Thread: Anandtech News

In the realm of photo and film-editing, post processing can make the difference between bad looking media and something epic. The depth of post processing on an image or a video is usually dictated by the level of expertise of the editor or the budget, which might suggest that things could be better. Darbee is a known company that deals in media post-processing in real-time, whereby I have a couple of friends who swear by their custom boxes that use clever manipulation techniques (based on blur-and-subtract algorithms) to bring their home media system to life. What Galaxy has done is combine one of their GPU designs, the GTX 750 Ti, with a Darbee IP, to allow an all-in-one image enhanced graphics card.

The system takes a standard reference design GTX 750 Ti, extends the length, and uses an add-in card containing an Altera Cyclone IV FPGA as well as some other ICs.

The effect is output only on one HDMI port due to the hardware limitations, but users can adjust the depth of the effect from 0% (none) to 100% (full) with the included software. At current the GPU is not equipped for SLI over cabling, however I requested an edition to come to the US, allowing users to hook up three cards and run them all in SLI with the effect on three HDMI panels.

After speaking to a few friends about the technology, an interesting point came to pass. AMD and NVIDIA are currently in a battle for performance. It would not take much for one of these to invest into the Darbee post-processing ecosystem and incorporate it into their technology, thus giving an improved feature set to the brand. However, it was also mentioned how much effect Darbee has on a calibrated display. We now have a contact for Galaxy, so I will see if Ryan has time to look at a sample.

Gallery: Computex 2014: Galaxy Showcases GTX 750 Ti Darbee Edition

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The Advatronix Cirrus 1200 tries to distinguish itself from the average tower server offering with a cube shaped desktop that has many hot pluggable hard disk bays. Will the low power, low noise, and low latency storage be enough to convince potential buyers to invest in such a solution? Read on for our full review of this storage server.

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As part of their display at Computex, MSI was showing a new element to their range based on low power systems. The ECO range, in a white and green, is aimed at low power scenarios, and MSI seem to focus on micro-ATX sizes for H81 and B85 chipsets.

One of the main elements to this is the MSI software, allowing users to disable unused PCIe and USB ports, or disabling fan headers. We saw the early versions of this software on the Z97 MPower Max AC, but the ECO software is more extensive in terms of options.

There still has to be a number of features on the motherboards in order to sell, but MSI is interested in comments regarding the range.

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Back in 2011, that year’s Computex offered the opportunity to play ‘spot the X79’ motherboard, and there ended up being a significant number of models on display before launch. Fast forward a number of years and ‘spot the X99’ is in full swing, although there seems to be less opportunity. Only one motherboard manufacturer had an X99 motherboard on outward display to all press and the public, so when we went through MSI’s booth, we had a look.

Aside from the lack of a rear panel, there is clearly USB 3.0 and a number of SATA 6 Gbps ports to play with. The spec list to the side mentions DDR4-2666 (OC), showing that 2666 MHz is an overclock frequency for the memory. There also seems to be a reference to an M.2 x2 support, SATA Express support, and an Intel I218-V Ethernet.

Also at the MSI booth was a motherboard featuring a USB 3.1 controller.

The Z97-G55 SLI used the ASMedia ASM1142 Controller that requires two PCIe 2.0 lanes, which puts more pressure on PCIe lanes given the new storage technologies implemented on the 9-series that also require PCIe lanes.

Gallery: Computex 2014: X99 and USB 3.1 at MSI




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Cruising by the ECS booth this year yielded a couple of elements I was not expecting. We have visited ECS booths in years gone by, but this time they are coming to market with a mini-ITX motherboard update. The Z97I-Drone motherboard is designed to be a lower cost Z97-series motherboard, with five SATA ports and an M.2 slot for WiFi/Bluetooth only. I’ll be honest – I have not seen many WiFi modules based on the M.2 standard. There is also an Intel I218-V NIC and six USB 3.0 ports.

Moving around the booth I came across a 4K all-in-one. I could not remember if I had seen a 4K AIO before without MST, but I enquired into the refresh rate, expecting it to be 30 Hz. To my surprise, it was 60 Hz. So this is a 24-inch, 4K, 60 Hz display, which I also found out was running an Intel i7-4790S CPU, a 3.2 GHz quad core model with hyperthreading. ECS is offering this as an OEM for anyone who wants to stick their name on it and sell it. I should have asked if the panel comes pre-calibrated, but it does come with space for two 2.5” drives or one 3.5” drive.

Gallery: Computex 2014: ECS’ Z97I-Drone mini-ITX motherboard and UHD/4K60 AIO

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Speeding by the Thermaltake booth at Computex and our contact showed us the new Core V1, an exciting mini-ITX case where the top, sides and bottom of the case are interchangeable. The case comes with one windowed panel and three vented panels, but users should be able to purchase more windowed panels to make their rig see though, or replacing panels becomes easy and cheap. The front panel of the case is easy to remove, and features a 200mm fan.

The case is also large enough for two 120mm fans on the rear, and due to the nature of the design, the space for a GPU extends into the front of the case for longer graphics cards. It also supports ATX PSUs and it can even be made to house a water cooling loop:

It will not fit their new 540 radiator (3x180mm) though:

The Core V1 has space for two side-mounted 3.5” or 2.5” drives, but with adaptors it will fit four 2.5” drives. The Core V1 should be available within a matter of weeks.

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Okay, pardon my potentially horrible German (and a James Bond reference for good measure!), but it was worth a shot. The latest Humble Weekly Bundle includes up to twelve games, all from German developers. The core bundle has a "pay what you want" price ($1 or more for Steam codes; DRM-free version of five of the seven core games are available for any donation), with three more games if you beat the current average price ($3.81 right now), and finally two additional games if you donate $9 or more. I'm used to seeing Child's Play Charity and the American Red Cross as the standard donation options, but this week the two charities are Doctors Without Borders and Make-A-Wish, so if you'd like to help those causes it's another reason to pick up some of these games. Here's the short list, ordered alphabetically within the pricing tiers:

• Beatbuddy: Tale of Guardians (75%, 08/2013 – $1+): puzzle-platformer with a world that responds to the soundtrack, with rhythm/adventure elements thrown it for good measure.
• Crazy Machines 2 (72%, 06/2008 – $1+): solve increasingly challenging/complex puzzles by building Rube-Goldberg-inspired machines.
• Galaxy on Fire 2 (63%, 08/2012 – $1+): open-ended space shooter/simulation with an optional story you can follow; updated graphics relative to the original iOS release.
• The Great Jitters: Pudding Panic (~60%, 05/2014 – $1+): a port of a popular iOS game, you guide a scared blob of pudding down the rails of a ghost train – try not to faint! (Reviews of the original iOS version are very positive, but the PC port is so new that I haven't seen any reviews yet. Personally...I rate it about a 60%; it's a weak port, with no resolution support above 1024x768 and the gameplay with a mouse is undoubtedly not as compelling as with a touchscreen.)
• The Guild II Collection (~61%, 10/2006 – $1+): this collection includes the original medieval strategy/RPG "life simulation", along with the two follow up games Pirates of the High Seas (63%, 2007) and Renaissance (56%, 2010). You can choose from a number of professions and then life out your life in the game world.
• Spirits (~60%, 02/2012 – $1+): a puzzle/action game with concepts similar to Lemmings, if you go that far back. Guide the autumn leaves home by altering the way the wind blows and changing the ground.
• Tiny & Big: Grandpa's Leftovers (75%, 06/2012 – $1+): a 3D cell-shaded puzzle-platformer where you manipulate the environment with various tools to try to recover a lost relic (Grandpa's Underpants); this was part of another recent bundle, but if you missed it you can pick it up here.
• ArcaniA – Gothic 4 (63%, 10/2010 – BTA): an open-world RPG in the vein of the Elder Scrolls series, this fourth installment moves to more tropical island environment.
• The Book of Unwritten Tales Digital Deluxe Edition (82%, 10/2011 – BTA): this is a classic-style point-and-click adventure game from the Unwritten Tales series, originally funded/launched via Kickstarter. This includes a "making of" booklet and original soundtrack as part of the "Digital Deluxe" package; not to be confused with the later installment in the series, the Critter Chronicles.
• Risen (77%, 10/2009 – BTA): if you've finished reading all of the Elder Scrolls and beaten Gothic and you're still looking for more open-world RPG adventuring, you might want to check out the world of Risen – it's good for another 50+ hours of gameplay.
• Giana Sisters: Twisted Bundle (~80%, 2012-2013 – $9+): this is a two-for-one bundle that gives you the original Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (77%) and the Rise of the Owlverlord (84%), with the latter providing seven new levels. Giana Sisters is a platformer (and another game that started at Kickstarter), with the key mechanic being that switching between the two "sisters" alters the entire game world.
• The Night of the Rabbit: Premium Edition (75%, 05/2013 – $9+): last but not least, this is another point-and-click adventure that involves you following a white rabbit to the world of…no, not Wonderland, Mousewood! Help young Jerry fulfill his dream of becoming a magician, and in the process save Mousewood.

I think the "beat the average" portion of this bundle is a pretty easy sell, as you get ten games and at least a few of them should be worthy of your time. The $9 tier isn't too bad either, provided you don't already own one or both games. I grew up playing quite a few point-and-click adventure games but the genre lost me as I grew older; with young children of my own now, however, getting some family friendly fare that might stretch their brains a bit is always welcome. I'm not sure I'd rate the bundle as "wunderbar", but "gut genug" in this case was sufficient to help me part with some of my money. And as an added bonus for making it this far, I already own Tiny & Big as well as Risen, so the first two people to ask me for a game code can get a Steam gift code from me.
Gallery: Humble Weekly: Liebesgrüße aus Deutschland

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While Computex is already over for this year, we still have a lot of stuff to go through and post. I stopped by at Plextor's booth earlier this week and Plextor showed me their brand new M6 Pro along with PlexTurbo software. Plextor showed the M6 Pro already at CES this year but now the drive is nearly ready for the official release. The hardware inside hasn't changed from CES and it's still uses the Marvell 88SS9187 SATA 6Gbps controller with Toshiba's A19nm NAND and the release is scheduled to take place next month, so we should be able to get samples pretty soon.
In addition to just re-showing the CES products, Plextor also had something new to demo. PlexTurbo is software similar to Samsung's RAPID function and it leverages system RAM to increase transfer speeds. The key difference to RAPID is that PlexTurbo uses RAM as a write-through cache, which means that the data is written to both RAM and the SSD simultaneously. Samsung's approach is write-back based, which is more vulnerable to data loss as initially the data is only written to the cache and is not written to the SSD until the data in the cache is about to be modified. Both RAPID and PlexTurbo are limited to 1GB of RAM to ensure that the system still has enough RAM for standard operation.
Plextor showed me a video of their internal testing comparing PlexTurbo with RAPID in case the drive is disconnected right after writing something. In the test Plextor used a Word file that they modified and unplugged the drive after saving the file. With RAPID the modifications were lost, whereas thanks to Plextor's use of write-through cache the modifications remained intact. Of course this test was designed to promote PlexTurbo’s approach and we will have to run our own tests to confirm the results but it looks like Plextor’s approach might be a bit more reliable than Samsung’s.
PlexTurbo also appears to provide better performance as I saw speeds of up to 10GB/s when the settings were optimised for the software. Plextor did admit that the first generation of PlexTurbo was mostly designed for high benchmark scores, so I would take the results with a grain of salt, but the next version should focus more in actual real world performance. Either way, it’s certainly interesting to see how PlexTurbo stands up with RAPID. With SATA 6Gbps it’s getting very hard to differentiate in the market and providing software like PlexTurbo is one of the only ways, even though the real world gains are debatable.

Furthermore, Plextor announced an M.2 version of the M6e along with other SATA based M.2 SSDs. Currently the M6e has only been available with the half-height, half-length PCIe adapter, which is just added cost for users who are looking to upgrade the M.2 SSD in their laptops.

Plextor will also be bringing a notebook upgrade kit for the M6S. The kit includes a 2.5” chassis for the old internal drive, which can then be used as external storage for backups for instance. Finally, Plextor told me that they will be introducing M6V later this year. The V stands for value and this will be the budget drive from Plextor. I was’t able to get much details other than that it won’t use Toshiba NAND but this might as well be the TLC drive Plextor has been developing for years now.

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Unlike many manufacturers, Kingston didn’t have a booth or suite at Computex but instead they held a one-day HyperX gaming event on the top floor of one of Taipei’s many skyscrapers. In addition to the gaming event, Kingston had several upcoming products to show, ranging from Phison based V310 SSDs to PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD with a brand new Marvell controller.

The V310 will be the successor to V300 and is based on Phison S9 controller instead of the SF-2281 found in the V300. The NAND will be Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC, which enables Kingston to go all the way to up to 960GB. Pricing should be quite similar to the V300 but the difference is that the V310 provides the same performance regardless of the data type (incompressible vs compressible). I was told that the official release should take place in about six weeks, so it looks like July will be a busy timeframe for new SSDs.

Kingston is also bringing a new model to their HyperX family: the HyperX Fury. This is yet another SF-2281 drive and similar to the V310 it utilizes Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC NAND. This provides lower cost compared to the HyperX 3K and Kingston is aiming the Fury at the lower-end gaming segment. Capacities are limited to just 120GB and 240GB and the drives should be available soon.

Now, the PCIe stuff. Kingston had two PCIe SSDs to show —one being the SF3700 based HyperX Predator that was already showcased at CES earlier this year and the other being a Marvell based PCIe 2.0 x4 drive. Similar to everyone else, Kingston couldn't really tell us anything new about the SF3700 but Kingston is still aiming for Q4 release. Kingston had the same 80/20 read/write demo to show that LSI showed us earlier but Kingston was able to tell me that the writes are not 100% compressible. Performance was the same 1.3GB/s that we saw earlier, so nothing new in the SF3700 front really.

As for the Marvell based drive, this is the first time Kingston is working with Marvell and they actually had to hire a few engineers since the Marvell platform is different from the others. The firmware development is still in the early stages but Kingston had a live demo running that showed sequential read performance of nearly 1.4GB/s. Release timeframe is still up in the air due to firmware development but we will probably see the drive some time next year.

Kingston also had some DDR4 at their event but the details were very limited. They will have a full lineup ready when the X99 launches but at this point, they were not willing to discuss any details regarding speeds. The module they had at the show was a 2133MHz one (for servers I think) but we will likely see higher speeds for the desktop market. Desktop capacities will be limited to 8GB at launch while server DIMMs will be available in 16GB as well.

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We already covered ADATA's DDR4 last week but they had a ton of other interesting products at their booth. I'll start with the SSDs as they are the most intriguing for me.
ADATA didn't announce any new SSDs at Computex but they had all their existing products along with some unreleased drives shown at the booth. The most interesting drive was the SR1020, which is an SF3700 based enterprise drive that comes in capacities of up to 2TB and is rated at up to 1,800MB/s and 150K IOPS. Both 2.5" and M.2 2280 versions will be available with similar specs (yes, 2TB in M.2) but ADATA couldn't really share much details due to LSI's strict policies with the SF3700. I'm guessing the drive uses 128Gbit Micron NAND to achieve the high capacity but we will have the full details once the release gets closes (should still be Q4).

In addition to the enterprise-focused SR1020, ADATA also had a more consumer-friendly 2TB to show: the XPG SX930. This is also an SF3700 based SSD but the controller runs in SATA 6Gbps mode. If you have read our original SF3700 announcement article, you might remember that the controller supports both SATA 6Gbps and PCIe 2.0 x2/x4 interfaces and selecting the mode is as simple as toggling a switch, although this can only be done by the OEM to ensure that the end-user doesn't accidentally change the mode. While SATA 6Gbps isn't fast enough to show the full potential of SF3700, I see the reasoning behind a SATA 6Gbps version. In the end, the transition to PCIe won't happen overnight and there are plenty of areas where the interface isn't the bottleneck (IO consistency and performance at low queue depths for instance).

ADATA also had a working SF3700 sample in one of their demo systems but they were not allowed to run any benchmarks on the drive. Looks like LSI has been able to tune down the power consumption as the drive no longer needs a heatsink for the controller.

Here is what ADATA's high-end SSD lineup currently looks like. The SP910 was launched just before Computex and it's based on the Marvell 88SS9187 controller. The difference to SP920 is that the SP910 features a custom firmware, whereas the SP920 uses a Micron-designed firmware as it's essentially a rebranded drive like we mentioned in our review (although ADATA cannot officially say that). ADATA also launched M.2 SATA 6Gbps SSDs with SF-2281 controller with capacities of up to 512GB. The SP610 with a Silicon Motion controller was also present at the booth and I already have the drives and will be reviewing them within the next few weeks.

In addition to 2.5" and M.2 SSDs, ADATA had micro SSDs to show. The idea is similar to SanDisk's iSSD and basically it's a standard SSD but in BGA footprint. ADATA is using JMicron's JMF608 controller, which is a 4-channel design that does not need any external DRAM. Sequential performance should be similar to any other SATA 6Gbps SSD and capacities go all the way to up to 128GB thanks to Micron's 128Gbit 20nm NAND. The market for micro SSDs is mainly in the embedded market but that's currently a growing market with a lot of potential.

ADATA also had some industrial SSDs to show. The drive in the picture is ISSS312 and it uses a JMicron controller with an ADATA-designed firmware. Power loss protection is provided by tantalum capacitors as you can see in the picture but in addition there is also support for hardware erase (i.e. there is a physical button that triggers secure erase) and there is even a water-proof version available. Capacities with MLC NAND range from 16GB to 128GB and SLC NAND is supported as well.

While DDR4 was obviously at the center of the attention, ADATA also had all their DDR3 modules at the booth. On the right is the new XPG V3 with a redesigned heatsink. Specs are similar to the V2 and the XPG V3 is available at up 3200MHz (CL12) in capacities of 4GB and 8GB per module.

While I mainly focused on ADATA's component selection, there were some interesting mobile accessories too, such as a desk lamp, which functions as a wireless charging pad for devices with Qi wireless charging support. I think the idea is pretty neat because it eliminates the need for an additional device on your desk.

Of course ADATA also had some traditional wireless chargers to show, such as the Elite CE700.

The PV110 is an updated version of the PV110 power bank and it ups the capacity from 4,200mAh to 10,400mAh. The design has also changed from plastic to brushed aluminum and with two USB ports the PV110 is capable of charging two devices simultaneously with total output of 3.1A. For users who don't need such high capacity, ADATA offers the PC500 with 5,000mAh capacity with just one USB port and the design is also plastic to help drive the cost down.
Thats it for the ADATA booth tour. I'll be covering ADATA's plans for DDR4 and SSDs in more detail over the next couple of weeks because I had a meeting with their president along with the directors of their memory and SSD departments, so stay tuned for more content!

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