Thread: Anandtech News

Patriot's Box Office helped the memory company diversify and now it's giving Android a try with the PBO Alpine. Patriot showed me a very early concept of the Alpine running Android 2.2. The experience obviously needs a lot of work but the promise is an affordable Android based media streamer that allows you to run Android apps.

There's no market support of course since this isn't an official Google TV deployment, but you could always sideload. Given that this is a concept there's still the chance that Patriot could take the Alpine in a more Google TV-like route when Google makes the source available.

Patriot had no additional information on the Alpine so forgive the lack of SoC details. We'll update this post if we come across any more information.

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Patriot gave me a preview of their new Viper Xtreme Division4 DDR3 memory due out later this year. Patriot is targeting this new line at Sandy Bridge E systems, which support up to four channels of DDR3 memory (official support for DDR3-1600, but overclocking will surely be an option).

Given the current price of memory, Patriot expects the default configuration for SNB-E systems to be a kit of four 4GB DIMMs for a total of 16GB. Sandy Bridge E isn't expected until the Fall at the earliest so memory pricing isn't certain, but Patriot expects a 16GB SNB-E memory kit to sell for around $130 when Division4 is released later this year.

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I had a chance to quickly go through the Lian Li booth today, and scope out what new products are on the horizon for the well respected computer case manufacturer. Even at first glance, I thought the TU-200 was a good idea:

This is essentially the same inside as the PC-Q08 case we have recommended in our small form factor buyer guides, but built with a sturdier outer shell and a handle for easy movement. The most obvious application for this product is for LAN gamers who often move their machines about. The TU-200 is a mini-ITX with space for a full length dual slot graphics card and 4 SATA drives, like the PC-Q08, or space for 6 SATA drives if a small card is used. Expect to see the TU-200 in markets soon, though unfortunately no word on pricing, nor how much weight the handle can take – Lian Li tell me this is still to be tested.



The other main new Lian Li case on show, this time in a large size form factor sufficient for XL-ATX size motherboards, was the PC-100: a new design concept on how a case should be built. Lian-Li have decided to change the position of the motherboard mounting such that the IO panes are at the front of the case, thus having all the USB ports available for immediate use.



This raises a few questions, namely how the airflow is arranged in the case. I pointed out that as the case still has an intake at the front, the warm air from the GPU would rise into the front fan and blow warm air over the CPU. A quick chat with one of Lian Li’s engineers and I found out that this hadn’t been thought of – ultimately the PC-100 is still in the engineering phase – they’re expecting to put a door on the front of the case for easy access to the I/O panel, and as I pointed out the heat issue, they may place the board on the other side of the case so the GPU is at the top – and thus the motherboard is upside down. However, there are still concerns with what to do with Ethernet, audio and everything else to do with the I/O panel – but it’s interesting to see a different design perspective from a case manufacturer.



One other point of note is the HDD bay design. I’d never seen this before on a full size case before today, but on both the PC-90/100 (as well as an Enermax case at Computex) the mounting of 3.5 inch drives has been taken towards the vertical, against the case, to free up some space in terms of case length for high end graphics cards. This could result in more case manufacturers following suit, and less cases only being as long as the high end GPUs.

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Almost all the major motherboard manufacturers have had some form of X79 on display – Anand has already shown you the MSI and ECS offerings, but I stopped by the Intel booth today to a magnificent display. Almost every X79 board at Computex was on show, so let us play a game of spot the difference.

Of the 12 models on display, ASUS alone have six – the C1X79, C1X79 LE, C1X79 PRO, C1X79 Deluxe and the C1X79 Plus, which covers most of their standard P67 launch model names. We have one from Sapphire (PB-C17X79N), one from ECS (X79R-A), one from ASRock (X79 Extreme4), and three from MSI (GD65, GD70 and GD80) also.

All the X79 on show are likely to be early engineering samples or mockups – this is more than clear with the brown PCB shown on the ASUS boards and the lack of cooling on the VRMs across most on display. The lack of I/O on the ASUS boards adds more to this realisation.

The Sapphire model is interesting given that it contains 6 full length PCIe and an 8-pin 12V connector, whereas the ECS board has four PCIe – possibly color coded for an nForce 200 quad GPU configuration.

The MSI series starts with the high end GD80 having a blue PCB with a PCH fan, an 8-pin power slot and an angled fan cooler. Unfortunately it seems the display had the GD70 and GD65 boards in the wrong place, as the board above the GD70 said GD65 however where the GD65 was, there was a sticker over the model number and that board required two 8-pin PCIe. Perhaps it was a new GD90 designation in this spot to confuse us?

It will ultimately be a while before we can get our hands on working boards to let you know how they feel, but stay tuned – this is an exciting time for the CPU and motherboard industry. Have a look at the gallery for the full X79 line-up from the Intel booth.

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It's time for another break from the Computex 2011 coverage, this time with an extreme system review.

There seems to be an interesting cottage industry between custom desktop boutiques in trying to build the single fastest machine consumers can buy, and it's not at all dissimilar to the kind of competitive thinking that produces utterly impractical video cards like the AMD Radeon HD 6990 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 that threaten to populate those machines. Somewhere along the line, someone said "screw it" and decided to figure out just how much of a speed demon they could build while still being able to market and sell it to consumers and support it without tarnishing the brand. DigitalStorm has pretty aggressively held on to our "fastest computer we've ever tested" crown for a while, but CyberPowerPC looks to steal it away with their Gamer Xtreme FTW Edition. Read on to find out if they succeed... and how much this puppy will set you back.

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Today marks the first day of our coverage of Qualcomm's annual Uplinq conference in San Diego, California. It's our first time coming to Uplinq, a conference whose roots trace back to the haydays of the Brew MP platform, when featurephones were king. Since then it's become a mobile conference hosted by Qualcomm for developers, operators, and software developers alike.

Read on for our coverage of today's keynote by Dr. Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm.



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At Computex there are a few systems floating around with an updated version of AMD's Brazos platform. The E-350 we reviewed not too long ago featured two Bobcat cores running at 1.6GHz alongside an 80 SP GPU running at 400MHz. Later this year AMD will refresh the platform with an E-450. You'll still get the same 2/80 core configuration, but clock speeds and memory support will be slightly different.

The E-450 runs at 1.65GHz, a mild increase over the E-350. Remember that AMD used a very GPU-like approach to the design of Bobcat. The chip was very easy to lay out and manufacture, but it doesn't have the frequency headroom of a traditional AMD CPU. Instead AMD will have to rely on process shrinks to really bring about larger increases in clock speed.

AMD will also add DDR3-1600 support with the E-450, a mild spec bump over the 1333MHz support we get today.

While the GPU doesn't get any more execution power it will both operate at a higher base frequency and apparently support some form of graphics turbo. Manufacturers at the show tell us that the CPU side won't be able to turbo up.

The E-450 is still a few months away from release, we'll see AMD's Llano followed by Bulldozer before Brazos gets this mid-cycle update.


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Intel just emailed me to clarify a point from its Ivy Bridge presentation on Tuesday. While USB 3.0 will finally be integrated into the chipset, Thunderbolt will not. Intel clarified that the interface will be featured on some 2012 platforms but it wouldn't be on all and it won't be integrated into the chipset.

Thanks to the readers who questioned our original interpretation of the slide and my apologies for the confusion.





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Dozens of companies have built entire businesses supplying accessories to the iPod and iPhone. With the iPad, storage vendors are trying to get a piece of the pie by addressing the inherent storage limitations of the platform. Without an SD card slot, your iPad is stuck with however much storage you buy it with. Upgrading isn't possible and higher capacity models are sold at a pretty steep premium. Seagate and now Kingston are offering 802.11 enabled, battery powered external storage devices to use with the iPad or any device with a web browser (iOS or not).

While Seagate went the mass storage route with a 500GB hard drive, today Kingston is announcing its Wi-Drive an external 16GB or 32GB wireless addition deisgned for mobile devices. The Wi-Drive can support up to three simultaneous users either through a free iOS app or by connecting to the Wi-Drive via a web browser.

You get your content onto the Wi-Drive via USB and then can access it wirelessly via your mobile device. Kingston is promising up to 4 hours of battery life.

The 16GB version will retail for $129.99 while the 32GB version will set you back $174.99.

Personally I see the need for expandable tablet storage, but I'm not entirely sure what the sweet spot is. For users who use the iPad as their only computing device, these devices are going to make a lot of sense. I plan on looking at both the Seagate solution and the Kingston Wi-Drive after I get back from Computex.



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Kingston is a pretty big player in the SSD space but mostly on the mainstream/value end of the spectrum. With a fairly conservative strategy we haven't seen Kingston be competitive with higher end drives since the release of the X25-M. That's all about to change now that Kingston is officially a SandForce partner.

The Kingston HyperX SSD uses Intel 25nm NAND and a SF-2281 controller, making it very similar to a Vertex 3 (it's unclear if it'll have the same performance-limited firmware as the OWC drive we tested).

The drive will come with a 3-year warranty and be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities. As always, Kingston will offer the drive as a part of an optional upgrade kit which includes a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, external USB enclosure, Acronis imaging software, SATA cable and a screwdriver.

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