USB 3.0: What You Need To Know

 

The Universal Serial Bus standard has come a long way since its introduction in 1996. Backed by a consortium of companies led by Intel, Compaq and Microsoft, it offered some unheard-of features for its time, including the ability to connect peripherals without turning off the computer first and to draw power without a separate AC connection. The standard became popular with the arrival of version 1.1 in late 1998, allowing a maximum transfer rate of 12Mb/s, and as we can witness nowadays just about any device comes standard with 'Hi-Speed' USB 2.0 connectivity.

Intel's 6-core Gulftown to debut as Core i7 980X

PC online has leaked an Intel published slide showing what appears to be the official branding for its upcoming six-core Gulftown processor. Long rumored to be released with the Core i9 identifier, the 32nm Westmere based chip will reportedly debut as the Core i7 980X instead, featuring 3.3GHz clock speeds and a whopping 12MB of L3 cache.

Individual cores will be able to hit up to 3.6GHz thanks to Turbo Boost, while Hyper-Threading support will allow it to juggle 12 threads in total. TDP remains constant at 130W helped by the newer fabrication process. The LGA 1366 chip will be able to drop straight into existing X58 motherboards, following a BIOS update, and should replace the Core i7 975 this March as Intel's flagship desktop product -- at the same $999 price point.

AMD's six-core Thuban processor is expected to hit around the same time as the Core i7 980X. However, in terms of performance, they are expected to compete for a completely different market, perhaps taking on Intel's Lynnfield Core i5 and i7 quad core CPUs.

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com 

ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review: Dual-GPU Graphics

As we discussed in our preliminary Radeon 5870 review, on ATI's horizon ATI was a follow-up to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, code-named "Hemlock XT", which in essence would put together a pair of Radeon HD 5870 GPUs on a single PCB.

Today AMD is officially unveiling the Hemlock as the new ATI Radeon HD 5970, hoping to expand its current dominance in single-GPU performance with the fastest single-slot graphics card on the market -- a title that until today was reserved for Nvidia's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295.



The Radeon HD 5970 looks to be well suited for the job. The GPUs used in this card use exactly the same configuration found on the Radeon HD 5870, while core and memory frequencies match those of the Radeon HD 5850. This provides the HD 5970 with an unmatched memory bandwitch of 256GB/s.

Source: TechSpot

AMD's 2010 - 2011 Roadmaps: ~1B Transistor Llano APU, Bobcat and Bulldozer

It’s got roughly one billion 32nm transistors, fabbed at Globalfoundries. Four CPU cores and a single graphics core. It’s what AMD calls an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). And we’ll see it in 2011.
Unfortunately that’s a bit late. The APU, codenamed Llano, was originally scheduled for 2010 but got pushed back. In 2009/2010 Intel will be the first to deliver on-chip graphics with Clarkdale/Arrandale, and in late 2010 Sandy Bridge will have on-die graphics.

The first die shot of AMD's 32nm Llano APU based on 32nm Phenom II cores

Above is what I believe to be a die shot of AMD’s first APU. The CPU doesn’t use AMD’s next-generation microarchitecture, that’s only for the server and high end in 2011. The first APU will use the existing Phenom II architecture on the same die as DX11 graphics, but at 32nm. Sandy Bridge will use a brand new microprocessor architecture on 32nm but with updated Intel integrated graphics. It looks like Sandy Bridge will have the CPU advantage while Llano might have the GPU advantage, assuming Intel can't get their GPU act together by then. Llano is on schedule to debut in 2011 with OEM sampling happening before the end of the year.
Also on schedule is AMD’s next-generation microarchitecture, codenamed Bulldozer. AMD listed its client PC goals for 2010 at this year’s Financial Analyst Day, one of them is to start sampling its next-generation microprocessor next year - in 2010. If the chip is ready for OEMs by the end of 2010, that means it’ll go on sale as early as 1H 2011.

Unfortunately AMD isn’t talking much about Bulldozer architecture, I suspect we won’t see that disclosure until mid to late 2010. It’s not to keep things secret, we already have many estimates of what Bulldozer’s architecture is going to look like. And if the public already knows, then Intel is also well aware of what AMD has coming in 2011. Updated: AMD has given a high level overview of its Bulldozer and Bobcat architectures here
A major focus is going to be improving on one of AMD’s biggest weaknesses today: heavily threaded performance. Intel addresses it with Hyper Threading, AMD is throwing a bit more hardware at the problem. The dual integer clusters you may have heard of are the route AMD is taking...

Radeon HD 5970 detailed in advance

While AMD is gearing up to release it, the Radeon HD 5970 card has made a stealthy appearance online, exposing its likely final specifications. Made by Sapphire, the listed Hemlock card, which is most likely an all-stock product, has two 725 MHz-clocked Cypress 40nm GPUs, each with 1600 Stream Processors, and 2GB of GDDR5 memory set at 4000 MHz, both frequencies being at HD 5850 level.

The dual-GPU, dual-slot card also has a 2x256-bit memory interface, DirectX 11 and CrossFireX support, and dual-DVI outputs plus one mini DisplayPort connector (no HDMI like for the HD 5800 cards). The Radeon HD 5970's pricing and release date are still unconfirmed.

Weekend Open Forum: Have you upgraded to Windows 7 yet? What is there to like/not?

Inevitably the past few weeks have been a lot about Windows 7. We have contributed our fair share of information and resources in the process, from nifty tips and tricks for those of you coming as far back as the first public beta, to a complete round-up of information to get you up to speed if you are upgrading to Windows 7 just now.

But what makes Windows 7 different from previous releases? First of all, Windows 7 has proved in a relatively short time span that it’s no dog, and no Vista for that matter. Vista suffered all the incompatibilities and supposedly necessary transition needed to open the path for a next generation OS. In the process, the average PC also became much faster.

Furthermore, consider this… over 90% of PCs worldwide rely on Windows. A big chunk of those computers

are still running XP or even older versions. A majority of businesses didn’t go for Vista and are now showing more willingness to move to 7 eventually, which will also require more modern hardware. Finally, in the consumer end, a majority of the PCs currently running Vista came with the OS pre-installed, and that hardware is more than capable to handle 7, one less obstacle that is showing in preliminary sales statistics for retail boxed versions of the new OS.



In this edition of our weekend open forum we ask you: Have you upgraded to Windows 7 yet? If yes, what’s your favorite feature so far? If not, what’s keeping you from doing so?


By Julio Franco, TechSpot.com 

Latest AV-Comparatives Test (October) Fresh !

Here you find the the Removal-Test results of av-comparatives (released this month).

This tests focuses only on the malware removal/cleaning capabilities, therefore all used samples were samples that the tested Anti-Virus products were able to detect. It has nothing to do with detection rates or protection capabilities. Of course, if an Anti-Virus is not able to detect the malware, it is also not able to remove it.

The main question was if the products are able to successfully remove malware from an already infected/compromised system. The test report is aimed to normal/typical home users and not Administrators or advanced users that may have the knowledge for advanced/manual malware removal/repair procedures. A further question was if the products are able to remove what they are able to detect.

You can download here

Source:  AV-Comparatives