Hasta La Gadget!

Sony’s top-secret prototype labs must be clocking hours like mad, as Sony Insider reports that the company has two more surprises in store — in addition to a PlayStation tablet, dual-screen clamshell and sliding PC, the skunk works has cooked up a Chrome OS notebook, as well as a “VAIO Hybrid PC” that defies any sort of meaningful explanation in just three words. The Chrome OS device is reportedly modeled after Google’s own Cr-48 reference design with roughly the same dimensions and keyboard but an oh-so-slightly smaller 11.6-inch screen, and NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 running the show alongside 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage. Sony’s also shooting for eight hours of battery life, and a weight of just 2.2 pounds.

All of that pales in comparison to what Sony’s plotting for this “Hybrid PC,” though. The publication says we’re looking at a thin-and-light Core i7 notebook with an incredible 8 to 16.5 hours of battery life, Intel Thunderbolt and an internal SSD, all of which plugs into a dock of some sort that adds a Blu-ray burner and external graphics (by AMD) for gaming and multimedia. We don’t have any pictures or proof at this point, but it sounds like a whopper of a tale, and just the sort of thing that Intel was talking about making possible with the 10Gbps of bandwidth that Thunderbolt brings.

Sony crafting VAIOs with Chrome OS, external GPUs and Thunderbolt tech? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Mar 2011 19:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At CES, LucidLogix’s Virtu software solution promised to get discrete and Sandy Bridge GPUs together in graphical harmony — giving you both Sandy Bridge’s greased-lightning video transcoding and the horsepower of an NVIDIA or ATI rig. The code also lets you watch content from Intel’s forthcoming Insider movie service while running a discrete GPU. Now that Chipzilla’s 2nd-gen Core i5 and i7 CPUs are getting to market en masse, the gang at Hot Hardware put an RC of Virtu through its paces to see what it can do. As expected, the software waxes chumps and smokes fools when encoding HD video, but gaming performance suffered slightly (in FPS and 3DMark 11 tests) with the technology enabled. The other nit to pick was that Virtu renders the control panel of your discrete card unavailable, so any graphics adjustments must be made in-game whenever the software is running. Time will tell if the final release has similar shortcomings. Hit up the source link for the full rundown.

LucidLogix Virtu in action, discrete graphics and Sandy Bridge together at last originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you were expecting your new 13-inch MacBook Pro’s Core i7 CPU to Turbo Boost its way north of that default 2.7GHz clock speed, we might suggest discontinuing your anticipation. Two separate reviews of the laptop are reporting the curious case of its Core i7-2620M processor failing to automatically overclock itself the way it should. Intel’s dual-core chip is capable of a maximum speed of 3.4GHz, but reviewers weren’t able to get it any higher than its stock setting while testing Apple’s latest 13-incher. High temperatures were identified (north of 90C / 194F) as the likely culprit, with Notebook Journal also finding its machine throttled down to 798MHz due to heat dissipation issues. PC Pro theorizes that Apple intentionally disabled the Turbo Boost functionality on this particular MBP model in order to preserve your lap and your pride from being scalded by melting components. That would make sense to us, and hey, it’s still a fast machine, just not Turbo fast.

[Thanks, Markus]

Update: AnandTech‘s findings contradict the above, with Anand asserting that “there’s absolutely no funny business going on here, the dual-core 2.7 is allowed to hit its maximum frequencies.” Seems like we’ll need to keep digging to get to the bottom of this one.

Update 2: We’ve confirmed with Apple that there are no specific hardware or software limits to block the Turbo Boost function, however we’ve also discovered, through less direct sources, that the company is providing new low level software tools to diagnose cooling issues with the 2011 batch of laptops. Ergo, the speed limits that PC Pro and Notebook Journal encountered might have been caused by inadequate heat dissipation, which arguably is no less troubling than an Apple-mandated de-Turbo-fication.

Intel Turbo Boost is MIA on new 13-inch MacBook Pro? (update: negatory) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 05:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, you were worried Sony wasn’t going to release its new VAIO S ultraportable in the US? Okay, so it has taken the company a bit longer to prep the 13.3-inch laptop for its American debut, but it’s here and it looks like it was well worth the wait. While Sony is holding that it will not replace the VAIO Z Series, which has just recently gone out of stock on Sony’s website, there’s no denying that it fills a similar high-end ultraportable spot. Don’t be fooled by its inch-thick profile, it packs a serious amount of horsepower — like the UK version, it will be configurable with Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6630 graphics with 1GB of VRAM (sadly, there’s still a physical toggle for switching), Blu-ray, and a range of SSDs. As you can tell from the image above, the design drops the circular hinge of previous VAIOs, but the 3.8-pound machine is still made of magnesium and aluminum, has a backlit keyboard, while also sporting the option of a unique slice battery that meshes with the overall aesthetic.

However, that $150 extended cell isn’t just any old battery — it’s said to provide a total of 15 hours of battery life when latched onto the bottom of the system and additionally it comes with its own adapter so it can be charged separately from the entire rig. Yep, this one is filled to the brim with the latest and greatest, and even better it doesn’t seem terribly overpriced — the $979 starting model packs a Core i5-2410 processor, those aforementioned AMD graphics, and a 320GB hard drive. It should be available for pre-order later today and we’re hoping to bring you a full review of it soon, but until then we have a few hands-on shots of the laptop back at CES below.

Continue reading Sony VAIO S arrives stateside, brings along an advanced extended battery

Sony VAIO S arrives stateside, brings along an advanced extended battery originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So far, AMD’s new Fusion chips have been all about the low-end, whether you’re talking in terms of price, performance or power consumption, but the company has a vision for its future that has these new Accelerated Processing Units dominating every segment of the market. In order to do that, AMD will need to overcome Intel’s latest generation of mainstream processors, the Core 2011 family we’re more familiar with under the Sandy Bridge codename. Before you rush past the break and watch AMD’s own comparison between said Intel hardware and the forthcoming quad-core Llano APU, be aware that processor performance can rarely be generalized from a single test alone and the one we’re witnessing is specifically geared to highlight the Fusion chip’s strengths. All that said, the workload demonstrated by AMD — a 3D game, HD video playback (plus post-processing on the Llano rig), Excel calculations, and some 3D modeling, all running simultaneously — is handled most impressively by the A8-3510MX APU, which even manages to use less power than Intel’s 2GHz Core i7-2630QM. See the video after the break.

[Thanks, Vygantas]

Continue reading AMD compares upcoming Llano Fusion APU with Intel Core i7, puts the heat on Sandy Bridge (video)

AMD compares upcoming Llano Fusion APU with Intel Core i7, puts the heat on Sandy Bridge (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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