Solid-state drives are relatively new technology for anyone of us, and up until now we've heard only good things about them. They are fast, small, they have no moving parts, but what happens after extensive use of the flash memory that is incorporated in them? Yesterday a review was posted over at PC Perspective, entitled "Long-term performance analysis of Intel Mainstream SSDs". According to the information posted, it appears that Intel's X25-M MLC SSD drives may degrade in performance after a period of time when they are put to extensive use. PC Per claims that once an Intel solid-state drive is used, after a period of time it will no longer be as fast as a new one, neither its rated transfer speeds will be the same.
In response, Intel stated today: "Our labs currently have not been able to duplicate these results," "In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use. Similarly, the benchmarks they used to evaluate performance do not represent what a PC user experiences." Intel also said: "In general, when a PC's drive (SSD or HDD) is full, there will be some reduction in system performance, however the performance reduction reported by PC Perspective is higher than we generally expect, which is why we are looking into the methodology."
We'll keep you posted if there's new information on the matter.

ASUS, a pioneer in the adoption of cutting-edge notebook graphics, announced today the ASUS N81Vg, the world's first notebook to feature the new NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M graphics processing unit (GPU). The NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M GPU features NVIDIA CUDA technology with 32 processor cores, DirectX 10 support, and 1080p High Definition video playback through NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology. Coupled with the ASUS N81Vg's 14-inch LED backlit display, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M delivers unrivaled visual clarity and vibrancy.

Seagate today introduced its Constellation family ofnew enterprise storage solutions for Tier 2 nearline storage applications. The two new drive models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security. Both drives also include PowerChoice from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments.

"The need for greater storage capacity will continue to expand in multiple directions and dimensions, but there will be an increasing scrutiny of all storage system purchases, with an eye to decreasing power consumption, footprint, and cost per GB in unprecedented ways," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points."

Mushkin Enhanced, one of the leading manufacturers for High Performance Computer Parts announced today the release of its XP3-15000 DDR3 modules. Rated for 933MHz (1866MT/s data rate) and 8-9-8-24 latencies, the XP3-15000 modules provide astonishing performance on Intel X58 platforms while using a safe 1.65V supply voltage.

"Following our tradition of innovation in the high performance memory market, the new XP3-15000 brings Core i7 triple-channel kits to an elevated standard", said Brian Flood, Mushkin's director of product development. "Enthusiasts and gamers alike will enjoy the flexibility and stability of this new product while overclocking their machines."

"Spider" is the codename for a high-end desktop platform by AMD, which came to light late last year. It consisted of an AMD Phenom series processor, an AMD 790FX-based motherboard, and Radeon HD 3800-series graphics card(s). AMD would be offering a new high-end gaming platform based on its products, called "Dragon". It consists of a Phenom II processor, running on an AMD 790-series motherboard, and Radeon HD 4800-series graphics card(s). Expreview sourced a company-confidential side which illustrates the company's expectations from the platform, in terms of performance increments over its predecessor.

With office and productivity applications, AMD slates a 20~40% performance increment. The trend stays with multimedia applications. The gaming performance is where the money lies, with increments up to 280%. Again, take into account that the Dragon testbed is using a Radeon HD 4800 accelerator. 20~40% seems a significant figure, nonetheless.

A spy-shot of the dual-core Intel Atom processor has surfaced. The picture reveals an important bit about the design of the processor. Dual-core Atom isn't about two processor cores integrated onto one die, but two dies sharing a package and front-side bus, much in the same way its distant ancestor, the Pentium D was built. This design allows modularity and helps Intel cut manufacturing costs. They don't have to build separate wafers of dual-core dice but rather use two single core dice and integrate them onto one package. The Atom 330 will be the first product based on this design. Early performance tests with arithmetic and memory bandwidth reveal a good level of scaling, close to 100% that of the N270, a single-core 1.6 GHz part:

HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.

The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.

Benchmarks of Nehalem derivatives are on a roll. We had seen the Bloomfield 2.66 GHz scores and thought it was great. A couple of days ago, Tom's Hardware showed off their newest toys to the world in which was a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield we covered here. Interestingly, they had then stated that Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) prevented them from releasing any benchmark data, though following ChipHell's publication, they thought they would disclose theirs as well.

They carried out their tests on the Foxconn Renaissance X58 motherboard with dual-channel Crucial Ballistix 2x 1GB DDR3 1600 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Windows Vista SP1 and hotfix_vista32-64_dd_ccc_hd4800series_64906 patch. A 750GB Seagate SATA II hard drive was used.

In 3DMark 06, it secured a CPU score of 5183. In PCMark 05, a CPU score of 9583 with a memory score of 9010 was noted. In 3DMark Vantage, the CPU score was 17966 (CPU Test1: 2515.1 Plans/S, Test2: 23.08 Steps/S). 2.93 GHz Bloomfield had a Mere 11% performance advantage over a QX6800 (that clocks at 2.93 GHz). It is also said that this 2.93 GHz chip is 23% faster than a Phenom X4 9950.

Most of you know that Microsoft created a new Service Pack for Windows Vista, and is in the middle of getting it out to people. Some select testers, such as CNET, already have a copy of the final batch, and were obliged to give it a test drive. What they found confused and made people wonder why Microsoft worked so hard in the first place. While, yes, Vista SP1 is a lot more stable, and there are performance boosts in some areas, there are a sizable chunk of tests where Vista SP1 performed worse in than it's predecessor. The CNET tests concluded that while Vista SP1 definitely oozes with effort, most users will hardly notice the difference between vanilla Vista and Vista SP1. Most of the performance hits were seen when copying or transferring files. If you'd like to read the full review, please check out CNET here.