Filed under: Desktops

With Intel formally rolling out its Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors today, we were expecting to see more new machines with these chips besides the Gateways we brought you earlier, and our friends over at Samsung did not disappoint. The Korean manufacturer has just announced a new desktop known as the BZ60, which rocks the 1.86GHz E6300 variety of Core 2 Duo, and also throws down nVIDIA GeForce 6200 graphics, 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, and a capacious 320GB SATA2 hard drive. As far as pricing and availability goes, well, we have no clue about the former, and the latter is rather inconsequential considering that this model will probably never make it stateside. Stay tuned, because new dual-core models -- ones that you will be able to purchase -- should be coming at a fast and furious pace in the coming hours and days...

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Seems like only yesterday we were firing off Core Duo announcement after Core Duo announcement (with the occasional Core Solo thrown in for good measure), and now the Merom (aka Core 2) family has finally landed. We can expect ten new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme chips from Intel today; we'll leave the bithead biz to the fine folks at Tom's and the like, but expect to Leap Ahead into "performance enhancing" buzzwords like Wide Dynamic Execution, Smart Memory Access, Advanced Smart Cache, Advanced Digital Media Boost, and 64 bit processing (from the Core 2 Extremes and Duo desktop chips), as well as Core 2 Duo mobile processors' new Dynamic Power Coordination, Dynamic Bus Parking, and Enhanced Intel Deeper Sleep with Dynamic Cache Sizing, all intended to drop processor juice usage even further. Should we expect to see some announcements of machines based on these long awaited processors? Well, check back in a couple hours, why don't you? In the mean time, Intel assures us that boxes with Core 2 Extreme chips are already ready to rumble, but unfortunately you'll have to wait for the Core 2 Duo desktops and mobiles until early and late August, respectively.

P.S. -If you're of the bencharking ilk -- and somehow we have a feeling you are -- PC Perspective's got a load of early-release performance data they just threw up. Thanks Ryan.

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Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

We know that it’s a bit of a tease to keep featuring products that will never be available in the US, but we figure that if you’re not down with foreign devices, you probably would have stopped visiting this site long ago (or maybe you just skip over these types of posts). Anyway, the latest look-but-don’t-touch model comes from Japanese manufacturer PC-Koubou — the same company that dropped seven new laptops on us not too long ago — who just announced the impending release of its 15.4-inch Lesance AS520AW-DUO gaming notebook. As you probably guessed from the model number, this Windows XP Home Edition-powered machine sports an Intel Core Duo processor of the 1.83GHz T2400 variety, along with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics (featuring 256MB of VRAM), a 1,200 x 800 pixel display, 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 RAM, and a 60GB hard drive running at 5,400 RPM. Also along for the ride are an ExpressCard slot (though no PCMCIA), 8x DVD super-duper multi drive, and four USB 2.0 ports, though WiFi and Bluetooth are nowhere to be found. If you happen to be visiting Japan starting next month, you can snatch one of these beauties up for just $1,371.

[Via MobileWhack]

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Dream, fanboys, dream. Here’s the formula for a rumor: Add in the July 27th launch date for Intel’s Core 2 Duo chips (redundant name? yes, and yes.) Add the approach of Apple’s Developer Conference in early August. Bake at 300 degrees, no, wait, 150 degrees, and instantly arrive at the idea that the new chips would show in new a Macbook Pro next month. While we’re cooking up speculation, it would be fair to drool. Those chips are supposed to be a great deal faster than the originals inside of today’s MBPs; a great deal more than what we get in an average game of CPU-speed leap frog.– Brian Lam

New Macbook’s in August(?)[ MacRumors ]
Core 2 Duo: Zippy [ Internal ]

Filed under: Desktops

There aren't many arguments that Intel has a winner -- however temporary -- with their new Conroe Core 2 Duo chips, but they aren't relaxing just yet. With the oncoming threat of AMD's 4x4 chips in the performance/gamer space, Intel is getting a bit of quad-core action of their own with the new Kentsfield and Clovertown setups for consumer and server use respectively. Originally due in the first half of 2007, near when AMD's "Conroe killer" K8L was set to drop, both have been bumped up to fourth quarter '06 status, which sure has Intel looking smug. There are differences, however, in approach: Intel's Kentsfield architecture squeezes four cores into one socket, as compared to the dual sockets used by AMD's 4x4. This means the Intel chips will have less memory and frontside bus bandwidth available to each core, which will hurt them some in the performance race, but it also means cost savings that could give them an edge in the bang for buck arena. If anything, this is an indication of the intense competition going on for our chip dollars, and even if the quad-core war is a bit of a semantic one, we'll accept all the Photoshop crunching and AI processing power these guys want to push our way.

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Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo has just announced a new addition to its Z61 series of ThinkPad notebooks — which currently consists of the Z61t and Z61m — in the form of a “mobile workstation” called the Z61p. Like the other models in this lineup, the 15.4-inch Z61p offers consumers several Intel Core processor options (maxing out with the 2.0GHz Core Duo T2500), but improves upon the graphics setup by including a Mobility Fire GL V5200 chipset from ATI with 256MB of VRAM. Other features include 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM (expandable to 3GB), up to 100GB of hard drive capacity (in either 5,400RPM or 7,200RPM varieties), a 1,920 x 1,200 pixel display, WiFi, Bluetooth, an ExpressCard slot, and the popular ThinkVantage suite — though you’re not getting the 3G WWAN or titanium case options found on the other Z61 models. While all the pricing details are not immediately clear, it looks like a well-configured system will be going for around $2,400 when these become available next week.

[Via laptoping]

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Filed under: Tablet PCs

We still don’t feel like consumers are rushing out to buy those portable but quirky UMPCs (well, an unnamed Engadget editor actually did rush out to buy one — and returned it shortly thereafter), but it seems like the form factor is here to stay anyway, and now Korean manufacturer Daewoo Lucoms — a spin-off of Daewoo Electronics — has released its own version called the Solo M1. Specs on this one are almost identical to the Samsung Q1, as the two devices share the same low voltage 900MHz Intel Celeron processor, 7-inch touchscreen, 512MB of RAM, and of course, Windows XP Tablet Edition operating system. Also like the Q1, the Solo M1 sports both Bluetooth and WiFi wireless radios, and comes with the option of a built-in GPS receiver and/or DMB tuner. You’ll have to forgive us for not getting too enthusiastic about these products anymore (the novelty wore off about 100 posts ago), but if you’ve set the bar a little lower than we have, then you can pick up your own M1 for about $1,050 — in won, of course.

[Via Mobility Site]

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Filed under: Desktops

According to Apple Insider’s latest information, it looks like Apple’s upcoming Intel-based Mac Pro desktop is going to end up looking pretty much the same as the current Power Mac G5 that it’s replacing, with only a couple of small modifications. The biggest change is the addition of a second optical drive slot (seen in an artist’s rendition, above), which Apple Insider rightly speculates will probably ship empty in the initial units, giving users the choice to add a Blu-Ray or HD DVD drive as their wallet permits. The other change comes at the rear of the unit, where the power supply has been moved further to the top, bringing it more in line with Windows PC designs. Of course, this could just be a diversion to make it an even bigger surprise when Jobs unveils a radically redesigned system at a hastily arranged “special event”, but we wouldn’t bet on it.

[Thanks, Bababooie]

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A Microsoft employee ponders on what Microsoft would do if they were actually to implement an HDMI port on the Xbox 360 (there isn’t one now). We talked about the possible leaked pic of a development board having HDMI a few days ago, and the employee thinks if this is true, Microsoft would offer an upgrade plan for current Xbox 360 owners.

He made a comparison between this and the Intel Pentium floating point bug in the mid-90s. Although this bug didn’t affect very many people, the fact that it was there unnerved customers enough that they kept complaining to Intel. Intel’s Andy Grove at first didn’t see the need for an upgrade or a recall, because few people actually did encounter the bug. But after enough cajoling, they eventually did offer a plan to issue fixed Pentiums to whoever complained.

The employee thinks Microsoft should take a similar route with the 360s. If someone wants an upgraded 360 with HDMI port, sure, here you go. But he thinks not enough people will want this to make a huge dent on Microsoft’s bottom line. The positive feelings from the community would offset the cost of replacing a few 360s. – Jason Chen

Rumor: HDMI port coming to 360? [via Xbox Scene]

This year we’ve been hearing lots of the Core Duo, especially when it comes to the media and their loads of Apple laptop news. But now the reviews of the Core 2 Duos are in, and they’ve supplanted the Athlon 64 FX as the top pocessor out now.

The results also show a significant advantage for Intel over AMD by pretty much every metric that counts to power users: price, performance, power consumption, and all the combinations of those three.

We’ll spare you the extreme details that you need a degree in EE to understand—we have one and we still don’t—but suffice it to say that the Core 2′s performance on everything was excellent. The $316 Core 2 Duo E6600 is a great deal for the power it’s got, and if you’re after the most amount of power, there’s the Core 2 Extreme X6800 at $999.

If you’re into the nitty gritty like charts and performance comparisons, check out the links below. – Jason Chen

Intel’s Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors
Conroe at last [Tech Report via Ars Technica]

Filed under: Desktops

The reign of Core Duo has dominated 2006, but now is the time for a line of desktop processors to take the stand for justice. Or something like that. Announced in June, Intel's Core 2 Duo is officially "out" today -- though you can't buy 'em just yet -- and bit-tech.net has given the Conroe and Allendale lines (4MB vs. 2MB L2 cache) an incredibly thorough rundown. We're not total chip nuts, so some of the architecture notes went a bit over our heads, but it's clear that the Intel's Core architecture has the makings of a champ. While sharing a misleadingly similar name, Intel's Core Duo mobile line isn't actually built on Intel's "Core" chip design, notably lacking 64 bit compatibility. However, the breakthroughs made in the "Yonah" Core Duo chips really shine through in the Core Duo 2, and the chip thoroughly trounced AMD's offerings in bit-tech.net's benchmark tests. Of course, at $999 in the high end (the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800), and with AMD timing price cuts for Intel's July 24th release party, you might not be quite getting the performance-per-dollar for your desktop that the Athlon has been boasting of lately. Luckily, even faster chips are on the way, and AMD and Intel are charging into a price war that should give us some of the best valued chips we've seen in a while.

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Filed under: Desktops

We've been seeing the multi-core trend oncoming for a while now, but it seems Intel isn't just kidding around with the idea. The word on the street is that they have plans for a 32 core chip line named "Keifer" in the next few years to bust on those server tasks, which will no doubt be as boring and onerous as the processes of today. The good news is that while those chips will be fairly low on GHz -- about one third of the fastest Xeon CPU currently available -- but they'll manage 15x the performance with all those cores working in parallel, running a total of 128 threads. Based on a 32nm process, each Keifer should have eight processing nodes holding four cores, with a total of 24MB of cache between them. It appears Intel is most worried about keeping up with the multi-core efforts of Sun's Ultra Sparc chips, with little fear for AMD's Opteron roadmap, but with these Keifer chips being due around 2010, we're wondering how long it'll take for all this crazy multi-core action to trickle down into laptop chips for 32x (or 15x, as it were) the portable fun. The biggest hurdle of all, however, could be a consumer Microsoft OS that can fully help software take advantage of multiple cores, a task which Vista isn't quite up to.

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Filed under: Desktops

Japanese consumers looking for yet another Mac mini-style PC will soon be able to pick up the LF800 from miniPC, which won't run as silently as the ED612E we recently saw from this same company, but delivers a much more impressive set of specs. Instead of that pokey 1.2GHz VIA Eden processor powering the last offering, this model throws down a Core Duo T2300, while also doubling the RAM to 512MB and jacking up the hard drive capacity from 40GB to 250GB. If that particular configuration doesn't suit your needs then you're in luck, because you can also pick up a bare bones model that includes integrated Intel graphics, a PCI-Express x16 slot, and CF reader, along with Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, USB 2.0, S/PDIF, and S-video ports. Both the fully assembled rig as well as the DIY version will be available sometime this month, with the former going for around $1,080 and the latter priced just under $600.

[Via Impress]

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Intel and Motorola have decided to put their money where Craig O. McCaw's mouth is by investing $900 million dollars in his company, Clearwire, the WiMax provider that lost $140 million last year. Intel, having already made a smaller investment in the company back in 2004, is coughing up another $600 million cash, which sounds like a good indicator to us that their Centrino chips with WiMax are on the right development track. Motorola's smaller, but still substantial, $300 million dollar investment includes the purchase of NextNet, a Clearwire hardware subsidiary. All three companies are hoping that this deal brings us all one step closer to keeping us wired -- wirelessly of course -- no matter where we go, and that sounds good to us. As long as they can do it without making us all incredibly sick.

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Filed under: Desktops

CRTs are so early 90′s, don’t you know? After threatening the death of cathode ray for years, Apple has finally managed the chutzpah to kill off their eMac, and have released a $900 Intel iMac to fill the educational void. The specs aren’t bad for a $900 Mac, including a 17-inch LCD, 80GB SATA HDD, 512MB of DDR2 SDRAM (though they skimp with dual 256MB chips), a DVD-ROM/CD-RW disc drive, AirPort Extreme, a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor and Intel GMA 950 graphics. An Apple Remote will cost you $26 extra, but otherwise it doesn’t look like Apple cut many corners, which students might enjoy, but that $900 pricetag might be unrealistic for most school budgets. That, and we’re just jealous of those dang kids who get to mess around with an iSight cam and Front Row. We think we’ll just stick with Math Blaster on our 6100 while we wait for that rumored LCD eMac.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Video, Wireless

It takes a pretty special phone-less PDA to pique our interest these days, and even though Korean manufacturer BlueBird's new Pidion BM-300 doesn't really push the envelope in areas like processor speed or screen resolution, the fact that they threw a DMB tuner into the mix puts this model in some pretty distinguished company. Besides the PM80 from LG, in fact, we're hard-pressed to think of another palmtop that sports a built-in digital TV receiver -- which is probably because there's little demand for this feature anywhere outside of Korea for now. Specs-wise, the WiFi- and Bluetooth-equipped BM-300 definitely comes out on top, as its 512MHz Bulverde CPU, 64MB/128MB RAM/ROM configuration and Windows Mobile 5.0 OS are all superior to what the LG model offers, though the two do share the same unfortunate 320 x 240 resolution. South Korean TV fanatics can expect these to hit stores sometime in October -- from the look of things, they need some time to polish up that design a little -- for a price that's yet to be announced.

[Via Digital-Lifestyles]

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Laptops, Wireless, Networking

Seemingly always at the forefront of the latest and greatest technologies, little South Korea has once again trumped almost the entire rest of the world by rolling out commercial versions of the long-range wireless networking standard known as WiBro. Based on Intel's version of WiMax, the services offered by both SK Telecom and KT Corp will provide broadband speeds to users in and around Seoul from base stations with one kilometer ranges, allowing subscribers to maintain their connections even while traveling at speeds up to 74MPH. Although a slew of WiBro-enabled devices are on the verge of release, currently that Samsung PCMCIA card we saw last month is one of the few ways to go for getting your mobile WiBro on. Initially SK will be charging around $31.50 per month for its service, while KT's is significantly cheaper at less than $17, although both carriers are planning on introducing tiered pricing based on usage, as well as subsidies up to $105 on compatible gear.

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Filed under: Media PCs

 

We wonder what the meeting was like over at Intel HQ when they decided to produce this programmable remote that's designed for controlling your Viiv devices and is shaped like the steering wheel from a BMW F1 car. We wrote a short play describing how we think it went.

Executive 1: It seems like people are seeing Viiv as kind of a novelty. What should we do?
Executive 2: Hmm, maybe we should develop a remote that'll give users access to all of their media without having to switch remotes, thus making Viiv actually useful for accessing content. It can have an array of custom programmable buttons, two of which look like bright blue marker caps, and everything.
Executive 1: Yeah, and it can be shaped like the steering wheel from a race car!
Executive 2: That is a totally sweet idea. When does it come out and how much?
Executive 1: Well we're developing it now, so no word on release date. But judging by how much other companies charge for race car stuff, it's safe to say that it won't be cheap.
Executive 2: Awesome. AMD Live! has no idea what's coming.

Fin.

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Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

So apparently Toshiba has a Core Duo-powered update to the Tecra M4 convertible tablet waiting in the wings, and this one gives you a 100GB hard drive, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, and especially nice, a dual layer Super Multi drive that handles both flavors of recordable DVDs. Although we haven’t yet seen any pics of the 14.1-inch, WXGA+ Tecra M7, info on Toshiba’s European website seems to indicate that it will look similar to the M4 (pictured), but you’re getting a lot more muscle on the inside with either 1.66GHz or 1.83GHz Core Duo chips. Rounding out the specs are nVidia Quadro NVS 110M graphics, a 6-in-1 memory card reader, four USB ports, PCMCIA slot, video out, FireWire, and both WLAN and Bluetooth wireless radios. It’s not clear when this model will officially be released (pretty soon, we reckon), but we already have a good idea on pricing: it looks like you’ll be able to get a nice configuration for around $1,600 or $1,700.

[Thanks, Ethan]

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Filed under: Storage

Looks like Intel and Texas Instruments aren’t the only ones with some chip bragging to do, since Toshiba and friends are joining forces to standardise a 45nm manufacturing method, and possibly even share manufacturing plants in the future. The deal marks the end of a plan by Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC, Renesas to build an independent microchip foundry. The Japanese chip makers scrapped the plan because it supposedly wouldn’t have made any money in the ultra-competitive space, but analysts aren’t so sure this recent cooperative plan will help these smaller manufacturers compete against the big boys like Samsung, Intel and TI. Sony has agreed to team up in 45nm development with the four manufacturers, in continuation of a deal with Toshiba and NEC, but there’s no word if any of these smaller outfits have made similar process breakthroughs to those that Intel and Texas Instruments were bragging about on Monday.

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Filed under: Desktops

Looks like Intel’s going to have an announcement in San Francisco to make come June 26th, according to TG Daily; their assumption, is that Intel’s going to take the wraps off their Xeon 5100, the server-class CPU based on the Woodcrest core (and supposedly the chip that’ll be dropped into future Xserves, among other boxen). It seems unfortunate that these higher class chips might sooner make it to the end-user finish line before Intel’s hotly anticipated Conroe-based Core 2 Duo siblings (which is what the Mac Pros and just about every other desktop should expect to receive when it officially hits this summer or fall), but in the mean time if these new Xeons are announced before the consumer line, rumor has it we can expect them to range in speeds of 1.5GHz to 3GHz with prices between $210 and $850.

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Filed under: Laptops

Two of the biggest names in chips, Intel and Texas Instruments, have taken this fine Monday to announce independent advancements made by their R&D departments in the never-ending search to continue Moore’s law. TI kicked things off by unveiling their new 45nm manufacturing process that uses some immersion lithography trickery to trump Intel’s current 65nm chips by 30 percent. They plan to use the tech for memory chips. Intel, of course, is not to be outdone, and announced a new better way to insulate circuits. Their new “tri-gate transistors,” which should be on the scene by 2010, reduce the power leak problems experienced when transistors are dropped lower than 90nm. The tech could cut power consumption by as much as 35 percent or boost performance by 45 percent. “This will be an option for chips somewhere beyond 45 nm–in the 32 or 22 nm mode–so that gives us confidence we can continue scaling Moore’s Law into the next decade,” said Intel’s Mike Mayberry. The tech also does away with the troublesome carbon nanotubes that IBM has been proposing, which are currently too costly to produce chips with. Now we’re just waiting for AMD to announce a 22nm chip due next week and for half the cost, then our day will be complete. Don’t let us down, guys!

Read – Intel “tri-gate transistors”
Read – AMD 45nm manufacturing

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If you’re not too worried about being on the Fed’s wiretap-this-VoIP-line list, Intel’s making it a little easier to get your internet telephony on with their new 600SM PCI phone adapter. Not too different from the usual kind of POTS-to-VoIP gear you’d see from Vonage, et. al., but this one adapts that telephone through your computer, and is compatible out of box with your choice of CounterPath, DeltaThree, Engin, Packet8, Skype, and Yak. Not a bad idea, if you ask us, but we probably won’t bite until it’s motherboard integrated, We’re just not all that terribly interested in a VoIP calling card, dig?

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Filed under: Laptops

Intel's been showing around a lot of new concept portable devices lately, especially since the UMPC took center stage earlier this year. Looks like one of those they were really pushing this week at Computex is the concept device we refer only to as the longneck laptop, which in some ways reminds us of more of an HP TC1000 than anything else. Of course, the advantages to a telescoping (or detachable) laptop screen are many, as we can well imagine, but until someone wants to actually build some of these up we're gonna have to let these remain flights of gadget fancy.

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Filed under: Games, Multimedia

Nvidia has taken the wraps of its MobileMedia platform for Windows Mobile 5.0-based devices at Taiwan’s big Computex trade show, promising to bring high-quality digital TV and video, 3D graphics, and high fidelity audio to PDAs and smartphones. At the heart of the MobileMedia platform is Nvidia’s GeForce 5500 chip, which supposedly delivers “console-class 3D gaming,” although they convienently don’t specify which console — we’re guessing it falls somewhere below an Xbox 360 but above a Sega Genesis. As it turns out, we’ve actually already seen a couple of the smartphones based on the Nvidia platform, although no one was spilling deets at the time. Modeo’s DVB-H smartphone (seen here) is just one of the devices already announced that has Nvidia tech on the inside, as is Samsung’s i310 smartphone, as well as an unnamed device from ReignCom. Nvidia also announced that they’ve hooked up with Intel and Freescale to develop reference designs for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices currently in development that should be unveiled later this year.

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