How to dual-boot Windows 8 and Windows 7

One of the big barriers to upgrading to Windows 8 is that Windows 7 is so good. For keyboard-and-mouse users, Windows 8 isn’t a hugely compelling upgrade — and without judicious use of third-party apps tobring back the Start menu and other core Windows 7 features, Windows 8 can actually make the desktop experience worse.

But what if you want to try out Windows 8? What if you want to take the Metro Start screen for a spin? (Who knows, maybe you’ll like it.) What if you want to give Windows 8 a chance?

One method you could use is virtualization, where you quite literally have Windows 8 open in a window on your Windows 7 PC. Virtualization isn’t really viable if you’re looking to truly experience Windows 8 and everything that it entails, though. For that, you need to dual-boot.

How to dual-boot/multi-boot Windows 8 with Windows 7

This guide assumes that you already have Windows 7 (or XP or Vista) installed. If you’ve already got Windows 8 installed, and you want to install Windows 7 as an additional OS, this guide might still work — but no guarantees.

First things first, you should backup any important documents. You shouldn’t lose any files during this process, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. See our Backup Masterclass for tips on how to backup your data efficiently and securely.

With that out of the way, hit Start, typediskmgmt.msc, and press Enter. This will open the Disk Management console. You should see a big (or small) list of all the drives currently attached to your computer.

Find the drive that Windows 7 is installed on (it should be marked as “Boot” or “System”), right click it, and click Shrink Volume. In the window that pops up, you ideally need a figure that’s around 50,000MB (50GB). If your hard drive is very full, this might not be possible. In theory the minimum install size for Windows 8 is around 20GB, but I really wouldn’t proceed without at least 30-50GB. If Disk Management refuses to shrink your volumes, you may need to try a third-party tool such as Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager.

Once the volume has been shrunk, a black, “Unallocated” region will appear at the end of the drive. Right click this and select New Simple Volume. Click through the dialog windows and give the new volume a memorable name such as Windows 8. Don’t change any other settings. This process will format the new partition, which may take a little while.

Installing Windows 8

At this point, all you really need to do is install Windows 8. You might opt to install a full version of Windows 8, or you can grab a 90-day evaluation copy. Either way, you want to slot the DVD (or USB stick) into your computer, reboot, and begin the installation process. (You may need to change the boot priority of your DVD drive/USB stick, which can be done in the BIOS).

When given the option, select a Custom install (not Upgrade). On the next screen you’ll be shown a bunch of partitions/volumes. Select the one that’s labeled Windows 8 (or whatever you called it). Be absolutely certain that you’ve selected the right volume, then click Next.

The slick Windows 8 installer will now do its thing. It will reboot once or twice, but eventually you’ll be greeted with a multi-boot menu that allows you to select which OS you want to load (Windows 8, Windows 7, or any other OSes that’re installed). Windows 8 will load by default after a few seconds, but you can change it back to Windows 7 by clicking “Change defaults or choose other options” at the bottom of the screen. Voilà: You now have a PC that dual-boots Windows 8 and Windows 7.

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Linux drops support for Intel’s 386 processors, but does it really matter?

If you’re the type of person that not only heavily uses the Linux platform, but also has a bunch of very old processors lying around for everyday use, you’ll be disappointed to know that Linux has just dropped support for Intel’s 386 processors. Say goodbye to that hobby Linux operating system you’ve been building on your twenty-year-old rig.

Linux and the i386 have something of an intertwined history. Intel first released the i386 processor back in 1985, and Linux’s source code was first released back in 1991, after Linus Torvalds developed the operating system on a 386. Eventually, back in 2006, Intelannounced that it would finally cease production of the i386 the following year. Linux continued to support the processor years after it died, and has now finally abandoned said support.

Aside from being free and highly customizable, one of the best features of Linux is that it always maintained support for older or lower-end systems, helping to breathe new life into that old Thinkpad sitting at the bottom of your closet. Case in point: The Raspberry Pi, extremely tiny and underpowered by today’s desktop standards, comes stock with a Linux distribution. As for why Torvalds decided to drop i386 support from the Linux kernel, Red Hat employee and Linux hacker Ingo Molnar explained it was a simple matter of the extra work involved in continuing support not outweighing the resulting benefits. He noted that the complexity of supporting the 386 architecture “has plagued us with extra work whenever we wanted to change SMP primitives, for years.”

A little snarky in his explanation, Molnar goes on to say: “Unfortunately there’s a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won’t be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff.” Torvalds followed Molnar’s remark with cold acceptance, stating “I’m not sentimental. Good riddance.”

Torvalds announced the dropped support just two days after Linux 3.7 was released, though no mention of the dropped support appears in the release notes. Along with removing i386 support, Linux 3.7 brings some other major changes and additions. It includes completely new architecture for ARM 64-bit CPUs, as well as the ability to build a single ARM kernel that is portable across different hardware setups.

In the scheme of things, Linux dropping i386 support won’t really affect much other than the staunchest of hobbyists. The act holds more historical weight than it does any kind of practical significance, signaling the end of a relatively long era.

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Is it worth investing in a high-efficiency power supply?

If you’ve gone shopping for a power supply any time over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed the explosive proliferation of various 80 Plus ratings. As initially conceived, an 80 Plus certification was a way for PSU manufacturers to validate that their power supply units were at least 80% efficient at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of full load.

The 80 Plus program has expanded significantly since the first specification was adopted. Valid levels now include Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and a currently unused Titanium specification level. The chart below lists the requirements a PSU must meet to be certified.

In the pre-80 Plus days, PSU prices normally clustered around a given wattage output. The advent of the various 80 Plus levels has created a second variable that can have a significant impact on unit price. This leads us to three important questions: How much power can you save by moving to a higher-efficiency supply, what’s the premium of doing so, and how long does it take to make back your initial investment?

Power supply pricing and premiums

First, here’s an overview of 80 Plus PSU pricing at various wattages. We created this data from NewEgg results, but only picked units from well-known vendors. Generic products from companies like CoolMax aren’t a part of these results. When we priced units, we opted for the lowest-cost unit from the same manufacturer.

Basic 400W-600W units are quite cheap these days, even from top vendors like Antec, Corsair, OCZ, and Silverstone. Prices start to climb by the 700W range; 1200W units are several hundred dollars.

The price premium for greater-than-80 Plus certification can be substantial. Below 800W, Bronze certification adds 4-20% to the list price of an 80 Plus unit. 80 Plus Gold PSUs are 35-61% more expensive within the same wattage category. Platinum-level power supplies are 90-100% more expensive; twice the price of a standard 80 Plus unit.

By way of example: Antec and Rosewill have $50-$60 80 Plus PSUs in the 501-600W category, while the 80 Plus Platinum products are $139 and $110 respectively. In the 701-800W division, Corsair has 80 Plus Bronze units for $84.95, and 80 Plus Platinum priced at $179.

At the highest end of the market, this changes slightly. Power supplies in the 1kW and greater category don’t put much of a premium on high-efficiency units. An 80 Plus 1200W PSU is $229; 80 Plus Gold is ~$258. 80 Plus Platinum is still significantly more expensive at ~$332.

You can’t save power that you aren’t using

Power supply efficiency is defined as the amount of power actually provided to the internal components, divided by the amount of power drawn at the wall. A 50% efficient PSU that’s tasked with providing 50W of power to a system will draw 100W from the grid. The extra 50W is lost as heat. A 90% efficient PSU would draw 56W in the same circumstances.

Even generic PSUs are far more than 50% efficient; in fact, 75-77% is fairly common. This means the amount of money you save from upgrading to a high-efficiency PSU is minimal if you don’t actually draw much power to start with. Electricity rates are charged by the kWh — if your system only uses 80W at idle, and idles 20 hours a day, you won’t see much benefit from an 80 Plus Platinum PSU as opposed to a regular 80 Plus.

How we tested

We’ve tested two pairs of PSUs from the same manufacturer and with the same rated power output (or close as we could get). Our first testbed was outfitted with two 750W power supplies from PC Power & Cooling. The first is a red Silencer with an 80 Plus certification. Overall listed efficiency for the unit is 83%. The manual breaks this down further, specifying that efficiency ranges from 82-85% depending on exact load.

The other 750W is a Silencer Mark II. It’s certified as 80 Plus Silver with an average efficiency of 85%. Efficiency isn’t broken down by overall load for this model.

The second testbed was configured with a brace of Thermaltake Toughpowers. The first is a 1200W Toughpower 1200A, the second is a 1275W Toughpower XT Platinum. The first unit is certified as 80 Plus, with a listed efficiency of up to 87%; the second’s efficiency is listed as up to 94%. Thermaltake doesn’t provide any additional clarity for either unit, so it’s not initially clear if those figures are for 115V or 220V operation.

Note: The 750W and 1200W figures cannot be cross-compared. We built two entirely different testbeds for this project. Putting a moderate load on a 750W PSU isn’t particularly difficult, while stretching the legs of a 1200W PSU took a bit more work.

Our test methodology was simple: We plugged in a Kill-A-Watt wall meter and measured the power consumption of each unit over 2.5 hours at both load and idle. The meter was reset in between each test for each PSU. Our wattage figures are the average load while the system was in each state, not spot checks on the meter. It’s true that this is a relatively simple, broad-spectrum test, but our goal is to compare simple, real-world savings; not metrics you can’t measure without expensive equipment.

Results

First, here are the idle figures for the four solutions:

The idle figures illustrate what we said earlier regarding the limited impact of increased idle efficiency as far as total power costs are concerned. Gains here are in line with claimed figures. Moving to the 80 Plus Silver 750W cuts idle consumption by roughly 3.6%; the 80 Plus Platinum reduces power consumption by 9.2%.

Load tests show the same gaps at higher power consumption. The 80 Plus Silver 750W Silencer Mark II is 4.5% more efficient than the original Silencer; the 1200W Toughpower XT Platinum is 8.8% more efficient than the 1200A power supply. Again, it matters where you start from. Saving 25W between the 80 Plus and 80 Plus Silver isn’t bad, but the XT Platinum knocks almost three times as much wattage off the 1200A’s main draw.

Clearly the efficiency of a top-end PSU can save you some scratch over the long term. Exactly how much depends on what you’re doing.

How much can you save?

Here, we’ve taken our data from all four power supplies and plugged it into various use equations over an entire year. Our first two graphs assume that the system is either in idle or under full load 24/7/365. Two different costs per kilowatt-hour are included: The US average, at 12.5 cents per kWh, and the current New York State average of 18.7 cents. These are simplistic assumptions, but they ballpark the maximum and minimum savings you’ll see if you never turn the system off.

At constant idle, the 750W 80 Plus Silver saves $4.38 to $6.56 over the course of a year. Upgrading to the 80 Plus Platinum drops between $18.63 and $27.87 back in your pocket.

At constant load, even the modest upgrade offered by the 750W 80 Plus Silver is worth $27-$40. The Toughpower XT 1275W saves you $80-$120 in power costs per year.

Granted, very few people are going to need a power supply under this type of continuous load, but there is a financial benefit to upgrading if you use this much power. At some point, however, we need to address the fact that the best way to save power is to turn the machine off or put it into hibernation.

Here are power usage figures and costs if we assume that the system is idle eight hours a day, under load for four hours, and off/hibernating for the remaining 12.

Heavy workers may still see an advantage from an upgrade; the Thermaltake 1275 XT Platinum will save from $19.57 to $29.38 a year. The smaller 750W upgrade is worth $6 to $9.

A dubious investment

The good news is that power supplies with better 80 Plus ratings really do deliver what they claim — there is a net reduction in total power consumption. If you burn a lot of power, Platinum units could be good investments and pay back their premiums in a year or two. Similarly, if you’re trying to minimize every last watt of consumption, this is one way to do it. The cost premiums, however, don’t add up anywhere but at the highest end. If you’re buying a 1200W unit, Gold is scarcely more expensive and Platinum will still pay back its initial up-front cost in a year or two.

Most of us, however, would be best served by turning the machine off or dropping into hibernation. The best way to save power is simply not to use it, and manufacturers currently charge huge premiums for marginal performance gains. If you’re upgrading from a cheap piece of junk (anything with words like Sparkle, Max, Tech, Sun, Bright, or Beam in the name is virtually guaranteed to be garbage), the premium is easier to justify. If you’ve already got an 80 Plus PSU, it’s a much harder sell.

The flip side is that PSU units go on sale fairly frequently, and a gold or silver unit can be trusted to provide an upgrade. It may not make much sense to buy a unit at a significant premium, but if you get a good deal, we recommend taking it.

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GE develops ultra-thin, almost-silent cooler for next-gen laptops and tablets

General Electric has unveiled what seems to be the thinnest, high-performance cooler for the next-generation of ultra-thin tablets and laptops (pictured above). While this cooler obviously allows for slimmer designs (or more space for other components), it also uses just half the power of a comparable fan, granting a significant boost to battery life. Oh, it’s almost silent, too.

The technology behind GE’s cooler is called DCJ — Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets. DCJ basically acts as a miniature pair of bellows: Expanding to suck in cool air, and then contracting to expel hot air. GE originally invented DCJ to help cool commercial jet engines, but two years ago it seems someone had the clever idea of miniaturizing the tech for use in computers — and so here we are.

At 2:15 in the video below you can see the DCJ in action, inside a modern ultrabook laptop. The rest of the video is a bit fluffy, featuring lots of dramatic lighting and excessive use of protective goggles.

As you can see above, GE’s cooler is roughly the size and thickness of a credit card, but the press release states that the complete cooling solution (presumably including a heatsink/pipe) is 4mm. This is apparently 50% thinner than existing fan-based solutions, and obviously rather significant as we move towards tablets and laptops that are sub-8mm.

Perhaps most importantly, though, according to GE VP Chris Giovanniello, “DCJ can be made so quiet that users won’t even know it’s running.” This is partly because the tech is fundamentally different from a fan — there’s no blade whizzing through the air at thousands of RPM, and thus no buzzing or vibrations — but it’s also because DCJ supports verylocalized cooling. Instead of a complex heat pipe and fan assembly, GE suggests that you might instead have a bunch of smaller, more efficient DCJs directly attached to components that need cooling.

Moving forward, GE has already licensed DCJ tech to Fujikura, a Japanese thermal management company. GE is also providing OEMs with DCJ kits, so that they can test the technology out in next-generation tablets and laptops. Realistically, we should see DCJ cooling solutions sometime in the next couple of years.

How to bring back the Start menu and button to Windows 8

In our continuing quest to fix and finesse some of Windows 8′s frolicsome foibles, we turn at last to the Start menu — that beloved button that has staked out the bottom left corner of your desktop for almost 20 years, only to be ignominiously removed from Windows 8 and replaced by the desktop-hating Metro Start screen.

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to ensure that the Start button and menu remain dead, a bunch of third-party replacements have emerged. Really, it just goes to show how devoted the Desktop Windows userbase is: Microsoft completely stripped out the underlying Start menu code to quash potential Luddite revolutionaries, and yet just weeks after the release of Windows 8 there are dozens of Start menu and Start button replacements.

Let’s take a look at the best, cheapest, and most authentic apps for bringing back the Windows Start menu and button.

Classic Shell

Classic Shell is free, open-source donationware that gives you the option of a classic (Windows 98ish), Windows XP, or Vista/7 Start menu. At its most basic, it puts a Start button back on your taskbar — but as always with third-party utilities, it has a ton of other features and settings that you can tweak to your heart’s content (in Classic Shell’s case, there’s probably too many tweakable settings). There is apparently an option for Classic Shell to boot straight to Desktop, but I couldn’t find it.

One strong point of Classic Shell is that it successfully rebinds your Start key, so that the Start menu pops up instead of the new Metro Start screen. Hitting the Start key from Metro pops up Classic Shell, too. Other Start menu replacements don’t usually cope quite so well.

Take care while installing Classic Shell, though: It’s not just a Start menu replacement, and if you’re not careful you will end up installing Classic IE and Classic Explorer, too.

Download Classic Shell (free)

Pokki

Where Classic Shell tries to replicate the Windows of yesteryear, Pokki (free) is very much its own beast — and as much as I love the Windows 7 Start menu, I have to admit that Pokki is probably even better. It utilizes a neat “pinning” system that isn’t unlike the home screen of your smartphone or tablet (though I would argue that the Windows taskbar/superbar still does a better job). You can also add widgets to Pokki, such as Gmail or Facebook, which display your latest email or status updates.

By default, Pokki will configure your Windows 8 system to boot straight to the Desktop — and there is an option that will just completely disable the hot corners, if you so desire. (Remember, Win+C pops open the Charms menu, if you need.)

Download Pokki (free)

Start8

Finally, a commercial offering that will set you back $5: Start8. Start8 is very similar to Classic Shell, but it’s just a little bit smoother. Start8′s configuration interface is much easier to use (and easier on the eyes), and the actual Start menu feels much more like a contiguous part of Windows.

Start8 has a curious option where you can actually have the Metro Start screen pop up as a menu, rather than full-screen (pictured at the top of the story). This is kinda neat, though you’re probably better off sticking to the normal Windows 7-style Start menu replacement.

Like Pokki, Start8 can disable your hot corners and boot directly to Desktop. Start8 also has a bunch of configuration options for how the Start key interacts with Desktop and Metro, which can be useful if you’re looking for a very specific functionality.

Download Start8 ($5, free 30-day trial)

For more Windows 8 tips, such as shutting down a Windows 8 PC easily, or booting to the Desktop without the aid of a third-party app, check out ExtremeTech’s extensive Windows 8 tips.

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AMD’s Trinity analyzed: A surprisingly good, inexpensive gaming solution

If you followed our coverage of AMD’s Trinity launch last month, you may recall that our benchmarking efforts were thwarted by an unexpected motherboard fire. Such events are problematic as far as launch-day coverage is concerned, but it also gave us time to consider some of the different use cases for AMD’s mainstream desktop processor.

The A10-5800K’s low price point, plus its integrated HD 7660D GPU, opens up some intriguing options compared to the current crop of Intel processors. Intel’s Core i5-3550, the CPU we tested against, currently retails for $209. It’s a 3.3GHz part with a 3.7GHz Turbo Boost and no Hyper-Threading. We used the Core i5-3550 because it’s the lowest-end Intel chip we had available. A Core i3-3220 would have been the most appropriate chip, price-wise. We’ll address the theoretical value proposition of the Intel chip after we examine how the A10-5800K performs against a substantially more expensive CPU.

What we’ve done is pair the A10-5800K with a low-end Radeon 6570 GPU (combined with the APU’s integrated 7660D), and compared it against the Core i5-3550 + Radeon 6570. At $55-$70, the 6570 is exactly the sort of low-end card a regular user might opt for to juice up a low-cost desktop. The Radeon 6570 is based on the older “Turks” GPU; it offers 480 shader processors and 1-2GB of RAM (our card had 1GB). Both systems used the same 8GB of DDR3-1333 RAM. Total cost of this baseline configuration was $304 for the Intel system, $224 for the AMD rig. We used an MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 motherboard. The board offers a full set of tweakable features for overclockers and tuners; we were quite pleased with its overall performance.

Then, to make things interesting, we swapped out the RAM on the AMD system as well. AMD’s APUs are capable of benefiting significantly from additional RAM bandwidth; we wanted to see if that trend would hold true in a combined GPU configuration. With 8GB of DDR3-2133, the total AMD cost rises to $244.

We ran play tests in four games: Orcs Must Die 2 (I’m a huge fan of the OMD series), Batman: Arkham City, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Left 4 Dead 2. Does the A10-5800K’s ability to leverage a dual-GPU actually translate to a real-world performance advantage?

Vsync was turned off in all cases, all games were benchmarked in 1920×1080, and AMD’s Catalyst Control Panel was configured for “Quality” texture filtering. Anisotropic filtering was enabled in-driver rather than forced on via the Control Panel.

Orcs Must Die 2 is an enjoyable simple first-person tower-defense title. We benchmarked the game’s “Twisted Halls” finale map at 1900×1080, with graphics details set to High and 4xAA. Average frame rates are in the first graph, minimum frame rates in the second.

We chose “Twisted Halls” because it’s a map that can noticeably chug on lower-end graphics cards once a full array of traps are set. This is a game where AMD’s higher minimum frame rates make more of a difference than the increased average. Both systems hit low points at various times, but the 5800K’s 23 FPS was 36% faster than what we saw with the Intel system.

Next up, Batman: Arkham City. The game was set for High detail (DX11 was disabled). PhysX and Ambient Occlusion were both disabled, FXAA was enabled in the game’s settings. We benchmarked Arkham City in two modes. First, a single-room challenge map (Prison Riot), and second while soaring over the streets and alleys of Gotham City.

In Arkham City, the AMD system is 14% and 18% faster in our two scenarios. The minimum Prison Riot frame rate is 9% higher; the minimum City Flight frame rate is 24% higher.

In fairness to Intel, though this isn’t easily captured in a frame rate test, the transitions from map to map — when moving between rooms in the same building, for example, were smoother with the Core i5.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

Skyrim was configured for Medium details, with no AA and 8x AF enabled. Standard textures were installed (the game offers a high-resolution texture pack as well). Of all the games we tested, Skyrim saw the greatest performance boost from DDR3-2133 as compared to DDR3-1333. The A10′s average frame rate was a full 40% faster than the Core-i5 3550′s; its minimum frame rate was 28% higher.

Left 4 Dead 2

Finally, there’s Left 4 Dead 2. We tested the game with Very High shaders and High Detail, with multi-core rendering enabled, 4x MSAA, and 16x AF.

Again, AMD outperformed Intel here — L4D picked up a nice boost to its average frame rate from the faster RAM, even if the minimum FPS didn’t change much.

What about other tweaks?

One of the theoretical advantages of buying an A10-5800K is that the chip is fully unlocked out of the box. We experimented with various settings and overclocking options, but saw mixed results. Increasing the integrated memory controller’s speed to 2200MHz, up from 1800MHz, had virtually no impact on our gaming tests.

Interestingly, overclocking the integrated GPU had virtually no impact on Combined performance. We confirmed that the GPU was running faster with various GPU compute tests, but in games, there was no difference. Evidently AMD’s internal profiles keep most of the GPU workloads on the discrete card.

Setting the DDR3-2133 to 1T operation boosted performance by roughly 5% in some games, but Skyrim would crash almost instantly. Disabling Turbo Boost and running the entire CPU at 4.2GHz gave a 3-5% FPS boost in some tests. Results from around the internet suggest that the A10-5800K can hit 4.6GHz with a solid third-party cooler — that extra 10% won’t do your power bill any favors, but you can squeeze a bit more performance out of the chip if you’ve got the hardware.

A modest proposal

Our results indicate that AMD’s Trinity-based desktop APUs may be a better option for gamers on a budget, but there are some significant caveats to consider. AMD’s performance advantage over Intel is limited to GPU configurations that combine the on-die GPU with a discrete solution. Paired with a high-end GPU, Intel CPUs are significantly faster than their AMD counterparts.

Swapping the Core i5-3550 with a hypothetical Core i3-3220 would eliminate the price discrepancy between Intel and AMD, but it wouldn’t make the Intel system faster in the tests above. Even if we assume both Intel CPUs performed identically, the AMD chips would have a 10-15% edge when paired with a low-end GPU that could make use of Trinity’s Combined Graphics mode.

The flip side to this is that an Intel system with a Core i3-3220 is a more certain upgrade path. Enthusiasts can buy a low-end Intel system today, knowing they’ll be able to upgrade to a CPU that can push a high-end modern GPU to its limit. For AMD buyers, that’s not a given. Sunnyvale has promised that the FM2 socket will be supported by Kaveri and the Steamroller-based APUs that are currently expected to debut in 2014, but Steamroller’s performance isn’t known.

Prospective buyers should be aware that while Steamroller is expected to significantly improve on Trinity’s single-thread performance, it is unlikely to close the gap with the Haswell/Broadwell parts Intel will be shipping by that date. Best case CPU improvement, based on what we currently know, would be approximately 15%. That’s not enough to unseat Intel; Santa Clara remains the better option if you want serious upgrade potential.

Budget-constrained gamers who want to maximize current performance and aren’t concerned about future upgrades should give the A10-5800K a look. It’s not the best option for everyone, but there’s a valid argument for adopting AMD over Intel for gaming in this market segment. We’re the first to admit that it’s a pretty specific use scenario, but the performance gaps are large enough to support it.

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DirectX 11.1 will be exclusive to Windows 8: Is Microsoft forcing gamers to upgrade?

If you’re on the fence about upgrading to Windows 8 and its formerly-known-as-Metro tablet-style user interface, Microsoft may have just made the decision a little easier. The company has announced that the next incremental upgrade to DirectX, version 11.1 — and presumably every new version thereafter — will be exclusive to Windows 8.

Microsoft touts DirectX 11.1 as a piece of Windows 8, likening its exclusivity to Windows 8 (and Windows RT and Windows Server 2012) to how DirectX 11 was built specifically for Windows 7. However, if you were a Vista user, you may remember DirectX 11 being retrofitted for Vista, whereas Microsoft has made it clear that — at the moment, at least — DirectX 11.1 will be exclusive to Windows 8 without any plans to bring it to older operating systems.

Some Windows users may feel like Microsoft is constructing an artificial reason for people to switch to their new operating system, and a quick glance at the DirectX 11.1 features listwill probably confirm their stance. Perhaps the biggest addition to come with the new version is native stereoscopic 3D support, a feature of which most gamers probably don’t take too much advantage. Before this addition, developers could only add stereoscopic 3D support to software by intentionally programming it with specific graphics cards that support it in mind.

As of now, unless you’re running a bunch of 3D software, you most likely don’t need to worry too much about upgrading to Windows 8 in order to nab DirectX 11.1. However, if there are no plans to retrofit 11.1, then it wouldn’t be surprising if future versions of DirectX with more significant upgrades were also not available for anything below Windows 8, eventually forcing an upgrade to access more significant features.

It’s also possible that, with DX11.1, Microsoft is testing out — or at least laying the groundwork — for the Xbox 720′s implementation of DirectX. Remember, the “X” in “Xbox” actually stands for the “X” in “DirectX” — an early codename for the Xbox was the lengthier “DirectXbox.” Currently, there’s no word if the next Xbox — or any upcoming console — will employ the exclusive DirectX 11.1, and as any PC Skyrim player will note with a frown and a sigh, games tend to be built for consoles then ported to PC nowadays, so they might not be built with a new DirectX in mind anyway.

One must also wonder if Microsoft is using this seemingly artificial exclusivity as an attempt to drum up sales for the recently released Windows 8, which has been met with mixed reviews. Though the operating system isn’t even three weeks old, hard sales figureshaven’t yet been revealed, and normally a company would want to shout fantastic sales from the rooftops whenever possible.

Of course, if Microsoft really is using DirectX 11.1 to artificially force its user base to switch to Windows 8, it can only do so much. A large part of the power lies with the developers — if they don’t actually use any of the new DX11.1 features in their software, then there’s little reason to actually need those features.

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Samsung’s Ativ 500T: Not the Windows 8 tablet you’ve been waiting for

Samsung’s Ativ Smart PC 500T is a $749 tablet meant to bridge the gap between the notebook industry and the Apple-dominated tablet space. The manufacturer describes the 500T as “a fully functioning PC. The Samsung Ativ Smart PC 500T runs the programs you need on a Windows 8 operating system in a sleek, lightweight form.”

Samsung has built an enormous smartphone business around delivering high-quality products at attractive price points; the Galaxy series is the beautiful result of close collaboration between engineers, designers, and the Holy Beancounters. The Smart PC 500T, in contrast, feels more like the product of a three-way turf war — and the accountants won.

The 500T’s base specs look great. It’s built on Intel’s Clover Trail platform and features a pair of 1.8GHz Atom cores with Hyper-Threading enabled. The tablet includes 2GB of RAM, lists 64GB of storage, and an 11.6-inch display at 1366×768. There’s no 3G or LTE support, but WiFi and BlueTooth 4.0 are both included.

External hardware

Note: The Samsung Ativ 500T we were sent for review lacked the keyboard that normally ships with the device. When we compare against Surface, we’re omitting comparisons to the Touch Cover. The Ativ 500T’s weak points are unrelated to its dock.

The plastic shell Samsung uses for the 500T feels sturdy, with just the right touch of flexibility. This may or may not be an accurate impression; grip the 500T too hard at the back, and the front LCD will distort in the same places. The Samsung logo at front and back is glued on and there’s a pair of thankfully unobtrusive stickers on the back. The system feels a little too cheap. The stickers aren’t visible in the stock image below, but you can see the included stylus in its slot. This is a welcome addition for navigating in Desktop mode, and Samsung gets kudos for including it.

The bottom of the tablet has the attach points for the dock as well as a magnetic connector reminiscent of those Microsoft uses for the Surface.

Port access and button placement is very hit-and-miss. Here’s the left-hand side of the 500T:

The left-hand side of the device is clean; the volume controls and mini-HDMI output are easily accessible. Mini-HDMI is esoteric enough that we wish the company had included a full-size HDMI to mini-HDMI adapter, but that’s a fairly minor point.

The top of the device is very busy. From the left, there’s the SD card slots, the USB 2 port, the physical auto-rotate on/off button, and the power switch. We’re thrilled to see a physical option for auto-rotate, but the device’s button placement makes it impossible to hold it in portrait mode from the left-hand side. The power button is easy to hit by mistake, a fact that’s particularly annoying given the network problems we experienced. The fold-away tabs make the device look cheap, especially if you’ve got multiple peripherals hooked up at the same time. There’s no way to detach them without breaking them off.

Weight and size

The 11.6-inch screen is clear and bright, but 11.6 inches is, in my opinion, the tipping point for 16:9 tablets. Even before I had the opportunity to test Microsoft’s Surface, I thought the Samsung 500T was too large and clumsy for a handheld device. Windows 8′s split keyboard helps, but doesn’t completely solve the problem.

I compared notes with Sebastian, who has an 11.6-inch Series 7 (Core i5) tablet from Samsung and substantially larger hands than me. He agreed; 11.6-inch tablets aren’t that great for on-screen keyboard work. At 1.65lbs (0.75kg) sans dock, the 500T isn’t heavy, but the 16:9 form factor make it difficult to hold in just one hand in either portrait or landscape mode. Holding the 500T up at an angle while reading/watching content in bed also aggravated the tendinitis in my right arm. That’t not Samsung’s fault, but if you have carpal tunnel, tendinitis, or a similar problem, you may want to look elsewhere.

Finally, there’s Surface. On a purely aesthetic level, Surface makes Samsung’s 500T look like a cheap knockoff from mainland China. In this case, looks are deceiving — the 500T is faster than its rival — but you’d never think so to look at them. The small difference in screen size (10.6 inches instead of 11.6) and weight (1.5 pounds vs. 1.65) matters far more than you’d think; Surface feels solid and comfortable when held in a single hand. The 500T never does.

Display

The Ativ’s display is one of the device’s strong points. 11.6 inches and 1366×768 is a good fit for basic desktop work as well as browsing in Metro applications. It’s bright and clear, with good color saturation and uniformity.

Each bar should be a individual, easily distinguished color. Good TN panels will only blur a bit at the 30-32 marker. Surface is a bit better than the 500T, but the Samsung panel is quite good. Both tablets performed well in single-color viewing angle tests as well.

We compared it against the Surface’s 10.6-inch screen for general video playback and used Lagom’s LCD tests for specific data points. Surface’s display has a slightly higher PPI (147 vs. 135), and slightly more accurate color reproduction. Both displays were adjusted to the third “Brightness” notch. That’s one of the only changes you can make to either tablet; the driver interfaces are bare-bones by even Intel’s standards. Nvidia’s comprehensive control panel, with its 2D and video playback controls, is completely DOA.

White and black saturation are slightly better on Surface; the 500T’s display is marginally easier to use outdoors. Surface is a bit slower in lag tests; viewing angles for both are excellent. Both panels are glossy. Boo.

Video playback: Pick your problems

File compatibility and format support are a big potential reason to go with an x86 tablet instead of something Windows RT-based. Microsoft’s decision not to support MKV playback natively is still a problem; there’s currently no sure-fire solution available in the Windows Store. The 500T, in contrast, has access to tools like VLC and MPC. Samsung’s decision to include PowerDVD doesmake some sense here, even if we prefer open-source solutions.

Unfortunately, other problems keep the Ativ from snagging what ought to be an easy win.

We measured CPU utilization on Surface and the Samsung 500T with multiple test files. These included:

An Xvid encode of a Walking Dead episode (343MB, 640×360, 1.1Mbps)
An Xvid encode of The Incredibles (2.05GB, 720×304, 2.5Mbps)
An Xvid encode of Shutter Island (1.7GB, 1280×544, 1.73Mbps)

We also tested one movie (Star Trek) at multiple quality settings to measure what the two platforms could and couldn’t handle. We encoded Star Trek at three different quality levels and profiles using Handbrake. These were:

1x H.264 (High@L3.0) (811MB, 720×304, 761 Kbps)
1x H.264 (High@L4.0) (6.77GB, 1920×800, 7.6Mbps)
1x H.264 (High@L4.1) (8.75GB, 1920×800, 9.8MBps)

Here’s how performance broke down in our first three videos:

Overall CPU usage is lower for Tegra, which isn’t too surprising — Hyper-Threaded cores are treated like full cores when Windows tracks CPU usage, but they don’t have a full core’s worth of resources. The Incredibles and The Walking Dead episodes played beautifully across both tablets. Shutter Island, on Surface, was something more akin to Stutter Island, for no reason we could see. Its encoding parameters and bit stream size are well within the range of the other two files, but playback was a mess.

The x86 Smart PC had no such problems. Point to Samsung. Watch what happens, though, when we fire up Star Trek.

Atom can play all three versions of our Star Trek encode, but the last two, only just barely. We had to shut down the Task Manager (keeping it open consumes 4-6% of the CPU’s processing power) and close every other open program. Unfortunately, none of our go-to applications fully support Clover Trail’s SoC; we couldn’t get a reliable read on whether or not the video stream was being properly offloaded to the GPU. Based on these figures, we don’t think it is.

GPU offload problems would also explain the lag in Desktop mode. A number of other reviewers have commented that while Metro is smooth and capable on the Ativ, attempting virtually anything in Desktop turns the system into a lagfest. We ran into the same problem; as soon as the tablet tries to juggle even basic tasks, it starts to skip. We suspect the problem here has more to do with video drivers than Atom’s CPU performance. What we’re seeing in Windows 8 is similar to early nettop problems in Windows 7. When Nvidia launched Ion, one of its major talking points was the way Windows 7′s UI didn’t stutter.

Windows 8 relies on GPU acceleration much more than Windows 7 did; it’s entirely possible that the lag and high CPU utilization during video playback are a result of an unoptimized driver stack.

So does Surface win this round? Not hardly. No MKV support meant I had to re-encode the movie into a format the Windows RT tablet could play. The 32GB tablet’s minuscule available storage meant deleting everything else just to watch a single high-quality film. We suspect the Ativ’s playback capabilities could be substantially improved with better video drivers, but as things stand, you can choose between a tablet with excellent video offload and minimal storage, and a lot of re-encoded data files — or a tablet with slightly more storage, full application compatibility, and problematic high-detail playback.

Playback power consumption

Playback power consumption favors Surface, since the two devices have 30Wh batteries.

Smidgen of storage, wonky WiFi

The Ativ Smart PC 500T has a hat trick of problems that effectively nuke its strong points. We’ve discussed the storage problem at some length, but the bottom line is this: Samsung is advertising this as a 64GB tablet and shipping it with roughly 32GB of usable storage.

That’s not just an advertising problem. The entire benefit of buying an Intel tablet is supposed to be x86 compatibility, but a lot of desktop software isn’t exactly sized to fit on a 32GB device. Office 2013 is 2GB. Start adding browsers, Photoshop, photos and video, and some work applications and poof — you’re out of room.

Cloud services like SkyDrive can be helpful here, but they only work as “extra” storage if you tell them not to synchronize with local folders. Otherwise they keep local mirrors on each device and could actually exacerbate the problem.

Still, cloud storage could help solve this problem, if the WiFi didn’t have problems of its own. The 500T’s signal strength and performance once a connection has been established is excellent. We were able to download files via wireless nearly as quickly as via wired connections, and had no problem using the tablet while several rooms (and an entire floor) away from the router.

But actually connecting to the router? That’s a major problem.

At boot or upon resume, the 500T regularly takes between 90 and 120 seconds to connect. It regularly claims to be connected to the internet, even as web pages refuse to load, as shown below.

This is infuriatingly common

Clicking on “Fix Connection Problems” almost never fixes the problem. Usually, it just makes the router vanish for an indefinite period of time. Rebooting the tablet will restore the router as a detected device, but won’t solve the connection issue. Sometimes Metro apps like News will load but Desktop Internet Explorer won’t. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

Intel confirmed to us that this is an issue, but told us the solution is stuck in Samsung’s QA process, with no targeted release date.

This bug single-handedly kills the idea that a tablet is a computing device you can pick up and use the same way you’d use your smartphone. Simply leaving the tablet on and waiting a few minutes doesn’t work; the user has to actively attempt to use the internet, have it fail, than muddy through enabling and disabling the connection.

Samsung’s update application, meanwhile, is prone to errors. The screenshot below was taken after checking both the Windows 8 Store and Windows Update for available Microsoft patches.

It made me download the update twice, for no apparent reason. I’m still not sure it actually changed anything.

Dodgy Desktop

Finally, there’s the state of Desktop performance. In Metro, the 500T shines. Application load times and overall performance are measurably faster than Surface. This is particularly true in twitch games, like Jetpack Joyride. Surface has a noticeable stutter; the Samsung keeps things smooth.

In Desktop mode, responsiveness and performance are great until you actually try to do something. Even small tasks, like simultaneously playing a video file while moving the mouse, lag noticeably. We couldn’t, for example, keep the Task Manager open while playing either of our high end Star Trek encodes. Attempting to manage both windows at once, even with one of them minimized, was too much for the 500T.

Desktop gaming is also out. While the 500T may be theoretically compatible with x86 games, the SGX545 can’t handle anything recent. Even Torchlight, in 640×480 netbook mode, with all details at their lowest values, was barely able to manage a mid-teens frame rate.

The nearly constant lag turns x86 software compatibility into more of a bullet point technicality than it really ought to be. It’s the sort of situation that might be fixable via driver updates, or might be a symptom of an underlying hardware bottleneck.

Who’s supposed to want this?

All of the companies that dominate the modern tablet industry have content stockpiles and product ecosystems. Companies like Samsung, that lack such options, have little choice but to double down on hardware capability. Compare the specs on the 500Tagainst Samsung’s own Series 3 NP350V5C, both at $749, and try not to wince. The laptop is 5.5lbs. The 500T is 3.28lbs with its dock attached. If you need something lighter, there are over a dozen Core i3/i5 SKUs in the 2lb – 3.9lb segment, including four that skate under the 3lb mark.

That’s a major problem. As much as Samsung might like to position the system as a tablet with an optional dock, it’s ridiculously underpowered compared to the laptops in its price bracket. The instant-on premise is demolished by network problems, the prospect of doing Real Work is nuked by desktop lag, performance stuttering, and a ludicrously small amount of storage.

If all these issues were resolved, this tablet might be worth $549. That’s a $120 premium over the current crop of high-end 10.1-inch (1024×600) Atom netbooks, which typically use the N2600 (1.6GHz, dual-core) and an SGX545 GPU. Then again, those systems still ship with 2-3 USB ports and 320-500GB of storage.

What would I do? Wait. At the very least, wait and see if Samsung, Intel, and Microsoft can resolve the desktop performance lag and the wireless issues. Wait and see if Samsung does anything about available storage, or even acknowledges the problem. The Ativ gets some things right, but far too much of what’s billed as basic functionality doesn’t work or comes with caveats. Some of these issues very much extend to Surface, which is why I’m not waving it around as the alternative must-have. Some of them, like the network problems, don’t.

If the Ativ is representative of the hardware other PC OEMs are shipping, it’s no wonder thatuptake is markedly worse than Windows 7. It’s not that the Ativ 500T is a bad tablet, but it’s eclipsed on every side by better devices at lower price points.

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Android 4.2′s built-in malware scanner tested, detects only 15% of threats

Google’s choice to go with a more open app model for Android has invited nefarious people all over the world to develop exploits for the platform. Various anti-malware services have launched on Android, but Google stepped into the ring just recently when it added an app verification system to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. How well does it work? That’s a question researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) have attempted to answer. The results are not pretty.

Out of 1260 malware signatures, Google’s native verification system in Android 4.2 detected only 193 — that’s a little over 15%. While this sounds laughably bad, there’s a little more nuance to the numbers.

What’s supposed to happen

The first time an app is installed on Android 4.2, a message pops up asking the user to enable app verification. This will probably be the last time most people see the app verification screen, but it will be silently working in the background. It even has a very Googley approach: Unlike most third-party anti-malware services, this is an entirely cloud-based solution.

When an app is installed, Android gathers a few pieces of information about it. It will aggregate things like the package name, size, and SHA1 hash value. This data is sent off to the Google servers, where it is compared against a database of potential threats. The result is sent back down and the user gets no feedback if the app is clean. If Google finds something suspicious, the device will block the installation.

Since all apps installed on Android go through the same package verification (there is no such thing as a silent install on Android), Google’s system should be in a perfect position to detect all threats.

What’s actually happening

The NCSU team found that Google actually fails to detect a great many malware packages that the third-party apps handle just fine. Just like desktop malware, there are usually updated and slightly modified versions of the same basic bit of malicious code. In some cases Google could detect the original variant, while missing all the new ones. But why?

Google’s verification system relies almost entirely on SHA1 values and the package name to determine if something is malicious. This is a very limited approach because malware authors can easily change the checksums without making any other alterations. Google just isn’t acquiring enough information to do in-depth analysis.

The third-party apps are running local checks on apps as they are installed, which is probably why some of them have perfect or near-perfect detection records in the NC State tests. Google is doing all the work in the cloud, and it doesn’t want users waiting on a response from Google’s servers while it verifies apps.

A potential benefit to this system is that Google can update the malware fingerprints on its servers at lightning speed without pushing updates down to all users. It will also be incredibly straightforward to target a specific threat in the future. Basically, the kind of widespread malware attacks we saw in the Play Store a few years ago could be stopped before they ever got going.

Behind the numbers

I’ll be the first to admit that these numbers sound bad — they are bad. If Google is going to go out of its way to add malware detection to Android, it should have done a more thorough job with it. However, many of the malware samples tested by the researchers are complete non-issues at this point.

Take the so-called DroidKungFu Trojans. These nasty little bits of code are intended to root a target device and give control of it to a remote server. Yeah, it sounds really terrible until you realize this malware relies on an OS exploit that was patched at the system level over two years ago. There is just no reason for Google to bother scanning for this. No phone with the app verification system will ever need to worry about any of the nearly 500 DroidKungFu samples tested.

It’s the same story with a few other pieces of malware. Android is no longer susceptible to many of these old attacks, but the researchers checked anyway. This was just scientific thoroughness, but I feel like it should have been pointed out in the results that many of these exploits are now neutered.

One issue uncovered by the study is the way Google is handling SMS Trojans. These apps use the Android permission system to message premium rate numbers and rack up huge charges. SMS Trojans are usually found in obscure Chinese app stores, but Google detected almost none of them. This likely has something to do with most of Google’s certified device users (i.e. non-Chinese) being at little to no risk of catching a SMS Trojan.

Time to panic?

In a word: no. The time has not yet arrived to smash your Android phone and live off the grid up in the mountains. Google has been implementing security measures like app verification and the Google Play Bouncer to improve security. These systemshave improved security, but the problem was never as bad as some news headlines made it seem. Pirated apps hosted in suspicious Chinese app stores are filled with malware, but that’s not something you need to fret over.

Apps you get from Google Play are almost certainly safe these days. As for the somewhat shady things they do with your data, that’s another matter entirely. Google is trying to get the tools in place to protect Android users going forward. For the time being, this is all a placebo. That goes for Google’s approach, and the third-party apps alike.

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Intel unveils 22nm SoC transistors, while TSMC and GlobalFoundries plan risky process jumps

Transistor announcements aren’t the sexiest occasions on the block, but Intel’s 22nm SoC unveil is important for a host of reasons. As process nodes shrink and more components move on-die, the characteristics of each new node have become particularly important. 22nm isn’t a new node for Intel; it debuted the technology last year with Ivy Bridge, but SoCs are more complex than CPU designs and create their own set of challenges.

Like its 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs, the upcoming 22nm SoCs rely on Intel’s Tri-Gate implementation of FinFET technology. According to Intel engineer Mark Bohr, the 3D transistor structure is the principle reason why the company’s 22nm technology is as strong as it is. Other evidence backs up this point. Earlier this year, we brought you news that Nvidia was deeply concerned about manufacturing economics and the relative strength of TSMC’s sub-28nm planar roadmap. Morris Chang, TSMC’s CEO, has since admitted thatsuch concerns are valid, given that performance and power are only expected to increase by 20-25% as compared to 28nm.

Intel, in contrast, is predicting record gains. The company claims that its 28nm SoC “employs high speed logic transistors, low standby power transistors, and high-voltage tolerant transistors in a single SoC chip to support a wide range of products, including premium smart phones, tablets, netbooks, embedded systems, wireless communications, and ASIC products.” The company reports enormous improvements in leakage currents and Intel plans to take full advantage of the improved performance.

You’ve probably seen the image above trotted out when Intel talks about process node improvements. In this case, it’s the length of the line that’s more improvement than its rightward shifts. The diagram shows leakage current dropping more quickly than clock speed. At 65nm, Intel’s transistor performance and minimum leakage levels dropped off more quickly, while minimum leakage was much higher.

Here’s 65nm, 32nm, and individual data sets for SRAM cells across multiple process nodes.

At 65nm and a maximum input voltage of 1V, Intel’s SRAMs had a narrow operating range. 800MHz was the maximum effective frequency at that voltage — below 0.8v, the chip stopped working at any frequency. At 32nm (Medfield, Clover Trail), the company’s processors have considerable more latitude. 22nm pushes the envelope still further.

The challenge for both TSMC and GlobalFoundries is going to be how to match the performance of Intel’s 22nm technology with their own 28nm products. 20nm looks like it won’t be able to do so, which is why both companies are emphasizing their plans to move to 16nm/14nm ahead of schedule. There’s some variation on which node comes next; both GlobalFoundries and Intel are talking up 14nm; TSMC is implying a quick jump to 16nm.

I don’t want to say too much on how the three companies’ future processes might compare; tech papers at IEDM may shed more light on the particulars of each solution. What’s clear is that both GF and TSMC are going to try to accelerate FinFET development. GF’s tech papers imply that the company will deploy a hybrid 22nm-14nm process to make the jump more quickly.

Will it work? Unknown. TSMC and GlobalFoundries both have excellent engineers, but FinFET is a difficult technology to deploy. Ramping it up more quickly than expected while simultaneously bringing up a new process may be more difficult than either company anticipates. Given the advantages Intel claims for the technology, it might’ve made more sense to ramp FinFET on an established node. One of the most significant demonstrations of what Intel thinks it’s getting out of 22nm FinFET is the company’s decision to revise Atom for an out-of-order architecture. Intel has resisted the call to overhaul the in-order CPU; the current core at the heart of Medfield and Clover Trail offers nearly identical performance to the design that debuted in 2008.

22nm Atom should close the gap with existing ARM CPUs and give Intel a substantial advantage. Overall, the situation looks like Intel holds the cards until GF and TSMC manage to revise their roadmaps for the sub-20nm market.

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