Thread: Anandtech News

AMD today released the final version of the Catalyst 11.10 driver package for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7, Windows Vista desktops and laptops and Windows XP desktops.
The full release notes don't mention the Battlefield 3-related enhancements highlighted in the 11.10 beta release, but five-display Eyefinity configurations (of a maximum resolution of up to 16000 x 16000 pixels) are now supported, and a new "bezel compensation" feature can adjust for displays with different pixel densities.
We also get some fixes, most of them under Windows 7 - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Lost Planet 2, F1 2010, Dirt 2, Google Earth, and Mafia II are among the games and programs that have crashing or corruption issues fixed, as well as a display corruption issue that I myself have noticed when running multiple monitors with Aero enabled. For the full list of changes and fixes, the release notes are linked below.
The driver package supports most of AMD's DirectX 10 and DirectX 11-capable Radeon cards. As always, the new drivers can be downloaded from AMD's web site, through the Catalyst software's automatic updater, or via Steam.
Source: AMD



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History loves to repeat itself, and even Apple isn’t immune to the yearly cycle of rumor and release. Leading to each year’s iPhone refresh, excitement, rumors, and hype build to a fever pitch, features and designs are added into an increasingly unrealistic combination, and finally everyone is silenced at the device’s eventual unveiling.

Today we’re looking at Apple’s latest iPhone refresh, the iPhone 4S (henceforth just 4S). Read on for our full review!


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Yesterday Seagate had three members of its Barracuda family of 3.5" hard drives: the Barracuda Green, Barracuda, and Barracuda XT. Today, all three lines are being folded under the Barracuda name. The Barracuda Green drives will cease production in February 2012. The Barracuda XT, Seagate's flagship 3.5" drive, will eventually be replaced by a solid state Hybrid drive at some point in the future. Until then, if you want a 3.5" hard drive from Seagate - it'll just be called a Barracuda.
The new Barracuda lineup is top-to-bottom 7200RPM. Seagate makes up for the extra power required to spin at 7200RPM (vs 5900RPM for the Green drives) by moving to 1TB platters and a faster cache. Increasing platter density has been the preferred route of increasing performance in hard drives over the past decade, causing spindle speeds to stagnate but sequential transfer rates to increase steadily. The new 1TB-per-platter Barracuda disks are no exception. Despite not carrying the XT label, the new 3TB drive is capable of noticeably higher sequential read/write speeds compared to the outgoing Barracuda XT.

Seagate also updated the controller (now built on a 40nm process) and DRAM (now up to 64MB of DDR2) on the new Barracuda line. The 1TB platter drives are available in 1TB, 1.5TB, 2TB and 3TB capacities. Their prices and model numbers are below:

Seagate's 1TB-per-platter Barracuda Lineup
Model Number	Capacity	MSRP
ST3000DM001	3TB	$179.99
ST2000DM001	2TB	$105.99
ST1500DM001	1.5TB	$83.99
ST1000DM003	1TB	$71.99

We'll have a full review of the new 3TB flagship drive later today.

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For the last couple of years AMD has been pretty consistent about cascading their GPUs through their entire product line. Nowhere is this more evident than their professional graphics lineup, where consumer desktop video cards have transitioned over to professional products at almost 6 months on the dot. In May of this year we saw the introduction of the Cayman based FirePro V7900 and V5900, and now just a bit over 6 months after the Turks based Radeon 6570 and 6670 launched, Turks is getting the professional graphics treatment with the FirePro V4900.

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In 2009, Piranha Games released a trailer intimating that they were working on a new MechWarrior title. Recently, the company announced MechWarrior Online, a free-to-play multiplayer mech simulator set in the Battletech universe.
In a dev blog, Bryan Ekman, Creative Director of Piranha, explained how the company’s attempts to secure a publishing deal redefined and ultimately derailed the MechWarrior project they had planned. The game was pitched as an Xbox 360/PC release, but “the scope and budget required to develop a console reboot needed the support of a PS3 SKU and we just couldn’t convince publishers to take a risk.”
The PC-exclusive MechWarrior Online will feature a first-person cockpit view and Ekman hopes to include joystick support. Ekman’s also trumpeting urban combat zones and “information warfare” as the game’s two big design pillars. Fighting in (and hopefully destroying) details cityscapes should ameliorate issues of excessive long-range sniping, and disrupting or controlling the flow of information should encourage players to experiment with a wide variety of mechs.
The specifics of the free-to-play plan are scant, though Ekman assured PC Gamer, “Anything that would affect or give you a tactical advantage, you can’t purchase with real cash. You have to earn that by playing the game.”
MechWarrior Online is slated for a 2012 release. Those looking for more information or looking to register their pilot name ASAP should head to Piranha’s site.
Source: Piranha Games, PC Gamer



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We did a thorough review of the base model Dell XPS 14z last week for the official announcement, and starting today the XPS 14z is available for ordering. At 0.9" thick, the 14z flirts with ultrabook sizes but comes equipped with a much larger 8-cell 58Wh battery and an optical drive. For those that want battery life and still need an optical drive, the added girth relative to ultrabooks is unlikely to matter much. We measured peak battery life of over seven hours, with over five hours of useable (e.g. web surfing) mobility and four hours of H.264 video playback.
For casual users, the $1000 base model should be sufficient. It comes equipped with a Core i5-2430M, 6GB RAM, a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, and the usual assortment of ports and other features (e.g. USB 3.0, webcam, wireless networking, etc.) If you'd like a little more oomph in the graphics department, the $1200 model adds a GeForce GT 520M and increases the RAM and HDD to 8GB and 750GB, respectively. Add another $100 and you upgrade the CPU to the i7-2640M, which should boost CPU performance by 17% (in both base speed and maximum Turbo Boost). Or at the top-end you can get all of the above and swap out the HDD for a 256GB SSD for a final cost of $1600.
Where the XPS 14z fails to impress is in its LCD, a 1366x768 run-of-the-mill offering that does nothing to stand out from the crowd of basic 14" laptop displays. In fact, it has one of the lowest contrast ratios we've measured in the past two years. That's a shame, as there's otherwise plenty to like with the core 14z design, including a thin bezel on the sides that allows Dell to fit a 14" LCD into a chassis size typically used with 13.3" LCDs.



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Up until now, if you wanted a Windows Phone, it'd implicitly come with a Qualcomm SoC inside. The Windows Phone platform started out with QSD8x50 (first generation Snapdragon), and has recently moved to MSM7x30 and MSM8x55 (second generation) SoCs, all single core. Today, ST-Ericsson has announced that it too is joining the fray with its dual core NovaThor SoCs inside future Nokia Windows Phone smartphones. We haven't seen much of NovaThor since its arrival, but its U5500, U8500 and U9500 SoCs bring dual core Cortex A9 CPUs and ARM Mali-400 GPUs alongside some onboard cellular connectivity.

U9500 Block Diagram (Source: ST-E)

As we discussed previously, this initial Nokia Windows Phone lineup (consisting of the Lumia 800 and 710) are based on 1.4 GHz MSM8255 SoCs. This announcement from ST-E appears to be directed at the next iteration of Windows Phones up Nokia's sleeves.
Source: ST-Ericsson



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I'd almost given up hope that someone would acquire SandForce. After taking so long to fix the infamous BSOD issue and our own interests beginning to shift away to other vendors, the future of SandForce seemed somehow less important. Just last week however LSI announced its intention to acquire SandForce, a deal that should close in early 2012.
At first glance, the LSI acquisition didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The one thing SandForce needed was a partner that understood validation and could elevate SandForce's standards in that department. I wasn't thinking broad enough.
Insufficient validation may be what has troubled SandForce's designs in the consumer space for so long, but there was a much bigger problem. SandForce's current customers are companies like Corsair, Kingston, OCZ and OWC. The client list doesn't include traditional hard drive manufacturers, companies like Seagate or Western Digital.
When asked about why they are timid about entering the SSD market, every hard drive manufacturer I've spoken to has pointed at the more conservative nature of their businesses. The hard drive guys apparently like certainty and predictability in their products. The current state of SSD controllers, firmware and designs is anything but that. To date, there is no turnkey solution that a company like Seagate or Western Digital could implement that would give them hard drive-like compatibility and dependability, with all of the benefits of an SSD.
LSI has the ability to fix this.
A quick look at Seagate's Barracuda XT or even the recently announced 1TB-platter Barracuda and you'll find a controller from a single company: LSI. In fact, LSI's semiconductor business is responsible for over 70% of its revenues. LSI wants to be a semiconductor company that plays in the storage space, and when viewed through those glasses - the SandForce acquisition makes a lot of sense.
There are a lot of companies that will work with LSI thanks to its reputation, but not SandForce. That's what LSI is banking on to help grow SandForce's business.
Obviously to do so, LSI needs to address some of SandForce's shortcomings - particularly in the validation department. While LSI wouldn't commit to a timeframe to do so, having been a customer of SandForce itself I do believe that LSI knows what needs to be done moving forward.
LSI's interests in SandForce aren't purely altruistic of course. If the world does shift away from hard drives and towards SSDs, LSI's semiconductor business would suffer. By acquiring one of the highest performing SSD controller manufacturers in the business, LSI has a good chance of being able to compete in the SSD space should it see considerable growth at the expense of hard drives.
What's going to happen to SandForce's existing customers? As a silicon company, LSI is completely fine with being a controller and firmware supplier to SSD manufacturers. LSI reaffirmed it has no desire to enter the standalone consumer or enterprise SSD business.
In fact, the only area where LSI plans to deliver a branded solution driven by SandForce hardware is in the enterprise PCIe space - although once again, LSI says it has no issues supplying SF controllers for competing PCIe SSDs such as the OCZ Z-Drive.
I see the acquisition as a positive for SandForce. I believe that SandForce has the best technology in the industry but suffers from inferior validation. With existing design wins in the consumer hard drive and enterprise markets, LSI clearly understands the customer requirements for delivering a robust storage controller solution. If LSI can extend those learnings to SandForce, this acquisition will have a significant impact on the SSD industry going forward.
Gallery: The LSI SandForce Acquisition: Anand's Thoughts




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Last week, Rockstar Games added a Grand Theft Auto V (Five) banner to their website. The banner didn't really tell much, other than that GTA V exists and a trailer will be released next Wednesday, which happens to be today. The trailer can be seen below.

It looks like GTA V will be placed in San Andreas, which is the same place as in GTA: San Andreas (quite obvious like the name suggests).



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With the Dota 2 coming in the near (yet unannounced) future, Valve’s decided to expand the current beta. Last night, Valve sent emails to many who’d expressed interest, asking them to take part in a survey assessing your hardware and your experience with the original DotA. You don’t have to have received an email to participate, however, as Valve’s posted the link to the survey right on their official blog.
You’ll need to restart your Steam client for the survey to work (you may also need to post the link into “Run” under the Windows Start menu). It will ask for information about your Internet connection speed and then collect data on your hardware. What then follows is a surprisingly deep survey about your experience with DotA: questions about average gold acquired, average kills, which heroes you use, etc. Neophytes shouldn’t feel ashamed about admitting their ignorance to what any of this means. Valve claims that “the extra data the survey provides will allow us to ensure we invite a wide spread of players.”
To ensure a large mix of early testers, Valve will also be providing two extra copies of Dota 2 to each player selected. You’ll be able to gift these to your friends, which Valve hopes will foster the proper spirit of teamwork necessary for good DotA play.
Valve’s aiming to release Dota 2 before the end of 2011, but if you can’t wait and want in on this expanded beta you can take the survey here.
Source: Valve



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