Intel's hardware accelerated video transcode engine, Quick Sync, was introduced two years ago with Sandy Bridge. When it was introduced, I was immediately sold. With proper software support you could transcode content at frame rates that were multiple times faster than even the best GPU based solutions. And you could do so without taxing the CPU cores. While Quick Sync wasn't meant for high quality video encoding for professional production, it produced output that was more than good enough for use on a smartphone or tablet. Given the incredible rise in popularity of those devices over recent history and given that an increasing number of consumers moved to notebooks as primary PCs, a fast way of transcoding content without needing tons of CPU...
Lucid's Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms
We first met LucidLogix (now just Lucid) 2.5 years ago at IDF. The promise was vendor-agnostic multi-GPU setups with perfect performance scaling. The technology was announced at a very...
39 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2011
AVADirect's Clevo P170HM with GeForce GTX 485M: High-End You've Been Waiting For
When we reviewed the Clevo W880CU and, by extension, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480M, we were perplexed. Certainly NVIDIA had reclaimed the mobile graphics crown and no one could dispute...
28 by Dustin Sklavos on 2/28/2011
MacBook Pro 2011 Refresh: Specs and Details
As expected, Apple today unveiled a range of speed and functionality improvements for its MacBook Pro lineup. The update was unusually quiet for Apple. There was no scheduled press...
130 by Andrew Cunningham on 2/24/2011
HP's Business Notebook Hat Trick
It's fair to say the refreshes HP announced for their consumer computers earlier this month seemed fairly lackluster. While nobody can complain about improved notebook speakers and the triumphant...
47 by Dustin Sklavos on 2/23/2011
Puget Systems Serenity SPCR Edition: Blissful Silence
We've had the opportunity to look at a few custom builds from different boutiques so far. While most have generally been well-rounded builds using cherry picked off-the-shelf parts and...
139 by Dustin Sklavos on 2/10/2011
ASUS & MSI Announce 6-series Motherboard Replacement Programs
Let’s recap. Intel launched Sandy Bridge. Intel found a bug in the 6-series chipset, necessary for all Sandy Bridge systems. Intel issued a stop shipment on all 6-series parts...
58 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/8/2011
Mobility Sector Updates: Waiting for Sandy Bridge and Market Analysis
The past week shook up the whole computer industry with Intel’s announcement that a potential flaw in their Cougar Point chipset required a respin to fix. In the ensuing...
49 by Jarred Walton & Vivek Gowri on 2/7/2011
Gigabyte Announces 6-series Motherboard Replacement Program
Yesterday Intel announced the largest stop shipment/recall I can remember it ever making (excluding FDIV). The product in question? All 6-series chipsets, a necessary part of any Sandy Bridge...
86 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/1/2011
The Source of Intel's Cougar Point SATA Bug
I just got off the phone with Intel’s Steve Smith (VP and Director of Intel Client PC Operations and Enabling) and got some more detail on this morning’s 6-series...
125 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/31/2011
Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis
In our Sandy Bridge review I pointed out that Intel was unfortunately very conservative in one area of the platform: its chipset. Although the 6-series chipset finally brought native...
161 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/31/2011
CES 2011: Intel WiDi 2.0 Brings New Media Extenders
One major feature of mobile Sandy Bridge is support for Intel WiDi 2.0. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, WiDi 2.0 uses SNB’s Quick Sync engine...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
A Closer Look at the Sandy Bridge Die
Aside from a stack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I snagged something else of interest at my Intel meeting at CES 2011: a shot of some exposed Sandy Bridge...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
Intel Insider: Sandy Bridge Gets 1080p High Bitrate Streaming
In an attempt to ultimately raise its stock price, Intel is trying to shock and surprise investors by keeping details scarce on unannounced products. We saw the first example...
20 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011
Lucid Enables Quick Sync with Discrete Graphics on Sandy Bridge
If you read our Sandy Bridge Review you’ll know that we were very excited about Intel’s Quick Sync hardware transcode engine. It easily offers at least twice the performance...
44 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/7/2011
Ask Your 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor Questions Here, Update: Now with Answers!
ASUS and Intel are putting together a webcast that they've invited me to attend. The topic of discussion? Sandy Bridge. The webcast will air after Intel's official announcement of...
223 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/5/2011
CyberPowerPC's Gamer Xtreme 4000: Now with Sandy Bridge
Intel's Sandy Bridge processor architecture is upon us, and with it a freshly minted gaming PC courtesy of CyberPowerPC: the Gamer Xtreme 4000. If you read Anand's preview of...
42 by Dustin Sklavos on 1/4/2011
The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested
Intel never quite reached 4GHz with the Pentium 4. Despite being on a dedicated quest for gigahertz the company stopped short and the best we ever got was 3.8GHz...
282 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/3/2011
Intel’s Sandy Bridge i7-2820QM: Upheaval in the Mobile Landscape
Ever since the Sandy Bridge preview, we’ve been waiting to see what Intel’s new architecture could do for mobility. No longer would quad-core notebooks require discrete graphics solutions, and...
66 by Jarred Walton on 1/3/2011
Intel's Sandy Bridge Architecture Exposed
A few weeks ago we previewed the performance of Intel’s next-generation microprocessor architecture, codenamed Sandy Bridge. We came away impressed with our early look at performance but honestly had...
62 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/14/2010
Intel Demos Sandy Bridge, Shows off Video Transcode Engine
Today marks the first day of our IDF 2010 coverage and we just left Dadi Perlmutter's keynote. Keeping up with tradition, Dadi's keynote focused on two of Intel's upcoming...
18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/13/2010