MTTL

Review: ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics AIB

2010-03-02T13:12:09Z

ATI-AMD continued to roll out products in its Evergreen line this week, adding to the Enthusiast segment with the HD 5830. The HD 5830 fits in the lower end of the Enthusiast segment in between the HD 5850 and the HD 5770 with a $240 price point.

The following chart puts the new board in perspective with its peers from AMD.

HD 5770	HD 5830	HD 5850	GTX 260 Core 216
1.36 TFLOPS	1.79 TFLOPS	2.09 TFLOPS
850 MHz	800 MHz Core Clock	725 MHz	1.2 GHz Core Clock
800 Stream Processors	1120 Stream Processors	1440 Steam Processors	240 Processor Cores
108W	175W Max Power	151W Max Power	182W Max Power
40 NM	40 NM	40NM	55 NM
1.04 Billion Transistors	2.15 Billion Transistors	2.15 Billion	1.4 Billion Transistors
13.6 GPixel Fill Rate	12.8 GPixel Fill Rate	23.2 GPixel Fill Rate	16,128 MPixels
GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	DDR3
1.2GHZ Memory Clock	1GHZ Memory Clock	1GHZ Memory Clock	1GHz Memory Clock
$170	$240	$300	$230

Comparison of ATI Radeon 5830, 5850, and Nvidia GTX260 AIB’s specifications

As with all Evergreen GPU’s the HD 5830 is equipped with ATI’s Eyefinity Technology. In the case of the Evergreen line, that means the board can power three monitors at resolutions up to 1920x1080. And the entire Evergreen line provides full Direct X 11 support. The Maximum Board Power for the HD 5830 is about 25 W higher than the HD 5850, this could be attributed to the Core clock speed which is 75 MHz higher than its big brother. This disparity difference definitely influenced the PMark score of the HD 5830.

We tested the HD 5830 on an Intel i7 based machine running at 2.93 GHz, with 32-bit Windows 7. We matched up the HD 5830 against the Nvidia GTX 260 Core 216. Even though the GTX 260 is an older board it is comparable in segment placement and price. W with the GTX 260 Core 216 available for $230.

As we have seen in previous rounds of benchmarks Nvidia’s counterpart to the HD 5830 performs admirably side-by-side by side until we really start to tax the boards. As you can see in the Unigine Tropics testing once we turn up resolution the AA to 8X and turn on the Ambient Occlusion the quality of the ATI architecture really starts to come through.

The HD 5830 will no doubt come in a variety of different looks and clock speeds, many of which are already hitting the market. Our board was the standard elegant ATI design with 2 DVI ports, and HDMI and display port out.

ATI was looking to fill the gap between the HD 5570 and 5850 and that is exactly what they did in terms of performance and price. The HD 5830 is a quality product at the lower end of the Enthusiast segment.

The HD 5830 rounds out the Evergreen Enthusiast Segment, which includes the dual GPU HD 5970 ($750), The HD 5870 ($400) and the HD 5850 ($300).

What do we think?

The ATI Radeon HD 5830 AIB is a lot of graphics board for not too much money. However, in terms of the Pmark the HD 5850 is a better choice. The 5850 uses less power, gets better benchmark scores, and doesn’t cost that much more.

Once again, although the Pmark shows the best case condition, if a buyer is only using one parameter in his or her shopping decision, then the 5830 wins on price.

Pay a little, get a lot—AMD’s HD 5450 and 5470 sub $100 AIBs

2010-02-16T20:06:12Z

AMD introduced two additional add-in boards to their expanding product line for the Value segment putting a virtual strangle hold on the <$100 market.

Radeon HD 5450

The HD 5450 with a 40nm “Cedar” GPU is a sub $60 card set to take the place of its HD 4350/4550 predecessors. To get to this thrifty price point AMD made some significant hardwaremodifications.

AMD cut the cost of manufacturing of the AIB by giving the 5450 a fan-less heat sink which gives the HD 5450 a unique look but also turns this sub $60 AIB into a dual-slot solution. There will be some manufactures like Sapphire which will equip the HD 5450 with a single slot fan-based heat sink.

These single-slot designs with fan assembly might be more desirable to some depending on one’s box configuration. AMD also downgraded the memory, which has been DDR5 since the HD 4000 series were introduced 2008, to DDR2/DDR3. The Cedar GPU is an economical 292 M transistors on a die size of 59mm2.

The HD 5450 is not going to blow you away with its gaming performance—its obviously better equipped to perform to the standards of a casual gamer, however it is outfitted with Eyefinity technology so it will power up to three monitors with a maximum resolution 2560 x 1600 with solid HD video capabilities. The AIB has one DVI port, a VGA port, and a Display Port.

The HD 5450 is remarkably efficient, drawing less than 20W when functioning under stress—key for the value environment.

The Nvidia GT 220 and 210, also built in a 40 nm process, match the HD 5450 performance and price with the GT AIBs touting more favorable fill rates. However, the GT AIBs will draw up to 56 W of power, and still do not support DirectX 11.

Radeon HD 5570

The second AIB from AMD set to launch in the sub $100 segment is the Radeon HD 5570. The HD 5570 is the slimmed down version of the HD 5670. The HD 5670 has the same number of transistors, 627 million, in the 40 nm process, and it equals the 400 stream processors and 20 texture units. The main difference in the two AIBs comes in the form of memory with the HD 5670 coming with the now AMD standard GDDR5 while the thrifty HD 5500 series card has DDR3. The memory clock was also taken down 100 MHz to 900 MHz with the processor clock coming at 650 MHz compared to 775 MHz on the HD 5600 series. The overall footprint of the HD 5570 was cut down to about half the size of the HD 5670 saving a bit on the manufacturing process as well. The HD 5570 is priced roughly $25 to $30 less than the $99 HD 5600 series.

Like all AIBs in the Evergreen GPU family, the HD 5570 can drive up to three monitors with AMD’s Eyefinity technology. The HD 5670 has DVI, VGA and HDMI connections.

Nvidia’s value offerings. GT 220 and 210, can compete with the HD 5570 on price and performance but again, all of AMD’s cards support DX 11 and multi-monitor options, and use less power.

In testing, you can see a significant performance drop with the HD 5400 series, which is expected given the price point and architectural differences.

Benchmarks

We ran three sets of benchmarks on the new value segment AIBs from AMD, Vantage (also used for calculating the Pmark), the popular Resident Evil 5, and the DirectX 11 benchmark Stalker—Call of Pripyat.

All the tests were run on an Intel Clarksdale corei5 3.33 GHz-based computer with 4GB RAM.

Pmark

The combination of price, power consumption, and performance is expressed in the Pmark.

As might be expected, the lower power and lower priced HD 5450 got the best Pmark score.

Vantage

The industry standard synthetic benchmark is still Futuremark’s 3Dmark Vantage test suite.

We had difficulty getting the HD 5450 to run at the higher (1680 x 1050, and 1920 x 1200) resolutions with anti-aliasing on. However, in other tests the AIB ran fine at those resolutions. The HD 5570 significantly (average 456%) outperformed the HD 5450 and so once again if power consumption and/or price are not the main criteria, then the HD 5570 is the better choice.

Resident Evil 5

This game is chosen because it is popular, has a built-in benchmark, and uses DirectX 10 and DirectX 11; however, for these tests we only used DirectX 10.

The Radeon HD 5450 was not good enough to run the benchmark (and therefore presumably the game) at a minimal acceptable frame rate (i.e., ≥ 30 fps.) The HD 5570 could only run at the minimal acceptable frame rate at lower resolutions with anti-aliasing turned on, and did alright at higher resolutions with AA turned off.

Stalker—Call of Pripyat

Jon’s current favorite game and one that offers the most detailed test information other than Unigine is Stalker—Call of Pripyat.

Stalker gives you different levels of DirectX, multiple test scenarios with nineteen resolutions, six render lighting modalities, and four environment conditions (with a Min., Ave., and Max measurement) to evaluate an AIB resulting in 1,368 possible test conditions—overwhelming to say the least. The test scores are in fps, and they are similar in results to what we found in with Resident Evil 5.

What do we think?

The AMD ATI Radeon HD 5450 is a very capable AIB for casual games and could even be used in some high-end FPS game. The HD 5570, which costs just a little more than the 5540 is capable of running high-end games. For sub $100 that’s an amazing value.

Aperture surprises: Apple slips in new release when fans were losing hope

2010-02-16T20:00:21Z

Aperture 3 is here and Apple has made it a lot more flexible and friendly. In fact, Apple has reversed the waterfall and pulled the popular Faces and Places feature in iPhoto up to Aperture. Features like photo books, which have existed in both products, have become easier to use in Aperture but there are also more options. Aperture, if you don’t remember, is a photo management tool introduced for professional photographers. It was brought forth sometime before Adobe introduced Lightroom and it caused a sensation. It handled some of the most common tasks performed by professional photographers—and in so doing it duplicated some of Photoshop’s jobs albeit in a simple, one-two button way. Reflecting its development as a professional tool, Aperture was priced at $499 when it was released. As it turned out, that was too much and the price dropped to $199.

Unfortunately, after a fast turn around to Aperture 2, which fixed some bugs and improved the way in which Aperture worked with RAW files, Apple seemed to lose interest in Aperture and Adobe’s competing product Lightroom gained adherents.

I was reminded of all that when I got back on the Mac with a PowerBook Pro. I tried out iPhoto and liked it at first. Actually, I thought to myself, this could work instead of Aperture. I loved the Faces tool and I loved the easy geotagging. Apple, makes it really easy to place pictures by letting you search for easy place names, like Grand Central Station, the Ebisu Center in Tokyo, the Golden Gate Bridge, the White House, it gets you there. At the same time, Apple’s presumptuous file handling got the better of me again, especially when I wanted to use my images in a Premiere video. I wound up downloading Picasa.

With the release of Aperture 3, Apple has removed any reason that might have made me hesitate to use Aperture. It’s been 3 years in the making but Apple has really fixed the problems that plague professional photographers … and me. There is a whole army of people like me who use images in our work. It would be nice if we were better photographers with assistants to log our photos, and clients to buy them but even though that’s not the case we need a good photo management and editing tool to deal with our images.

There were several very positive signs right out of the box. Aperture lets me import my images from anywhere and it gives me the option of pulling the images into the Aperture file system, leaving them where they are, or moving them to the pictures file folder. For me, this is pretty much the whole ball game. It also did a slick job of importing my database from the files stored on the Time Machine disk.

Aperture goes even further with an import feature that allows professional photographers to sync and edit databases between machines so that changes can be maintained across computers.

Apple has obviously made extensive changes to Aperture’s imaging engine. In fact, Aperture is built on the iPhoto engine. This has an effect on images edited previously in the older version of Aperture. If you want, Aperture will reprocess the image or you can step back since the editing process is non-destructive.

Faces and Places

Apple says they’ve added 200 new features to Aperture and that’s easy to believe. Most obviously, the interface is easier to use and the tasks you perform most frequently are located in a panel that has tabs for library functions, metadata, and adjustments.

There are still some features that were hard to find but Apple has created instructional videos that solve those kinds of problems instantly. For instance, Apple has expanded the tools for making books but I couldn’t find them at first. And, I knew that Apple had added video support to its slide show capability, but I couldn’t work that one out either. As it turns out, it was easy, just click on new to create a new project, web page, book, or slide show. The older version of Aperture asked you to work in separate environments depending on the job you were doing. (Lightroom has a similar problem and it doesn’t really reflect the way most people work.)

The Faces and Places feature comes from iPhoto and as you might expect, when you import images from iPhoto all that metadata comes along. In Aperture, identified faces can be found throughout your entire database or by project. Places expands on iPhoto’s geotagging capabilities with support for cameras with GPS. Images can also be dragged to an interactive map. If you like, you can track the progress of a photo shoot or a trip—and that information can be used in the photo books to add a map.

Adjustments

Apple has worked hard on the adjustments and it has recognized the dirty little secret shared by professional photographers and not-so-professional photographers and that is when a one button enhance works, use it. Apple has added new presets and it allows users to save their adjustments as a preset. This is the sort of thing you only have to use once to understand. Frequently, one batch of photos is going to have similar problems—the lighting was not great, for instance. Creating a preset lets you use the same correction in batch mode, or just have an easy correction to reach for first when familiar problems crop up. Kirk Paulsen, a senior director at Apple, was particularly pleased with the work done in adjustments and says he believes that photographers will contribute their own pre-sets, they’ll share them and they’ll sell them.

Poking around Apple’s Aperture site, by the way, reveals that a very active community of developers has grown up around Aperture.

The brushes feature in Aperture is also nice. It would be nice to be able to save these as well, but so far I haven’t seen a way to do this. Brushes let you apply a change to just a part of an image. With edge detection you can stay within the lines and the ability to soften and vary the strength of the effect and the size of the brush gives a nice feeling of control. One of the new features added is a skin tone brush for portrait work that lets you smooth out skin tones.

Apple has taken advantage of the CPU and the GPU to accelerate the performance of Aperture. I have a fairly modest Macbook Pro but I found little to complain about in performance—that’s not to say I didn’t notice some lag but it was well within the bounds of reasonable expectation and those blessed with discrete graphics processors will see big improvements.

A note of caution: in general Aperture is solid, but in a heavy session of adding places and renaming files to make a book—Aperture crashed frequently. However it recovered with minimal loss of work. Others have complained that it is slow but I’m not seeing anything out of line in comparison to comparable professional products.

Aperture is $199, $99 upgrade.

What do we think?

Apple has recognized that “professionals” come in all different sizes with very different job descriptions and technical skills. With features like Faces and Places, Apple has added an element of play to Aperture that actually improves its ability to organize information.

Using Aperture has made me think about how much image processing has improved over the years. It’s not that these capabilities are so new but they have been refined so that everyone can use them. Probably the most important thing Apple has done has been to show a commitment to Aperture that will bring many disaffected users back to the program. To make sure that happens, Apple is offering the upgrade price to users who have Aperture 1 and 2.

AMD’s ATI Radeon HD5670

2010-01-18T20:22:44Z

While multi-card Crossfire/ SLi solutions and chasing record breaking performance get the headlines the bottom line is fueled by the $100 and under AIB’s. The Mainstream segment of the market has always been the monetary sweet spot of the GPU industry. What a company loses in profit margins in the segment is more than made up for in volume. In years past this segment would be reserved for the high-end parts that has fallen from grace and becomes obsolete, however recognizing the importance of this segment (Steam is reporting that 90% of AIB are <$100) GPU companies design GPUs specifically for the Mainstream. The HD 5670 is no exception, and in fact it’s a great example.

The core of the new HD 5670 is the Redwood XT GPU. The Redwood XT like its big brothers the Cypress and Juniper is a 40NM part with 640 Million transistors compared to 2.15 billion and 959 million of the Cypress and Juniper respectively. Fewer transistors contribute to the HD 5670’s efficient power consumption – 61W in use, 14w idle.

The HD 5670 is the first sub $100 mainstream part introduced by ATI that is DirectX 11 compatible; this will give obvious advantages to the Redwood XT solution over its GT 240 counterpart. Six months ago even three months ago DX 11 would not have been a major advantage in the Mainstream segment but with more and more DX 11 games being introduced DX 11 is becoming a necessity. It’s our speculation that Nvidia will not be able to introduce a Fermi derivative DX 11 for Mainstream until the fall which gives the HD 5670 plenty of time to wrestle away market share from the GT 240 until a DX 11 Nvidia successor can hit the street.

As of now the GT 240 is a comparable part and can outperform the HD 5670 as some of our test show. We tested both cards using an Intel Clarksdale – i5 661 @ 3.33 GHz.

AMD 40nm HD 5670 MSRP: $99.99	Nvidia GT 240 40nm available at EVGA.com $99.99:
775 MHz Core Clock	550MHz GPU
400 Stream processors	96 Cuda Cores
	1800 Memory Clock (3600 MHz Double Data Rate)
512 MB/ 1GB GDDR5	512 MB DDR5
61w/ 14w	69w at power
6.2 GPixel fillrate	8.8 Gpixel fillrate
Catalyst	Driver 195.62
Single Slot Solution	Single Slot Solution

ATI is planning to follow up the HD 5670 with two Value parts the HD 5500 – HD 5450 (the HD 5450 will be a fanless dual-slot solution) these are do to be rolled out in early February.

Pmark

The Pmark score shows the new EVGA GT 240 AIB to be the hands down best board available today.

The Pmark is a three parameter test

Where:

Performance is expressed in 3DMark Pre-set Extreme Vantage score
Price is expressed in US dollars (NextTag data used)
Power is expressed in watts of the AIB

What do we think?

The relative performance of the AIBs is close and brand loyalty could easily make the decision. However, the AMD HD 5670 can run DX 11 games and therefore offers better investment protection.

Software Review: Making Muvees

2009-12-15T21:54:23Z

Of all the tools out there that promise to make video making easy and fun, Muvee has been one of the best and one of the easiest. The way Muvee works is to let you select video clips and still pictures, add a soundtrack, and pick a style. The templates add some graphics elements, such as a scrapbook, stars, cubes, and also a style for cuts and transitions. Then you just push a button and see what you get.

The developers at Muvee have been pretty quiet and that’s because they’ve been working away re-architecting the software to take advantage of modern hardware. They’ve also added new features to Muvee Reveal to add control and at the same time keep it simple to use. They’ve also brought the templates up to date. Muvee has had the ability to highlight important areas of a video and to mark the areas you don’t want, but they’ve added more control so you can select the exact sections you want. You can add logos and captions. But, perhaps the most obvious improvement is that the software is much faster.

CEO Terence Swee came to JPR’s offices to demonstrate the software. Obviously, he can make Muvee sing and dance with just a few clicks but what’s impressive is that in our first few tries here we were able to customize our Muvees to get good results. For instance, the software has built-in face detection capabilities to zoom in on the most important areas of videos or photos. I was struck by the graceful way in which it combined a zoom in on one video clip with the zoom out on another. It’s possible to turn up the native video and turn down the music. You can also add a voice-over recording.

The Muvee developers have tried to keep the features to a minimum to be just the most valuable and useful features one might need but I did keep wishing for a little more—the ability to rotate video, to adjust the lighting, and everyone will have their own ideas and there ya go. As soon as you add what everyone wants you’ve got a heavy, difficult to use product. The emphasis here is on using as few button clicks as possible and overall the company has hit the mark.

Muvee Reveal takes advantage of Cuda to speed the software’s performance on Nvidia processors. It shows up in creating previews and also in creating output files. That’s really the great thing about the new Muvee software—because it’s faster, it’s a lot more pleasant to just try out different styles and to fine tune the content.

The only snag we came across was that Muvee didn’t seem to like Quicktime much as an import format. Everything else seemed to be fine and you never know if it’s just a problem with the components on a particular computer.

Muvee Reveal enables you to create and upload videos to the web and Muvee has an online service at shwup.com. In addition, you can upload to your account on YouTube and Facebook. You can save and export to your iPhone and the PSP. The software also provides a variety of encoding tools for additional formats including standard and HD. The list includes: WMV, MOV, MPEG-1, H.264, 3GP, and MPEG-4.

Muvee Reveal 7.x is available for $79.95. Additional templates are available—some are free and some are available in low-cost add-on packages.

What do we think?

As is so often the case, the secret to having fun with Muvee is to relax and not demand too much of the software. Just push the button and have fun. We’ve been playing with similar software from Roxio (PhotoShow), and from Corel (Digital Studio 2010) and these products too, have their talents. Roxio has concentrated on photos and simple online tools—they’ll make their money from upgrades, they hope. Corel has focused on imaging, photobooks, and fast video publishing.

Our biggest troubles come when we think these really simple tools ought to do something and we waste enormous amounts of time looking for a particular feature. Sometimes it’s the easiest interface that’s the most daunting because you’re sure you’re missing something. You are not. Muvee Reveal is designed to give people the ability to create something nice from all their videos and photos from the vacation and get on with their lives.

Some people have absolutely no trouble getting that concept into their heads and they already love Muvee. We’re getting the hang of it and inflicting Muvees on anyone who holds still in our presence. If you have an iPhone, no one is safe.

EVGA’s GT 240 - Testing a powerful low-cost AIB

2009-12-15T21:37:27Z

We don’t just test super high-end AIBs here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs; we look at any AIB that is novel or interesting, or controversial. So we decided to take a look at some midrange AIBs, and in particular Nvidia’s newest offering, the GT 240. EVGA loaned us a board for examination and we put it through the usual tests.

It’s appropriate to look at midrange AIBs at this time of year and in this economy. Consumers looking for a gift, or for themselves, are looking for value in their purchases and the midrange AIBs offer plenty of that. Not everyone plays demanding graphics games all the time. In fact, one of the most popular games out there now, World of Warcraft doesn’t really need super high-end graphics for an enjoyable experience but it definitely benefits. A midrange AIB will provide most of the performance and sometimes at considerably lower prices.

So with that in mind we examined the midrange AIBs.

Pmark

The Pmark score shows the new EVGA GT 240 AIB to be the hands down best board available today.

The Pmark is a three parameter test

Where:

Performance is expressed in 3DMark Pre-set Extreme Vantage score
Price is expressed in US dollars (NextTag data used)
Power is expressed in watts of the AIB

The EVGA GT 240 comes with several built-in Nvidia chip features such as GeForce 3D Vision stereo capability (glasses not included), Nvidia’s PureVideo Technology, PhysX-ready, and Cuda ready.

**Table 1**: Pmark scores for the HD 5750 and GT 240. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)
	HD 5750	GT 240	Ratio
Vantage	4110	1931	1.13
Price	$145.00	$100.00	0.45
Power	86.00	70.00	0.23
Pmark	0.33	0.28	0.19

**Table 2**: Comparison of specifications for ATI HD 5750 and Nvidia GT 240. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)
	HD 5750	GT 240
Process	40nm	40nm
Transistors	1.04B	727M
Engine Clock	700 MHz	550 MHz
Stream Processors	720	96
Compute Performance	1.008 TFLOPS	385 GFLOPS
ROPS	16	8
Texture Units	36	32
Texture Fillrate	25.2 GTexels/s	17.6 GT/s
Pixel Fillrate	11.2 Gpixel/s	8.8 GP/s
Memory Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory Clock	1150 MHz	3400 MHz
Memory Bandwidth	73.6 GB/s	54.4 GB/s
Maximum Board Power	86W	69W
Memory on board	512MB—1GB	512MB—1GB
Idle Board Power	16W
Price	$145	$100

What do we think?

Graphics AIBs continue to be real value for money—you get what you pay for. As the data table above shows, the ratios of difference between the $100 EVGA AIB and the $150 ATI give you an interesting menu: max performance—ATI, best price—EVGA.

ATI’s Radeon HD5970 Hemlock - DirectX 11, lots-o-cores, multiple displays, over-clockable

2009-11-24T18:58:01Z

Number five in its series of new AIBs, ATI as promised delivered the dual chip HD5970 Radeon board. It’s killer fast, easy on the power supply and pocketbook, and has bonuses like multi-display output and over clocking tools.

The board comes with 2GB of DDR5, one each for each GPU. The GPUs get to the PCIe lanes via a gen2 PLX PCIe bridge chip.

We ran a series of tests on the board in Windows 7 and the results were very impressive—without over-clocking. ATI has a lot of headroom in the RV870 Evergreen GPU, and the two of them on the Hemlock board have been slightly detuned to stay within power supply and temperature bounds. To do that ATI decided to go with a smaller power supply solution by selecting a 6-pin + 8-pin power connector while still using the components from the 400W board design.

To further support the enthusiasts ATI included a number of components strictly to support over-clocking:

Fast volterra digital regulators that allow more current than the board draws at default settings.
Fast ceramic Japanese 47 μF capacitors as part of the voltage regulations and smoothing.
A new, massive vapor-chamber that ATI claims can pulls up to 400W worth of heat away from the GPUs.
An SMSC fan controller that monitors multiple temperatures and optimizing fan speed and acoustics.
High-speed 5.0 Gbps-rated GDDR5.
And the RV870’s 1600 processors which can be over-clocked.

And of course the HD5970 runs in DirectX 11. However, we only had one benchmark to run DX11 tests in: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Pmark

The Pmark score shows the new ATI Radeon HD 5970 AIB to be the hands down best board available today.

The Pmark is a three parameter test

Where:

Performance is expressed in 3DMark Pre-set Extreme Vantage score
Price is expressed in US dollars (NextTag data used)
Power is expressed in watts of the AIB

When Performance is expressed in FPS then the FPS score is multiplied by 100 to put it in the same range as the 3D Vantage scores.

The Pmark shows ATI’s sweet-spot strategy is working pretty well and delivering the best balance of price-performance and power consumption.

Forgetting about price or power consumption, we tested the AIBs in a few games and Vantage to give an overall impression of what they have to offer.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Prypiat

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has proven to be one of the most enduring games in a long time with mods and updates. Call of Pripyat is a sequel to Shadow of Chernobyl. Although Call of Pripyat is already available in German-speaking countries, a translated version is still being finished and isn't due for release until the first quarter of 2010.However, it was the first to show up with a DirectX 11 interface, and to have a benchmark sequence in it. It also offers three environmental conditions: Sunny day, Rainy day, and Night. We tested it in DirectX 11 with two ATI AIBs, and then again in DirectX 10.1 with the same AIBs plus an Nvidia GTX295, and the results can be seen in the charts.

The AIBs were run with hardware accelerated tessellation on and off (W/O Tess), at high resolutions, and with 4XAA always on. The dual GPU HD5970 showed pretty good scaling (average of average day) of 41.7% with its normal 725 MHz HD5970 clocking and the HD5870 running at 850MHz—a clock difference of 14.7%.

In DirectX 10.1 the Nvidia GTX295 did surprisingly well, although it wouldn’t run at max (2560x1600) res.

The scaling was better in DX 10.1 reaching an average of 42.5%

Unigine Tropics

We ran our first set of synthetic tests using Unigine’s DriectX 11 Tropics benchmark, and compared several boards, as well as a dual board Crossfire combination against the HD5970, the results are shown in the Unigine Tropics chart.

In order to make the most use out of the 3200 processors on the 5970 AIB we things at the max toggling ambient occlusion (AC), and varying anti-aliasing (AA) or anti-isotropic filtering (AF.)

Resident Evil 5

In Resident Evil 5 the HD5970 beat everything except two 5870 AIBs which again is due to the differences in clock speed. However, the scaling from one (higher clock) HD5870 to the HD 5970 isn’t as great in Resident Evil 5 as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and only averages 34.5%.

Resident Evil 5 is a very fast playing game, like Left Behind, and so frame rate is pretty important. It has some interesting graphics, if a bit disturbing at times, so keeping all the graphics functions amped up is justified.

Vantage

Vantage remains the base line benchmark, and the HD 5970 did well in it as expected, showing an average scaling of just 15.2%, the lowest for all the tests.

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is expected to sell for $599, it can be found on the web from $699.99 (which is an indication of the scarcity of the board (due probably to TSMCs difficulties with yield at 40nm.) to as low as $519.99.

What do we think?

If you’re shopping for your holiday present, or a present for your favorite geek, then the HD 5970 is the best choice you could make right now. And with over-clocking capabilities it’s even a more fun toy to play with.

The new Zune review – HD at work

2009-11-19T20:16:17Z

Microsoft's latest assault on the portable media market is the Zune HD. It is a lovely little piece of hardware that gives Microsoft a play against some strong. In fact, it reminds me of my beloved Samsung Yepp YP-P2. Samsung has upgraded that line with a new P3 and of course, Apple is the power house with the iPod Touch. Microsoft developed this generation of Zune, the HD, with Nvidia’s Tegra and the added power is evident in the beautiful bright screen. It also has a nifty interface, a long battery life, and a software infrastructure that needs work.

Table 1: Comparing Apples and not-apples. The Zune HD is not a phone but the iPhone is a media player and there’s something to be said for each. I’m never without my phone, but it’s nice not to be bound to a service contract for a media player. The YP-3 was chosen because it represents a comparable device to the Zune HD that we’ve actually used (and loved).
	YP-P3	iPhone 3GS	Zune HD
Processor	TC 7901 (AM926EJ-S X2, 489 MHz)	Custom Samsung w/ ARM Cortex 8 at 600 MHz + Imagination PowerVR SGX	Nvidia Tegra APX, Arm 11/ARM 7
Display	TFT LCD, 480x272	TFT LCD 320x480	3.3 inches, 480x272, OLED
TouchScreen	Yes+Haptic	Yes	Yes
WiFi	802.11b/g	802.11b/g	802.11b/g
Playback	Audio 30, video 5	audio 30, video 7	audio 33 hours, video 8.5 hours
Radio	FM	no	HD
Phone	No	3G	no
Camera	No	3 Mpixel	no
External Speakers	yes	yes	no
Microphone	yes	yes	no
Bluetooth	yes	yes	no
Price	$199, 16 GB	$199, 16 GB	$219, 16 GB

Downloading the Zune software takes a while. Once the software is installed, it's a nice whizzy land that is supposedly connected to the cloud so you can buy stuff or play your own. It did a great job of finding what it wanted on my computer -- a concern because I have a lot of “Plays for Sure” content from Napster and I was afraid I'd wind up with a bunch of dead content on the Zune but instead it managed to find the content that it could play. Also, it very gracefully managed to import the podcasts that I had previously downloaded in iTunes. To get Audible running I had to download an additional piece of software but it wasn't that wasn't difficult and in no time I was able to get my audible content into the Zune.

When you get started, Zune seriously wants you to sign up for a pass for $14.99 per month pass or buy songs. There are a few free apps and every time you want to play one, Microsoft suggests you buy a Zune Pass. Obviously, Microsoft is eager to be making the kind of money Apple is making hand over fist, but also the Zune Pass really let's Microsoft show off its agent technology called “Smart DJ.” Using the content you already have, coupled with choices you give the Zune DJ about what kind of music you like, the Zune DJ makes suggestions for free downloads or purchases. Subscription content is stored separately so that when you no longer have a subscription, you aren't stuck with the chore of weeding out dead content. The Zune Pass also lets you pick 10 songs a month to keep.

Is the world ready for subscription music? It would seem so. Apple has finally added support for Rhapsody and the Zune Pass is getting good comments from those bright enough to understand that they can still buy music they want to keep, but the subscription services enable them to build up playlists and libraries of new songs as well as old favorites. Yes, the price tag is always something to consider -- $15 a month is expensive if you're a kid and even for adults dealing with cable subscriptions, internet access subscriptions, mobile phone bills, not to mention mortgages, rent, and car payments. But, if you're going to be buying music anyway, then yes indeedy, the Zune Pass is a good way to go. And, comparing it to Napster -- which I have been using and I’m attached to -- so far the Zune seems smarter about picking music I'm going to like.

Also, the Zune let's you maintain content on three computers and three Zunes. In the Zune world it’s much easier to maintain the Zune player and computer libraries. Apple insists you sync the iPhone with only one machine; the Zune is more accommodating though it can get a little prickly about downloaded TV content. So far, there’s no problem as long as you selectively sync files, which is generally what I want to do anyway.

All that said, I will say that I did just upgrade my iPhone and a friend's Palm and neither operation was quite as involved as the process of getting the Zune comfortably talking to my computer. Microsoft, dudes,do you forever want to be associated with that little fat man in the TV ads? How can Microsoft expect mere mortals, mortals with jobs I might add, to go through all these hoops just to get a device working as it should?

So far, the longest part of the project seems to be downloading the software, rebooting, and downloading more updates. In all honesty, iTunes updates can be just as laborious and every bit as annoying. However, Apple has done such a good job of communicating what's going on with progress bars and announcements about what stage of the process is happening. Sometimes the Zune just went blank ... what, is it broken? is it working? should I reboot? (Don't) Eventually, it all worked out but during the process, I had problems and misgivings that are completely alien to those smugly living the Apple lifestyle.

Once set up however, the Zune quickly makes itself an indispensible companion. With WiFi, the Zune has some mobility -- you use it to browse for songs and download the pitifully few apps there are (more are promised). In addition, Microsoft is the first media player to include HD radio and, using the HD radio let’s you buy songs as soon as you hear them.

The Zune display is flat out beautiful, I added a bunch of pictures because I so enjoyed seeing them on the Zune. Likewise, the picture for videos and movies is bright and sharp. It's an obvious generational change, and Nvidia has something to crow about here. The display is bright and sharp and the TV videos, once I got them downloaded looked and sounded great. I didn’t see any lip sync issues and on the small screen the quality was good. Microsoft offers an optional dock that lets you play HD video on TVs and it works with the Xbox 360.

Microsoft is slowly but surely into this household. I have an Xbox Live account, I have a Microsoft ID, now I have a Zune Pass, I have bought points, and gradually all this stuff is starting to work together. The Xbox 360 can see my computer and play content. It can find Zune content and play it. I can plug my Zune into the Xbox 360 and play content directly, which is an obviously better option than depending on the home WiFi. The Xbox 360 can play Netflix movies.

Soon, like by the time you are reading this, Xbox 360 will have a new update and it will also support Facebook, Twitter, and Last FM. Bringing Facebook into the living room is brilliant, when guests come over you can show them what mutual friends are up to -- take a look at pictures, take pictures of your group and upload them instantly. It adds another dimension of sociability to social networks. Now, it's not necessarily one lonely person in front of the computer updating status and uploading photos.

The Xbox was introduced a few eons ago in 2005. When it was introduced, Microsoft was at pains to position the product as a home entertainment device and not solely as a game machine. When it arrived, it was a game machine, but here we are four years down the road and it is truly becoming what it was designed to be -- the hub of the home network.

But let's not forget the little fat man. Microsoft software is still infuriating in places. You're just hearing now from a woman who has triumphed over adversity. Who has conquered utterly mysterious menu choices, and has spent time nurturing the Zune HD so that it really knows what I like. I have also devoted time shuttling between the living room, back office, and Zune to introduce the PC to the Xbox 360 to the Zune HD. This review should have been done a week or so ago. It was delayed by problems in getting the Zune HD to update its firmware and download videos on one machine; even though I got another machine to work instantly (it helps to have a household of computers in this modern age). If I had published this review earlier, as I was still struggling to get everything working, it would have been a much more negative review. Now that I have gotten it working and I’m playing my music through the home stereo I can see a real future for Microsoft and the Zune in the larger home entertainment market.

What do we think?

Microsoft obviously knows that it’s important to build a total software and hardware infrastructure. That’s why the company broke its Plays for Sure pledge to enable all media players to work with subscription services. And, the Zune HD and its Marketplace are pretty good and, we’re assuming it will get better. I used to use the Samsung P2 with Cinema Now (before Roxio acquired the company). It was too difficult to use and I gave up but the P2 is a flawless Plays for Sure client. It’s intriguing that Samsung has continued with the Yepp YP line and followed the P2 with a P3. Samsung too is building an infrastructure with the Emodio store. There are a few apps, and Samsung is building connectivity into its TVs – but it’s still primarily a music player.

So far, the Zune HD along with the Xbox 360 and the Zune Marketplace is the best integrated system to compete with Apple. Microsoft is not going to give up – and all in all we’re pretty impressed with where they are now.

The Zune HD gets a thumbs up for the hardware but the software is going to need a little more work – it might only be an upgrade or two away.

Kill a watt

2009-11-19T20:01:41Z

Every month the electric bill comes in and every month it’s higher than you think it should be and every month you say we have to find out what is using all that power, it can't be just the PC I sit in front of all day, someone is leaving lights on or something. And then you go back to reading your email and tapping out tweets. At quitting time, you get up and some folks turn off their PC, others have a sleep mode set and want to have instant on when they come back so they leave the machine on, but sleeping - or so they think.

I am a fanatic about turning things off - and still, even with 5KW of solar cells powering JPR HQ and Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs, there's an electric bill and it's higher than I think it should be.

You can't call the electric company (PG&E in our case - they don't make house calls - but they will give you advice - turn stuff off. Thanks.) You could call an electrician and he or she will do what you can do for $30, instead of $300 an hour. Get a Kill a Watt meter ($29.95 at CableOrganizer.com) and plug it in the wall and then plug your stuff into it and take a look at the power consumption - how easy is that?

So we did that. On my rig which is a high performance PC with three monitors, an audio amp, and two external disks, running off a UPS battery backup system, the wall draw is 400 W. I didn't know that and if someone had asked me I would have guessed it to be 300 W max. When I quit and turn off the PC there's still a draw of ~ 150 W or so - the monitors in sleep mode. Then I turn off the UPS so all the little cube supplies get shut down - and guess what - even turned off there is 40 W being used. Where? I haven't a clue, maybe the UPS isn't fully shut off and there's a trickle charge running - hell of a trickle at 40 W.

Kill a Watt with mini extension cord

On another workstation here, with a similar setup, three monitors, external disks, amp, etc. There is no UPS on two other systems, which are used for testing and non-essential daily stuff, so when we’re finished with them, the master switch on the power strip is switched off and their consumption goes to zero. A master switch off seems to be the only solution.

What do we think?

We would have never known if we hadn’t gotten a Kill a Watt meter. The meter will show line voltage, amperage, Watts, and most interestingly KW/hr – the thing the utility company charges you by. My rig which is consuming ~400 W instantaneously, is telling the utility company it’s sucking 40 KWH. This is shocking news, a wakeup call.

The only down side element of the meter is that you have to shut down your appliance and unplug it, then plug it into the meter, and then the meter into the wall. Sometimes that can be inconvenient depending on what else is plugged in and so we use mini extension cords, which is one on the best inventions since soft pretzels, if you’ve got a bunch of cubes, you need mini extension cords.

The other problem with the meter is in order to not contribute to the problem (of unwanted power consumption) it uses a passive LCD screen, which is a little difficult to see sometimes, especially at a wall socket where there may not be much light, so we’ve found you have to use a flashlight to see what’s going on.

However, if you’re annoyed by your creeping upward electric bill and want to get to the root of the problem, the Kill a Watt meter is a must have in your tool kit.

Your very own switchboard

2009-11-19T19:51:46Z

Here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs we run several computers with AMD or Intel processors of various sizes. We have a variety of monitors, keyboards, and mice, and the one we want is never attached to the machine we’re going to run tests on. Not only that, when we do unravel the rat’s nests of wires, one of them in inevitably is either too short or too knotted up to reach and so a few frustrating minutes are lost sorting that out.

We’ve tried to get a KVM switch that would help us manage it and couldn’t find one that handled all the USB switches, could carry dual link DVI signals at max bandwidth, and wasn’t encumbered with old PS2 connectors. That is, we couldn’t until Michael Becce at MRB Public Relations introduced us to Cambridge UK based Adder Technology.

Michael arranged for us to get an AdderView Pro MultiScreen to put through the paces. This machine was designed for us, or so it seems, whoever thought it up must have heard our cries.

“The unit allows up to four DVI-I heads per computer to be switched, “ says Nigel Dickens, engineering director of Adder. “Bring it on. “Not only that,” Dickens bragged, “due to our high quality, efficient switching technology, each video head can support four full dual link digital video displays.” Music to our ears – literally, read on.

Actually, as incredible as it might seem, Dickens and his team didn’t have us in mind when they designed the AdderView Pro MultiScreen. Instead, they recognized a need in professional applications such as medical imaging and broadcast for multi head DVI switches that could be used alongside specialist interface devices such as graphics tablets, 3D explorers, joysticks, and so on. In addition to the impressive video performance, these units offer more than just straight switching between four systems. The KVM switches speakers and two separate USB devices attached to the AdderView Pro units. Devices can either be switched in unison, as normal, or you can mix your peripherals between any of the systems to suit your current tasks.

For instance, you could be creating emails on one system, listening to a soundtrack from another while a third is sending documents to your printer and a fourth performing another task with a different USB peripheral.

In environments such as benchmarking, or medical imaging the application Adder identified, , the AdderView Pro MultiScreen series will allow displays to be shared across multiple computer systems, therefore eliminating the need for multiple high resolution displays.

The unit features Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) Emulation and profile DDC ensuring that separate EDID data from each video display will be distributed through to the appropriate video adaptors within each computer - this is extremely important in a benchmarking lab. The extended DDC EDID profile ensures that the switched graphics card is always optimized to work with your screen.

The system carries USB 2.0, and video bandwidth up to 2560 x 1600 for the 30-inch screens.

There are various sized units. The AV4Pro-DVI-Dual is $995, AV4Pro-DVI-Triple sells for $1395, and the AV4Pro-DVI-Quad is $1795. Adder has distributors worldwide so it won’t be difficult getting one of these puppies. More details are here: http://www.adder.com/UK/products/Datasheets/av4pro_MS_0809_elec2.pdf

What do we think?

We’ve been testing (and testing with) the AV4Pro multi screen four – look at the photo of the back panel to get a sense of what this machine can do - any monitor to any PC and (as far as we can tell) any combination. We had two monitors running off of one PC, and then we had one of those monitors running off another PC. We were able to use one keyboard for multiple PCs, one monitor for multiple PCs, and various other combinations. In fact it cost us a little production time while the folks here played with the various combinations.

The combinations are selected on a front panel switch matrix which took a few minutes to figure out (someone suggested we read the manual, and he’ll be out of the hospital in a day or so.)

This is a solid piece of really good engineering. It’s well built, and it does the job it’s advertised to do. If you’re using multiple PCs and/or monitors and need to change their configuration from time to time, this is the box to have.

Reviewing the Lenovo D20, Quadro FX 4800 and AMD FirePro 7850

2009-11-09T23:52:12Z

Lenovo loaned us a new workstation to take a look at, the company’s recent top-end Nehalem-class, dual-socket ThinkStation D20.

The D20 came equipped with both sockets filled, as well as 12 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 memory. Two of the machine’s five 3.5-inch drive bays were filled, each with one 500 GB SATA drive, connected via a Marvell VD 0 SCSI adapter that presented them as one 1 TB RAID 0 drive (RAID 0 offers no redundancy). For graphics, Lenovo supplied us with one Quadro FX 4800 card, with 1.5 GB GDDR3 memory. And, we also tried it with an AMD FirePro V8750 card.

Power-conscious Xeon SKU E series vs. top-performance W series.

The D20 came configured with dual E5540 Xeon Nehalem-class processors. The E prefix SKUs are more power conscious, with lower rate clocks than either the max-performance W series or middle of the road X series. For example, while the top-end W5590 is rated for 3.33 GHz operation, our E5540’s chugged along at 2.53 GHz.

Table 1: Configuration specifications for our ThinkStation D20 review machine. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)
	Component
CPU	Dual Xeon E5540 @ 2.53 GHz
Memory	12.0 GB total; 6 GB per CPU
(3 x 2 GB DDR3-1333 DIMMs)
Disk	2 x 500 GB SATA 7200 RPM
(configured as 1 TB RAID 0)
Graphics	Nvidia Quadro FX 4800, or
(1) AMD FirePro V8750
OS	Windows 7

The payoff for the E5540 is in power and noise. It’s rated at 80 Watts, versus the W5590’s 130 Watts. And reduced power consumption means it will—all else being equal—run cooler and quieter. Last but not least, the E series machines are far less expensive than the W series, making them a more economical choice on two levels (initial purchase and then operation).

Bottom line: the E5540 we had was far more representative of what most customers would buy, but the W5590 would be the choice for those who are willing to give up power consumption advantages and pay more for some varying degree of performance
improvement.

Different motherboard topology with Nehalem

Migrating to Intel’s Nehalem architecture means a different motherboard layout than FSB-based CPUs have. Therefore, the memory DIMMs need to be closer to each of the CPUs (see photo), rather than the single North Bridge.

Exploring ways to differentiate

Workstation OEMs today don’t have a whole lot of room to differentiate on components. They’ve all got access to the same components from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD, as well as disk and storage components. It’s not easy for one machine at one price point to argue performance advantages over another similarly priced system based on the same hardware components. So to a large degree, differentiation must come from other avenues, such as:

Price.
Aesthetics.
Ergonomics.
Power consumption.
Noise level.
Expandability.
Reliability.
Bundles and turnkey solutions.
Service and support.

Aesthetics? In the past that was either a low priority or a non-priority, aesthetics is carrying more and more weight, varying by segment. The trend lately has been leaning toward the beefy, industrial look, showing grill work and—cost allowing—metal rather than plastic (for example, brushed aluminum enclosures). And not just on the outside either, as a look inside Apple’s Mac Pro attests.

Rather than polished bare metal all around, D20 designers went with a black finish, combining a metal grill and enclosure with plastic trim. One component of the trim is a beefy front handle, which, when paired to a metal tab on the backside, makes lugging the system less of a hassle.

Touting a tool-less chassis in and of itself isn’t much of a differentiator anymore; tool-less is a checkmark item these days. However, vendors’ approaches to tool-less aren’t the same. In the D20’s case, the panel removes easily, revealing several tool-less devices: a plastic retention bracket that supports add-in cards when the panel is closed, pull tabs on drive trays and press-to-release tabs for optical. Everything snaps closed and releases fairly reliably.

Benchmarking the Lenovo D20 ... and an opportunity to compare Nvidia’s Quadro FX 4800 and AMD’s FirePro V8750

To get a feel for the D20’s general system-level capability running typical workstation loads, we ran three SPECapc benchmarks: 3ds max, SolidWorks and Lightwave. And to focus in on the graphics, we opted for the tried-and-true SPEC Viewperf.

Comparisons are always difficult from a number of perspectives. First off, the systems or AIBs being compared need to represent a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison. For our definition, “reasonable” means a similar configuration and/or similar price point and similar target usage. That is, if they’re built up similarly, or if they sell for around the same amount (street price) and they’re intended for the same class of user, then they’re
comparable.

Second—and we stress this often—benchmarks always need to be taken with a grain of salt. Used improperly, benchmark results can be misleading. And even under the best circumstances, benchmarks only tell one part of the story.

Lining up a Quadro FX 4800 and AMD FirePro V8750

With the D20 review, we tested an Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 (provided in-system) and an AMD FirePro V8750. The two are based on comparable GPU generations (the Quadro FX 4800 derived from the GT200 and the FirePro V8750 from the RV870), and the two sell in a similar range (as of this writing) on the street. Results from an on-line price scan showed both cards selling in a range of around $1,200 to $1,400, with the Quadro FX 4800 perhaps just a nudge less expensive. One notable difference is that the FirePro V8750 comes outfitted with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, where the Quadro FX 4800 is equipped with 1.5 GB of GDDR3.

No apples and apples

We couldn’t compare apples-to-apples by configuration, but we could by price ... so what’s better to buy: more modest-speed cores or fewer fastest-possible cores?

We didn’t have any dual-socket E5540 Xeon systems to compare to the D20, however, we could compare by price. The 2.53 GHz E5540 has a more power efficient CPU and it’s far cheaper. So much so that two 2.53 GHz E5540’s can be had for about the same price as one 3.33 GHz W5590 (Dell’s site had one W5590 only $200 cheaper than two E5540’s when configuring a Precision T7500).

Now all else being equal, two 2.53 GHz processors will offer more theoretical performance than one 3.33 GHz processor. But in the reality of the multi-core age, how well they compare depends on how much the application can take advantage of more cores. Specifically, with today’s quad-core Nehalem-EP processors, the question is how much better can eight physical cores (16 logical with HyperThreading) perform compared to four (or eight, respectively). Running SPECapc on our dual E5540 D20 and comparing to benchmark results from SPEC-submitted single W5590 systems yielded some interesting results.

For the SPECapc 3ds max 9 benchmark, we compared the D20 to both a Dell Precision T7500 and an HP 7800. The W5580 and W5590 systems outperformed our dual E5540 machine on the Hardware shader and Graphics components. So the superior clock rate of the single W5580 and W5590 trumped the dual E5540’s. But for the CPU render component the more plentiful (albeit slower) Nehalem CPU cores performed better.

For SPECapc Lightwave, all components scaled poorly with the number of cores, and again the single W5590-based Dell Precision T7500 and HP Z800 bested our dual E5540-based D20 on all counts. On the Render and Interactive scores, the Dell and HP systems beat the D20 by 23% to 30%, a range that’s no surprise, considering their processors are 31% faster. But on the Multi-task score, which we’d expect to scale better by core count, the D20 was much closer.

We ran SPECapc for SolidWorks, comparing the D20 against the Dell Precision T7500 and a Fujitsu Celsius 670. The benchmark again rewarded the faster, fewer-cored competitors, with the exception of I/O, which as one might surmise is not particularly CPU-sensitive.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, the D20 performed worse on the graphics component, despite having the pricier Quadro FX 4800. But remember, this is SPECapc, where the CPU is still busy with application processing, even if the component name suggests it’s testing just the graphics. And when considering the GPU on-board, the FX 3800 is essentially equal that of the FX 4800, and the result isn’t completely out of whack (much of the premium for the FX 4800 is for memory size).

How well the application scales by core count makes all the difference ... in this case, the SPECapc applications preferred the one faster CPU over the two slower ones.

Specifically in the context of this subset of these SPECapc benchmarks then, we can conclude that allocating dollars upgrading to a faster single CPU pays off more than forking out dollars on a second slower CPU. Of course, that conclusion doesn’t reflect on the performance of D20 compared to the Z800, Precision T7500 or Fujitsu Celsius 670. Rather, it reflects on how well—or in this case, not so much —the application tasks that SPECapc dispatches take advantage of more available cores.

SPECapc results vary by graphics card

As expected, the D20 system did yield modestly different SPECapc results, depending on which graphics card was installed. But while we expected the scores to vary, we were surprised that the card had relatively little impact on scores. And for 3ds max and Lightwave, the D20-with-FirePro V8750 modestly edged out the D20-with-Quadro FX 4800 on 3ds max, while the reverse situation held for Lightwave, where the Nvidia-enabled system finished slightly ahead.

It’s worth noting that for the Quadro FX 4800, we ran with the company’s Graphics Performance Driver, not the specific 3ds max Performance Driver. The latter was not available for Windows 7 at the time (only beta), but when available should provide some (we assume noticeable but modest) performance improvement on the 3ds max test.

However, on SPECapc for SolidWorks the difference was significantly (and surprisingly) more substantial, with the Quadro FX 4800-configured D20 beating the FirePro V8750-configured D20 by between 10% and 20%. The reason for it wasn’t clear, as even the I/O component was superior, and the edge was most pronounced on the CPU sub-score; in neither case would we assume the graphics card should have much impact.

Viewperf 10.0 results

With the exception of the SolidWorks test, SPECapc results didn’t change dramatically depending on the graphics card installed. And where the differences were modest (3ds max and Lightwave), each vendor scored one win. However, next up for testing was Viewperf, which effectively isolates the load on the graphics subsystem (driver and card). Would we see big differences by card? Would one card perform better on some tests and worse on others, or would one card sweep the testing? As it turned out, while both cards did win some corners, one card took top honors more consistently.

We ran Viewperf 10.0 three times per card and across three corners: single-thread, dual-thread and quad-thread. If any one result was significantly out of line, we would have discarded that result; however, that didn’t turn out to be necessary. The three results per corner were then averaged to yield the final tallies.

The numbers were generally close, with the edge in most—but not all—instances going to the Quadro FX 4800. In general, as the number of threads increased, the FirePro card narrowed the gap to the Quadro card. But that was not a rule without exceptions. As the number of threads increase, the stress on the cards’ transformation and lighting capabilities should increase linearly, while the stress on fill and texture rate should change less (as the windows are smaller). That is, the load balance shifts, which opens the door for different architectures (not to mention different driver optimizations) to perform differently.

In the single-thread corner, the Quadro FX 4800 won out modestly, but the FirePro V8750 came out on top with the Maya (maya-02) viewset. As the number of threads increased to two, the edge got more pronounced, but then moving on to four, the Quadro turned the tables, finishing higher.

Where’s the money

So, in testing the two cards, we’re seeing slightly different slants on where dollars are spent.

The Viewperf results were in-line with our general expectations. We didn’t expect either card to post results to shame the other, we didn’t expect one card to sweep all the tests, and we didn’t expect the difference to be consistent from viewset to viewset. And we weren’t surprised to see the Quadro FX 4800 edge out the FirePro V8750 more of the time. That’s no indictment of the latter card, but rather an indication of the subtly different approach the card vendors had.

It’s not a case of the two cards being apples and oranges. They’re both apples, but they’re apples of somewhat different shapes. Nvidia allocated a bigger percentage of its build cost to the GPU and AMD a bit more to memory.

The heart of the Quadro FX 4800 is a full-blown GT200, where FirePro V8750 sports an RV770. Both (as of this writing) represent the current top of the line GPU for each company in the context of their professional line (AMD’s recently introduced Evergreen, and Nvidia will in coming months launch Fermi).

In terms of raw horsepower, the GT200 has held an edge over the RV770, modestly but consistently, as echoed by Nvidia’s GTX 200 series holding a performance edge over AMD’s Radeon HD 4800 series. Nor should the GT200’s edge over the RV770 surprise anyone, as the two companies had different-enough goals in mind when shaping the devices; AMD was looking for superior price/performance, while Nvidia aimed for the single-GPU performance crown.

So both are solid performers with similar street prices. But if you’ve got $1,200 or so to spend and want maximum GPU horsepower, you’d probably lean toward the Quadro FX 4800. Conversely, if you’ve got an application sensitive to video memory size (big, deep quad-buffers perhaps?) and/or memory speed, you might lean to AMD’s 33% larger frame buffer with GDDR5 speeds.

Corel Digital Studio 2010

2009-10-28T16:02:23Z

We believe that there are about 16 million people working with digital media all over the world—and around 35% of them are in the United States. The vast majority of those people are not professionals, they are people who are taking pictures, editing them, and creating videos and picture books, because they like it. Some of them are good at it, many of them wind up spending a lot more time on what they’re trying to do than they ever intended.

Corel has taken a look at the market and brought a new suite for working with video, pictures and creating DVDs. The company has come a little late to the party but they have taken a very careful look at what people want to do with their media and they have tried to streamline the process.

Media Studio is a suite but, unlike similar products, it’s very focused. Earlier examples of suites have tended to be loaded with programs and, in many cases, the programs have not worked well together. Another failing has been that products developed for consumers have been dumbed down with dopey interfaces that seem to be developed for children.

Corel’s Media Studio has avoided most of these pitfalls. The suite includes:

VideoStudio Express 2010—a time-line-based video editing tool with a few basic templates and effects. It encodes to iPhone, online, DVD, etc.

PaintShop Photo Express 2010—photo editing with the basic features: crop, rotate, red-eye removal, basic lighting adjustments, and sharpen. The application enables easy upload to photo sharing sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It also has projects for making books, calendars, cards, and gifts. Corel has teamed with Fuji to enable books to be created, uploaded, and ordered.

WinDVD 2010—Corel’s DVD viewing technology.
DVD Factory—DVD authoring for photos and audio. It allows back up and provides templates.
Corel Instant Viewer—a quick content viewer.
Digital Studio Gadget—the gadget can auto start with the computer and sits on the desktop at the ready.

It’s a little disconcerting to load Media Studio and find that it has taken over as the handler of choice for all media files and as the media viewer. We’ve had the same experience with Photoshop Elements and we understand that the software developers have weighed the options and have come down in favor of making things as easy as possible for consumers. However, if their users are all that inept, then they’re going to be even more frustrated and dismayed when their computer starts doing things that they didn’t tell the computer to do and they’re not sure why. Although it’s a simple matter to reset format associations and default photo viewing associations, I’m not sure Corel’s Media Studio will like it if you do this. When I did, the program had trouble finding media.

Corel looked at products like Picasa, Photoshop Elements and especially Apple’s iLife tools and it tried to do just a slightly better job. It has succeeded in many areas. Every module has a consistent look and behaves the same way. And here let me say that every digital media user, including professionals struggling with idiosyncratic professional tools should give a silent nod of approval to Corel’s efforts here. It’s a beautiful interface. It’s consistent, clear, and next steps are obvious.

At first in fact, the interface was so clean, it took me a while to track down some basic capabilities. In all fairness though, it comes pretty rapidly. At first though, it’s almost like looking at a blank page. Once I got the hang of it, I appreciated the ability to go to a few simple actions.

One of the nicest features of the Media Studio are the app tools for creating projects—especially books. Some sites require that you upload images and then arrange them in books. This makes me nervous because I’m not sure of the output quality that I’m getting. Digital Studio does all the work on the computer and when you’re happy with the book you can upload the whole shebang and order online. The book-making utility also warns about images with low resolutions that might not print acceptably.

When it comes to working with photos I suspect that users may quickly outgrow the Digital Media’s feature list and they’ll add on another product like Picasa or maybe even something like Adobe’s Lightroom or Apple Aperture. However, in digital content creation the 80/20 rule tends to apply – most people settle into a routine of just using a few features and Corel has hit most of them.

I can easily see relying on Digital Studio to make books. Corel tells us that they’re planning to add to the library of available templates. What they have now is fine but limited. Fortunately, there are simple options that are likely to be the ones used most frequently.

But let’s talk about video now, because that’s where Digital Studio shines. Video is hard and I use several video products both for JPR’s online content and for fun. I’d love to experiment with effects and improving the video, but what’s most important is to get it done fast and that’s what Digital Studio offers. The video screen is just as clean as the photo app. It offers a few simple templates for opening titles and the ability to trim video, add music, and even add a voice over. This is a really handy feature for creating online slide shows if that’s the sort of thing you want to inflict upon the world. Background sounds and added music tracks are automatically brought down when the voice over comes up but the program gives the user control over that feature as well.

When finished, Digital Studio supports output to iPhone and other MPEG-4 variations for devices as well as online for YouTube, Facebook, etc. And, of course there’s always the option of outputting your creation to DVD using Corel’s DVD Factory tool. As you might expect, the DVD Factory module offers the same family of templates to put together a DVD. DVD Factory can also be used as a computer backup utility. However, DVD Factory does not support Blu-ray. I’m not bugged by that because I’m not creating huge HD videos but this will be an issue before too long. There are a lot of HD cameras out there, Blu-ray media is coming down in price and people will come to expect it very soon now.

Although it’s a program for beginners, it’s not really a program for lightweight computers, which is not really surprising for video and photo apps—they’re resource hungry.

System requirements:

Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83 GHz, or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0 GHz or higher recommended).
Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP with latest service packs installed.
1 GB of RAM (2 GB or higher recommended).
128 MB of VGA VRAM or higher (256 MB recommended).
4 GB of free hard-drive space.
1024 × 768 minimum display resolution.
Windows-compatible sound card.
Windows-compatible DVD-ROM for installation.
Recordable DVD drive for creating DVDs.
Internet connection for online features

A word of advice, try and resist the urge to multi-task while making videos. You should know better than this anyway, but it is hard to resist. Nevertheless, work on your zen breathing, get up and walk around while video is processing. This is not advice specific to Media Studio, it’s always true when working with mainstream machines and video—and besides, it’s better for you.

Digital Studio has been optimized for Windows 7—it takes advantage of gestures and multi-touch if you have a touch screen.

Price: $99.95.

What do we think?

In the brief time we spent with Digital Studio I found it to be useful for photos and valuable for videos and DVDs. Although Corel is building Digital Studio for the very casual user, I still think it’s good manners to ask about assuming authority and making itself the default app for relevant file formats and that goes for installing gadgets, and putting itself in toolbars and on the desktop.

I love the book making and video features and it is likely to remain the first program I turn to for those capabilities. Although any user will appreciate clean interface and the directness of the program, Digital Studio is most definitely an entry level product and you’ll be much better off with a new computer with at least a dual core processor and plenty of RAM.

The DoubleSight Smart USB Monitor

2009-10-28T16:00:06Z

With the rapid expansion of VOIP services for video games things can get confusing. Gamers talk to other players within the game via the in-game voice system, which gives an on screen graphical display of who is yapping. However many gamers also communicate outside of the in-game voice system via Teamspeak, Ventrilo, or other VOIP applications. It’s really a testament to the brain training and multi-tasking elements of modern video games when gamers not only have to manage multiple voice channels but also determine who is speaking, which channels they are in, and whether they have muted certain channels.

My Logitech G-15 keyboard (an excellent device) has a small data screen which is very useful for displaying stats about your system such as temperatures, fan speeds, and frames per second, however I found that using it to monitor Teamspeak chat was difficult because one must look down to see who is talking or whether you are muted or not.

Enter DoubleSight with their new USB mini LCD monitors. DoubleSight sent over their 7 incher, which runs at 800 x 480, plugs into the USB port, and does not need a separate video card. The monitor swivels to portrait from landscape and is just perfect for gamers to monitor VOIP apps. Content creation people will also love the ability to use it as their tool palette and I’m sure there are hundreds of more applications. It is extremely small and light and comes with a cover. Travelers will find it takes about the same space in their baggage as three checkbooks. 800 x 480 is actually a decent resolution for these applications and can display a lot of data as you can see in the screen shot on the next page.

The retail price for the 7 incher is about $120; however I have seen them for $107 brand new on eBay. DoubleSight also has a 9-incher for $140 that runs at 1024 x 600 as well as one with a webcam for $160.

I am pleased with this monitor and think that it is a great device for gamers. It takes advantage of DisplayLink technology giving it the ability to run from a single USB port. The USB plug has a secondary plug that can be used, if necessary, for older or diluted USB ports, which are pushing less power.

Wikipedia in your pocket

2009-10-28T15:58:14Z

Openmoko has announced the availability of WikiReader, a palm-sized electronic encyclopedia containing the more than three million English language articles of Wikipedia that can be accessed immediately anytime, anywhere without requiring an Internet connection. WikiReader is available for $99 at http://thewikireader.com and Amazon.com starting today.

We got to play with one briefly Saturday night and, in addition to being a real attention getter, it suddenly became the main guest—all of a sudden everyone had a question they wanted answered.

WikiReader turns on instantly and we are told will run for months before its two AAA batteries need to be replaced. The unit measures 4 inches x 4 inches by 3/8 inches thick rising to 5/8 inches. It weighs 4.9 oz. and has a 2-3/8 high x 2-3/4 wide monochrome screen with a touch interface and articles can be scrolled with a stroke of the finger and hyperlinks selected with a simple tap. Three buttons, Search, History and Random, offer the convenience of reading specific topics or the serendipitous pleasure of discovering something by chance within Wikipedia’s rich array of articles. The company says updates for the WikiReader will be provided quarterly and available for free download via their website. A yearly subscription plan for updated microSD cards is also available for $29.

“We created the WikiReader to be fun, easy, informative and entertaining for all ages,” said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. “WikiReader is a whimsical look at the joy of learning in the digital age. It’s personal and it’s fun. We’re extremely excited about sharing our device with the world.”

The WikiReader was designed by Thomas Meyerhoffer, the former Apple designer known for reshaping surf culture with his radically different surfboards: “The key is keeping it simple. We really want the focus to be on the experience of reading Wikipedia, not browsing the Web. That’s why we only have three buttons. There really is no interface. You’re just straight into the content.”

For more information on WikiReader, please visit http://thewikireader.com.

What do we think?

It looks like this will be the stocking stuffer for this year’s holiday madness. It could change the course of junior high and high school—will WikiReaders be outlawed in the classroom as calculators were when they were first introduced?

How high can you go? - Village Tronic says 1920

2009-10-28T15:57:27Z

Village Tronic is one of the pioneers of multi-display solutions and the company just launched a new member to its ViBook family of display extenders. These little modules provide computer users with a simple way to run several displays from a Windows or Mac desktop computer or laptop. The ViBook Plus is one of the first devices to use DisplayLink’s new DL195 chip, enabling it to support higher resolution screens of up to 1920x1200 and up to 28 inches with faster graphics and improved video playback that includes HD video streams.

Up to six displays can be driven by one Windows-based computer and up to four for a Mac OS machine. Each display is driven by the ultra compact ViBook Plus that plugs directly into the DVI socket of the display and the other end of the cable goes to the USB port of the desktop or notebook.

ViBook Plus is supplied as a complete USB Graphics System that includes a DVI to VGA cable for high quality analog output to displays, a VESA mounting cradle, Village Tronics’ sophisticated multi-screen software for an enhanced user experience, and VT MultiDisplay software for Windows and VT Voilà for Mac. Other cable options are available as optional extras.

The ViBook Plus is compatible with any computer system with an USB 2.0 port running Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 on Intel-based Mac; and Windows 2000, Windows XP (32-bit), Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit). It can support displays up to 28” in size, with a resolution of up to 1920x1200 in 16- and 32-bit color. As it draws its power from the USB within the USB power rating, no additional adapters are required and it can even work via a USB hub. It can be used with or independently of the video card already installed in the computer and can even drive projectors and HDTV displays.

The adaptor is extremely small at only 4.3cm by 7cm by 2.4cm (1.7 inches by 2.8 in by 0.9 inches) and has a three year warrantee.

The new ViBook Plus USB display extender costs €129 in Europe, which includes VAT and free shipping to mainland Europe if ordered from the website www.vibook.it In USA and Canada, the ViBook Plus costs US$129 from the website.

What do we think?

We like it. You can add a monitor for less than the cost of a graphics board, and if you don’t have an open slot in your computer you can still add one or more monitors. However, a new graphics AIB can be had for under $100 and will have two to three outputs. The other complaint leveled against a USB adaptor is video. The max 480 Mbps available from USB 2.0 can be problematic and the DisplayLink engineers have been working on that. So video and fast FPS games at high res are still a challenge, but everything else is perfect. We use lots of the adaptors here in JPR land, and they’ve never given us a bit of trouble.—JP