Intel Reports Q3 2011 Earnings

Subject: Editorial | October 19, 2011 - 05:29 PM | Josh Walrath
Tagged: sandy bridge, Q3 2011, Intel, earnings, bulldozer, atom, amd

This should come as a shock to no one.  Intel made a lot of money this past quarter.  We again have seen new records in both gross revenue and net income.  GAAP revenue for the quarter came in at an astounding $14.2 billion.  Essentially that is the net revenue for AMD during a three year span.  Net income is again impressive at $3.5 billion.  In AMD terms that would be gross revenue for three quarters.  Truly there is a tremendous disparity between the two companies who are very bitter rivals.  It is no wonder AMD is starting to really fall behind.

All of the internal groups, except for one, have shown tremendous growth over the past year.  Notebooks have really lead the charge as of late, but both desktop and server markets have shown very favorable growth for the company.  Even the McAfee and Intel Communications divisions provided upwards of $1 billion to the bottom line.  The only area that Intel is lagging in is the Atom line.

When we look at the product offerings of Intel in server, desktop, and notebook markets we see they have a sizeable advantage in both process technology and performance per watt.  Intel has been shipping 32 nm chips for well over a year and a half.  On the desktop this has translated to modestly priced processors that have a much smaller die size yet comparable (and even superior) performance to the AMD products which are much larger in size and more expensive to produce.  On the server side we really have not seen AMD make any inroads since Intel took over that market in a big way once they released the QPI based designs which took away AMD’s last architectural advantages; HyperTransport and integrated memory controllers.

Read the rest of the article after the break.

The many faces of Sandybridge motherboards

Subject: Motherboards | October 18, 2011 - 06:21 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Z68XP-UD3, x68, sapphire, sandybridge, Pure Platinum Z68, p67, Maximus IV Extreme B3, Intel, gigabyte, G1.Sniper, asus

When building a SandyBridge system you have several types of motherboard chipset to choose from, some with more capabilities than others.  The ASUS Maximus IV Extreme B3 is the odd duck in this roundup, being the only P67 board in an Z68 round up which means that it loses out on Intel SRT, which is not a drawback for those planning on using an SSD with a high enough capacity to be used as a main drive.  The two Gigabyte boards and the Sapphire board are Z68 and therefore sport all of the bells and whistles that come with that chipset.  In terms of pure performance and overclocking ability it is not the feature set that matters, it is the ability of the board its self.  Check out which of these 4 boards reigns supreme in Neoseeker's benchmarks here.

"A quartet of motherboards based the Intel P67 and Z68 chipsets arrives at Neoseeker's labs, covering both the value and enthusiast market spectrums. There just might be something for everyone with a Intel LGA 1155 socket CPU in our latest motherboard roundup."

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Motherboards

• EVGA X79 Classified E779 Motherboard Pictured At GeForce LAN 6 @ Legit Reviews
• Biostar TZ68K+ - Energy-Efficient LGA1155 Mainboard for Thrifty Users @ X-bit Labs
• ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 Review @ Kitguru
• BIOS Option Of The Week - PCI Clock Synchronization Mode @ Tech ARP
• ASUS M5A99X EVO Motherboard Review @ OCIA
• Sapphire A75 Pure Platinum Review @ OCC
• Gigabyte GA-A55-DSP3 Motherboard Review @ HardwareHeaven
• GIGABYTE Super4 A75-UD4H Socket FM1 Motherboard Review @ Legit Reviews

Overclocking the next generation of Intel CPUs

Subject: General Tech | October 14, 2011 - 11:24 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: sandy bridge-e, overclocking, lynx point, Ivy Bridge, Intel, haswell

 Perhaps not everybody has fond memories of overclocking past architectures with jumpers on motherboards and needing to be able to do math to determine what overclock you want and more importantly if it took or if the system bailed back to default clocks.  Those days are behind us now, as the BIOS becomes the UEFI and you can use a mouse to affect changes on your system timings.  Bulldozer does offer some complexity to those looking for a challenge but for most it is the unlocked Sandy Bridge processors that are the go to chip for overclockers.  According to information VR-Zone picked up at IDF, overclocking the upcoming families of processors will be even easier.  Intel has changed quite a bit over recent years, from the extreme of locking all their processor frequencies to making it easy for the enthusiast to push their CPU beyond design specs.

"Ivy Bridge CPUs decouple the main clock finally, following what the coming Sandy Bridge - E Socket 2011 is also implementing. Now, you can overclock the cores and memory without worrying about affecting the I/O and PCIe clocks. But then comes the more interesting piece news. A year later, in early 2013, the pinnacle of Intel's 22 nm process show off, the initial Haswell processor, is expected to go another step further, where CPU core, GPU, memory, PCI and DMI ratios are all set independently here, on top of fine grain BCLK base clock available within the Lynx Point chipset."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• EUV closer to commercialization @ SemiAccurate
• RRAM to take on flash at 11nm @ SemiAccurate
• AMD Ports Open-Source Linux Driver To Windows Embedded @ Phoronix
• Did a Seagate sales bloke just say 5TB drives are coming? @ The Register
• TEXT GOES HERE
• Kisai Rogue Touch LED Watch Review @ Tech-Reviews
• AMD’s Sasa Marinkovic speaks to Kitguru about Bulldozer FX
• Weekly Giveaway #13: OCZ Vertex 3 120GB Solid State Drive @ eTeknix
• Real World Labs And Other World Computing Joint Contest

Podcast #174 - AMD FX Processor launch, New products from Corsair, Viewer Questions and more!

Subject: General Tech | October 14, 2011 - 12:02 AM | Ken Addison
Tagged: podcast, Intel, FX, corsair, bulldozer, amd

PC Perspective Podcast #174 - 10/13/2011

Join us this week as we talk about the AMD FX Processor launch, New products from Corsair, Viewer Questions and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, Allyn Malventano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 57:42

Program Schedule:

1. 0:00:40 Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
5. 0:02:04 AMD FX-8150 Processor Review - Can Bulldozer Unearth an AMD Victory?
   1. Bulldozer Impressions: That was... interesting
6.  0:29:19 Video Perspective: AVADirect $1000 Gaming System Review
7.  0:30:00 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
   
8. 0:31:15 Corsair Releases High Capacity Force GT and Force 3 SSDs
9. 0:33:00 Corsair Launches New H40 and H70 CORE Sealed Loop Water Coolers
10. 0:35:23 Corsair Announces Availability of $139 Gaming PC Case
11. 0:37:55 Samsung and Micron Developing Hybrid Memory Cube Technology
12. 0:41:35 A quick and easy way to duplicate your drives
13. 0:45:32 Email from Jeff about SSD slow down
14. Email from Kent about SSD reviews
15. 0:50:00 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: Novatel Mifi Verizon 4G LTE
    2. Jeremy: MDK2HD!
    3. Josh: Sup Com and SC: FA on Steam now!  Cheeeap.  http://store.steampowered.com/sub/11732/
    4. Allyn: Sysinternals tools (namely Process Explorer)
16. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
17. http://pcper.com/podcast   
18. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
19. Closing

Video coming soon!

Samsung and Micron Developing Hybrid Memory Cube Technology

Subject: Memory | October 7, 2011 - 08:52 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: memory, hybrid memory cube, HMC, micron, Intel, Samsung, ram, DDR, DRAM

Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics, in cooperation with Intel, Altera Corporation, Open Silicon, and Xilinx among others have formed the “Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium” to develop and encourage adoption of a new storage interface specification. This new storage technology is based on Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) technology, which is comprised of PCB, a thin logic layer, and stacks of DRAM chips. These memory chips are stacked vertically on top of one another and connected via TSV.

A mock up of a HMC (Source: CNET)

According to Tech Connect Magazine, Micron’s Vice President for DRAM Marketing is quoted in stating “HMC brings a new level of capability to memory that provides exponential performance and efficiency gains.” Hybrid Memory Cube technology is claimed to be capable of using 70% less power than current DDR3 memory modules (DIMMs) while being up to 15 times faster.

Reinforcing Micron’s position is Intel’s CTO Justin Rattner who talked very highly of the technology and it’s massive bandwidth and I/O improvements versus traditional DDR style memory designs. The Hybrid Memory Cube is capable of sustained transfer rates of 1 terabit per second, and is “the most energy efficient DRAM ever built” by a bits transferred per amount of energy consumed.

Both Intel and Micron have expressed that the HMC technology will be a boon for data centers and high performance computing that demands low power and high bandwidth memory storage. Assuming the numbers pan out, the Hybrid Memory Cube will be quite a leap in memory efficiency and will further accelerate adoption rates of so called “cloud” applications as well as more efficient high performance servers used in scientific research endeavors. All in all, the idea of the Hybrid Memory Cube is cool stuff, and it will be interesting to see if the actual memory will live up to its grandeur name.

Intel Core i7 2700K Overclocked to 5GHz On Air

Subject: Cases and Cooling | October 7, 2011 - 05:49 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: cpu, Intel, core i7, 2700K, cooling

An aspiring overclocker and Coolaler forum go-er "u48802109" got his/her hands on an engineering sample and set out to see just how far he could push the upcoming Intel Core i7 2700K processor using air cooling.  In an exciting result, the overclocker was able to achieve a stable 5 GHz overclock on the 2700K with a 100 MHz bus speed and 50x multiplier.  Even more amazing are the voltage and temperature results (keeping in mind that we don't know the particular HSF being used) of the overclock.  Specifically, they were able to hit 5 GHz with 1.384 V and hit a maximum temperature of 65 C.  

A zoomed in look at the CPU-Z readout.

While air cooling may not be able to support going to much higher frequencies, water cooling could certainly open up even more headroom in the chip.  Also, keeping in mind that these are engineering samples, it will be interesting to see where the Core i7 2700K falls once it starts rolling out to consumers.  If these results hold out, it does seem like it may just be worth it to pay a few extra bucks and eschew the 2600K for new builds.  What are your thoughts, are these results encouraging to you?  You can see the full overclocking results here.

Podcast #173 - Battlefield 3 System Build Guide, RAGE Performance Testing and Issues, Bulldozer updates and more!

Subject: General Tech | October 6, 2011 - 02:22 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: rage, podcast, nvidia, kepler, Intel, bulldozer, bf3, amd

PC Perspective Podcast #173 - 10/06/2011

Join us this week as we talk about our Battlefield 3 System Build Guide, RAGE Performance Testing and Issues, Bulldozer updates and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, Allyn Malventano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 58:56

Program Schedule:

1. 0:00:39 Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
5. 0:01:53 MSI X370 Review: Fusion Hardware, Ultraportable Chassis
6. 0:03:05 Battlefield 3 (BF3) System Build Guide - What you need to succeed
   1. Battlefield 3 Beta: Caspian Border Performance and Screenshots
   2. Battlefield 3 (BF3) Beta Performance: Quality Preset and SLI Scaling
7. 0:16:10 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
8. 0:17:12 RAGE Performance and Image Quality Evaluation - Day 1
   1. PC Gamers Rage Over Numerous RAGE Issues
9. 0:31:30 Panel Self Refresh; a new way to save power
10. 0:36:11 AMD Bulldozer FX CPUs dated: October 12th. Shhh.
11. 0:37:01 AMD Bulldozer FX Processor Benchmarks Leaked
12. 0:41:15 More confirmation, NVIDIA is leading the 600 series with mobile chips 
13. 0:44:05 Just Delivered: Asus HD 6770 DirectCU Silent
14. 0:47:38 OCZ Technology Acquires UK Design Team from PLX Technology
15. 0:49:15 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: Join me at GeForce LAN in Oakland!!
    2. Jeremy: Buy RIM, please!
    3. Josh: I have one, and I like it:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835209049
    4. Allyn: power-over-esata to (22 pin) sata cables, cheap: here
16. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
17. http://pcper.com/podcast   
18. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
19. Closing