Thread: Anandtech News

Without increasing rotational speed the only hope for improving mechanical hard drive performance is through greater platter densities. There are other benefits realized through increasing platter density: larger capacities or lower noise and power consumption. Yesterday Hitachi GST announced the first 3.5" HDDs with 1TB platter densities.
Hitachi is using the 1TB platters to drive capacity in single-platter drives rather than chase after the 4TB+ market, although it's inevitable that we'll see efforts there as well. The Deskstar 7K1000.D and the 5K1000.B both use the new 1TB platters. Both lines ship with a 32MB buffer, varying only in their rotational speed. The 7K1000 spins at 7200RPM while the 5K1000 implements Hitachi GST's CoolSpin technology. Most drive makers replaced at least some of their 5400RPM drives with these ambiguously named technologies. The spindle speeds are optimized for each capacity point (e.g. a 3TB CoolSpin drive may spin at a different speed than 1TB/single platter CoolSpin drive). The speed of rotation is determined by balancing performance, power and acoustics, although it's never published.


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It's finally here, and hopefully worth the wait! Verizon Wireless and Motorola Mobility announced this morning the new and improved Droid Bionic, the first dual-core, 4G LTE handset. After all the leaks the spec sheet seems fairly familiar, but the TI OMAP 4430 running at 1 GHz with SGX 540 GPU, 1 GB of RAM and 4.3" qHD screen should make this a top performer. The handset will be Webtop capable and so the requisite docks will be available, and the device will also support HDMI mirroring for media playback on a big screen. On the software side Android 2.3.4 is on deck and Motorola is introducing ZumoCast, an application that provides remote access to media stored on your comptuer at home, along with the now standard assortment of enterprise apps including Citrix GotoMeeting and Citrix Receiver.
Handsets go on sale Thursday September 8th for an eye watering $299 on a two year contract, and we anxiously await our review sample to land. PR is after the break along with some press shots.
Source: Verizon Wireless
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HP has accidentally leaked three AMD A-series APUs while updating the service guide for HP Pavilion g7. The update simply includes SKUs and specs for three yet to be released APUs, which suggests that HP will be utilizing these APUs in Pavilion g7 at some point. All three are mobile variants like the M at the end suggests. Below is a table of AMD's A-series mobile lineup - the unreleased CPUs are in bold.

AMD A-Series Mobile Lineup
Model	Core/Thread Count	Frequency	Max Turbo	L2 Cache	IGP	IGP Frequency	TDP
A8-3530MX	4/4	1.9GHz	2.6GHz	4MB	HD 6620G	444MHz	45W
A8-3520M	4/4	1.6GHz	2.5GHz	4MB	HD 6620G (?)	444MHz (?)	35W
A8-3510MX	4/4	1.8GHz	2.5GHz	4MB	HD 6620G	444MHz	45W
A8-3500M	4/4	1.5GHz	2.4GHz	4MB	HD 6620G	444MHz	35W
A6-3420M	4/4	1.4GHz	2.4GHz	4MB	HD 6520G (?)	400MHz (?)	35W
A6-3410MX	4/4	1.6GHz	2.3GHz	4MB	HD 6520G	400MHz	45W
A6-3400M	4/4	1.4GHz	2.3GHz	4MB	HD 6520G	400MHz	35W
A4-3320M	2/2	2.0GHz	2.6GHz	4MB	HD 6480G (?)	444MHz (?)	35W
A4-3310MX	2/2	2.1GHz	2.5GHz	2MB	HD 6480G	444MHz	45W
A4-3300M	2/2	1.9GHz	2.5GHz	2MB	HD 6480G	444MHz	35W

Some of the specs have a (?) after them because those specs were not found in the HP datasheet, but they are our guesses based on the other models of that family. All in all, it looks like A8-3520M will be A8-3500M with 100MHz higher clock speed and Turbo, A6-3420M is A6-3400M with 100MHz higher Turbo and A4-3320M is A4-3300M with 100MHz higher clock speed and Turbo. Increasing the frequency multiplier by one is a pretty common way of delivering smaller updates between bigger updates like die shrinks and micro-architecture changes, so this is nothing special.
Source: HP


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I'd like to congratulate AnandTech reader semandjem for winning the grand prize in our Summer of Honeycomb Giveaway. While we're all out of NVIDIA gear, HP just stepped in to offer the latest prize to AnandTech reader. The prize here is cold hard cash...almost: HP is giving away a $500 Visa Gift Card to one lucky AnandTech reader. The giveaway is in celebration of HP's newest blog targeted at small business owners and entrepreneurs called: Input Creates Output. The sweepstakes is available to all AnandTech readers (US residents only) - to enter simply respond to this post with one comment about what piece of hardware you're most looking forward to buying this year. What are you hoping to do with that hardware once you get it? And if applicable, how is this piece of hardware going to help you in your work or business?

The full sweepstakes entry details are below. Good luck!


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Today AMD introduced its first dual-core Llano APUs: the A4-3400 and A4-3300. These APUs have only 758M active transistors, a bit over half of the transistors in the bigger quad-core alternatives. AMD originally indicated that it would have a separate die for the dual-core APUs but it's unclear whether or not the first A4s will be on the new die or simply used a fused off quad-core Llano. TDP is kept at 65W and there's no Turbo Core supported on either A4 model. These GPUs only have 160 Radeon cores, which should still result in performance competitive with Intel's Sandy Bridge Pentiums based on what we've seen from the 320 core version of the GPU. If we assume linear scaling with core count there shouldn't be many (any?) areas where the Radeon HD 6410 is slower than the SNB Pentium's HD Graphics GPU.
These A4s will work in all existing Socket-FM1 motherboards. Although not listed in the table above, only the A6 and above officially support DDR3-1866. The A4s only support up to DDR3-1600. This isn't too big of a deal as we found in our investigation: DDR3-1600 is the sweet spot for Llano APU performance.


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Intel's Thunderbolt interface is frustratingly fast. The frustration comes from the fact that there just aren't many Thunderbolt devices out on the market today, not to mention that the vast majority of systems don't support the interface.
As a quick refresher a single Thunderbolt link supports 10Gbps of bandwidth in each direction for a total of 20Gbps per link. The Thunderbolt interface itself can carry both PCI Express and DisplayPort signals and you can daisy chain multiple devices together, all sharing the bandwidth of the interface. One potential usage model is for a notebook to connect to an external box offering PCIe slots. It's this usage model that Magma hopes to target with its ExpressBox 3T.
The ExpressBox 3T features three PCIe 2.0 expansion slots in an external chassis. No word on the width of each slot (x4? x8? x16?). The box has an internal 220W power supply and there's no support for auxillary power connectors so you can forget about installing a beefy video card.
Magma hasn't announced pricing or availability or any other details for that matter. I've been hearing that it's tough to get Thunderbolt projects off the ground because of a lack of cooperation from Intel. That may all change next year when Thunderbolt is going to be available as an option for Ivy Bridge platforms. Here's hoping that we'll see more of these boxes in the future, it may be the key to enabling notebook as a desktop usage models for gamers.


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Microsoft is beefing up virtualization support in Windows 8 with Hyper-V, writes Microsoft's Mathew John on the Building Windows 8 blog. Hyper-V was previously available in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but in Windows 8 its functionality is also being rolled into the client version of the operating system.
Hyper-V allows users to run multiple operating systems on the same computer at the same time - if its functionality sounds familiar, it's because programs like VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, and Parallels (for the Mac users among us) have all been providing similar functionality for years. This isn't Microsoft's first foray into this space, either - among other things, Microsoft's Windows Virtual PC (which enables XP Mode on Windows 7 machines) is also virtualization software.
One of Hyper-V's most appealing features compared to basic consumer-level virtualization software is dynamic memory allocation - a Hyper-V-enabled VM with 2GB of RAM allocated to it will only use the RAM it needs, leaving the unused portion of that 2GB available to the host OS or to other VMs. Microsoft notes that up to four VMs can be hosted on a 64-bit system with 4GB of RAM, though more VMs will require a greater amount of memory.
Use of Hyper-V will require a 64-bit version of Windows 8, 4GB or more of RAM, and a CPU supporting either Intel's VT-x or AMD's AMD-V virtualization technology. Hosted operating systems can be either 32 or 64-bit, and can make use of up to 32 processors and 512GB of RAM. For complete details on Hyper-V and specifics on its implementation in Windows 8, read the full post on the Building Windows 8 Blog.
Source: Building Windows 8 Blog


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Last Thursday, Eric Schmidt sat down for a keynote interview at Dreamforce '11, Salesforce.com's cloud computing conference held in San Francisco. The keynote covered a lot of history, several patent issues, the Motorola acquisition and some broad stroke descriptions for what we can expect from Google in the future. One thing slipped through earlier coverage, though. During a brief discussion on Android (at 30:25 in the link below), Eric Schmidt revealed that Ice Cream Sandwich would be introduced in the October/November timeframe. This plays out with the rumors that the Nexus/Droid Prime would premiere in the November/December time frame. Big news? No, but it does tell us that an SDK might be just a few weeks away. Like we said, this is going to be a busy fall.
Source: Youtube via Android and Me


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We've known the GTX 570M was coming for a while now, but MSI is the first to start shipping notebooks with the new GPU. Sitting between the GTX 560M and GTX 580M, the GTX 570M packs 336 CUDA Cores clocked at 1150MHz, with 3GB of GDDR5 running on a 192-bit bus and clocked at 3GHz (72GB/s of bandwidth). That compares to 192 cores clocked at 1550MHz with 2.5GHz GDDR5 (60GB/s) for the GTX 560M, giving the 570M 20% more bandwidth and 34% more processing power. The big brother GTX 580M on the other hand comes with 384 cores clocked at 1240MHz, with 3GHz GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus (96GB/s), so it has 33% more bandwidth and 23% more processing power.
Like all the 500M GPUs (and the 400M parts before them), the 570M supports NVIDIA's Optimus graphics switching technology, though it's up to the notebook manufacturers to actually use it or not. Unfortunately, it appears MSI has decided to not support Optimus with their G-series updates, so we'll have to wait for a future model to get that feature.
That brings us to MSI's new notebooks. The GT683DXR and GT780DXR update the GT680R and GT780R respectively. We reviewed the GT580R a few months back, and it sits in the middle of a bunch of similarly specced notebooks. The new model upgrades the GPU along with packing in 12GB RAM (2x4GB + 2x2GB), keeps the 2x500GB RAID 0 hard drive setup, and continues to offer a GPU overclocking tool dubbed Turbo Drive Engine (TDE) that boosts GPU clocks 3-5%. Newegg and Amazon already have the GT683DXR in stock, priced at $1600 and $1594 respectively.
The larger GT780DXR sports roughly identical specs, with the chief difference being the larger chassis and 17.3" display. The GT780DXR also includes a third USB 2.0 port and a VGA port, to go along with the two USB 3.0 ports and the HDMI port offered on the GT683DXR. and it has a backlit keyboard with three color zones. We haven't had a chance to look at the GT780 series before, so we can't comment on the display quality, but it can hardly be worse than the panel we tested in the GT680R. Considering it costs an extra $100 for a larger notebook with otherwise identical specs, not to mention the use of a matte LCD, we're hopeful that display quality is substantially better on the GT780DXR. The GT780DRX is also available at Newegg for $1700, or at Amazon for $1700.
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You too can help design Borderlands 2. Gearbox Software has invited PC gamers to weigh in on platform-specific options they’d like to see in the forthcoming Diablo-with-guns shooter.
On a recent forum post, UI Design Lead Jason Shields put out the call for suggestions of PC-specific features and “interface niceties” that would improve the game on PC. He doesn’t promise anything grand, but he does say Gearbox will “be putting a lot of effort into properly supporting our PC customers for Borderlands 2.”
The first Borderlands, while lauded for its solid shooting and addictive loot, had a troubled launch on PC. One character’s signature skill simply did not work. The GameSpy-powered networking was unreliable. It also lacked the graphics options to which PC gamers have become accustomed.
Gearbox already announced that Borderlands 2 would support Steamworks, and they are adding it to Borderlands so they can begin tracking player statistics to inform their development process. Borderlands 2 is still a year away, but Gearbox is already doing right by PC gamers by asking them what they missed in the original.
Source: Gearbox


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