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Portables

VIA Nano CPU Benchmarked, Beats Intel Atom 279

Posted by timothy from the hoping-for-even-cheaper-subnotebooks dept.
Vigile writes "Back in May, when the Isaiah architecture was first disclosed, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel's upcoming Silverthorne technology. Since then, Isaiah has become the VIA Nano processor, and Silverthorne changed to the Intel Atom — and now we can finally see tests comparing the two technologies. The Nano's out-of-order super-scalar design is definitely an architectural leap over the Atom's in-order single-issue design, but with Intel including HyperThreading technology in their CPU the competition is closer than expected. The Nano does win the performance tests by a considerable margin, but what might be more impressive is seeing the Atom use only 4 watts of power under full load!" As reader Mierdaan points out, that's 4 watts more than at idle, for about 60 watts total.

Feed Engadget: NVIDIA's sub-$100 GeForce 9500 GT gets introduced and reviewed (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Peripherals


Should the GTX 280 be a bit too rich for your blood, NVIDIA's lookin' out. Introduced (and reviewed) today, the PCIe 2.0-compatible GeForce 9500 GT checks in a few bucks south of $100 depending on where you go and provides a 550MHz core clock, 1,400MHz shader clock, 32 stream processors, 800MHz memory clock, 256MB / 512MB of RAM and twin dual-link DVI ports. Assuming the specifications meet your standards, you're probably curious about performance. Based on the first reviews, it was found to be "measurably faster than the Radeon HD 3650, and pretty much on par with the GeForce 8600 GTS." For under a C-note, it's a solid buy for those okay with being a few steps behind, and HTPC builders will find the low power consumption, quiet operation and small size to be quite appealing. Check out the links below for pages upon pages of in-depth coverage.

Read - Introduction and review
Read - Benchmarks, images and another reviewPermalink|Email this|Comments


Portables

Submission + - VIA Nano CPU Benchmarked, Beats Intel Atom (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: Back in May when the Isaiah architecture was first disclosed, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel's upcoming Silverthorne technology. Since then Isaiah has become the VIA Nano processor and Silverthorne changed to the Intel Atom and now we can finally see tests comparing the two technologies. The Nano's out-of-order super-scalar design is definitely an architectural leap over the Atom's in-order single-issue design but with Intel including HyperThreading technology in their CPU the competition is closer than expected. The Nano does win the performance tests by a considerable margin but what might be more impressive is seeing the Atom use only 4 watts of power under full load!
Intel

Submission + - Intel details Nehalem CPU and Larrabee GPU (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: Intel previewed the information set to be released at IDF next month including details on a wide array of technology for server, workstation, desktop and graphics chips. The upcoming Tukwila chip will replace the current Itanium lineup with about twice the performance at a cost of 2 billion transistors and Dunnington is a hexa-core processor using existing Core 2 architecture. Details of Nehalem, Intel's next desktop CPU core that includes and integrated memory controller, show a return of HyperThreading-like SMT, a new SSE 4.2 extension and modular design that features optional integrated graphics on the CPU as well. Could Intel beat AMD in its own "Fusion" plans? Finally, Larrabee, the GPU technology Intel is building, was verified to support OpenGL and DirectX upon release and Intel provided information on a new extension called Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) for SSE that would improve graphics performance on the many-core architecture.
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA doubts ray tracing is the future of games (pcper.com)

Submitted by SizeWise
SizeWise writes: After Intel's prominent work in ray tracing in the both the desktop and mobile spaces, many gamers might be thinking that the move to ray tracing engines is inevitable. NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Kirk, seems to think otherwise as revealed in an interview on the topic of rasterization and ray tracing. Kirk counters many of Intel's claims of ray tracing's superiority such as the inherent benefit to polygon complexity while pointing out areas where ray tracing engines would falter like basic antialiasing. The interview rounds out discussion on mixing the two rendering technologies and whether NVIDIA hardware can efficiently handle ray tracing calculations as well.
AMD

AMD Open Sources the AMD Performance Library 59

Posted by samzenpus from the let-my-library-go dept.
bluephone writes "Today AMD announced that they're now opening the source to the AMD Performance Library (APL) under the Apache license. The newly opened code is now hosted at SourceForge (the corporate overlord of Slashdot) under its new name, Framewave. Phoronix says, "The AMD Performance Library / Framewave covers a multitude of operations from simple math operations to media processing and optimizations for multi-core environments." No word as to if it does your laundry. The SourceForge page says that while Framewave is 'sponsored' by AMD, it is "very much an open-source venture. While AMD will continue to participate in and contribute to the project, third-party developers are welcome and encouraged to implement all or part of the code base and/or to create derivative works." Being Apache licensed, it's quite open, so this doesn't seem to be mere lip service."
Portables

Submission + - New VIA x86 CPU aims for Intel Silverthorne (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Kaz
Kaz writes: "While not considered one of the two major CPU designers, VIA's Eden and C7 lines of processors have been gaining traction in the world of UMPCs and thin clients. While past architectures have been considerably out of date in terms of modern features, the new Isaiah architecture looks to be very competitive with what AMD and Intel have lined up for future ultra-mobile products. It features an out-of-order, superscalar execution core, 64-bit support, virtualization and even SSE3, all on a 94 million transistor 65nm process die. The initial offering will be single-core only though VIA says that multi-core ability is already designed in. Is Isaiah going to replace your Core 2 system for gaming? No, but it might give Intel's Silverthorne a run for its money."
Graphics

Submission + - Ray tracing for gaming explored (pcper.com) 3

Submitted by
Vigile
Vigile writes: "Ray tracing is still thought of as the 'holy grail' for real-time imagery but because of the intense amount of calculations required it has been plagued with long frame render times. This might soon change, at least according to an article from Daniel Pohl, a researcher at Intel. With upcoming many-core processors like Intel's Larrabee he believes that real-time ray tracing for games is much closer than originally thought thanks in large part to the efficiency it allows with spatial partitioning and reflections when compared to current rasterization techniques. Titles like Valve's Portal are analyzed to see how they could benefit from ray tracing technology and the article on PC Perspective concludes with the difficulties combing the two rendering techniques as well as a video of the technology in action."
Intel

Submission + - The fastest processor you can't run

Submitted by
auld_wyrm
auld_wyrm writes: "Intel is trying to push the news of AMD's Barcelona launch out of the headlines with the release of the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770, a 3.20 GHz CPU that runs on a 1600 MHz front-side bus. It is the fastest consumer level processor that has come out, but don't plan on running it anytime soon. It's ~$1200 price tag, and the lack of any motherboards that support a 1600MHz FSB will stop this unneeded answer to Barcelona from appearing in enthusiast's PCs for Christmas. Still, the benchmarks from this powerful CPU are something awesome to behold."

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