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Techradar |
- AMD debuts quad-core Fusion laptop platform
- Review: AMD A8-3500M
- Duke Nukem Forever tops UK gaming charts
- Juror who 'contacted defendant on Facebook' faces contempt charges
- HP planning to launch cloud music service?
- Turkish police hold 32 Anonymous activists
- Pioneer boosts AV range with new high-end receivers
- Samsung offers up more free 3D for Smart TVs
- Rumour: HTC moving to slim, plasti-metal chassis
- Cello unveils 3D television range
- Facebook user figures fall in UK and US
- Updated: Wii U: all the latest details
- Review: Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350
- Review: AVerTV Volar HD
- Buying Guide: What's the best Core i7 laptop?
- Review: AC Ryan PlayOn! HD2 Mini
- Jellyfish protein leads to world's first biological laser
- In Depth: What's inside your iPad? Tablet tech explained
- Imax man: 3D alone won't fill cinema seats
- Updated: Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro UK release date pushed to July
- Video: Video hands on: Panasonic GF3
- Video: Video hands on: Panasonic GF3
- Updated: Orange Barcelona heads to UK with Android 2.2
- Gates: Voice recognition is the next big thing
| AMD debuts quad-core Fusion laptop platform Posted: 13 Jun 2011 10:01 PM PDT AMD is looking to steal a march in laptop graphics with its new 32nm mainstream platform offering true gaming graphics and quad-core processing in a single, power-efficient AMD A Series Fusion chip previously known as Llano. You'll see laptops in stores featuring the previously-used AMD Vision branding as well as the processor names A4, A6 and A8. The new chips also have USB 3.0 support and promise battery life up to 10 hours. Intel may have had the upper hand in laptops for the last few years but with its latest launch AMD should give us all serious food for thought when we choose our next laptops. As our AMD A8-3500M review found, the new platform offers serious graphics performance and, providing the price is right when units hit the stores, is ideal for mainstream laptop gaming – this top-end chip features 400 DirectX 11 shader cores. Considering AMD's top-end integrated laptop graphics previously had 80, that's a whole lot more grunt. What's more, the new platform also offers excellent battery life, too - though we'll wait to see shipping hardware before passing full judgement on that. The new platform should ensure further success for AMD in 2011 – the company sold out of its first Fusion chips, the C and E Series Intel Atom-bashing netbook processors based on AMD's low-power Bobcat core. The Fusion chip is a long awaited launch from AMD, building on the graphics expertise garnered from ATI which it bought in 2006. The AMD A8-3500M is that it's AMD's first full-power Fusion processor combining CPU cores and graphics in a single chip - its four cores are derived from AMD's Stars architecture. Stars is the processor core design found in existing AMD Athlon II and Phenom II CPUs. Check out our AMD A8-3500M review. 
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| Posted: 13 Jun 2011 10:01 PM PDT AMD is on the up. With the launch of its new A Series Fusion processor, tested here in AMD A8-3500M form, it looks like the good times are going to keep on rolling. With four cores and grunty graphics in a single, power-efficient chip, the processor previously known as Llano – part of the company's Sabine notebook platform - looks set to take the notebook market by storm. It feels good to type those words. After all, AMD's processor division had been taking a beating from arch rival Intel since way back in 2006 when the first Core 2 processors were launched. It was all one way traffic until AMD launched its first fusion chips, the C and E Series processors based on AMD's new low-power Bobcat core. The platform will be marketed under the AMD Vision brand. As well as this A8, there will also be A4 and A6 variants available. We're testing this inside a whitebook (unbranded latop), sent to us by AMD. AMD claims the C and E Series APUs (Accelerated Processing Unit) have been such hot sellers that millions have shipped already this year and supplies have literally run out. That's not a big surprise. As a cheap netbook and low-end notebook processor, the C Series in particular is an awful lot better than Intel's Atom. The Atom is arguably better suited to ultraportable devices. It's therefore the job of the new A Series APU, codenamed Llano, to do the same thing for AMD in the mainstream laptop and notebook market. It certainly has some serious weapons. For starters, it packs highly efficient 32nm transistor technology. It also sports up to four CPU cores. Significantly, each is based on AMD's Stars architecture as found in its top-end Phenom II chips, rather than the relatively weedy Bobcat core in the C and E Series. Then there's Llano's new integrated graphics core. It's the most complex integrated core the world has ever seen. In short, Llano is a much more powerful chip than the C and E Series and it might just have what it takes to take the fight to Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7 notebook processors. The key factoid to fathom with the AMD A8-3500M is that it's AMD's first full-power Fusion processor combining CPU cores and graphics in a single chip. It's unambiguously a mobile processor designed for notebooks and laptops. The chip itself is codenamed Llano and contains four cores derived from AMD's Stars processor architecture. Stars is the processor core design found in existing AMD Athlon II and Phenom II CPUs. AMD's first Fusion chips, the C and E Series APUs, sport AMD's Bobcat core. It's much more power efficient than the Stars core. But it also delivers much less performance. Of course, the use of the Stars core means much of the Llano chip isn't strictly new. But there's plenty that is. For starters, Llano is AMD's first 32nm processor. Of course, Intel has been flogging 32nm CPUs for well over a year and is planning 22nm processors for early 2012. Still, better late than never for AMD's 32nm transistors. The other really exciting news involves Llano's graphics core. With 400 DX11 shader cores, it's easily the most powerful integrated graphics core in the history of computing. For context, AMD's previous best was just 80 shader cores. Or, to put it another way, AMD's most powerful dedicated graphics chip as recently as 2007, the Radeon HD 3870, had just 320 shaders. It's a properly powerful bit of graphics hardware. What it doesn't have, however, is the very latest AMD graphics gubbins, as seen in the Radeon HD 6900 series desktop cards. Instead, Llano's graphics is the slightly older graphics architecture first seen in the Radeon HD 5800. That means you get the so-called 4+1 ALU setup instead on the latest four-way symmetrical ALUs. For the record, the rest of the Llano graphics core specification highlights include the full UVD3 2D video feature set and thus hardware acceleration support for all the important video codecs. Oh, and the minor matter of just 20 texture units, eight colour ROPs but only two render back ends. Still, the net result is raw number crunching throughput of 355 GFLOPS. Add in the four processor cores and you're looking at over 500 GFLOPS. It's quite a chip. Other architectural interests go as follows. Both discrete graphics and AMD's Crossfire multi-GPU technology is supported courtesy of 16 on-chip PCI Express lanes. As for the supporting mobile chipset, it's packed with high-end features including six SATA 6Gbps ports and support for a pair of USB 3.0 sockets. As a mobile chip, AMD has also ramped up the power-saving features. Which brings us neatly to the specifics of the AMD A8-3500M model tested here. Like most of the new A Series range, it's a quad-core processor. Seven A Series chips are available at launch, five quads and two entry-level dual-core models. Where the power savings come in involves the 3500M's clocks. Nominally, it's a 1.5GHz processor, which isn't all that impressive. But thanks to a new version of AMD's Turbo Core feature, up to two cores can run at 2.4GHz. AMD has also added support for the power saving C6 idle state. Combine that with those tiny 32nm transistors and you have a mobile CPU AMD claims is capable of both excellent performance and 10 hours of battery life. But can it really be the best of both worlds in a single processor? Time to see how Llano performs. Professional rendering, Cinebench R10 Video encoding, x264 HD Gaming, Call of Duty 4 Gaming, World in Conflict Memory bandwidth Battery life during 720p video playback Power consumption First the bad news: for a quad-core PC processor, even one designed for laptops rather than desktop PCs, the AMD A8-3500M's raw CPU performance is mediocre. That's because the clockspeed is limited to just 1.5GHz when all four cores are crunching numbers. In fact, in our testing we never detected any cores running beyond 1.5GHz, though AMD says it does happen when only one or two cores are under load. Consequently, the 3500M gets absolutely hammered by the likes of Intel's quad-core Core i7-2820QM. Take the x264 video encoding test. The 3500M manages just 8.3 frames per second. Intel's 2820QM hammers out 28 frames per second. It's a similar story in the Cinebench R10 3D rendering benchmark. Intel's mobile quad completes it in 47 seconds. The 3500M lumbers across the line in two minutes and 21 seconds. Of course, the A8-3500M is a much cheaper chip designed for relatively low-cost laptops. The harsh truth is that most of Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7 mobile chips will have the measure of the 3500M for plain CPU performance. But the crucial question is whether that actually matters. For day-to-day computing, there's more than enough processing power on offer. What's more, where AMD's new chip really comes good is where you need performance most. Gaming. In the 3500M, the graphics core is known as the Radeon HD 6620G, it has all 400 cores enabled and runs at up to 444MHz. And it absolutely destroys Intel's equivalent integrated graphics core, the HD 3000. Running an older game such as Call of Duty 4 at 1,280 x 800 pixels, the Intel HD 3000 can only manage around 27 frames per second. The Radeon HD 6620G cranks out 46 frames per second. In a more demanding title like World in Conflict, the HD 3000 is frankly unplayable, even at just 800 x 600 pixels. The Radeon struggles, too, at standard settings. But it has just enough grunt to cope if you knock a few of the detail settings down. Overall, it's a great little graphics chip for low key gaming on the move. A spot of World of Warcraft or Portal 2 at the airport? No problem. AMD's new mobile chip is not a performance heavyweight in a conventional sense. Let's be clear about that. With four rather elderly cores and a clockspeed that doesn't often - if ever - go beyond 1.5GHz, that was always going to be the case. But this is a chip for compact, cost effective laptops not mega-power workstations or gaming rigs. What it does do, therefore, is deliver an outstanding compromise between performance and efficiency. We liked The test system provided by AMD is extremely thin and light. But it has plenty of oomph for daily computing right up to and including one of the more odious demands on consumer PCs, decoding high definition flash video. And yet AMD claims up to 10 hours battery life. Our testing indicates around six hours when decoding 720p video, so 10 hours idle is very plausible. Then there's the graphics performance. The test system offered both the integrated core and a discrete chip along with the promise of Crossfire multi-GPU for extra performance. In the event, Crossfire failed to function. But here's the thing. The AMD A8-3500M processor makes most sense in its simplest form without discrete graphics. The integrated Radeon HD 6620G graphics is massively faster than any previous integrated core. And while most decent discrete GPUs remain quicker, the 6620G is still a nice little core for casual gaming. Thanks to Llano, 'integrated' is no longer a dirty word when it comes to graphics. We disliked Strictly speaking, this is probably the slowest quad-core PC processor you can buy. We also don't know how much shipping hardware will be as yet - and cost will have a major bearing on the success of this platform. Verdict Never mind that because the best thing about this new Fusion APU isn't any individual feature. It's not the 32nm transistors, the quad-core CPU or that game changing integrated GPU. It's the way the whole thing hangs together in an efficient, cost effective package under the AMD Vision umbrella. With this new Fusion processor on the scene, we confidently predict there will be many more affordable but seriously effective thin and light laptops on the market. Give it up for Llano. 
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| Duke Nukem Forever tops UK gaming charts Posted: 13 Jun 2011 02:38 PM PDT The first Duke Nukem video game in 13-years has stormed straight to the top of the UK gaming charts, despite critics labeling it a massive flop. Duke Nukem Forever was finally released last Friday for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PCs after over a decade of false starts and delays. The game, which is a throwback to the popular, trash-talking, ass-kicking, first-person shooters of the 90s replaced Rockstar's gangster thriller La Noire a top of the gaming tree. Critical kicking The commercial success comes despite a string of critical kickings for Duke's overdue adventure. IGN awarded the game just 5.5/10 while Eurogamer posted a score of 3/10. The Guardian's Neil Davy awarded the game two-out-of-five and commented: "If this was 15 years in the making, it makes you wonder what they did for the other 14 years and 10 months." Zing! Meanwhile, on DNF's rapid ascent to the top of the charts, Games Asylum added: "Publishers – if you want your game to go straight to #1 no matter how rubbish it is, just delay it for 13 years and release it without letting anybody review it first. Case point: Duke Nukem Forever." So regardless of its quality it seems that absence has definitely made the heart grow fonder for Duke fans. Source: CVG, Games Asylum 
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| Juror who 'contacted defendant on Facebook' faces contempt charges Posted: 13 Jun 2011 12:09 PM PDT A female juror in a high profile drugs trial will appear in court this week, charged with contempt, after allegedly contacting the accused through Facebook. Joanne Fraill is said to have contacted defendant Jamie Stewart using the social networking site during the trial in Manchester last year, causing it to collapse. Ms Stewart had been acquitted as a result, but also faces charges of contempt of court on Tuesday. The trial was one of many connected to the same case, which are believed to have cost the UK taxpayer up to £6 million. Juror misconduct The case will be heard by Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, says The Guardian, and will coincide with the appeal of a convicted defendant who claims that the alleged juror misconduct means his conviction should also be thrown out. The charges are the second time that social networking sites have made big news in court this year following a landmark ruling allowing journalists to use Twitter in court. Source: Guardian 
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| HP planning to launch cloud music service? Posted: 13 Jun 2011 11:46 AM PDT The webOS-powered HP TouchPad might eventually get its own cloud music streaming service, following reports that Hewlett-Packard plans its own iCloud rival. US music industry bible Billboard is reporting that HP is in ongoing discussions with the major music labels, with a view to launching its own music locker. The service would enter into an increasingly populated market, with Amazon, Google, Sony and Apple already either releasing or announcing their own versions of a cloud-based streaming portal. Like Qriocity One major record label executive told Billboard that "they're debating doing something like Qriocity for a variety of media, which can be delivered on any HP device. We don't know how serious they are." Some sources in the article point out that HP has been down this road before, while others believe that HP doesn't really know what it wants its service to offer customers. "In their talks with the majors, they're trying to narrow down what their service will look like," said one person with knowledge of the matter. Any launch would almost certainly not be in time for the launch of the HP TouchPad tablet which is scheduled for July 1st. Source: Billboard 
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| Turkish police hold 32 Anonymous activists Posted: 13 Jun 2011 09:53 AM PDT Authorities in Turkey are detaining over 30 people on suspicion of involvement with web-hacktivists Anonymous after the group allegedly launched a DDoS attack on a telecoms regulator in the country last week. The move comes after DDoS attacks were made by Anonymous on two government websites in protest over internet censorship in Turkey. Raids took place in 12 provinces across the country today and resulted in detention of 32 people. We are not a group The mass holding of supposed Anonymous members is likely to spark a similar reaction from the group as the arrest of three men suspected of involvement in a similar attack in Spain last week. Anonymous then issued a statement to Spanish police claiming that dedicated denial of service attacks are an online act of peaceful protest. The statement continued, "You have not detained three participants of Anonymous. We have no members and we are not a group of any kind. You have, however, detained three civilians expressing themselves. "You are providing us with the fuel, but now you must expect the fire." The fire, it turned out, was a brief outage of the Spanish police's website during the weekend; what revenge will the collective taken on the Turkish authorities? 
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| Pioneer boosts AV range with new high-end receivers Posted: 13 Jun 2011 08:48 AM PDT Pioneer has spilled the beans on its latest high-end AV receivers, showing off four new devices that, it claims, recreate audio as close to studio source as possible. The SC-LX85, SC-LX75, VSX-LX55 and VSX-2021 don't come with the catchiest of names but they can all handle multiple HD audio and video formats. What's more, the top-end SC-LX85 and SC-LX75 come with Direct Energy HD amplifiers for super-efficient performance with minimal distortion and clever multi-room capabilities that can offer differing channel set-ups. First the A These models also offer Hi-bit 32 and hi-sampling audio processing to revive the original sound and again lessen distortion; they both offer a new DAC filter too. The SC-LX85, SC-LX75 and VSX-LX55 also come with Apple AiPlay compatibility, while all four come with Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad certification. Each is also DLNA Certified v1.5 and compatible with an optional Bluetooth adapter for wireless music streaming fun. And now for the V In terms of video performance, the receivers all offer 1080p 24-fps playback with upscaler to automatically improve standard definition footage to 1080p. Other features include advanced video adjust for smart adjustments when connecting to displays via HDMI and Stream Smoother to reduce compression noise for better quality images when streaming media online. The Pioneer VSX-LX55 and VSX-2021 UK release dates are set for July 2011, while it's a wait 'til September for the SC-LX85 and SC-LX75 When it comes to UK pricing, the VSX-2021 and VSX-LX55 will set you back £799.95 and £999.95 respectively, while the higher-spec SC-LX75 comes in at £1499.95 and the SC-LX85 at £1999.95. 
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| Samsung offers up more free 3D for Smart TVs Posted: 13 Jun 2011 08:16 AM PDT Samsung has confirmed more 3D titles that will be offered for free on its 3D video-on-demand service through Samsung Smart TVs. As you may expect, the titles are not exactly Hollywood blockbusters but will at least let you showcase your brand spanking new 3D television to your mates. The films are billed by Samsung as a "range of 35-45 minute action and family titles, which can be easily accessed through the 'Explore 3D' App on Samsung Smart TVs." A-list to a list The titles on offer are Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk, Wild Ocean, Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, Dinosaurs – Giants of Patagonia, Dinosaurs Alive, Ultimate G's: Zac's Flying Dream, Legends of Flight and The Ultimate Wave Tahiti. Guy Kinnell, Marketing Director for TV, Samsung UK said: "This year Samsung has been first to bring the excitement of 3D to the Smart TV platform in the UK. "By expanding our Explore 3D app service to include this enhanced range of 3D content, we are further demonstrating our commitment to providing consumers with new immersive 3D experiences that take advantage of our multi-award winning 3D Smart TV product range." So, not exactly Avatar, but at least it gives you a reason to don the specs until you can buy a few more 3D Blu-rays, sign up for Sky 3D or wait for Wimbledon to start in 3D on BBC HD. 
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| Rumour: HTC moving to slim, plasti-metal chassis Posted: 13 Jun 2011 07:50 AM PDT HTC's next smartphone behemoth could use plastic-and-metal moulding technology to offer a super-skinny casing. Rumours that the much-loved phone manufacturer has placed orders with Chenming Mold Industrial (CMI) have come by way of sometimes-correct Digitimes, which cites component maker insiders as its sources. It's a case of two becoming one at CMI where they've developed NanoMolding Technology (NMT) which creates mouldings made of combined metal and plastic, rather than cases which are made of both metal and plastic pieces, like that of the HTC Sensation. Pletal metstic Aside from providing a slinky slim casing, the combination of the metal and plastic would allow HTC to combat the issues that pure metal presents for the radio antenna – i.e. interference and dropped calls, something HTC is a bit familiar with. The plastic injection also allows for easier shaping of the new handsets, and would also leave HTC with a more durable phone than a pure-plastic casing. Although CMI refused to comment directly, it did tell Digitimes that the technology has "already been certified by several first-tier handset vendors and will start mass production in July." Could we see a new HTC Superphone land in September then? Perhaps, dare we suggest it, the Google Nexus 3? 
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| Cello unveils 3D television range Posted: 13 Jun 2011 06:50 AM PDT British TV maker Cello has launched a 3D TV range, offering up 42- and 47-inch models for £499 and £699. Although 3D has by no means won the war for our hearts and minds, it is nevertheless becoming increasingly important as people look to futureproof their next TV purchase. Cello's LCD offerings are being aimed at the more budget conscious end of the 3D market, offering passive 3D utilising an LG panel and four sets of glasses with each screen.
Unsure Brian Palmer, director of Cello, said: "Initially I was unsure about the future of 3D, but the quality of 3D vision now available and the number of new 3D films coming onto the market this year guarantees success for this new technology. "Sky now has one 3D channel and existing subscribers who already have Sky's full package can get it free of charge. "I'm sure many other 3D channels will also launch in the near future, making ownership of a 3D TV even more appealing." 
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| Facebook user figures fall in UK and US Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:52 AM PDT Facebook may be inching ever-closer to the 700 million user mark, but user numbers have begun falling in the UK and US. The US, in particular, experienced its first fall in monthly active users, losing almost six million in May this year. At the same time, the UK posted losses of over 100,000 active users in May, although overall Facebook users grew to 687 million during the month. This doesn't necessarily mean that people are actively deleting their profiles, however, rather that they simply aren't using their Facebook accounts. Other countries that were relatively early to the Facebook phenomenon are also seeing fewer Facebookers, places including Canada, Norway and Russia. Twitter likes this Although it's not a huge surprise to see growth slow as Facebook reaches saturation point in certain countries, overall growth also seems to have slowed down during both April and May, which could indicate a wider loss of interest in the social network. The company that collated the user data, Inside Facebook, concedes that bugs in its tools and seasonal changes (including better weather) can skew the numbers, so it's definitely not time to start predicting that Facebook will go the way of MySpace. But now that we've established exactly how successful we are in relation to our most popular classmates and with privacy concerns rumbling on, perhaps our lust to 'Like' is beginning to wane. 
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| Updated: Wii U: all the latest details Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:50 AM PDT As original Nintendo Wiis gathered dust in households across the UK, Nintendo confirmed would unveil a second-generation 'Wii 2' at this year's E3. And now the Wii U is out in the open and we've rounded up all the new details on the new console right here. The Wii 2 is called Wii U Nintendo is calling the successor to the popular Wii console the Nintendo Wii U. It has sold 86 million Wii consoles so far. Here is a video of T3's first impressions: Remember when you first heard the name Nintendo Wii? Many people laughed and said it would never catch on. It did. Nintendo is hoping that Wii U will capture people's imaginations in the same way. "You might remember how the Wii name began to make perfect sense once you started hearing it as Wii. It was clear how much fun we all had playing together," said Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime on the E3 stage earlier today. "But in thinking about a new Nintendo system we knew the prevailing thought would be this: yes, the game would probably be right for all of us, but could it also be a perfect fit just for you. "The answer to that question is an emphatic 'absolutely'. Today, welcome to the world of Wii U." Wii U is the Wii logo we all know well, with a small blue U just to the right of it. It looks (and sounds) a bit weird, but we may well get used to it in time. So here's the new console - read on for more details on it and the revolutionary new controller.
Wii U UK release date The Nintendo Wii U UK release date is pencilled in for April 2012. Wii U UK price Pricing is yet to be announced. But the fear is that, with the new controller, it may be a little too high. Wii U is a Full HD, 1080p console The new console will be fully HD compatible, unlike its predecessor. EA boss John Riccitiello says that Wii U is a "stunning breakthrough" that "speaks directly to EA Sports games" and boasts "brilliant HD graphics." "Imagine a shooter like Battlefield with jaw-dropping graphics and smooth animations from the Frostbite engine, brought to you on a Nintendo system with that brilliant controller… We can't wait to see EA games on this new system." Wii U has a touchscreen controller The controller for the Wii U is, as was rumoured a 6.2-inch touchscreen tablet that also features an accelerometer and gyroscope for motion control, dual analogue sticks, rumble feedback, a D-pad, a front-facing camera, triggers and shoulder buttons, start/select/home buttons and a microphone. Each Wii U console will come with a new controller and can also use up to four additional Wii Remote or Wii Remote Plus controllers. The system is also backward compatible, and can play all Wii games and use all Wii accessories. Can Nintendo disrupt the market - just as they did with the original Wii controller - yet again?
Wii U processor According to IBM, Nintendo's Wii U is powered by a custom 45nm multi-core Power processor with embedded DRAM. Says the company: "IBM's embedded dynamic random access memory will help deliver a thrilling new game experience to Nintendo fans. The new memory technology, a key element of the new Power microprocessor that IBM is building for the Nintendo Wii U console, can triple the amount of memory contained on a single chip, making for extreme game play." Wii U graphics Wii U's graphics carry on the ATI heritage of the Wii, with a custom AMD Radeon HD GPU reports Kotaku. Wii U specifications and connectivity It appears the original Wii's Gamecube controller compatibility will be binned. while there will be four USB ports under that hatch/at the rear and there will still be an SD card slot. There will also be some internal storage, though you'll be able to boost that by plugging in an external drive. And, as befits an HD console, there will be HDMI onboard, in addition to S-Video and component. Also expect 802.11n Wi-Fi. Wii U disc format We know Wii U will be backward compatible with all past Wii games, but we don't know if there will be any upscaling - or indeed whether the unit will boast a Blu-ray or DVD drive. However, a company exec has revealed that the system's proprietary disc format will hold up to 25GB of data, but it will not be compatible with Blu-ray. You can play games solely on the Wii U touchscreen controller Nintendo president Satoru Iwata agrees that the first Wii U demo video "may have answered some questions, but it probably raised several others, too". But the key concept is clear - Nintendo hopes that you will be able to transfer the game you are playing on a TV screen in your home to the local screen, should you wish to play alone in your bedroom or study - perhaps if someone else needs the TV. "Up until now, home console games had to occupy the TV screen in order to be played. But, the new controller for Wii U with 6.2-inch screen means you won't need to give up your gameplay when someone else comes in the room and wants to watch a TV programme."
Demos show that you can move your game from the TV to the screen in your hand almost immediately. Games can also make use of both screens - there's an ace video of this in action where a girl is using the controller as the tee in a golf game while using a standard Wiimote to actually swing - it's at 3m30s. Here's a pic of the controller in use for baseball:
So in single-player games the new controller can display information on its screen that does not appear on the TV, while the information and viewpoint can also change in the new controller based on the orientation of its gyroscope. In multiplayer games the player using the new controller can have a different experience than those looking at the TV. Wii U does video calling and more It also looks like you will be able to make video-calls on the Wii U control pad, using its front-facing camera. Plus, you will be able to share content such as your holiday pictures and home videos from your local controller to the main television with ease. Wii U is fully backward compatible with kit and games Wii U is fully backward compatible, which means that you can play all of your current Wii games on the system and use your Wii Fit or any other accessories you currently use with it. But Wii U's controller is not a standalone handheld console The controller needs to be tethered to the Wii U console to function - it isn't a PlayStation Vita competitor.
Wii U games will be plentiful "Wii U was created so that the widest variety of games can be supported," says Nintendo. "That means those aimed at experienced controllers that can use circle controllers using both their hands, plus those games that can be intuitively played without the need for any buttons." Games design guru Shigeru Miyamoto says of Nintendo's new home console: "More than anything I'm really looking forward to new styles of play... There are so many we're just trying to decide where to begin." Ninty announced new content based on its own franchises such as Mario (see below) and Zelda, but more interestingly, says our own Adam Hartley, "is that EA, Ubisoft, Sega and lots of other third party games developers were showing off new adult-themed, hardcore games that they are making for Nintendo's Wii U."
"Graphically, many of the games look on par with new AAA titles on PS3 or Xbox 360. "Hardcore favourites such as Tekken, Assassin's Creed, Batman Arkham City and Ghost Recon Online were also demonstrated. Clearly, Nintendo aims to push Wii U to the hardcore crowd as well as to the casual market it has so successfully won over with Wii. "EA boss John Riccitiello took to the Nintendo stage to tell the crowd that: 'Over the years I've made E3 appearances with several console partners, but never before with Nintendo.'" Want to look back? Here are all the rumours we rounded up before the big announcement. Considering PlayStation 4 rumours have little substance and Xbox 720 rumours are wispy at best, any revamped, upgraded, HD-friendly follow-up to the Wii would undoubtedly turn heads. And Wii sales finally show signs of decline, Nintendo needs a new console to maintain its momentum. Our colleagues at T3.com have rounded up the latest rumours in the Wii 2 video below: Enter 'Project Cafe': more than just a Wii HD If the Wii 2 rumours are to be believed, then Nintendo's Project Café is more than just a high-def Wii. Game Informer started the rumour mill turning, citing the existence of an HD-ready Wii from mysterious 'multiple sources'. French website 01net.com then chipped in with the Project Café codename and suggested core specs that could eclipse those of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Wii 2 specs could include a touchscreen display… The 01net.com website has form - it previously leaked the specs of Sony's NGP handheld before the official reveal. So it's tempting to believe that the Wii 2 could indeed be powered by a three-core IBM Power PC chip, feature an ATI R700 GPU for 1080p/3D visuals and use a unique gamepad with a 6.2-inch touchscreen, dual analogue sticks and a built-in camera. This machine would also be backward-compatible with the current Wii and its motion-sensing peripherals, enabling it to go head-to-head with Kinect and PlayStation Move. Such a specification would make the Wii 2 faster than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But you'll note that it's hardly cutting-edge tech we're talking about here. In contrast, the components are proven, reliable and reasonably cheap. If this is the specification Nintendo opts for, it won't take two years to turn a profit on each Wii 2 sold. One thing that is highly unlikely is 3D support, with Nintendo making it clear that it would resist the urge until glasses free technology was at a high enough standard for the television. Goodbye Wii, hello 'Stream'? There's a good chance that Nintendo's new console won't be called the Wii 2, Wii HD, Super Wii, 'Wii Wii' or any other variation of Wii. IGN has heard the name 'Stream', but it could be one of many names up for consideration. Moving on from the Wii brand would make sense if Nintendo is building a powerful machine to win back hard-core Western gamers. Rather than recycle Wii Sports Resort and Just Dance in 1080p Full HD, Nintendo has its eye on greater 3rd-party software support. EDGE claims that "Ubisoft, Activision and Electronic Arts have had development units of the new hardware for months." Of course, having AAA titles such as Mortal Kombat and LA Noire alongside a next-gen Mario Kart or Zelda on the Wii 2 isn't going to win Nintendo many converts. It will also need to revolutionise its online offering for the Wii 2 to be taken seriously as a credible gaming machine. Wii 2 release date With the Wii 2 set to be revealed at this year's E3, then it's possible that Nintendo could start rolling it out before Christmas. But given the complexity of a global console launch, early 2012 looks a more sensible bet. That would give Nintendo two years to rack up sales if Sony and Microsoft don't launch new consoles until 2014. "Nintendo is doing this one right," an anonymous source told Game Informer. "[It's] not a gimmick like the Wii." The statement is a little harsh on the Wii, which opened up video gaming to a whole new demographic. Nintendo won't want to throw that all away. 
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| Review: Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:15 AM PDT Sapphire has got its shrink-ray online again with this tiny AMD Fusion board, the Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350. AMD's long-awaited, and even longer talked-about, Fusion technology has finally seen the light of day with a few motherboard manufacturers offering boards built around it. Fusion is the world's first APU (Accelerated Processor Unit); a combination of a dual core processor, Northbridge controller and a DX11 supporting graphics processor all built into the same piece of silicon and is AMD's belated riposte to Intel's dual core version of the Atom. The compact nature of the technology has enabled the board producers to have another go at trying to persuade people that the tiny (17cm square) ITX format is a serious proposition, but unfortunately that's a road that the past 10 years has seen a number of companies disappear down. Long-time AMD partner Sapphire currently has two boards based on the Fusion technology, the Pure White Fusion E350 (IPC-E350M1W) and the subject of our review, the Pure Fusion Mini E350 (IPC-E350M1), the differences between the two are the type of memory supported. While both the MSI E350N-USB3.0 and Sapphire's Pure Fusion Mini E350 use AMD's Fusion technology, the MSI board uses standard 240-DIMM DDR3 memory modules rated up to 1333MHz Sapphire's board on the other hand uses SO-DIMM modules but only it supports up to 1066MHz modules, but regardless of which type of memory is used the APU architecture only supports single channel memory. CPU Rendering performanceCinebench R10 – (Seconds: quicker is better) Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 - 391 MSI E350N-USB3 - 410 Cinebench R11 Index - (Index score. Higher is better) Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 - 0.61 MSI E350N-USB3 - 0.62 Video encodingx264 v2.0 (Frames per second. Higher is better) Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 - 3.46 MSI E350N-USB3 - 3.78 x264 v3.0 (Frames per second. Higher is better) Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 - 3.1 MSI E350N-USB3 - 3.2
Integrated graphics performance Just Cause 2 (Average frames per second. Higher is better) Concrete Jungle map 1280 x720 2xAA Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 - 7.34 MSI E350N-USB3 - 5.87 EfficiencyPower Consumption (Watts. Lower is better) Metered at wall socket. Peak metered during run of Cinebench R11 Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 Idle - 28w / Peak - 37w MSI E350N-USB3 Idle - 29w / Peak - 42w When it comes to performance, well you might well take one look at the test results and say, "What performance?", but even these performance figures outshine the old EPIA boards' stuttering attempts at running benchmarks. But out-and-out performance isn't what this type of motherboard is about, it's more about be able to offer adequate performance - especially video playback - at low power requirements, in a small, tight space where the lack of heat production is of real importance, making them ideal for very small form factor HTPC's. As mentioned in the introduction, the difference between the two Sapphire boards is the type of DDR3 memory supported. The Pure White Fusion uses two standard 240-pin DIMM slots while the Pure Mini Fusion uses two SO-DIMM slots, the slots normally associated with notebooks. Using a pair of smaller memory slots has given Sapphire more elbow-room to work on the motherboard, which has allowed them to include a mini-PCI slot which can be used to house something like a Wi-Fi card in. Just as Zotac has done with its Intel based H67ITX board, only Sapphire hasn't included any bracketry to help with mounting the aerial(s). You might think that a motherboard this small would be light on features, but the Pure Mini Fusion can hold its own against many a full size board; five SATA 6Gb/s ports, two USB3.0 and three USB ports, VGA and a single link DVI outputs, HDMI, Bluetooth, eight channel audio and integrated Gigabit LAN. There's also a single PCI-E x16 slot for a discrete graphics card, but it only runs at x4 speed. We liked This time around, it appears that the ITX format has a lot going for it as AMD's Fusion technology has made it possible to combined adequate performance and power saving with a half-decent, usable feature set to make the format an interesting proposition for people wanting to build a very small media platform. We disliked It's a real shame that Sapphire didn't include a Wi-Fi card with the Pure Fusion Mini E350, especially as it went to the trouble of adding Bluetooth to the board. Even worse, there's no provision for mounting an aerial(s), should you have brought a third-party Wi-Fi card. Verdict Although its early days for AMD's latest technology, it works well and is ideal for very small form factors, something that Sapphire has proved quite nicely with the Pure Fusion Mini E350. 
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| Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:14 AM PDT Questions, questions, questions. That's our first impressions of the AVerMedia AVerTV Vola HD. It's a budget USB TV tuner that makes us ask things like this: TV on a PC? Too many random capital letters? Have we fallen through some sort of time vortex to the ancient past? All the cool kids are watching their YouTubes nowadays, aren't they? What's that you say - ruffs should be starched this season? Apparently, though, despite the best efforts of iTunes, iPlayer, Vimeo, YouTube and of course, BitTorrent, a lot of you can't quite give up broadcast TV and all its linear programming loveliness. Who can blame you? There's a certain safety knowing that Doctor Who will be shown on Saturday at tea time, and Match of the Day will be repeated at... some time in the evening. So, the AVerTV Volar HD makes life as easy for you as possible, with its tiny, memory stick size, miniature aerial and low, low price. Only one question remains, then: will it both offer and meet with a positive reception? The best, and most interesting, thing about the AVerTV Vado isn't the USB tuner at all. It's the little high-gain antenna that's packed with it. This cute little twin-set has a flat plastic signal booster that can stick on to any smooth surface thanks to the fact it has a sucker for a base. Two telescopic aerials can then be pulled out of the sides and rotated around to find the best signal. It's proper old-school gadgetry at its finest - if best used while sitting near a window. The cable is a little short for reliving childhood memories of making Dad wander around the room and stand holding an antenna next to the ceiling, but the memories are there, all the same. Somewhat less exciting is the supplied tuner software, which is functional, if not particularly attractive or intuitive. It can pick up digital radio as well as Freeview and Freeview HD channels, although annoyingly there isn't a signal strength meter to guide you into positioning the aerial before you try to autotune it in. All of the essential features are there though, including timeshifting, scheduled recording and the ability to wake up your PC from sleep to start a recording. There's none of the more adventurous stuff such as series linking, though. Still, it is much quicker at finding channels than Windows Media Center. If you use a PC to regularly watch TV on, you'll be better off with an internal card that boasts a pair of tuners for recording and viewing two separate channels simultaneously. If you're out and about a lot with a laptop and want something to watch on the go, the AVerTV Volar HD is a good way to get HD TV at a reasonable price. We liked The quirky antenna is a quaint throwback to days of yore, and the picture quality on the USB tuner is good for the price. It's simple and straightforward - and Freeview HD for £20 seems like a bargain to us. We disliked The tuner software is a bit dated and unfriendly, and the signal from that cute aerial isn't actually that good once you move indoors. There's also only one tuner, so you can't watch and record separate channels. Verdict TV tuners are very much a commodity these days, but if we had to pick one the AVerTV Volar HD would be high on the list. 
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| Buying Guide: What's the best Core i7 laptop? Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:10 AM PDT Intel's Core i3 and Core i5 processors provide ample power for the price. But when it comes to getting the most power for your money, nothing comes close to Intel's high-performance Core i7 processors, especially in the latest Sandy Bridge versions. The Core i7 has finally blurred the lines between laptop and desktop PCs and, in many cases, the prices are highly affordable. To help you choose the right machine for your needs, we've brought together four of the best Core i7-powered laptops, at prices to suit all budgets. Offering staggering performance and features ideal for the whole family, you won't fi nd a more powerful range of consumer laptops. 1. MSI CX640-018UK - £512
The combination of excellent performance, long battery life, vibrant screen and solid build in the MSI CX640-018UK makes this a fantastic all-round laptop that will suit a variety of tastes and users. Most importantly, it will handle anything you care to throw at it. That's thanks to its Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7-2410M and a potent Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics card, which mean that it handles multimedia and gaming just brilliantly. There's also a power-saving mode, meaning that it's got excellent battery life to boot. Read the full MSI CX640-018UK review 2. Lenovo W520 - £1,501
The Lenovo W520 is fairly firmly a business laptop, but it's one that offers a lot of great features. The 1080p screen offers plenty of space to work in, especially for design professionals – something that's complemented by the Nvidia Quadro 1000M GPU. An Intel Core i7-2620M produces enough processing grunt to safely get you through all but the most demanding applications. With all this power, battery life isn't as good as many laptops, but when you're working at a desk, this is a potent machine. Read the full Lenovo W520 review 3. Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch - £1,647
Apple wasted no time getting on the Sandy Bridge bandwagon, offering several configurations of its MacBook Pros, including Core i7 versions. The quad-core CPU is capable of just eating through video tasks, while an increase in graphics capabilities with an AMD Radeon 6750M means it can also deal with gaming comfortably. The MacBook Pro aluminium unibody design is as great as ever, while the addition of the super-fast Thunderbolt connector is also a major plus for pros. Read the full Apple MacBook Pro 15" review 4. Kobalt Computers G150 - £1,704
What a beast. Intel and Nvidia are two heavyweights of the PC industry, and the Kobalt G150 laptop includes some of the two companies' most powerful components. A Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU is paired with a Nvidia GTX 485M, offering simply astonishing gaming performance for a laptop (as well being fast everywhere else. It doesn't skimp on other features either, offering 6GB of RAM and a Blu-ray drive. Unsurprisingly, it's not super light and doesn't get a huge amount of battery life, but those aren't the point of a machine like this. It's all about speed, and this is fast. Read the full Kobalt Computing G150 review Best Intel Core i7 laptop: Verdict There's simply an astonishing amount of power on offer from these laptops, and they're all capable of cutting through tough tasks without breaking a sweat. The MSI CX640-018UK offers that power at a bargain price – it really is amazing what just over £512 can get you, so it gets our vote as the value buy, hands down. But it's not the winner. The MacBook Pro gets an honourable mention for packing big power into a slim and attractive design, and if you're a Mac fan it will inevitably be your choice anyway. But it's still not the winner. It has to be the Kobalt G150 that's our winner here. We wanted power from Intel's new chips, and we got it, packed in with a killer graphics card, too. It's a laptop that will blow you away, and though it certainly isn't cheap, we don't think you'd be too worried about buyer's remorse once you were using it. 
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| Review: AC Ryan PlayOn! HD2 Mini Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:08 AM PDT A trimmed-down version of the AC Ryan PlayOn! HD2 networked media player, the HD2 Mini is almost identical in terms of specs with one obvious exception: there's no internal hard drive. The HD2 Mini is a pure streaming device, which finds videos and music from local computers and NAS boxes via UPnP, network shares or from a selection of internet sources, and puts them on your TV. That means it's cheaper than the full PlayOn! HD2 and also smaller. Smaller than, say, an Xbox controller. And its glossy black lines are sleek and uninterrupted, save for a glowing logo on the front and a selection of connectors round the back. These include ethernet and HDMI, as well as surround RCA audio jacks, optical SPDIF and USB ports for attaching portable hard drives full of films or an optional Wi-Fi adaptor. It's silent, and the picture quality is good. If you've got a lot of videos on a networked drive, what's not to like? Just like the PlayOn! HD2, our biggest complaint with the HD2 Mini is the lack of polish that's gone into the interface. It's even worse here, though, since the main menu has lots of redundant options carried over from its bigger brother. Selecting 'Video', for example, tells it to search a hard drive that isn't there. So it does nothing. Getting to a film held on a UPnP share, meanwhile, is just as tedious as on the HD2. There are no less than six levels of menu to cut through - each of which takes a few seconds to load - before you can get to the file you want to play. What the HD2 Mini should be about is navigational polish and speed. But boot times from standby are just as slow. The litmus test for a separate media-streaming device must be that it's quicker and simpler than firing up a laptop and plugging that into the HDMI input of your TV. The HD2 Mini isn't and that's a problem. We'd also like to see a UPnP server built into both the HD2 and HD2 Mini for when USB drives full of files are attached. If all this sounds negative, it's only because the HD2 Mini is so likeable in almost every other way. It's a charming size, can stream almost every codec known to man and the picture quality is very good, especially over Ethernet. But it's up against a lot of competition for space by your TV, and there's definitely room for improvement. We liked The PlayOn! HD2 Mini is tiny, silent and a cinch to set up. As well as HDMI out and gigabit Ethernet, there's a full suite of analogue and digital audio connectors, USB ports and a Wi-Fi option, too. Most importantly, it finds files on the network easily and playback quality is great. We disliked It's slow to start up and the selection of internet sources is very limited, but the main problem is that the interface just isn't as well-thought-through as it should be. Redundant options and a long-winded process to get to a shared drive let down an otherwise peerless player. Verdict Almost excellent, but the simplicity of design is held back by a clunky menu system. 
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| Jellyfish protein leads to world's first biological laser Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:01 AM PDT Scientists have unveiled the world's first 'living laser', having coaxed an organic cell into emitting fluorescent light. It was the glowing jellyfish that illuminated the light bulb above the researchers' heads, and the lasing cell was engineered using the light-emitting protein found in the sea creature. It then requires a spot of light manipulation; the cell is immersed in a weak blue light, leaving the scientists with a "bright, directional and narrowband laser emission" as researchers Malte C Gather and Seok Hyun Yun so passionately put it. Lasing action What's more, the cell is able to go on living even after prolonged lasing action. Until now, as the researchers point out, all lasers have used artificial materials including doped crystals, semi-conductors, synthetic dyes and purified gases. While the biological beam could have implications for medical laser use, we'd like to suggest a commercial use for such research: the invention of Cyclops-style laser eyes. We'd buy them. 
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| In Depth: What's inside your iPad? Tablet tech explained Posted: 13 Jun 2011 04:46 AM PDT What makes one tablet a winner and another a bucket of bolts? Let's start with a story. Once upon a time, there was a little English company called Acorn Computers. Through the early 1980s, it had quite a bit of success with an 8-bit home computer named the BBC Micro. You may remember it. For a replacement, Acorn decided that none of the then-available processors - such as the Motorola 68000 and Intel 80286 - were suitable. So it decided to make its own, as you do. The year was 1985 and Acorn developed a 25,000 transistor RISC processor called the ARM v1. It used it to power the now defunct Archimedes computer, and that same ARM core - with a few enhancements - is what now powers more than 75 per cent of all embedded 32-bit devices made in the 21st century, 90 per cent of all mobiles in the last five years, and the majority of tablets, including the iPad. This amazing success is partly to do with how ARM Holdings sells the processors, in that it doesn't. It licenses the design IP so anyone out there can create their own ARM-powered processor or hybrid system. So the A4 processor in the iPad is ARM powered, is the same as the Galaxy Tab, sits at the heart of Nvidia Tegra and also inside almost all smartphones. The original ARM v1 had no pipelines, no cache and no MMU. The latest v7 design is used in a bewildering array of different processors and consumer devices, uses the Cortex-A line and is the first multi-core capable design from ARM. There are two main variants you'll want to keep an eye out for. The Cortex-A8 is a single-core implementation that uses a 13-stage pipeline, up to 32KB L1 cache and 1MB L2 cache, an MMU and an optional FPU, and has a maximum clock speed of 1GHz. You'll find it in the original iPad A4 chip and the HTC Desire.
The more recent and better Cortex-A9 is a quad-core capable variant with a 13-stage out-of-order pipeline, up to 64KB L1 cache and 8MB L2 cache, an MMU, an optional FPU and a maximum clock speed of 2GHz. A dual-core version of this is inside the iPad 2 A5 chip and the Motorola Xoom. A cheaper version is the Cortex-A5, which has no L2 cache and a maximum speed of 1GHz or 600MHz for the low-power variant. For 2012, ARM has the Cortex-A15 lined up. It promises at least a 40 per cent leap in speed per clock over current designs. The other players Of course, ARM isn't the only name in the game; both Intel and AMD are hammering their own stakes into the market. The AMD Fusion ship has already set sail in the Acer Iconia W500 tablet, which uses the AMD Fusion C-50 system-on-a-chip (SoC) processor. Running at 1GHz with two x86 cores and a 512KB L2 cache, it still draws 9W of power, which might be good for a Windows laptop but is nowhere near the sub-1W that ARM devices can achieve. Hence the shorter, four-hour battery life while playing video, versus 10 hours on an iPad. But its main design goal is to drive Windows systems - it sports full DirectX 11 graphics, though lacks the CPU and GPU grunt to run anything recent of note. On the Intel side, tablets fall into two groups: full Sandy Bridge models and Atom-powered units. The Asus Eee Slate EP121 is a perfect example of a 'fully featured' Core i5 Windows tablet. It costs £999 and has a two-hour battery life. But, then, tablets like this aren't supposed to compete with consumer ones. They're business tools for business solutions, such as medical imaging in a networked environment. Going atomic The big hope for Intel is its Atom range, which we're all familiar with thanks to the lock-down netbook design. Unlike the AMD Fusion and Sandy Bridge Core, architects for the Intel Atom took out a heap of features to make it less power hungry, primarily giving it an in-order pipeline, a limited 512KB L2 cache, a single-channel memory controller and no SSE4, among other things. Even though the original Atom N2x0 only drew 2.5W, it needed an additional system chipset that consumed 9.3W, totalling 11.8W. It was the Pineview SoC models - which integrated graphics into the Atom N450 single-core and N550 dual-core models, dropping total power to 5.5W and 8.5W - that made these more acceptable, boosting netbook battery life towards the eight-hour level.
The Atom N550 is found in the new Dell Inspiron Duo Sparta convertible netbook/tablet but, again, battery life struggles to make the four-hour mark. However, for Intel the game won't really start until the first Atoms using the 32nm production process launch by the end of 2011. Its Medfield variant will initially pop up in phones, but a 32nm Atom will arrive in tablets and offer full 1080p HD playback. Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC One familiar name that's starting to win friends in tablets is Nvidia, with its Tegra 2 SoC. It's an ideal example of what many other brands do in the mobile space: take the ARM core and build a system around it. That's how the A4 and A5 processors work. The Tegra 2 is a 1GHz dual-core SoC built around the ARM Cortex-A9 core, using a unified 1MB of L2 cache and separate 32KB instruction and 32KB data caches for both cores. Interestingly, alongside these sits a separate ARMv7 processor. This is a far simpler model that can deliver ultra-low power requirements, primarily when playing audio and video, helping extend battery life by shutting down the larger Cortex-A9 cores. Talking of which, Tegra 2 boasts both a full 1080p hardware decoder and encoder. The former is designed to handle both local and streamed content, and is optimised for Flash video encoded with h.264 but also VC-1 and MPEG-4 video. Power consumption while playing 1080p video is less than 400mW. The encode engine is designed to handle 1080p video at 30fps from an integrated camera, and both units can work in unison to deliver HD video conferencing. Alongside the video is a dedicated audio processor able to handle MP3 playback using less than 30mW of power. An image signal processor is designed to take the raw output from any integrated cameras up to 12MP in resolution and 30fps, applying real-time image enhancement such as white balance and noise reduction. The output can then be saved as an image, or as a stream ready for compressing and broadcasting. There's also a host of additional I/O requirements that Nvidia squeezes onto the silicon to handle security protocols and encryption, USB, HDMI, SPI touch controller, memory, NAND flash storage, PCIe and interfaces for radio. Many other models, such as the Texas Instruments OMAP3xxx series, Qualcomm Snapdragon and Samsung Hummingbird, provide similar abilities. The one missing element is graphics. Mobile graphics are no different to desktop ones. It's just that, instead of a 200W, power-sucking card, you need a sub-1W solution that fits on a SoC. Returning to the Nvidia Tegra 2, it uses what's called the ultra-low power (ULP) GeForce GPU. Think DirectX 9 and a card with four pixel shaders and four vertex shader cores. It's capable of 5x Coverage Sample Anti-aliasing (CSAA) and 16x anisotropic filtering. Running at 300MHz and with each core executing two FLOPS per clock, that's a peak output of 4.8GFLOPS. But because these aren't unified shaders, it would take careful optimisation to get the best out of them. Remember PowerVR? That's the de facto standard in the mobile world. Its tiled-based deferred rendering in a power-limited environment has delivered better performance per watt than Z-buffer alternatives.
The current range in almost all SoC solutions is the PowerVR SGX5xx series. Usually running at 200MHz, all the models use a Universal Scalable Shader Engine (USSE). It's able to perform geometry, pixel and GP-GPU operations. Each pipeline is highly flexible and able to complete two FLOPS per clock, with the latest generation of USSE2 cores issuing twice as many instructions, increasing that to four FLOPS per clock. The PowerVR SGX535 in the Apple A4 and Intel Atom has a pair of USSEs able to run two FLOPS at 200MHz for a maximum 1.6GFLOPS. The Galaxy S has a PowerVR SGX540, offering four USSEs for a maximum 3.2GFLOPS. That's no problem for the Nvidia Tegra 2, until you hit the latest generation of multi-core PowerVR SGX54x models. The iPad 2 makes use of a dual-core SGX543MP2 with a total of eight USSE2 units, each capable of four FLOPS for an impressive 12.8GFLOPS. The PS Vita will have a quad version of this running at 543MHz, with the technology scaling up to 16 cores. Nvidia has the Tegra 2 running Quake 97 per cent faster than the Galaxy S, but it should do - the Galaxy S is a 1GHz single-core ARM Cortex-A8 using the 3.2GFLOPs PowerVR SGX540. A Tegra 2 running a single core runs 62 per cent slower, never mind if it also has a third less graphical power. Against the iPad 2, the Tegra 2-powered Motorola Xoom performs at about a third of the speed. At best, it gives two thirds of the performance. But direct comparison is tricky due to resolution and OS differences. Tablet games Specific 3D performance hasn't been something tablets have been sold on. Apple gave a nod to it when the iPad 2 was launched, claiming nine-times the graphical performance over the iPad, but Nvidia is trying to drive this home in a real sense. We might finally be seeing an end to the 'Angry Bird period' of mobile gaming.
The company has its Tegra Zone app, which helps promote Tegra-optimised games such as Samurai II: Vengeance THD, Dungeon Defenders and Monster Madness. But beyond this, the tablet gaming scene remains embryonic, with a heavy mix of indie games and a few AAA titles. Oddly enough, DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 hardware support is here - largely because it's a pre-requisite for Windows Phone 7 devices. It's already available on some PowerVR models, such as the SGX535 and SGX545, but all current mobile games are developed for OpenGL ES 2.0, which is supported by Android and Apple iOS. A key element in game production is a mature development engine. If you want exciting 3D games then you want developers to have access to the best tools. The good news is that there's certainly not a shortage of free or big-name kit out there. Due to its popularity, Apple iOS has gained the most attention, but Android is certainly catching up, with development tools supporting both. Cocos2D is a free 2D aid that's spawned a load of games. iTorque is a well-known and long-running environment, is low-cost and offers 2D and 3D kits. While you may have come across Unity for Flash games, it also provides relatively low-cost 3D development tools. If you're hoping for big-name support, Epic already has the Unreal Engine 3 on Apple iOS. You can try it out with Epic Citadel from the App Store.
While id Software beavers away with RAGE, it's also been developing a mobile id Tech 5 Apple iOS engine that spawned the RAGE HD game. John Carmack, technical director at id, has publicly commented that it plans to create an Android version as well. Tablet builds But it's not all about what's inside a tablet. We should step back and take some time admiring the tantalisingly slim exteriors - all the tablets on the market have a slimline build. There's no doubt that the iPad 2 is the most perfectly engineered, but the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is close. The second thing the iPad and Transformer get spot on is the screen. The former has a less than stellar 1,024 x 768 resolution - good enough, but you can tell that alternatives such as the Galaxy Tab and Asus Transformer, both 1,280 x 800, are sharper and perfect for HD content. Responsiveness is also vital. All tablets should be capacitive, which means the screen is coated with a conductive material, rather than relying on resistive screens that use pressure to function. Battery technologies are key too. Li-Ion batteries are relatively expensive, but even they're cheaper than the Li-Polymer alternatives found in the iPad and Asus Transformer. Battery capacity is usually measured in milliamp hours (mAh), but companies have started using a watts per hour (Wh) measure, which is the capacity times the operating voltage. The iPad has a 25Wh battery, the Asus a 24Wh one and the Acer W500 a 36Wh unit. Obviously, the amount of power offered by the battery is only part of the story. Despite its larger battery, the Acer W500 only manages half the runtime of the other two. Tablet operating systems Considering that the majority of tablets sold seem to be running very similar hardware, the OS you choose is a large differential between devices. At the start of 2011, the choice was limited: Apple iOS, Android 2.x or Windows 7, where iOS easily won because it was designed from the ground up to be a touch-controlled tablet OS. Android 2.x almost worked, but it was engineered for small-screened phones, and doesn't support the app store on larger tablet screens. Samsung and Dell did good work masking this with the Galaxy and Streak, but the host of knock-off Android devices suffered massively. Of course, Windows 7 supports multi-touch, but it's not designed to be its primary input method, so all tablets struggle in one way or another. The big win for Windows models is that you can run all of your favourite Windows software. Unfortunately, this tends not to be touch-orientated, which undermines the proposition somewhat.
New for 2011, there's Android 3.0, which is specifically designed for tablets and does an excellent job of catching up with iOS from a feature and functionality perspective. If you're a little sick of Apple's controlling nature and dependence on iTunes, it's going to make an excellent alternative. BlackBerry will also be entering the market with its all-new PlayBook tablet and Tablet OS. Though it will initially lack the number of apps the other platforms have, the company should create a compelling device. The tablet world is still very much in flux, but is maturing rapidly. From our perspective, Apple iOS devices are beautiful but are also locked into an Apple/iTunes ecosystem, which we find both distasteful and limiting. Android tablets offer far more choice and variety, even if that includes cheap and nasty options. The BlackBerry PlayBook is an unknown quantity so far, as dedicated Windows 8 tablets will be come 2012. But with prices going as low as £199, tablets certainly can be fun things to play with. 
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| Imax man: 3D alone won't fill cinema seats Posted: 13 Jun 2011 04:36 AM PDT Imax CEO Rich Gelfond has warned that the ubiquity of 3D means that the feature alone has stopped getting people into the cinemas. With the stock market taking an increasingly dim view of 3D, Gelfond told Deadline that, as you would expect, 3D movies need to be good movies first if they are to prove a hit. "When 3D was first introduced the public got really excited," says Imax CEO Rich Gelfond. Movie-by-movie basis "But over time it's going to be on a movie-by-movie basis. In some cases it will work. And in others it won't." It's not exactly a blinding revelation - and it's a viewpoint that has been put forward before - but it's increasingly important for movie makers to understand that bolting on 3D will not necessarily boost viewing figures. With the last Harry potter film – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II - and Transformers: Dark of the Moon coming soon, the world will be watching the 3D box office takings. This follows the reaction to RealD's CEO making light of the poor 3D performance of Kung Fu Panda 2 and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. 
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| Updated: Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro UK release date pushed to July Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:48 AM PDT Sony Ericsson has opened pre-order on its physical-QWERTY-toting Android handset, the Xperia Pro, revealing its UK price as £349.99. Perhaps you're having trouble picturing the Xperia Pro, in which case simply cast your mind back to February; it's Mobile World Congress, Sony Ericsson is officially unveiling its PlayStation Phone after months of leaks but look beyond, just there – behind the Xperia Play and to the left of the Xperia Neo – yep, that handset there. That's the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro. It may have been months since its official unveiling, but the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro is on its way at last - but it's still a bit of a wait, with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro release date now having been pushed to "late July". Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much The UK price of £349.99 puts the SIM-free Xperia Pro on a par with the likes of the Motorola Defy, Desire Z and older handsets like the Nokia N8 and Samsung Galaxy S. It's a pretty good price for an Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) handset with a 3.7-inch touchscreen, 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and the Sony Bravia Graphics Engine. There's no word from the networks yet about possible subsidised contract deals, although we'd guess they'll come in at around the £25 - £30 per month mark. 
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| Video: Video hands on: Panasonic GF3 Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:41 AM PDT TechRadar has spent a little time with the next small thing in the camera world – and now you can see what the experts at PhotoRadar thought of the Panasonic GF3 with our video hands on review. As the Hands on: Panasonic GF3 review points out, this is the company's smallest interchangeable lens camera, utilising the already-popular micro Four Thirds system. "On the face of it, the Panasonic GF3 appears to be an ideal alternative to a compact camera," says head of testing Angela Nicholson. "It offers good image quality, an extensive range of controls and simple, yet sophisticated, handling. So, check out TechRadar and PhotoRadar's video hands on for all the inside information about the latest Panasonic offering. 
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| Video: Video hands on: Panasonic GF3 Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:41 AM PDT TechRadar has spent a little time with the next small thing in the camera world – and now you can see what the experts at PhotoRadar thought of the Panasonic GF3 with our video hands on review. As the Hands on: Panasonic GF3 review points out, this is the company's smallest interchangeable lens camera, utilising the already-popular micro Four Thirds system. "On the face of it, the Panasonic GF3 appears to be an ideal alternative to a compact camera," says head of testing Angela Nicholson. "It offers good image quality, an extensive range of controls and simple, yet sophisticated, handling. So, check out TechRadar and PhotoRadar's video hands on for all the inside information about the latest Panasonic offering. 
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| Updated: Orange Barcelona heads to UK with Android 2.2 Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:28 AM PDT Orange is set to unleash another own-branded Android handset in the form of the Orange Barcelona. Update: We've heard back from Orange, which reveals that the manufacturer behind the Barcelona is Huawei, rather than ZTE which made the San Francisco. The Orange Barcelona UK price has also been set: it'll set you back £119.99 on pay as you go (plus a £20 top-up, effectively making the price £139.99), or you can nab it for free on 24-month contracts of £15 per month or more. Following the great success of the 2.1-toting Orange San Fransisco, the Barcelona is taking a step up in the world, launching with Android 2.2 (Froyo). Unlike the San Francisco, it comes with a full physical QWERTY keyboard and a 2.6-inch TFT touchscreen; like a budget BlackBerry Bold 9900. Like a jewel in the sun Also on board are HD voice, a 3.2MP camera, and video calling, presumably via a front-mounted camera but we can't see one on Orange's mock ups at first glance. The Barcelona will also be rocking 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as offering seven hours of talktime from a single charge. Not much news on the Orange Barcelona UK release date front; all we can tell you is that it's coming to pay monthly and pay as you go 'soon', as the Orange shop site says. Stay tuned for more details on UK pricing too; we'd expect it to be around the same level as the low-cost ZTE-made San Francisco, but there are no guarantees until we hear back from the tangy network itself. 
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| Gates: Voice recognition is the next big thing Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:19 AM PDT Bill Gates has once again insisted that the next big thing is speech and voice recognition. The Microsoft founder is currently touring to highlight his charitable foundation, The Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation. Since stepping away from day-to-day control of Microsoft, Gates has dedicated much of his life (and a good proportion of his money) to battling against malaria in Africa, enhancing healthcare and the reduction of extreme poverty. But Gates has not entirely given up on trying to change the world's technology and he is currently pushing the message that speech and voice recognition is a key area. Kinect the dots "The next big thing is definitely speech and voice recognition," Gates told the Daily Mail. "You'll be able to touch [a white] board or speak to it and get your message to colleagues around the world. Screens are cheap." Of course, one of Microsoft's key new products (and an instant hit) is the Kinect for Xbox 360, which includes the capacity to recognise speech. Gates also reiterated that he would not be returning to the helm at Microsoft, a rumour that has persisted of late. "My full-time work for the rest of my life is this foundation," he added. "I'm part-time involved [in Microsoft]. But this is my job now." 
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