Hasta La Gadget!

The latest high-fashion gaming outfit (known as Origin ’round these parts) has just started shipping its beastly Genesis out, and if you’ve ever wondered what five large could get you in the land of desktops, wonder no more. The crew over at Hot Hardware managed to procure a darn-near-loaded machine, complete with a Core i7-920 CPU (overclocked from the factory to 3.8GHz), 6GB of Corsair DDR3 RAM, twin ATI Radeon HD 5970 GPUs, a liquid cooling system, 80GB SSD boot drive and pretty much every other top-of-the-line component you could imagine. How’d it stand up to testing? Well. Really well. It crushed every benchmark that dared get in its way, and we’re told that when pressed, the company’s explanation of its warranty was truly best in class. What’s interesting is that the MSRP of the test unit can be halved by simply opting for a few marginally weaker pieces, and we’re guessing that the overall performance wouldn’t suffer a huge deal. Hit the source link for all the bars, charts and in-depth analysis you can handle.

Origin’s Genesis gaming desktop gets reviewed: blisteringly fast, but oh-so-pricey originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa, Nelly! Just weeks after Intel came clean with its new Pine Trial nettop and netbook platform, the company is today cutting loose with a few more. This go ’round, we’ve got the 32nm Arrandale (which consists of the Core i5 Mobile and Core i3 Mobile) heading for the laptops and the 32nm Clarkdale chips over on the desktop front. Starting with the former, most reviews found the CPU + GPU solution to be faster than rivaling Core 2 Duo + integrated GPU options, with the Core i5 being particularly potent in highly threaded applications. Better still, battery life didn’t seem to take a hit even with the extra performance, though high-end, high-res gaming was still a lesson in futility when working without a discrete graphics card. Overall, the chip was a welcome addition to the fold, but we got the feeling that the first wave was priced too high and offered too little of a performance increase on the gaming side to really warrant a wholehearted recommendation. As for the Clarkdale? The Core i5 661 that everyone seemed to snag was found to be blisteringly fast, with most folks deeming it the outright champion in the dual-core realm. Unfortunately, the integrated GPU was — again — not awesome for hardcore gaming, and the questionable pricing didn’t exactly thrill some critics. Do yourself a favor and dig into the benchmarks below — we get the feeling we’ll be seeing oodles of machines hit the wires this week with these chips within.

Arrandale reviews
Read – HotHardware
Read – AnandTech
Read – Tom’s Hardware
Read – PCPerspective
Read – Legit Reviews

Clarkdale reviews
Read – NeoSeeker
Read – HotHardware
Read – HardOCP
Read – TechSpot
Read – AnandTech
Read – PCPerspective
Read – Legion Hardware
Read – Overclockers Club
Read – Bit-tech

Intel’s Arrandale and Clarkdale CPUs get benchmarked for your enjoyment originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just after finally making them official and just ahead of what will surely be a blowout of devices at CES, Intel has let loose the dogs of benchmarking upon its highly anticipated Pine Trail Atom platforms: the N450 for netbooks and the D510 for nettops. On the portable side it’s HotHardware and AnandTech doing the testing, pitting the new Asus Eee PC 1005 PE (which we just reviewed ourselves) against some of its earlier Atom brethren, finding it out-paces the single-core N270 in terms of sheer CPU performance but is generally trumped by the dual-core 330, while its integrated GPU loses out handily to any machine with an Ion processor. But, in terms of battery life, it bested them all. The story is similar over at PCMag, which tested the D510 in a prototype nettop and found that its performance was no better than earlier 330-spec’d machines, but that its power consumption of just 19W under full load undercuts the thriftiest nettops — it’s quieter, too, thanks to a complete lack of fans. So, perhaps not the speed boost you might have been looking for, but fine battery life abounds, eh?

Intel’s netbook and nettop Pine Trail Atom platforms explored, benchmarked originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Western Digital plopped itself firmly in the midst of the 2TB HDD battle back in early September, and if you’ve been holding off on buying your next slab of storage until the benchmarks hit, we’re pleased to inform you that the wait is over. The crew over at Hot Hardware slapped both the Caviar Black and RE4 drives into their testing rigs in order to put ’em both through their respective paces. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, both of the 7200RPM drives were mighty quick in real-world use — not SSD quick, mind you, but pretty darn snappy given the capaciousness. When push came to shove, the Caviar Black managed to pull ahead in terms of raw speed, but given that the RE4 is really an enterprise drive, we doubt you’re keeled over in shock. Hit the source link for all the charts and bars, but only if you’ve got a C-note or three to burn once you get the itch.

WD’s Caviar Black and RE4 2TB drives get benchmarked, one is wicked fast originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Immediate obsolescence is an age old problem in the computer industry, but it doesn’t look like the upcoming Core i9 “Gulftown” processor is going to do anything to solve it. Word is from early benchmarks of the upcoming Intel processor is that it bests the current Core i7 at the top of the heap with speed gains as large as 50% — directly in line with its addition of two cores on top of the Core i7’s existing four. Of course, six 2.8GHz cores aren’t quite as exponentially helpful when applied to non-optimized tasks, but with most major modern software development aimed at better utilizing multiple cores, the core overkill of Core i9 will likely prove increasingly useful over time. At the start, however, Core i9’s improvements will come at a premium: 130W power consumption instead of 95W in Core i7, and of course a high-end only price tag to match. Word is we’ll be seeing these chips hit the market in early 2010, possibly as soon as January.

Early Core i9 benchmarks promising, make you wonder why you even bothered with Core i7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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