Archive

SilverStone Nitrogon NT07-775 Low Profile CPU Cooler | Posted on: 30/04/2009 @ 6:20

AMD Unveils Budget Friendly Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition | Posted on: 29/04/2009 @ 15:20

AMD has announced its latest processor the AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition which delivers strong performance to mainstream PC users for under $70 bucks. "Given the current economic environment, consumers are seeking the best computing value without sacrificing the performance required to maintain their digital lifestyle. This new processor enables AMD technology partners and OEMs to address the ...

Intel Releases New Driver, Kills EXA/DRI1 | Posted on: 29/04/2009 @ 12:50

It was just two weeks ago that Intel released its xf86-video-intel 2.7 driver, but there is already a new test release that will lead up to the release of the xf86-video-intel 2.8 series. Normally it is two or three months before a new test release is available for Intel's quarterly Linux graphics driver update, but that is not the case with their Q3'09 stack. Less than a week ago we shared that ...

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition | Posted on: 29/04/2009 @ 1:55

Only few months after presentation of Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and Dragon platform, AMD made its next move: transition to a new memory standard – DDR3. New standard, as it is in most cases, demands new socket. In this case pin configuration isn’t too much different from the one present on AM2+ socket, but there are differences because of which it is not possible to insert old ...

AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition AM2 Kuma Processor | Posted on: 28/04/2009 @ 19:54

Last week\'s launch of the Phenom II X4 955 was a big win with the enthusiast crowd. This week, however, it looks like AMD has shifted focused to the mainstream market. Not only is the highly anticipated Radeon HD 4770 launching today, but also a new dual core Black Edition processor: the Athlon X2 7850 AD785ZWCGHBOX. Based on the updated K10 Kuma architecture, the 2.8GHz X2 7850 is poised to ...

AMD Athlon X2 7850 vs. Intel Pentium E5300: Choosing the Best $70 CPU | Posted on: 28/04/2009 @ 16:10

Here's a price point we don't usually talk about: $70. And here's another interesting fact. At $70 you can buy a CPU faster than a 3.73GHz dual-core Pentium 4 and an Athlon 64 FX-62....

AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition CPU | Posted on: 28/04/2009 @ 11:10

Another Kuma is on the loose and it's 100MHz faster than the last one. Has anything else changed and does AMD have a bargain processor to take on the Intel Penium Dual Core E5200? We test their stock clocks and comparative overclocking potential to see which is the best bargain buy.

Scythe Mugen 2 CPU Cooler | Posted on: 28/04/2009 @ 5:00

Linux Firewall Part 4: Core Software Installation | Posted on: 28/04/2009 @ 0:50

If you already have an Internet Router that you're intending to replace, I recommend some prep-work to make things easier. Most routers are set as the gateway to their network (i.e. 192.168.1.1), and this is probably the address that you want your firewall to use. Otherwise, you'll have to set the firewall to 192.168.1.2 or some other address, which can get real confusing really fast. Go ahead ...

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE AM3 Processor | Posted on: 27/04/2009 @ 15:16

Following their success in the Athlon 64 era, many were surprised to the see AMD struggle with the Phenom family of processors. With the launch of the Phenom II and Dragon platform, however, AMD has made a dramatic comeback. Today, Benchmark Reviews takes a look at the latest addition to the Phenom II family, the X4 955 Black Edition. With full AM3 support and an impressive 3.2 GHz clockspeed, ...

Dell launch Intel Core i7 powered Studio XPS 435 desktop | Posted on: 27/04/2009 @ 15:10

Hold onto your hats folks because the kind people at Dell have reliably informed us that the wraps are now well and truly off the new Studio XPS 435 desktop machine in the UK – and boy does it sound tempting.

Samsung Unveils Its First Google Phone The i7500 | Posted on: 27/04/2009 @ 13:20

Samsung Electronics in South Korea today became the first major mobile phone maker to bring Google's Android software to a smartphone. Samsung has unveiled its i7500, a 3.2 inch AMOLED touchscreen smart phone with boasts a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of memory and it's only 11.9 millimeters thick."Samsung is among the earliest members of the Open Handset Alliance and has been actively moving forward ...

Packard Talks About Ongoing Intel Linux Work | Posted on: 25/04/2009 @ 6:50

Lately we have talked a lot about the Intel Linux driver stack with their ongoing work of switching over to the Graphics Execution Manager for memory management, moving to kernel-based mode-setting, and migrating to the Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2. In the short term, this work has caused some nasty problems, but once the fallout has been addressed, the open-source Intel driver should be in ...

Will Intel Completely Drop Support For EXA? | Posted on: 24/04/2009 @ 20:00

Earlier this month Intel had pushed out the xf86-video-intel 2.7 graphics driver that brought a variety of new features and fixes. This 2.7 X.Org driver has been rolled into Intel's "2009Q1 Package" along with Mesa 7.4 plus a few more patches, the Linux 2.6.29.1 kernel plus a few more patches, and libdrm 2.4.9...

AMD Unveils Plans for 12 and 16 Core Processors | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 13:50

AMD has announced its processor roadmap in efforts to compete with Intel's current and future products. The company said it will introduce a new processor code-named Magny-Cours, Q1 of 2010 which will pack 8 and 12 cores. In 2011 AMD said it would deliver a new chip family code named, Interlagos which will come packing 12 and 16 cores. Below are all of the significant roadmap points that AMD ...

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 10:10

The fastest AMD to hit the streets is here. It's 3.2GHz of Black Edition overclocking friendly badness and we test its wares to see if this AM3 part is worth considering over the already tempting AM2+ Phenom II X4 940 on DDR2.

AMD's Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 7:40

AMD continues to build its competitiveness with an even faster Phenom II. The 955 is AMD's answer to Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9550....

Asus M3A78-T AMD AM2+/AM3 DDR2 Motherboard Review | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 6:20

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE, 3.2 GHz, (Deneb) | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 5:10

Mit dem Phenom II basierend auf dem aktuellen Deneb-Kern meldete sich AMD wie Phoenix aus der Asche zurück im CPU Markt. Auf einmal hatte man wieder eine CPU im Protfolio, bei der Takt sowie pro-MHZ-Leistung wieder mehr oder weniger auf dem Niveau des Konkurrenten lagen. Der grosse Vorteil, den AMD ganz klar für sich zu beanspruchen weiss, ist ein kaum schlagbares ...

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition: back with a bang | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 5:00

Cranking up the frequency and adding memory flexibility, has Phenom II come of age? We find out.

Audio2 FX Force Feedback Gaming Headphones Review | Posted on: 23/04/2009 @ 0:40

In order to get the best out of your gaming experience, you have to feel the noise. Yeah, Quiet Riot did have it right all those sixty or so years ago. With the advances in audio gaming technologies, we can now “feel” the power of a shotgun or experience the thud of falling from a roof onto the ground. Watching movies with 3D sound is okay, but gaming with it is the first step to ...

Intel Core i7 Virtualization On Linux | Posted on: 22/04/2009 @ 6:20

Earlier this month we published Intel Core i7 Linux benchmarks that looked at the overall desktop performance when running Ubuntu Linux. One area we had not looked at in the original article was the virtualization performance, but we are back today with Intel Core i7 920 Linux benchmarks when testing out the KVM hypervisor and Sun xVM VirtualBox. In this article we are providing a quick look at ...

AMD revenue flatlines | Posted on: 21/04/2009 @ 23:30

Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD’s first quarter losses equaled $416 million, or 66 cents a share, compared with a loss of $364 million, or 60 cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Nevertheless, the company managed to hit sales of $1.177 billion during the first quarter of 2009, which represents a 21% decrease compared to the [...]

Phenom II X4 955 goes after Core i7 920 | Posted on: 21/04/2009 @ 11:20

And 2.83GHz C2Q Q9550 We are still two days away from AMD’s official launch of Phenom II X4 955 and 945 CPUs and today we have a bit more clear picture of which Intel CPUs AMD sees as competition for its 3.2GHz clocked 955. The key competitors are the slowest Core i7, the 920 that works [...]

Thermaltake ISGC-300 CPU Cooler | Posted on: 21/04/2009 @ 5:50

Deal of the Weekend - AMD Phenom II X4 940, Kingston DDR3, and more stuff... | Posted on: 20/04/2009 @ 1:20

A short story for those looking to shop this weekend for a new processor, video card, or memory....

AMD Pushes Out New R600/700 3D Code | Posted on: 18/04/2009 @ 15:00

In late December AMD had published open-source R600/700 3D code that also allowed for 2D and X-Video acceleration, but was not of use to end-users interested in full OpenGL acceleration. AMD had then released the R600/700 3D documentation a month later and then the R700 ISA documentation just a few weeks back. Today, however, AMD is finally pushing some workable code into a public code repository.

AMD’s roadmap leaks SB850 info | Posted on: 17/04/2009 @ 18:30

Q4 launch Expreview has gotten its hands on what seems to be AMD’s April 2009 roadmap, and amongst other nuggets of info it reveals a couple of details on the upcoming SB850 Southbridge. The SB850 Southbridge will keep SB750’s features but will come with the new-gen SATA 3 controller boasting 6Gb/s, and support 6 SATA [...]

AMD Catalyst 9.4 Finally Brings X Server 1.6 Support | Posted on: 17/04/2009 @ 17:10

X Server 1.6 was released back in February, and there have been test releases for it going back to the end of last year, but today AMD has finally delivered support for this new X.Org server in their proprietary Linux graphics driver. Like last month with the Catalyst 9.3 release, the Linux version was not released on the same day as the Windows build, which ended up being a one-week delay. ...

Intel's 2.7 Graphics Driver Still Has Problems | Posted on: 16/04/2009 @ 19:00

Last night Intel pushed out the xf86-video-intel 2.7.0 driver, but still it does not correct some of the performance regressions that have been occurring within the Intel Linux graphics stack for the past few months. While there are UXA improvements in the 2.7 driver, the performance is still bad. Continuing on from our benchmarks yesterday where we looked at the greedy migration heuristics ...

Intel Ends Out The Day With 2.7 X.Org Driver Release | Posted on: 16/04/2009 @ 2:50

The day started out for us by looking at the performance impact of using greedy migration heuristics with Intel graphics as well as taking another look at their driver's UXA performance. After that article was published, we had benchmarks from the Linux 2.6.30-rc2 kernel that showed 2D/3D Intel performance improvements...

Intel Drops A Load Of G45 Programming Documentation | Posted on: 16/04/2009 @ 1:00

While Intel has long backed an open-source graphics driver for their integrated graphics driver, it was not up until last year when Intel released the i965/G35 documentation that there was public, NDA-free documentation concerning their newer IGPs. Later that year they then released the GMA X4500HD series and since then we have been waiting for them to push out public documentation concerning ...

Linux 2.6.30-rc2 Improves Intel Performance Some | Posted on: 15/04/2009 @ 23:10

Since earlier today when looking at whether greedy migration heuristics help in improving Intel's 2D driver performance and how it compares to using UXA acceleration, we have run a couple more benchmarks. This time Canonical's Bryce Harrington was interested whether a new kernel improves Intel's performance. Found in the Linux 2.6.30-rc2 kernel release yesterday were a few Intel i915 DRM updates ...

Does A Greedy Intel Driver Improve Performance? | Posted on: 15/04/2009 @ 20:50

As we have outlined before and shared benchmarks of in the past, the Intel graphics driver stack has been going through some significant changes. The Intel graphics driver now has a proper memory manager in the form of the Graphics Execution Manager, there is upstream kernel mode-setting support, and a new 3D component is coming soon in the form of Gallium3D. With all of this invasive work going ...

Intel Core i7 920 and 940 CPUs | Posted on: 14/04/2009 @ 9:23

Ever since their launch towards the tail-end of last year, Intel\'s Core i7 CPUs have been enjoying the limelight as the company\'s flagship range of CPUs. Today, we run the rule over both the Core i7 920 and 940, to take a look at how these two chips perform in a variety of scenarios, as well as examining just what they bring to the table over Intel\'s well-established Core 2 architecture.

New Test Release Of Intel X.Org 2.7 Driver | Posted on: 10/04/2009 @ 23:00

We are now into the second quarter of 2009, but Intel will soon release its X.Org driver for Q1'09. While late, the xf86-video-intel 2.7.0 driver update SDVO-TV support, basic SDVO-LVDS support, tear-free X-Video support, and many bugs have been fixed. Just before calling it a week, Carl Worth released the third release candidate for the xf86-video-intel 2.7.0 (version 2.6.99.903)...

Intel Looks To Make Large Contribution To GCC | Posted on: 10/04/2009 @ 16:20

Intel contributes quite a bit to the development of X.Org and the Linux kernel, through a number of Intel employees working on Linux full-time, making hardware contributions, etc. Up until recently, Intel even had its own Linux distribution (Moblin) for their Atom hardware...

Wired2Fire Velocity and Hellspawn XFire PCs: Intel Core i7 and AMD Phenom II @ 3.6GHz | Posted on: 09/04/2009 @ 5:00

Two systems clocked in at 3.6GHz. Read on to find out which offers better value and performance.

Intel Atom Running At 2GHz With Hyper Threading | Posted on: 08/04/2009 @ 13:40

While it already seems like the Intel Atom processor family has been around for quite a while, it's really only been one year. Today Intel is celebrating the one year anniversary of the Atom processor from the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing. To commemorate the one year anniversary, Intel has introduced two new members of the Atom family...

Intel Core i7 On Linux | Posted on: 07/04/2009 @ 13:00

Back in November Intel had formally launched the Core i7 series, but Linux benchmarks were not to be found. However, in the weeks that followed, results began to emerge through the Phoronix Test Suite and Phoronix Global. Over time there were many more Linux test results from the Phoronix Test Suite community, but now we have posted some of our own Intel Core i7 numbers from Ubuntu Linux.

Futurelooks Attends the Spring 2009 Intel InfernaLAN | Posted on: 01/04/2009 @ 21:20

Prolimatech Megahalems LGA775/1366 CPU Cooler - Benchmark Reviews | Posted on: 01/04/2009 @ 3:30

With nearly twenty different LGA1366 kits tested in our Best CPU Cooler Performance LGA1366 - Q1 2009 (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=285 Itemid=62) article, one particular product stood out as an up-and-coming favorite. The Prolimatech Megahalems is a CPU cooler build from scratch using over twenty years of industry design experience and engineering. While the Prolimatech name is new ...

Prolimatech Megahalems LGA775/1366 CPU Cooler | Posted on: 01/04/2009 @ 3:21

With nearly twenty different LGA1366 kits tested in our Best CPU Cooler Performance LGA1366 - Q1 2009 (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=285 Itemid=62) article, one particular product stood out as an up-and-coming favorite. The Prolimatech Megahalems is a CPU cooler build from scratch using over twenty years of industry design experience and engineering. While the Prolimatech name is new ...

Prolimatech Megahalems CPU Cooler - eTeknix | Posted on: 01/04/2009 @ 3:21

With nearly twenty different LGA1366 kits tested in our Best CPU Cooler Performance LGA1366 - Q1 2009 article, one particular product stood out as an up-and-coming favorite. The Prolimatech Megahalems is a CPU cooler build from scratch using over twenty years of industry design experience and engineering. While the Prolimatech name is new to most [...]