Remember 2008? The year that saw the birth of the iPhone 3G, citizen journalism begin to take off, and of course, the launch of Android on the G1. But one thing that many have forgotten was that 2008 was also the year in which Seagate was touting their upcoming “Hybrid hard drive technology”.
Essentially, it was a small bit of SLC memory stuffed onboard your standard platter-based hard drive with the intentions of increasing data throughput while also decreasing load times and high costs — as has been associated with SSD’s thus far…
Scientific number munchers look elsewhere, this is not your Google-sourced, bar chart type of benchmark. It’s nothing more than a dude from Android Police running a benchmark using LinPack. But that benchmark is quite telling.
At stock speeds and non-rooted, the Nexus One averages 6-7MFLOPS. Alright, decent showing. But, flash Android 2.2 (Froyo) on that beast and the ‘putin is kicked up several notches to an average of 37MFLOPS! Talk about a speed increase. That’s a huge improvement brought about by nothing more than more efficient coding. I don’t know if I should be ecstatic for the new found power or depressed that Android was so inefficient this was possible…
Either way, it’s good news for Android users. Whether or not we’ll actually see 450% of real world improvement (and that’s what’s really important) n day to day tasks, under the hood everything should be a lot happier — especially with Flash focusing it’s sights on your Android devices’ resources.
Good god, potatoes. Can you believe it! When we talk browser speed tests, it usually entails multiple passes of Javascript benchmarks that show just how much muscle a particular browser has. But leave it to Google (the one’s with the now somewhat infamous gamut of job applicant questions) to truly think outside of the box. Instead of the normal, plain jane benchmarks, the Google Chrome team used more “real-life” examples and took it up another notch thanks to the use of 2700fps slo-mo cameras. Oh yeah — it’s nerdy and super awesome. Click your way inside and give it a watch…
Geeks and PC builders usually fall into two classes: (1) performance or (2) quiet computing. I personally love speed, not giving too much care to noise as I often am wearing headphones, so it’s a moot point. But others would like to be able to hold a normal conversation or play a song without having to crank the volume up just to be heard of the sound of spinning fans.
For the ATI 58xx series, there hasn’t really been a legitimate 3rd party solution for cooling. The stock heatsink/fan/shroud combo isn’t particularly bad. Though if you overclock at all plan on setting the fans to spin faster, earlier. Of course, all that extra spinning means more noise. That’s where the ZALMAN VF3000A comes in.
Featuring twin 92mm fans that spin between 1,300 – 2,500 RPM’s, the VF3000A will easily cool even the hottest running OC’d 58xx cards. I guess it’s good that ATI cards, the 58xx series especially, don’t really run all that hot.
There is one thing to keep in mind before getting to excited though. This cooler is big! Weighing in at 430 grams and thick enough to consume two PCI slots on it’s own means you’re going to need a massive amount of PCI slots/motherboard space if you’re considering running two of these on a CrossFireX setup. From the looks of it, it appears the best installs will be single card setups only.
Feeling all bleeding edge with your freshly updated DROID 2.1 update that recently rolled out? On the surface it may have a few new bells and whistles to make both function and look mildly prettier, but under the surface, there seems to be a possible bug that is destroying graphics performance. And this isn’t some minor brush it under the rug type of speed hit either.
Discovered by the developer behind TesujiGames, the issue was found when running a particular frame rate testing app called LagTest (Direct download link) used to test app performance. Downloading the linked app and running it yourself will quickly net a similar experience as highlighted in the video below. I went ahead and ran lagtest on my rooted 2.0.1 device and compared it to my friends freshly updated 2.1 DROID. Sure enough, just like the video below shows, his “updated” DROID was running a solid 40% slower at all times and peaked at roughly 55%.
For as many times as the 2.1 update was delayed for apparent bugs, it’s odd (and a shame none the less) that something as glaring and important such as graphics performance was overlooked. Video and graphs below highlight the sadness… Anyone else seeing this speed issue?
I spent a pretty good deal of time searching through various Android forums and there are quite a bit of naysayers as to the validity of this claim. The general consensus is that the results are “bunk” seeing as how the program “Lagtest” itself isn’t very reliable. So there may not even be any real issue at all with the update as it is more of an issue with the app itself and/or the developer claiming there was a problem in the first place. I’ll let you guys decide.
Android 2.0.1
Android 2.1
Video
Give it a shot and let us know if you see the same drop in performance after upgrading.
For those who fly with team Red (ATI), the arrival of XFX in recent times was seen as a god send. More competition is always good and really, XFX makes some mean ass cards. They’ve already shown their penchant for performance with Nvidia, so adopting ATI cards as well seems like the only logical next step, right? Well, for consumers it’s a partial yes. I say partial because in their move to support and put out ATI cards, someone on the other side of the fence looks a tad jealous — Nvidia.
Within the last week, Nvidia officially launched their Fermi-based GTX 470 and 480 graphics cards. Debate all you want about price, specs, and performance. I personally found all the build up to be a little misleading as the cards themselves are merely “meh” for me. With the launch of these next gen high end cards, many suspected XFX would be right back at it with some decimating Nvidia cards kicked up a notch or two — and then XFX announced that they weren’t planning on launching any Fermi-based cards.
The speculation is already flying. Some claim that because XFX broke a long-standing Nvidia only partnership and pursued the ATI 58xx series cards, Nvidia is in turn “punishing” them by refusing XFX to release any Nvidia branded cards with Fermi architecture. The other side of the coin has XFX holding the baton of power and passing on Fermi because they feel the 58xx series from ATI “is better suited for the enthusiast marketplace”. So which is it? To be clear, XFX isn’t dropping all Nvidia support, they’re simply passing on by the Fermi-based cards in the near term.
I’ve reached out to both Nvidia and XFX for any clarification on the matter. We’ll see how that little venture goes. In the meantime, questions around why their is a lack of XFX Nvidia cards won’t go away, leaving many questioning their “loyalty”. Are you pro-Nvidia or pro-XFX? I can certainly understand having a favorite and being loyal to one brand over the other. I generally buy whomever is performing the best at that given point in time. And at this stage in the game, I feel ATi’s performance vs. power consumption vs. price is one to two steps ahead of Nvidia.
What do you think: Jealousy on Nvidia’s part or “You’re stuff is whack” by XFX?
No holds barred gamers never give a second guess to price. To them, only the biggest, fastest, and coolest running components will work. In the case of PC gaming, the fastest of the fast in GPU terms rests solely on the ATI 5970′s shoulders. This dual-GPU behemoth measures in at nearly 11.5″ by itself. But even the stock dual-GPU, 2GB memory, 725MHz/1,000MHz core/memory clock speeds aren’t enough (apparently) as XFX is developing an even faster, more ballsy version of the card.
These special edition XFX 5970 Black Edition cards will feature double the memory for a whopping total of 4GB, ensuring that no game for the next 12 months comes close to taxing this card. With the increase in memory means a thirsty appetite. The XFX Black Edition will require (2) 8-pin connectors, up from the (1) 6-pin and (1) 8-pin connectors of it’s “normal” cousin. Currently it’s unknown exactly the extent of the power draw, but the stock version still was able to come in under a single-GPU Nvidia GTX 480 — impressive.
Rounding out the insanity are 6 — yes, six — DisplayPort….ports to plug in extra monitors without the need for dinking around with adapters and daisy chaining tom foolery. The cherry on top of such an oh so sweet card such as this all starts with the presentation — the case. You’ll notice it’s shaped like an automatic weapon. Awesome. Definitely over the top, but definitely lust worthy none the less.
What about the price you say? Naturally, a card that can come this close to moving mountains won’t be cheap. XFX is looking at roughly $100 over the normal 5970 price meaning you the end user can expect to drop anywhere between $799 up to $849 and beyond as demand will surely drive prices up.
If I had any more organs to donate, you can bet I’d offer up one (maybe even two) to own this card. Anyone with unfathomably deep pockets looking at picking up a couple?
It used to be that you only were rewarded if you actually accomplished something worthwhile. The better you did, the more compensation. Nowadays however, we live in the age of bank bailouts, auto bailouts, tax cuts for those who don’t need it and so on. Failure is the best business as it gets you the most money. Sad really.
Along those lines, when we hear the name “Sprint”, failure is generally an accepted word that follows quickly soon after. In their defense, Sprint has managed to at least slow down the bleeding of customers over that last quarter or two. But losing customers quarter after quarter is hardly a reason to celebrate, much less reward the CEO for “performance”.
So what exactly is the price of failure? In Sprint’s case — $12.3 million. Now, it’s important to note that isn’t an outright cash amount but instead the total amount of compensation when all things are taken into account. Things such as 401(k) contributions, private jet flights here, there, and everywhere, security services, etc., etc. It’s also worth highlighting that while this compensation for performance is still grossly high, it is down from the previous year to the tune of 13%. Progress, but still a long way to go.
Why highlight this? There’s no real need actually. But I figured since we still here offhand comments about various bailouts around various different industries, why not highlight an exchanging of cash that in much the same as the other examples, is a ridiculous case of lost priorities.
Think ‘ol Hesse should have been paid so much for failing to convince millions of people to jump on board with his company, much less even retain the customers he he currently has?
Whenever you increase a particular computer part (such as a processor) with 50% more processing power, real world gains are sure to be evident. In the case of the i7 980X — the new hotness — do the two extra cores actually add any real benefit for that $1k pricetag? Two more prominent and thorough reviews by Benchmark Reviews and Anandtech reveal that while the 980X is faster, current software just isn’t making the most of those 12 threads of fury, resulting in what I would call, slightly less than anticipated speed. Not to mention, if you’re a gamer looking for their next processor, the premium in this case isn’t really worth it as the gains aren’t all that different from OC’d 920′s and 940′s. Don’t get me wrong, benchmarking software shows increases in speeds and power between 130 to almost 200% — nothing to shake a stick at. It’s just that everyday stuff that isn’t so noticeable yet.
Potential purchasers who can afford such luxury however shouldn’t be turned away. Give it 6-12 months. Once software developers really get the hand of this whole multi-threaded thing, the 6-core 980X will fly. Lust for it yet?
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