Thread: Anandtech News

Intel has posted an upgrade service page on their website which indicates that Intel will again be offering upgradeable CPUs. This is not totally unheard of since Intel offered a similar service for Pentium G6951 a year ago. Back then, $50 bought you Hyper-Threading and 1MB more L3 cache, and the SKU of the CPU changed to G6952. This time Intel has expanded the lineup and the upgrade service is available for three CPUs: i3-2312M, i3-2102 and Pentium G622. Unfortunately we don't know the price yet but we do know that the upgrade offers higher frequency and possibly increased amount of cache. Here are the CPU before and after the upgrade:

CPU Before Upgrade	CPU After Upgrade	Performance increase
i3-2312M (2.1GHz, 3MB)	i3-2393M (2.5GHz, 4MB)	10-19%
i3-2102 (3.1GHz, 3MB)	i3-2153 (3.6GHz, 3MB)	12-15%
Pentium G622 (2.6GHz, 3MB)	Pentium G693 (3.2GHz, 3MB)	15-23%

The after CPUs have not been released so the specs are just calculations based on the performance gains Intel reported.
Upgrading the CPU is very simple. All you need is the upgrade card. Then download the installer from Intel's site and run it. At some point, you will be asked to insert the code from the upgrade card (no, you can't get this for free).
The need for such upgrade is fairly small though. We don't know the price so it's hard to say can the upgrade be worth it or not, but if the price will end up being $50 like before, it's pretty expensive for 10-23% gains. Pentium G622 costs only ~$65, meaning that you get 23% performance increase for 77% more money. Not exactly a bargain. i3s cost a bit more but even then, you aren't getting a good performance/price ratio.
The only useful scenario could be with OEM PCs when you don't get to choose the CPU. Intel has blocked overclocking in non-K CPUs, so you are stuck with the stock frequency. In some rare occasions where the extra CPU speed is really needed, paying the upgrade price can be worth it. However, what we are looking at are low-end CPUs, so anyone who needs a powerful CPU should look at Intel's i5 and i7 lineups in the first place.
Source: Intel


More...

Ever since we reviewed the SilverStone Raven RV03, a lot of you have chimed in about their Fortress FT02 enclosure, with more than one even proclaiming it the best air-cooling enclosure ever; high praise to be sure. To be fair, we were impressed with the FT02 when we reviewed the DigitalStorm BlackOps, a monster of a boutique build that nonetheless ran remarkably quiet and cool given the massive overclock on its Core i7-950 and the pair of GeForce GTX 580s sandwiched together in precisely the way NVIDIA tells you to avoid. It didn't matter: the system was cool and quiet despite pulling nearly 700 watts under our testing load and undoubtedly cable of pulling more. The FT02 has been around for a couple of years now and SilverStone warns that it doesn't enjoy some of the conveniences modern enclosures do, but can it hold up?

More...

Using a tablet outside of the home in areas where WiFi isn't prevalent is unbelievably frustrating. Sure it's nicer to use the larger screen of a tablet compared to a smartphone, but only if you can actually browse the web and check email on it. I suspect a large number of WiFi tablets are used in locations where free WiFi is prevalent. At homes, in cafes, on campus, in hotels, etc... But what about those who aren't so lucky?

You can always tether to your smartphone or get a MiFi, but if you want to carry only a single device there's always the option of a cellular connected tablet. While Motorola's Xoom shipped with the promise of a future upgrade to support LTE, Samsung and Verizon were actually first to deliver an LTE enabled tablet: the Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE.
Read on for our full review of the LTE enabled Galaxy Tab 10.1.


More...

Google has just announced that they will acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (or more commonly known as just Motorola). Google will be paying $40 per share, which means a total of about $12.5 billion. That is 63% more than what was Motorola's closing price on Friday, August 12.
Motorola has been selling Android phones since the late 2009, so the Android platform is familiar for them. Google states that the goal of this acquiring is to enhance the Android platform as a whole in order to provide better user experience. Motorola will remain as an independent business, meaning that the Motorola brand is not going anywhere. Also, Android will remain open for other manufacturers.
It appears that this is Google's try to fight against Apple and iOS. One of Apple's biggest advantages has been the control of both, software and hardware. Google has Nexus but the sales have been fairly low, which might indicate that the hardware has not been top notch. Motorola, on the other hand, has been in the hardware business for years, so maybe with Motorola's hardware skills, Google will be able to come up with a revolutionary smartphone.
Source: BusinessWire


More...

If you've been on the Internet for very long today, you've probably already heard about this: Google intends to purchase Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion, or about $40 a share. The deal, Google's biggest acquisition ever, has been approved by the boards of both companies.

There are potentially far-reaching implications to this deal in both the long and short term: more immediately, Google will gain access to Motorola's massive portfolia of 17,000 patents (for reference, the Nortel bid that Google lost to Microsoft and Apple earlier this month ago was for just 6,000 patents). This will help Google face the wave of litigation that nearly every company in the smartphone market is currently trying to ride. In the long run, as the companies become more integrated, we could see Motorola phones that exhibit an Apple-like synergy between hardware and software. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
What does it mean for Android?

In a blog post announcing the deal, Google CEO Larry Page was careful to note both that the "acquisition will not change [Google's] commitment to run Android as an open platform" and that "[Google] will run Motorola as a separate business," meaning that other manufacturers will be given the same access to Android that they currently enjoy and that Motorola, for the moment, would continue to run as a separate entity and would not receive preferential treatment as an Android licensee.
For the moment, this is likely to be true. Google won't want to deal with an exodus of hardware manufacturers from Android to competing platforms, and even if the stated goal was a tight integration between Motorola hardware and Google software, this would take time to achieve.
Surely, as time goes on, Google will begin to give some form of preferential treatment to Motorola and its handsets, whether in the form of early access to software updates (as we've already seen with the Xoom and Honeycomb) or in features developed specifically for Motorola phones. Even so, Google will likely work to give third parties the same sort of access they have today, since the company's success has come from getting Android on as many devices as possible rather than at trying to beat Apple at its own game.
What of Microsoft?

As mentioned above, Microsoft could potentially see increased interest in Windows Phone 7 from handset makers worried about subpar treatment from Google, but Windows Phone 7 has had such a hard time gaining traction in the market that this seems unlikely.
What is more likely is that Microsoft will try to follow suit and buy up its own smartphone company - some have suggested that Nokia, a company with whom Microsoft already has a cozy relationship, could be a potential acquisition target, and Nokia's stock is currently up about 10% on this speculation.
Rumors of a Microsoft-Nokia acquisition were swirling earlier this summer, but Nokia called them "totally baseless" at the time, and there are no indications that things are any different now. Still, especially as the patent wars heat up, expect to see more acquisitions as companies try to beef up their portfolio's and shore up their businesses.
Clearing The Regulators

The last thing to consider is whether the deal will actually go through at all: both companies approve, but the deal still has to clear the hurdle of the Federal Trade Commission, the US agency responsible for antitrust regulation.
The FTC already has its eye on Google: primarily, the FTC wants to make sure that Google isn't using its dominant position in the search market to promote its other products as it continues to diversify its business. Also of concern to the agency is whether Google discourages its hardware partners from using non-Android operating systems on their handsets. This investigation is still in its early stages, having only started in June, but the scale and scope of the Motorola purchase will be sure to raise some eyebrows.
Despite this, I would say that the likelihood of FTC interference in the Google-Motorola deal is pretty low, since it's not a stretch to say that there's still a lot of very healthy competition in the smartphone market - Android has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, but Apple and the iPhone are both still very healthy, and Microsoft is taking aggressive steps to increase the presence of Windows Phone 7 in the market. Regulators would be smart to scrutinize the deal, but they probably won't stop it.


More...

Not too long ago Intel officially recognized that its SSD 320 is impacted by a bug that results in the drive's capacity being limited to 8MB. Today Intel announced that it has found the root cause of the problem, developed a firmware fix and is currently validating the firmware. As soon as the update is through Intel's validation it'll be released to end users.
Validation testing is an important process of any software/hardware release. It includes regression testing to make sure that no previously fixed bugs are re-introduced with the new firmware, as well as compatibility and performance testing to ensure that nothing new is broken with the release. Obviously validation is only as good as the test plan itself. Clearly the Intel SSD 320 made its way through initial validation without ever discovering this bug, however now that it's been found Intel has probably modified its SSD validation to include bugs of this nature.
You can always increase the scope of your validation by testing more scenarios on more hardware in parallel. Unfortunately this does increase developments costs and as we mentioned in our last SSD article, there's not a ton to be made in consumer SSDs to begin with.


More...

One week ago, we wrote about HTC's launch of HTC Dev, its intent to release more components of its OpenSense SDK, and some of its plans for unlocking bootloaders on already released devices. True to its claims, HTC has released the bootloader unlocking tool for the international HTC Sensation today.

The workflow might seem a bit daunting at first given the diagram above, but it boils down to getting a token off of the individual device, then shipping that off to HTC so they can track unlocked devices when warranty status comes into question later. The token is no doubt some hash of identifiers unique to the phone being unlocked - possibly a hash of IMEI, serial, or others. HTC's servers then generate a key based on the device token, which the bootloader accepts and unlocks itself with. HTC has more details about the process at its website.

{gallery 1309}

Currently the tool only works with the international version of the HTC Sensation, though the EVO 3D on Sprint and T-Mobile US HTC Sensation are listed alongside as devices which will get official unlocks as well.

Source: HTC

More...

VR-Zone has released preliminary info about Sandy Bridge-E pricing. There doesn't seem to be any surprises though, the report states that SB-E will adopt exactly the same price points as what Intel's current LGA 1366 socketed i7 CPUs use. Below is a table of the CPUs and their specs:

	Nehalem/Westmere			Sandy Bridge-E
Model	i7-960	i7-980	i7-990X	i7-3820	i7-3930K	i7-3960X
Cores/Thread Count	4/8	6/12	6/12	4/8	6/12	6/12
Frequency	3.2GHz	3.33GHz	3.46GHz	3.6GHz	3.2GHz	3.3GHz
Max Turbo	3.46GHz	3.6GHz	3.73GHz	3.9GHz	3.8GHz	3.9GHz
L3 Cache	8MB	12MB	12MB	10MB	12MB	15MB
Unlocked Multiplier	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Price	$294	$583	$999	$294	$583	$999

As the table shows, the price points are indentical. This is what we expected back in April in our article about SB-E, and because Intel has kept pretty much the same price points since the introduction of Nehalem in late 2008, this isn't surprising. However, Intel will not be including CPU cooler in the retail package anymore, which marginally reduces the expenses. Considering that SB-E is mainly aimed at enthusiastics and enterprise market, it makes sense as most users have relied on third party coolers anyway due to better cooling performance and quieter operation for instance. The CPU pricing does not imply that the platform costs will be identical to X58 though, it's possible that Intel will be charging more for the X79 chipset, but that shouldn't make a dramatical difference.
VR-Zone says that this info has come from one of their most reliable sources and overall VR-Zone has been a fairly reliable source of information lately, but as with any unofficial data, the info should be taken with grain of salt.
Source: VR-Zone


More...

It seems like not all that long ago we were talking about the launch of Windows 7, but 2012 is right around the corner, and it's bringing Windows 8 with it. To that end, Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky opened the Building Windows 8 blog today. Like the Windows 7 blog before it, "B8" will discuss Windows 8 in-depth as it moves from its current internal development phase to RTM, which is still planned for some point in late 2012.
Sinofsky's opening post gives no new information on the operating system, but it does reiterate a lot of what we already know: it will run on ARM SoCs, it needs to run (and run well) on a wide variety of devices, and our next major look at the software will be at Microsoft's BUILD conference next month. It also appears likely that the road to Windows 8's release will closely mirror Windows 7's, including a public beta period in which "end-users, developers, and information professionals" will get their chance to evaluate the new OS before it is actually released.
Also evident in Sinofsky's blog post is that the company still remembers the lessons learned from Vista. He notes that some have expressed "frustration over how little [Microsoft has] communicated" regarding the new OS (in possible reference to the lack of information about the programming languages Windows 8 will push), but noted that Microsoft has "learned lessons over the years about the perils of talking about features before [they] have a solid understanding of [their] ability to execute," a reference to the many features Longhorn shed over its five-year development cycle. In short: Microsoft is only planning on talking about features that it's pretty confident will be included in the shipping version of the OS.
Sinofsky made no mention of when or how often the blog would update, but said that many members of the Windows team would be writing posts and responding to feedback left on the blog. Windows 8 still has no firm release date, but if it follows Windows 7's precedent, we'll probably see a beta sometime in early 2012, followed by a release candidate in the spring and RTM in the summer before the OS is released to the public in the fall.
Source: Building Windows 8 Blog


More...

Top-down shooting, upgradeable fleets, a galaxy-wide zombie infestation: MinMax Games’ Space Pirates and Zombies (officially abbreviated S.P.A.Z.) has it all for just $15. Released yesterday on Steam, S.P.A.Z. is also available through a number of other digital distributors.
In the world of S.P.A.Z., warring factions of miners and military tussle over resources in the lawless expanses of space. Your small but merry crew, on a mission to find the mother lode, stumbles across a ship crawling with zombies. As you can imagine, things get complicated from there.
S.P.A.Z. is quite the feat for a development team of two. It blends top-down shooting with in-depth fleet construction (similar to Gratuitous Space Battles or Galactic Civilization) and RPG-like skill progression. The flight mechanics are physics-based, lending the keyboard and mouse controls their own floaty flavor of twin-stick shooting. As your fleet grows, you can issue commands at the macro level if you prefer, but it’s the riveting small-scale dogfights that will tell you if have the nerves and skill to stick it out in S.P.A.Z.
The $15 price tag may seem a bit steep, so I encourage you to give the demo a spin (I spent 90 minutes with it and am already hooked). Sure, the character art doesn’t measure up to the ship designs and the writing doesn’t always land. But its old-school space combat and persistent, procedurally-generated universe make the idea of sinking hours into S.P.A.Z. incredibly appealing.


More...