- Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 Mobile Platform
- AMD Launches Ryzen PRO 7000 Series Mobile & Desktop Platform
- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
- NVIDIA Announces Latest Ada Lovelace Additions: GeForce RTX 4060 Ti & RTX 4060
- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
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NVIDIA’s CEO Doesn’t See Fab Ownership in Near-Future
If there’s one man with a lot to say, it’s NVIDIA’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang. Taiwan-based DigiTimes had the opportunity to sit down with Jen-Hsun and pick his brain over current NVIDIA issues and to see what he plans to see happen with the company in the future. A lot of what’s said has been known for a while, but he does well to reaffirm his stance on certain issues.
When questioned about the mobile GPU debacle, Jen-Hsun gave the same line he’s been giving for a while… that the company has been more than adamant in working to get the issue fixed. He mentioned that NVIDIA is willing to pay far more than what the chip is worth to have them replaced, so it’s hard to fault the company here. The problem shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but at least it appears consumers can get their notebook fixed without issue, or cost.
Also in the interview he’s questioned about fabs, and whether or not NVIDIA will ever own one. Jen-Hsuan strongly suggests that they don’t need one given their current success, but it doesn’t seem he’s ruling it out completely. He does assure that TMSC and UMC will remain partners for the next few years at least. The interview covers quite a variety of subjects, so it’s worth a read if you want to get caught up with NVIDIA happenings.
However, I would like to comment on Intel’s push to using x86 architecture for GPUs. High-end graphics technology is not something you can achieve by just stepping through the door. Intel’s hope of changing the whole GPU industry is not going to be something easily achieved.
Intel’s Core i7 Stock CPU Cooler Revealed
With Intel’s Core i7 launch right around the corner (~2 months), it’s about time we get a glimpse of the CPU cooler we’ll be receiving with the retail product, right? Well, someone on a Chinese forum was lucky enough to score what appears to be a retail packaging (minus the graphics) and also the completely revamped cooler.
As you can see in the image below, the new cooler doesn’t change the overall design, but it appears thin copper fins replace the somewhat-thicker aluminum ones on the previous models. The fan itself is also larger and lacks a “guard” of sorts and happens to be completely clear. Overall, it looks rather sharp and should be a huge improvement over what we’ve seen before.
I still have to gripe about the use of the thumb-mounts, though. I know I’m not alone in thinking that these are less-than-ideal and only result in sore thumbs, but they continue to be used not only on Intel’s own coolers, but some others as well. The benefit of the thumb-mounts is of course ease-of-installation, but when your thumbs are sore afterwards, is it even worth it?
Whether or not this cooler will be included with all of the Core i7 models, or just the higher-end models is yet to be seen. It shouldn’t be too much longer before we find out.
Activision Suing Game Pirates
According to a few reports making the rounds this week, it’s not a good day to be a game pirate, especially if it’s Activision who has you in their sights. The reports note that the game publisher has been quietly suing individuals for a while, although the first case to become really well-known has just come to light, which is the case of James R. Strickland of New York.
James has been sued by Activision for distributing Call of Duty 3 for the Xbox 360 on file-sharing sites, and the publisher is demanding between $30,000 – $150,000 per infringement, on top of reimbursement of legal fees. Ouch. It’s not just the RIAA out there who have asinine demands, it seems.
It’s important to note that the cases so far haven’t dealt with downloaders themselves, but rather the people who’ve ripped the game and uploaded it to distribute. However, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the lawsuits shift to the downloaders themselves, as the publishers will want to get the point across somehow.
According to Activision, the alleged infringement was “willful and intentional, in disregard of and indifference to the rights of Plaintiff.” Activision is seeking statutory damages ranging from $30,000 to $150,000 for each infringement of each copyrighted videogame. They are also seeking reimbursement of legal fees.
Adobe Announces Creative Suite 4, Adds GPU Support to Photoshop
It seems like those colorful boxes we know as CS3 just came out… but it was actually a year-and-a-half ago. I have to wonder… what in the world did I do in the past eighteen months?! Well, that’s not important. What is, is that Adobe has officially announced Creative Suite 4, with its launch to occur within the next few weeks.
Like CS3, CS4 will come in a variety of “packs”, such as Design Premium, Design Standard, Master Collection, Production Premium, et cetera. Individual applications can of course be purchased also, but if you use two or more applications that are found in any of the collections, you are bound to get a lot more for your money by going that route. The largest bundle of them all, Master Collection, retails for $2,500 and includes a staggering sixteen different applications.
It would take at least ten pages to explain all that’s new, but for most who read this site, one of the most notable features is GPU support in Photoshop. With the help of the incredible acceleration, editing photos should take less time overall, but it’s hard to say at this point what kind of operation would benefit most. Right now the support seems to only be in Photoshop, but it’s definitely a start.
You can read all of what’s new on the official site.
Broad Integration and Efficiency Improve Creative Workflow Adobe Creative Suite 4 offers unprecedented choice among editions and stand-alone products, with comprehensive support for the most cutting-edge workflows for virtually any design discipline. Customers can choose from six suites or full version upgrades of 13 stand-alone applications, including Photoshop CS4, Photoshop CS4 Extended, InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, After Effects CS4, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.
Leica’s 37 Megapixel D-SLR Leaked Ahead of Photokina
When you hear the name “Leica”, what’s the first thing to spring to mind? If you’re a regular shooter of point-and-shoot cameras, you might think of your lens, since the name is extremely popular in that area. If you take things a little more seriously, you probably think of the company’s quaint M-series… modestly-sized cameras that do well to invoke some serious creativity and also features some of the highest-quality glass around.
What? You mean you don’t immediately think of a 37 megapixel D-SLR? Don’t worry, no one else did either. But, it’s been leaked ahead of the Photokina trade show and already you can see people drooling. The S-series camera’s sensor falls between in between a full frame and medium format, and delivers a resolution most commonly seen on Hasselblads, but even those are physically larger.
The leaked article doesn’t mention a price tag, but you can be sure it’s going to be far out of the reach of many. Even the lens, at f/2.5 70mm is sure to carry a price tag that could almost buy another pro D-SLR. Other features include saving to the DNG open format, a three-inch LCD, high ISO support and the hope that we’ll begin to see other such Leica D-SLRs in the near-future.
“We realised that many professionals work with medium format but also keep another camera – a Canon or Nikon – for location work. We wanted to make something to occupy that middle ground. A camera that would give the quality of medium format and the handling and flexibility of 35mm.”
Best Buy Imitates Customer, Refuses Sale Price
Is it just me, or are the majority of customer service horror-stories tied to Best Buy? It’s not much surprise to me, because I have enough experience with their Canadian-equivalent, Futureshop, and if anyone out there has ever gone to either and have nothing bad to say about the company, then you are either very lucky, or have the patience of zen master.
The latest story comes courtesy of the Consumerist, where one consumer decided to take advantage of a deal on the Best Buy website that offered 2GB PNY flash drives for $2.50. Despite the apparent pricing error, the customer received a confirmation in the e-mail that said he could go to the store to pick up the five that he ordered.
Well, this story really has to be read to be fully-appreciated, because the management at this particular Best Buy actually makes the management at all other Best Buy’s look like saints. Imagine a manager who calls up customer service pretending to be you. Yeah, it was that bad. One more reason to resist all urges to ever look in the store again…
To top it all off, he then takes my printed receipts from my emails and calls 1-800-Best Buy from the store and tells the CRS that “I” wanted to cancel my order and that it shouldn’t have been picked. After 30 minutes of arguing with this person, while he is on the phone I tell him that I wanted to talk to the CSR and he refused to let me speak.
HP Rumored to be Closing VoodooPC
According to an insider close to the situation, VoodooPC as we know it might not be around for much longer. An e-mail is apparently being circulated throughout the company noting layoffs, although the number of people to be culled is unclear. However, VoodooPC itself wouldn’t have that many employees to begin with, so any layoffs could be a sign of what’s to come.
In addition, it’s become known that VoodooPC has been returning product to their suppliers, such as Topower, their provider of power supplies. Topower has received over 300 of their supplies back, which doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme, but Voodoo is known to sell less than 100 of their Omen desktop machines per month, and that’s the only product where a full power supply would be used.
This rumor comes at an ironic time, as the two-year anniversary of HP’s buying of VoodooPC comes on Sept. 28th. Since that time, fellow canuck and VoodooPC founder Rahul Sood has become an integral part of HP’s gaming and luxury operations, resulting in such products as the Blackbird 002.
The closing of such a well known boutique would undoubtedly be surprising, but it’s become obvious in the past two years that HP has far greater interest in promoting their own products, and with the help of Rahul and his crew, they can further develop their own brand rather than focus on their newly-acquired one. As it stands, VoodooPC offers two different models, the Omen desktop and Envy notebook, and neither deliver sales numbers that HP is looking for. The name might be well-known, but if it isn’t generating pleased investors, then keeping it around would be questionable.
Whether or not HP has offered a sell-back to Rahul is unknown, but it’s doubtful. Rahul built up a well-known boutique that offered incredible products, so it’s unlikely that HP would want to part with him just yet. For now, this is still a rumor, and neither HP nor HP have responded to our queries. We’ll update you once we know more.
Update: We didn’t receive responses from HP or Voodoo ourselves, but our friends at Gizmodo did, and Rahul had this to say: “HP is working on a plan to better leverage its existing resources to bring Voodoo products to market faster and make them more accessible to consumers. I can assure you that Voodoo employees and champions of the brand will continue to work on the conceptualization, design and development of Voodoo products.“
C|Net’s Crave blog also received a response from an HP spokeswoman, “We continually assess and rebalance the size of our work force relative to the business environment and market conditions.“
These quotes confirm that changes will be happening, but neither go into enough detail to let us know whether Voodoo as a company will still be standing in a few months, or if it will become a brand of HP instead. We’re sure to find out soon enough, and we’ll keep you up to date as soon as we find out more.
SanDisk Unveils ‘slotMusic’ – Smallest Albums Ever?
I realize full-well that I’m in the minority, but I love walking into a music store and picking up a fresh shrink-wrapped impossible-to-open-without-a-knife CD and going home to jam out. It’s just one of those things. I’m a purist, so I cannot bring myself to download lossy music, or even download lossless music if the option was there. I like ripping my own music and being done with it. But again, I’m in the minority.
Who’s not in the minority are the millions of people who LOVE services like iTunes and Amazon music, and in truth, I have no reason to blame them. Convenience is key, and it’s hard to disagree with. It sure does hurt hard-copy music sales though, which is one reason SanDisk is partnering up with four major music labels to launch a new format, called slotMusic.
slotMusic is music sold on a microSD card… and nothing more. I wish it was more interesting, but that’s it. Full albums will be pre-loaded in MP3 format (non-DRM!) and can be immediately played in your cell phone or MP3 player. Each “album” will include a USB sleeve so you can access the music on Windows, Linux or Mac, which leads me to assume you could also take the music off with no issue.
 Definitely not to scale. |
“slotMusic offers consumers an immediate, tangible, and high quality alternative to CDs and digital delivery,” said Danielle Levitas, vice president, Consumer, Broadband & New Media, IDC. “This year, more than 1.2 billion mobile phones will ship globally, outstripping portable media players by nearly an order of magnitude – and this trend is accelerating.”
Tilera Launches TILEPro64 Processors
Tilera isn’t a name you see on our pages too often (alright, never), because their products almost have nothing to do with what we normally deal with, such as desktop CPUs… or products you’d have in your machine at home. Their processors are interesting, though, because although they are designed for certain purposes (embedded, DSP, FPGA, x86), the numbers they boast can catch anyone’s attention.
According to the company, the new TILEPro64 processors are twice as fast as the previous generation, and offer a 35x better performance/watt ratio over Intel Xeon Quad-Cores. Despite the hefty jump in performance over their previous generation, the new processors manage to increase power consumption by only 5%.
The reason that Tilera’s processors excel in what they do is because the “64” in the name doesn’t denote 64-bit integer support, but rather the fact that it contains 64 cores. Squeeze 700MHz into each, and it’s easy to understand in theory just how whipped a Xeon processor could be. It’s far faster, and uses less power. It might make you wonder why their processors aren’t being used in desktops, but it comes down to the fact that Intel and AMD processors are far more robust, and are designed for general purpose, not a relatively set purpose, like is needed in the industry.
Another note of interest, is that while the architecture itself is different, standard C/C++ code can be written, and since most of Tilera’s customers use Linux in some way or another, their processors work with the OS relatively simply. The downside is that not anyone can go ahead and code for the platform, or even purchase the tools required unless you want to pony up some cash. As it stands, Tilera is a relatively small company, but if their products continue to impress, maybe we’ll be hearing about them a lot more in the future.
Just over a year after launching the world’s highest performance embedded processor, Tilera Corporation today announced its TILEPro family of processors, setting a new benchmark for performance. The TILEPro family includes two new processors: the TILEPro64 delivers 35X better performance per-watt over the Quad-Core Xeon, and 15X the performance of the DaVinci DM6467 series DSP; while the TILEPro36 carries Tilera’s performance, power efficiency, and programmability into mid-range applications.
Not-So-Fun Stuff Found on Some ASUS Notebooks
I’ve mentioned in the past that ASUS makes some killer notebooks, and I stand by that, since almost every one I’ve ever touched has pleased me. What I never saw on any of the notebooks, though, were software cracks, employee résumés or internal company documents. No, I wouldn’t be so lucky. Some folks in the UK were though, and it didn’t take long before the news exploded all over the net.
The obvious question was “how?”… how on earth could illegal files, résumés, internal documents and even source code find it’s way onto thousands of notebooks all over? Well as it turns out, one employee came out in an interview to explain how it happened, and sadly, it’s not that exciting.
To cut a long story short, it turns out that due to how Windows is mass-installed, files found on the same source thumb drive as the required XML file will get copied over to a set folder without confirmation. So, some unwise employee had more than he should have had on his thumb drive, and soon enough, thousands of customers had the data also. Woops… bet that mistake won’t be made again.
An OEM employee (name not mentioned here) discussing the matter said that during the vista installs, the generic vista disc installing the OS looks for an XML file (unattend.xml) on a flash drive, and upon finding it the installation parses it and runs the XML code as installation instructions so nobody has to go through the installation menu for the hundreds of synchronous installations (hence the unattend).
Intel Updates Processor Discontinuation List
With Intel’s upcoming Core i7 launch happening within the next few months, it’s little surprise to hear about the discontinuation of multiple products currently on the market. According to industry-tracking site DigiTimes, Intel has plans to discontinue all of the current high-end processors in the first quarter of the next year, with them phased out completely in Q2. Those include the QX9650 and QX9770.
It’s also noted that November will be a huge month for sending out the discontinuation notices, as they have plans to pull ten Dual-Core, the Quad-Core Q9450, three Pentium and the Celeron E1200 to make way for new product. Next month, both the Quad-Core Q8300 and Q6600 are due to have price cuts, in addition to the E7300. At the same time, they’ll launch the E7400, a 2.8GHz (3MB L2, 1066MHz) part.
As mentioned multiple times before, Intel will be launching three Core i7 models in the coming months, with the smallest model being priced at $284 in quantities of 1,000. Intel hasn’t announced an exact launch date as of yet, but given the end of the year is so close, it’d probably be safe to say that early to mid-November would be likely.
The company is planning PDNs for the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 and 9650 in the first quarter of 2009, and the two CPUs will phase out of the market in the second quarter. The company will also send out PDNs for four quad-core CPUs including the Core 2 Quad Q9450, ten dual-core CPUs including the Core 2 Duo E8300, three Pentium CPUs including the Pentium E2220 and the Celeron E1200 starting in November, and all products will phase out between the first and second quarters next year.
EA Loosens Up Spore DRM, But is it Enough?
Early last week, I posted about how Spore’s asinine DRM protection wasn’t paying off. After all, despite the fact that Will Wright’s game has become a relative masterpiece, for the past two weeks it’s been best-known for being the “game with DRM”, which isn’t good at all. It was immediately found out that gamers were none-to-pleased, and who’s to blame them? Not me, as I’ve made clear way too many times.
Well as surprising as it may be, EA has heeded the call of their customers and decided to lighten up the harsh restrictions the game carried. Instead of being required to call EA after every three activations, they increased the count to five, which they consider to be way more than enough. According to their internal statistics, only 0.4% of Spore gamers have tried to activate on more than three machines.
That in itself is valid, but the fact of the matter is, the restriction shouldn’t be there in the first place. If you boot up to play a game, you shouldn’t feel like you’re being watched over, especially after you paid for the game with your cold-hard cash. What’s ironic might be the fact that the people who aren’t dealing with the pesky DRM are the ones who’ve downloaded the game off of torrent networks – the non-paying customers. The paying customer sure has reason to feel special, aye?
All that aside, what is important is this quote: “If we were to ever turn off the servers on the game, we would put through a patch before that to basically make the DRM null and void“. Good to know.
While these movements into less-restrictive DRM are nice, the game has already lost quite a bit of momentum, not to mention good will. Gamers made this displeasure clear by carpet-bombing Amazon.com with one-star reviews, and the install limit of Red Alert 3 has also been receiving negative press. Even worse for PR, the name Spore now has many negative connotations, very few of which have anything to do with the game, aside from the install restrictions.
“I’m a PC” Commercial is Good… Seriously
When Microsoft first launched their new Windows Vista campaign, no one knew what to expect. And after the first commercials with Jerry Seinfeld aired, people were… confused. The commercials had nothing to do with anything (similar to Seinfeld’s previous comedy), so that was essentially money thrown out the Windows (haha!).
Well, Microsoft is now in phase two of their advertising scheme and what results is an “I’m A PC” campaign, an obvious mock of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads. Though I might be one of the few who think this, those Apple ads are far past their prime, and I find them excruciatingly boring now. This “I’m a PC” ad was actually completely refreshing, and I don’t think anyone expected it to be.
The commercial is no doubt working towards the goal of changing minds about the PC, especially after the countless “I’m a Mac” ads that have put Vista in such a poor light. PC users aren’t ultra-naive like Apple’s commercials show, but are rather regular people, and as the commercial points out, they can also be hot freaking supermodels. Now I know why I use the PC!
Phase 2 of Microsoft’s Windows ad campaign debuted tonight during The Office, and the latest work by ad agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky definitely beats the crap out of those (ill-fated?) Gates/Seinfeld ads when it comes to making a point. The point is simple: Not all PC users look like John Hodgman. Some are even sexy beasts.
NVIDIA Cuts 6.5% of Global Workforce
Just earlier this year, NVIDIA was riding high, but things sure have changed. The company is unable to catch any sort of a break, what with two different class-action suits against them at the same time for their faulty mobile chips, and the fact that their latest GPU launch was immediately dampened by ATI’s surprising performance-packed HD 4000 series.
Well now the company has announced a cut of 360 employees globally, some which will affect those in North America. The number might not seem like a big deal, but given that NVIDIA has just under 5,000 employees, it’s a rather high percentage. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang notes that despite the termination of all the employees, the company will continue to invest in all of their upcoming technologies, including CUDA and Tegra – technologies which we’ve covered many times before.
Although the booting of employees is never a good thing, NVIDIA seems to be treating their dismissed staffers well, with full severance packages, counseling and job placement support. NVIDIA might be in a tough situation lately, but they’re sure to turn back around soon enough. Need proof? AMD did the same thing not long ago!
The work force reduction amounts to about 360 employees from its worldwide work force. NVIDIA employees in the U.S. are affected as well. NVIDIA also announced that it will take a restructuring charge of between $7 and $10 million in its Q3 financial results. The charge will be used to fund severance packages and related expenses.
Google Breaks Into Top 10 Best Brands
The list for the top 100 global brands has just been published by research company Intrabrand, and there are many interesting tidbits to be found within. The first is the fact that Google’s name has broken through the top ten list to become the number 10, up from 20 last year. Microsoft has fallen a smidgen, from 2 to 3, as the result of a brand value change of 3%.
Most of the top ten hasn’t changed in the least, with Coca Cola still taking the leading spot, with IBM gaining the number two spot. Nokia, Intel, McDonald’s and a few others have retained their exact positions. Another leap was from Apple, who ranked 33 in 2007, but now have shifted up to 24. Given their ever-increasing growth, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them inch into the >20 spot next year.
A few other notable entries include BlackBerry who sit at 73%… which is rather impressive since it’s their first time being on the list. Dell gains a spot to sit at 31, while the GAP has dropped -20% in brand value to hit the 61st spot.
Google, Apple, Amazon.com, Zara and Nintendo are among this year’s top gainers in Interbrand’s annual ranking of The Best Global Brands, and not surprisingly, financial services giants Merrill Lynch, Citi and Morgan Stanley are among the companies that have slipped dramatically down the list.
HP Remains Largest Notebook Vendor in the World
Hewlett-Packard might be preparing to cull 8% of its workforce, but in terms of notebook shipment volumes, they’re still tops – at least they were back in Q1 and Q2 of this year. In North America, their share was 21.4%, which turned out to be 0.5% short of catching up to Dell. HP made up for the loss in the markets outside of NA, though, where they scored 20.5%, while Dell had only 12.5%.
Other numbers found in the reports are interesting to take a look at also, especially if you haven’t studied the markets before. Dell and HP in North America are really the only fierce competitors, with Acer coming in third with 14.4% and Apple in fourth with 10.6%, which I consider to be an impressive figure in itself.
Things change vastly when talking about the world markets, where Acer holds the second spot with 17.9%, with Dell in third with their 12.5%. ASUS, a company’s whose notebooks I’ve come to love, hold 5.5% of the market there. Impressive numbers all around, but it will be interesting to see if HP can hold onto their market lead going into this and the next quarter, especially with these job drops imminent.
Growth of the 13.3- to 16-inch panel segment was the strongest during the period, increasing to 88.5%, while the larger than 17-inch segment saw its market share fall to 7.5%. The 10.4- to 12.1-inch segment also saw its market share shrink to just 4% likely due to the high number of netbooks introduced by leading PC brands during the quarter, DisplaySearch noted.
Creative Releases Notebook Audio Card Suitable for Wireless Streaming
External audio solutions for notebooks is nothing new, but as we’ve found out in the past, it’s rarely that impressive. The new Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook audio card might change some minds though, as it’s equipped with the proven X-Fi chip and plugs into virtually any ExpressCard slot.
What makes this one noteworthy is that it allows for wireless operation. Essentially, you could plug it in, sit on the couch free of any cords and still be enjoying your music from the speakers of your liking – at least ones that use simple RCA jacks or line-out, 5.1 listeners are out of luck.
The audio card itself will retail for $89.99, while the Wireless Receiver retails for $69.99. The latter isn’t required if you have no interest in being truly wireless, or if you sit at a desk all the time and don’t mind being plugged in.
You can place up to four speaker systems with Creative Wireless Receivers up to 100 feet away from your notebook and your audio will play wirelessly with no delays or dropouts, without requiring a wireless network. You can also set up individual zones to control playback independently in specific rooms.
AMD Launches “Power of Fusion” Campaign
So… AMD almost gave me a heart attack this morning. In my inbox laid an e-mail from the greenest company in Sunnvale, boasting the “Power of Fusion”. Considering that up to now, Fusion has been the term thrown around about for their CPU/GPU hybrid chip, it definitely made me jolt my coffee. Well as it turns out, this Fusion has more to do than just with that Fusion.
AMD today coins the term “The Future is Fusion”, which is the focal point for a new campaign that focuses on AMD’s family of technologies, from CPUs to GPUs to Chipsets to whatever else. It goes even further than that, though. From the release: “Fusion is the AMD working philosophy that marries innovation with collaboration, and is the process by which AMD and its partners can enable next-generation technologies that change the way we live, work and play.“
What that means exactly, I’m unsure, but it’s clear that AMD is keen on continuing their great industry relationships while solidifying new ones. The release also mentions their Fusion CPU/GPU architecture, which we still don’t know that much about. With AMD’s sudden gung-ho attitude on all things Fusion, that might change, very soon.
Another notable part of the announcement is a new utility called “Fusion for Gaming“, which is an all-around performance tool for, you guessed it, gamers. The software of course requires a PC with an AMD processor, and allows both automatic and manual overclocking for your CPU and AMD-based GPU, while the Overdrive portion can track the temperatures, stability and so forth.
Profiles can also be created, with some being able to shut down certain processes that might be running in the background. The goal is to slim the PC down as much as possible, so as to make the gaming experience as pleasurable as possible. This same ‘enabled’ profile can also affect the overclock automatically. Once you are done gaming, you could simply undo what was done.
AMD is truly taking this campaign seriously, and they probably need to. Whether or not it’s going to revitalize their image like they hope it will, we won’t know for a while, but so far they seem to be off to a good start. Now if only we could learn more about the Fusion architecture itself…
An example of “Fusion” in the AMD product roadmap is its Fusion Architecture – the stated intent to combine the photo-realistic imagery made possible by its graphics processing units with the processing power of its central processing units. The company believes its new “Fusion” brand concept captures the benefits of this same collaborative initiative across a range of technology platforms, partner relationships, employee teams, and market segments.
Turn Your PC Into a Mac… With a Dongle?
When Apple first announced that Intel processors would be used in their machines going forward, it became obvious to many that hacking OS X to run on your PC would have to be made much easier. Although projects existed before that announcement to run OS X on your non-Apple machine, the result was lackluster in all regards. But, things changed when moving over to the x86 scheme of things, that’s for sure.
I didn’t realize things have gotten this easy, though. Over at Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan gave a new ‘dongle’ a go, of all things, which allows a user to install OS X on their PC with absolutely no hassle. Well, there might be some hassle, but it’s minor, and the biggest caveat is that you need to use supported hardware, which at this point in time, is a small list.
It’s noted that the OS installed just fine, though, and even the updating system works like a dream. Unlike a ‘Hackintosh’, this dongle tricks the system into thinking it’s a legitimate Apple machine, so the updating process is no issue. Whether or not Apple has the ability to patch their updater for this specific type of hack is yet to be seen, but you can be sure they are investigating. Oh, and if there is another downside, it might be that the dongle will set you back a cool $150.
Okay, there was a slight hitch. My video card, an Nvidia 8800GT, isn’t supported by the firmware EFiX ships with. EFiX already has the update on the site, but its updater is only coded for 32-bit Windows. If, like me, you run Vista 64-bit, you will have to install Vista 32-bit on the drive you intend to put Leopard on, just to update the stupid firmware.
Leaked Intel Roadmap Exposes First Core i7 Model Names
Leaked Intel roadmaps are as about rare as finding a Starbucks, but this one is a bit interesting. The folks at Expreview stumbled over a new roadmap that reaffirms what we already knew about the upcoming launches, except this time, model names are attached.
The 3.2GHz model is set to be called the Core i7 965, the 2.93GHz will be the Core i7 940 and the smaller 2.66GHz will be the Core i7 920. It doesn’t need to be said, but these are not the most creative names Intel could have picked out of the hat. Of course, the same can be said about the ‘Core i7’ moniker as well.
To recap what we know so far, the highest-end 965 at 3.2GHz will be priced at $999 in quantities of 1,000, similar to most other Extreme Edition’s we’ve seen in the past. The ‘performance’ 940 at 2.93GHz will be sold at $562, while the mainstream 920 at 2.66GHz is $284. The roadmap doesn’t expand much beyond these three models, sadly, but it does appear that the first follow-up Nehalem launches will occur in Q2 of next year.
Super Talent Releases “Dangerously Fast” SSDs
It’s rare for a week to pass without seeing an SSD product launch, and this week it comes courtesy of Super Talent. This is one company who really, really wants to make an impression, because they were one of the first out the door with their own SSDs, and they’ve followed up their line-ups many times over. Each time, they get cheaper and faster… and that’s what we like to see.
The latest launch is for both MLC and SLC-based units, or rather, one somewhat expensive series and one whoa expensive series. The MasterDrive OX is for the ‘budget’ models, coming in at 32GB, 64GB and 128GB densities, and boasting 150MB/s Read and 100MB/s write. The 128GB OX drive will retail for $419, which is still expensive, but it’s a stark contrast to what things were like just a few months ago.
Refer back to Super Talent’s launch this past May. At that time, their 120GB was $699, and if the price difference isn’t enough, realize that those drives featured a 120MB/s Read and 40MB/s Write. That was only four months ago! Indeed, it’s hard to recommend anyone take the SSD route right now, because it’s worse than buying a new car in terms of value lost. Where things will be in five months is anyone’s guess, but it’s a lot of fun watching the prices free-fall.
These new SSDs are based on a sophisticated new multi-channel SATA-II (3.0 Gbits per sec) controller. The MasterDrive OX uses MLC NAND Flash to transfer data at speeds up to 150 MB/sec (sequential read) and 100 MB/sec (sequential write). The MasterDrive OX is offered in capacities up to 128GB, and is backed with a 1-year warranty.
Will the Playstation 4 Omit Blu-ray?
Rumors have been going crazy lately with regards to both the “Xbox 720” and “Playstation 4”, and everyone has an opinion. One rampant rumor in particular is that the Playstation 4 will lack the Blu-ray player that came with the PS3, and for the most part, it’s a good argument. The fact of the matter is, Sony’s adding of Blu-ray to the PS3 is one of the reasons why the console didn’t sell far better than it did, although the lack of quality games that kicked off the consoles first year probably didn’t help, either.
One of the strangest opinion pieces I’ve seen has to be the one posted at C|Net, by Don Reisinger. He kicks off as saying, “To me, Blu-ray is the LaserDisc of its time. It’s not nearly as useful as the DVD that it’s trying to supplant“. Wait… what? To give the impression that Blu-ray isn’t a substantial upgrade from DVD… is just ridiculous.
Let’s take a look at the now picture. Blu-ray offers a far higher resolution than DVD, and if Don ever took the opportunity to watch one, he’d know this. The difference would be noticeable by anyone, no matter how inept their technical ability. Then we have the storage issue. Blu-ray can store upwards of 50GB, and with many current games already requiring 10GB+ of data, I’d say the extra storage is worthy.
It’s constantly argued that HD downloads is the next big thing, but I really don’t see that method taking over anytime soon. The reason, to me, is both the bandwidth caps enforced by ISPs, and also the general download speed. It’s fine if you want to download a movie in advance, but it would be impossible to download a 20GB movie some evening and still have the desire to watch it by the time it actually finishes downloading. Even on a 20Mbit connection, that movie would take over two hours to download. Whether or not even those net speeds will be common in three years, who knows.
Lastly, the major hit against the PS3 has been the added price due to the player, but now, the prices are getting so low, people are throwing drives in their HTPCs without second thought. NewEgg has an LG BD-ROM for $140 now… so imagine what the prices will be like three years down the road. It will virtually add so little cost to the console, it’s going to be a non-issue. Regardless of your opinions on things, it’s going to be a while before we actually have hard answers, sadly.
But the fact that the Playstation 4 won’t feature Blu-ray goes far beyond the fact that it’s not as coveted in the Playstation 3 as some want to believe. In reality, it’s more likely that the Playstation 4 won’t have Blu-ray than you may think. The Playstation 4 should be made available in the next three to five years. During that time, Sony will need to work on getting Blu-ray into more homes and try to supplant DVD as the leader in the media space.
Upgrading Our Test Rig, Shout Out to Corsair
Every so often, we like to take a look at both our regular testing machine and also our methodologies and see where improvements can be made. The latter is really a never-ending process, but I believe we’re at the point now where we have an ideal setup in place that allows us to expose the full potential of whatever it is we are evaluating, while being able to deliver accurate and repeatable results.
We’ve just spent the past two weeks working over all the details of how we benchmark, and plan to put new methodologies into place in the coming weeks for motherboards, GPUs, CPUs and now storage. Definitely stay tuned as I’m sure you’ll be pleased with where we are going with things. With Nehalem right around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade our main testing machine as well, or at least change the components used.
You can see our most recent configuration here. What will be changed is the CPU (to a QX9770), the motherboard, the RAM, power supply, chassis, cooling and ODDs. I won’t get into the chosen parts for some of those yet, but I did want to give Corsair a shout out for sending us two kits of their memory, 4GB DDR2 and DDR3, and also their kick-ass HX1000W power supply. The PSU we’ve been using for a while is less-than-stellar (Antec TruePower Quattro 1000W), but I’ve heard nothing but great things about the HX1000W from some of the industry’s most well-known experts. I feel confident adding it to our rig, and the fact that it’s modular helps us continue to retain a great airflow scheme.
We are still waiting on a few other components to arrive, but our first step in putting forth our newest methodologies is with our GPU reviews. We’ll be upgrading both Crysis and STALKER to their ‘sequels’, Warhead and Clear Sky, and re-benchmark our entire lineup using the most recent drivers, to give a better sense of where things stand right now in the graphics scheme of things. We’re both excited and confident about new changes we’ve put in place and definitely think you’ll come to enjoy the content even more (assuming you liked it before!).
Researchers Design True 3D Processor
The term ‘3D Chip’ might sound a bit misleading, and it might very-well be. When I first heard the term, I thought it was another GPU processor, but ‘3D’ is meant to be taken literally. All current processors out there now are 2D… flat, with components found to the right and left of each other. Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed what they claim to be the first true 3D processor, running at 1.4GHz.
A true 3D processor is one that has stacked components, rather than the side-by-side components found on all current chips. The benefits would be better efficiency, better performance and a far better footprint. One researcher noted that while we will hit a barrier with horizontal chips, vertical chips will scale indefinitely. I can see it now… installing a pole rather than a flat piece of silicon.
Of course things shouldn’t get that bad, but the prospect of a 3D chip is an interesting one. What would concern me is the cooling-ability. How is it that a cube chip could be effectively cooled? With ‘2D’ chips, they lay flat, and obviously that works out to our favor with cooling. A cube chip wouldn’t be able to use a standard CPU cooler design, but rather something entirely different. Regardless, there are obvious hurdles, but it’s an interesting prospect nonetheless.
The hardest part according to the researchers is getting the levels of the chip to properly interact. Professor Friedman compares the problem to a scenario where a standard microprocessor is like the U.S. traffic system, and then the 3D processor is like 3 or more U.S. traffic systems stacked atop each other and expected to coordinate traffic between levels. He says the problem is even tougher as the processors are different, so it’s more like stacking the U.S., China, and India, where traffic laws are different, atop each other.
Apple’s P.A. Semi to Develop ARM CPU for Upcoming iPhone
When Apple acquired P.A. Semi, a Power processor manufacturer, we couldn’t quite figure out what their plans were. After all, Intel has been at the forefront of the Cupertino company’s hardware side of things for a few years, but it was clear either Intel or Apple weren’t entirely ecstatic with the relationship as they once were, because while many originally speculated that the iPhone 2 would include an Intel Atom processor, it clearly did not.
Well, the reason for the P.A. Semi acquisition becomes a little clearer today. The folks at Apple Insider link to a blog post which links to a LinkedIn Profile of the ‘Senior Manager Chip CPU Architect at Apple”, who’s managing the new ‘ARM CPU architecture team for iPhone’. Hard to misinterpret that one!
So, P.A. Semi will be heading up production of a new ARM CPU for iPhone use, which is not a bad move. Apple will be able to build and tweak their own chip, hopefully resulting in making the iPhone 3 much more efficient, both with regards to performance and power. The current iPhone’s on the market are also equipped with ARM processors, so codebases can remain intact… good news for developers.
The small revelation appears to confirm speculation that Apple was indeed the “leading handset OEM” who purchased earlier this year “a long-term architecture license” to ARM’s current and future technology portfolio for use in its future mobile products. Although analysts have long fingered an ARM-based processor at the heart of the first two generations of the iPhone, Apple has refused to confirm or deny the specific type of chip employed by the handsets.