Does Turbo Boost Help Or Hurt Core i5/i7's Power Efficiency?

Intel’s new LGA 1156-based processors, namely the Core i5-700- and Core i7-800-series, arrived with a bang. Our launch article by Chris Angelini provides all the key information. But, in short, the new processor delivers increased performance compared to Core 2 Quad. No surprise there. But Intel also claims that power consumption went down significantly, so we decided to tackle this prospect with a closer look.

Core i5, i7: Intel’s new processors for LGA 1156.

The Core i5 Innovation

The new P55 platform and Intel’s Lynnfield processors make a are impressive enough from a performance angle, but I’d like to look at the facts from a different perspective. The platform’s foundation still centers on the Nehalem architecture first seen as Core i7 for LGA 1366 late last year, hence the level of innovation in Lynnfield is less revolutionary and more of an evolution.

Intel is great at tweaking, though. From a technology standpoint, Core i5 incorporates a lot more integration, stepping closer to the inevitable SoC (system-on-chip) future by adding PCI Express onto the die. A more aggressive implementation of Turbo Boost adds extra performance for non-threaded applications. Considering that Intel plans to integrate graphics with Clarkdale in coming months, this step could also be looked at as a necessity. Improved Turbo Boost is another building block for turning dynamic overclocking into a real feature. In reality, though, the large motherboard makers have been offering similar features for a few years already.

I see two main benefits of the new LGA 1156 processors for buyers. First, you have decreased power consumption thanks to the integrated memory controller and PCI Express 2.0 interface. The second benefit is performance. Turbo Boost helps to elevate LGA 1156-based parts to Core i7-900-class performance levels in certain applications. Both benefits became obvious in our article, Intel’s Mainstream Magnum Opus.

Intel delays USB 3.0 support until 2011 ?

Those looking forward to the wide rollout of USB 3.0 are in for a major disappointment, if an unnamed industry source talking with EETimes is to be believed. Pointing out that the new interconnect "won't get real traction until it gets integrated in the chip sets," the source claims that Intel won't be offering motherboard integration before 2011, so vendors who want USB 3.0 will have to turn to costly third party controllers.

The information is said to come from a senior technology manager at a "top tier PC maker," who explains that Intel chipset teams are more focused on supporting the current Nehalem platform, as well as transitioning to the 5 GHz PCI Express 2.0 specification. The chip maker may also be showing preference to its own optical cable interface, Light Peak, which can handle transfers up to 10Gbps and will enter mass production early next year.

Intel has declined to comment on these assertions. If true, it doesn't necessarily mean we won’t see any USB 3.0 support next year, but you probably shouldn't expect to see the new interconnect on cheap boards, which in turn means less USB 3.0 compatible peripherals as the market will simply be too limited to be profitable.

Intel quietly rolls out Core i7 960 processor

Intel has quietly made a new addition to their "Bloomfield" series of processors, the Core i7 960. Coming in at the same 3.20GHz frequency as the original Core i7 965 Extreme Edition, which was replaced by the now flagship 975 Extreme Edition, the new chip will effectively take the 950’s position in the Core i7 lineup.

Besides having a faster clock, the Core i7 960 features the same $562 list price and basic specifications as its 950 predecessor, including four cores, eight threads, 8MB of L3 cache, 4.8GT/s QuickPath Interconnect speed, 130W thermal envelope, and LGA1366 package. It's also priced in the same range as the Lynnfield-based Core i7 870, which fits into cheaper LGA1156 motherboards, drops the faster QPI link in favor of DMI, and uses two memory channels instead of three.

The new chip has actually been available for some time in Australia (home of our own technical editor Steven Walton) so we've had some hands-on experience with it already. Although not in a dedicated review, you can find some benchmark numbers in our Intel Core i5 750 review and see how it fared against the competition.


Source: http://www.techspot.com

How to Decide Between Laptops and Notebooks

f you have decide it is time to up grade your old laptop, or if you have decided that the desktop PC has served its purpose but now you really need the space then you may be looking into the range of new laptops that are on offer and maybe wondering what these notebooks are also, they weren't there last time you looked, and a notebook is paper bound with a spiral spring isn't it? Laptops and notebooks can become a bit of a confusing area, but don't despair!

Well, gone are the days of notebooks just meaning paper you can write on, now we have laptops and notebooks on offer, all professing to do all the things computer related, desktops are fast becoming old technology, so it is natural that you may have many questions to be answered, especially with the massive range of prices on offer, so how do you know what to choose to make sure you get the best deal and the most use from your device, most importantly how do you make sure you spend your money wisely.

Laptops and notebooks are similar, however the laptop is considered device that is more closely able to replicate all the features of a desk top, and fit with the term 'desk top replacement', this means that they have more powerful processors, more memory and tend to be a minimum of 14 inch screens. This makes them heavier units, although they are still light enough to be portable, and can potentially get hotter than a notebook when resting on your lap.

Where as the notebook is considered to be the more portable device, lighter and available in smaller units, this may mean having to sacrifice some of the processor speed and memory, but as you wont be looking to it to do all the jobs that a desktop based PC does, in face you may choose to keep your desktop and transfer files to it for storage to keep the notebook running at optimum speeds, and just have the bits you are actually working on stored on the notebook itself.

Have laptops and notebooks seems to be a more family friendly thing to do also, as this means you are no longer spending hours shut away in the study, or squashed in under the stairs whilst you get the work done, or sort the Christmas present shopping online, but are free to sit on the sofa or dining room table and still interact with the family as you type.

The laptop and notebook culture is also ideal for students or those who travel a lot, as they are portable and fairly lightweight, and as well as being a work machine you can use them to play DVD's or games, especially if you have the smaller notebook style, which can relieve the boredom of long journeys and save on pay per view films in hotel rooms, simply take a stack of your favourite films along with you, plus many hotels offer internet access as standard, meaning you can get online and surf the net or chat to friends and family to help pass the time instead.

Low end laptops and notebooks are definitely worth considering if that is all you can afford, as they will do a good job, however if you can afford to spend a bit more, choose a good brand first then look at things like processor speed and memory as these are key to a machine that runs well, after all there is nothing worse than having to sit watching the egg timer for ages every time you try and do something, save a document, or reload a web page for example.

Rolf Joho is a writer with many various interests and he owns several websites on a variety of topics. Some great resources for you would be to visit Laptops and Notebooks

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rolf_Joho

Apple performs major product overhaul, intros world's first multitouch mouse

Steve Jobs wasn't kidding when he said Apple had a strong lineup prepared for the holiday season and beyond. The company has just about refreshed its entire product line, introducing the world's first multitouch mouse, as well as new iMacs, a low-end MacBook, and a new Mac mini.

The "Apple Magic Mouse" is void of the usual buttons and instead has a multitouch surface that is reliant on touch, taps, and swipes -- as interesting as this may be, I can't see it being useful beyond basic use. The Magic Mouse connects via Bluetooth and can be purchased for $69 alone, but it ships with the new iMacs launched today.

Apple's iMac refresh includes the introduction of new 21.5" and 27" models, which effectively replace the old 20" and 24" units. The 21.5" iteration features a 1,920x1,080 LED-backlit display with 178-degree viewing angles, a 3.06GHz or 3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated or ATI Radeon HD 4670 discrete graphics, 500GB to 2TB of storage, an iSight camera, all of the typical connectivity and starts at $1,199. Meanwhile, the larger model bumps the screen resolution to 2,560x1,440, a 2.66GHz or 2.8GHz Intel Core i5, dedicated ATI Radeon HD 4670 or 4850 graphics, and starts at $1,699.

Read the rest after the jump.

Cupertino is also shipping a revamped version of its entry-level MacBook, which is now a bit thinner, lighter, and more powerful. It measures just over an inch thick, weighs about 4.7lbs, and is housed in a glossy-white polycarbonate body which boasts a similar construction to the aluminum MacBook Pros. The new 13" MacBook has a glass multitouch trackpad (sans buttons), a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of DDR3 RAM (up to 8GB), Nvidia 9400M graphics, a 250GB HDD (320GB and 500GB options available), a seven-hour battery life. It is available today from $999 and ships with Snow Leopard and the iLife Suite.

The company's Mac mini line has received faster processors, more memory, and now includes a server configuration. Apple's updated Mac minis are priced the same as before, with the $599 system featuring a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of 1066MHz RAM, and a 160GB hard drive, while the $799 model features a 2.56GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB drive -- both have Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics. The new $999 Mac mini server has no optical drive, but instead includes a second HDD to make 1TB of total storage.

Source: http://www.techspot.com

ATI HD Radeon 5870: The Fastest Videocard Ever (PS It's $380)

AMD packs 2.15 billion transistors into a tiny chip, offering outstanding performance, DirectX 11 support, and triple-monitor (or better) capability. Nvidia’s response is nowhere to be seen

AMD’s graphics division, the former ATI Technologies, loves a good surprise. The company has been a perennial also-ran in the graphics performance arena, but every now and then, it one-ups the competition in a big way. That happened back in 2002, with the launch of the original Radeon 9700, which stole the performance lead from archrival Nvidia. It happened again last year, with the Radeon HD 4800 series. The 4850, 4870, and 4890 weren’t always faster than the competition, but they were small, efficient chips that forced Nvidia into a price war that was good for users but bad for Nvidia’s bottom line.

Now AMD’s doing it again, putting some serious hurt on the competition with the first GPU to support Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX 11 API. AMD’s also been paying close attention to the emerging market for non-gaming apps accelerated by GPUs, such as video transcoding and digital photography, fully supporting DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL standards for general purpose computing on graphics cards.

This new chip is no shrinking violet in the numbers department. Every number associated with the new Radeon 5800 series is staggering: 2.15 billion transistors, 2.7 trillion floating-point operations a second, more than 20 gigapixels per second throughput, 1,600 shader units. Other numbers impress because of their smallness. One example: The idle power is a scant 27W— lower than many entry level GPUs.

Given the sheer scale and ambition of this GPU, does it deliver in the performance realm? And will it deliver at a price normal humans can afford? Let’s find out.

Digging into the Radeon HD 5870

At its core is a no-compromise GPU more efficient than any in graphics history

Two years ago, AMD’s ATI division decided to bow out of the game of building huge, hot chips that were expensive to make, ceding the high-end glory to Nvidia’s GT200 chip. That’s not to say AMD gave up on performance; it instead adopted the mantra of building the best performance GPU within a certain cost and power envelope. The Radeon HD 5800 series, originally code-named RV870, is the culmination of that approach. Taking advantage of Moore’s Law, ATI’s designers were able to build a GPU with few compromises using a 40nm manufacturing process.

Radeon GPUs Compared

Radeon HD 4890 vs 5870

	Radeon HD 4890	Radeon HD 5870
Die Size	263mm-squared	334mm-squared
Transistor Count	956 million	2.15 billion
CPU Clock	850MHz	850MHz
Memory Clock	975MHz	1200MHz
Memory Quantity (GDDR5)	1GB	1GB
Manufacturing Process	55nm	40nm
Stream Processors	800	1600
Texture Units	40	80
ROPs	16	32
Maximum Board Power (TDP)	160W	188W
Idle Power	90W	27W

Power and Performance

The new GPU is just 334mm2—30 percent larger than the earlier 4870 GPU, but packing more than twice the number of transistors.

At 27W, the idle power is astonishingly low for such a large chip. The key factor was enabling lower memory clocks and voltages during idle, a feat made possible because of significant improvements in the 40nm manufacturing process. The net result is very low power when the board is just rendering your Windows desktop. At the same time, the VRM (voltage regulator module) interface has been improved, preventing overheating while allowing somewhat higher power consumption when performance is actually needed.

So the HD 5870 can draw less power while it’s doing nothing. But we also expect to see better performance, particularly given some of the other specs listed by ATI. The faster memory gives the 5870 overall memory bandwidth of 153GB/s. Feeding that huge pipe is a GPU with twice as much hardware where it matters—stream processors, ROPs, and texture units.

The graphics engine itself sports some new features—particularly the hardware tessellation engine. While past ATI products have offered hardware tessellation, the new engine fully supports Microsoft’s DirectX 11 tessellation API. ATI is fond of pointing out that this is actually its sixth generation tessellation hardware.

A Sneak Peek at Intel’s Core i9 Gulftown

Intel is preparing for launch of the 32nm six-core processor codenamed Gulftown in 1H 2010 according to Fudzilla, and the enthusiast JC has managed to grab the sample of Core i9 Gulftown.

With support for Socket LGA1366, Gulftown is based on 32nm technology, operating at 2.4GHz (18*133MHz), with 12MB of L3 cache.

Compatible with the X58 chipset, Gulftown is really something to look forward to.