Friday, February 3, 2012

AMD Reference Notebook Design from Compal Exposed

AMD demos Compal notebook reference design

AMD's recent Financial Analyst Day event exposed many things about what the company would and wouldn't be doing over the next few years, but that wasn't everything that was revealed.

It so happens that, in addition to AMD itself, Compal also made a revelation, or it might be more accurate to say that AMD revealed something made by Compal.

Put simply, the item in the pictures provided byEngadget is the reference notebook design based on AMD's Trinity APUs.

Advanced Micro Devices spent the past few years offering little, if anything, in terms of mobile PC CPU technology.

Though discrete GPUs have never been in short supply, the Sunnyvale, California-based company didn't make many mobile CPUs.

Now, though, the rise of tablets and the steady change of focus from desktops to notebooks is, one might say, forcing AMD's hand.

The Trinity APUs is the company's answer to this trend, and this laptop from Compal is one of the coveted design wins.

18 mm thick (0.70 inches), the notebook has a low-voltage quad-core APU (Piledriver cores, Radeon HD 7000M graphics).

There is also an HDMI port, USB 3.0 and a mini-DisplayPort.LightningBolt may or may not be present as well.

Compal means for final products to be priced at $500-$600 (380-456 Euro) and will start shipping this reference design to its OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners soon.

That way, the latter will know what architecture, features and performance they should seek when creating the laptops.

For those who want to know what plans the company has made for the long term, Advanced Micro Devices is accelerating the“true” fusion of x86 and GPU.

By 2014, APUs will be able to decide on their own whether to use the x86 cores or the stream processors of the Radeon GPU.

The company has also decided to cancel the 10-core and 20-core Opteron units, overall slowing down the platform progression on the server market.

10-Core Intel Ivy Bridge-EP CPU Tested, Has 20 Threads

As Sandy Bridge CPUs were followed by Sandy Bridge-EP units, Ivy Bridge central processing units will get similar successors, one of which has actually been tested.

The engineering sample of the Ivy Bridge-EP CPU that got put through its paces not long ago is the sort of thing that will leave onlookers starry-eyed.

Intel probably didn't mean for this chip to land in the hands of someone so eager to publish the results for all to see.

Nevertheless, a person in Taiwan did get a hold of it somehow and has big and clear screenshots to prove it (CPU-Z, Windows 8 task manager, the works).

Quite simply, nothing on the consumer CPU market has even come close to the sort of performance that this thing is bound to demonstrate.

Of course, it was obvious that an Ivy Bridge-EP CPU would blow even the best Ivy Bridge units out of the water, but the magnitude of it all wasn't exactly apparent.

The Ivy Bridge-EP/EX engineering sample has 10 physical cores, but its Hyper-Threading technology allows for 20 logical cores to be enabled at the same time.

In other words, the operating system may as well be working with 20 CPUs at once, for all it knows.

Spec-wise, the processor has a clock speed of 2.8 GHz, 30 MB of shared L3 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core.

A WPrime test returned a score of 1,024M in 158.5 seconds, while Fritz Chess scored 41.78X relative speed.

All this happened while only eight of the 20 threads were utilized, which makes one wonder if there even are benchmarking suites that can force this beast to actually show some effort.

Of course, there are no programs or games that can use so many cores, except, perhaps, video conversion and other professional applications.

People shouldn't start raving just yet, of course. After all, Intel hasn't even launched the “regular” Ivy Bridge LGA1155 chips (they are scheduled for April, 2012).

Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Android Review

Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Android tablet review

While it may be hard to believe for quite a lot of older gamers, over 10 years separate us from the initial release of the iconic Grand Theft Auto III, a title that pretty much changed the way we view open world titles, as well as games in general.

Now, as a testament to how much technology, not just games, has progressed since then, Rockstar has released a special Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition onto mobile platforms like the iOS (including iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) as well as Android (including various mobile phones and tablets).

We have had the chance to try out the title on the Asus Transformer tablet, powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 technology, and see just how the game looks after more than 10 years since its initial release.

So, does this re-release honor the classic game or should it be thrown into the trunk of a car and crashed through Liberty City? Let’s find out.


Go from humble beginnings ...	... to living the good life

In case you’re among the few people in the world who don’t know what GTA III is, here’s a brief description of the game.

It’s an open world title, with its action taking place in Liberty City, although it’s not the one from GTA IV, however. This copy of 1990s New York is constituted of several island neighborhoods connected by various bridges and filled with all sorts of characters and criminal organizations.

You play as Claude, a silent protagonist that’s just been part of a prison break, who needs to make a name for himself by doing all sorts of various jobs for all sorts of various criminal organizations, from the mob to the Yakuza. The missions usually consists of some mix between driving and shooting, but you can also engage in a variety of side missions, like driving Liberty City residents by taxi, saving them with an ambulance or making the streets a safer place through Vigilante activities.

This is what made GTA III such an impressive game, that after you got over the open world, the great third person shooting or driving, not to mention the graphics that were stunning at that time, you could still do all sorts of things and not get bored during your adventures in Liberty City.

While the original game is still here and as glorious as ever, it’s time to talk about the 10 Year Anniversary Edition and how it actually feels on a tablet, instead of regular gaming devices like consoles or the PC.

This is where things go awry, however, as the touchscreen input generates some mixed results, largely because Rockstar didn’t really try to adapt the controls to the special needs of a phone or tablet. Instead of rethinking some actions, the studio just threw on the screen a variety of buttons that are clunky, to say the least.

Incoming 2012: Shank 2

What we know:

Shank 2 is the next iteration in the side scrolling brawler series made by independent studio Klei Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts.

While the original impressed with its sharp visual style, as well as with the surprisingly deep combat mechanics, its successor wants to improvepretty much every aspect. This includes the combat, which has been extensively polished, as well as problematic areas, like the boss fights, which no longer rely on difficult puzzles to complete.

Klei also revealed that subtle tweaks, like a longer respawn time, had also been added, in order to give players a bigger period to analyze their combat strategy. This will help throughout the story campaign as well as in the all-new Survival cooperative mode.

Those who played Shank with a buddy remember that the co-op mode acted as a sort of prequel to the single-player story, and saw Shank, together with his friend, Falcone, go through legions of enemies across different environments.

The new Survival mode in the upcoming game will see Shank and a mysterious lady friend fend off waves of enemies, while trying to protect three stashes in various environments. While this experience may seem like a downgrade when compared to the story-based one from the original, Klei has added plenty of unlockable outfits and upgrades that can be uncovered by playing with a friend, either locally or online.

Why it matters:
Shank 1 was a great game, despite its pretty short length and annoying boss fights. With its sequel, Klei Entertainment has seemingly addressed complaints from fans, while further tweaking and polishing the combat. Couple these things with the same impressive visual style and Shank 2 might become even more popular than its predecessor.

Shank 2 is currently scheduled to appear next week as a downloadable game, on February 7, for PC and North American PlayStation 3 owners, and on February 8, for Xbox 360 owners and European PS3 users.

Windows Updates Downloader 2.50 Build 1002

This software will enable you to easily download any critical updates that your PC might need.

Written by Bogdan Popa on November 17th, 2011

Updating Windows is nowadays a job that doesn’t involve the user at all sometimes, but there are people out there who wish to know exactly what they’re going to install on their computers.

In case you feel like the Windows Update tool doesn’t give you enough power, meet Windows Updates Downloader, a pretty innovative application that does exactly what its name says.

The application has been developed to help you download updates for your Windows operating system manually, so that you can keep them on your machine and install them at a later time.

Although it may seem a bit complicated, using the program is as easy as pie. In order to download the required updates, you have to install an update list that corresponds with your operating system version.

It’s worth mentioning that Windows Updates Downloader only works with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Vista, so no chance to get it running on 7.

So, you get an update list and install it into the app. Just hit the refresh button and you will be prompted to pick the updates you wish to download, regardless if we are talking about fixes or service packs.

From now on, it’s all a matter of time because the download speed depends on your Internet connection. We’ve tried the app with multiple updates and everything worked flawlessly, which means it should be just fine as long as you use one of the aforementioned operating systems.

There is no complicated settings menu, just a bunch of options in the main window, so you won’t spend too much time to see which feature is which.

So all in all, Windows Updates Downloader is a must have if you’re tired with the standard Windows Update tool and since it’s free, we really can’t see any reason for not using it.

Windows Updates Downloader description

Windows Updates Downloader will allow users to easily grab all the current Windows critical updates. All updates are downloaded directly from Microsoft.com to the computer with a single mouse click.

Windows Updates Downloader is a very useful application that was deisgned for helping users to manage the way they download Windows' system updates.

Here are some key features of "Windows Updates Downloader":

· Automatic highlighting of already downloaded updates.
· Minimize to tray.
· Adding links to original KB article in UL files.
· Option to create sub-directory per UL.
· Proxy support.
· Remove previous updates.
· Command-line options for 3rd party integration.

Requirements:

· NET Framework 2.0

Internet Download Manager

Internet Download Manager is a tool for increasing download speeds by up to 5 times, and for resuming, scheduling, and organizing downloads. The program will resume unfinished downloads due to network problems, or unexpected power outages. The program features a full-fledged site grabber that downloads files that are specified with filters, for example, all pictures from a Web site, different parts of Web sites, or complete Web sites for offline browsing. The program supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and MMS protocols, and has an adaptive download accelerator for MP3 audio, FLV and MPEG video files. The program also features Download Video and Audio Panels for Internet Exporer, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers that appears on top of a web-player and can be used to download flash videos from sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, Google Videos.

What's new in this version: Version 6.08 build 9 improves video stream recognition for web players and adds support for new types of video streaming sites, also adds support of new Filesonic changes.

Internet Download Manager

Don't let the dull name fool you: Internet Download Manager is a full-featured package that handles downloading tasks with aplomb. It conveniently integrates into your browser, even if you use Mozilla or Opera.

It automatically sorts incoming files by file type and puts them in the appropriate folder. Most importantly, it supercharges download speeds (it doubled ours). Its windowed interface is clean and easy to understand. Power users can take advantage of the command line interface to resume file transfers, schedule downloads, connect through dial-up, or log on to password-protected sites. Experienced users also can limit the number of connections, the download speeds for specific sites, and even create an exception list to block specific, user-defined sites.

Other features include automatic virus checking and the ability to download all files linked to a page. The new version has a Web spider that can analyze a site and retrieve, for example, all the images on it.

Internet Download Manager strikes us as a natural choice for users in need of a trusty transfer tool. Version 5.11 build 5 added FLV grabber that can be used to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpaceTV, and other popular sites.