Intel’s Newest Processors

Recently Intel came out with their newest line of chips, the Core i3, i5, and i7. These seem pretty awesome, and they are a great bunch of processing for the money. The i3’s come in 2 two core models, 2.93 Ghz and 3.06 Ghz. The i5’s come in 2 and 4 core models ranging from 2.66 to 3.46 Ghz. The i7’s come in 2, 4, and 6 core models, ranging from 2.66 to 3.33 Ghz. But dont be deceived. Not everything is based on core clock speed. When you have several cores in your processor, each of the cores runs at the listed clock speed. It’s almost like having two processors working in parallel. Each core would run at 2.66 Ghz, for example. The newest breakthrough in Intel’s line is the Core i7 extreme, with 6, yes 6, cores. It runs at 3.33 Ghz, or 19.98 total if you have them all running in tandem. It even has a turbo boost feature that brings that up to 3.6 Ghz. I dont have a G to drop on one of these amazing chips, but if you have one, let me know how it runs. I want to hear about all of your Core i series experiences.

Storage Growth Vs. Storage Used

In today’s computing world things are growing quickly. A good example is the size and speed of conventional computer storage. The average user today uses most of their memory on music and pictures. But how much memory do you really need?

Over the past few years we’ve seen massive advances in storage capacity of traditional platter HDD’s. 300 Gb is now standard in the lowest end desktops, and if your into gaming you can get several drives, each several terabytes large. We have also seen many advances in speed.

The two biggest are serial ATA, or SATA, and SSD’s, or solid state drives. SATA was a major improvement over IDE for the connection of drives. IDE speeds are limited to about 500 MBits a second, where standard SATA is good for about 3Gbps. Plus, ribbon cables are messy, SATA is thin and keeps your case airflow clear. New, high end SATA cables get up to 6 Gbps, though many drives don’t support those speeds.

SSD’s are a revolution in speed and storage methods over traditional platter hard disk drives. They support 3 and 6 Gbps speeds, because data access is instant, unlike traditional drives there the platter has to be spun and read. SSD’s accomplish this by using a flash drive like technology that stores data in flash chip memory rather than a magnetic disk. Newer platter drives also have increased speed by increasing spin speeds. SSD’s bring many other advantages too, which i will discuss in another article. over the last ten to fifteen years the space requirements of computers has increased greatly.

There are many more programs available today, which require more storage space. Also, operating systems have grown more sophisticated. Music, videos, and photos also hog a lot of space. The real question is do we utilize all of the space available to us? no. At the moment we do not. Even with 15,000 songs in your library, that will only eat up about 60 Gb of your hard drive. Movies are much larger, and photos take up a lot of room, but the average family will most likely never use 500 Gb, much less a terabyte before they upgrade their machine. Businesses and gamers use much more memory than the average user, but a few terabytes is still an outrageous amount of memory to spend your money on.

Another issue is speed. Is it worth spending a few hundred extra dollars to go from standard to high speed SATA? If you play a lot of games or movies, then maybe, because then load speeds are a big deal. You need your information available as quickly as possible. All of that considered, unless you’re going to drop another few hundred bucks on a fancy solid state drive, high speed SATA still isn’t worth your money. Gig for gig, we have way more storage space than we need, and way more speed. but its still pretty cool, so who cares?

USB 3.0 – The Pros and Cons

I started this blog to discuss just about anything technical. I have left comments open for starting discussions, and suggesting new topics.

My topic today is USB 3.0. Is it worth the money? How long until it’s fully integrated?

First off, let’s start with the differences between USB 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. USB was a revolution in the connection of peripheral devices, such as printers, mice, and keyboards. USB 1.0 was released in 1995 by Intel. It had a speed of 12 Mbps. USB 2.0 was released in April 2000, and was forty-fold faster than USB 1.0, with a speed of 480 Mbps, which is the current standard today. USB 3.0 has the amazing capability of running at 5 Gbits a second at full speed, and usually runs around 3.2 Gbits a second after overhead.

The problem is, as with anything you eventually lose backwards compatibility, as we now have in USB 3.0. USB 1.0 and 2.0 were backwards compatible. The physical structure of the plug never changed, it was merely a slight receiving end hardware change, and a major software update. I can plug my USB 1.0 device into my USB 2.0 computer without any special cables or adapters, and it will run, albeit still only at 12 Mbps, but it will run. The same goes for putting my 2.0 device into a legacy 1.0 port. It will only run as fast as the slowest hardware involved.

In USB 3.0 the plugs were made longer, to accommodate new pins, called SuperSpeed pins. Don’t misunderstand me; there are certain ways to connect old devices. You can connect USB 1.0 and 2.0 to a new USB 3.0 female plug, or receiving end, such as on a motherboard or hub, because the new plug is simply longer, and the legacy plugs will never reach the new pins. However, you will not be able to connect a USB 3.0 device to a USB 2.0 board or hub without a special type of cable or adapter. So the issue once again comes down to being able to upgrade in a timely manner without disrupting too many people. Within a few years I will need an adapter to connect my new iPod to my 3 year old laptop.

Another issue is cost. At the moment there are very few devices on the market for USB 3.0. If you like building or upgrading your own computers, you can buy a motherboard equipped with USB 3.0, but you will definitely pay an arm and a leg just to have the jump on your friends. So yes, USB 3.0 is a great addition to the technological world, and a much needed upgrade to a system that was quickly aging as everything sped up around it. Would I go out and buy a 3.0 motherboard now? No. There aren’t enough devices out yet to justify the price. But USB 3.0 is growing up quickly and very soon it will be in all of our lives.