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 .:Latest Topics |
.:Latest News
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: PC Perspective Forums | Subject: General Tech
Meridian, one of our forum moderators is playing with a D0 stepping Core i7 920. He is trying to peg down the best overclock by manipulating all of the possible variables that apply to overclocking this new architecture. Take a peek and see what tricks you can pick up and post in this thread if you have any comments or questions. The overclock does of course lead to heat problems, so you will have to make sure your cooling solution is good enough to provide the needed heat dissipation. A solid PSU is not a bad investment either. Overclocking isn't the only way to get an increase in your systems performance, old tricks do still work, like defragmenting your page file, or moving it to a separate controller. There is also a lot to be gained by tweaking your OS, so look to the Windows forum or the Linux forum, depending on your OS of choice. In addition to the forums and the front page, get the latest tech info from the Weekly PC Perspective Video Podcast; the TWKR chip from AMD starts it off. You can leave us feedback after you've watched it in this thread. It is more than just tech news that should grab your attention, there is a secret URL revealed during the podcast which will give you another chance to win the Smooth Creations custom built gaming rig that PC Perspective is giving away!
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: X-Bit Labs | Subject: Motherboard
Opting for a less extravagant name, Intel's new extreme motherboard for the Core i7 is called the DX58SO. As well they went with no box art and a minimum of connectors and adaptors. The extras are on the motherboard as well as the driver CD which comes with a long list of software. One of the most noticeable features when you first look at this board are the DIMM slots, which are located at the top of the board. Less obvious is the work that went into the Turbo Boost implementation which was one of the best that X-bit Labs has seen. Along with a solid VDroop control, this motherboard deserves to be on anyone's list of high end motherboards.
"We first learned about the features of the Intel DX58SO mainboard back in early November 2008, right after the NDA lift and before the official launch of the new Intel platform. Our article called 'New Hit from Remake King: Intel Core i7 Review' contain a short chapter devoted to this mainboard. However, this solution turned out very interesting and quite unique that is why we decided to devote the whole separate article to the numerous features and functionality of the flagship LGA1366 Intel board from the extreme series." Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Hardware Zone | Subject: General Tech
Although it is at its heart a Gigabyte GM-M7800, the Gigabyte Elegant Vogue Wireless Mouse is much more than that. 18 karat gold highlights and Swarovski crystals set off the two tone leather covering of this stylish mouse. Make sure to grab yours quickly as there are only 10,000 being made and Hardware Zone has already grabbed one. "Swarovski crystals, 18k gold, leather, these are but some of the ingredients that make up the decadent Gigabyte Vogue Wireless mouse." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Guru of 3D | Subject: Graphics Card
When you buy a factory overclocked card with some sort of spiffy name or a long string of capital letters denoting exactly how cool the card is, it can be disappointing to discover a 10MHz overclock on the GPU. Sapphire's Toxic HD 4890 Vapor-X
will not disappoint, it sports a 960MHz core clock speed which is 110MHz over reference and a 300MHz advantage in memory speed. That translates into a noticeable bump in frame rates and to make the card even more attractive, The Guru of 3D got even more performance out of it, pushing the GPU above the 1GHz mark.
"Armed with a nice vapor chamber heatpipe based cooler and with it's clock frequency locked at a steady 960 MHz, this little beast is ready for some serious gaming action. And it doesn't stop there though, even the nice phat 1 GB graphics memory is clocked higher at 4200 MHz. This is seriously one of the best Radeon HD 4890 cards we ever tested." Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: AnandTech | Subject: General Tech
Probably the biggest improvement of Bigfoot Networks since the release of the original Killer NIC is the drop in price of its new generation of network accelerators; the Killer Xeno Prois only $130. It is based around a 400MHz PowerPC processor with 128MB of RAM and like the original it will bypass the Windows TCP/IP stack and handle networking by its self, thus freeing up your CPU to do other tasks. See what AnandTech thought of this card during game testing in their full article.
"Bigfoot Networks has, for the past few years, been trying very hard to bring high powered, intelligent network interface cards to the desktop. We previously looked at their Killer NIC with some interesting results, and today we've got the Killer Xeno Pro in our labs. The major difference between the older Killer NIC and the newer Killer Xeno Pro is the inclusion of an audio path and audio processing for voice chat acceleration. They Killer Xeno Pro also has twice the RAM of the original. Despite the improvements, one of the major benefits is that the Killer Xeno Pro will be available at a lower retail price than the Killer NIC was. Oh, and it is sort of cool to see the new hardware dialog talking about a PowerPC Processor:" Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Ryan Shrout | Source: PC Perspective | Subject: Editorial
For those of you that desperately wanted it, the PC Perspective Podcast #63 is now available in its video form! You can see how the show looks as we record it live AND you can also find one of those *hidden* entry methods for the PC Perspective / This Week in Computer Hardware Smooth Creations system giveaway at the very end... :)
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Tech-Reviews | Subject: Mobile
Tech-Reviews has picked up a strange liquid based laptop cooler from Nexus called the TDD-9000. While it may look like a mouse pad, it is instead a liquid filled base for you to place your laptop on which is intended to provide cooling. It did feel like it was filled with gel, as opposed to a true liquid which could be very important if it was ever introduced to a sharp object. Their testing did not go so well for the Nexus product; perhaps if you used it on a model with a fan on the bottom the cooler would perform differently.
"Today at Tech-Reviews we have the TDD-9000 Nexus Cooling Pad. There are many different types of cooling solutions for notebooks available and each claim to work wonders, but the Nexus Liquid Cooling Pad specifically claims of a whopping 17 Degree drop in laptop temperature (based on their own independent tests). It’s now time to find out whether or not their claim is the result of an exaggerated marketing company or reality." Here are some more Mobile articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Think Computers | Subject: General Tech
Ditch the bundled headphones that came with your iPhone in favour of the Radius Atomic Bass Earphones for iPhone; your ears will love you. This in-ear headphones can be yours for under $40 and will provide a much better sound quality than the stock headphones though perhaps not as good as $400 sets. One of the big differences between them would be the quality of the microphone, which Think Computers found to be of fairly low quality on the Radius set. They still recommend them for most to use on the majority of Apple phones and MP3 players as well as other manufacturers offerings.
“We all know that the "stock" earphones that come with most products are not the best. The iPhone is not any different, the earphones that are included are good, but nothing great. There are so many third party earphone's made specifically for the iPhone it is hard to choose. Well Radius has sent us their Atomic Bass Earphones for iPhone that have a quite low retail price compared to other earphone's out there. Let's see if they are actually a good deal or their price reflects their performance and quality." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: The Tech Report | Subject: Storage
The Tech Report's previous review of SSDs, in which they found serious problems with the performance of the Indilinx Barefoot controlled Super Talent and OCZ SSD drives generated some feedback from listeners. Their comments can be summed up as a complaint that if they had used Vista, instead of XP and its default 63-sector partition offset which is a problem for Indilinx controlled SSDs and updated the firmware of the drives, all the problems would go away. Read on to see how the test results differed from their first review.
"Our last SSD round-up caused quite a stir for using an older test system with Windows XP. We've now explored SSD performance on more current hardware with Vista x64 SP2, and you might be surprised by the results." Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Overclockers Club | Subject: Case and Cooling
Apart from a questionable neon green motif, Maxcube's first offering is a rather impressive case. Its pair of 120mm fans seem to be enough to keep the air moving inside the case and the depth of almost 8" means that fitting larger Core i7 coolers into this case is not going to offer a problem. Tool-less installation, numerous eSATA and USB ports are easily accessible round out a well designed first case that Overclockers Club felt no worry about recommending.
"For Maxcube's first case, I must say I am impressed with the features it brings to the table. Not only is the case sleek and stylish, but it has function as well. The case features two more front USB ports than most cases I've seen and is following with the new trend of bring eSATA to the front panel as well. Tool-free cases have been around for a while and Maxcube has integrated this feature into the Amoris. It even introduced a new concept to me, the external CMOS reset switch, which would be useful to any overclocker, as you wouldn't have to open the case to reset CMOS. Having the CMOS reset is nice, but it has been almost standard on high performance motherboard I/O panels for well over a year now. The case did lose some ground in the tests however, probably due to the fact it only runs on two fans. Nevertheless, for only having two fans, it kept up pretty well with the competition, which in the case of open air, had no fans, or with both the X-Fighter and Super Lanboy, had an average of three fans." Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: The Inquirer | Subject: General Tech
The rumours of Ion 2 are growing, and with the nature of the industry they will become fact sooner rather than later. As Jon Peddie put it to The Inquirer, we all are trapped in the mantra of Moore's law.
If you don't build faster and better chips, you get left behind. Most rumours agree that nVIDIA will double the shaders to 32, while simultaneously shrinking the die to keep the TDP relatively unchanged. Having that many shaders might help general graphics performance but will certainly help 3D gaming. It does make you wonder who is going to game on an IGP with graphics cards so incredibly cheap to buy.
"The first we heard of the plan was at Nvidia's analyst day a few weeks back, when the Green Goblin mentioned it would be releasing two more versions of the modified GeForce 9400M processor it calls Ion, although it stingily neglected to give out either dates or specifications. Our sources expect products based around Ion 2 to be available before the end of the year, however." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: PC Perspective | Subject: Case and Cooling
If you haven't been reading Lee's PSU reviews you have been missing out on some great power supplies like the SilverStone Element ST70EF.
Since you can't catch him on the live podcast tonight on TWiT at 7pm EDT, his reviews are the
best way to hear what he has to say about current technology. In this particular case, Silverstone did an excellent job on the PSU except for one weakness that he uncovered.
If you can't wait until 7pm, you can catch Ryan and Colleen on TWiCH at 3PM EDT; or do both!
"The SilverStone Element ST70EF 700W PSU delivered excellent voltage
regulation with very good efficiency. The ST70EF is quiet, runs cool
during
normal operation, and includes a good compliment of fixed
cables/connectors.
The only weakness we found was relatively high levels of AC ripple on
the DC
outputs when the PSU was subjected to extreme loads."
Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:
Ryan Shrout | Source: PC Perspective | Subject: Processor
We first brought up the AMD TWKR processors last week but we are now starting to see some actual hands-on time with the processors at various places around the web. The Inquirer posted an update about these CPUs today as well:
AMD appears to have sent out their little TWKRs to the creme de la creme of overclocking high society, with forums announcing that the likes of K|ngp|in, Chew*, SF3D and Maci have already gotten their paws on them.
K|ngp|in et all are considered demi gods in the world of extreme overclocking and the likes of SF3D and Macci have previously appeared in AMD unprocessed videos pushing the firm's Phenom II to the max. Someone over at Legit Reviews also got their hands on one and was able to get some impressive results: Reaching nearly 6.6GHz on a Phenom II X4 processor was an awesome experience and it just goes to show how far these cores can go with the right cooling. AMD has done a great job with the Phenom II processors and the TWKR edition processors really highlight that success.
Very nice! Now, I have a bit of a problem with this barrage of marketing though. It stems from a couple of answers to LR's questions posted in their "review": Will this ever go retail and if so what is pricing?
Right now this is just for the good of the community and not for sale. How rare are these processors? Are they 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 100,000? There are less than 100 of these that I know of, and unlike our competitor we don’t have the means or process in place to sort through thousands of processors. All AMD Phenom II processors have great potential and we have a few secrets on what we look for as the glass comes off the line…so far we’ve found what we’re looking for. When everything performs well it isn’t too tough to find fast chips. So AMD is essentially creating a buzz around its Phenom II product line using VERY specifically handpicked processors that were given to very specific people to play around with. Is it fair? Is this basically the same problem we saw years ago in the GPU world when companies like NVIDIA and ATI would release super-high-clocked graphics cards (like the 8800 Ultra or X850XT "Phantom Edition") to show their "dominance" in the market but never actually deliver something a consumer could buy and use? I tend to think so. You could also compare the tactic to GM showing off really cool concept cars only to try and sell you a Cobalt when you reach the dealership. 
This is the "Pandora's Box" of processors apparently... To be perfectly open: yes we asked for a TWKR part and no we were not given one. Would it have been fun to play with it and some LN2? Sure, we would have had a blast putting that video out for you all to see. But our opinion would have been the same: show you (the consumer) the money. AMD: if you are so proud of your processors and their clock speeds and performance, put up or shut up. Give us that high-end 3.8 GHz CPU that will make Phenom II competitive with Core i7 and the upcoming Lynnfield parts. Don't tease the enthusiast with something they can't buy in hopes of getting a few more sales. Remember last November when you showed the same parts running at 5 GHz+? What has the average consumer gotten out of that in the 7 months since? Look, I don't want to come off COMPLETELY down on the company that is trying to build excitement around its brand. But the truth is that AMD's technology doesn't allow them to produce products of this caliber in any remotely profitable volume and thus many users will find the marketing distasteful. Update: Josh, one PC Perspective's other editors thinks I might be coming down on AMD a bit too hard here. Here is his "conclusion" on the TWKR part: TWKR is a very specialized marketing tool being used by AMD to garner more fans in the outspoken enthusiast ranks, unfortunately, for the average buyer it means squat and they will be lucky to even catch a real life glimpse of even the special TWKR box.
Ryan Shrout | Source: Email | Subject: Processor
EETimes is reporting that the 40nm process at TSMC, the same one responsible for the Radeon HD 4770 and both NVIDIA and AMD's latest mobility GPU offerings, is still having SIGNIFICANT yield problems.
In fact, not only do our checks suggest 40-nm yields but, to our surprise, these have remained below 30 percent, affecting shipments in 2H09,'' he said in the report. ''We believe yields are as low as 20 percent to 30 percent, which may explain the recent management change. We think some key customers who are increasing 40-nm tape-outs have already started to evaluate other foundries (UMC) in case yields do not improve soon.
If those yields are even close to accurate, TSMC and its partners must be in a world of hurt and it obviously explains why AMD is having difficulty getting the price and availability of the Radeon HD 4770 worked out. It also puts into question NVIDIA's recent move to 40nm on their new GeForce 200M mobility GPUs. 
Will this giant in the industry put this issue behind it quickly? I'm sure someone like GlobalFoundries is just chomping at the bit to get in there and take some of TSMC's customer base but that will have to wait for the next generation of 32nm and 28nm wafers if it is going to happen. TSMC needs to work on getting this 40nm production issue worked out and QUICKLY to avoid any potential customer loses to competing foundries in the future.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Digital Trends | Subject: System
Do you have an old laptop or desktop system hiding away somewhere; which you plan to do something with, at some time in the future? Why not turn it into an HTPC system? Sure, it is nice to go out, pickup an Atom + 9400M motherboard and a sweet Shuttle HTPC case and put together a brand new system, but you could always do that sometime in the future and give the ancient one away. Watch as Digital Trends turns an old Dell laptop with a 2.66GHz P4, 512MB of RAM, and a GeForce FX Go 5200 card, choose OS and software and sits back watching 720p content on their TV.
"We've experimented with any number of home media servers that will stream YouTube, play movies across a home network, and stream music from a library of connected home storage appliance. And they're nice if that's all you ever want to do. But for ultimate flexibility, nothing beats a true home theater PC. Using a fully functional PC, you throw away all the limitations of a traditional set top box, building up a box that does exactly what you want it to, the way you want it to." Here are some more Systems articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Big Bruin | Subject: Display
The ViewSonic VX2433wm is a $220, 23" LCD whose native 1920x1080 happens to be the same resolution as 1080p. This means that your HD content will not have any pixel manipulation in order to display. It also sports a fast enough response rate to allow ghosting free gaming. Big Bruin would like to give you a warning about the built in speakers though.
"You would be hard pressed to find visual shortcomings with the ViewSonic VX2433wm. With a resolution of 1920x1080 you are able to display the latest HD content, something the majority of smaller monitors are not capable of. The monitor's visual qualities are complimented by being able to connect via all three of the most popular connections; HDMI, DVI and VGA." Here are some more Display articles from around the web:
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: [H]ard|OCP | Subject: General Tech
Ghostbusters is a game with a message, and that message is that you don't need Quad-SLI to run a 30" LCD all of the time. In a way that is really good, as Ghostbusters does not seem to support multiple GPUs very well; that may be because it just isn't demanding enough to need them very much. [H]ard|OCP had a 1GB HD4870 and a GTX260 running the game @ 2560x1600, with every option on its highest setting and were still averaging 40fps. That is not to imply that this is a bad looking game, it is both attractive and sports some interesting physics. For only $30 and a guarantee it will run well, how can you say no?
"Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! That’s right; a brand new video game marks the re-release of
the feature film on Blu-ray. We’ll take this game, which pays homage to the feature films
perfectly, through our gauntlet of video cards to see what kind of value and gameplay experience
you can get. We’ll also see if the stories are true about this being a multi-core CPU aware game
using CPU-based Physics."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Ryan Shrout | Source: The Inquirer | Subject: Graphics Card
This is kind of an odd little article over at The Inquirer: an AMD Senior Vice President, Rick Bergman, claims that they "WILL NOT engage Nvidia in a price slashing war." Uhhh, maybe I am dreaming, but I think that war is already on and in fact it was AMD that started it.
"Are we interested in winning share by losing money on every GPU we ship? No," Bergman said. "We're not going to engage in that and we haven't had to."
Bergman maintained that, on a "sustained basis", AMD is actually doing quite well at the lower end of the graphics market, noting, "if you go and look at Dell, HP or Acer's website, you'll actually see a lot of ATI graphics at the entry level." Bergman added that in the last quarter, AMD had pretty good market share when it came to graphics, smiling acidly as he remarked, "we even made some money. And obviously our competitor [Nvidia] lost a lot of money." Ouch. Perhaps Mr. Bergman forgot that it was the introduction of the Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870, that strongly undercut NVIDIA's price/performance on already existing parts, that really started this race to the prices we are at today for discrete graphics cards. That FORCED NVIDIA to drop its prices and then AMD did it again, a few times! They released the HD 4670, then the HD 4830 and even the HD 4770, all of which forced NVIDIA's hand to lower prices. 
This guy was really the start of the latest AMD/NVIDIA price war Of course, AMD was also pushing prices down by continuing to drop prices on cards like the Radeon HD 4850 - they even essentially made their own HD 4770 irrelevant. Now, at PC Perspective, we are as big of fans as low prices as anyone else, but we do see the potential down side to these two guys continuing to undercut each other: low to no profits. Obviously that can lead to even worse things like one of the companies dropping off the map.
Jeremy Hellstrom | Source: Ars Technica | Subject: General Tech
Relative newcomer to the streaming content business Hulu has displaced Joost in the hearts of internet users as the favourite way to grab
online TV series and movies. The original concept of Joost might have been a bit too broad, using bittorrent to distribute the content was certainly a great idea, but their concept of content was so broad they never managed to find a core group of users to depend upon to spread the good word. Switching to a browser model put them in direct competition with Hulu, a content provider that does have a huge amount of users preaching the gospel of Hulu and Hulu Desktop. Find out what the future holds for Joost at Ars Technica.
"Joost, the P2P online video service once hailed as the new way to watch TV, has announced that it's ditching its consumer video offerings. Instead, the company plans to offer services to other media companies—such as cable and satellite providers—as a "white label video platform." The company will be doing quite a bit of restructuring in order to accommodate its new role by shedding employees and replacing its CEO." Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
Ryan Shrout | Source: General | Subject: Mobile
While this shouldn't really come as a big surprise to anyone that pays attention to these sorts of things, a post over at Semiaccurate is saying that in all likely hood NVIDIA is "being shown the door" when it comes to future Apple system designs.
Back when the NVIDIA-based Apple notebooks were first announced, you will remember a lot of confusion on the timing of such a move by the rising computing company. Just a few months before, NVIDIA had to officially announce that it was having problems with a previous generation of mobile GPUs and chipsets and took quite a significant write off financial for the blunder. Apple's inclusion of the then brand-new GeForce 9400M mobile chipset was supposed to be a good sign for the GPU designer but as it turns out it might have just been a stop gap by Apple in its product line. To quote from the above linked article: The word is that Nvidia is out of Apple designs, starting with the Nehalem laptops and iMac type things. We are told the arrogance and bluster of Nvidia proposals were greeted with a response that, paraphrased, said, "Go away and don't come back for 3-4 years if you are still around as a company. Lose our number, and if you do call, we will laugh at you again."
In any case, that Apple page keeps changing, the warranties are now up to three years, and the disclaimer at the bottom is new too. Good for Apple, they seem to be the only ones attempting to protect their customers over the Nvidia bump scandal, Dell and HP sure as heck aren't. Think about that when making your next purchase. Now, in NVIDIA's defense, there have been NO PROBLEMS with the GeForce 9400M integrated graphics that we have seen. But Apple is not usually a company that takes risks from a hardware perspective - hence why they stuck with PowerPC components for so long. 
Will it be a short relationship? Because Apple's design cycles are somewhat lengthy, NVIDIA will still be in the entire allotment of Apple machines for the foreseeable future. But if this report is correct, it looks like NVIDIA might have some problems keeping Apple as a customer past this generation of products. Even though Apple is not a huge quantity of sales, NVIDIA did gain a lot of positive reputation courtesy the adoption by one of the most forward-looking computer companies today. If that company were to suddenly back out, the negative PR would be a potential disaster for NVIDIA executives. Want more news? Check out our Archive |
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