PhotoFast also introduced a new PowerDrive-LSI PCIe SSD, this unit will ship in 240GB to 960GB capacities and offers blazing fast transfer speeds. Pricing and availability is unknown.

CompactFlash stalwart PhotoFast has unveiled its all-new PowerDrive, which claims it can read your data at 1.4GBps and write it at an even faster 1.5GBps. That’s the rough equivalent of reading two full CDs’ content every second! Need we say more? The PowerDrive’s speed puts the stinking fast Fusion-io ioXtreme to shame, humbles PhotoFast’s own 1GBps G-Monster, and matches OCZ’s otherworldly Z-Drive. The supported OS list includes a nice selection of Linux flavors as well, and sizes stretch from 240GB up to 960GB.

For those who love, care and cradle Betas .. Firefox 4 Beta 2 has been released, based on the Gecko 2.0 Web platform, has just been released for consumption.

Windows, Mac and Linux versions are all available in a total of 24 languages. Beta 2 brings a new look to Firefox 4 (with tabs now on top by default), a new ‘App Tab’ feature, and features various performance improvements over the previous beta. Mozilla warns that some add-ons may not be compatible with this version of Firefox.

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ATI have just released ATI Catalyst™ 10.4 for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux. One of the features that i am quite excited about to see supported is H.264 Level 5.1 support. I know this will make a lot of high-definition media enthusiasts happy as that will now be hardware accelerated.

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.4 Windows release include:

Performance improvements

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky

o Improves up to 6% with ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics products
o Improves up to 3% with ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 graphics products
o Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series products

New Features

ATI Catalyst – Video enhancements

* H.264 Level 5.1 support
o ATI Catalyst™ can now playback 5.1 level streams on all support players
o Allows for playback of high resolutions (4Kx2K)
* Mosquito noise removal
o Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback .
o Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series of products

AMD video transcoding updates

* This release of ATI Catalyst™ provides enhanced support for the Windows 7 Drag and Drop video converter
o Performance improvements
o New formats supported (H.264 file formats – MTS and WMV9 Complex profile interlaced content)
o ATI Catalyst™ Control Center option for enabling/disabling GPU acceleration
* Support for the ATI Video converter is now available in the advanced view of the ATI Catalyst Control Center

Resolved Issues: Highlights

* Desktop mouse cursor will no longer intermittently appear enlarged
* Pressing the “Page Down” button while configuring the last display in Eyefinity group will now properly switch to the next display instead of closing the bezel user interface
* Shortcut keys to configure the bezel now functions properly
* “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” maps no longer takes unusually long to load for ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
* Performance on 2D applications and benchmarks has now been fixed
* Flashing no longer visible in “Shattered Horizon” game with CrossFire™ enabled
* Changing in-game resolution in “Alien vs. Predator” no longer causes screen flickering under multi-GPU configuration
* Tint setting under Catalyst Control Center – Basic Color now displays smooth transition when adjusted for Blu-ray playback
* In-game anti-alias now functions properly when other in-game options like Volumetric Effects are enabled in “Empire: Total War” and “Napoleon: Total War”games
* Flickering corruption and flashing textures are no longer visible in “Battlefield 2: Bad Company”

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