Technology News & Reviews

Bulldozer: The Aftermath

2011-10-19T02:03:00.000-07:00

Since all the official benchmarks have now been released, we know about how Bulldozer has been competing. Unfortunately, it's not great.
After all this time it's still having to compete with the i5 2500k, sure in some places it gets ahead but it general it doesn't balance out as a great chip, the IPC is even beaten by the Phenoms, which is never a good sign. A new stepping, B3 should be coming out soon, not soon enough if you ask me.
We need to know more about this stepping to see what kind of improvements it could make, there have been claims that a registry fix is also necessary to improve Bulldozer, improvements of 40% have also been claimed, but you'd expect that such an improvement could not be entirely down to the registry.
I'm sure new benchmarks will come out with the stepping, hopefully affecting that huge power drain and the TDP, people are still buying the chip regardless of it's current problems, if there is such an improvement with this second stepping.. I wonder how those people will feel, they've been through a lot already if they're still willing to by the chip.
That's all for now, more ranting and raving at a later date.
Have a nice day.

Bulldozer took it's time.

2011-10-12T04:38:00.000-07:00

Looks like the bulldozer modules are finally here, Zambezi has arrived.

The unfortunate point is that the benchmarks may not be as promising as previously expected, this being let down in some amount by the architecture of the chip, for even in the FX-8150 there are only four FPU schedulers, which is even less than the 1100T, the highest rated Phenom. Where the FX does begin to pull back some ground is when rendering, video compression and conversion are involved, the multiple modules and cores really having an impact on the performance.

I've been waiting all this time to see what I should build my new pc as, I expected more from the Bulldozer, considering this is the flagship chip, and to see it lose out to the i5 2500k and even the 1100T in tests isn't good. In the end it comes down to what you want to do with the chip.

Although in the future, the sound of bulldozer modules housed in an APU does sound promising, as long as they put a few more FPUs in there and keep the prices down, i'm sure we'll all be happy.

I'll be updated a lot more regularly, keep posted.

Until next time.

SSDs and Laptops: The Heaven Combination

2011-06-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

When you get money rolling in and you happen to have a penchant for buying technology it gets very tempting to spent it on things which aren't particularly necessary, for instance, putting a SSD into a laptop.
I'm very tempted to do this, my laptop runs everything I want it to, for instance Minecraft and the few other games I occasionally play, but having the ability to boot and recover from sleep as fast as SSD's show you can then it is hard not to.
Obviously the problem with doing this in a laptop and not a desktop is that if you do not have two hard drive bays then the SSD will be the only capacity in your laptop, so a size too small isn't going to be helpful, which means the price which you can actually start buying at goes up.
For me i'd probably go for around a 240/300gb hard drive, my current hard drive is 320gb and I have a serious amount of space in there which I know i'll never fill.
Then it comes down to speeds, you're going to pay more if you want a larger impact on the boot times, a normal hard drive will probably read at about 70mb/s, when it's in a decent condition, so if you're going to be spending around 200-250$.
At these prices the read speeds vary from 210mb/s to around 400, so it really depends what reviews you've heard or what size you want really.
I'm probably going to buy either a crucial or an ocz, I know both are very capable of what i'd task them with so when I get round to it, I'll buy it.

Goodbye for now.

Laptops: Their strengths and flaws.

2011-05-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

Laptops, are they a viable replacement for desktops or not? Well it completely depends on the situation and the user. Some people will never come to grips with laptops, we can assume these people are hardcore gamers and overclocking enthusiasts, but to them, we don't mind, they can do as they please.
With a laptop you get mobility, and it's good knowing you can access all the programs you need wherever you are.
But when purchasing a laptop, what would be classified as a good choice and what would not? We're here to find out.
No matter what the budget, you should not have to settle for a Celeron or a Pentium now, 1st generation i processors are very cheap and much more effective in comparison to the forms which cam before it.
Depending on whether you want to do some casual gaming or otherwise, a dedicated gpu is advisable, unless you're tempted to get Llano, but we'll come to that later.
2gb of ram was acceptable and plentiful when a 32bit system was more common, but with the greater increase of 64bit systems on the market 2gb isn't really enough anymore, i would advise 3 or 4, I personally have never got over 4gb myself and that is with a lot of things running, more than enough.
When taking into account doing some heavy cpu related tasks, I always considered Intel as a more compitent choice due to it's Multi-threading, having a relatively powerful gpu to go with it was expected.
In the idea of Llano, as stated in a previous update it still clings to the K10 architecture which means it's not going to compete with Multi-threading or Intels laptop cpus yet, but with the on chip die and gpu heightened ability, in comparison to the Intel HD which is available on Intel chips, it is multiple times more powerful.
As far as hard drives go, get the size which is most attractive to you, my laptop is used for just occasional minecraft and some browsing online, so I have a 320gb hard drive. I feel no need for more.
One of the flaws with owning a laptop is the usability of a powerful laptop, or a workstation replacement laptop, because a laptop is meant to be portable and once it gets to a certain point then the battery is just insignificant.
Also laptops suffer from a serious problem, with a desktop computer, you can have a large case with efficient airflow, or remove the side to help with cooling, with a laptop you need the base so you can rest it on your legs, removing panels isn't as effective. Cooling on a laptop is difficult, the idle temperature you can expect to be higher than normal on a desktop, as we know, the cooler something runs the more efficient it will be, therefore the greater battery life it will have.
I'll continue this again in another update, there's a lot to put.

For now, goodbye. I hope you enjoyed the post.

AMDs comeback.

2011-05-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

The new release from AMD are coming into fruition, APUs, Accelerated Processing Units.
Their releases are for june, in which Llano for the laptops and desktops are available.
The Llano is the only new release hanging on to the original K10 architecture which was shown with the Phenoms beforehand, both the Zambezi and the Bulldozer will be composed of a new architecture.
Although this being said, the Llano is which has an on chip graphics die, the chips being focused more on balanced gpu usage with our ever changing ways of using computers.
The Llano are being released at Computex on June 1st, and the on the 7th for the desktop.
With the ever prominent AMD ethics of chip pricing, you can expect a Llano to cost approximately $300-350.
AM3+ compatible motherboards are already on the market, AM3 chips are compatible, so investing in a motherboard now and waiting is possible, just not advised.
In my opinion I cannot wait until these hit the market, how they take on SandyBridge will be very interesting to watch.
I'll probably be buying one relatively soon after release, i'm very excited.

Until about later on today when I update once again!
Goodbye.

Llano, an AMD production.

2011-03-16T03:07:00.000-07:00

AMD seems to be giving its all to regain a greater market share. Llano will be the desktop and mobile new chips available mid 2011, as we know now the Bulldozer will be facing off with the Xeon and Bobcat will compete with the Atom.
The Llano though, that is a different matter altogether, it is redefining the idea of a cpu, for it isn't a cpu, it's an APU. An APU is a combination of a CPU and a GPU, rolled into a single chip.
You'd first believe there is speculation to if this would perform well enough to be a good investment if you want a powerful pc? Well it is.
It has been measured to be equivialent in cpu power to a Phenom 1090T, the 3.2Ghz Hex-Core from AMD, so you're thinking so far it's got at least a decent level of calculating power, but what about the graphics aspect? Before I point this out, I'll state this.
You do not need to buy, a seperate graphics card if you have Llano.
So with that in mind, the graphics power will be equal to a 6000 series HD radeon.

So in summary, that's a 1090T, 6000 series HD radeon, in a single chip, which is a quarter the size of a phenom cpu.
With this being AMD, you can only expect the price to be mindblowing.

I can't wait to see how it benchmarks in all honesty, I truly believe it could be a good investment.
But for now, i'll love you and leave you. Till next time.

SSDs.

2011-01-31T02:17:00.000-08:00

The not necessarily brand new, but a subject worth covering.
ssd have had long enough now to come in capacities of normal hard drives, but unfortunately the prices associated with these are more than extortionate.
For a 1 terabyte ssd, the prices are in the thousands of dollars.
When you can get a 1 terabyte hard drive for around fifty.
Again, although i'm English i'm talking in dollars because that's where my audience seems to be.
Although the kind of ssd you need will ultimately come down to how you intend to use it.
If you're going to be using a ssd as a primary and your only drive then you'll need a drive with an equally good write speed as read speed (OCZ have good drives for this, 285mb/s read 275mb/s write. Although if you're only using the ssd as the operating system drive and then a larger spinpoint hard drive as the slave then you can negate a larger write speed for a greater read speed (Corsair C300s are perfect with 355mb/s read 75mb/s write).
PCI-E ssds are even faster, but the speed does come with a considerably larger price tag.
A 50gb PCI-E ssd will cost you $215, that is a serious amount of money for such a small amount of storage.
Even with 540mb/s read and 450mb/s write.

In summary, if you're willing to purchase a ssd for the prices which are around then go ahead.
My recommendation is get an operating system drive, like the Corsair C300, then just have a larger spinpoint drive, for instance the Samsung F3. This combination would cost $185 from newegg, that is good for the speed and capacity you would be getting out of it.

I'll see you all again, but goodbye for now.

Bulldozer? Sandy Bridge? ATI?

2011-01-26T02:23:00.000-08:00

With the recent release of Sandy Bridge, Intel seem to have taken a leaf out of AMDs book.
These cpus are benchmarking much higher than the processors that Intel would usually sell for this price, for $320 you can purchase the i7-2600k. This benchmarks only slightly lower than the i7 970, which is almost three times the price.
In saying this AMD are going to try to regain some grounds with the introduction of Bulldozer, and Bobcat.
AMD are hoping that this will be the success that Opertron was against Intel in the server sector.
Again, as a blog i'm trying my best to be impartial so we'll just have to see.
I just hope that AMD sticks to its guns and continues to offer very effective processors.
Unfortunately with the recent problems AMD has had with its ATI graphics cards they are going to be trying hard to keep their market share and possibly increase it with the impending release of the GTX 560.
What is ATI going to do? They are going to be lowering the price of all 6XXX series graphics cards, and with an impending driver release for all of these to attract a serious amount of attention back to themselves (after the unfunctional drivers for newly released cars and the fan/component conflict which ended with having to sand down the corner inside so the fan would fit) but other than that we can only hope that ATI continues pushing forwards in its endless fight with nVidia.

For now I say goodbye, until next time.
Thank you for reading.

2010-09-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

Time for another blog me-thinks.
I'll be updating more rapidly nowadays, i'm sorry for such a delay.
Although I said i'd be moving on to another high street retailer I feel compelled to go back to bitch and moan about PC world.
I did a recent search on their website, out of boredom.
I searched for ram, nothing out of the ordinary there just when it came to the eventuality of these products coming up, I was happy to see some very old ram available, DDR-400 (DDR is the predecessor to DDR2, and then again to DDR3 ram so it is quite old). This was also the size I needed it in, so i was contemplating revoking my previous statements on how bad PC world is, this is until I saw the price.
£25. For 512mb ram, i've heard of extortion just not on levels like this. Never before have I seen such a large price on something so outdated. I'd advise everyone to stay well clear of PC world as profit is the only word you'll hear lingering in that store.

More next time.
Out, T.

Desktop!

2010-08-31T04:35:00.000-07:00

Looks like i need to rebuild my desktop.
Well I say mine, my parents old one. They're absolutely useless with any form of technology so it comes down to me.
Being a typical male power is everything, and this desktop being so old it should be made out of stone.
PCWorld, to me, they know nothing. I go in there, ask about RAM and instantly they have to pass me on to someone else who also doesn't know. In my opinion go somewhere else, i'll be trying more high street brands for their knowledge to judge which is best.
So far my opinion online sources is that Overclockers.co.uk is a very good and knowledgeable company.
I shall update when I want to talk more random stuff, or to comment about these know-nothings.
Bye for now.

Hurrdurr etc etc.

2010-08-29T06:18:00.001-07:00

Well. This is a space filler. Hopefully more pictures and things will come up soon.
When I have time. In the mean time, i click you. you click me. Cheers.