Product highlight: Asus ROG Matrix GTX 580

Lest everyone forgets, Asus doesn’t just make notebooks and tablets. Believe it or not, they’re also a prolific PC parts manufacturer, famed for their motherboards and videocards that usually cost more than your smartphone. That seems to be the case with the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 580, an absolutely massive beast of a videocard that can also double as a bludgeoning tool*. The Taiwanese firm took an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU and slapped a number of improvements and overclocking technologies on top of it to earn the Asus ROG badge. Things like on-the-fly OC, GPU tweak utility, 19-phase Super Alloy Power components and multicolored MATRIX LED load indicator make it one of the most overclockable cards on the market. Asus is making two variants of this monster: the MATRIX GTX 580 P /2DIS/1536MD5 that has an engine clock of 816MHz, and a MATRIX GTX 580 /2DIS/1536MD5 that runs at a slower 782MHz.

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Skype on your iPad soon!

iPad users finally have another app to watch out for: Skype on their iPad.
There is no announced official release date yet from either company, but iSpazio.net has leaked a video of the app’s prototype, which is rumored to be approved quite soon.
While some people might wonder why Skype is only releasing an app now, this is directly linked to the addition of a camera on the iPad 2.
According to Skype’s VP of Consumer and Product Design, Rick Osterloh, the app will have almost all of the same functions as compared to the PC version, although a few features (i.e. file sharing) will not be available.


Source: TUAW

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Product Highlight: PowerColor Vortex 2 PCS+ 6950

We got some hands-on time with the PowerColor’s Vortex 2 6950 during our visit to their booth during COMPUTEX. The Vortex 2 PCS+ is the company’s own take on the AMD 6950, and as such has been modified extensively.

Aside from a traditional heatsink, the card also features heatpipes to draw heat away from the GPU, along with 2 fans. But these aren’t regular card fans – their height can be adjusted by the user which then increases the air intake and maximizes cooling.

Another nice feature is that when the fans are placed in opposite angles, a vortex effect is created producing even better cooling for the card. Stats include an 850MHz engine clock, 1300MHz (5.2Gbps) memory clock, 2GB GDDR5 of memory and a 256bit memory interface. We’ll get a review up as soon as we get a demo unit from the folks at PowerColor.

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