Hummingbird Eats Snapdragon In Quake 2

It seems that Samsungs flagship Hummingbird processor eats Quadcomm’s Snapdragon, at least at OpenGL. People over at Android Community got bored and pitted the HTC Desire in all its Snapdragon glory against the larger and more expensive Samsung Galaxy S. Hummingbird literally hums along, running it faster then my PC at the time ever did.  The Snapdragon, on the other hand, ran horribly.
This is definitely an eye opener for anyone considering what the difference is between 1GHz and 1GHz. Jump over to Gizmodo for a bunch of video’s (including one of the Samsung running Quake 3).

Via [Gizmodo]

GTX 480M King Of Mobile Performance

NVidia announced the Geforce GTX 480M a few months ago, saying it was going to be the fast mobile GPU yet. They were right according to Notebook Check, who believe that it is the new king beating the old king, the ATI 5870, by around 9% in gaming tests.
It is also the first 100w card, so don’t expect untethered MW2. The king is dead, long live the king.

Jump over to Notebook Check for more information then you will probably want.

Intel Atom N550 Gets Benched

Intet’s Atom could never really be called a performer and it wasn’t traditionally designed to be. It seems the N550 is set to change that slightly, with its ability to outmatch the SU3300 (Core 2 Solo).
The N550 can do this by being the first portable Atom with dual cores (similar to the 330 and D510). To give you an idea it is around twice as fast as the current N450. For more information, just over to Liliputing.

S3 And The Little 430 GT That Could

Who can knock the monstrous NVidia off the king of the video market throne? I would say S3, but their newest card, the Chrome 430 GT, is made to be low powered and run cool (not a Geforce 9800 killer).
The card is made to compete with the current Radeon HD 3450 and the NV 8400 GS, and features sweet DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1 support. In tests (3DMark 06) it creams both competing card by at least 20%. It does this with a low power 65nm fabrication technology from Fujitsu (and slow DDR2 memory).
It is refreshing (can you feel it?) to hear of a competitor to the big two, that can actually outperform them. S3 can do it, and it will only cost you $US59 for the privilege (to tell your friends you can’t run SLI or Crossfire).

For more info, click Fareast Gizmos.

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Intel Atom Gets First Benchmark

The Atom AKA Silverthorn is set to be in every upcoming MID device, and has already been demoed on a bunch of devices.I want to know how it will perform against other processor’s in its class? The people over at XTReview were lucky enough to sneak some benchmarks of a demo Asus MID device.
The results aren’t fantastic, with the 1.6GHz Atom in review doing very average on 1MB Super Pi benchmarks. It was beaten by the 900MHz Celeron, which could mean the EeePC will be faster then the upcoming MID’s. On the other hand, the Pi tests aren’t the bases of all results, and will have to wait for a complete benchmark to be completed (will it run Crysis?).
The advantages of the 45nm processors are the power savings, but considering that a lot of companies are expecting to be running Vista on these little devices, they may encounter some performance issues. Until I have seen all round benchmarks, including battery life, I will reserve my all mighty judgement.

For the benchmarks, click over to XTReviews.

P.S. A little less advertising and a little more design goes a long way XTReviews.

Intel E8500 Gets Reviewed

Hot Hardware have ran the brand spanking new Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo through its paces. They liked the chip, saying “If you’re a gamer, the Core 2 Duo E8500 will deliver better performance compared to a low-end quad-core.” The things they didn’t like were mainly price related, which is fair enough for a brand new processor from Intel. If you wanted a budget Core 2 Duo, look at the 6 series. If you want kick arse you can’t go past the E8500 (unless you can afford the E8650).

For the complete review, click over to Hot Hardware.

ATI HD 3870X2 Gets Benched

It is time for the top of the range video cards to battle to the death for our viewing pleasure. This time it was about 20 difference websites. That is a lot of people with some down right impressive HD 3870X2 cards lying around. What do they all think? It’s damn fast and will take the seat at the head of the table, but with the upcoming 9800 from NVidia with a very similiar dual GPU setup, the 1 TeraFLOPS beast might not be there for long.

For the Inquirers massive list of benchmarks go here.

It’s Air Review Time

It has started and isn’t likely to stop for a long while yet. What I’m talking about is Macbook Air reviews. I will only do a round-up, seeing there are way to many to go to deeply in each of them (would end up being a 50 page article). Currently the reviews are from Gizmodo, USA Today, Newsweek and Wall Street Journal.
What do they think? The theme of the review’s are based around limitation, which Apple does so very well. They all like the size, it is life shattering sleek, but they don’t like what you lose. Apple have created a niche product, and unfortunately for Apple, it doesn’t seem to be the next iPod.
That all I have to say about the reviews, it is just as easy for you to click a link and read it yourself. I would like to say a few side notes though.
Gizmodo, as well as doing a nice review, have benchmarked the device. It is the slowest available Macbook, but considering it is not meant to be a notebook replacement, you can let that one slide.
The remote drive ability of the device is super limited. It won’t let you play HD movies, CD’s, install Windows and numerous other things. It will be a deal breaker for a lot of people.
The available external drive for the Air doesn’t work on any other Apple. That is something that will probably be fixed by patch, so don’t take to much notice. Also it seems that battery replacement by the user is possible, though it will probably void the warranty, and isn’t something you will want to do on the road.
All in all, I will parse on this device. The taste it leaves in my mouth, while nice, isn’t irresistible. If may need a little salt and pepper, but the meal has already been served.

Phenom 9500 Not There Yet (Review)

To quote from The Register review on the AMD Phenom 9500, “It seems that 2008 is not going to be a good year for AMD”. Doesn’t sound to positive for the already in trouble AMD does it?
The Register have done a fantastic and lengthy review on the Phenom 9500, and though they liked it they said “AMD’s Phenom squares up for a fight with the Intel Core 2 Quad, but comes out with the bruises…” It means that if you are an AMD fanboy, you might want to wait till AMD can refine this processor class a little. They did give it a decent 75% rating, but I got a feeling it is more out of pity,  then the processor itself. At least the new ATI’s are good. 

For more info, click over to The Register.

Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT Sneak Peaked

It seems that the 9 series of the famous Geforce series of video processors isn’t going to be the end all of graphics power. That at least is the case in the 9600 GT.
The guys over at ExpReview have sneaked what seems to be a reference board from Nvidia and ran some 3DMark 06 tests on it. They tested the 9600 along side a 8800 GS and GT. What were the results? The card ran very similar scores the 8800 GS, but is still edged over by the 8800 GT.
The card is going to be faster then the current 8600 by a decent chunk, at least in 3dMark. The deal breaker could be the price point, because in the stat’s this card is going against the ATi 3870, which is already available and cheap. It will be much more interesting to see what the other 9 series cards benchmarks get, at the moment though, don’t expect it to be mind blowing.

For more info, jump over to The Inquirer.

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