November 22, 2006, 10:53 AM PST
Nvidia's PureVideo HD: Mostly pretty OK HD decoding
Posted by: Rich Brown

If the PureVideo high-definition test system that Nvidia sent us is any indication, you're going to need a fairly beefy PC to play HD video. Ours came in a SilverStone small-form-factor case and included an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU, a GeForce 7600 GT graphics card (complete with an HDMI output and HDCP compliance), an HD-DVD drive, and 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM. HP sells just such a system in the form of its Pavilion m7690n Media Center PC TV, which you can get for $1,650 with no extras. We have one in our lab right now, in fact, and we'll post our review of it next week.

Specs aside, Nvidia sent us this box to take a look at PureVideo HD, the decoding software that helps complete the PC's end of the HDCP chain. Having a "secure" system won't be an issue until roughly 2010, when Hollywood may or may not kick in the copy-protection technology that will "down-res" HD movies when you play them on unapproved hardware, but it's nice to have that box checked early. Perhaps more importantly, when you play a Blu-ray or HD-DVD movie, PureVideo HD will help the graphics card, Windows, and your HD movie player software to communicate, ideally ensuring an optimal HD movie-watching experience.

To get an idea of what this experience looks like, we plugged Nvidia's test box via an HDMI cable into the highly rated Sony KDS-R60XBR2 60-inch television. Coming fresh off of its November 11 review, we chose that TV because it was handy, but also because it'll do HD resolutions up to 1080p, and we already had its image-quality settings set. Even after eliminating the television as a source of any trouble, we still found mixed results.

We were happy to see that Nvidia's drivers recognized our television and autoset the screen to 1080p resolution. Nvidia's software includes a few easy-to-use tools for calibrating RGB color accuracy and brightness. It took some tweaking, but eventually we were happy with the color temperature and other settings. One drawback we found is that any changes you make to the video don't show up on the fly. You have to close whatever you're watching and restart it for any adjustments to kick in, making the process overly cumbersome. This lack of real-time feedback has always been an issue with PC video, though, so it's nothing new.

In terms of actual movie playback, we were generally pleased with 1080p and 720p. We used Swordfish and The Last Samurai as our test discs, and we compared them against output from a standard HD-DVD player. On the Nvidia system, we noticed some false contouring (distinct lines appear where gradients of color should transition smoothly), fewer fine details in shadowy areas, and some noticeably choppy frames during some more difficult pans, but at no time did we feel like were we utterly disappointed in the quality. We still saw much of what we've come to expect from HD video, things such as individual stubble hair and crisp background details, and the frame rates generally kept up.

The 1080i output was a different story. For some reason, Nvidia's test system wouldn't stay at 1080i on the Sony 60-incher. When we set that resolution in the drivers, it kept bouncing back up to 1080p. To eliminate the problem, we connected the PC to our Sony KD-34XBR960, an older, Editors' Choice-winning, 34-inch direct-view CRT that will only go as high as 1080i. When we finally got 1080i output to stick, all of the issues we noticed at 1080p were magnified: The contouring was terrible, diagonal lines were covered in shimmery moire effects, jagged edges marred both the foreground and the background, and the slight stutter we saw during certain scenes became much more pronounced. We're not sure whether the video card or PureVideoHD itself is to blame, but the result is that 1080i looks significantly worse than either 720p or 1080p. Early adopters who want an HD television and can't wait for 1080p to become more prevalent will feel this problem the most.

For progressive output, at least, we're mostly happy with PureVideo HD and the system that Nvidia sent us. We haven't had the opportunity to test an HD drive-equipped PC that has AMD/ATI's Avivo video-decoding technology, so we can't say what the PC competition is like. What we can say is that while a living room PC remains inferior to standard home theater components in terms of movie-image quality and general ease of use, Nvidia's PureVideo HD gets the quality part rather close on progressive content.

Permalink | 3 comments

• Read also: Desktops, home video
• Email to a friend | Print this post

November 13, 2006, 9:01 PM PST
The unofficial eight-core Apple Mac Pro
Posted by: Daniel A. Begun

CNET Labs might be ahead of Apple's product release cycle, and we likely violated our Mac Pro's warranty, but we just had to see what the Apple Mac Pro could do when populated with a pair of Intel's brand-new, quad-core Xeon 5355 processors.

Today marks Intel's first official day of the quad-core processor era with the release of quad-core processors for enthusiasts (the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700) and for servers and workstations (the Intel Xeon 5355)--and Intel was kind enough to supply CNET Labs with a pair of 2.66GHz Xeon 5355 processors. As the Xeon 5355 is pin-compatible with the Xeon 5160 processors that came installed in our Mac Pro, we proceeded to swap out the two dual-core processors with the new quad-core processors. (We highly advise you not to try this at home! The Mac Pro case is not designed to allow the end user to perform CPU surgery--and we've got the cuts and bruises to prove it.) With the pair of Xeon 5355 processors installed, we booted the system back up and were greeted with eight active processing cores in both the Mac OS and Windows XP via the Boot Camp Public Beta. With the transplant successful, it was time to run our benchmarks...

Even though dual-core processors have been around for a while now, you'd still be hard-pressed to find many mainstream applications that can efficiently take advantage of both processing cores at the same time (typically referred to as a multithreaded-application). Double that number to four processing cores, and the list of supported multithreaded applications gets even shorter. Double it again to eight...and you get the idea. Some professional multimedia and scientific applications, however, are designed to take advantage of as many processors as are present--and performance will scale accordingly, based on the number of processors available.

Both the Cinebench and PyMOL tests use all available processing cores and hit 100-percent total CPU utilization on every configuration we tested. We saw a 31-percent performance increase on the Mac OS X version of the Cinebench test from the two dual-core chips to the two quad-core chips. Although we doubled the number of cores, we didn't see twice the performance. This is for a few reasons: The quad-core chips are actually running at a slower speed (2.66GHz) than the dual-core chips (3.0GHz). Also, the extra cores introduce some additional computational overhead to the overall workload. Additionally, our "octo-core" rig is our own unsanctioned rig, and therefore isn't benefiting from any of Apple's special sauce, such as firmware and driver updates to better optimize the system for the additional cores.

Our multimedia multitasking test performs a QuickTime encode in the foreground while iTunes is simultaneously encoding in the background. On systems with two or fewer cores, this workload typically saturates the total CPU utilization at 100 percent. With four cores, the system hovered around 40-percent CPU utilization, but dropped to about 23-percent when using eight cores. Interestingly, the actual performance gain we saw between four and eight cores was less than 10 percent. To truly see a significant benefit from the additional cores while performing multiple tasks, you will have to perform a massively multitasking scenario--something we unfortunately did not have time to do for this story.

Our iTunes and Quake 4 tests are more representative, however, of what you are likely to see with most mainstream applications in a nonmultitasking scenario. The results for both of these tests (as well as with other apps, not shown here, such as Photoshop CS2) indicate that what influences the speed of these tasks is primarily CPU speed. Four cores running at 3.0GHz consistently outperform eight cores running at 2.66GHz. (Note that iTunes is better optimized for the Mac OS, and Quake 4 is better optimized for Windows XP.)

It will be interesting to see how long it is before Apple migrates the Mac Pro over to the new quad-core Xeon chip and makes an eight-core system publicly available. But unless you do work normally relegated to high-end workstations, perform massively multitasking workloads, or just want the bragging rights, eight cores is definitely overkill...at least for now. As more applications become available that support multithreading across multiple processing cores, the benefits of quad- and octo-cores will be realized.

System configurations:

Intel QX6700: 4 cores @ 2.66GHz, Windows XP
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 256MB ATI Radeon X1900; 74GB Western Digital 10,000rpm SATA/150

Mac Pro: 4 cores @ 3.0GHz, Mac OS X
OS X 10.4.8; 2x 3.0GHz Intel Xeon 5160; 2,048MB DDR2 FB-SDRAM 667MHz; 512MB ATI Radeon X1900; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm SATA/150

Mac Pro: 4 cores @ 3.0GHz, Windows XP
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2x 3.0GHz Intel Xeon 5160; 2.048MB DDR2 FB-SDRAM 667MHz; 512MB ATI Radeon X1900; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm SATA/150

Mac Pro: 8 cores @ 2.66GHz, Mac OS X
OS X 10.4.8; 2x 2.66GHz Intel Xeon 5355; 2,048MB DDR2 FB-SDRAM 667MHz; 512MB ATI Radeon X1900; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm SATA/150

Mac Pro: 8 cores @ 2.66GHz, Windows XP
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2x 2.66GHz Intel Xeon 5355; 2,048MB DDR2 FB-SDRAM 667MHz; 512MB ATI Radeon X1900; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm SATA/150

Permalink | 29 comments

• Read also: Apple, Desktops
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 25, 2006, 3:05 PM PDT
Windows Vista Upgrade coupons are here, but what's with the "nominal fee"?
Posted by: Rich Brown

Update: Velocity Micro informs us that it will actually be charging for the upgrade to Windows Vista Basic from Windows XP Home, via a coupon that lets you make the switch for $60. (11/10/06)

The news circulated earlier today that Microsoft has finally unveiled the specifics behind its Windows Vista Upgrade coupons. As of October 26, the company is going to allow vendors to offer an upgrade for all new Windows XP-based desktops and laptops. The upgrade path matches certain versions of Windows XP to their Vista equivalents. XP Home will earn you Vista Basic, XP Media Center 2005 gets bumped to Vista Home Premium, and XP Pro lines up with Windows Vista Business. You get the upgrade DVD by sending in the coupon or filling out a Web form.

We like this plan, but one thing bothered us. The details on Microsoft's official Vista blog weren't specific as to what the upgrades would cost. It pointed to a "nominal fee" for each, and said that it was up to the PC manufacturers and retailers to decide the specifics of upgrade and shipping-and-handling fees. So who's going to charge, you ask? So did we. Here's what we found out from the major PC vendors, except Sony who never called us back (where were you guys?).

Alienware: Won't offer the upgrade to XP Home, but will have no charge for the other versions. It will charge for shipping.

Dell: Will charge $45 to go from XP Home to Vista Basic; all other versions will be free; shipping costs apply.

HP: All versions will be free. It will also ship a DVD of Vista driver updates with the upgrade disc (nice touch). Might charge for shipping, depending on your location.

Gateway: For online customers, all versions will be free, with no shipping-and-handling fee. A few retail customers might get hit with S/H charges. Details for professional-channel customers have yet to be worked out.

Lenovo: Going from XP Home to Vista Basic will cost an amount that has yet to be determined--on top of the shipping and handling fee. XP Pro to Vista Business will have a fee for shipping and handling only.

Sony: TBD

Velocity Micro: No charge for any of the upgrades. Shipping-and-handling charges will apply via Microsoft. Made the point that all out-of-channel vendors (read: the smaller guys) will need to point customers to Microsoft directly, hence the shipping charge. The larger vendors have the option to absorb the fee.

Permalink | 1 comment

• See product information for Windows Vista RC2
• Read also: Desktops, laptops, computers, software
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 24, 2006, 7:16 AM PDT
DIY FragBox
Posted by: Rich Brown

If you jump on over to NewEgg.com this morning, you'll find a new desktop PC chassis for sale. The Falcon Northwest FragBox case runs nearly $300 ($289.99, to be exact), but for that price, you get a small form-factor case with the spec standards of premiere, high-end PCs. Falcon has sold its Northwest FragBox directly from its Web site. According to the press release issued this morning, however, the act of unleashing the item on NewEgg was less at-odds with Falcon's own custom-PC business.

The case doesn't come with a power supply, and you have to bring your own motherboard, too. We've seen the FragBox running with a pair of 3D cards in it, however, making it quite friendly to PC builders wanting to make a small-but-deadly semiportable gaming system.

It has room for four expansion cards, so it is a little bigger than a typical, small form-factor PC, but we have a feeling most gamers won't mind the added capacity.

Permalink | 2 comments

• See product information for Falcon Northwest FragBox 2 (Athlon 64 FX-57)
• Read also: Desktops, computers, gaming
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 18, 2006, 11:29 AM PDT
More motivation to let a robot vacuum
Posted by: Elsa Wenzel

To go on a proper energy diet, first you'd have to measure the power consumed around the house, outlet by outlet. Just like counting calories, that would take all the fun out of gobbling up electricity. But if you're really geeked about saving money and greening your home, then you might follow the lead of one Silicon Valley engineer who crusaded around his apartment with the Kill-a-Watt energy meter, measuring the appetite of nearly every appliance.

Eric Boyd calculated that over a year, his refrigerator, desktop PC, and iMac used the most electricity. He estimated that his stove, oven, and air conditioner demanded a bit less energy than the computers. (Government figures, on the other hand, list heating and cooling as the biggest energy gobbler.) The toaster, microwave, washer, and dryer were hungrier for watts than anything else in Boyd's home, but their infrequent use led to low operating costs overall. Lighting didn't cost much because he already used compact fluorescent bulbs instead of ravenous incandescents. And in case you needed more motivation not to clean the floor yourself, his Roomba ate up a piddling 43 cents of his annual electrical bill.

Unfortunately, Boyd concluded that he'd barely notice a dent in his utilities bills if he conscientiously unplugged every gadget from the wall when not in use. But various studies show that standby power drained by those dormant appliances might quietly eat up as much as one-tenth of your energy expenses.

Permalink | 5 comments

• Read also: environment and energy, computers, desktops, laptops, peripherals
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 17, 2006, 7:53 AM PDT
ATI cleans up CrossFire
Posted by: Rich Brown

Nvidia's SLI dual 3D card technology has become more or less the de facto winner in high-end gaming rigs, not necessarily because its cards are faster (Quad SLI notwithstanding), but because it was out first, and it's had a much cleaner design than ATI's competing CrossFire mode. ATI still has to challenge the perception that SLI is a more robust, stable solution than CrossFire, but at least its technology has finally caught up, by way of the Radeon X1950 Pro, announced today. Now you don't need a special, more expensive CrossFire Edition of a particular 3D card to run two side by side. ATI has also improved the aesthetics by moving the connector between the two cards to the inside. Good-bye, stupid dongle!

ATI pitched this card to us with an MSRP of $199, to compete against Nvidia's new GeForce 7900 GS card. Confoundingly, Froogle turned up prices more along the lines of $299. ATI assured us that it was just speculative preorder pricing and that NewEgg will have the card at or close to the MSRP when it updates its listings. If it comes in at the lower price, early returns on performance are that the 256MB Radeon X1950 Pro is an impressive midrange deal. If it's more like $300, we suggest that you wait to see what Nvidia has up its sleeve with its next-gen cards, due to be announced within the next few months. Our review is almost ready to go, so stay tuned for full performance results and hopefully the final word on pricing.

Permalink | Post a comment

• See product information for ATI Radeon X1950 Pro
• Read also: desktops, computers, gaming
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 04, 2006, 8:39 AM PDT
Interview: Falcon Northwest CEO Kelt Reeves on the HP-Voodoo PC deal
Posted by: Rich Brown

First Dell bought Alienware, then HP scooped up Voodoo PC. If those deals are bad news for Falcon Northwest, it's not because CEO Kelt Reeves isn't dedicated. Dude just answered our questions from his Hawaiian vacation. Maybe it's all that sun, but he doesn't sound too worried.

Were you surprised by HP's acquisition of Voodoo?

I don't know anyone who wasn't surprised. That said, with the Dell/Alienware deal as precedent, it was a logical fit from a business perspective. What was so surprising about it is that [Voodoo President and CTO] Rahul [Sood] has made a name for himself as a blogger by predicting other deals, such as the ATI/AMD buyout and Dell's aquisition of Alienware. The one he could've predicted with perfect accuracy was the one he was very good at keeping secret.

What do you think it means for the future of Falcon Northwest and the boutique PC market in general?

That's probably a more loaded question than either of us can imagine right now. This is definitely an "inflection point" for the entire PC market. It depends on how the two companies fit together. We found that as Alienware grew, they strayed further from the enthusiast/custom/boutique market. The Dell deal seems to have clinched that. It works out well for us because essentially we're serving two different markets. Alienware may be sleeping on a big bed of money these days, but it hasn't seemed to come at our expense...the net effect on us is neither Dell nor Alienware seems to be on our turf anymore, and strangely, their combined impact on us is less than it used to be with Alienware alone.

HP's aquisition of Voodoo PC seems to be structured much more effectively, and if it works, it could keep the rest of the boutique market on its toes. It appears HP understands that a boutique's real value isn't from volume, but as a proving ground for showing off new technologies and getting real-time enthusiast feedback. And most importantly, filtering enthusiast PC ideas to mainstream products quickly. Another Web site likened it to HP buying a Formula 1 team. In that sense, they could be very valuable to all of us enthusiasts by bringing enthusiast PC thinking to more mainstream customers.

Do you plan to capitalize on your new status as the best-known indie PC vendor?

I've received a lot of "what's it like to be the last one?" e-mails this week. While not technically true, I can see how a lot of people are viewing us that way. The enthusiast market perceives going mass market as "selling out." The very day Alienware went into Best Buy years ago we heard nothing from our clientele except "they sold out." A bit unfair on day one, but I guess it's just the price you pay for making ties with any big company. Falcon's not going to go taking out advertisements saying "Hey we're the last of the 'big 3' independents, so you should buy from us and stick it to The Man!" We're going to do what we've always done: provide hardware and services that are an alternative to the big PC makers.

Alienware has Michael Dell's checkbook; Voodoo has the keys to the HP R&D kingdom. How does Falcon plan to compete?

In theory they do, but I doubt it's that simple. Alienware has a sliver of Michael Dell's checkbook, and Michael Dell is using many more slivers to make his own gaming-focused XPS line. It must be maddening for Alienware's management, but they wouldn't be allowed to say so if it is. Voodoo may find HP already has a long list of its own projects, and Voodoo may not be as important to HP's $80 billion worldwide sales as it is to Canada's enthusiast community.

These trade-offs could be tough on a small company that's used to moving fast and not having to ask for budget approval on projects. But it would be foolish to suggest that having big company funding was on balance a disadvantage. I'm sure the funding will give them a competitive advantage. But Falcon has always fought the big guys; I've never seen being small as a disadvantage. On the contrary, being small means I make our decisions quickly, without politics, and with our clients a bigger priority than stockholders.

One speculation is that Gateway or another large vendor might come knocking on your door. Thoughts?

Obviously, the fit between a boutique and a volume player makes sense to a lot of people, including me. That said, it would be very hard for any bigger fish to swallow Falcon without destroying what it is that makes it special. We've passed up many opportunities to "go big" over the years. These opportunities may have made a lot of business sense, but I'd rather protect what Falcon Northwest is and who it serves.

Permalink | 1 comment

• Read also: Desktops, gaming, computers
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 29, 2006, 4:34 AM PDT
HP and Voodoo pull a Dell and Alienware
Posted by: Rich Brown

As you may have heard, HP and Voodoo appeared together on stage last tonight to announce their new partnership. Voodoo CEO Ravi Sood and his brother Rahul, the chief technology officer, will now report to HP's Phil McKinney, the CTO of HP's personal systems group. In short, once the deal has finalized, HP will have acquired a boutique PC maker to give it leverage in the profitable high-end gaming PC market, similar to the way in which Dell subsumed Alienware earlier this year.

According to Rahul's blog, Voodoo's operations will remain in Calgary, and you can continue to purchase Voodoo PCs. As for the future, "our strategy for the HP gaming portfolio is yet to be revealed--but expect the unexpected." And here we thought we were at the Manhattan Center last night for a simple fourth quarter HP product refresh.

With no new Voodoo products at the time of the announcement, it's hard to say whether this deal is any different from Dell's acquisition of Alienware. That marriage seems so far to be a hands-off kind of situation, for better or for worse. You don't see Alienware PCs among the Dells in your Sunday circular, but Dell's XPS desktops technically compete with Alienware's products for high-end gaming dollars. According to Rahul, the HP-Voodoo deal is different. Both in his blog and at last night's event, Rahul said that he had been given the keys to HP's R&D lab and that that would give Voodoo access to innovative muscle it didn't have before.

If Voodoo and HP really do pool resources and mindsets, I would expect that we'll see some very exciting products coming out of the partnership. Despite its rep as a pusher of printer ink, HP has impressed us with its creativity on the PC side over the past few years. Its Personal Media Drives and the z555 Digital Entertainment Center have both demonstrated HP's willingness to take risks. And Voodoo most definitely knows how to make a performance PC. What we also hope is that HP's mass-market background rubs off on the Voodoo team. We've always admired Voodoo's attention to detail and the level of craftsmanship behind its PCs, but we've also often found Voodoo systems overpriced, even for high-end gaming desktops.

Permalink | 4 comments

• Read also: Systems, desktops, laptops, gaming
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 21, 2006, 8:32 AM PDT
Pentium 4 gets shown the door
Posted by: Matthew Elliott

With Core 2 Duo out in full force, Intel is expected to relegate its Pentium 4 chips to the bargain bin. Using Intel's suddenly outdated Netburst architecture, Pentium 4 CPUs will see their prices slashed by up to 58 percent at the start of 2007 as Intel looks to clear out inventory of its old chips. The price of the 3.0GHz Pentium 4 631, for example, is expected to drop nearly $100, from $163 to $69.

Intel will reportedly stop manufacturing Pentium 4 processors by Q3 of next year; production of the Netburst-based budget Celeron chip will cease in early '08. A budget line of CPUs based on Intel's new Core architecture is expected to be released in Q2 of next year. On the high end, of course, Intel's quad-core desktop CPU (Kentfield) is expected to be one of the major headliners of next year's CES.

Permalink | 10 comments

• Read also: Ccmputers, desktops
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 12, 2006, 8:17 AM PDT
Dell rounds out the XPS line with the Core 2-based XPS 210
Posted by: Rich Brown

As expected, Dell rounded out the updates to its XPS line of desktops by adding the XPS 210, a Core 2 Duo-based replacement for the XPS 200 small-form-factor PC released last year. This system becomes more compelling now that it has Intel's hot new chips in it, but we're still not sure about the design of the thing. If you're really interested in a media PC with a small footprint, Apple's Mac Mini or the WinBook Jiv Mini are more compact, and for power, Shuttle, Falcon Northwest, and other vendors have slightly larger chassis that can accommodate full-size expansion cards for more powerful gaming and other upgrades. Like the XPS 200 before it, the XPS 210 tries to strike a balance between size and capability, but in general we prefer products that stick their feet more firmly in one camp or another. The most basic XPS 210 model will cost you $899 without a monitor. We've finished testing our review unit, too, and we'll have the full review up shortly.

Permalink | Post a comment

• See product information for Dell XPS 210 (Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz, 1GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows XP Media Center)
• Read also: computers, desktops
• Email to a friend | Print this post