Epic Games Releases Epic Citadel for Android Devices - We test it out
Epic Games granted us a huge wish and released Epic Citadel for Android devices publicly this week, and included a benchmark inside. Getting Epic Citadel for Android and thus a benchmark of a real game engine (Unreal Engine 3) running atop Android has been a longtime wish, and we immediately started testing some devices. Epic claims to have updated visuals for the Android Epic Citadel release, and correspondingly released an update for the iOS version, although the iOS version still lacks a benchmarking mode.
The visuals inside Epic Citadel are impressive, which almost goes without saying. Performance walking around the map is also smooth, almost too smooth. I suspect Epic spent a lot of time optimizing the Android version for optimal performance on a wide set of hardware. Keep in mind that Epic Citadel is designed more as a proof of concept for developers, and to prove that Unreal Engine 3 can be performant across a wide range of hardware.
The Android version of Epic Citadel includes support for both ARM devices and x86, which lets us test it out on Intel's Medfield platform with a RAZR i in a native way alongside a suite of other Android devices. I grabbed a handful of current devices and N-1 generation devices to see how effective of a benchmark Epic Citadel's new mode proves to be. There's a menu option exposed by the drop down, which allows users to select between High Quality and High Performance modes, and below it, rendering resolution percentages if you want to set a render target smaller than the display (for example how the iPad with Retina Display initially rendered). To make the test as taxing as possible I set High Quality even on devices which defaulted to High Performance, and made sure resolution was set to 100% of native.
Unfortunately Epic Citadel for Android is already running at vsync on most modern devices most of the time. Watching a run through on devices like the HTC Droid DNA or Butterfly, which are 1080p, it's amazing how much of the benchmark is right against vsync. There really is only one outdoor scene that is taxing enough to bring the device's FPS down into the low 50s and high 40s, which brings that average down below 60. If we're already at vsync on Fusion 3 hardware which is shipping today, that means future devices are going to be even more constrained running the same benchmark. Even Nexus 10 spends much of its time against vsync despite rendering to a positively huge WQXGA display natively.
My conclusion is really that either Epic waited too long to release Epic Citadel with a benchmark, and now the assets are nowhere near taxing enough, or this is primarily designed as a benchmarking mode to showcase how well UE3 runs on current hardware. Given the purpose of Epic Citadel, I'd say the latter is more of a credible story. While I'm glad we finally have a proper UE3 benchmark to use on Android, I doubt we'll be able to glean much from running it on next-generation devices and SoCs.
Source:
Play Store,
Epic Blog
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Samsung Laptops Bricked by Booting Linux Using UEFI
Ryan passed this along early this morning (
really early for Ryan, seeing that we’re not even in the double digits of the morning hours!), and while this issue is only likely to affect a very small subset of users, anything that can completely brick a laptop in a matter of seconds is worrisome enough that we wanted to pass it along. File this one under the "things that should never happen" category.
You can read
more of what is known at H-Online, but the short summary is this: Samsung’s UEFI implementation appears to be faulty. It was most likely tested with Windows only and found to work, but thorough testing with other operating systems doesn’t appear to have been a priority—or perhaps a consideration at all. At present, the bug appears to affect Samsung 530U3C, 300E5C, NP700Z5C, NP700Z7C, and NP900X4C series laptops; if you have one of those laptops, we recommend you exercise extreme caution if you have a need to boot into a Linux environment.
The bigger picture here is that this is what happens in a race to the bottom: corners get cut, which means less testing and validation, which can in turn lead to some catastrophic failures in specific circumstances. What's really scary is that these Samsung laptops aren't even budget offerings, so the budget race ended up impacting higher priced offerings! Granted, in the increasingly complex world of computer hardware it can be difficult to test all of the likely scenarios. UEFI represents a fundamental change in how many low-level aspects of the computer function, however, so it needs to be thoroughly tested; not properly testing any OS besides Windows would be a gross oversight.
Long-term, we expect Samsung to release BIOS and firmware updates for the affected laptops, though how long that might take is unknown. Short-term, the workaround is for Linux to boot these Samsung models using the Compatibility Support Module (CSM), which basically bypasses the UEFI bootloader, but dual-booting via CSM appears to be a bit complex. Ubuntu’s development team has worked with Samsung and identified the kernel’s Samsung-laptop driver as the prime suspect, and there are other workarounds proposed already to address the issue. However, these fixes have not yet been merged into the main Linux development tree, so again we recommend Samsung laptop owners who use Linux exercise caution.
Update: It appears the problem stems from NVRAM corruption. Removing power, opening the laptop up, and disconnecting the CMOS battery appears like it will clear the problem, but that's a pretty serious set of steps to take for most laptops.
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BlackBerry 10 Announcement: Live Blog
We're seated at RIM's BlackBerry 10 launch event. Keep your browser parked here for our live blog that should start at 10AM EST.
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Intel SSD 525 Review (240GB)
The mSATA SSD space has been heating up over the past year as Ultrabooks and other small form factor devices like
Intel’s NUC have continued to grow in popularity. While mostly a placeholder until
M.2 (formerly
NGFF) SSDs show up on the market, mSATA drives are currently the only solution if you need a standardized small form factor 6Gbps SATA SSD.
Due to physical limitations, the largest mSATA SSDs on the market today are still 240/256GB as there’s only room for 4 NAND packages (8 x 8GB die per package). The transition to
128Gbit NAND die will double this to 480/512GB so I’d expect that limit to be broken in the next quarter or two.
Although there are capacity limitations, there are no real performance limitations to delivering an mSATA SSD. As we found in our review of Micron’s mSATA C400, you can deliver the same performance as a 2.5” SSD in the mSATA form factor. It’s a pretty amazing thing to think about. You get more performance out of a tiny mSATA SSD than out of a stack of 10K RPM hard drives.
Intel has been dabbling in the mSATA space for a while now. Until Monday the fastest mSATA SSD Intel made was based on Intel’s first controller technology, but earlier this week that all changed with the
announcement of the Intel SSD 525.
Read on for our full review of the 525!
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Updating AnandTech’s 2013 Mobile Benchmark Suite (RFC)
If it seems like just last year that we updated our mobile benchmark suite, that’s
because it was. We’re going to be keeping some elements of the testing, but with the release of Windows 8 We’re looking to adjust other areas. This is also a request for input (RFC = Request for Comments if you didn’t know) from our readers on benchmarks they would like us to run—or not run—specifically with regards to laptops and notebooks.
We used most of the following tests with the
Acer S7 review, but we’re still early enough in the game that we can change things up if needed. We can’t promise we’ll use every requested benchmark, in part because there’s only so much time you can spend benchmarking before you’re basically generating similar data points with different applications, and also because ease of benchmarking and repeatability are major factors, but if you have any specific recommendations or requests we’ll definitely look at them.
General Performance Benchmarks
We’re going to be keeping most of the same general performance benchmarks as last year. PCMark 7, despite some question as to how useful the results really are, is at least a general performance suite that’s easy to run. (As as side note, SYSmark 2012 basically requires a fresh OS install to run properly, plus wiping and reinstalling the OS after running, which makes it prohibitively time consuming for laptop testing where every unit comes with varying degrees of customization to the OS that may or may not allow SYSmark to run.) We’re dropping PCMark Vantage this year, mostly because it’s redundant; if Futuremark comes out with a new version of PCMark, we’ll likely add that as well.
At least for the near term, we’re also including results for TouchXPRT from Principled Technologies; this is a “light” benchmark suite designed more for tablets than laptops (at least in our opinion), but it does provide a few other results separate from a monolithic suite like PCMark 7. We’ll also include results from WebXPRT for the time being, though again it seems more tablet-centric. We don’t really have any other good general performance benchmarking suites, so for other general performance benchmarks we’ll return once again to the ubiquitous Cinebench 11.5 and x264 HD. We’re updating to x264 HD 5.x, however, which does change the encoding somewhat, and if a version of x264 comes out with updated encoding support (e.g. for CUDA, OpenCL, and/or Quick Sync) we’ll likely switch to that when appropriate. We’re still looking for a good OpenCL benchmark or two; WinZip sort of qualifies, but unfortunately we’ve found in testing that 7-zip tends to beat it on file size, compression time, or both depending on the settings and files we use.
On the graphics side of the equation, there doesn’t seem to be a need to benchmark every single laptop on our gaming suite—how many times do we need to see how an Ultrabook with the same CPU and iGPU runs (or doesn’t run) games?—so we’ll continue using 3DMark as a “rough estimate” of graphics performance. As with PCMark, we’re dropping the Vantage version, but we’ll continue to use 3DMark06 and 3DMark 11, and we’ll add the new version “
when it’s done”. We’re considering the inclusion of another 3D benchmark,
CatZilla (aka AllBenchmark 1.0 Beta19), at the “Cat” and “Tiger” settings, but we’d like to hear feedback on whether it makes sense or not.
Finally, we’ll continue to provide analysis of display quality, and this is something we really hope to see improve in 2013. Apple has thrown down the gauntlet with their pre-calibrated MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and iMac offerings; if anyone comes out with a laptop that charges Apple prices but can’t actually match Apple on areas like the display, touchpad, and overall quality, you can bet we’ll call them to the carpet. Either be better than Apple and charge the same, or match Apple and charge less, or charge a lot less and don’t try to compete with Apple (which is a dead-end race to the bottom, so let’s try to at least have a few laptops that eschew this path).
Battery Benchmarks
As detailed in the
Acer S7 review, we’re now ramping up the “difficulty” of our battery life testing. The short story is that we feel anything less than our previous Internet surfing test is too light to truly represent how people use their laptops, so we’re making that our Light test. For the Medium test, we’ll be increasing the frequency of page loads on our Internet test (from every 60 seconds down to every 12 seconds) and adding in playback of MP3 files. The Heavy test is designed not as a “worst-case battery life” test but rather as a “reasonable but still strenuous” use case for battery power, and we use the same Internet test as in the Medium test but add in looped playback of a 12Mbps 1080p H.264 video with a constant FTP download from a local server running at ~8Mbps (FileZilla Server with two simultaneous downloads and a cap of 500KBps, downloading a list of large movie files).
Other aspects of our battery testing also warrant clarification. For one, we continue to disable certain “advanced” features like Intel’s Display Power Saving Technology (which can adjust contrast, brightness, color depth, and other items in order to reduce power use). The idea seems nice, but it basically sacrifices image quality for battery life, and since other graphics solutions are not using these “tricks” we’re leaving it enabled. We also disable refresh rate switching, for similar reasons—testing 40Hz on some laptops and 60Hz on others isn’t really apples-to-apples. Finally, we’re also moving from 100 nits brightness to 200 nits brightness for all the battery life testing, and the WiFi and audio will remain active (volume at 30% with headphones connected).
Gaming Benchmarks
In truth, this is the one area where there is the most room for debate. Keep in mind that when testing notebooks, we’re not solely focused on GPU performance most of the time (even with gaming notebooks); the gaming tests are only a subset of all the benchmarks we run. We’ll try to overlap with our desktop GPU testing where possible, but we’ll continue to use 1366x768 ~Medium as our Value setting, 1600x900 ~High as our Mainstream setting, and 1920x1080 ~Max for our Enthusiast setting. Beyond the settings however is the question of which games to include.
Ideally, we’d like to have
popular games that also tend to be
strenuous on the graphics (and possibly the CPU as well). A game or benchmark that is extremely demanding of your graphics hardware that few people actually play isn’t relevant, and likewise a game that’s extremely popular but that doesn’t require much from your hardware (e.g. Minecraft) is only useful for testing low-end GPUs. We would also like to include representatives of all the major genres—first person shooter/action, role-playing, strategy, and simulation—with the end goal of having ten or fewer titles (and for laptops eight seems like a good number). Ease of benchmarking is also a factor; we can run FRAPS on any game, but ideally a game with a built-in benchmark is both easier to test and produces more reliable/repeatable results. Frankly, at this point we don’t have all that many titles that we’re really set on including, but here’s the short list.
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim: We’ve been using this title since it came out, and while it may not be the most demanding game out there, it
is popular and it’s also more demanding (and scalable) than most other RPGs that come to mind. For example, Mass Effect 3 generally has lower quality (also DX9-only) graphics and doesn’t require as much from your hardware, and The Witcher 2 has three settings: High, Very High, and Extreme (not really, but it doesn’t scale well to lower performance hardware). Skyrim tends to hit both the CPU and GPU quite hard, and even with the high resolution texture pack it can still end up CPU limited on some mobile chips. Regardless of our concerns, however, we can’t think of a good RPG replacement, so our intention is to keep Skyrim for another year.
Far Cry 3: This is an AMD-promoted title, which basically means they committed some resources to helping with the games development and/or advertising. In theory, that means it should run better on AMD hardware, but as we’ve seen in the past that’s not always the case. This is a first-person shooter that has received good reviews and it’s a sequel to a popular franchise with a reputation for punishing GPUs, making it a good choice. It doesn’t have a built-in benchmark, so we’ll use FRAPS on this one.
Sleeping Dogs: This is another AMD-promoted title. This is a sandbox shooter/action game with a built-in benchmark, making it a good choice. Yes, right now that's two for AMD and none for NVIDIA, but that will likely change with the final list.
Sadly, that’s all we’re willing to commit to at this point, as all of the other games under consideration have concerns. MMORPGs tend to be a bit too variable, depending on server load and other aspects, so we’re leaving out games like Guild Wars 2, Rift, etc. For simulation/racing games, DiRT: Showdown feels like a step back from DiRT 3 and even DiRT 2; the graphics are more demanding, yes, but the game just isn’t that fun (IMO and according to most reviews). That means we’re still in search of a good racing game; Need for Speed Most Wanted is a possibility, but we’re open for other suggestions.
Other titles we’re considering but not committed to include Assassin’s Creed III, Hitman: Absolution, and DmC: Devil May Cry; if you have any strong feelings for or against the use of those titles, let us know. Crysis 3 will hopefully make the grade this time, as long as there's no funny business at launch or with the updates (e.g. no DX11 initially, and then when it was added the tessellation was so extreme that it heavily favored NVIDIA hardware, even though much of the tessellation was being done on flat surfaces). Finally, we’re also looking for a viable strategy game; Civ5 and Total War: Shogun 2 could make a return, or there are games like Orcs Must Die 2 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but we’re not sure if either meet the “popular and strenuous” criteria, so we may just hold off until StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm comes out (and since that games on “Blizzard time”, it could be 2014 before it’s done, though tentatively it’s looking like March; hopefully it will be able to use more than 1.5 CPU cores this time).
Closing Remarks
As stated at the beginning, this is a request for comments and input as much as a list of our plans for the coming year. If you have any strong feelings one way or the other on these benchmarks, now is the time to be heard. We’d love to be able to accommodate every request, but obviously there are time constraints that must be met, so tests that are widely used and relevant are going to be more important than esoteric tests that only a few select people use. We also have multiple laptop reviewers (Dustin, Jarred, and occasionally Vivek and Anand), so the easier it is to come up with a repeatable benchmark scenario the better. Remember: these tests are for laptops and notebooks, so while it would be nice to do something like a compilation benchmark, those can often take many hours just to get the right files installed on a system, which is why we’ve shied away from such tests so far. But if you can convince us of the utility of a benchmark, we’ll be happy to give it a shot.
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Slightly Smaller Apple TV 3,2 (A1469) Contains A5X SoC, BCM4334 Combo
Yesterday along with iOS 6.1 being pushed to iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches, Apple released an update to the Apple TV 2,1 and 3,1, and curiously enough released another image for an unannounced Apple TV 3,2 product with model A1469. Originally it was assumed this was an international release with minimal changes, however it turns out there's much more inside, including an A5X SoC and BCM4334 (up from BCM4330) WLAN and BT.
Matthew Panzarino from
The Next Web pinged me about the FCC documents posting and whether there were any changes inside, which piqued my interested and made me dig a little deeper. First, the Apple TV 3,2 model is slightly smaller, as noted by
Engadget. Inside however from what we can glean from the FCC documents there's no longer
a two antenna solution for the BCM4330 WiFi+BT combo, but rather a single antenna solution with different gain and utilizing a
BCM4334 combo instead. This is the same WLAN+BT combo as used in the iPhone 5 and basically all of the newly refreshed iDevices, and is built on a 40nm RF CMOS process. Since the previous antennas were a part of the Apple TV PCB, and the FCC disclosure notes that the new Apple TV uses a single PIFA (Planar Inverted F Antenna), it's highly likely we're looking at a completely different PCB.
That fact intrigued me and made me take a look inside the Apple TV 3,2 IPSW, which contained exactly what I was looking for. Instead of the A5R2 SoC (S5L8942) inside the Apple TV 3,1, this new device contains an A5XR2 SoC (S5L8947) as shown in the screenshots I've taken of the Restore.plist file, though there are numerous others. It's entirely possible that Apple is again using different bins of the A5X, it's not possible to tell whether CPU or GPU cores are fused off at this point from my digging through the IPSW.
Update: I should note that S5L8945 is the original 45nm Samsung produced A5X, S5L8947 is the A5XR2 that is in this unannounced Apple TV. Note that previously the A5 underwent a similar plus 2 offset, from S5L8940 (A5) to S5L8942 (A5R2) which changed process geometry from 45nm to 32nm HK-MG at Samsung. It's possible we're also looking at a process node change with the A5X to A5XR2 here.
This is an interesting silent update and development for the Apple TV. Given the IPSW release onto the web before an actual hardware announcement, I originally suspected this was a silent upgrade of the Apple TV platform to newer hardware, however the presence of an A5X SoC inside makes things a bit more curious. Hopefully we will see an official announcement in the next few days.
Source:
TNW,
Engadget,
FCC
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AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 3 Drivers Released
As promised alongside last week’s release of the
Catalyst 13.1 WHQL drivers, AMD has shipped out the first public beta for the next version of their drivers this week, Catalyst 13.2 Beta 3.
The latest beta makes a couple of additions that will be of particular interest to hardcore gamers. On the application support side, like
NVIDIA’s beta release yesterday these are the first drivers that specifically target Crysis 3, itself having just been released in beta form as a multiplayer beta. AMD is citing up to a 15% performance improvement here in scenarios with high degrees of MSAA, while promising further improvements as the game and the drivers both march towards a final state.
Meanwhile these drivers are also the first driver set from AMD to address some of the frame latency issues Tech Report’s Scott Wasson has turned up over the last couple of months. His own testing of
an earlier version of these drivers found that frame latency was significantly reduced in a few different games he tested, including Skyrim, Borderlands 2, and Guild Wars 2.
As always, these latest drivers are available directly from
AMD’s site.
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HP Leaks Their First Chromebook
Google's venture into the desktop operating system space has been getting a lot of the right kind of attention lately. Acer's C7 Chromebook has been well received, as has the latest Samsung Chromebook. Google announced that their security competition, Pwnium, would be focused on Chrome OS. And now HP has let slip that they'll be building a Chromebook of their own. Tagged the HP Pavilion Chromebook, the 14-inch screen provides more screen than Chrome OS has seen on a laptop before, but the same 1366x768 resolution limits the value of that real estate. The internals will look familiar; it has the same Intel Celeron 847, and 2GB of RAM, as Acer's C7. The HP model comes with a 16GB solid state drive, in lieu of the Acer's mechanical drive. The 37WHr battery reportedly offers a modest 4 hours and 15 minutes of longevity, similar to the Acer C7. So, once again, not a road warrior, but enough perhaps to serve a lightweight user's needs.
When and how much? The original leak's been pulled, but it looks like the HP Chromebook will premier on February 17th for $329.99. That MSRP puts it above the Acer that it resembles, but for those that like the idea of a larger keyboard and screen the increase could be worth the added cost. We'll be interested to find out how it does.
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Trio of New Gigabyte Server Motherboards Announced
We recently reviewed a dual processor setup using the Gigabyte GA-7PESH1 and a pair of socket 2011 Xeons, with varied reactions from the point of view of a need for ultimate throughput with a simple to intermediate knowledge of NUMA programming. Today Gigabyte has announced the successors to the GA-7PESH1 and GA-7PESH2 in the form of the 4-way GPU supporting GA-7PESH3 and GA-7PESH4, along with a 3-way 1P model, the GA-6PXSV4.
The main feature Gigabyte wish to promote is the improved memory compatibility; specifically noting that they are the only manufacturer to support a system fully populated with DDR3-1600MHz 16GB RDIMM 1.35V modules.
The
GA-7PESH3 looks more like a normal 2P motherboard in terms of orientation, with each CPU supporting one module per channel and the PCIe layout designed for multi-PCI devices (think 3-way or 4-way dual slot GPUs, or 7-way single slot). The motherboard also contains an LSI controller for support up to eight SAS 6 Gbps drives, a full 7.1 audio solution and USB 3.0 functionality.
The
GA-7PESH4 model gives the full range of memory slots available, similar to the GA-7PESH1, but with an orientation change. The PCIe layout is clearly a little odd, with one at the top of the IO panel, and the power connectors are also in this area. The main selling point of the 7PESH4 is the inclusion of four Intel I350 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
The
GA-6PSXV4 takes the GA-7PESH4 in a single socket form, with the four Intel I350 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the socket orientation at right angles to normal channel implementations. The layout supports 3-way GPU, but also includes a PCIe x1 slot as well as a PCI slot. Like the GA-7PESH3, we also get a series of USB 3.0 ports on the rear IO.
All three boards are reported to have been designed for airflow design in mind, and each CPU is supported by a 6-phase power delivery (remember, no overclocking on server boards). We analyzed the Gigabyte management software package in our
GA-7PESH1 review, which used the Advocent Server Management Interface for security, monitoring, and remote control, and expect these new models to be relatively similar.
As always, Gigabyte server boards are currently B2B (business-to-business) only, but readers in the US can contact their local Gigabyte server branch
here for more information regarding individual pricing.
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AZZA Silentium Case Review: Knowing the Limits
The desktop enclosure market has broken down pretty simply into three categories with only the rarest of outliers. Cases under $100 will either have good acoustics or good thermals, but never really both. Cases between $100 and $150 will typically find a balance. And if you're paying more than $150 for a case, it needs to deliver on both, full stop. The problem that sub-$100 silent cases often run into is that the measures taken to keep noise down result in substantially reduced airflow, and when you start really pushing the hardware (and thus the limits of the case's cooling), those measures actually serve to increase system noise beyond a garden variety case.
With all of that information in mind, AZZA's $99 Silentium is entering a perilous market. The Silentium is meant to compete with cases like the BitFenix Ghost and the NZXT H2, offering quiet computing at a competitive price point. The problem is that when you're at the top of the sub-$100 market, you risk having to compete with monsters like the Fractal Design Define R4 and the soon-to-be-released-on-American-shores Nanoxia Deep Silence 1. Does the Silentium carve out its own niche, or is it fighting an uphill battle?
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The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 15
We're back after CES and have a little bit of post-show wrap-up. We kick off this week's podcast with a discussion of Intel's near term challenges in the industry and Intel's decision to leave the desktop motherboard business. The Valvebox and the idea of a truly open console are next on the list of big topics for this week, although we also talk about Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa, the 3rd gen SandForce controller and Intel's newly announced Yolo smartphone.
The AnandTech Podcast - Episode 15
featuring Anand Shimpi, Brian Klug & Dr. Ian Cutress
iTunes
RSS - mp3, m4a
Direct Links - mp3, m4a
Total Time: 1 hour 19 minutes
Outline - hh:mm
Thoughts on Intel's Challenges - 00:00
Intel Leaving the Desktop Motherboard Business - 00:12
The Valvebox - 00:25
SandForce Gen 3 SSD Controllers - 00:54
Samsung Exynos 5 Octa - 00:55
The Yolo Phone - 01:10
As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.
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NVIDIA GeForce R313.95 Beta Drivers Available
It seems ironic that after years of their monthly releases when AMD/ATI has now switched to a "when it's necessary" release schedule--something NVIDIA has been doing via official beta releases for a similar time--that the cadence of official releases from both AMD and NVIDIA seems unphased. In fact, as usual the holiday season only increased the pace of updates. The second half of 2012 and beginning of 2013 for instance gives us the following drivers:
| Recent Driver Releases |
| NVIDIA Version | Release Date | AMD Version | Release Date |
| 313.95 Beta | 28-Jan-2013 | 13.2 Beta 3 (12.100.0) | 29-Jan-2013 |
| 310.90 WHQL | 5-Jan-2013 | 13.1 WHQL (9.012.0) | 17-Jan-2013 |
| 310.70 WHQL | 17-Dec-2012 | 12.11 Beta11 (9.010.8) | 4-Dec-2012 |
| 310.70 Beta | 4-Dec-2012 | 12.11 Beta7 (9.010.8) | 12-Nov-2012 |
| 310.64 Beta | 28-Nov-2012 | 12.10 WHQL (9.002.0) | 23-Oct-2012 |
| 310.61 Beta | 20-Nov-2012 | 12.9 Beta (9.001.0) | 26-Sep-2012 |
| 310.54 Beta | 12-Nov-2012 | 12.8 WHQL (8.982.0) | 14-Sep-2012 |
| 310.33 Beta | 23-Oct-2012 | 12.6 WHQL (8.980.0) | 30-Jun-2012 |
| 306.97 WHQL | 10-Oct-2012 | 12.7 Official Beta (8.981.2.1) | 27-Jun-2012 |
| 306.23 WHQL | 13-Sep-2012 | 12.7 Beta (8.981.2) | 12-Jun-2012 |
| 306.02 Beta | 27-Aug-2012 | 12.x (9.00) | 12-Jun-2012 |
| 304.79 Beta | 3-Jul-2012 | 12.x (8.980.0) | 4-Jun-2012 |
| 304.48 Beta | 18-Jun-2012 | Win8 Release Preview (8.972.4) | 2-Jun-2012 |
Note the increase in NVIDIA's releases as the holiday games came out, with two or three driver updates each month for the past four months. In contrast, AMD had five beta releases in June (which were all similar and mostly looked to fix bugs not addressed in the initial beta) along with a WHQL driver, the 12.8 WHQL in September along with another beta, 12.10 WHQL in October, the 12.11 beta in December, and now the 13.1 WHQL and 13.2 beta in January. Basically, we're looking at similar total number of readily available driver releases during the same seven months, but AMD had a lot of betas early in the cycle (many related to Enduro and WIndows 8 support).
NVIDIA's latest update primarily looks to address performance issues with Crysis 3, though there are a few other recent titles like Assassin's Creed III, Black Ops II, and Far Cry 3 that may also see performance improvements. NVIDIA's release notes claim improvements of up to 65% in Crysis 3 and 24% in Assassin's Creed III, though that's with the ultra-high-end GTX 690 desktop GPU so those with lower class GPUs should temper their expectations accordingly. Interestingly, we're still seeing potential performance improvements (albeit minor) in some older titles like Civilization V, DiRT 3, Far Cry 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. You can read the
full release notes on NVIDIA's site, with the following downloads currently available (and yes, Windows XP is supported as well, but I figure few enough gamers are running that with high-end hardware that it's not worth the extra four links):
Update, 1/29/2013: There was apparently an issue with the installer on international non-English systems; NVIDIA has released a new version (313.96 instead of 313.95) to fix the problem:
313.95 Desktop Beta 64-bit Windows Vista/7/8
313.95 Desktop Beta 32-bit Windows Vista/7/8
313.95 Notebook Beta 64-bit Windows Vista/7/8
313.95 Notebook Beta 32-bit Windows Vista/7/8
Thanks to reader SH SOTN for the heads up!
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Intel's SSD 525: Bringing iSandForce to mSATA
Today Intel is officially announcing what we've had in house since the end of last year:
the Intel SSD 525. Based on SandForce's SF-2281 controller but using a special Intel validated (but SandForce developed) firmware, the 525 is an mSATA version of the
2.5" SATA Intel SSD 520 that launched last February. Unlike the
Intel SSD 335, the 525 uses the same 25nm 2-bit MLC IMFT NAND as the 520, the only difference here is the form factor.
Similar to the 520, Intel is claiming max sequential performance of 550/520 MBps (compressible reads/writes). Random IO specs are listed as up to 50K/80K for 4KB random reads/writes.
The 525 features a 5-year warranty from Intel and will be available in capacities ranging from 30GB all the way up to 240GB. The 120GB and 180GB 525s are shipping today, with the rest of the models scheduled to be available later this quarter. Pricing is listed below:
| Intel SSD 525 Launch Pricing |
| Capacity | 30GB | 60GB | 90GB | 120GB | 180GB | 240GB |
| RCP/MSRP | $54 | $104 | $129 | $149 | $214 | $279 |
Intel's suggested pricing is a bit higher than Crucial's mSATA m4, but street pricing is almost always lower than what we see in these press announcements. The range of capacities and granular size options will make the 525 good for everything from a very small boot drive (30GB) all the way up to a full fledged OS/apps drive at the higher capacities.
By the middle of the year we should see the arrival of the first
NGFF (now known as M.2) form factor SSDs that should eventually supplant mSATA. It will take a little while for motherboards and OEM systems to implement M.2, so I expect that we'll continue to see mSATA used. I do hope for a quick transition to M.2 however, not only is the standard more flexible (e.g. longer cards can deliver even higher capacity drives) but it also supports PCIe as well as SATA as an interface.
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MSI Z77 MPower Review: The XPower’s Little Brother
Like many other manufacturers, MSI is building brands to aid the development of their product lines. Over the past few Intel chipsets MSI have developed their Big Bang family, such as the
P55 Trinergy, P55 Fuzion,
X58 XPower, P67 Marshal,
X79 XPower-II and now the latest, whilst devoid of the Big Bang part from the official title, is the Z77 MPower. MSI have coined this as ‘XPower-II’s little brother’, designed as an overclocking board to be paired with the MSI Lightning range of GPUs. As a result, the Z77 MPower is designed with the MSI Lightning Twin Frozr IV scheme in mind. We’ve tackled one Z77 overclocking board already, so how does the MSI fare? Read on for the full review.
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Element Case Sector 5 for iPhone 5 Review
Most of the AnandTech crew seems to be averse to putting cases on their phones for a variety of different reasons. I’m still of the persuasion where I want a case for everything that I’m going to carry regularly both to prevent putting scratches and also have a resulting device form factor something that looks a bit different than the norm.
A few weeks after our iPhone 5 review posted, Element Case reached out to me and offered to sample a review unit of their upcoming iPhone 5 case, the aptly named Sector 5. Element Case has been known for a while for making exotic cases that use metal instead of plastic and look like nothing you’ll see others carrying around, so when I heard about the iPhone 5 version I jumped at the opportunity. In addition, since I spent a lot of time back in the iPhone 4 and 4S days doing attenuation testing, getting to the bottom of whether this unique case detunes the antenna was particularly intriguing.
Inside the box is the case itself, a removable adhesive suede back cover, keychain mountable screw driver, a “transit EVA case” which is a hard pouch with zipper for the phone, and some rash guards for the aluminum side.
For installation, Element Case wants you to apply removable sticker “rash guards” which essentially prevent the anodization from chipping off of the device. In theory these are great, but not totally necessary, as the case includes a soft rubber material around its inner perimeter to prevent aluminum from touching aluminum. The Sector 5 wraps around the iPhone 5 and then screws together at top left to lock the phone in place. The supplied screwdriver is keychain mountable so that if you need to get your iPhone out of the case it’s handy. In practice there really shouldn’t be any need to take it out of the case unless you’re moving to a different one or have a stubborn docking station, since the SIM tray and other connectors are easily accessible on the device.
The Element Sector 5 is a completely different case than the norm, since, like I mentioned earlier, it’s made from 6061 aluminum instead of polycarbonate plastic, silicone, or some other polymer. This gives it a completely different in-hand feel than basically every other case on the market, one that’s eerily similar to the iPhone’s native aluminum characteristics. With the case on, the overall package is still surprisingly light since there’s a lot of material machined out of the sides. With the case installed, I measured a mass of 133.7 grams over the iPhone 5’s native 112 grams.
For the back there’s an adhesive sticker which in my case was suede, though there are different back materials available. Having a suede backed device is something very different from what I’m used to, and surprisingly enough works well. I haven’t picked up a lot of dirt or grime leaving the phone backside down on surfaces, and the suede feels great.
On the left side is a large cutout for accessing the vibration switch and volume buttons. They’re a little difficult to get to because of the depth of the machined groove, but still workable. At top is the power button, and beside it a groove where more material was machined out. I have no issues with the power button, it is still clicky and communicative.
The right side has a cool cantilever looking structure with a large enough gap to get to the SIM tray and ejection port. I’m very grateful that Element Case chose to leave the SIM tray accessible since I’m constantly swapping SIMs, and making you take the whole case off to get to this would get old fast.
At the bottom are cutouts for the microphone, speaker, earphone jack, and lightning connector. The Lightning connector is big enough for the standard Apple USB to Lightning cable, but not quite big enough for the Lightning to 30-pin or the Amazon Basics Lightning to USB cable, both of which required filing to make them fit. I’m not surprised by this however since it seems as though every Apple ecosystem case I come across requires filing to make all the accessories work. The earphone jack hasn’t been a problem with my Shure SE535 cable, thankfully.
The aesthetics of the Sector 5 case are radical. You quite honestly are highly unlikely to run across someone with the same case on their iPhone 5, and as a result it’s always drawing attention when I have it on. I find the Sector 5 looks like something out of Quake rather than an iPhone case, with the aggressive geometric protrusions at the four corners, modern angular shape, and radical design. It’s definitely a bit crazy in the industrial design department as far as an iPhone case goes, but I’m a fan of how this makes the device look.
In terms of feel, the Sector 5 is a bit sharp at times but also is easy to get a firm hand grip on, as the bulges at the four corners make it easy to grasp onto. The Sector 5 also doesn’t make the device much thicker than it is already as a result of its design. The tradeoff is that there’s not too much front display protection beyond the supplied screen protector (which I almost always refuse to install when supplied with cases), but there is a lip so that when laid front down the device isn’t totally coplanar with the surface it rests on.
I’ve dropped the Sector 5 with the iPhone inside twice and was left only with a small deformity from the impact that is hardly visible, with no discoloration or scratching off of anodization. The case looks like it wouldn’t afford too much protection, but it does a good enough job at deflecting impacts on the sides or back; just avoid the front unless you’ve applied the screen protector.
The big question is just how much adding an aluminum case to a smartphone affects antenna gain and cellular performance. I’ll note that I’m still using the case on a daily basis when using the iPhone 5, so the short of the matter is — not a whole lot, if at all.
First, Element Case has included polymer links between each of the four main aluminum blocks so there’s no continuity between them, which is easy enough to verify with a multimeter. In addition the case is insulated from the aluminum exterior of the iPhone 5 with a rubber material, so there’s really no galvanic contact between case and phone. That’s a good first step to not change too much of the ground plane or inadvertently create a path between the bottom primary antenna and top secondary antenna on the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 has an RFMD RF1102 tuning block and seems to do a good job dealing with any antenna detuning that the Sector 5 might introduce. I won’t say that the Sector 5 doesn’t affect the antennas at all, as adding conductors this close to the device clearly does, but the much improved tuning onboard the device seems to cope with it perfectly well and I haven’t noticed any ill effects.
101 dBm RSRP on the iPhone 5 with Incipio Dual Pro, -102 on iPhone 5 with Sector 5. I've done other testing where both were identical.
I compared my iPhone 5 against a few others also on AT&T LTE (Band 17) and on AT&T WCDMA (Band 2 PCS) and didn’t notice any difference in RSRP or RSCP respectively after allowing the two to stabilize. I’m impressed that there really is no difference, and in using the device a lot with the case on I haven’t noticed any difference on my mental signal map.
At
$139.95 the Element Sector 5 definitely isn’t a normal case, nor one that’s in everybody’s price range, but if you’re looking for something that stands way out from the norm and has rugged construction I’d definitely recommend it. It's quite a head turner.
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AVADirect’s Clevo P570WM X79 Gaming Notebook Available for Pre-Order in the US
Depending on whom you ask, desktop replacement notebooks are either a growing or a shrinking market. Most large OEMs have completely abandoned the DTR market, with high-end DTR-like notebooks generally going the “mobile workstation” route instead. There are also large notebooks that some might call DTR (e.g. Alienware’s M17x and M18x, and most of the other 17.3” gaming notebooks), but if you want true desktop power you’ll want a desktop CPU. That’s precisely what AVADirect/Clevo are offering with the P570WM, supporting Intel’s socket 2011 processors in a large chassis with an equally large power brick.
It’s interesting to note that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about X79 gaming notebooks. AVADirect even
points out in their forum post, “Almost one year ago, AVADirect began to accept pre-orders on what was to be the world's first X79 desktop replacement, the Clevo P270WM. After many complications, production was halted and release delayed.” It appears the P270WM has been completely scrapped, though I suspect much of the earlier design remains, and what we have is the new P570WM. This is the first truly new DTR since Clevo’s X7200/X7201 two years back that supported socket 1366 CPUs up to the hex-core Gulftown offerings.
Specifications are largely a continuation of what we saw with the X7200 series, only with a new chipset comes new processors and a different memory topology (quad-channel instead of tri-channel). CPU choices consist of the entire line of LGA-2011 processors: i7-3820 quad-core, i7-3930K hex-core, and the i7-3960X hex-core. The primary difference between the 3930K and 3960X is the addition of 3MB of L3 cache on the 3960X, as both hex-core CPUs are fully unlocked so making up the 100Mhz difference in clock speed is as easy as tweaking the BIOS. It’s not clear how much support the P570WM has for overclocking the CPU, but considering the amount of power an overclocked Sandy Bridge-E processor can consume, we’d recommend exercising some discretion before shooting for massive overclocks.
Other specifications for the P570WM include SLI GTX 670MX or SLI GTX 680M dual-GPU graphics configurations, along with single-GPU configurations for the GTX 680M and Quadro K5000M. Interestingly, a single GTX 680M actually costs slightly more than dual GTX 670MX, and we expect the SLI 670MX will be a higher performing option (assuming the games you’re using properly utilize SLI, of course). The chassis has three 2.5” HDD/SSD bays, and with an optional 2.5” caddy for the optical drive bay you can utilize up to four hard drives. RAID 0/1/5 are also available should you so desire. The remaining options run the usual gamut of WiFi and connectivity ports, with two USB 3.0, one eSATA/USB 3.0 combo, and two USB 2.0 ports. A 1080p glossy LCD comes standard, with DisplayPort, HDMI, and single-link DVI video ports available. The keyboard also sees an “upgrade” to the 3-zone colored backlighting and altered layout found in the other
recent Clevo offerings.
Clevo has been one of the few (if not the only) ways to get desktop CPUs in a notebook for a while now, but there have been more than a few broken eggs along the way. Besides the aborted P270WM, the earlier X7200 series
wasn’t without concerns. With the latest update, we were hoping for an even larger power brick to accommodate all of the high-end components, and sadly that doesn’t appear to have happened. It doesn’t take a math whiz to figure out that two 100W TDP GPUs with a 130W TDP CPU are already enough to overload a 300W power brick; add in storage, the LCD, RAM, and various motherboard components and we suspect Clevo will have to do some thermal throttling/management to keep things in check. Hopefully this time that means minor throttling rather than tripping the circuit breaker in the power brick and running off battery power; even if things work properly, though, we don’t expect you to be able to get 100% performance out of two GPUs and the CPU simultaneously. For gaming on the other hand, most loads should stay below the 300W rated output of the power brick [fingers crossed].
Pre-ordering from
AVADirect is now online, though ordering and actually having a product ship aren’t necessarily the same thing as we saw with the P270WM. The base configuration comes with an i7-3820, GTX 680M, 2x8GB DDR3-1600 Crucial RAM, a 750GB Seagate HDD, and a 1-year warranty and a starting price of $2758. If you want a true “maximum gaming performance” configuration with an i7-3930K, dual GTX 680M, PK-3 thermal compound, 4x8GB DDR3-1600 RAM (with Windows 7 Pro, naturally), 512GB Crucial M4 SSD with 1TB Hitachi 5400 RPM HDD for storage, and Killer 1103 3x3:3 WiFi, you’re looking at $4374. Or why not go for broke and nearly max out every component, with the i7-3960X, 4x512GB Samsung 840 Pro in RAID 5, and a Quadro K5000M GPU (and the other options as with the gaming configuration); that will get you a final price of $7384, not counting the $350 you can put into a custom paint job.
I’m not sure how many people are actually in the market for gaming notebooks or mobile workstations like this, but if you’ve got a need for every last ounce of performance you can squeeze out of a twelve pound behemoth (add another pound or two for the power brick!), the Clevo P570WM should have you covered. Let’s just hope this time the notebooks ship without any further delays or complications.
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Transcend SSD320 & SSD720 (256GB) Review
Transcend is a Taiwanese company specializing in memory and flash storage solutions. While Transcend may not be the first company that comes to mind about NAND flash, they have been in the industry since the late 80's. Transcend's USB flash sticks and SD cards are actually rather popular at least here in the northern Europe, but they aren't exactly known for their SSDs. Like many other smaller SSD OEMs, Transcend relies on SandForce's SF-2281 platform. The lineup consists of two models, the SSD720 and SSD320, which Transcend sent us in for reviewing. Read on to find out how they perform!
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