The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 7
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 1, 2012 3:19 PM ESTWe're back with another podcast. This time we start out with a discussion of Borderlands 2 and philosophies on sidequests in games. We briefly talk about TI defocusing its smartphone/tablet SoC business, Brian also gives us a look at the role of the PMIC in a modern ultra mobile platform. AMD's desktop Trinity GPU launch is discussed as well as some of the behind the scenes politics we deal with on a regular basis here.
We mention Samsung's new SSD 840/840 Pro and what the 840 means for driving SSD prices down in the future, and conclude the discussion with more about the iPhone 5 from Brian.
The AnandTech Podcast - Episode 7
featuring Anand Shimpi, Brian Klug & Dr. Ian Cutress
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RSS - mp3, m4a
Direct Links - mp3, m4a
Total Time: 1 hour 49 minutes
Outline
As always, comments are welcome and appreciated. Let us know what you liked, hated and want to hear more of.
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Lib3rty - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Ah sorry, ignore me! I forgot that I queued up the stream earlier today, just didn't start playing until now, I usually don't do that. Thanks for the great podcast!AmdInside - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
You guys are the best. No other tech podcast compares to Anandtech podcast.Lib3rty - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
I would still listen start-to-finish if it was 4x longer. These guys know what they're talking about and express things in a technical nature that is matched by no other podcast I've heard.Since I have more time available for podcast listening than I do article reading, I am thankful for the addition of this podcast.
Sunrise089 - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Thanks for the helpful outline!justaviking - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
+1I have enjoyed every bit of every podcast so far, and am looking forward to listening to this one too.
Even though I'm confident I'll eventually listen to everything, it is nice to know that the items I'm most interested in today are in the first half of a nearly two-hour podcast.
Thanks for everything you do. AnandTech.com is the best!
tipoo - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
I want Nintendo to do something really different with the Wii U versions of their first party games, it should be capable of providing Skyrim-like depth to a Zelda game for instance. I hope there's more too it than just the touchscreen controller as a selling point.On that topic I'm really curious to hear the whole AT teams thoughts on how much we can say about the performance of the Wii U, we know that it has a typical gaming power draw of 45w and peak of 75w, 1GB RAM reserved for the OS (odd) and 1GB (shared) available to games and likely 32MB of eDRAM cache similar to the 360. Apart from those things we only have rumors to go on, the GPU seems likely to be an RV7** derivative, although some more recent rumors said the embedded E6760. The CPU is more of a mystery, IBM recently retracted statements that said it was Power7 based, instead calling it only "power based" and apologizing for the past reference error. We also know it is 45nm, like the 360 Slim CPU now is. With only a max of 75 watts to work with the CPU is probably constrained to 25 or so, I think.
So what I'm wondering is, would a modern Power architecture under such low power draw be able to significantly outperform the processors in the PS360? Even compared to the slim versions of either, it has less power to work with, less chassis space for cooling, and on the same manufacturing process. The consensus from developers seems to be that the GPU is significantly better than the old consoles but the CPU is holding things back, some even say it's weaker than the 360. But then, maybe they need to get used to it like they did for the Cell, although I don't think it's that far-out an architecture this time.
Anyways, curious what everyone thinks.
makken - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
So this podcast got me curious, is there a way to quickly search for all the products that've gotten an editor's choice award from anandtech?Death666Angel - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
After the first few minutes (love the game talk!) I definitely like what you did with the sound. It is much better and almost sounds like you were all in the same room. I hope it stays that way! Thanks! :DAikouka - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
I would actually recommend against Ian's advice for side-quests in Borderlands 2. Borderlands has a weird way of determining your reward for a quest... it's purely based on what level you were when you picked up the quest. Even if the enemies have leveled up with you, you will still get an old award. So, people highly recommend to *avoid* side-quests in play-through 2 until you beat the game the second time.I was a bit interested in the purple haze iPhone 5 talk, but I came away rather disappointed. I've noticed the odd purple hue to all lens flares when compared to my other mobile devices (iPad 2, ASUS TF300), and I've been hoping that someone would explain what about the iPhone 5 would cause it to have a purple hue to its lens flares. Brian, would you mind ringing in on this? There are some Anandtech forum users that would certainly appreciate a good explanation!
IanCutress - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Interesting on that. I'm still on playthrough one, so I'll probably take your advice on playthrough two!For that 'worst game ever', the game is Big Rigs: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/big-rigs-over-th... - "YOU'RE WINNER!" (there was actually a patch to fix this typo I believe...).
Ian