Tech News
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Intel's Next-Gen Sandy Bridge-E Extreme Chip to Boost Performance by 65%
Published: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 | By: DennisThis is some good news for us Workstation enthusiasts, now if the processor will also overclock like the 900 series we'll have a great tweaking processor as well.
According to a document with Intel's performance estimates of the Core i7-3960X processor (six cores, 3.30GHz, 15MB cache) seen by X-bit labs, the forthcoming chip for the LGA2011 platform is clearly faster than its predecessor Core i7-990X (six cores, 3.46GHz, 12MB cache) across a range of benchmarks despite of lower clock-speed amid the same amount of cores due to advantages of the Sandy Bridge micro-architecture over Nehalem/Westmere micro-architecture, quad-channel memory controller and other innovations.
I'm beginning to wonder what the difference is between X and K skus besides the L3 cache size. According to the chart they both have unlocked multipliers and we already know 8 core CPUs will be "Xeon" branded for servers. So, what does X mean? Multi processor maybe?
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Intel Core i7-3930K compared to Core i7-980X
Published: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 | By: DennisAfter IDF I started doing some more research into what will come with the LGA2011 processors and X79. Of course the information is sparse and likely to change but the rumor mill appears to be quite knowledgeable.
With Sandy Bridge as the foundation the processors will be tweaked with a quad-core DDR3 memory controller, better overclocking and up to six cores in retail - eight for servers.
We knwo since earlier that Intel is planning at least three Sandy Bridge-E processors in the Intel Core i7-3000 series this fall and it is the middle child Core i7-3930K that Cooler has. The processor will operate at 3.2 GHz, but can overclock to 3.8GHz in Turbo mode. it was locked at the nominal frequency and then compared to Intel's current Gulftown architecture at the same clock frequency and number of cores.Minus the misspellings the article is quite interesting and talks about 3 basic skus with the high end editions being X and K complete with unlocked multipliers. All processors will feature a 130w TDP and quad memory channels so they almost mimic the 1155 lineup.
The 130w TDP is quite high considering SandyBridge-E appears to be nothing more than two 1155 processors smashed together, I guess they need a little extra juice to get all of the cores and PCI Express lanes to work.
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NVIDIA GeForce LAN 6 BYOC Sells out in 2 Hours!
Published: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 | By: DennisGamers Sign Up in Droves for This Fall’s Hottest Gaming Event; Gives Gamers First Chance Ever to Play Three Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Maps
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—September 20, 2011— NVIDIA today opened registration for GeForce LAN 6, which was met with an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from PC gamers.
Just two hours after opening registration, seats for the highly-anticipated bring-your-own computer (BYOC) gaming area sold out, as gamers reserved their spots to play in the highly anticipated 64-person LAN featuring Battlefield 3.Check the Ninjalane Message Forum for the full press release
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NL: Review Block - Motherboards Pimp Video Cards and SSD
Published: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 | By: DennisQuick review block to start your Tuesday with.
Motherboards
- Funky Kit Review: Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi Motherboard
- GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 2 @ Bjorn3D
- Sapphire Pure Platinum A75 @ PureOverclock
- GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3-iSSD (Intel Z68) Motherboard Review
Video Cards
- EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD Classified Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
- His IceQX Radeon 6770 Videocard @ Rbmods
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 1280MB SOC Review @ APH Networks
Storage
- Kingston HyperX 240GB SATA 6Gbit/s SSD Review @ TechgageMore to come so stay tuned.
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Portal free on steam
Published: Friday, September 16, 2011 | By: DeanWho doesn't like free stuff? Well Steam is giving away Portal once again for free. You have till September 20th so act soon.
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Windows 8 on a laptop in-depth preview
Published: Friday, September 16, 2011 | By: DeanMany of you might have known that a developers build of Windows 8 has been released to the general public already. Heres a great preview of what's inside.
Less than 24 hours after it went live on Microsoft's site, Steve Ballmer reported a whopping 500,000 downloads of Windows 8 Developer Preview. That's half a million copies, if not eager Windows fans. Well, you can count us among them. Although we were treated to some private hands-on time with a tablet optimized for the OS, we hadn't, until now, had a chance to use it on a laptop -- i.e., the computing environment where we spend most of our time, and the one where we're most used to seeing Windows, in particular.
If you don't have time yourself to install, this preview will tide you over just fine. Very in depth and informative.
If you want to grab it yourself and give it a go, you can do so from here.
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Off to Watch the Boise Open
Published: Friday, September 16, 2011 | By: DennisNot much more I can say. I'm off to watch the Boise Open today and likely won't be able to post any news. Don't fret normal operations will resume before you know it.
Oh wait, I said that already
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ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z LGA1155 @ techPowerUp
Published: Friday, September 16, 2011 | By: DennisThe Maximus IV Gene-Z that we reviewed was actually a really fun board to mess with. It didn't have all the cool stuff found on the Maximus IV Extreme but reacted and performed exactly the same, which is saying a lot since it’s only half the size.
ASUS has updated their microATX ROG offerings with the latest chipset from Intel, and we take a look. A red and black racer, the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z is ready for high speed gaming without a doubt, and packs in many exclusive features that just might see it hit the finish line first. Ready? Set? GO!
The ROG features are what really separate these motherboards from the competition and I think the TPU folks agree..
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AMD Bulldozer FX pricing revealed @ ExtremeTech
Published: Thursday, September 15, 2011 | By: DennisEarly this week AMD released some amazing overclocking numbers from a golden, and LHe cooled, FX-8150 which has many enthusiasts excited about the new platform. Pricing for the new chip has also been released and seems to have many analysts confused.
Why is any of the above bad news? Well, the pricing is possibly too cheap. Early benchmarks of Bulldozer showed that Zambezi was never likely to be competitive with Intel’s Core i7 — and these prices, which are all well below any of Intel’s comparable i7 (and even some i5) Sandy Bridge chips, suggest that the FX Series chips are priced to sell rather than compete. The nearest-spec chip to the FX-8150, for example, is the Core i7-2600, which has an Intel-suggested retail price of $294 — some $60 more than the AMD chip. If you compare the FX against the “overclockable” 2600k, the price difference is even more pronounced.
$200 isn't bad for a new processor and I have yet to see an AMD processor ever cost more than the comparable Intel offering so I dunno what the big deal is. Of course this is just speculation, once the reviews are up we'll know for sure.
Check CPU-World for a price list and the site below for more on this story.
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IDF Goodness - Gigabyte X79 Motherboards Reveled
Published: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 | By: DennisLast year Gigabyte unveiled their P67 line at IDF which marked a radical change in direction for Gigabyte. First of all they changed the board colors from light blue to matte black and updated the heatsink design to better align the accent colors with the segment level.
Well, in keeping with tradition there is a new line of motherboards on display. This time based on the Intel X79.
The X79A-OC we are told was built to be the X79A-OC, but as many have heard there will be no more boards named the OC board. As you can obviously see the board carries the same color coordination, as well as the same features, and a few more such as the DIP switches, which we don't know what they do.
Be sure to check out SinHardware.com for some good photos of the upcoming boards including the new X79A-UD7(OC) board. Yep, as we had suspected the OC and UD7 lines have been combined.
You'll also notice two different boards, one based on four memory sockets with the other having eight. Boards that come with eight memory sockets will likely be higher-end than the four socket edition but may not work as well for overclocking.
