Thread: Anandtech News

We saw a preview build at ICS and now it's here. Archos announced today a worldwide rollout of its Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update for the G9 line of tablets. We've been waiting expectantly for the Archos G9 Turbo editions, with their TI OMAP4460 SoC's tuned to 1.5GHz, since the line was first announced last fall. We still haven't seen one so tuned, but the current edition uses TI's OMAP4430 clocked at 1.2GHz, so performance should match the Galaxy Nexus, which also uses TI's OMAP4430. Archos promises their build will leverage the GPU for excellent video output of their usual panoply of codecs and containers, and all at 1080p, with HDMI output.
Much has been made about the slow roll-out of Ice Cream Sandwich to devices, and user's frustration is palpable. The developer community has worked tirelessly to squeeze Android 4.0 on to every manner of device, and yet only a few updates have been rolled out by big OEMs; and a seemingly shrinking list of updates is planned over the coming months. Archos, either through luck or foreknowledge, based their product on the development platform for ICS, giving them a slim advantage over competitors with tablets based on alternate SoCs. Possibly more crucial is that Archos applies all its development know-how to adding media functionality, versus designing and executing on a thorough UI reskin and layers of widgets and services.
Compared to their competitors products, though, Archos doesn't have the prettiest chassis's, nor the highest quality screens. But with storage options up to 250GB and a history of providing excellent media playback their products become ever more compelling. Our biggest concern, though, is their ability to execute on hardware; it's been 8 months since the line was announced, and the 1.5GHz variants are still scarce. We'll try to get some phone time with Archos representatives to see if we can get more details, and maybe some hints at what's next. In the meanwhile, anyone looking for a speedy Android slate, running the most current software revision should seriously consider the G9 line, starting at just $269, it could be a real steal.



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Not to be outdone by Apple with its recent iOS 5.1 announcement, nor HTC with its rollout to Sensations in Nordic countries, Samsung has announced that it will make the Android 4.0 ICS update for the International SGS2 (GT-I9100) available through Kies 2.0 on March 10th.
The update will be also available OTA, but Kies 2.0 usually ends up being the most advisable way to go for Samsung device updates. According to the release the update supports face unlock, android beam, mobile data usage monitoring, and will not support flash or bluetooth 3.0 HS due to OS limitations. The Kies update will require 60 MB of free space, whereas the FOTA update will require 350 MB for hte install.
The update notes that there's no supported upgrade path from customized or unofficial previous firmware, so now is probably a good time to revert to a stock ROM if you intend to try the final update out. I've got my GT-I9100 ready and waiting, and we'll be sure to check it out and update with any performance updates.
Source: Samsung



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Yesterday Apple unveiled its third generation iPad, simply called the new iPad, at an event in San Francisco. The form factor remains mostly unchanged with a 9.7-inch display, however the new device is thicker at 9.4mm vs. 8.8mm for its predecessor. The added thickness was necessary to support the iPad's new 2048 x 1536 Retina Display.

Tablet Specification Comparison
	ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity	Apple's new iPad (2012)	Apple iPad 2
Dimensions	263 x 180.8 x 8.5mm	241.2 x 185.7 x 9.4mm	241.2 x 185.7 x 8.8mm
Display	10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 Super IPS+	9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 IPS	9.7-inch 1024 x 768 IPS
Weight (WiFi)	586g	652g	601g
Weight (4G LTE)	586g	662g	601g
Processor (WiFi)	1.6GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 T33 (4 x Cortex A9)	Apple A5X (2 x Cortex A9, PowerVR SGX 543MP4)	1GHz Apple A5 (2 x Cortex A9, PowerVR SGX543MP2)
Processor (4G LTE)	1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 (2 x Krait)	Apple A5X (2 x Cortex A9, PowerVR SGX 543MP4)	1GHz Apple A5 (2 x Cortex A9, PowerVR SGX543MP2)
Connectivity	WiFi , Optional 4G LTE	WiFi , Optional 4G LTE	WiFi , Optional 3G
Memory	1GB	1GB	512MB
Storage	16GB - 64GB	16GB - 64GB	16GB
Battery	25Whr	42.5Whr	25Whr
Pricing	$599 - $799 est	$499 - $829	$399, $529

Driving the new display is Apple's A5X SoC. Apple hasn't been too specific about what's inside the A5X other than to say it features "quad-core graphics". Upon further prodding Apple did confirm that there are two CPU cores inside the SoC. It's safe to assume that there are still a pair of Cortex A9s in the A5X but now paired with a PowerVR SGX543MP4 instead of the 543MP2 used in the iPad 2.
Read on for our analysis of Apple's 3rd generation iPad.


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Windows has changed a lot since Windows 95 ushered in the modern era of the desktop operating system almost two decades ago—the underlying technology that makes Windows what it is has completely changed since those early days to keep pace with new technologies and usage models. Despite all of those changes, though, the fundamental look and feel of Windows 7 remains remarkably similar to its hoary old predecessor.

Windows 95 and Windows 7: We're not so different, you and I

All of that's changing—the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is here, and it brings with it the biggest fundamental change to the default Windows UI since 1995. Metro is an interface designed for the modern, touch-enabled era, and when Windows 8 (and its cousin, Windows on ARM) is released, it will signify Microsoft's long-awaited entry into the tablet market that the iPad created and has subsequently dominated.
The difference between Microsoft's strategy and Apple's strategy is that Microsoft is not keeping its operating systems separate—iOS and OS X are slowly blending together, but they remain discrete OSes designed for different input devices. Windows 8 and Metro, on the other hand, are one and the same: the operating system running on your desktop and the one running on your tablet are going to be the same code.
While Metro tends to overshadow Windows 8 by the sheer force of its newness, but while it's one of the biggest changes to the new OS it's certainly not the only one. Windows 8 includes a slew of other new and updates programs, utilities, services, and architectural improvements to make the operating system more useful and efficient than its predecessor - we'll be looking at the most important of those changes as well.
Will all of these new features come together to make Windows 8 a worthy upgrade to the successful Windows 7? Will the Metro interface work as well with a keyboard and mouse as it does on a tablet? For answers to those questions and more, just keep reading.


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With Intel's next generation processors firmly on the horizon, we should also turn to what motherboards will be on offer when we have the opportunity to root around in our pockets to invest in an next generation system. With appropriate vendor support, 6-series motherboards will support these new processors with little more than a BIOS update, however to get the most out of the new processor, we have to look at the new range of motherboards about to hit the market. This brief look at some of them is by no means an exhaustive list, however we would like to know what you find most interesting and would like to be reviewed over the next few months.


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AMD has released the WHQL-certified version of its Catalyst 12.2 driver package for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista, and 7. In addition to the fixes and enhancements we'll discuss below, this is AMD's first unified driver package that has added support for members of the Radeon HD 7000 series in Windows Vista and Windows 7, specifically the 7900, 7700, and OEM-only 7300 series. Support for the 7800 series will follow at a later date, and Windows XP support will come in Catalyst 12.4.
The new Catalyst drivers enable Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing in DirectX 10 and 11 games, which can be enabled and disabled through the Catalyst Control Center in supported applications. AMD's Eyefinity multi-monitor technology has also been improved, bringing support for a wider range of custom resolutions, dynamic configuration changes when monitors are plugged in and unplugged, the ability to move and resive the Windows taskbar via HydraVision, and the ability to create multiple display profiles for easy configuration changes on the fly.
The new drivers also fix bugs in several games, including HAWX, Modern Warfare 3, Dragon Age 2, Battleforge, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Batman: Arkham City, Dirt 3, and several Crossfire bugs. It also properly enables hardware acceleration for BluRay 3D content. A full list of bug fixes known issues can be found in the release notes, linked below.
In addition to support for the 7000-series cards, the drivers also support Radeon HD 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, and 6000 series graphics cards, IGPs, and APUs.
Source: AMD



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Quattro 1264-T

Intel's Xeon E5-2600 lineup was released last Tuesday and as expected, several manufacturers have released products based on these processors. Today we are looking at Boston's offerings, which is one of the largest resellers and partners of SuperMicro (see our article on SuperMicro's Xeon E5 solutions). This means Boston does not design or manufacture the motherboards they use - they buy barebones from SuperMicro and then configure the system according to their customers' wishes. This business model is similar to iBUYPOWER's and CyberpowerPC's, for example.
The benefit of this business model is that you can concentrate pretty much all your capital on customer relations. You don't have to worry about R&D and manufacturing, as you are basically just a reseller who also assembles the system. Customers are mainly paying for your knowledge about the market and their needs. In turn, you lose total control over what you sell and are at the mercy of other companies. It's harder to be innovative when everyone has access to the parts you use. However, at least in the consumer market, products from e.g. iBUYPOWER are generally cheaper than what equivalents from Dell, HP, ASUS etc. cost, so that's definitely an advantage.
Please note that the configurations below are just options among the hundreds of different configurations that Boston offers, as all systems are built to order.

Specifications of Boston's Xeon E5 Reference Lineup
Model	Quattro 1264-T	Value Series 380 G8	Venom 2000-7T
Form Factor	2U Twin^2	2U Rackmount	Midi-Tower
Motherboard	4x SuperMicro X9DRT-HIBFF	SuperMicro X9DRi-LN4F+	SuperMicro X9DAi
Chipset	Intel C602	Intel C602	Intel C602
Processors	Eight Intel Xeon E5-2670 (8/16, 2.6/3.3GHz, 20MB L3)	Two Intel Xeon E5-2670 (8/16, 2.6/3.3GHz, 20MB L3)	Two Intel Xeon E5-2670 (8/16, 2.6/3.3GHz, 20MB L3)
Graphics	N/A	N/A	nVidia Quadro 4000 (256 CUDA cores @475MHz; 2GB GDDR5 @2.8GHz effective)
Storage	12x 2TB 7200rpm SAS (Toshiba)	4x 2TB SATA (WD RE4-GP)	128GB Crucial M4 2x 1TB 7200rpm (Hitachi) in RAID 1
Memory	128GB DDR3-1600 ECC Registered	32GB DDR3-1600 ECC Registered	32GB DDR3-1600
Expansion Slots	4x PCIe 3.0 x16	4x PCIe 3.0 x16 1x PCIe 3.0 x8 1x PCIe 3.0 x4	3x PCIe 3.0 x16 2x PCIe 3.0 x8 1x PCIe 3.0 x4
Network	4x Intel i350 (2x GigE LAN each)	Intel i350 (4x GigE ports)	Intel i350 (2x GigE ports)
SATA	2x SATA 6Gb/s 5x SATA 3Gb/s	2x SATA 6Gb/s 8x SATA 3Gb/s (four used by the hard drives)	2x SATA 6Gb/s (one used by the SSD) 8x SATA 3Gb/s (two used by the hard drives)
Other I/O	4x Mellanox Connect-X3 FDR Infiniband (one port each) 4x USB 2.0 4x LSI 2008 SAS2 HBA	9x USB 2.0	4x USB 3.0 7x USB 2.0 2x FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a)
Power Supply	1620W	920W	865W
Operating System	Windows 2008 R2 Standard x64	Windows 2008 R2 Standard x64	Windows 7 Professional x64
Price	~£20,000 (~$31,363)	~£4000 (~$6,273)	~£5,000 (~$7,841)

The Quattro 1264-T is definitely one of the most interesting offerings from Boston. It's based on SuperMicro's 2U Twin^2 solution, which integrates four dual-socket motherboards inside a compact 2U chassis. This means you can have up to eight CPUs in one system, and up to 64 cores when using octo-core Xeon E5 CPUs. That works out to be 1,344 cores when utilizing a standard 42U rack cabinet. We used SuperMicro's 2U Twin (two motherboards in 2U chassis) in our Xeon E5-2600 review, so head there if you want to take a deeper look at the Twin design. The advantage of Twin^2 is its density. It provides an enormous amount of processing power in a relatively small form factor, and hence is the most suitable for workloads that demand a lot CPU power (such as HPC workloads).
The Value Series 380 G8 is a more traditional dual-socket server in 2U form factor. It offers more space for expansion when compared to the Quattro due to looser board design. The Quattro supports only 128GB of RAM per CPU, while Value Series supports up to 384GB per CPU. Thus Value Series is better for memory-hungry usage, such as virtualization and database applications.

Venom 2000-7T

Venom 2000-7T is Boston's answer to high-end workstation users. Since it's not aimed for server use, it comes with nVidia Quadro 4000 graphics, making it ideal for media creation and other GPU-intensive workloads. There is also Crucial M4 SSD (see our review) included along with USB 3.0 ports to increase I/O performance. The operating system also changes, to standard Windows 7.
Unfortunately, OEMs like Dell, HP and ASUS have not updated their server and workstation offerings with the Xeon E5 series yet, so we cannot do any price comparison.



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Late last year, before CES, we had the opportunity to check out Dell's then-upcoming entrant to Intel's nascent ultrabook market, the XPS 13. Dell has been refocusing their XPS line with an eye on sophisticated notebooks that straddle the line between the consumer and business classes, while at the same time emphasizing slimmer, more powerful machines. Thus, the XPS 13 seems like a natural fit both for their XPS line and for the ultrabook category.

While manufacturers like ASUS, Toshiba, and Acer have been apt to more closely ape the Apple MacBook Air aesthetic that Intel is arguably appropriating for ultrabooks, Dell's XPS 13 is a different creature, and when we saw it in 2011 it felt like the ultrabook to wait for. Now it's here; was it worth the wait?


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Mozilla is due to release Firefox 11 to the stable channel today, and like every Firefox release since 4.0 the new version adds a handful of new features and fixes without drastically changing how the browser works. Firefox 10, the current Firefox Extended Support Release, will see a new 10.0.3 patch that will implement Firefox 11's security patches but not its new features.
Firefox users looking to move back to Mozilla's browser after trying Chrome will now be able to import that browser's bookmarks, history, and cookies, with passwords, form data, and settings to follow in a later version. Users of Firefox Sync will now also be able to synchronize their browser add-ons across multiple computers, ensuring a more consistent experience for people with multiple systems.
Additionally, the new Firefox offers a couple of new developer tools: the first is called Tilt, and it's pictured above - when inspecting page elements (right-click a page, click Inspect Element), users with WebGL-capable systems can now click a 3D button to see a copy of the page rendered in 3D. You can move the page around and zoom in and out at will - in addition to looking pretty cool, it can also make it easier to interact with elements that overlap. The other addition is a new Style editor, accessible from the Web Developer menu.
All of this comes with a handful of smaller changes and security fixes which are laid out in the release notes, linked below. Firefox 11 is available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, as well as OS X 10.5 (Intel), 10.6, and 10.7 and most Linux distributions.
Source: Mozilla



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While Apple's new iPad won't be available until Friday, some users have gotten their hands on the new models and done some preliminary benchmarks. Sonny Dickson tweeted a screenshot of GeekBench running on the new iPad (model iPad3,3) which showed a score of 756 and a 1.00GHz ARMv7 processor. For comparison, the GeekBench score of iPad 2 is 751, which confirms that the GeekBench reading of the frequency is indeed correct.

Image courtesy of Sonny Dickson

In a nutshell, the processor in A5X is largely the same as in A5: We are looking at two Cortex-A9 cores running at up to 1.0GHz. Some people were anticipating an increase in the clock speed as A5X is expected to be 32nm while A5 was based on older 45nm process node, but it appears that Apple used all the gains of a smaller process node for better graphics.
The GeekBench screenshot also confirms 1GB of RAM, although that was fairly certain even before the release thanks to leaked screenshots.
The GPU, especially its frequency, is still a mystery but hopefully we will be able to get our hands on the new iPad as soon as possible and start testing.



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