Some months ago we tested the new "Fanless" series from Seasonic. Today we will take a look at a semi-passively-cooled version with the same design and more power. The Seasonic X-560 ends up as the direct competitor of the Enermax Modu87+ 500W, as well as FSPs Aurum alternative (without modular cables). We purchased this particular PSU from a retailer, so we'll be able to see if they use the same capacitors as in their review samples, and if Seasonic is able to reach the promised 80 Plus Gold efficiency. We'll also look at the sound pressure level at various loads.

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Last month at Mobile World Congress Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab 10.1, a NVIDIA Tegra 2 based Honeycomb tablet. Since then, Apple's iPad 2 raised the bar for ergonomics and performance. Not wanting to be outdone, Samsung just announced a redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1 that's both thinner and lighter than Apple's iPad 2.

The new Galaxy Tab 10.1 measures only 8.6mm thick and weighs 595 grams. The iPad 2 by comparison is 8.8mm thick and weighs 601 grams. The display is a Xoom-like 1280×800 using Samsung's PLS display technology.

Read on for more information on the new 10.1 as well as the new Galaxy Tab 8.9.

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It's called the Intel SSD 320, but the part number should give away just what we're looking at here:

This is the long awaited third generation Intel based SSD. This is the G3. And at this point it's around 6 months late.

Back then it was simply called the Postville Refresh on Intel's roadmaps (Postville was the 34nm Intel X25-M G2). It would use 25nm Intel NAND, feature improved performance and full disk encryption – all behind a 3Gbps SATA interface.

Read on for our full review!

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Gateway announced this past Moday that they're releasing to the market a trio of value-oriented desktop (well, really nettop) replacement notebooks built around AMD's Fusion platform. Brazos has been a big hit with OEMs as nearly every major manufacturer is producing machines based around it, particularly the extremely popular E-350 APU.

The new NV series from Gateway features across the board 15.6" LED-backlit 1366×768 displays, wireless-n connectivity, HDMI, 1.3-megapixel webcams, and six-cell, 44Wh batteries. They also feature the now-traditional Acer/Gateway island-style keyboard that remains the bane of my existence, much to Jarred's continued amusement. As a whole the line may not seem too exciting, but remember these notebooks are gunning for users on the strictest of budgets and top out at an MSRP of $470.

Gateway's flagship model is the catchily-named NV51B05u. This is the $470 one, and it ships with the AMD E-350 APU, 3GB of DDR3, and a 500GB 5400-RPM hard drive. Presently, the NV51B05u is the only model on Gateway's website, but it can be found here. Gateway quotes over four hours of running time on the battery, and our experience with the E-350 suggests that figure is probably accurate for moderate loads.

On the other hand, Gateway is a little more cagey with detailed specs about the other models that are rounding out the line. At $450 is the NV51B02u, which also features the E-350. Odds are good this model has a smaller hard drive and/or less RAM. And at the extremely entry-level $400 price point is the NV51B08u which swaps out the E-350 for the C-50. The AMD C-50 retains both cores, but runs at a much slower 1GHz and clocks the graphics core at just 280MHz, though it also features a TDP of just 9W, half that of the already frugal E-350.

Unfortunately these prices seem a little on the high side for what you get. Compare the NV51 series to Gateway's own NV50: starting at $450, you get bumped up to a 2.1GHz Phenom II triple-core and 4GB of DDR3. Of course you'll sacrifice mobility and battery life for the privilege, so for users who are going to want to take their 15.6" notebook onn the go, the newer NV51 with the E-350 may seem like the better call. Ultimately, though, an important takeaway is that this extreme budget market segment may not be for you, but users who don't need much from a machine are going to get more mileage out of these notebooks. This is a market that used to be served by AMD's dire V-series processor, so the E-350 is going to be a major upgrade. 

And just to sweeten the pot, we'll have Toshiba's 15.6" Brazos model, the C655D, in house soon.

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When 3DMark11 launched earlier this year, it seemed like the time was right for an update to PCMark Vantage as well. While we don't have an exact release date or pricing, Futuremark has now confirmed their intention to update the product, but instead of PCMark11 we're getting PCMark 7. The release does say "coming soon", which usually means Futuremark is less than a month or two away from the official launch (but don't hold us to that).

Over the years, we've complained more than a few times about Futuremark's 3DMark scores; It's a long story, but I've posted a comment below for the interested. PCMark on the other hand has been more useful at giving us an easy to run application suite. (If you haven't tried it, SYSmark requires some serious voodoo to get it to run on most modern systems—many of the patches for Vista will break the benchmark, and let's not even get into Windows 7.) The new version looks to provide an updated performance analysis for modern Windows 7 PCs, which may mean Vista is no longer supported. [Update: It should run on Windows Vista, but "missing API support" means the full suite won't run properly, so the final score will be affected.]

We've been a bit critical of PCMark Vantage with regards to inflated SSD results, so it will be interesting to see if PCMark 7 provides a more realistic picture of what an SSD can do for the overall system performance. Yes, we know they're faster, but the problem with Vantage is that even relatively mediocre SSDs did an excellent job at inflating benchmark scores. The PCMark 7 press release states, "Hardware innovations like solid state drives (SSDs), and new form factors such as netbooks and tablets are greatly increasing the range of PC performance available to businesses and home users," so we should see some new metrics addressing such changes at the very least.

System requirements list a DX9 video card as the minimum, but DX10 and DX11 are necessary for some additional tests (i.e. tests that aren't part of the main PCMark score). There are seven test suites with 20 different workloads designed to give various views of system performance. The seven test suites are PCMark, Lightweight, Entertainment, Creativity, Productivity, Computation, and Storage. The Lightweight suite is the one truly new entrant, and Computation could be interesting if there's any support for GPGPU type workloads; the other suites tend to correlate with one or more of the suites in Vantage (Memories, TV and Movies, Music, Communications, Productivity, and HDD—thankfully, the Gaming Suite that tended to be more of a storage benchmark is now MIA).

The full (and somewhat short) press release is below.

New Benchmark Includes 7 Suites for Complete PC Performance Analysis

HELSINKI, FINLAND – MARCH 21, 2011 – Futuremark®, the developer of the world's most popular benchmarking software, announced PCMark® 7 today, a new benchmark offering complete PC performance analysis for Windows 7. PCMark 7 includes 7 separate test suites combining more than 20 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. A release date has not been announced though the official website states that PCMark 7 is coming soon.

"Hardware innovations like solid state drives (SSDs), and new form factors such as netbooks and tablets are greatly increasing the range of PC performance available to businesses and home users," said Jani Joki, Director of PC Products and Services at Futuremark. "With so much choice available, PCMark 7 is an essential and easy to use tool to test and compare PC performance accurately and reliably across a wide range of usage scenarios."

PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive.

For more information please visit http://www.pcmark.com/ or follow Futuremark on Facebook.

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It's been a busy yet incredibly productive second day at CTIA 2011, and we've been getting hands on with all the latest and greatest from LG, HTC, and Samsung. We've seen a few familiar faces since MWC getting more polished and closer to launch, like the LG Optimus 3D and 2X – turned G2x. We've also gotten hands on with a few more devices that we didn't make it to last time at MWC, including the HTC Flyer and some physical prototypes of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9

Read on for our impressions of all these devices.

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When we reviewed the LG Optimus 2X a while ago, we weren't quite sure what carrier it would wind up on when it came stateside. T-Mobile seemed the most likely (and heavily rumored) suspect, but the picture wasn't entirely clear at that point. Today T-Mobile officially announced at CTIA 2011 that the LG Optimus 2X is coming to the soon-to-be-acquired carrier as the T-Mobile G2x. 

Probably the only non-stock thing about this photo and screenshot is that 4G status indicator up top, which I don't belive is official Android 2.2.x iconography from the AOSP

Superficially it appears there's nothing physically different between the G2x and the Optimus 2X. The front side has the exact same button layout and subtly curved capacitive touchscreen. There's a T-Mobile logo up top instead of LG, but everything else remains the same. The backside appears to be the same earth-tone soft touch material, and likewise the sides retain the silver metallic texture. I didn't think anything needed changing with the Optimus 2X, it's nice to see that nothing is changed with the G2x. 

Unsurprisingly, the G2x also trades 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz UMTS support for some T-Mobile friendly AWS 1700 / 2100 MHz support, but interestingly keeps the 1900 / 850 MHz around. Maybe that isn't so surprising considering the imminent acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T, who will likely repurpose nearly all the carrier's AWS 1700 / 2100 MHz spectrum for its LTE buildout, and transition T-Mobile customers to AT&T's existing 850 / 1900 MHz 3G UMTS/HSPA. That band support is according to the current T-Mobile specs page, at least. HSPA+ support is noted, but no specific HSDPA class or speed is given. I think that's a notable improvement from the HSDPA 7.2 kicking around in the Optimus 2X. 

The G2x also differs from the Optimus 2X in that it foregoes the LG skin for a pure Android 2.2.x (Froyo) experience. I didn't find the LG theme nearly as claustrophobia-inducing as say motoblur, but it's definitely nice to see T-Mobile demanding unskinned Android on so many smartphones. The G2x still comes with a number of software preloads, including a trial version of N.O.V.A., full version of NFS Shift HD, T-Mobile TV and Qik video chat, Zinio eReader, and some DTS software audio enhancements. It's still not quite as stock as the Nexus line, but pretty close, and dual-core to boot. The G2x also will be the first smartphone to launch with NVIDIA's Tegra Zone preinstalled. 

Along those lines, I guess it's worth noting that all the other hardware choices remain the same: it's still packing a Tegra 2 AP20H 1 GHz dual-core A9 SoC with GeForce GPU, 8 MP rear camera with LED flash and 1080P video capture, 1.3 MP front facing camera, 800×480 4"  LCD capacitive touchscreen, 8 GB internal NAND, microSD card slot, and 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1. 

The T-Mobile G2x will be available later this spring. Nvidia has a blog post up about the G2x and T-Mobile G-Slate as well. 

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Today kicked off the start CTIA 2011, and Anand is already over in Orlando, Florida covering the event. I'm missing out this time, instead working on a couple of important reviews coming up, including the Galaxy S 4G and HTC Thunderbolt which you should stay tuned for.

Nexus S 4G

However, there's been some interesting news out of the conference from Google and Sprint. The first bit of news is the Nexus S 4G for Sprint, which superficially is the same as the Nexus S that we reviewed back in December. What's different is inclusion of support for Sprint WiMAX 4G and CDMA2000-EVDO Rev.A instead of GSM/UMTS like in its younger cousin. 

Samsung and Google haven't disclosed what WiMAX baseband is going into the Nexus S 4G, but it seems possible that Samsung would choose its own CMC730 SM single chip solution for WiMAX and likely something from Qualcomm for CDMA2000 support for Sprint voice and data. I hate speculation, but I'd be surprised if Samsung didn't at least go with its own WiMAX chipset. It'll be interesting to see how very similar hardware performs with different baseboards in our battery life tests. For comparison, the HTC EVO 4G and EVO Shift 4G both use use a Sequans SQN1210. Update: The Samsung Epic 4G uses the CMC730S for WiMAX and a Qualcomm QSC6085 CDMA2000 baseband, so CMC730 + QSC6085 therefore seems like a likely combination for the Samsung Nexus S 4G. 

The rest of the specs remain exactly the same between the Nexus S and Sprint-specific Nexus S 4G. Same 5 MP rear camera and VGA front camera, lack of 720P video capture, 1 GHz Hummingbird SoC with PowerVR SGX540, 16 GB iNAND internal flash, 802.11n/b/g, NFC, GPS, and 1500 mAH battery. 

It's odd that there are no logos on the back of Sprint's Nexus S 4G press shots

Both retain the same mass – 129 grams, and outline size. The original Nexus S specs give thickness as 10.88 mm, or 0.428 inches. Interestingly enough, the Nexus S 4G specs given by Sprint list thickness as 0.44 inches, or 11.17 mm. Either there's some rounding error going on from the conversion, or the Nexus S 4G is ever so slightly thicker, which seems possible given requisite MIMO for WiMAX and the number of extra antennas that entails. Both of the EVOs and the Thunderbolt are relatively beefy phones thanks in no small part to MIMO. 

The software experience on the Nexus S 4G will be pure Google. That means no Sprint NASCAR or Sprint TV applications preloaded. No doubt the marketplace will have a tab where you can grab all of that if you so choose, however.

We'll review the Nexus S 4G in due time when it launches. For now, Sprint has a Nexus S 4G landing page with information at sprint.com/nexus. 

Google Voice on Sprint

The other big announcement is that Sprint is partnering up with Google to enable native Google Voice support for all of its customers. The feature isn't live yet, but is coming soon, and you can sign up here to be notified if you're an existing Sprint customer. What's different here is that unlike every other carrier plus Google Voice combo, no number port or call abstraction layer is required. 

If you already have a Google Voice number, you can use it natively on your phone for calls and texts. There's no abstraction or forwarding going on like Google Voice normally adds. Likewise, if you don't have a Google Voice number, you can transparently use your existing Sprint number with Google Voice – this isn't a number port at all. Sprint is essentially dynamically routing calls appropriately using some routing table magic. Everything gets routed over – voicemails, texts, and calls. Even better, no application is required to use Google Voice, so even featurephones and dumbphones will work natively, you just won't get access to immediate transcription and other features available only through web or the Google Voice app. You can even switch back and forth between using your number with Google Voice and normal PSTN routing. 

Perhaps best of all is that texts can be sent through Google Voice using the Google Voice for Android application for free, without a messaging plan. That works so long as you don't send any SMSes through the native messaging app, just Google Voice. Sprint has that and a few other interesting tidbits in its FAQs. 

It'll be interesting whether the perceptible extra latency that usually accompanies Google Voice calls completely disappears as a result of native carrier routing. This is huge news for Sprint, as it will soon be offering the most native implementation of Google Voice to date. 

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Sandy Bridge is more than just P67.  With the plethora of issues regarding the B2 stepping and Intel’s recall, there is still hope in the land of Sandy Bridge.  Before Z68 is launched sometime later this year, we have laid our hands on some H67 boards.  The H67 allows us to use the onboard graphics capabilities of the Sandy Bridge platform, at the expense of processor overclocking, as well as one of the two graphics based PCIe slots that P67 afforded.  Today we are examining the Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H, the ECS H67H2-M and the ASRock H67M-GE/HT, all below the $150 mark, all micro-ATX.

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It's been a while since we reviewed the BlackBerry Torch, and today we have a follow up review of the BlackBerry Bold. The long and the short of it is that this is the same core hardware, sans touchscreen but with a better camera. On the software side, the Torch and the Bold can both run the latest revision of BlackBerry OS 6, and there have been some updates there that are worth exploring.

Read on to see if these OS updates alone are worth giving the 9780 a shot.

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Last year we ran a little series called Ask the Experts where you all wrote in your virtualization related questions and we got them answered by experts at Intel, VMWare as well as our own head of IT/Datacenter – Johan de Gelas.

Given the growing importance of IT/Datacenter technology we wanted to run another round, this time handled exclusively by Johan. We've got answers to two of your questions from the original post – read on to see Johan's responses to questions about cloud computing!

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Back on Tuesday NVIDIA put out a quick teaser about a new video card that would be launching today. As virtually all of you correctly guessed, it was the GeForce GTX 590, NVIDIA’s latest dual-GPU monster. Coming only two weeks after the launch of the Radeon HD 6990, NVIDIA wants their spot back as the single card king, and it’s the GTX 590 that will fight for it. But does the GTX 590 have what it takes to dethrone the 6990 so soon? Let’s find out.

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As many of you no doubt suspect, NVIDIA is in fact getting ready to launch their next flagship video card. The NDA does not expire for another 48 hours (March 24th at 6am PDT), but in an effort to build up suspense NVIDIA has gone ahead and posted a very brief teaser video about the card and when the NDA expires.

We'll have more in a couple of days, so stay tuned.

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I don't exactly remember when I stopped using the iPad, but it wasn't without me trying to use it. We reviewed the WiFi version on AnandTech last year but it was the AT&T 3G version that I ended up using most of the time. For short trips around NC I'd carry it with me. It was the perfect car companion. Smaller and lighter than a notebook but functional enough to get me through any short trip. I tried carrying it to lunch and meetings around town but for the most part it wasn't portable enough for that to make sense. A smartphone was a far better companion.

For several trips around the country I remember trying to take just the iPad, but I always needed to work on an article or publish something extensive while I was gone. For months I boarded every plane with the intention of bringing only the iPad but I always ended up bringing a notebook as well. Even when I went on vacation last year I had to finish a review and ended up bringing a notebook just for three days of use. Eventually I just gave up completely and left the iPad at home. As I mentioned in our review of the first iPad last year, this is a device that augments your existing setup – it replaces nothing. You'll still need a computer of some sort and you'll still need a phone, you just get to have another device that's more convenient than both of those occasionally.

These days my iPad sits docked at my desk doing nothing more than charging and receiving updates. Yet every time I'm at an airport I look around and see tons of passengers with their iPads. It's the new ThinkPad. I see it everywhere and people seem to be happy with it. In fact, last quarter 17% of Apple's total revenue came from iPad sales. 

Will a new iPad be enough to make me a tablet convert? Read on for our full review of the iPad 2.

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We try not to bring you too much news about product announcements unless there's something particularly intriguing about them; we get inundated by them and most of the time it's the most generic of refreshes. Happily that's not the case with Lenovo's shiny new ThinkPad X220 notebooks.

Inexplicably Lenovo is opting to label these two very different notebooks under the same X220 header: one is a tablet clocking in at 3.88 pounds with a 4-cell battery; the other is an ultraportable that weighs less than three pounds. Both come with support for either SSDs or mechanical hard disks (with a 4GB SSD option as a special order).

We'll start with the ultraportable X220. Lenovo is shipping it with a 12.5" 1366×768 LED-backlit screen, but you can upgrade to an IPS panel. It maxes out at 8GB of DDR3 and has a strong spread of Sandy Bridge mobile processors to choose from, starting with the Core i3-2310M at 2.1GHz and going all the way up to the i7-2620M at 2.7GHz. Strangely, only the i7-equipped models come with USB 3.0 connectivity. Reviews of the X220 are already popping up on the internet and the IPS screen is proving as impressive as you'd expect, but not nearly as impressive as the battery running time: Lenovo claims up to 15 hours on a 9-cell battery, a hyperbolic figure to be sure but not as crazy as you'd think. NotebookReview's test model came with a 6-cell battery and was pushing nine hours.

You can see and eventually order the ultraportable X220 here, and MSRP is expected to start at a not-unseemly $899.

The other X220 is the tablet model. Again it ships with a 12.5" 1366×768 LED-backlit screen, but in this case the only choice is the finish you want on the IPS panel: Infinity Glass or Corning Gorilla. Yes, the X220 tablet comes with an IPS panel standard, proving that Lenovo understands what ViewSonic couldn't figure out with their tablet: that viewing angles are really important. Unfortunately the X220 tablet is nearly a pound heavier than its ultraportable cousin and doesn't come with an option for USB 3.0 connectivity. Lenovo quotes nine hours of running time with the 8-cell battery.

The X220 Tablet isn't up on Lenovo's site yet, but MSRP is expected to start at $1,199.

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We can not say that we are dazzled by the amount of new products at CeBIT. Most demonstrations we saw and documentation we found of the tier-one OEMs were in German, a clear sign that CeBIT is getting a little bit less international each year.

As we also visited this event only for a few hours, we focused on a few extraordinary products of the more international oriented companies like Tyan and Supermicro.

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Earlier today, Apple made the iOS 4.3 available to its customers via iTunes, two days ahead of its previously announced March 11th release date.

The new iOS revision, which will also come installed on the iPad 2 when it begins shipping this Friday, is a modest update to the mature iOS 4 operating system. It drops support for some older devices and speeds up some newer ones, but I don't think there's any one feature here that will fundamentally change the experience for the iOS userbase. Read on for details!

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Last year we ran a little series called Ask the Experts where you all wrote in your virtualization related questions and we got them answered by experts at Intel, VMWare as well as our own head of IT/Datacenter – Johan de Gelas.

Given the growing importance of IT/Datacenter technology we wanted to run another round, this time handled exclusively by Johan. The topics are a little broader this time. If you have any virtualization or cloud computing related questions that you'd like to see Johan answer directly just leave them in a comment here. We'll be picking a couple and will answer them next week in a follow up post.

So have at it! Make the questions good – Johan is always up for a challenge

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Throughout the lifetime of the 400 series, NVIDIA launched 4 GPUs: GF100, GF104, GF106, and GF108. Launched in that respective order, they became the GTX 480, GTX 460, GTS 450, and GT 430. One of the interesting things from the resulting products was that with the exception of the GT 430, NVIDIA launched each product with a less than fully populated GPU, shipping with different configurations of disabled shaders, ROPs, and memory controllers. NVIDIA has never fully opened up on why this is – be it for technical or competitive reasons – but ultimately GF100/GF104/GF106 never had the chance to fully spread their wings as 400 series parts.

It’s the 500 series that has corrected this. Starting with the GTX 580 in November of 2010, NVIDIA has been launching GPUs built on a refined transistor design with all functional units enabled. Coupled with a hearty boost in clockspeed, the performance gains have been quite notable given that this is still on the same 40nm process with a die size effectively unchanged. Thus after GTX 560 and the GF114 GPU in January, it’s time for the 3^rd and final of the originally scaled down Fermi GPUs to be set loose: GF106. Reincarnated as GF116, it’s the fully enabled GPU that powers NVIDIA’s latest card, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti.

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The DMA (Digital Media Adapter) aka media streamer market has been dominated by Sigma Designs, Realtek and of late, the Intel CE 4xxx series. The low end market is catered to by the Boxchip and Amlogic based media streamers.

Having got the codec compatibility right (at least on paper), the choice for the media streamer manufacturers was to either go the 3D route or add extra non-core functionality in the next-gen products. 3D is yet to go mainstream despite the best efforts of the top tier manufacturers.

In 2011, you can expect a slew of media streamers running Android. The TViX Xroid A1 has already been announced and demonstrated to be running Android on the SMP8656. Read on for our coverage of the launch of another Android-based media streamer, the Nixeus Fusion XS, which also happens to be Marvell's debut vehicle in this product space.

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Earlier this morning we published our first impressions on Apple's iPad 2, including analysis on camera quality and a dive into the architecture behind Apple's A5 SoC. Our SoC investigation mostly focused on CPU performance, which we found to be a healthy 50% faster than the A4 in the original iPad – at least in web browsing. We were able to exceed Apple's claim of up to 2x performance increase in some synthetic tests, but even a 50% increase in javascript and web page loading performance isn't anything to be upset about. We briefly touched on the GPU: Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX 543MP2. Here Apple is promising up to a 9x increase in performance, but it's something we wanted to investigate.

Read on to see just how fast the new PowerVR SGX 543MP2 really is.

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When Eurocom offered to send us their latest Racer notebook, we were mildly intrigued. Then they upped the ante by giving us the chance to put AMD’s latest and greatest HD 6970M to the test and we jumped at the opportunity. The Racer is the “little brother” of the Clevo P170HM we reviewed a few weeks ago, sporting many similarities all wrapped up in a smaller package. This puppy doesn’t come cheap, but with a matte 1080p LCD sporting a good contrast ratio, awesome performance, and a better build quality than the previous Clevo models we’re quite happy with the result.

So, just what does an HD 6790M do for performance, and how much will it set you back? What else might Eurocom have to offer to sweeten the deal? Eurocom also likes to label their notebooks as mobile workstations, and while the system we have doesn’t necessarily cater to that audience, we’ll have some thoughts on that segment as well. Read on for our full analysis.

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We first met Indilinx in early 2009, with its Barefoot controller at the heart of OCZ's Vertex SSD. Until SandForce showed up in 2010 with the SF-1200/1500 series of controllers, the Indilinx Barefoot was the cheaper alternative to Intel. If it wasn't for Indilinx I'm not sure Intel would've had any real competition until last year. 

The OCZ/Indilinx relationship was always a close one, but it's about to get a lot closer. Today OCZ announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Indilinx Co., Ltd for ~$32M in OCZ shares. The deal is expected to close within 30 days.

Why would OCZ acquire Indilinx? To be honest, it's the only way to ensure growth in the future. While OCZ is currently the retail/channel face of SandForce, SF also happens to sell to all of OCZ's competitors. OCZ may get early access to SandForce hardware, but so could anyone else who shows up with a big enough check. Ultimately to stick around in this business OCZ needs to be able to build its own controller and that's what the Indilinx acquisition is designed to allow.

Indilinx was working on its first 6Gbps controller codenamed Jet Stream, however the design never surfaced. Delays do happen in chip design and I'm guessing Indilinx just couldn't make it happen with Jet Stream. 

What does this mean for SSDs today? Probably very little. OCZ will continue to ship SandForce based drives, however at some point I'm expecting to see an exclusive OCZ branded controller. While this move will likely guarantee OCZ's ability to differentiate amongst its smaller competitors, I'm not entirely convinced  it will be enough to compete with the likes of SandForce. We've even seen Intel struggle with that battle. 

Anything can happen though. Two years ago I didn't expect anyone other than Intel to dominate SSDs. A year ago it was SandForce. By this time next year anything could happen.

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It may have taken some time for AMD’s Fusion to finally arrive, but now it’s here and we’re starting to see a decent number of Brazos laptops. We’ve already reviewed HP’s dm1z, which set the bar that other manufacturers will have to match or exceed. Today, we add two more E-350 laptops to the mix of reviews, one an 11.6”-screen and the other a 13.3”-screen chassis.

In the black corner, we have MSI’s ultra-slim X-series laptop, the X370; in the silver corner is a smaller competitor in Sony’s VAIO YB. How do these two compare with the HP dm1z and with each other? What are the benefits and detriments involved with moving to a larger chassis?  And is the Brazos platform right for you? That’s what we’re going to discuss in this head-to-head matchup.

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While the drought of Sandy Bridge notebook hardware is thankfully approaching its sweet, merciful end, there are still a healthy amount of AMD-based notebooks on the market at good prices awaiting happy homes. Toshiba was kind enough to send us their L645D, a 14" notebook sporting a mobile Phenom II dual-core processor running at a speedy 3GHz, Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics, and a Blu-ray drive: all yours for a potentially exciting value proposition of just $619. Is it worth it?

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In the competitive media streamer market, we have been covering products with a huge US presence. Today, we will look at an offering from DViCO in the TViX series. DViCO is a Korean company with a big presence in the Asia-Pacific and European multimedia markets. DViCO's media streamers / tuners / PVRs are available under the TViX label.

We have had the TViX Slim S1 in our labs for more than 6 months now. Based on the Realtek RTD1283, it was introduced in July 2010. The initial firmware versions were not upto the mark, and the unit went into the review backburner. With streamers based on the next-gen Realtek chipsets starting to make an appearance, it was time to dust off the old review unit. Our friends over at MPCClub rank the TViX Slim S1 as one amongst the top five media players right now. Is it really that good? Read on to find out about our experience with the TViX Slim S1.

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Last year at the iPad introduction Steve Jobs announced that Apple is a mobile device company. Just last week Steve returned to introduce the iPad 2 and point out that the majority of Apple's revenue now comes from products that run iOS. The breakdown is as follows:

Just looking at iPad and iPhone, that's 56% of Apple's sales. All Macs put together? Only 20%. Granted 20% of $26.7 billion in sales is still $5.3 billion, but the iOS crew gets most of the attention these days.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that when Apple launched its 2011 MacBook Pro lineup last week that it did so with little fanfare. There was no special press event and no video of an unusually charismatic man on a white background describing the latest features of the systems. All we got two weeks ago were a few pages describing the high level features of the lineup, a short outage on the Mac Store and five new configurations available for sale.

We've been working non-stop since the launch on our review of the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros. Despite the lack of fanfare, this is a pretty serious upgrade. Read on for our in-depth analysis!

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The transition to smaller form factors hasn't been exclusively a client trend over the past several years, we've seen a similar move in servers. The motiviation is very different however. In the client space it's about portability, in the datacenter it's about density. While faster multi-core CPUs have allowed the two-socket 1U server to really take off, they have also paved the way for a new category of density optimized servers: the micro server.

The argument for micro servers is similar to that for ultra low power clients. Only a certain portion of workloads really require high-end multi-socket servers, the rest spend much of their time idle and thus are better addressed by lower power, higher density servers. Johan typically argues that rather than tackling the problem with micro servers it's a better idea to simply increase your consolidation ratio into fewer, larger servers. There are obviously proponents on both sides of the fence but Intel estimates that the total market for micro servers will reach about 10% of its total shipments over the next 4 – 5 years. It's a small enough market for Intel not to be super concerned about but large enough that it needs to be properly addressed.

Today Intel believes that it addresses this market relatively well with the existing Xeon lineup. Below is a table of Sandy Bridge Xeons including a 45W and 20W part, these two being directed primarily at the micro server market:

Drop clock speed (and voltage) low enough and you can hit the lower TDPs necessary to fit into a micro server. Thermal constraints are present since you're often cramming a dozen of these servers into a very small area.

Long term there is a bigger strategy issue that has to be addressed. ARM has been talking about moving up the pyramid and eventually tackling the low end/low power server market with its architectures. While Xeon can scale down, it can't scale down to the single digit TDPs without serious performance consequences. Remember the old rule of thumb: a single microprocessor architecture can only address an order of magnitude of TDPs. Sandy Bridge can handle the 15 – 150W space, but get too much below 15W and it becomes a suboptimal choice for power/performance.

The solution? Introduce a server CPU based on Intel's Atom architecture. And this is the bigger part of the announcement today. Starting in 2012 Intel will have an Atom based low power server CPU with sub-10W TDPs designed for this market. Make no mistake, this move is designed to combat what ARM is planning. And unlike the ultra mobile space, Intel has an ISA advantage in the enterprise market. It'll be tougher for ARM to move up than it will be for Intel to move down.

Intel's slide above seems to imply that we'll have ECC support with this server version of Atom in 2012, which is something current Atom based servers lack.

The only real question that remains is what Atom architecture will be used? We'll see an updated 32nm Atom by the end of 2011 but that's still fundamentally using the same Bonnell core that was introduced back in 2008. Intel originally committed to keeping with its in-order architecture for 5 years back in 2008, that would mean that 2012 is ripe for the introduction of an out-of-order Atom. Whether or not that updated core will make it in time for use in Atom servers is still up for debate.

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The second generation iPad went on sale earlier today, to much fanfare and long, long lines. We're hard at work on our full review of Apple's second generation tablet but there were a few things we wanted to chime in on before too much time passed.

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Our last comprehensive server and server CPU review focused on some of the best and fastest x86 servers on the market. This time, we focus on more humble servers. Performance is not necessarily priority one for many businesses; chances are that low power and budget are higher on the list. So we did our best to get the most interesting power sipping and inexpensive CPUs in the lab.

We selected three AMD Opterons and two Intel Xeons. On the Intel platform we test with the older but very cheap Xeon E5506 and the newer but more expensive low power Xeon L5630. AMD sent us three different Opterons: the low power Opteron 4162 EE, the performance/watt balancing Opteron 4170 HE, and the ultra cheap Opteron 4122. Read on to find out which of the five CPUs make sense in which situation. As always we use very realistisic benchmarking and power measurments to find out.

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Dell is one of the leading vendors in the PC market to have a play in the SFF HTPC (small form factor home theater PC) space. In 2009, they introduced the first Zino HD HTPC, the Zino 400. It used the AMD's Athlon 64 2650e/2850e / Athlon 64 X2 3250e/6850e on the AMDRS780G chipset with the option of the integrated 3200 GPU or a discrete 4330 mGPU. It received a decent enough response to warrant a refresh of the lineup after a year.

In Q4 2010, the Zino 410 HD HTPC was launched. It made use of the same formula from the previous generation product (usage of CPUs meant for the laptop market, and pairing it with either the integrated GPU or a discrete mGPU). However, Dell learnt some important lessons from the first generation launch, which they have put to good use in the design of the Zino 410 HD HTPC.

We have had the highest end Zino 410 HD HTPC configuration in our labs since October 2010.   Read on for our take on the second generation Zino HD HTPC, and also why it took us so long to publish the review.

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The SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) NAS market is a highly competitive one. A lot of things have changed since the last time we covered this market in a roundup. With storage becoming cheaper by the day, and HD videos (both user generated and commercial content) becoming more and more popular, it is difficult to find a SMB NAS which doesn't cater to the home consumer also. In 2006 (when we did our SMB NAS roundup), Synology was not one of the major players. In the last 4 years, though, they have taken giant strides and earned many plaudits.

We have had the latest 2 bay model from Synology, the DS-211+, in our labs since CES. Read on to find out how it fares in our benchmarks and see if it is a good fit for your usage scenario.

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Back at IDF 2010, we wrote about Intel Light Peak nearing its eventual launch in 2011. Back then, the story was a 10 Gbps or faster physical link tunneling virtually every protocol under the sun over optical fiber. Though an optical physical layer provided the speed, in reality the connector and physical layer itself wasn’t as important as the tunneling and signaling going on beneath it. Daisy chain devices together, and connect everything with one unified connector and port. 

That dream lives on today, but sans optical fiber and under a different name. Intel’s codename “Light Peak” is now named Thunderbolt. 

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It's been a long time coming but we finally have Intel's third generation SSD. Codenamed Elmcrest, this is not only the first 6Gbps SSD from Intel but it's also the first Intel drive to use a 3rd party controller. Why would Intel turn elsewhere for a controller design? And more importantly, how does it compare to the 2nd generation SandForce drives like the Vertex 3?

Read on to find out!

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As expected, Apple today unveiled a range of speed and functionality improvements for its MacBook Pro lineup. The update was unusually quiet for Apple. There was no scheduled press event and nothing more than a press release announcing the specs and availability. Apple retail stores received stock prior to today and began selling product immediately. The Apple online store also has immediate availability.

No mere speed bump, these new MacBooks bring Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors chipsets to the entire line, replacing the previous Arrandale processors and finally retiring the aging Core 2 Duo from service in the 13-inch model.

Contrary to earlier reports, there are no default SSD configurations although the solid state offerings are still optional. The big new feature (outside of Sandy Bridge) is support for the first incarnation of Intel’s Light Peak interface technology, now called Thunderbolt.

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A year has passed without a significant Android competitor to Apple's iPad. Today that all changes as Google and Motorola unveil the world's first Honeycomb tablet: the Xoom. With better hardware than the original iPad, read on as we find out just how well the software stacks up. 

Can Google build a tablet OS that's as appliance-like as iOS but without compromising on its Android roots?

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The AMD Radeon HD 6990, otherwise known as Antilles, is a card we have been expecting for some time now. In what’s become a normal AMD fashion, when they first introduced the Radeon HD 6800 series back in October, they also provided a rough timeline for the rest of the high-end members of the family. Barts would be followed by Cayman (6950/6970), which would be followed by the dual-GPU Antilles (6990). Ultimately Cayman ended up being delayed some, and as a result so was Antilles.

So while we’ve had to wait longer than we anticipated for Antilles/6990, the wait has finally come to an end. Today AMD is launching their new flagship card, retiring the now venerable 5970 and replacing it with a new dual-GPU monster powered by AMD’s recently introduced VLIW4 design. Manufactured on the same 40nm process as the GPUs in the 5970, AMD has had to go to some interesting lengths to improve performance here. And as we’ll see, it’s going to be a doozy in more ways than one.

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The tablet market today is a far more interesting place than it was just over a year ago. Since the launch of the iPad, there hasn’t been a real competitor to iOS in the tablet space. We’ve seen customized versions of Android for larger devices like the Galaxy Tab, but they’ve all had their fair share of limitations. In fact, Android releases up to Gingerbread were never really designed to be used on larger screens. But Honeycomb has the potential to change all that and it could be just the catalyst manufacturers need to come up with the next iPad-killer.

It’s been public knowledge that Honeycomb (v3.0) was going to be the next major release of Android after Gingerbread (v2.3). It all started when Andy Rubin showed up at the D: Dive Into Mobile event with a mysterious looking tablet that was later revealed to be the Motorola Xoom running Honeycomb. CES gave us a sneak peek at Xoom and a host of other tablets that would run Honeycomb. At the Honeycomb launch event a few weeks back, Google gave us a full-blown preview of the OS. Now, with the Xoom releasing this month, the time has come for Google's official answer to the iPad.

Honeycomb has been designed ground-up for use on tablets. Google also confirmed that Honeycomb is a tablet-only OS for the time being and that some of the new features would eventually transition over to phone versions of the OS. That’s where the next release of Android codenamed Ice Cream comes into picture; more on that later. Honeycomb represents Google’s first effort to be a serious contender in the tablet market. Make no mistake here Honeycomb is an absolutely massive release with a smorgasbord of new user and developer features; some of which are so well implemented that they could give iOS a run for it’s money. Without further ado, let us dive into the juicy bits.

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I've been working with MSI for nearly as long as AnandTech has been around. So when MSI came to us with a giveaway opportunity we jumped on it. The grand prize? A Sandy Bridge equipped MSI GT680R Notebook. The notebook is powered by a quad-core Core i7-2630QM which runs at 2.0GHz by default but can turbo up to 2.9GHz with only a single core active. 

The GT680R includes three USB 3.0 ports and a pair of 500GB 7200RPM drives in RAID-0. The system will ship with 8GB of DDR3 memory making it a pretty beefy desktop alternative. The integrated GeForce GTX 460M is paired with 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory and it drives a high resolution 1920 x 1080 15.6-inch panel.

Read on for the full specs as well as details on how to enter.

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