Thread: Anandtech News

Thus far, we’ve spent most of 2010 focusing on mainstream segments for our motherboards reviews, there’s more of that to come over the next few months starting off with a long overdue focus on AMD. Before we get to that though, there are a few loose ends to tie up on Intel’s X58 chipset – today we’re going to take a look at four motherboards aimed at the serious enthusiast.



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In the second half of our Mobile Buyer's Guide, we focus on portable machines with screens smaller than 14". The market as a whole is getting a thorough overhaul over the summer, both because of brand new chips coming from Intel, AMD, ATI, and NVIDIA (for those of you keeping score at home, that's...everyone) and because of the rapidly approaching back-to-school season, which always means newly refreshed notebook lineups. With so many new systems out there, who's going to put in the groundwork to figure out which ones can hold their own in the market and separate the contenders from the also-rans? We did, and our findings are in this article. Read on for more details!



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Anandtech has evaluated many systems in search of the utopian HTPC. However, every one of them has ended up with some issue or the other. When ASRock offered to send us their flagship HTPC introduced at the 2010 CeBIT show, we jumped at the opportunity to evaluate it and determine whether it was the HTPC of our dreams.

Instead of going with a second generation ION chipset that many had expected them to (after the ION 330-HT from last year), they sprang a surprise by opting for an Arrandale based platform. Having realized that the Atom in the nettop was the main reason for enthusiasts to avoid using them as full-fledged HTPCs, they have corrected their approach now. We had earlier mentioned that Clarkdale / Arrandale was quite up to the task as a HTPC platform. In the last few months, we have seen the introduction of many H55 / H57 based mini-ITX motherboards supporting the Clarkdales. The strong demand for such motherboards indicates that there is a definite market for pre-built HTPCs based on the Clarkdales and Arrandales in that form factor. The Core 100 series from ASRock seems to fit that bill.

How does ASRock's flagship product fare? Is it the destination in our search for the utopian HTPC? Read on for Anandtech's review of the ASRock Core 100HT-BD.



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There’s a divergence in the smartphone world. Some devices are either maintaining or shrinking overall size in an attempt to become more convenient to carry around. Although it’s not what you’d expect, we have seen a few devices go in the opposite direction. As nice as it is to carry a small phone, it’s far more productive to have a bigger one. They’re easier to type on, better for reading web pages and generally more useful when you’re actually trying to get something done.

HTC was first in our labs with a member of this new breed of larger smartphones with the EVO 4G. While we found the larger screen nice, the lackluster OS performance and poor battery life weren’t exactly great selling points. Now it’s Motorola’s turn.

The Droid X is the spiritual successor to last year’s Droid. While the original only had speed going for it, the X adds size as well. Speed comes in the form of the OMAP 3630, TI’s first 45nm SoC based on the ARM Cortex A8 core. In essence, this is TI’s answer to the Apple A4. And the size is due to the Droid X’s 4.3-inch screen.

But unlike the EVO 4G, you don’t sacrifice performance or battery life. As a matter of fact, you end up with the best battery life of any Android phone we’ve reviewed. And TI has put together an SoC that finally rivals and exceeds Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

Read on for our full review.



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Antec approached us out of the blue and offered a DF-85 case in our last giveaway. Well, there was a slight change of plans. Antec was so pleased with how many AnandTech readers entered that it agreed to give away two cases instead of one. Congratulations to both goozira and fralexandr, respond to the email I just sent you guys and you'll both get a case from Antec.

This week it's back to memory, we have another 4GB kit to give away courtesy of G.Skill. Today's prize is a 4GB (2 x 2GB) G.Skill Ripjaws kit (F3-10666CL8D-4GBRM). The memory is rated for DDR3-1333 with 8-8-8-24 timings at 1.5V. This should work in Intel LGA-1156 and AMD Socket-AM3 motherboards. You can find Newegg's listing here.

Today's Prize

Read on to find out how to enter.



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A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich Brunner and myself. The goal was to talk about the past, present and future of virtualization. In preparation for the webcast we solicited questions from all of you, unfortunately we only had an hour during the webcast to address them. Rich Uhlig from Intel, Rich Brunner from VMware and our own Johan de Gelas all agreed to answer some of your questions in a 6 part series we're calling Ask the Experts. Each week we'll showcase three questions you guys asked about virtualization and provide answers from our panel of three experts. These responses haven't been edited and come straight from the experts.

If you'd like to see your question answered here leave it in the comments. While we can't guarantee we'll get to everything, we'll try to pick a few from the comments to answer as the weeks go on.



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Our Ask the Experts series continues with another round of questions.

A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich Brunner and myself. The goal was to talk about the past, present and future of virtualization. In preparation for the webcast we solicited questions from all of you, unfortunately we only had an hour during the webcast to address them. Rich Uhlig from Intel, Rich Brunner from VMware and our own Johan de Gelas all agreed to answer some of your questions in a 6 part series we're calling Ask the Experts. Each week we'll showcase three questions you guys asked about virtualization and provide answers from our panel of three experts. These responses haven't been edited and come straight from the experts.

If you'd like to see your question answered here leave it in the comments. While we can't guarantee we'll get to everything, we'll try to pick a few from the comments to answer as the weeks go on.



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Pine Trail netbooks are pretty much all the same: they give you a 10.1" 1024x600 display and pitifully slow CPU and GPU performance, but that's balanaced by good battery life and a low cost. The Samsung N210 has been around a while now, but it stands out from the crowd by being one of the few netbooks to eschew glossy exteriors and LCDs. Is that enough to make it a good purchase? That depends on whether you can live with the Atom performance bottleneck.

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The last few years have seen a large number of digital content sources becoming easily accessible to end consumers. Digital content providers such as Netflix have recently been expanding their service to be compatibile with game consoles like the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii, and an increasing number of Bluray players and televisions. WD has followed suite and now offers a flavor of their WD TV series that supports Netflix video streaming and also has one of the widest ranges of both online and local content compatibility that exists in the media streaming device market today.

In this review, we examine the WD TV Live Plus and put it to test using our recently developed media streamer / HTPC review methodology.



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Take the fastest desktop microprocessor in the world, lock its multiplier, shave off 133MHz and drop its price by $100. That's basically what you get with the Core i7 970. Despite the name this is the second 6-core 32nm Gulftown processor from Intel.

If you're tempted by the 980X but wanted something slightly more affordable, read on to get introduced to the new Core i7 970.



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