AMD (finally) sees the light in the tablet market?

Tablet PCs are often viewed as devices to access certain content while travelling, but in a lot of cases they are used as electronic book readers or portable Internet devices at home. As they become more powerful and universal, they may become a gateway into the living room for x86 microprocessors, according to a vice president of Advanced Micro Devices.

"Tablets present a wonderful opportunity for AMD. I have been in the PC industry for over twenty years; we really have struggled to get into the living room and it is clear that tablets are finding their way into the living room, a real consumer experience," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of products group at AMD, during a conference with analysts.

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Nvidia to release their GeForce GTX 590 dual-GPU in February

GeForce GTX 590 is the confirmed name of NVIDIA's coming graphics card flagship. With dual GF110 GPUs the beafy graphics card will offer 1024 CUDA cores and 3GB memory. Perhaps the most exciting is that the launch is set for February, in the same timeframe as AMD Radeon HD 6990 is expected to arrive.

NVIDIA's Fermi architecture have gone from being a laugh in 2009 to being the father of a very respectable graphics card family that boasts the fastest single-GPU graphics card around - GeForce GTX 580.

The company is on a roll now and is expected to follow up the launch of GeForce GTX 560 Ti with a new flagship. The new graphics card comes with dual graphics circuits and according to reliable sources the name is set to GeForce GTX 590.

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Nvidia are developing their own AA technology

NVIDIA is developing its own antialiasing (AA) technology to rival morphological antialiasing (MLAA). The subpixel reconstruction antialiasing (SRAA) NVIDIA is currently conducting research on aims to provide better image quality with minimal performance penalty. It "combines single-pixel (1x) shading with subpixel visibility to create antialiased images without increasing the shading cost," as NVIDIA puts it in its research abstract. SRAA is suited for rendering engines that don't use multisample antialiasing (MSAA) since they use deferred shading. For such renderers, SRAA works as a post-processing layer, just like MLAA.

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A review of MSIs Sandy Bridge laptop, the GT680

When MSI unveiled the new GT680R gaming laptop at CES this year, the company touted it as one of the "fastest, most powerful gaming notebooks in the world." As one of the first laptops to take advantage of Intel's Sandy Bridge processor, this laptop definitely packs plenty of power. Under the hood, you'll find NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics with 1.5GB of video memory, 8GB of DDR3 system memory, and two 500GB 7,200rpm hard drives.

The GT680R isn't MSI's only new notebook to offer a Sandy Bridge processor. Like MSI's other products based on the second generation Core processors, the GT680R offers USB 3.0 connectivity as well as the MSI Turbo Drive Engine for easy, one-touch overclocking. This 15.6-inch laptop supports full HD (1980x1080) with its LED-backlit display. There's also a HDMI port for outputting content from the notebook onto larger displays. The GT680R also comes with Dynaudio speakers and THX TruStudio Pro for a more true-to-life sound quality experience.

Read the full review here.

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PSA: Intel recalls its 6-Series Sandy Bridge Chipset due to serious flaw.

Intel has today announced that its 6-series chipset, for use with the Sandy Bridge processors released earlier this year, has a serious flaw and that the company is recalling and replacing the affected parts. The chipsets, which provide PCI Express, USB, and other connectivity to the processor, have a problem in their SATA controllers causing performance to degrade over time.

In its statement, the company states that customers who have taken delivery of systems with the P67 and H67 "Cougar Point" chipsets can continue to use their systems "with confidence," suggesting that the flaw is restricted to a performance issue and cannot cause data loss. Nonetheless, such users should contact their computer manufacturers to obtain a fixed system.

The flawed chipsets are no longer shipping from Intel, and the company has already started manufacturing corrected versions. These will reach customers by the end of February. Full production volume won't be achieved until April. Intel estimates that the full financial cost of the error will be around $700 million, with $300 million of that incurred during the first quarter due to the production interruption. The company has adjusted its investor guidance accordingly.

via ArsTechnica
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An analysis of gaming performance on Windows 7 SP1

So you're a Windows 7 user and you thank Microsoft every day for creating something that has gotten you off Windows Vista. Almost 18 months on and loads of little updates later, we finally find ourselves greeted with the first Service Pack for the operating system.

So it's got a list of fixes etc. - But we only really care about one thing when it comes to the new service pack. Is our gaming experience going to be any better? - It's not uncommon for a major release like this to offer us some free performance, and that's exactly what we intend to find out today; if we're able to get some.

Read the full review here.

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AMD readies 5W Fusion Ontario APU for tablets

Advanced Micro Devices claims that power consumption of its code-named Ontario accelerated processing unit (APU) can be reduced to 5W. Such APU can power devices like tablets, but it is clearly a temporary solution and going forward AMD will have to introduce a special chip designed specifically for tablets.

The limited edition AMD C-350 (1GHz) dual-core accelerated processing unit with 5W thermal design power (TDP) is a typical Ontario chip with some tweaks, e.g., different operation of input/output functionality, reduced amount of supported memory modules and some other, according to claims made by AMD in an interview with PC Watch web-site. At present the chip is used inside Acer 5745G hybrid tablet/netbook, which is projected to become available later this quarter.
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Intel briefly shows off an Atom SoC powered smartphone

Intel Corp. at its sales conference last week reportedly demonstrated a prototype of a smartphone featuring one of its Atom-based system-on-chip (SoC). The demonstration likely involved an early prototype of a handset running code-named Medfield SoC, which is due to be released later this year.

Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and co-general manager of the Intel architecture group showed off a Medfield-based phone at an Intel sales conference, according to a MeeGo developer who attended the event. The demonstrated smartphone was neither big or small; it was also not clear, which operating system the phone utilized.

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ARM launches their new Cortex-R Series of processors

The chips are designed to extend the architecture's footprint in mobile baseband environments (3G and 4G), mass storage applications as well as industrial and automotive markets - or the same market that Intel is targeting with its extended Atom processor strategy. According to ARM both the R5 and the R7 can be manufactured in single- and dual-core flavors.

The R5 is a successor to the previous R4 model with greater performance, while the R7 is pitched as a new model that "greatly extends the performance levels of the R-series beyond existing capabilities." ARM said that the new R-series is designed for low-power 28 nm semiconductor processes.

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Intels top-of-the-line Core i7 "Gulftown" 990X now shipping

A bunch of Polish retailers have apparently jumped the gun and started shipping Intel's flagship Core i7-990X Expensive Edition at prices starting about €900. However, we are still not sure when to expect availability in all markets.

The new processor has already been listed by several OEMs in their high-end rigs, but it was not available to the great unwashed in retail. The Gulfton-based six-core is clocked at 3.46GHz and it clocks to 3.6GHz with Turbo Boost. The TDP stands at 130W and it packs 6x256kB of L2 and 12MB of L3 cache.

This is the end of the line for Gulftown. Intel will replace the current generation with new Sandy Bridge E parts by the end of Q3 2011. Hopefully it won't sell them with broken chipsets.
via Fudzilla

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