Thread: Anandtech News

Hot on the heels of our Retina Display analysis we have some more data for you: battery life of the new iPad. The chart above is our revamped web browser battery life test that we introduced in Part 2 of our Eee Pad Transformer Prime review. Despite the huge increase in battery capacity, battery life seems to be a bit lower than the iPad 2. The drop isn't huge but it does echo what we've seen in our subjective testing: the new iPad doesn't appear to last as long as the old one.
The drop on LTE is in line with what Apple claims you should expect: about an hour less than on WiFi.
Now for the killer. If you have an iPad on Verizon's LTE network and use it as a personal hotspot (not currently possible on the AT&T version), it will last you roughly 25.3 hours on a single charge. Obviously that's with the display turned off, but with a 42.5Wh battery driving Qualcomm's MDM9600 you get tons of life out of the new iPad as a personal hotspot.
More in our upcoming review...



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Just about anyone can put together a solid computer using a decent midtower and the right parts. What we don't see as often is just how fast a computer can be assembled in a small form factor. More and more, too, the term "fast" isn't an all-encompassing one; as the GPU becomes increasingly important, the definition gets foggier and foggier. Today, all of these considerations collide as we test two top end configurations from Puget Systems against each other.

On the outside it looks we have two systems assembled in Antec's ISK-110 enclosure, but on the inside, we have a showdown between Intel and AMD's best and brightest at 65 watts. The more cynical (and admittedly informed) reader may already have an idea of where this is going, but there are definitely some surprises in store. Read on to find out where each platform performs better, as well as our thoughts on the best use case for each system.


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We tested the Hive 550W a short while ago, and now Rosewill is following up with their Capstone series, which should be more efficient (80 Plus Gold certification). In this article we will see if the quality of this power supply can match the flawlessness of brands like Seasonic. The Capstone 450W and 650W are little different internally compared to the Hive models. All of the Capstone power supplies are targeted at the high-end market, so our expectations are quite high for this product.

The Capstone series has the goal of delivering performance, quality, and high efficiency; simply put, it's the best solution Rosewill can provide at the moment. The previous tested PSU was made by Sirtec (High Power), but the new models come from a different manufacturer. On the following pages we will show who built these PSUs. Read on to find out how it compares to other offerings.


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DRM (Digital Rights Management) is intended to protect media from being played in an unauthorized manner. However, more often than not, it fails to serve the purpose. Today, we will take a detailed look at Cinavia, a DRM mechanism which has recently become mandatory for all Blu-ray players to support.

We will see how Cinavia is different from other Blu-ray DRM mechanisms, and find out whether it will actually help in reducing media piracy. In almost all cases, it is the law-abiding consumer who is put to much inconvenience. Will Cinavia be doing the same? While we are on the subject of Blu-rays, we will also try to identify areas where user-friendliness can be improved and how consumers can get the best possible experience from them. Read on for our opinion piece..


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The iPad (3) took front row during the recent launch extravaganza, however Apple also refreshed their Apple TV with a new model sporting a single core A5 SoC and some other noteworthy tweaks. We've spent some time with the new model since its launch, and have found a few interesting new things lurking inside. In addition to decoding 1080p iTunes content and Netflix streams, the new Apple TV also includes a second WiFi antenna with better gain, which translates to improved reception and network throughput.

Read on for our quick review.


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Today we are looking at the Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2V, the first A55 motherboard to hit the AnandTech test beds. In comparison to the A75 platform which we have covered extensively, although the A55 lacks a few features such as USB 3.0, SATA 6 Gbps and a second full length PCIe slot, the A55 motherboards are usually aimed at low end, low budget system builders. The Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2V comes in at a smaller than mATX form factor for just such occasions. Please read on for the full review.

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We've known about Cedar Trail for quite a while now, the next iteration of Intel's Atom processor line. As far as the CPU is concerned, not a lot has changed from the previous generation Pine Trail. Cedar Trail is manufactured on Intel's 32nm process technology, but the CPU architecture is still in-order. You can read more of our Cedar Trail coverage in our initial look at the platform. It's taken far longer than expected, but we finally got someone to send us a Cedar Trail netbook for review. That someone is ASUS, and the netbook is their 1025C.

We'll have our full review in the future, but in the meantime we thought we'd give some quick impressions of performance and, more importantly, battery life during video playback. I'll cut straight to the chase with regards to CPU performance: it's largely unchanged from the last version, which means Atom N2600 still feels quite sluggish for many tasks. Atom is faster than ARM A9 CPUs, and you can see a comparison of Sunspider 0.9.1 with various tablets below, but for Windows 7 it's still painfully slow at times.

The bigger change however is in the GPU, where the old GMA 3150 (itself a minor tweak to the even older GMA 950) is finally getting a needed upgrade. This won't turn Atom into a gaming system by any stretch of the imagination, but it does finally bring GPU accelerated H.264 decoding into the Atom ecosystem (without the need for a discrete GPU). What does that mean for performance? It means HD YouTube video can finally run without dropping a ton of frames—at least, the 720p videos that I tested played back without any major issues. 1080p video still experiences quite a few dropped frames, unfortunately, but then you don't need to stream 1080p video if you're using the integrated 600p LCD.
But YouTube HD video has always demanded more than local video playback, and we can now finally get DXVA assisted playback of H.264 video content. I tested both 720p and 1080p H.264 videos without any major issues using MPC-HC. What's more, I ran our standard H.264 battery life test to see how the Atom N2800 fared—and I ran it a second time with a 1080p video stream just for good measure. Check out the results:

Atom and netbooks in general still aren't going to set the world on fire with performance, but if there's one thing Atom can do well it's long battery life. Cedar Trail takes the previous Atom results and improves on them by over 50% in video playback tests. Tablets still generally do better here, but gIven that Cedar Trail now supports HDMI output, you could conceivably use an Atom netbook as a portable media player in addition to standard laptop tasks.
I tested Hulu and Netflix on the 1025C as well and both worked reasonably well, but only with SD content. That's not an issue for Hulu, but Netflix HD content completely lost A/V sync. It may be that Hulu and Netflix are not currenlty recognizing the GMA 3600, but until this is addressed it's worth noting.
There's still a question of whether a $300 netbook has a place in the market when we've got tablets to play with, but it's really a matter of intended use as well as price. ASUS' own Eee Prime Transformer offers a better display and a nifty touch interface that easily surpasses the Windows 7 Starter experience, but if you're looking to do mundane tasks like basic word processing you'll need the keyboard attachment, which takes the final price up to ~$550—nearly twice that of the Eee PC 1025C. For basic typing, then, the price of the 1025C makes it a better choice, and you get excellent battery life that will easily carry you through a day of use and then some.
Atom still isn't going to surpass AMD's Brazos for performance or GPU driver quality, but pricing and battery life still appear to be in favor of Intel's Atom, and 10.1" Brazos netbooks are pretty rarefied. We'll have our full review as soon as we can finish running the remaining benchmarks and doing additional testing, which might be a while. Hopefully we'll see equally impressive improvements for Internet and Idle battery life, but it took over ten hours to recharge the battery on the 1025C and eight hours plus for our video playback test, so basically I'm look at a full day for each battery test cycle to complete.



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Asus's Transformer Prime just got some company. Available for pre-order today, the Acer Iconia Tab A510 brings the price of entry for a 10.1" Tegra 3-powered tablet down to a cool $449.99, $50 less than the similarly equipped Asus offering. Like the Prime the A510 features a 10.1" 1280x800 display, the 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 SoC with 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage expandable by microSD. The base battery life on the A510 is an impressive 36.26Whr, not quite as much as the new iPad, but somewhat higher than its prececessor and the Prime. That big battery does lead to a somewhat portly frame, with a thickness cresting a centimeter and weighing nearly 100g more than the Prime. The frame is similar to the A200 we saw in January, but is actually a little thinner and with a textured back for extra grip.
Android 4.0 is on order for software, complete with Acer's Ring UI, a relatively innocuous skin that mainly seeks to put your most commonly used apps in easy reach. When we took a look at the A500, we were pleased with its display quality, not quite IPS but great for a vanilla LCD; we hope we can expect more of the same from this display. Software pre-load includes the usual branded media players and print software, along with Polaris Office 3.5 for productivity. Gone though, is the full-sized USB port, replaced by microUSB, though it remains compatibile with portable HDD up to 2TB in size.
There's no shortage of options for tablet buyers right now, and everyday another pops up. But if performance, battery life and price are your main criteria, the A510 may just be the tablet for you. Pre-orders start today for $449.99 at your favorite e-tailers; no ship dates are available.



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While the desktop-bound GeForce GTX 680 is undoubtedly the most exciting release from NVIDIA today and the true flagbearer for their new Kepler microarchitecture, NVIDIA actually has a whole host of releases ready to go on the notebook front. We've already had a chance to check out the GeForce GT 640M in action, but it's far from the only member of the old/new GeForce 600M series. Today we have details on their complete 600M series from top to bottom; some of it is exciting and new, and some of it is just the GPU industry up to its same old marketing tricks. Read on for the full details.

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