AMD to Bring Back 'FX' Series

Regardless of what market we are dealing with, there is always going to be a product that screams 'ultra high-end'. It will cost a lot more than the rest, but gives certain perks that cause it to be drool-worthy for enthusiasts everywhere. One such case is with our CPUs. Intel's Extreme Editions cost much more than the second rung in the ladder, but they are binned for perfection and stock-clocked higher than anything else.

But remember when AMD had such a series as well? With the launch of Intel's latest Core 2 processors, AMD was whipped, and they knew it, so their 'FX' line was dropped. It was rather upsetting. When FX models first hit the market in 2003, they really meant something. I clearly remember the first time I read about the single-core FX-51, a 2.2GHz wonder chip that just screamed 'take out a loan, now!'.

The last 'real' FX chip was the FX-60, a 2.6GHz Dual-Core offering that came out in early 2006. Since then, we saw CPUs for the Quad FX platform, but I don't think we need to talk too much about that. For those who miss that FX moniker, no fear, as AMD plans to relaunch the series next summer. The big question though, is whether or not AMD will be able to deliver a product that actually deserves the title. We can hope...

The code-named Deneb FX microprocessors that are projected to be launched sometime in the middle of next year will feature four processing engines, shared level-three cache, dual-channel DDR2 (up to PC2-8500, 1066MHz) and DDR3 (up to PC3-10666, 1333MHz) memory controller, according to sources with knowledge of AMD’s plans. The new chips are projected to utilize AM3 form-factor, which means better system flexibility.

Source: X-bit Labs

Atom Demand High, Intel Unable to Keep Up

One problem with a new product being so successful is that it's sometimes difficult to keep up with the sheer demand, especially if you don't have the factory power to back it all up. Take Nintendo's Wii for example. Despite the fact that it was released two years ago, it's still in short demand, and the only way to guarantee a console is by 'knowing someone' who works at a retailer that carries them.

Well apparently Intel is suffering a similar issue with Atom. The demand is so high, that they are simply unable to build enough, even though they yield close to 2,500 per wafer. Thank ASUS, I guess, for kicking off the netbook PC revolution, because since they released their Eee PC, at least ten other companies have followed suit with their own mini-notebooks. Slowdown? Not going to happen for a while.

What could result from Intel's inability to keep up with demand might be extra sales for VIA, of their Nano processor. Nano has its own caveats, but when Atom supply is limited, some companies are going to have to look elsewhere. As Ars Technica mentions, HP is the first company to pick up on Nano for their own netbook, but it wouldn't be surprising to see other companies offer special models. This could be resolved if Intel converted one of their fabs to push out Atom, but that would of course affect another product line. Tough decisions at Santa Clara, it seems. Who said success was easy?

If anyone benefits from Intel's constraint, I'd expect it to be VIA, but I also expect Santa Clara to keep a very close watch over Atom's growth. If the company feels that it is losing important sales due to production constraints, it might very well decide to take a (small) hit in another processor family in order to establish Atom's presence in as many first-generation netbooks as possible.

Source: Ars Technica

Sandra 2009 Brings GPGPU Benchmarking to our Toolbox

SiSoftware, creators of one of the most popular benchmarks ever, have released version 2009 of Sandra. We've used Sandra in our reviews for as long as the site's been around, and it's likely easy to understand why. It offers a slew of different tests, from ones that target to the CPU to the RAM to the GPU. What? Did I just say the GPU? Why yes I did, and that happens to be one of the new features of the latest version.

As mentioned in the last news post, GPGPU is a term that really came out of nowhere, but is here to stay. Since GPUs have been found to be so highly-efficient in the general purpose game, a huge push is being put forth to shift certain applications over to those, to take advantage of the highly parallel architecture that the GPU offers. Noticing this, SiSoftware was quick to add three new tests to the latest version, all which test the GPU and spit out a result similar to what we currently see with their CPU benchmarks.

The new benchmarks are 'Video Rendering', 'Graphics Processing' and 'Graphics Bandwidth', all of which are self-explainable. You can see the results of the middle test below, which delivers results for both the float and double precision shaders in MPixel/s and GPixel/s, respectively. I could not immediately get the Video Rendering test to function properly, despite having a fully up-to-date system.

How useful the new benchmarks will prove to be in real-world use is unknown, but it could be just as useful as the results the CPU ones we have now. This is at least a start, and though there is not that much importance on GPGPU right now, I think we'll see things change over the next year, when applications that take advantage of the GPU begin to hit the market, such as video renderers and image manipulators. After we evaluate the new version more, we may begin to include results in our GPU reviews, if there is some interest in such metric.

We believe the industry is seeing a shift from a model where the vast majority of workload is processed on the traditional CPU: in a wide range of applications developers are using the power of GPGPU to aid business analysis, games, graphics, and scientific applications. Coupled with the charts added to the latest version of the software, we can work out whether a CPU or GPU would be faster, more power efficient or cost efficient.

Source: Sandra 2009 Press Release, CPU vs. GPU Arithmetic, CPU vs. GPU Memory Bandwidth

What DirectX 11 Will Bring to the Table

It took a little while before DirectX 10 games hit the market, but now there is at least 20 different titles that are either native DX10 or at least support it. The most notable might be Crysis, although games like Call of Juarez, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War (pictured below) and Lost Planet put it to the best use. The real benefits of DX10 might be seen when certain titles like Alan Wake and Crysis Warhead hit the market though... not to mention STALKER: Clear Sky. The next year in gaming is sure to be pretty...

What about DirectX 11? Microsoft formally announced the new API at their Gamefest conference in Seattle this past July, but what does it mean to developers, or gamers? According to Elite Bastards, it means a lot of things, and from what they've found out, Microsoft is really pushing forth an effort to make sure their upcoming API is well-received. Microsoft even goes as far as saying the best way to prepare for DX11 is to code with DX10 and 10.1, now. Not much will change from the code base scheme of things, it seems.

One of the biggest new features for DX11 might be multi-threading support, allowing developers to begin taking full advantage of multi-core CPUs (or so we can hope). Another major feature is GPGPU support, which is good given the sheer amount of effort both Intel and NVIDIA are placing on using your GPU in non-gaming situations. In short, DX11 looks promising, and it might be one of the biggest single changes our GPUs have experienced in a while, at least on the software side.

These coding changes will also be reflected in an updated version of the DirectX HLSL (High Level Shading Language) used to write shaders and DirectX code. As we can see above, it appears that the general target for DirectX 11's Compute Shader is still going to be the manipulation of graphics and media data, which as I mentioned previously suggests it won't quite be invading on CUDA territory this time around by providing a complete coding structure geared towards creating an application of any kind in HLSL.

Source: Elite Bastards

Using Rsync to Reliably Backup Your Linux

Early last month, there was a slow news day, and as a result, I had to scrape the bottom of the bucket to find something to post about. Of course, the natural thing to do was pimp our old content, which I think is a great idea since there are many people who may not have seen it before, and well, even if you did see it before, you might appreciate the reminder. The last 'article recall' I did covered a Linux article, and well, let's stick with the Linux theme for this one. Don't worry, I plan to recall non-Linux content in the future as well.

If you run Linux, do you know what backup options are available to you? There's honestly quite a few solutions out there, and I admit that I haven't tested any, so the suggestions I have might be more difficult than what is available. In "Backing Up Your Linux", I give the power-users solution of how to back up your rig, because when you take care and write a simple, yet effective script, you know that your system is being handled and backed up properly.

The article covers many different ways to exploit 'rsync', and in case you don't have your system set up in a certain way, I make sure to cover all the details. Though you can back up to another hard drive or even an external hard drive quite simply, the article also explains how to backup to network storage (NAS box or even a Windows PC) and even backing up to a remote server, where your data will remain safe even if something horrible happens to your local backups. So if you run Linux and have enough patience to read through the article and write up some great scripts, I highly recommend you read through, and I'm not just saying that because I wrote it. I swear.

There are many different mediums that you can back up to, but we are going to take a look at the three most popular and go through the entire setup process of each: 1) Backing up to external storage; 2) Backing up to a Network-Attached-Storage (NAS) and 3) Backing up to a remote server running Linux. On this first page, we are going to delve into the wonderful tool that is rsync, and give examples for you to edit and test out for yourself.

Source: Backing Up Your Linux

Microsoft Preparing to Launch Mobile Apps Store?

It isn't too often that Apple seems to make a poor business decision, and with the launch of their apps store, it was an incredible decision, evidenced by the fact that it pulls in around $1M in revenue every-single day. Well, Google also offers such a service, though it's nowhere near as popular as Apple's incarnation. It's no surprise then, that Microsoft wants a piece of the action, and apparently they're planning to launch their own apps store in the near future.

The service will be called 'Skymarket' and consist of applications suitable for the Windows Mobile platform - essentially anything that's not an iPhone. Few details are known right now about the new service, but Microsoft is actively seeking someone to fill the position as Senior Product Manager. Though, the original listing is now gone, so the position might have been filled, or is at least close to being filled.

How successful Microsoft's shot at a mobile store is anyone's guess, but it's bound to be a success with all those who are sticking with Windows Mobile as their handheld platform of choice. I don't own an iPhone, nor have ever experienced Apple's apps store, but I do know people who love it, and visit it daily. It seems nowadays the best kind of developer to be is a mobile developer... it's an industry that's certainly on a steady incline.

It appears the software giant expects to launch an applications store called "Skymarket" this fall for its Windows Mobile platform, if a recent job posting spotted by Long Zheng at Istartedsomething.com is accurate. According to the ad posted Sunday on Computerjob.com, the Skymarket senior product manager will head a team that will "drive the launch of a v1 marketplace service for Windows Mobile."

Source: C|Net

Intel Improving PC Audio for Better Efficiency?

I tend to be a wannabe audiophile, in that I love audio, but can't even begin to understand half of the terms thrown around during a real conversation. Intermodulation distortion? Seriously? Well, I'm confident that one thing even audiophiles don't likely ponder over often is the actual power draw required for certain technologies, such as Dolby True HD, and even things as minor as microphone noise reduction.

Apparently Intel does care, and apparently they let people know it in an IDF talk that most others (including us) completely overlooked. According to an article at the Inquirer, such technologies can draw loads of power... with Dolby True HD drawing upwards of 20% of a mobile Penryn CPU... that's considerable when any extra watt drawn can potentially result in 15 minutes less battery-life.

The solution? Offloading of the workload to a DSP, bypassing the OS in order to rid the interrupt load. Instead of a chip with another million transistors, the data transfers would be consolidated into a few DMA bursts, which apparently increases performance and also decreases power draw. Most of the attention right now is being targeted towards notebooks, naturally, but we can be sure to see such improvements made in our desktop counterparts at some point as well.

Finally, Realtek's upcoming ALC 269 'Vienna', the Audio DSP fitting into the 64-pin layout of the existing software-assisted mobo audio chips, was also discussed. This might be the entry point for hardware audio next year. The benefits? Tremendous - less power usage, higher overall system performance, more powerful media players.

Source: The Inquirer

September 2nd Tech Roundup

• ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe Mempipe - Digit-Life

• Samsung LN40A650 40inch LCD HDTV - Overclockers Online
• Palit GeForce 9800GT Sonic 512MB - Think Computers
• Palit HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition 512 MB - techPowerUp!

• Geil EvoOne DDR2 - Overclockers Club
• Thecus N3200 Networked Area Storage - Bjorn3D

• CrazyPC EL Neon Wire Kit - Viper Lair
• CyberSnipa Sonar 5.1 Headset - Red and Blackness
• Razer Destructor Precision Mousepad - Overclock3D
• SteelSeries IKARI Laser and Optical Gaming Mice - Metku
• Stix 200 Wii-like PC Controller - i4u

• Gelid Solutions GC1 Thermal Paste - Hardware Bistro

• Antec 1200 Ultimate Gamer Case - Pro-Clockers
• be quiet! Straight Power E6 450W - Technic3D
• Lian Li PC7B Plus II Mid-Tower Case - Benchmark Reviews
• Tagan A+ Black Pearl WCR - APH Networks

• NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) v4.5 - MVKTech