Hasta La Gadget!

Maingear’s latest gaming desktop doesn’t arrive with any 3D goggles or fairy dust, but it does boast a nice sheet of specifications and a surely polarizing motif. The relaunched F131 offers gamers quite a lot of options, providing a choice between AMD’s Phenom II or Intel’s Core i7 and even the ability to shove a trio of ATI Radeon 4890 graphics cards in there for triple-digit frame rates. Deep-pocketed consumers can also get 8TB of HDD space, acoustic dampening technology for whisper quiet operation, Maingear‘s M.A.R.C. custom laser etching and upwards of 12GB of DDR3 RAM. The newly decorated F131 is up for order now starting at $1,299, but it doesn’t take long to push that figure well beyond the two grand mark.

Filed under: Desktops

Maingear freshens up F131 gaming desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 May 2009 14:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD, the other chip company, is 40 years old today. It’s the scrappy underdog to the Intel juggernaut. Today, it’s not in great shape, but at one point, it was actually beating Intel on innovation.

• AMD tried to kill the megahertz myth before Intel. During the Pentium 4 days Intel kept pushing clock speeds higher and higher, before it hit a wall and abandoned the Prescott architecture. The message was clearly, “more megahertz is more better.” AMD’s competing Athlon XP chips, while clocked slower, often beat their Pentium 4 rivals. Ironically, AMD was the first to 1GHz, as some commenters have pointed out (don’t know how I forgot that). Obviously though, AMD’s performance lead didn’t last forever.

• AMD beat Intel to 64-bit in mainstream computers. And we’re not just talking about its Opteron and Athlon 64 processors. AMD actually designed the X86-64 specification, which Intel wound up adopting and licensing—so AMD’s spec is used Intel’s 64-bit processors to this day.

• AMD was first to consider energy efficiency in processor designs. Okay, this is kind of an extension of point number one, but during Intel’s Pentium 4 ‘roid rage period AMD’s processors consistently used less power than Intel’s. Intel’s performance per watt revelation didn’t really start until the Pentium M (which was actually a throwback to the P6 architecture), which set the tone for Intel’s new direction in its successor, the Core line of chips.

• AMD beat Intel to having an integrated memory controller. A tech feature AMD lorded over Intel for years: AMD’s processors started integrating the memory controller with its processors years ago, reducing memory latency. Intel’s first chip to use an integrated memory controller is the Core i7—before, the memory controller was separate from the processor. (Here’s why Intel says they held off.)

Athlon XP and Athlon 64—those were the good old days, AMD’s cutthroat competitive days. The days they were ahead of Intel. I miss them—at one point, every hand-built computer in my house ran AMD processors. I felt like a rebel—a rebel with faster, cheaper computers.

Unfortunately, I don’t run AMD chips anymore. Intel came back, and came back hard. But here’s hoping for another resurgence, and another 40 years, guys. Share your favorite AMD memories in the comments.

AMD already showed us yesterday what kind of graphical prowess could be crammed into a sub-$100 GPU, and today it’s attempting to pull the same kind of stunt on the CPU front. The Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition — a 2.8GHz chip with 2MB of L3 cache and loads of overclocking potential — has just been loosed, and with a downright stunning $69 MSRP, we’d say it’ll have budget gamers across the nation paying attention. Reviewers across the web voiced their appreciation for the low price, and while the processor didn’t burn any barns down along the way, it did manage to garner a sufficient amount of praise while on the bench. NeoSeeker seemed to capture the general consensus with this: “the Athlon X2 7850 is a decent processor that is able to power even the latest games.” ‘Course, the performance-per-watt was a bit lacking given the 65nm manufacturing process, but it’s not like you can have your cake and eat it too.

Read – NeoSeeker (“a decent processor”)
Read – HiTechLegion (“performed very well”)
Read – Guru3D (“packs decent muscle and has reasonable overclock potential”)
Read – Bit-tech (“unsurprisingly underwhelming compared to the 7750 Black Edition”)
Read – Overclocker’s Club (“impressed with the increased performance”)
Read – Benchmark Reviews (“an incredible value”)
Read – Detailed specifications
Read – AMD press release

Filed under: Desktops

AMD’s $69 2.8GHz Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition CPU launched, reviewed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We like how you’re thinking, AMD, and we don’t say that everyday — or ever, really. During a time when even hardcore gamers are having to rethink whether or not that next-gen GPU is a necessity, AMD has pushed out a remarkably potent new graphics card for under a Benjamin, and the whole world has joined in to review it. The ATI Radeon HD 4770, which was outed just over a week ago, has been officially introduced for the low, low price of just $99 (including rebates, which should surface soon). Aside from being the company’s first mainstream desktop GPU manufactured using a 40nm process, this little gem was a real powerhouse when put to the test. In fact, critics at HotHardware exclaimed that this card “offers performance in the same range as cards that were launched at the $299 to $349 price point only a year ago.” The bottom line? It’s “one of the best buys” out in its price range, and even with all that belt tightening you’ve been doing, surely you can spare a C-note, yeah?

Read – HotHardware (“Recommended; one of the best buys at its price point”)
Read – XBit Labs (“the best budget graphics accelerator [out there]”)
Read – LegitReviews (“great performance, low power consumption and low noise”)
Read – PCStats (“strikes a balance between performance and price”)
Read – TechSpot (“an outstanding choice in the $100 graphics market”)
Read – NeoSeeker (“a good value”)
Read – PCPerspective (“impressive”)

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

ATI Radeon HD 4770 GPU review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever since we saw the glowing review AMD’s ATI Radeon RV740 prototype received, we’ve been looking forward to the day that the company would make one of these 40nm wonders available. It looks like that day might be close at hand — according to these purloined slides, a little something called the ATI Radeon HD 4770 is due to make the scene next month in the $99 price point. This handsome lad sports GDDR5 memory, DirectX 10.1 support, a 750 MHz clock speed, a memory clock of 800 MHz using a 128-bit memory bus, a frame buffer size of 512 MB, and much, much more. Curious? Of course you are. Check the slides out below for all of the glorious details.

[Via Tom’s Hardware]

Gallery: ATI Radeon HD 4770

Filed under: Desktops

AMD’s 40nm ATI Radeon HD 4770 outed, slated for May release? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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