Processor giant Intel is living it up in San Francisco at GDC, speaking to games developers, announcing new graphics technologies and convincing top dev houses to use their proprietary gaming advances. They're acting just like AMD or Nvidia.
I hope they know what they're doing...
Asus have dropped a few teaser images of their upcoming Gryphon and Z87-Deluxe motherboards on the Republic of Gamers minisite. The Z87 motherboards will house Intel’s 4th Generation Haswell Core processor architecture with the new LGA 1150 socket design. It's a few pins short of the LGA 1155, so we'll definitely need new motherboards if we want to take advantage of Intel's Haswell tech.
Rumours have surfaced from Taipei and DigiTimes that Intel will be launching it’s brand new processors, with their funky new architecture, on June 2nd this year. That’s a couple days before the start of Computex in Taiwan, one of the biggest tech trade shows in the world. That means you can bet there’ll be a host of Haswell motherboards littering the show following the launch.
I’m actually rather excited about the next CPU to come from the Intel labs, especially after being bombarded with info at this year's Intel Developer Forum. And now Chinese site, VR-Zone, has posted up a leaked datasheet purporting to display the full details of the upcoming Haswell i5 and i7 lineups.
The new chips will still be running on the same 22nm production process, but with a new architecture that should see the graphics performance of the HD 4600 graphics components doubling.
Amidst rumors that the 2012 apocalypse would be caused by Intel discontinuing production of socketed CPUs, causing thousands of system builders and overclockers to cry out in anguish, our friends over at Maximum PC have given the all clear. Intel has no plans to begin welding their processors inseparably to motherboards to the exclusion of producing the removable kind we've all come to know and love. Life as we know it, so it seems, will go on.
There have been rumours floating around for the last couple days that Intel is going to end the traditional socketed CPU once the Haswell chip is out of the door. Based upon a supposedly leaked processor roadmap, Japanese site, PC Watch, is claiming to show that Intel will be calling time on the CPU upgrade market.
What they are saying is that the Broadwell CPU, the next-generation chip to follow Haswell, will be sold soldered into the motherboard, doing away with the LGA socket altogether. As the Broadwell lineup will represent the die-shrink down to 14nm from the 22nm Haswell variant, it's possible there may be an architectural need for these CPUs to be permanently attached to the motherboard.
Semiconductor giant Intel is rolling out solid-state drives featuring the very latest of their 20nm NAND flash modules - good news for owners of gaming laptops, which will benefit hugely from the improved power efficiency, allowing longer sessions away from the plug socket.
Intel have been in the consumer SSD game since the very beginning, and despite ditching their own memory controllers, the 330 Series have already carved out a pretty decent niche thanks to some recent price drops and Intel’s reputation for longevity.
The PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit group composed of influential hardware and software developers such as Intel and Epic, revealed today its Game United Contest and asked for entrants to record a video or write a wiki entry on the value and future of PC gaming for an Intel Ultrabook grand prize.
Hands up if you've ever bought a DisplayPort connector? Thought not, because while the monitor adaptor of tomorrow (still) is clearly a very elegantly designed piece of kit, everyone knows the future of everything is wireless.
Hence a bit of excitement about today's announcement from industry steering group WiFi Alliance. It's launched a new standard, known as Miracast, which should theoretically make it simple to get moving pictures from one PC, laptop or phone to any screen on your house using nothing but the power of 802.11x.
I wasn't at Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) this year, so forgive the tardiness of this round up of the announcements from said conference. The big news is, of course, more details on its next CPU, codenamed Haswell. This chip will be the fourth in the 'Core' line-up, replacing current Ivy Bridge processors some time early next year.
The good news, for PC gamers at least, is that you can probably upgrade your CPU now (if you need to) safe in the knowledge that Haswell isn't likely to make any current desktop quad core obsolete within a year or so.
It's laptops and tablets that Intel has its eye on for the future (doesn't everyone?)
Did you read about the details of Intel's Ivy Bridge launch a few weeks ago and wonder what happened to the dual core and ultra mobile chips that have proved so popular in Sandy Bridge variants? Don't worry, they haven't been retired – just held back until today, that's all.
There are 14 new processors launched today, nine of which are duallies. They join the quad core Core i5 3xxx and Core i7 3xxx CPUs we've already seen and reviewed in PCG 241, and with them promises of ultra cheap or ultra thin gaming systems, and touch screen Ultrabooks too.
Just 15 months after the technology first appeared in a commercial form, ASUS and MSI have finally announced the first PC motherboards that will ship with built in Thunderbolt ports.
Thunderbolt, if you're aware of it all, may sound like a tedious hard drive technology, but it's got an enormous amount of potential for PC gaming. With these two boards, we may finally be in the era of the modular PC – which doesn't have to be opened up for upgrades.
It means, potentially, external hard drives that are as quick as internal SSDs and plug in graphics cards that really work. Much as I like to tinker inside my PC's case, this is big.
Chin up CPU fans, Intel has launched its latest batch of processors out into the world today. On this fine anniversary of Shakespeare's birthday an infinite number of monkeys has been hard at work producing a replacement for the entire Core i7 and Core i5 range - not that they needed it - and Intel have crossed over Sandy Bridge and are onto a new Ivy Bridge design.
And we've had one of these new chips in the office to play with for a couple of weeks. Want to know what we think? Read on.
Intel and Plextor have both announced new additions to their SSD line up this week, hitting low price points for fast solid state drives. While they're timed to arrive at the peak of current generation SSD technology, though, it's what comes next that's really interesting.
Easter Sunday. Depending on your ethical proclivities it was a day for church, chocolate or just chilling out playing some games safe in the knowledge that you don't have to work tomorrow. Or, if you're Intel, it's a day for launching your new range of motherboard chipsets and a swanky example of their kind to go with it.
Nope, timing beats me too. Still, I've had one of their new Z77-type boards in the office for a few days now, which is long enough to be suitably impressed with it.
Market analysts at Jon Peddie Research have published their latest quarterly figures for graphics card shipments, and concluded that sales of discrete add-in graphics cards were down 3.5% in the last three months of 2011 compared to the same period of 2010.
It's not all bad news though. Overall sales of graphics processors, including Intel's Sandy Bridge hybrid CPUs and AMD's Fusion APUs, were up by 8.9% to 124million units compared to the previous year, apparently. Sales of PCs in general rose by around 1.8% by the same metric.
Fancy trying your hand at overclocking a CPU but don't want to risk your precious silicon? Intel may have just the thing for you. The chip giant has announced a new optional insurance policy for Core i-thingumy owners who want to protect their processors.
The new warranty is good for three years and covers a one time replacement of a processor damaged by overclocking. It goes by the name of Performance Tuning Plan, and costs between $20 and $35 depending on which chip you own.
Memory meisters at Intel and Micron have announced a new addition to their joint range of NAND flash modules, capable of storing a terabit of data (128GB) on a chip the size of your finger tip.
Physically, that's between eight and sixteen times smaller than the chips commonly used in SSDs today. If the costs are right, it's big news for the little drives.
How powerful does a laptop need to be? It’s a pertinent question. Last week Razer unveiled a laptop it proclaimed the “saviour of PC gaming”. But the big laptop news is that we’re about to be deluged by ‘ultrabooks’ - thin and light MacBook Air clones which weigh just over a kilo, but pack powerful Core i5/i7 processors.
Want to overclock your CPU? Why bother with all those tedious BIOS tweaks when Intel can effortlessly turbo charge your chip on your behalf? The company has updated its Intel Upgrade Service to cover three chips from the new Sandy Bridge family, allowing owners of the low end Core i3-2312M, Core i3-2102 or Pentium G622 to transmogrify them into something else. Something a little more powerful.
