Hasta La Gadget!

Thinking about picking up an (inconceivably expensive) HTC Jetstream? After all, it just slipped into AT&T’s online store this weekend. We’ll just leave this link to HotHardware in the source below, in case you want to check out some comparative benchmarks before trading $700 for a two-year contract. Not that it performed poorly mind you, it raced neck-and-neck with Lenovo’s IdeaPad K1 — we just like think charts and tables are cool. Videos too — hit the break to see the folks at HotHardware give the 10-inch slate a quick hands-on.

Continue reading HTC Jetstream hits AT&T store, gets benchmarked

HTC Jetstream hits AT&T store, gets benchmarked originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So AMD’s Bulldozer has been chugging along at a snail’s pace when it comes to actually making it to market, but if these benchmarks are any clue, the sluggishness stops there. Donanim Haber recently obtained an 8-core (that’s four Bulldozer cores) engineering sample and put it through its paces alongside an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU, and from the looks of things it faired pretty well, pulling in a 3DMark 11 score of 6265, with a physics (CPU-centric) score of 7487. As Ars Technica points out, that puts it solidly in the center of Tom’s Hardware’s physics scores for the Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K, scoring 6667, and Core i7-2600K, pulling in 8152. When it came to PCMark 7 scores, however, Bulldozer fell far behind the competition. Of course, these are just numbers — for an engineering sample, no less — which means they should be taken with a fistful of salt, but it’s nice to finally see Bulldozer getting down and dirty. If your hunger for benchmarks hasn’t been fully satisfied, hop on over to the source for more results.

AMD Bulldozer prototype gets benchmarked, could give Sandy Bridge some competition originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD is due to release a batch of new Llano APUs next month that are specifically tailored to desktops rather than laptops. The most powerful among them will be the 2.9GHz A8-3850, which has already caused a stir on the review circuit for one simple reason: it pulls off a brutal “one shot one kill” on Intel’s HD 3000 integrated graphics. AnandTech raised an impressed eyebrow at the fact that all its benchmarking games were playable on the $135 AMD chip, which roughly doubled frame rates in titles like Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2 and World of Warcraft compared to the more expensive Sandy Bridge i5 2500K. TechSpot declared the APU its “new budget king,” with graphical performance “on another level” compared even to an i7.

However, the superlatives quickly evaporated once reviewers shifted their focus to the CPU. TechReport spotted that pure CPU performance per dollar was actually lower than what you’d get from a lowly i3. Moreover, it reckoned you’d only have to spend an extra $70 to buy a much more powerful CPU and a separate graphics card — an option that comes “awfully close to making the A8-3850 seem irrelevant.” Ouch. Nevertheless, if an affordable processor with integrated graphics is what you’re after, then it’s fair to say this one sets the standard. Click the source links below for full reviews.

AMD Llano desktop APU gets reviewed: the best integrated graphics in town originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not uncommon for a company to make a public endorsement from time to time, but AMD today drafted a press release to announce that it’s not endorsing a product — BAPCo’s SYSmark 2012 benchmark — going so far as to drop out of the non-profit org to drive its point home. AMD claims that it attempted to work with BAPCo to focus testing on real-world usage, rather than traditional benchmarks that don’t necessarily represent how we use computers today. Nigel Dessau, AMD’s CMO, explains the decision on AMD’s blog:

“Unfortunately, our good intentions were met with an outcome that we believe does a disservice to the industry and our customers. We weren’t able to effect positive change within BAPCo, and the resulting benchmark continues to distort workload performance and offers even less transparency to end users. Once again, BAPCo chose to ignore the opportunity to promote openness and transparency.”

The biggest issue appears to be that SYSmark highlights processor speed while ignoring GPU power — a significant flaw, considering GPUs now play a large role in overall system performance.

Continue reading AMD resigns from BAPCo consortium, denounces SYSmark 2012 benchmark

AMD resigns from BAPCo consortium, denounces SYSmark 2012 benchmark originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just when we thought the Motorola Xoom had hit its stride at a blazing 1.504 billion operations cycles per second, the trusty Tiamat kernel has strapped on an veritable afterburner capable of 1.7GHz. What happens when your shaking hands flip that switch and give that Tegra 2 all the jet fuel it can take? Well, anecdotal cases from the XDA-developers forums suggest it’ll probably just reboot anticlimactically. If you’re lucky enough to have the magic silicon, however, you’ll be treated to a benchmark-blitzing rig, reportedly capable of 70 MFLOPS in Linpack, 1480ms runs in SunSpider, and Quadrant scores approaching a smooth 5,000. See just how far that rainbow benchmark bar can stretch in a screencap after the break.

Update: There’s a jolly discussion in comments about whether gigahertz can be directly translated to operations per second in the case of the Tegra 2 — we’ll err on the side of caution and say cycles per second instead.

Continue reading Motorola Xoom hits 1.7GHz, teeters on the edge of oblivion

Motorola Xoom hits 1.7GHz, teeters on the edge of oblivion originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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