Here today's reviews and articles, including Intel's First 8 Core Desktop Processor Exposed, Optimized Binaries Provide Great Benefits For Intel Haswell, and Tutorial: How to move your iTunes library to an external drive



Haswell-E - Intel's First 8 Core Desktop Processor Exposed @ techPowerUp

Another day, another Intel leak and a few surprises as well. During the last few days we covered Intel's desktop roadmap for the next twelve months, bringing you news and insights on Intel's plans for the aforementioned time interval. Today we bring you news on what's to follow in the second half of 2014, specifically, on Intel's Premium Desktop plans for the interval, namely Haswell-E, DDR4 and the X99 PCH.

Haswell-E will be Intel's last and best offering using the 22 nm fabrication process, it will come in two versions, core count wise, 8 core part(s) as well as 6 core part(s) with hyper-threading enabled, therefore, boasting no less that 16 execution threads for the 8 core chips and 12 execution threads for the 6 core version(s). Judging by that alone, Haswell-E should constitute a far superior upgrade over Ivy Bridge-E, compared to what the latter will be in relation to Sandy Bridge-E, Haswell-E offering two additional physical cores that translate into four additional execution threads. The new chips will boast 2.5 MB of L3 Cache per core, summing up to 20 MB total L3 cache for the 8 core parts. TDP will remain in the same neighborhood it was in the case of its predecessors, around 130-140 W.

Read more: Haswell-E - Intel's First 8 Core Desktop Processor Exposed @ techPowerUp

Optimized Binaries Provide Great Benefits For Intel Haswell @ Phoronix

Utilizing the core-avx2 CPU optimizations offered by the GCC 4.8 compiler can provide real benefits for the Intel Core i7 4770K processor and other new "Haswell" CPUs. For some computational workloads, the new Haswell instruction set extensions can offer tremendous speed-ups compared to what's offered by the previous-generation Ivy Bridge CPUs.

With our source-based benchmarks to date of Haswell, we have been using the -march=native compiler flag that effectively means -march=core-avx2 but we haven't looked specifically at the benefits provided by Haswell CPUs introducing support for AVX2, FMA, BMI, and BMI2. This is also particularly interesting since on the Windows side, most of the benchmarking that happens at the other review sites is done using generic pre-compiled binaries rather than building from source with optimizations for a given architecture.

Read more: Optimized Binaries Provide Great Benefits For Intel Haswell @ Phoronix

Adin S7BT Vibration Bluetooth Speaker Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

The S7BT is a compact speaker with Bluetooth and 3.5mm connectivity which is designed to offer an enhanced audio experience when on the move. And not only that, it uses vibration/induction from any nearby hard surface to produce its sound...

Read more: Adin S7BT Vibration Bluetooth Speaker Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

E3 2013 Video Roundup with Kaeyi Dream @ HardwareHeaven.com

Today Kaeyi Dream brings you the latest news and revelations from the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2013.

Read more: E3 2013 Video Roundup with Kaeyi Dream @ HardwareHeaven.com

Nokia Lumia 925 @ Neowin

Nokia has tackled the major criticisms of its Lumia 920 with the launch of its thin, light, aluminium-bodied Lumia 925. But is the new flagship Windows Phone any good, or is its beauty only skin-deep?

Read more: Nokia Lumia 925 @ Neowin

Tutorial: How to move your iTunes library to an external drive @ Techradar

Apple's iTunes Match service lets you store all your music in the cloud, but some people prefer to have a local copy of all their music instead. It's free, and doesn't disappear if your internet connection goes down. You might have thousands of tracks you've ripped from CD over the years, for example. This is the more conventional way to use iTunes and it's great, until your library starts to get too big for your hard drive. And with more and more people using ultraportable MacBook Airs, storage capacity can be an issue. Luckily, iTunes makes it fairly easy to move your library to an external drive, even one connected to your Wi-Fi router.

Read more: Tutorial: How to move your iTunes library to an external drive @ Techradar