Western Digital's Caviar Green Gets Tested

It's hard to look at any product nowadays and not read something to the extent of it being "energy efficient". Heck, the product might literally bear the color green just to prove it. I don't think it's all for naught though. Producing energy efficient products isn't just smart, it's common sense. There's little need of sucking more power than we need to, just for the sake of it.

Despite the fact that hard drives are nowhere near as power-hungry as a processor or graphics card, they aren't escaping the slimming down to become more efficient either. Our friends at the Tech Report have taken Western Digital's latest Caviar Green for a spin, which promises to be fast, reliable, quiet and energy efficient, and according to TR's tests, it's hit its mark.

The drive isn't that fast given its goals, at around 5400RPM, but for those who are looking to build a file-server, HTPC or want a storage drive in their PC, it proves to be a great choice. The silence itself will be enough to please some people, because when 1TB can sound near-silent, it's easy to smile. The Caviar Green costs around $20 more than the normal 1TB offering, so it's up to you to really decide whether the premium is worth it. Depending on your needs, it probably will be.

The idea behind the Caviar Green is a simple one. For some applications, be they home theater PCs, secondary desktop storage, or a home file server stuffed into a closet, you don't need the fastest hard drive on the block-just one that's fast enough. Those markets are likely to prefer drives with lower noise levels and power consumption, which the Caviar Green is more than eager to provide, ideally while maintaining an acceptable level of performance.

Source: Tech Report

LucidLogix Secures $18 Million in Funding

LucidLogix, a company that aims to deem both SLI and CrossFireX useless, have just secured $18 million in Series C funding from Rho Ventures, a good sign that the technology has what it takes to fulfill its goal. We first learned of Lucid back during the Intel Developer Forum and overall, both Rory and I left their demo impressed.

In case you are completely unaware of the technology, you may want to read Rory's exhaustive look which explains the ins and outs and also what it could mean for us in the future. Lucid's product is a chip that touts the ability to evenly split up a graphics workload between multiple processors... it doesn't even matter the model, or the drivers installed.

That goal seems a little ambitious, but I'm remaining hopeful since it would help gamers everywhere get a lot more for their money. Let's face it, sticking in a second identical GPU and seeing a 50% performance increase is a little disappointing. After all, you did pay for two full cards, not one and a half. Lucid's chip hopes to up that percentage to 100%, which is why it seems so ambitious. Product is set to launch in the middle of next year, so we have a little wait yet, sadly.

"It is a great achievement for Lucid to raise this level of funding when the economic atmosphere is so shaky. Our recent announcements and engagements with major partners have demonstrated that we can deliver and commercialize our technology," stated Offir Remez, founder and VP of business development. "Our investors see the value added of both the company personnel, as well as the technology it develops."

Source: LucidLogix Press Release

Tech Roundup - October 30, 2008

Motherboards & Processors
• Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 - Hardware Bistro

Displays & Video Cards
• BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 OCX - TweakTown
• Galaxy GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB - PC Perspective
• HIS HD 4850 IceQ 4 TurboX - Overclockers Online
• MSI HD 4670 - Bjorn3D
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4550 - ClubOC

Memory & Storage
• Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR3 1333MHz - Pro-Clockers
• Patriot Warp V2 128GB 2.5 Solid State Drive - TweakTown

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Creative HS-1200 Wireless Headset - Metku
• JayBird JB-200 Bluetooth Stereo Headset - Legit Reviews
• OCZ Technology Dominatrix Laser Gaming Mouse - BigBruin
• Silverstone Raven Gaming Mouse - t-break
• Vidabox Premium Wireless Keyboard - techPowerUp

Cooling
• NZXT Cryo LX Laptopcooler - TweakPC
• Vantec Aeroflow FX 92 VAF-9225 Heatsink - FrostyTech
• Zalman CNPS9300 AT CPU Cooler - Hardware Logic

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Aerocool Aeroracer Pro Mid-Tower - TweakNews
• Coolermaster CM690 - Case Critics
• LanCool Metal Bonded PC-K1 Mid-Tower - Think Computers

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• AMD's X-Video Bitstream Acceleration - Phoronix
• Brother MFC-790CW Color Inkjet All-in-One Printer - TestFreaks
• Dell Studio Hybrid Small Form Factor Desktop - HotHardware
• Samsung Home Theatre Setup - Dreamware Computers