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.
18429084
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
Today at CES, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang shocked attendees by announcing Project Denver, a "high performance ARM core" designed in-house at Nvidia. Project Denver will include both a next-generation ARM-based processor component and a graphics processor on the same silicon. Huang gave strong hints that a yet-to-be-announced version of Windows will run on the chip, too.
17095784
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
Are netbooks starting to grow up? On one side, Intel is pushing its recently release Atom N550 processor, which has two cores, four threads, and a netbook-friendly power envelope. On the other, Nvidia is still promoting its next-generation Ion graphics chip. Asus' Eee PC 1015PN is the first 10" netbook to combine the two, and according to the first full review of the system, it actually manages to deliver solid performance, seven-hour battery life, and some measure of gaming capability. The build quality beats that of cheaper netbooks, too. Unfortunately, at $430, the Eee PC 1015PN doesn't look like such a good deal compared to affordable CULV laptops like Dell's Inspiron M101z. The system could be an attractive choice if Asus slashed the price, though, and it bodes well for the netbook category as a whole.
15693318
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
A little over four years have passed since AMD purchased ATI. In May of last year, AMD took the remains of the Canadian graphics company and melded them into a monolithic products group, which combined processors, graphics, and platforms. Now, AMD is about to take the next step: kill the ATI brand altogether. The company has officially announced the move, saying it plans to label its next generation of graphics cards 'AMD Radeon' and 'AMD FirePro,' with new logos to match. The move has a lot to do with the incoming arrival of products like Ontario and Llano, which will combine AMD processing and graphics in single slabs of silicon.
14678918
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
We've all seen performance benchmarks comparing Nvidia's newly released GeForce GTX 460 to the competition from AMD, but value comparisons like this one are more unusual—and helpful, if you're on the market for a new graphics card. Apparently, Nvidia's current batch of DX11 cards are slightly better deals than the competition from AMD when you look at them from a pure performance-per-dollar perspective. (Other factors do come into play, of course, like power consumption and noise.) It looks like the Radeon HD 5800 series in particular is overdue for a price cut.
14562866
submission
EconolineCrush writes:
Intel's Xeon 5600 series is the latest batch of CPUs to tap the company's cutting-edge, 32-nano fabrication process. Code-named Westmere-EP, these new server and workstation CPUs add two cores and 4MB of cache per socket while remarkably staying within the same thermal envelopes as their predecessors. When pitted against the last Xeon generation, the new chips predictably offer better performance and power efficiency. Intel's power-optimized Willowbrook server motherboard may be even more impressive, as it enables a dozen-core Xeon L5640 system to consume just 66W at idle.
14360046
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
A member of the Tech Report forums reports that his iPad's charging cord literally melted in the middle of the night, and the iPad it was connected to became searing hot—hot enough that the user dropped it and caused some damage. Melted charger cables and searing-hot (or combusting) batteries are nothing new, and they've led to mass battery recalls in the past. After getting in touch with Apple, however, the user was simply told he was responsible for damaging the device by dropping it, and that the iPad was out of warranty for having jailbroken software installed.
14353528
submission
EconolineCrush writes:
Apple might have an answer for the iPhone 4's antenna issues, but a potential problem with the iPad could be tougher to fix. At least one user's iPad nearly combusted while the device was plugged in, melting the charging cable in the process. Similar problems prompted mass notebook battery recalls a few years ago, although this seems to be the only case of iPad-related melting reported thus far. Have any Slashdot users observed similar behavior with their iPads?
14278240
submission
J. Dzhugashvili writes:
If you read Slashdot, odds are you already know about WiGig and the 7Gbps wireless networking it promises. The people at Atheros and Wilocity are now working on an interesting application for the spec: wireless PCI Express. In a nutshell, wPCIe enables a PCI Express switch with local and remote components linked by a 60GHz connection. The first applications, which will start sampling next year, will let you connect your laptop to a base station with all kinds of storage controllers, networking controllers, and yes, an external graphics processor. wPCIe works transparently to the operating system, which only sees additional devices connected over PCI Express. And as icing on the cake, wPCie controllers will lets you connect to standard Wi-Fi networks, too.
14196492
submission
EconolineCrush writes:
The GF100 GPU that underpinned Nvidia's first wave of GeForce GTX 400-series graphics cards was designed to moonlight as a GPU-compute engine in the company's Tesla products. Nvidia has now released a leaner version of the chip that drops Tesla-specific features to focus squarely on graphics performance. The result is a new line of GeForce GTX 460 graphics cards that can handle the latest and greatest games at high resoltuions without having to compromise detail levels. These new GeForce cards perform better than comparable Radeons while costing less, which could ignite a mid-range price war. Or so we can hope.
14056272
submission
EconolineCrush writes:
Nvidia has long pushed its PhysX game physics middleware as a prime candidate for GPU acceleration. However, it seems that the company may have also taken steps to ensure that PhysX performs poorly when run on a modern CPU. Despite the fact that physics calculations lend themselves to parallel processing, games tend to implement PhysX with a single thread. PhysX also relies largely on x87 code rather than SSE instructions. The latter should run faster and make life easier for developers, and Nvidia has taken advantage of similar instructions with its console-specific PhysX implementations. But not on the PC, which smells like a willful attempt to hinder PhysX performance on anything but an Nvidia GPU.
14030400
submission
EconolineCrush writes:
SSDs hardly offer compelling value on the cost-per-gigabyte scale. But what if one considers performance per dollar? This article takes a closer look at the value proposition offered by today's most common SSDs, mixing raw performance data with each drive's cost, both per gigabyte and as a component of a complete system. An even dozen SSD configurations are compared, and results from a collection of mechanical hard drives provides additional context. The data are laid out in detailed scatter plots that clearly illustrate the most favorable intersections of price and performance, and you might be surprised to see just how well the SSDs fare versus traditional hard drives. A few of the SSDs offer much better value than their solid-state competition, too.
