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Podcast #201 - GTX 690 review, ASUS G75V Ivy Bridge Notebook review, a Vertex 4 update and more!

Subject: Editorial | May 10, 2012 - 03:56 PM |
Tagged: Vertex 4, podcast, nvidia, Ivy Bridge, Intel, gtx690, g75v, amd, 690

PC Perspective Podcast #201 - 05/10/2012

Join us this week as we talk about our GTX 690 review, ASUS G75V Ivy Bridge Notebook review, a Vertex 4 update and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano

Program length: 1:04:25

Program Schedule:

  1. Introduction
  2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  3. http://pcper.com/podcast
  4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  5. Win a Netgear R6300 802.11ac router!!
  6. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review - Dual GK104 Kepler Greatness
  7. ASUS G75V Review: Gaming Goes Ivy
  8. Greater than 20 Percent of Malware Articles Miss the Point
  9. Trinity Improvements Include Updated Piledriver Cores and VLIW4 GPUs
  10. More Leaks Emerge on NVIDIA’s Kepler Based GTX 670 GPU
  11. Ready for Diablo III? Not with Catalyst 12.4 you're not.
  12. Corsair Launches Air Series of High Airflow and High Static Pressure Fans
  13. Steam Allows Remote Installation of Games
  14. OCZ Updates Vertex 4 Enthusiasts to 1.4 Release Candidate Firmware
  15. Windows Media Center To Be A Pro Only Feature In Windows 8
  16. Good news from TSMC for NVIDIA and you
  17. Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: ASUS N66U Dual-band Router
    2. Jeremy: Wave your hands like an idiot for free
    3. Josh: Not exactly mine, but good.
    4. Allyn: pqi U819V 3cm USB3 
  18. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  19. http://pcper.com/podcast   
  20. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  21. Closing

Source: PC Perspective

Intel wants to be the colloidal silver lining in the cloud

Subject: General Tech | May 7, 2012 - 12:30 PM |
Tagged: Intel, mcafee, cloud

It really has been almost a year and a half since Intel bought McAfee and we started speculating on what this would mean.  It was a common hypothesis that Intel wanted to leverage the Trusted Execution Technology that exists in Xeon processors as well as a belief that there would be instruction sets in the Core architecture that could be used to make your machine more secure without sacrificing performance.  That theory has proven true as Jason Waxman who is in charge of Intel's Cloud initiative spoke about the current and planned implementations of their hardware assisted antivirus.  A new tool called McAfee Management for Optimized Virtual Environments AntiVirus will handle scans and updates for the server and service side and new additions to McAfee's ePO agent which expand its ability to secure networks and servers.  The Register put together a generalized look at what we know so far and while we are still hoping to see more specifics from Intel soon it is certainly more interesting than the other McAfee story currently circulating.

silverlining_small.jpg

"Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel's Cloud Infrastructure Group, said that over the last year or so he'd been inundated with questions about what Intel was going to do with McAfee since it lashed out $7.68bn for the security firm, during an industry-wide buying spree on cyber-security companies. Chipzilla's been intentionally quiet on the subject, but was now ready to talk he said."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: The Register

Getting hot and bothered by Ivy Bridge

Subject: Processors | May 2, 2012 - 04:14 PM |
Tagged: Ivy Bridge, Intel, i7-3770k

Anyone who has been keeping up with the reviews coming out which try overclocking Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor will be familiar with the large amount of power required to hit high frequencies.  While the voltages required to overclock Ivy Bridge and its predecessor Sandy Bridge are very similar, Ivy Bridge's stock voltage is lower so the change is greater for Ivy Bridge.  That larger increase could be one cause of the higher heat that Ivy Bridge generates.  Another theory is that the heatspreader could be a cause as Intel used thermal paste in the design as opposed to the fluxless solder present on SandyB, however other tests have shown that this does not seem to be the case.  The Tech Report has gathered together the current facts on this hot topic, so you can check out the numbers for yourself right here.

burning_ivy.jpg

"Folks across the web have reported some eye-poppingly high temperatures for their overclocked Ivy Bridge processors, leading to some tough questions about the causes. Does Ivy Bridge truly run hotter than its predecessor, Sandy Bridge, and if so, why? We checked into it, and the answers were surprising, to say the least. Have a look."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

 

Source: The Tech Report

Intel SSD 910 Series 800GB PCIe SSD First Look

Author:
Date: April 27, 2012
Subject: Storage
Manufacturer: Intel SSD 900 Family
Tagged: ssd, pcie, Intel, 910, 800gb

Background and Internals

A little over two weeks back, Intel briefed me on their new SSD 910 Series PCIe SSD. Since that day I've been patiently awaiting its arrival, which happened just a few short hours ago. I've burned the midnight oil for the sake of getting some greater details out there. Before we get into the goods, here's a quick recap of the specs for the 800 (or 400) GB model:

"Performance Mode" is a feature that can be enabled through the Intel Data Center Tool Software. This feature is only possible on the 800GB model, but not for the reason you might think. The 400GB model is *always* in Performance Mode, since it can go full speed without drawing greater than the standard PCIe 25W power specification. The 800GB model has twice the components to drive yet it stays below the 25W limit so long as it is in its Default Mode. Switching the 800GB model to Performance Mode increases that draw to 38W (the initial press briefing stated 28W, which appears to have been a typo). Note that this increased draw is only seen during writes.

Ok, now into the goodies:

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Click here to read on!

Podcast #199 - Ivy Bridge Desktop and Mobile reviews, Intel and AMD Earnings, and a Gold Motherboard

Subject: General Tech | April 26, 2012 - 04:59 PM |
Tagged: Z77, podcast, nvidia, Ivy Bridge, Intel, earnings, amd, 3770k

PC Perspective Podcast #199 - 04/26/2012

Join us this week as we talk about Ivy Bridge Desktop and Mobile reviews, Intel and AMD Earnings, and a Gold Motherboard

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano

Program length: 1:06:54

Program Schedule:

  1. Introduction
  2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  3. http://pcper.com/podcast
  4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  5. Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge LGA1155 Processor Review
  6. Intel Core i7-3720QM - Ivy Bridge For Mobile Review: Monster Kill!
  7. NVIDIA continues to tease, sends us a crowbar
  8. ASUS Demonstrates Z77 Motherboard Features at PC Perspective
  9. ASUS Overclocks Ivy Bridge To 7 GHz, Breaks World Records
  10. Intel Announces Q1 2012 Earnings: Not a Record, but Close
  11. AMD Q1 2012 Earnings Analysis: Looking Back and Looking Forward
  12. New mLink PCI-E to Thunderbolt Enclosure Shown Off at NAB 2012
  13. Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: ECS GOLDEN BOARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    2. Jeremy: 25GB free on Microsoft SkyDrive
    3. Josh: I like this case. Not exactly affordable, but still really nice.
    4. Allyn: Is it a pen or is it a pencil?
  14. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  15. http://pcper.com/podcast   
  16. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  17. Closing

Source:

The i7-3720QM rules the mobile roost

Subject: Mobile | April 26, 2012 - 12:55 PM |
Tagged: mobile processor, mobile cpu, Ivy Bridge, intel hd 4000, Intel, i7-3720QM

Matt was not the only one who had a chance to play with a notebook based on the new i7-3720QM, Hardware Canucks received an engineering sample of the ASUS G75VW-3D which contains the Core i7-3720QM and an impressive 16GB of DDR3-1600.  Their testing agreed with Matt's as they saw improvements across the board when comparing this system to a similar SandyBridge based machine on general GPU computing and an even larger increase when testing the HD4000 graphics engine on the chip.  Catch their full review here.

HC_IVY-BRIDGE-MOBILE-14.jpg

"With such a big deal being made about the introduction of Intel's Ivy Bridge lineup on the desktop side, their new mobile chips deserve a chance in the spotlight as well. In this review, we take a closer look at the new i7-3720QM notebook processor which promises to be a significant step forward for the mobile product space."

Here are some more Mobile articles from around the web:

Mobile

 

Source: Hardware Canucks

Revisiting an old argument; does HyperThreading hurt performance?

Subject: General Tech | April 26, 2012 - 11:48 AM |
Tagged: hyperthreading, Intel, overclocking, fud

In the past there have been two arguments against using Intel's HyperThreading to create two threads per core.  The first is specific to overclockers who found that previous generations of Pentium and Core architecture chips could remain stable when pushed to higher frequencies when they disabled HyperThreading.  There is still a lot of testing to be done on Ivy Bridge overclocking before a definitive answer is found for this generation of chips, which may fall victim to power issues before HyperThreading becomes a major limiter.

The second issue is more serious and deals with the fact that in some cases enabling HyperThreading reduces the total performance of the chip on certain, usually single threaded, applications and by disabling it you will see performance improvements from your processor.  SemiAccurate felt that this needed to be revisited in light of the release of Ivy Bridge and so took an i7-3770K through a battery of 7 tests once with HyperThreading enabled and once without, including a run through CineBench with multithreaded processing disabled.  Drop by to see if there is any noticeable benefit to disabling HyperThreading on this generation of Intel processor.

hyperthreading_image2.gif

Yes, that was 11 years ago

"We decided to explore the effects of Hyper-Threading on the performance of the Ivy Bridge based Core i7-3770K by running our CPU benchmarking suite on it twice. Once with Hyper-Threading enabled, and once with Hyper-Threading disabled. As such we set-up our results table to look for applications that perform better with Hyper-Threading disabled, rather than enabled."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: SemiAccurate

Intel's interconnect business grows after buying Cray's technolgy

Subject: General Tech | April 25, 2012 - 01:03 PM |
Tagged: purchase, interconnect, Intel, cray, aries

Anyone who follows the supercomputer business has had quite a bit of excitement recently, with major shifts in the market becoming quite frequent.  Intel started it off by purchasing QLogic's Infiniband networking technology which allows the connection of separate high performance computers over an extremely low latency and high bandwidth path, utilizing PCIe.  This will give Intel a big edge when clustering multiple HPCs on a network. 

Next it was AMD's turn as they snagged SeaMicro out from underneath Intel's nose and purchased the rights to their 3D torus interconnect technology.  This is a processor agnostic interconnect for within an HPC which is targeted at low power processors and is specifically designed to get the most efficient use of every watt that the system consumes.  This could lead to some ironic HPCs which use AMD's interconnect technology to link together large amounts of Intel Atom processors.

cray23.jpg

Today a bigger change was announced, to the tune of $140 million, as Intel purchased Cray's interconnect technology.  This architecture is the polar opposite of SeaMicro's and focuses on creating the most massively powerful HPCs possible on current technology and requires an immense amount of electricity to power.  For quite a while Cray utilized AMD's HyperTransport technology and favoured large amounts of Opteron processors to power its supercomputers but that relationship soured thanks AMD's supply problems and delayed technology refreshes.  Cray abandoned AMD and never even looked at Intel's QPI, instead they designed an interconnect technology of their own, one which could use any processor.  Now that technology belongs to Intel.  You can see what The Register thinks this move signifies in their full article.

"Intel really is taking networking and system interconnects very seriously, and is buying the interconnect hardware business from massively parallel supercomputer maker Cray for $140m."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: The Register

Intel Announces Q1 2012 Earnings: Not a Record, but Close

Subject: Editorial | April 23, 2012 - 05:12 PM |
Tagged: trinity, Q1, Ivy Bridge, Intel, earnings, atom, arm, amd, 2012

Guess what? Intel made money. A lot of money. This is not surprising. The results were not record breaking, but they did beat expectations. Intel had a gross revenue of $12.9 billion for the quarter, with a net income of $2.7 billion. Gross margins decreased (slightly) to 64%, but the reasons for this are pretty logical as we discover down below. Compared to Q4 2011, results are still significantly down, but this is again expected due to seasonal downturns. In Q4 they had $13.9 billion in gross revenue and $3.4 billion in net income with a gross margin of 64.5%.

 
Currently Intel is showing inventory at near historic lows, and this is due to a variety of factors. The PC market has been growing slower than expected due to the hard drive shortage that started last fall. Intel has adjusted manufacturing downward to account for this, and has worked to ramp 22 nm products faster by cutting back 32n production and converting those 32 nm lines. Intel is very aggressive with Ivy Bridge, and it expects 25% of all shipments in Q2 to be 22nm products. This is probably the fastest and most aggressive ramp that Intel has ever done, and it will continue to put AMD in a hole with their 32 nm production.
 
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The second half of the year should see some significant growth on the PC side. The primary push will be the release of Windows 8 from Microsoft. This, combined with the near complete recovery of hard drive production, should push PC growth the record levels. Ultrabooks are an area that Intel is spending a lot of money to promote and develop with their partners. There are some 26 Ultrabook designs on record so far, and Intel expects this number to rise rapidly. The big push is to decline the overall price of Ultrabooks, as well as enabling touch functionality for a more affordable price. While not mentioned during the conference call, AMD is also pushing for ultra-thin notebooks, and once Trinity enabled products hit the street, we can expect a much more aggressive price war to be waged on these products.
 
Smart phones are another area that Intel is actively trying to expand into. This past quarter we saw the introduction of the Orange, Lava, and Lenovo phones based on the Medfield platform. So far these have been fairly well received by users and media alike, though the products have certainly had some teething issues. Intel still has a lot of work to do, but they finally realize the importance of this market. Intel expects that there will be 450 million smart phones shipped in 2012 (from all manufacturers), and that it is expected to grow up to 1 billion shipped a year by 2015/2016 (if not sooner). Intel wants to get into those phones, and is adjusting their Atom strategy to fit it. While in previous years Atom lagged behind other processor development from Intel, they are pushing it to the forefront. We can expect to see Atom based products being manufactured on 22 nm, and then aggressively pushed to 14 nm when that process node is available. Intel feels that they have a significant advantage in process technology that will directly impact their success in achieving higher rates of utilization across product lines in the mobile sector. If Intel can offer an Atom with similar performance and capabilities, tied with a significantly lower TDP, then they feel that a lot of phone manufacturers will look their way rather than use older/larger/more power hungry products from competitors.
 
Finally, Intel essentially has little interest in becoming a foundry for other partners. They are currently working with a handful of other countries to produce products for them, but I think that this might be a short term affair. Intel will either stay with a few partners to produce a low quantity of parts, or Intel will learn what they have to about producing products like FPGAs and eventually start producing chips of their own. When Intel fabs their own parts, they essentially get paid twice as compared to foundries or 3rd party semiconductor companies.
 
Intel continues to be profitable and successful. Ivy Bridge is going to be a very big product for Intel, and they are going to push it very hard through the rest of this year. Mobile strategies are coming to fruition and we see Intel getting their foot in the door with some major partners around the world. Servers, desktops, and notebook chips still comprise the vast majority of products that Intel ships, but mobile will become a much stronger player in the years to come. That is if Intel is able to execute effectively with accelerated Atom development on smaller process nodes. ARM is still a very worthy competitor, and a seemingly re-invigorated AMD could provide some better competition with Trinity and Brazos 2.0 in the notebook/tablet market.
 
Margins will be down next quarter due to the aggressive 22 nm ramp. With any new process there will be problems and certain inefficiencies at the beginning. As time passes, these issues will be resolved and throughput and yields will rise. Intel does expect a larger PC growth through the next quarter and a higher gross revenue. It will be interesting to see if Ultrabooks do in fact take off for Intel, or will competitors offer better price/performance for that particular market. Needless to say, things will not slow down through the rest of this year.
Source: Intel

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge LGA1155 Processor Review

Author:
Date: April 23, 2012
Subject: Processors
Manufacturer: Intel
Tagged: Z77, Ivy Bridge, Intel, i7-3770k, i5-3570, 3770k, 3570, 22nm

An update to a great architecture

This article will focus on the new Ivy Bridge, 3rd Generation Core Processor from a desktop perspective.  If you are curious as the performance and features of the Ivy Bridge mobile processors, be sure to check out our Core i7-3720QM ASUS N56VM review here!!

One of the great things about the way Intel works as a company is that we get very few surprises on an annual basis in terms of the technology they release.  With the success of shows like the Intel Developer Forum permitting the release of architectural details months and often years ahead of the actual product, developers, OEMs and the press are able to learn about them over a longer period of time.  As you might imagine, that results in both a much better understanding of the new processor in question and also a much less hurried one.  If only GPU cycles would follow the same path...

slides01.jpg

Because of this long-tail release of a CPU, we already know quite a bit about Ivy Bridge, the new 22nm processor architecture from Intel to be rebranded as the 3rd Generation Intel Core Processor Family.  Ivy Bridge is the "tick" that brings a completely new process technology node as we have seen over the last several years but this CPU does more than take the CPU from 32nm to 22nm.  Both the x86 and the processor graphics portions of the die have some changes though the majority fall with the GPU.

Ivy Bridge Architecture

In previous tick-tock scenarios the "tick" results in a jump in process technology (45nm to 32nm, etc) with very little else being done.  This isn't just to keep things organized in slides above but it also keeps Intel's engineers focused on one job at a time - either a new microprocessor architecture OR a new process node; but not both.

arch01.jpg

For the x86 portion of Ivy Bridge this plan stays in tract.  The architecture is mostly unchanged from the currently available Sandy Bridge processors including the continuation of a 2-chip platform solution and integrated graphics, memory controller, display engine, PCI Express and LLC along with the IA cores.  

Continue reading our review of the new Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge Processor!!