Last month, Intel unleashed its highly anticipated Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. We had been hearing about Ivy Bridge for what seemed like an eternity leading up to the launch, and although not based a totally new design, Ivy Bridge would offer a number of enticing enhancements, like a faster Quick Sync engine, significantly improved...Read more...
If you're longing for the next great Android superphone, the time is now. Samsung just revealed that the global variant of the Galaxy S III --- which has a beastly quad-core Exynos processor within -- will begin shipping this week in 28 countries around the globe. By July, that will expand to 145 countries and will...Read more...
Intel's presumably affordable dual-core Core i7 3520M processor with Ivy Bridge DNA is slated to ship next month, but if you're willing to wait a bit longer for something a bit more powerful, there's a Core i7 3525M chip on the horizon, too. Like the Core i7 3520M, the Corei7 3525M processor will boast a 2.9GHz stock clockspeed capable...Read more...
Intel's 3rd-generation Core i7 CPUs are certainly forces to be reckoned with, but they aren't the best option for most businesses. In order to give enterprise users an option, too, the company's introducing a 3rd wave of their Core vPro CPUs. These units are shipping now, aimed at notebooks (Ultrabooks included) across the IT landscape. With...Read more...
Product launches are a funny thing. Companies often hoot and holler and celebrate the 'launch' of new products days in advance of when you can actually hop online and order the darn thing, which is exactly what happened with Ivy Bridge. These are known as 'paper launches' and they're not unique to Intel. Try shopping...Read more...
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) managed to lessen the gap between it and Intel in the x86 space, even if just by a smidgen. According to Mercury Research's latest data, AMD's x86 market share jumped nearly a full percentage point from 18.2 percent to 19.1 percent in the first quarter of 2012, compared to Intel, which...Read more...
One of the great things about Intel’s “Tick, Tock” release cadence is that it gives us all an early glimpse into the company’s future plans and potential product offerings, especially since they’ve been able to execute so well over the last few years. Seeing Conroe eventually evolve into Penryn, and Nehalem into...Read more...
One of the great things about Intel’s “Tick, Tock” release cadence is that it gives us all an early glimpse into the company’s future plans and potential product offerings, especially since they’ve been able to execute so well over the last few years. Seeing Conroe eventually evolve into Penryn, and Nehalem into...Read more...
AMD's burgeoning profitability took a hammering in Q1 thanks to a $700M deal with GlobalFoundries, its purchase of SeaMicro, and a sequential decline in sales. Total company revenue was $1.59B (down from $1.69B in Q1 2011), but Sunnyvale delivered a $590M net loss. Much of that is attributable to the company's new...Read more...
ARM's been in the news quite a bit lately, most recently in dealing with Windows RT, but now they're making some waves of their own. They've just announced the new Cortex-A15 quad-core Hard Macro, a power-optimized implementation of quad-core hard macro on 28nm process. In other words, it's a juiced-up version of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor....Read more...
It's only been five months since Skyrim hit store shelves, but the amount of work done on the game by both Bethesda and an army of modders has been enormous. With the Creation Kit now in the wild for several months, we've rounded up some of the best mods available and brought them for your consideration. We'll also walk you through the modding...Read more...
It's only been five months since Skyrim hit store shelves, but the amount of work done on the game by both Bethesda and an army of modders has been enormous. With the Creation Kit now in the wild for several months, we've rounded up some of the best mods available and brought them for your consideration. We'll also walk you through the modding...Read more...
Just last month, Intel made it crystal clear that it was never in the running to acquire SeaMicro, a server startup that was ultimately snatched up by rival chip maker AMD for a cool $334 million. Intel's Chief Information Officer (CIO), Diane Bryant, basically said that no one at Intel was particularly impressed with...Read more...
Nvidia isn't happy with what it sees as the free pass Intel's upcoming Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture has gotten on the software front, and it's taken to the blogosphere to challenge it. The post begins with a lengthy discussion of what Nvidia is calling its "hybrid architecture," in which a CPU and GPU get together for great fun...Read more...
It's been six weeks since Eric Demers, AMD's CTO of graphics, left the company to pursue other opportunities, and another former ATI employee has followed his example. Godfrey Cheng, who recently served as one of AMD's Director of Client Technologies, has left the company. Cheng was part of AMD's high-profile Llano launch and reportedly chose...Read more...
The FirePro V3900 is AMD's latest budget solution for the professional graphics market. We covered the card's launch last month. It's a formidable step up from the V3800 it replaces. Budget card launches may lack some of the excitement of high-end product debuts, but lower-end cards like the V3900 account for a significant percentage of AMD's...Read more...
The FirePro V3900 is AMD's latest budget solution for the professional graphics market. We covered the card's launch last month; it's a formidable step up from the V3800 it replaces. Budget card launches may lack some of the excitement of high-end product debuts, but lower-end cards like the V3900 account for a significant percentage of AMD's...Read more...
Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's CEO, is a canny and intelligent leader who has capably helmed the company through both rough patches and successes, not least of which is the recently launched GTX 680. He's known for strong opinions, but not crazy, off-the-wall statements, which is why his recent remarks regarding Intel are...Read more...
While power users sit in patient anticipation of Intel's Ivy Bridge platform, which seems like it's taking forever to launch, AMD just keeps doing its thing. AMD's "thing," of course, is competing on the bang-for-buck front, and towards that end, the Sunnyvale chip maker is reportedly getting ready to launch a couple of new FX Series processors....Read more...
New silicon? Yep, AMD's got it. The company this week announced the new Opteron 3200 Series CPU family, a revised outlay of chips that are sure to be useful for enterprise and cloud-based applications. AMD claims that it offers 38% better price performance and up to 19% less power per core than the competition, and that folks running rack...Read more...
A joint study between Microsoft Research and Purdue University has taken a look at how smartphone applications handle power consumption and come to some damning conclusions where energy efficiency is concerned. This is an issue that's become more important as smartphone specs have skyrocketed without a similar increase in battery life. The...Read more...
Intel unveiled its new Atom CE5300 media processor at the IPTV World Forum in London this week. Codenamed "Berryville," the Atom CE5300 part is a System on Chip (SoC) designed to power the next generation of set-top boxes and media gateways, Intel says. Details are fairly light at this point, though we do know it's a...Read more...