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CyberPower Announces USB 3.0 and SATA 6G for Entire Gamer Xtreme line

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:08:12 -0600

Intel has drawn a lot of flak from various quarters for delaying the adoption of USB 3.0 and SATA-III. But lesser known players seem far more eager to make the leap to these new standards. CyberPower has decided to include USB 3.0 and SATA-III in all the upcoming models in its Gamer Xtreme range of desktops.

“CyberPower customers can configure and order a Gamer Xtreme system with the super speed USB 3.0/SATA III interface today. With Intel's latest i5/i7 processors and P55/X58 chipsets, you'll enjoy maximum performance today and be ready for tomorrow. Both USB 3.0 and SATA III are backward compatible to assure users their current peripherals will not become obsolete,” the company said in a laconic press release. The Gamer Xtreme range starts at $749.

ECS Becomes Latest Company to Offer USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s Cards

Pulkit Chandna — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:16:50 -0600

Wish to experience the blazing speeds of USB 3.0 and/or SATA 6Gbps? Or do you just want something new to brag about to your friends? If yes, then an add-on card is the way to go for you, especially if you wish to live your USB 3.0/SATA 6Gbps dream on a shoestring.

A few days after Asus announced the world's first USB 3.0 /SATA 6.0 PCI-E card, ECS is also said to be ready to launch similar add-on cards. According to reports, it will release two separate PCI-E expansion cards, with one equipped with USB 3.0 and the other armed with SATA 6 Gb/s.

The USB 3.0 card features two ports on the rear panel. The SATA 6 Gb/s card on the other hand features one internal port and a lone eSATA 6 Gb/s connection. There is no word on the price or availability of the cards.

Image Credit: Xfastest

Now Available: Motherboards Equipped with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps

Jason Barry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:43:08 -0600

With some of the first USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices already released, the first capable motherboards are now available for purchase. Asus and Gigabyte were both known to be working on new boards earlier this summer and both companies are now shipping their latest models.

Asus is shipping two boards, one with a P55 chipset, and the other with an X58. Due to the single lane bandwidth bottleneck of the P55 chipset, Asus uses a bridge chip (PLX8613) and four PCIe lanes so the board can run in SLI and Crossfire modes. Gigabyte is shipping seven different boards in the P55A series. Gigabyte opted to avoid the bridge chip so dual-card modes will not be enabled in the board.

These motherboards are shipping despite delayed chipset releases from Intel supporting the latest interfaces. Manufacturers do not expect to have new Intel chipsets with USB 3.0 support until 2011.

Asus P7P55D-E-Premium

Exclusive: First USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Expansion Card, Will Sell For $30

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:45:07 -0500

If you were bummed like most of us that Intel’s shiny new P55 chipset didn’t include USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 support, Asus's new U3S6 should make you happy.

For a mere 30 smackers, the U3S6 card gives you two USB 3.0 ports and two SATA 6.0 ports in a PCI-E card. The card has three primary components: an NEC D720200F1 USB 3.0 controller, a Marvell 88SE9123 SATA 6.0 controller, and a PLX PEX8613. The PLX part is the same chip the company uses on its SATA6 boards to helps ameliorate a problem with the P55 chipset.

As you likely know, the LGA1156 CPUs moved PCI-E express controls directly into the CPU. In addition to the x16 PCIE-2.0 in the CPU, another 8 x1 PCI-E lanes are in the P55 chipset itself. On its motherboards, Asus said the PEX8613 chip gets plumbed into a x4 PCI-E in order to offer enough bandwidth for today’s drives. Running the Marvell chip directly into a PCI-E x1 would effectively cap any devices at 250MB/s. On the U3S6 card, bottlenecks are alleviated by running the card in a x4 PCI-E mode.

We gave the U3S6 card a whirl by firing it up in Windows 7 Ultimate. We unfortunately, did not have any USB 3.0 devices but the card performed on par with the USB 2.0 ports in the P55 board we tested. Likewise, we didn’t have a SATA6 drive available for testing at the moment but soon will.

Asus said the card is expected to available “soon” for about $30.

The NEC USB 3.0 Controller

The Marvell chip controls the two SATA6 ports

New Asus Motherboards Boast "True" USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s Compatibility

Paul Lilly — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:45:46 -0500

Intel may be content to wait until 2011 before jumping on the USB 3.0 bandwagon, but that isn't stopping third-party mobo makers from taking advantage of the SuperSpeed spec right now. Take Asus, for example, who has just launched a pair of motherboards the company claims features "true" USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s performance.

So what exactly is all this talk of 'true?' According to Asus, a special expansion bridge chip outfitted to its P7P55D and P7P55D-E series alleviates bandwidth constrictions for both the USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s controller chips, whereas other solutions might knock the theoretical bandwidth down by as much as 50 percent.

Other features of the new boards include CrossFireX and SLI support, eSATA, up to 10 USB 2.0 ports (and 2 USB 3.0 ports), Firewire, DDR3 2200 support, and full Windows 7 support.

Image Credit: Asus

Dane-Elec Hops on the USB 3.0 Bandwagon

Paul Lilly — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:42:00 -0500

Now that the spec has been finalized and controllers in mass production, we expect to see a lot of USB 3.0 devices in the coming weeks and months, particularly as companies look to brand their products as the "world's first" in their respective categories. Enter Dane-Elec, who claims its new line of external hard drives is the first to take advantage of the new spec (Freecom would disagree).

Plenty of storage options abound in the So SuperSpeed line, ranging in capacity from 500GB to 2TB. The series will also include Intel-branded USB 3.0 solid state drives (SSDs) with data transfer speeds of up to 250MB/s, Dane-Elec says. At full-bore, that's almost 10 times faster than currently available USB 2.0 devices.

Pricing for the new drives will start at $45 on the lower end and work its way up to $800. Catch a glimpse of the full lineup (with prices) here.

Image Credit: Dane-Elec via devicemag.com

2010 Technology Preview

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0500

We've seen the future and it's full of new and exciting hardware for power users

So much in life is unknowable. Will the economy rebound? Hard to say. Will oil prices skyrocket? Maybe, maybe not. Will Brangelina add to their brood? Frankly, we don’t care. But one thing’s for sure: Technology is ever-changing and each year guarantees new advances for the PC user.

As we do every year around this time, we got on the horn with our industry contacts—experts in their respective fields—and pressed them for details about what new and exciting hardware power users can look forward to in 2010. Some of what we learned was expected (SATA speeds will double), some came from out of left field (six 30-inch panels on a single videocard?!), and some just plain make sense (like a Nehalem chip for the masses).

Read on to find out how your personal computing landscape stands to be altered in the year ahead.

Core i7 Goes Mainstream

Intel's latest troika of new CPUs brings Nehalem goodness to the masses

Nehalem for everyone! That simple sentence best explains Intel’s brand-new series of CPUs, which is sure to please budget users everywhere while confounding power users.

Why would a new CPU that gives you the best bang for the buck in town be greeted nervously? Because Intel’s new CPU brings with it a new socket as well as a new infrastructure. This new infrastructure is essentially a fork in the road that forces users to make a difficult choice: Save money today but get locked out of the high-end, or splurge today knowing that the budget CPU is damn near as good as the top-end part.

For the details on Intel’s new budget monster, savor our full report, consume the specs, and then digest the benchmarks to see just which path your next PC should take.

AMD Pins Hope on 32nm Parts

New Orochi core, based on Bulldozer, will see the light in 2011

Even before Intel released its first Core i7 last year, AMD didn’t really have a part that could compete in the high end. Now the company says it will get back in the ball game—but not before 2011.

That’s when its enthusiast Orochi chip is expected to begin shipping. Based on the new “Bulldozer” modular microarchitecture, Orochi will have four or more cores and 8MB of cache, and dump support for DDR2 in favor of DDR3. The company originally hoped to have Bulldozer out much sooner using its existing 45nm process, but has had to postpone the chip so it can be built on a 32nm process. AMD’s fab partner, Global Foundries, won’t actually have that up and running until next year.

For mainstream users, AMD plans to release a version dubbed Llano. Llano will have 4MB of cache and DDR3 support, and some versions will feature integrated graphics cores.

Until Orochi and Llano arrive, however, AMD will have to rely on its existing Deneb and Propos cores. The big question that’s up in the air is whether Orochi will introduce a new socket design or not. AMD isn’t saying and observers seem split on whether AMD can continue to use the AM3 socket for the redesigned chip. Reusing AM3 would make the loyalists happy, and AMD has been far more careful not to force its users to buy new motherboards, so AM3-compatibility wouldn’t surprise us.

Still, with a new budget Core i5 part already faster at far lower clocks, 2011 is a long time away for the AMD faithful.

PCI Express 3.0

New spec removes bottlenecks and improves throughput, but when will we see it?

PCI Express 3.0 will offer a substantial increase in both bandwidth and efficiency over the existing PCI-E 2.0. A good thing, as bandwidth requirements are being pushed ever higher by the increasing capability of graphics cards, with frame buffers now at two gigabytes on high-end cards; increasing graphics features in DirectX 11; and demands made by multiple GPUs on a single card.

PCI Express 3.0 pushes the peak bandwidth from five to eight gigatransfers per second. The new standard will also use 128- and 130-bit encoding, rather than the current 8/10-bit encoding, which should improve efficiency. Additional features include optimizations for improved signaling and better data integrity, while maintaining backward compatibility with PCI Express 1.0 and 2.0 hardware.

However, it’s an open question as to when we’ll actually see PCI Express 3.0–capable hardware. The PCI-SIG, the standards body responsible for PCI Express 3.0, has pushed back the final definition for the new version until mid-2010, with hardware availability pushed to mid-2011. The strong need to ensure backward compatibility as well as a high degree of reliability have been cited as the reasons for the delay.

Even the new generation of DirectX 11 graphics cards, due to hit the streets this fall, will only be PCI-E 2.0 cards. The recently announced Intel P55 motherboards are also built with PCI-E 2.0 slots. The good news is that bandwidth limits aren’t likely to hit a wall with the new generation of GPUs. So, while it’s disappointing to see PCI Express 3.0 pushed back, we won’t suffer performance bottlenecks in the near term.

Graphics

Hang onto your wallets—a new generation of videocards is about to arrive

The speculation about AMD's Direct3D 11 graphics card offering has come to an end. AMD's Radeon 5870 is the fastest single-GPU videocard we've ever tested, packing 2.15 billion transistors and 1600 shader units into an RV870 chip built on the 40nm process.

What about Nvidia? The company has been uncharacteristically quiet about consumer graphics, instead touting design wins with its Tegra and Ion mobile platforms. It's next-generation Fermi chip has a focus on compute functionality (given Nvidia's heavy bet on CUDA), and we've yet to see performance numbers in consumer products like PC games, let alone any definitive release timeframe for Fermi graphics cards outside of the workstation market. This means that AMD has a substantial lead in the push to the next GPU generation.

Trailing behind AMD has got to hurt Nvidia’s pride, and allows AMD to play the pricing game—charging a little more for cards early on, before the competition can ship an equivalent GPU.

Nvidia should be racing to get its new GPUs out because the 900-pound gorilla that is Intel is readying its own GPU, code-named Larrabee. Based on a modified, multicore version of the venerable x86 architecture, with significant vector extensions, Larrabee is unlikely to ship until late Q1 or Q2 of 2010.

In some respects, these new GPUs will actually bring PC graphics hardware just a little closer to game consoles, as DirectX 11 builds on and enhances the tessellation features built into the Xbox 360 GPU. Hardware tessellation is a substantial departure from previous generations of DirectX, which used triangles and vertices as key graphics primitives. Instead, patches are passed to the tessellation pipeline, which contain control points that define areas within which triangles can be automatically generated by the hardware. This is different than previous approaches, which required the application to generate the triangles passed to the GPU.

What this means is that geometry can be automatically generated where it’s needed, allowing smoother curved surfaces. Using hardware tessellation also reduces the number of steps required by game artists to create the artwork, since they only have to create one representation of an object, instead of multiple versions for different levels of detail.

DirectX 11’s other major feature is compute shaders. Using graphics processors for general computing tasks has become a hot topic in the graphics world. Applications like video transcoding, certain Photoshop filters, and scientific applications lend themselves well to the massively parallel floating-point engines built onto graphics chips.

While the main target for DirectX 11 will be Redmond’s newly minted Windows 7 operating system, the new API will run on Windows Vista, as well (but not on Windows XP). Full DirectX 11 support will require new hardware, but a few of the features—particularly multithreading—will run on existing DX10-, DX10.1-, and DX9-capable hardware. So, even owners of older GPUs may see some performance improvements once DirectX 11 actually ships, late in 2009.

USB 3.0

Like USB 2.0, but 10 times as fast

The maximum data transfer speed of USB 2.0 is 480Mb/s, which was fine when it was invented. Now that you have to fill dozens of gigabytes of apps, music, and movies on your cell phone or iPod, it seems kind of pokey. Enter USB 3.0, dubbed SuperSpeed USB (2.0 is officially Hi-Speed USB). The new spec boosts transfer speeds 10x to 4.8Gb/s, which means in the real world you might see transfer speeds up to around 400 megabytes per second. It also operates in full-duplex mode, meaning the USB host can send and receive data simultaneously. All previous USB specs are half-duplex.

SuperSpeed USB ports will be backward compatible with Hi-Speed USB—of course, you won’t get the additional speed. You’ll notice that the ports and cables used for SuperSpeed mode are a little different, though. The heads are a little longer, with the additional pins for the SuperSpeed mode data extending beyond the usual USB plug.

Other nice additions to the spec include new power management modes and an increase in the base power load, so charging your USB 3.0–compatible devices may be 50–80 percent faster than with USB 2.0. The best part? Motherboards with USB 3.0 ports should start rolling out by the end of this year—if we’re lucky.

DisplayPort

Smaller, simpler, faster

DisplayPort is not so much an “upcoming” technology as an “already here” one. AMD, Dell, and Apple already ship a few products with DisplayPort support, for instance. This new VESA digital display connection standard is essentially a replacement for DVI for external monitors and LVDS for internal connections to notebook displays.

What’s so special about it? Well, the connector is smaller, simpler, and doesn’t have those annoying thumb screws that catch onto every cable like a grappling hook, for starters. The cables are slimmer, and a DisplayPort-only monitor could itself be slimmer—and cheaper.

Primarily, DisplayPort provides more data per wire than DVI. You know how you need a dual-link DVI cable to use a monitor with a resolution over 1920x1200? A “single-link” DisplayPort cable should provide enough bandwidth for 2560x1600, or deeper color modes. There’s also an auxiliary 1Mb/s bidirectional data channel that could be used to carry touch-screen data, data for a built-in microphone, etc. The spec supports HDCP content protection, but don’t expect it to replace HDMI on consumer electronics. Each will serve its own market. DisplayPort might pick up traction fastest in notebooks to replace LVDS to drive the display with fewer wires. Hinge space is already at a premium and crammed with wires, so less is more.

Touch

It's not just for your cell phone anymore

It seems like touch-screen technology is everywhere these days. The resistive touch screens seen on old Windows Mobile devices and the Nintendo DS are quickly being replaced by more finger-friendly capacitive multitouch technology (iPhone, Zune HD). It seems like every smartphone in the world and half the portable media players these days are built around the idea that you’ll operate them entirely by smearing your grubby fingers all over the screen.

Touch might be poised to enter the main computing world, too. Sure, you can get an HP TouchSmart all-in-one or a Tablet PC today, but those aren’t exactly the norm. Microsoft is desperately interested in touch technology these days, and where Microsoft goes, the PC industry often follows. Witness the Surface computer and Windows 7. The latest OS out of Redmond incorporates native touch controls throughout and a multitouch API for developers. Windows 7 is clearly designed primarily for a mouse, but the seeds have been planted.

All we need now is a proliferation of touch-screen PC hardware. We need desktop monitors that are touch-enabled, and notebooks with touch screens (that aren’t necessarily Tablet PCs). Building this kind of support into devices is getting cheaper all the time, but the push these days is to lower-cost PCs, not premium features. Will touch for mainstream PCs and notebooks take off? It’s hard to say, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Storage

Bigger, faster, solid-state-ier drives await in 2010

To say that in 2010, hard drives will get more capacious, faster, and cheaper is to state the obvious. Shelves have been stocked with 5,900rpm 2TB 3.5-inch drives for months, and Hitachi’s 7,200rpm 2TB drive comes out in September. But how will 2010 improve on that? Henry Fabian, executive director of marketing for Seagate, says, “We’ll see 3TB drives, probably even higher, as everyone’s vying in the areal density race.” But the more data you have, the harder it is to back up.

Three terabytes is way more storage than we estimate most desktop users will need—but then again, Maximum PC readers aren’t most users. Video editing takes up a lot of space, and those of us who back up our movies to hard drive will quickly find that 3TB holds only about 120 Blu-ray movies.

In the solid state market, expect capacity to go up quickly as prices come down—but maybe not as quickly. Troy Winslow, director of marketing at Intel’s NAND Solutions Group, says he expects solid state drives to double in capacity—at least. Already, we’re seeing lots of gaming PC vendors ship rigs with speedy SSDs for the OS and games, and terabyte-plus drives for storage; expect this to become even more mainstream as 2.5-inch SSDs approach 320GB—or even 500GB. But don’t expect them to match magnetic-drive prices any time soon.

We’ll also see widespread adoption of the TRIM command, which helps keep solid state drives performing at their fastest by informing the controller of empty blocks before a write cycle, so writing files to blocks containing deleted data goes faster. The command is implemented in Windows 7 and in the Linux kernel, and will be available in new drives as well as old drives (with a firmware update).

Is 2010 the year that solid state drives overtake standard hard drives in any sector?

It all depends who you ask. Troy Winslow says that in 2010 SSDs will “continue to displace high-rpm hard drives in enterprise applications, and standard HDDs in corporate and consumer laptops and enthusiast desktops.” But Henry Fabian doesn’t think so. “We don’t see flash today overtaking hard drives, in enterprise or anywhere else, until costs come down. Early adopters will have them, but they’re not ready for prime time,” says Fabian. He cites other concerns besides costs, saying solid state drives won’t replace magnetic enterprise drives until they can match the durability and reliability of enterprise drives. Intel and Hitachi, however, are betting that that happens in 2010, when they jointly release a line of SAS and fiber-channel SSDs.

What about magnetic hard drives with a large solid state cache? Several manufacturers released hybrid drives in 2007 and 2008, but the lines have been allowed to languish, leading many to wonder if the market segment is dead. We’d love to see terabyte-plus hard drives married to a few gigabytes of NAND for speed. Seagate’s Fabian wouldn’t tell us whether Seagate has any hybrid drives in the works, saying merely, “It’s a capacity game, so hybrids could definitely have a role. You get your capacity, with a little boost of speed. It makes perfect sense.”

6Gb/s SATA Will Give SSDs Some Growing Room

Expect 2010 to be the year of SATA 3.0, the 6Gb/s follow-up to the current 3Gb/s SATA spec. High-speed SSDs are already starting to bump up against the 3Gb/s ceiling with their read speeds, so SATA 3.0’s doubled speed gives SSDs some much-needed breathing room. SATA 3.0 also adds greater support for Native Command Queuing and better power management. Drives, motherboards, and adapters utilizing the new spec will appear before the end of 2009—expect announcements at the Intel Developer Forum in late September. We expect widespread adoption by the end of 2010.

Mobile Broadband

LMDS is dead, LTE and WiMax are coming

LMDS

Not too many years ago, it looked like LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution Service) was going to solve the "last mile" problem and bring broadband to rural areas, while enabling urbanites to roam around with their laptops at broadband speeds anywhere they go. It never really caught on. There are a few providers, but in practice the technology never really sees the 8-mile range or 1.5Gb downstream, 200 Mb upstream connection rates it promised. In reality, this relatively expensive and high-power technology is limited to less than 2 miles and rarely achieves high bandwidth rates. It's going to be all but killed by WiMAX and LTE.

WiMAX

Intel spearheaded the development of WiMAX, now ratified by IEEE in the 802.16d and 802.16e specifications. With speeds of over 100 Mbit/s downlink and 30 Mbit/s uplink, WiMAX has been poised as both a "last mile" solution for bringing broadband to rural areas and a 4G solution for mobile phones and notebooks. Sprint has fallen way behind on their promised WiMAX rollout, and other carriers are opting for LTE as their 4G technology of choice. It's far from a dead technology, though, especially since it's so technically similar to LTE. Clearwire, which is mostly owned by Sprint, plans to roll out WiMAX service to quite a few major metropolitan areas over the next year.

LTE

The 3GPP Long Term Evolution or "LTE" technology looks very hot...on paper. As with WiMAX, this "4G" technology is an all-IP based, low latency network that could truly be called mobile broadband. With enough antennas, bandwidth should be 2-3x what WiMAX offers. Early devices won't show off the full speed, but you could still see notebooks and smartphones getting 10+ Mbit/s with low latencies. Best of all, it seems as if every cell company (save Sprint) has jumped on the LTE bandwagon for their 4G rollout. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Rogers Wireless and Telus in Canada, and many others around the world are all adopting LTE and rolling out service over the next year or two. Fortunately, the fundamental radio technology and communications protocols between LTE and WiMAX are so similar that some chipmakers are simply building one chip that can be configured to work with either standard.

Multiscreen Madness

If you think a 30-inch monitor insufficient, how about gaming on six?

Today’s graphics cards can barely handle one 30-inch monitor in gaming. Pushing around 2560x1600 pixels is a challenge for current-generation GPUs. While it’s true that each new generation of graphics cards can push performance, we weren’t quite prepared for the preview AMD gave us of its upcoming DirectX 11–capable graphics hardware.

AMD ushered us into its Sunnyvale, CA, test lab, where it had a high-end system set up with a single graphics card. AMD would only disclose that the card had a single GPU, and was one of the company’s upcoming DirectX 11–capable chips—nothing about the amount of video RAM, clock speeds, or anything else. This particular graphics card also sported six DisplayPort connectors. Attached to each DisplayPort connector was a 30-inch Dell display. The whole affair was configured as a single, 7680x3200 monitor. That's 24.6 megapixels!

Sure, you say, you can hook up six monitors and run Windows… but can it do 3D?

The short answer: yes, in spades. We witnessed the flight sim XPlane 9 running at full resolution, as well as Far Cry 2. Also shown was the flying ship scene from 3DMark 2006, running at a full 7680x3200, at between 12 and 20 frames per second. Dubbed Eyefinity, the tech demo was an amazing tour de force, and we can’t wait to get our hands on one of those cards.

Buffalo to Ship First USB 3.0 HDDs within the Month

Paul Lilly — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:00:36 -0500

Buffalo, who has offices in Japan, USA, Germany, UK, Ireland, and Taiwan, is well on its way to being the first to release a USB 3.0 hard drive. On Tuesday, the networking and storage company said its HD-HU3 series of USB 3.0 external hard drives would be the "world's first" to ship to retailers, Engadget reports.

The company also plans to offer NEC's IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI-Express x1 host controller because, well, what good is a USB 3.0 drive without a controller to take advantage of it?

But before we get ahead of ourselves, it appears the drives will only be available in Japan when they ship later this month. According to Engadget, the 1TB model will run about $225 after the exchange rate, while the 1.5TB will cost $284. Later on, Buffalo plans to release a 2TB model, which will sell for around $530. Add another $60 for the controller.

Image Credit: Buffalo via Engadget