AMD's Llano to have power envelopes from 2.5 to 25W
by Cyril Kowaliski — 11:51 AM on February 9, 2010

The Llano "accelerated processing unit" has been on AMD's roadmaps for over a year, but surprisingly few details have made it out into the news. To coincide with the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, however, AMD has taken the time to provide fresh technical details and pimp the new design. The folks at EE Times jotted down some of the information.

Llano will include four microprocessor cores, 4MB of L2 cache (1MB per CPU core), and a graphics core on a single die manufactured using GlobalFoundries' 32-nm silicon-on-insulator process. According to EE Times, the CPU cores will each take up 35 million transistors and 10 mm² of die area. Clock speeds will be upward of 3GHz, and supply voltage should fall in the 0.8-1.3 V range.

AMD will base Llano's cores on the same "Stars" architecture that powers today's Phenom IIs. Why not Bulldozer, AMD's next-generation architecture? When we asked the company that question last year, the company replied that it wanted to use a "well understood, existing core" as the basis for its first 32-nm APU. That decision mirrors Intel's "tick-tock" execution model, which involves transitioning to new process technologies using existing architectures to minimize implementation snags and delays.

Llano will tread new ground not just with its built-in GPU and 32-nm SOI silicon, but also with new power-management features, which will allow the chip to fit into 2.5-25W thermal envelopes, "depending on the performance demand." EE Times says those features will include core power gating, which allows each core to be shut off completely from the power supply; improved on-die temperature measurements; and a new clock grid design, which EE Times says "reduced the metal capacitance in the grid by more than 80% and reduced the number of final clock buffers by better than half."

AMD's latest desktop and mobile roadmaps place the arrival of Llano in 2011 as part of the Lynx and Sabine platforms. On the desktop, Lynx will succeed the existing Pisces and Kodiak platforms that combine Athlon II processors with AMD's 785G chipset. In the notebook market, meanwhile, Lynx will follow in the footsteps of last year's Tigris platform.

3 comments —
Last by gfos at 12:16 PM on 02/09/10

Intel unleashes quad-core Itanium 9300
by Cyril Kowaliski — 8:43 AM on February 9, 2010

Although the mass of both current and upcoming Nehalem-based Xeons might suggest otherwise, Intel still hasn't killed its Itanium processor line—far from it. Just yesterday, the company introduced five Itanium 9300 processors based on the brand-new Tukwila architecture.

Tukwila features four cores, eight threads, 24MB of L3 cache, Turbo Boost, QuickPath interconnects, second-gen hardware virtualization tech, and some new reliability features, all laid out on a massive, two-billion-transistor die. Intel claims the new Itanium 9300 series more than doubles performance over previous-gen dual-core Itaniums, bringing eight times the interconnect bandwidth, five times the memory bandwidth, and seven times the memory capacity with "industry standard DDR3 components."

The Itanium 9300 lineup looks like so:

Processor	Cores/ threads	Speed	Turbo speed	L3 cache	QPI	TDP	Price
Itanium 9350	4/8	1.73 GHz	1.86 GHz	24 MB	4.8 GT/s	185 W	$3,838
Itanium 9340	4/8	1.60 GHz	1.73 GHz	20 MB	4.8 GT/s	185 W	$2,059
Itanium 9330	4/8	1.46 GHz	1.60 GHz	20 MB	4.8 GT/s	155 W	$2,059
Itanium 9320	4/8	1.33 GHz	1.46 GHz	16 MB	4.8 GT/s	155 W	$1,614
Itanium 9310	2/4	1.60 GHz	N/A	10 MB	4.8 GT/s	130 W	$946

Interestingly, Intel says these processors share a number of platform features with upcoming eight-core Nehalem EX processors, including "the Intel® QuickPath Interconnect, the Intel Scalable Memory Interconnect, the Intel® 7500 Scalable Memory Buffer (to take advantage of industry standard DDR3 memory), and I/O hub (Intel® 7500 chipset)."

As we wrote last May, Nehalem-EX will also have a formidable transistor count (2.3 billion), which it will spend most notably on eight cores, 16 threads, 24MB of shared L3 cache, and a total of four memory channels. Server makers will be able to arrange Nehalem-EX CPUs in eight-socket configurations for a total of 64 cores and 128 threads. Unlike Tukwila, however, Nehalem-EX will be based on the same base microarchitecture as Intel's desktop processors. Itaniums still have their own, separate instruction set, and Intel targets them at different markets.

Servers featuring new Itanium 9300-based processors should start shipping within the next three months, according to Intel.

28 comments —
Last by Goty at 12:09 PM on 02/09/10

National Bagel Day Shortbread
by Ronald Hanaki — 2:12 AM on February 9, 2010

National Bagel Day

1. DealBook Blog reports 10th person in Galleon insider case pleads guilty
2. Yahoo! News reports TPM cracked
3. MacRumors: Current MacBook Pro models deleted
   from Best Buy's inventory system? Updates imminent?
4. Apple management: iPad prices could change
5. Ars Technica reports survey tries quantifying iPad hype, suggests interest waning
6. The iPad tweet that enraged Steve Jobs
7. Engadget reports ExoPC shows its touchscreen stuff on video
8. Fudzilla reports Intel loves Nvidia for Optimus
9. Hi Tech Legion's PowerColor interview
10. Engadget reports Motorola Droid's next update to be Android 2.1, includes multitouch browser
11. Motorola: Droid update to Android 2.1 'will start to roll out this week'
12. TechFlash: A color screen for the Kindle? Job posting indicates so
13. WSJ reports Google to add social feature to Gmail
14. C|Net reports Google launches Nexus One phone support
15. Google analyst: U.S. Internet needs to get faster
16. C|Net reports 1080p streaming not coming to Netflix this year
    and Netflix says ISPs could threaten web video
17. Ars Technica on the lost souls of telecommunications history

Software

1. Engineering Windows 7: Windows 7 battery notification messages
2. Is Windows 7 reliability fix making PCs less reliable?
3. Lifehacker has the complete guide to Windows System Restore
4. Ars Technica reports Mozilla dropping 10.4 support with next Firefox release
5. Download Squad reports Firefox 4 gets animated: New videos show slight browser tab changes
6. C|Net reports Adobe promises faster Flash on Macs
7. Locus OS interface on Vimeo
8. SuperSite Blog reports Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 RC available
9. Another Opera 10.5 development snapshot: Acid3 and more
10. WindowBlinds 7.01
11. ASTRA32 version 2.05 released
12. PwnageTool 3.1.5 for Mac OS X

Gaming

1. Shacknews reports EA talks DLC strategy for 2010 and EA reveals Windows
   release of major games: Crysis 2, new Dragon Age, Sims & much more
2. Blue's News reports no PC Dead Space 2 and Crysis 2 for the holidays
3. Why you may not be able to import your Mass Effect 2, save to ME3
4. Kotaku reports Cerberus ups your Mass Effect 2 arsenal tomorrow
5. Ars Technica's Dante's Inferno interview: Of marketing and Gods of War
6. CVG reports New Vegas 'wittier' than Fallout 3
7. Mashable on how social gaming is improving education
8. Shacknews reports Final Fantasy 13 developers claim
   it will 'resurrect' the Japanese game industry
9. Team Fortress 2 update released on Steam

Systems and storage

1. HardwareZone tests 7 Intel CULV notebooks
2. Phoronix: How to reverse engineer a motherboard BIOS
3. VR-Zone shares rumor: Intel's Sandy Bridge to integrate up to 2 GPUs
4. AnandTech reports AMD reveals more Llano details
   at ISSCC: 32nm, power gating, 4-cores, turbo?
5. Ars Technica reports AMD reveals Fusion CPU+GPU, to challege Intel in laptops
6. Overclockers.com tests Core i5-661 32nm Clarkdale on Biostar TH55XE
7. Hardware Secrets reviews Athlon II X4 635 and Phenom II X2 555
8. Rbmods on 6GB Mushkin PC3-12800 memory kit
9. BCCHardware reviews 128GB Patriot Torqx SSD
10. Benchmark Reviews on 32GB LiteOn Strong-Page MLC SSD

Multimedia

1. AnandTech, ExtremeTech, Guru3D, [H]ard|OCP, HotHardware, and
   Legion Hardware, Techgage, TechSpot review AMD Radeon HD 5570
2. Elite Bastards, Hardware Canucks, Hardware Heaven,Hexus.net, Hi Tech Legion,
   Legit Reviews, OCC, PureOC, and TweakTown review Sapphire Radeon HD 5570
3. techPowerUp! reviews QNAP NMP-1000 network media player
4. MissingRemote on EFO RF wireless handheld keyboard - touchpad
5. OverclockersHQ reviews Playseat Flightseat flight simulator gaming chair

Power, casing, and cooling

1. PureOC reviews 850W Kingwin Lazer PSU
2. Motherboards.org reviews Thermaltake Level 10 case
3. ThinkComputers reviews Corsair Obsidian Series 800D case
4. Legit Reviews on Antec Nine Hundred Two case
5. Technic3D reviews NZXT Beta Evo case (in German)
6. ProClockers review Dynatron Azenx P-Secure HDD enclosure
7. Verdis Reviews on Noctua NF-P14 FLX case fan
8. TechReviews UK on Spire TherMax Pro CPU cooler

19 comments —
Last by kravo at 12:01 PM on 02/09/10

Radeon HD 5570 launches at $79-85
by Cyril Kowaliski — 11:01 PM on February 8, 2010

After outing the Radeon HD 5670 in January and the Radeon HD 5450 last week, AMD has now added a third sub-$100 graphics card to its DirectX 11 lineup. The new Radeon HD 5570 fits squarely between its two siblings with a $79-85 suggested price range, and it essentially brings a diluted version of the 5670's formula.

AMD based the Radeon HD 5570 on the same 40-nm Redwood graphics processor that powers the 5670. The company didn't disable any bits or pieces, so users will still get 400 stream processors, five texture units (for 20 texels/clock fill rate), two ROP units (for a total eight pixels per clock), and a 128-bit memory interface. However, the core clock speed has fallen from 775MHz to 650MHz, and instead of speedy 4Gbps GDDR5, AMD has limited the 5570's memory selection to 1.8Gbps DDR3.

As a result, floating-point number crunching power has fallen from 620 gigaFLOPS on the Radeon HD 5670 to 520 gigaFLOPS on the Radeon HD 5570, and memory bandwidth has dropped similarly from 64GB/s to just 28.8GB/s. These changes appear to have helped the 5570's power efficiency—AMD quotes a "typical" 38W at load, down from 61W. In turn, the reduced power consumption enables a half-height form factor and a smaller cooler. AMD tells us we could actually end up seeing passively cooled 5570s from some card vendors.

On the performance side of things, AMD claims the Radeon HD 5570 packs enough punch to hit 30 FPS in recent games, either at 1920x1080 or using a triple-monitor, 3840x1024 Eyefinity setup. Naturally, such feats should involve disabling some eye candy. You'll never run Crysis at 1920x1080 at the highest preset with antialiasing on a $79 graphics card... not this generation, anyway.

61 comments —
Last by Dr. Zhivago at 12:13 PM on 02/09/10

Boy Scout Day Shortbread
by Ronald Hanaki — 1:13 PM on February 8, 2010

Boy Scout Day

1. The Register reports U.S. economy sheds 20,000 jobs in January
2. Ars Technica reports Google's China problem leaves opening for Bing
3. CDN: The enterprise opportunity that Apple doesn't want you to know about (thanks dpaus)
4. C|Net reports bids are in for AOL's sale of ICQ
5. When MetroPCS says 'no contact,' they mean 'contract'
6. 4chan confirms that Verizon Wireless has explicitly blocked them
7. Computerworld reports proposed battery restrictions could crimp e-commerce, air travel
8. IBM unveils new POWER7 systems to manage increasingly data-intensive services
9. DigiTimes reports Compal said to have turned down Asus notebook orders due to Acer
10. Rambus unveils Mobile XDRM memory for next-generation mobile products
11. TC Magazine reports TDK roadmap suggests 2.5TB HDDs are just around the corner
12. EETimes reports Intel tips NAND strategy, reveals a surprise
13. VR-Zone reports Samsung S2 Special Edition portable
    external HDD comes with "Michael Jackson's This Is It"
14. Nvidia: External graphics accelerators for notebooks is a big opportunity
15. The Inquirer reports Nvidia's line of Fermi GPUs is hanging fire
16. Donanim Haber reports Club3D unveils custom designed
    Radeon HD 5850 Overclocked Edition (in Turkish)
17. PC World reports, Sharp, Samsung settle all outstanding LCD patent cases
18. Ars Technica reports Microsoft investigating disappearing music from Zune Pass
19. The Inquirer reports Google Nexus One sales disappoint
20. C|Net reports Linux founder endorses Google's Nexus One
21. DailyTech reports RIM making necessary changes as smartphone competition heats up
22. C|Net reports B&N Nook back on sale
23. TorrentFreak reports The Pirate Bay to be censored in Italy, again
24. Large Hadron Collider producing record-breaking collisions
25. Off-Topic: Burger King of Beers
26. Win a Dell XPS laptop with OC3D and Dell Outlet
27. Win an Nvidia 3D Vision bundle from Techgage
28. Dealzon's deals: $130 off 15.6" Acer Aspire 5740, $254 off
    Dell Inspiron 13, and $50 off FLO TV + 6 mos. subscription

Software

1. WindowsITPro reports battery life issues almost certainly not Windows 7's fault
2. Computerworld reports Symantec hit with class-action lawsuit over auto-renewals
3. C|Net reports new UI, features highlight McAfee 2010 suites
4. Latest Opera 10.50 development snapshot: Java is back
5. Google Chrome v5.0.317.0: Another reason to ditch Firefox
6. DailyTech reports Google to bring Wave, Voice to businesses in 2010
7. Google working on universal translator

Gaming

1. Xbox 360 120GB HDD has price slashed in U.S. as well
2. Ars Technica reports EA hides Dante's Inferno ads in source code of popular sites
3. Shacknews reports 'Dudebro' coming to PC via
   NeoGAF Forumites, features voice of Duke Nukem
4. IGN: Mass Effect 3 & beyond (Ray Muzyka interview)
5. VG247 reports Modern Warfare 2 Care Package patch sent to MS for certification
6. First screenshots from Shattered Horizon "Moonrise" content pack
7. Edge Online on the art of gaming
8. Ars Technica reviews BioShock 2 and Aliens vs. Predator demo
9. LanOC preview: BioShock 2
10. Games For Work: Doom Triple Pack Flash games
11. Big Download reports Electronic Gaming Monthly print subscriptions now being taken
12. Total War week on Steam: Save 66% on Total War games, packs, and DLC this week only

Systems, storage, and networking

1. Hardware.Info's game PC - February 2010
2. TechReviewSource on hp Pavilion Elite HPE-140f
3. Futurelooks reviews ASRock Ion 330HT
4. ThinkComputers reviews Core i5-661
5. PureOC on Phenom II X4 for $99: Unlocking the X2 555 BE
6. Tech ARP's BIOS option of the week - Anti-Virus protection
7. Guru3D reviews Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3
8. Ninjalane reviews Foxconn Inferno Katana P55
9. Madshrimps test USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps on Gigabyte P55A-UD6
10. TweakTown reviews 120GB Team Group Xtreem-G1 SSD
11. Ars Technica on designing a highly reliable small & medium business network

Multimedia, power, case, and cooling

1. Benchmark Reviews on EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP
2. OCC reviews Asus ENGT240
3. Björn3D reviews MSI N240GT-MD512 OC/D5
4. Tweaknews reviews Samsung PN58B850 58" plasma TV
5. TweakTown reviews 1600W Ultra X4 PSU
6. TWL reviews 1050W Ultra X4 PSU
7. CowcotLand reviews Antec Mini P180 case (in French)
8. HardwareOC reviews Noctua NH-U9B SE2 cooler (in German)
9. PCShopTalk reviews Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 4870X2 VGA cooler

29 comments —
Last by wira020 at 11:22 PM on 02/08/10

Faster Athlon II X2s may arrive later this year
by Cyril Kowaliski — 11:45 AM on February 8, 2010

Penny pinchers may get another two dual-core Athlon IIs to choose from before the end of the summer. According to Fudzilla, AMD will roll out an Athlon II X2 260 next quarter and follow up with a faster X2 265 model the quarter after that.

Both of those future processors should outperform the freshly released Athlon II X2 255. Fudzilla quotes a clock speed of 3.3GHz for the X2 265, and based on what we know about AMD's model numbering scheme, we'd expect the X2 260 to run at 3.2GHz. For the record, the existing X2 255 ticks away at 3.1GHz with 1MB of L2 cache per core and a 65W thermal envelope.

As far as precise scheduling goes, Fudzilla reckons the Athlon II X2 260 might show up in April, while the X2 265 should succeed it in the middle of the third quarter—August, in other words.

The arrival of faster dual-core Athlon IIs could increase the pressure on Intel, which currently competes in the same price range with only Pentium E6000-series CPUs based on its older architecture. Intel's cheapest Nehalem-derived processor, the 2.8GHz Pentium G6950, sells for $96 and lacks both Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost features.

42 comments —
Last by MadManOriginal at 8:45 AM on 02/09/10

Etc.
by Scott Wasson — 10:21 AM on February 8, 2010

Our resident Mac blogger, Jason Fox, is also an advertising professional, and his annual look at the Super Bowl ads is online over at the AdHole. As ever, Jason gives you his reasons why the ads did or didn't work for him, as well as some grumbling at hippies. I wonder if he wrote this up on his new Hackintosh. Hmm.

27 comments —
Last by eitje at 7:09 PM on 02/08/10

Apple chip designers leaving to form startup
by Cyril Kowaliski — 9:25 AM on February 8, 2010

Last month, the iPad became the first device to feature Apple's A4, a new applications processor designed in-house at the company by former PA Semiconductor staffers. According to a story by the New York Times, however, Apple may have already lost some of the talent that came up with the chip:

Some of the chip engineers Apple gained in its purchase of PA Semi appear to have already left the company. According to partial records on the job networking site LinkedIn, at least half a dozen former PA Semi engineers have left Apple and turned up at a start-up called Agnilux, based in San Jose. The company was co-founded by one of PA’s leading system architects, Mark Hayter.

EETimes writes in a separate story that Agnilux's founder is none other than PA Semi co-founder Amarjit Gill. At PA Semi, Gill reportedly took care of sales and business development.

The site adds that Agnilux has ties with Cisco and is working on a server processor. Perhaps that processor will have multiple ARM cores and target power-efficient servers. In the iPad, the A4's low power draw purportedly enables up to 10 hours of battery life despite the device's half-inch profile and 9.7" backlit display.

20 comments —
Last by xii at 6:47 PM on 02/08/10

Rumor: AMD's Thuban to have Turbo Boost-like feature
by Cyril Kowaliski — 6:00 AM on February 8, 2010

Could we see Turbo Boost-like functionality in an AMD processor soon? "Sources close to the company" have tipped off the guys at X-bit labs that Thuban, a six-core AMD desktop processor due later this year, will be able to "overclock" individual cores dynamically.

Dubbed "C-state performance boost," this feature will reportedly operate at the hardware level, and it will give Thuban the ability to disable cores and raise the clock speeds of remaining ones automatically depending on load. Just as with Intel's Turbo Boost scheme, the clock speed modulations will all happen within the processor's rated thermal envelope.

While evidence seems sparse at this point, it's hard to argue against the usefulness of a Turbo Boost-like feature in a six-core desktop processor. Squeezing six cores in the same thermal envelope as a Phenom II X4 will undoubtedly entail a lower base clock speed, and because few desktop apps are likely to use that many threads, the lower base clock could lead to slower day-to-day performance than one might otherwise expect from a high-end CPU. Disabling extra cores and speeding up the rest could solve that problem nicely.

According to the latest whispers from the Far East, Thuban will arrive in May as Phenom II X6 1035T, 1055T, and 1075T processors. Those three parts will be based on the same 45-nm process technology as current Phenom IIs, and they'll work in the same Socket AM3 and AM2+ motherboards. (Thanks to TR forum gerbil ish718 for the link.)

60 comments —
Last by Sahrin at 12:13 PM on 02/09/10

Super Bowl Sunday Shortbread
by Ronald Hanaki — 7:00 AM on February 7, 2010

Super Bowl Sunday

1. Unreleased Core i7 MacBook Pro 6,1 benchmarked? Supplies constrained
2. IndustryGamers: iPad developer explains why it's 'so revolutionary'
3. FCC: iPad use could further strain AT&T 3G
4. IGN: Google developing an iPad killer?
5. Apple may retain AT&T as exclusive iPhone partner
6. ISPs look to bundled music services to keep you around
7. Engadget reports Dell Mini 5 earns FCC approval, AT&T 3G coverage assured
   and Lenovo ThinkPad X201T convertible tablet hits the FCC, Australia
8. Dell Precision M6500 gets Core i5, USB 3.0
9. ATI launches Radeon HD 5450 and HD 5570
10. Windows Phone 7 details emerge from the depths
11. Engadget reports Motorola Droid gets official multitouch support—in Google Maps, anyway
12. PC World reports third major publisher dumps Amazon $9.99 e-books model
13. Download Squad reports Americans consumed 33 billion online videos in December 2009
14. TELUS revolutionizes television in Edmonton, Alberta
15. Engadget's eco shocker: Turbine Light concept uses wind to light highways
16. C|Net: Google to air ad during Super Bowl?
17. Computerworld's top 10 Super Bowl tech ads
18. Super Bowl's economic impact may be super inflated

Software

1. TUAW reports 16 month-old bug continues to crash Flash
2. Tim Sweeney talks Android
3. DirectX end-user runtimes (February 2010)
4. CPU-Z 1.53.2 beta
5. Google Chrome 5.0.317.0 beta for Windows and 5.0.307.5 beta for Mac and Linux
6. Latest version of MPlayer
7. Engadget reports Kindle dev kit now rolling out in limited beta
8. Tech ARP posts x264 HD benchmark 3.12

Gaming

1. Earnings preview: Electronic Arts
2. Microsoft won't let me transfer my Xbox hard drive data because of registration error
3. Joystiq reports new Hori arcade sticks are large
4. Auto-set processor affinity for Mass Effect 2 PC with Mass Affinity, fix those load times
5. BioShock 2 developer call
6. [OC]ModShop has BioShock 2 developer Q&A
7. Summary of what's known so far about Fallout: New Vegas
8. Diablo III's female Monk designs revealed on The Jace Hall Show
9. StarCraft II reveals more character info on website
10. Fable III's almost "at the final edit," says Molyneux
11. Remote administration interface for BFBC2 PC
12. World War II levels in Bad Company 2?
13. Bad Company 2's back cover reveals impressive score
14. Why Ellis is Valve's favorite character (L4D2 interview)
15. GameTrailers have exclusive new Dragon Age: Awakening trailer
16. Quake Resurrection flash game
17. Kotaku reports EA Sports planning Facebook version of Madden
18. Exclusive BioShock 2 merchandise for sale on the 2K Store
19. The art history... of games? A new conference, Romero explain
20. Command & Conquer Ultimate PC contest

Hardware

1. HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2010
2. Hardware.Info's entry level PC - February 2010
3. Engadget's Asus Eee PC 1008P (Seashell) review
4. HardwareZone reviews Jetway Kuroshio BI-700
5. Björn3D reviews Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 1GB
6. Hi Tech Legion reviews Axle GeForce G210 512MB
7. Digital Trends on the best digital cameras of 2010,
   Aliph Jawbone Icon, and BlackBerry Presenter
8. OC3D reviews SteelSeries 7G gaming keyboard
9. Tweaknews reviews Microsoft Explorer wireless rechargeable mouse
10. Overclockers Online and TweakPC (in German) review NZXT Hades case

25 comments —
Last by burntham77 at 6:37 PM on 02/08/10

Waitangi Day Shortbread
by Ronald Hanaki — 11:04 PM on February 6, 2010

Waitangi Day

1. VR-Zone reports Thuban branded as AMD Phenom II X6
2. X-bit labs report AMD Phenom II X6 "Thuban" processors to get dynamic speed boost
   technology and Nvidia's Optimus to combine GPU and IGP for improved performance
3. Why you'll use a tablet. Yes, you!
4. Yahoo! News reports Dell must defend suit alleging defective notebooks
5. DailyTech reports Apple offers bounty to take yellow iMacs off UK owners' hands
6. DigiTimes reports Shuttle expects desktop shipments to reach 300,000 units in 2010
7. Ars Technica: 16- and 48-core monster chips on tap at next week's ISSCC
8. Computerworld reports AMD aims for GPUs in mainstream servers starting in 2012
9. Sharky Extreme has weekly CPU prices
10. DailyTech reports MIT creates world's first computer-ready germanium laser
11. Fudzilla reports socket 775 holds 77% share
12. Expreview reports EVGA updates BIOS for several X58 motherboards
13. Storage Forums: Western Digital WD1001FAES revealed
14. Best Router reports new Buffalo router surfaces in Japan
15. QA standards may hold back stereoscopic game dev
16. Fudzilla reports AMD's HD 5570 detailed
17. Expreview reports MSI trots out Radeon HD 5770 HAWK graphics card
18. Gizmodo: Full details on the new B&N Nook 1.2 firmware going out now
19. Nook 1.2 firmware demo (video)
20. Ars Technica reports publishers continue pummeling Amazon over e-book prices
21. Sen. Franken to Comcast, NBC execs: Merger no laughing matter
22. Bing: Enhanced cooperation with Facebook on search
23. Facebook turned 6
24. Windows Weekly 142: Snake in the Brass (podcast)

Software

1. Windows 7 battery update: Still no conclusive findings
2. Ars Technica reports Windows 7 stability fix breaks stability, puzzles Microsoft
3. Security issue on AMO
4. Ars Technica reports Nuanti brings HTML5 and Ogg Theora video to Silverlight
5. Windows Azure may host virtual machines starting March
6. Microsoft Small Basic 0.8
7. EVGA SLI Enhancement Patch version 23

Gaming

1. Discontinuation of Xbox Live for original Xbox consoles and games
2. Gizmodo reports Sony still loses money on every PS3 they sell
3. Shacknews on video games to be released next week
4. Shacknews reports Aliens vs. Predator Marine trailer
   turns out the lights, PC demo matchmaking fixed
5. Left 4 Dead 2 and the Left 4 Dead 2 SDK updates released
6. XSReviews gives away free games

Systems, storage, and graphics

1. Sharky Extreme reviews Acer TravelMate 8471 Timeline
2. Rbmods on Athlon II X4 635
3. PC Perspective reviews Asus Maximus III Gene
4. iXBT Labs review Asus M4A785G HTPC/RC
5. Hardware Heaven reviews 4GB G.Skill Pi Series DDR3-2200 and Eco DDR3-1600 memory kits
6. TestFreaks review 12GB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz triple channel kit
7. Tech ARP's modding a Barracuda 7200.11 into a VelociRaptor rev. 1.1
8. Guru3D and TweakTown Radeon HD 5770 HAWK
9. OCC reviews PowerColor HD 5750
10. Ultimate Hardware reviews Sapphire Radeon HD 5670
11. Motherboards.org and [OC]ModShop review AMD Radeon HD 5450

Power, casing, and cooling

1. [OC]ModShop reviews 750W Thermaltake TR2 RX PSU
2. PureOC reviews Thermaltake Element V case
3. Benchmark Reviews on Azza Solano 1000R case
4. TWL reviews Cooler Master ATCS 840 case
5. ProClockers review SilverStone DS221 dual HDD RAID enclosure
6. Big Bruin reviews Mini-Box.com M350 universal Mini-ITX enclosure
7. CowcotLand and VR-Zone review Thermalright Venomous X
8. [H]ard|OCP compares Tuniq Propeller vs. Thermalright Venomous X
9. Björn3D reviews Zalman CNPS10X Extreme & CNPS10X Flex
10. Hi Tech Legion reviews Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler
11. Hardware Secrets reviews Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU cooler

20 comments —
Last by AlvinTheNerd at 2:11 PM on 02/08/10

Saturday science subject: Pluto's surface
by Cyril Kowaliski — 4:56 PM on February 6, 2010

Pluto may have lost its status as a bona-fide planet back in 2006, but that hasn't quelled the interest of astronomers. Discovery News reports that Marc Buie, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has put together "the most detailed view of Pluto ever" thanks to images from the Hubble space telescope.

The shots above may not look all that sharp, but they're a big improvement over previous imagery. Keep in mind that Pluto is only two thirds the size of the moon, and according to Wolfram Alpha, it's currently about 12,400 times farther away, near the very edge of our solar system. Buie's task took four years and 20 computers operating continuously, and Discovery News compares it to "trying to see the markings on a soccer ball 40 miles away."

HubbleSite says Buie obtained the images by combining multiple shots of the dwarf planet to yield more detail than a single exposure.

What do these new photos tell us? Quite a bit, apparently. Discovery News explains that researchers have been able to compare them to shots from 1994 in order to learn more about Pluto:

Pluto's coloring is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant Sun breaking up methane that is present on Pluto's surface, leaving behind a dark molasses-colored carbon-rich residue. This material, called "Tholin" (Greek for "mud"), is found on other icy minor bodies but not Earth.

Astronomers were very [surprised] to seen that Pluto's brightness has changed over a few years. The northern pole is brighter and the southern hemisphere darker and redder. Summer is approaching Pluto's north pole and this may cause surface ices to melt and refreeze in the colder shadowed southern pole of the planet.

Only two other solar system bodies go through a comparable range of visible surface changes based on the melting or sublimation of ices: Earth and Mars.

We'll hopefully get some more eye candy in about five years. That's when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will make its first flyby of Pluto.

28 comments —
Last by drsauced at 5:36 PM on 02/08/10

Friday night topic: Free e-books
by Scott Wasson — 7:06 PM on February 5, 2010

With all the of the hype around the iPad and, before it, the Kindle, electronic books have been gaining quite a bit of traction.  Yet, for all of their virtues, e-book readers are like any other hot new gadget the cool kids like to drool over: they're just breaking off a small slice of PC functionality and making it easy, self-contained, and mobile, like Cisco and Netapp and Nintendo before them.  Truth is, you can read a book pretty well on a netbook or ultraportable, so long as you don't mind the backlit LCD.  Heck, there's even Kindle for the PC, with the ability to sync your place in each book to your other devices.  I have to admit, though, that I'm surprised by how much I prefer reading books on my iPhone instead, primarily through Stanza.  (Although there's Kindle for the iPhone, too.)  I've become a habitual iPhone reader, mainly because I found myself caught on flight with nothing else to do and gave it a try.

Regardless of which reader you use, there are associated download services that offer a nice catalog of freely downloadable books.  Many of them are older books, oftentimes classics, but others are new books from hungry authors who simply want the exposure.  So far, I've been enjoying some of Jack London's books, including White Fang.  Some really intriguing studies of animal (and human) nature there.

I also read one H.P. Lovecraft story, "The Call of Cthuhlu," but I found it to be overhyped—Cthulhu, I mean. Lovecraft oversells him and delivers less than he portends, in my view.  Heresy, perhaps: I know the man has been influential, but that's how it struck me.

I'm currently making my way through the entire corpus of Sherlock Holmes stories, which are very entertaining, too.  These are probably my favorite free books so far. I expect I'll have read practically everything by Doyle before I'm finished.  Looks like he has lots of sci-fi stories to offer, as well.

The questions of the evening are: Do you use an e-reader?  What readers and free books would you recommend?  If you've not tried it, let me encourage you to grab Kindle for the PC or something else and browse through the lists of most popular free downloads.  Then come back and offer any recs you can.

55 comments —
Last by Usacomp2k3 at 11:56 PM on 02/07/10

Deal of the week: Quad-core bargains
by Cyril Kowaliski — 5:32 PM on February 5, 2010

As a horde of processors finishes sweating away deep in the bowels of Damage Labs, the transformation of quad-core processors into commodity items seems more striking than ever. Scott has been comparing newer offerings to the Core 2 Quad Q6600, which was Intel's cheapest quad-core CPU when it debuted at $851 almost three years ago. Today, that part takes a beating from quad-core Athlon II X4s selling for around just $100.

AMD's budget quad-core lineup looks more formidable than ever now the Athlon II X4 635 has pushed its siblings down the price ladder, too:

Processor	Speed	L2 cache	TDP	Price
Athlon II X4 620	2.6GHz	2MB	95W	$95.99
Athlon II X4 630	2.8GHz	2MB	95W	$108.99
Athlon II X4 635	2.9GHz	2MB	95W	$125.99

The Athlon II X4 630 looks particularly interesting, because its 200MHz clock speed advantage over the 620 model comes at a very small price premium. The 635 only gets you another 100MHz over that, which may or may not be worth the extra 18 bucks (including shipping), depending on your budget.

Of course, the playing field here isn't devoid of interesting Intel alternatives. The $124.99 Core i3-530 may have only two cores, but with Hyper-Threading functionality and much lower power consumption, it's a highly capable and very power-efficient alternative.

80 comments —
Last by clone at 9:02 PM on 02/08/10

Microsoft PR responds to critical op-ed
by Cyril Kowaliski — 2:37 PM on February 5, 2010

Surprise, surprise. Microsoft has addressed that op-ed rant we told you about yesterday, and it doesn't agree with Dick Brass' assessment that the company has turned into a "clumsy, uncompetitive innovator." Microsoft Corporate Communications VP Frank X. Shaw wrote a relatively short post on the Official Microsoft Blog to rebuff some of Brass' claims and defend his employer's corporate culture.

According to Shaw, Microsoft doesn't care about having "a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea." Rather, the company judges the merit of ideas by their "broad impact" on the world.

Shaw brings up ClearType as an example. Brass, whose team came up with the technology, alleged that internal conflict caused a ten-year gap between the development of ClearType and a full version appearing in Windows. In this case, Shaw points out that ClearType is now installed on around a billion PCs, and he adds, "what matters is innovation at scale, not just innovation at speed."

Predictably, the blogger also takes issue with Brass' claim that the Xbox 360 fails to stand out next to its rivals. The 360 was "the first high-definition console," "the first to digitally deliver games, music, TV shows and movies in 1080p high definition," and the first to "bring Facebook and Twitter to the living room," in Shaw's view. He also brings up Project Natal, which will launch this fall. To Microsoft's credit, that control scheme does look quite innovative—it's no Wiimote clone, certainly.

Oh, and what Brass said about the Office team stifling tablet development? Not true, says Shaw, pointing to Office OneNote and its tablet-friendly input features.

41 comments —
Last by Pax-UX at 6:39 AM on 02/09/10

Radeon HD 5800 users get gray screen fix
by Cyril Kowaliski — 11:54 AM on February 5, 2010

AMD has released a Catalyst driver hotfix for a so-called "gray screen" problem affecting Radeon HD 5800 users. The hotfix is available from AMD's support knowledge base as two downloads: one for Windows 7 and Vista and another for Windows XP, all in either 32-bit or 64-bit variants. Both downloads appear to concern only Radeon HD 5800 graphics cards.

The knowledge base entry describes the hotfix as follows:

Alleviates some of the intermittent grey screen and vertical line corruptions that may randomly appear during normal usage when using an ATI™ Radeon HD 5800 series graphics card

A search for complaints about the problem reveals this thread on AMD's Game forums, where users have been detailing the issue (and providing screenshots) since late November 2009. In another thread, one forum member quotes AMD's support staff as saying the problem had to do with a Windows 7 update, and AMD was "looking at it" as of December 30. The company wasn't able to get a fix in the Catalyst 10.1 release that came out last week, though.

15 comments —
Last by totoro at 9:27 PM on 02/08/10

Etc.
by Scott Wasson — 11:26 AM on February 5, 2010

I'm closing in on the completion of testing for the last of 20 different processors to be included in our upcoming round-up. The Pentium 4 670 did indeed POST and run fine in our LGA775 motherboard, so it's going to be a part of our comparison, along with the Core 2 Quad Q6600, giving us a couple of nice reference points from the past.

However, including the Pentium 4 wasn't entirely a good idea, since the thing is slower than Adobe Flash. I'm running three or more benchmarks on the newer systems, including the humble Athlon II X2 255, during the span of time it takes the P4 670 to run one—and that's with reboots and post-boot cool-down time in between. Seriously, we may be looking at an additional day or two of testing just to get this processor through the suite. Should make our Gulftown comparisons interesting, at least.

I had conceived of taking this comparo back further by digging out some old hardware—and I may yet do it at some point in the future—but we'd have to scale back the test suite somehow, I think.

45 comments —
Last by UberGerbil at 8:02 PM on 02/06/10

Rumor: Radeon HD 5830 pushed back
by Cyril Kowaliski — 9:40 AM on February 5, 2010

That rumored Radeon HD 5830 graphics card from AMD doesn't appear to be launching today, in spite of previous reports. Fudzilla got an update from its sources about the matter, and it now claims the product's introduction has been delayed because of the Chinese New Year.

Reportedly, shipments might be pushed back to February 20, six days after China and Taiwan transition from the year of the ox to the year of the tiger. Fudzilla doesn't expect Radeon HD 5830 cards to become available in volume until March as a result.

Last month's coverage suggested the Radeon HD 5830 will launch at $239. Performance will no doubt end up somewhere between the Radeon HD 5770 1GB and the Radeon HD 5850, which now sell for around $163 and $289, respectively. As we noted last time, $239 isn't far off from the midpoint between those two GPUs.

Right now, AMD only has its previous-generation Radeon HD 4890 bridging the gap between the 5770 and 5850. The 4890 does tend to outpace the 5770 in terms of raw performance, but it's based on an older, power-hungrier GPU without DirectX 11 support or features like Eyefinity.

30 comments —
Last by OneArmedScissor at 7:46 PM on 02/06/10

Mozilla Weave 1.0 syncs Firefox user data
by Cyril Kowaliski — 6:00 AM on February 5, 2010

We recently wrote about the release of Google Chrome 4.0, which lets users synchronize their bookmarks across multiple systems. Well, Firefox users can now enjoy the same functionality—and no, not with a third-party add-on. As Ars Technica points out, Mozilla has released version 1.0 of Weave, its official synchronization extension for Firefox.

The Mozilla Weave Sync extension is downloadable right now from the Mozilla Add-ons website. The organization has actually gone further than mere bookmark synchronization, as the official feature list attests:

Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar across your devices, so you can get to your favorite sites with just a few keystrokes

Get up and go. You can continue what you were doing: have the ability to open any tab you have open on all your devices.

Keep the same list of bookmarks on all your devices.

Typing is hard. Now, you can easily sign in to all your favorite sites using your saved passwords (this is especially handy on mobile phones, where it's hard to type in complex passwords)

Do it all securely: Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla's servers, so that only you can access your data

In other words, Weave Sync keeps track of your bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and tabs.

Ars Technica's article shows how to get up and running with Weave, and it also includes a fairly detailed look at how the extension behaves, both on PCs and with Firefox Mobile. The author concludes that Weave "has become one of the most powerful and compelling solutions for synchronization that is available for the Firefox Web browser."

46 comments —
Last by obarthelemy at 3:52 AM on 02/08/10

Bubble Gum Day Shortbread
by Ronald Hanaki — 12:00 AM on February 5, 2010

Bubble Gum Day

1. Gizmodo reports Apple paying out 15% on broken 27" iMacs
2. Channel Register reports hp ordered to pay £200 in interim damages ruling
3. U.S. government: iPad and other smart mobile devices may strain networks
4. Engadget reports hp slips out stylish, Core i3-based G62t laptop
5. NordicHardware repors Biostar confirms 890GX and Phenom II X6 branding
6. Fudzilla reports Sandy Bridge to get 2X times faster graphics
7. NordicHardware reports SilverStone HDDBoost mixes SSDs
   and HDDs for better read performance (thanks Chris M.)
8. TC Magazine reports Gigabyte delivers USB 3.0 PCIe add-in card
9. ATi-Forum reports HD 5830 comes on 18th February (in German)
10. C|Net reports Panasonic admits plasma TV black level change but says picture
    quality still 'excellent' and HDMI 1.4 3D specification available for download
11. Engadget reports Motorola Devour has Flash support, makes Pixi look like an underachiever
    and Samsung E61 e-book reader outed, brings physical QWERTY keyboard to lineup
12. Studios crushed: Ars Technica reports ISP can't be forced to play copyright cop
13. Should entertainment industry pay for ISP content nanny costs?
14. ISP offers 200Mbps residential service in Vancouver, B.C.
15. TechFlash has a report: T-Mobile USA considering a whopper of an IPO
16. AT&T greenlights Slingbox over 3G
17. Tech spending bounces back as profits rise (thanks Sahil U.)
18. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz tweets resignation in Haiku
19. Yahoo! News reports U.S. Department of Justice slams Google book deal
20. Ars Technica: In wake of hack, Google negotiating cooperation with the NSA
21. TechFlash reports NSF, Microsoft offer researchers free access to Windows Azure
22. Infosecurity reports House passes cybersecurity research bill
23. SuperSite Blog: Fretting the post-Microsoft era
24. Microsoft: Measuring our work by its broad impact (response to Dick Brass NYT op-ed)
25. Microsoft schedules 12 Windows Phone sessions for Mix 10 conference
26. DigiTimes: TSMC and UMC expansion project may
    result in overcapacity for 12-inch wafers, say sources
27. Ars Technica reports graphene transistors promise 100GHz speeds
28. Safe travel: Sending messages by light
29. PCPer podcast #92
30. Win 2 SanDisk Ultra Backup USB 2.0 flash drives from t-break

Software

1. Microsoft security advisory (980088): Vulnerability in IE could allow information disclosure
2. Microsoft security bulletin advance notification for February 2010
3. Ars Technica reports IE6 users to be evicted from Gmail, Google Calendar
4. C|Net reports Microsoft readies Office 2010 upgrade program
5. DailyTech reports Adobe talks Flash 10.1, Apple, HTML5
6. SuperSite's Windows 7 feature focus: HomeGroup
7. Ars Technica on Mozilla Weave 1.0: Take your tabs and bookmarks everywhere
8. Thunderbird 3.1 Alpha 1
9. Everest Ultimate Edition 5.30.2018 beta
10. Download Squad reports Boot Snooze combines the goodness of hibernation and rebooting
11. Dorado: One more key to the Microsoft mobile puzzle
12. Futurelooks reviews Pinnacle Studio HD Ultimate Collection V14

Gaming

1. Trendy Entertainment's VisionPlay - revolutionary new video game technology
2. Slashdot: Sun's Project Darkstar game server platform no more
3. Ars Technica reports Sega reveals 2D Sonic the Hedgehog 4, coming this summer
4. Shacknews reports Splinter Cell: Conviction release date 'set in stone'
   and has Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity gameplay trailer
5. VG247 shares rumor: Nispel F.E.A.R. 3 promo casting reveals plot details
6. Unpitiful Hacker: System Shock M-look mod
7. Doom iPhone code review
8. Original painting by Brom used for the Diablo II box art
9. Destructoid reports The Sims turns 10
10. Team Fortress 2 and Steam client updates released
11. Steam's weekend deal: 50% off all Far Cry games
12. Direct2Drive Europe launches

Processors

1. PC Perspective: Intel previews tera-scale technologies for upcoming products
2. HotHardware: Intel details upcoming mobile and 6-core processors
3. AnandTech's Core 2 CULV roundup: Who needs Atom?
4. PCGH on Intel Clarkdale: Integrated graphics benchmarks plus SMT and Turbo performance
5. X-bit labs on Clarkdale’s second half: Intel HD graphics
6. Phoronix on Intel Clarkdale Linux graphics performance
7. PCStats reviews Phenom II X4 910e
8. InsideHW reviews Athlon II X3 440

Systems and storage

1. HardwareZone on the Sony Vaio spring launch
2. Digital Trends reviews Sony Vaio X Series
3. Madshrimps review MSI Wind U135 Pine Trail
4. t-break reviews Gigabyte H55M-S2H motherboard
5. PCStats reviews Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P
6. Motherboards.org reviews ECS A785GM-AD3 Black Series
7. TweakTown on Gigabyte's SATA 6G update - RAID 0 just how we like it
8. Ninjalane reviews 6GB OCZ Reaper PC3-15000 triple channel kit
9. Tech ARP on modding a Barracuda 7200.11 into a VelociRaptor
10. bit-tech on why you need TRIM for your SSD
11. Hardware Secrets has 64GB SSDs roundup
12. XtremeComputing reviews Synology DS210j 2-bay NAS

Multimedia

1. TweakTown tests AMD Radeon HD 5450 in CrossFire
2. Benchmark Reviews, FiringSquad, Guru3D, [H]ard|OCP,
   HT4U, Techgage, and TechSpot on AMD Radeon HD 5450
3. ASE Labs and Hardware Heaven on Sapphire's Radeon HD 5450
4. Tweaknews on HIS HD 5750
5. TechFlash: How 3D works, and why it's back
6. The NY Times: The pluses, and oddities, of 3D TV
7. Digital Trends reviews Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Mini
8. TweakPC reviews Logitech Z-10 2.0 speakers (in German)
9. Hardware Secrets reviews Motorola Droid
10. How I became a Palm fanboy
11. X-bit labs on electronic book readers: Upcoming models of spring - summer season
12. [OC]ModShop reviews OCZ Sabre OLED gaming keyboard

Power, cases, and cooling

1. Björn3D reviews 850W SilverStone Strider Plus Series PSU
2. Hardware Bistro reviews In Win Fanqua case
3. Rbmods on XClio Nighthawk case
4. X-bit labs review Thermalright Venomous X CPU cooler
5. DeXgo reviews Cooler Master Hyper TX3 (in German)

36 comments —
Last by kravo at 7:58 AM on 02/06/10

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