When I first bought an Intel P55 chipset based motherboard and a LGA1156 Core i7 Processor, I thought the safest thing to do would be purchasing Standard memory from a reputable company with JEDEC approved voltage and timings.
I use google chrome almost exclusively when doing the web, but I see many people using a wide variety of web browsers these days.
So I wanted to see how fast they are in the immensely popular javascript:
<–relative speed. (higher is better)—>
OS: windows 7 64-bit b7048 RAM: 4GB DDR2-800 CPU: intel 2-core 3Ghz Penryn w/6MB cache HDD: Samsung F1 7200rpm Chipset: intel G45
v8 is http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/v3/run.html
sunspider is http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html
dromaeo JS is http://dromaeo.com/?dromaeo
dromaeo DOM is http://dromaeo.com/?dom|jslib|cssquery
(ie and safari 3 were not able to complete the dromaeo DOM test suite w/default settings)
note:
the 64-bit firefox I tested is not official; http://www.mozilla-x86-64.com/
google chrome 2.0.269.0 is a dev/beta build.
opera, IE, chrome, firefox, k-meleon, safari are all 32-bit unless otherwise noted.
looks like intel is implying they have a drive cluster size an order of magnitude smaller than current mainstream MLC drives.
This (obviously?) yields much better random small write performance, and according to this info, Intel did it w/o sacrificing STR…
I stole the photos from this anandtech piece.
After my 2 previous SSD investigations, I can’t wait to get my hands on these.
If you look in the Internet, in various forums including storagereview, hardocp, and anandtech you will find hundreds of people talking about RAID. I’d say almost all of them involve someone thinking about using some onboard raid solution that came with their computer, and a bunch of other more “experienced” forum members posting replies to the effect of: “don’t even bother with it, buy a “real” raid controller and go from there”.
Let’s take a deep look at storage, and while we are there we can stop and see if the if Intel’s ubiquitous ich9r is any good at raid.
Let’s take a look at how RiDATA’s $270 64GB SSD compares with OCZ’s Core SSD:
a 275USD 64GB SATA2 Solid State Drive with Reads up to 120-143MB/sec and Writes up to 80-93MB/sec with a seek time less than .35ms? That’s what OCZ claims, and that is what got me interested, but I soon realized it wasn’t so straightforward.
Read into it:
Sometimes you may want to move large amounts of data over a network. The natural and probably naive assumption is that if you have a Gigabit Ethernet network, the transfer will occur at 1Gb/sec.
Many things can prevent this from happening:
a x86 CPU market refresher for the last 6 months:
* 45nm intel quad and dual core CPUs
* 65nm AMD quad and tri-core cpus with TLB-bug fixed
*2 new integrated chipsets for AMD cpus (the AMD 780g and the nvidia 8200), with great media playback capabilities
Intel is dominating the middle and high-end, while low-power (45W dual (4850e) and 65W quad (9100e)) AMD cpus paird with the new integrated chipsets are very attractive media-centric platforms.
Coming Soon:
Intel’s G45 chipset which finally brings excellent video playback, decent 3d performance, and official 16GB ddr2 support to intel CPUs.
new 45nm notebook CPUs from intel are coming imminently, lowering power and heat with small laptops. Also new notebook chipsets similar to the G45 are arriving, along with a new wireless card with wimax.
Coming not-so-soon:
Intel’s first CPU with an integrated memory controller: (no more talking to ram via a northbridge)
for those interested in performance, It’s exciting. This true multi-core chip will run in a similar thermal envelope as the current penryns.
i had high expectations for apples new ultra-portable laptop, considering apple seems to be one of the few companies that puts the extra effort into designing their PCs.
and here it is, the macbook air:
it seems everyone thinks its a new gift from god, after the iphone…
but lets actually take a step back and notice there are non-apple products out there…
| macbook | macbook air | air ssd | sony sz740 | tz150 | toshiba r500 | r500 ssd | thinkpad x61 | x300 | toughbook Y7 | dell m1330 | |
| box volume | 123 in^3 | 87 in^3 | 87 in^3 | 174 in^3 | 99 | 94 in^3 | 94 in^3 | 123 in^3 | 103 in^3 | 220 in^3 | 153 in^3 |
| lid surface | 114 in^2 | 114 in^2 | 114 in^2 | 116 in^2 | 85 in^2 | 94 in^2 | 94 in^2 | 87 in^2 | 114 in^2 | 120 in^2 | 118 in^2 |
| weight | 5lbs | 3.0lbs | 3.0lbs | 4.0lbs | 2.7lbs | 2.4lbs | 1.7 w/o dvd | 3.6lbs | 2.5-3.17 | 3.7lbs | 4.3lbs |
| cpu | 2.2ghz/800 | 1.6ghz/800 | 1.8/800 | 2.5ghz/800 | 1.06/533 | 1.2ghz/533 | 1.2ghz/533 | 2.2ghz/800 | 1.2/800 | 1.6ghz/800 | 2.2/800 |
| cpu cache | 4mb | 4MB | 4MB | 6MB | 2MB | 2MB | 2MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB |
| cpu tech | 65nm | 65nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 45nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 65nm c2d | 65nm |
| ram | 4GB | 2GB | 2GB | 4GB | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | 4GB | 4GB | 3GB | 4GB |
| hdd | 120gb 5.4k | 80gb 4.2k | 64gb ssd | 200gb 5.4k | 100gb 4.2k | 120gb 5.4k | 64gb ssd | 120 5.4k | 1.8″ ssd sata | 80gb 5.4k | 160GB 5.4k |
| built-in dvd | yes | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | yes |
| usb ports | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| sd card | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| expresscard | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes (34) | yes | yes |
| dvi | mini | micro | micro | no | no | no | no | no | no | no | hdmi |
| webcam | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | no | yes | no | yes |
| input | touchpad | touchpad | touchpad | touchpad | touchpad | touchpad | touchpad | trackpoint | both | touchpad | touchpad |
| keyboard | full-size | full-size | full-size | full-size | almost-full | full-size | full-size | full-size | full-size | full-size | full-size |
| screen | 13.3 | 13.3″ LED | 13.3″ LED | 13.3″ LED | 11.1″ LED | 12.1″ LED | 12.1″ LED | 12.1″ | 13.3″ LED | 14.1″ | 13.3″ LED |
| resolution | 1280×800 | 1280×800 | 1280×800 | 1280×800 | 1366×768 | 1280×800 | 1280×800 | 1024×786 | 1440×900 | 1400×1050 | 1280×800 |
| wireless | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT | abgn+BT+ GPS+WiMax |
abgn+BT | abgn+BT |
| wwan | no | no | no | option | option | no | no | option | option | option | option |
| wired | gigabit | none | none | gigabit | gigabit | gigabit | gigabit | gigabit | gigabit | gigabit | 100mb |
| os | macosx | macosx | macosx | vista hp | vista b | vista b | vista b | vista b | vista | vista b | vista hp |
| price | 1379 | 1799 | 3098 | 1800 | 2099 | 2170 | 2999 | 1340 | TBD | 2400 | 1520 |
issues with the air:
uses old 65nm cpu… what about penryn?
ram is almost free, yet its impossible to upgrade the air to 4GB
only 1 usb, no gigabit ethernet, no sd-card slot…
1.8″ IDE hard disk, so not possible to install a 7200rpm drive.
thin and light, sure… but a big footprint footprint, could have less unused space around the screen and keyboard.
A technically bigger laptop like the R500 will actually seem to be smaller in person since it’s more compact.
question: does it use UEFI 2.0 so one could install vista64SP1? other macbooks do not.
I think I’ll wait for penryn sff, and frankly the macbook air seemed large in person… thin yes, but has a large footprint, a 13.3″ display with a significant border around the screen.
I might go for another 12.1 like the toshiba R500, but again, I’ll wait for penryn.