Kohjinsha 10.1 Dual Screen Netbook with Neo MV-40

This unique machine looked cool enough. The hinge mechanism is much smoother and slicker than expected. The screens slide in a method similar to the keyboard slides out of a mobile phone.

The specs of the machine with an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 CPU running at 1.6GHz, a maximum of 4GB of RAM, 160GB of storage and the little netbook runs Windows 7. Expected to debut in 2010 at a price said to be under 100,000 yen.

Windows 7 Launch!

There is a lot to be excited about with this new operating system and AMD technology has been designed specifically to help PC users benefit from the visual experience and features that it brings.


The Windows 7 release is important to AMD for a few reasons:

OEM systems powered by AMD VISION Technology will ship with Windows 7, so on October 22 consumers can walk into retail stores and purchase a new PC with VISION Technology from AMD.

With Windows 7 comes DirectX 11, a key feature supported by award winning ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series graphics products. DirectX 11 will bring new levels of performance, realism and computing power to the PC.

For business customers, Windows 7 has a lot going for it including a new feature called Windows XP Mode that leverages the AMD-V virtualization technology in our CPUs to run older Windows XP software applications in a virtual copy of Windows XP on top of Windows 7.

Athlon II X3 "Rana" Introduced

AMD today announced several new AMD Athlon™ II processors that offer outstanding performance and low power consumption, while enabling sleek desktop PC designs and attractive price points. In addition to the standard power processors, the full AMD Athlon II processor family now delivers high-performance, low-power dual-, triple- and quad-core processors to meet a range of computing needs.

The highlight today is the new triple-core 45 nm CPUs are priced starting at $76! The Athlon II X3 435 is a triple core Athlon II processor clocked at 2.9GHz. As with all the Athlon II processors there is no L3 cache, it's built using a 45nm process, features 64K of L1 cache per core and 512KB of L2 cache. It's derivative of the Phenom II architecture but isn't built using die harvesting from Phenom II CPUs.

News & Reviews:
AMD Press Release
Tech Report
X-bit Labs
AMDZone

Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 "Juniper" Jump In

The technology built into the Radeon HD 5870 is propagating to a second GPU in record time. AMD has just introduced a pair of graphics cards based on a new mid-range graphics processor code-named Juniper. Official name is the Radeon HD 5700 series.

Juniper turns out to be quite similar to the RV770 GPU that powers the prior-gen high-end Radeon HD 4800 series. Both Juniper and RV770 have 800 SPs, 10 texture units, four render back-ends, and a single rasterizer. But Juniper is a smaller chip intended for less expensive graphics cards, so it has only two 64-bit memory controllers or an aggregate 128-bit memory interface. Both Cypress and RV770 have 256-bit memory interfaces. Still, the use of higher-clocked GDDR5 memory in the Radeon HD 5700 series will at least help bridge the deficit versus the RV770.

Juniper varies from the RV770 in many other respects. The chip's hardware supports many capabilities exposed in new software APIs like DirectX 11, DirectCompute, and OpenCL 1.0. Don't forget it's manufactured by 40nm fabrication process.


Radeon HD 5770 comes with 10 SIMD engines, cranks away at 850MHz in the 5770, paired with a gig of memory clocked at 1.2GHz. That memory clock translates into a 4.8 GT/s data rate, since this is GDDR5 memory. Happily, Juniper has inherited Cypress's ability to conserve power at idle by dropping its GDDR5 memory into a low-power state. As a result, AMD rates the 5770's idle power at only 18W. Even under load, the 5770 is relatively tame, with a 108W max power rating.

Radeon HD 5750, the 5770's little brother has had one of its SIMD cores clipped, along with the corresponding texture unit. Clock speeds are de-tuned, too, with the GPU at 700MHz and memory at 1150MHz. Thanks to the changes, the 5750 tops out at 86W of power draw and is rated for just 16W at idle.

Another limitation of the 5700 series will be the number of cards supported in CrossFire multi-GPU configurations. Although the cards have dual CrossFire connectors up top, AMD plans to limit them to dual-GPU configs only. Going beyond that will mean moving up to the 5800 series.

The initial suggested e-tail price for the Radeon HD 5770 is $159. The Radeon HD 4870 1GB can be had right now for a prevailing price of about $150 at online retailers. That decision puts the Radeon HD 5770 in more or less direct competition with the GeForce GTX 260, too. Prevailing prices online for the GTX 260 are about $165.

Meanwhile, the 1GB variant of the 5750 will list for $129, where it will have to contend with the Radeon HD 4850 1GB (~$120 prevailing price) and the GeForce GTS 250 1GB (~$140, with some rebates available). Over time, Radeon board makers should begin shipping a 512MB version of the 5750, as well, for around $109.

Game Developers Share Their Thoughts on DirectX 11:


Check out this YouTube video from DiRT 2 showing some of the features that Codemasters incorporated from DirectX 11, creating an incredibly realistic gaming experience:



In this video showcase some of the amazing game-enhancing features that DirectX 11 will bring to the PC version of DiRT 2. The DirectX 11 effects featured in this video are Cloth Tessellation, Hardware Instanced Tessellated Crowd, Tessellated Water with Dynamic Displacement Mapping, Enhanced Lighting and Post Processing. Together these effects make DiRT 2 for Games for Windows Live the most intense, visceral racing game you will have experienced.

More readings here:
Tech Report
AMDZone Review on Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 & 5750
AnandTech
PC Perspective

Intel's cheat on 3DMark Vantage scores

Futuremark's popular 3DMark benchmark has been the target of several questionable optimizations over the years. Given that history, it's not surprising that the company has strict guidelines for the graphics drivers it approves for use with 3DMark Vantage. These guidelines, which can be viewed here (PDF), explicitly forbid optimizations that specifically target the 3DMark Vantage executable. Here's an excerpt:

With the exception of configuring the correct rendering mode on multi-GPU systems, it is prohibited for the driver to detect the launch of 3DMark Vantage executable and to alter, replace or override any quality parameters or parts of the benchmark workload based on the detection. Optimizations in the driver that utilize empirical data of 3DMark Vantage workloads are prohibited.

In this case, Intel is not playing fair. Recently, AMD has notified Futuremark that Intel's 15.15.4.1872 Graphics Media Accelerator drivers for Windows 7 incorporate performance optimizations that specifically target the benchmark.

Tech Report decided to investigate. They tested 3DMark Vantage 1.0.1 with these drivers on a G41 Express-based Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2H motherboard running the Windows 7 x64 release-to-manufacturing build, a Core 2 Duo E6300, 4GB of DDR2-800 memory, and a Raptor WD1500ADFD hard drive. They first ran the benchmark normally. Then, they renamed the 3DMark executable from "3DMarkVantage.exe" to "3DMarkVintage.exe". And—SURPRISE!—there was a substantial performance difference between the two.


System's overall score climbs by 37% when the graphics driver knows it's running Vantage. Meanwhile, the GPU score jumps 46% thanks to Intel's apparent Vantage optimization. At the same time, the CPU score falls by nearly 10%.


In the GPU tests, the system's CPU utilization is much higher with the default executable than with the "3DMarkVintage" executable. Intel appears to be offloading some of the work associated with the GPU tests onto the CPU in order to improve 3DMark scores.

Intel is definitely detecting 3DMark Vantage and changing the behavior of its drivers in order to improve performance, which would appear to be a direct contravention of Futuremark's guidelines. Intel's 15.15.4.1872 graphics drivers don't appear on Futuremark's approved driver list for 3DMark Vantage. Indeed, NONE of the company's Windows 7 drivers do so far.

Violating Futuremark's driver optimization guidelines is one thing, but Intel also claims it's offloading vertex processing to enhance performance in games. Indeed, the very same INF file that singles out 3DMarkVantage.exe also names other executables.

One of the games on the list for detection, Crysis Warhead. Tech Report also tested it with the executable under its original name and then renamed to Crisis.exe, using FRAPS to collect real-world frame rate data with the game running at 800x600 and minimum detail levels.


Intel's software-based vertex processing scheme improves in-game frame rates by nearly 50% when Crysis.exe is detected, at least in the first level of the game we used for testing. However, even 15 FPS is a long way from what we'd consider a playable frame rate. The game doesn't exactly look like Crysis Warhead when running at such low detail levels, either.

Read more here : Tech Report

Vic Zhou refuses to be a slave to money

Wednesday, 30 September, 2009 Taiwan
Source : Ming Pao
Translated by : Karened @ http://asianfanatics.net/

F4 shot to fame with 'Meteor Garden' and Vic Zhou ('Zai Zai'), who acted as Hanazawa Rui, said that to be that popular meant that he didn't have to accept jobs for the sake of money. Instead, he could choose the direction he wanted to go and work hard for his dreams.

Although the members of F4 have already split and gone their own ways, and did not share particularly good relationships with each other, Zai Zai was still thankful to the other three members for teaching him many things and making him who he is today. In his heart, he has not forgotten these battlemates and hopes that everyone could become a megastar with their abilities.

Starting to like acting

Although Zai Zai rose to fame after acting as Hanazawa Rui in 'Meteor Garden', he was always critisized that he cannot act and only attracts people because of his looks. However, his acting has matured a lot now and is nominated for this year's Golden Bell Award for his role in the idol drama 'Black & White'.

To be able to fight for the position of Best Actor, Zai Zai feels that this is proof that his hard work in improving his acting skills did not go to waste. He said, "I was only 19 when I entered showbiz and was only a kid who didn't know what he wanted to do. When I acted in 'Meteor Garden', I only knew how to act using the acting styles of Jerry Yan, Ken Zhu and Vanness Wu. I only knew how to follow what they did and never had a mind of my own. Initially, I didn't see that as a problem. Whatever the company told me to do, I would do, such as releasing an album. However, I slowly realised that I had more interest in acting than singing. Everytime I took up a role, I would work hard at interpreting it. In order to act out a particular emotion, I would brainstorm on how I could do it better."

Walking out of a period of confusion

Zai Zai raised an example of an old granny he saw once during driving. She picks up litter from the streets of Taipei early every morning. She lived like this and seeing such situations allowed him to use his inner feelings when he had to act out certain expressions during filming. He continued, "I acted in various different genre of films in recent years. Previously, people thought that I was only adept in melancholic characters but now, they realised that I can act different types of roles, for example cheerful ones. I realised that there is a lot of space in acting and so I really like acting. As for awards, I dare not think about them."

Some people pointed out that he is now much happier than before. Zai Zai laughed, "Is that so? Actually I'm not melancholy. Neither was I playing cool. But when I first came to Hong Kong, I didn't know what to say when I had interviews together with F4. Hence, I spoke little and let the rest do the speaking. Now that I've grown up, I know what I want to do and am not confused like how I was when I first entered showbiz."

Looking forward to F4's display of abilities

Vic Zhou described F4 as 'only having popularity and no true abilities' when they first debuted. Now that the four of them have changed completely, it's time for them to show their true abilities.

Due to the idol drama 'Meteor Garden', Zai Zai's name became well-known in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He even enjoys popularity in Japan. It seems that 'F4' has really brought him a lot of money. Zai Zai said, " I am the youngest in F4 and hence was easily influenced. Sometimes, I wondered why I had to do something, and how ridiculous it was. But in the past 9 years, I really earned a lot of money. As for how much exactly, I won't say. But now I feel that money isn't my only target. I just want to work hard and do my job well."

Not to be an empty shell without a soul

Zai Zai expressed that even if he had a job that could bring him a lot of money, but if the job made him unhappy, he would choose to drop it. "I now have the ability to choose. Throughout the years, I had saved up some money that would allow me to do things that make me happy." Zai Zai does not have high expectations for money and had never thought of sucking up to people for the sake of money. Then what other dreams does he have? Zai Zai said, "F4 let me become popular. I hope that we can show people the results of our hard work and not be like the F4 we were when we debut 9 years ago. Back then we only had popularity and no true abilities. I feel that after so many years, we should bring out our abilities and let those who once said we had none know that we are always seeking improvements."

Actually, Zai Zai had already wanted to quit when he was 20. However, he started enjoy his job and so planned to quit at the year of 30. He said, "I now realise that there are a lot of things I want to challenge myself with. It's alright even if I failed. There are still a lot of things I want to learn in this entertainment circle."

Zai Zai said that he has never thought of entering Hollywood. He said, "My English is not very proficient and to me, it is too distant. I just want to reach a good position in Taiwan and then move on to the China market. As long as the China audience recognizes my acting, the whole world will naturally know. Just like Jacky Chan - even the Hollywood people knows that he acts well."

Growing up through love

Although Vic Zhou does not want to talk about his ex-girlfriend Barbie Hsu, he still wishes her happiness.

There had been rumours of Zai Zai and several other actresses and he also went public about his relationship. He said, "Everyone needs romance. If I am really in a relationship, of course I can tell others about it. I used to not know how to interact with other but when I'm in a relationship, I can learn how to interact with people when the other party wants something frokm me. I can also learn how to face the opposite sex. To me, this is very important. When girlfriend tells me whether my thinking is correct, and points out areas I can correct and improve, the love can make me grow up."

When asked if previous love Barbie Hsu (Da S) is a very important person in his life, Zai Zai said, "She is a very good woman and I just want to wish her happiness. It's not convenient to talk about other stuff."

Rebuilding the souls of Sichuan earthquake child survivors

The UNICEF held funds raising events to help the Sichuan earthquake child survivors rebuild their homes. At the same time, it is very important to rebuild their souls. As the ambassador of the Hong Kong arms of the fund, Vic Zhou described this as a long-term job. The first phase of recovering from the aftermath of the earthquake will last till 2011. He will also attend the activities in Hong Kong frequently. When asked if he had ever thought of establishing a fund himself, he said, "Faye Wong, Kelly Chen and many other had established funds to help other. But to do so requires a lot of manpower and funding. For me, being able to participate as part of the UNICEF is just as meaningful."

After-thoughts

Vic Zhou has really grown up! When he came to Hong Kong to promote the F4 concert 9 years ago, he only knew how to smile and did not answer interview questions, making him seem flippant. Perhaps this was because he did not understand Cantonese, or maybe like what he said, he was only 19 and did not know how handle showbiz. This time round, he answered every question posed. He was unlike some Taiwanese stars, who give the 'especially polite' attitude that makes one feel uncomfortable. Instead, Zai Zai was full of smiles throughout the interview, making me feel like I had been too harsh on him.

Time can really make someone change. The melancholic Hanazawa Rui back then is unforgetable but the cheerful Zai Zai is very cool and manly. It's no wonder that loyal fans followed him for 9 years, never giving up.