Thread: Anandtech News

The gaming motherboard range from a manufacturer is one with a lot of focus in terms of design and function due to the increase in gaming related PC sales. On the Haswell-E side of gaming, GIGABYTE is putting forward the X99-Gaming G1 WIFI at the top of its stack, and this is what we are reviewing today.

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Late last month, we published our yearly holiday guide for people interesting in buying tablets. We took a look at what we considered to be the best tablets running iOS, Android, and Windows which have become the three dominant operating systems among tablets. That being said, users are likely more familiar with iOS and Android tablets than they are with ones that run Windows, myself included. There's significantly less coverage of Windows devices, and they generally don't attract the same sort of attention as high profile launches like Apple's iPad and Google's Nexus tablets. This makes it somewhat challenging to determine what Windows tablets are good recommendations, and I had to take a look at what owners of Windows tablets had been saying about their experiences. During my search, I came across a tablet that was genuinely interesting. I had seen it previously in posts about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, and the reason I found it to be so interesting was because of its low price. The tablet that I speak of is the HP Stream 7. Read on for our full review, and see what you can get for $119.

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After the last 344.75 NVIDIA driver update, I thought maybe we might not get any more updates until the New Year. Certainly I wasn't expecting to move from the R343 category of drivers to R346, but today NVIDIA has done just that. This is also one of the rare instances where NVIDIA has released a beta driver this year; the last official beta came back in June with 340.43, after which NVIDIA had six straight WHQL updates. You can find the drivers at the usual place.
I have to be clear, however: NVIDIA's driver numbers can often be something of a mystery, and this is a great example. One look at the full release notes (PDF) and I have to ask: why is this 347.09 instead of 344.80? NVIDIA might know, but I asked and they're basically not telling. The jump in numbering would usually suggest at least some new feature, but if it exists it isn't explicitly listed anywhere. More likely it's something that will come with a future update, but then why bump the number in advance?
I also like how this is part of the "Release 346" branch, but it comes with a 347 major revision (similar to how the Release 343 drivers started with 344 numbering). Of course, you can find 343.xx and 346.xx drivers for Linux, so that at least explains the main branch labeling somewhat.
The main reason for the driver release appears to be getting a Game Ready driver for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zero, which was released yesterday for PCs. This is also a Game Ready driver for Elite: Dangerous apparently, which might seem a bit odd as Elite: Dangerous was already listed back with the 344.65 update; then again, the game was in early access for Kickstarters before, where now it has officially launched.
Other than being Game Ready for those two titles, the only other changes mentioned are some 3D profile updates, a new profile for Project CARS (apparently for developers and testers, as that game isn't due for release for another three months), and a few miscellaneous bug fixes. We haven't had a chance to do any testing of the new drivers, but NVIDIA didn't mention performance changes so I wouldn't expect much.
I should also note that the AMD Omega Drivers came out almost two weeks back, and I have done some testing of those. We had planned for a launch day article but due to sickness that has not yet been completed. I can report that the Omega drivers appear to be an improvement in performance or at least status quo for all of the games I tested, and a few titles (BioShock Infinite in particular) show a rather large performance increase. We will hopefully have the full write up posted shortly, but if you haven't updated I have found no reason to hold off doing so.

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While the first 3D NAND chips have just found their way to the market and most NAND manufacturers are still developing their designs, there are already a handful of next generation memory technologies in development that are slated to supersede NAND in the next decade or so. One of the most promising technologies is Resistive Random Access Memory, which is more commonly referred to as Resistive RAM or just RRAM. Similar to NAND, RRAM is non-volatile, meaning that it will retain data without power unlike regular DRAM, which needs a continuous power source. Multiple companies are developing RRAM including semiconductor giants like Samsung and SanDisk, but Crossbar, a US based startup, has probably the most advanced design so far.
I've been following Crossbar for quite some time, but I haven't written anything about the company until now. The company was founded in 2010, headquarters in Santa Clara, California and has secured over $50 million in funding. The company's roots come from the University of Michigan and its Chief Scientist and co-founder, Prof. Wei Lu, is currently an associate professor at the university. The Crossbar team consists of 40-45 members at this point, of which most have extensive backgrounds in semiconductor research and development.

The big benefits RRAM have over NAND are performance and endurance. NAND read latencies are typically in the order of hundreds of microseconds, whereas Crossbar claims latency of as low as 50 nanoseconds for its RRAM design. Endurance in turn can be millions of program/erase cycles, although for the early designs Crossbar is aiming at more conservative ~100K cycles.

Last week at IEDM Crossbar announced that it is now entering the commercialization stage. In other words, it has already shown a working silicon and it has also proved that the design can be transferred to commercial fab for high volume manufacturing, so the company is now working with the fabs to build final products.
At first Crossbar is aiming at the embedded market and is licensing its technology to ASIC, FBGA and SoC developers with first samples arriving in early 2015, and mass production scheduled for late 2015 or early 2016. Aside from licensing, Crossbar is also developing standalone chips with higher capacity and density, which should enter the market about a year after the embedded RRAM designs (i.e.most likely sometime in 2017).
The beauty of RRAM is that it can be manufactured using a regular CMOS process with only a few modifications. NAND and especially 3D NAND require expensive special tools (for things like high aspect ratio etching), which is why only a handful of companies are making 3D NAND. RRAM in turn can be manufactured by practically any existing fab with very little added cost, which ultimately results in lower prices due to more competition.
Additionally, RRAM doesn't share NAND's lithography issues. As we know, the sole reason why 3D NAND was invented is because planar NAND can't really scale below 15nm without serious endurance and performance considerations. However, RRAM can efficiently scale to 4-5nm without any issues and in fact Crossbar has already demonstrated an 8nm chip that it built in its R&D labs (most likely using multiple patterning). Moreover, RRAM can be stacked vertically to create a 3D crosspoint array for increased density and so far Crossbar is at three layers, but first commercial standalone chips are expected to feature 16 layers and up to 1Tbit capacity.
Obviously, there are still several hurdles to cross before RRAM is ready to challenge NAND, but it's good to hear that there has been significant progress in development and the technology has gained interest from the fab companies. Faster, more durable and cheaper SSDs and other storage devices are a win for everyone and ultimately even 3D NAND is just an interim solution until something better comes around, which may very well be RRAM. I'll be doing a more in-depth article about RRAM technology in the coming months as this article was more of a heads up about the state of RRAM and Crosspoint's recent developments, so stay tuned for a deeper analysis!

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While we generally avoid going into deep detail when it comes to our display testing, in light of statements that seemingly contradict our testing it becomes important to contextualize our display tests. Many people are often confused by contradicting statements regarding the peak brightness of an AMOLED display, as we will state that the Samsung Galaxy Note 4’s display reaches a maximum of 462 cd/m^2, while other sites often state that the Note 4’s display reaches a maximum of 750 cd/m^2. Another commonly cited discrepancy is that we rate the Nexus 6’s display to reach a peak brightness of 258 nits, while others have rated the Nexus 6’s display to be as bright as 400 nits.
One might immediately assume that one measurement is right, and the other is false. In truth, both measurements are achievable, as we’ll soon see. Before we get into any discussion of testing methodology though, we must first understand how AMOLED and LCD displays work. Fundamentally, LCD and OLED displays are almost completely different from one another, but face similar issues and limitations. LCD is the older of the two technologies, and is fundamentally quite simple, although not quite as simple as OLED. In short, we can view an LCD display as made of a backlight, and a color filtering array which has liquid crystals that control the passage of light, along with polarizers to make sure that the filtering system works correctly.

An Apple iPod Touch music player disassembled to show the array of white-edge LED's powered on with the device / ReTheCat

To break this system down further, we can look at the backlight. In the case of mobile devices, the only acceptable backlight system for thickness and power efficiency reasons is the edge-lit LED, which places a line of LEDs along an edge of the display, which is then diffused through a sheet of transparent material with strategically-placed bumps in the material to create points of light via total internal reflection. For the most part, LEDs in use today are blue LEDs with yellow phosphors in order to increase efficiency, although this means that that the natural white point of such a backlight is higher than 6504k and requires filtering in order to reach a calibrated white point.

Schematic diagram IPS LC display / BBCLCD

While the backlight is relatively simple, the actual color filtering is a bit more complicated, although we will avoid extensive depth in this case. In the case of IPS, the structure is generally quite simple in nature, with two electrodes in plane with each other, which is used to generate an electric field that rotates the orientation of the liquid crystals in plane with the display to dynamically alter the polarization of the light that can pass through the liquid crystal array. With a set of fixed polarizers before and after the liquid crystal array, by using the controlling TFTs to alter the voltage applied on the electrodes one can adjust individual color output on a per-pixel basis.

Schematic of a bilayer OLED: 1. Cathode (−), 2. Emissive Layer, 3. Emission of radiation, 4. Conductive Layer, 5. Anode (+) / Rafa

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X99 and Haswell-E, due to the price, the performance and the feature set, ends up being very expensive compared to the mainstream. It is an odd state of affairs in the self-build arena when a reviewer states that the budget end of a spectrum is sub-$300. In this space we find the ASUS X99-A at $275 MSRP. This motherboard is the topic of our review today.

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With the holiday season here, Microsoft has announced the January Games with Gold free games preview a bit earlier than normal. They have gotten into a bit of a pattern of only having one game on the Xbox One, with two for the Xbox 360, and this month is no different. 2014’s free games continued to show the huge library of excellent games available for the 360, with many quality titles made available for Xbox Live Gold subscribers, but the Xbox One, with its much smaller library as a newer console, did not enjoy the same caliber of games.
2015 looks to be off to a decent start. Personally I’m still hoping to see some of the bigger launch titles made available soon, since they are now being bundled with new systems or offered for steep discounts. Perhaps later in the year. For now, let us take a look at January’s Games with Gold offers.
Xbox One

D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die

D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is a game I have been eyeing up as something that looks pretty interesting. You play the game as David Young, who is a private investigator, however your wire has been murdered. Access Games is the developer for this episodic detective story, and D4 was originally intended to be used with Kinect, but luckily controller support was added. Reviews have been mixed on D4, with some very high scores and some not so high scores. Metacritic has D4 as a 77 Metascore, and 7.2 User score. D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die was released as a Xbox One exclusive in September 2014, and normally retails for $14.99.
“D4 is the brainchild of legendary Japanese designer Swery (real name: Hidetaka Suehiro), the mind behind the fantastic Deadly Premonition. You play David Young, a detective whose wife has been murdered. David suffers from a strange syndrome as a result of the murder: He can’t remember the past, but he can travel through time. He uses this ability to go back and find out the truth behind his wife’s death so he can try to prevent it. But, along the way, his bizarre powers get augmented (and sometimes impeded) by an equally bizarre cast of characters. The puzzles will leave you scratching your head (in a good way) for a while, but the story and unique cel-shaded graphics will keep you glued to the screen.”
Xbox 360

MX vs ATV Alive

The first game for the Xbox 360 is from THQ Digital Phoenix, and was originally launched in May 2011 on both the Xbox 360 and PS3. MX vs ATV Alive is the fourth title in the off-road racing series. Reviews were not overly high, with many citing the obvious promotion of DLC paid content, and only scored a 63 Metascore and 7.5 User Score on metacritic. MX vs ATV Alive will be available January 1^st to 15^th on the Xbox 360, and normally retails for $19.99.
“Own the competition as you wrestle for position with tightly contested racing in the fifth iteration of the MX vs ATV franchise. Feel the realism of the revolutionary real-world physics engine which has defined the racing genre. Live the sport as Alive captures the spectacle of motocross and the essence of competitive racing while providing the best riders and gear from the latest manufacturers.”
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

The biggest game available for January is the critically acclaimed action RPG The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Players assume the role of Geralt of Rivia, who is a witcher skilled in the destruction of monsters. The game is based on The Witcher fantasty novels, and has a great story and excellent gameplay. The Witcher 2 came in with an 88 Metascore and 8.4 User Score on metacritic, and is a game any RPG fan will want to check out. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will be available January 16^th to 31^st and normally retails for $29.99.
“The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings features a thoroughly engrossing, mature storyline that defines a new standard for realistic,non-linear game narration. In addition to an epic story, the game features a complex combat system that uniquely combines deep tactical elements with dynamic action.”
We are still waiting for the big game to come to the Xbox One Games with Gold program, but D4 is at least a different type of game than we have seen for the last several months. The Xbox 360 has a big name title in the Witcher 2, and right in time to let people get through the second instalment before The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt arrives in May 2015.

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The increasing affordability of SSDs has put a strain on the traditional market for hard drive vendors. However, hard drives continue to remain the storage medium of choice for applications where capacity and cost factors outweigh performance requirements. Thanks to the rapid growth in the SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market, new opportunities have opened up for the HDD vendors. All the major players have lineups catering to this market segment. Western Digital was the first to introduce a 6 TB drive in this space, and Seagate joined in recently with a souped-up Enterprise NAS HDD recently. Today, we will take a look at the highest capacity version in HGST's Deskstar NAS family.

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Today we are having a look at the Raven RV05, an atypical Midi-ATX case from SilverStone with a rotated motherboard tray and a unique visual appearance. It is the fifth and by far the smallest version of the Raven series cases, with SilverStone boasting that it is "a glimpse into the future of enthusiast PC cases". While we can't foretell the future, we can see what the present holds for the Raven RV05. Read on for the full review.

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The legal battle between Samsung and NVIDIA over GPU licensing has turned another page this week, with the announcement from the United States International Trade Commission that it is opening an investigation into NVIDIA and their partners based on complaints filed by Samsung. As outlined in Samsung’s original counter suit, Samsung accuses NVIDIA of violating several of their patents, and having taken these complaints to the ITC, the ITC is now investigating these patent infringement claims.
This is the latest in a series of legal actions by the two companies, and one of many to come in a process that will likely take years to resolve. At the time of their initial counter-suit against NVIDIA and partner Velocity Micro, Samsung indicated that they would be going to the ITC, so this week’s action in turn by the ITC has been expected. Broadly speaking ITC investigations are regular occurrences that do not require a high burden of proof, and in the meantime the ITC already has a similar investigation open against Samsung as per NVIDIA’s original complaint.
Meanwhile of particular note, the ITC’s investigation of NVIDIA will be casting a fairly wide net. Along with NVIDIA, the ITC investigation will also include NVIDIA partners such as EVGA, OUYA, Zotac, Biostar, and Sparkle. As one of the purposes of Samsung’s complaint is to get a ban on the importation of certain NVIDIA SoCs and GPUs, NVIDIA’s use of partners in product assembly and distribution means that those partners are similarly exposed and affected in legal battles such as these.



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