Laptop Review » New Tech

Intel X25-V, the affordable 40GB SSD available in France at 172USD

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:16:20 +0000

SSDs are the future of storage. Unfortunately, at present their rates remain far too high for a rapid democratization of technology. Some brands have understood and are starting to offer more affordable alternatives.
Intel sells and a 40GB model available for one hundred dollars, the X25-V. If it has storage well below that of a traditional hard drive, the performances are decidedly higher.
Intel announces a read speed of about 170 MBps and 35 MBps write. Features that can benefit from an increased responsiveness with an average access time of 0.1 ms. Specifically, the DSS will perfect system disk on a laptop equipped with two bays to maintain a traditional hard drive for storage.

If you want to install it in your netbook / laptop, verify that it has a SATA connector.

The X25-V is available for around 172USD in Materiel.net. He also marketed by Kingston as a reference “V-Series 40GB.

AMD: Details on the new mobile platform Danube, 12 processors in the program

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:12:55 +0000

Intel and its new Pineview Atom processors are not the only ones to make the buzz on the web in recent days. It is also the case of new Phenom belonging to the Danube AMD mobile platform scheduled for 2010.
Operating with integrated processor cores to 4, the Champlain, Danube has also RX881 chipset, RS880M and RS880MC.
45nm, Champlain processors based on K10 architecture integrating a DDR3 memory controller.
Side graphics, RS880M chipset shipped him a chip Mobility Radeon HD4200 which supports DirectX 10.1 and hardware acceleration for decoding videos in High Definition.
S88xxM chipsets can also support 14 USB 2.0 ports (2 USB 1.1), 4 PCI-Express, 6 SATA (with RAID support) and Gigabit Ethernet.

Three of the 12 processors announced to run on the Danube are based on an older architecture: the simple model V120 AMD heart and double heart Athlon II P320 and N330.
Here are summarized in a table known characteristics of the processors running the new AMD platform Danube, the top model is the quad core Phenom X920 Black Edition II:

Series	Pattern	Frequency	Hearts	L2 Cache	FPU	TDP	Memory (MHz)	Memory (MHz)
Phenom II	X920 BE	2.3 GHz	4	2 Mo	128 bits	45W	1333	3.6 GT/s
	N930	2.0 GHz	4	2 Mo	128 bits	35W	1333	3.6 GT/s
	P920	1.6 GHz	4	2 Mo	128 bits	25W	1066	3.6 GT/s
Phenom II	N830	2.1 GHz	3	1.5 Mo	128 bits	35W	1333	3.6 GT/s
Phenom II	P820	1.8 GHz	3	1.5 Mo	128 bits	25W	1066	3.6 GT/s
Phenom II	X620 BE	3.1 GHz	2	2 Mo	128 bits	45W	1333	3.6 GT/s
Phenom II	N620	2.8 GHz	2	2 Mo	128 bits	35W	1333	3.6 GT/s
Turion II	N530	2.5 GHz	2	2 Mo	128 bits	35W	1066	3.6 GT/s
Turion II	P520	2.3 GHz	2	5 Mo	128 bits	25W	1066	3.6 GT/s
Athlon II	N330	2.3 GHz	2	1 Mo	64 bits	35W	1066	3.6 GT/s
Athlon II	P320	2.1 GHz	2	1 Mo	64 bits	35W	1066	3.6 GT/s
V-Series	V120	2.2 GHz	1	512 Ko	64 bits	25W	1066	3.6 GT/s

For the latest news, AMD will launch its new platform Danube in May 2010.

NVIDIA Ion 2

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:52:27 +0000

Nvidia’s Ion chipset solution has similar Gained traction as when Intel enters the new NetBook market with its relatively old chip-set pairing that does not seems to be able to satisfy consumers’ requirement especially HD (High Definition) video decode capability. In order to continue its momentum, the famous discrete graphics card maker has planned to get its next generation chipset Ion into consumer space, opening up more opportunities pairing processors by end of this year.
Ion Unlike NVIDIA’s chipset that being limited to certain processor series, the new Ion 2 chipset is expected to be relatively compatible with older Pentium, Celeron, Core 2 architecture besides VIA Nano processors. This is definitely good news to OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) or board makers that intend to put graphics capability as one of the selling points for both targeted netbook notebook as well as utilizing Culver (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processors. As expected, based Nehalem architecture such as Core i3, i5 Gold i7 is not in the media lists due to the chipset licensing dispute between Intel and NVIDIA.

No detailed information on Ion 2 architecture yet but initial specifications leak disclosed that it could potentially be built on 40-nm process technology which possibly boost up the whole performance while able to shrink down the foot print and reduce the power consumption significantly. Theoretically, it can offer twice as much of shadier effects at 32 suitable for any graphics centric applications as compared to its predecessor.

Airis Praxis Slim

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:18:11 +0000

Nowadays notebook design has been trending towards ultra-slim design and some of the famous models include the Apple’s MacBook Air and HP Probook 5310m. In view of the market demand, Airis, a famous Spanish PC manufacturer has just unveiled a new netbook model that is claimed to be one of the slimmest and lightest machines in the world.
Named as Praxis Slim Air, it is based on thermally efficient Intel Atom processor clocking at 1.6GHz. Further coupled with GMA950 chipset that can offload graphics processing from CPU intensive, it offers a great processing power suitable for business travelers and professionals. Unlike most of the nettop that model being tiny with limited screen size, the machine has been designed with 12-inch LCD panel with resolution of 1366 X 768 pixels Which is almost compatible with middle end notebook series in the market. Other hardware specifications include a 667MHz SODIMM 1GB DDR2 memory, an internal 160GB hard disk drive, 802.11b / g WiFi wireless module, USB ports, a 1.3Megapixel web camera and even a HDMI port for extended video output to external LCD screen. All these are well designed into a 25mm thickness casing with a total weight of only 1.2kg. Only one drawback, the battery life time is claimed to be less than three hours due to smaller capacity battery pack to compromise for its ultra-slim form factor.

As expected, the machine will be a bit high in pricing due to its slim and stylish design and at a retail price of 399 pounds, it will be preloaded with either Linux, Windows XP, Vista or 7 ready to reach consumer market by October this year.

SSD-Solid State Drive

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:31:12 +0000

Often treated as successors of mechanical hard drives, the Solid State Drive (SSD) with early models date back to 2008 are experiencing a rapid development in recent months, both in terms of increased capacity and performance,

Initially relatively expensive and unaffordable for the general public, the diversification of models and the evolution of technology has to offer DSS at fair prices, but still expensive compared to HDD (Hard Disk Drive) standard, gigabyte price of being between 10 and 30 times more expensive.
Today we decided to introduce this technology on Extreme, and 5 models to compare a solution Raid 0 HDD classics. We have focused our choice of SSD based on two criteria:
Size: between 60 and 80GB, large enough for a primary partition to accommodate the operating system.
Price: between 180 and 240 €, that prices can still be considered reasonable for the purchase of a DSS.

In the following pages you will find a small presentation of each participant, as well as theoretical tests to measure the raw performance and practical tests to get a real idea of the usefulness of a DSS daily.