The Tech Report

Saturday Shortbread

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:33:00 -0600

Eight is Enough

VR-Zone: Intel's Extreme series Z77 motherboard specs revealed
AnandTech's MSI Big Bang-Xpower II X79 review - a world of novelty heatsinks
X-bit labs: Leading memory makers show DDR4 prototypes at ISSCC
X-bit labs: Nvidia pre-announces 4G / LTE smartphones with Tegra 3
T-Mobile announces LTE, prepares to take the U.S. wireless market by storm
All About Microsoft: Microsoft Office 15 apps to include 'touch mode'
Jay Wilson wanted to share a message with the Diablo III community
The weapons of Max Payne: The mini-30 rifle

Deal of the week: Games, games, games

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:39:00 -0600

Solid hardware deals seem scarcer than usual this week, but there are plenty of game download deals to make up for that—especially at Amazon.

Let's see... right now, the e-tailer is selling Deus Ex: Human Revolution for $10.19 and The Darkness II for $24.99 . The former ...

Zune, Windows Live brands said to be on the chopping block

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:42:00 -0600

Microsoft is cleaning house, it sounds like. We found out this morning that the company might cut down on the number of OS editions with Windows 8, offering only standard, business, and enterprise flavors. Now, The Verge reports that Microsoft may also be retiring its Windows Live and Zune brands.

The branding in the upcoming Windows 8 ...

Friday Shortbread

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:29:00 -0600

Eight is Enough

DigiTimes: Global HDD capactiy expected to be restored to 80% in 1Q12
Jon Peddie Research: Q4 graphics shipments increased 8.9%
Nvidia Kepler power circuitry revealed at VR-Zone: 300W TDP?
Fudzilla reports Kepler GK104 cards in production
Nvidia: Technology formerly known as VSMP gets a new stage name: 4-Plus-1
Bloomberg reports hp CEO sees Windows 8 tablet by year-end
Forbes: Sony has new console in the works, AMD building graphics
Massively: Blizzard tells Diablo III fans to lower their expectations

Linsanity spreads to motherboard market

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:23:00 -0600

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. ASRock has become the first company in the PC industry to hop on the Linsanity bandwagon—and it's pretty much the epic fail you'd expect. The problem begins with the press release, which touts the "Lincredible" miracle of ASRock's latest BIOS and driver update for its budget H61 motherboards. This update adds support for Intel's Rapid Start and Smart Connect. The former speeds waking up from sleep states, while the latter allows email and social networking apps to update while the PC is slumbering.

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A look at TR's new GPU test rigs

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:22:00 -0600

As I mentioned on the podcast this week, I have been working to re-fit Damage Labs with new hardware all around. Since I test desktop GPUs, desktop CPUs, and workstation/server CPUs, I have a number of test rigs dedicated to each area. Our desktop CPU and GPU systems have been the same for quite some time now. Heck, my massive stable of 30+ CPU results dates back to the Sandy Bridge launch. However, as time passes, new hardware and software replaces the old, and we must revamp our test systems in order to stay current. Oddly enough, we've just hit such an inflection point in all of the types of hardware I test pretty much at the same time. Normally, these things are staggered out a bit, which makes the change easier to manage.

Fortunately, though, I've been making solid progress on all fronts.

The first of my test rigs to get the treatment are my two graphics systems—identical, except one is dedicated to Nvidia cards and the other to AMD Radeons, so we can avoid video drivers for one type of GPU causing problems for the other. Also, I can test two different configurations in parallel, which really helps with productivity when you're running scripted benchmarks and the like.

The old GPU rigs were very nice X58 systems that lasted for years, upgraded along the way from four cores to six and from hard drives to SSDs. They're still fast systems, but it was time for a change. Let me give you a quick tour of our new systems, and we'll talk about the reasons for the upgrade.

Behold, the new Damage Labs GPU test rig. Innit pretty? In the past, our open-air test rigs have sat on a motherboard box, with the PSU sitting on one side and the drives out front. This system, however, is mounted in a nifty open-air case that the folks at MSI happened to throw into a box with some other hardware they were shipping to us. I was intrigued and put the thing together, and it looks to be almost ideal for our purposes. I'm now begging MSI for more. If we can swing it, we may even give away one of these puppies to a lucky reader. That may be the only way to get one, since this rack apparently isn't a commercial product.

Here are a few more shots from different angles.

Nifty and pretty tidy, all things considered. Even takes up less room on the test bench.

Now, let's talk specs. I had several goals for this upgrade, including the transition to PCI Express 3.0, a lower noise floor for measuring video card cooler acoustics, and lower base system power draw. I think the components I've chosen have allowed me to achieve all three.

CPU and mobo: Intel Core i7-3820 and Gigabyte X79-UD3 - The X79 platform is currently the only option if you want PCIe 3.0 support. Of course, even after Ivy Bridge arrives with PCIe Gen3 for lower-end systems, the X79 will be the only platform with enough PCIe lanes to support dual-x16 or quad-x8 connectivity for multi-GPU rigs.

Obviously, the conversion to PCI 3.0 essentially doubles the communications bandwidth available, but that's not all. The integration of PCIe connectivity directly into the CPU silicon eliminates a chip-to-chip "hop" in the I/O network and should cut latency substantially, even for graphics cards that only support PCIe Gen2.

The Core i7-3820 is the least expensive processor for the X79 platform, making it an easy choice. Yes, we've dropped down a couple of cores compared to our prior-gen GPU rigs. That's partly because I didn't want to get too far into exotic territory with these new systems. With four cores and a Turbo peak of 3.8GHz, the Core i7-3820 should perform quite similarly to a Core i7-2600K in cases where the X79 platform's additional bandwidth is no help.

We did want to be able to accommodate the most extreme configurations when the situation calls for it, though. That's one reason I selected Gigabyte's X79-UD3 mobo for this build. Even some of the more expensive X79 boards don't have four physical PCIe x16 slots onboard like the UD3 does. Those slots are positioned to allow four double-width cards at once, making the UD3 nearly ideal for this mission.

Cramming in all of those slots and the X79's quad memory channels is no minor achievement, and it did require some compromises. The UD3 lacks an on-board power button, a common feature that's only important for, well, open-air test rigs like this one. Also, the spacing around the CPU socket is incredibly tight. With that big tower cooler installed, reaching the tab to release the retention mechanism on the primary PCIe x16 slot is nearly impossible. I had to jam part of a zip tie into the retention mechanism, semi-permanently defeating it, in order to make card swaps easier.

Still, I'm so far pleased with Gigabyte's new EFI menu and with the relatively decent power consumption of the system, which looks to be about 66W at idle with a Radeon HD 7970 installed. That's roughly 40W lower than our prior test rigs, a considerable decrease.

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz quad-channel kit, 16GB - If you're going X79, you'll need four fast DIMMs to keep up, and Corsair was kind enough to send out some Vengeance kits for us to use. Setup is dead simple with the built-in memory profile, supported by the UD3.

PSU: Corsair AX850 - Our old PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W power supplies served us well for years, but they eventually developed some electronics whine and chatter under load that interfered with our acoustic measurements. It was time for a replacement, and the wonderfully modular Corsair AX850 fit the bill. Although 850W may seem like overkill, we had some tense moments in the past when we pushed our old 750W Silencers to the brink. I wanted some additional headroom. It didn't hurt that the AX850 is 80 Plus Gold certified, and I think the nice reduction we've seen in system-wide idle power draw speaks well of this PSU's efficiency at lower loads. (In fact, when the 7970 goes into its ZeroCore power mode, system power draw drops to 54W.) Even better, when load is 20% or less of peak, the AX850 completely shuts down its cooling fan. That means our idle acoustic measurements should be entirely devoid of PSU fan noise.

CPU cooler: Thermaltake Frio - The original plan was to use Thermaltake's massive new Frio OCK coolers on these test rigs, but the OCK literally would not fit, because the fans wouldn't allow clearance for our relatively tall Vengeance DIMMs. That discovery prompted a quick exchange with Thermaltake, who sent out LGA2011 adapter kits for the older original Frio coolers we had on hand. Although the original Frio isn't that much smaller than the OCK version, we were able to shoehorn a Frio in a single-fan config into this system. The fan enclosure does push up against one DIMM slightly, but that hasn't caused any problems. With a cooler this large, we can keep the fan speed cranked way down, so the Frio is blessedly quiet, without the occasional pump noise you get from the water coolers often used in this class of system.

Storage: Corsair F240 SSD and some old DVD drive - The F240 SSD was a fairly recent upgrade to our old test rigs, and it's one of the two components carried over from those systems, along with the ancient-but-still-necessary DVD drive for installing the handful of games we haven't obtained digitally. The biggest drawback to the SSD? Not enough time to read the loading screens between levels sometimes.

That's about it for the specs. I'm very pleased with the power and noise levels of these new systems. The noise floor at idle on our old test rigs, with the meter perched on a tripod about 14" away, was roughly 34 dB. I'm hoping we'll be able to take that lower with these systems, although honestly, driving too far below that may be difficult without a change of environments. Our basement lab is nothing special in terms of acoustic dampening and such. We'll have to see; I haven't managed to squeeze in a late-night acoustic measurement just yet.

For what it's worth, we have considered using a system in a proper PC case for acoustic and thermal measurements, but that hasn't worked out for various reasons, including the sheer convenience for us, typically rushing on some borderline-abusive deadline, of being able to swap components freely. We also have concerns about whether a case will serve to dampen the noise coming from the various coolers, effectively muting differences on our meter readings that the human ear could still perceive. We may still investigate building a dedicated, enclosed acoustic/thermal test rig in the future, though. We'll see.

Now that the new Damage Labs GPU test rigs are complete, I'm sadly not going to be able to put them to use immediately. I have to move on to testing another type of chip first. I'll get back here eventually, though. I still need to test Radeon HD 7900-series CrossFire, and I understand there are some other new GPUs coming before too long, as well.

Tribes: Ascend enters open beta

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:01:00 -0600

I logged a lot of hours playing the original Starsiege: Tribes. It offered fantastic multiplayer gameplay on what was at the time a pretty grand scale. Developer Hi-Rez Studios is trying to recreate that magic with Tribes: Ascend, a free-to-play title that enters an open beta right about now, at noon EST. You can set up a beta account for the game here. In only a few minutes, you should have access to the game.

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Windows 8 editions listed in HP driver notes

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:28:00 -0600

Now, this could simply be a placeholder, not a genuine list of the upcoming Windows 8 editions. Still, it's an interesting slip-up by HP. As Neowin points out, the revision notes for an "Alcor Micro Smart Card Reader Driver" on the company's website including the following entries, all nestled amid the list of supported operating systems:

If the list is genuine, then hats off to Microsoft for simplifying Windows' edition breakdown further. Provided the Enterprise edition remains unavailable at retail, as is the ...

Max Payne 3 PC to have 'gloriously increased' detail

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0600

Something amazing may be about to happen: a PC release will have enhanced graphics but won't be delayed til six months after the console version comes out. Rockstar Games has posted the first screenshots of Max Payne 3 PC, and it's promising "gloriously increased resolution and graphical detail" for PC gamers.

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Release roundup: High-end gear and a neat SATA dock

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:04:00 -0600

This week in the roundup, we bring tidings of fresh product launches from ASRock, PowerColor, Thermaltake, and Spire:

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ABC report shows Foxconn's iPad assembly line

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:50:00 -0600

Ever wanted a peek into the factories where Apple products are made? Well, you're in luck. ABC's Bill Weir has posted an 18-minute report with footage of a Foxconn factory in China where iPads are manufactured. If you don't live in the United States, the ABC report has snuck its way onto YouTube, as well, though I suspect it may not stay there long.

Apple (whose board members, incidentally, include ABC's CEO) authorized the report, and ABC got a surprising amount of access. It even interviewed real, live factory workers. I found that quite surprising, considering the factory tours we've done in the past have ...

Ice Cream Sandwich update trickling out to original Transformer tablets

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:04:00 -0600

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream... sandwich, that is. In a post on its Facebook page, Asus has announced that Ice Cream Sandwich, otherwise known as Android 4.0, has begun spreading to the original Transformer tablet via an over-the-air update. The update is hitting Taiwan first and is due to arrive in other regions "soon after." Commenters in Hong Kong and Singapore claim to have received the update already. My own Transformer waits patiently.

Well, it's waiting patiently—I'm not. I've already checked for the new firmware ...

Via QuadCore CPU rides in on new Mini-ITX boards

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:11:00 -0600

Remember the QuadCore CPU Via introduced last spring? We've been waiting for the chip to pop up in actual products, and now it has. Via's new EPIA-M900 and EPIA-M910 Mini-ITX boards are available with the quad-core CPU. The chip runs at "1.2+ GHz", which is Via's way of saying it has a 1.2GHz base clock speed with a 1.46GHz turbo peak. Riding shotgun on both boards is Via's VX900 chipset, whose integrated GPU boasts a ChromotionHD 2.0 video engine primed to accelerate 1080p video playback.

The EPIA-M900 is the more conventional of the two offerings, but it has a few tricks up its sleeve. In addition to a PCI Express x16 slot (with only eight lanes of bandwidth), the M900 features an old-school PCI ...

Forbes: Before ATI, AMD wanted to buy Nvidia

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:33:00 -0600

Here's a fun bit of alternate history for you: what if AMD had never bought ATI? According to an interesting story by Forbes, the company might have paired up with Nvidia, instead—and gotten a change in leadership for good measure.

Quoting a former AMD employee, the publication says ATI wasn't the only company AMD approached about a merger prior to the July 2006 deal . In fact, it ...

SanDisk ramps 19-nm, 128 Gb flash chips

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0600

And the next stepping stone on the way to uber-cheap solid-state drives has been laid. SanDisk says it has begun shipping 128Gb multi-level-cell NAND flash chips fabbed using a 19-nm process. Shipments kicked off last year, and the company says it's "already started to ramp into high volume production."

The chips are made up of a single silicon die with a 170 mm² surface area—that's about 60% of the size of a penny. SanDisk claims the chips are the "smallest . . . currently in production" ...