Angelbird unveiled the unique 1GB/s PCIe SSD system a year ago, and now finally the production version has arrived. The performance claims are more modest than we saw in the beta phase, but we’re not distraught: the new benchmark is 800MB/s reads and 750MB/s writes, achieved with a $3000 setup including four 240GB SSD modules mounted on a Wings PCI-e card with a 32GB SSD built-in. Need to hold something back for groceries? You can’t reduce the number of SSDs without slowing everything down, but four 60GB drives on the cheapest Wings Lite PCIe card ought to satisfy most thrill seekers for just under a grand.
Intel wants a piece of the smartphone market, and they want it so bad. The mobile market has been in the palm of ARM, with Qualcomm and Nvidia fighting for the crown, which seemed like a goldmine to Intel. The company has made no bones about its attempts to break into that booming space.
Despite big talk, however, it hasn’t really given smartphone manufacturers something they can work with. A new promotional video for its pint-sized Atom E6xx series, however, reveals that chipmaker may be taking a step in the right direction, highlighting a January 2012 date for bringing Android 2.3 to the processor.
Keep in mind, of course, that this isn’t a smartphone chip that we’re talking about here — the primary applications as outlined by Intel are retail, fitness equipment, digital signage and in-vehicle systems. Something very small, like an embedded system. Still, perhaps it marks a next step in the company’s push toward your mobile devices, or moreover, a shift for Android into more non-mobile things.
ADATA has introduced another budget-friendly SSD to the market with their announcement of the S510 SATA 6 Gb/s SSD to go along with the S511 SSD.
The S510 is only available in a 120 GB capacity (which seemed to be an odd move, with it being hailed as a budget-friendly SSD, why not a 64 GB version, ADATA?) and is equipped with a SandForce SF-2200 series controller, Asynchronous (MLC) NAND Flash memory, and native support for the SATA 6Gb/s platform. It has a MTBF of 1 million hours, TRIM support, features a 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch mounting bracket, free Disk Migration Utility software, along with a 3-year warranty.
ADATA lists the S510 performance numbers for sequential reads and writes as 550 MB/s and 510 MB/s (ATTO), 4K Random Write (Aligned): 60,000 IOPS (Max 85,000 IOPS). AS-SSD performance shows a big difference with sequential reads and writes at up to 200 MB/s and 140 MB/s respectively.
AMD has announced the availability of its two dual-core A-Series APUs: the A4-3300 and the A4-3400 for desktops. Now PC builders can throw together an AMD-based entry-level desktop with DirectX 11 capabilities, dedicated HD video processing and advanced performance by spending around $70 on the just the APU – and without having to purchase a separate PCIe graphics card.
“The AMD A4-3300 and A4-3400 desktop APUs each combine two x86 CPU cores with 160 Radeon cores, enabling powerful DirectX 11-capable discrete-level graphics and dedicated HD video processing on a single chip,” the company said. “These dual-core APUs enable responsive and energy-efficient performance for everyday PC productivity and multitasking, as well as an amazing gaming experience.”
Now available for $70 USD, the AMD A4-3300 APU features a CPU clock speed of 2.5 GHz and a GPU clock speed of 444 MHz. It includes the 160 Radeon (HD 6410D) cores, 1 MB of L2 cache and a TDP of just 65W. The AMD A4-3400 is slightly pricier, costing a mere five bucks more ($75 USD). This APU features a CPU clock speed of 2.7 GHz, a GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, 160 Radeon cores, 1 MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 65W.
The AMD A4-3300 and A4-3400 desktop APUs are now available for purchase from Amazon.com, NCIX and other retailers. All A-Series processors are designed for use with FM1 motherboards, but the A4 APUs require the AMD Vision Engine Control Center 11.8 driver release or later releases, the company added.
OCZ joins the likes of Intel, SanDisk, Kingston and others to the mSATA SSD battlefield with its two Strata and Nocti mSATA SDDs. The OCZ Strata and Nocti mSATA drives have been seen for pre-order at European sites like Scan.co.uk, though no “official” announcement has been made by OCZ Technology on their availability.
Strata utilizes a slightly revised version of OCZ’s own Indilinx controller and comes in 30GB and 60GB capacities. The 30GB model offers 4k random writes of 750 IOPS, 4k random reads of 11,000 IOPS, sequential writes of 40 MB/s, and sequential reads of 125 MB/s. The 60 GB model offers 4k random writes of 1500 IOPS, 4k random reads of 12,000 IOPS, sequential writes of 85 MB/s, and sequential reads of 130 MB/s.
Notci utilizes either a SandForce SF-2141 or SF-2181 controller and comes in 30GB, 60GB and 120GB capacities. The 30GB model offers 4k random writes of 12,500 IOPS, 4k random reads of 6,000 IOPS, sequential writes of 255 MB/s, and sequential reads of 280 MB/s. The 60 GB model offers 4k random writes of 12,500 IOPS, 4k random reads of 11,500 IOPS, sequential writes of 260 MB/s, and sequential reads of 280 MB/s. The 120 GB model offers 4k random writes of 32,000 IOPS, 4k random reads of 11,500 IOPS, sequential writes of 260 MB/s, and sequential reads of 280 MB/s.
MSI put together a presentation to detail information on what it feels is a true PCIe Gen3 motherboard. MSI is pointing out that, from its view, Gigabyte’s claim on having 40 PCIe Gen3 boards isn’t true. Good grief, what a big slap in the face.
MSI shows that its motherboards utilize Pericom 34xx (Gen3) switch chips, whereas Gigabyte utilizes Pericom 24xx (Gen2) switch chips. To fully utilize PCIe Gen3, all components are required to be Gen3 compliant to operate at 32 GB/s (CPU, PCIe Slot and GPU).
MSI said that it did some PCI-Express electrical testing using a 22 nm Ivy Bridge processor sample to show the bandwidth seen on Gigabyte’s P67A-UD4-B3 and MSI’s MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3). MSI states through their review that the only true PCIe Gen3 ready Gigabyte motherboard is the G1.Sniper 2.
Despite all the troubles Intel has had with Sandy Bridge-E and the X79 chipset, DonanimHaber reports that it is set to release as early as November. The Platform Launch is specified as Weeks 46-47, which covers November 14th to November 27th. However DonanimHaber insist that the final release-date is November 15th.
The three SKUs are Core i7 3820, Core i7 3930K and Core i7 3960X, priced at $294, $583 and $999 respectively. The new flagship, Core i7 3960X, is expected to be 15% faster than the Core i7 990X on average. However, the 3960X is much faster in applications that rely heavily on memory bandwidth (thanks to X79′s quad-channel memory) or AVX.
Meanwhile, AMD’s Bulldozer continues to slip. What was once expected to be a 2 quarters lead with Bulldozer expected to release in June and Sandy Bridge-E in end 2011, is now likely to be a couple of months, at most.
AMD’s Interlagos, its server-styled Bulldozer chip, model number Opteron 6200 to those unfamiliar– is being pushed out to retailers and OEMs ready for an October launch.
AMD is calling it the first 16-core x86 processor, although as we know from the required reading, it has eight two-core shared modules rather than 16 independent ones, something how the Intel’s earlier Core 2 Quad are designed, which is 2 units of Core 2 Duo stuffed together.
The chips are compatible with Socket G34 motherboards, but most of this first production run will go straight into supercomputer projects. AMD remains mute on progress of the consumer-level Zambezi, but rumors are that the company can’t clock it fast enough to compete with Intel’s Core i7 — the very class that Bulldozer was designed to bury. Makes us wonder if Bulldozer really is worth the hype.
Essentially this new “tech” merely runs the GPU’s fans at 100-percent in the opposite direction when the system is turned on, expelling any dust from the heatsink fins and fan blades that may have accumulated since the system was powered off. After thirty seconds, the fan will then resume its correct rotation and blow heat off the chip.
“Experiments show that cold air can’t effectively remove the heat from the heat sink fans on a graphics card if they are covered with dust,” the company reports. “The result is reduced cooling performance and the GPU’s working temperature may even increase by 15°C! With the advanced MSI Dust Removal Technology, the fans spin in reverse for 30 seconds upon system startup, helping to remove dust buildup on heatsink and ensuring optimal cooling performance.”
WD leads the market with 32% share, followed by Seagate with 31%. Including the recently announced acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage (HGST), WD was at 48% share, while the addition of Samsung takes Seagate to 42%. The only other major HDD manufacturer left is Toshiba/Fujitsu with 11% share.
IHS said that WDC had record shipments of 53.8 million drives during the quarter and revenue of $2.4 billion. Seagate shipped only 52.3 million units, but raked in $2.9 billion thanks to its position in the enterprise market.
“Despite some disruptions resulting from the Japan quake disaster in March and the continuing decline of netbook sales because of tablet devices, HDD shipments rose during the second quarter, with each hard drive maker meeting its revenue forecast,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “Growth was achieved partially from a pull-in of orders by PC manufacturers fearing a potential shortage of components from the quake’s impact, and also by suppliers utilizing less expensive sea freight to ship goods instead of costly air freight.”
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