General Gaming Article |
- Llano vs Sandy Bridge: Which $500 PC is Right For You?
- Fractal Design Core 3000 Review
- Zynga Delays IPO?
- GScreen Spacebook Offers Dual-Screen Mobile Computing, for a Price
- Chrome Web App of the Week: One tsp.
- Delicious Irony: Each Anonymous Mask Sold Puts Cash In Time Warner's Pockets
- California Judge Says BitTorrent Users Don't "Act In Concert," Can't Be Sued In Bulk
- Cornell Lets Two Chatbots Talk It Out, Hilarity Ensues
- Nokia Investigates SQL Injection Attack, Admits Security Breach "Significantly Larger" than Thought
- United Kingdom Links Social Networking to Rise in Online Libel Cases
| Llano vs Sandy Bridge: Which $500 PC is Right For You? Posted: 29 Aug 2011 01:54 PM PDT Can AMD's Llano offer decent gaming with integrated graphics? We aim to find out
Ever since Intel's 810 "Whitney" chipset hit the streets in the late '90s, integrated graphics have been synonymous with suckage. This year, though, integrated graphics have been making a comeback as Intel and AMD have put their might toward offering game-worthy graphics alongside the CPU. Intel's Sandy Bridge kicked off the trend earlier this year, but the best Intel has offered up is still lacking for gamers, even budget-constrained gamers. Enter AMD's A-series chip. Code-named "Llano," this chip merges a quad-core CPU with a discrete GPU to make AMD's second-gen "APU." To see just how well Llano performs, we took the parts from the $667 PC that we built in our August issue and paved over the Sandy Bridge board and processor with an AMD A8 X4 3850 CPU and A75 motherboard. AMD's Llano Exposed
The A-series is AMD's second part to sport the Fusion moniker. In this case, Fusion means the fusing of graphics and compute power into the CPU. The first product was AMD's E-Series, the basis of our $340 rig in last September's Build It. That part sips power and is extremely low-cost, but it's also a bit soft on both compute and graphics. By using what's essentially an Athlon II X4 core and Radeon HD 6550D in the A8 Llano chip, AMD believes it has the antidote to Intel's Sandy Bridge chips on the low-end. While both chips feature integrated graphics, the vast majority of Intel's Sandy Bridge chip is dedicated to x86 while AMD devotes more than half of its core to graphics. The x86 side of the chip uses the well-known K10 cores. For graphics, the top-end part features 400 cores, 20 texture units, and a core clock running at 600MHz. Llano is also AMD's first chip built at a 32nm process, which helps keep the thermals to manageable levels. Overall, Llano may truly be the first CPU with integrated graphics that will satiate gamers—gamers on a tight budget, that is. The Same but DifferentFor our build, we took our $667 PC and removed two parts: the Gigabyte GA-H67M-D2-B3 motherboard and the Intel 3.1GHz Core i3-2100. To ensure maximum comparability, we opted for a Gigabyte AMD motherboard, the A75M-S2V. Like the GA-H67M-D2-B3, the Socket FM1–based A75M-S2V is micro-ATX, sports but two DIMM slots, and costs just $90. For the CPU, we used the 2.9GHz A8 X4 3850. At $139, it's slightly more expensive than we expected, but you get better graphics and a quad-core processor versus the dual-core in the Sandy Bridge, so it's worth it—right? We're also deleting the discrete Radeon HD 6790 card from our $667 rig. Because this box is aimed at entry-level gaming, we wanted to see which platform yields better integrated graphics results; we figured that a person going this route would eventually upgrade to discrete graphics. The rest of the components are identical to our build from August. For comparison, we're showing both configs in the ingredients list. Ingredients
Building TipsLLANO BUILDS AREN'T SO DIFFERENT FROM STANDARD CONFIGS, BUT HERE ARE SOME USEFUL TIPS With the introduction of Llano, AMD is breaking from the single-socket philosophy it has held since Socket 939 was introduced in 2004. For now, at least, two sockets will be supported: the new Socket FM1 and the newish Socket AM3+. Socket AM3+ will primarily support the existing Phenom II and Athlon II chips, as well as the upcoming FX processors aimed at enthusiasts. Socket FM1 is geared toward entry-level users, all-in-one machines, and home theater PCs. Although the Llano CPUs look exactly the same as an older Phenom II on the heat-spreader side, the newer chip is physically incompatible with the latter's socket. The good news is that AMD kept the same cooler design, so most Socket AM2+/AM3 coolers will work with FM1 boards. Installing the new FM1 chip is the same as installing a Phenom II or Athlon II, so if you've previously built such a rig, FM1 will offer no surprises in CPU or heatsink installation.
AMD has two FM1 chipsets: A75 and A55. The higher-end A75 has six SATA 6Gb/s ports and four native USB 3.0 ports. The lower-cost A55 chipset sheds the USB 3.0 ports, and its SATA ports are limited to 3Gb/s. Both APU/motherboard combos support dual-channel RAM up to DDR3/1866. While we kept the RAM costs low in our build by using DDR3/1333, folks hoping to get the most performance out of Llano's GPU should consider paying for faster DDR3/1866 as it greatly increases the performance of the chip. That's because unlike discrete graphics, which have their own local frame buffers, Llano (and Sandy Bridge, too) rely on main system memory. Generally, graphics can use as much bandwidth as you can throw at them, so DDR3/1866 or higher is recommended. As we said earlier, the A75 chipset features all SATA 6Gb/s ports, so you don't have to spend five minutes flipping through the manual to find the correct SATA ports. That's a big improvement over Intel's weak-sauce implementation of just two 6Gb/s ports. A75 and A55 also support UEFI underpinnings to support booting from drives larger than 2.1TB. Not all boards will sport fancy UEFI interfaces, though; many will continue to support BIOS interfaces despite the UEFI underneath.
Overclockers hoping to get a free gigahertz of performance should prepare to be disappointed. Despite the new 32nm process, AMD has clock-blocked you by locking the multipliers. The only option for overclocking is bumping up the reference clock (AMD's equivalent of Intel's base clock.) Overclocking by raising the reference clock, however, will goose other components, which may cause instability. It's not great, but it's slightly better than the Intel Sandy Bridge side, where B-clock overclocks are extremely difficult and the chipsets themselves can limit your overclocking capability.
Llano vs. Sandy BridgeAfter we built our Llano rig, we benchmarked it using a subset of our standard system benchmark suite, as well as a few additional benchmarks to stress the capabilities of Llano and Sandy Bridge. For gaming, we threw out our standard über-tests, which are made to stress $5,000 PCs with multiple GPUs. Instead, we ran 3DMark Vantage at the Performance setting. We also ran vReveal, which leverages the GPU to enhance video. It's one of the showcase apps used to illustrate the power of the GPU. We took a 1080p video shot on a Canon Rebel T1i, applied image enhancements and corrected the orientation. We also used the APU/GPU/CPU-dependent CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 and converted a large MPEG-2 file to a portable format for use in a tablet device. The benchmark is one of the tests that taps Intel's hardware transcoding QuickSync circuits in Sandy Bridge. The results speak for themselves. Where the benchmarks rely on the x86 side of the equation, the state-of-the-art dual-core Sandy Bridge processor easily spanks the antiquated quad-core Athlon II X4 processor. Even in benchmarks where multithreading is a heavy influencer, the Core i3-2100 smokes the A8 X4 3850 despite the A8 having double the cores of the Core i3-2100. That speaks to the efficiency of the Sandy Bridge cores and Intel's Hyper-Threading. In graphics, the roles are reversed: AMD's A8 X4 3850 absolutely destroys the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics across the board. For VReveal and MediaEspresso, it's really about choosing your poison.
We also tried a few games—Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and The Sims 3—at small-panel resolutions of 1680x1050. The Sandy Bridge part was disappointing in all but Team Fortress 2. Llano was the opposite, with satisfactory performance across the board. In other words, it's a mission accomplished for Llano. If you're looking to build a low-cost machine that'll give you reasonable gaming on your small panel, the A8 X4 3850 is a pretty damn good chip. But that's not the whole story. The weakness of the compute side can't be overlooked. That a dual-core can badly trounce a quad-core in some multithreaded tasks tells you how creaky the K10 core is. What's worse, upgraders looking forward may see the Sandy Bridge as a better part if they plan to drop in a midrange GPU. After all, with Sandy Bridge, you retain the better x86 performance, while on AMD you lose the strong integrated graphics but retain the weaker K10 cores. One setup, albeit limited, does favor Llano, though: A-series chips feature a hybrid CrossFire mode where the integrated GPU can work in CrossFire with a low-end card such as the Radeon HD 6670. The upshot is that it really depends on where you hope to take your ultra-budget rig. Llano's strength is in entry-level gaming for folks with modest aspirations for discrete graphics. CPU upgrades will continue to be supported, as AMD is committed to its new FM1 platform. Sandy Bridge is weaker in graphics, but it has far stronger x86 performance. It also has the stronger upgrade path, as the LGA1155 boards will support the über-fast Core i7-2600K and next year's Ivy Bridge chips. We do have to question if that's a realistic goal, though. Will anyone building a $500 PC today ever consider installing a $300 CPU next year? Probably not. Overall, we like the Llano platform. The gaming performance you can get from a $500 PC these days is truly impressive. We're not entirely sure Llano makes sense for desktop duties at this point, but in HTPCs, all-in-ones, and notebooks, AMD seems to have a winner. Benchmarks: Core i3-2100 vs. A8 X4 3850
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| Fractal Design Core 3000 Review Posted: 29 Aug 2011 01:50 PM PDT One of the nicer $70 cases we've testedMuch like another Fractal Design case we reviewed recently, the Arc Midi, the Fractal Design Core 3000 is a simple and effective case, made all the more enticing by its affordability and ease of use. It's always with a little apprehension that we step into the sub-100-dollar case category; so we're surprised and happy to report that the Core 3000 is a very solid contender for you budget builders.
Calling the Core 3000 a mid-tower chassis would be technically correct, though at 17 inches tall by 19 inches deep by 8 inches wide, it's on the smaller side of the spectrum. This becomes apparent when building into the chassis—our test build was a little more difficult than normal due to the limited space inside. Our test bed's abnormally large heatsink made it damn near impossible to get the 8-pin power connector connected, though we could have mounted the heatsink afterwards, as the motherboard tray has a large CPU backplane cutout. As in many cases, the top hard drive cage is removable to accommodate long GPUs—we had to remove it to fit an 11-inch GTX 590. Though the case is cramped inside, we were still able to utilize the three backplane cutouts for cable organization, though getting slightly larger power supply cables through them was a bit of a hassle. The Core 3000 features six hard drive trays, seven PCI expansion slots, and two optical drive bays, which each use two screws to hold the drives in place. Like Fractal's Arc Midi, the case is painted matte black throughout, but the hard drive bays and PCI expansion covers, in addition to the two stock 12cm fans (exhaust, top) and one 14cm fan (front), are white, which makes for a stark visual contrast.
The front of the chassis is mesh, lined in matte plastic. Up top you're given four USB 2.0 ports, a reset switch, and your standard audio jacks. It's also noteworthy that the Core 3000 gives you a ton of cooling options: You can add a 12cm front fan, one 12cm bottom fan, a 12cm or 14cm fan at the top, or a 12cm or 14cm side-panel fan. This number of fan mounting options is unusual for a case in this price range, but most definitely welcome. Even with the stock fans, however, the case performed well in our thermal testing, out-cooling every mid-tower case from last month's roundup. Ultimately, the Core 3000 is a respectable case for the price. Sure, we'd like to see USB 3.0 inclusion or a SATA hotswap dock of some sort, but these aren't must-haves for a case in this price range. Little inclusions, like the black/white color scheme and removable dust filters tell us that Fractal focuses on the details, and we appreciate it. Your $70 gets you a smaller-than-normal mid-tower that makes for a quick (albeit slightly cramped) build that's easy on the eyes. For all you budget builders out there, the Fractal Core 3000 is worthy of your consideration. $70-80, www.fractal-design.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 29 Aug 2011 01:35 PM PDT
Zynga was looking to rake in about $1 billion from selling stock, perhaps even as early as next month. The recent stock market instability has apparently given the social gaming folks cold feet. Investors are still chomping at the bit to get a piece of the Zynga gravy train, though. The company's SEC filing set its value at about $11 billion in March 2011. Even if Zynga decides to go through with the IPO, the SEC has expressed concern over the small percentage of the user base that actually buys content from Zynga. The regulatory filings make it clear that just 5% of players have ever bought a virtual item. Even with those small figures, Zynga is expected to see $1 billion in revenue this year. That's a lot of virtual crops. Still, if Zynga moves forward, it isn't necessarily going to be clear sailing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| GScreen Spacebook Offers Dual-Screen Mobile Computing, for a Price Posted: 29 Aug 2011 12:52 PM PDT
The Spacebook weighs in at a backbreaking 10-pounds, but you get a lot of processing might for that price. The device will come with a Core i5 or i7 CPU, up to 8GB of RAM. 500GB of hard drive space, and a GeForce GTS 250 with 1GB of vRAM. To cut down on the weight as much as possible, the Spacebook has a Magnesium alloy frame. The two screens slide out symmetrically, with one emerging from behind the other. The 17-inch panels are 1920x1080, which makes for a solid pixel density at that resolution. If you really need this kind of mobile workstation, the Sapcebook is going to be selling at a price commensurate with its high weight. The entry level version will go for $1899, and can be specced out for $2099 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chrome Web App of the Week: One tsp. Posted: 29 Aug 2011 12:06 PM PDT
One tsp. is designed to function as a one stop shop for all of your favorite recipes. After signing up for a free account, users can add and store up to 150 recipes for free, and an unlimited number of recipes for a measly five bucks a year. With fields for the recipe's name, a description, ingredients list, cooking directions and the recipe's source, One tsp. gives you ample space to store all of your favorite dishes pertinent information in one place. As your collection grows in size, finding the recipe you're looking for is a piece of cake, thanks to a handy tagging system that anyone who's used a blogging platform such as Tumblr will be all too familiar with.
What's more, unlike conventional recipe software, One tsp. can be accessed from any computer rocking Chrome, and also boasts excellent support for a wide range of mobile devices including Android, Blackberry, iOS and *ahem* WebOS. Be sure to check back every Monday for another edition of Maximum PC's Chrome Web App of the Week.
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| Delicious Irony: Each Anonymous Mask Sold Puts Cash In Time Warner's Pockets Posted: 29 Aug 2011 11:09 AM PDT
Time Warner owns the rights to the now iconic image, you see, and the New York Times reports that the company receives a distribution fee every time one of the masks is sold. And thanks to Anonymous, the masks sell like hotcakes. The smiling visage is the best-selling mask on Amazon, and it was sold out in costume stores in the San Francisco area in the days leading up to the BART protests. Costume company Rubie's Costume is one of the organizations that makes the masks. "We sell over 100,000 of these masks a year, and it's by far the best-selling mask that we sell," Howard Beige, their executive VP, told the NYT. "In comparison, we usually only sell 5,000 or so of our other masks." Hilarious! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| California Judge Says BitTorrent Users Don't "Act In Concert," Can't Be Sued In Bulk Posted: 29 Aug 2011 10:33 AM PDT
Pirates who download the same file from separate torrents have nothing in common other than that they downloaded the same work, so they can't be plaintiffs in the same lawsuit, Spero said. More importantly, Ars Technica reports that Spero ruled that even multiple people who downloaded the same torrent can't be sued en masse. From the judge's ruling (warning, legalese ahead): Second, even if the IP addresses at issue in this motion all came from a single swarm (Maximum PC note: a swarm is a group of peers distributing a torrent), there is no evidence to suggest that each of the addresses "acted in concert" with all of the others. In fact, the nearly six-week span covering the activity associated with each of the addresses calls into question whether there was ever common activity linking the addresses in this case. In this age of instant digital gratification, it is difficult to imagine, let alone believe, that an alleged infringer of the copyrighted work would patiently wait six weeks to collect the bits of the work necessary to watch the work as a whole. At the very least, there is no proof that bits from each of these addresses were ever assembled into a single swarm. As the court previously explained, under this court's precedent regarding other file sharing protocols, merely infringing the same copyrighted work over this period is not enough. Judge Spero also said that not only would each of the 188 pirates probably have different defenses, they may also live miles away from each other, so it would be unfair to lump them together in a mass lawsuit.The ruling could end up being a major blow against the practice of suing file sharers in bulk. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cornell Lets Two Chatbots Talk It Out, Hilarity Ensues Posted: 29 Aug 2011 10:00 AM PDT Since 1990, the $100,000 Loebner prize has been left sitting on the table, patiently waiting for a computer program to come along that's capable of carrying on a conversation indistinguishable from a conversation with a human. So far, no program has even been able to claim the $25,000 silver prize, which would be awarded to a program that can fool just two judges in the Loebner panel that it's human. So robots can't fool people. But can they fool other chatbots? Cornell decided to put that question to the test, to hilarious results. ; Cornell's Creative Machines Lab put two chatbots mano-a-mano in a robochat death match of slightly less than epic proportions, the IEEE Spectrum reports. The conversation starts off well, but quickly devolves into inane accusations of robot-hood, circular logic, religious beliefs and fantasy creature name-dropping. Our favorite exchange between the two bots: "I am not a robot. I am a unicorn." "But you said earlier you were a robot." "I did not." "I thought you did." "You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you." Watch the video above for even more hilarity! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nokia Investigates SQL Injection Attack, Admits Security Breach "Significantly Larger" than Thought Posted: 29 Aug 2011 09:18 AM PDT
"Initially we believed that only a small number of these forum member records had been accessed, but further investigation has identified that the number is significantly larger," Nokia said in a statement. Nokia said no sensitive information was ever at risk, including passwords and credit card details, nor was the security of forum members' account at risk. The vulnerability was addressed right away, but Nokia said it took the developer community website offline as a precautionary measure. No word on when it will go back up. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| United Kingdom Links Social Networking to Rise in Online Libel Cases Posted: 29 Aug 2011 08:58 AM PDT
Citing information obtained from legal information firm Sweet and Maxwell, BBC News reports social networking is to blame for the rise in online defamation lawsuits. "People who find themselves damaged on social media sites can often find it time-consuming and difficult to have the offending material removed, because many platform providers do not accept responsibility for their users' content," Barrister Korieh Duodu, a media specialist with law firm Addleshaw Goddard, explained to BBC News. It gets even more difficult when journalists tap into social media sites as sources for news stories. "Such is the speed at which information travels through social networks that one unchecked comment can spread into the mainstream within minutes, which can cause irreparable damage to the subject who has been wronged." Welcome to the Internet. Image Credit: teefury.com (hogboy) |
Zynga was founded in 2007, and then proceeded to sap as much productivity from Facebook users as was possible. The maker of games like Farmville and Cityville filed for an IPO back in June, but reports are claiming that the company is now 
For those times when portability is absolutely, positively, not a concern, there will soon be a new choice in "mobile" computing. The GScreen 
Irony, your name is Anonymous. The hacktivist group tosses DDoS bombs around with callous ease in an apparently never-ending quest against government and corporate "tyranny," all behind the smiling, blank Guy Fawkes mask featured at the end of "V for Vendetta." Sure, a silent crowd full of masked Anons can be creepy, but here's the funny part: each Guy Fawkes mask bought by an Anon member puts cash into megacorporation Time Warner's pockets.
Suing file sharers in bulk has become the hot new thing in antipiracy cases, as it allows content providers to associate names with IP addresses quickly, but that tactic just suffered a major blow in the Golden State. The physical locations of P2P defendants have been a bone of contention in courts. Steele Hansmeier, an antipiracy law firm, used geolocation to confirm that the 188 porn pilferers named in its mass lawsuit actually lived in California, but the judge presiding over the case still axed 187 defendants off the suit, making it a single-party case.
Nokia is cleaning egg off its face after losing developer records to an SQL Injection attack, prompting the mobile phone maker to shutter its developer discussion forum ahead of its Windows Phone 7 launch. Hackers were able to access a database table filled with email addresses and, in some cases, birthdates and other information included in their public profile.
Social networking is all fun and games until someone gets bent out of shape and hits back with lawsuit for libel. Courts in the United Kingdom processed more than twice as many online defamation cases in England and Wales from May 31, 2010 to May 31, 2011, as number of libel lawsuits rose from 7 to 16 during that one year period, according to U.K.'s BBC News.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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