t-break: Tech @ Its Fastest » CPU

Intel rumored to release Ivy Bridge CPUs in April 2012

Taimoor Hafeez — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 07:16:35 +0000

DigiTimes is reporting that according to Taiwanese PC makers, Intel will be releasing their upcoming Ivy Bridge processors on around 8th April 2012. There will be a total of 25 different models of both desktop and laptop processors released, ranging from core-i7s to core-i5s.

Source: Wikipedia

Ivy Bridge improves on Sandy Bridge by way of process, bringing it down to 22nm from the existing 32nm die size, as well as several new improvements, such as PCIe 3.0 support, higher CPU multiplier, 4K resolution video playback and more. Obviously the desktop processors aren’t the only ones benefiting from this improvement, with mobile Ivy Bridge processors also releasing alongside their desktop variants.

“Notebook CPUs Core i7-3920Qm, 3820QM and 3720QM will be released in April priced at US$1,096, US$568 and US$378, respectively. Other models including Core i5-3520M, 3360M, 3320M and ultrabook CPUs Core i7-3667U and Core i5-3427U will be unveiled later.”

As usual, new processors also mean new chipsets, and Intel will be releasing most of them in April, with a few in May.

“Desktop chips to be released in April will include Z77, H77, Z75 and B75, with Q77 and Q75 coming on May 13, the sources indicated. Meanwhile, Intel will also release notebook chips HM77, UM77, HM76 and HM75 in April before launching QS77 and QM77 in May.”

Apple’s A5 chips supplied by Samsung from Texas

Taimoor Hafeez — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:07:20 +0000

In a recent report by Reuters it was revealed that Apple’s current A5 processor, that’s used in both the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, is supplied by Samsung’s factory in Austin, Texas, instead of South Korea.

Samsung uses its 1.6 million sq.ft. factory, almost as big as 9 football fields, to produce the majority of the A5 processor chips for Apple. Earlier in the year, when the iPad 2 was launched with the A5 processor, and even the A4 processor used in the original iPad and iPhone 4, all production was done in the South Korean factory by Samsung in-house. Parts were then sent to Foxconn in China to be assembled into final products.

Earlier this month, the Austin facility went into full force with all of the A5 processors now being supplied to Apple directly from Austin.

Outside of the supply chain, Samsung and Apple have been in a plethora of legal battles against each other over product design disagreements between the two giants.

Perhaps it’s possible that Samsung wants to concentrate their full production of the current and next-gen Exynos processors used in their smarthpones for their factory in South Korea, while leaving the Apple processor production in US itself. One byproduct of this could be that supply costs increase for Apple as the A5 processors now have to be shipped from US to China, instead of neighboring South Korea.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime announced

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:11:07 +0000

After Nvidia recently announced of the new Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core CPU for tablets, ASUS was quick to announce that they’re the first one’s in the industry to launch a tablet with the Tegra 3 chip.

The new Eee Pad Transformer Prime has some incredible specs in its lean 8.3mm body. So first off, it has a 10.1″ Super IPS+ panel with over 600nits of brightness. The iPad 2′s screen has close to 350nits and is barely readable under bright sunlight. The rest of the 1280×800 screen uses 10-finger multi-touch and is covered in Corning Gorilla glass.

At launch the Transformer Prime will come with Android Honeycomb 3.2, but once optimized, ASUS will be releasing an upgrade of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich early next year. Apart from the quad-core Tegra 3 CPU, the Transformer Prime will have 1GB DDR2 RAM and will come in either 32GB or 64GB flavors. Speaking of which, the Transformer will come in either Amethyst Gray or Champagne Gold metallic spun finish on the back, giving it a very premium feel.

Of further interest isn’t the same old 1.2MP front facing camera, but the rear 8MP auto-focus camera that has a bigger f2.4 aperture size. This may very well be the same sensor Apple is using on their iPhone 4S. This will most certainly make the Transformer Prime not only the most powerful and fastest tablet on the market, but also one with the best camera.

Not satisfied with all of this, ASUS went once step further by claiming that they have effectively reduced input lag on the Transformer Prime, an issue that’s been plaguing all Android Honeycomb based tablets; bringing it down to 50ms compared to 110+ ms of other tablets.

All in all the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime…or EPTP (!) sounds like one hell of a tablet. It should be released here before the year end, and ASUS has priced it as a high-end version of the existing Eee Pad Transformer which will be sold alongside the Prime for the time being. The 32GB version will cost $499 (AED 1,900) and the 64GB will cost $599 (AED 2,300). The docking pad itself will remain the same, at $149.

AMD launches 8 core FX series CPUs

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:33:49 +0000

Today AMD finally launched their long awaited FX series performance CPUs. The new FX series comes in three forms, the FX 4100 series which is a quad core processor, the FX-6100 which is their hexa core processor and the FX-8120 and FX-8150 CPUs which are their flagship octa core processors.

AMD pegs the FX-8150 to the Intel Core i7-2600K and i7-980X in terms of performance in multi-threaded applications and games. With all CPUs unlocked and backwards compatible with AM3+ motherboards, AMD suggests the system price to be very low compared to Intel solutions, which certainly looks to be the case.

Those who want to see what’s next in the pipelines may want to look at the image below and…wait I guess.

Look out for our review next week where we go in-depth with the FX-8150 and see how far we can overclock this behemoth.

Q & A with AMD’s Raymond Dumbeck and Manish Punjabi

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 06:31:19 +0000

We got a chance to catch up with AMD’s Raymond Dumbeck, senior marketing manager for mobile and commercial products, and Manish Punjabi, field marketing manager for MENA and Turkey.

The future is smaller processors.

While discussing the recently released Llano APUs, we also talked a bit about the upcoming Bulldozer high-end processors. There’s also a little bit about AMD’s vision of their ATI graphics cards, now that they’re moving forward to a one chip future.

AMD 990FX Review: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX vs ECS A990FXM-A

Taimoor Hafeez — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:27:03 +0000

The new AMD 9-series chipsets brings with it the long awaited octa-core CPU support. These new AM3+ motherboards will support any AMD processor all the way till the good old Athlon processors of yore. With the 9-series chipsets, AMD brings support for SATA III (6gbps), PCI 2.0 2×16 lanes or 4×8 lanes, and up to 14 USB 2.0 connections. You will notice that USB 3.0 is sorely missing native support, but then that issue is moot because most motherboard manufacturers will just use a Marvell chip to control that.

Interestingly Nvidia cards can now run in SLI mode, but as I said earlier, the modes available will be 1×16, 2×16:16, 3×16:8:8 and 4×8:8:8:8 lanes in PCIe 2. Of course, the SB950 Southbridge is no slouch, perfectly complimenting the 990FX chipset with most of the I/O operations. It’s interesting to note that in addition for up to 6 SATA III port support, raid modes 0,1,5 and 10 are also supported on the 990FX platform.

Apart from the native support and future-proofing with support for the 32nm Bulldozer based Zambezi 8-core CPUs coming out later this year, there’s not much of an improvement over the 890FX. That means that aside from anything new the motherboard manufacturers choose to add as an extra, the 990FX platform doesn’t bring much new to the table; at least for the existing AMD processors.

For now, let’s take a look at our two contestants for today’s review of the 990FX platform.

Intel discontinues its Core i7-970 due to lack of demand

karar — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:50:44 +0000

Intel has announced that their six core Core i7-970 chip will be taken out of production as demand for it has been very less even after price cuts. Launched at the tail end of Summer 2010, the chip runs at 3.2GHz and under ‘Turbo Mode’ can clock up to 3.46GHz. The 32nm part with thermal design power of 130W almost immediately received a significant price drop, and is currently being hawked for somewhere around 2,250 AED, if you can find it in stock.

Now Intel has announced that its Product Discontinuance Program Support for the chip began on 6 July 2011 and will end with the firm shipping the last Core i7-970 chip a year later. For boxed chips, that is to say those in retail packaging, after 27 January 2012 it’ll be first come first served for remaining stocks.

AMD Llano A8-3500M APU Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:09:09 +0000

The mobile notebook market is currently dominated by Intel, there’s no denying the power of the Sandy Bridge (and its predecessors). AMD used to struggle to get a hold in this highly competitive, but continuously expanding market before; not anymore. With the introduction of the new AMD Llano APUs we have finally entered the next step in mainstream laptops and notebooks powered by a CPU and GPU on a single die that are good for gaming.

While having integrated graphics on a CPU is nothing new, Intel have been doing this for the past 2 generations on their Core i5 and i7 chips with Intel HD 3000 graphics, gaming was never a realistic option before. The best an onboard Intel HD 3000 chips can offer are barely decent framerates with the lowest settings and a measly resolution of 1024×768 in most cases. The game (no pun intended) is about to change with AMD Llano APUs though, as the split of transistors between CPU and GPU is almost 50% on the die, compared to Sandy Bridge with merely 20% dedicated to GPU..

This may come as a strange turn of events to some as it may indicate lower CPU performance compared to other similarly priced processors from Intel, but as you will see later on in the review, the small decrease in CPU for the huge increase in graphical prowess is more than justified.

The AMD Llano APU will be branded as AMDs new A-Series APU for their new Sabine platform of mobile processors.

As you can see from the specs sheet above, the A8-3500M is at the sweet spot for performance vs power; rated at only 35W TDP for both CPU & onboard GPU with 400 Radeon cores. Price wise the A8 processors will compete with Intel’s Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7.

The test unit we received from AMD is an unbranded 14” laptop which seems to have all the bells and whistles of a notebook that would carry an A8-3500M APU. Clocked at 1.5GHz, the four cores on the A8-3500M can go up to 2.4GHz in Turbo mode, while the Radeon HD 6620G on board GPU runs at 444MHz and HD 6630M discrete GPU runs at 485MHz on the core. The discrete HD 6630M GPU also comes with its own 1GB DDR3 memory, combined these two cards are called HD 6690G2 under CrossFire. The ram on our test system was 4GB DDR3-1333 plus 250GB internal HDD running at 7,400rpm with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit installed.

Another brilliant thing about the A-Series APUs is the onboard AMD Fusion Controller Hub that allows for multiples of SATA III (6Gbps), USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, and dedicated PCIe 2.0 x16 lanes for discrete graphics cards. As such, our test machine came with VGA and HDMI out, plus one USB 3.0 port and two USB 2.0 ports. Finishing up the system was a memory card reader on the front and a Bluray/DVD-RW combo drive.

GPU temperature monitoring guide

karar — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:06:00 +0000

For PC gamers, a GPU or 3D card is one of the most pricy as well as most rapidly upgraded item. So, its importance and safety is overall the top priority in a gaming PC. And the most common problems in GPU occur due to over-heating. Hopefully this guide will be useful for all of those who aim to setup some safety measures for this purpose.

GPU temperature monitoring is essential when you have over-clocked your GPU. Even if you have not over-clocked your GPU, its always better to keep an eye on it, as different games under different loads can cause heat-up more than expected. Of course, there are many other factors that increase the temperatures;reducing the life of components, if not causing permanent damage. However, most people don’t know how to monitor temperatures “efficiently”. So, we are presenting a guide which will inform you of some good practices and recommended softwares which will help you remain vigilant of any over-heating issues.

EnerJ: A software solution to reduce CPU load by 90%

karar — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:30:08 +0000

EnerJ a project of University of Washington aims to bring down the CPU loads, temperature and power consumption by 90%. And rather than a physical cooling solution, they aim to do this by an open-source software which will manage how calculations are done on CPU.

This software breaks all the instructions to CPU into two parts: one that require high precision calculations and other which is not so crucial. And separate voltage levels are maintained to reduce the power used by less crucial instructions. This allows them to do a power saving of around 50% right now. But EnerJ team hopes to increase this by 90% after optimization. This solution will be released as open source code for the world later this summer.

[via Gizmag]