Displaying items by tag: Pentium

Some of you might remember the days of the “P” rating CPUs. It was an interesting time when you never really knew what you were actually getting in terms of clock speed. Instead you were able to get a CPU named something like P333 or P500. This was an attempt by some manufacturers to show their “P”erformance rating in relation to Intel’s Pentium. Cyrix, AMD, and a couple of others used this to sell CPUs. Unfortunately everyone knew that the P did not really stand for performance it really meant Pentium equivalency. A Cyrix P667 was supposed to perform as well as an Intel Pentium 667 (at least on paper). Sadly this just confused the market more and we all had the fun of trying to figure out what our CPUs were really doing. Now we might be seeing the trend return, but perhaps in reverse as AMD has announced the Centurion CPU.

We have our third victim… um test subject in our continuing Network Attached Storage (NAS) device reviews. This time it is from a company with a fair recognizable name in the industry, NETGEAR. For many the name NETGEAR means low cost consumer networking products and maybe a lower reliability rating. We have to agree that some of that reputation was rightfully earned in the past, but they have since changed things around and are now making some fairly solid products for the consumer, SMBs and the enterprise. We have already covered their ProSafe WNDAP360 wireless access point and found it to be a well put together product. Now we are going to dive into their pro line of NAS products with the ReadNAS Pro 6. This is a 6 bay device that can support up to 12TB of RAW storage and has more than its share of features to boot. So let’s take a look at what you get with the ReadyNAS Pro 6 from NETGEAR.

Intel is offering another upgrade plan for some of their Core i3 and Pentium G CPUs (the Core i3 2312 and 2102 and the Pentium G622). This is similar to an upgrade offer that was given last year for another group of CPUs. For a small fee (it was $50 last year) you can purchase a code that will unlock features in the CPU to increase performance. These features are reportedly able to bring an alleged 11-15% performance boost over the “locked” CPUs.

Of course the fact that Intel locked off those features to begin with have some a tad bit annoyed, but a quick look around finds that most of these are not retail CPUs but OEM ones. This means a quick and easy upgrade for just about any consumer. We do not have any information on how much this will cost, but it should not be more than $50-$60. Check out Intel’s site for more information.

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