Annual Toshiba Refresh Brings Llano...and Some Style

The regular refreshes that come from notebook vendors aren't often the stuff of exciting news. It's generally a processor update, maybe a slight change in shell design. With Toshiba's 2011 refresh that's not entirely untrue, but this year they've timed their update to coincide with the launch of AMD's Llano APU and NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce GTX 560M. Their Fusion finish is also getting a much needed update along with the top-of-the-line Qosmio. Bottom line: there's a lot going on at Toshiba.

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AMD Llano brings "Fusion" to hybrid graphics laptops @ arstechnica.com

Here is an interesting read from arstechnica.com. AMD's Llano CPU/GPU combo starts shipping...

AMD ships Llano, the ultimate HTPC processor

 

It has been five years since the AMD/ATI merger promised us the "Fusion" of a CPU and GPU onto a single die, and on Monday AMD finally made good on that promise with the shipping of the company's first true multicore CPU/GPU combo parts, codenamed "Llano." Sure, the Brazos platform launch was technically the first time that AMD put a CPU and GPU onto the same die, but Llano is supposed to be what the company originally intended with Fusion—a combination of CPU cores and vector hardware that's somehow more "integrated" than a normal on-die GPU. (The exact way in which the latter is true is not clear to me; if anyone knows, feel free to enlighten.)

The picture above is from AMD's blog post announcing that Llano is shipping to OEMs, and it shows the workers in the company's Singapore factory surrounding a box that presumably contains one of the first batches of Llano processors.

AMD is calling Llano's combination of a CPU and GPU on the same die an APU, for "accelerated processing unit." Whatever you call it, it's pretty certain that even tech-savvy customers are never going to see Llano as anything other than another CPU/GPU combo part like Brazos and Sandy Bridge. No matter, though—the Llano parts will have their own place in the processor ecosystem, and it will be different from that of Sandy Bridge.

There is no chance that Llano's CPU core will outperform that of Sandy Bridge, given that the former is a straight-up derivative of AMD's existing Phenom II core. But Llano's GPU is another matter entirely. AMD has used their considerable experience in building best-in-class integrated graphics processors (IGPs) to pack a ton of GPU performance onto each Llano die. Llano will be a great gaming portable, and Llano desktops should offer extremely good price/performance ratios for gamers.

If Intel can get the performance of Sandy Bridge's trailing-edge GPU design up to the point where it can outperform low-end discrete graphics cards, then Llano should do even better. Llano's DirectX11-class GPU will beat Sandy Bridge's GPU by a comfortable margin, and should compete with mid-range discrete solutions. Intel won't have anything comparable until its Ivy Bridge launch early next year.

So from now until Ivy Bridge comes up, AMD will have the budget performance notebook and desktop segment pretty much to itself with Llano. Llano will also make a monster of a home theater PC chip, because you'll be able to build a relatively cheap HTPC with some serious gaming chops.

AMD has said that the first Llano parts will show up in laptops, with desktop parts likely to follow later in the summer. The company isn't giving out any details on which specific products are shipping, though—we'll probably get this info as part of an official launch, soon.

 

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SAPPHIRE Brings Back AMD Radeon HD 5800 Series with New Xtreme Editions

Hailed as the most exciting development in graphics for several generations, the original SAPPHIRE HD 5800 series not only included the fastest single GPU available, but was also the first family of video cards in the world to support the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and multi-monitor displays in Eyefinity mode. Now it’s back – with the exciting new SAPPHIRE HD 5800 series Xtreme Editions! Two models will be available from April 2011 – the SAPPHIRE HD 5850 Xtreme and the SAPPHIRE HD 5830 Xtreme. Both will represent spectacular value for money – and support all the latest games and applications.

With a 150GB/s memory interface to 1GB of the latest GDDR5 memory, and a GPU architecture with a total of 1440 stream processors and 72 texture units, the new SAPPHIRE HD 5850 Xtreme speeds through older DirectX10.1, DirectX 10 and DirectX 9.0 games and applications – as well as delivering stunning levels of performance, detail, transparency and lighting effects in the latest DX11 games and applications. Not far behind is the SAPPHIRE HD 5830 Xtreme Edition with its 1120 stream processors and 56 texture units. With its core clocks of 800MHz and 1GB of DDR5 memory with speeds of 1000MHz (4GHz effective), it represents a breakthrough in value for money for the gamer. Both cards feature new SAPPHIRE original cooler designs, and optimised voltage regulation, which together with clock and memory speeds can be adjusted with the SAPPHIRE TriXX overclocking tool (free for users to download) to enhance performance. Both cards offer support for all the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and deliver spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects.

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AMD G-Series Brings APUs to the x86 Embedded Market

The embedded market is dominated by SoCs based on RISC processors such as ARM and MIPS. The low power consumption of these SoCs make them attractive. Other than ARM and MIPS, PowerPC and x86 also play a role. Intel, AMD and VIA have been trying their best to enable x86 to gain a strong foothold in the embedded space. Today, AMD is bringing the power of the Brazos platform Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) into the embedded space.

Let us take a look at what the AMD Embedded G-Series brings to the market.

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CES 2011: Intel WiDi 2.0 Brings New Media Extenders

One major feature of mobile Sandy Bridge is support for Intel WiDi 2.0. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, WiDi 2.0 uses SNB’s Quick Sync engine to encode, in real time, the frame buffer and send it over 802.11n to a compatible WiDi receiver attached to your TV. The WiDi receiver decodes the content and displays your mobile desktop on whatever TV you have attached to the WiDi receiver, wirelessly. All you need is a SNB laptop with an Intel WiFi controller. Unlike wireless HDMI, the cost is much lower since you’re relying on the host CPU to do the video encoding. All you have to pay for is the cost of the WiDi receiver.

With the original WiDi, Netgear was the only company that made a WiDi receiver. The receiver was fine but generally it’s nice to see more than one company offering a technology. This time around Intel plans to have many more partners with WiDi receivers. At CES last week Intel had a D-Link WiDi receiver hooked up to a SNB notebook:

Sandy Bridge WiDi also supports HDCP and 1080p, so you can now stream Blu-ray content from a SNB notebook to a TV connected via WiDi.

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Computer Boots Up and brings to the Welcome Screen and Freezes

Date Fixed : 04.10.10

Owner : Ms. Elain Rebutante

Processor : Intel 1.8 GHZ PGA

Motherboard : ECS P4-M800

Memory : 256 GB

Hard Disk Drive : Maxtor IDE 80 GB

Operating System : Win XP Sp 2

Technician : Drokz

URL : http://clhidohsr.blogspot.com

PROBLEM :

Boots up, then freezes at Windows Xp Welcome Screen. No keyboard response. System can only be shutdown by holding the power button for few seconds.

CLIENT REQUESTS:

Data Backup

Antivirus Installation

DVD RAM Installation

INTERVENING FACTORS:

ECS P4m800 Driver lost.

Possibly Defective Hard Disk ( Clicking sound in the hard drive when the system is turned on )

OBSERVATION :

- Upon turning on the system, the clicking sound of the hard disk is clearly audible. With that unusual sound, any technician can directly point out that it might be defective or most probably be causing the problem.

- As the system starts to show the Windows Welcome Screen, the system freezes and locks the keyboard.

TROUBLESHOOTING PROCEDURE

- First, we need to check if the hard disk is the peripheral that is failing. It is quite obvious that the internal clicking sound indicates a mechanical inconsistency. So I removed the hard disk and restarted the system (computer) to see if the error is really related to that of the hard drive or might be the other failing failing peripherals.

- But upon restarting, the system stalled on POST. The hard disk might not be the cause of the problem.

- So I opened the side cover of the system unit and check for blown or leaking capacitors on the motherboard because these capacitors when they malfunction gives the same problem as observed - system stalling or not no booting up at all. But as I have checked on the mobo, there seemed to be no blown or leaky capacitors. So I decided to check the other peripheral that has capacitors in it - the Power Supply Unit.

- I then removed the Power Supply from the system case. And as I opened the Power Supply Unit, I saw 3 blown capacitors! The Power Supply is practically to be replaced. It is not advisable to replace the capacitors in the Power Supply Unit for it might contribute a chain of troubles to the rest of the components of your computer including primarily your motherboard, hard disk, and your precious CPU.

- An hour after, the requested power supply arrived. After installing the new power supply, the system was turned on and it did not stall at all. It continued the Power on Self Test (POST) and seeks for a bootable disk! At last we found the culprit. I then will try to check the Hard Disk if it is still functional.

- The hard disk drive was then installed back and restarted the system unit. Not a surprise to me, there was an error indicating a disk scan or a scheduled check disk. The hard drive needs to be restored, this might be due to the defective power supply, it already affected the hard disk and should not be long enough be replaced immediately.

-So I turned off the system, installed her new DVD RAM and then run the XP SP2 cd to restore the installed XP Operating System of her computer. ( Restoring the XP OS in not yet covered in tis tutorial - you may ask for information thru commenting here and you will get your answers via email - we will discuss your problem in this blog so others may learn also. :-] )

- After the Operating System restoration, the system works just as fine but I recommended Ms. Elain to buy a new hard disk for her computer. The hard disk will fail any sooner.

REPORT:

- Stalling / Freezing on Welcome screen or on Power on Self Test (POST) was contributed by the defective power supply unit - which in the case of Ms. Elain's Computer, it was replaced.

- A defective Power Supply corrupts an Operating System ( Win XP ) , and even worse your Hard Disk Drive.

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