IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 12/06/2014

AMD Lists New Kaveri Desktop Processors

We are now six months down the line from the AMD Kaveri launch, and the only two Kaveri processors available on Newegg today are the A10-7850K at $170 and the A10-7700K at $160. Both of these SKUs come with games as part of the purchase, but as AMD’s biggest desktop processor launch of the year, one might have expected more processors to come to market by this point. This is especially true as AMD sampled the A8-7600 SKU to media with a configurable TDP which showcased a large jump in graphics APU performance at the 45W TDP margin, but this model number has not hit consumer shelves in North America. Perhaps then we get a sigh of relief that AMD are announcing seven new Kaveri APUs, including that A8-7600.

AMD Kaveri APUs
New	Model	Modules/ Threads	Base MHz/ Turbo	L2 Cache	GPU	Memory	TDP
	A10-7850K	2 / 4	3.7 / 4.0	4 MB	R7, 512 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	95W
New	A10 PRO-7850B	2 / 4	3.7 / 4.0	4 MB	R7, 512 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	95W
New	A10-7800	2 / 4	3.5 / 3.9	4 MB	R7, 512 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	65W / 45W
New	A10 PRO-7800B	2 / 4	3.5 / 3.9	4 MB	R7, 512 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	65W / 35W
	A10-7700K	2 / 4	3.4 / 3.8	4 MB	R7, 384 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	65W / 45W
'New'	A8-7600	2 / 4	3.1 / 3.8	4 MB	R7, 384 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	65W / 45W
New	A8 PRO-7600B	2 / 4	3.1 / 3.8	4 MB	R7, 384 @ 720 MHz	DDR3-2133	65W / 35W
New	A6-7400K	1 / 2	3.5 / 3.9	1 MB	R5, 256 @ 756 MHz	DDR3-1866	65W / 45W
New	A6 PRO-7400B	1 / 2	3.5 / 3.9	1 MB	R5, 256 @ 756 MHz	DDR3-1866	65W / 35W

These specifications come directly from AMD’s website rather than a specific press release, and features a new line of PRO branded APUs. These APUs will have similar specifications but are earmarked for longer life support and warranties for OEMs. These PRO processors also have a ‘B’ at the end of the name, similar to previous ‘B’ processors in the past that were aimed at business environments.
There are some interesting trends – the dual module APUs all support DDR3-2133 natively, compared to the single module members that are only DDR3-1866. Similarly the dual module versions have 384-512 GPU cores and are classified as R7 series graphics, whereas the single module APUs have 256 cores and are labelled R5. These latter APUs do have a higher GPU frequency however.
All of the APUs will turbo around the 3.8 GHz to 4.0 GHz range, with varying base frequencies. The consumer APUs will be able to configure TDP from 65W to 45W, whereas the PRO models also have a 35W selection point, which will decrease the maximum turbo frequency.
Exact release date and pricing has not yet been announced. Read our Kaveri launch review with the A10-7850K and A8-7600 here.
Source: CPU-World

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The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads
Last week we reviewed Intel's first NVMe drive: the DC P3700. Based on a modified version of the controller in Intel's SSD DC S3700/S3500, the P3700 moves to an 18-channel design, drops internal latencies and sheds SATA for a native PCIe interface. The result is an extremely high performance enterprise SSD that delivers a combination of high bandwidth and very low latencies, across a wide span of queue depths.
Although Intel's SSD DC P3700 is clearly targeted at the enterprise, the drive will be priced quite aggressively at $3/GB. Furthermore, Intel will be using the same controller and firmware architecture in two other, lower cost derivatives (P3500/P3600). In light of Intel's positioning of the P3xxx family, a number of you asked for us to run the drive through our standard client SSD workload. We didn't have the time to do that before Computex, but it was the first thing I did upon my return. If you aren't familiar with the P3700 I'd recommend reading the initial review, but otherwise let's look at how it performs as a client drive.


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Corsair Vengeance K70 Keyboard Review
Mechanical keyboards are far from a new technology; they are decades old and some of the first mass produced personal computers came with mechanical keyboards back in the 1980's. After a transition to lower cost keyboards during, however, many users have rediscovered the benefits of high quality mechanical switches, and today they are among the most widely promoted type of keyboard. Today we have Corsair's latest Vengeance K70 in for testing. Note that this is not the version with RGB LED backlighting, but it is the same core design; read on for our full review.


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Computex 2014 ADATA Booth Tour: 2TB SX930 SSD, Micro SSDs, Power Banks, Wireless Chargers and More

We already covered ADATA's DDR4 last week but they had a ton of other interesting products at their booth. I'll start with the SSDs as they are the most intriguing for me.
ADATA didn't announce any new SSDs at Computex but they had all their existing products along with some unreleased drives shown at the booth. The most interesting drive was the SR1020, which is an SF3700 based enterprise drive that comes in capacities of up to 2TB and is rated at up to 1,800MB/s and 150K IOPS. Both 2.5" and M.2 2280 versions will be available with similar specs (yes, 2TB in M.2) but ADATA couldn't really share much details due to LSI's strict policies with the SF3700. I'm guessing the drive uses 128Gbit Micron NAND to achieve the high capacity but we will have the full details once the release gets closes (should still be Q4).

In addition to the enterprise-focused SR1020, ADATA also had a more consumer-friendly 2TB to show: the XPG SX930. This is also an SF3700 based SSD but the controller runs in SATA 6Gbps mode. If you have read our original SF3700 announcement article, you might remember that the controller supports both SATA 6Gbps and PCIe 2.0 x2/x4 interfaces and selecting the mode is as simple as toggling a switch, although this  can only be done by the OEM to ensure that the end-user doesn't accidentally change the mode. While SATA 6Gbps isn't fast enough to show the full potential of SF3700, I see the reasoning behind a SATA 6Gbps version. In the end, the transition to PCIe won't happen overnight and there are plenty of areas where the interface isn't the bottleneck (IO consistency and performance at low queue depths for instance).

ADATA also had a working SF3700 sample in one of their demo systems but they were not allowed to run any benchmarks on the drive. Looks like LSI has been able to tune down the power consumption as the drive no longer needs a heatsink for the controller.

Here is what ADATA's high-end SSD lineup currently looks like. The SP910 was launched just before Computex and it's based on the Marvell 88SS9187 controller. The difference to SP920 is that the SP910 features a custom firmware, whereas the SP920 uses a Micron-designed firmware as it's essentially a rebranded drive like we mentioned in our review (although ADATA cannot officially say that). ADATA also launched M.2 SATA 6Gbps SSDs with SF-2281 controller with capacities of up to 512GB. The SP610 with a Silicon Motion controller was also present at the booth and I already have the drives and will be reviewing them within the next few weeks.

In addition to 2.5" and M.2 SSDs, ADATA had micro SSDs to show. The idea is similar to SanDisk's iSSD and basically it's a standard SSD but in BGA footprint. ADATA is using JMicron's JMF608 controller, which is a 4-channel design that does not need any external DRAM. Sequential performance should be similar to any other SATA 6Gbps SSD and capacities go all the way to up to 128GB thanks to Micron's 128Gbit 20nm NAND. The market for micro SSDs is mainly in the embedded market but that's currently a growing market with a lot of potential.

ADATA also had some industrial SSDs to show. The drive in the picture is ISSS312 and it uses a JMicron controller with an ADATA-designed firmware. Power loss protection is provided by tantalum capacitors as you can see in the picture but in addition there is also support for hardware erase (i.e. there is a physical button that triggers secure erase) and there is even a water-proof version available. Capacities with MLC NAND range from 16GB to 128GB and SLC NAND is supported as well.

While DDR4 was obviously at the center of the attention, ADATA also had all their DDR3 modules at the booth. On the right is the new XPG V3 with a redesigned heatsink. Specs are similar to the V2 and the XPG V3 is available at up 3200MHz (CL12) in capacities of 4GB and 8GB per module.

While I mainly focused on ADATA's component selection, there were some interesting mobile accessories too, such as a desk lamp, which functions as a wireless charging pad for devices with Qi wireless charging support. I think the idea is pretty neat because it eliminates the need for an additional device on your desk.

Of course ADATA also had some traditional wireless chargers to show, such as the Elite CE700.

The PV110 is an updated version of the PV110 power bank and it ups the capacity from 4,200mAh to 10,400mAh. The design has also changed from plastic to brushed aluminum and with two USB ports the PV110 is capable of charging two devices simultaneously with total output of 3.1A. For users who don't need such high capacity, ADATA offers the PC500 with 5,000mAh capacity with just one USB port and the design is also plastic to help drive the cost down.
Thats it for the ADATA booth tour. I'll be covering ADATA's plans for DDR4 and SSDs in more detail over the next couple of weeks because I had a meeting with their president along with the directors of their memory and SSD departments, so stay tuned for more content!


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Computex 2014: Kingston Announces V310 & HyperX Fury SSDs, Shows SF3700 And Marvell PCIe SSDs
Unlike many manufacturers, Kingston didn’t have a booth or suite at Computex but instead they held a one-day HyperX gaming event on the top floor of one of Taipei’s many skyscrapers. In addition to the gaming event, Kingston had several upcoming products to show, ranging from Phison based V310 SSDs to PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD with a brand new Marvell controller.

The V310 will be the successor to V300 and is based on Phison S8 controller instead of the SF-2281 found in the V300. The NAND will be Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC, which enables Kingston to go all the way to up to 960GB. Pricing should be quite similar to the V300 but the difference is that the V310 provides the same performance regardless of the data type (incompressible vs compressible). I was told that the official release should take place in about six weeks, so it looks like July will be a busy timeframe for new SSDs.

Kingston is also bringing a new model to their HyperX family: the HyperX Fury. This is yet another SF-2281 drive and similar to the V310 it utilizes Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC NAND. This provides lower cost compared to the HyperX 3K and Kingston is aiming the Fury at the lower-end gaming segment. Capacities are limited to just 120GB and 240GB and the drives should be available soon.

Now, the PCIe stuff. Kingston had two PCIe SSDs to show —one being the SF3700 based HyperX Predator that was already showcased at CES earlier this year and the other being a Marvell based PCIe 2.0 x4 drive. Similar to everyone else, Kingston couldn't really tell us anything new about the SF3700 but Kingston is still aiming for Q4 release. Kingston had the same 80/20 read/write demo to show that LSI showed us earlier but Kingston was able to tell me that the writes are not 100% compressible. Performance was the same 1.3GB/s that we saw earlier, so nothing new in the SF3700 front really.

As for the Marvell based drive, this is the first time Kingston is working with Marvell and they actually had to hire a few engineers since the Marvell platform is different from the others. The firmware development is still in the early stages but Kingston had a live demo running that showed sequential read performance of nearly 1.4GB/s. Release timeframe is still up in the air due to firmware development but we will probably see the drive some time next year.

Kingston also had some DDR4 at their event but the details were very limited. They will have a full lineup ready when the X99 launches but at this point, they were not willing to discuss any details regarding speeds. The module they had at the show was a 2133MHz one (for servers I think) but we will likely see higher speeds for the desktop market. Desktop capacities will be limited to 8GB at launch while server DIMMs will be available in 16GB as well.


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Computex 2014: Plextor Announces M6 Pro SSD & PlexTurbo Software

While Computex is already over for this year, we still have a lot of stuff to go through and post. I stopped by at Plextor's booth earlier this week and Plextor showed me their brand new M6 Pro along with PlexTurbo software. Plextor showed the M6 Pro already at CES this year but now the drive is nearly ready for the official release. The hardware inside hasn't changed from CES and it's still uses the Marvell 88SS9187 SATA 6Gbps controller with Toshiba's A19nm NAND and the release is scheduled to take place next month, so we should be able to get samples pretty soon.
In addition to just re-showing the CES products, Plextor also had something new to demo. PlexTurbo is software similar to Samsung's RAPID function and it leverages system RAM to increase transfer speeds. The key difference to RAPID is that PlexTurbo uses RAM as a write-through cache, which means that the data is written to both RAM and the SSD simultaneously. Samsung's approach is write-back based, which is more vulnerable to data loss as initially the data is only written to the cache and is not written to the SSD until the data in the cache is about to be modified. Both RAPID and PlexTurbo are limited to 1GB of RAM to ensure that the system still has enough RAM for standard operation.
Plextor showed me a video of their internal testing comparing PlexTurbo with RAPID in case the drive is disconnected right after writing something. In the test Plextor used a Word file that they modified and unplugged the drive after saving the file. With RAPID the modifications were lost, whereas thanks to Plextor's use of write-through cache the modifications remained intact. Of course this test was designed to promote PlexTurbo’s approach and we will have to run our own tests to confirm the results but it looks like Plextor’s approach might be a bit more reliable than Samsung’s.
PlexTurbo also appears to provide better performance as I saw speeds of up to 10GB/s when the settings were optimised for the software. Plextor did admit that the first generation of PlexTurbo was mostly designed for high benchmark scores, so I would take the results with a grain of salt, but the next version should focus more in actual real world performance. Either way, it’s certainly interesting to see how PlexTurbo stands up with RAPID. With SATA 6Gbps it’s getting very hard to differentiate in the market and providing software like PlexTurbo is one of the only ways, even though the real world gains are debatable.

Furthermore, Plextor announced an M.2 version of the M6e along with other SATA based M.2 SSDs. Currently the M6e has only been available with the half-height, half-length PCIe adapter, which is just added cost for users who are looking to upgrade the M.2 SSD in their laptops.

Plextor will also be bringing a notebook upgrade kit for the M6S. The kit includes a 2.5” chassis for the old internal drive, which can then be used as external storage for backups for instance. Finally, Plextor told me that they will be introducing M6V later this year. The V stands for value and this will be the budget drive from Plextor. I was’t able to get much details other than that it won’t use Toshiba NAND but this might as well be the TLC drive Plextor has been developing for years now.


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Google Buys Skybox, Nets HD Imaging Capabilities
Satellites could one day double to provide internet and self-aware algorithms to Google's customers

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FAA Issues First Commercial License for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
BP secure the first license for its AeroVironment Puma AE drone

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Study: Video Will Account to 84 Percent of U.S. Internet Traffic by 2018
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Honeywell Responds to Nest with Its Own Stylish, "Lyric" Thermostat
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Stop-Gap "Halo: The Master Chief Collection" Drops in Nov.; Halo 5 in 2015
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Developer Finds iPad "Split Screen" Code in iOS 8 Beta
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Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1: Making Touchless Gestures More Than a Gimmick
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Following Verizon's Lawsuit Threat, Netflix to End ISP “Speed Warnings” on June 16
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Report: Start Menu Revival is Delayed Until Windows 9
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64GB Moto X Now Available for $449
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Microsoft's $399 Xbox One Goes on Sale Without Kinect
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Quick Note: Buy an Android Smartphone, Tablet from AT&T and Get $50 Google Play Credit
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