Fudzilla
reports that the Core 2 Duo E8600 will come out on August 10 with a $266
price tag. The CPU will run at 3.33GHz, or about 170MHz faster than the Core 2
Duo E8500 Intel recently pulled down from $266 to $183. Today, Newegg carries
the E8500 for $194.99 with free three-day shipping. Fudzilla points out that
this may be the last high-end Core 2 Duo, and recently leaked roadmaps would
seem to corroborate that claim. Supposedly, Intel will replace the E8600 and
other current-gen chips in the same price range with dual- and quad-core Nehalem
derivatives in the third quarter of 2009.
HotHardware got a chance to
test and benchmark the EAH3850 Trinity, a trio of AMD ATI Radeon HD 3850
GPUs in CrossFireX mode for tri-GPU performance on a single card. Their
verdict? Performance isn't as high as it could be: going from a single Radeon HD
3850 to the three-way, single-slot device only raised Company of Heroes frame
rates from 37 to 55 FPS at 1280x1024 with 4X antialiasing enabled. That's a 49%
increase in performance from a 300% increase in GPU horsepower-not exactly
jaw-dropping.
As many of you probably would ask, the answer is yes, it does play Crysis
relatively well. However, in all honesty we expected better, more linear scaling
overall. As a reference point, in our Company of Heroes testing, a single Radeon
HD 3850 would score somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 FPS at 1280x1024 with 4X
AA, whereas Trinity scores nearly 55 FPS. That's a 48% increase in speed but
three times the GPU horsepower thrown at the task. In reality, this quick and
dirty triple-GPU showcase from Asus probably suffers more from lack of driver
optimization than anything else; that and probably a shortage of PCI Express
bandwidth and latency over the on-board switch.
Microsoft released
a handful of details about DirectX 11. Features include
new shader technology that begins to allow developers to position GPUs as more
general-purpose parallel processors, rather than being dedicated solely to
graphics processing; better multi-threading capabilities; and hardware-based
tesselation. The good news is that there will be no new hardware requirements,
so DirectX 10 hardware should be DirectX 11 compatible.
Similar to DirectX 10, the software will
be available only on Windows Vista and
future versions of Microsoft's operating
system. DirectX 11 will add new compute
shader technology that Microsoft says
will allow GPUs to be used "for more
than just 3D graphics," allowing
developers to utilize video cards as
parallel processors.
DirectX 11 will support tessellation,
a feature which can potentially assist
developers in making models appear
smoother when seen up close.
Multi-threaded resource handling is also
incorporated, making it easier for games
to utilize
multi-core processors in a user's
machine.
Microsoft also disclosed that DirectX
11 will add features to existing DirectX
10-compatible hardware, though it was
not immediately clear what those
features may be.
A launch date for the new software
was not provided, though Microsoft is
expected to release more information in
the near future. The bullet points, as
provided by Microsoft, are listed below.
Full support (including all DX11
hardware features) on Windows Vista
as well as future versions of
Windows
Compatibility with DirectX 10
and 10.1 hardware, as well as
support for new DirectX 11 hardware
New compute shader technology
that lays the groundwork for the GPU
to be used for more than just 3D
graphics, so that developers can
take advantage of the graphics card
as a parallel processor
Multi-threaded resource handling
that will allow games to better take
advantage of multi-core machines
Support for tessellation, which
blurs the line between super high
quality pre-rendered scenes and
scenes rendered in real-time,
allowing game developers to refine
models to be smoother and more
attractive when seen up close
Amber Heard is a 22 year old actress that you have probably never heard of, although she's been around and has secured a fair number of smaller Hollywood roles. However, Amber can be found in the latest issue of Maxim magazine - which you are probably quite familiar with :P
The New Opel Inisgnia, which debuts at the 2008 British Motor Show was showcased in London on Monday (21st July). This new modern, stylish family car, seen as the Vectra successor, was dropped from the skies as more than 300 people watched on from below. Hatchback and notchback versions will be available with a choice of seven engines, each meeting high standards in emissions, safety and technology.
Okay, so I'm crushing hard on Audrina Patridge right now. Even with the fake
boobs (which I'm usually againt), these Audrina Patridge bikini pictures are
really, really hot!
Gary from iPhoneInCanada.ca was a little miffed with the battery performance on his iPhone 3G -- down to 20% after some "light surfing and barely any talking" -- so he set out to see what he could do about it. One of the major things you can do to save battery life is to turn off the 3G when you don't need it. This almost eliminates the appeal of the iPhone 3G, but you can always activate it again if you want it. Other tips include turning off the auto-brightness, turning off location services, turning off Wi-Fi, turn off Bluetooth, and severely limit your use of GPS. Alternatively, you can get a massive USB extension cable for continuous charging.
How to Increase Your iPhone 3G Battery Life - the Extreme Edition
- Turn on 3G only when you need it. I found that having 3G turned OFF saved
battery life (duh!). Using EDGE actually isn't that painful–just think of it as
a mildly disfunctional WiFi hotspot!
- Turn off Location Services.
- Turn off Auto-Brightness. Manually move the slider to 25% or 33% brightness.
- Turn off WiFi until you need a hotspot. The iPhone's WiFi will automatically
try connecting to SSIDs it detects.
- Turn off Push. Change your Fetch schedule to Manually.
- Set Auto-Lock to 1 minute.
- Turn off Bluetooth.
- Limit GPS use unless you really need it.
- Do a monthly battery calibration. According to the Apple website, you should
be doing this periodically. Give your iPhone a full charge, then let the battery
run out. Recharge.
- Usually with lithium-ion batteries this is not necessary as they maintain no
"memory effect"...but it's worth a shot.
- Only use the iPhone 3G connected to an outlet. Find a 100ft extension cable
and attach it to your USB cable. Attach USB cable to iPhone 3G. Let extension
cable follow you around the house, knocking furniture, pets, and children over.
Ignore wife/girlfriend's complaints because–email, Twitter, and the
iPhoneinCanada.ca forums call for your attention.
- The bottom line is Apple needs to desperately release an update for 2.0
firmware. When previous updates were made, such as jumping from 1.0.2 to 1.1.1,
battery life increased. Let's hope a new firmware will help increase battery
life by a bit.
OCC
has published a new review on the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300. As the lowest
speed rated 45nm Quad core Yorkfield processor, the Q9300 has some big shoes to
fill. It features a 1333MHz bus speed running with a 7.5 clock multiplier to
give a final clock speed of 2.5GHz, just slightly higher than the 65nm Q6600 and
166MHz slower than the Q9450. What it does not share with the rest of the family
is the 3MB of L2 cache per core of the Q9450 up to the QX9770. It only has 1.5MB
of L2 cache per core for a total of 6MB versus 12MB or even the 8MB on the
Q6600.
As a comparison to the existing quad core Intel CPUs, there really is not
much of a comparison. The Q9300 just barely performs better than the Q6600 in
the comparison field of processors. In many ways, it is handicapped by the lower
amount of L2 cache it is equipped with. The clock speed does not in all
instances make up for this lack of cache. Don't get me wrong here, in many of
the benchmarks the Q9300 was competitive, it just did not have enough to get it
to that next level of performance. The processor would do all that it was
required to do and did so without any stutters or lag. So the actual "feel" of
the chip in operation was really no different than the Q6600 or Q9450. This is
where the majority of users will have their experience with this chip. But is
this feel worth about $85 dollars more than the bargain Q6600 at $184? Probably
not. In the system based tests, the Q9300 performed better than the Q6600 in
only 13 out of 35 tests, performed worse in 10 and performed equally in 12. Not
really much of an improvement. The Q9450 and Q9770 each out performed it, so
there was no real performance comparison there. In the gaming tests, the Q9300
lost slightly more than it won when compared directly with the Q6600 and Phenom.
It outperformed them in 11 tests, lost 16 and equaled the performance in five.
Not exactly stellar, but not a total loss either. This was most likely due to
the higher bus speed on the CPU as well as the clock speed.
When overclocking the Q9300, I was stoked when it went to 450 x 7.5 FSB on stock
volts (1.215). My excitement was short lived though, as I could only manage to
reach 456 x 7.5 (3420MHz), the lowest overclock I have achieved on any of the
quad core CPUs I have tested. Dropping the clock multiplier, increasing the
volts, tweaking skew levels, nothing would get it stable any higher. However, at
this point 1.31 volts were required for Prime 95 stability. The level of voltage
required for the maximum overclock brought a little of the excitement back. Just
like its faster brothers, this chip gets hot when the voltage is pushed. After
three mounts with the CPU heatsink, temperatures at the 1.31 volt mark were in
the low 60s Celsius. This could very well be just a warped heatspreader that
needs some attention. If you want a 45nm quad core CPU but the price of the
Q9450 and Q9550 are just out of reach, then this would be a good option to go
with. Performance junkies might want to give this one a pass as 500+ FSB speeds
will be needed to get to the promised land due to the low clock multiplier. If a
45nm quad is not a requirement, then the Q6600 is still a better value for your
money.
A new outrageous comedy, COLLEGE is the story of three high school seniors (Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell and Kevin Covais) who visit a local college campus as prospective freshman anticipating the best weekend of their lives. Once there, the rowdiest fraternity on campus (featuring Nick Zano, Gary Owen and Zach Cregger) decides to recruit the boys as pledges, subjecting them to endless humiliations, in return for granting them access to the no-holds-barred college party scene. But once the boys catch the eye of some of the older sorority girls (Haley Bennett, Camille Mana and Natalie Walker), the threatened Frat-boys increase the pre-frosh humiliation and blackmail them by threatening to expose their age. The boys decide to fight back, retaliating with a major revenge scheme that lands them on top. What began as the weekend-from-hell turns into the BEST. WEEKEND. EVER.
Rossi stops Stoner for first Laguna Seca victory. World Championship leader Valentino Rossi put an end to Casey Stoner's victory run with a win at the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix.
It's
Windows Vista's fault that solid-state storage isn't performing as well as
its proponents predicted. So said SanDisk CEO Eli Harari, but at least he didn't
go as far as saying it's Microsoft's problem to fix. SSDs are viewed as the heir
apparent to the hard disk, particularly for laptops and other mobile computers.
SSDs are way more shock-resistant and consume less power. Theoretically, they
should deliver better performance. SSD "performance in the Vista environment
falls short of what the market really needs", admitted Harari at the company's
earnings conference this week. Why not? According to Harari, it's because "Vista
is not optimised for Flash memory solid-state disks". The problem surely stems
from Windows' use of hard disk space for memory caching, something all modern
and not-so-modern operating systems do. So it's not like the SSD manufacturers
didn't have any warning this could be an issue. Small, Cheap Computer will
continue to benefit from Flash storage, Harari said, because they have
"relatively unsophisticated and demanding requirements" - they're either running
very basic Linux apps or, when they come with Windows XP, have virtual memory
disabled.
If you own an ATi video card, head on over to the AMD / ATi website and
download the new Catalyst 8.7 drivers for 32-bit/64-bit Windows Vista and
Windows XP. There are a host of fixes and improvements as well as a new CCC
enhancement that allows full hardware information for each physical graphics
accelerator installed in the system. Those who install the new drivers can also
look forward to resolved problems in Assassin's Creed, Crysis, Frontlines: Fuel
of War, Hellgate London, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, World In Conflict, and World of
Warcraft. Oh, and AMD mentions that the Catalyst 8.7 drivers bring a "Full
Hardware information" section to the Catalyst Control Center.
On the Linux front, the Catalyst 8.7 release fixes a few bugs
and adds support for Ubuntu 8.04, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
10 SP2, and openSUSE 11. You can get the 8.7 Linux Catalysts
over
here for 32-bit systems and on
this page for 64-bit Linux variants. AMD links detailed
release notes on both driver download pages.
Intel
has cut processor prices up to 31 percent, though overall cuts are limited
in number and degree. The quad-core Q6600 was cut from $224 to $193. The desktop
Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz) got the largest cut, from $266 to $183 (31 percent)
on the new pricing list, dated July 20. The next biggest price reduction was the
desktop Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53GHz), reduced 15 percent, from $133 to $113. Other
price cuts include the popular quad-core Q6600 (2.4GHz). It drops 14 percent,
from $224 to $193. The desktop Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz) falls 11 percent, from
$183 to $163. Xeon server processors also saw price cuts. The X3220 (2.40GHz)
was cut 12 percent, from $224 to $198. The X3210 (2.13GHz) saw an identical cut,
while the E3110 (3.00GHz) was reduced 11 percent, from $188 to $167. The
pricing for QX "Extreme" processors, such as the QX9775 (3.2GHz, $1,499),
remains unchanged from the pricing list published on July 15, when the Centrino
2 mobile processors were introduced.
Claudia Schiffer, who was dominated the catwalk during the 1990s, proved that she was still worthy of supermodel status. The 37-year-old supermodel has stripped off in her provocative cover shoot for the German edition of Vogue magazine.
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