Jon Peddie Reviews

Review: Nvidia’s dual GPU GTX 690 AIB

2012-05-10T19:24:16Z

Fastest, bestest, not biggest

With the GTX 690, Nvidia was focused on creating not only the most powerful dual-GPU card in the world but also a card that was power efficient with great acoustics.

There has always been a sacrifice when trying to cobble together the best enthusiast PC in trying to figure out what is the best way to get the best performance. Crossfire and SLi were the solutions up until now. Early attempts at dual-GPU cards underperformed compared to Crossfire and SLi, but the latter was expensive, took up quite a bit of real estate in the tower, and ate up power. Dual-GPU cards of the past could not compete on the performance front, and the core clocks had to be turned down as much as 20% to 22% to account for heat and wattage restrictions, resulting in cards that just underperformed when compared to their SLi counterparts.

Nvidia’s new GTX 690 introduced last week is the first dual-GPU AIB that challenges the notion that one card can’t compete with two. In our tests, the new Nvidia board not only crushes the former heavyweight champion, the limited-edition ASUS Mars II goliath, but shows performance on par with GFX 680s in SLi. We are seeing comparative scores with two GTX 680s because the GTX base and boost clocks are only about 5% less than a standalone GTX 680.Compare that to the previous generation dual GPU card, the GTX 590, which was outfitted with GPUs whose a base clocks were more than 20% slower than the GTX 580 (to manage heat).

So what is allowing the GTX 690 to run at such high core clocks? The answer would be twofold. First, the cooling system on the GTX is exceptional; Nvidia decided to “spare no expense” when it came to construction. The shell of the GTX 690 is cast aluminum with trivalent chromium plating, which not only acts as a heat sink but gives the card a striking appearance—space-age coolness. Molded magnesium makes up the side walls of the 690, which cover two nickel-plated fin stacks as well as ducted airflow channels and vapor chambers. In the center of the card you see the single axial fan. The fan’s speed can be adjusted using EVGA’s precision software, but we chose to leave it at auto during our tests.

{image_1}

In our mountain lab, we saw temperatures hitting 62 Celsius on the GTX 690 at load compared to the 78 Celsius that we observed with the GTX 590, and the 690 was running at higher clocks and with roughly 25% better performance on average. Power consumption in the GTX 690 is about 45 watts, which is less than the GTX 590 as well.

Along with the revamped heat sink technology, another reason the 690 is allowed to run at such high speeds is the GPU boost. The GTX 690 core clock is 910 MHz, but with GPU boost the clocks can be cranked to over 1 GHz, depending on load and voltage. But the GPU boost also regulates power going into each GPU and optimizes each GPU independently in real time. One GPU could be running at 1 GHz while the other is at base 910 MHz or even at idle 300 MHz when the application does not call for SLi. This allows the card to run most efficiently and keeps it cool, relatively speaking.

Nvidia also focused on the acoustics of the GTX 690. The GTX 690 is the first dual-GPU Nvidia card that is quieter than comparative SLI configurations: the GTX 680 runs at an estimated 51 dB with the 690 running 5 dB quieter on average, which puts the GTX 690 just 5 dB louder than a single GTX 680.

The new line of Kepler GPUs also allows for surround gaming and surround gaming in stereovision. With Fermi, two AIBs were needed for surround 3D. The GTX 690 comes with three dual-link DL-DVI connectors and one mini displayport.

With the introduction of the GTX 690, Nvidia again stakes its claim to be the fastest AIB on the market. And for the first time you can get premium performance from a single card. The GTX 690 can be run in Quad SLi with another GTX 690, but Nvidia doesn’t support a GTX 690/ GTX 680 configuration. You can add another AIB for PhysX, however. The GTX 690 is a hard launch with boards available today. The price tag runs close to $1,000, but as we said before, Nvidia spared no expense and expects solid sales of this top-of-the-line graphics card. We’re waiting to hear back from Asus whether there will be a Mars III answer.

Performance

We ran the GTX 690 using three games and two benchmarks.

{image_7}

NOTE: We’ve (slightly) renamed the Pmark and now call it the P3mark. The P3mark is an overall score that measures a board’s performance, price, and power consumption. We added the “3” to eliminate confusion that the “P” stood for Peddie, or that it might be confused with PassMark, another benchmark. Also, we are pleased to report that Futuremark is using the P3mark on their website (http://www.futuremark.com/) for scores sent to them.

We compared the Nvidia GTX to four other boards and SLi configurations; the results are shown in the two charts to the left.

One of the promises of additional graphics horsepower is the ability to run a game or other application at ultra-high resolution with maximum graphics features such as lighting, shadows, smoke, and 8x anti-aliasing. However, in some games, for example, Crysis 2, you can’t select all of those options.

The first chart shows the GTX 680 getting the best overall P3mark scores, which is mostly due to the price difference. Likewise, the older GTX 580 does better on the P3mark score than the GTX 690.

The GTX 690 beats the 680 SLi configurations and is close to the GTX 590.

In the case of raw performance, the GTX 690 is almost tied with the SLi 680s. You can see that more clearly in the next chart, which shows the various AIBs’ FPS results for all of the tests.

The GTX 690 does best on Batman: Arkham City and Dirt 3.

Pros and cons

One might argue that if could overclock an AIB, why wouldn’t you? And the simple answer is you would, but not everyone would be able to achieve the same level of overclocking due to manufacturing tolerances in the GPUs. Obviously, if Nvidia could get 100% consistent performance out of GTX 680/690, it would raise the specifications. For that reason, overclocking has no place in comparative testing but can be interesting in experimentation by individuals.

Just incidentally, and not part of this test, the GTX 690 got a higher score in performance than an AMD HD 7970 and a HD 6970, but they both beat it in the P3mark score (due to price and power).

The test platform

All tests were run using a 3.3-GHz Sandy Bridge Core i7-3960x processor, with 8 GB of 1.6-GHz DDR3 Corsair Viper Extreme RAM, in a system with a Windows 7 64-bit operating system and a 249.68-GB HDD.

The AIBs used in the tests are shown in the next table.

What do we think?

It’s a personal decision that is gated by your wallet. If I had two GTX 580s driving three screens in a surround 3D setup and wanted to reduce the heat and noise, and had the money, I’d immediately replace them with a GTX 690. In addition to being able to drive my surround 3D configuration, I could (with an active DVI splitter) drive even more screens. And … maybe most important, if I a had two GTC 580s and could drop in one GTX 690 and then overclock the hell out of it, well, boys and their toys—it’s lot safer than what I used to do with souped-up cars, and I never get grease under my fingernails on a date night.

	GTX 580	GTX 590	GTX 580 SLi	GTX 680	GTX 680 Sli	GTX 690
Cuda Cores	512		512 (2x)	1536	3072	3072
Core Clock	772	600	772	1000	2000	915
Memory Clock	2000	850	2000	3000	6000	3000
Memory Interface Bits	384	768	768	256	512	512
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GGDR5	GGDR5	GGDR5
Memory GB	1.5	3	3	2	4	4
Driver	296	266.1	296.1	301.1	602.2	301.1
Wattage/ Max	244	365	488	195	390	300
Price Point	$400	635	$800	$524	1048	$999
Die size MM2	520	520 2x	520 2x	294	588	294 2x

{image_2}

{image_3}

{image_4}

{image_5}

{image_6}

DisplayLink Targus

2012-05-02T14:26:20Z

Video and FPSs across USB with Targus

{image_1}DisplayLink started life as Newnham Research in Cambridge England in 2003 doing thin-client displays. It got the bright idea to provide a wireless connection to projectors from a PC. It was a great idea then, still is—even if it doesn’t yet exist. Sidestepping the radio issues, Newnham moved their video compression scheme to USB and sold the idea to Kensington Computer who put it in a universal docking station. They were the first customer for DisplayLink technology.

In the early introduction of the DisplayLink USB to video devices (consisting of a software compressor and an external hardware decompression and VGA/DVI PHY) the company was criticized for not being able to deliver high bandwidth video for FPS game play and video. It wasn’t their fault—just how much can you do with 488 MHz that you don’t own? Not that they stopped trying mind you, we tested some really clever and aggressive codecs from them, but still it all came up lacking. Then Intel bestowed USB 3.0 upon us all and the world got a little brighter. More bandwidth—a whole lot more 10x, and a lot more power to, up to 5A—what’s not to like?

So DisplayLink set about developing a new set of codecs that could exploit USB 3. Some of the early examples were the portable 17-inch monitors with only a USB cable (we’re still trying to get one of them to test). And, DisplayLink’s other best customer Targus built a docking station that ran everything except the clothes dryer (may need USB 4.0 power for that).

Targus also has a module that has an USB connector, a DVI connector, and an HDMI connector—that’s all, oh, it has a blue LED light to let you know it’s alive and well.

It’s a very difficult and complicated installation. First of all you have get TWO cables (I know, do they think we’re just made of money). Then, and here’s the tricky part— you have to plug the USB cable into the USB port, and the HDMI into the HMDI port. (It’s easier to get it wrong than you might think.)

Once we got the cables in the right holes, loaded the drivers from the CD, and then turned on the monitor (there’s just no end of the work that has to be done), we were treated with a brilliant display; one that could be a clone, or an extended display. It really is a “just works” plug & play set up.

The new chip inside the Targus, DL3, can drive both outs simultaneously.

The tests

We’ve tested a lot of DisplayLink stuff, and all of us (no joke) use DL stuff all day on our production machines. So we went through the usual checks and ho hum, it works.

The test system consisted of a HP Pavilion dv6 laptop with an AMD A8 Llano APU and HD 6620 GPU pushing a 1920 x 1080 screen. Hanging off of that, via the Targus, was the second screen, an HP LP2480zx DreamColor monitor with 1920 x 1200 resolution. (hereafter referred to as the second screen).

Good video, mixed on games

The Targus performed flawlessly on movies. Using CyberLink PowerDVD 10. We ran a DVD movie in two display configurations, with the secondary display as a clone (so the movie showed up on both screens simultaneously) and with the second screen as the main monitor so the movie ran only on it. In both cases the movie ran a solid 24 fps, no hiccups no sound problems.

Then we brought up Deus Ex, a FPS game. Not so good—the screen flickered due to frame drop, and crashed during first try. The game ran at 20 to 23 fps on opening menu, 12-13 fps running the game full screen on the second monitor with the second monitor set as the main monitor. Running the second monitor in clone mode, the main monitor showed 30 fps and the second only 12 fps, and never got past the opening screen while on the main monitor we were able to play the game. But then we found out DisplayLink never said it could—they offer Dx10 support.

DisplayLink is looking at the IT market, not the gaming market and video market. So we’re just beating them up with these tests, but heck, that’s what we do.

We tried another game, Stalker. First on the main monitor, as the main monitor, and the game played at 55-60 fps full screen. We then set the displays to clone mode, and it still played well on the main monitor but the second monitor never caught up. Then we set it so the second monitor was the primary and the game played fine on it. So it seems to be game sensitive. Although upgraded to Dx11 Stalker is an older game. Also, Stalker was run from a CD install, whereas Deus Ex although a CD install is tied into Steam. However, when run on the second screen, Stalker can only be played using static lighting. If Dynamic DX11 lighting is used it stutters too much to be playable. If the game is run on the laptop’s main screen only dynamic Dx11 lighting can be used. So even though they’re not into gaming, you can do it pretty well.

What do we think?

DisplayLink continues to impress. They’re not the only ones in the game, SMSC offers the same kind of capability, but only in embedded OEM chipset solution, and companies like Acer seem to have their own stuff. DisplayLink of course does a lot of OEM business, and if you go to their web page store you can buy products from their OEMs. You can get a Targus directly from them with HDMI/DVI/VGA out ($100), or DVI/VGA out ($80)

We like the bandwidth USB 3.0 brings, and the possibilities it opens up for multiple displays. And, think of how easy it would be to hang a USB to DisplayPort 2.1 off your machine and daisy-chain a few monitors.

We used DisplayLink’s 6.2 driver. In a few weeks 6.3 is comings and even more performance will be squeezed out with dual monitors.

Acer C120 Pico projector

2012-05-02T14:19:17Z

Projecting power like an aircraft carrier

{image_1}We got an Acer C120 Pico projector to play with (and we took it on a road trip to Finland and the UK). The units can display up to 1280 x 800 resolution, has a 1000:1 contrast ratio, and offers 100 Lumens brightness when plugged in. It can be powered by USB 3.0 and there is a battery. The convenient USB 3.0 option allows for faster display of the images at 75 ANSI lumens. Alternatively, when higher brightness matters you can power the projector with the AC adapter and get an even brighter 100 ANSI lumens. The new projector is plug and play compatible with notebook PCs, so no drivers need to be installed.

The Acer C120 is touted as a mobile projector aimed squarely at the business sector. Since this palm-sized pico-projector is only 1'' x 4.7'' x 3.2'' in size and only weighs only 6.34 oz., this is as road warrior-friendly as it gets. Except for USB 3.0, the new C120 isn’t really all that different from the C110 which has been shipping since mid-2011. Both LED projectors have a lamp life of 20,000 hours and their resolutions are rather limited, at 854x480 (native) 16:9 but they can up-convert to 1280x800 (interpolated) in a 16:10 aspect ratio. The C120 has a projection range from 15-inches to 12 ft. Incidentally, Acer has an optional patented 25-inch foldable screen that purportedly enhances brightness by 200%. That’s something to check out in case you want the $230 Acer C120 to throw up a brighter image.

It comes at a price of $259.99 and is available from the Acer Store with one year warranty.

Epilog

We tested the C120 on a laptop on which we had previously installed a DisplayLink driver (see following story). Although the Acer C120 has a video codec/decompressor it doesn’t use DisplayLink’s. When the external monitor was plugged in, it was not possible to get the C120 to scale up to a higher resolution. Disconnecting the external DisplayLink Targus module solved the problem and the C120 scaled to 1280 x 800. Don’t expect Acer or DisplayLink to do anything about this; what’s the probability those two would ever be in the same system except in some wacko lab like ours?

What do we think?

The C120 is a nifty, pocket size projector that is surprisingly bright, and relatively easily to install. Windows 7 goes nuts sometime and makes a big deal about degrading to basic color, which causes the C120 to disconnect and reconnect a few times (with the associative Windows bing-bong sounds). If it doesn’t stabilize, then a reboot is needed to sweep out the miscellaneous bits scattered through the system.

The projector only works in clone mode. That’s unfortunate because it would be an ideal way to have a second screen and more desktop. The focus control (on the side) is a bit touchy and sometimes hard to find the sweet spot, but it can be done.

Overall it’s a very positive experience, and a must have for a road-warrior or someone who wants to watch movies without being hunched over a laptop.

Ivy Bridge graphics and more

2012-05-02T14:12:03Z

The best ever integrated graphics

For comparison, we ran graphics benchmarks on the processor-based graphics in machines using Intel Ivy Bridge (IVB) processors.

We ran the same series of tests on the Ivy Bridge i7-3370k running at 3.5 GHz with HD4000 graphics and compared it to a two year old entry level graphics AIB, a GTX 520, to see if integrated graphics had gotten good enough yet—and guess what—it has, within limits.

We ran five tests: 3DMark 11, Heaven, Batman, Crysis 2, and Dirt3. We tried running the tests at 1920 x 1080, but couldn’t get the Ivy Bridge’s HD4000 to do it in all the tests, so for competitive purposes we dropped back to 1650 x 1080, and got some very good results.

The tests show the HD4000 beating a two-year old entry-level graphics AIB in all four benchmarks. Add in 4X anti-aliasing and the board pulls close and even wins on some tests. The advantage is is Nvidia’s anti-aliasing algorithms.

Now it’s a little peculiar to think of buying a high-end PC with an i7 in it and then use entry-level graphics. But for someone whose primary interest is not graphics, maybe it makes sense. But then, if not interested in graphics why pay for HD4000? Why not just use HD3000? In most cases, the person who steps up to the i7 is also going to spring for a good graphics board. But as these tests demonstrate Intel’s graphics are coming along.

We ran FutureMark’s PC Mark in the IVB using its built-in HD4000 graphics, and with an Nvidia GTX680, and also on the SNB with an Nvidia GTX 680. The older Sandy Bridge with GTX 680 scored 5137, the new Ivy Bridge integrated HD4000 scored 4749, and with an Nvidia GTX 680 scored 5408.

We also ran a video transcoding test and the results were about the same as the SNB we tested last year. So although Intel talks about a new video engine, we couldn’t see much difference.

Highest score

The highest Pass Mark score we have ever seen was generated on the Ivy Bridge—2594.

What do we think?

Ivy Bridge is a great machine with features we used to dream of just a few years ago. It is now a full-fledged citizen in the graphics world—not a AAA FPS game machine, but damn decent performance—and for free.

{image_1}

{image_2}

{image_3}

Review AMD Radeon HD 7970 and Nvidia GTX 680 AIB

2012-05-02T13:42:14Z

The world’s two fastest graphics boards are compared—GTX 680 wins

A month or so ago AMD released their top-of-the-line Radeon HD 7079. Demos were sent out to the company’s favorite reviewers (that means NOT you JPR) and results started being reported, it looked good. Then a week or two ago Nvidia released its GeForce GTX 680 Kepler (Yes JPR, even you can have one), and the comparisons began. In the meantime, by trading some vintage wine and rare out-of-print copies of TechWatch we were able to get a black market HD 7970 (no thanks to AMD). And so we ran some tests on the two AIBs in a Sandy Bridge PC and the new Ivy Bridge PC (can’t even hint about how we got one of them).

These are state of the art high-end machines, which will get out of the way of any game, even one that is CPU limited. They are also remarkably quiet machines, even when heavily loaded.

The tests

We ran five benchmarks on the AIBs: 3Dmark 11, Unigine Heaven, Batman Arkin, Crysis 2, and Dirt. We ran single AIB, and SLI with the Nvidia boards because we actually had two GTX680s. AMD’s Catalyst 12.3 and Nvidia’s GeForce R301.1 drivers were used for the tests.

The results were very interesting, which if you have the stamina to trudge through this dribble you’ll see.

Comparison of AMD’s AIBs
	Radeon HD 7970	Radeon HD 6970
Architecture	Tahiti	Barts
Stream Processors	2048	1536
Core Clock MHz	925	880
Memory Clock GHz	1.375	1.375
Memory Bus bits	384	256
Memory bandwidth	264	176
Memory size GB	3	2
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Texture Units	128	96
ROPs	32	32
Transistor Count (B)	4.31	2.64
Process (nm)	28	40
Wattage	195	250
Price	$549	$350

Test beds used in benchmarking AMD and Nvidia’s new AIBs
Test bed	Ivy Bridge	Sandy Bridge
Processor	Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.5GHz	3.30 gigahertz Intel Core i7-3960X
Chipset/mobo	DZ77GA-70K (Gaspar)	Intel Corporation DX79SI AAG28808-500
RAM	16GB Ram	8GB RAM
Drive(s)	Intel SSD SC2CW240A3, HDD 240 GB	249.68 GB HDD
Power supply	AX850 Corsair Powersupply	850W Thermaletake
OS	Windows 7 64-bit	Windows 7 64-bit

AMD Radeon HD7970 Tahiti

AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 AIB is based on the Tahiti generation of GPUs. The Tahiti is a 4.31 billion transistor chip with 2,048 shader cores in a 365mm2 package manufactured at TSMC in their 28nm process. The AIB’s base clock is 925 MHz, and can be overclocked to 1200 MHz. We did not run any tests in over-clock mode, but if you wanted to, the easiest way to begin overclocking the Radeon HD 7970 is to use AMD’s built in Overdrive option in Catalyst Control Center.

The HD7970 has 3GB of GDDR5 running at 1375 MHz clock or 3Gbps. The overall power consumption of the chip is 195w. The Tahiti uses less power than the previous Barts-based GTX580 (GF110) which is a 520mm2 chip with 3 billion transistors (500M fewer), 512 shader cores with a clock speed of 880MHz, and a power draw of 250w. The Tahiti chip is 43 percent smaller than the Barts and has 63 percent more transistors while increasing the amount of shader cores by 33.3% and reducing the power consumption by 8 percent.

AMD Radeon HD 7970

The Radeon HD 7970 offers a dual-link DVI, an HDMI, and two mini display port connectors allowing support of four monitors or more using daisy-chaining display port monitors.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 Kepler

{image_1}

Nvidia’s GTX 680 AIB is based on the GK104 Kepler GPU generation. The GK104 is a 3.54 billion transistor chip with 1,536 shader cores in a 294mm2 package manufactured at TSMC in their 28nm process. The AIB’s base clock is 1006 MHz, and can be increased to 1058 MHz using Nvidia’s GPU Boost, which lets portions of the GPU overclock itself when there is a light load on the chip.

The GTX 680 has 2 GB of GDDR5 running at 1500 MHz clock or 6 Gbps. The overall power consumption of the chip is 195w. The GTX680 uses less power than the previous Fermi-based GTX 580 (GF110) which is a 520mm2 chip with 3 billion transistors (500m fewer), 512 shader cores with a clock speed of 772 MHz, and a power draw of 244w. The GK104 chip is 43 percent smaller than the GF110 and has 17 percent more transistors while tripling the amount of shader cores and reducing the power consumption by 20 percent.

The GTX 680, which is 10-inche long, is just over half an inch shorter than its closest competitor, the Radeon HD 7970.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 680

The GTX 680 offers two DVI connectors; one is dual-link, an HDMI, and one display port connector.

Test results

Nvidia’s AIBs comparison
	GTX 680	GTX 580
Architecture	Kepler	Fermi
Cuda Cores	1536	512
Core Clock MHz	1000	772
Memory Clock MHz	3000	2000
Memory bus bits	256	384
Memory bandwidth	192	192
Memory size GB	2	1.5
Memory type	GGDR5	GDDR5
Texture units	128	64
ROPs	32	48
Transistor count (B)	3.54	3
Process (nm)	28	40
Wattage	195	244
Price	$524	$400

Differences between AMD and Nvidia’s GPU specifications
	AMD HD 7970/ Nvidia GTX 680	AMD HD 6970/ Nvidia GTX 580
Stream	33.3%	200.0%
Core Clock MHz	-7.5%	14.0%
Memory Clock GHz	-54.2%	-31.3%
Memory Bus bits	50.0%	-33.3%
Memory bandwidth	37.5%	-8.3%
Memory size GB	50.0%	33.3%
Texture Units	0.0%	50.0%
ROPs	0.0%	-33.3%
Transistor Count (B)	21.8%	-12.0%
Process (nm)	0.0%	0.0%
Wattage	0.0%	2.5%
Price	4.8%	-12.5%

As mentioned we ran five tests (3Dmark 11, Heaven, Batman, Crysis 2, and Dirt 3), we ran those tests on four AIBs (GTX580, GTX680, HD6970, and HD7070), and we ran them on two machines (SNB and IVB), we also ran the tests on the Ivy Bridge (IVB) PC. With that data we calculated the Pmark for each AIB on individual benchmarks and as an average of the benchmarks. We also ran the GTX 680 in SLI mode. On the IVB machine we couldn’t run a second GTC 680 because of the limitations of the power supply in the system and a lack of time to replace the supply.

In all tests, which were run at 1920 x 1080 4XAA, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 680 got the highest Pmark scores.

In all but one test the Nvidia GeForce GTX got the best frames per second score, as shown in the following chart.

Given the differences in specifications, with AMD having more of almost everything, you would have expected AMD to do better than Nvidia.

The differences were calculated by dividing AMD’s parameters by Nvidia’s. For example, AMD has 2,048 processors in their HD7970 and Nvidia has 1,536 so the difference is 33.3%. The first column is the comparison of the AMD HD 7970 to the Nvidia GTX680, and the second column is the comparison of the AMD HD 6970 to the Nvidia GTX580.

Although AMD has more memory bandwidth than Nvidia, which should favor results, Nvidia runs all of the clocks (memory and GPU) at a higher speed than AMD, and that seems to account for the difference in performance.

What do we think?

AMD and Nvidia are close competitors, always have been and always will be. For this round Nvidia is the champ. That can change in 90 days, and no matter who is the champ, the consumers never lose, both companies offer great products.

We think the Pmark scores tell the real story, and so the prize goes to Nvidia for having a clean sweep of the best Pmark scores across five benchmarks.

Review of AMD Radeon HD 7950 Tahiti - Better than even the 6970

2012-03-29T23:22:08Z

Announced in December, AMD began shipping the HD7950 in mid-January, and through the magic of modern transportation, one arrived here already, in mid-March, so obviously you’re anxious to read all about its performance characteristics. We have been anxious to put the board to work. For our tests, we run the most common benchmarks and then compare the results as far as price and performance and power to put a product in perspective for consumers.

The 79xx series is based on AMD’s most recent Southern Island Series which are based on AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) technology. The 79xx series are 28nm Tahiti GPUs. and the HD7950 is the Enthusiast class AIB in the family. and compares favorably with other AMD AIBs as shown in the table.

The features of the HD7950 include:

240GB/s memory bandwidth
2.87 TFLOPS Single Precision compute power
717 GFLOPs Double Precision compute power
GCN Architecture
28 Compute Units (1792 Stream Processors)
112 Texture Units
128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
32 Color ROP Units
Dual geometry units
Dual Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE)
Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive anti-aliasing
Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)

We’ve been told AMD is eliminating reference designs for the 7950. All 7950s will be custom to some degree and use the partner’s choice of cooler with a new PCB from AMD specifically for the 7950. In the next run the partners will have the option of going with totally custom design. Some of the partners will be shipping factory over-clocked parts from beginning, neither MSI or Sapphire have a stock clocked card as part of their lineup, which is going to make impossible to make easy comparisons—differentiation is the name of the game. We’ve heard the low-end over-clocked AIBs will be shipping as low as 810MHz, while 900MHz is particularly common at the high-end. Skipping the reference design will save AMD some time and money and give the ODMs more flexibility; however, AMD will have to limit it to the bigger firms with advanced PCB design tools—a GHz is still a GHz, and can’t be treated casually.

	Radeon HD 7950	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 6850
Stream Processors	1792	1536	1408
Texture Units	112	96	88
ROPs	32	32	32
Core Clock MHZ	800	880	800
Memory Clock GHZ	1.25	1.375	1.25
Memory Bus Width bits	384	256	256
Frame Buffer GB	3	2	2
FP64	DP	DP	DP
Transistor Count (B)	4.31	2.64	2.64
PowerTune Limit (W)	200	250	200
Mfg Process (nm)	28	40	40
Price	$449	$350	$250

The tests

We tested three AIBs, the HD 7950 against its predecessors the HD 6950 and the bigger HD 6970, using FutureMark’s 3D Mark 11, and two games: Crysis 2 and Dirt 3. We used Crysis 2, a DX11 benchmark, primarily for the graphics specific demands it makes including hardware tessellation, motion blur, and shadows, all of which challenge the GPU. Dirt 3 has become an industry standard and it too is a DX 11 benchmark. It has smoke, particles, water, snow and mud 3D Mark is, of course a good all around benchmark designed for computer graphics with input from the graphics GPU makers.

On a 3.20 GHz Core i7 970 system with an Intel DX58SO2 AAG10925-205 mobo equipped with 8 GB RAM, and an Intel SSDSA2M160G2GC 160.04 GB SSD, running off an EVGA (antec) 1200W Classified SR-2 power supply.

The Pmark

The Pmark compares price, performance, and power to provide a different perspective of the AIB. We believe it adds another, more useful layer of information to raw benchmarks.

What do we think?

The HD 7950 is in a different class from its predecessor the HD 6950, in that the 7950 is in the Enthusiast class and the 6950 was at the high-end of the Performance class. Therefore a comparison of the AIBs may not be fair. But who gives a damn about fair anyway?

{image_1}

{image_2}

{image_3}

{image_4}

OnLive Desktop

2012-03-16T15:00:39Z

On the second of March we got notified by OnLive of their new app that offers full Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader from the cloud. We excitedly downloaded it and started playing with it.

OnLive Office is a somewhat different product from something like Splashtop. Splashtop allows you to remotely connect to your personal PC/Mac and control it. You will have access to all your programs/files/everything as if you are sitting in front of your PC/Mac. OnLive Office is a of virtual desktop that delivers whatever programs it supports. Currently those products include Adobe Acrobat readers and basic Microsoft Office (including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint) along with 2GB of cloud storage..

The app for Android tablets also takes advantage of 4G LTE broadband connections found on many Android tablets and when combined with a full PC on-screen keyboard, handwriting recognition and optional Bluetooth PC-compatible keyboard or mouse, promises an interesting mobile productivity experience.

OnLive also offers its Desktop Plus service for $4.99/month at www.desktop.onlive.com claiming it brings gigabit-speed accelerated browsing Ethernet speed connections to the Internet for extremely fast, but brief, data transfers. These connections are shared with other OnLive users. Sustained high-speed data transfers that excessively impact these shared connections are not permitted. OnLive asks users to please be reasonable. If not Internet usage may be limited by OnLive in its sole discretion.

I set up the Asus Transformer with this, free, app. When you click on the desktop icon, or opens and It looks exactly like a Win7 desktop. When you click on an app (like Word) it opens up Word 2010. Its file management system is cloud-based and there is a “MyDocuments” folder. I can’t get it to see other machines on the network for file transfers, however, it does synch with Google.

This would make the Transformer more of a productivity tool and first impressions are favorable.

Already available on android tablets and iPad OnLive says its coming soon to smartphones, PC, Mac, TVs and monitors, OnLive says its Desktop app delivers access to your personal desktop on all those devices and if you use it on Android, and then later use it on iPad, you will have the same files and browser Favorites (with OnLive Desktop Plus) on both tablets, with automatically-adjusted screen resolution.

What do we think?

It’s a great way to work remotely using a tablet. However, we can’t figure out how OnLive manages the licensing with Microsoft, and as of this writing OnLive hasn’t responded to our repeated questions. So I guess it will be free until either Microsoft shuts it down, or OnLine charges a fee. On March eight Joe Matz, VP of worldwide licensing clarified the issue on Microsoft’s Volume Licensing blog, and said the company is “actively engaged with OnLive” in the hopes of “bringing them into a properly licensed scenario.” When Endgaget asked, an OnLive representative responded with: “We have never commented on any licensing agreements.”

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime

2012-03-16T14:56:03Z

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is a slim and lightweight tablet with an attractive metallic spun finished design. Asus claims it is the slimmest tablet on the market at 0.33” thick and weighs 1.29lbs. Asus says the Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet that offers up to 12 hours of battery life, which accomplished by having two batteries, one in the tablet itself, and another in the detachable keyboard.

Equipped with a 10.1-inch Super IPS display with a 1280 x 800-resolution, a backside-illuminated 8-megapixel rear camera with flash, back-illuminated CMOS sensor and f/2.4 aperture plus a 1.3-megapixel front camera for video conferencing, and was the first to be powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3

The Super IPS+ panel that’s made of Corning Gorilla Glass with 178° ultra-viewing angle, Asus says the Eee Pad Transformer Prime’s screen resolution and brightness has also been enhanced to make it easier than ever to read outside in the sun.

Review of Splashtop HD

2012-03-16T14:45:49Z

This app will allow you to access your office or home PC with an Android-based tablet and use the PCs apps and files. It’s remarkably clever.

On my office PC I have three high-resolution displays, the center or main display is a 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 monitor with 100 PPI. The Asus Transformer Prime has a 1280 x 800 resolution on its 10.5-inch screen giving 150 PPI (although Asus lists it at 160).

When I logged in to my desktop (via the company LAN) the Transformer almost immediately replicated my main PC screen. My main PC screen went black (this is an option you can select, you can choose to leave the host screen visible), but the cursor movement on the Asus was seen on the PC as a white arrow. Would make a good clue in a mystery or spy movie—“Hey, someone has broken in this machine—look.”

But more important, leaving the host screen visible would make a great tech support or training feature where you, on the host, could lead the student/client on the other machine to the correct controls, files, or whatever. One thing though, when the two are connected, the host’s screen resolution is reduced to that of the remote machine—which in this case reduces the host’s 1920 x 1080 screen to 1280 x 800. Spashtop defaults to 1024 x 768, so to get the max resolution for the remote machine you have to get into the setup (click on a little “+” sign in the upper right of the scree) and force it into max, 1280 x 800 in this case.

Splashtop gives you a fully functional replication of your PC, with access to all the programs and files you have on the PC. And even though I have three screens, with different apps on each one, the software maps them all on to the Asus screen—automagically. Well, almost. you can’t drag a document, you can’t scroll horizontally, and there is no right mouse control—these are restrictions of Android not Splashtop. Although you can’t use the sliders you can tap on the scroll bar and move a document

Over the internet

If you want to connect the two machines across the internet you can. Obviously you will not see all the performance since the network bandwidth will be the bottle neck.

There is a little keyboard icon in the lower right corner of the tablet’s screen. When you click on it you get a tab bar at the top which will, among things, give you the Windows start up task bar.

To get started I typed in Splashtop Remote Streamer on my Asus Google store and didn’t get that. But I did see Splashtop Remote Desktop, bought and downloaded and installed it. Clicked on it and connected (via the internet) to my PC—in fact, I started this story on my PC and am now writing it on the Asus. So it’s pretty impressive. The ultimate test was when I got to China (see above).

You can keep Pro on the Transformer, you don’t have to uninstall one app to install another. You will need Splashtop THD if you want to test out the high performance version, gaming version of Splashtop. Otherwise, you can test out Splashtop HD.

Note: For Splashtop THD, you cannot use the Pro Streamer. You would have to uninstall Pro Streamer and install the Splashtop Streamer from here.

What do we think?

This is a very cool way to have your cake and eat too so to speak. You can go on the road with a lightweight device like the Asus Transfer (see description below) and run and use all your apps and files at home. The only drawback is your PC has to be on-line.

Splashtopping - Remote and on-line use with a tablet

2012-03-16T14:41:30Z

We were impressed with the demonstrations Nvidia made at CES using an Asus Transformer Prime as a remote terminal to play a FPS over the internet from a remote host PC. And we were intrigued by OnLive’s Desktop, so we thought we’d try our luck at using the super tablet in such situations. We were not disappointed and in several instances quite impressed.

{image_1}

Splashtop

Splashtop was started in 2006 and originally they called themselves DeviceVM. The founders came from OSA technologies and were friends since their college days at MIT. Sometime in 2007 they renamed the company Splashtop.

The company has several products and when you first encounter their web page it’s a little confusing as to which one you should choose. We tried three: Splashtop HD which is used for general purpose remote service, Splashtop THD, which is a souped up version designed for games and Nvidia Tegra-based tablets, and Splashtop Pro. These are either free or low cost (<$10) apps, and you can run them via WiFi or over the internet.

Splashtop THD

Step 1—purchase and install on the Transformer.
Step 2—download Splashtop’s Streamer app onto the PC/Mac from here (free).
Step 2a—during installation create a Security Code. You will need this to enter apps on the host PC from the remote tablet to connect.
Step 3—Open Splashtop THD on Transformer (or other tablet), it should automatically find the PC/Mac that is running Streamer app if they are on the same network. (Note: Splashtop says to see the best performance install Streamer on a PC with an Nvidia AIB.)

On the remote device (the Asus Transformer in this case) you are offered a choice to operate in Desktop mode, or Gaming mode. This is not a life time decision, you can change it later. Since we’re running THD for this test we choose Gaming.

When the tablet connects with the host, it turns off the sound in the host, that’s a considerate feature. Imagine being next to an unoccupied computer that was blasting the hell out of a bunch of screaming aliens.

Worst case test?

We ran these tests in a hotel room in Beijing. The room only had a RJ45 wire for the Internet so using Connectify we set the laptop up as a WiFi hot spot. The Transformer was then getting internet access via WiFi via the Laptop’s WiFI radio to the Internet wire.

When we started the game, Deus Ex Human Revolution, it didn’t appear on the Transformer, but rather the laptop. Then we remembered I had the TV hooked up as a second extended display on the laptop. We exited the game, reset the laptop so the TV was a clone of the laptop’s display, and then went back to the Transformer and relaunched the game (I also closed all other apps on the laptop). That helped, but all we got was a black box on the Transformer in the upper left. Next we launched the game on laptop and reset the display from full screen.

That fixed the problem and we could launch and run the game on the Transformer, but the mouse control was no good. Any time you touched the mouse it would spin the screen and come to rest at some odd point, typically looking at the celling or the floor. We tried decreasing the mouse’s sensitivity to slow it down, but it had no effect. Because Deus Ex for the PC is a port from the console, the refresh rate is fixed at 60 Hz. If we could have let it be free that might have helped.

Using the WASD or cursor keys worked fine. We could see a little lag, but it would not have been a game stopper. When firing a weapon however you could see the flash long (100 to 200 mS) before you heard the blast. That was annoying.

What do we think?

If you only had a tablet and wanted to play a game you could do it. There are some tradeoffs, and bandwidth sharing as we were doing was not helping anything.

Review: of Lightroom 4 builds on a successful legacy - Adobe adds features for consumers

2012-03-16T14:35:40Z

Photo organizing tools have evolved over the years to provide many more capabilities besides simple organization and editing. They have become workflow tools that many photographers use as their sole processing application.

There are plenty of free or low cost tools available that can handle the simple task of managing data with simple editing, rating, geotagging, uploading etc. Among those tools are Google’s Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Apple’s iPhoto, Corel’s Paint Shop Pro, and Adobe’s Element line of consumer tools. Stepping up a bit, Adobe’s Bridge tool which comes with its content creation products is a magnificent organizational tool for all of one’s media.

{image_1}

So, why in the world does one need another photo editing tool like Lightroom (or Apple’s Aperture, or Corel’s new AfterShot Pro, etc.)?

Because managing photos is a nightmare of our own making. Digital content just seems to metastasize on hard drives.

Adobe stresses the usefulness of Lightroom for amateurs and professionals and in fact, many of the features in this new version are geared towards consumers, or at least committed hobbyists. Adobe has added new tools to make it easy to create snazzy books. Lightroom users had previously been doing a DIY approach for creating books. Some have even resorted to InDesign to create their own layouts, create PDFs, and send them off to a printing service.

With the new Lightroom 4, Adobe has teamed with Blurb to handle the print side of the process. Books can also be output to PDF to send off to other publishers. Adobe has also added support for video. Users can do quick edits on their video clips and apply the same types of processing to videos as they would to photos. This makes it easy to get all the content for a project to look consistent. Other new tools include new editing tools for high dynamic range, giving users the ability to recover detail in bright areas and in shadows. The addition of brush editing lets users fine tune corrections in some regions of a photo and leave others alone. The brushes can be used with any of the Lightroom editing settings making it an extremely easy to use tool for touching up photos.

The new geo tagging features support cameras and mobile phones that collect this data but users can also add their own data or select the location of photos on a map. Then photos can be organized or searched according to location as well as other features. Finally, Adobe has improved the ability of Lightroom to share photos with social networking sites including Facebook and Flickr. When posting pictures, printing, or creating a book, it’s always nice to know what you’re going to get. Adobe has added a soft proofing tool helps users adjust their images according to how they’re planning to output them. It’s a great tool but it’s not obvious when trying to figure out how to use it.

A few video demos later and I discovered that soft proofing lets you set the output method, such as your printer, sRGB for a photo book, etc. Then once the software knows how you plan to output content, it can highlight areas that aren’t going to print as expected because they’re out of gamut. This gives users an opportunity to adjust their photos to get the best acceptable compromise. For instance you can shift the hue or the saturation. Select specifc colors to adjust. It’s great because you can play with your images to get the best look. It’s terrible because you can play with your images forever. Still, this is one of those features that once you get it, it’s hard to live without.

Right now, it should be said that the value of any organization tool is dependent on how much you’re willing to put into working with your images. In some cases, Adobe’s tools are not the easiest to use. I have found plenty of other products to be much easier to use. And, it could be argued that features that enable easier sharing, video editing, geo-tagging and books have been in competitive products, ahem, Aperture for some time.

However, Lightroom is a really stable product and the most frequently used features are well designed. For instance, it’s easy to add keywords, rate photos, sort images for the keepers and losers, and maintain photo information from multiple disks including hard drivesd and external drives.

Lightroom is already a complex tool with a lot of features, but users can get what they need out of it straight out of the box, and there are plenty more tools so that users expand their expertise as they learn. For that to happen, users are going to have to put some work into the process. Thank god for video tutorials and Adobe is adding on to its library of teaching tools. Adobe is going to be making Lightroom available with its subscriptions and we expect to see it become a valued enticement for people who are thinking about making the leap to the subscription model. It can be purchased for $149.

Sony’s proto-ultrabook will be a hard act to follow

2012-03-03T15:51:16Z

{image_1}Some people just can’t wait to have an Ultrabook. Me, for instance. And if you’re not willing to wait for the crop of competively-priced new machines that are just being dusted off and readied for the store floor, the choice has been between an Apple Air and a Vaio. There are strong arguments in both directions, I personally like the Apple environment and tools and I do much of my creative work on the Mac, but the Vaio called to me. There are still minor issues when working in an otherwise Windows work environment. Both the Apple Air and the Sony Vaio lightweight machines are going to be more expensive than the average laptop. However, the Vaio is really lightweight—about 2.5 lbs. It’s got a high resolution display, 1920x1080, The one I have is powered by the Intel i5-2540M CPU with integrated graphics (it’s also available with an i7 processor) and if you spring for the Power Media Dock you get additional graphics power from an AMD Radeon HD 6640M chip as well as Blu-ray, more USB, another HDMI, VGA. The dock design uses Intel’s Lightpeak technology to turn the laptop’s USB 3 port into a highspeed connection for the dock.

There’s a SD slot and also one for Sony’s Memory Stick. But, perhaps the best thing about this baby is that it’s purple. We specified the Carbon Indigo and we were surprised at how very purple it is. I’ll tell you what, no one is going to grab your computer in the security line at the airport and say, oh I thought that was mine.

Size: 13.0 x 0.66 x 8.27
Processor: i5-2540M CPU @260 GHz, Intel HD graphics 3000
4.00 GB DDR 3 RAM
128 GB SSD storage
13-inch backlit LED full HD 1920x1080
Internal Bluetooth
Lithium polymer battery (4000mAh)
Custom noise cancelling headphones
Optional dock with AMD Radeon HD 6650M (1GB ) Graphics and Blu-ray Disc Player / Burner, with USB 2 and USB 3, HDMI and VGA

The machine also includes memory card slot, WiFi b/g/n, backlit QWERTY keyboard, built-in webcame and mic, and a touch pad which supports multi-touch gestures, and a fingerprint sensor. The operating System is 64-bit Windows 7.

This thing starts at abou $1,889, but we got it up to around $2,500 with very little effort. That’s a lot of money for a new machine these days.

The machine is lightweight, but it’s designed to do heavy lifting. It is a total joy to travel with. Depending on who you are and how tired you may be of lugging computers around, the discussion may be done right now. There’s no compromise on performance and you can forget it’s in your bag.

{image_2}Okay, so let’s talk about the screen. That high resolution is a double-edged sword. If you’re vision impaired like most people over 40, the screen is tough on the eyes. At the desk, there’s no problem, the base machine features a VGA connector as well as HDMI so you can connnect a second monitor and if you want performance, add the dock with the additional discrete graphics. For the road, I’m thinking I’ll try using a tablet as an additional monitor. There are now several products offering that option —I’ll report back on that later. I have found that I can manage the type size and the wide screen is perfect for the work I do laying out publications.

It’s hard to underestimate the speed that comes with the SSD. These days you still have to make a sacrifice in terms of disc space—kind of an ironic situation for media makers but external memory is cheap. The machine boots up and saves content instantly; it’s very responsive. As soon as I went back to my older machine, I was shocked at how slow it was. My, how quickly we adapt.

I have had some trouble adjusting to the Synapsis Touch Pad. I’m not real great with touch pads anyway. I usually use an external mouse and turn it off. The touch pad on this Vaio is extremely sensitive. I came close to throwing it out a window the first day. However, this is being written on a trip, I forgot the mouse, and I found that I can adapt. It’s not too bad once you remember to curl your fingers over the keyboard the way your piano teacher taught you. And, I kinda like not having to carry any more extra stuff than I have to.

{image_3}

The other problem I have had is pretty specific but I’ll mention it because it absolutely drove me crazy trying to figure it out. Because of the vision thing, I increased the type size via the Windows Control Panel. Life was good, but when I started using Adobe InDesign I found that there were buttons on some palettes that just wouldn’t work. What? I unloaded and reloaded InDesign. Moved the palettes around and finally searched the forums where I found that changing the font size of the system can mess up the controls in the program. For all I know this could affect other programs, so if you encounter this problem, try it out. Another gotcha is that Microsoft has renamed some standard fonts in Windows 7. Heck if I know why. Someone was bored. However, the effect was that InDesign did not recognize fonts that I knew were installed and working just last week. Turns out, there’s a patch for that. Bless the forums.

Finally, there’s been complaints about the sound on this computer. It comes with special noise cancelling earphones and the sound coming through them is really good. The sound coming through the speakers, though, really is beyond bad. I believve it’s a design flaw of the speakers, and not the sound system itself.

Now, I have the computer working perfectly. I’ve pretty much filled up my storage with the program I have to have on the machine but I’m not about to give this thing up. It’s already improved my life. So let’s recap. I bought this teeny computer with solid performance capabilities and mostly great ergonomics but I’m adding an external hard drive, a mouse, and a tablet. So far the trade off is easy to make. The only other aspect I’m worried about is the machine’s sturdiness. It’s got a good responsive feel, but it’s just so light, I wonder how much wear and tear it will take. I took the added warranty and I’ll let you know if anything happens sooner than one would expect. If you don’t hear back from me, look for a happy person with a purple computer who could have bought a workstation for what she paid for a laptop. Size matters.

{image_4}

{image_5}

Sony PS Vita - its a handful

2012-03-03T15:12:33Z

Sony and Nintendo have launched their handheld gaming devices into a market where some of the most casual gamers, who previously bought handhelds, are now opting for their smartphones and tablets. Where does that leave the potential market? It leaves the market in the hands of core gamers and causal gamers who have found the gaming experience on phones and tablets to be underwhelming. These people number in the hundreds of millions.

{image_1}

A big question that affects the gaming handheld market is: how good is a smartphone for gaming? They are good for short play sessions and casual games, but for a core or casual gamer intent on any deep and prolonged mobile play, smartphones pretty much suck. One of the simplest reasons is that gaming will decimate the battery and the phone is usually more important as a communication and data device. Other key elements are ergonomics and control dynamics. Holding a smartphone and attempting to use the screen as a virtual joystick is awful; with the gamer losing tactile feedback and also covering and smudging up the screen with their fingers. Tablets have many of the same issues and are not quite as portable.

I’ve been running the VITA previously codenamed "Next Generation Portable" (NGP), through its paces and am already a big fan. I am also a fan of the Nintendo 3DS which just hit global sales of 15 million units since its launch, September 29, 2010. To put DS sales into perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S II just hit 20 million units in sales and is considered a big success. As of now, the VITA has sold 1.2 million units globally since its launch in December 17, 2011.

The PS Vita is very well designed and utilizes some unique elements not seen in handheld gaming before, the biggest of which is the capacitive touchpad on the back of the device. The primary display, a 5 inch capacitive touch screen 960x544 OLED capable of 16 million colors is brilliant and bright. That said, when I took it outside in full sunlight, the display did not perform very well, washing out a bit and reflecting the environment, which was surprising for an OLED. This is not an issue for me as I don’t play video games outside, but could be an issue for a commuter who gets beams of direct sunlight through the train or bus window. To be fair, I have not seen many displays that do perform well in direct sunlight except for the e-ink monochrome Kindle type screens.

{image_3}

The processing speed of VITA is snappy and the graphics performance is impressive. The Sony VITA utilizes an ARM Cortex A9 quad core CPU and a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ quad core GPU. It carries 512mb of system RAM and 128mb of video RAM. This is enough horsepower to drive a casual large screen experience and is perhaps why Sony did not integrate video out (as in the PSP) as such a feature could potentially cannibalize PS3 sales.
Also integrated into the device are a front and back cameras that have face detection, head detection, and head tracking capabilities, stereo speakers, a microphone, a three axis gyroscope, three axis accelerometer, three axis digital compass, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and in the more expensive model, a 3G radio and GPS receiver.

{image_2}

The battery gives three to five hours of play and is not removable. The games are delivered either digitally or on proprietary memory cards which have replaced the UMD discs. The internal storage of the device is also a proprietary memory card, which range in size from 4 to 32GB.

The launch suite of titles is solid. This is in contrast to the 3DS when it launched, for which Nintendo was highly criticized. FIFA, a soccer game, is already one of the top selling titles and together with Uncharted account for 50% of VITA software sales. FIFA utilizes the rear touchpad well, allowing the gamer to tap it for precise shot on goal placement. The VITA’s digital store was working immediately at launch and has a few apps like Flickr (which is very well designed), Netflix, Google Maps, and Facebook (which has been pulled for maintenance). The device interacts with the Playstation 3 allowing a gamer to pause a game on one device and continue on the other.

My only criticism for the device is that the front and rear cameras (used for video chat, creating personalized avatars, and augmented reality gaming) are only 640x480. I don’t think people would expect the VITA to be a digital camera replacement, but seems they could have squeezed a bit more resolution into the design.

Sony really needs a win and I think the VITA is a win from a design perspective. Sales cannot be judged quickly, and like the 3DS, the device had a slower launch in Japan. This is partially due to the discounted 3DS which launched into the most challenging market for handhelds I’ve seen, as people were acquiring and experimenting with heir first powerful smartphones. However the gee-whiz factor has worn off and I believe the Japanese and global market will make the VITA profitable for Sony over the course of a year.

The PS Vita comes in two versions, a Wi-Fi only for $249.96 (in the US) and a 3G/Wi-Fi version with an 8GB memory card for $299.96 (in the US). Games are typically $39.96 with the popular Uncharted Territory selling for $49.96

HP’s Ozmo-based WiFi mouse—Look ma, no dongle

2012-03-02T01:23:42Z

{image_1}Why use a Bluetooth tooth mouse when you’ve already got WiFi in your computer? That was where Ozmo devices started. The company was founded as H-Stream Wireless in 2004 with the goal of developing low power battery-operated Wi-Fi communication devices for wireless personal area network (WPAN) connectivity. Name-challenged, the company changed its name to Ozmo Devices, much better hmmm? Nonetheless, the company’s unique, patent-pending technology supports concurrent WLAN/WPAN connectivity utilizing standard Wi-Fi hardware.

The company’s two-part solution includes a driver that coexists with the host platform’s Wi-Fi device and a chip embedded in the wireless peripheral. The company has been funded by Granite Ventures, Intel Capital, and Tallwood Venture Capital.

HP was one of the first OEMs to go for it and during the summer introduced the HP Wi-Fi Mobile Mouse, the first mouse to connect without a USB dongle via the PC’s built-in Wi-Fi receiver. The mouse uses link-5, 2.4-GHz wireless technology and has an intelligent sleep mode that HP says can give you up to nine months battery life—the unit uses two AA batteries.

The mouse is designed to work with Windows 7, and can be super-fast at 1600 CPI, according to how the user chooses to set the sensitivity using the control panel. In addition it has six programmable buttons.

The wheel is a bit unique in that there are no “notches” felt when scrolling.

There’s a connect button and on/off switch on the bottom along with a latch that releases the top cover, revealing the location of the two AA batteries.

{image_2}In addition to freeing up a USB port, a Wi-Fi mouse is pretty cool for a few other reasons. For one thing you use it up to 30 feet from your PC and without interference from other wireless devices. You could use it for running a slide show, or watching movies on a PC from a distance, like in bed.

We were curious whether the mouse could be used to play a FPS—we were curious about latency. Not to worry, we couldn’t detect any and at 1600 CPI there was no lag and quick firing.

The mouse connects instantly when rebooting your computer, so there is no need to wait that little lag time when signing on. It costs under $50 online and the lack of a tiny USB dongle makes this a compelling choice, especially if you travel with the mouse or use it with more than one computer.

What do we think?

It’s easy to recommend to mobile Windows 7 PC users who need more available USB ports. However, The HP Wi-Fi mouse only works on Windows 7 PCs, so folks on older versions of Windows, or Macs won’t be able to use—but no doubt an Apple version will show up. And there’s no small parts to lose—we love it.

Corsair’s Vengeance gaming peripherals

2012-03-02T01:19:48Z

{image_1}

Corsair introduced their Vengeance series of keyboard in December 2011, just in time for the holiday season. Their first keyboard was the K90 and it sold for $130. Recently they came out with the K60, a slightly smaller and less expensive version, which sells for $110. Our friends at Corsair sent one to us and dared us to break it. We lost, it lives.

The keyboard is solid as a rock, in a sturdy brushed aluminum frame and seriously steep and positive feeling keys. The keyboard comes with a palm pad, and in it are stored extra keys, colored keys, orange colored keys for WASD, the gamer keys, and the top number row one to six. A key-cap pulling tool is also considerately included.

The keyboard is solid and positive. But that comes with cost of noise. For a gaming situation where there’s loud music and gun firing it’s not a problem, but you wouldn’t want to use it in an office environment. Also, it’s higher than modern keyboards reminding us a little of the old IBM AT keyboard.

The mouse, the Vengeance M90 is a serious piece of work. It has a nice weight to it, a flat black finish, and 14 buttons. Corsair has designed the M90 to have a button within range no matter where you click. Below the mouse wheel is the mouse sensitivity indicator along with the sensitivity adjustment buttons,

It comes with a heavy-duty, but not obtrusive braided cable, and doesn’t comes with a software disc: you’ll have to download Corsair’s Dashboard from their website. The dashboard lets you configure all the buttons, and the speed (resolution) of the mouse. The basic resolution is an astounding 5700 CPI.

The M90 has been described as a MMO user’s mouse because of all the buttons—serious MMO players will use as many configurable buttons as they can find. All of the M90’s mouse buttons are configurable, and you can even configure a button with the M60’s “Sniper” function. With the M90 you also gain a toggled backlit logo under the palm. The unit sells for $69.

What do we think?

Coming from a super thin low-profile keyboard took a little getting used to, but the adaption time wasn’t long, and positive snap of the keys is well worth it. Also the keyboard and mouse have some weight to them so they don’t go sliding around when you’re in a tight spot in a game—how many times has that gotten you killed?