Windows 8 may be getting a webcam application for taking pictures and filming video. A user who goes by the name of PlainDickhead has posted a YouTube video on the My Digital Life forums showing off the basics of the new utility.
The video shows a basic user interface that lets the user configure webcam settings and application settings, take timed or instant pictures, and record video clips. Like many other parts of Windows 8 we've seen leaked so far, the application has a very basic design: a dark background, blue icons, white text, and an overall clean layout.
Under Application Settings, there are five options: Webcam, Audio source, Resolution, Frame rate, and Audio recording level. Webcam Settings also has five options: Brightness, Focus, Exposure, Zoom, and Flicker. Those are under the two tabs on top, while the three icons on the right let you do the actual picture taking and video recording. Once the content has been captured, you are given the option to view it and then either Accept or Retake it.
This application, if it ends up making it into the final release of Windows 8, is not yet complete. It looks as if the video preview function is currently not working. Furthermore, the application only works in full screen mode.
Windows should have received a webcam application a long time ago, but I think the reason it is getting one now is due to form factor. Laptops are outselling desktops and the tablet market is getting ready to explode. Most laptops and tablets nowadays come with front-facing cameras, so it makes sense to include software for the hardware
The National Security Agency (NSA) is designing a new $895.6 million supercomputing complex called the High Performance Computing Center, to be complete by December 2015. It will be constructed at its Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters over the next several years according to National Security Agency Military Construction, Defense-Wide FY 2012 Budget Estimates (19-page PDF via InformationWeek).
The Department of Defense budget document indicates that the project will be designed with energy efficiency, security, and "state-of-the-art" computing horsepower in mind, including the goal of attaining an LEED Silver certification by conserving water, energy, and materials. The specifications for the new supercomputing complex seem to suggest that the NSA is building a massive data center, with typical needs such as raised flooring, chilled water systems, fire suppression, alarms, as well as power requirements of 60 megawatts.
The NSA is requesting $84.7 million for the new High Performance Computing Center in fiscal 2012, including $35 million for planning and design. That will be followed up with a planned $399.9 million in fiscal 2013, and $431 million to complete the center in fiscal 2014. Unsurprisingly, the supercomputing complex will have expensive protection, including an estimated $15.1 million in building security and $21.7 million on perimeter control. The security features will include a vehicle cargo inspection facility, a visitor control center, card access control, video surveillance, intrusion detection systems, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear detection systems, perimeter fencing, and so on.
In addition to the supercomputing center and a few non-tech related construction projects, the budget document also shows a $246.4 million request for 2012 to be used for NSA's new cybersecurity data center under construction at Camp Williams, Utah as well as a $68.6 million request for a new generator at NSA's communications intercept site at RAF Menwith Hill in England
The latest high performance external 4 port PCIe SATA 3Gbps host adapter card compatible with Apple's latest Mac Pro, Power Mac G5 and any PC equipped with PCI-e slot . The 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus (4x) features high speed SATA 3Gb/s connection at 3 Gb/s bandwidth and allows you to connect up to 4 external SATA devices. With the Port Multiplier functionality and can support up to 20 hard drives. Serial ATA is a high-speed serial link replacement for the parallel ATA attachment of mass storage devices. The serial link employed in the 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus is a high-speed differential layer that utilizes gigabit technology and 8b/10b encoding. The current data rate is 1.5Gb/s (=150MB/s) and 3.0Gb/s and the 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus will support 6Gb/s in the near future.
Based on a radically ultra fast and native PCIe chip-set architecture SiI 3132, the 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus is a extremely fast PCI Express 4x host adapter and takes SATA performance and features to enterprise levels: massive data storage space, high performance data transfer rate RAID 0, or high availability RAID 1, RAID 5. Our 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus (4x) fills the need of applications such as servers, digital video, digital audio, storage library's, graphic professionals and workstations storage systems that require maximum performance from their storage assets. Utilizing a four lanes (4x) PCI Express interface and four (4) independent Serial ATA (eSATA) channels
With the 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus (4x), you have the potential to actually use the greatest speeds and the best STR (Sustainable Transfer Rate) that are available with SATA 1.5Gb/s and 3Gb/s interfaces, when you begin to stack SATA drives together in RAID you will really see your data fly. Supporting high capacity and sustained data transfer, the 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus (4x), is also ideal for connecting to video and photo editing "scratch disks", huge photo/MP3/movie libraries and enhance your editing experience. Reglardless if you are a audio or video editor working with FinalCut Pro or ProTools on a Mac Pro, G5 Dual-core or PC workstation, this card is designed for you. the 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus (4x) can easily handle multiple streams of a variety video formats such as 10 bit uncompressed HD, 8 bit uncompressed HD, DVCPro HD, 8 bit SD, 10 bit SD, HDV, etc.
The 4-Port NitroAV SATAStar Plus (4x) also offers the best ROI on the market for this performance based product. There is nothing faster for the value on the market.
Key Features
Supports 4-lane, 10Gb/s PCI Express Bandwidth
Provides 4 external port eSATA2 Channels
Utilizes Silicon Image Si3132 Chip-set
Supports FIS-based switching with Port Multipliers
Fully compliant with Serial ATA 1.0a and Serial ATA II Extensions to Serial ATA 1.0a spec revision 1.1
Supports Serial ATA Generation 2 transfer rate of 3.0 Gbps
Supports Serial ATA II Port Multiplier 1.0 Specifications revision 1.1
Incorporated high-performance Heatsink to ensure reliable operations and long life.
Supports First-party DMA commands for Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
Supports Legacy Command Queuing (LCQ)
Co-resides with Motherboard IDE and SATA devices
Staggered Spin-up Control
Connect up to 20 SATA hard drives
Supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and RAID 5 (over Port Multipliers)
Compatible with a variety of capture cards: AJA, BMD, Matrox and others
Supports Windows 2000, XP, XP Pro, Server, Vista and MacOSX 10.4.x
PCI Express (PCIe) 4-lane host bus interface for high-performance apps, including Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Apeture, Photoshop, Lightroom, iMovie, iPhoto, ProTools, Games and much more.
The ARC-12XX SATA ll RAID host adapter is a high-performance PCI-Express bus to SATA ll Disk Array host adapter. The controller can provide up to 4, 8, 12, or 16 SATA ll peripheral devices on a single host adapter. When properly configured, the SATA host adapter can provide non-stop service with a high degree of fault tolerance through the use of RAID technology and advanced array management features. Intel IOP333 processor has integrated the RAID 6 engine inside. It offers Areca the advantage of reduced engineering and development costs, by having the New RAID6 function build-in and integrated part saves on component costs and internal PCI bandwidth. Intel emphasis on architectural commonality in IOPs allows Areca developers to capitalize on their existing code base.
The 4/8 port Serial ATA RAID Host adapter is low-profile PCI cards-ideal for 1U or 2U rack-mount system. It is used the same RAID kernel of its field-proven external RAID controller.
256MB on-board DDR333 SDRAM with ECC protection(4/8-port)
One SODIMM socket with default 256MB of DDR333 SDRAM with ECC protection, Upgrade to 1GB. An ECC or non-ECC SDRAM module using X8 or X16 chip organization (12/16/24-port)
Write-through or write-back cache support
Support up to 4/8/12/16 SATA II drives
Multi-adapter support for large storage requirements
BIOS boot support for greater fault tolerance
BIOS PnP (plug and play) and BBS (BIOS boot specification) support
Intel RAID 6 Engine to support extreme performance RAID 6
NVRAM for RAID event & transaction log
Redundant flash image for adapter availability
Battery Backup Module (BBM) ready ARC-6120BA-T1xx, xx means version no.
The introduction of the latest Intel Core i5 and Core i7 based processors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture and paired with that the P67 motherboard chipset for the somewhat enthusiast community certainly brought a big smile to all our faces. Face it, any combination of that processor and a motherboard is just wicked.
Update: this article was written prior to the P67 chipset recall - more info in the conclusion on this.
But... there's also wicked in threefold. We have seen some truly P67 amazing motherboards already, but the one tested today is bound to top them all. It is a motherboard that I have been on the lookout for a long long time. It is the MSI Big Bang P67 Marshal!
The Marshal, as we'll call it from here and onwards, is a eATX based P67 motherboard on which MSI went completely wacky, the board will compel and lure the extreme enthusiast class end-user as it is smothered with features and options.
Powered by Intel's P67 chipset, the MSI Big Bang Marshal comes with MSI's latest Military Class II design that makes use of a 24 phase (!) power SFC choke setup alongside the best quality Hi-c CAP's and Japanese made solid capacitors with a hopefully an extended long life-time expectancy. Primary features:
Military Class II components
OC Genie II: Auto OC to boost performance in 1 sec
ClickBIOS: Easy-to-use UEFI BIOS interface
Super Charger: fast charge iPad/iPhone/smartphone
MANY USB 3.0 & SATA 6Gb/s
MANY PCIe slots
But wait there's so much more... to name just a few, this board at default comes with twelve USB 3.0 ports thanks to three NEC USB 3.0 controllers and an internal VIA HUB, is has eight (!) mechanical PCIE x16 slots supporting CrossfireX and 2-way SLI.
Added to the mix for additional PCIe lanes is a Hydra chip, which also can be utilized to combine mix and match graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup. The board comes with 24-phase DrMOS power design, voltage monitoring points, an external overclock device called the OC dashboard, that all new EFI BIOS, dual-BIOS selectable with a simple button, and OC genie button that allows you to have say a 2500K processor run at 4200 with the flick of a switch. I'm not done though, we spot integrated audio with SoundBlaster X-Fi application (software) layer, ten SATA ports of which four are based on the all new SATA 6G. Thick heatpipe (passive and thus silent) cooling and more and more.
This board is a true hardware enthusiast dream come true, a freakfest of hardware but was it really designed into perfection or do we stumble into some compromises? Well, let's have a quick peek after we'll show, test and overclock it. We'll bring it close to 5 GHz on air cooling today and put some really sexy 2133 MHz DDR3 CAS7 memory on it to see if we can set any new records.
The Intel 68 series chipset
Paired with the new Sandy Bridge based processors come new motherboard chipsets, ten in total of which five are intended for desktop processors, namely the P67, H67, Q65, Q67 and B65. Next to the new chipsets there is also a small socket change. Previous Clarkdale Core series processors were seated onto a LGA 1156 package (socket). The new SB processors do not share that same socket, Intel placed them onto socket LGA 1155, one pin less.
The primary reason here is that a last generation processor will not work with a series 6 chipset and vice versa. So you can't install by accident, a Clarkdale based Core i5 on a P67 motherboard.
Now, luckily this doesn't mean you'll be needing a new cooler, your old LGA 1156 CPU cooler is compatible with the LGA 1155 motherboard measurements. Let's have a look at the primary features of the 82P67 Platform Controller Hub chipset.
Segment
Corporate
SMB - B65
Consumer H67
Consumer P67
Socket
LGA 1155
LGA 1155
LGA 1155
LGA 1155
Memory channels / DIMM per channel
2 / 2
2 / 2
2 / 2
2 / 2
USB2.0
14
12
14
14
SATA Total (Max number of 6Gb/s)
6 (2)
6 (1)
6 (2)
6 (2)
PCIe 2.0
8
8
8
8
PCI
Yes
Yes
No
No
Integrated Display
2
2
2
n/a
Performance Tuning
No
No
No
Yes
Above, you can see the primary desktop chipsets released, H67 and P67 will be the two chipset you are dealing with. For end consumers like you and me the H67 chipset will be less performance targeted and comes with support for monitor connectivity.
The one significant difference in-between H67 and P67 is that the P67 does not support the embedded GPU inside the processor or any of its functions. P67 requires a dedicated graphics card.
The P67 chipset is targeted at performance and enthusiast end users, allowing much more tweaking and providing performance features. As you can understand, we'll be testing a lot of these chipset based motherboards, some of which will also have support for the new uEFI BIOS. A graphics user interface BIOS that is going to fascinate you.
Interesting to know is that the new 67 series chipsets will come a SATA 6G controller and though not native, all of them will very likely come with USB 3.0 support by using a NEC controller. P67 will have 16 PCIe lanes available for your graphics card (x16) but can be split down into two x8 PCIe lanes for graphics cards if you like to pursuit multi-GPU setup, hence SLI and Crossfire will run quite well on them.
The Intel 82P67 Platform Controller Hub (PCH) SATA2 ports can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology.
Another change is that the chipset now comes standard with an Intel Gigabit LAN (Intel 82579V) controller, on the previous chipsets this was an optional for ODMs, this time around... it simply sits there and can be used by the motherboard ODM. So I expect a big increase in Intel based LAN connectivity the upcoming year, bad news for Realtek that is.
EFI BIOS (MSI CLICK BIOS)
Before we dice deep into the hardware with the help of a photo-shoot, I quickly wanted to show you the BIOS. We touched the topic at the previous page already, the new EFI BIOS is an Extensible Firmware Interface that complies with EFI architecture, offering a user-friendly interface that goes beyond traditional keyboard-only BIOS controls to enable a way more flexible and convenient mouse input at BIOS level.
EFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a specification detailing an interface that helps hand off control of the system for the pre-boot environment (i.e. after the system is powered on, but before the operating system starts) to an operating system, such as Windows.
EFI is an interface. It can be implemented on top of a traditional BIOS (in which case it supplants the traditional "INT" entry points into BIOS) or on top of non-BIOS implementations.
End-users can navigate the new EFI BIOS (basic input/output system) with the same smoothness as their operating system. It's simply a Windows OS feel. The EFI mode displays frequently-accessed setup info, experienced performance enthusiasts that demand far more intricate system settings and you can go nuts in there.
We have recorded a little video on the new EFI BIOS feature, and yes it is as impressive as it looks. The MSI EFI Click BIOS implementation however lacks a bit of creativity as it simply does not grasp me. It's setup is somewhat illogical, you constantly have to seek, it is also somewhat unresponsive and even buggy here and there as sometimes a mouse click on a register or function simply does not work.
Yeah there still lots of improvements to be made on MSI's side alright, but it's better then your regular BIOS of course as it makes common functions really fail proof, features like flashing a BIOS is done in a jiffy and all variables can be managed and monitored really easy. We'll see a lot of ODMs make a move to the EFI BIOS this year.
Specifications
Socket
1155
CPU (Max Support)
Sandy Bridge
Base Clock
100MHz
Chipset
Intel P67
DDR3 Memory
DDR3 1066/1333/1600*/2133*(OC)
Memory Channel
Dual
DIMM Slots
4
Max Memory (GB)
32
PCI-Ex16
8
PCI-E Gen
Gen2 (1x16, 1x8)
PCI
2
IDE
N/A
SATAIII
4
SATAII
6
RAID
0/1/5/10
LAN
10/100/1000*2
USB 3.0 ports (Rear)
8
USB 2.0 ports (Rear)
2
Audio ports (Rear)
6+Coaxial/Optical SPDIF
1394 ports (Rear)
1
eSATA
2
Form Factor
eATX
DrMOS
Y
APS
Y
SLI
Y
CrossFire
Y
Alright, let's head onwards to an overview of the motherboard with the help of a photo-shoot.
