Intel officially introduced its family of quad-core processors on Tuesday. The new processors include the Xeon 5300 (Clovertown) and Core 2 Extreme (Kentsfield) models.
The quad-core Xeon 5300 (Clowertown) represents a pin-compatible replacement for the current dual-core Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest) processors that currently reside in the Mac Pro. This possibility was previously demonstrated by AnandTech when they successfully dropped Clovertown samples into the current Mac Pro. No benchmarks were available at that time, but CNet has now posted benchmarks of this same configuration:
As the Xeon 5355 is pin-compatible with the Xeon 5160 processors that came installed in our Mac Pro, we proceeded to swap out the two dual-core processors with the new quad-core processors. .... With the pair of Xeon 5355 processors installed, we booted the system back up and were greeted with eight active processing cores in both the Mac OS and Windows XP via the Boot Camp Public Beta.
Benchmarks compared 3.0GHz 4-core Mac Pros (Woodcrest) vs 2.66GHz 8-core Mac Pros (Clovertown) and showed a 31% improvement in highly multithreaded benchmarks such as Cinebench. iTunes and Quake saw less significant improvements. Their conclusion was that "unless you do work normally relegated to high-end workstations, perform massively multitasking workloads, or just want the bragging rights, eight cores is definitely overkill...at least for now."
Tuesday September 19, 2023 2:04 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
All of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models feature a new battery health setting that prevents the devices from charging beyond 80% at all times when enabled, as confirmed by The Verge's Allison Johnson during a Q&A session today. The new setting is separate from the pre-existing Optimized Battery Charging feature on iPhones, which intelligently delays charging past 80% until a more...
Sunday September 17, 2023 12:35 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
In June, Apple announced iOS 17 with a wide range of new features and changes for the iPhone. Following over three months of beta testing, the free software update will be released this Monday, September 18 for the iPhone XS and newer. Below, we have recapped 10 key features coming to the iPhone with iOS 17, with additional features coming later this year. The update should be released to...
Thursday September 21, 2023 10:28 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 17.0.1 and iPadOS 17.0.1 updates for the iPhone and the iPad, adding bug fixes to the new software. The iOS 17.0.1 and iPadOS 17.0.1 updates come just a few days after Apple launched iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. The software, which is build 21A340, can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. There is a...
Tuesday September 19, 2023 12:43 pm PDT by Juli Clover
As Apple was announcing new iPhone models last week, the Unicode Consortium was officially approving new emoji characters that are set to be added to smartphones starting in 2024. Mockup of new emoji from Emojipedia Approved Unicode 15.1 emoji include phoenix, lime, an edible mushroom, shaking head vertically (as in a "yes" nod), shaking head horizontally (a "no" head shake), and broken...
