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Test shows significant improvement over old version

Before I go any further, a few disclaimers and notes.  First off, I’ve carried out this test on a single system running Windows Vista Home Premium on which Firefox had not been previously installed.  The system has 2GB of RAM.  Both Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Firefox 3.0 b 1 were installed fresh using a standard install.  For each test I visited the same web pages and did my best to make the browsing the same on both versions.

OK, with that out of the way, on with the tests.  I simulated three different browsing scenarios:

• Loading a five pages into the browser
• Loading a single page and leaving the browser for 10 minutes
• Loading 12 pages into the browser and wait 5 minutes

Click for more on Memory test - Firefox 2.0.0.9 vs Firefox 3.0 b 1 »

IBM Blue Gene takes the crown…again

A system created by IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Lab hits 478.2 trillion calculations per second. IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., took top supercomputer honors.

The IBM Blue Gene/L system installed at the DOE research facility, runs at 478.2 teraflops or 478.2 trillion calculations per second, earning it the most powerful system on the Top 500 Super Computer list, which is published twice annually by the University of Mannheim, Germany, the University of Tennessee and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory. It was released at the International Supercomputer Conference’s in Reno, Nev.

Click for more on IBM Takes Top Supercomputer Honors Again »

What you may expect from Phenom x4 and Yorkfield

From the final result, Phenom only lose QX6850 about 5.5%. But the CPU Score is losing 9.11% . If the rival change to QX9650, the gap will even bigger. If we compare to other subitem, that dual core E6850 will boost Graphic system better than Phenom X4. Comparing to Phenom X4 and E6850, All the advantage score are coming from the CPU score. Phenom X4 does bad in HDR and SM subitem tests.

Click for more on NextGen VS. CurrentGen CPU: 3DMark06 »

It’s the era of the terabyte. Which drive offers better performance and value?

That era really launched back in May when Hitachi delivered its 7K1000 terabyte hard drive. However, the 7K1000 was a five platter, ten head device, while Western Digital and Seagate ship four platter, four head devices. That’s right: The Western Digital WD10EACS and Seagate 7200.1 offer a cool 250GB per platter. That’s a lot of bits in a small area. Seagate’s take on a terabyte drive is a more traditional design, while Western Digital plays the green card. Which drive offers better performance and value?

Click for more on Terabyte Hard Drives Show Stellar Performance »

On Monday, Nvidia launched the GeForce 8800GT, designed as a lower-cost alternative to the company’s other cards. The cards are designed to be priced at between $199 and $259, Nvidia said.

“When we introduced the GeForce 8 Series family, our most savvy customers and press demanded a product with 64 stream processors and a 256-bit memory interface to deliver more performance at the popular $199 to $259 price point,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce desktop GPUs at Nvidia, in a statement. “Today we decided to raise the bar and deliver GeForce 8800 GT with 112 stream processors, a fast 256-bit memory interface, and our second-generation PureVideo HD technology, giving our customers an incredible value proposition.” “At this price point, gamers are getting more performance and features than ever before.”

Click for more on New Nvidia GeForce 8800GT Card: ‘Perfect Card’ for Crysis »

Amazing performance, beats 8800GTS 640M as well as HD2900XT 1GB in almost all the tests.

New Geforce 8800GT features 112 stream processors each individually clocked at blazing fast 1.5GHz and an impressive 256 bit frame buffer interface running at 900Mhz.

Click for more on 8800GT First review »

Time to sell your old 8800GTS even 8800GTX on eBay.

According to the test, the 8800GT is only 17% than an Ultra on the test. Considering this is done on 4xAA and 8xAF, we can definitely expect better score without AA. According to a manufacturer, the 512MB 8800GT will cost you about 1,999RMB(266.2 USD).

Click for more on 8800GT VS. 8800 Ultra, scores out! »

Wired Ethernet is not going to be replaced by 802.11n or any other wireless technology on the horizon anytime soon, if ever.

How do I make such a bold statement? Well, the facts really speak for themselves. The figure below is taken from the Wireless Performance Charts and show downlink throughput vs. path loss curves for three draft 11n products, representing the three major draft 11n chipsets.

Figure 1: Downlink Throughput - 20 MHz bandwidth mode

Click for more on An Inconvenient Truth: Draft 11n ≠ 100 Mbps Ethernet »

Tests show some clear benefits–but other results were inconclusive.

When they were introduced a couple of years ago, hybrid hard drives seemed enticing. Pairing a standard hard drive with a flash component sounded like a good way to deliver on the theoretical performance boosts that flash can offer while still providing the long-standing price, capacity, and performance benefits of hard disks.

We looked at Seagate’s Momentus 5400 PSD drive, announced today, and Samsung’s SpinPoint MH80 drive, released this summer. Both models are 2.5-inch, 160GB notebook drives with 256MB of nonvolatile flash memory cache on board. The hard-drive industry concentrated on introducing the new technology in laptop drives because notebooks would be more likely to reap the benefits that hybrid tech promises, including faster boot time and power savings.

Click for more on Tested: New Hybrid Hard Drives From Samsung and Seagate »

As long as competition stays reasonably tight, though, the real winner isn’t going to be Intel or AMD: it’s going to be the end-users.

Both AMD and Intel have enough horsepower with their integrated graphics solutions to drive Windows Vista’s Aero interface, so if you’re not going to be gaming then either integrated graphics solutions is more than enough. Windows and animations did seem to render more smoothly on the Intel platform but we’re not sure if that’s a driver, GPU, or CPU advantage.

Click for more on Midrange CPU Roundup: It’s Time to Buy »