Adobe Releases Initial CS4 Betas: Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth

It's hard to believe that Adobe's CS3 suite has been out for well over a year, but it has. What's that mean? CS4 has to be right around the corner. As is usual these days, Adobe has released three brand-new betas for upcoming CS4 software, including Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth. Interestingly, Photoshop is not yet available, but being their pride and joy, it's no surprise.

The only application I use of the three on a regular basis is Dreamweaver, and I gave the latest version a quick go. The biggest difference you'll notice right off the bat is the much cleaner interface, and I'm already a big fan. CS3 wasn't great-looking with Vista, but CS4 changes that entirely. Also new is a Live View that allows you to view your pages in real-world conditions, an improved code navigator, a CSS inspector, much improved Photoshop integration and more.

On the Fireworks side, it also has been treated to a new UI, but also includes the ability to create entire webpages in the application then export in a CSS standard layout for further editing in Dreamweaver, PDF export and AIR authoring. Not too much information is given about what's new with Soundbooth, nor would I notice the difference if I looked, but music authors may want to have a look.

All the betas are free and run alongside your current installations. Check them out at Adobe Labs.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today gave a sneak peek at three applications from the next release of Adobe Creative Suite, its award-winning collection of graphic design, Web development and video editing applications. The company released public beta of new versions of Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Soundbooth as free downloads on Adobe labs. 

Source: Adobe Press Release

Bigger is Not Better, Says AMD

In the tech world, bigger is better, right? Wrong, according to AMD. When asked by a C|Net blog as to why they are not building huge chips like NVIDIA, they responded, "We believe this is [building smaller chips] is a much stronger strategy than going for a huge, monolithic chip that is very expensive and eats a lot of power and really can only be used for a small portion of the market."

Tu shay, AMD, tu shay. That's a valid point, though. Why build a massive power-sucking processor rather than pairing two efficient processors together for the same performance? It can be argued though, that this is a needless argument, because the fact of the matter is, dual-GPU cards are still watt-suckers. This will always be the case unless the architecture is redesigned to allow one GPU to be shut off while it's not needed.

The other argument that can be brought up is that one massive GPU is better than two mid-range offerings, because it will increase performance in all games, not only those that can properly take advantage of a multi-GPU setup. One GPU would deliver the full load of power, while a multi-GPU card may only deliver one-half of its available power. It all varies from game to game, however, and many today will indeed handle multi-GPU setups well.

One things for sure though, with AMD's next-gen dual-GPU offering and NVIDIA's massive single-GPU card en route, next month is going to be incredibly interesting.

"We believe this is a much stronger strategy than going for a huge, monolithic chip that is very expensive and eats a lot of power and really can only be used for a small portion of the market," he said. "Scaling that large chip down into the performance segment doesn't make sense--because of the power and because of the size."

Source: C|Net Blog

May 27th Tech Roundup

Motherboards & Processors
• ECS A780GM-A AMD 780G - PC Perspective
• Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 - Overclockers Club

Displays & Video Cards
• Samsung T220 LCD Monitor - Dreamware Computers
• PNY Verto GeForce 9600GT - TweakTown
• XFX 9800GTX Black Edition - Motherboards.org

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Hiper DVI-to-HDMI Cable - Phoronix
• Logitech diNovo Mini - InsideHW

Cooling
• Coolink SWiF-192 Silent Fan - Tech-Reviews
• Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler - Hardware Canucks
• Xigmatek HDT-D1284 - Technic3D

Chassis & Power Supplies
• CoolerMaster Centurion 590 - Motherboards.org
• Glacialtech Altair A380 HTPC - TweakNews
• Hiper 880W Double Header Power Supply - JonnyGURU
• NZXT Tempest - Think Computers
• Vizo Luxon Advanced ED Hard Drive Enclosure - Tech-Reviews
• ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler - ModSynergy
• ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler - Virtual-Hideout

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Lenovo ThinkPad X300 Series Notebook - TweakTown