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Popcornhour http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=catalog is was ahead of the game. The model C200 networked media player will play back any file format and has provision for a local hard drive or blue ray drive.

The C-200 supports NFS, SMB, FTP, and multiple streaming protocols.

This looks like what I'd like -- do you ever have it play DVDs from ISOs over SMB shares, and does it do it OK without barfing/freezing/etc?

Another option you might want to look at is Patriot's $99 Box Office Media Player. I don't have one, but I just read about it in Anandtech's new Apple TV review as an alternative that "will play virtually everything you have, regardless of container or format."

The specs page lists support for UPnP streaming and "[MPEG-2] MPG/MPEG/VOB/ISO/TS/TP/M2TS", but this avsforum post indicates it might meet your needs. From the post:

• "Will not see any of my .iso or .mkv when using the UPnP feature, but sees all when using the "NET" feature (SMB share)."
• "Handles DVD .iso very well, menu functionality is retained for those that have it."

I can't speak to your experience, of course, but it looks like VZ is taking a new stance on their more recent offerings. Case in point, the Fascinate.

...It's not like you can change it, either. There's no way to change the in-browser search engine - it's stuck being Bing....
Similar to the Droid 2, you also cannot remove the Verizon bookmarks. Trying to do so gets you a nice error message.

Actually, I recall an article on Anandtech that states the various differences between the latest iPod Touch and iPhone. They didn't just drop the phone part, they also have a different casing which could indicates different internal structure, lower quality display, speaker, camera and no GPS. Are these worth the £270, probably not, but it means it might not be as bad as it looks.

This is the article I was referring to (read through the comments for discussion about AM3+ compatability):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3937/amds-fall-refresh-new-phenom-ii-and-athlon-ii-cpus-balance-price-and-performance

Here's another blurb about the same issue:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289211-28-official-socket-support-bulldozer

No, that benchmark bears out exactly what I said –the phenom wins in the multithreaded benchmarks, loses in all the less threaded ones, and costs $40 more. Now lets look at the intel chip you claim that phenom is on a par with...
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=191

Oh look, the phenom beaten by between 1 and 40% depending on the benchmark.

AMD's fastest 4 core consumer chip (the X4 965) gets beaten handily by the i3 540 in pretty much every test

You must be confused, or we're looking at very different benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=143

• ASUS KGPE-D16 dual socket G34 motherboard $439.99
  (There's something fishy going on with Tyan's boards. I read some pretty bad reviews on newegg a month ago but now they have all disappeared)
• Opteron 6174 2.2GHz 115W 12-Core 2 * $1299
  (Personally I would have gotten the Opteron 6128 2.0GHz 115W 8-Core: $280.99)
• Athena Power CA-SWH02B65 case+PSU $169.99
  (Personally I would get a different case and an Anteq TPQ-1200 1200W PSU for $249.99)
• Kingston 4GB DDR3 1333 ECC RDIMM 2 * $115.99
  (Chosen to be an exact match with the Intel comparison)

Skip the DVD and hard drive(s) since that should not affect the comparison.
Total price: $3,439.96


Intel

• ASUS Z8NA-D6C Dual LGA 1366 motherboard $249.99
  (Put a fan over the intel 5500 northbridge. It doesn't come with one. It needs it. Also note you can only use up to triple-channel DDR3. The AMD setup above goes to quad-channel DDR3.)
  (Note the quad 1207(F) motherboards wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison. A quad-6-core system will lose to a dual-12-core system anytime.)
• Westmere 3.33GHz 6-core 130W 2 * $1723.15
• Athena Power CA-SWH02B65 case+PSU $169.99
• Kingston 4GB DDR3 1333 ECC RDIMM 2 * $115.99
  (Chosen to be an exact match with the AMD comparison)

Total price: $4,098.26


Conclusion: AMD's Magny-cours option is awesome at the high end. Best of all is its price. Anandtech sums it up: "Here the choice is less clear. At this point, we believe both server CPUs consume about the same power, so that does not help either to make up our minds. It will depend on how the OEMs price their servers."

Newegg prices put things way over on the AMD side of things. What am I missing?

True, I was thinking about the 1366 socket motherboards (but even the older motherboards are still more expensive than the Intel ones).

> A bulldozer chip will NOT work in AM3, only AM3+.

Has this been confirmed? Not as far as I've seen. The point still stands that Intel changes sockets more often.

> Tests that blast the hell out of all cores (both physical and virtual) on both chips often show the i7 coming out ahead.

It seems to me that they don't. Link. This at a time where most applications are probably optimized for dual/quad cores.

Yup
and
Yup
and
Yup

So basically, the i5 760 will beat it handily at pretty much everything except for one embarassingly parallel task.

Good game though.

Yup
and
Yup
and
Yup

So basically, the i5 760 will beat it handily at pretty much everything except for one embarassingly parallel task.

Good game though.

Yup
and
Yup
and
Yup

So basically, the i5 760 will beat it handily at pretty much everything except for one embarassingly parallel task.

Good game though.

nope

Playing games at 18 watts and under!

My question would be are those wanting a laptop that is too small for a discrete GPU and who care about graphics performance going to be better off staying with a core 2 duo with a nvidia chipset? or will they be better off with sandy bridge?

Unfortunately anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/7 ) didn't include nvidia integrated graphics in their comparison. Also they were using a desktop not a laptop chip afaict (though they don't seem to know for sure exactly what they had from reading the comments). Integrated graphics performance is far less relevant for desktops than for laptops since it's so easy to add dedicated graphics to a desktop.

Further it seems anandtech can't seem to be consistent in their benchmarking. I found an article where they benchmarked a 320M ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3762/apples-13inch-macbook-pro-early-2010-reviewed-shaking-the-cpugpu-balance/2 ) but WOW was at lower settings and the other games didn't match up at all. Still told me that sandy bridge was probablly better than the 320M at least for WOW.

My question would be are those wanting a laptop that is too small for a discrete GPU and who care about graphics performance going to be better off staying with a core 2 duo with a nvidia chipset? or will they be better off with sandy bridge?

Unfortunately anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/7 ) didn't include nvidia integrated graphics in their comparison. Also they were using a desktop not a laptop chip afaict (though they don't seem to know for sure exactly what they had from reading the comments). Integrated graphics performance is far less relevant for desktops than for laptops since it's so easy to add dedicated graphics to a desktop.

Further it seems anandtech can't seem to be consistent in their benchmarking. I found an article where they benchmarked a 320M ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3762/apples-13inch-macbook-pro-early-2010-reviewed-shaking-the-cpugpu-balance/2 ) but WOW was at lower settings and the other games didn't match up at all. Still told me that sandy bridge was probablly better than the 320M at least for WOW.

You don't need to go Alienware. I am typing this on the Asus g73jh which I bought for $1500 + tax. Here is a review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3662/asus-g73jha2-affordable-xlsized-gaming The laptop is a few months old so it's cheaper now, I've seen some places selling it for $1000. That said, there's a version coming out soon with an nVidia graphics cards. I would recommend getting those since a large amount of the ones with Radeon 5870s have grey screen of death issues if you update the drivers. There are solutions, but they're a little weird. My solution to the grey screen of death was to install the 10.8 Catalyst drivers, overclock my videocard by 5 MHz, and then download a still in beta hotfix from Microsoft that had something to do with the framebuffer causing freezes. Come to think of it I don't even think I have to overclock my computer since downloading the update anymore but I digress. The Asus g73jh and its variants are some of the best bang for your buck gaming laptops around. In short, the screen on the laptop is good and it gets great performance. The only downside is that some have the GSOD, but since new laptops have nVidia cards that should be solved. The laptop is very large so it's more of a portable desktop but it will definitely fit into smaller space than an iMac + PC monitor.

Yup if you shelled out for a Socket 1366 (high end i7), you're going to be sticking with Nehalem until Socket R comes out down the line.
If you went with 1156, which I did (P55 Classified + i7 860 @ 4.0 Ghz), then you're screwed, just earlier, since it's now Socket 1155, which isn't compatible even though it's just a 1 pin difference.
I wasn't very happy with Intel when I found this out, since they've recently switched sockets after holding on to 775 for so long, but from my understanding AMD has also done something with the AM-2/3 socket where some motherboards are back/forwards compatible, but others aren't. I think there is a derivative socket, Am-2/3+, that is backward compatible but the Am2-3 standard version isn't forwards compatible. Don't take my word on it though, my builds have been Intel since the Q6600 came out. AMD has done a better job of backward compatibility but the sweet spot for price/performance + overclocking has been Intel chips whenever I've done my last few builds, and I only do builds every few years, usually after new architectures are released so my motehrboards are usually replaced as well.
Anandtech covered upcoming socket changes in more detail in their writeup

AMD has a new arch coming out which will go by Bulldozer for the mainstream and Bobcat for the low end netbook market. It looks to be pretty bad ass, as their hyperthreading will have an actual integer per thread with only the floating point being shared. Last I heard they were using the 5450 Radeon GPU for their integrated so it will definitely pump out the graphics. Next year should be an interesting time for us builders.

Sadly I'll probably sit this round out as my AMD quad is already faster than I am and at 8Gb of RAM I don't see myself needing anything else for quite some time, but Bulldozer based rigs should be great and affordable for my customers and if Bobcat rocks as well as their AMD Neo + Radeon discrete it'll make a kick ass multimedia netbook chip. According to those I've sold Neo dual based netbooks to they are getting around 5 hours on a charge and the graphics and video performance is awesome, and Bobcat is supposed to cut the power by anywhere from 40-60%.

So it looks like either way you go next year is gonna be a nice time for new gear. Faster and better graphics, cool. BTW, does anyone know if the Intel will support some sort of hybrid SLI? The AMD allows you to put a low end discrete with the onboard and bring it up to midrange GPU performance. Of course the way Intel has been trying to hamstring Nvidia lately it wouldn't surprise me if it don't. You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already. And if Nvidia doesn't end up buying Via so they can offer an "all in one" solution like Intel and AMD I predict it's gonna be some bad times for them, with Intel trying to squeeze them out of their sandbox and AMD not needing them since buying ATI.

Anandtech discusses this briefly in their article. Basically, it look like the CE4100 SoC includes a dedicated decoder in addition to the Atom and SGX535 cores, which is what allows it to decode two 1080P H.264 streams.

A4 has a PowerVR SGX535 GPU, which can push 28 million triangles/sec whilst the Galaxy S has a PowerVR SGX540 GPU that pushes 90 million triangles/sec.

Unfortunately, it has half the battery life of the A4.

Still waiting for a smartphone that is powerful, has good battery life and has a physical keyboard.

After Samsung "announced that it is adopting the Mali [GPU]...for its future graphics-enabled ...SoC ICs", it sounds plausible that the speedup and the lack of information about the GPU could relate to this Mali technology from ARM.

ARM has recently released source for some parts of the Linux drivers for current Mali GPUs under GPLv2, which might be the first step towards ARM SoC's with fully-open GPU drivers.

There are no guarantees, but at the moment it appears that ARM is much more receptive to the idea of open GPU drivers than Imagination Tech (PowerVR GPUs) or NVidea.

I think it's a shame that AMD isn't moving faster w.r.t the embedded/mobile market. Sure, they're planning to make SoC's with a GPU on the same silicon, but as of last week they're not currently interested in competing with ARM for market share. And AMD's the chipmaker that's most actively supporting and creating open drivers for their graphics hardware.

It'll be interesting to see where the hardware goes in the next couple of years. Can Intel (and AMD, if they get serious) pull marketshare from ARM, or will the RISC chip reign supreme?

Who cares? Between AMD and Intel, they are toast. Even AnandTech agrees http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/7

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3767/media-streamer-platforms-roundup/5 You can read a decent (although aging) round-up of your options there, or just go buy the O!Play. It plays anything that matters.

Never mind the fact that AMD will be the source of confusion for "normal" folks in the not-too-distant future. Yay for having Intel and AMD stickers on the same system!

Note: yes, I'm aware that most nerds won't be affected by this...but it will certainly confuse some normal folk, I guarantee it.

Nah. Most normal folk don't even know what companies do what. Sure, they've probably heard the names Intel and AMD... And maybe even know that they both make processors... And maybe they've even noticed that you typically only have one or the other on a box... But normal folk aren't even going to ponder why they've now got both on a box. They'll just buy the machine with the most gigawhosits and call it done.

Never mind the fact that AMD will be the source of confusion for "normal" folks in the not-too-distant future. Yay for having Intel and AMD stickers on the same system!

Note: yes, I'm aware that most nerds won't be affected by this...but it will certainly confuse some normal folk, I guarantee it.

The new Intel Sandy Bridge architecture is hoping to change people's opinions of integrated graphics. Anandtech got a hold of a sample chip that is expected to be released early next year, and they show that not only does it offer CPU performance comparable to older Extreme i7 chips, the new Integrated GPU performs on par with ATI Radeon HD 5450 which is a low to mid-range graphics card often used for home theater PCs.

Also the notebook/netbook models will have an integrated GPU that is twice the power of the desktop model that Anandtech tested, so they should allow you to play many 3D games at decent frame rates using their low to medium settings.

If Anand's article last week is to be believed, Intel's on die graphics are shaping up to be at least as good as an entry level discrete card, and that's just in the first generation. At this point I'm more worried about AMD, though given the quality of their existing chipsets it should be a good fight.

I went with an Intel integrated chipset a number of years back because the alternatives weren't very well supported on FreeBSD, but the graphics weren't just not special, they were bad. Sufficiently bad that I've stayed away from them ever since. Which for Intel is just dumb, I have a very hard time believing that Intel couldn't do any better than what they've been doing.

Well, Intel is not stupid and they know why AMD bought ATI. Even though Larrabee doesn't seem to be going anywhere their integrated graphics are due for a big improvement in Sandy Bridge due soon, a preview is found here. It won't be competing for the serious gamers but it does well against current low end discrete chips.

I don't honestly think Intel cares that much what AMD is doing, they got what 20% of the market? Intel is far more interested in making the 80% that use Intel CPUs also use Intel GPUs, at least everyone but the high end gamers. Already you can have your Intel CPU with your choice of Intel chipset and nothing else, really. And motherboards are soon only adding the right connectors to the Intel chipset. In essence, it doesn't matter if Dell, Compaq, HP, Lenovo compete - as long as it's an Intel then Intel wins every which way. It does give a pretty good illusion of competition though.

The intersect is going to start happening later this year when Intel releases Moorestown. Moorestown is a ground-up redesigned architecture that will still run x86, and will idle at 23mW and play video at 1.1W. It will also give about 2X performance increase over current ARM designs, although the 1.1W power consumption will probably mean that it will only end up in tablets, MIDs, and PMPs. For naysayers who keep bashing how wasteful x86 is (which it is) and how it will never compete with ARM, note the power consumption in idle.

The real intersect will happen when Intel releases Medfield, the next generation of Moorestown, probably in Q4 of 2011.

One caveat to this is the fact that by the time Intel releases Moorestown and Medfield, ARM performance would have also increased to an extent that Moorestown's performance edge may only be a small one (although ARM's power consumption also seems to be increasing). On the other hand, x86 (and Linux) support may be a strong reason for companies to migrate to this platform.

I disagree with your views on Intel/Windows. Firstly, your notion is quite outdated - in the mobile space, Intel is actually pushing Linux very strongly in the form of Moblin, and is really not trying to shove Windows down everyone's throat.

Secondly, and more interestingly, MS itself recognizes how unsuitable Windows is in mobile devices. Take a look at the extent to which MS has redesigned Windows Mobile 7 - I strongly suspect that it will be a viable challenger to Android and Apple in the near future.

The intersect is going to start happening later this year when Intel releases Moorestown. Moorestown is a ground-up redesigned architecture that will still run x86, and will idle at 23mW and play video at 1.1W. It will also give about 2X performance increase over current ARM designs, although the 1.1W power consumption will probably mean that it will only end up in tablets, MIDs, and PMPs. For naysayers who keep bashing how wasteful x86 is (which it is) and how it will never compete with ARM, note the power consumption in idle.

The real intersect will happen when Intel releases Medfield, the next generation of Moorestown, probably in Q4 of 2011.

One caveat to this is the fact that by the time Intel releases Moorestown and Medfield, ARM performance would have also increased to an extent that Moorestown's performance edge may only be a small one (although ARM's power consumption also seems to be increasing). On the other hand, x86 (and Linux) support may be a strong reason for companies to migrate to this platform.

I disagree with your views on Intel/Windows. Firstly, your notion is quite outdated - in the mobile space, Intel is actually pushing Linux very strongly in the form of Moblin, and is really not trying to shove Windows down everyone's throat.

Secondly, and more interestingly, MS itself recognizes how unsuitable Windows is in mobile devices. Take a look at the extent to which MS has redesigned Windows Mobile 7 - I strongly suspect that it will be a viable challenger to Android and Apple in the near future.

I didn't have a 3gs, but an old-school 3g.

I know, but the 3gs is still on sale, and for half the price of the cheapest iPhone4. And without the attenuation issues :)

There's no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.

Looks like some crackpot mod is calling Anand a troll.

I didn't have a 3gs, but an old-school 3g.

I know, but the 3gs is still on sale, and for half the price of the cheapest iPhone4. And without the attenuation issues :)

There's no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.

Looks like some crackpot mod is calling Anand a troll.

It will probably depend on implementation...certain chipsets may be faster then others.

However, anandtech recently reviewed a WD hard drive with a USB 3.0 connector and it was actualy ~20% faster then the eSATA port.

WD 3TB External HD Review

I didn't have a 3gs, but an old-school 3g.

I know, but the 3gs is still on sale, and for half the price of the cheapest iPhone4. And without the attenuation issues :)

There's no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/3
some loads the 1090T is better than the 980x....

Intel's hexacore is also ~$900, i can buy a whole computer with a X6 and a 58xx or gtx4xx with 8GB ram for that... and according to your benchmark get ~60% of the performance, but they don't list the test rigs, instruction sets used, etc etc...

Also 2x performance for 4-5x the cost? seems worth it huh?

Compared to such articles as AnandTech's coverage of this in November 2009, I don't see much new information. Perhaps the key bit, and this is glossed over but you can tell from the slides AMD gave them, is the difference between the bulldozer and bobcat cores. The bulldozer cores contain the two integer units that have been revealed before, but the bobcat core only has one but it still implements hyperthreading.

I know you're probably aware of this solution, but I'll throw it out there anyway. Several vendors are selling low-power set-top boxes that support torrent downloads to attached or internal media. These run linux and can also deliver 1080p media to your TV from a wide array of file formats.

I recently purchased the Patriot Box Office for $65 (with rebate) off NewEgg's site. It's not without it's problems, but it performs most of its responsibilities reliably. It also works as a NAS, though without many permissions options.

I'd get three more of these before I'd waste any money on a walwart linux box. These settop boxes are just as hackable, plus they have hardware video chipsets.

Intel does not have the fastest MLC drives out there (X25-E is SLC), and now they're ditching SLC?
I wonder how their performance will match the other controllers (Sandforce, Indilix, Samsung, etc)... perhaps their new MLC is more along the lines of what Sandforce is doing?

Decent android phones make their batteries last a lot longer than any iphone offering atm. ( samoled, hummingbird etc)

If you actually need to use it as a phone for any reason, you don't want an iphone.

AFAIK, that's not true. The iPhone 4 seems to last 20-50% longer in most usage scenarios than pretty much any other smartphone when keeping the usage pattern constant. (See Anand's reviews for instance.) Though I have the impression that this is not due to software or hardware superiority, but due to the sheer size of its battery (made possible by being nonremovable).

Obviously, if you just want a basic phone that lasts longer than a day, you would get a basic Nokia or SonyEricsson instead of a GPS/3G/GHz-processor smartphone anyway...

Yeah, engineers can be wrong, of course, but at least in general they know what they are talking about. You refer to power with a negative value in decibels (power is always Watts, and dBW or dBm are still Watts, but just in a logarithmic scale with 1W or 1mW as a reference), and you continue to fail in seeing that you don't need an anechoic chamber or special equipment when you just want to know the attenuation caused by some event.

If your phone tells you the amount in power is receiving from the base station (Android phones do, BTW, and in dBm, not in dB because that would not make sense), you can cover it with your hand and see the difference.

Please, if you claim to be an skeptic and like science, you have to respect that some guys did some measurements, and that you can review them and find the faults in their analysis. That's science: reproducible tests, peer review, etc.

Or... you can just see the press conference, and remember that Apple (yes, Apple) said that the iPhone 4 dropped more calls than the iPhone 3GS. You still seem to ignore these, and you are not even replying to that. What are you afraid of?

ALL CELL PHONES, ALWAYS will have their antenna detuned by a human's touch.

You are wrong in two things. First, yes, touching an antenna (and can't stress that much more, I said touching) changes the current distribution in the antenna, and therefore, changes its gain. But only the iPhone 4 has an external antenna that you can actually touch. Even worse. The iPhone 4 is the only phone in which you can touch one of the antennas, and shortcircuit it to a second antenna. This of course, causes a heavy change in the current distribution, and much less power can be given to the amplifier that is connected to the antenna.

What you are pointing in this manuals is a suggestion to avoid heavily covering the spot where the antenna is located... behind the case. You cannot touch a microstrip antenna during normal operation because is inside the guts of the phone. You can attenuate the signal that the antenna of a non-iPhone 4 phone sends or receives by placing your hand close to it, but is impossible to detune it. Period.

Plus, the iPhone 4 also suffers from attenuation. Probably much less because is hard to cover the whole antenna with the hand, but the Anandtech study showed that the change in the properties of the antenna is worse than other phones.

Oh, and one more thing: when you bridge the two antennas... guess what happens to the power that is not sent to the base station? Is funneled to the WiFi/BlueTooth/GPS antenna, probably affecting in the long term to the durability of the amplifiers and filters of those radio circuits.

ALL CELL PHONES, ALWAYS will have their antenna detuned by a human's touch, and THEY ALL have a death spot.Sure do. Show me any cell phone, I'll show you how to detune the antenna, and I'll find it's death spot.

It's not just a matter of detuning, but how much it gets detuned. For example, this story claims a significant drop of signal compared to a couple other phones (iPhone 3GS and HTC Nexus One). For example, when the reviewer clenched tightly the iPhone 4, he got a 24 dB drop in signal. The HTC Nexus One does 7 dB better (which is more than a factor of 5 stronger signal) and the iPhone 3GS does a full 10 dB better (slightly more than a factor of ten stronger signal). "Holding naturally" still has an almost 20 dB drop in signal strength for the iPhone (that's a factor of hundred drop in signal strength) while the iPhone 3GS has almost no attenuation in signal strength.

really? whats competative at the $300 point with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T from Intel? No really, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225 [newegg.com] is probably the best at stock speeds and it's only a 2.8ghz quad core
And yet the i7-920 (which is only a 2.66GHz quad-core) seems to hold it's own quite well against the Phenom II X6. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=47 . It seems the amd is generally winning in video encoding while the intel is winning in most other stuff (unfortunately anandtechs charts are hard to read because some tests are lower is better and others are higher is better :( )

and uses more expensive motherboards than the AMD.
If you are trying to build a cheap system the i7-8xx series is probablly a better bet than the i7-9xx series It tends to give more performance per dollar and runs on cheaper motherboards. The downside is you get less PCIe and less memory slots.

really? whats competative at the $300 point with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T from Intel? No really, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225 is probably the best at stock speeds and it's only a 2.8ghz quad core(yes yes hyper-threading, but it doesn't work as well as real cores last I heard) 130W, and uses more expensive motherboards than the AMD.

A $300 cpu isn't really "low end", more like upper mid range. Sure the i7-980X will beat the pants off the 1090T, but you can buy 3 1090T's for the same price as the 980X. You certainly can do 2(including ram and motherboard), for the $1000 the 980X commands.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed for some numbers.

The new Xbox 360 redesign seems to indicate that they've obtained the requisite experience. And by all accounts, the Zune and Kin were fine hardware devices at least.

The Kin even had great battery life:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3814/microsofts-kin-a-eulogy/4

I'm not saying that making phones is a good idea, but it's certainly possible.

FUD. SSDs are 5x and more in seek and read speed and time. It's noticeable reduced cumulative latency such as 15 seconds OS boot. Ever tried a compile on a SSD? If your HDD never makes a clicking sound then maybe you're right, but not in this universe.

As "desktop systems are disk-bound" while FATXX/NTFS naturally fragment files, SSDs win because YOU NEVER HAVE TO DEFRAG AGAIN. SSD speeds stay above even defragmented HDDs, spindle-speed doesn't matter anymore and Vista ReadyBoost is obsolete while SuperFetch is complemented.

Even the worse SSD crushes a HDD in normal usage: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/28

Then there's SSD's reduced power-draw, weight and volume, extreme shock tolerance during operation, etc. Too many ways of win, and people are attracted to that.

Especially under OSX, with its terrible threading model.

Yeah, I know mac fanboys - "just avoid using it that way", right?

In other news does anyone have any idea if there are any brands of spray paint which are a good dielectric?

Any sprayable lacquer will do just fine, thing is, it won't last too long. You might want to try some Kapton tape...

Actually not really true the current cortex A9 is about 2-3 times as fast as the Atom, you can google the performance numbers.

I'm highly sceptical of this

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3696/intel-unveils-moorestown-and-the-atom-z600-series-the-fastest-smartphone-processor/14

ARM does a bit better on CoreMark (5.7 vs 3.6 for a single threaded app, for dual threaded an N280 does 5.6. Most CPU intensive stuff is probably dual thread friendly these days, even the horrid flash)

http://blog.linleygroup.com/2010/04/arm-outmuscles-atom-on-benchmark.html

Still CoreMark is small enough to fit in the L1 cache. The Achilles heel of ARM systems has been slow memory controllers. Admittedly that's because ARM is aimed at phones where power consumption is a much more serious issue than netbooks, but still.

On something like SpecInt which is large enough to exercise the DRAM interface I'd expect Atom to blow away an ARM from a similar generation. And Intel already have things like Core2 which can be migrated down to low power as you can see with ULV. I'm not convinced Arm can migrate up.

Emulation would likely make things worse - CPU core performance will drop and if a JIT is used it will stress the memory subsystem more because you need to access both the native code and the translated code. An Jazelle like solution implies a greater memory subsystem hit too - you need to keep the code that emulates the instructions you don't handle in hardware in the cache. That's cache memory an Atom could use on the code its actually executing.

In fact Anandtech reckons that Apple should switch from ARM to Moorestown

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3640/apples-ipad-the-anandtech-review/17

Actually not really true the current cortex A9 is about 2-3 times as fast as the Atom, you can google the performance numbers.

I'm highly sceptical of this

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3696/intel-unveils-moorestown-and-the-atom-z600-series-the-fastest-smartphone-processor/14

ARM does a bit better on CoreMark (5.7 vs 3.6 for a single threaded app, for dual threaded an N280 does 5.6. Most CPU intensive stuff is probably dual thread friendly these days, even the horrid flash)

http://blog.linleygroup.com/2010/04/arm-outmuscles-atom-on-benchmark.html

Still CoreMark is small enough to fit in the L1 cache. The Achilles heel of ARM systems has been slow memory controllers. Admittedly that's because ARM is aimed at phones where power consumption is a much more serious issue than netbooks, but still.

On something like SpecInt which is large enough to exercise the DRAM interface I'd expect Atom to blow away an ARM from a similar generation. And Intel already have things like Core2 which can be migrated down to low power as you can see with ULV. I'm not convinced Arm can migrate up.

Emulation would likely make things worse - CPU core performance will drop and if a JIT is used it will stress the memory subsystem more because you need to access both the native code and the translated code. An Jazelle like solution implies a greater memory subsystem hit too - you need to keep the code that emulates the instructions you don't handle in hardware in the cache. That's cache memory an Atom could use on the code its actually executing.

In fact Anandtech reckons that Apple should switch from ARM to Moorestown

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3640/apples-ipad-the-anandtech-review/17