Posted 09/16/09 at 10:00:00 AM by Gordon Mah Ung

Even the Intel fanboys have to hand it to AMD once in a while. After Intel deftly dropped a Core i5 anvil on Phenom II’s head, AMD did a quick drop to floor and now fires back slo-mo style with its own chip: a $99 quad core.

Dubbed the Athlon II X4 620, this 2.6GHz quad core isn’t just leftover parts swept off the factory floor, either. The Athlon II X4 is based on the familiar K10 microarchitecture in the Phenom and Phenom II, but it’s actually a newer, smaller die. In fact, the new chip has less than half the transistors of a Phenom II X4 processor. Much of the shrinkage comes at the expense of cache. While the Phenom II packs 6MB of L3, the budget Athlon II X4 features none.

The TDP of the new Athlon II X4 chips (there are two, but only one is sub $100) is also considerably lower than the top-end Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition chip at 95 watts versus 140 watts. Other than the TDP and lack of L3 cache, the CPUs are essentially the same as their Phenom predecessors.

Read on for our full analysis, review, and benchmarks!

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Posted 09/08/09 at 10:00:00 AM by Gordon Mah Ung

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.

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Posted 04/20/09 at 08:20:59 PM by Pulkit Chandna

The One Laptop per Child project has chosen Via’s low-wattage C7-M processor for a revised version of its XO laptop. The inexpensive XO laptop currently ships with AMD’s Geode LX processor, but AMD has decided to retire the processor. OLPC has made it clear that the Via-powered XO laptop - which the OLPC has dubbed “Generation 1.5” – will not be a major hardware refresh.

"The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance," OLPC’s VP of hardware development, John Watlington, announced on Friday. The revised version, which is due in November, will feature 1GB DDR2 SDRAM (currently 256MB) and up to 8GB flash storage (currently 1GB). OLPC will abandon the x-86 processor platform and adopt an ARM-based processor in its stead as part of its Generation 2.0 refresh.

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Posted 02/09/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Who says AMD moves too slowly? Just a month after releasing its well regarded Phenom II mid-range CPUs, the company is back with no fewer than five new P-II chips and its new AM3 socket that support DDR3.

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Well, except when it’s a CPU war. In that case, it’s good for consumers. Really good for us. With the unveiling of five new AMD’s latest Phenom II CPUs supporting DDR3, it’s pretty clear that the CPU war that started with the unveiling of the Phenom II in January is escalating.

AMD’s new lineup includes the 2.6GHz Phenom II X4 for $175, the 2.8GHz Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition at $145, and the 2.6GHz Phenom II X3 710 for $125. AMD’s two other new chips: the 2.6GHz Phenom II X4 910 and the 2.5GHz Phenom II X4 805. The 910 and 805 are OEM only CPUs and pricing was not released but you can expect that gray-markets will carry them and that the prices will follow the numbers. The 805, for example, should be slightly cheaper than the $175 810 and the 910 should be cheaper than the $195 Phenom II X4 920.

Lost in the numbers? So where we. AMD’s lineup is so bewildering to us today that we had build a spread sheet just to sort it out! We give you the skinny on AMD’s latest quad and tri-cores and help you sort through AMD’s bewildering array of CPU choices.

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Posted 02/05/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Overclocking can kill your CPU. It can corrupt your OS, melt your motherboard, and cause you to lose a month’s work or more. Despite those dire orange-alert warnings, however, overclocking has moved on from the Nerd’s Only Club to become practically a mainstream hobby in the last few years.

So why overclock if the risks are so great? For some folks, it’s about bragging rights. Like drag-strip racers who burn up an engine just to set a quarter-mile record, there’s a small community who will overclock a CPU to the brink of destruction just to run a benchmark and take a screen shot of the result.

The bulk of overclockers, however, are more concerned with the cost dividends. If you can take a $300 CPU and make it as fast or faster than one that costs $1,000, the money you save can go toward other components in your system. For these folks, it’s like getting a free high-end videocard.

Whether you’re a cheapskate or a drag racer, you’ll find that Intel’s new Core i7 CPU is unlike any previous Intel CPU, and overclocking this beast requires more tinkering than you might expect. Follow along as we explore what it takes to push this chip hard.

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Posted 01/29/09 at 06:22:54 PM by Florence Ion

Stop the presses! (Ok, maybe not). We wanted to let you know that Best of the Best, our comprehensive list of our favorite PC hardware components, has just been updated and overhauled with new categories and parts that you’ll need to consider for your next PC build or upgrade.

In addition to three new processor categories (Extreme, $500, and $250), we’ve listed our pick for the top Core i7 motherboard. The budget through high-end GPU lineup as also been refreshed, and we now make two hard drive recommendations based on performance and capacity.

Check it out!

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Posted 01/14/09 at 03:16:55 PM by Andy Salisbury

It looks like Intel’s pricing on their lower-end quad-core processors will be reportedly going down on January 18th. This comes in the wake of AMD’s latest 45-nm Phenom II and Shanghai Opteron chips.

AMD’s newest quad-core beast, the Phenom II Dragon processor has been garnering some pretty high acclaim as of late. Its even being featured in servers by Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Dell, IBM and Fujitsu.

The cuts are expected to be on only the quad-core processors, but it’s still very much a possibility that other chips could receive cuts.

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Posted 12/11/08 at 04:17:45 PM by Andy Salisbury

While it’s presently believed that 22nm will be the maximum achievable process shrink using silicon, recent discoveries might allow chip makers to cut the 2020 goal set by Moore’s Law loose.

The discoveries come in the form of a manganese-doped germanium substrate, which will allow the creation of nanowires that can be easily magnetized. The magnetizing effect is reportedly showing “the potential of using these nanowires as building blocks for electronic devices,” such as “ferromagnetism above 300 K and a superior performance with respect to the hole mobility of around 340 cm2/Vs and other industrially relevant parameters.”

So what does all this mumbo-jumbo mean? Well, in short there’s a chemical element (number 32 on the periodic table, if you’ve got one handy) that, when mixed with a magnetic field, is showing some promise for chipmakers looking to break the 22nm barrier. With any luck, in the 10 years between today and the marked date for the 22nm barricade, the research will come full circle.

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