Mobile Platform Wars: AMD vs. Intel

AMD has fallen on some hard times, dating back to the launch of Intel's Core 2 lineup in the fall of 2006. Many enthusiasts have been feeling quite anxious, holding out hope that Barcelona would mark the return of yesterday's AMD, where the K8 architecture basically scored a knockout punch for the underdog, but the chances of that occurring are becoming increasingly unlikely. At least in terms of raw performance, Intel has a roadmap in place that should keep the heavyweight belt firmly in their grasp. However, as many people are ready to point out, performance isn't everything. Is there some truth to that statement, or is it a convenient phrase that merely serves as an excuse? That's what we're here to find out.It's no secret that the mobile PC market trails the desktop and server markets quite a bit in terms of computational power. Quad-core desktop systems are becoming increasingly common, and octal-core workstations and servers are more affordable than ever before. Bounce back to the mobile market and you will find plenty of dual-core offerings, but only at lower clock speeds. Laptops also come with slower memory, hard drives (with the exception of the new solid-state models), graphics chips, and system buses. Not surprisingly, for about $1500 you can build a high-quality desktop system that is capable of outperforming even the fastest notebook currently on the market. On the other hand, you can't easily take such a system on the road with you - and you certainly can't use it in an airplane or car. And if you want to talk about performance per watt, many notebooks are able to offer competitive performance to desktop systems that consume two or three times as much power.In fact, compared to one year ago, about the only significant changes to the desktop performance landscape are the addition of quad-core CPUs and extreme performance graphics chips, neither of which are really necessary for a large number of computer users. Businesses in particular don't require such amenities, as they are rarely running their computers at full load and they don't tend to run a lot of 3D applications (aka "games"). Adding higher performance parts to such an environment would simply increase energy usage without necessarily increasing productivity. Throw in the mobility factor of notebooks, and there are a lot of businesses that are getting away from traditional desktops and moving towards using laptops for most of their employees. (There are exceptions of course, so we are speaking about typical businesses - game developers, 3D animation studios, and other high-performance computing companies can and do continue to use desktops and workstations.)A couple months ago, AMD quietly launched their newest update to their mobile Turion X2 processor line. The latest addition is the TL-66, which increases the maximum clock speed to 2.3GHz, an admittedly small bump in performance relative to the TL-64 that runs at 2.2GHz. However, the TL-66 also holds the distinction of being one of the first 65nm Turion X2 parts to hit the market. The Brisbane core was AMD's first 65nm part, and while that part wasn't much faster than the previous 90nm offerings it did lower power requirements somewhat. With a more mature 65nm process, it certainly makes sense for AMD to migrate their mobile CPU production to the new fabrication facilities. We've got HP's 6515b business laptop in-house for testing, equipped with both a TL-60 and a TL-66 processor, so we will be able to see exactly what has changed (if anything) with AMD's new mobile CPU.Naturally, we also want to look at how AMD's fastest Turion X2 compares to Intel's latest Core 2 Duo laptop processors. As we want to keep the system configurations as similar as possible, we will be focusing on performance compared to HP's dv6500t, which is based off of Intel's Santa Rosa platform. It's also noteworthy that both of these notebooks use integrated graphics, so we will also take a moment to look at the current state of IGPs. These are not strictly apples-to-apples comparisons, but by the time we're through with the benchmarks we should have a fair idea of how the two mobile platforms currently compare to each other.

HP Blackbird 002 Revisited

A few weeks back, we provided our initial review of HP's Blackbird 002. What we found was a very interesting and exotic design, but without more information on pricing and availability it was difficult to come to any final conclusions. In fact, we were almost left with more questions than answers, so we spent some time talking to HP Gaming's CTO (and VoodooPC founder) Rahul Sood and the Blackbird sales team. There are still some questions that we weren't able to get answered, but we did get a lot of good material and we felt it would be worthwhile to revisit the Blackbird as well as HP's Gaming division.One of the first things that might be a bit confusing for some people is how HP Gaming relates to VoodooPC. While HP bought out VoodooPC last year, they continue to exist as a separate brand (though still under the HP corporate umbrella). You can still go out and purchase a VoodooPC computer, and you will get the same thing that you always got from Voodoo: extreme attention to detail, premium components, and prices that might just leave you gasping for breath. VoodooPC is as much a status symbol as anything, and while the performance and construction is definitely top-notch, the simple truth is that we just don't see many people being willing to plunk down as much as $10,000 (or more!) on hardware that is going to be second-tier performance in 12 months.This gets into one of those dirty little secrets about computers that some companies don't like to discuss. AnandTech of course isn't one of those companies, so let's air the dirty laundry. There are a few truths about extreme performance computer hardware. First, naturally, is that it costs quite a bit of money. Second, you generally get rapidly diminishing returns as you move up the performance ladder. Third, newer and faster products are always just six to twelve months away. Finally, if you take the top performing parts currently on the market and slap them together in a system, the difference in performance between something manufactured by a boutique computer shop (VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Alienware, etc.) and something built in your parents' basement is, generally speaking, negligible.These aren't the only truths, of course. Another point that frequently comes up in enthusiast circles is that overclocking - particularly of CPUs - can save you a truckload of money. Practically speaking, there is no difference in performance between a QX6850 running at 3.0GHz and an overclocked Q6600 running at the same speed (9x333). With the right cooling, you can most likely push both processors up to around 3.5-3.6GHz (9x400), and performance will remain equal. What you do get with the QX6850 is more flexibility and (typically) slightly lower voltages. The unlocked multiplier on the QX6850 (and all of the Core 2 Extreme line) means that adjusting front side bus speeds isn't only way to affect the CPU clock speed. However, it's difficult to find a good reason to spend over three times as much on the CPU just for convenience. The best reason to purchase a Core 2 Extreme is honestly if you're not planning on overclocking and you want the best possible guaranteed performance. In that case, you might be more interested in a factory overclocked - and warrantied - system like the Blackbird.The take away from all of this discussion is that our real question in regards to something like the Blackbird 002 is: what can it add to the computing experience that isn't directly related to raw performance? With a bit more time using the system, more configuration options available, and a lot more details on pricing, we should be able to answer that question.

Foxconn MARS: Lab Update

We recently took a first look at the Foxconn MARS motherboard and discovered that Foxconn is finally headed down the right path when it comes to product offerings in the enthusiast sector. Our initial testing of the MARS board revealed a product that is capable of competing with other mid-range enthusiast boards but does not stand out from the crowd. However, the MARS board does provide a very competitive feature set which includes a BIOS design that caters to the overclocking crowd. This is a vast departure for a company that is heavily involved in the OEM sector.

Foxconn has been busy over the past couple of weeks and is now ready to launch their new Quantum Force product line that will focus on providing very good price to performance products for the enthusiast. With the initial launch of the Intel P35-based Foxconn MARS motherboard also comes the first official retail BIOS release for the board. Foxconn provided the P06 release to us a few days ago and after testing it, we decided to provide a quick update to our original article that utilized the P03 BIOS.We are glad to report that the P06 BIOS did not break, damage, or harm any objects or personnel in the labs this last week. To cut to the chase, the P06 BIOS did provide some very minor performance improvements, reduce voltage requirements when overclocking, and generally remained extremely stable throughout testing. Foxconn has been extremely diligent in addressing problems and providing solutions quickly during our testing. This bodes well for future customer support in our opinion although the proof is in the pudding as we will find out shortly as the boards are shipping now.Not all is perfect with the BIOS release as we still cannot get 2x2GB or 4x2GB configurations to work correctly and there are a few tuning improvements that we would like to see addressed quickly. These improvements include improved 4:5 memory ratio performance when overclocking, ability to manually set the memory straps, drop the quick shutdown and reboot procedure after completing minor FSB or memory settings, and further balancing of memory/chipset timings during overclocking (they tend to be very tight or very loose). With that said, we are going to take a quick look at the board's performance with the P06 BIOS now.

Test Setup
Processor=Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600Quad 2.4GHz, 2x4MB Unified Cache, 9x Multiplier, 1066FSB
CPU Voltage=1.200V Stock
Cooling=Thermalright 120 eXtreme
Power Supply=OCZ 1000W
Memory=Corsair Twin2x2048-10000C5DF
Memory Settings=4-4-4-12 (DDR2-1066)
Video Cards=MSI HD X2900 XT 512MB
Video Drivers=ATI Catalyst 7.9
Hard Drive=Western Digital 7200RPM 750GB SATA 3/Gbps 16MB Buffer
Optical Drives=Plextor PX-B900A, Toshiba SD-H802A
Case=Cooler Master Stacker 830 Evo
BIOS=P.03
Operating System=Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Our test setup did not change except for the BIOS update and all settings were maintained the same, as much as possible, over the platforms tested. Our game tests are run at settings of 1280x1024 HQ to ensure our MSI HD 2900XT is not the bottleneck during testing. All results are reported in our charts and color-coded for easier identification of results. So, let's take a quick look at the results.

AMD's Newest TV Wonder: Clear QAM For The Masses

For a while now, we've been able to watch over the air (OTA) channels and analog cable on our PCs. TV tuners are nothing new. The ability to turn an HTPC into a DVR is quite nice trick. Unfortunately, there are limitations. Many current TV tuners lack the ability to tune in digital cable channels. For viewers in our area, this means anything above channel 75 is out of reach. But there are options for those who want to watch unencrypted digital cable (the channels that come with a basic digital cable subscription) on their PC. The least desirable option is to connect a cable box to the PC. This gets in the way of easily scheduling recordings and the like. Alternately, you can pick up a TV tuner that supports Clear QAM (the type of modulation used to for digital cable). While a TV tuner that supports Clear QAM can tune in some digital cable channels, PC owners still won't be able to watch premium or pay-per-view content without a solution that supports a cable card. And even with a cable card, PC owners aren't able to take advantage of on demand video features. While technologically feasible, the industry has not yet decided on standards for opening up their networks to the two way communication necessary for on demand and similar functionality. Today, AMD joins Hauppauge and Pinnacle in offering Clear QAM TV tuners for the PC. This is basically a refresh of the TV Wonder 6xx line-up, as the only major difference is the addition of Clear QAM support for digital cable. This does come with some caveats though. Let's take a look at AMD's new TV Wonder lineup.