The Tech Report

Super Bowl Sunday Shortbread

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:33:00 -0600

7 Up

AnandTech: Understanding AMD's roadmap & new direction
AMD: The flexibility is in the fabric - AnandTech
AnandTech on AMD's tablet architectures: Hondo at 4.5W, future sub-2W SoC
X-bit labs: IBM quietly starts to make chips for AMD
Apple iPad 3 reportedly to debut on March 29
BioWare: Keep your Mass Effect 3 saves, just in case - CVG
Max Payne 3's new weapon: The 608 Bull (video)

Saturday Shortbread

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:25:00 -0600

7 Up

AnandTech: AMD's Rory Read outlines AMD's future strategy
VR-Zone: Motherboard prices expected to increase 10% by next quarter
and Kingston expected to drop pricing on NAND flash storage products
and info shared on GPU options for Dell's Alienware M18X R2
AMD presents your new AMD decoder ~~ring~~ key
AMD reports AMD Trinity ULV 3DMark scores revealed; AMD
Trinity for ultrathins platform to enable 18nm notebooks for $600 - $800
AMD: Leading graphics performance is critical for us
Fudzilla reports AMD 28nm Sea Islands official successor to Southern Islands
A secret TF2 project

Deal of the week: SSDs, graphics, and displays

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:31:00 -0600

If you checked our latest review, then you'll know why we're featuring Samsung's 830 Series solid-state drives in our deal post. Newegg offers 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB 830 Series variants for $109.99, $219.99, and $359.99, respectively. The drives may not be on sale right now (though they do ship with a free copy of Batman: Arkham City), but considering how well the 256GB model did across our test suite, we can't help but include them.

We already looked at a number of Radeon HD 7950 models in our recent availability check, but it's worth pointing out that Sapphire's version of the 7950 is still available at Newegg for $449.99 —last we checked, that was the lowest price ...

Micron CEO killed in plane crash

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:24:00 -0600

There's all kinds of industry news—exciting, provocative, shocking... boring. And then there's the kind of news that makes you wish things had played out differently.

This morning, Micron CEO Steve Appleton died in a "small plane accident" ...

Faster quad-, six-core AMD FX chips coming

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:34:00 -0600

We've spent a lot of time covering AMD's eight-core FX-series processors, but there's a whole line of FX chips out there, including more affordable quad- and six-core models. According to CPU-World, AMD is about to introduce two new low-cost derivatives;

The most affordable one will be the quad-core FX-4170, which will run at 4.2GHz with a 4.3GHz peak turbo speed. CPU-World found it listed for pre-order over at Bottom ...

BlackBerry PlayBook slips back under $200

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:58:00 -0600

Amazon's Kindle Fire isn't the only game in town if you're looking for a sub-$200 tablet—at least, not until next weekend. BlackBerry's PlayBook has gone on sale for $199 again, and the discount is scheduled to stick until February 11.

If the 16GB model seems a little limiting, fret not. You can also grab the 32GB PlayBook for $249 and the 64GB model for $299. Oh, and ...

Metro: Last Light pushed back to 2013

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:41:00 -0600

Bad news: you'll have to wait until 2013 for your next tour of post-apocalyptic Moscow's dark, mutant-infested subway tunnels. Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports that THQ has postponed Metro: Last Light from its original mid-2012 release time frame to early next year.

The stated reason for the delay? A "need for more polish," according to publisher ...

Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 to have shared kernel

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0600

We know that Windows 8 is taking a page out of Windows Phone 7's playbook by implementing the same Metro user interface. According to the latest reports around the web, Windows 8 will have even more in common with the next version of Windows Phone—but this time, Windows Phone will be the one doing the borrowing.

The folks at Pocket Now say they've gotten hold of a video , purportedly intended for "partners at ...

Friday Shortbread

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600

Eight is Enough

Wired: hp paid Intel $690 million to keep Itanium on life support
AnandTech has AMD's 2012-2013 server roadmap: Abu Dhabi, Seoul & Delhi CPUs
X-bit labs: AMD promises "full" Fusion of CPU and GPU in 2014
VR-Zone: Intel Core i7-3770K benchmarks leaked and AMD
A8-3870K makes it past 6GHz with memory at 3505MHz
and Intel's betting on Tizen and Atom marriage for smart TVs
X-bit labs: Intel shows off first Atom chips for micro-servers
PC Perspective: AMD processor and GPU roadmaps through 2013
Seagate: Shortage of disk drives to continue through 2012 - Computerworld
AppleInsider: Apple rolls out Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard updates

Release roundup: Gaming gear and a monster laptop

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:52:00 -0600

With Chinese New Year celebrations at an end, hardware makers in the Far East have started announcing fresh products again. This week, our inbox collected press releases from Cooler Master, Genius, Eurocom, and MSI.

...

Samsung's 830 Series solid-state drive

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:40:00 -0600

Despite being a consumer electronics giant that makes everything from smartphones to home appliances, Samsung has always been something of a dark horse in the PC storage industry. For years, the company cranked out some of the finest desktop hard drives around, yet they were often difficult to find in stock at online retailers. We got the sense that Samsung was far less interested in selling bare drives to the enthusiast community than the other hard drive makers.

Indeed, Samsung has now bailed out of selling hard drives completely. This past spring, Seagate announced plans to acquire Samsung's hard drive business. ...

AMD to go 'ambidextrous,' grow another ARM?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:31:00 -0600

Here at AMD's Financial Analyst Day, a procession of top AMD executives—from new CEO Rory Read to new CTO Mark Papermaster and new Sr. VP and GM Lisa Su—has used a metaphor about being "ambidextrous" when it comes to architectures, meaning CPU core instruction set architectures. The somewhat oblique yet obvious implication: that AMD's future products will eventually include chips with ARM CPU cores for markets where it makes sense.

Dr. Su made the boldest statement on this front, proclaiming that AMD will take advantage of all sorts of ecosystems, from Windows 8 ...

Alan Wake coming to the PC in two weeks

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:30:00 -0600

A whopping 20 months after its release on the Xbox 360, Remedy's Alan Wake is about to make its way onto Windows PCs. Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports that the PC release has been set for February 16.

Surprisingly, it doesn't look like Alan Wake will be another throwaway PC ...

Bethesda serves Skyrim 1.4 patch, previews mod kit

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:31:00 -0600

After a short public beta that began last week, Skyrim's 1.4 update has now been released into the wild. Bethesda announced the update's mass availability on its blog late yesterday, throwing in the (long) list of bug fixes and "quest fixes" for good measure.

For once, PC gamers are first. Bethesda says it's submitting the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of ...

Facebook files for IPO, reveals monster profits

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0600

You've probably heard about this by now, because it's all over the news: Facebook has filed for its initial public offering. What you may not know are the numbers, and I feel compelled to point them out.

According to Forbes , Facebook had net income of $1 billion on revenue of $3.71 billion for 2011, up from $606 million net income and $1.97 billion revenue for the ...