41389165
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
As Slashdot noted earlier this week, AMD has a new line of mid-range Radeon GPUs aimed at notebooks. The chips are based on the Graphics Core Next microarchitecture, and they're slated to show up in systems early next year. While the initial report was limited to specification details, the first review of the Radeon HD 8790M is now out, complete with benchmark data from the latest games. The 8790M is about 35% smaller than its 7690M predecessor but offers substantially better gaming performance across the board. Impressively, the new chip has similar power draw as the outgoing model under load, and its idle power consumption is slightly lower. Notebook makers should have no problems making the switch. However, it is worth noting that this new mobile GPU exhibits some of the same frame latency spikes observed on desktop Radeons, including in games that AMD itself has sponsored.
40485353
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
Over the past few years, Corsair has earned a name for itself as a purveyor of nice high-end enthusiast cases. The company's entry into the budget market late last month raised some eyebrows, and now, the first reviews are starting to come out. Apparently, the Corsair Carbide Series 200R more than holds its own against the competition from Antec. The Corsair runs a little hotter, but it's quiet, and its innards are apparently much less frustrating to rummage around in, thanks to tool-less storage bays, big cut-outs in the motherboard tray for cable routing, and other amenities like dedicated bays for solid-state drives. The case looks pretty good, too, with a black paint job that even covers the inside. Considering you can get this thing for as little as $50 right now, it looks like a pretty solid deal.
28702167
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
AMD has released a cheaper graphics card based on its new 28-nm Tahiti chip, and judging by the reviews around the web, it's pretty appealing. The verdicts at The Tech Report, Hot Hardware, and AnandTech are pretty much the same: the Radeon HD 7950 beats the more expensive GeForce GTX 580 from Nvidia, and certain variants of it even nip at the heels of the $549 Radeon HD 7970. As icing on the cake, 7950 cards seem to have sizeable overclocking headroom under the hood, as well. The only caveat is that this card may be overkill if you don't have a display with a resolution above 1920x1200—or a multi-monitor setup.
25692280
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
We already know that delving inside the second, i.e. measuring frame times instead of frame rates, can provide some novel insights on multi-GPU performance. As it turns out, using the same technique shows unexpected things happening in Battlefield 3 with the latest mid-range GPUs, even when those are running in single-GPU mode. Nvidia cards seem to exhibit large and frequent frame latency spikes in some sections of the game. Although average frame rates hover close to 60 FPS, rapid frame latency oscillations occurring inside each second affect the illusion of motion, making the game feel slightly jumpy and not completely fluid. AMD Radeons exhibit a similar problem, but to a much lesser degree and not in the same levels of the game.
23950630
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
Microsoft let out an interesting bit of news early this morning: Internet Explorer 10 won't support plug-ins in its Metro incarnation. That means no Flash support. Apparently, the only way to get Flash to run will be to toggle over to Windows 8's classic "desktop" mode and use IE10 in there. Justifying the move, Microsoft says not supporting plug-ins in the Metro version of IE10 "improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers." Interesting... all of that sounds awfully familiar.
23941578
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
At the Intel Developer Forum today, Intel announced that it has started shipping its new 710 Series solid-state drives to customers. These next-generation enterprise SSDs are meant to replace the X25-E series. Because they're saddled with 3Gbps SATA interfaces, they shouldn't break any performance records. However, they offer much higher capacities than the X25-E series ever did: 100GB, 200GB, and 300GB, which will set you back $649, $1289, and $1929, respectively. Intel reached these capacities using not single-level-cell flash memory, but a variant of its 25-nm multi-level-cell NAND flash tuned for endurance. Purportedly, a 300GB 710 Series drive can write up to 1.1 petabytes over its lifespan, compared to just 30TB for a consumer-level 320 Series drive of the same capacity. Users can increase endurance an additional 40-90% if they increase the overprovisioning percentage manually.
21331912
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
We've seen some solid-state drives on PCI Express cards before, but OCZ's RevoDrive Hybrid may very well be the first solution to combine solid-state storage and a mechanical hard drive on a single PCI Express x4 card. Using Dataplex caching software from Nvelo, the RevoDrive Hybrid uses its solid-state component (a RAID 0 array of SandForce-based SSDs) as a cache for an onboard mechanical hard drive. The caching scheme is reportedly so effective that "a 5,400-RPM drive can be used without sacrificing much performance," according to The Tech Report's coverage. OCZ hasn't hashed out all of the details yet, but it expects the RevoDrive Hybrid to start at $350 this July. The base configuration should couple 60GB of solid-state storage with a 500GB mechanical drive.
21163214
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
You might know Cayman as the graphics chip inside AMD's Radeon HD 6900-series graphics cards. Today, AMD announced that the new GPU has made its debut in the world of professional workstation graphics as part of new FirePro V7900 and V5900 cards. The new FirePros are priced at $999 and $599, respectively, and they both benefit from Cayman's much-increased geometry processing throughput. Also, the V7900 is the first $999 FirePro card to feature four display outputs, while the V5900 is the first $599 model with 2GB of RAM. AMD says the two cards should be available today in pre-built machines from the likes of HP and Dell.
20999892
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
Although Slashdot users may not agree on what constitutes an affordable graphics card, there's no denying that competition between AMD and Nvidia has delivered plenty of bargains around $200. Today, Nvidia adds a new option with the $199 GeForce GTX 560. This review summarizes the performance picture with an interesting scatter plot illustrating the almost linear relationship between price and performance as you move through the mid-range graphics market. Paying a little more always seems to grant you a few more frames per second, making factors like noise levels and power consumption more important when choosing between cards.
18980186
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
In the wake of Intel's announcement that all existing Sandy Bridge chipsets have a bug that causes degraded Serial ATA performance, top-tier motherboard makers Asus and Gigabyte have made public statements regarding their return policy for affected boards. Asus is promising 'hassle-free return and/or replacement', while Gigabyte says owners of affected boards are entitled to a full refund or replacement—and it recommends that users seek refunds. Both companies are advising users to contact the original place of purchase to proceed. On a related note, Gigabyte has announced that new Sandy Bridge motherboards with bug-free chipsets will be available in volume in April.
18936592
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
Early adopters of Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors, beware. Intel has discovered a flaw in the 6-series chipsets that accompany the new processors. The flaw causes Serial ATA performance to "degrade over time" in "some cases." Although Intel claims "relatively few" customers are affected, it has stopped shipments of these chipsets and started making a revised version of the silicon, which won't be ready until late February. Intel expects to lose $300 million in revenue because of the problem, and it's bracing for repair and replacement costs of $700 million.
