cpu

Low-cost ultraportable laptops and family-friendly all-in-one desktops are a common sight in the CNET Labs; massive gaming rigs less so.

It's gotten to the point now that when one of these high-end systems appears, someone in the office always asks, "Does anyone even buy these things any more?"

PC gaming, while not dead, is not the arms race it was more than five years ago, as only a handful of 2011 games (Battlefield 3, The Witcher 2) are designed to really push PC hardware.

Game publishers know they need to create games that can play on a wide variety of systems, and much of the growth in PC gaming comes from social and casual games that run on nearly any hardware, and predating that, MMOs such as World of Warcraft that also had forgiving system requirements. … Read more

Nvidia's Tegra chips will for the first time power a supercomputer--more evidence that ARM is movin' on up into Intel territory.

The chipmaker said today the Barcelona Supercomputing Center is developing a new hybrid supercomputer that, for the first time, combines energy-efficient Nvidia Tegra CPUs (central processing units), based on the ARM chip architecture, with Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs).

The supercomputing center plans to develop a system that is two to five times more energy-efficient compared with today's efficient high-performance computing systems. Most of today's supercomputers use Intel processors.

"In most current systems, CPUs … Read more

CPU Speed Professional tests your PC's processor and compares its results against other users' CPUs and systems via an online rankings site. This free tool stresses your CPU with a variety of tests designed to reveal strengths and weaknesses, but it doesn't hurt or change anything. It's basically foolproof to use and compatible with both Intel and AMD processors.

This software's user interface resembles a car's analog instrument cluster, with tachometer-style displays for both % CPU and MHz. A menu offered controls for initiating the scan and viewing and sharing the results. We ran the test, … Read more

When a program suddenly quits in OS X without any user direction, it usually means the program has crashed. The system will likely show the crash reporter window that you can submit to Apple to help the developers troubleshoot their code and correct the problem. However, if you are running OS X Lion then you may run into a situation in which applications you have open will close without showing any indication of a problem.

As an example, go ahead and open TextEdit and close any windows that open up. Then go through your Applications folder and launch a number … Read more

While iTunes itself is not a tremendous processing resource hog (about 1 to 3 percent CPU usage and 11 to 13 threads when idle), leaving the iTunes Store as your active selection in iTunes can jump the CPU usage to between 6 and 10 percent and add two to three threads when idle.

If you're needing to process anything requiring a lot of power and you've got iTunes open, being sure that the iTunes Store is not the active selection in the iTunes sidebar is a good place to get some extra oomph. Mac OS X Hints user … Read more

Apple's newest release of OS X is just around the corner, and part of its advancements is that it will not only be Intel-only as was the case with Snow Leopard, but it will also run exclusively in 64-bit mode and therefore require a 64-bit CPU. Unfortunately, this means that some of the early Intel-based Macs will not be able to run Lion when it is released, so if you did purchase one of the first Intel Macs in 2006 (or purchased one second-hand) then you may not be able to install and run OS X 10.7.

Despite … Read more

As a product category, CPU cooling hardware tends to offer few worthwhile developments, but a new heat sink concept from Sandia National Laboratories seems to offer tremendous promise for computers, as well as cooling appliances. Designed by researcher Jeffrey Koplow, the new "Sandia Cooler" does away with a separate fan component, and instead relies on the heat sink itself to disperse heated air.

If you're familiar with traditional CPU heat sink designs, they usually feature a metal heat sink and a fan working in concert to siphon off the heat generated by CPU, graphics chips, and other computer parts that draw, and therefore emit, energy. The problem with that design is what's called the boundary layer of air that hugs the heat sink. That boundary layer retains heat, which the fan is then supposed to disperse. Because of the power necessary to drive the fan, as well as the fan's proximity to the boundary layer, that design is inefficient. The Sandia Cooler eliminates the fan, replacing it with a finned heat sink that can disperse the boundary layer far more efficiently since the two are in closer contact.… Read more

Following the wave of scam "MacDefender" software and its variants, Apple recently released a security update for Mac OS X 10.6 that updates the built-in "XProtect" feature to identify these threats; however, after installing the update, a number of people are finding the system is stuck with high CPU usage, resulting in the system being bogged down and running slowly. Upon checking Activity Monitor, a process called "MRT" is using a large percentage of CPU, and even with forcing the process to quit it will reappear and continue to use the CPU.

Apple'… Read more

According to Turkish Web site Donanimhaber, which has successful track record of finding component leaks, AMD plans to release quad-core laptop CPUs as early as June. The report specifically mentions a 1.9GHz A8-3530MX part.

A Google-translated version of the page (as seen on tech blogs Engadget and Electronista) says the new CPUs will integrate Radeon HD 6620G graphics and DirectX 11 support. AMD calls this combination of CPU and GPU an APU, or Accelerated Processing Unit.

AMD has been on something of a roll lately, with its low-cost Fusion E-350 CPU powering our favorite 11-inch ultraportables, such as the … Read more