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AnandTech research shows Verizon iPhone 4 'death grip' reports are overblown
Consumer Reports tested the Verizon iPhone 4 using the same methodology as the original GSM version, and with the same results: signal strength drops if the iPhone 4 is gripped in a certain fashion, commonly known as the "death grip." As a result of its testing, Consumer Reports decided it couldn't recommend the Verizon iPhone 4, either. Similar testing done by AnandTech throws some cold water on Consumer Reports' findings, however. Not long after the Verizon iPhone 4's launch, AnandTech found the Verizon iPhone 4's "death grip is essentially mitigated." The Verizon iPhone 4 experienced a signal loss of 16.5 decibels (dB) when held in "death grip," compared to signal loss of 15.5 dB when held "naturally." This is far better performance than the GSM iPhone, which experienced signal loss of 24.6 dB in "death grip" and 19.8 dB in "natural grip." In other words, the Verizon iPhone 4 in "death grip" mode experiences less signal degradation than a GSM iPhone 4 held "naturally."
LG Optimus 3D's OMAP 4 benchmarked, pulls ahead of Exynos and Tegra 2
Which dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 system-on-a-chip rules the roost? It's probably too early to tell, but if you're looking for a preliminary verdict, AnandTech has benchmarked all three of them now. Texas Instruments' OMAP 4430, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 and Samsung's Exynos 4210 went head to head in a gauntlet of browser and graphical benchmarks, and it looks like the LG Optimus 3D's OMAP 4 came out on top, boasting minor but significant improvements practically across the board. Good news for the BlackBerry PlayBook, no? Oh, and if you're wondering why the iPhone 4 and Atrix 4G fall behind their older brethren in the image above, remember that they both have to render images at a higher screen resolution. More graphs at our source link below.
Intel Sandy Bridge chipset flaw identified as a rogue transistor affecting SATA ports
Intel raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday by disclosing that its Cougar Point chipsets suffer from an incurable design issue that would potentially degrade Serial ATA transfers over time. AnandTech has gone to the trouble of getting in touch with Intel to seek more information and the problem, as it turns out, is a single transistor that's prone to a higher current leakage than tolerable. This can not only diminish performance over the 3Gbps SATA ports, it can actually make them fail altogether. There is more comforting news, however, in that the pair of 6Gbps SATA ports on the chipset are untroubled by this ailment, so devices and users that never plug into the 3Gbps connections can just carry on as if nothing's ever happened. For everyone else, a repair and replacement service is taking place now, with Intel's budget for dealing with this problem said to be a generous $700 million.
MacBook Air benchmarks for maxed-out 11-inch model
Those sweet, thin little MacBook Airs are sure making a lot of Mac-heads drool, even though they are not the speediest Macs in the world by a long shot. While the diminutive 11.6-inch model isn't really designed to be used with Pro apps or CPU/RAM hogs like Adobe Photoshop, that didn't keep the folks at AnandTech from running a suite of tough benchmarks on that tiny Air. Their results weren't exactly surprising. If you get the slightly faster 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and double the standard RAM to 4GB, you'll get about 16 percent better performance over the base 1.4GHz / 2GB model. Most of that improvement is probably due to the extra RAM; the benchmarks didn't show the performance of the slower CPU model with 4GB of RAM. Anandtech also ran Aperture 2 RAW import, battery life, video encoding and 3D rendering tests, all of which demonstrate (duh!) that the MacBook Pro is really the laptop to use for these types of applications. As many Mac pundits have pointed out, the MacBook Air is great for web surfing, writing, iLife and iWork. If you're going to be running graphics or CPU-intensive applications, though, you're going to be disappointed with a MacBook Air. [via Engadget]
AnandTech goes behind the scenes of ATI's RV870 / Evergreen GPU development
Anyone familiar with the constantly shifting release dates and delays that characterize GPU refresh cycles will have been impressed by ATI's execution of the Evergreen series release. Starting out at the top with its uber-performance parts, the company kept to an aggressive schedule over the winter and can now boast a fully fleshed out family of DirectX 11 graphics processors built under a 40nm process. The fact that NVIDIA has yet to give us even one DX11 product is testament to the enormity of this feat. But as dedicated geeks we want more than just the achievements, we want to know the ins and outs of ATI's resurgence and the decisions that led to its present position of being the market leader in features and mindshare, if not sales. To sate that curiosity, we have our good friend Anand Shimpi with a frankly unmissable retrospective on the development of the RV870 GPU that was to become the Evergreen chips we know today. He delves into the internal planning changes that took place after the delay of the R5xx series, the balancing of marketing and engineering ambitions, and even a bit of info on features that didn't quite make it into the HD 5xxx range. Hit the source link for all that precious knowledge.
Clovertown Intel Core 2 quad-core will work in a Mac Pro
Ok Mac fanboys, listen up: if you somehow manage to have two not-yet-released Clovertown Intel Core 2 quad-core chips kicking around and you happen to have recently bought a Mac Pro, you can pop the pair of them right there into your nice little LGA-771 sockets, for some oct-awesome processing power. In fact, that's precisely what the good folks at Anandtech did. They have their silicon-stained paws on some "engineering samples" of the Clovertown chips and dropped them into their Mac Pro. What did they find? Mac OS X didn't hiccup at all, and neither did the other hardware. The CPU Monitor indeed showed all eight processors, but as Anandtech pointed out, there's not much that you can do at this point that will stress all eight processors at once, not unless you're running SETI@Home, Folding@Home and every other distributed processing program you can find -- and even then that probably won't do it.[Via Slashdot]
