IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 10/23/2013

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 10/23/2013

AnandTech

Qualcomm Atheros Introduces QCA7500 HPAV2 Powerline Solution with MIMO Capabilities

In October 2012, Qualcomm Atheros introduced their first HomePlug AV2 (HPAV2) solution in the form of the QCA7450/AR1540 chipset. It did boast of theoretical speeds up to 500 Mbps, but lacked support for all the MIMO profiles.
Today, Qualcomm Atheros is announcing the QCA7500 HPAV2 solution to deliver gigabit-class performance using existing electrical wiring. The QCA7500 is highly integrated, with no need for an external AFE (analog front end). An integrated 2x2 MIMO AFE line driver reduces system cost. It also includes TR 069 remote management support. The MIMO feature comes with optimized beamforming coefficients. As expected, kits based on the QCA7500 will be interoperable with the already installed HomePlug solutions.

The QCA7500 has an operational frequency band between 2 and 68 MHz and boasts compatibility with IEEE 1901 and HPAV, and pre-compliance with HPAV2. 128-bit AES encryption is available along with a hardware QoS engine. An integrated ARM1156 CPU manages the Ethernet and HPAV2 subsystem and interfaces with the rest of the SoC components.
Qualcomm Atheros has been promoting the Hy-Fi hybrid networking solution heavily over the past couple of years. They claim that the QCA7500, coupled with the VIVE 11ac solutions will be compliant with the nVoy / IEEE 1905.1 hybrid networking standard.

NVIDIA GeForce 331.58 WHQL Drivers Now Available

After last month’s release of their 331.40 beta drivers, NVIDIA’s R331 driver branch has finally reached WHQL certification with today's release of driver version 331.58.
For those of you on a beta upgrade cadence, these drivers should be similar to the last beta, going by NVIDIA’s release notes. Otherwise for those of you on a WHQL upgrade cadence, then these are the first drivers with all of the R331 branch enhancements. This includes the usual mix of performance enhancements – up to 10% in several games versus R325 – new SLI profiles, driver-based HBAO+ support, official Ivy Bridge-E support, and OpenGL 4.4 support. Furthermore NVIDIA is labeling these as a “game ready” release for Battlefield 4 and Batman: Arkham Origins (both coming out at the end of this month), so these will be the preferred drivers for those games.
As usual, you can grab the drivers for all current desktop and mobile NVIDIA GPUs over at NVIDIA’s driver download page.

Ubiquiti Networks Introduces Next-Gen Fixed Wireless Broadband Infrastructure

Ubiquiti Networks is a B2B company with a very interesting business model. At the enterprise level, companies employ dedicated sales teams to attract clients and increase revenue. Ubiquiti claims that such teams are responsible for approximately 40% of the consumers' end cost. Ubiquiti does away with these teams and passes on the savings to the consumer, which results in a disruptive pricing model. We have already covered Ubiquiti before, when they launched the first 802.11ac access point for enterprise Wi-Fi networks.
One of the most interesting product lines from Ubiquiti is their fixed wireless broadband lineup. The airMAX, airFiber and EdgeMAX products helps Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) to provide broadband access to remote and sparsely populated areas (think of outposts in Alaska with populations in the hundreds or low thousands). Laying wired cables to such areas might not make economic sense and this is where Ubiquiti steps in. Fixed wireless broadband providers have rapid ROI since they do not require trenching and can also be deployed in areas with limited infrastructure. The WISP business is still a niche market, but analysts predict that it is growing at a 21.8% CAGR through 2017. This represents a $5.9B revenue opportunity for service providers next year.
The new products from Ubiquiti introduced today include:

airMAX: This provides point-to-multipoint and point-to-point fixed wireless access (last mile infrastructure). Within this product line, we have the airMAX NanoBeam CPE (consumer premises equipment) family based on Ubiquiti's proprietary airMAX TDMA protocol. This products comes in a couple of different form factors for deployment flexibility. One form factor is the dish reflector design with three different models: 2.4 GHz 400mm, 5 GHz 400mm and 5 GHz 300 mm, while the other all-in-one design integrates both antenna and radio to provide a more efficient footprint. This one also has a faster processor and comes in two models, 5 GHz 16dbi and 5 GHz 19 dBi.
airFiber: This provides high performance point-to-point wireless access (backhaul platform). It operates in the unlicensed 5 GHz band and primarily targeted at carrier backhauls. However, it can also be used for building-to-building networking in enterprises. The new generation product can provide 1.0+ Gbps aggregate throughput and, with the new xRT (eXtended Range Technology), can provide a range of over 100 kms. It is priced at $2000 per link, which is very disruptive. The airFiber family also includes a 24 GHz model which provides 1.4+ Gbps real data throughput with a 13 km range.
EdgeMAX: This is a routing and switching platform for the network edge and comes in two models, EdgeRouter and EdgeRouter Pro. These are 8-port rack mountable switches and the Pro version comes with two SFP ports. Both are capable of 2 million packets per second throughput.

The new products are scheduled to ship in Q4 2013. Ubiquiti also announced the beta release of the Ubiquiti World Network, an endeavour to create a directory of WISPs (Ubiquiti customers). It is envisaged that the directory would make it easier for end consumers to find Internet providers servicing their location.

MSI ‘Master Overclocking Arena’ 2013: The Final

These past few days MSI has held their annual competitive overclocking event, the ‘Master Overclocking Arena’, in Taipei. Following a preliminary overclocking competition online, with tickets evenly distributed throughout EMEA, APAC and the Americas, sixteen finalists were invited to show their sub-zero talent in front of an audience, the cameras, and a livestream. As far as international overclocking tournaments go, MSI have held MOA since 2008, and have publicly stated via their Executive Vice President, Charles Jiang, that “This is the 6th consecutive year of MOA and we have no intention to stop.”

Final competition was relatively simple: two days of contest. The first day was the Classic Battle, using well known benchmarks SuperPi 32M, Cinebench R11.5 and 3DMark Firestrike, using provided i7-4770K CPUs, MSI Z87 MPower Max motherboards, MSI GTX 780 Lightning GPUs and other sponsored hardware from Corsair, Plextor, Cooler Master and BenQ. Scores at the event were compared to a base stock system, given as a percentage of the overall score, and weighted by a predetermined factor.

The winner of this first day was T0lsty from Ukraine, fresh from a win the previous month in another live overclocking contest and MOA 2010 runner-up. He achieved first in FireStrike with a final score of 14736 which translates as a +48.98% overclock over stock, as well as high results in SuperPi and Cinebench. MOA 2008 winner Lucky_n00b from Indonesia finished an overall second despite winning both the SuperPi and Cinebench stages, but T0lsty’s lead in FireStrike was too much. Third was Xtreme Addict from Poland who was hot on the tails in each round, including matching Lucky_n00b in Cinebench. Australia had a good showing, with both of their qualifiers SniperOZ and JJJC finishing 4^th and 5^th respectively.

The second day was more a freestyle event: all the overclockers had a day to break any one of ten world records in specified benchmarks. Any competitor who claimed a new world record received $1000, and contestants were given time to prepare as well as discuss between them the best way to modify components to squeeze out the extra few MHz. As world records can take large amounts of preparation (some GPU benchmarks require 10+ hours of modifications on each graphics card in order to provide the right power), offering only eight hours in order to do so requires an expert hand. At the end of the day, three records were broken; a couple of them were broken several times by repeated improvements:

MOA 2012 winner oc_windforce from Korea beat the 6-core Intel XTU world record, scoring 1891 marks with an i7-4960X at 6047 MHz
Vivi from South Africa beat the 4-core Cinebench R11.5 world record with 13.91 points using an i7-4770K at 6300 MHz
Rbuass from Brazil broke the 1xGPU Unigine Heaven world record five times (!) with a final score of 4697.82 DX11 Marks using an i7-4770K at 5900 MHz and a modified GTX Titan at 1700 MHz (memory at 1930 MHz).

Needless to say I tried entering the contest but with little success as I was not able to prepare sufficiently for the qualifiers (There's a skill element I lack as well!). Congratulations to each of the winners, they put in a lot of hard work and it was well deserved.

PCMark 8 Basic and Advanced Editions Available

We’ve had a “preview” release of PCMark 8 for a few months now, but Futuremark was still working on a few minor issues it seems – plus the pending release of Windows 8.1 likely created a reason for delaying the public launch. Today it appears everything is finally in order and PCMark 8 Basic and Advanced editions are now available. (Sort of…Futuremark’s web page was being updated briefly and the Steam store pages aren’t live, but I suspect those will go up some time today. Update: And the Steam page is live now.)
PCMark 8 follows in the steps of the latest 3DMark with a modified user interface that is more touchscreen friendly. It also breaks up the benchmark into five tests: Home, Creative, Work, Storage, and Applications. The Creative test is a superset of the Home and Work tests, and likewise Home is a superset of Work, but the overall scores in each category can still vary depending on the capabilities of the device being tested. Storage naturally focuses on your storage device, and it can take a while to run on an SSD never mind waiting around for a hard drive. The Applications suite is the one item I have yet to test, as it requires Microsoft Office (2010 or later) and Adobe Creative Cloud (or later) in order to run. Also included as part of the overall package are battery life tests for the Home, Creative, and Work suites.
In terms of what you get with PCMark 8, the Basic edition only includes the Home, Creative, and Work benchmarks, along with the battery life tests. The Advanced version adds the Storage and Applications suites. Basic is available for free – either from the Steam PCMark 8 page or from one of the download mirrors. The Advanced edition is priced at $49.95 regularly, but there’s a sale going on right now on Steam that will save you 25%, or a price of $37.49.
You can see results for PCMark 8 testing on several laptops in Mobile Bench (Creative, Home, Work, and Storage), and we’ll be adding to those results in the coming months/years. Of particular interest is the Storage suite, where the sole hybrid storage solution that we’ve tested (the Acer V7-482PG) only manages half the performance of the pure SSDs. This is actually more or less my experience with hybrid storage solutions, and it will be interesting to see how pure HDD systems end up faring. The public release of PCMark 8 should also bring with it a larger collection of results in the ORB, if you’re interested in seeing how your hardware stacks up.

Sony VAIO Pro 13 Battery Life with Windows 8.1: Largely Unchanged

Last week I finished up the review of the Sony VAIO Pro 13, which delivers excellent battery life compared to most other laptops that we’ve tested – granted, it’s also one of the first Haswell ULT systems we’ve tested as well. Shortly after the review posted, Microsoft officially released the Windows 8.1 update. Battery life is apparently one of the areas that’s supposed to improve with Windows 8.1, or at least that’s the theory. I reran the battery life tests (only with the internal battery, in order to keep testing time manageable), and here are the results:

Sony VAIO Pro 13 Battery Life (Minutes)
	Windows 8	Windows 8.1
Light	481	479
Medium	315	283
Heavy	195	191

I’m going to have to rerun the Medium test (after the battery finishes recharging yet again), just to verify the result, as it shows a rather significant 11% drop compared to my initial testing. As for the other two tests, they’re also down compared to the earlier results, but here we see a 2% drop in the Heavy test and only a 0.4% drop in the Light result. A margin of error of ~2% is normal for battery life testing, so short of retesting multiple times I’m willing to call the Light and Heavy results a tie.
The main takeaway here is that anyone expecting Windows 8.1 to dramatically improve battery life relative to Windows 8 is likely going to be disappointed. Note that we do test with the LCD at a constant 200 nits, so optimizations that turn off the display sooner rather than later could still have an impact, but in comparing equivalent settings we did not notice any improvement on the VAIO Pro 13.
Far more important in my experience will be the laptop BIOS/firmware. I’ve been communicating with Intel recently in the hope of helping to improve the situation, as I have a few Haswell-equipped laptops that are failing to deliver the expected battery life. If all goes well, Intel will bang some OEM heads and we’ll get BIOS updates that will improve our battery life.
Frankly, I’m amazed that some companies still appear to not put in the necessary time/effort to deliver good battery life. Clevo is probably my biggest gripe right now, and we’ve dinged them on battery life for as long as I can remember. With the Haswell Clevo notebooks that I have right now (P157SM and W740SU), it appears neither one is using the deeper sleep states (C6/C7) for the CPU package – and in the case of the P157SM, it’s not even using the package C3 state. The CPU cores are properly using C7, but the package is not. That may not be the only item holding back battery life, but at least it appears to be part of the puzzle.
In short, consider this a warning shot across the bow of the laptop manufacturers. It’s time to join the modern world, and failing to put unused devices to sleep or to take advantage of deeper sleep states with computer hardware is not acceptable, especially not on a laptop. I don't want software hacks to turn off the display more quickly, or drop the brightness to 100 nits in direct sunlight; I want real improvements. Besides raw battery life, I'll at least be checking to see that future laptops use all the available C-states (on the cores as well as the CPU package) when running off the mains.

ASUS Launches Xonar Essence STU USB DAC

One of the stalwarts of ASUS' audio program has been the Xonar Essence ST/STX sound cards - these are sound cards with a multi-year development cycle to ensure compatibility, usability and getting exactly down to the nitty-gritty of what a user requires. On the back of the success of the Xonar Essence range, ASUS are launching the Xonar Essence STU device - a USB digital to analog converter and headphone amplifier, based on the Xonar Essence ST/STX design.

Features include 120+ dB signal-to-noise ratio (DAC is rated at 127 dB SNR), 0.00032% THD+N, swappable op-amps, a 600 ohm headphone amplifier and segregated PCB layout to minimize signal interference and crosstalk.

To cater for audiophiles the system is adjustable via Op-Amps, selectable DC servo headphone output, a volume bypass mode (to use the STU as a pre-amplifier) and variable resistor calibration for optimization of left/right channel outputs.

The Xonar Essence STU is due for release in North America in the next two weeks, MSRP of $399. Other markets to follow.

Gallery: ASUS Launches Xonar Essence STU USB DAC

Latest Snowden Leak Shows that NSA Spied on French Citizens
France wants answers

Confirmed: Windows 8.1 Apps Will Run on Xbox One
Move could boost struggling Microsoft operating system

HTC CEO Hands Sales, Marketing Duties Off to Focus on Smartphone Comeback
The shift of duties is said to be temporary until the smartphone department is back on track

President Obama Addresses Healthcare Website Issues, Calls them "Unacceptable"
He'll do so at an event today at 11:25 a.m.

Nokia Lumia 1520, "Treasure Tag" Key-Finder Pics Leak
Nokia continues to show off unique ways to differentiate its smartphones

Quick Note: Apple Testing an iPad Keyboard Cover According to Reports
Source says these covers may not be ready for the event tomorrow

10/21/2013 Daily Hardware Reviews
DailyTech's roundup of reviews from around the web for Monday

Netflix Closes on HBO Boasting an Estimated 30 Million Paying Subscribers
Netflix may have passed HBO for US subscriber numbers

Available Tags:NVIDIA , GeForce , WHQL , Wireless , MSI , Windows 8 , Sony , VAIO , Windows , ASUS , USB , Windows 8 , Xbox , HTC , CEO , Smartphone , Nokia , Apple , iPad , Keyboard , Hardware ,

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