An AIO and Tablet Design

When new and interesting architectures and technology are developed, it enables system designers to build creative designs and systems for consumers.  With its renewed focus on power efficiency as well as performance, Intel has helped move the industry towards new form factors like the Next Unit of Computing and the evolution of the All-in-One design.

Today we are taking a look at the new Sony VAIO Tap 20 system, an AIO that not only integrates a 10-point touch screen on a 20-in 1600x900 resolution display and an Ivy Bridge architecture ultra low voltage processor, but also a battery to make the design semi-mobile and ripe for inclusion in high-tech homes. 

Check out our quick video overview below and then follow that up with a full pictorial outline and some more details!

This isn't Sony's first foray into all-in-one PCs of course but it is among the first to combine this particular set of features.  In what is essentially an Ultrabook design with a large screen, the Tap 20 combines an Ivy Bridge Core i5 processors, 4GB of DDR3 memory and a 750GB hard drive.  Here is the breakdown:

The display is pretty nice with a 1600x900 reoslution though I do wish we had seen a full 1080p screen for HD video playback.  As with most touch screens, the display quality is under that of a non-touch IPS monitor but even up close (as you tend to use touch devices) you'll be hard pressed to find any imperfections.  Viewing angles are great as well which allows for better multi-person usage. 

On the left we find the power connection and a hard wired Ethernet connection that compliments the integrated 802.11n WiFi.

Continue reading our review of the Sony VAIO Tap 20 AIO!!!

In case you missed it...

UPDATE: We have now published full details on our Frame Rating capture and analysis system as well as an entire host of benchmark results.  Please check it out!!

In one of the last pages of our recent NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card review we included an update to our Frame Rating graphics performance metric that details the testing method in more detail and showed results for the first time.  Because it was buried so far into the article, I thought it was worth posting this information here as a separate article to solict feedback from readers and help guide the discussion forward without getting lost in the TITAN shuffle.  If you already read that page of our TITAN review, nothing new is included below. 

I am still planning a full article based on these results sooner rather than later; for now, please leave me your thoughts, comments, ideas and criticisms in the comments below!

Why are you not testing CrossFire??

If you haven't been following our sequence of stories that investigates a completely new testing methodology we are calling "frame rating", then you are really missing out.  (Part 1 is here, part 2 is here.)  The basic premise of Frame Rating is that the performance metrics that the industry is gathering using FRAPS are inaccurate in many cases and do not properly reflect the real-world gaming experience the user has.

Because of that, we are working on another method that uses high-end dual-link DVI capture equipment to directly record the raw output from the graphics card with an overlay technology that allows us to measure frame rates as they are presented on the screen, not as they are presented to the FRAPS software sub-system.  With these tools we can measure average frame rates, frame times and stutter, all in a way that reflects exactly what the viewer sees from the game.

We aren't ready to show our full sets of results yet (soon!) but the problems lie in that AMD's CrossFire technology shows severe performance degradations when viewed under the Frame Rating microscope that do not show up nearly as dramatically under FRAPS.  As such, I decided that it was simply irresponsible of me to present data to readers that I would then immediately refute on the final pages of this review (Editor: referencing the GTX TITAN article linked above.) - it would be a waste of time for the reader and people that skip only to the performance graphs wouldn't know our theory on why the results displayed were invalid.

Many other sites will use FRAPS, will use CrossFire, and there is nothing wrong with that at all.  They are simply presenting data that they believe to be true based on the tools at their disposal.  More data is always better. 

Here are these results and our discussion.  I decided to use the most popular game out today, Battlefield 3 and please keep in mind this is NOT the worst case scenario for AMD CrossFire in any way.  I tested the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition in single and CrossFire configurations as well as the GeForce GTX 680 and SLI.  To gather results I used two processes:

1. Run FRAPS while running through a repeatable section and record frame rates and frame times for 60 seconds
2. Run our Frame Rating capture system with a special overlay that allows us to measure frame rates and frame times with post processing.

Here is an example of what the overlay looks like in Battlefield 3.

Frame Rating capture on GeForce GTX 680s in SLI - Click to Enlarge

The column on the left is actually the visuals of an overlay that is applied to each and every frame of the game early in the rendering process.  A solid color is added to the PRESENT call (more details to come later) for each individual frame.  As you know, when you are playing a game, multiple frames will make it on any single 60 Hz cycle of your monitor and because of that you get a succession of colors on the left hand side.

By measuring the pixel height of those colored columns, and knowing the order in which they should appear beforehand, we can gather the same data that FRAPS does but our results are seen AFTER any driver optimizations and DX changes the game might make.

Frame Rating capture on Radeon HD 7970 CrossFire - Click to Enlarge

Here you see a very similar screenshot running on CrossFire.  Notice the thin silver band between the maroon and purple?  That is a complete frame according to FRAPS and most reviews.  Not to us - we think that frame rendered is almost useless. 

Continue reading our 3rd part in a series of Frame Rating and to see our first performance results!!

TITAN is back for more!

Our NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Coverage Schedule:

• Tuesday, February 19 @ 9am ET: GeForce GTX TITAN Features Preview
• Thursday, February 21 @ 9am ET: GeForce GTX TITAN Benchmarks and Review
• Thursday, February 21 @ 2pm ET: PC Perspective Live! GTX TITAN Stream

If you are reading this today, chances are you were here on Tuesday when we first launched our NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN features and preview story (accessible from the link above) and were hoping to find benchmarks then.  You didn't, but you will now.  I am here to show you that the TITAN is indeed the single fastest GPU on the market and MAY be the best graphics cards (single or dual GPU) on the market depending on what usage models you have.  Some will argue, some will disagree, but we have an interesting argument to make about this $999 gaming beast.

A brief history of time...er, TITAN

In our previous article we talked all about TITAN's GK110-based GPU, the form factor, card design, GPU Boost 2.0 features and much more and I would highly press you all to read it before going forward.  If you just want the cliff notes, I am going to copy and paste some of the most important details below.

From a pure specifications standpoint the GeForce GTX TITAN based on GK110 is a powerhouse.  While the full GPU sports a total of 15 SMX units, TITAN will have 14 of them enabled for a total of 2688 shaders and 224 texture units.  Clock speeds on TITAN are a bit lower than on GK104 with a base clock rate of 836 MHz and a Boost Clock of 876 MHz.  As we will show you later in this article though the GPU Boost technology has been updated and changed quite a bit from what we first saw with the GTX 680.

The bump in the memory bus width is also key, being able to feed that many CUDA cores definitely required a boost from 256-bit to 384-bit, a 50% increase.  Even better, the memory bus is still running at 6.0 GHz resulting in total memory bandwdith of 288.4 GB/s.

Speaking of memory - this card will ship with 6GB on-board.  Yes, 6 GeeBees!!  That is twice as much as AMD's Radeon HD 7970 and three times as much as NVIDIA's own GeForce GTX 680 card.  This is without a doubt a nod to the super-computing capabilities of the GPU and the GPGPU functionality that NVIDIA is enabling with the double precision aspects of GK110.

Continue reading our full review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card with benchmarks and an update on our Frame Rating process!!

GK110 Makes Its Way to Gamers

Our NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Coverage Schedule:

• Tuesday, February 19 @ 9am ET: GeForce GTX TITAN Features Preview
• Thursday, February 21 @ 9am ET: GeForce GTX TITAN Benchmarks and Review
• Thursday, February 21 @ 2pm ET: PC Perspective Live! GTX TITAN Stream

Back in May of 2012 NVIDIA released information on GK110, a new GPU that the company was targeting towards HPC (high performance computing) and the GPGPU markets that are eager for more processing power.  Almost immediately the questions began on when we might see the GK110 part make its way to consumers and gamers in addition to finding a home in supercomputers like Cray's Titan system capable of 17.59 Petaflops/s. 

Watch this same video on our YouTube channel

Nine months later we finally have an answer - the GeForce GTX TITAN is a consumer graphics card built around the GK110 GPU.  Comprised of 2,688 CUDA cores, 7.1 billion transistors and with a die size of 551 mm^2, the GTX TITAN is a big step forward (both in performance and physical size).

From a pure specifications standpoint the GeForce GTX TITAN based on GK110 is a powerhouse.  While the full GPU sports a total of 15 SMX units, TITAN will have 14 of them enabled for a total of 2688 shaders and 224 texture units.  Clock speeds on TITAN are a bit lower than on GK104 with a base clock rate of 836 MHz and a Boost Clock of 876 MHz.  As we will show you later in this article though the GPU Boost technology has been updated and changed quite a bit from what we first saw with the GTX 680.

The bump in the memory bus width is also key, being able to feed that many CUDA cores definitely required a boost from 256-bit to 384-bit, a 50% increase.  Even better, the memory bus is still running at 6.0 GHz resulting in total memory bandwdith of 288.4 GB/s. 

Continue reading our preview of the brand new NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card!!