Thread: Anandtech News

With the launch of Sandy Bridge on the horizon, the larger motherboard manufacturers are putting the final touches to their products. ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI, Foxconn, and others will all be vying for your hard earned cash by attempting to wow you with images of hardware, and words regarding supposed performance. So when ASUS started handing out images of their upcoming high-end P67 range, we had to dissect and pass on the information. Click through for the P8P67 Pro, P8P67 Deluxe and the P67 Maximum IV Extreme.

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I haven’t had an official product briefing with VIA in years. The last time I met with a representative from the company was two years ago outside of IDF in San Francisco. Before then, it was probably around 4 years.

VIA was the first casualty of integration in the PC space. Today we’re all talking about moving graphics onto the processor die, but a few years ago we were having similar discussions about moving the memory controller and north bridge on die. As a manufacturer of chipsets (north and south bridges) for CPUs, VIA lost relevance in the x86 CPU market as the need for a third party chipset maker faded.

VIA’s recent visit to me in Raleigh, NC had two purposes according to the company. One, to remind me that VIA was still around and to give me some face to face time with a VIA representative (appreciated). And two, to showcase VIA’s dual-core Nano platform and brand new integrated graphics chipset (intriguing).

Read on for our preview of VIA's latest, and surprisingly competitive Nano platform.



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Yes folks, it's that time again: time to open your wallets and let a ravenous technology industry take its cut so you can have the shiniest, latest gadgets on store shelves. We're kicking off our Holiday 2010 Buyers' Guides with the mobile sector. While it wasn't perfect, overall this year has been a great one for notebooks, and there has been a healthy share of upheaval in the process. The dust shows no sign of clearing, but hopefully we'll be able to guide you through it to the very cream of the crop this industry has to offer.

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Last week I mentioned that I had recently spent some time with AMD down in Austin, TX, benchmarking its upcoming Brazos platform. The Brazos platform is composed of an AMD Zacate or Ontario APU and the Fusion Controller Hub (a South Bridge based on the SB800 series). Brazos systems will run the gamut of mainstream notebook, netbook and nettop segments ranging from $299 to around $500. While AMD let us reveal the fact that we tested Brazos, we weren't allowed to publish numbers last week. Today, we can.

Read on for our full Brazos performance preview.



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Last year was dominated by two SSD controller manufacturers: Intel and Indilinx. Intel delivered the performance while Indilinx offered a value alternative. Once SandForce hit early this year however, it was game over for Indilinx. We have reviewed a couple of Indilinx drives since SandForce hit but for the most part we've been enamored with SF and Crucial's offerings.

Over the summer Indilinx was supposed to have its next-generation controller ready for debut, codenamed Jet Stream. Unfortunately the 6Gbps controller has been delayed until 2011, leaving Indilinx with two options: quietly bow out of the SSD market, or update Barefoot.

And here we have the updated Barefoot:

The Indilinx Martini based OCZ Vertex Plus

Read on for our preview of the first new Indilinx controller since 2009.

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Back when ASUS released the UL80Vt last year, we gave it a glowing review, praising its balance of performance and battery life without breaking the bank. The UL80Vt had an overclocked Core 2 Duo SU7300, an NVIDIA G 210M with a manually switchable option, and ASUS’ now standard 84Wh battery. This gave it pretty solid performance, on par with larger mainstream notebooks, and close to 13 hours of ideal-case battery life, even with turbo mode enabled. Today, we’ve got the UL80Jt, an updated version running the new Core i3-330UM processor and NVIDIA’s Optimus-enabled G 310M graphics. Does it measure up to the reputation its predecessor had, or will it ultimately be overshadowed by newer and equally well rounded notebooks? Read on to find out.



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Earlier today Qualcomm briefed analysts on its Snapdragon SoC roadmap. The current Snapdragon is available in both 65nm and 45nm versions integrating a single Scorpion CPU core running at up to 1GHz and an Adreno 200 or 205 GPU (respectively). Snapdragon was the SoC of choice for many Android phones over the past year and a half, not to mention the only SoC available in Windows Phone 7 devices.

In the coming months we’ll see the first dual-core Cortex A9 based NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoCs ship in devices. Sometime next year we’ll see A9 based OMAP4 SoCs in smartphones as well. So what does Qualcomm have in store for us over the next few years?

Read on for the details.



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Generally speaking when we think of Antec, we usually think of quality cases (such as the silent gaming stalwart P182/P183 line) and solid power supplies. Personally I even think of good customer service (i.e. missing some drive rails? E-mail their customer service and they'll send you replacements for free.) What we don't think of is quality audio, and just like Corsair's recent branch into audio hardware with their HS1 gaming headset, Antec has opened a brand new line dubbed "Soundscience," which starts with their Rockus 3D 2.1 speaker system. The $249 MSRP could make them a tough sell; do you get your money's worth?



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We haven't updated our various system buyers' guides for a while, and what better time to rectify that oversight than the holiday shopping season? We're going to take a different approach this time, with different builds from most of our staff covering the gamut from pure budget to dream level systems. We have widely ranging tastes and budgets, but we've tried to make sure that someone covers each general category of system, with both AMD and Intel builds. Whether you're in the market for a complete new system or just want to upgrade a component or two, our System Builder's Guide should have what you need.

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Finding a mainstream notebook with a high resolution screen can be harder than pulling teeth. Outside of the new Dell XPS 15 and the odd business-class machine, a resolution higher than the dismal 1366x768 on a 15.6" screen can be extremely difficult to locate and may even force you to compromise and buy a bigger machine than you'd intended. Fortunately there are options and we've tracked one down in the form of the Clevo B5130M. Sporting NVIDIA's new GeForce GT 425M and a 1080p high-resolution screen, is this notebook enough to steal the crown from the Dell XPS 15?

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