Mobile Buyers' Guide, December 2009

Upper Midrange: $1150 to $1500

Naturally, you can add even more upgrades to many of the laptops mentioned so far to get them into this price range. If you purchased a laptop that doesn't get great battery life, you might consider adding a high capacity battery, or a second battery (or two) if you need to go untethered for a while. Batteries can be quite expensive, however, and the need to hibernate/resume when swapping batteries can be an annoyance.

The short summary of the upper midrange price segment is that you can get faster versions of midrange laptops. Where before you had to decide between either a faster GPU or a quad-core CPU, it's now possible to get both in a single system. You can also upgrade LCDs on some laptop models from large OEMs, like the Studio XPS 16 where the 1080p RGB LED LCD adds $250 to the price. If you want a good LCD, there's a lot to like with the Studio XPS 16 (and presumably any other RGB LED LCDs, though they're hard to find).

The big problem with laptops once you get into this price range is that many are unbalanced in one fashion. Ultra-fast CPUs with low-end GPUs are usually unnecessary, and in fact most laptop users rarely need the fastest CPU options. Adding $250 to move from a P8600 to a T9700 is a lot of money for a small increase in performance; a good SSD would almost certainly be a far more noticeable upgrade (albeit with less capacity). Let's talk about our two top recommendations for this price bracket, representing very different computing styles.

Another Good LCD

Dell has been doing some pretty nice sales during the holidays and the Dell Studio XPS 16 is currently going for $1049 ($309 instant savings). We'd add the 1080p RGB LED, HD 4670 GPU, and a 9-cell battery to get the price to $1444. At that point, you can decide if that's all you need or if you'd like an SSD, Blu-ray drive, a faster CPU, or perhaps a different color chassis - we like the white chassis, as the black casing is a fingerprint magnet. Some of the options obviously push the Studio XPS 16 into high-end territory, and without the rebate it's difficult to get a reasonably configured system for under $1500. For a good LCD, it's going to be difficult to beat this particular Dell (even if the contrast ratio is "only" 500:1).

Midrange Gaming II

If you're after raw performance, one of the best candidates we've tested is the ASUS G51J. It comes loaded with just about everything you could want, outside of battery life. The G51J uses the latest Core i7-720QM CPU, which provides four CPU cores with four additional virtual cores via Hyper-Threading. The standard clock speed of 1.6GHz is a limitation for heavily threaded tasks, but the Turbo modes allow single-threaded clock speeds of up to 2.8GHz. The net result is that it provides plenty of speed for most users and is plenty fast for gaming laptops that don't use multiple GPUs.

On the graphics side, ASUS includes a GeForce GTX 260M (similar to the 9800M GT but clocked faster). It's not as fast as desktop GTX 260 cards, but it's fast enough to run many games at the native 1920x1080 LCD resolution and high detail settings. Laptops with GTX 280M are about 20% faster in GPU limited situations, but they also cost several hundred dollars more - we'll discuss those options in the high-end category. The G51J also includes 4GB DDR3 memory and two 320GB 7200RPM hard drives (not in RAID by default). The LCD is a low contrast panel, and battery life maxes out at around 90 minutes (with a relatively small 53Wh battery), but those are the only complaints we have with the G51J. ASUS also has a "3D" model with NVIDIA's 3D VISION glasses and a 120Hz LCD, but the cost for that upgrade is an extra $250.

Really, if you're interested in an affordable gaming laptop, just try to find anything with (in order of decreasing performance) a GTX 260M, 9800M GTX/GT, 8800M GTX, GTS 260M, GTS 160M/9800M GTS (essentially the same thing), 9800M GS, GTS 250M, GTS 150M, or 8800M GTS. Yes, that's a completely confusing list, and that's just the NVIDIA side of things! All of those chips have at least 64 SPs and as many as 112 SPs (for the GTX 260M), with 256-bit memory interfaces. They can all handle 1280x800 at high detail, and 1440x900 for nearly all of the GPUs (with a few games causing problems). You'll want the 96 SPs or more to run 1680x1050 and 1080p resolutions.

On the ATI side, there are quite a few theoretical chips that we're waiting to see in actual laptops, and we're not sold on their mobile drivers. They've updated drivers a couple times with the Win7 launch, but it's not clear if that's the way of things to come or if that was just a short-term decision to get Win7 performance up to snuff. The fastest single-GPU ATI solution that we're aware of is the HD 4850 which shipped in the MSI GT725, but finding that laptop in stock anywhere is a crapshoot at best; performance would be competitive with the GTX 260M should you find one, but pricing is generally going to be above $1500. A rumored Mobility Radeon HD 5670 may come out at some point, but it's not shipping. In fact, the fastest shipping ATI solution that you can find for under $1500 is going to be the Mobility Radeon HD 4670, which has half as many stream processors (320) as the HD 4830. You can find this GPU in the Dell Studio XPS 16, which we already discussed.

ASUS Eee PC 2G Surf

Introduction

The ASUS Eee PC has seen its share of both praise and criticism. Today we're looking at the recently released 2G Surf model. This is a continuation of our earlier coverage of the Eee PC 4G.

The box of the 2G Surf is well packed. A support CD is included with Windows XP drivers, along with a Windows XP Installation Guide. There is also a Linux recovery CD. Naturally, to use the CD (or install XP), you'll need a USB optical drive.

This is the Galaxy Black model, but the 2G Surf is also available in Pure White, Sky Blue, Lush Green, and fetching Blush Pink. The DVD case shown for scale - the Eee is small. The unit comes with simple key and screen protectors for shipping.

Price Guides, August 2005: Labor Day CPUs

Athlon 64

While the dual core processors are stealing the limelight, AMD's current generation Venice and San Diego (revision "E") processors continue to drop in price since our last guide. The prices of these units have finally dropped below their older 130nm Hammer, Newcastle, and Winchester counterparts. One particularly interesting chip we would like to showcase is the "E6" Venice [RTPE: Venice E6]. These Venice chips have the same memory controller as the dual core Manchester and Toledo chips, and thus they support AMD's new memory divider. Since there is virtually no premium on the E6 Venice chips, the new memory controller might be worth reading up about.

Since our last guide, there have been some significant price drops. Check out how the Athlon 64 San Diego 3700+ [RTPE: ADA3700BNBOX] has performed over the last few weeks:

AMD Athlon 64 (939) 3700+ 1MB San Diego

The Athlon 64 San Diego 3700+ processor caught our eye this week at only $255. Although prices on the 3800+ continue to plateau, the 4000+ is beginning to drop to more reasonable prices.

Product	Vendor	Price	Shipping	Total	Change	Details

We continue to recommend against anyone buying a Socket 754 computer, unless you plan on putting one of those fairly powerful Sempron chips inside. The Socket 939 easily outclasses the Socket 754 offerings, however if you're looking to build a decent budget PC or upgrade an older machine, 754 may be the way to go. Below is a listing of our Socket 754 Athlon prices; we strongly suggest going with a Socket 939 motherboard and CPU instead.

Caustic Graphics: Hardware Raytracing

Today we have a new add-in board coprocessor in town. Caustic Graphics has announced their CausticOne hardware and CausticGL API which will enable hardware accelerated raytracing. We are reminded of Ageia's venture into dedicated hardware for physics, but Caustic Graphics seems to be taking a more balanced approach to bringing their hardware to market. The goal is to start at the top where cost is no object and get developers interested in and working with their hardware before they bring it to the end user.

Pixar and other studios that make heavy use of computer generated animation for films tend to have render farms that can take seconds, minutes or even hours to render. With full length films lasting about 150000 frames (plus or minus), that time really adds up. Those that need to render one frame as near reality as possible (say car designers doing preliminary visualization of a new model) can kick off rendering jobs that take days to complete. These guys put tons of cash into their computer systems. Time is money and if Caustic can save these guys more time than it would cost them to buy the hardware and port their software, then Caustic will do well.

The long term goals might have something to do with gaming, but we definitely aren't looking at that option right now. By trying to penetrate the market at the back end like this, Caustic Graphics may avoid the pitfalls we saw Aegia run into. Of course, at this point it is unclear whether or not the end user will even need a dedicated raytracing card by the time the hardware makes it to market. With current GPUs getting faster all the time, CPUs becoming increasingly parallel, and Larrabee on the horizon, there are quite a number of factors that will affect the viability of a part like this in consumer space.

Regardless, Caustic Graphics is here and ready to start making an impact. Their SDK should be available to developers today, with hardware soon to follow. Before we take a deeper look at what Caustic Graphics is offering, let's talk a little bit about the differences between rasterization (what current GPUs do) and raytracing (what the Caustic Graphics hardware will accelerate).

Istanbul versus Nehalem, some extra notes

My last post generated quite a bit of discussion, some of it based on misunderstandings. In this post I'll try to make a few things more clear. In a previous post, I pointed out that there are a good indications that a dual Nehalem EP has a 40 to 100% advantage over Shanghai (depending on the application, based on the SAP and Core i7 workstation benchmarks).

If Istanbul is introduced in the early part of H2 2009, AMD will have a small window of opportunity of competing with a hex-core versus a quad-core (Intel's Nehalem EP). Time will tell of course how small, large or non-existing this window will be.

In well threaded applications, the best a "hex-core Shanghai" can do is give about a 30-40% boost to performance compared to the current Shanghai, which is most likely not enough to close the gap with the upcoming Nehalem CPU (let alone the 32 nm hex-core version). However, Istanbul is more than a hex-core Shanghai. The improved memory controller and HT-assist can lower the latency of inter-CPU syncing and increase the effective memory bandwidth. For that reason, Istanbul will do better than just "a shanghai with 2 added cores" in many applications such as SAP, OLTP databases, Virtualization scenario's and HPC. Depending on the application, Istanbul might prove to be competitive with the quad-core Nehalem. It is clear that the hex-core "Westmere" which will have a slightly improved architecture will be a different matter.

But back to the "this higher amount of bandwidth will allow the quad Istanbul to stay out of the reach of the dual Nehalem EP Xeons" comment. It is very embarrassing, and simply bad PR if a quad socket platform is beaten by a dual socket platform in any benchmark. This is something we have witnessed in the early SAP numbers. That is why I commented that the improved "uncore" will help the quad socket Istanbul to stay out of the reach of the dual Nehalem EP. I was and am not implying that people who would consider a dual Nehalem EP are suddenly going to consider a quad Istanbul.

It is clear those looking for a 4S and 2S server are in a slightly overlapping but mostly different market. Quad socket is mostly chosen for large back end applications such as OLTP databases or for virtualization consolidation. The number of DIMM slots in that case is a very important factor. However, even with the advantage of having more DIMM slots, better RAS etc., a quad socket platform that cannot outperform a dual socket platform will leave a bad taste in the mouth of potential buyers. It is important that there is a minimal performance advantage.

The fact that the performance/power ratio of such a quad server will be worse than a dual socket server is an entirely different discussion. IBM's market research (see the picture below) shows which form factor is bought mostly for consolidating VMs. As you can see it comes down to some people being convinced that a number of 4-socket rack servers is the best way, others are firm believers that about twice as much low power 2-socket blades is the way to go. It is very hard to convince the latter or former group to switch sides and that is why I feel that 2S and 4S servers are mostly in different markets.

In many cases, the number of virtual machines you can consolidate on one physical server is mostly a function of the amount of RAM. If the number of DIMM slots allows you to consolidate twice as many virtual machines on the quad socket machine, the consumed energy might be better than using two DP machines with the same number of DIMMs.

So despite the fact that the two DP machines have a lot more CPU power, the "scale up" buyers still prefer to go for a large box with more memory; they are not limited by raw CPU power, but by the amount of RAM that they can put in this server. It is these people that AMD will target with their 4S platform, a platform which has - especially for virtualization - a number of advantages over the current Intel 4S "Dunnington" platform... at least until Intel's octal-core arrives. Whether you choose the 2S blades or 4S rack servers depends on whether you believe in the "scale up" or "scale out" philosophy.

The conclusion is that many 4S rack servers are not only bought for raw CPU performance, but for the amount of RAM, their RAS features, and so on. However, it is clear that a 4S server should still outperform 2S servers so that the group of buyers who are believers in the "scale up" philosophy feel good about their purchase.

The basic "Server Building Block" for your virtual infrastructure

If you read our last article, it is clear that when your applications are virtualized, you have a lot more options to choose from in order to build your server infrastructure . Let us know how you would build up your "dynamic datacenter" and why!

vApus for Open Source: Creating a virtualized stress test

If you've been keeping up with our articles for a while, you might have picked up on vApus Mark I: the virtualized stress test we created for internal use at the Sizing Servers testlab.

As detailed in Johan's article, this bench consists of 3 separate applications, all of which we are very familiar with due to extensive optimization and stress testing efforts. Although we believe the results published based on this bench speak for themselves, the problem remained that it was impossible for anyone outside our lab to verify the results, seeming as how two out of three of the applications used were owned by private companies and were entrusted to our lab under rather strict conditions (distributing them to the rest of the world sadly not being one of them).

Secondly, vApus M1 being a bench that focuses on fairly heavy VM's, we feel the need to create another point of reference. One that will back up the results of the original, but with a completely different mix of VM's.

Thus began the process of creating vApus For Open Source, or vApus FOS, as we like to call it in the lab.

The idea behind vApus FOS is that the VM's can be freely distributed to any vendors that wish to verify our results, and our lab can provide a version of the actual in-house developed vApus benching software to generate the load.

I am happy to say that the preliminary 1-tile testing for this new benchmark has just completed, and so far everything has been running quite smoothly. The results are reproducible, the VM's stable... looks like our 4-tile (16 VM's in total) testing can begin!

The fun part is that a lot of the ideas we incorporated into the new setup we owe to you, our readers! Thanks to the feedback we got on vApus M1, we were able to combine some new workloads into an interesting mix:

As it stands, one tile consists of 4 VM's, all of which run a basic, minimal CentOS 5.4.

VM1 runs an Apache webserver and MySQL database, hosting a phpbb3-forum. The VM is given 2 vCPU's and 1GB RAM.

VM2 runs the same setup as VM1, but is only given 1 vCPU.

VM3 runs a fully configured mailserver using Postfix, Courier and a Squirrelmail frontend. This VM is assigned 2 vCPU's and 1GB RAM.

VM4 runs a separate MySQL OLAP database, using InnoDB as its storage engine. This machine is also assigned 2 vCPU's and 1GB RAM.

The goal is currently to get a 4-tile test going on a 16-core machine, meaning that the hypervisor will have to account for 28 vCPU's in total. This should prove to be a very interesting exercise for the scheduler. Of course, this VM setup can be made to work perfectly fine in an OpenVZ environment as well, meaning we can finally do some real world testing on alternative Linux-based virtualization solutions as well.

We thought we'd keep you updated on the progress of our research. As any experienced IT professional will know, well thought-out server technology testing takes time, and it's important to realize the amount of steps required to produce results that can immediately be applied in the real world.

Stay tuned for our first testing results, they should be rolling in very soon now!

Cloud computing in 2010: let us get practical

Cloud Computing was probably the most popular buzzword of 2009. There was a lot of hype, but basically, cloud computing is about using the large datacenters of the Internet to your advantage. Either by copying the methods they use to be very scalable and available and applying them in your own datacenter (what VMware is partly trying to do with their "private Cloud", "vCloud"), by outsourcing your infrastructure (PaaS, SaaS) to an external datacenter via the Internet or most likely some hybrid form.

In 2010, all the hype and buzz should materialize. Will you use a form of cloud computing?

Expensive Quad Sockets vs. Ubiquitous Dual Sockets

The answer was simple: "You cannot compare a truck with a sports car." The question? "What is point of the hex-core Xeon MP now that we have servers based on the Xeon 5500 series?" The excellent performance of the new Xeon DP platform has put Intel's own quad socket platform in an uneasy spot and the marketing people now have to resort to "fuzzy logic" to combat the feeling that the Xeon MP platform is obsolete since the end of March 2009. Comparing the dual socket Nehalem servers with sports cars and the heavy quad socket "Dunnington" systems with trucks might look like a decent analogy at first, but both the DP and MP platform are made for the same reason: do your processing work. There is nothing that prevents you from using a Xeon DP X5550 server instead of a Xeon 7460 one as a database backend: they can perform the same tasks. However, moving your furniture with a Lamborghini instead of a truck might prove to be quite a challenge.

Does it matter for you, the IT professional? Yes, and the reason is once again… virtualization. Choosing between a dual and quad socket server used to be simple: use the latter for the heavy backend applications, the former for everything else. But do you build your virtual infrastructure on top of quad socket or dual socket machines? The dual socket servers are much cheaper than the quads, you can easily get two and still save some money compared to buying a quad machine. However, two dual machines have four power supplies if you want redundancy, and when running 10 critical applications on a machine redundancy is something you cannot afford to ignore. Most quad socket machines are more redundant and reliable. Since the quad market is less ruled by price/performance and slower to evolve, manufacturers can afford to spend more time and money working on the reliability of their machines. One 2U quad machine will also have more expansion slots than two 1U dual socket machines.

Do you get a few quad socket machines or (slightly less than) twice as many dual socket servers? It is not as clear cut a decision as it used to be. This article will compare the power and performance of the current AMD and Intel quad and dual platforms, giving you some of the information you need to make a well informed decision. Please share your own experiences with the dual and quad socket question, we are eagerly awaiting them.

AMD's 2010/2011 Roadmap from the IT Professional’s Perspective

At its recent financial analyst day, AMD disclosed processor and platform roadmaps for 2010 and 2011. As the target public consisted mainly of financial analysts, the presentations focused more on AMD’s strategy and competitiveness than on technical accuracy. We had a conference call with John Fruehe and Phil Hughes of AMD and we tried to find out what the new server CPU roadmap means for our readers, the IT professionals who actually configure and buy these servers.

Compared to the mobile and desktop market, AMD is doing relatively well in the server and HPC market. The early delivery of the six-core Opteron (codenamed Istanbul) enabled Cray to build the fastest supercomputer in the world (at least for Q4 2009). It's called the the Cray XT5-HE “Jaguar” with 224162 cores, good for almost 1.76 million GFlops. The Opteron EE made heads turn in the low power cloud computing market, and the six-core Opteron is a good price/performance alternative in the rest of the server world. And last but not least, the 4-socket 84xx Opterons are the unchallenged champions in the quad socket world.

Nevertheless, AMD’s position in the server and HPC market is seriously threatened. An impressive 95 out of the top 500 supercomputers contain Intel's "Nehalem-EP" Xeon 5500 processors. Intel’s star has been rising fast in the HPC market since the introduction of the Intel Xeon 5500. Intel’s Nehalem EX is almost ready to attack the quad socket market. And there's more.

AMD created a very “cool” niche market with the 40W ACP (60W TDP) Opteron EE. Large power limited datacenters bought these CPUs in quantities of a few (and more!) thousands at once. Just a few months ago, Intel also introduced a 45 Watt Xeon L3426 at 1.86 GHz based on their Lynfield core (LGA1156 socket). Considering that AMD’s ACP numbers are rather optimistic and Intel’s TDPs are rather pessimistic, the 8-thread quadcore 1.86 GHz L3426 ($284) makes the six-core 1.8 GHz Opteron 2419EE look expensive ($989). The former can push it’s clock up to 3.2 GHz under single threaded loads, and is thus a really interesting option if your application has a significant part of non-parallel code.

So far AMD has countered Intel’s higher “per core” performance with 50% more cores. Indeed, the six-core Opteron can keep up with the Xeon 5500 in quite a few applications. But Intel is readying a slightly improved six-core version of the Xeon 5500 series called Westmere-EP in the first half of 2010. Being a 32 nm high-K dielectric CPU, the six-core Westmere-EP wil offer about the same power consumption with six-cores under load as the quadcore Xeon 5500 (Nehalem EP). At idle, Westmere-EP will consume less (14 to 22% less leakage). Westmere-EP’s architecture is identical to that of the Nehalem EP, with the exception of a 50% larger L3 cache (12 instead of 8 MB) and support for special AES instructions.

AMD's Answer

It was hardly noticeable but AMD made a historic step forward in September 2009 with the introduction of it’s own server chipsets. For the first time, AMD is a real server platform supplier, in control of both the CPU and chipset. The previous AMD server platform was mostly based on NVIDIA's nForce 3600 Pro. The nForce 3600 gave some system administrators quite a few headaches, especially in combination with VMware’s ESX. VMware’s ESX installed flawlessly on all Intel platforms we have tried so far, but it was unpredictable whether or not an nForce board would work with ESX. Of course, the added value of a tier one OEM is that they sort these things out and offer you a driver + hardware platform that is certified for ESX and others. So you could say that this was a non-issue for HP, SUN and Dell buyers (I have hardly seen any IBM Opteron based servers in the wild). Still, it is good to see that AMD is now completely responsible and in charge of it’s own server platform.

Below you find the specs of AMD’s northbridge server chipsets:

And next the southbridge chip.

At the moment, the impact of the “Fiorano” or SR56xx chipsets is negligible. Most server vendors are preparing the servers based on the C32 socket and G34 socket and don’t feel like investing in the socket-F server platform which is at the end of its long road. Only Tyan and Supermicron, which focus mostly on the HPC market, offer servers based on the AMD SR5690 chipset right now.

Dynamic Power Management: A Quantitative Approach

Performance per Watt rules the datacenter, right? Wrong. Yes, you would easily be lead astray after the endless "Green ICT" conferences, the many power limited datacenters, and the flood of new technologies that all have the "Performance/Watt" stamp. But if performance per Watt is all that counts, we would be all be running atom and ARM based servers. Some people do promote Atom based servers, but outside niche markets we don't think it will be a huge success. Why not? Think about it: what is the ultimate goal of a datacenter? The answer is of course the same as for the enterprise as a whole: serve as many (internal or external) customers as possible with the lowest response time at the lowest cost.

So what really matters? Attaining a certain level of performance. At that point you want the lowest power consumption possible, but first you want to attain the level of performance where your customers are satisfied. So it is power efficiency at a certain performance level that you are after, not the best performance/Watt ratio. Twenty times lower power for 5 times lower performance might seem an excellent choice from the performance/watt point of view, but if your customers get frustrated with the high response times they will quit. Case closed. And customers are easily frustrated. "Would users prefer 10 search results in 0.4 seconds or 25 results in 0.9 seconds?" That is a question Google asked [1]. They found out to their surprise that a significant number of users got bored and moved on if they had to wait 0.9 seconds. Not everyone has an application like Google, but in these virtualized times we don't waste massive amounts of performance as we used to in the beginning of this century. Extra performance and RAM space is turned into more servers per physical server, or business efficiency. So it is very important not to forget how demanding we all are as customers when we are browsing and searching.

Modern CPUs have a vast array of high-tech weapons to offer good performance at the lowest power possible. PowerNow!, SpeedStep, Cache Sizing, CoolCore, Smart Fetch, PCU, Independent Dynamic Core Technology, Deep Sleep, and even Deeper Sleep. Some of those technologies have matured and offer significant power savings with negligible performance impact. A lot of them are user configurable: you can disable/enable them in the BIOS or they get activated if you chose a certain power plan in the operating system. Those that are configurable are so for a good reason: the performance hit is significant in some applications and the power savings are not always worth the performance hit. In addition, even if such technologies are active under the hood of the CPU package, it is no guarantee that the operating system makes good use of it.

How do we strike the right balance between performance and energy consumption? That is the goal of this new series of articles. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; before we can even talk about increasing power efficiency at a certain performance point, we have to understand how it all works. This first article dives deep into power management, to understand what works and what only works on PowerPoint slides. There is more to it than enabling SpeedStep in your server. For example, Intel has been very creative with Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading lately. Both should increase performance in a very efficient way. But does the performance boost come with an acceptable power consumption increase? What is acceptable or not depends on your own priorities and applications, but we will try to give you a number of data points that can help you decide. Whether you enable some power management technologies, how you configure your OS is not the only decision you have to make as you attempt to provide more efficient servers.

Both AMD and Intel have been bringing out low power versions of their CPUs that trade clock speed for lower maximum power. Are they really worth the investment? A prime example of how the new generation forces you to make a lot of decisions is the Xeon L3426: a Xeon "Lynnfield" which runs at 1.86GHz and consumes 45W in the worst case according to Intel. What makes this CPU special is that it can boost its clock to 3.2GHz if you are running only a few active threads. This should lower response times when relatively few users are using your application, but what about power consumption? AMD's latest Opteron offers six cores at pretty low power consumption points, and it can lower its clock from 2.6GHz all the way down to 800MHz. That should result in significant power savings but the performance impact might be significant too. We have lots of questions, so let's start by understanding what happens under the hood, in good old AnandTech "nuts and bolts" tradition.

Warning: This article is not suited for quick consumption. Remember, you come to AnandTech for hard hitting analysis, and that's what this article aims to provide! Please take your time… there will be a quiz at the end. ;-)

PMA 2009: Panasonic GH1 & Olympus E620

Observers knew the pickings would be limited at this year’s PMA. After the rush of announcements at last fall’s Photokina there wasn’t too much left for PMA some 5 months later. However, the actual announcements turned out to be even thinner than anyone expected.

Notable no-shows were the Canon replacement for the $8000 Professional 1Ds Mark III, which Canon says has a sensor outperformed by the sensor in the $2700 5D Mark II, and Sony’s replacement for the A700, rumored to be called the A800. Both were expected at PMA and their absence started their own buzz among show-goers.

These are tough economic times around the world, and even the robust interchangeable lens digital camera market is seeing sales declines in the last few months. This is obviously having an impact on camera sales, and manufacturers are more cautious in the costly development of new models.

The one area where new models were not lacking is in the Olympus/Panasonic four-thirds sensor cameras. The only two new interchangeable lens cameras were both 4/3 sensor – although the Olympus E-620 represents the continuing evolution of the Olympus 4/3 line, and the Panasonic GH1 represents the High Definition Video promise of the micro 4/3 line.

ASUS AiGuru S1: Skype goes WiFi

"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after."

This passage from the novel Gift from the Sea by acclaimed writer and aviation pioneer Anne Morrow Lindbergh stirred our thoughts on the many different ways we communicate. While nothing compares to or conveys thoughts or true expressions like face to face communication, it was the telephone that revolutionized our ability to communicate with each other from just about anyplace at anytime. Yes, the printed word, television, and the internet have also revolutionized the means by which we communicate but none of them are as quick or convenient as picking up the ubiquitous telephone.

While we are reviewing the ASUS AiGuru S1 WiFi Skype phone today we will first give a brief overview of Skype's capabilities for our readers who are unfamiliar with the program, as this VoIP phone is designed expressly for the Skype user. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that lets you make or receive a telephone call over an IP based network instead of the traditional analog phone line utilizing your computer, a dedicated VoIP phone, or your traditional phone with an adapter. In its simplest form VoIP utilizes IP addresses in place of phone numbers and a broadband internet connection in place of analog phone wire.

Skype is a proprietary peer-to-peer Internet telephony (VoIP) network system that is the brainchild of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the creators of KaZaA, and is now owned by eBay. Skype is one of the largest VoIP providers in the world with over 100 million subscribers currently. The program is available in 27 different languages and runs on Windows, MAC OS X, and Linux platforms. Skype offers free voice, video conferencing, file transfers, and chat capabilities between Skype users. The software is free and can be downloaded from Skype's website.

Skype differs from other VoIP clients in that it operates on a peer-to-peer model instead of the more traditional server-client model. The Skype user directory is decentralized and distributed among the nodes in the network, which means the network can scale very easily without the cost and complexity of a centralized infrastructure. The program has the ability to route calls through other Skype peers on the network, and this allows it to work behind the majority of firewalls and gateways. Skype's encryption system actively encodes all calls, file transfers, and instant messages end-to-end with either 1536-bit or 2048-bit (subscription services) RSA. Encryption is necessary since all calls or transfers are routed through the public Internet. Further information about Skype's P2P telephony capabilities is available if you'd like to know more.

SkypeOut provides inexpensive per minute subscription charges to users with landline or mobile telephones, although users can make free calls within the US and Canada to both landline and mobile phones until the end of 2006 at this time. SkypeIn allows you to purchase your own regular phone number. This concept allows to you have a local number that anyone can call and you answer in Skype no matter where you are located at the time. If you choose a number in New York City but are staying in London then anyone who is in the same area code that calls your number will not have to pay long distance charges. Anyone outside of your area code (unless they have unlimited long distance service) will still pay for long distance charges to your New York City area code but not to London. You can purchase up to 10 numbers with locations just about anywhere in the world.

Other services include Skype Voicemail, Skype SMS, and Skype Zones (allows Skype communications from supported WiFi hot spots). Note that Skype is not considered a true telephony system and therefore lacks 911 call capability. Also, although the program and usage is free between users, you will need a good microphone, headset, and/or supported VoIP phone before using the service. We have found users with desktop or monitor microphones often have audio feedback issues due to speaker placement, making them a less than ideal solution. Headsets generally work the best although your mileage varies based upon their quality, and Skype specific VoIP phones are now being introduced into the market in volume.

Now let's take a closer look at the basic features of Skype and the performance of the ASUS AiGuru S1 phone.

ASUS M2N32-SLI & Epox MF570SLI: AM2 Wunderkinder

For a platform and CPU that were almost invisible before their May 23rd launch, AM2 and the supporting AM2 chipsets are proving to be remarkably mature. Part 1 and Part 2 of our AM2 roundup examined four AM2 motherboards based on the nForce 500 family of chipsets. Three were based on the top-end 590 SLI chipset and one was based on the mainstream 570 SLI chipset. Part 3 looks at two of the most exciting nForce 500 motherboards that have been evaluated - the readily available top-end ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe and the mainstream Epox MF570SLI.

The ASUS M2N32-SLI was quickly out the door as the Reference Board supplied by AMD for the AM2 launch. CPU manufacturers are always careful about Reference Boards and AMD's confidence in the ASUS AM2 platform speaks highly of the board's stability and performance. Our review here is based on the full retail version of the M2N32-SLI Deluxe, complete with on-board wireless 802.11 b/g and dual-Gigabit LAN ports that can be "teamed" to create a 2Gb port. The review board is currently available at many on-line e-tailers and local computer shops. For more information on pricing and availability of the M2N32-SLI Deluxe please refer to the just-published Price Guide, June 2006: Motherboards

Just below the nForce 590 for AM2 is the single X16/dual X8 nForce 570 SLI. The 570 SLI uses the same new 590 chip as the top-end chipset, but it does not supply the second SPP chip for the additional X16 PCIe support.

nForce 500 Specifications
	NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI	NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI	NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra	NVIDIA nForce 550
Segment	Enthusiast SLI (2 X16)	Performance SLI (2 X8)	Performance	Mainstream
CPU Suggestion	Athlon 64 FX Athlon 64 X2 Athlon 64	Athlon 64 FX Athlon 64 X2 Athlon 64	Athlon 64 FX Athlon 64 X2 Athlon 64	Athlon 64 Sempron
SLI Technology	Yes	Yes	No	No
NVIDIA LinkBoost	Yes	No	No	No
NVIDIA FirstPacket	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
NVIDIA DualNet	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Gigabit Connections	2	2	2	1
Teaming	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
TCP/IP Acceleration	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
MediaShield	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SATA / PATA Drives	6 SATA 2 PATA	6 SATA 2 PATA	6 SATA 2 PATA	4 SATA 2 PATA
RAID	0, 1, 0+1, 5	0, 1, 0+1, 5	0, 1, 0+1, 5	0, 1, 0+1
NVIDIA nTune 5	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PCI Express Lanes	46	28	20	20
Links	9	6	5	5
USB Ports	10	10	10	10
PCI Slots Supported	5	5	5	5
Audio	Azalia	Azalia	Azalia	Azalia

570 SLI also does not support all the NVIDIA auto-overclocking features like LinkBoost as you can see in the above chart. 570 is clearly a mainstream part, but performance should be at the same level as nForce 590. The most important distinction is support for dual X16 PCIe on 590 versus support for dual X8 PCIe on 570 SLI. For more information and a detailed comparison of the nForce 500 family chipsets please refer tonForce 500: nForce4 on Steroids?

The Epox MF570SLI is based on this mainstream 570 SLI chipset. You will see in the review of this board that you can still find an incredibly well-appointed board with almost every overclocking option you can imagine in a mainstream-priced board.

The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

The catch however is that what we don’t have is a level of clear domination when it comes to single-card solutions. AMD was shooting to beat the GTX 295 with the 5870, but in our benchmarks that’s not happening. The 295 and the 5870 are close, perhaps close enough that NVIDIA will need to reconsider their position, but it’s not enough to outright dethrone the GTX 295. NVIDIA still has the faster single-card solution, although the $100 price premium is well in excess of the <10%>

-From Our Radeon 5870 Review, On The GTX 295 vs. The 5870

Let’s get straight to the point, shall we? Today AMD is launching the 5970, their dual-GPU card that finishes building out AMD’s technical domination of the high-end market. With it AMD delivers the absolute victory over NVIDIA’s GTX 295 that the Radeon 5870 couldn’t quite achieve and at the same time sets the new high water mark for single-card performance.

This also marks the last AMD product introduction of the year. The rest of the Evergreen series, composing the sub-$100 low-end parts, will be launching next year.

	AMD Radeon HD 5970	AMD Radeon HD 5870	AMD Radeon HD 5850
Stream Processors	2x1600	1600	1440
Texture Units	2x80	80	72
ROPs	2x32	32	32
Core Clock	725MHz	850MHz	725MHz
Memory Clock	1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5	1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5	1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	2x256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Frame Buffer	2x1GB	1GB	1GB
Transistor Count	2x2.15B	2.15B	2.15B
TDP	294W	188W	151W
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm
Price Point	$599	$400	$300

The 5970 serves as the nowadays obligatory dual-GPU part. It is 2 Cypress dice mounted on a single, dual-slot video card. AMD clocks it at 725MHz core and 1GHz (4GHz effective) for the GDDR5 memory. The card comes equipped with 2GB of GDDR5, which is split between the two GPUs, giving it an effective memory capacity of 1GB. The card will be selling for $600, at least so long as vendors and retailers hold the line on MSRP.

In practice this makes the card something between a 5850 in Crossfire mode and a 5870 in Crossfire mode. The clocks are the same as the 5850, but here all 20 SIMD units are enabled. This is a 15% clockspeed difference between the 5970 and 5870CF, so officially the 5870CF will continue to be the faster setup. However as we’ll see in a bit, looking at the stock 5970 can be a bit deceiving.

This also brings up the matter of the name of the card. We asked AMD what happened to the X2 tag, and the answer is that they didn’t want to use it since the card was configured neither like a 5850 nor a 5870 – it was closer to a mythical 5860. So rather than call it an odd (or worse yet, wrong) name, AMD just gave it a new model number entirely. We suspect AMD wanted to be rid of the X2 name – their processors go up to X4 after all – but there you go as far as an official reason is concerned. It looks like special multi-GPU tags are now gone in both the NVIDIA and AMD camps.

Moving on, for power, the 5970 uses an 8pin and a 6pin power connector (although the 6pin sits on top of a spot silk-screened for anther 8pin). The TDP is 294W, bringing it in just under the 300W ATX limit. Idle power is 42W, thanks to AMD’s aggressive power optimizations present in the entire 5000 series.

As some of you may have noticed, in spite of the fact that this card is at least a pair of 5850s, it consumes less than the 320W (2x160W) such a setup would. In order to meet the 300W limit, AMD went and binned Cypress chips specifically for the 5970, in order to find chips that could operate at 725MHz at only 1.05v (the 5850 runs at 1.088v). Given the power creep coming from the 4800 series, binning for the best chips is the only way AMD could get a 300W card out.

AMD’s official guidance for this card is that the minimum requirements are a 650W power supply, and they recommend a 750W power supply. The recommended power supply will become more important later on when we talk about overclocking.

Finally, AMD is also launching Crossfire Eyefinity support with the 5970, and thus far only the 5970. Currently Eyefinity doesn’t work with Crossfire mode on any of AMDs cards due to driver limitations. The drivers that the 5970 will be shipping with enable Crossfire Eyefinity support on the 5970 for 22 games – currently AMD is using whitelisting and is enabling games on a case-by-case basis. Crossfire Eyefinity will make its way in to the mainstream Catalyst drivers and be enabled for other cards early next year.

GPU Accelerated Flash 10.1 Prerelease

I suppose I could start this article off with a tirade on how frustrating Adobe Flash is. But, I believe the phrase “preaching to the choir” would apply.

I’ve got a two socket, 16-thread, 3GHz, Nehalem Mac Pro as my main workstation. I have an EVGA GeForce GTX 285 in there. It’s fast.

It’s connected to a 30” monitor, running at its native resolution of 2560 x 1600.

The machine is fast enough to do things I’m not smart or talented enough to know how to do. But the one thing it can’t do is play anything off of Hulu in full screen without dropping frames.

This isn’t just a Mac issue, it’s a problem across all OSes and systems, regardless of hardware configuration. Chalk it up to poor development on Adobe’s part or...some other fault of Adobe’s, but Flash playback is extremely CPU intensive.

Today, that’s about to change. Adobe has just released a preview of Flash 10.1 (the final version is due out next year) for Windows, OS X and Linux. While all three platforms feature performance enhancements, the Windows version gets H.264 decode acceleration for flash video using DXVA (OS X and Linux are out of luck there for now).

The same GPU-based decode engines that are used to offload CPU decoding of Blu-rays can now be used to decode H.264 encoded Flash video. NVIDIA also let us know that GPU acceleration for Flash animation is coming in a future version of Flash.

To get the 10.1 pre-release just go here. NVIDIA recommends that you uninstall any existing versions of flash before installing 10.1 but I’ve found that upgrading works just as well.

What Hardware is Supported?

As I just mentioned, Adobe is using DXVA to accelerate Flash video playback, which means you need a GPU that properly supports DXVA2. From NVIDIA that means anything after G80 (sorry, GeForce 8800 GTX, GTS 640/320MB and Ultra owners are out of luck). In other words anything from the GeForce 8 series, 9 series or GeForce GT/GTX series, as well as their mobile equivalents. The only exceptions being those G80 based parts I just mentioned.

Anything based on NVIDIA’s ION chipset is also supported, which will be the foundation of some of our tests today.

AMD supports the following:

- ATI Radeon™ HD 4000, HD 5700 and HD 5800 series graphics
- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics (and higher)
- ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 integrated graphics (and higher)
- ATI FirePro™ V3750, V5700, V7750, V8700 and V8750 graphics accelerators (and later)

It’s a healthy list of supported GPUs from both camps, including integrated graphics. The only other requirement is that you have the latest drivers installed. I used 195.50 from NVIDIA and Catalyst 9.10 from AMD. (Update: The Release Notes now indicate Catalyst 9.11 drivers are required, which would explain our difficulties in testing. ATI just released Catalyst 9.11 but we're having issues getting GPU acceleration to work, waiting on a response from AMD now)

Intel’s G45 should, in theory, work. We tested it on a laptop for this article and since the acceleration is DXVA based, anything that can offload H.264 decode from the CPU using DXVA (like G45) should work just fine. As you’ll see however, our experiences weren’t exactly rosy.