Notebook Battery

The notebook industry promises increased battery run times, but the advances are in fact small, and run times still mainly depend on the power provided by the notebook battery. More efficient processors and platforms, drives and LED-backlit displays certainly help a lot. Real leaps, however—say to 10+ hours of battery life—just aren’t within reach. 

The electrical draw of the system isn’t constant; it varies depending on the state of the each component. Displays are the largest power-eaters, as they have to operate transistors and their backlight—larger and higher resolution displays typically require more power than smaller ones. But there is also quite a power requirement range among notebook system components.

Modern notebook processors may require little power when there is nothing to do, but they can go up to 35 watts of power consumption at full load, depending on the processor model and power classification. Notebook platforms using graphics units built into the chipset are the most efficient, while notebooks utilizing a discrete mobile GeForce or Mobility Radeon always consume at least a bit more power than integrated solutions. In terms of storage, flash SSD drives have the potential to deliver impressive throughput and quick access times with very little power consumption. Most devices require considerably less power when they are idle, so it makes sense to operate your notebook as close to idle as possible, to maximize battery run time.

While there are alternative energy sources on the horizon, such as silver-zinc batteries (see ZPower), none of them are ready to be deployed into the mainstream right now, where huge quantities of batteries are required. Notebooks typically utilize lithium-ion or lithium-polymer batteries, which are organized into so-called “cells” (typical capacities are three, six, or sometimes nine cells). While the power level of a battery depends on the specific model, a 6-cell battery will generally give you twice the battery run time of a 3-cell model. Battery capacities are rated in Watt-hours (Wh).

The 9-cell batteries obviously provide the most juice, but they are often too large to be accommodated within the standard rectangular notebook footprint, and hence stick out a bit from the back. To expand capacity without this physical size expansion, some notebook vendors offer additional modular batteries that can be inserted instead of a machine’s optical drive; these are especially common on portable business notebooks (13-15”).

Source tomshardware.com

AMD’s Low Power Advantage

AMD, dominated the processor market with its Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2 just a few years ago, was able to make a return with the recent Phenom II processors. While these new 45 nm CPUs cannot trump Intel's Core i7, they offer performance that can match a Core 2 Quad here and there. Unfortunately, there is no low-power version available yet, so we decided to look at AMD’s remaining low-power option.

The latest Athlon X2 dual-core CPUs are very affordable, and supposedly efficient. Our shootout includes an Athlon X2 5050e (45 W TDP) and a 5600+ (65 W TDP) as well as several Intel processors.

Low Power

Power users will certainly focus on performance first, while all other users want to have the best of both worlds: a fast processor that does not consume more power than necessary.

Performance is easy enough to define. It is the time required for a workload to complete, or workload execution within a given time. However, efficiency is still sometimes misunderstood, because efficiency does not equal low power. A low-power device such as Intel’s Atom processor has low power consumption, but it is far from being efficient.

We define efficiency as the power that is required to complete a specific workload. In this case, power is measured in Watt-hours (this isn’t watts per hour, but watts times hours). Some readers had noted that work energy should be stated in joules. One joule equals one watt-second, so a watt-hour equals 1 x 60 x 60 = 3,600 joules. We decided to stay with Watt-hours (Wh), as this is the way we are charged for electricity.

CPU Power

On the CPU side, AMD has traditionally had two advantages over Intel. First there is the SOI manufacturing process (at 90, 65, and 45 nm), which ensures low power requirements in idle mode thanks to low leakage power. This makes it very much competitive with Intel’s manufacturing, which has typically been 12-18 months ahead of AMD with regards to transistor size (note that AMD processor manufacturing is being outsourced). Second, AMD processors have come with integrated memory controllers since the introduction of the Athlon 64 in late 2003, which typically provides a power consumption advantage over logic that is part of the Intel chipset. Core i7 has started to introduce a paradigm change in this direction with Intel, but that doesn’t apply to Core 2.

So there is the platform, which contributes to power consumption. Especially if you look at all-in-one integrated chipsets such as the AMD 780G, AMD has offered much better 3D performance and power efficiency than Intel chipsets. We used an integrated AMD 780G motherboard as well as an Intel board based on the latest G45 chipset for this article, as well as two representative AMD processors, two Intel dual-cores chips, and two Intel low-power quad core CPUs.
Source from tomshardware.com

GeForce GTX 285 On Water Cooling

Zotac's Infinity Edition : Why Water?

Liquid cooling takes advantage of the key features that a larger radiator offers compared to local sinks, with the added benefit that the radiator can often be mounted in a cooler air stream.

That explains why a large radiator sits at the front of most automobiles, but in the case of overclocking, complexity and inconvenience have limited the number of liquid-cooling applications in PCs. Most liquid cooling systems focus on the CPU, since adding other components to the loop makes servicing a nightmare. In particular, removing a liquid cooling system from graphics cards requires extreme caution and plenty of extra time to drain the system, which must then be refilled and re-purged (to remove air from the water lines) before it can be used again. This could easily turn five minutes of diagnostic work into a one-hour ordeal--and that's if you know what you're doing.

But liquid cooling’s inconveniences can be more easily justified in situations where air cooling simply isn’t adequate. We’ve run into this exact problem when overclocking multi-card graphics configurations, and our December $2,500 3-Way SLI PC was the most noteworthy example. Packing three double-slot cards together limited airflow to the intake fans of the top two cards, so that cooling was barely adequate to keep up with the configuration’s stock speed.

For overclockers, the opportunity to seek significant performance gains makes liquid cooling’s troubles worthwhile, and several companies are ready to fulfill those needs. Options include buying an air-cooled card and adding an expensive liquid-cooling “water block” or purchasing a card with the water block pre-attached, such as the GeForce GTX 285 Infinity Edition from Zotac.

Liquid-cooled graphics cards typically cost around $50 less than the sum of their parts (high-end water block plus a high-spec card), so the smart money for anyone looking to water cool is to buy these parts pre-assembled. Zotac adds one more reason to purchase its product by pre-overclocking its GPU and RAM to extra-high speeds, selling the card with a warranty that home overclockers typically must sacrifice. That also means that each GTX 285 Infinity Edition is hand-selected for its ability to support the rated speeds, while the purchaser of a reference-clocked card must rely on the luck of the draw to reach similar or greater speeds.

Overclockers aren’t the only market for liquid-cooled electronics, as similar methods have been used to address airflow constraints in densely packed servers. And let’s not forget home-theater and audio-studio applications where liquid cooling allows enormous passive radiators to suffice in situations that would have otherwise called for noisy high-speed fans. All of these markets share a common goal of increased cooling capacity at reduced use of local space and these are things that even non-overclocking performance enthusiasts can appreciate.

Source from www.tomshardware.com

Led LCD

Hardware designers have made stunning advances in designing much more power-efficient components than most of us are using in their notebooks today. Choosing the options wisely may result up to 50% more battery time in some, with little extra money spent. Unfortunately, there is very little information on these new components out there would provide a guideline what purchase makes sense and which not. Do you know which components have the most impact on the battery time the new generation of notebooks? I bet that there is at least one you wouldn’t expect.

Jeremy Brody, HP’s global business notebook marketing manager, disagrees and stated that 24 hours is possible with the right adjustments - turn off your wireless network, dim the screen down and use applications that do not demand too much from your hardware (read about the additional configuration requirements in our previous article.) I will leave it at that and we will know more once the hardware HP described in the configuration will be available.

However, if you think about, the 24-hour claim isn’t really the big deal here. On very few occasions, you may want your notebook to hold up for 24 hours on one charge. The much more interesting question is: What would I have to buy to get a notebook that takes me through an entire workday on one charge – for 8 to 10 hours? Brody had some interesting recommendations, which I believe are important to pass on.

First, you really want to equip your notebook with the most battery capacity that is available. In HP’s case and the 14.1” Elite 6930p notebook that would be the standard 6-cell battery and an optional 12-cell battery, which promise a combined battery time of 16 hours. The extra battery will set you back $190.

Second, how do you cut the power consumption most effectively beyond a low-power processor? According to Brody, you definitely would want to pick the company’s upcoming LED display, which will be offered as a $50 option in October. The LED display can cut the power consumption dramatically as the LCD typically eats most of the electricity provided by the battery. HP says that the LED alone may extend the battery time by 4 hours. Source tgdaily.com

Tessera unveils technology

The new camera, called OptiML WLC, is the first digital camera of its kind that is manufactured entirely on the wafer level. Compared to the traditional way of building digital CMOS cameras, which involves optical elements that are created through plastic injection molding and glass molding as well as a relatively complicated process to match the optical unit to the IC, Tessera is using lenses that are produced on a wafer level and are automatically attached to the sensor package.

The result of this simplified wafer technology yields a digital camera that is about half the size of today’s cellphone digital camera. According to Tessera, the OptiML WLC is about 30% cheaper to manufacture than today’s devices.

The company said that the camera has a height of less than 2.5 mm; the device is promised to scale from VGA resolution (640 x 480) to “multi megapixel” and offer features such as autofocus and digital zoom.

Tessera said that it will license the blueprints for the OptiML WLC, but not build the device itself. The company announced last year that more than 10 billion semiconductors using the firm’s packaging technology have been shipped since 1990.

Information from www.tgdaily.com

Intel CEO

You may have heard about Intel’s new processor for ultra-mobile devices “Silverthorne”, whose development was officially confirmed at this year’s Spring IDF in Beijing. But there’s a good chance you have not paid much attention to the chip, not just because it is still more than a year out from its debut, but also because it the CPU is aimed at cellphones and two other product categories – one of which hasn’t done particularly well so far and one that isn't available yet.

But Otellini believes that Silverthorne may be one of the most important products in Intel’s history. “The importance of the new Silverthorne chip is only comparable with the 8088 processor or Pentium,” he told the FAZ. The executive said that the company will create a 45 nm Silverthorne “product family” and aim to capture the “top 10 to 20% of the cellphone business.”

Intel previously announced that Silverthorne will debut as part of the “Menlow” platform in 2008. The processor will replace the recently and quietly introduced A100 and A110 UMPC CPUs, which are basically under-clocked (600 and 800 MHz, respectively) versions of the 90 nm Pentium M processor with Dothan core. The 45 nm Silverthorne chip is expected to be as fast as the second-generation of Pentium M processors, while running in a power envelope between 0.6 and 2.0 watts.

The FAZ article does not provide much information why Silverthorne is so important to Otellini, but it is unlikely that that Intel is just aiming at the cellphone market. The new CPU will also make its way into UMPCs, which show signs of becoming a replacement for the tablet PC rather than a mass market product, as well as Mobile Internet Devices. Intel believes that these Mobile Internet Devices, short MIDs, will have four to five times the volume opportunity than a relatively pricey UMPC. With a form factor that fits between the UMPC and a smartphone, a 5” screen, flash-based storage, a light operating system such as Ubuntu Linux (which was shown at IDF) and a $500 price tag, MIDs could be much more attractive for Intel than the UMPC.

Silverthorne is also the first processor that will focus much more on cost-efficiency than previous processors – which not only will allow Intel to increase profit margins, but also enable the firm to target these processors at much cheaper computing devices that will be more affordable for a greater audience around the globe. At IDF, Intel said that the CPU will be Intel’s “most cost-efficient processor since the 286 CPU. Manufactured in 45 nm, Intel can squeeze about 2500 Silverthorne processor on one 300 mm wafer. According to Otellini, the average price of a product that will be integrating a Silverthorne processor will be about $100.


Information from www.tgdaily.com

New tech

With support for DDR3 memory and the next generation of FSB1333 Intel Core 2 processors, Intel's P35 Express chipset is the most forward-looking part in its portfolio. But support for advanced technology isn't going to alter its market: The P35 Express is designed to replace Intel's legendary-overclocking P965 mainstream part.

Driving Intel's latest technology "downward" into the mainstream is support for only a single PCI-Express graphic card at full x16 bus width and official DDR3 memory support extending only to 1066 MHz data rate. As a mainstream part, the P35 Express officially supports a single graphics card and memory speeds up to DDR3-1066. Adding a second graphics card slot or DDR3-1333 RAM compatibility are features Intel left to the discretion of motherboard producers.

The sixteen PCI-Express lanes delivered by the Northbridge are capable of supporting only one device, so there is no option to split them across two slots as previously seen in the high-end Intel 975X and later in the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200. Like the P965, any second graphics card must instead use some of the six PCI-Express lanes from the Southbridge, so most "CrossFire Compatible" P35 Express motherboards will have the two x16 slots wired with x16 and x4 pathways. Rather than being a true CrossFire solution, any second graphics card is really more useful for adding multiple displays than it is for boosting graphics performance.

Great single-card performance and high overclocking capabilities pushed the P965 Express chipset to the forefront of mid-priced performance, so a major part of P35 Express testing will be to make sure this new product lives up to the reputation of its predecessor.

Buyers looking to upgrade their motherboard for future processor support while keep their old DRAM modules will be more interested in the P35 Express Chipset's DDR2 capabilities, while others will want to see how DDR3 motherboards compare to DDR2 versions. However, DDR3 still has to mature, and today's modules run such high latency that it makes a fair comparison impossible. Today, we focus on DDR3 performance. We will detail DDR2 performance in an upcoming review, and readers who still need to be convinced that DDR2-1066 CAS4 can be quicker than DDR3-1066 CAS7 can look back to this review for a comparison.

Information from www.pcworld.com

Intel launches Bearlake chipset

The new chipset series arrives in a total of six models, four with integrated graphics and two for higher-end mainstream and enthusiast platforms designed to be coupled with discrete graphics cards.

All new chipsets share a common foundation, which includes a 1333 MHz front side bus, support for DDR2 (800 MHz) and DDR3 (only in consumer chipsets for now; 800-1066 MHz in mainstream models, 1333 MHz on the high-end) as well as NAND-flash-based Turbo Memory, and the new ICH9 southbridge. ICH9 continues the legacy removal that began with ICH8, includes 12 USB ports and a reduced power consumption to less than 3.5 watt.
In the entry-level segment, Intel is offering the P35 chipset for low-cost PCs. Positioned in the mainstream, the G33 and G35 versions offer integrated graphics with the firm’s proprietary Clear Video technology as well as support for DirectX 10. The G35 version is capable of playing back HDCP-protected content, including HD DVD and Blu-ray movies.
Business platforms get the Q33 chipset, while vPro systems will include the Q35 model. Both have integrated graphics, but Intel does not support DDR3 memory in these “stable platform” chipsets yet and limits compatible memory to DDR2-800. The Q33 comes with Intel’s basic active management technology (AMT), while the Q35 will get AMT Pro, virtualization features as well as support for Intel’s TPM technology “LaGrande”, now called Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). Intel also unveiled the upcoming X38 version (formerly code-named Bearlake-X) of Bearlake, which will support quad-core CPUs, PCI Express 2.0, DDR3-1333 memory as well as up to two graphics cards (2x16). Intel said that the G33 and P35 chipsets have been shipping since April, while the Intel Q33 and Q35 Express Chipsets are shipping ahead of schedule.



The G35 and X38 are expected to ship within 90 days, the company said. All six new chipsets support the upcoming 45 nm Penryn processor generation. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the updated E6x50 series of Core 2 Duo processors, which industry sources mentioned will be introduced “soon”.
There will be three new processors, including the E6650 (2.33 GHz), E6750 (2.66 GHz) and E6850 (3 GHz). During a presentation at Computex today, Intel chief marketing officer Sean Maloney also said that Intel and Asustek are working together to offer a family of education focused, low-cost mobile PCs, with one model below $200.
Additionally Maloney disclosed plans for an Intel Core 2 Extreme mobile processor product to be released by Intel in the third quarter of this year. The plan follows the company’s Extreme Edition brand introduced for desktop PCs in 2003 and extends it to laptops.

Information from www.tgdaily.com