Wednesday 9 November 2011
Saturday 29 October 2011
AMD Does Not Expect Thai Flood to Reduce Demand Towards Its Chips
Advanced Micro Devices does not expect potential shortage of hard disk drives caused by flooding in Thailand to affect its business performance in the fourth quarter. The company projects that existing inventory of hard drives to be enough for Q4 2011 and is more concerned about its own supply problems conditioned by poor yields of 32nm chips at Globalfoundries.
"We do not see an impact in the fourth quarter, to be very honest, at least after discussing with our customers. We will have to see how this is going to impact the supply chain moving forward and into 2012. It depends on a lot of things, how long this situation is going to continue, and then how much damage needs to be repaired. But in short term, not much of an impact," said Thomas Seifert, chief financial officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during a conference call with financial analysts.
Due to flooding in Thailand, largest maker of hard drives Western Digital had to close its HDD manufacturing facilities down, while Seagate Technology suffers tight supply of components, which also reduces its output. In case there is a shortage of drives, PC makers will be unable to sell computers and will thus cut orders for microprocessors. Independent analysts believe that there will be enough hard drives for Q4 2011.
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"We do not see an impact in the fourth quarter, to be very honest, at least after discussing with our customers. We will have to see how this is going to impact the supply chain moving forward and into 2012. It depends on a lot of things, how long this situation is going to continue, and then how much damage needs to be repaired. But in short term, not much of an impact," said Thomas Seifert, chief financial officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during a conference call with financial analysts.
Due to flooding in Thailand, largest maker of hard drives Western Digital had to close its HDD manufacturing facilities down, while Seagate Technology suffers tight supply of components, which also reduces its output. In case there is a shortage of drives, PC makers will be unable to sell computers and will thus cut orders for microprocessors. Independent analysts believe that there will be enough hard drives for Q4 2011.
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AMD Beats Own Revenue Forecast Despite of 32nm Chip Shortages
Despite of the fact that Globalfoundries could not ship enough new-generation microprocessors made using 32nm SOI process technology to Advanced Micro Devices, the latter managed to beat its own revenue forecasts. Thanks to high demand towards its multi-core server chips based on Bulldozer micro-architecture and the popularity of Fusion A-series accelerated processing units (APUs), the company even posted $97 million income.
AMD said late on Thursday that revenue for the third quarter of 2011 was $1.69 billion, net income was $97 million (or $0.13 per share) and operating income of $138 million. $1.69 billion is higher than AMD anticipated in its mid-quarter update (up to $1.66 billion), but is still lower than the company predicted originally ($1.749 billion and upwards). AMD's gross margin was 45%, lower than the company forecasted due to lower-than-expected amount of new chips in the product mix.
Revenue in the third quarter of 2011 was adversely impacted by 32nm yield, ramp and manufacturing issues experienced by one of our foundry partners, that limited supply of Fusion "Llano" A-series APUs. Additionally, 45nm supply was less than expected due to complexities related to the use of common tools across both technology nodes, AMD said.
“Strong adoption of AMD APUs drove a 35% sequential revenue increase in our mobile business. Despite supply constraints, we saw double digit revenue and unit shipment growth in emerging markets like China and India as well as overall notebook share gains in retail at mainstream price points. Through disciplined execution and continued innovation we will look to accelerate our growth and refine our focus on lower power, emerging markets, and the cloud,” said Rory Read, the president and chief exec of AMD.
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AMD said late on Thursday that revenue for the third quarter of 2011 was $1.69 billion, net income was $97 million (or $0.13 per share) and operating income of $138 million. $1.69 billion is higher than AMD anticipated in its mid-quarter update (up to $1.66 billion), but is still lower than the company predicted originally ($1.749 billion and upwards). AMD's gross margin was 45%, lower than the company forecasted due to lower-than-expected amount of new chips in the product mix.
Revenue in the third quarter of 2011 was adversely impacted by 32nm yield, ramp and manufacturing issues experienced by one of our foundry partners, that limited supply of Fusion "Llano" A-series APUs. Additionally, 45nm supply was less than expected due to complexities related to the use of common tools across both technology nodes, AMD said.
“Strong adoption of AMD APUs drove a 35% sequential revenue increase in our mobile business. Despite supply constraints, we saw double digit revenue and unit shipment growth in emerging markets like China and India as well as overall notebook share gains in retail at mainstream price points. Through disciplined execution and continued innovation we will look to accelerate our growth and refine our focus on lower power, emerging markets, and the cloud,” said Rory Read, the president and chief exec of AMD.
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How to keep your PC computer running as fast as possible
Hello everyone, In today's post I am going to be looking at how you can keep your PC running as fast as possible without having to make any hardware changes at all. This guide will show you how to keep your PC software in top condition and keep it running quickly and efficiently. I will include some free programs that I currently use that keeps my PC running at top performance, Often my cheap computer will out perform more expensive ones because I take care of the software side of my PC.
The first step to increasing the performance of your PC is to make sure that there is no junk on the computer that will take up space and slow the hard drive performance down. To do this I recomend that you download and install CCleaner and CCEnhancer. Once you have downloaded them, Install CCleaner first and then install CCenhancer after. Once CCenhancer is installed open CCleaner and then on the left hand side tick all of the tick boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space"
Once you have ticked all the boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space" click on the tab at the top of that section that says "Applications" Once you have clicked that, Tick all of the boxes in the section that appears to make sure that you are removing all of the junk on your computer. If you would like under this section you can opt not to delete "Saved form information" and "Saved passwords" under Internet explorer, Firefox, Google chome, and Opera. This means that any saved passwords will still exist after you run this program.
Once you have selected all of the tick boxes click "Run cleaner" in the bottom right hand side of the screen. This will set the cleaner to work digging out and deleting all of the rubbish documents and folders that have built up over the course of using your PC. Once that section of the program has finished you can now move onto it's next part.
Click on the big icon on the left hand side that says registry. Once you have that section open, Click all of the tick boxes on the screen so that it cleans every section of the registry.
Once all of the tick boxes are selected, click on scan for issues. Once it has finished scanning a list of damaged/broken registry entries will be shown on the screen. You can now clock on fix selected issues and it will fix all the registry problems.
Now it is time to Defrag your hard drive to help regain the performance that it originally had before you installed and uninstalled programs and files. Defragging arranges the files and folders on the hard drive so that they are all in order which makes loading times much faster. Firstly download Defraggler. Once you have installed Defraggler open it and then click on the hard drive that you would like to defrag at the top of the screen as show in this image.
Once the drive has been selected click on the Defrag button that is located at the bottom left hand side of the program. This will set the program to defrag you hard drive. It is best to close as many programs as possible when doing this as that means that more of the files and folders can be defragged. Once it has started leave the computer and just let it finish this task on it's own as it can take quite a long time on a hard drive that hasn't been defragged often.
Once Defraggler has been finished it is often a good idea to run an Anti-Virus scan as well. I would suggest that you make sure your anti-virus program has the newest updates and virus definitions (which most programs do on there own anyway) and then run the program to do the most in-depth scan you can and let it complete it. As there are many different anti-virus programs out there I cannot really show you how to do this one in depth.
Once all of those tasks have been finished the computer should be a lot more responsive and fast running. I have bought back many PC's that people have thought to have been broken by using these 3 simple programs and everyone has been surprised at what a speed improvement they got.
Thanks for reading, Jack-O-Bytes
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The first step to increasing the performance of your PC is to make sure that there is no junk on the computer that will take up space and slow the hard drive performance down. To do this I recomend that you download and install CCleaner and CCEnhancer. Once you have downloaded them, Install CCleaner first and then install CCenhancer after. Once CCenhancer is installed open CCleaner and then on the left hand side tick all of the tick boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space"
Once you have selected all of the tick boxes click "Run cleaner" in the bottom right hand side of the screen. This will set the cleaner to work digging out and deleting all of the rubbish documents and folders that have built up over the course of using your PC. Once that section of the program has finished you can now move onto it's next part.
Click on the big icon on the left hand side that says registry. Once you have that section open, Click all of the tick boxes on the screen so that it cleans every section of the registry.
Now it is time to Defrag your hard drive to help regain the performance that it originally had before you installed and uninstalled programs and files. Defragging arranges the files and folders on the hard drive so that they are all in order which makes loading times much faster. Firstly download Defraggler. Once you have installed Defraggler open it and then click on the hard drive that you would like to defrag at the top of the screen as show in this image.
Once Defraggler has been finished it is often a good idea to run an Anti-Virus scan as well. I would suggest that you make sure your anti-virus program has the newest updates and virus definitions (which most programs do on there own anyway) and then run the program to do the most in-depth scan you can and let it complete it. As there are many different anti-virus programs out there I cannot really show you how to do this one in depth.
Once all of those tasks have been finished the computer should be a lot more responsive and fast running. I have bought back many PC's that people have thought to have been broken by using these 3 simple programs and everyone has been surprised at what a speed improvement they got.
Thanks for reading, Jack-O-Bytes
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Thursday 27 October 2011
AMD FX-Series Bulldozer Specifications Price and Info
Hey everyone, This post is going to be a simple table that shows you the specifications of the new AMD FX-Series Bulldozer CPU's
| Model | Cores | Threads | Frequency | Turbo Frequency | L3 Cache | TDP | Price |
| FX-8150 | 8 | 8 | 3.6GHz | 4.2GHz | 8MB | 125w | $245 |
| FX-8120 | 8 | 8 | 3.1GHz | 4.0GHz | 8MB | 125w | $205 |
| FX-6100 | 6 | 6 | 3.3GHz | 3.9GHz | 6MB | 95w | $165 |
| FX-4100 | 4 | 4 | 3.6GHz | 3.8GHz | 4MB | 95w | $115 |
Tuesday 25 October 2011
Windows XP 10 Years Old Today
Ten years ago, on October 25, 2001, Windows XP was released on retail shelves for sale.
Until September, Windows XP has still been the world's most popular operating system and will be, according to StatCounter, surpassed in market share by Windows 7. Born as the sixth major generation of Windows, the software was introduced in 25 languages around the globe, but did not sell well initially. Within the first three days after launch, only 260,00 copies were sold in the U.S. Windows XP only gained traction when drivers became available and system vendors began offering computers with XP preinstalled.
By 2006, XP had reached a milestone of 400 million active copies, according to an IDC analyst. The successor Windows Vista was launched in January of 2006, but enthusiasts as well as the notebook segment held on to XP and widely rejected Vista. Microsoft announced the discontinuance of Windows XP several times, but delayed the end of retail sales until June 30, 2008. OEM distribution of XP ended on October 22, 2010. Extended support for XP users is still available until April 8, 2014.
Even if it is a decade old, Windows XP is far from being dead. StatCounter suggests that Windows XP lost its OS market share leadership position to Windows 7 this month. Windows 7 has 40.41 percent of the market, while XP has fallen to 38.51 percent. This is still far more than Vista ever reached; Vista peaked at 23.60 percent in October of 2009.
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Until September, Windows XP has still been the world's most popular operating system and will be, according to StatCounter, surpassed in market share by Windows 7. Born as the sixth major generation of Windows, the software was introduced in 25 languages around the globe, but did not sell well initially. Within the first three days after launch, only 260,00 copies were sold in the U.S. Windows XP only gained traction when drivers became available and system vendors began offering computers with XP preinstalled.
By 2006, XP had reached a milestone of 400 million active copies, according to an IDC analyst. The successor Windows Vista was launched in January of 2006, but enthusiasts as well as the notebook segment held on to XP and widely rejected Vista. Microsoft announced the discontinuance of Windows XP several times, but delayed the end of retail sales until June 30, 2008. OEM distribution of XP ended on October 22, 2010. Extended support for XP users is still available until April 8, 2014.
Even if it is a decade old, Windows XP is far from being dead. StatCounter suggests that Windows XP lost its OS market share leadership position to Windows 7 this month. Windows 7 has 40.41 percent of the market, while XP has fallen to 38.51 percent. This is still far more than Vista ever reached; Vista peaked at 23.60 percent in October of 2009.
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Microsoft's Youtube Channel has been Hacked
Just one week after the Sesame Street YouTube channel was targeted, Microsoft's corporate channel seems to have fallen victim to some cyber tomfoolery.
Microsoft's YouTube channel was left without content on Sunday after a third party gained access to the account and removed all of the company's video. CNet reports that in their place were several short clips attempting to gather subscribers and a message that read "I DID NOTHING WRONG I SIMPLY SIGNED INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT I MADE IN 2006 :/" The Register reports that there were also some cartoon videos uploaded to the channel.
Microsoft later confirmed that it had lost control of the account for a period of time but was once again back at the helm and working to restore content.
"We have regained control of the Microsoft channel on YouTube, and we are working to restore all of the original content," a company representative told CNet. "We will continue to work with YouTube to ensure safeguards are in place for the future."
Things have been running smoothly since, and Microsoft's videos are all back up and running on its channel. However, the mystery of who gained access to the account and why remains. There's a certain amount of speculation from YouTube users commenting on Microsoft's page that the channel was once owned by someone else entirely, someone who registered in 2006, but that the handle was passed over to Microsoft by YouTube staff at some point. If this is the case, the credentials were obviously not properly changed, because the old user could still log in and out, upload and pull videos, and change settings such as the background. Neither Microsoft nor YouTube have commented on these rumors.
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Apple, Dell, Intel Expect HDD Shortage to Have Drastic Impact on PC Market.
Although the high-tech market tends to recover quickly from almost all kinds of disasters and large manufacturers often try to reduce their risks, the flooding in Thailand and consequent potential shortage of hard disk drives will clearly affect the whole PC industry in the coming quarters. But while giants like Apple, Dell or Intel are concerned, they remain relatively optimistic.
Intel, the world's largest supplier of microprocessors on the planet, said on Friday that it was keeping an eye on a dynamic situation in Thailand that directly impacts that hard drive supplies, but expects existing stores of drives and unaffected sources to help keep the PC industry supplied.
"The PC supply chain has proven to be very resilient, as most recently demonstrated in the response to the earthquake in Japan," said Jon Carvill, a spokesman for Intel, reports Reuters news-agency.
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Intel, the world's largest supplier of microprocessors on the planet, said on Friday that it was keeping an eye on a dynamic situation in Thailand that directly impacts that hard drive supplies, but expects existing stores of drives and unaffected sources to help keep the PC industry supplied.
"The PC supply chain has proven to be very resilient, as most recently demonstrated in the response to the earthquake in Japan," said Jon Carvill, a spokesman for Intel, reports Reuters news-agency.
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Intel Starts to Sell Unlocked Core i7 Processor
Intel Corp. has quietly added a new “unlocked” microprocessor into its price-list, which means that the chip is available to customers worldwide. The Core i7-2700K "Sandy Bridge" chip will extend Intel’s leadership on the market of high-performance microprocessors designed for overclockers.
Intel Core i7-2700K central processing unit has four cores with Hyper-Threading technology, 8MB of cache, integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller. The default clock-speed of the processor is 3.50GHz and the Turbo Boost top speed is 3.90GHz. Since the chip belongs to Core i7 family, it fully supports all of Intel’s advanced technologies like virtualization, trusted execution and so on. The microprocessor costs $332 in 1000-unit quantities.
The new processor is only slightly (by 100MHz) faster compared to Intel’s own Core i7-2600K chip and since both chips sport unlocked multiplier and can be easily overclocked, actual performance difference between the models 2600K and 2700K is somewhat doubtful.
Intel’s Core i7-2700K was supposed to ensure that Intel has the fastest chip in the $300 - $400 segment after the company’s arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices unveils its highly-anticipated FX-series microprocessors powered by Bulldozer micro-architecture. As benchmark results by independent researchers revealed, even AMD’s top-of-the-range eight-core FX-8150 CPU can barely compete against Core i5-2500K and is unable to beat the model 2600K.
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Monday 24 October 2011
What to Look for When Buying a Desktop Computer PC
Hey there everyone, Today I am going to be looking at how to choose a good computer that is right for your needs. There are many little tricks out there in the PC business that makes it hard to choose a computer that is correct for you and often support staff at computer shops will sell you one that is much higher cost than you really need to pay. I am going to look at all the basic stages of computers from Office PC to Gaming PC's and show you computers that are in those ranges so you know what to look for.
The Budget Desktop PC
A lot of people don't currently have a lot of money to spend on gaming PC's or extreme computers that will do anything in seconds so there is a massive market out there for budget desktop computers at the moment.
I class a budget computer as one that costs anywhere between £180-£250 ($285-$400) When you are buying a budget computer the main thing to look for is to make sure that it has an operating system included. Often on cheap computers they will leave out the operating system which then becomes and additional cost that you weren't prepared to pay for.
A modern budget computer will usually come with either a single or dual core CPU and around 2-4Gb RAM. The hard drive will generally be around 500Gb and there will often not be a graphcics card included. Here are a couple of examples of budget computers that would do for most simple tasks such as internet browsing and office work (England) and (USA)
The computer from eBuyer has a Dual core Intel CPU that is fairly out of date now but at this price that can be expected. The Newegg computer has a very good Quad core AMD CPU and 4Gb of RAM. It will easily be fast enough for any office and internet work that you throw at it.
Both computers have Windows 7 pre-installed so you can get them working straight out of the box so long as you have a screen to go with them.
The Mid Range Desktop PC
This is where things usually start to get a bit more complicated. At a price range of £250-£550 ($400-$900) many companies start to add in things like graphics cards and SSD drives. This can often complicate the choice quite a bit.
In this price range you should be expecting to get at least a quad core CPU and a 1Gb graphics card. I would also personally expect at least 8Gb of RAM and a 1Tb hard drive. I have found a couple of current examples of mid range PC's to show you what sort of computer you should be expecting to get for your money. (England) and (USA) The English computer there features a quad core CPU and 8Gb of RAM. It also has an Nvidia GT 520 graphics card which is very good at this price. As for the Newegg computer that has a Quad core Intel CPU, 8Gb of DDR3 RAM and a HD6670 which is a very good card to find in a computer at this price range. It also comes in quite a funky looking case which will apeal to most gamers.
Overall computers at this range will usually be very good at simple office tasks and internet browsing along with HD video decoding and possibly some light-medium gaming. Not bad for £250-£550 ($400-$900)
The High End Desktop PC
This next category is where performance really starts to become more about competing with the next person rather than just having it for the fact that it is nicer to use. I would class £550-£1000 ($900-$1600) as the performance PC section of the market. In this section of the market you can expect to get at least a quad core CPU minimum. Around 8-16Gb of RAM and a high end gaming graphics card. You can also expect to get a good copy of Windows 7 instead of the basic home edition one. I have found a couple of examples of computers that you can get in this price range.
(England) and (USA) Both of those example computers come with the latest range of Intel CPU's. The Ebuyer computer has a high speed Core i5 CPU and the Newegg computer has the newest Core i7 CPU. Both of the computers have 8Gb of DDR3 RAM which is the fastest type you can currently buy and both of them have high end graphics cards in the form of an Nvidida GTX 560 and GTX 570. Both of these cards are lightning fast and will easily be enough to power through most current games.
I am going to include these two websites as well in this post as these have helped me no end when building computers and recommending computers to people that I know.
The Budget Desktop PC
A lot of people don't currently have a lot of money to spend on gaming PC's or extreme computers that will do anything in seconds so there is a massive market out there for budget desktop computers at the moment.
I class a budget computer as one that costs anywhere between £180-£250 ($285-$400) When you are buying a budget computer the main thing to look for is to make sure that it has an operating system included. Often on cheap computers they will leave out the operating system which then becomes and additional cost that you weren't prepared to pay for.
A modern budget computer will usually come with either a single or dual core CPU and around 2-4Gb RAM. The hard drive will generally be around 500Gb and there will often not be a graphcics card included. Here are a couple of examples of budget computers that would do for most simple tasks such as internet browsing and office work (England) and (USA)
The computer from eBuyer has a Dual core Intel CPU that is fairly out of date now but at this price that can be expected. The Newegg computer has a very good Quad core AMD CPU and 4Gb of RAM. It will easily be fast enough for any office and internet work that you throw at it.
Both computers have Windows 7 pre-installed so you can get them working straight out of the box so long as you have a screen to go with them.
The Mid Range Desktop PC
This is where things usually start to get a bit more complicated. At a price range of £250-£550 ($400-$900) many companies start to add in things like graphics cards and SSD drives. This can often complicate the choice quite a bit.
In this price range you should be expecting to get at least a quad core CPU and a 1Gb graphics card. I would also personally expect at least 8Gb of RAM and a 1Tb hard drive. I have found a couple of current examples of mid range PC's to show you what sort of computer you should be expecting to get for your money. (England) and (USA) The English computer there features a quad core CPU and 8Gb of RAM. It also has an Nvidia GT 520 graphics card which is very good at this price. As for the Newegg computer that has a Quad core Intel CPU, 8Gb of DDR3 RAM and a HD6670 which is a very good card to find in a computer at this price range. It also comes in quite a funky looking case which will apeal to most gamers.
Overall computers at this range will usually be very good at simple office tasks and internet browsing along with HD video decoding and possibly some light-medium gaming. Not bad for £250-£550 ($400-$900)
The High End Desktop PC
This next category is where performance really starts to become more about competing with the next person rather than just having it for the fact that it is nicer to use. I would class £550-£1000 ($900-$1600) as the performance PC section of the market. In this section of the market you can expect to get at least a quad core CPU minimum. Around 8-16Gb of RAM and a high end gaming graphics card. You can also expect to get a good copy of Windows 7 instead of the basic home edition one. I have found a couple of examples of computers that you can get in this price range.
(England) and (USA) Both of those example computers come with the latest range of Intel CPU's. The Ebuyer computer has a high speed Core i5 CPU and the Newegg computer has the newest Core i7 CPU. Both of the computers have 8Gb of DDR3 RAM which is the fastest type you can currently buy and both of them have high end graphics cards in the form of an Nvidida GTX 560 and GTX 570. Both of these cards are lightning fast and will easily be enough to power through most current games.
I am going to include these two websites as well in this post as these have helped me no end when building computers and recommending computers to people that I know.
I have often found that when buying PC's the person selling them will say something such as "Dual Core 3Ghz CPU" now that really isn't that helpful as an older 3Ghz dual core will be much much slower than a modern Dual core 3Ghz CPU. I have also found that many people will sell a computer as a gaming computer even with a low end graphics card that has 1Gb of video RAM. A card such as the HD5450 1Gb Edition will be quite a bit slower than say a 5670 with only 512Mb of graphics RAM. The two websites above will help you compare the CPU's and Video cards in different computers and will show you which one has truly more performance. I will show an example of this now;
- HD 5450 1Gb - 304 Points
- HD 5550 512Mb - 612 Points
As you can see getting conned into buying a 1Gb model graphics card just for the RAM can leave you with a massive performance drop. Here is an example of some 3.0Ghz CPU's
- Intel Core i3 2.6Ghz - 3509
- Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz - 1730
As you can see, Both of these are dual core CPU's yet the lower clocked Intel core i3 has a much better performance score. This can be down to a number of things such as the amount of L1, L2, and L3 cache the CPU has and also the general architecture of the CPU die itself.
Overall there are many ways that companies and individuals can scam you when selling a computer and I hope that this guide has helped people to see where you can be caught out and what to expect when buying a computer. If you have any questions just post a comment on this post.
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