Thread: Anandtech News

Today we’re taking a look at our first customized GTX 760 cards, the GTX 760 OC Windforce 3X and GTX 760 Superclocked ACX from Gigabyte and EVGA respectively. Based on fully custom designs, Gigabyte and EVGA are pairing factory overclocks with their in-house coolers and software to add value to their cards and stand apart in a crowded market. With both cards similarly overclocked the real test will be who has the cooler cooler: Gigabyte or EVGA?

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Ahead of things to come this week, NVIDIA has announced a preemptive price cut for a couple of their mainstream GeForce products. As of today, the GTX 660 is getting an official price cut to $179, which is down from the $200 or so prices that it was at a bit earlier this year. Meanwhile the GTX 650 Ti Boost is getting a price cut down to $149 for the 2GB model, and $129 for the 1GB model.

Fall NVIDIA MSRPs
Video Card	MSRP
GeForce GTX 780	$649
GeForce GTX 770	$399
GeForce GTX 760	$249
GeForce GTX 660	$179
GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB	$149
GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB	$129

Interestingly, NVIDIA did take the time to reiterate that these are the only price cuts that are taking place. The GTX 760 and GTX 770 are not getting price cuts and will remain at $249 and $399 respectively.

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After being announced back at AMD's 2014 GPU Product Showcase, today AMD is finally launching the Radeon 200 series. Today we’ll be looking at the new series in detail – sans the yet be launched Radeon R9 290X – including both the feature sets and technologies that are arriving alongside the new 200 series cards, and several of the cards themselves. AMD is going to be saving their best for last, but they have a warm-up act that should at least capture the attention of video card enthusiasts everywhere.

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Synology launched two new 2U RackStations (the RS2414+ amd RS2414RP+) today. These are the first units with a full 12 bays available in the main unit itself (Their current flagship, the RS10613xs+ has 10 bays and two additional bays for caching drives). Both models can scale up to 24 drives with the RX1214 and RX1214RP RackExpansion units.

Gallery: Synology RackStation RS2414RP+

Gallery: Synology RackExpansion RX1214RP

Keeping affordability in mind (the RS2414+, RS2414RP+, RX1214 and RX1214RP have MSRPs of $1900, $2500, $1700 and $2400 respectively), the models don't come with Xeon-based platforms. They appear to have the same base hardware as the DS1813+ (with a 2.13 GHz Atom-class dual core CPU, four Gigabit NICs and 2 GB of RAM which is upgradeable to 4 GB). Enterprise features like high availability and MPIO are available. The software (DSM 4.3) carries all necessary certifications from the virtualization software vendors, ADS and LDAP support as well as SSD read caching and TRIM support.
Synology's decision to target the market for rackmount units with both Xeon and Atom-based models is interesting. Even though the Atom-based units are probably not powerful enough for models with a large number of bays, it should be good enough for applications where scalability and capacity are primary concerns, rather than raw performance.
Enterprise / SMB customers with an urgent need for scalable solutions would do little wrong in opting to go with the new models. For those who can wait a little, the Bay Trail-based solutions coming out next year are going to be a better choice in many respects (power consumption and encryption performance are just a few aspects in which we can expect considerable improvements).

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Just recently, news broke that the Galaxy Round is being released for sale in Korea. While Samsung can claim that they are the first to create a commercially sold curved AMOLED display, Samsung has made phones with curved displays before, although such curves were achieved through curved glass, not curved displays. Smartphone OEMs are no strangers to curved glass, as such designs were extremely popular in 2012, because it made for no detectable ridge when swiping off of the screen, but came at the cost of increased susceptibility of the glass lens to damage.
While this Galaxy Round is not likely to suffer from such issues, this formfactor will likely carry a few idiosyncrasies. But first, the specs. The phone is almost undoubtedly running an MSM8974 SoC with the higher 2.3 GHz bin, as 8974AB seems to be confined to the Xiaomi Mi-3 for now, and the presence of LTE-A means MDM9x25. The back seems to be adopting the same design as the Note 3’s, with a faux-leather texture, although it appears the speaker has been moved to the back of the phone and the Wacom digitizer is gone, most likely due to volume constraints imposed by such a shape, as effective volume goes down compared to a conventional slate like that of the Note 3, which explains why the battery is now a 2800 mAh, 10.64 WHr unit instead of the 3200 mAh, 12.16 WHr unit found in the Note 3. Beyond these changes, the phone appears to be largely identical in hardware to the Note 3. Despite the curve, the AMOLED display should be largely identical in behavior compared to its flat counterpart.
Of course, Samsung has also released new software to take advantage of the rounded design, such as rocking the device to check glanceable information such as missed calls and notifications when the device is asleep. Various other motion features also take advantage of the phone’s design that allows it to roll left and right when placed on a table, such as music controls and gallery navigation. While currently unique to this phone, the Galaxy Round is far from the only smartphone on the market that behaves in a similar manner when placed on a table, with phones like the HTC One coming to mind. While a curved back makes for better ergonomics, such design is not limited to devices with curved displays, as evidenced by both the Moto X and LG G2.
Possibly one of the biggest issues that could happen with this phone is severe issues with screen protectors, cases, and other accessories due to its unusual curve, although it would only be a matter of market demand to find solutions to such problems. Although Samsung should be applauded for being the first to make a curved display, it is difficult to understand the utility of such a device, due to the lack of any killer feature in the device, which was a large reason for the success of the original Note line, as the Wacom digitizer feature arrived during the height of the Draw Something fad. While it will probably fit well in a pocket, and the motion features are neat, neither really justify the reduction in battery capacity nor the deletion of hardware present in the Note 3, which affects core experience for the sake of minor features. While the market ultimately determines what products are successful or not, the fact that this is only being sold in Samsung’s home market speaks volumes. This device seems to be a continuation of Samsung’s strategy of targeting as many formfactors as possible (as well as being an exercise in productizing internal Samsung technologies), in the same vein as the Galaxy S4 Active. It also seems to be that this device is most likely to end up in a similar situation as the Galaxy S4 Active, merely repeated in the Note line. 

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FPGAs offer the promise of reconfigurable computing: Reconfiguring the hardware to match your application needs. This reconfigurable approach is often more efficient than general purpose processors such as CPUs. However, programming FPGAs has traditionally been hard and usually required expertise in Hardware Description Languages (HDLs). Altera has introduced an OpenCL SDK for FPGAs, making them accessible to a much larger software community and a potential alternative to other accelerators such as GPGPUs. We take a look at Altera's offering, explain how it works and provide analysis about how using OpenCL for FPGAs compares with alternatives such as GPUs.

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Gold seems to be on every device maker's mind right now. Recently we saw Apple introduce the Gold iPhone 5S, and then Samsung countered with a gold Galaxy S4, today we got a chance to hold and look at a special edition Gold HTC One. I stuck my gold iPhone 5S alongside the gold HTC One to compare the two gold phones.

The special edition HTC One is electroplated with 18 carat gold by Goldgenie for the 18th anniversary of the MOBO Awards. One of the devices will be given away to the winner of the best newcomer category at the MOBO Awards.

HTC is only making 5 gold HTC Ones, and the device we got hands on with is a test designed for getting the plating right and doing testing, so it isn't quite as flawless as the end devices will be. There's a clear coating on top of the gold to prevent scratching or flaking, of course gold itself has native properties that resist the formation of an oxide. Oddly enough the clear coating seemed to be the cause of most of the visual scratches which are suspended above the mirror finish gold plating. The front metal inserts of the HTC One are also gold plated. This gold version weighs 4 grams more than a normal HTC One as well, and HTC says its valued at 2,750 GBP, or roughly 4,400 USD.
Whereas the gold iPhone 5S is more of a champagne color, the gold HTC One is a much more vibrant color owing to the native nature of the gold plating material. The plastic regions are black on this gold edition as well, as an aside I wish Apple had a black and gold combination rather than the white and gold available now.
HTC says the special edition gold HTC One has passed all the necessary RF testing, in spite of being plated. Antenna attenuation is of course still a concern even if the gold edition of the HTC One is ornamental.
Gallery: Hands on with the MOBO Edition 18ct Gold HTC One

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During the past week, AMD revealed their new R7 and R9 desktop GPUs, which mostly consist of rebranded 7000-series parts. The one exception is the R9-290X, which uses the Big Kahuna core. Full details are not yet public, but Maingear is now taking preorders for their Shift and F131 systems that use the GPU. They also include a few pieces of information about the cards. For one, the R9-290X will ship with 4GB GDDR5 (along with TrueAudio and 4K resolution support), and second, the estimated ship date on the Shift and F131 is 10/23/2013.
As part of the offer, pre-ordering will also get you a copy of Battlefield 4 along with Battlefield 4 branded cases and hardware. These are “limited edition” systems, but that appears to be mostly related to the BF4 branding elements – and of course, Battlefield 4 will be one of the first games to support AMD’s Mantle API. The Shift is a CrossFire setup coming standard with two R9-290X cards and supporting up to three cards, with either the FX 9370 or 9590 CPU; pricing starts at around $3789. The F131 comes standard with a single R9-290X and supports up to two cards, and it uses an FX 8350; pricing begins at $2199 (depending on options).
Both systems are expensive and Maingear is known for relatively large markups, so it’s difficult to say how much each card will cost. The systems are also using AMD FX CPUs and motherboards, and while there are areas where AMD is still competitive, it’s pretty clear that overall Intel is well ahead in most areas of CPU performance. I suspect we’ll see Intel systems with R9-290X show up around the same time from other vendors, but we’ll wait for the full review before coming to any final recommendations.

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Today we're taking a look at Sapphire's Radeon R9 280X Toxic, the latest of the custom 280X cards to come rolling through our labs. With the Toxic series of cards Sapphire shoots high, and their 280X is no exception. Shipping with a factory overclock greater than any other 280X card, the 280X Toxic is the fastest of the 280X cards, which as we'll see has some very interesting performance and power consumption repercussions.

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Western Digital's SMB / enterprise network storage lineup (the Sentinel series) has been based on the Microsoft Windows Storage Server platform. The most recent update to the Sentinel lineup was the RX4100 rackmount model. Like its desktop pedestal mount counterpart (DX4000), the RX4100 was also based on theh Intel Atom platform. Businesses looking for a network storage / server combination were not being served with these models. To gain a foothold in this niche, Western Digital is launching two S-series Sentinel models today, the DS5100 and DS6100.
The DS5100 and DS6100 are ultra-compact storage units also capable of acting as the first server / primary domain controller in a SMB setting. The Xeon CPUs and ECC RAM allow SMBs to run line-of-business applications reliably without compromising on NAS performance. The servers run Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials. Data protection with backup and restore is available for up to 25 users and 50 devices. The  servers come with WD Se enterprise hard drives pre-installed, and these can be accessed via the integrated RAID controller or Windows Storage Spaces. Time Machine support for Macs is also available.
The members of the WD Sentinel Storage Servers family are compared in the table below.

The most impressive aspect of the new members is the ultra-compact size. It will be interesting to see how Western Digital has been able to pack in Xeon-class performance while managing the thermals in a very small chassis less than 450 cubic inches in volume.

The WD Sentinel DS5100 comes in 4 and 8 TB varieties, with the former having a MSRP of $2560. The DS6100 is available with capacities of 8, 12 or 16 TB. The units are available today at CDW, PC Connection, Insight and through the usual VARs in the SMB / enterprise channels.

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