Hasta La Gadget!

Just when you though you’d had your fill of insanely detailed benchmarks of processors you may or may not have ever heard of, AMD’s new Phenom II X4 955 and 945 hit the scene to get those overclockers all in a tizzy. The top of the line is the 955 “Black Edition” at 3.2GHz, while the 945 plays with a petty 3GHz. And the verdict? They’re clearly AMD’s fastest so far, but that might not be fast enough. AMD offers great value, but only really matches Intel’s Core 2 offerings on performance — Core i7 is still out in front. There is the fact that Phenom II offers a nice upgrade path for certain people who already do the AMD thing and are looking to upgrade, along with “enthusiasts” who are “enthused” by easy-access overclocking, but overall it looks like AMD is still playing catch-up with Intel.

Read – HotHardware
Read – Neoseeker
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Tech Report
Read – TechSpot
Read – EXTREME Overclocking

Filed under: Desktops

AMD Phenom II X4 955 and 945 benchmarked to high heaven originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, Intel’s one-upping AMD in the 32nm department, but IBM and its merry band of Technology Alliance members — including Samsung, STMicroelectronics, and AMD chipmakers Globalfoundries — are looking to ramp up the competition and develop even smaller, low power 28nm processors before Intel gets a chance to size down. The group additionally promises migration plans for companies who’ve got 32nm on their roadmap and want to maybe shrink a few of the later, already planned models. Early risk production for the 28nm chips are planned for second half 2010, which means it’s very unlikely we’ll be seeing them in consumer gadgets until at least 2011.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

IBM, Samsung, Globalfoundries, and more looking to beat Intel to 28nm market originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know the drill: the Atom is the king of all netbooks, with a domain stretching as far as the eye can see. But, upstarts like the Via Nano and AMD’s Athlon Neo are encroaching on Intel’s domain, and Crave took the time to pit examples of the three against each other in a series of benchmarks to see which should rule the land. Rather sadly for us, each of the three tests had a different winner, with the Atom N280 excelling in multi-tasking, the Nano U2250 best for iTunes encoding, and the Neo MV-40 quickest under a Jalbum-based benchmark. So you know what that means: everyone gets a prize, nobody has to go home crying, and you should just go ahead and buy whichever netbook you like best already.

Update: It’s actually unclear which proc won which test, as the table at the source shows one thing, but the text swaps the Neo and Nano around. But, again, there’s not much between these three.

Filed under: Laptops

When netbook processors compete, everyone wins originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Unless you’ve started your weekend early, you have probably realized that both NVIDIA and AMD announced new GPUs this morning. Coincidental timing aside, it sure makes things easy for the consumer to eye the respective benchmarks and plan out their next mid-range GPU purchase accordingly. A whole bevy of reviews, tests, graphs and bar charts have hit the web this morning extolling and panning the pros and cons, but without getting too deep in the nitty-gritty, we can sum things up pretty easily with this. NVIDIA’s GTX 275 showed performance that placed it perfectly between the GTX 285 and GTX 260, and in all but a few off-the-wall tests, it outpaced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 (albeit slightly). Granted, the HD 4890 was called the “fastest, single-GPU powered graphics card AMD has ever produced” by HotHardware, though apparently even that wasn’t enough to help it snag the gold across the board. If you’re hungry for more (and you are, trust us), take the rest of the day off and dig in below.

Read – HotHardware GeForce GTX 275 review
Read – HotHardware Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – ExtremeTech GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – DailyTech GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – X-bit Labs ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – ComputerShopper ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – Guru 3D GeForce GTX 275 review
Read – Guru 3D ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – PCPerspective ATI Radeon HD 4890 review

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

NVIDIA GTX 275 / ATI Radeon HD 4890 review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Comfile Technology’s CUPC-P80 isn’t quite a full-fledged UMPC, though it could definitely get away with posing as one. Realistically though, we suspect this one was engineered to control media and such within your vehicle. The 12v power system and the 10.2-inch display sure make it an ideal candidate for replacing that stock radio in your ’87 Taurus, and while the 500MHz AMD Geode LX800 isn’t potent enough to stream YouTube videos in high-def, it should be plenty to spin your latest Tears For Fears-filled playlist. Other specs include 512MB of RAM, an Ethernet port, 4GB of flash storage, three USB sockets and an SD card slot. The rig can be purchased now for $699 without an OS, or for $849 with Windows XP embedded.

[Via Zedomax, thanks Max]

Filed under: Handhelds

Touchscreen-based CUPC-P80 UMPC just might double as a carputer originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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