Neowin Galaxy Nexus review, the sweetest aftertaste

Neowin is reviewing today the latest Nexus phone from Google, built in partnership with Samsung, and powered by the newest Android 4.0 release. For those unfamiliar with this beautiful device, it’s called the Galaxy Nexus, and it runs on delicious and futuristic Ice Cream Sandwiches.

Google's vision for the Galaxy Nexus was to make it the destroyer-of-all phones, backed by the absolute best OS they have ever made and running on the best hardware that Samsung could find. Most of this vision has made it to the Galaxy Nexus, but as you'll find out it's not a completely smooth ride.

Samsung has almost gone all out with the Galaxy Nexus, fitting it with a 1.2 GHz TI OMAP dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and the impressive 4.65" Super AMOLED HD display. NFC is also on-board, along with penta-band HSPA radios and LTE depending on your region.

In many ways the Galaxy Nexus looks like a love-child between the Nexus S and the Galaxy S II. The front is completely dominated by a curved display with not much else, similar to the Nexus S, while the back is beautifully textured by Samsung to feel similar to the Galaxy S II line of devices.

GPU shipments up 18.4% on-year, Intel has over 60% of the market

Jon Peddie Research has released its third quarter report on the graphics market, announcing 16.7% sequential increase in shipments to 138.5 million. That's above the 10-year average of 13.9%, but still in line with seasonal expectations as vendors stock up for the holidays. Intel alone witnessed a 28.5% growth in shipments on-quarter and 36.5% on-year, which is almost entirely comprised of the embedded graphics chips inside its latest-generation desktop and mobile processors. The company has maintained its majority share of the graphics market with 60.4% slice -- up 10.1% from the previous quarter and 9.5% on-year.

Although it has experienced a 9.9% growth in shipments -- thanks to its legion of Fusion APUs -- AMD has reportedly lost footing to Intel with a market share of 23%, down 5.9% on-quarter and flat year-over-year. Shipments of AMD's desktop and notebook Fusion chips have increased 58.4% from the last quarter. Given the rise of CPU/GPU combo chips from Intel and AMD, more computers than ever are shipping with two graphics solutions. Almost 92 million PCs shipped worldwide this quarter, up 8.8% sequentially. There were roughly 1.6 GPUs per computer in 2011, which compares to 1.15 GPUs per system a decade earlier.

Company	Mkt Share  This Qtr	Mkt Share   Last Qtr	Unit Change   Qtr-Qtr	Share Change     Qtr-Qtr	Mkt Share   Last Yr
AMD	23.0%	24.4%	9.9%	-5.9%	23.0%
Intel	60.4%	54.8%	28.5%	10.1%	55.1%
Nvidia	16.1%	20.1%	-6.2%	-19.6%	21.0%
Matrox	0.04%	0.0%	0.0%	-14.3%	0.1%
SiS	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
VIA/S3	0.5%	0.6%	-8.9%	-22.0%	0.8%
Total	100.0%	100.0%	16.7%		100.0%

Besides its low powered mobile platforms, Nvidia doesn't have a mass market embedded graphics solution to lean on and its shares slipped even further than AMD's. In the third quarter, Nvidia represented some 16.1% of the market, down 19.6% from the previous quarter and slipping some 23% from the year-ago figures. Nvidia's shipments fell 6.2% on-quarter and while its overall stats may not be as impressive as its rivals', JPR notes that the company is placing more focus on discrete graphics processors. In that realm, Nvidia currently reigns supreme, gaining 30% of the discrete market on-quarter and 10.9% on-year.

New motherboard layout for the new X79 LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E

X79 LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E motherboards are showcased last Computex 2011. The LGA2011′s layout is quite different from it’s predecessors and for some enthusiast the design may look odd.

As you will notice there are four DIMM slots but two DIMM slots are placed in the right side of the CPU socket and the other 2 is in the left side of the socket.

Most of these new X79 LGA2011 motherboards have 10 or more SATA 6Gbps connectors and have 3 or more PCI-Express slots. The CPU socket looks bigger and it has a new type of locking system.

Below are 5 new Sandy Bridge-E motherboards with socket LGA2011 based on x79 chipset.

ASRock x79 Extreme4

ASRock X79 Extreme4

Specifications of ASrock x79 Extreme4:
Platform: Sandy Bridge-E
Socket: LGA2011
Chipset: X79
8-phase VRM
Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM (supporting quad channel DDR3-2133MHz)
Formfactor: ATX
PCI-Express 3.0 40-lane hub (x16/x16/NC or x16/x8/x8)
10x SATA 6 Gbps
2x SATA 3 Gbps
8-Channel HD Audio
Dual gigabit Ethernet
4x USB 3.0
Supports 3-way NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossfireX

MSI X79A-GD80

MSI X79A-GD80 LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E

Specifications of MSI X79A-GD80:
Platform: Sandy Bridge-E
Socket: LGA2011
Chipset: X79
Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM (quad channel)
PCI-Express 3.0 (x16/x8/x16)
10x SATA 6 Gbps
8+2 channel HD audio
dual gigabit Ethernet
USB 3.0

As you have observed on the picture above, the MSI X79A-GD80 makes use of a 40mm fan-heatsink to cool the VRM above the CPU socket, which is not present in other X79 LGA2011 motherboards.

Gigabyte X79 UD3 LGA2011

Gigabyte GA-X79A-UD3

GA-X79A-UD3

Specifications of Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3:
Platform: Sandy Bridge-E
Socket: LGA2011 (2,011 pins in total)
Chipset: X79
Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM (quad channel)
6-phase design
Formfactor: ATX
5x PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (40-lane )
10x SATA 6 Gbps
2x SATA 3 Gbps
8+2 Channel HD audio
USB 3.0 and USB 2.0
Single Gigabit Ethernet

Foxconn Quantum Force X79

Foxconn Quantum Force X79 LGA2011

Foxconn X79 Socket LGA2011

Specifications of Foxconn Quantum Force X79 LGA2011:
Platform: Sandy Bridge-E
Socket: LGA2011
Chipset: X79
Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM (quad channel)
dual gigabit Ethernet
14 SATA ports
12 Phases PWM for CPU
Extreme OC Total solution
Quantum Force Bios (OC)
Ferrite Choke PWM Solution for total solution
Nvidia SLI support

So far information about this motherboard is limited but you can guess it’s pretty much the same as other LGA2011 motherboard. So far, the Foxconn’s X79 LGA2011 motherboard looks better than its competitors.

Intel X79 – ECS X79R-A

ECS X79R-A

Specifications of ECS X79R-A:
Platform: Sandy Bridge-E
Socket: LGA2011
Chipset: X79
Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM (quad channel)
10x SATA 6 Gbps
4x PCI-Express 3.0
8-channel Audio
Dual Giga LAN
eSATA 6 Gbps
USB 3.0

There you have it. The full information about these motherboards are not yet revealed. But based on the pictures and design, you will have an idea what these new LGA2011 motherboards are capable of.

Also, these are not the high-end X79 LGA2011. Maybe these are entry to mainstream level but definitely not the high end ones. Sure enough, motherboard manufacturers will design and make a better looking Sandy Bridge-E X79 LGA2011 motherboards for the enthusiasts.

Samsung SpinPoint F4EG 2TB Hard Drive Review – Get Ready for The Top Dog In HDD Storage

The search for fast, cheap, reliable and large capacity Hard Disk Drives seems to be never ending. Enter Samsung with their new EcoGreen 54EG 2TB Series of hard drives and we get a fresh look at something newer, faster, quieter and requiring less power than other hard drives in todays fast moving world of storage.

With contenders such as Seagate, Western Digital and many others vying for top spot in the uber competitive HDD market, Samsung improves upon the reliability of the F3EG model to introduce the new 5400 RPM EcoGreen F4EG, a hard drive that we believe just may grab the Crown with its combination of price, performance and capacity.

Todays review will focus on the performance of a single F4EG, and the benefits of placing them in a RAID array. With 5400 RPM drives being a bit slower, quieter and a better value than their 7200 rpm counterparts, many have chosen these drives in RAID configurations for maximum performance at a great price point. We will focus on the benefits of this type of array using the four drives and hope to demonstrate the amazing performance in RAID 0 (stripe size of 128) of these drives.

INTRODUCTION

Samsung has made some marked improvements to this series of EcoGreen HDD in the F4EG. The F3EG had four platters whereas the F4EG sports three platters with an incredible areal density of 667GB contained on each platter. We can see that the big increases in density allow for fewer platters which equates to better performance and lower power requirements than Samsungs competitors. As a result the F4EG easily outpaces its rivals in many categories and we see that the performance gleaned from the higher densities helps the 5400 rpm class of drives immensely. This, combined with the Advanced Format Technology, allows for much higher capacities at lower price points. Advanced Format Technology changes the base formatting of 512 bytes per sector to 4k per sector. A big plus to the evolution of this newer form of formatting is increased data integrity and larger capacities.

The appearance of the drives themselves is rather unremarkable as it follows the normal look and approach to external design of a hard disk drive.

The drives follow the standard 3.5 inch form factor and measure 4 inches wide, 5.79 inches long, with a depth of 1.03 inches and weigh roughly 1.5 pounds.

One area where the SpinPoint F4EG does vary from its competitors is the design of the PCB on the bottom of the device itself. Usually the drive controllers are placed facing into the drive itself whereas this drive has the control chips facing outwards. This may help thermally with heat dissipation as it would allows the chips to be exposed to the air inside the enclosure that they are placed in, however, none of these chips will produce much heat, as they are definitely geared towards low power usage. To the rear of the device you can see the standard SATA power and data ports that one would use to connect to the computer.

SPECIFICATIONS

Drive Configuration

• 2 TB Capacity
• Interface SATA 3.0 Gbps
• 32 MB Cache
• Drive Configuration 4000 bytes per sector with Emulation

Performance Specification

• 8,9 ms Average Seek Timer (Typical)
• 5,52 ms Average Latency
• 250 MB/s Media Transfer Rate (Max)
• 300 MB/s Interface Transfer Rate (Max)
• 13 sec Drive Ready Timer (Typical)

Power Requirements

• + 5 V ± 5%, + 12 V ± 10% Voltage
• 2,0 A Spin – up Current (Max)
• 5,7 Watts Seek Power (Typical)
• 6,3 Watts Read / Write Power (Typical)
• 5,1 Watts Idle Power (Typical)
• 1 Watts Stand – by Power (Typical)
• 1 Watts Seek Power (Typical)

MISCELLANEOUS

• Advanced dynamic FOD control for best data integrity
• Intelligent compensation of external disturbance
• SATA Native Command Queuing Feature
• Device Initiated SATA Power Management
• Shock & Rotational vibration sensor
• Improved performance with dual-ARM based firmware
• ATA S.M.A.R.T. Compliant
• ATA Automatic Acoustic Management Feature
• ATA 48-bit Address Feature
• ATA Device Configuration Overlay Feature
• NoiseGuard™
• SilentSeek™