Intel has revealed that it’s working on bringing Jelly Bean to its low-power Atom architecture. In an email to PC World, company rep Suzy Greenberg confirmed the project was ongoing, but didn’t offer a timeline as to when the latest flavor of Google’s mobile OS would arrive on a device. It’s the same story regarding when Ice Cream Sandwich would turn up on Medfield-powered devices like the San Diego and its brethren. The report also pours cold water on hopes for Clover Trail powered Android gear — saying that it’s pencilled in as a Windows 8-only platform.
Dell has outed a range of new Precision mobile workstations, billed as the world’s most powerful and yet delivering all-day battery life and slotting into the 17-inch segment which Apple recently abandoned. The new Dell Precision M4700 and M6700 pack 15- and 17-inch displays respectively and use Intel Core i5, i7 and Extreme Edition processors paired with a choice of NVIDIA Quadro K-series and AMD FirePro graphics. Down the line there’ll be optional multitouch, too.
The Precision M6700 uses its extra bulk to accommodate an optional AMD FirePro M6000 with PCIe x16 Gen 3 for even more graphical crunching abilities, while the special Covet Edition optionally adds in a Phoenix Red casing and edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass 2. Both models get the option of NVIDIA Optimus graphics, and RAID 0/1/5 storage with up to 1.8TB of total capacity (spread across three bays) in the M4700 and up to 2.8TB (spread across four bays) in the M6700.
Up to 32GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory or 16GB of 1866MHz memory can be specified, as well as up to 512GB of SSD storage. Ports include two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0 and one eSATA / USB combo, along with VGA, HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2. There’s also power for up to three simultaneous displays when undocked, or five when docked in a Latitude E-family station.
Screen options include a choice of WLED and IPS RBG LED displays, including some with more than 100 percent Adobe color gamut. The M6700 will also be offered with optional 10+ finger multitouch, though that SKU won’t arrive until a few months time. NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro can be specified for the M6700 as well.
The magnesium alloy and aluminum chassis meet MIL-STD 810G standards, and can be paired with an optional slice-battery for extended runtimes.
The Dell Precision M4700 is priced from $1,649, while the company is asking from $2,199 for the M6700 and from $3,579 for the M6700 Covet. Orders are being taken from today.
ARM and TSMC have inked a deal for the next-generation of 64-bit processors, paving the way for phones, tablets, notebooks and even servers which outclass x86 chips on performance and efficiency. The deal, which builds on an existing multi-year agreement between ARM and TSMC on 20nm production, will see ARM optimize its ARMv8 architecture and Artisan IP with TSMC’s FinFET process technology, slashing the time it takes to bring new, advanced chips to market.
64-bit is the next step in ARM’s continued encroachment into markets that would traditionally have looked to Intel and AMD x86 processors. Although ARM-based chipsets are currently dominant in phones and tablets, where their power frugality makes them ideal to balance limited battery life with the expectations of all-day runtime from users, 64-bit readiness will enable the company to broach the enterprise and server segments.
“The 64-bit architecture has been designed specifically to enable energy-efficient implementations” ARM said in a statement on the deal. “Similarly, the 64-bit memory addressing and high-end performance are necessary to enable enterprise computing and network infrastructure that are fundamental for the mobile and cloud-computing markets.”
Meanwhile, TSMC’s “ability to quickly ramp volume production of highly integrated SoCs in advanced silicon process technology” and FinFET process will mean chips on sale sooner and that use less power.
Dell and HP have both revealed plans for ARM-based servers, and the chipsets will get an extra boost when Windows RT – previously known as Windows-on-ARM – arrives in October. Samsung and others are expected to release Windows RT tablets using ARM-based processors, while one of Microsoft’s own Surface tablets will run on ARM technology.
Here you are new AIO or All In One computer from LG with the V720. This new 27” wonder comes with the usual IPS full HD screen but also includes LG Cinema 3D (on the i5 Version Only) Support and a Dual Digital TV Tuner with basic PIP (Picture in Picture). The V720 will be available in Korea in two flavors with the: V720-U.AE30K running on a Core i3-2370M at 2.4GHz with 4GB of RAM, 750GB of HDD and a GeForce GT640M with 1GB of VRAM but no 3D V720-U.AE50K running on a Core i5-3210M at 2.5GHz, …
Today SlashGear has a real treat for those of you looking for no less than a top of the line gaming tower. This is the AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC build we’ve got here is a lovely combination of white plastic, metal, massive amounts of power, and processing so quiet it’s scary. This is without a doubt the most impressive PC I personally have reviewed for SlashGear, and with the custom build we’ve got waiting for you in this hands-on look, I fully expect you’re going to be scrambling to break your piggy bank to count up to $2019.16 USD to buy your own. Check it out!
Case
This case is massive, gigantic, and certainly not made for hauling around to LAN parties – there’s no handles here, folks. Instead this machine is made to remain stationary, made with so many fans and air ducts that it’ll never, ever get hot (it might, but we’ve not seen it yet), and it’s clean. This machine looks fabulous, with a classy white combination of plastic and metal parts and safety bumpers all around so there’s no clunks or clanks when you’re opening or shutting doors.
The front of the machine has a flat aluminum shape to it with a couple of peek-holes you’ll be able to see in the hands-on look at the machine in the video above. This front panel is a door which reveals your DVD drive, memory card ports, and whatever else you want to attach in the racks on racks on racks available throughout the front of the machine. This machine comes with room for so much customizability right out of the box it’s absurd.
The back of this AVADirect tower has a massive collection of ports which you’ll read about below and will be able to see in the hands-on video above. It’s all very neatly arranged, and up on top of the tower you’ve got a few more for good measure. The bottom of this case has that unique boost not just for your visual pleasure, but so air can move through the machine top to bottom. The bottom is open so air can travel through the case downward, upward, out the back, and out the front as well – there are fans behind that door up front and there’s a dust catch you can remove and clean underneath as well!
You’ve also got two distinctive sides to this machine, with the right side having a small area for cords to rest in, keeping them clear of the other side which is the deep home for all of your massive bits of next-level gear. For those of you that love lights, you’ll find a few well-placed green LEDs sitting down deep in the guts, blinking like it’s no big deal, while a couple of white lights shine up front through those crevices mentioned above so you know the machine has been turned on. Again – if you didn’t have a monitor plugged in to show you that the beast was turning on, you might never know it for how silent it is – that’s what the lights are for.
Sound Levels
With this build you’ll find a total of seven fans, eight if you count the one attached to the 3rd Gen Intel Core i7 hardware. With that many fans you might expect quite a bit of rustling to be going on inside this box, but no. You have to get up within a foot of this device to hear it make a sound – it’s that quiet. This device has SPCR Certification for quietness. This means that it must run under 20dBA at idle as well as under 27dBA under maximum load. Check out more about SPCR Certified PCs to get an in-depth idea of what this means for your own gaming room. Don’t expect to be lulled asleep by the hum of this machine – there really isn’t any.
Custom Build
This monster has a set of specifications that I do not hesitate to say are a dream for our modern age of gaming. In addition to the massive amount of ports you get on the top and back of this machine, prepping you for any and all display, 3rd party connection, and memory card situations, you’ve got processing and graphics power that’ll blow your socks off. You’ll notice at this point that I’m having trouble finding much that I do not like about this system, and for that I apologize – I’m a sucker for fantastically constructed machines.
• NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 670 950MHz, 2GB GDDR5 5000MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI + HDMI + DP, OEM • OCZ, 120GB Vertex 3 SSD, MLC SandForce SF-2281, 550/500 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, Retail • Western Digital 1.5TB WD Caviar® Green™ (WD15EARX), SATA 6 Gb/s, IntelliPower™, 64MB Cache • SONY AD-7280S Black 24x DVD±R/RW Dual-Layer Burner, SATA, OEM • SABRENT CRW-UINB Black 65-in-1 Card Reader/Writer Drive, 3.5″ Bay, Internal USB • CUSTOM WIRING, Standard Wiring with Precision Cable Routing and Tie-Down • Smart Drive NEO Standard Silent Hard Disk Drive Enclosure, 5.25″ • Lamptron Deluxe Black Shakeproof PSU Gasket Silencer • Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM • Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)
This build will cost you, again, a total of $2,019.16 in all, and if you’re wondering how much it cost to ship from the AVADirect facilities in Twinsberg, Ohio to where this review is taking place in Saint Paul, Minnesota here it is: $58.23. Not so devastating a shipping cost at all. Especially considering how well it was packaged – they even stuffed the inside of the unit with padding to assure nothing wiggled loose!
Benchmark Results and Performance
Have a peek at our standard test results here picked up by GeekBench. You’ll find that nowhere in our history of Desktop Reviews will you find a more powerful system, and of course the Laptop Reviews don’t stand a chance either.
Benchmark Score – System manufacturer System Product Name
Section
Description
Score
Total Score
Windows x86 (64-bit) – Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Integer
Processor integer performance
15912
19077
Floating Point
Processor floating point performance
29323
Memory
Memory performance
10950
Stream
Memory bandwidth performance
10551
We tested out Batman: Arkham City and we tested out Portal 2, Skyrim and Crysis 2, we played some HD videos and we rocked out a couple monitors at a time – and there’s nothing, no waiting time, everything is swift – it’s like this machine was made for the future. Have a peek at some more of the inner bits of the machine here as well:
System – System manufacturer System Product Name
Manufacturer
AVADirect
Product Type
Desktop
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8Z77-V LX
Processor
Intel Core i7-3770K
Processor ID
GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9
Processor Frequency
3.50 GHz
Processors
1
Threads
8
Cores
4
L1 Instruction Cache
32.0 KB
L1 Data Cache
32.0 KB
L2 Cache
256 KB
L3 Cache
8.00 MB
Memory
16.0 GB DDR3 SDRAM 934MHz
FSB
100 MHz
BIOS
American Megatrends Inc. 0610
The Bottom Line
This machine is well worth the cash you’re going to pay for it. For the couple thousand dollars you’re going to drop on this exact build you still couldn’t get the least expensive Mac Pro, and I dare you to find a more well put together PC for this kind of cash. This custom-made conglomeration of top-tier gamer-friendly parts makes me want to forget about factory built machines entirely. There’s just no going back after this.
If you’re not all about having the best of the best or have no use for processing and graphics power that’s going to blow you away with even the most heavy games on the market, this build is not worth the cash. You can pick up the standard build of this machine – with the silence, the case, and slightly lower power than what we’ve got here for $1107.51 from AVADirect too – that’s probably going to be good enough for most gamers out there on its own.
If however you want the most powerful, silent, and aesthetically pleasing gaming PC on the market, this is it. You can grab it from AVADirect’s online store today – and don’t forget to customize!
Faster Thunderbolt connections will have to wait until 2014, according to new talk on Intel’s high-speed interconnect tech, with the next-gen version expected to stick to the 10 Gbps of the existing link. Thunderbolt, which was co-developed by Intel and Apple as a replacement for USB, display connections and more, will see an upgrade to the third-gen “Redwood Ridge” chip in Q2 2013, DigiTimes reports, with support for 10 Gbps as well as the latest DisplayPort standards.
Those standards include DisplayPort v1.1a and DisplayPort v1.2 Redriver, a version which supports strengthening of signals over longer stretches of cable. However, it had been hoped that Intel might coax more raw data speed out of the new Thunderbolt version.
That won’t happen until 2014, the sources say. Codenamed “Falcon Ridge” the new chips will be boosted to 20 Gbps through two channels, making the interconnect even more suitable for daisy-chaining multiple high speed devices such as RAID arrays, high-quality audio and video interfaces, and monitors.
Redwood Ridge Thunderbolt will arrive alongside Intel’s Haswell “Shark Bay” processors, themselves expected sometime in the first half of 2013. Currently Thunderbolt is still seeing only minor adoption, usually in high-end desktops and notebooks, with Apple them most enthusiastic having replaced its Mini DisplayPort connections on all MacBooks with at least one Thunderbolt port.
Intel’s Thunderbolt was introduced last year and while it hasn’t caught on like wildfire (manufacturers are only using Thunderbolt interfaces in their high-end products), it looks like Intel could be ready to give it an upgrade. According to DigiTimes, the company plans to release an upgraded version of its Thunderbolt chip, codenamed Redwood Ridge, in the second quarter of 2013 together with the launch of its Haswell processors.
The new Thunderbolt chip is said to support 10Gbps data rate, DisplayPort v1.1a and DisplayPort v1.2 Redriver. In 2014, it is also said to be further upgrade to Falcon Ridge with transmission speeds of up to 20Gbps through 2 channels. No word on how true these rumors are, but take this information with a pinch of salt for now. Q2 2013 is still a long way to go anyway.
Thunderbolt was one of the killer features last year. 10 gigabits! But since then, there have been a few Thunderbolt products, and a few comically absentee ones, but it feels like most of us have never even used the port—Mini Displayport double duty notwithstanding. Anyone getting actual use out of the thing, or is it as abandoned as it feels? More »
If you think Intel took awhile to roll out the Xeon E5, imagine the mindset of Itanium server operators — they haven’t had any kind of update to the IA-64 chip design since February 2010, and they’re still waiting. Much to their relief, Intel just dropped a big hint that the next-generation, Poulson-based Itanium is getting close. Both a reference manual and a Product Change Notification have signaled that the new, 32-nanometer part will get the Itanium 9500 name as well as a heap of extra improvements that haven’t been detailed until now. We knew of the eight processing cores, but the inadvertent revelation also confirms about a 50 percent hike in the interconnect speed and a matching increase in the cache size to 32MB. Clock speeds also start where current Tukwila-running Itaniums stop, with four processors between 1.73GHz and 2.53GHz giving the line a much-needed shot of adrenaline. Few of us end users will ever directly benefit when Poulson ships to company server farms later this year; after these increases, though, don’t be shocked when the database at work is suddenly much quicker on its toes.
When we looked at the 13-inch Samsung Series 9, we lamented that there was only one version on offer: if anyone wanted more than a Core i5 and a 128GB drive, their dreams were crushed. Samsung must feel that there’s hope for us yet, as there’s now a higher-end spec that slots in a 1.9GHz Core i7 and doubles the storage to 256GB. That’s good news to us, even if the 4GB RAM ceiling will still have some avid Ultrabook fans turning elsewhere. Springing for the new flagship will set shoppers back by about $300 more than the previous top of the line, or $1,700 — still pricey relative to the competition, but much more palatable you’re searching for a premium Windows 7 ultraportable and aren’t willing to budge on screen size.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
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Intel’s Thunderbolt was introduced last year and while it hasn’t caught on like wildfire (manufacturers are only using Thunderbolt interfaces in their high-end products), it looks like Intel could be ready to give it an upgrade. According to DigiTimes, the company plans to release an upgraded version of its Thunderbolt chip, codenamed Redwood Ridge, in the second quarter of 2013 together with the launch of its 
