pc experts

Next iPhone to be “thinner and lighter

2011-07-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

Both smug and anorexic

I suppose that this magnificent achievement will be pretty costly, but it’s not like anyone will care. (Is this your way of asking for a raise? sub.ed.)

Apparently, Apple’s manufacturer Foxconn had some difficulties assembling the new iPhones. Foxconn’s chairman already complained about iPhones and iPads being very thin, which hindered production somewhat. While the company hoped for improved yields in the second part of the year, it will not happen if Apple goes for even thinner devices, the company said.

Still, it seems like that won’t stop Apple from trying to flog some 40 million by end of 2011. Namely, one supplier claims that Apple told them to be ready to ship enough components to build 25 million iPhones. This, coupled with the earlier reported order to Pegatron, would indeed confirm Apple’s plans for 40 million.

The Wall Street Journal’s sources claim the new iPhones will come with 8mp rear cameras and Qualcomm’s baseband processors. Also, it will be thinner and lighter. We know we said that before, but we just never get tired of it.

AMD Bulldozer FX-8130P and FX-8110 CPUs for Sale

2011-07-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Well this is an interesting development. A hardware Website from Singapore started selling the 8-core FX-8130P and FX-8110 CPUs. The processors than went on sale are nothing more than engineering samples of the FX-8130P and FX-8110 based on AMD's B1 silicon revision.

That means the operating clocks may be lower than those of the final CPUs that AMD is expected to start retailing in August/September 2011, as these will use the newer B2 stepping.

The final version of the AMD FX-8130P is expected to feature eight processing cores with a base frequency of 3.8GHz, that can be increased up to 4.2GHz when Turbo Core kicks in. This is going to be AMD's only Zambezi FX processor to have a 125W TDP.

The second chip to be listed, the FX-8110, is expected to also feature eight computing core, but these will carry a base clock of 3.6GHz, a maximum Turbo frequency of 4GHz and will have a TDP of just 95W. Apart from the four Bulldozer modules, the FX-8130P and FX-8110 also pack 8MB of Level 3 cache memory and an integrated dual-channel 1866MHz memory controller.

Both Zambezi processors will come as Black Edition parts, meaning they feature an unlocked multiplier for higher overclocking headroom.

Pricing for the AMD FX-8130P engineering sample CPU has been set at 600$, while the FX-8110 is sold for 500$.

The prices are higher than the ones uncovered by us a few months ago ($320 FX-8130P and 290$ FX-8110), but this is expected since the processors sold are engineering samples of two yet-unreleased products.

Films and books on Android

2011-07-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

Google me that Americans have phones and tablets based on Android OS 2.2 from yesterday made available a new version of Android Market applications. Beside the new redesigned interface that is very much like the Windows interface Phonea 7, novelty is the possibility of buying books and borrowing movies. Paid content are related to specific Google account and are available either over the phone, tablet , or a classical computer.

For ease of troubleshooting to find the newest content, Google is basically an application interface added menus Books and Movies (with existing Apps and Games). They also added a new top list of contents, list of contents selected by Google (Staff Picks) and lists the contents assessed Editor's Choice award (ie the choice of editors).

Currently the option of buying books and borrowing films is possible only within the U.S., but Google has recently planned to offer these additional features and other users.

Two ARM A15 cores can outperform four Cortex A9 cores

2011-07-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

28nm dual A15 beats Nvidia’s 40nm quad-core

We just had a nice chat with some chaps from Texas Instruments, the people behind the highly successful OMAP architecture, and we can tell you that 28nm can be very interesting for tablets and phones.

Unfortunately for consumers, 28nm comes only in 2012, for most companies in the latter part of next year, but it will get ARM chips quite a significant performance boost. We just heard that two new ARM 15 cores are fast enough to beat quad-cores based on the current A9 design. This means that a dual ARM A15 chip can beat Tegra 3, aka Kal-El, a 40nm quad-core solution. Kal-El is expected in Q3 2011, in August / September timeframe and it will be a while until you see 28nm ARM chips in actual products, which should appear roughly a year later.

This kind of performance will probably put a lot of pressure on Intel and AMD, companies who traditionally don’t know how to make chips that deliver ultra low power consumption, and it doesn’t stop there. In 2013 you can expect some 20nm chips to continue the transition.

Bear in mind that in 2012 we will see Windows 8 as well as Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s OS that units a phone and tablet OS. Ice Cream Sandwich might come very late 2011 and it is promised to make a huge difference in the way users interact with tablets, phones and similar devices.

Of course, by the time Omap 5 and ARM A15 comes out, Nvidia should have Wayne A15 based 28nm as well.

2012 seems to be quite interesting year for tablet wars, as 2011 just kindled things up

ASRock pushing hard for PCI-Express 3.0

2011-07-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

Preparing release of four LGA 1155 boards

Following the release of ASRock's first Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 and MSI's latest Z68A-GD80 (G3) motherboard, it now appears that Asrock plans quite a push with four new motherboard models that will also feature PCI-Express 3.0 support.

All four motherboards will be based on Intel's LGA1155 socket and will feature either a single or two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. The motherboard will be known as the Z68 Extreme7 Gen3, Z68 Extreme 4 Gen3, Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 and P67 Extreme4 Gen3. The Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 is the only motherboard in this batch that comes with a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot while the rest will have two.

These four new motherboards are a high-end offer from Asrock and feature multiple PCI-Express slots with support for both SLI and CrossfireX, up to six SATA3 slots, USB 3.0 ports, dual or single gigabit LAN and much more.

In case you are wondering, the PCI-Express 3.0 offers up to 8.0GT/s of raw bit rate with 8Gbps of interconnect bandwidth and around 32GB/s of total bandwidth for x16 lane. These specs roughly doubles the speed of a previous PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots.

OCZ RevoDrive 3 is coming

2011-07-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

SSDs are designed for use in workstations

OCZ has launched two SSD's high performance - RevoDrive 3 and 3 RevoDrive X2. Both models connect to the motherboard via PCI-Express interface. According to the manufacturer, speed reading of data to model RevoDrive 3 are 1 GB / s, while the recording takes place at 925 MB / s and 130,000 IOPS. Step-3 model RevoDrive X2 data are read at 1.5 GB / s and writes at 1.25 GB / s to 230,000 IOPS. The available capacity in the range 240-960 MB.The price is not known, and SSDs will be shipping with a guarantee for a period of three years.

Smart cell phones for $ 100

2011-07-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Head of Microsoft's Windows Phone, said he believes in cooperation with partners can lower the cost of "smart" mobile phones at $ 100 by mid next year.

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, Andy Lees, President Phone Windows division, said it would cost devices based on their mobile operating system without operator subsidies fall to 100-150 U.S. dollars next year. Currently, the price of $ 200 or more, while a year ago were $ 400 or more. He also noted that Microsoft will offer Windows Phone on the market operating system for tablets, or as they look to pills as a kind of classical computers.

HIS rolls out HD 6970 IceQ Mix card

2011-07-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

HIS has officially rolled out its new HD 6970 IceQ Mix graphics card that was previously introduced back during Computex. Packing AMD's Cayman GPU, the new HD 6970 IceQ Mix also comes with LucidLogix chip that enables it to work with all other GPUs including Nvidia ones.

The spec list includes 1536 stream processors, a GPU clocked at 880MHz and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5500MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. It features two DVI, HDMI and two mini DisplayPort outputs.

The card uses HIS' well known IceQ dual-slot cooler with four heatpipes and a special blower fan that should provide up to 23 degrees C lower temperatures when compared to a reference cooled card.

Unfortunately, HIS didn't announce the price tag.