After the big step of Falcon Northwest’s DRX laptop and AVADirect’s Clevo D900F notebook releasing laptops with intel core i7 processor it has put the other notebook producing brands in the tights and forcing them to go on big discounts with notebooks that do not have core i7 processors.

It actually is still a hard time to find notebooks with intel core i7 processors even today, last time I went shopping a laptop couldn’t find a single brand (other then the two mentioned above) that used core i7 processor.

Get your laptop for cheap today

At CircuitCity you can find several brands of notebooks for real cheap, these offers tho last until August 17th 2009 so if you want a new laptop that doesn’t have the newest processor it is your time for shopping and I will lost down some brands bellow.

• Asus Notebook – Intel Core2Duo T6400 2GHz 4GB 14.1″ WXGA RB $529.97
• HP Notebook – AMD Athlon X2 2GHz 3GB 16″ TFT Vista RB $499.97
• Toshiba Notebook – Intel Core2Duo SU9300 1.20GHz 3GB 12.1″ WXGA $899.97
• HP Notebook – Intel Celeron 2GHz 1GB DL DVDRW 15.4″ WXGA Vista $329.99
• HP dv6 Notebook – AMD Turion X2 2.2GHz 4GB 16.0″ Vista 64-bit $649.99
• Toshiba Notebook – Intel Core2Duo T6400 2.0GHz 4GB 16″ TFT Vista $799.99

What Notebook do you have?

What is your favorite notebook and what specs does it have?

No related posts.

Graphics and Animation Industry specifically are always hungry for more processing power and memory. The applications they use are extremely processor and memory intensive and are always multi-threaded. So a processor like Intel’s i7 Core series, that can support the SMT Technology are the only choice these professionals have.

Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition has every feature that a Graphics Designer or an Animator can dream of. i7 Core 975 has four physical cores all on the same die, so bandwidth is massive and latency is extremely low. As it supports Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) it can handle 8 Threads at any given time. To further increase the performance of the processor, Intel has introduced 8 MB of L3 cache into the processor which is shared among all the four cores. Intel has done away with old generation FSB technology and QPI (QuickPath Interconnect) has taken its place. With QPI Technology, bandwidth available has increased from 800 MB/s to 32 GB/s. Intel has also introduced 7 new SSE4 Instructions. And the most important advantage i7 Core processor has is that it is fabricated using the 45 nm silicon wafer technology. The Extreme Edition of i7 Core 975 has 35 unlocked multipliers. This means that you can increase the processor speed from 3.33 GHz to a sizzling 5.29 GHz without making the system unstable. With that amount of processing power, nothing would look time consuming a task.

Intel Core i7 Extreme Benchmark Test

Getting to the Benchmark tests, we could record results untouched by the predecessors and speed impossible with other processors available today in the market.

DhryStone CPU test is basically used measure the processor speed and optimizing capabilities. As mentioned above, we will be specifically targeting the multi-threading capabilities of the processor. Intel i7 Core 975 scored 88041 points while it’s ‘younger’ brother Intel i7 Core 965 could only make up to 81388. These are as much as twice faster than the Phenom II X4 955BE. When over-clocked to 4.0 GHz, the processor could easily cross the 10000 points barrier which creates a record.

Kribi bench, a benchmark developed by Adept Development, is a SSE aware benchmark used for measuring the 3D Rendering capabilities of a processor. This means that it will bypass the GPU and all you have is a result obtained in direct relation to CPu and the memory. The benchmark records the average frame rate on the host CPU and our i7 core 975 @ 3.33 GHz produced 12.8 frames per second on average. This rate went upto 13.4 when processor was over-clocked to 4.0 GHz.

3DMark 06 CPU test, which is regarded as the most accurate test in the graphics industry, allows to measure the CPU performance to extent that is impossible with other benchmark utilities. Intel i7 Core 975 scored 5949 points in the normal mode and 6752 in the over-clocked state. This shows a performance boost of 43 % when compared with the then fasted Intel Quad Core QX9770 processor.

These tests simply show that investment of $999 USD into such a processor is worth the price. The performance that you can get with this processor is impossible with any of the processors available today. No processor can withstand the competition. We are just amazed with the processing power it delivers, now it’s your turn.

1. Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition Review

Here is the quick look at the spectacular specifications of i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition.

1. It performs at a steady speed of 3.33 GHz, which is almost 135 MHz more than Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme Edition.
2. It delivers a dedicated 6.4 GT/s QPI which is also the fastest on Earth.
3. This edition from Intel will feature unlocked multipliers as this too is a Extreme Edition Release. This simply means that you can overclock and get a performance you never saw anywhere, anytime.

And here follows the detailed technical analysis of the Big Boss as just adding three lines of praise is insulting its capability.

Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition sports a whole range of improvements that has contributed immensely to its speed. Intel has now done away with the Old Fashioned FSB technology which could not deliver a bit over 800 MT/s. Though nothing out-of-the-blue, the QPI technology that was developed by AMD has been adopted by Intel in this new i7 Core Series and this has multiplied the speed of the data transfer between the processors by 8 times. i7 Core 975 has 4 physical cores. So basically this too is an Quad Core processor, but, with a minor update. The HT (Hyper-Threading) Technology that Intel used with its Pentium 4 Prescott series has been reused in these processors. This will allow 8 consecutive threads to be executed at any given time. This is a huge advantage for those professionals who use Multicore-aware software.

Intel has introduced a whole new set of Cache. L1 cache is still the same as it is in the Quad Core processors, L2 cache would be 256 kB per core – totalling to 1 MB of L2 Cache and i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition sports another “shared” L3 cache of 8 MB which has given a performance increase of 83% over the predecessors.

Since few years, Intel has been reducing its wafer size and here they are with their new 45 nm silicon wafer technology. This improvement has put them way ahead of AMD and other competitors in terms of speed, performance and efficiency. It has also helped Intel in reducing the normal TDP of the processor.

Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition processor supports the LGA 1366 Socket and so the only motherboard that can be used with this processor is the x58 chipset. This in turn has another downside, it can only support DDR3 series of RAM and so it will not be backward compatible. The Core i7 (Nehalem) processor series is the first multi-core design from Intel to have its cores joined in a single die rather than to join multiple cores together.

In the conclusion, all you can say about a processor delivering 5.3 GHz of stable raw processing power in over-clocked mode is that once you switch over to it and you will never again think of another system again. Though, it can prove to be a heavy investment, it’s worth a shot.

We will be covering a full fledged Benchmark test and will also evaluate the Graphics and Animation Rendering capabilities of Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition in normal and over-clocked state, subscribe to our RSS feed to follow.

1. Preview of the ‘Big Brother’ Core i7 975

One of the best performer among the laptops provided by AVADirect is AVADirect’s Clevo D900F. This laptop features Intel’s flagship processor Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition. Let’s take a look at the spectacular feature set it boasts of:

• As mentioned above, it supports the Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition that can be over-clocked to 5.3 GHz.
• It also supports up to 12 GB of triple channel RAM which means that you can be insane about performance.
• It supports 3 Hard Disk Drives and like the Falcon Northwest DRX Fragbook, one of the hard drive can be a 80 GB SSD from Intel.
• It has 4 cooling fans that would keep the processors performing good and efficient.
• It would support nVidia’s lower end of graphics card – nVidia GeForce GTX 280M 1GB graphics card.
• It has 4 speakers in place of 2 speakers found in other commercial laptops and has support for 4 USB 2.0 Ports and 1 IEEE-1394 Ports.
• Another advantage and a credit that you can give to AVADirect is that it knows what true performance is and so it supports a Full Sized Keyboard with Numeric Keypad.
• Last but not the least – Intel High Definition Audio / 8 Channel external audio outputs supported.

Some of the compromises that you are required to make are Battery time and portability. Because of the high TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 130 Watts, the processor will wipe out the power quickly and will not allow for longer battery times. Also, do expect the notebook to be light.

With these considerations, the performance charts proves that in comparison to this notebook, no other can even reach near to the performance records that it sets. So, the only thing that can bring a smile on your face would be the performance charts. Like the Falcon Northwest DRX series notebooks, it easily crosses the 10,000 point benchmark when tested with the PCMark Vantage tests. Yes I can see a big smile on your face.

The screen resolution of the notebook is also good enough and is at par with other generic models available. Brightness levels are perfect. So this monster is the best in the category for CAD/CAM Designers, Graphics and Animation professionals.

The only downside of this wonderful, powerful and beautiful device is the price tag attached to it. And it would definitely increase if you customize it. You should be ready to let go your half-yearly savings to get one in your hands. But then you are the performance setter and you are the speed king.

1. Review Of The Intel Core I7 Extreme Processor

This 12 pound notebook features the monster from Intel, i7 Core 975 which has a whooping 3.33 Ghz of available processing power at a non-over clocked state. It has 6 GB of Triple channel RAM and supports 3 Hard Drives one of which is a 80 GB SSD. Considering the huge raw processing power available from the single processor, Falcon’s people have restricted themselves from using the top of the line graphics card featuring the SLI technology which supports 2 graphics processors and have went with the Lower Edition of nVidia GeForce 280M GTX card.

When you combine all this into a notebook, all other people can do is watch you helplessly getting way ahead in terms of performance and gaming experience.

Falcon Northwest DRX sports eye-catchy colors and as they specialize in Custom paint jobs, you can get your laptop in virtually any color you think of.

Falcon went with a Standard LCD screen which has a resolution of 1920 x 1200 or 1080 pixels. The viewing angles and the brightness levels are in terms with other generic notebooks. It features all the ports that are commonly included in a notebook including the DVI-I port, HDMI-out and an eSATA port as well. The additional advantage that you get is an inclusion of the TV Tuner Card which is not common in the notebooks available today.

Now comes the only experience that can be compared to the price tag of this heavy laptop. It is the performance, sorry it is the sky-high heart-throbbing performance.

PCMark Vantage tests on this system broke the 10,000 point mark, which hasn’t been done on a laptop until now. In Cinebench R10 testing, the DRX’s 19,314 score was easily double that of the P7808 and uG71G-Q1. From this it is obvious that it can shatter the performance records of every preceding notebook.

Therefore, it all boils down to a simple conclusion that if you can go broke for performance, go for it or just leave the deal.

1. Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition: The Worlds Fastest Processor
2. Upgrade to the Fastest on the Planet with Intel’s New Processor: Core i7
3. Review Of The Intel Core I7 Extreme Processor

Intel is known for speed. Intel’s processors are definitely fast but so is also the case with Intel’s development process. Intel has launched the mobile editions of the fastest “Nehalam” processors. While the desktop counterpart has already spawned benchmark-busting laptops, i7 core mobile editions are out too.

Falcon Northwest has already launched i7 Core based laptops in the market. It is one of the first companies to sell notebooks featuring Intel i7 Core Techonology. Though, as you have expected, it would be a the extreme high end lineup. And as this monster is way ahead in terms of performance as compared to the other processors, people at Falcon Northwest have shifted thier attention away from models featuring extremely highend graphic cards.

One fine example is of Northwest FragBook DRX core which features this extremely highend processor from Intel, but have used a lowerend graphics card from nVidia, GeForce GTX 280M instead of using the lastest SLI technology, which uses two grahics chip. The performance has not seen any downfalls though.

These laptops are not only sufficient for highend graphics industry, they are a dream machine even for the extreme gamers. You can easily play Crysis and World of Conflict in the highest graphics settings possible and this processor will give you the best you have ever seen.

The TDP – Thermal Design Power of the processor is a whooping 115 Watts though. So the featured laptops will have more than 3 fans to keep this monster cool and efficient. Northwest FragBook DRX has four cooling fans. The reason is obvious and so would be the specific requirements for its operation. The laptops will not have enough battery for long time. If run on a battery mode, the laptop would be powerless in less than 2 hours.

Northwest, though, is not the only one selling those powerful laptops. Many others have also entered the competition and those include the Smooth Creations and CyberPower. The best bet has been with AVADirect Clevo D900F Core i7 laptop which has the best performance among the tested.

It does seem that other companies will soon catchup on the core i7 processors, and so you can expect some advantages in terms of pricing of the laptops.

On the other hand, Intel has also launched it new flagship processor Intel i7 Core 975 which till date is the fastest processor on earth having a superb speed of 3.6 Ghz in normal mode and just above 5.3 GHz in over clocked state. This monster is expected to stay for a long time to come as Intel is not facing any challenges from AMD this time.

No related posts.

Intel i7 Core Family of processors was launched in November 2008, Five months ago and since then they have become the talk to the town for the Tech Enthusiasts. It has not disappointed anybody with its performance. They are the fastest processor on earth is now an accepted fact. But as usual, Intel has been very harsh with the processor prices and in the case of Intel i7 Core 965, it is a whooping 1000 USD. It is the most expensive processor too. Performance always has a price to pay. But here you will see that is not true! You can buy a complete PC with as much performance as delivered by the Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme Edition and more in some cases at the quarter price of what the monster i7 Core 965 EE would normally cost. It sounds a little strange but just scroll the page and look for yourself.

For the Benchmarks we selected a computer with the following configurations that allowed us a stable over clocking of the processor without overheating it. We had a ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard and a 6GB triple channel Corsair Dominator 2 kit that’s rated to 1,600MHz with 8-8-8-24-2T timings at just 1.65V. We arranged a Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme mounting bracket, which provide tremendous cooling power for this monster running at no lower than 130 W idle.

Now we were all set to go. We conducted the tests and the results we saw are described below:

• Memory Test – Read

  Intel i7 Core 920 Over clocked out performed the big brother with a huge margin. The performance increase was approximately 51%. This is a huge difference.

• Memory Test – Write

  This test also confirmed the same results and showed an performance increase of the approximately 29%

• Image Editing – Video Encoding

  When this system was tested with Paint.NET, we saw a performance boost of 9 % as compared to Intel i7 core 965 Extreme Edition. AutoMKV showed us a upward shift of 13 % which is significant.

• File Compression – WinRAR

  The time required by the i7 core 920 for compressing a file was 63 seconds which took 69 seconds by the i7 Core 965 Extreme Edition. So this factor also shows us a significant performance boost

All the tests confirmed the same result. So at a stable overclocking of i7 core 920 at 4.0 GHz is comparable with the Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme Edition.

Now let us compare the rates. The system that we prepared using the Intel i7 Core 920 cost us just above 875 USD. And if we consider the price of the Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme Edition alone, it is a whooping 1000 USD. Though the actual benefits can be seen only when they are compared in similar fashion. We had not overclocked the Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme Edition. But what more important is that majority of the professional seldom require such very high configuration and if that same can be achieved by a more cost effective way, then that solution does count. The war was never for performance alone. It is always for Performance per Cost.

In that manner Intel i7 Core 920 definitely wins the battle and is the most cost effective processor we tested considering the price factor as crucial. Thus if you decide to buy a techy computer then it is better to learn how to overclock the Intel i7 Core 920 rather than spend more money for the Extreme Edition in the Intel i7 Core Family of processors.

No related posts.

It has not been long when Intel passed a wave of surprise with its i7 core family of processors making it the fastest processor on earth. And they are set to do it again! Intel Plans the release of the i7 core 965 EE’s Big Brother, the Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition in May 2009. After that, the crown of the fastest processor belongs to Intel i7 core 975 EE. But several Distributors and Retailers are showing this date to be in Early April instead of May End.

This monster will be built using the Intel’s 45 nanometer Silicon Wafer Technology and will have a clock speed of 3.33 GHz. The release of this processor is rather an anticipated one as i7 core 975 EE will serve as the flagship processor chip for Intel. This chip is codenamed ‘BloomField’.

The specifications of this i7 core 975 Extreme Edition are as follows:

• It will have a clock speed of 3.33 GHz and will have 24 unlocked multipliers.
• It will support the Intel’s QPI Technology which is currently used in the i7 core families for extremely fast data transfer in place of the Front Side Bus which is very slow in comparison.
• This processor will also support the Hyper Threading (HT) technology that was used in times of Intel Pentium 4 processors. Due to this reason, the processor will be able to run 8 threads simultaneously.
• It will support the DDR3 Category of RAM.
• It will have native support for the LGA 1366 sockets.
• It will support 1 MB of L1 Cache and 8 MB of shared L3 cache in place of the L2 cache supported by the current processors of the Core 2 Quad family.

This processor is expected to consume 130 W of power and this will value will be much lower when the processor will be in the idle state. According to a trusted source, when this processor is over-clocked, it reaches a maximum clock speed of 5.239 GHz making it far more superior in terms of performance and efficiency. This processor has broken the then record of FutureMark’s 25Mark05 benchmark application. This processor will be supported by the Gigabyte’s Ex58 chipset which supports the DDR3 category of RAM only.

Thus it stands clear this processor will not face any kind of performance and speed competition in the near future. Again this processor is going to make you think twice or may be thrice before its purchase and it will cost a whooping 1000 USD when purchased in a bulk of at least 1000.

Intel has also planned the release of Intel i7 Core 950 at 3.06 GHz with Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition. Now it is just a matter of time for people to see the world’s most capable processor ever made.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed of the intel core i7 blog to know the latest news on real time.

1. The Intel Core i7 Extreme Lives Up To Its Hype

AMD ruled the Market with it’s cutting edge technology from 2003 to 2006. When Intel Launched its Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad family of processors, AMD was knocked out of the market. And till date, Intel has retained the throne for the fastest processor on earth that money can buy you. Recently Intel introduced completely revised family of processors under the codename “Nehalem”. With this it has become the favorite of the Industry with sizzling speed, performance and efficiency.

But that alone is not the only factor to be considered while making a decision of Upgrading your system. Now you must be asking me, what else, other than, performance of the processor can be considered as the most crucial factor while upgrading or purchasing a brand new System? And Yes, there is an Answer to it. What matters the most in the industry is not Highest Performance, but Highest Performance per Dollar spent. How is that important can easily be understood.

i7 Core 965 EE costs about 1000 USD for the processor. The Chipset, RAM (Only DDR3 is supported by X58 Chipset which is costly), HDD, GPU, etc altogether can burn a deep hole in your pocket. Now 86% of the performance delivered by i7 core supported system can be achieved from a AMD Phenom series in overclocked mode at just 58% of the cost of i7 Core 965 EE. So if we see the situation Cost wise AMD excels.

As Intel Knocked out AMD in High End Processors, AMD gave more attention towards the Entry Level and the Mid Level systems which covers almost 63% of the market share. This strategic decision has resulted in an overall increase of 2.2 percentage points in the Market Share of AMD. Thus in the lower end market the competition is by and large in favor of AMD as Intel has always been aggressive on processor prices giving AMD an added advantage of performance per Dollar spent after the processor. So AMD still retains the market share for the lower and the mid range computer system affecting Intel’s Market share dearly. As AMD has announced its new 45 NM technology supported processor in response to Intel’s Penryn core processors, it has received a grand welcome from the Retailers. It is expected that this strategic move will again increase the market share of AMD by more than 13% making it double to what it was back in 2008.

Market Research of 2009 by the reputed Analysts suggests that AMD will be able to Capture a market share of around 22 % by the end of 2009 with the launch of Phenom Series Processors and others that are scheduled in 2009 before the Processor Market sees a downfall in the market rate of the current processors offered by Intel. This will prove to be a significant blow on the market share of Intel from its competitor.

Now it is just a matter of time as to what decisions, that are significant for retaining the market share of the company, are taken by Intel as well as AMD to get a competitive advantage over other. Intel wants to market performance while AMD wishes to fight the duel with Cost as the weapon. The current scenario is in favor of AMD in terms of Market share while Intel is favored for Performance.

No related posts.

That is not all. Now the time lines are searchable with keywords specification. There are arrangements for composite navigation too. You can seamlessly export the rich media to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional keeping the layer and KeyFrame Data intact for later editing. XMP metadata can be added to project till final rendering for better asset management and copyright tracking. They have also worked out mobile device authoring. This will enable you to see the video as it will look in different devices.

You can also import the 3D layers that were laid in PhotoShop as they are. So you will not get a 2D layer taken from a specific angle, you can have the whole structure and layer in 3D. These are extremely significant for a serious video editor and film maker. Now purchasing a new i7 core enabled machine has become an excuse for upgrading your present system configuration.

We were extremely eagar to lay our hands on Adobe After Effects and here are the conclusions that we have at the end of using After Effects CS4 on a project. We wanted to test out the photoshop file import first so here we go…

We created a cube in Photoshop CS4 and imported it in After Effects. And we were impressed as we had the full 3D Volumetric space retained. It was not just the snapshot of the cube taken from an specific angle. We could rotate the cameras as well as any other 3D layers in after effects using the same functions as the functions used in CS3 for a Camera Rotation around the X,Y and Z Axis. But as these are afterall layers, the effects can only be applied over time.

The other stunning feature that we came across is the Unified Camera Tool. This tool allows you to take the advantage of the multi-mouse button to control the camera moves such as zooming, rotation and moving around a 3D Object quickly. These option can be accessed from the Upper Composition.

In all, we are highly impressed with Adobe After Effects CS4. We highly recommend upgrading from the CS3 package to the CS4 package. Eventhough, it is a heavily priced pacakage, but it is an indispensable tool for a serious professional in the multimedia industry dealing with a large Video Editing project. Maybe you will even need to upgrade the system for using this outstanding Package, but all the investments are worth undertaking for the sake of seamless integration and management of work load with CS4.

1. Video Editing on an Intel Core i7 Extreme