Corsair has had an excellent run as a case designer, showing growth with each new enclosure by adding some features, subtracting other ones, moving things around, and generally continuing to experiment. The Obsidian and Carbide lines in particular have shown healthy progress, but today Corsair launches a fourth line under their popular Vengeance gaming brand: the Vengeance C70.
While the exteriors of the Obsidian and to a lesser extent Carbide cases have all been fairly austere, the Vengeance C70's target is pretty clear: they're going after gamers. Thus far, products in the Vengeance market have generally been of high quality and haven't been particularly ostentatious, but the C70's external design is an unusual step for Corsair. Is the C70 as a whole part of Corsair's continued evolution as a case designer, or is this their first major misstep along the way?
It’s been a couple weeks since Intel officially unveiled Ivy Bridge, and we continue to see plenty of product announcements from the major OEMs. Yesterday, while we were busy writing about AMD’s Trinity APU, Lenovo fired off a barrage of new mobile devices. Whether you’re looking for laptops, notebooks, tablets, or ultrabooks, chances are Lenovo has a new product for your consideration.
Starting with the ultrabook side of things, the flashiest device in the lineup is the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon. As the name implies, the X1 has a carbon fiber rollcage that allows Lenovo to create a durable ultrabook without sacrificing weight. Lenovo claims this is the “world’s thinnest and lightest 14-inch ultrabook” and we see no reason to doubt the claim. Other interesting features include RapidCharge that allows the laptop to recharge to over 80% battery capacity in 30 minutes, a backlit keyboard, and a full 180 degree hinge. The X1 Carbon is a business class ultrabook, so it comes with Intel vPro technology for manageability, fingerprint scanner, and optional 3G mobile broadband. Lenovo didn’t provide any specifications yet, but we’ve heard elsewhere that the X1 Carbon will feature a 1600×900 LCD. We haven’t had a chance to test the laptop in person, but hopefully Lenovo can also do something about the keyboard experience on ultrabooks, as to date we’ve found that most of them have little if any key travel—a consequence of the thin form factor, unfortunately. Availability is planned for “this summer”, which is a bit nebulous, so if you’re interested in the X1 Carbon you’ll have to wait a bit longer before pulling the trigger.
The remainder of the lineup consists of the usual updates to their product stack. The ThinkPad L, T, W and X Series are all receiving upgrades to allow for Ivy Bridge—3rd Generation Intel Core processors. Common features across the lineup include mobile broadband, docking stations, RapidBoot, Dolby audio, and Lenovo’s ThinkPad Precision Keyboard (with backlit and/or ThinkLight options).
Starting with the L-Series, the L430 and L530 both support the same general set of hardware. Besides Ivy Bridge CPUs (Lenovo didn’t provide a list, but we’d assume it will be the dual-core range of processors), you can choose between several HDD/SSD configurations—including a 32GB mSATA caching SSD if you forego WWAN support—up to 8GB RAM, and either 1366×768 or 1600×900 LCDs. The L430 also has an optional NVIDIA Quadro NVS 5400M 1GB GPU upgrade available, with Optimus Technology; judging by our initial testing of HD 4000, the NVS 5400M should still boost graphics performance by roughly 2X.
Expansion ports consist of a single USB 3.0, three USB 2.0 (one always powered), Express Card 54mm, Gigabit Ethernet, and a flash card reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC). VGA and mini-DisplayPort outputs are present, along with a single headphone/microphone jack. You can also equip either laptop with the standard 6-cell battery (up to 8 hours battery life) or an extended capacity 9-cell (up to 13.5 hours battery life), and both come with optical drives. The L430 measures 13.94” x 9.57” x 1.17-1.24” (354mm x 243mm x 29.6-31.4mm) and weighs 5.0 lbs. (2.27kg) with the 6-cell battery, while the L530 measures 14.96” x 9.72” x 1.25-1.31” (380mm x 247mm x 31.7-33.4mm) and starts at 5.4 lbs. (2.45kg) with the 6-cell battery. Pricing should starts at around 9, with availability in early June.
The T-Series is the workhorse of Lenovo’s ThinkPad lineup, with higher quality build materials (e.g. magnesium allow rollcages) and higher performance components, along with support for up to 16GB RAM. Most of the options are similar to the L-Series, but the T430 and T530 add support for an optional battery slice (up to 32.5 hours of battery life on the T430, or 30 hours on the T530!) while the T430s supports only 4-cell and 6-cell batteries but adds the option for a bay battery (e.g. in place of the optical drive). Storage options on all three models include Opal FDE (Full Disc Encryption), on either hard drives or SSDs—or you can still go with a normal HDD/SSD. The T530 is also available with a second HDD in place of the optical drive. NVIDIA Optimus switchable graphics is available on all models; only the T430s explicitly mentions the NVS 5400M, though we suspect the others will use the same GPU. The T430/T430s both feature 1366×768 or 1600×900 LCDs, while the T530 includes the two lower resolutions along with a high quality 95% gamut 1920×1200 panel.
In terms of expansion ports, the laptops have two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports (one configurable as always on), VGA, mini-DisplayPort, a flash reader, and an optional Smart Card reader; the T430/T530 also add an Express Card 34mm slot. The T430s is the lightest and slimmest of the trio, starting at 3.94 lbs. (1.79kg) and measuring 13.50” x 9.05” x 0.83”-1.02” (343mm x 230mm x 21.2mm-26mm. The T430 is slightly larger/heavier, starting at 4.77 lbs. (2.17kg) and 13.8” x 9.13” x 1.18” (350.5mm x 232mm x 29.9mm) while the T530 tips the scales at 5.56 lbs. (2.5kg) and measures 9.65” x 14.68” x 1.25”-1.40” (245.1mm x 372.8mm x 31.8-35.6mm). Availability is again early June, with the T430 and T530 starting at around 9, the T430s starting at 99.
The W530 is the mobile workstation upgrade to the T530, with identical dimensions (9.65” x 14.68” x 1.25”-1.40” / 245.1mm x 372.8mm x 31.8-35.6mm) but a slightly higher starting weight of 5.95 lbs. (2.7kg). Nearly all of the options are the same, but the W530 adds support for up to 32GB RAM and the graphics get boosted from Quadro NVS to full-blown Quadro cards. Lenovo lists the Quadro K1000 and K2000 as options, which are presumably the Kepler-based replacements for the Fermi 1000M/2000M; the cards are so new that we can’t even find specs on NVIDIA’s site right now! The W530 has the same display options as the T530, and about the only other difference immediately apparent is the addition of a slightly higher capacity 62Wh 6-cell battery with a 3-year warranty (instead of the 1-year warranty 57Wh battery). Pricing for the W530 starts at approximately 29, with availability again in early June.
Wrapping things up we have the X-Series, with the X230 and X230t. The X230 is a traditional ultraportable while the X230t takes many of the elements but mixes things up to become a convertible tablet. Both models feature 12.5” IPS displays, though there’s a non-IPS panel available on the X230; the X230t comes standard with a multitouch panel but has the option for a pen-only direct-bonded Gorilla Glass display. The storage department again has a variety of HDD and SSD options, including 32GB SSD caching and FDE solutions, and despite the small size there’s still an optical drive present in the UltraBase. Battery options on the X230 cover the gamut, with 4-cell (29Wh), 6-cell (63Wh), 9-cell (94Wh), and an optional 6-cell (57Wh) slice—you can get up to 24.9 hours with the 9-cell and slice. The X230t uses different batteries, with a 6-cell (29Wh) standard or a 9-cell (62Wh) upgrade, along with a slim external battery pack (157Wh) that can provide up to 18 hours of mobility.
Expansion ports include two USB 3.0 ports, one always on USB 2.0 port, flash reader, VGA, mini-DisplayPort, Express Card 54, and optional Smart Card reader. The X230 isn’t quite an ultrabook as it’s a bit too thick, measuring 12.01” x 8.13” x 0.75”-1.05” (305mm x 206.5mm x 19-26.6mm); it weighs 2.96 lbs (1.34kg), presumably with the default 4-cell battery. The X230t is slightly bulkier to accommodate the rotating hinge, and it measures 12” x 9” x 1.06”-1.23” (305.0mm x 228.7mm x 27.0-31.3mm) and weighs 3.67 lbs. (1.66kg). As you would expect, neither ultraportable comes cheap, with the X230 starting at around 79 and the X230t bumping that up 0 to 79, and both are set to arrive in June.
Besides the laptops, Lenovo also offers their updated ThinkPad Series 3/USB 3.0 Dock. As the name implies, the dock now features USB 3.0 support—five SuperSpeed ports to be precise. It also comes with dual “beyond-HD” video outputs, though no mention is made of whether they’re DisplayPort, dual-link DVI, or something else. Also present is Gigabit Ethernet and always-on mobile device charging, thanks to the separate AC power.
Kodak has launched two new all-in-one printers to sit in its lineup, featuring Wi-Fi technology that enables printing on the go from mobile devices.
First up, the Kodak ESP 3.2 printer features wireless printing technology, along with a 2.4-inch colour touchscreen for navigating the different options and features of the printer.
Printing of personalised photo cards, collages and pictures is available with the Kodak Pic Flick HD app for iOS, BlackBerry and Android devices. The ability to print from Google Cloud Print is also available.
Kodak claims that the ESP 3.2 has the lowest total ink replacement cost and the lowest average cost per page, along with the fastest photo speed printing for highest quality prints.
Social networking
Compatible with Kodak Ink cartridges in the 30 series, other features include the ability to create, print and share a photo collage of you and your friends’ Facebook pictures with a Facebook app – the first of its kind on the site.
Kodacolour technology claims to bring quality, speed and photos that last a lifetime.
Second up, the ESP 1.2 printer is also launched with many of the same features but a smaller (1.5-inch) touchscreen.
The Kodak ESP 3.2 printer price is £79 (around 7), and the price of the ESP 1.2 is £69 (around 0).
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Cloud gaming: fast to play, faster to start
The GeForce Grid that’s powered by Nvidia’s new Kepler GPU is powerful enough to let you play the latest games on a TV – without a console – or to use professional compositing software from a tablet.
Does that mean you’ll never need to buy a graphics card again? Not quite, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told TechRadar.
"There are still power users that require so much performance; because their work requires them to have dedicated capabilities I have every confidence that they’ll continue needing GPUs. It’s not likely they’ll want to share!
"When you’re designing a car when you’re sitting at your desk, the idea of sharing your computer with someone is completely ridiculous, because time is money and you want to get that car designed. However once that car is designed and they need to show that to clients or to an ad agency so they can create a great commercial, in that case it totally makes sense to access that same data set (through the cloud)."
"You’re still going to have your primary computing devices; this makes your primary computing device more convenient. You can now access whatever design, whatever data, whatever application that you want on enterprise desktops remotely and on mobile in a mobile way."
You’ll still need your PC
Even with a cloud of GPUs behind it, a tablet won’t be all you need all the time, and you’ll actually use your PC more often. "All of us will have a primary computing device and all of us will have a remoting app like Citrix on all of our computing devices. So I’ll have Citrix Receiver on my phone and on my tablet and on my thin and light notebook. I have three receivers remoting into my computer."
For accessing games on GeForce Grid game clouds like Gaikai, you don’t even need a tablet; just a network connection and an H.264 decoder. "The green cable is your came console," explains Huang (pointing at the Ethernet cable running into the back of a TV screen). What else do you need?
"A pretty normal H.264 decoder on just about any mobile device. H.264 is quite universal. Anything that has what you need to decode YouTube – and at this point pretty much every device in the world can decode YouTube – you should be able to use GeForce Grid.
"Of course the faster your decoder is, the smaller the latency becomes. So it is possible to build a better device to receive GeForce Grid but almost every single device can do it; cable set-top box, iPhones, any Android device, PC, Mac…"
But can any device you play a game on really give you the performance gamers are used to from console games? Are GeForce Grid games going to be good for more than casual gaming? How has Nvidia managed to get games in the cloud to be fast enough to avoid latency and lag?
Huang says consoles aren’t that hard to keep up with, actually, especially with the new GPU. "Whereas most consoles are now some six or seven years old, when a new game comes out it pushes that console right to the limit. There’s no horsepower left and so as a result the visual quality and the performance is balanced so delicately that it gets you just enough frame rate but with the most realism they can squeeze in so the game feels as fresh as possible.
"However that same game running on our state of the art Kepler could run 60hz easily; so the frame time goes from 30 or 60 milliseconds down to 16 milliseconds."
Fast response time
The response time of the game cloud will be just five milliseconds, he says; and the GPU is now much more efficient than the one in your console. "Where we used to render into a frame buffer and that frame buffer was then copied back into the CPU for decoding and compression and streaming, our GPU now renders and when it’s done rendering it’s already streaming out right out of the GPU, so it saves a whole bunch of encoding time not to mention copy time.
"So between rendering things faster, compressing and streaming in parallel we’ve taken a couple of 100ms lag and reduced it down to something that’s effectively the same performance and the same snappiness as a game console."
Games have to play fast enough for people to even consider cloud gaming, but once they do there are a lot of other advantages, Huang points out. "The benefit of cloud computing is convenience; it is the most convenient computing model we have ever known. It’s wonderful that one day I have all my music on my Android and it’s up in the cloud and the next day I buy a new Android device, I turn on my tablet and all my music shows up. All my photos show up. It is the most convenient model.
"Wouldn’t it be great if you could have games the same way? Today you have to download those applications and the biggest apps you can download on mobile devices are – games. And they’re larger and larger because the content is so rich; it’s arguably so rich that it’s hard for videogames to proliferate.
"As big as the gaming industry is, and growing still very fast, imagine how large it could be if you didn’t have to download five or ten gigabytes of application every time, if you didn’t have to wait eight or twelve hours for the download before you could enjoy it – you could literally click and you’re instantly in the game."
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AMD, and NVIDIA before it, has been trying to convince us of the usefulness of its GPUs for general purpose applications for years now. For a while it seemed as if video transcoding would be the killer application for GPUs, that was until Intel's Quick Sync showed up last year.
With Trinity, AMD has an answer to Quick Sync with its integrated VCE, however the performance is hardly as similar as the concept. In applications that take advantage of both Quick Sync and VCE, the Intel solution is considerably faster. While this first implementation of working VCE is better than x86 based transcoding on AMD's APUs, it still needs work:
Quick Sync's performance didn't move all users to Sandy/Ivy Bridge based video transcoding. One of its biggest limitations is the lack of good software support for the standard. We use applications like Arcsoft's Media Converter 7.5 and Cyber Link's Media Espresso 6.5 not because we want to, but because they are among the few transcoding applications that support Quick Sync. What we'd really like to see is support for Quick Sync in x264 or through an application like Handbrake.
The open source community thus far hasn't been very interested in supporting Intel's proprietary technologies. As a result, Quick Sync remains unused by the applications we want to use for video transcoding.
In our conclusion to this morning's Trinity review, we wrote that AMD's portfolio of GPU accelerated consumer applications is stronger now than it has ever been before. Photoshop CS6, GIMP, Media Converter/Media Espresso and WinZip 16.5 for the most part aren't a list of hardly used applications. These are big names that everyone is familiar, that many have actual seat time with. Now there's always the debate of whether or not the things you do with these applications are actually GPU accelerated, but AMD is at least targeting the right apps with its GPU compute efforts.
The list is actually a bit more impressive than what we've published thus far. Several weeks ago AMD dropped a bombshell: x264 and Handbrake would both feature GPU acceleration, largely via OpenCL, in the near future. I begged for an early build of both of them and eventually got just that. What you see below may look like a standard Handbrake screenshot, but it's actually a look at an early build of the OpenCL accelerated version of Handbrake:
As I mentioned before, the application isn't ready for prime time yet. The version I have is currently 32-bit only and it doesn't allow you to manually enable/disable GPU acceleration. Instead, to compare the x86 and OpenCL paths we have to run the beta Handbrake release against the latest publicly available version of the software.
GPU acceleration in Handbrake comes via three avenues: DXVA support for GPU accelerated video decode, OpenCL/GPU acceleration for video scaling and color space conversion, and OpenCL/GPU acceleration of the lookahead function of the x264 encoding process.
Video decode is the lowest hanging fruit to improving video transcode performance, and by using the DXVA API Handbrake can leverage the hardware video decode engine (UVD) on Trinity as well as its counterpart in Intel's Sandy/Ivy Bridge.
The scaling, color conversion and lookahead functions of the encode process are similarly obvious candidates for offloading to the GPU. The latter in particular is already data parallel and runs in its own thread, making it a logical fit for the GPU. The lookahead function determines how many frames the encoder should look ahead in time in the input stream to achieve better image quality. Remember that video encoding is fundamentally a task of figuring out which parts of frames remain unchanged over time and compressing that redundant data.
GPU usage during transcode in the OpenCL enhanced version of Handbrake
We're still working on a lot of performance/quality characterization of Handbrake, but to quickly illustrate what it can do we performed a simple transcode of a 1080p MPEG-2 source using Handbrake's High Profile defaults and a 720p output resolution.
The OpenCL accelerated Handbrake build worked on Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge as well as the AMD APUs, although obviously Sandy Bridge saw no benefit from the OpenCL optimizations. All platforms saw speedups however, implying that Intel benefitted handsomely from the DXVA decode work. We ran both 32-bit x86 and 32-bit GPU accelerated results on all platforms. The results are below:
*SNB's GPU doesn't support OpenCL, video decode should be GPU accelerated, all OpenCL work is handled by the CPU
While video transcoding is significantly slower on Trinity compared to Intel's Sandy Bridge on the traditional x86 path, the OpenCL version of Handbrake narrows the gap considerably. A quad-core Sandy Bridge goes from being 73% faster down to 7% faster than Trinity. Ivy Bridge on the other hand goes from being 2.15x the speed of Trinity to a smaller but still pronounced 29.6% lead. Image quality appeared to be comparable between all OpenCL outputs, although we did get higher bitrate files from the x86 transcode path. The bottom line is that AMD goes from a position of not really competitive, to easily holding its own against similarly priced Intel parts.
This truly is the holy grail for what AMD is hoping to deliver with heterogeneous compute in the short term. The Sandy Bridge comparison is particularly telling. What once was a significant performance advantage for Intel, shrinks to something unnoticeable. If AMD could achieve similar gains in other key applications, I think more users would be just fine in ignoring the CPU deficit and would treat Trinity as a balanced alternative to Intel. The Ivy Bridge gap is still more significant but it's also a much more expensive chip, and likely won't appear at the same price points as AMD's A10 for a while.
We're working on even more examples of where AMD's work in enabling OpenCL accelerated applications are changing the balance of power in the desktop. Handbrake is simply the one we were most excited about. It will still be a little while before there are public betas of x264 and Handbrake, but it's at least something we can now look forward to.
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