Monday April 28, 2008
- New iMac: Montevina Inside - Eric - 22:09:15
With the new iMac, Apple released its first hardware model based on the new generation of Intel mobile platform, known as Montevina, the successor of Santa Rosa. This new generation was supposed to be officially unveiled during the worldwide renowned Computex Taipei 2008, taking place on June 3-7, 2008. So Apple seems to have had a special agreement with Intel, and is the first manufacturer to release a computer based on Montevina.
Montevina supports the 45-nm Penryn Core 2 Duo processor currently used in the last version of Santa Rosa (MacBook and previous iMac). But it also opens the doors to Core 2 Duo supporting faster FSB to 1066 MHz, higher clocked CPU from 2.26 GHz to 3.06 GHz, support for SSE4 instruction set. The power consumption should also be lower, but the high-end CPU will should not end-up in the next revision of Montevina-based MacBook Pro.
The Montevina Intel Mobile 45 Express chipset, also known as Cantiga, will bring new and promising Intel GMA X4500 graphic unit. While it will remain a shared memory GPU, its clock speed should be ranging from 533 to 640 MHz, and its core will sport 10 shader units.
Montevina will also bring support for the DDR2 and DDR3 RAM, and the DDR2-667, DDR2-800, DDR3-800 and DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM modules will be compatible. As Montevina supports the DisplayPort, it will be interesting to see if Apple add it to the new iMac, or keep it for a future revision.
- Encode Records onto the IPod - Ewok - 21:44:17
Record players with USB connections which allow you to easily encode your records have been around for a long time. Numark, who recently has demonstrated an innovative spirit, offers the TTi Turntable with an iPod dock. Convert and transfer your records directly to a Mac or iPod. The included software automatically retrieves MP3 tags if they are available on Gracenote. The TTi Turntable also allows the navigation and playback of music from your iPod. The iPod, for once, becomes an accessory to a music player.
[translation by jwa]
- A Mac mini for less than 500 Euros! - Ewok - 16:43:08
Apple quickly updated the price of the Mac mini on the European Apple Store, probably to reflect the currency rate between USD and Euro, and/or to avoid the growing gray market in Europe. The new prices are:
- Mac mini 1.83 GHz, 1 GB, 80 GB, combo - 499 euros
- Mac mini 2 GHz, 1 GB, 120 GB, superdrive - 699 euros
[translation by Linathael]
- Apple releases new iMacs! - Eric - 15:50:09
It might be the first non expected updates of Apple branded hardware since years. Today, without any spreading rumors before, Apple updated iMac models by boosting CPU speed as well as RAM.
New specifications:
- CPU: 2.4, 2.66, 2.8 and 3.06 GHz
- GeForce 8800 GS as a BTO for the high-end model
- up to 6 MB of CPU cache
More details to come soon.
- US and European Apple Stores Closed - Eric - 13:51:23
The US and European Apple Stores have been closed for more than one hour, and as there was no real rumors of upcoming products, we end up with several options.
Just pick one of the following ones:
- Server upgrade
- Cupertino likes playing with our nerves
- A guy pressed the wrong button
- New iPod nano
- The long-awaited Mac Pro mini
- Some BTO available for MacBook Pro and/or Mac Pro
- GeForce 8800 GT: Performance and Power Consumption - Lionel - 10:24:23
Several users could not resist and purchase the GF 8800 GT as soon as it became available on the apple Store. Hereafter is a report from Christophe about this card installed in his Mac Pro:
I offered a GF 8800 GT to my Mac Pro Rev1When checking with Hardware Monitor the power consumption of the Mac Pro, Christophe noticed that the GF 8800 GT once installed drained 50W less than the Radeon! This is a quite substantial saving.
I received it yesterday, and immediately ran some comparison test with the Radeon X1900 XT
Couple of Benchmarks first:
- XBench:
The GF 8800 GT and the X1900 XT obtain similar result, despite the OpenGL performance, higher for the ATI/AMD GPU (might be directly linked to drivers)
GeForce 8800 GT
Results 220.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.2 (9C7010)
Physical RAM 6144 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0
Quartz Graphics Test 207.17
Line 184.65 12.29 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 255.95 76.42 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 206.52 16.83 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 203.21 5.13 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 198.04 12.39 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 161.59
Spinning Squares 161.59 204.99 frames/sec
User Interface Test 388.25
Elements 388.25 1.78 Krefresh/sec
X1900XT
Results 246.66
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.2 (9C7010)
Physical RAM 6144 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0
Quartz Graphics Test 208.27
Line 185.96 12.38 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 253.47 75.67 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 206.24 16.81 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 204.91 5.17 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 201.77 12.62 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 220.13
Spinning Squares 220.13 279.25 frames/sec
User Interface Test 354.83
Elements 354.83 1.63 Krefresh/sec
- CineBench
X1900XT 5212
8800GT 5016
Here too, the Radeon seems to be better for OpenGL rendering. This could confirm some reports found on the web, the GF 8800 GT would be a gamer-dedicated GPU while the Radeon X1900 XT would better fit for application-based graphical rendering.
Let's try some games:
- Colin Mc Rae Rally:
The game experience is strictly identical to the one provided by the Radeon, no difference. There is no difference at all, even when setting FSAA to 4x.
- Age of Empires III The War Chiefs:
This is a big surprise, with the Radeon X1900 XT it was simply impossible to play at high display rendering 1680x1050, no fluidity, horrible scrolling, and this game was putting the Radeon on its knees.
With the GF 8800 GT, no problem at graphic options set to max, and the game flies like a breeze, 100% fluidity
I could not test WarCraft III, but I will test Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars as with the Radeon it is simply unplayable except with all graphic options set to lowest level...
So first conclusion:
If you do not play game, then keep your Radeon X1900 XT!
If you are a hardcore gamer, then depending on the game, the GF 8800 GT might be the only one to allow a true immersion and a good gaming experience.
If the price of the GF did not drop I would have been slightly disappointed by the ratio performance gain/price for my own usage.
One should also mention that many Radeon owners are experiencing overheating problems with the ATI/AMD card that usually lead to system freeze of 3D rendering bugs.
[translation by Linathael]
- SSD in 25% of Notebook by 2011 - Lionel - 10:21:02
According to http://www.macsimumnews.com, Toshiba CEO predicts that 25% of notebook will sport SSD by 2011. HE expects 133% annual growth for this market over the next couple of year.
Of course, Toshiba with its current SSD offer ranging from 32 to 128 GB models is preparing to take a large stack of this growing market. During this interview, Toshiba CEO announced a 256 and 512 GB model in a near future.
Standard HD manufacturers will have to keep racing for offering larger storage space to compensate performance and access time when compared to SSD.
[translation by Linathael]
- Google's support for Yahoo! creates problems - Lionel - 07:48:59
When Microsoft decided to put its hand on Yahoo, Google did not see this alliance in a good light and decided to help its old competitor by giving it access to its technologies being used to tap into advertising income.
If this made it possible for Yahoo to stand firm, it also started an investigation by the American government into a possible violation under the anti-monopoly act.
The investigation will take a good time, but whatever is the result, it puts Yahoo in an uncomfortable position to make a deal with Microsoft.
It will be noted that MS also suffered from this fallen through purchase (all at least for the moment), certain analysts y having seen the incapacity of MS to conquer the Internet market alone.
It will be necessary that its directors try to reassure by announcing that they did not need Yahoo at all to go forward into a serene future.
[translation by crispin]
- CPU's are dead according to NVidia - Lionel - 07:35:04
One remembers that at the beginning of the month, Intel had opened the hostilities with the video board manufacturers by announcing that their hours were counted and that they would be soon useless.
A counter attack by NVidia has been launched. The company declared that the central CPU is died, and that the NVidia chips does the essential of work in a modern machine.
Besides the video, NVidia is refering to its Cuda project that makes it possible to carry out in the GPU many massively parallel calculations with a enormous saving of time.
The company even launched a contest, Cuda Challenge in order to promote this solution to developers.
Of course, we only in the first stage of a war without mercy, full of fizzling pieces of advertisements.
The graphics processors will certainly acquire the statute of CPU coprocessors, at least initially. To know which chip will have the dominating role in a few years, it will be necessary to wait.
[translation by crispin]
