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AMD's "Suzuka" Opterons Demand Attention

By Rafael Hernandez on July 3, 2009 6:47 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Processor launches are a funny thing. There's a whole lot of hoopla over the high end chips with all manner of benchmarks and quotes on how their latest product will make things run faster, cooler, and improve your Crysis framerate all at a low low price. That is of course if your chip is even noticed at all.

AMD launched their "Suzuka" (codename) based quad-core Opterons at around the same time they released their "Istanbul" six-core CPU...you can guess which one got the bulk of the press. The good news is that their latest chip does provide a performance boost while requiring less power to operate.

Here's hoping they'll announce that they've launched a different chip with some valid merits on a different day in the future.

Source: AMD

EVGA's Killer Xeno Pro, Network Stack Offloading Fun

By Rafael Hernandez on July 3, 2009 4:33 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Integrated network chips have eased the cost of networking your computers...so why would you want to buy an addon card for your gaming rig? Well your favorite operating system, namely Windows, usually has the system's CPU take care of the incoming packets which can degrade performance a bit.

The EVGA Killer Xeno Pro hopes to minimize the impact of network transfers as the NIC is capable of handling the data being streamed in leaving your system's processor to take care of other things. AnandTech has a look:

Let's start by saying that this isn't going to be a network card for someone hanging on to a 7 Series NVIDIA card or a Radeon 1k part from ATI in a single core CPU system. When upgrading, spending the $120 cost of the Killer Xeno Pro on a better graphics card will net you a great deal more performance. Even putting that money into the CPU is likely to get you more for your money in general. This is a card that should be targeted at the online gamer with a good system who wants to make sure every possible advantage is covered.

An interesting device with plenty of potential but you'll want an insanely high-end machine to match its price tag.

Acer's Aspire Revo R3600, Nettop Nvidia ION Action

By Rafael Hernandez on July 2, 2009 11:29 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Despite all of the enthusiasm over netbooks and the amount of lightweight and long life computing freedom they offer the chips powering them are certainly up to the task of providing a decent experience on the desktop as well.

The Acer Aspire Revo R3600 nettop combines Intel's Atom processor and Nvidia's ION platform for some spirited computing action. ModReactor has a look at the PC and what it can do:

The particular model we tested is sold a complete system, with pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium. Very soon models with the free open source Linux based OS will too be available, we also expect choice between HDD and SSD drives, different configurations of its complement and so on. At this time this is the very first model on the market and its job is to provide toy with all the essentials while sparing you from any problematic experiences (everything is pre-configured, all the drivers are pre-installed too - all you have to do in order to use it is get it out of its box).

It's a slick little system for sure, a little too slick, it just might tempt you into buying multiple systems...I know it beckons me.

Windows Vista and SSDs, A Case Study

By Rafael Hernandez on July 2, 2009 1:18 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Solid state drives offer a very attractive performance increase over the old platter based hard drives of the past, unfortunately getting the most out of them isn't as simple as plugging in the drive. Given the technology's early state you'll have to deal with firmware revisions and you might even have to question which operating system you'll be using with your drives.

The Tech Report has a look at how a batch of SSD drives perform under Windows Vista and go in depth with their findings:

Still, since Windows Vista drops XP's default partition offset, we decided to test with it next. We updated our test system's hardware, as well, combining a Core 2 processor with 4GB of memory and Intel's most recent ICH10R south bridge SATA controller. But does this drastic overhaul change the SSD performance picture any? We've subjected drives based on controllers from Indilinx, Intel, and Samsung to a battery of tests in an attempt to find out.

They'll have to rerun these tests once Microsoft's Windows 7 is officially launched but they enjoy that sort of punishment.

Nvidia Tegra to Appear In Smartphones

By Rafael Hernandez on July 1, 2009 9:12 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Nvidia is on a bit of a roll after securing themselves a nice design win with their Tegra system-on-a-chip processor made its way into Microsoft's Zune HD and now TheStreet.com has word on at least one major cellphone/smartphone vendor prepping to use their chip in a new product.

The piece goes on to tout the possibility of a Google Android based smartphone featuring its chip which is possible although given how far along Microsoft is with their own Zune HD, which runs on the company's very own Windows CE platform, something from their camp running on the smartphone isn't out of the question.

Whatever OS it uses a Tegra powered smartphone will certainly offer a good deal of performance to mobile applications.

Dell's Adamo Laptop, Upscale Mobile Computing

By Rafael Hernandez on July 1, 2009 8:33 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

There aren't many brands that attempt the premium quality notebook approach aside from Apple and many of the gaming laptop manufacturers, leave it to Dell to make a grand entrance.

The Dell Adamo sports an extremely slim and aluminum chassis and an overall slick design that oozes out coolness. t-break has a look at this somewhat ultra-portable:

The specifications on the Adamo are good but not great. You have an option between a 1.2Ghz or a 1.4GHz CPU which is a bit lowly compared to the even thinner MacBook Air's 1.83GHz or 2.13GHz CPU. You can get the Adamo with 2GB or 4GB RAM along with a 128GB Samsung Solid State Drive. I'm glad Dell chose the SSD as standard otherwise the Adamo would've felt very slow. The integrated graphics are based on the Intel 4 series which is good enough for 2D performance- just dont expect to play Crysis on it.

It's for the stylish and space conscious folks out there...who doesn't want to be stylish?!

Nvidia Rumored to be Working on ION 2

By Rafael Hernandez on July 1, 2009 8:06 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Nvidia, apparently, isn't content to leave good enough alone so the company is rumored to be silently working on a newer version of their ION chipset.

ION 2 is purportedly set to offer twice as many shader processors which should improve graphics performance and, considering the push towards general purpose GPU usage, the added shaders should help speed up CUDA/OpenCL/DX Compute/whatever the industry will think of next.

Source: Fudzilla

Firefox 3.5 Released

By Rafael Hernandez on July 1, 2009 1:21 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

In case you missed the veritable flood of news concerning the topic Mozilla's Firefox version 3.5 final has been released. The latest version boasts improved performance and standards compliance which is always nice.

As far as the performance claim there is a marked improvement compared to the 3.0 releases which was evident even during the beta and release candidate phase so the final version should offer up the same great speed as it doesn't appear to have changed much outside of some bug fixes.

Go on and grab your copy from their site or check for updates under the help section of your current Firefox install.

AMD's Athlon II X2 250 CPU, Sort of Phenom Yet Not

By Rafael Hernandez on July 1, 2009 12:55 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

When it comes to processors getting all of the specifications for the chip rarely tells you how it performs in the real world, so while that shiny new chip may share the same pedigree as higher priced models you may find the "minor" differences turn out to be major performance killers.

Luckily for the AMD Athlon II X2 250 a bit of missing L3 cache doesn't appear to hinder its performance much at all, in fact free from the added baggage the dual core chip is able to reach some nifty heights for an inexpensive CPU. bit-tech has a look:

However, the Athlon II X2 250 is much more flexible than its predecessors because it's compatible with both Socket AM2+ and Socket AM3 motherboards. This is great news for such a low price CPU as cheap good-quality Socket AM3 motherboards have finally begun to appear in the last few weeks. The only downside in this equation is DDR3 which, while coming down in price all the time, is currently still a little more expensive than DDR2. Still, given how much better Socket AM3 motherboards overclock than their Socket AM2+ predecessors - it's well worth thinking about using the Athlon II X2 250 with a Socket AM3 motherboard.

Enthusiasts know what they'll be doing with this chip but its stock 3.0GHz clock speed isn't too shabby for the non-tweakers either.

Samsung Ups the Ante, Develops 11.6" Nvidia ION Powered Netbook...Notebook...Thing

By Rafael Hernandez on June 29, 2009 11:38 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The netbook arms race is heating up once again and this time Samsung is busy preparing their salvo into the market. The company is preparing an 11.6" netbook computer which is pushing dangerously close into the notebook size department which would defeat the purpose of a netbook in the first place....

Anyway Samsung is looking to bring in Nvidia's ION platform into it which should see the GeForce 9400M chipset working along side Intel's N280 processor for some battery saving yet totally usable multimedia experience.

You might just have to wait a while though as it's not expected to be released until late October.

Source: The Tech Report

AMD's Propus, the Quad-core Athlon Arrives

By Rafael Hernandez on June 28, 2009 1:42 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

AMD's Athlon lineup was, at one point in time, their flagship consumer processor, that banner was passed along to the Phenom lineup leaving the poor old Athlon brand to take over the low-end processor branding duties.

Of course there's always room to move up in the world.

PC Perspective has some information on AMD's upcoming "Propus" core which should see the Athlon name shine bright once more. Here's a peek:

The last thing that needs covered here is the potential TDP of these products. Since the Propus core is around 60% of the size of the Phenom II, we can expect the lower 2.4 GHz versions to be around 65 watts TDP, and potentially as low as 45 watts TDP. The higher 3 GHz version would probably hit around 89 watts in the worst case scenario. Something else to consider is that with the continual advances on GF's 45 nm process, and the lack of large caches on the chip, we may even see TDPs dip into the 75 watt area for a 3 GHz part.

A cheaper and energy efficient quad-core for the desktop? It sounds like a tweaker's dream chip no matter how you look at it.

Apple to Avoid Nvidia for a Very Long Time?

By Rafael Hernandez on June 28, 2009 1:30 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Things tend to go from bad to worse when you keep your prime manufacturing partners out of the loop when it comes to defects you found in your product. So much so that you tend to lose business with the very people that are in a great position to sell millions of your chips.

That may be the case with Apple avoiding Nvidia according to SemiAccurate. With the "bumpgate" issue that lead to an unknown, but presumably large, number of failures for Apple and other computer manufacturers.

Nvidia might just see themselves shut out of many designs over the coming years, hopefully they can keep themselves going with their Tegra business line which has seen its fair share of adopters.

Microsoft Zune HD 64GB Rumored, Other Info Spilled?

By Rafael Hernandez on June 27, 2009 10:22 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Since all anyone has to go by is the good old rumor mill you'll have to take everything coming out about the Microsoft Zune HD with a huge grain of salt but given the thin dimensions of the gadget you can expect flash memory to be the chief method of storage. Unfortunately the only storage sizes mentioned so far have been the 16GB and 32GB marks which, given the richness of media (and size of 720p videos), is rather pitiful.

In comes Neowin's interview with a mystery Microsoft Software Engineer who, purportedly, spills some of the beans on the device and a 64GB model the company may, or may not, be planning.

Here's hoping they plan even larger models...real soon.

DataSlide's Square Platter, the Future of Data Storage?

By Rafael Hernandez on June 27, 2009 3:30 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

If you thought that solid state drives were going to replace the platter as your storage method of choice DataSlide wants you to think twice. The company has designed a method whereby the old spinning platter is replaced by a rectangular version designed to slide back and forth.

Aligned above and below the platter are 64 read/write heads which gives this technology some insane performance benefits. Of course there are no spinning platters either so that should help with the durability aspect as well.

We'll have to see just how quickly they'll be able to get this technology to market, if their performance claims pan out it'll be great to see some competition for SSDs.

Source: techPowerUp!

Microsoft Zune HD Launch Date Rumors

By Rafael Hernandez on June 26, 2009 10:41 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Has the Microsoft Zune HD caught your eye? Does its sleek casing, OLED touch screen, and HD Radio beckon you to spend your hard earned money on yet another personal media player?

Well you might have to wait until September 8th when the device is rumored to be released in 16GB and 32GB versions which seems to be extremely limited storage space given that the device is expected to output 720p video.

Ah well at least it looks great despite the limited storage.

Source: Gizmodo