Sep 09

Firefox 4 Beta 5 brings GPU acceleration for Windows

Posted in: Mozilla, Today's Chili, video

Browser betas, like puberty, can be a confusing time. Sure, we’re eager to be getting new functionality, but all the crashes and compatibility breaks and unrequited crushes can be a bit tough to handle. Now Mozilla is giving us something big for all our blood, sweat and acne: Firefox 4 Beta 5 has Direct2D hardware acceleration on by default. We tested it out real quick, and it seemed to speed up most HTML5 tasks considerably while inexplicably slowing a couple down, but we’re sure all will be ironed out in time for the final version of Firefox 4 to go head to head with Microsoft’s own upcoming hardware accelerated contender, IE9. Unfortunately, the speedups only apply to Windows for now, Mac and Linux are being left out in the GPU-less cold, but we suppose they should be used to that by now. Other perks in the update include HSTS, a successor to HTTPS in secure surfing, and HTML5 Audio, which allows for all sorts of audio processing and analysis at the browser level. You can check out a quick demo of hardware acceleration after the break.

Continue reading Firefox 4 Beta 5 brings GPU acceleration for Windows

Firefox 4 Beta 5 brings GPU acceleration for Windows originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 08

AMD names second Bobcat APU Zacate, shows off Ontario die size

Posted in: AMD, processor, Today's Chili

AMD might still have no actual Fusion product to sell us, but it’s added a fresh new codename to the stable of future CPU/GPU hybrids. The Zacate Accelerated Processing Unit is a Bobcat derivative, much like the Ontario, but it operates at a higher TDP of 18W and is intended for ultrathin and mainstream laptops along with power-sipping desktops and all-in-ones. Both it and the Ontario APU will offer two Bobcat cores allied to Radeon graphics capable of performing DirectX 11 instructions, though the Ontario dips all the way down to 9W with the stated aim of punching up netbook and small form factor pc performance. Just for reference, that’ll have to compete against Intel’s own dual-core solution, the 1.5GHz Atom N550, which scrapes by on just an 8.5W TDP… though, of course, it doesn’t integrate the same graphics processing prowess that Ontario promises. The two chips, Ontario and Zacate, will ride AMD’s Brezos platform when they finally debut early next year. Until then, enjoy the technicolor die shot after the break.

Continue reading AMD names second Bobcat APU Zacate, shows off Ontario die size

AMD names second Bobcat APU Zacate, shows off Ontario die size originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 02

NVIDIA GTX 470M highlights rollout of 400M mobile GPU series

Posted in: launch, NVIDIA, optimus, Today's Chili

Not everybody needs the world’s fastest mobile GPU, so NVIDIA is sagely trickling down its Fermi magic to more affordable price points today. The 400M family is being fleshed out with five new midrange parts — GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M, to give them their gorgeous names — and a pair of heavy hitters known as the GTX 470M and GTX 460M. Features shared across the new range include a 40nm fab process, DirectX 11, CUDA general-purpose computing skills, PhysX, and Optimus graphics switching. 3D Vision and 3DTV Play support will be available on all but the lowest two variants. NVIDIA claims that, on average, the 400M graphics cards are 40 percent faster than their 300M series counterparts, and since those were rebadges of the 200M series, we’re most definitely willing to believe that assertion. Skip past the break for all the vital statistics, and look out for almost all (HP is a notable absentee, while Apple is a predictable one) the big-time laptop vendors to have gear bearing the 4xxM insignia soon.

Continue reading NVIDIA GTX 470M highlights rollout of 400M mobile GPU series

NVIDIA GTX 470M highlights rollout of 400M mobile GPU series originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 30

AMD kills ATI brand, you can look forward to blood-stained Radeons

Posted in: AMD, ati, radeon, Today's Chili

This, dear friends, is a sad, sad day. ATI, the name of hope for all PC gamers who were sick and tired of NVIDIA rebadging the same GPU over the past couple of years, is to be no more. The callous souls over at AMD have decided that our little consumer brains aren’t sophisticated enough to handle two awesome brands, so they’re just axing the use of the ATI moniker from here on out. Product line names will be retained, with the Radeon and FirePro branding still intact, but ATI Eyefinity will now be known as AMD Eyefinity. The first graphics cards to, erm, benefit from the new nomenclature will ship “later this year,” and the whole thing is said to have been motivated by AMD’s move to Fusion APUs — hybrid CPU and GPU chips — where it’s considered beneficial to have a unified branding strategy. Great, but did anyone consider the fact that the graphics wars will now be fought between two teams wearing green jerseys?

Continue reading AMD kills ATI brand, you can look forward to blood-stained Radeons

AMD kills ATI brand, you can look forward to blood-stained Radeons originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 27

ATI leaks out Southern Islands codenames for next-gen GPUs

Posted in: AMD, ati, GraphicsCard, leak, radeon, Today's Chili

Um, oops? ATI’s latest Catalyst driver release has dished out some info that we imagine the company didn’t want to reveal quite yet. The names of some Southern Islands have been spotted — Cayman and Antilles appear to be the flagship chips — suggesting a refresh to the critically acclaimed Evergreen line of GPUs may not be far off. Rumors have been swirling for a while about ATI’s reputed shift to island-based nomenclature, and while hard specs are nowhere to be found, we can see that the Red Team is planning an overhaul with no less than 10 new additions to its roster. Hardly unpredictable, but good to know that ATI has something to counter NVIDIA’s heart-stealing GTX 460.

[Thanks, Jack]

ATI leaks out Southern Islands codenames for next-gen GPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 24

Microsoft details Vejle, the new Xbox 360’s system-on-chip architecture

Posted in: Microsoft, Today's Chili, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox360

There aren’t many unresolved mysteries with Microsoft’s new console by this point — apart from perhaps why it wasn’t named the Stealthbox, like we were suggesting — but one thing that hasn’t been covered in excruciating detail yet is the new 360’s splicing of the CPU and GPU into the same chip. Microsoft has remedied that today, informing us that the 45nm system-on-chip (codenamed Vejle; sorry, Valhalla fans) inside the refreshed Xbox makes do with a relatively minimal 372 million transistors, requiring only 40 percent of the power and less than 50 percent of the die space of its 2005 ancestor. A somewhat bemusing addition, noted by Ars, is the FSB Replacement sector you see in the image above. It’s designed to induce lag in the system so that the Vejle chip doesn’t run faster than the old stuff, something Microsoft couldn’t allow to happen. Facepalm away, good people, facepalm away.

Microsoft details Vejle, the new Xbox 360’s system-on-chip architecture originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 17

Eurocom serves up GTX 480M SLI and HD 5870 CrossFireX options, seasons with Core i7-980X

Posted in: ati, laptop, NVIDIA, radeon, retail, Today's Chili

It boggles the mind to think that one Fermi GPU could be fit inside a laptop, but two? Eurocom has just outed its 17.3-inch Panther 2.0 mobile gaming station — which looks like a straight rebadge of the Clevo X7200 — with the most overpowered set of component choices we’ve yet seen. You can go SLI with the GTX 480M or NVIDIA’s more professionally minded Quadro 5000M, crank up CPU speed to 3.33GHz and beyond with the Core i7-980X from Intel (yes, the desktop variant), stash up to 24GB of onboard RAM, and jack in up to four storage drives, our preference being for the 2TB of SSD goodness option. Of course, if you prefer ATI’s Evergreen side of the fence, dual Mobility Radeon HD 5870 GPUs are on tap as well. Sadly, we’ve no idea how much these spectacular specs will set you back, but launch is set for later this month and you can always call up and get yourself a quote; we’re guessing it’ll be in five figures.

Continue reading Eurocom serves up GTX 480M SLI and HD 5870 CrossFireX options, seasons with Core i7-980X

Eurocom serves up GTX 480M SLI and HD 5870 CrossFireX options, seasons with Core i7-980X originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 16

GPUs democratize brute force password hacking

Posted in: hack, hacking, security, Today's Chili
It seems that the availability of increasingly powerful GPUs, when combined with brute-force password cracking tools, is making it increasingly easy to crack passwords — even if they’re extremely well thought out, with symbols and quirky capitalization and all that. How short is too short? According to computer scientists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, “a seven-character password is hopelessly inadequate, and as GPU power continues to go up every year, the threat will increase.” A better alternative, he suggested, would be a 12-character combination of upper and lower case letters, symbols and digits. Of course, processors are only getting more powerful and hardware less expensive — soon even seven-plus character passwords may become the digital equivalent of unlocked doors. And if that weren’t bad enough, a recent study by an Internet security company called BitDefender has determined that some 250,000 user names, email addresses, and passwords used for social networking sites are freely available online — and seventy-five percent of these folks use the same password for their email and social networking. So, when dreaming up fancy new twelve character passwords, make sure you’re creating unique passwords for all your various accounts. It would be a shame if your Starsky & Hutch FanFicForum account left you vulnerable to identity theft.

GPUs democratize brute force password hacking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 12

ATI CrossFireX versus NVIDIA SLI: performance scaling showdown

Posted in: ati, GraphicsCard, NVIDIA, radeon, Today's Chili

We know who the daddy is when it comes to single-card graphics performance, and we’ve even witnessed NVIDIA and ATI duking it out with multiple cards before, but this here roundup is what you might call comprehensive. Comparing a mind-boggling 23 different configurations, the Tech Report guys set out to determine the best bang for your DirectX 11 buck. Their conclusion won’t shock those of you who’ve been following the recent love affair between reviewers and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460: a pair of these eminently affordable cards regularly outpaced the best single-GPU solutions out there. Slightly more intriguing, however, was the discovery that its elder siblings, the GTX 470 and 480, have improved in performance to the point of being markedly ahead of ATI’s Radeon HD 5870, with the blame for this shift being put squarely on the shoulders of NVIDIA’s driver update team. Hurry up and give the source a read while it’s still fresh, we can’t imagine ATI letting this be the status quo for too much longer.

ATI CrossFireX versus NVIDIA SLI: performance scaling showdown originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 11

DARPA enlists NVIDIA to build exascale supercomputer that’s ‘1000x faster’ than today’s quickest

Posted in: government, military, NVIDIA, Today's Chili, us, usa

At this point, it’s pretty obvious that GPUs will soon be playing a huge role in modern day supercomputers — a role that may just rival that of the tried-and-true CPU. Virginia Tech is gleefully accepting $2 million in order to build a GPU and CPU-enabled HokieSpeed supercomputer, and today DARPA is handing out $25 million to NVIDIA in order to develop “high-performance GPU computing systems.” Specifically the Defense Department’s research and development arm is aiming to address a so-called “crisis in computing,” and if all goes well, the four-year project will eventually yield a “new class of exascale supercomputers which will be 1,000-times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputers.” That’s a pretty lofty goal, but NVIDIA will be aided by Cray, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a half-dozen US universities along the way. And yeah, if ever anyone’s ego was prepared to topple Moore’s Law, it’d be this guy.

Continue reading DARPA enlists NVIDIA to build exascale supercomputer that’s ‘1000x faster’ than today’s quickest

DARPA enlists NVIDIA to build exascale supercomputer that’s ‘1000x faster’ than today’s quickest originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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