Antec is always known for their great case designs. They are at it once again with a refresh of their famous Sonata line. The latest Antec Sonata Elite chassis is meant to be a silent and stylish enclosure, but still be capable of cooling today’s modern hardware.

Today AMD is releasing a revised Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor. The TDP has been lowered from 140W to 125W, and also happens to be the new C3 stepping. Along with this new processor launch the prices for the 965's have been lowered to an expected price of $195 USD, a savings of about $20.

In what seems like even more bad luck for Intel (and for G2 owners), there appears to be yet another firmware issue cropping up to ruin the day. This time around, the new firmware appears to be hosing Windows 7-based systems after the update is applied.
One user, georgewillow, wrote the following on Intel's support pages:
Just did the firmware update and it hosed my Windows 7 installation. The updater showed a successful firmware update. Initially the computer booted just fine, but once I was within Windows it installed some drivers and asked for a reboot. That's when the trouble started. Now the drive won't boot Windows 7 anymore. I don't know if it's a Dell problem or Intel problem. The Dell BIOS claims a SMART error. I have a Dell XPS 8000.

Yes, we have been contacted by users with issues with the firmware upgrade for our 34nm SSDs and we are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware link while we investigate.

We've seen both dual core, and more recently, quad core Athlon II processors. Today AMD is announcing triple core Athlon II processors, along with a whole slew of low-power / energy efficient dual, triple, and quad core Athlon II chips! All these processors are priced aggressively against their Intel counterpart and should lead to some stiff competition.

Earlier this week, a Finnish website released an updated roadmap of AMD's mainstream and high-end platforms, providing more information on the chip manufacturer's plans for the coming two years. Apart from the current platforms, the roadmap mentions the earlier-announced hexacore Thuban chip, which will form the Leo platform with the RD890 borthbridge and SD850 southbridge. There are also three unannounced platforms: the mainstream counterpart of Leo, codenamed Dorado, as well as Scorpius and Lynx.

It's clear that AMD's upcoming processors will exclusively support DDR3-memory, leaving behind the DDR2 era. The SB850 southbridge is to feature support for SATA 6.0 Gbit/s and USB 3.0, making it unrequired for manufacturers to integrate third-party chips on their motherboards. The RS880P chipset is to replace the current 785G (codename RS880G) in the mainstream segment. This chipset will once again feature an integrated graphics core. Whether it'll have DirectX 11 features or remain at DirectX 10.1 is still unclear.

2011 will bring us the high-end Scorpius and mainstream Lynx platforms. The Scorpius will be combined with a processor featuring the Zambezi codename. The chip will sport at least four physical cores and a DDR3-memory controller. The term AM3r2 suggests that the processor will be launched for a new revision of the AM3-socket. The Lynx platform is based around the Llano processor, AMD's first Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). AMD has claimed this name to indicate processors equipped with an integrated graphics core, making it likely to become the competitor to Intel's 32 nm Clarkdale chip. Llano will be produced at 32 nm and will also be used in notebooks.

NVIDIA’s Ion platform, at least when first introduced, combined Intel’s Atom CPU with NVIDIA’s GeForce 9300/9400M integrated graphics chipset. This offered better performance and modern features compared to Intel’s 945G chipset, what Intel was bundling with Atom. Intel still sold the CPUs but it lost the chipset sale and got upstaged by NVIDIA. Intel doesn’t like being upstaged by anyone.

Zotac built the first mini-ITX Ion motherboard. While Zotac builds several Intel motherboards, they are hardly considered a tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. Zotac doesn’t get preferential treatment by Intel and thus Zotac doesn’t have to worry about ruffling any feathers by releasing an Ion motherboard.

ASUS was Intel’s launch partner for Atom. The first place you found the Atom processor was in ASUS’ Eee PC and Eee Box. The rest of the OEMs followed. It’s no surprise that ASUS didn’t build an Ion motherboard or an Ion netbook for that matter.

ASUS tested the waters with its value manufacturing brand earlier this year. ASRock put out an Ion system based on the Intel Atom 330 processor; note the use of the word system. The ASRock Ion differed from the Zotac Ion motherboard in that it was a barebones system complete with mini-ITX chassis, external power supply, 2GB of RAM, slim optical drive and 320GB hard drive. All you needed to add was an OS.

Intel Corp. has temporarily suspended shipments of its latest solid-state drives that utilize multi-level cell (MLC) flash made using 34nm process technology. Apparently, the company has found a bug in its firmware that causes data corruption.

Earlier this week, the Wi-Fi allianced announced that the definitive version of the 802.11n standard will not differ from the latest Draft 2.0 version, that was created in 2007. Minor additions or adjustments may take place, but in general, Draft 2.0 is to work perfectly with the final standard. Because 802.11n kept being delayed, numerous manufacturers decided to implement the Draft version in their products.

In September, the new standard will be officially launched and existing 802.11n products will be tested to ensure that the devices are 100% compatible with the finalized version. 802.11n is a significant performance increase compared to the conventional 802.11g, something that definitely comes in handy in a time where HD video-streaming and faster internet keeps raising the bar. The use of MIMO (multiple-in multiple-out) antennas not only increases the speed, it also improves the range and coverage of the wireless network. Theoretically, the new standard is to reach 300 Mbps, compared to 802.11g's 54 Mbps. In the real world, 802.11n connections usually reach speeds of between 80 and 100 Mbps, which is still three to four times as fast as what 802.11g actually reaches.

The rumors are true, Intel’s 2nd generation SSDs are available starting today.

The high level details are pretty interesting:

* The new drives will be available in 80GB and 160GB sizes and are still called the X25-M and X18-M. The X18-M will start shipping later this quarter.
* 34nm flash (down from 50nm in the original X25-M), allows Intel to include roughly twice the flash in the same size die.
* The enterprise SLC version doesn’t get the 34nm treatment at this point.
* The smaller flash die results in lower prices, the 80GB model will sell for $225 while the 160GB version should sell for $440.
* Best case read/write latency has been improved (more details below).
* The 34nm drives have a new controller and new firmware, also contributing to better performance (2 - 2.5x more 4KB random write IOPS than the old drive!). Enterprise level workstation/database apps should see an immediate performance benefit, client desktop performance is unknown. Don't expect a significant increase in PCMark or SYSMark scores, but in real world usage the new drives could feel faster.
* The new controller is Halogen-free (the old one wasn’t) so Apple could theoretically use the new drives in their systems without being un-green.
* TRIM isn’t yet supported, but the 34nm drives will get a firmware update when Windows 7 launches enabling TRIM. XP and Vista users will get a performance enhancing utility (read: manual TRIM utility). It seems that 50nm users are SOL with regards to TRIM support. Bad form Intel, very bad form.
* I get my drive this week, so expect a review to follow.

Intel updated its price list over the weekend and it focused on cutting prices within pretty much all its desktop CPU families bar the latest - Core i7.

The cuts are mainly of the order of 13-14 percent and affected products are within the Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium and Celeron families.

This move raises the possibility that we'll be seeing the new Lynnfield Core i5 processors a fair bit earlier than expected, as well as the advertised wholesale re-brand of its processor naming scheme.

Here are all the affected products and their new prices:

Processor Old price ($) New price ($) Decrease (%)
Q9400 ---- 213 ------------ 183 ------------ 14
Q9300 ---- 213 ------------ 183 ------------ 14
Q8400 ---- 183 ------------ 163 ------------ 11
Q8300 ---- 183 ------------ 163 ------------ 11
Q9400S --- 277 ------------ 245 ------------ 12
Q8400S --- 245 ------------ 213 ------------ 13
E7500 ---- 133 ------------ 113 ------------ 15
E6300 ----- 84 ------------- 81 -------------- 4
E5400 ----- 84 ------------- 74 ------------- 12
E5300 ----- 74 ------------- 64 ------------- 14
E1500 ----- 53 ------------- 43 ------------- 19

Three year warranty now standard on all Vertex and Summit drives, even the ones already sold to customers

Solid State Drives (SSDs) using NAND flash modules have many advantages over traditional mechanical hard disk drives. They can offer improved battery life, greater durability, shorter boot times, and much faster response times because they no longer require the use of spinning magnetic disks.
...
One of the keys to OCZ's success has been the Barefoot flash controller from Korean flash controller specialist Indilinx. Barefoot chips are affordable and offer superb random write speeds, something that most other controllers are lacking.

The company has been very aggressive in marketing the Vertex brand. It previously unveiled a Mac Edition, and entered into the enterprise market with the Vertex EX using Single Level Cell (SLC) chips to challenge mighty Intel.
...
The new Vertex Turbo Edition, however, can only help boost the Vertex name. OCZ is overclocking the Barefoot NAND flash controller and the SDRAM cache in order to achieve additional performance. Regular Vertex drives have 64MB of SDRAM clocked at 166MHz, but Vertex Turbo drives will have them clocked at 180MHz.

"The new Vertex Turbo makes use of the fastest SDR DRAM cache available and a
proprietary FTL level firmware that provides an even faster solid state drive for
enthusiasts looking for the ultimate desktop or laptop storage upgrade," stated Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management for the OCZ Technology Group.

The Vertex Turbo will be available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB models. The 250GB Vertex Turbo has the best performance on paper, unlike the regular Vertex series in which the 120GB model had the top performance. It has maximum read speeds of 270MB/s and maximum write speeds of 210MB/s write speed -- sustained write speeds are listed at up to 120MB/s. Performance of the 120GB model is similar, with a maximum write speed of 210MB/s. The other models have performance figures approximately 25% lower.

“The usable limit for semiconductor process technology will be reached when chip process geometries shrink to be smaller than 20 nanometers (nm), to 18nm nodes,” said Len Jelinek, director and chief analyst, semiconductor manufacturing, for iSuppli. “At those nodes, the industry will start getting to the point where semiconductor manufacturing tools are too expensive to depreciate with volume production, i.e., their costs will be so high, that the value of their lifetime productivity can never justify it.”

"The semiconductor industry will be living with historical generations of technology longer than it did before," Jelinek says. "You are not seeing these geometries rise and fall off the way they did before. Rather, they are living on."

And they are living on because chip makers are going to be forced by the high cost of each generation of chip technology to maximize for money generated by a process instead of chip performance and lowering the cost of chips. "Historically, the focus in the semiconductor industry was always how quickly you could move to the next geometry node. Now the question is how to make money by sustaining a specific node."

Since AMD started releasing processors based on the 45nm process at the end of last year, we have only seen quad and triple core chips. Today AMD is launching several new processors, all 45nm and all Socket AM3. The first big processor is the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition running at 3.1 GHz, and second is the Athlon II X2 250 running at 3.0 GHz.

PROVING THAT it has never been a company to stick to toeing the tedious line of conformity with reference designs, Asus has just shown us a new monster graphics card that it calls the Mars. It features two GeForce GTX 285 GPUs in SLI configuration, and it also looks like it could double-up as a blunt weapon in Cluedo.

In terms of design, it’s not dissimilar to a GeForce GTX 295. There are two PCBs sandwiched together inside one package, although each of these features 16 memory chips making for a total of 4GB of 1.2GHz (2.4GHz effective) GDDR3 memory. In short, this isn’t a card for anyone running a 32-bit operating system. Asus has also designed its own dual-slot cooler for the card, although it works in a similar way to the reference Nvidia GTX 295 cooler, with a single fan cooling both PCBs.

Interestingly, Asus has decided to spurn Nvidia’s own nForce 200 bridge chip to enable the two PCBs to talk to each other in SLI mode, and has instead used an anonymous third-party chip. One of the interesting innovations here is that, despite the new design, the card will still work with standard Nvidia drivers. The card will be recognised as a GeForce GTX 295, but will still be able to access the features of the GTX 285 GPUs.