Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "In an article from AnandTech, Purav Sanghani focuses on the most widely used flash media, the 1GB CompactFlash cards. AnandTech has taken ten of the most well-known and unknown brands and put them through three tests: real world file system task test, HDTach 3 RW and SiSoft Sandra's File System Benchmark." From the article: "All of these cards are standard CompactFlash Type I media cards with varying speeds with exception of the Lexar Professional series media, which features its 'Write Acceleration Technology', said to improve image write speeds by up to 23% with compatible cameras. This is done with the aid of special firmware on the media as well as the cameras themselves, which allow them to work together to improve the write algorithms. However, we have also seen an improvement in write speeds in our benchmarks as well, but we'll let you see for yourself."

Anonymous writes "AnandTech's Josh Venning takes a first look at ATI's brand new All-In-Wonder 2006 PCIe video card. Due to hit retail stores sometime this week, the A-I-W 2006 is based on the X1300 series of cards, making it aimed at more budget-based users. AnandTech also compared the A-I-W 2006 to the X1300 Pro to get an idea of where this version of the X1300 line of cards stands."

Lam1969 writes "IDG News Service reports NEC will release its first laptop based on Intel's Yonah dual-core processor in the first quarter of 2006, for just under $2,000. According to AnandTech, Yonah performance is comparable to AMD Athlon 64 X2, and is more efficient than the AMD chip in terms of power consumption."

illusoryphoenix writes "Anandtech has an interesting preview of the successor to Dothan (Pentium M's second generation), Yonah, with tests run on an engineering sample. It seems like latest Pentium M is still lagging in the floating point area, but has gained some ground overall. It's also interesting to note their comparisons to the Pentium D/Netburst based dual core."

Anony writes "Anandtech's Joshua Buss takes a look at four horizontal HTPC enclosures. He writes, "With the amazing rate at which full-fledged computers are dropping in price, it's really no wonder why they're starting to take over more and more roles that used to be accomplished by simpler machines. For everything from car stereo systems to hold massive music collections to kitchen machines for helping retrieve and store recipes, these "specialized" computer uses seem to only be expanding in number...Luckily, there have been many improvements made in this category since the inception of the HTPC, and as such, we were able to round up four very nice looking enclosures to compare in this article. Every unit is advertised as being able to handle a full ATX motherboard, and since the demands for a powerful HTPC are relatively high, we'll be giving these cases' cooling systems a vigorous workout with a brand new 3 gigahertz Pentium 4-based ATX test bed."

jshaped writes "As a follow-up to their previously popular article, Anandtech has posted an in-depth look at the Xbox 360 motherboard. The IBM cpu core looks massive, and check out the ATI gpu with 2 dice on the package." From the article: "The original Xbox featured a 4-layer Intel motherboard, but given the incredible power requirements of the CPU and GPU on the Xbox 360's motherboard we would be astonished if the same were true today. Luckily with any console, especially early on in their life, you are getting a true bargain when it comes to the cost of hardware - so the number of layers on this PCB doesn't matter much to the end user, as Microsoft will absorb all costs above and beyond the core system's $299 price tag."

Hack Jandy writes "Here is the first article I've seen about the Xbox 360 hardware internals. The article details everything from the storage devices to the CPU and GPU core."

An anonymous reader submitted a reasonably indepth review of the Google search appliance. The guys from anandtech put it through it's paces, and included a variety of pictures and comments on one of those Google products most of us will probably never play with.

UltimaGuy writes "Anadtech has an article up comparing the IBM G5 with Intel's CPU. This gives us insight on the strength and weakness of Mac OS X. It also has some thoughts of what they perceive to be OS X's Achilles Heel." From the article: "That is what we'll be doing in this article: we will shed more light on the whole Apple versus x86 PC, IBM G5 versus Intel CPU discussion by showing you what the G5 is capable of when running Linux. This gives us insight on the strength and weakness of Mac OS X, as we compare Linux and Mac OS X on the same machine. The article won't answer all the questions that the first one had unintentionally created. As we told you in the previous article, Apple pointed out that Oracle and Sybase should fare better than MySQL on the Xserve platform. We will postpone the more in-depth database testing (including Oracle) to a later point in time, when we can test the new Apple Intel platform." This is the sequel to another article, reported on in June.

EconolineCrush writes "Intel has revealed its next generation CPU architecture at the Intel Developer Forum. The new architecture will be shared by 'Conroe' desktop, 'Merom' mobile, and 'Woodcrest' server processors, all of which were demoed by Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture. Otellini claimed that Conroe will offer five times the performance per watt of the company's current desktop chips. He also ran the entire keynote presentation on a Merom laptop, and demoed Conroe on a system running Linux."

carlmenezes writes "Pretty much every time a faster CPU is released, there are always a few that are marveled by the rate at which CPUs get faster but loathe the sluggish rate that storage evolves. Recognizing the allure of solid state storage, especially to performance-conscious enthusiast users, Gigabyte went about creating the first affordable solid state storage device, and they called it i-RAM. Would you pay $100 for a 4GB Solid State Drive that is up to 6x faster than a WD Raptor?"

Hack Jandy writes "According to Anandtech, AMD has already developed a new processor lineup for Athlon 64 processors with DDR2. The article states that internal AMD roadmaps indicate the processors should debut early next year and will require a new 1207 pin socket."

CCat writes "Digital Spy reports that at a recent Toshiba road show in the U.S., Toshiba demonstrated their upcoming HD-DVD specification. The most interesting thing for people buying TVs at the moment is that Toshiba has stated that their HD-DVD Player will ONLY output high Def on the player's HDMI output (plus other digital connections) with the analog output downrezed to 480 lines. Prior slashdot disussion talks about the copy prevention angle and HDCP guidelines."

happycorp wonders: "As in recent years the Itanium does well, easily beating x86 processors even at its low clockspeed (1.4Ghz). The supercomputer people are serious about benchmarking (no easily tricked microbenchmarks or reliance on closed-source commercial apps), so the discrepancy between the performance and perception of this chip is serious. With a single-CPU Itanium2 system at around $2000 their price is already reasonable, and the price would come down (and software would be ported) if the Itanium ever became a mass market chip. Having an affordable chip one step above a Xeon or Opteron in floating-point performance would not be such a bad thing for gaming enthusiasts (or 3D artists). So, the recent article on the Top 500 supercomputers list brings up a question I've been meaning to ask: Why do we see so many disparaging opinions of the Itanium processor (all those 'Itanic' jokes, etc.)?" "It seems computing enthusiasts' sentiment is set against this processor, and its likely that it's going to be abandoned sooner or later. We'll be paying for x86 compatibility indefinitely (recall the Xeon has roughly three times the number of transistors of the ppc970 for example; but we hardly get three times the performance).

These are a couple scores from the top 20, with the total gigaflops divided by the number of processors to obtain a per-processor speed:

rank processor ghz (gflops / #procs) speed #5 ppc970 2.2 (27910 / 4800) 5.81 #7 itanium2 1.4 (19940 / 4096) 4.86 #10 opteron 2.0 (15250 / 5000) 3.05 #20 xeon 3.06 (9819 / 2500) 3.92
Given this, consider what a 2 or 3 Ghz Itanium could do.

(fine print: I am not affiliated with the Itanium or the top500 list in any way)."

demonbug writes "Anandtech has an article up comparing performance of dual G5s to AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon workstations. The article also takes a look at performance under Mac OS X versus Linux. It provides an interesting look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of the different CPUs." From the article: "This article is written solely from the frustration that I could not get a clear picture on what the G5 and Mac OS X are capable of. So, be warned; this is not an all-round review. It is definitely the worst buyer's guide that you can imagine. This article cares about speed, performance, and nothing else! No comments on how well designed the internals are, no elaborate discussions about user friendliness, out-of-the-box experience and other subjective subjects. But we think that you should have a decent insight to where the G5/Mac OS X combination positions itself when compared to the Intel & AMD world at the end of this article."

zbojnik83 writes " Today was the official start of this year's Computex, but as always we were able to get a sneak peak at the show before the floor actually opened. With the show a day barely underway, we've already seen the first AMD BTX motherboard, a number of NVIDIA G70 graphics cards, an Intel motherboard that can be switched to an Socket-939 board by just purchasing a single card and the details of ATI's new multi-GPU chipset."

Hack Jandy writes "After a couple year of silence, AnandTech has confirmed that NVIDIA will be bringing back Integrated Graphics Processors this year. NVIDIA's last IGP chipset was based on nForce2 and received much praise all around. The new IGP, 'C51,' will be based on a stripped down version of nForce4 and includes PCI-Express. The article also goes into some detail about ATI's new IGP chipsets RS482 and RS410."

The PlayStation 3 was unveiled yesterday afternoon in a press conference at Sony Pictures Studio. The event was full of beautiful demonstrations, specifications, and talk of the games of tomorrow. The machine is certainly impressive, with backwards compatibility, support for up to seven Bluetooth controllers, multiple HD signals, and intimate interactions with the PSP. Coverage, screenshots, and specs available from 1up.com, Gamespot, Joystiq, NYT, Voodoo Extreme, Gamespy, BBC, GamesIndustry.biz, Engadget, Anandtech, Kotaku, Gamasutra, and CNN Money. The only downside I see so far? The controller. Update: 05/18 21:35 GMT by Z : Gamespot has up a comprehensive look at the console based on what is known so far.

You may or may not have caught the Xbox 360 unveiling on MTV Thursday night, but the internet will provide. A plethora of sites have photos, videos, commentary, specifications, and interviews about the new system. Your fellow readers have pulled together to provide links to: 1up.com, Joystiq, Gamespot, The BBC, CNN, NYT, Gamespy, Team Xbox, Voodoo Extreme, Anandtech, and eToyChest. The official Xbox 360 site opened last night as well for word straight from the source. For more official images Ourcolony.net has been 'solved', and now features an OurColony specific video preview. Finally, for commentary on the event, the Video Game Ombudsman provides an alternative to the press releases. From the post: "Kyle Orland (9:28:42 PM): The future of gaming is a girl in a blue dress? Dan Dormer (9:28:47 PM): The future of gaming is a girl with a bag? Kyle Orland (9:28:57 PM): She's the Xbox! OMG!"

Annoyed.Gamer writes "Today ATI announced their first 512MB graphics card, the X800 XL 512MB. I have some systems that don't have more than 512MB of system memory, much less on a graphics card. According to AnandTech, the 512MB card can't outperform its 256MB counterpart and costs 50% more. ATI's favorite Half Life 2 showed the only real performance increase in the entire article. Overall a disappointment, especially because ATI for some reason didn't outfit their highest end GPUs with 512MBs, only the mid-range X800 XL."

Annoyed.Gamer writes "Today ATI announced their first 512MB graphics card, the X800 XL 512MB. I have some systems that don't have more than 512MB of system memory, much less on a graphics card. According to AnandTech, the 512MB card can't outperform its 256MB counterpart and costs 50% more. ATI's favorite Half Life 2 showed the only real performance increase in the entire article. Overall a disappointment, especially because ATI for some reason didn't outfit their highest end GPUs with 512MBs, only the mid-range X800 XL."

dtjohnson writes " Lost Circuits has carefully measured the power consumption of four recent Athlon 64 cores and has found that power consumption has been dramatically reduced in the new 'Venice' core from the relatively-low (compared to Intel P4) numbers of the original 2003 'Clawhammer' core to less than 30 watts under load and less than 10 watts for Windows at idle. This huge power reduction was apparently accomplished by a combination of 90 nm die shrink, Silicon-on-Insulator technology, and something called 'dual-stress liner technology' As Lost Circuits points out, power consumption worldwide has been exploding as more CPUs come online and the CPU power requirements increase so a significant power reduction will reduce the burden on electrical grids everywhere."

karvind writes "Folks at Tomshardware> are running a review of ATI's new FireGL V5000. The card's X700 processor, code named R410GL, is based on a 110-nanometer process and the card sports eight pixel pipelines, six geometry engines, 128 MB of GDDR3 memory, dual DVI connectors for multi-display applications and dual link support for 9 megapixels displays. Anandtech also posted a review."

Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech has a pretty thorough analysis of Sun's V40z 4-way Opteron server that fits in a 3U. Among some of the more noteable benchmarks include a 2 minute, 30 second Linux 2.6.4 kernel compile! Who would have thought only a few years ago that Sun would be the new champion of Linux and AMD?"

Hack Jandy writes "AnandTech has a very thorough, but not overly technical, article detailing CPU scaling over the last decade or so. The author goes into specific details on how CPUs have overcome limitations of die size, instruction size and power to design the next generation of chips. Part I, published today, talks specifically about the limitations of multiple cores and multiple threads on processors."

slashflood writes "After reading two articles on slashdot about the Cell architecture and another one that criticizes the extensive roundup of the STI patents, I found the first pictures of the Cell core. It seems that at least some predictions were true. Seeing is believing." mtgarden points to this ZDNet article which says that the "first version of the chip will run at speeds faster than 4GHz. Engineers were vague on how much faster, but reports from design partners say 4.6GHz is likely. By comparison, the fastest current Pentium PC processor tops out at 3.8GHz." (More below.)

Hack Jandy writes "Anand Shimpi has some details about the upcoming Cell processor (PS3) in his personal blog. According to Anand, "Rambus announced that the new Cell processor uses both Rambus XDR memory and their FlexIO processor bus. Because Rambus designed the interface for both the memory controller(s) and the processor interface, the vast majority of signaling pins are using Rambus interfaces - a total of 90% according to Rambus." Hasn't Rambus been showing up a lot again recently? The fact that Cell uses XDR has been widely speculated, but the fact that it will also use the Rambus bus signalling is something completely new."

Hack Jandy writes "AnandTech reports that Intel's Smithfield processors are going to get here sooner than they originally predicted; most likely within the next few months. Apparently, the Intel roadmaps reveal that the launch dates for next generation desktop chipsets, 2MB L2 Prescotts and Dual Core Smithfield processors (operating at 3.2GHz per core) are almost upon us - way ahead of the original Q4'05 roadmap estimates. Hopefully, that means Intel will actually start shipping the new technology instead of waiting four months after the announcement for retail products."

CrzyP writes "AnandTech has whipped up a short but informative article on the new HDMI digital audio/video connection standard that is said to be the successor of DVI. Take a look at what this new standard is all about and what we can expect from it in the future!"

Hack Jandy writes "For those of you who didn't see this coming, AMD's Advanced Virus Protection campaign has been banned in Holland since the technology does (almost) nothing to stop viruses! If you recall, AMD's NX bit attempts to stop the processor from executing pages on the stack that have been written to. Does NX even solve more problems than it causes?"

Hack Jandy writes "The Pentium 4 has gotten enough attention lately as a slow, over heated monstrosity; but does Intel's Pentium M fare any better? Intel's decision to introduce the Pentium M as a desktop processor (East Fork) may not be all it's cracked up to be. Sudhian has an in-depth article, and Anand has benchmarks (on Linux!). I will stick with my Athlon 64, thank you very much."

BatonRogue writes "Apparently ATI provided a few Half Life 2 benchmarks to the press and some websites are actually using the benchmarks for their Half Life 2 performance reviews. AnandTech and HardOCP seem to be the only reputable sources of Half Life 2 performance data as they both put together their own benchmarks representative of Half Life 2 gameplay. AnandTech apparently went through every Half Life 2 level and put together a list of the 11 most stressful levels and then created 5 demos, while HardOCP put together two long benchmarks for their review. AnandTech and HardOCP's results appear to agree with each other, while the ATI-backed benchmarks show ATI with a huge performance lead in Half Life 2. Apparently (according to the AnandTech article), ATI was allowed to make their demos while at Valve before Half Life 2 was released, while Valve would not let NVIDIA remove any data from their time at Valve until the game was released. Politics at work as usual."

BatonRogue writes "Apparently ATI provided a few Half Life 2 benchmarks to the press and some websites are actually using the benchmarks for their Half Life 2 performance reviews. AnandTech and HardOCP seem to be the only reputable sources of Half Life 2 performance data as they both put together their own benchmarks representative of Half Life 2 gameplay. AnandTech apparently went through every Half Life 2 level and put together a list of the 11 most stressful levels and then created 5 demos, while HardOCP put together two long benchmarks for their review. AnandTech and HardOCP's results appear to agree with each other, while the ATI-backed benchmarks show ATI with a huge performance lead in Half Life 2. Apparently (according to the AnandTech article), ATI was allowed to make their demos while at Valve before Half Life 2 was released, while Valve would not let NVIDIA remove any data from their time at Valve until the game was released. Politics at work as usual."

Hack Jandy writes "It's been almost three years in the making, but Intel's BTX form factor finally has some retail products to show for itself. Anandtech has some extremely thorough benchmarks of the new technology and proves that BTX definitely shows an improvement over ATX for the same sized chassis. Anand claims BTX as a design win, "It's obvious why Intel waited for Monday morning to lift their BTX platform - they have a winner on their hands.""

BatonRogue writes "I didn't see this anywhere else, but it looks like Intel has quietly launched their Pentium 4 570J running at 3.8GHz. The J denotes Intel's Execute Disable Bit support, which they have also quietly introduced (it seems to save face of being 2nd to support it behind AMD). AnandTech seems to be the only place to have a review of the 570J. It performs reasonably well and even better than AMD in some areas, while falling behind in things like games. AnandTech has a nice one page benchmark comparison of the 570J to AMD's 4000+ as a quick reference."

BatonRogue writes "I didn't see this anywhere else, but it looks like Intel has quietly launched their Pentium 4 570J running at 3.8GHz. The J denotes Intel's Execute Disable Bit support, which they have also quietly introduced (it seems to save face of being 2nd to support it behind AMD). AnandTech seems to be the only place to have a review of the 570J. It performs reasonably well and even better than AMD in some areas, while falling behind in things like games. AnandTech has a nice one page benchmark comparison of the 570J to AMD's 4000+ as a quick reference."

BatonRogue writes "I didn't see this anywhere else, but it looks like Intel has quietly launched their Pentium 4 570J running at 3.8GHz. The J denotes Intel's Execute Disable Bit support, which they have also quietly introduced (it seems to save face of being 2nd to support it behind AMD). AnandTech seems to be the only place to have a review of the 570J. It performs reasonably well and even better than AMD in some areas, while falling behind in things like games. AnandTech has a nice one page benchmark comparison of the 570J to AMD's 4000+ as a quick reference."

Hack Jandy writes "Getting Linux to work on an XBOX became relatively easy a few years ago, and building an XBOX render farm became the next logical solution. Anandtech bought 8 XBOXes and clustered them into a neat project any hardware hacker could appreciate. Check out the results as Anand pits his 8-way cluster against some Xeon and Opteron workstations as well."

Mihg writes "Try searching Google Images for abu ghraib, lynndie england, or Lynndie's boyfriend charles graner and note how you don't get any pictures of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners of war. Now try it with some of their competitors, like AltaVista, Lycos, or Yahoo!. Google used to be able to find them, as is discussed in this AnandTech forum thread." I'm guessing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable". Update: 11/07 20:18 GMT by P : Google has a reasonable explanation.

CrzyP writes "AnandTech has put together an extensive roundup on eight, count 'em, eight 16X DVD burners capable of writing to dual-layer media. Some of the big names on the list include Pioneer, NEC, LG, Sony, MSI, and more. They explain in detail the current technologies implemented into the newer drives, like bitsetting and error control as well as run their reading/writing benchmarks on 16X and dual-layer media."

Steve writes "Today sees the launch of both a new CPU and chipset from Intel. The CPU takes the form of a 3.46Ghz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, running at 1066FSB, and the chipset is the i925XE, the first Intel chipset to support this new FSB. HEXUS.net have a review of both. It looks like AMD still have the lead when it comes to performance, despite Intel's attempts to counter the Athlon 64 FX-55." Hack Jandy links to more reviews at AnandTech, HardOCP, and ExtremeTech.

DarkSarin writes "Anandtech has a review of dual gpu's using nvidia's nforce4 SLI chipset. They are showing ~66 fps on doom3 at 1600x1200 with 4xAA turned on (a 75% increase in performance over a single gpu). It's not available yet, but it should be fairly soon."

Hack Jandy writes "Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider? AnandTech benchmarks Sun's newest w2100z and includes some sneak peaks at Solaris 10 and Java Desktop System 2. The biggest surprise at the end - it costs less than IBM and HP's configurations. Has Sun learned from the demise of SGI workstations that relying on one processor architecture is harmful?" CrzyP adds "They perform various benchmarks including 2D/3D rendering, compiling, encryption, and thermal and noise performance, and compare the 64-bit Sun box with various other configurations, including varying operating systems."

Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech has a bunch of insider information concerning Intel and AMD's move to dual-core CPUs. The article has lots of great information on how the move to dual-core processors affects modern computing - in particular, Anand sees more promise in multiple CPU cores that perform different operations, rather than just stamping two identical cores on the same processor like AMD and Intel are doing now."

s3k writes "Firingsquad.com takes a look at nVidia's new nForce4 chip. It now includes a hardware-based firewall for improved CPU utilization, support for Serial ATA 3 Gigabytes/second hard drives, Gigabit Ethernet, and most importantly, 20-lane PCI Express. Firingsquad includes game performance numbers with nForce4 Ultra and a few performance notes on nForce4 SLI, which, according to nVidia will need a 550-watt power supply!" pacmanfan adds a link to PC Perspective's article (including benchmarks), Necroman points out the coverage at Bjorn3d and Anandtech, and Atif Butt would like you to check ATIF Approved for their take. The same boards, the same NDA -- don't be surprised to find the reviews cover similar ground, and are mostly positive.

CrzyP writes "AnandTech.com has benchmarked the new "Athlon 64 4000+ and the FX-55" in various areas including business application performance, audio/video, gaming, and much more in this first look at AMD's newest 64bit chips. Just after AMD's announcement, AnandTech posted this article to help consumers choose between Intel and AMD."

yamla writes "Doom 3 was released for Linux sometime last week. LinuxHardware.org decided to test how well it runs compared to the Windows version. Read the article here, including some technical information from the id Software employee who did the Linux port, Timothee Besset." AnandTech has a similar review available.

Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech - the PC hardware site - took the Apple challenge and tried a Mac out for a month. The result was the most indepth Macdate I have even seen. As quoted by Anand, 'In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.'"

CrzyP writes "AnandTech.com has benchmarked the most popular graphics cards from ATI and NVidia on the Linux OS (SuSE 9.1). It is interesting to see that they have also written a custom benchmarking tool which can also be downloaded from the article. Take a look at Kristopher Kubicki's "Linux 3D AGP GPU Roundup" to see how each of the mid to high end cards performed on the Penguin flavored system."

Dishes of Ryan writes "I fell in love with the idea of an LCD monitor, so I ended up buying a nice, shiny Dell 2001FP. However, nowhere, and I mean *nowhere* did I read about LCDs having an input lag on them. For instance, if I scoot the mouse across the screen, there is a noticeable delay between when I move the mouse and when the cursor moves. To prove it to people, made a video showing exactly what I mean. You can almost forget being king of the hill on twitch FPS games like Unreal Tournament. Are there any other Slashdotters out there that are as annoyed as I am? What did you do?"

X43B asks: "I'm building a 'luggable' computer for numerical simulation work (very niche, I know). My goal is to have the best single precision floating point performance for under $1000. I have decided on a Shuttle XPC layout. I can build a AMD 3500+ for ~$80 less than a Prescott 3.4Ghz. I know the AMD is supposed to be a better 'general purpose' CPU however I found this comparison which says the Intels are better for floating point. Additionally, even though the AMD is somewhat cheaper, I have found the free Intel Linux FORTRAN compiler quicker than gfortran. So even if the AMD had similar performance for cross compiling, the Intel would be ~10% faster with the free compiler. Does anyone have any recommendations on AMD vs Intel for single precision floating point operations? If you recommend the AMD, what (cheap or free) compiler can be used that is comparable to the Intel?"