Archive for November, 2007

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ATi FireGL V7600: the best workstation graphics card

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Tom’s Hardware always brings us excellent reviews, and today it compares two high-end  workstation graphics cards: ATI FireGL V7600 vs Nvidia Quadro FX 4600. Conclussion: ATI’s card, for about 1000 $, scores in most tests the same or better than Nvidia’s card, which costs over 1500 $. If I was shopping for a card of this kind, I know which one to buy.

More info: full shootout.

Think about it: yesterday AMD got in important success with the FireStream, today with the FireGL. It seems that the professional segment is giving AMD the success the company needs so much…

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Adobe Photoshop Express: online apps keep spreading

Friday, November 9th, 2007

That Adobe is developing an online version of Photoshop is old news, but News.com tells us about some features of this software, that has been shown in the 6sight digital imaging conference.

While it’s still a pre-beta version (Adobe has committed to release the beta later this year), it is now clear that Photoshop Express is much less powerful than the local versions, and seems to be aimed to provide additional photo editing features to several online photo hosting services. But it’s going to be free.

The final version of Photoshop Express is expected to be released in 2008.

Think about it: the first time I heard about “software as a service” and it being run through Internet, I thought that it was a concept without future. But almost 10 years have past, and Internet has changed a lot, and now we can be online everywhere, at any time. E-mail clients did seem so much better than webmail… But the last time I sent an e-mail in Thunderbird was many months ago. Now, I think it’s possible that, in a future, most of our programs are online apps, but the world still has to change a lot.

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AMD FireStream: supercomputing for 2000 $

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

Today’s big tech news is the unveiling of  AMD’s FireStream: a PCIe card that brings the huge parallel computing power of current graphics cards to other uses. The card uses a PCIe 2.0 16x port in a workstation or server, features double-precision floating point units and offers up to 500 GFLOPS of processing power, allowing for up to 20 times faster computing in scientific and enterprise computing.

At a price of 1999 $, it can look expensive from an end-user point of view, but it’s not for enterprise-level budgets.

More info: FireStream’s specs at AMD and news from CNET News, The Inquirer and Engadget.

Think about it: with this product AMD takes the lead in this field. The company really needs to be a leader in some fields, because currently most of its products fall behind Intel’s processors and Nvidia’s cards in terms of performance. A long-term dominance of any company in any given field can lead to a monopoly that is bad for end-users. So, long life to AMD.

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2 GB RAM + 1 GB Robson memory are NOT 3 GB RAM

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

I don’t know about your country, but here you can find cheap laptops advertised with 3 GB RAM. But if we look more closely, we can see that the laptop actually has 2 GB RAM + 1 GB of Robson memory, also known as Intel Turbo Memory, but Robson memory is not RAM, and cannot be added to main system RAM, so 2 GB RAM + 1 GB of Robson memory equals 2 GB RAM. Period. Robson memory is an additional memory pool to cache data but, let me insist, is not RAM. In fact, it still has to be proved that it speeds something up…

Additional info: at Intel and in the test performed in AnandTech.

Think about it: it’s hard to tell if it’s a fraud of just lack of knowledge in the marketing side, but anyway, it’s better to go shopping with a good amount of information…

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Chip released to increase computer energy efficiency

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

According to News.com and Laptop Logic, Marvell has released a chip to increase energy efficiency in power supplies of both desktop and laptop computers. The chip has been developed to comply with the new Energy Star guidelines, that require that computers use 80% of the energy they consume. Computers with this chip are expected to be available for the fall of 2008.

Think about it: it’s good that manufacturers make available more ways to reduce power usage, good for our pockets and for the environment. It’s a pity that graphics card manufacturers keep making energetic monsters, every day more powerful…

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Welcome to our tech and laptop news section

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

I’m glad to announce the opening of this brand new section in towards the optimal laptop – optimitza.com. Here you are going to find interesting news about technology, mainly hardware (laptops and more), but any relevant tech news are going to be posted here. News will be kept short and light on technical jargon, so they can be an easy reading for the general public.

I hope you enjoy the new content.

Francesc Felipe, creator of optimitza.com

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