Tech News and Gossip thread...

[Q]

If you were only talking about Fermi I would have to agree, but the ATI cards are a different story. Their power usage is very good, even at full load, which is particularly impressive given that they are essentially twice the GPU of the previous generation.

 

EDIT: Just found this:

 

[stingerhs]

^^^^

lolz at the pic.

 

at any rate, its my opinion that Fermi is a dud. for cryin out loud, the card is pulling 400+W when running Furmark and almost 400W in just about everything else. what really gets under my skin with Fermi is that it doesn't offer up much in the way of a performance edge, and they want a $100 premium for it. if this was the old 8800GTX vs 2900XT, that $100 would be a no brainer, but not this time.

 

to be fair, i have to agree with Astro as well. the 5800 series isn't as impressive as it probably should have been, and its not exactly lean on the wattage, either. am i happy with my 5850?? absolutely. its just that i really feel that AMD could've put more into it than they did. sure, the strategy of simply building a competitive product that you can sell at a lower price point has worked well for them, but i just think that it should've been a bigger step up from the previous generation than it is.

[Astrotoy7]

lolz - that must have taken some ATI fanboy a good 20mins of paint.exe skillz but provided a lifetime of glee That grilled meat actually is looking pretty lovely [/hungry]

 

The pic would be more accurate showing JHH destroying Al Gore and the environment, due to the excessive power draw required by Fermi.

 

As far as heat goes, any high end card sporting GDDR5 is not exactly going to be cool 'Tis the nature of the beast. Blame those fools at Qimonda/Infineon for making the Prescott of Graphics RAM. At the end of the day, NV/ATI will always be limited by what the foundries are churning out - and if that itself id based on a design that lends itself to high temps and increased power draw... well what do you expect??

 

mtfbwya

[Char Ell]

At least we have some competition in the graphics card business again though I'm not sure that prices are coming down all that much as of yet. Just did some spot checking at Newegg and other online retailers and and it looks like they've sold out of all their GTX 480's and 460's. Guess there was a lot of pent up demand out there.

 

So any thoughts on the recent infatuation with 3D display technology, especially when applied to gaming and home theater? I know I'm all for it as it's just one more step towards "holy grail" of holographic projection. I've been starting to think about getting a new TV to replace my old CRT one but I may wait to see how all this 3D tech develops over the next year.

[Astrotoy7]

I'd hold off on it charr. There are companies out there working hard to incorporate 3D into the TV directly, so you won't need those RIDICULOUS glasses, which if you ask your gramps - will tell you that he wore to watch the three stooges 3D movie in the 1950s.

 

One such company is alioscopy - I found out about them when I came across an article about my fave director(Mr David Lynch) raving about it..

 

Once that tech is perfected for the mass market, the eager fools who rushed out and bought the 1950s nostalgia kit coming on the market now are going to have some pretty expensive fashion accessories.

 

Fig.1. Seeing amusing images of JHH are popular atm - here is one relevant to 3D

 

Unfortunately, 3d projection is still a whiles away - simply because the way our current tech works is limited by cost and size. I see those large curved displays getting big over the next few years - imagine something like a car windscreen - and curved to fit just within peripheral vision. This will become more feasible once printable/flexible oled is ready for a larger format.

 

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mtfbwya

[urluckyday]

^I can't wait for the day that we all have to walk around with those cool glasses all the time...

[Astrotoy7]

AMD fans may be excited to learn that AMD has just posted a profit of $257 million for the first quarter of 2010.

 

However, before you anyone gets too excited, please bear in mind that these figures are still affected by the $125 Billion payout Intel gave AMD late last year - so it's not all down to how awesome the newer phenoms or 5xxx series are. Before the payout, AMD hadnt posted a profit for three years.

 

In related news, despite Fermi being hotter than a stripper's thong. it's still selling well. One factor is the relatively limited number of these first gen cards. Reading around tech forums, there is also a pervading opinion that alot of folks are waiting for a subsequent revision of these GPUs by board partners such as EVGA, XFX etc that will be a bit more power/heat efficient.

 

In any event, AMD not falling in a heap is still good news for competition, and the 5xxx series has definitely given them a shot in the arm from a cash perspective.

 

Lets hope they can keep up the positive trend once the financial impact of the Intel payout has well and truly passed.

 

In other AMD news, expreview has posted a preview of the Phenom II 1055T Hexacore CPU, which has apparently already gone retail in parts of Asia - so if you are super keen, you can now easily get one from fleabay for about $350USD

 

 

mtfbwya

[acdcfanbill]

holy nutsack, just think how much math i could do with six core!

[Astrotoy7]

holy nutsack, just think how much math i could do with six core!

 

lolz...If you were a proper Scientician, you could ask intel for one of their 48-core processors used in research supercomps

 

mtfbwya

[acdcfanbill]

lolz...If you were a proper Scientician, you could ask intel for one of their 48-core processors used in research supercomps

 

mtfbwya

 

Yea, but it'd be hard to be an AMD fanboy if I was asking intel for stuff

[Astrotoy7]

Yea, but it'd be hard to be an AMD fanboy if I was asking intel for stuff

 

Back when the Athlons reigned and cool n quiet was exactly just that, I was a proud AMD phanboy as far as CPUs go, but there has been seriously nothing to get excited about since then. K10 promised sooo much, and was a massive anticlimax in the end once we had seen the what the corei7 could do.

 

Most market commentators looking back on the goodness that was Athlon conclude that AMDs success had just as much to do with a bad decision by intel(cough*netburst*cough) than by any dazzling achievement of their own.

 

AMD had maintained their steady, but slow, evolution - whereas Intel took a massive step back with netburst. It really wasn't until they threw that out and brought put Core2Duo that they were able to pick up from where they left off.

 

Add to that some equally disturbing management decisions by Senor Ruiz. AMD survives for some very finite reasons:

 

*It makes money off GDDR5 fab

*Server market (totally underestimated by gamer fanboys how vital this is so that they can keep their CCC masochism alive) eg. 12 core "Magny-Cours"

*5xxx series decent performance vs nvidia price and huge delay on Fermi

*Intels payout

 

For competition's sake, I hope they stay around, but they have their work cut out for them on the desktop CPU side of things.

 

In other news - the unusual case of the month award goes to:

 

Lian Li's Spider Case (yes, only 4 legs, we know)

 

 

*Mini ITX

*Weird looking

*Available May if you want to use one on the set of your low budget sci-fi fanfilm

 

mtfbwya

[Astrotoy7]

Interesting stuff.... MS has just unveiled some vids of how Office will integrate into Windows Phone 7. Love that minimalistic interface, makes iphone/android look "so 2007"

 

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Earlier this week, the first WP7 device was revealed via an official leak from Dell :

 

The Dell Lightning

 

 

If this phone works like those vid renders promises, and they can follow it up with the courier device, MS are going to be kicking apple and google in the nuts in epic fashion.

 

competition is good for us consumers, so whether you are iFan or android owner/fanboy(like me), I hope MS delivers ...and prices become more competitive

 

I wonder how RIM/Blackberry are feeling after watching that office app demo

 

mtfbwya

[urluckyday]

^Basically looks like the Zune Phone people were talking about...beautiful.

[Astrotoy7]

^Basically looks like the Zune Phone people were talking about...beautiful.

 

Yep the interface on the Zune and the WP7 'Metro Interface' is built on Windows Embedded CE 6.0, and includes XNA(for games), Silverlight and the mobile version of the .net platform.

 

The UIs are both derivative of the MCPL interface you see in the media center application in windows 7.

 

As much as I like my android phone - I'm really looking forward to seeing how the WP7 interface works on an actual device

 

mtfbwya

[Astrotoy7]

Looks like folks outside of Asia are now starting to get their hands on the AMD hexacores.

 

Heres G3Ds Phenom II X6 1055T and 1090T review

 

longstory short:

*decent bang for buck six cores for those into video transcodes and such

*performance on par with higher end intel quads

 

 

* * *

 

In other news:

 

Team Kermit aka Nvidia have announced Project Verde, where driver releases are now going to be synced between all platforms, which is welcome news to nvidia laptop owners who often got left behind.

 

 

* * *

 

In phone related news:

 

UK android fans are about to get the almighty Nexus One, though if you are a fan of the HTC sense interface, best wait until the HTC Desire hits the streets. Both feature the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and a mammoth screen at 800x480. Beauteous

 

 

Pic - HTC Desire, Legend and Google Nexus One. As you can see the Nexus one/Desire have a massive screen, and is just a bit bigger than than the iphone in total size. The HTC Legend is a unique phone, just 600MHz, but has a single piece aluminum body - definitely for those into sturdier phones - I was thinking of getting one until I saw the Desire in store today... WANT!

 

 

This is one of the coolest hands on vids I've seen about these phones. No nervous tech show guy/girl rabbiting on. lolz@ English dude who got confused about how to make a call...

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In the US - the Verizon HTC Incredible is also turning heads.. it has a unique look and all the benefits of Android 2.1. Engadget did a great review HERE

 

mtfbwya

[Astrotoy7]

Some epic news in the mobile devices market today:

 

Hewlett Packard buys Palm for $1.2Billion

 

The potential for awesomeness is pretty high - Imagine the loveliness of palm's WebOS on some HP hardware. A web OS tablet would kick the pants off the iPad from a functionality POV....and because its HP, the whole printing element the iPad suffers from would not exist.....

 

many geeks are excited - prompting some photoshop phun of webOS on HP devices

 

 

Also, Drew Henry of Nvidia gave an interview to Digitimes - stating that nvidia will be looking to release a GPU with 512 Stream Processors.

 

Looks like they're quite aware that Fermi didn't live up to the delay/expectation/hype. Lets just hope those extra SPs don't make the damn things any hotter

 

Finally, ATI/AMD Card Owners can rejoice, CATALYST 10.4 was released today >> CLICKY

 

mtfbwya

[Char Ell]

RE: new smartphones

This is good stuff. I'm starting to pay closer attention to smartphones now as I plan to get a new mobile phone in July-August timeframe. At this point I think it's probably going to boil down to the iPhone and an Android-powered phone.

 

RE: NVIDIA interview

A bit odd. Drew Henry is quoted as saying NVIDIA has

a chance to launch a graphics chip with 512 cores in the future

I can only hope that it's a realistic chance. And maybe, just maybe, the part about

TSMC's yields for its 40nm process has met our expectations and market rumors about the yields being lower than 20% are completely untrue. We currently have everything under control.

is true now. Since Fermi released so long after AMD's Radeon HD 5xxx cards though it's certainly hard to believe that Mr. Henry's statement would have been uttered 3-4 months ago.

[Astrotoy7]

No self respecting tech head would get an iphone Char...android all the way!

 

*ducks projectile hurled by negsun*

 

I just got the HTC Desire... to feel the awesomeness of 1GHz Snapdragon in my hands... and that screen.......phaw! I thoroughly recommend UK sellers Clove.uk - who ship all over the place. I got the HTC Desire sim unlocked over $100AUD cheaper than the cheapest one on fleabay.

 

I came across a great new proggie for iphone and android users, called Missing Sync, the current beta can even sync your phone/android handset with selected pc folders wirelessly through wifi/bluetooth!

 

In other news, Asus have finally launched their EeeKeyboard, hearkening back to the days of the Amiga etc, where the pc was built into the computer. Pretty nifty

 

 

mtfbwya

[ChAiNz.2da]

No self respecting tech head would get an iphone Char...android all the way!

Yeah, cuz my iPhone actually works...

I get bored not needing to 'troubleshoot' anything * hugz iPhone *

[Astrotoy7]

* hugz iPhone *

 

Noooooooooooooo! Not you too man! This is techforum, not a discotheque!

 

Yeah, cuz my iPhone actually works...

I get bored not needing to 'troubleshoot' anything

 

troubleshoot a phone OS? lolz. what did you use before your iphone chainz?

 

I've had 4 people ask me for a phone recommendation in the last 2 weeks:

 

*The 3 ladies wanted iphones because they "are cool and everyone has one"

 

ie. They really should be giving these out with iphones.

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*1 bloke decided on a HTC Android device because "it has a removable battery, quicker processor, expandable storage, and didnt have anything to do with freakin' itunes*

 

Speaking of Apple... it was quite amusing how Steve Jobs put up his Manifesto against flash on apple.com this week.

 

Apple and MS really want us to embrace HTML5 early, with H.264 as the embedded video codec of choice -- as opposed to the truly "open" theora standard.

 

Funnily enough, both MS and Apple make money whenever devs will need to use this codec in their apps, cheeky buggers

 

mtfbwya

[ChAiNz.2da]

Noooooooooooooo! Not you too man! This is techforum, not a discotheque!

 

troubleshoot a phone OS? lolz. what did you use before your iphone chainz?

well.. not 'me' per se, but everyone and their freaking brother at work has asked me how to use their Crackberry and yes, Android phone. Definitely not an OS problem.. just a user "id-10t" problem.

 

They really should be giving these out with iphones.

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I prefer green

 

Speaking of Apple... it was quite amusing how Steve Jobs put up his Manifesto against flash on apple.com this week.

Monkey see, monkey do. Don't shoot, unless you intend to get shot at.

 

Apple and MS really want us to embrace HTML5 early, with H.264 as the embedded video codec of choice -- as opposed to the truly "open" theora standard.

Yeah, mac fanboi as I am.. I'd rather wait on the HTML5 until it's at least 'finalized' Kinda like riding a bike without putting the front wheel on it first. Sure you can do it... but don't count on getting as far as you 'could'..

 

Funnily enough, both MS and Apple make money whenever devs will need to use this codec in their apps, cheeky buggers

no different than Adobe / Flash

 

 

bleh.. but enough of the mac/pc/flash/android/iphone/blah blah pissing match. I love'em both/all and would die before giving up my mac or my Creative Suite hehehe

[Astrotoy7]

I saw this at another tech site recently, it seems that the original Terminator models prefer MS.

 

I think this vid was made as part of a competition, not sure if it won.

 

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what an awesome team the MS Terminator and the Google Android would make

 

edit:

 

Speaking of epic combos with Android - What do you get when you mix an android phone and rubiks cube solver app and a lego mindstorms kit - chip manufacturers ARM showed us:

 

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mtfbwya

[urluckyday]

That Lego video is insane...

[Astrotoy7]

That Lego video is insane...

 

Indeed.. android ftw. Though technically, it could have been executed on any ARM device. But only android has that geeky Linux allure of course.

 

It was just a matter of time, but reports by US market analysts are trickling out saying that android has just knocked off iphone from having the second highest market share for smartphones (in the US). RIMs Blackberry still have number one spot... like with all market data that doesn't reveal how they arrived at their results... take it with a grain of salt... but not a huge one. It's a shame that European/Asian market data isn't available because the story would be quite different - where android has a much more widespread market presence because of manufacturers like HTC, Samsung and Sony/Ericsson being based in Asia.

 

source = engadget

 

In browser news, Google is almost set to roll out Chrome Version 6. The Chrome Browser has come along in leaps and bounds, and now has an extensions gallery not unlike firefox - it will also have inbuilt flash support. I love the look of chrome, but am still attached to particular extensions of FF (eg. google redesigned, integrated gmail) - so get the chrome look in FF with the chromifox extreme extension/theme.

 

As far as portable browsers go, I've found that chromium portable is a bit more robust that FF Portable - especially if you're deploying on an older/slower rig at work/school/grandmas etc.

 

mtfbwya

[Astrotoy7]

Some mega-epic-awesome news was reported by TechCrunch today, notifying that the upcoming Android 2.2 build Froyo(all Android builds are named after desserts) will have in-built USB tethering and the ability to make your phone a wifi hotspot.... no more third party apps or hackarounds required

 

 

mtfbwya