Why Intel Could Really Sell 30 Million Smartphone Processors

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The problem with the first batch of 64-bit Snapdragon 615 processors that ... and smooth performance even after two hours of playing GPU/CPU-heavy games. I firmly believe that Jerry Shen will continue to favor Atom processors ...

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AMD roadmap leaks, shows off 14nm chips for 2016

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The main event for AMD in 2016 is the new “Summit Ridge” CPU, with ... cores, along with Radeon graphics and AMD secure processor technology, ...

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Microsoft designed a special processor to handle HoloLens data

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Like a traditional PC, HoloLens contains a CPU and GPU, said Alex ... Using a third processor frees up the CPU and GPU to run apps created by ...

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Intel Corporation Likely Planning to Launch New Xeon Chips Next Week

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Back in February, CPU World leaked a set of "partial specifications" of Intel's upcoming Xeon E7 processors. The four socket models will reportedly ...

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Come again? ZTE Nubia Z9 visits China's FCC with 3.5 GHz octa-core CPU, 8 GB RAM

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And believe it or not, Tenaa writes in black and white Z9's memory count sits at a gigantic 8 gigs, with a 3.5 GHz octa-core processor running the ...

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ZTE's new Android flagship gets certified in China, with a 3.5GHz octa-core CPU and 8GB RAM

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TENAA documentation reveals that the Android 5.0 device will feature a 3.5GHz octa-core processor, with an astonishing 8GB of RAM. Other specs ...

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Teardown shows Apple Watch S1 chip has custom CPU, 512MB RAM, 8GB storage

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Teardown shows Apple Watch S1 chip has custom CPU, 512MB RAM, 8GB storage. By Roger Fingas ... At the heart of the S1 is an Apple-designed processor, labeled the APL 0778, as discovered by ABI Research. The Broadcom ...

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Microsoft launches most affordable Lumia at Rs 5299

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The product has Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with a dual-core CPU that can run at 1.2 GHz, a four-inch WVGA display, and a smart dual SIM that ...

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ARM takes wraps off Cortex-A72 processor

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ARM rolled out a suite of premium mobile IP in February of this year, encompassing the Cortex-A72 CPU, Mali-T880 graphics, next-generation ...

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GIGABYTE Enables Support for Upcoming 5th Gen Intel Core Processors on Z97

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Gigabyte's Entire range of Z97 and H97 boards now support Intel's Upcoming 5th Generation CPUs.

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Leaked AMD roadmap suggests all 2016 APUs will be 14nm

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AMD's roadmap for the next two years has leaked, and it's filled with information about what the company is planning for their desktop and mobile CPU and APU lines. While 2015 will see a mix of 32, 28 and 20nm chips, 2016 is the year AMD will finally move to a...





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Leaked AMD roadmap suggests all 2016 APUs will be 14nm

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At the top of the product stack is a new flagship processor, which will finally replace AMD's aging 32nm Piledriver-based FX CPUs. This new 14nm ...

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Leaked slides show AMD desktop and mobility roadmaps for 2016

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This is 'confirmed' to feature up to four Steamroller CPU cores and sit in the FM2+ socket motherboards already on the market. It is targeting ...

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AMD mobile APUs bets on 14nm in 2016

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Carrizo is a 28nm SoC with up to four Excavator CPU cores, GCN graphics, Full HSA 1.0 support, True Audio, AMD secure processor and 15W to 35W ...

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Huawei P8lite with Octa-Core CPU, 4G LTE is Now Official

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This device is powered by a 1.2 GHz Octa-Core Kirin 620 processor with Mali 450 GPU / Octa-Core Snapdragon 615 SoC depends on the region ...

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AMD has three new desktop 14nm parts in 2016

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In 2015 AMD's biggest and fastest desktop processor is the 2nd Generation FX CPU, with up to 8 Piledriver CPU cores. The fastest of them is AMD ...

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BOXX Cranks Its 8-Core Haswell-E APEXX Workstations Up To Over 4GHz

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But Intel's flagship Haswell-E based Core i7-5960X processor's frequency was actually lower than the previous-gen Core i7-4960X, which hurt it in ...

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AMD 2016 Roadmap Leaked - Zen And K12 Based 14nm CPU And APU Products Inbound

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Two days ago the CPU block diagram for AMD's upcoming high ... A57 CPU cores, an integrated GCN GPU and a security processor all inside a frugal ...

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AMD 2015 and 2016 Mobile and Desktop Roadmaps Leaked

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Puma+ is a very solid processor architecture for low power products, but ... These will be comprised of four Cortex-A57 CPUs combined with AMD's ...

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GIGABYTE GA-B85M-D3H for PCs

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It comes with the HD4600 Intel® processor graphics that provide native 4K resolution playback ... This means users don't even need a discrete VGA card since the Intel has built. this powerful graphics engine directly into the CPU.

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Choices On Top of Choices

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Instead of delivering you a prepackaged CPU core, Tensilica instead hands ... Synopsys acquired fellow configurable-processor company ARC, and ...

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What's new with Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) latest Xeon D Processor and 14-nanometer ...

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It is a point to be kept in mind that Xeon D features eight CPU cores, 24 PCI Express lanes, and two integrated 10-gigabit Ethernet connections.

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Alleged benchmarks of Intel i7-6700K Skylake CPU published

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A little known Turkish computer tech website has published what could be the first benchmarks featuring an Intel Skylake-S processor. PC-FRM ...

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Globalfoundries 14nm process has volume production levels

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The 14nm LPP system is being pushed towards mobile processors and high-performance core product. This includes AMD next-generation CPU and ...

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New leak hints at AMD Zen's architecture, organization

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That CPU apparently packs AVX2 support, but it may have kept 128-bit ... be inaccurate — it looked more like a wish list than a functional processor.

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LG G4 smartphone launched, packs a Snapdragon 808 CPU

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LG G4 smartphone launched, packs a Snapdragon 808 CPU ... As the LG G4 marked the debut of the 808 processor Qualcomm executives were ...

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AMD "Godavari" APUs surfaced in CPU support lists

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ASRock added specifications of several Godavari processors to CPU support lists of socket FM2+ motherboards. As you may know, "Godavari" is a ...

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LG G4 revealed with hexa core processor, superb cameras and plenty of high end features

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LG has used the Snapdragon 808 processor in the G4 instead of Snapdragon 810 which has a 1.8 Ghz hexa core processor. This CPU is being ...

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LG G4 hands-on and first impressions (Video)

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Along with that, we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor (dual-core 1.8Ghz and a quad-core 1.44), the Adreno 418 GPU, and 3GB of RAM… ... it fares in the full review and how it affects battery life with LG's CPU choice.

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Rumor: AMD to release higher clocked Godavari APUs in May

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The processors, with a built-in GPU, are manufactured at 28nm and fit in a socket FM2+, just like the Kaveri chips. The processing unit is equipped with ...

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Origin PC EON15-X gaming notebook review

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From there, our review sample includes a Core i7-4790K—the same CPU found in many of the fastest gaming desktops. That processor is ...

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Intel Corporation: A Look at the New Xeon D Processor and 14-Nanometer Technology

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One thing to keep in mind is that Xeon D features eight CPU cores, 24 PCI Express lanes, and two integrated 10-gigabit Ethernet connections.

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Intel Skylake Core i5 and Core i7 details leaked

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The Core i5 and Core i7 Skylake CPUs shown in BenchLife's leak support both DDR3 and DDR4 memory. Core i3 processors are expected to release ...

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LG G4: Samsung Galaxy S6 Rival Launched With 5.5-inch QHD Display, Snapdragon 808 CPU

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In a surprise move, LG has abandoned the Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor in favor of the Snapdragon 808 model, probably to address the ...

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LG Announces the G4: 5.5-inch QHD with Snapdragon 808

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In a joint event between London and New York, LG has lifted the veil on the next iteration of its high-end smartphone, the G4. The G3's designs largely borrows from the G3 and iterates on it with a new slightly curved screen and optional leather back covers. The camera seems to be LG's core focus for this device, and we'll get back on those details in just a bit.

The G4 will be the first device to officially use the Snapdragon 808, Qualcomm’s MSM8992 big.LITTLE SoC arrangement that uses two ARM A57 cores in one cluster clocked in at 1.82GHz and four ARM A53s at 1.44GHz in the other. The GPU also uses a lower end Adreno 418 clocked in at 600MHz. Qualcomm avoided LPDDR4 in the S808, and thus remaines a LPDDR3 piece likely running at up to 933MHz.

While we're not too concerned with the resulting CPU performance and loss of two big cores, and slight frequency loss of the Snapdragon 808, it's the GPU which should see higher impact as 3D performance suffers a tad compared to the Snapdragon 810's Adreno 430. In our preliminary tests with the demo device, we see GFXBench Manhattan offscreen go down from 22.7fps to 15fps and T-Rex from 49fps down to 35fps when comparing the G4 to the HTC M9, which sports a FHD screen as opposed ot the QHD one we find in the LG device.

The detailed specification lists shows the iterative improvements over the G3, launched last year:

	LG G3	LG G4
SoC	MSM8974AC Snapdragon 801 4x Krait 400 @ 2.5 GHz	MSM8992 Snapdragon 808 2xA57 @ 1.82GHz + 4xA53 @ 1.44GHz
GPU	Adreno 330 @ 578MHz	Adreno 418 @ 600MHz
RAM	3GB LPDDR3 933MHz	3GB LPDDR3 933MHz
NAND	32GB NAND (eMMC 5.0) + microSD	32GB NAND (eMMC 5.0) + microSD
Display	5.5-inch 2560x1440 IPS LCD	5.5-inch 2560x1440 IPS LCD
Network	2G / 3G / 4G Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE	2G / 3G / 4G Qualcomm X10 (Integrated) UE Category 9 LTE
Dimensions	146.3 x 74.6 x 8.9 mm 149 grams	148.9 x 76.1 x 6.3 - 9.8 mm 155 grams
Camera	13MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size, F/2.4. OIS 2.1MP F/2.0 FFC	16MP Sony IMX234 rear camera, 1.12µm pixels, F/1.8 8MP Toshiba T4KA3 FFC
Battery	3000 mAh (11.4 Wh) replaceable	3000 mAh (11.4 Wh) replaceable
OS	Android 4.4.2 with LG UI	Android 5.1 with LGUX 4.0
Connectivity	802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC	802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0
SIM Size	MicroSIM	NanoSIM

The screen size and resolution stay constant at 5.5" and QHD, but the device has an angular element to it, similar to the LG G Flex 2 but not as pronounced: The screen is touted to be a new generation IPS Quantum display. It looks like LG is claiming 20% gamut increase. The display has  50% increased contrast over the G3, achieving a total of 1500:1 contrast ratio. The G4 reintroduces Panel Self Refresh which was unfortunately missing from the G3, and this should vastly improve battery life over its predecessor.

The screen has a 3000mm radius curve throughout the phone's design that LG markets as "Slim Arc" design.

The phone comes in several different plastic and leather cover options. These are high-quality hand-produced genuine leather products. The plastic version sports a diamond pattern mimicking a metallic look. This also means the G4 is slightly bigger and heavier than the G3 as it comes at a increased 155g. The removable battery of the G4 remains similar to the G3 at 3000 mAh, and the SIM moves to the nano-size. The microSD slot remains an option for the G4.

The G4 gets a camera update, moving from a 13MP to a 16MP design that migrates from an F/2.4 to F/1.8, allowing for potentially better performance. We find a Sony IMX234 sensor, a unit we haven't yet seen used in any other devices. LG were keen to point the F/1.8 over Samsung’s F/1.9 on the latest Galaxy S6. The new OIS system dubbed "OIS 2.0" now offers a 3-axis gyroscope instead of the traditional 2-axis implementations in all current OIS devices. Another first is the implementation of a colour spectrum sensor next to the flash unit, and is able to read RGB and infrared light. LG is able to vastly improve white-balance and also increase clarity for more natural pictures.

The phone now also offers full manual control, with customizable ISO, exposure, shutter speed and white balance among other things. RAW format capture is also supported. Double clicking on the rear buttons already takes a picture within a second, LG is here taking another stab at Samsung's S6 as it only is able to open the camera app in the same time.

The front camera has been boosted to a 8MP Toshiba T4KA3 sensor and sports an improved gesture shot triggering function.

The volume rocker on the rear changes slightly, moving to a flatter central piece. The flash element of the camera in this area is a dual LED design, and we also find the microphone grille at the bottom. One of the elements LG seems to be pushing with the G4 is the design of the back cover, allowing for a replaceable leather rear while retaining the front facia that exhibits a faux carbon-fibre effect of sorts.

The device should be available this week in major markets. We’re currently waiting in line to get some hands-on time with the device, and hopefully on the list to get a sample to follow up from the LG G3 review.

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Imagination Technologies opens up MIPS CPU architecture to universities

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A free download package of the CPU's architecture will let students explore the processor's RTL code to see how it works and identify its capabilities.

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Exynos M1 could house Samsung's custom CPU cores

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... generation Application Processor (AP) for Samsung's devices. It's because chip could very well be the first to carry Samsung's own CPU core design ...

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Imagination Technologies offers universities open access to MIPS processor architecture

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Universities are being granted access to Imagination Technologies' MIPS processors, which will give electronics and computer science students ...

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Huawei Honor 4C with Snapdragon CPU, 2GB RAM is Now Official

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Huawei Honor 4C, sports a 5-inch 720p HD display and powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-core processor or HiSilicon Kirin 620 ...

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AMD Zen CPU Block Diagram Released

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An AMD CPU Block Diagram of their new Zen Architecture has been released and it looks promising.

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BeQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 review

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Thanks to its ability to keep a processor as cool as many all-in-one liquid cooling systems, the Dark Rock Pro 3 is an excellent CPU cooler. It's very big ...

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300

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Planning on downgrading so the processor is for sale. The processor came with a lenovo desktop I purchased last month for my brother's graduation ...

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Imagination to release open MIPS design to academia

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MIPS may significantly trail x86 and ARM in the application processor world, but it's widely used in ... Hennessy and David Patterson of UC Berkeley published the nitty gritty details in “Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach.

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ASUS Announces the ZenBook Pro UX501

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Today Asus announced their new ZenBook Pro UX501. The ZenBook Pro UX501 sits above all the other ZenBooks as a flagship laptop for people who need serious processing power when they're on the go. It could be called a workstation laptop or a desktop replacement, but whatever the case may be it certainly packs some potent hardware. I've organized its specifications in the chart below.

ASUS ZenBook Pro UX501
Size	15.1 x 10.0 x 0.8” 38.4 x 25.4 x 2.03cm
Mass	5 lbs - 2.27 kg
Display	15.6" 1920x1080 IPS LCD or 15.6" 3840x2160 multi-touch IPS w/ 100% sRGB
Battery	60/96Wh battery rated for 6 hours of usage
Storage/DRAM	1TB 5400RPM HDD or 128/256GB SATA3 SSD or 512GB PCIe x4 SSD 16GB DDR3
CPU	Intel Core i7-4720HQ (2.6GHz base, 3.6GHz turbo)
GPU	NVIDIA GTX 960M
Wireless	2x2 802.11ac + BT 4.0
Ports	3 x USB 3.0, 1 x Thunderbolt 2.0/mDP, HDMI, SDXC, 3.5mm Headset Jack
Front Camera	HD 720p
Operating System	Windows 8.1 64-bit
Warranty	1-year limited
Price	$1799 for UHD + 512GB SSD model

Starting with its appearance, we see that the UX501 features an aluminum chassis with the same spun metal finish that ASUS has put on most of their products. At 2.03cm thick at its thickest point and a mass of 2.27kg, it's definitely not an ultra portable laptop. The aluminum build and high end specs will inevitably draw comparison to the MacBook Pro, and the name ASUS has chosen certainly gives the impression that they're taking on Apple's flagship laptop as well. That being said, in my view the UX501 is distinctly an ASUS product with its slightly tapered chassis and brushed metal lid.

Just looking at the specs, it's clear that the UX501 is what one might call a desktop replacement laptop. The most notable point may be its display, which is a 15.6" 3840x2160 IPS panel. At 282ppi it's an extremely high resolution display, although I don't think anyone was unhappy with 3200x1800 panels and the lower power consumption that comes with them. ASUS is also reporting full sRGB gamut coverage, and hopefully high color accuracy is bundled with that gamut. The rest of the specs are equally impressive, with a 2.6GHz quad core Intel Core i7 CPU, and NVIDIA's GTX 960M GPU.

In terms of storage, ASUS is offering several options with the UX501. Buyers can opt for a 1TB 5400RPM HDD, a 128GB or 256GB SATA III SSD, or a 512GB PCIe x4 SSD. The PCIe SSD is definitely the most interesting option, with ASUS quoting maximum read/write speeds of 1400Mbps.

Battery life on the UX501 is a bit low, but hardly unexpected for a laptop with these specifications. With no Broadwell quad core i7 parts available, companies making desktop replacements are stuck using Intel's 22nm Haswell parts. The display is undoubtably the biggest consumer of power, and one can debate the merits of moving to 4K from QHD+ or other resolutions. With a 96Wh battery in the UHD model, ASUS is also pushing up against travel regulations that do not permit battery packs above 100Wh on airplanes. Regardless, any users interested in a desktop replacement should always be ready to keep their charger with them.

The I/O ports on the UX501 are fairly standard for a laptop of this class, but there's one port that is fairly unique among Windows laptops. ASUS has included a single Thunderbolt 2 port on the UHD model of the UX501. Thunderbolt never really took off like many had hoped, but it seems that there's enough adoption of it in the professional space to warrant ASUS putting it on their flagship laptop. The 1080p models will feature a Mini-DisplayPort output rather than the Thunderbolt 2 port.

The ASUS ZenBook UX501 is available now in the United States from the ASUS Online Store as well as from various retailers. The fully featured model with the UHD display and 512GB PCIe SSD will be $1799 USD.

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Imagination To Give Universities Free And Open Access To MIPS Architecture

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Imagination announced that it's going to give universities free and open access to its MIPS architecture so both professors and students can have a better understanding of how to design and work with a MIPS CPU.

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Imagination Opens MIPS Architecture to Universities

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... that includes compiler and debug support, simulation and support to blow the processor into a Xilinx or Altera FPGA. CPU architecture and design is ...

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AMD Zen CPU Core Block Diagram Leaked - Features 512bit Wide Floating Point Unit And A ...

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A slide showcasing the block diagram for AMD's upcoming CPU ... the new instruction set extensions that the upcoming processor will support. This is ...

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Imagination Tech Releases Fully Open MIPS CPU to Universities for Free!

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What is apparently for the first time in modern processors, according to Imagination, the architecture for their MIPS CPU will be fully opened up to ...

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Intel Skylake-S Processor Specifications Leaked

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According to the website, the Intel Skylake-S line will feature ten processors, ... Skylake-S will represent the 'tock' in Intel's tick-tock processor model. ... not favor Hyper-Threading technology, and is being predicted to contain 4 CPU ...

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Samsung's mobile CPU with custom core looks to be the Exynos M1

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Samsung made waves in the mobile device market this year when it opted to use its own Exynos processor in its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones.

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Imagination introduces free MIPSfpga for university use

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Imagination Technologies designs the MIPS processor technology used in some low-power devices such as tablets and set-top-boxes. ... The CPU Imagination is making available is called MIPSfpga and it's can support Linux ...

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Buying Guide: 10 best graphics cards in the world today

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Best Graphics Cards

Are you a PC gamer? Then trust us on this: there is no other component nearly as important as the graphics card.

Yes, your monitor and even your mouse matter. But nothing has more impact on both frame rates and fun than your graphics card. Problem is, at any moment there are scores of cards to choose from and they typically all claim to have pixel-pushing perfection.

The simple solution is to buy the very best. But that also means the most expensive. For most of us, then, it's all about bang-for-buck at a given budget. Just remember to think carefully about how you match your graphics card with the rest of your PC.

If you have a super-high resolution monitor, for instance, you're going to need a high-end graphics card to make the most of it. But, equally, there's little point unloading on the finest GPU money can buy if its being bottlenecked by an old CPU or feeding a feeble screen.

With all that in mind, here's our guide to not only the fastest, but also the best value PC graphics you can buy.

1. Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X

The fastest and the finest single-GPU graphics card on the planet

Price: around £870

What was that we were saying about excessively expensive graphics cards? The Titan X ain't cheap. Not even nearly. But then the best never is. And make no mistake, the Titan X is clearly, undeniably, indisputably the best single-GPU graphics card you can buy. This time around, Nvidia has given us a Titan card that's purely for gaming and it's all the better for it. Yes, there are cards with two GPUs on board that can better it in some tests. But they are also less reliable. Money no object, it's the board we'd buy – except we'd have two of 'em!

Which board to buy:

Unless you go for an exotic custom-cooled effort, Titan X's are all the same, so you may as well grab something like Overclockers UK own-brand effort, which is about a cheap as they come, if you can call £870 cheap.

• Read our full Nvidia GeForce Titan X review

2. Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

All the graphics grunt you'll ever actually need

Price: Around £255

Diminishing returns are an occupational hazard for every PC gamer when it comes to buying a graphics card. And the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 is the point beyond which things go south. This is a stupendously powerful graphics card based on what we think is the best 3D tech currently available – Nvidia Maxwell architecture. There are faster cards. But especially if you are playing games at 1080p or even 1440p, most of the time, you won't notice the difference. And if you've heard about the whole 3.5GB versus 4GB fracas with the 970, don't let it bother you. It was inelegant of Nvidia, but it doesn't change what we think about the 970.

Which board to buy:

The 970 isn't exactly cheap. But it's still something of a value proposition. So we like the look of the aggressively priced Gainward model on Amazon.

3. AMD Radeon R9 290

A proper high-end GPU at a price you can (possibly) afford

Price: around £220

if you want a simple rule for buying graphics cards, it's this. Grab a slightly cut-down version of a flagship GPU a year or so after it goes on sale. That way you get all the high end features for both less than the price of the very top model and after the original launch price has inevitably cooled off. Enter, therefore the AMD Radeon R9 290. It's one rung down in AMD graphics hierarchy after the mighty 290X. But it's still a proper high-end bruiser, complete with a monster 512-bit memory bus and 4GB of graphics memory – all the better for running at high resolutions providing a bit of future proofing.

Which board to buy:

The reference cooler that AMD cooked up for the 290 was a bad joke. So go with something like Sapphire's Tri-X and its super-silent fans and factory overclock.

• Read our full AMD Radeon R9 290 review

4. AMD Radeon R9 280

It's an oldie, but for 1080p gaming it's still a goodie

Price: around £150

Sticking with the cut-down flagship theme, our next candidate comes from what is effectively AMD's previous generation of graphics cards. What was once the Radeon HD 7970 has been, in effect, rebranded R9 280. But here's the thing. AMD hasn't changed its graphics tech for a few years. So in terms of features, you miss out on little to nothing. What you do get is no fewer than 1,792 stream processors, a 384-bit memory bus that even Nvidia's GTX 980 can't match and a decent 3GB lump of graphics memory. And all for an eminently reasonable £150. A great choice for slick 1080p gaming. It's not a bad choice for 1440p gaming on the cheap, too.

Which board to buy:

Luckily, pretty much all 280s now come with fancy custom coolers. That includes MSI's Radeon R9 280 Gaming, which just squeaks in under the £150 barrier.

Read our full AMD Radeon R9 280 review

5. Nvidia GeForce GTX 770

Grab a graphics bargain while you still can

Price: around £220

If you like the look of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 770, and we can understand why you would, get your skates on. It won't be available for much longer. Like AMD's 280 chipset, the GTX 770 falls into that cut-down, previous-gen flagship slot that usually serves up such good value. At launch a couple of years ago, the 770 was priced well above £300 and was very nearly as quick as PC graphics got. Today, it remains a seriously speedy card, but it's yours for not much more than £200. On the downside, it lacks Nvidia's awesome new Maxwell architecture. But it still offers great performance at standard clockspeeds and usually overclocks like a monster, too.

Which board to buy:

It makes sense to keep the 770 as cheap as possible, so Asus's Direct CU for £220 makes a lot of sense. Just be aware that the 2GB frame buffer isn't ideal for really high resolutions.

• Read our full Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 review.

6. Nvidia GeForce GTX 960

So nearly a gaming great, shame about that pesky memory bus

Price: around £150

From hear on in, our recommendations come with an increasing number of qualifiers. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 is one of those cards we desperately wanted to like. After all, it's a more affordable version of its killer Maxwell graphics architecture, but still absolutely aimed at full-featured gaming, right down to its 1,024 CUDA cores. There is, however, a snag. Nvidia has seen fit to bequeath the 960 with a stingy 128-bit memory bus. That makes it a very hard sell for high resolution gaming including anything beyond 1080p. We also worry about how well the 960 will hold up when even more bandwidth-hungry games are inevitably launched in future.

Which card to buy:

A factory overclocked 960 card for just under £155? What's not to like about the Gainward GTX 960 2GB?

• Read our full Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 review.

7. AMD Radeon R9 270

Budget pricing, console-crushing graphics performance.

Price: around £115

Like it or loathe it, the latest games consoles from Sony and Microsoft set the minimum standard for most games developers. But the good news is that you can have a graphics based on exactly the same AMD technology as seen in both of the latest gaming boxes for not a great deal more than £100. Except this AMD board packs 1,280 of those all-important shaders, to the Sony PS4's 1,152 and the Xbox One's measly 768 cores. Nice. What's more, the 270 gets one over on Nvidia's GTX 960, too, thanks to its pukka 256-bit memory bus. All round, it's a very nice little package for the price. Our only real worry is whether 2GB of graphics memory is truly good enough these days.

Which board to buy:

While we'd like to recommend a 270 with more memory, they're much more pricey, too. So a Powercolor TurboDUO 2GB it is.

8. Nvidia GeForce GTX 980

A seriously sweet card, assuming you can afford it.

Price: around £430

Nvidia's Maxwell graphics technology is almost too good for our liking. Take the GTX 980 board. It's one hell of a graphics card, beaten only by Nvidia's own Titan X beast, a card that costs almost twice as much. And yet, at its heart, the 980 is really a mid-range graphics chip. It's just so darned good, Nvidia can get away with charging well over £400. Most of the time, that probably doesn't matter. If the 980 is quick, who cares how that is achieved. However, the telltale that gives away the 980 arguable mid-range status is a relatively stingy 256-bit memory bus, a feature AMD matches on its lowly R9 270 board for a quarter the price. Ouch.

Which board to buy:

Most 980 boards rock in around £430 or more. But the custom-cooled Palit GTX 980 Jetstream can currently be had for £400.

• Read our full Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 review.

9. AMD Radeon R9 295 X2

A bonkers dual-GPU board that might just make sense

Price: around £500

Normally, any suggestion that a £500 graphics card is a bit of a bargain would seem a bit bonkers. But try this for size. The AMD Radeon R9 295 X2 is over £300 cheaper than Nvidia's mighty new Titan X board. But it beats it in most benchmarks. The explanation, of course, is that the 295 X2 is a dual-GPU card and uses AMD's CrossfireX technology to get them working together to produce mega frame rates. The problem, which isn't unique to AMD but is also shared by Nvidia's similar SLI tech, is that running multiple GPUs doesn't always work. And when that happens, you suddenly have a £500 card that's giving your about £250's worth of performance.

Which board to buy:

The 295 X2 comes water cooled as standard, so you may as well buy the cheapest, one of which is Sapphire's sub-£500 effort.

10. Nvidia GeForce GTX 750Ti

The little card that started a big revolution in graphics

Price: around £100

This, arguably, is where proper PC gaming starts. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 750Ti is no big-bandwidth beast with a memory bus a mile wide. But it was the very first card to appear with Nvidia's incredible Maxwell graphics tech. And that means it definitely punches above its weight. For a card with just 640 CUDA cores (remember, the new Titan X has over 3,000), it does one hell of a job. Definitely don't try gaming beyond 1080p and definitely don't expect to play with every eye-candy option cranked up. But if you keep your expectations realistic, you might just be surprised at the amount of gaming grunt on offer for just £100.

Which board to buy:

We're suckers for a fancy looking cooler and some factory overclocking. So why not grab the EVGA GTX 750TI SC for a mere £110.

• Read our full Nvidia GeForce GTX 750Ti review.

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Imagination Announces Free MIPSfpga Design For Academia

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... CPU so that students can see first-hand how such a processor works, without any of the internals hidden away from them as proprietary information.

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Imagination Announces Free MIPSfpga Design For Academia

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While we admittedly don’t cover much in the way of education/university-related announcements, this one from Imagination this morning caught my eye.

As part of Imagination’s ongoing university relations program, the company is going to be releasing the design to one of their MIPS CPUs to universities for use by instructors and students. In this day and age university sharing agreements are fairly commonplace, but what makes Imagination’s offer particularly interesting is that they’re going to be releasing a complete and un-obfuscated MIPS core, releasing the design to educational institutions with a very deep level of access and with very few strings attached in the process.

The specific CPU Imagination is releasing is being called MIPSfpga, and is derived from the company’s microAptiv line, which is part of their lineup of embedded processor designs (think microcontrollers and the like). The MIPSfpga core, as implied by the name, is a customized microAptiv MPU core designed for implementation on FPGAs, with Imagination releasing the complete RTL for it. The design Imagination is releasing is among their fullest featured, and includes some otherwise optional microAptiv features such as an MMU and cache, which makes this processor functional enough to run Linux alongside more traditional real-time operating systems (RTOS).

Along with the un-obfuscated design itself, the actual terms of the agreement are rather unrestrictive. MIPSfpga is meant to be used for educational purposes and cannot be put into silicon – preventing anyone from using it as a roundabout way to get a royalty-free MIPS design – otherwise the only limit applies to patents. Consequently, users are free to modify the design as they wish, and then those who wish to patent those changes need to talk to Imagination first.

Imagination for their part is claiming that this is the first time anyone has released such a capable and complete un-obfuscated CPU design in this manner. And while we can’t confirm that no one has ever done something similar, certainly as far as we can tell no one has done something like this in recent history. Which would make this a very unusual release, and a big step up from more traditionally locked down and scaled down academic designs.

From a high level perspective, Imagination says that they’re doing this for education purposes; to give universities access to a complete (and relatively clean) CPU so that students can see first-hand how such a processor works, without any of the internals hidden away from them as proprietary information. After all, MIPS traces its very roots back to academia as a Stanford project. But pragmatically speaking, MIPS adoption at the manufacturer level has been struggling in the face of a very strong ARM for some time now, so releasing a complete design to universities gives Imagination the chance to get students familiar with the MIPS architecture early.

In any case, Imagination tells us that they will be releasing the design in the coming weeks. The very first release will be as part of an educators’ workshop in May. Otherwise Imagination expects to have it more broadly available in June, under a streamlined enrollment process on their university relations program website.

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Intel Skylake-S processors detailed in Chinese 'leak'

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A China-based computer news site has published the key specifications of, what it claims to be, an upcoming range of Intel Skylake-S LGA CPUs.

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7 best gaming PCs 2015: What's the best gaming PC you can buy in the UK?

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With the right processor and graphics card, you can achieve far higher-quality ... PC involves a balancing act between CPU and graphics performance.

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Cryorig Announces the H5 Ultimate CPU Cooler

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Cryorig Announces the H5 Ultimate CPU Cooler, an beautiful cooler with an affordable price tag.

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Samsung already testing Exynos chipset with custom CPU cores for the Galaxy S7?

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In early April, it was brought to our attention that Samsung doesn't plan to rely on stock ARM cores to keep up with mobile processor evolution.

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Rumored Intel "Skylake-S" desktop CPU lineup

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According to Benchlife.info, Skylake-S processors will be released at Intel Development Forum event in San Francisco. At the event, Intel will introduce ...

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Imagination Technologies battles x86 and ARM with free and open MIPSfpga

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While the CPU on offer is relatively new—it's based on the company's ... a great learning tool for those on a processor design and programming path.

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Exponential demand of CPU performance forecasted in automotives

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With high-end cars having more than 100 processors in each car and these processors running a software with tens of millions of lines of code, ARM ...

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Weekend tech reading: ARM unveils Cortex-A72, a guide to 5 cybersecurity bills, 4D printing inbound

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Today in London as part of ARM's TechDay 2015 event we had the pleasure to get a better insight into ARM's new Cortex-A72 CPU. ARM had announced the Cortex-A72 in the beginning of February -- leaving a lot of questions to be asked...





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Intel Skylake i7 Performance Figures Leaked and Pictured

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Intel's Skylake CPUs have had performance benchmarks leaked and their CPUs pictured. What do you think of the performance gains over haswell?

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Intel Skylake-S desktop CPU lineup details leaked

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A new leak from the website benchlife.info sheds light on the upcoming Skylake-S processor family. The leak details 10 SKUs that will be part of the ...

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AMD Supposedly Working On a 32 Core Opteron Processor

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The Opteron CPU would pack 32 Zen cores and, being a server part, would not need a Greenland GPU along for the ride. It seems that stripping out ...

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ARM unveils small-but-powerful Cortex-A72 CPU

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ARM has revealed more details on its next generation of its high-performance CPU in the shape of the Cortex-A72 designed for mobile devices.

The company used its annual Tech Day event to introduce the replacement for the Cortex-A57 that will bring faster and more efficient performance into a CPU that is much smaller than its older brother, according to Ars Technica.

Less is more when it comes to ARM's new range and it claims that the smaller area and reduced power consumption results in a clock speed of 2.7GHz that is around 10% higher than the A57's 2.5GHz. That's not all as it also offers an 18-30% better performance per watt score than the A57.

"Our focus on A72 was to achieve next-gen performance and pull a ton of power out of the design. We did that in spades," said Mike Filippo, ARM's chief architect for Cortex-A72.

Firmly targeted at the 14nm and 16nm next gen process nodes, ARM has also engineered branch prediction that outperforms the A57 by 20%, a completely reworked 3-way L1 cache and a much smaller, reorganised dispatch unit.

Flattened by Broadwell

What we really want to know is how is stands up against Intel's Broadwell CPU and, according to ARM, it isn't good when there's power by the bucket load and in that instance it was firmly trounced by Intel's chip. Although when the power and thermal envelope are dulled down the Cortex-A72 almost catches up with the Core M. That's according to ARM's figures at least.

We first heard about the Cortex-A72 back in February and ARM predicts that the first 16nm FinFET mobile SoCs with the CPU on board will ship at some point in 2016.

• Check it out: Who wants to squeeze ARM out of server market?

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ARM details its upcoming Cortex-A72 microarchitecture

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If true, that would make this one of the company's fastest CPU ramps, ever — so ... power than the Cortex-A15 (a notoriously power-hungry processor) at 28nm ... The CPU is targeting improved performance of 1.16x to 1.5x over the ...

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How To Build a New PC

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CyberPower Trinity Restores Some Luster to the Prosaic Desktop PC

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The computer also comes with ample ports and a small-enough footprint that it can be placed on the desk where people seeing it for the first time can ...

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Intel's 6th Generation Skylake-S Processor Lineup Leaked - Core i7-6700K Leads The Pack, 10 ...

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The unlocked processors options which are also the Enthusiast CPUs as detailed above will allow enhanced full range BCLK overclocking. Hopefully ...

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How powerful is the S1 SoC driving the Apple Watch?

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... and a snippet regarding the power of the gadget's processor has emerged ... As to what the CPU might be clocked at, as Stuff notes, that remains a ...

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Find out: Difference between Xiaomi Mi4 and Mi4i

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On the other hand, Xiaomi Mi4i is equipped with quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A53 and quad-core 1.1 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU and Snapdragon 615 GPU.

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The FPGA server promises flexible app acceleration

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FPGAs offload tasks from server processors more flexibly than other ... In one design, the central processing unit (CPU) offloads tasks to a field ...

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A closer look at the ARM Cortex-A72

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... silicon designers and end users, the Cortex-A72 is still a high-end processor, but it will utilize energy more efficiently. In other words, the CPU will be ...

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ARM Overtakes Imagination in GPU Shipments

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ARM Holdings plc, the leading licensor of processor intellectual property, ... But it's clear that—in the short to medium term—how well CPU and GPU ...

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DSP core offers ultra-low-power processing for IoT

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... Platform, which can be used to generate custom dataplane processor unit (DPU) cores that offer a unique blend of CPU plus DSP functionality.

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G.SKILL Announces Ripjaws 4 Series DDR4 Memory Kits

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Memory overclocking titan G.Skill has announced their latest DDR4 memory kit—the Ripjaws 4 with speeds of up to 3200MHz. These memory kits are available in red, blue or black updated Ripjaws heatspreader design that is only 40mm tall for high-compatibility with most CPU heatsinks. For more information, check out the official press release below: G.SKILL ...

- Post G.SKILL Announces Ripjaws 4 Series DDR4 Memory Kits appeared first on Modders-Inc, Case Mods and Computer Hardware Reviews.

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Thin is in again

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The reason: the ultra low-power Intel Core processors used by these ultrabooks were delayed. ... Haswell and Broadwell share the same CPU design.

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AMD opens-up about DirectX 12's key benefits

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Every game has a list of tasks for the CPU to relay as fast as possible to the graphics card. ... Despite processors being multi-core for over seven years, past versions of DirectX haven't taken advantage of multiple cores efficiently.

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The Gigabyte P35X v3 Review: Slim GTX980M Gaming Laptop

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The P35X comes equipped with the Intel Core i7-4710HQ processor, which .... a true 4790k(84w), while the Gigabyte's using a 4710HQ(47w) CPU.

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ARM Reveals Cortex-A72 Architecture Details

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​Today in London as part of ARM's TechDay 2015 event we had the pleasure to get a better insight into ARM's new Cortex-A72 CPU. ARM had announced the A72 in the beginning of February - leaving a lot of questions to be asked and sense of mystery in the air. The A72 is a direct successor to the A57 - taking the predecessor as a baseline in order to iterate and improve it.

On the naming side of the equation, moving from 'A57' to 'A72' rather than 'A59' or similar, ARM explains that it is purely a marketing decision as they wanted to give better differentiation between its higher-performance cores from the mid-tier and low-power cores. There seemed to be some confusion between the more power efficienct A53 and the more powerful A57, whereby vendors would assume they are similar, and thus moving its new big core into the A7x series.

We saw some absolute targeted performance numbers back during the February release, which promised some very interesting numbers over what the A57 could achieve. The problem was that it was not clear how much from performance and power efficiency came from the architectural changes and how much came from the the process on which these targeted performance data points are estimated from. It's clear that on the high-end ARM is promoting the A72 on the new FinFET processes from Samsung/GlobalFoundries and TSMC, which are referred to as 14nm and 16nm in the slides. Generally, due to the design and the node, the A72 will be able to achieve higher clocks than the A57, and we seem to be aiming around 2.5GHz on the 14/16nm nodes when high-end smartphones are concerned. Higher clocks may be present in server applications, where the A72 is also aimed at.

Probably the most interesting slide next to the actual performance metrics of the A72 is the apples-to-apples comparison of the A57 to the A72 on the same process node. When on the 28nm node, we see the A72 having a respectable 20% power reduction when compared to the A57. As a reminder - we're talking about absolute power at the same clock speed, which does not consider performance and thus not a representation of efficiency.

Notably, ARM is aiming for the A72 to be capable of extensive sustained performance at its target frequency. This is something that smaller form factor A57 designs (e.g. phones) have struggled with due to just how powerful A57 is, which has lead to more bursty designs that can only run A57 at its top speeds for short periods of time. We are presented with figures such as sustained 750mW operation per core on 16FF+ at clocks of ~2.5GHz.

While the power numbers are interesting we also have to put them into context of the achieved work. ARM has made several optimizations to the architecture to improve performance when compared to the A57. We'll get into more detail in just a bit - but what we are looking at is a general 16-30% increase on IPC depending on the kind of workload. Together with the power reduction, we now see how ARM is able to advertise such large efficiency gains for the same fixed workload.

A72 Architecture - The Upgrades Over A57

ARM seems to have managed to achieve an improvement in all three areas of the PPA metric; Performance, Power and Area - the trifecta of semiconductor design goals. This was achieved by doing a re-optimization of (almost) every logical block from the A57. There has been some considerable redesign in the CPU's architecture, some of which include a new branch-predictor and improvements in the decoder pipeline to allows for better throughoutput. 

On the level of the instruction fetch block we see a brand new branch-predictor that follows a new sophisticated algorithm that improves performance and reduces power through reduced misprediction and speculation, which has been cut down by 50% for mispredictions and 25% for speculation when compared to the A57. Superfluous branch-predictor accesses have also been suppressed - in workloads where the predictor is not able to do its job efficienctly it is then bypassed completely. There also has been general power optimization in the RAM-organization by coupling the different IP blocks better together, something ARM looks to provide with their own physical IP.

The decoder/rename capabilities have been improved by increasing the decode bandwidth and further general power optimization throughout the block. It's on the dispatch/retire stage that the architecture sees the biggest improvements to performance, as the dispatch unit transforms from and effective 3-wide to a 5-wide machine by trying to divide "macro-ops" into more granular µ-ops feeding into the execution units. ARM is quoting an average of 1.08 micro-ops per instruction in code, which will aid the cases where the 3-wide decode was feeding a 3-wide dispatch unit in A57 was limited. Again on the dispatch-level, ARM has done more extensive work on their register file by reducing the number of read-ports by introducting port-sharing and further reducing superfluous access.

ARM CPU Core Comparison
	Cortex-A15	Cortex-A57	Cortex-A72
ARM ISA	ARMv7 (32-bit)	ARMv8 (32/64-bit)
Decoder Width	3 ops
Maximum Pipeline Length	19 stages		16 stages
Integer Pipeline Length	14 stages
Branch Mispredict Penalty	15 cycles
Integer Add	2
Integer Mul	1
Load/Store Units	1 + 1 (Dedicated L/S)
Branch Units	1
FP/NEON ALUs	2x64-bit	2x128-bit
L1 Cache	32KB I$ + 32KB D$	48KB I$ + 32KB D$
L2 Cache	512KB - 4MB	512KB - 2MB

On the side of the execution units we see introduction of a new next-generation of FP/Advanced SIMD units. The new units allow for much lower latency as the maximum pipeline-length is reduced from 9 to 6.  FMUL is reduced from 5 cycles down to 3, FADD goes from 4 to 3, FMAC from 9 to 6 and the CVT units go from 4 to 2 units. The reduction of the FP pipeline length brings down the maximum pileline length of the architecture down from 19 to 16. 

The integer units see an improvement in the Radix-16 divider as it doubles its bandwidth, while the CRC unit now becomes a pipelined block with just 1-cycle latency, a 3x increase in bandwidth over the A57. Again, we see a repeating pattern here as ARM claims it tried to squeeze the most power efficiency from all the units by improving the physical implementation.

Also one of the largest improvements over the A57 is found on the Load/Store unit. ARM claims that bandwidth to L1/L2 has been improved by up to 30%. This was achieved by introducting a sophisticated L1/L2 data prefetcher which, again, is at the same time more efficient as improvements in the L1-hit pipeline, fowarding network and way-predictor reduce the needed power. 

We've been generally impressed with what the A72 brings to the table. It's clear that new architecture is an evolutional upgrade ot the A57, and the improvements in performance, power and area, when looked at from an aggregate view, bring substantial differences and upgrades when compared to the A57. With the A57 having come to market in Q3 of last year and it now shipping in high-volume SoCs such as the Snapdragon 810 and Exynos 7420, we are looking at the possibility of seeing its successor come to market in shipping devices in less than a year's time-frame. The obvious names that might ramp prodution the soonest are MediaTek and Qualcomm, if they are able to hit their target schedules. There should presumably still be un-announced parts from other ARM partners as well. It's clear that ARM has increased the cadence of releasing refreshes of its IP portfolio and the quick succession of the A72 seems to be part of that.

The A72 looks to be a logical update to the A57 addressing some weakpoints such as peak power and power efficiency combined with an ~10% area reduction. We already saw Mediatek showing off an A72 package at MWC, so it will be interesting to see how the IP actually performs in silicon and what ARM's partners will be able to do with the core and the time to market.

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