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AMD Llano desktop APU gets reviewed: the best integrated graphics in town
AMD is due to release a batch of new Llano APUs next month that are specifically tailored to desktops rather than laptops. The most powerful among them will be the 2.9GHz A8-3850, which has already caused a stir on the review circuit for one simple reason: it pulls off a brutal "one shot one kill" on Intel's HD 3000 integrated graphics. AnandTech raised an impressed eyebrow at the fact that all its benchmarking games were playable on the $135 AMD chip, which roughly doubled frame rates in titles like Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2 and World of Warcraft compared to the more expensive Sandy Bridge i5 2500K. TechSpot declared the APU its "new budget king," with graphical performance "on another level" compared even to an i7. However, the superlatives quickly evaporated once reviewers shifted their focus to the CPU. TechReport spotted that pure CPU performance per dollar was actually lower than what you'd get from a lowly i3. Moreover, it reckoned you'd only have to spend an extra $70 to buy a much more powerful CPU and a separate graphics card -- an option that comes "awfully close to making the A8-3850 seem irrelevant." Ouch. Nevertheless, if an affordable processor with integrated graphics is what you're after, then it's fair to say this one sets the standard. Click the source links below for full reviews.
ARM hopes to strengthen grip on mobile PCs, take 50 percent of the market by 2015
We've already heard rumors that chip designer ARM has been trying to get its wares into the Macbook Air. While we can't add anything to that particular story, we do have further evidence that ARM is going beyond smartphones and tablets in order to target bigger form factors. The company's president, Tudor Brown, has just appeared at Computex to declare that ARM wants to conquer the "mobile PC market", where the company currently only has a 10 percent share. He's aiming for 15 percent by the end of this year, and an Intel-provoking 50 percent by 2015. "Mobile PC" is a pretty ambiguous category, but we think it's safe to assume the focus is on low- and mid-power netbooks and ultraportables. Such devices could potentially run off ARM's forthcoming multi-core chips -- like perhaps the quad-core beast inside NVIDIA's mind-blowing Kal-El processor, or the more distant Cortex-A15. It's hard to imagine these tablet-centric chips ever competing with Intel's top performers, but four years is a mighty long time in this business.
T Mobile shares iPhone processor, RAM specs
As Jason Snell points out at Macworld, Apple doesn't want people thinking of the iPhone as a computer. At least, not the way geeks like you and I do. As iPhone product marketing manager Bob Borchers told Jason, "...it's just faster, better, quicker, snappier, and a great experience." Apple doesn't want us worrying about the "how," but many of us do, which is why we're interested in a blurb at T Mobile's Netherlands site which lists the iPhone 3G S as having 256MB RAM and a 600 MHz processor. Of course, we can't verify these specs yet but some have suspected, including myself, that the new model would hold 256MB RAM. I understand the logic behind Apple's move. John Q. Customer is uninterested in the iPhone's innards and cares only that it works. For many, terms like processor, RAM and MHz only make the thing sound complicated and foreign. Geeks like us, however, can't resist. [Via MacDailyNews]
