So far the only drive to use 3-bit-per-cell (TLC) NAND is the Samsung SSD 840. At least both Samsung and IMFT have 128Gb TLC but as of today I have not heard it being used in an SSD. The successor of SSD 840 will probably move to 128Gb TLC NAND to cut costs even more but that's at least a quarter away (this is just a guess, we don't have any info yet),
The funny thing about the ambiguous picture modes Samsung uses is that they're not even consistent among Samsung products. Natural mode on my Samsung TV makes people look like Nicki Minaj.
Also about the dynamic contrast thing. I think Brian's talking about CE dimming where it dims the backlight based on the brightness of content on the screen. Of course this makes absolutely no sense to me with a edge-lit LCD. If you rename the input to PC, it disables some of the image processing, including CE dimming. Unfortunately, it disables a lot of the features like motion interpolation. Fortunately, most of Samsung's features serve only to make the picture worse somehow. I actually get less input lag with the input renamed to PC than with game mode on.
Can we please get a podcast that doesn't include phones or tablets? Is technology so dead that only mobile devices are worth talking about? 4 out of 5 casts are based around this crap. It's too much.
I need an edit button. I just realized podcasts were now under the smartphone category on the site. The Anandtech Podcast is officially dead. When did that happen? Ah well, completely ignorable now, so nevermind.
It's true that most of the podcasts discuss smartphones/tablets (some more, some less) but there have been episodes that have focused on other topics. For example episode 18 was about the site redesign and GPUs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6874/the-anandtech-p...
What are the topics you would like to see discussed?
I think one of the things that makes Anandtech podcasts great is that you guys talk about what you are passionate about. That happens to be smart phones much of the time, and I'm fine with listening to talk about smart phones, even though I'm not really interested in buying any of the phones that exist. I always come away from Anandtech podcasts knowing more about the technology discussed and the industry and what goes on in it. I enjoy listening to people who know their hind quarters from the proverbial hole in the ground, and the Anandtech editors give me that better than any other site I've listened to. I never have the thought "That guy is freakin clueless" when I'm listening to an Anandtech podcast; I can't say that about any other site's podcast I've listened to.
And, frankly there just isn't a lot of exciting things to talk about in the PC world right now. People are still doing reviews of socket 1155 boards, and I have no interest in any of them. Basically, if it isn't about Haswell or maybe Ivy Bridge-E, I could care less. There isn't anything cool happening with GPUs, CPUs, or even SSDs right now. You talked about the most exciting thing going on, which was the price breakthrough of the M500 @ 960GB, and that's about all there was to say anything about. I would like more discussion about PC components, that's what I'm really interested in, but, really, what is there to say?
The most important thing to me is knowledgeable, enthusiastic discussion, and that's what you are delivering, so, no real complaints from me. As it stands right now, the most movement is in the mobile industry, so that deserves the lion's share of the podcast, in my opinion. When June hits and we have real information about Haswell and the related products, hopefully there will be something we can all sink our proverbial teeth into and we'll get more of that in the podcasts, but that's then, not now.
We kind of have settled into a pattern where we alternate between primarily PC focus, and primarily mobile focus. The reality is that the previous week was dominated by mobile related news, so that's what we talked about. Haswell is almost imminent, at which point I'm sure things will change back the other way as mobile slows down (hopefully).
I have been reading Anandtech for years but only just started listening to the podcasts in May. I am current with the podcasts now. I have never really been too interested in the technology that makes cellular phones possible but as the market shifts to mobile computing I am finding myself more interested. I've learned much catching up on the podcasts here. Many times your contributions are a bit over my head but Anand does a good job stopping and clarifying some of the details you gloss over. In my experience you two have provided a good balance in the discussions. As a generally inquisitive person I have been motivated by these discussions to learn more than I would have without them.
I think we are close to the point where the term smartphone isn't really the best description of today's flagship mobile devices since the phone functionality is no longer the dominant feature.
I agree with Sabresiberian's comment above. The enthusiasm of the discussion really hooks me as much as the topics do.
+1 on broken links. iTunes and direct links are both broke. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember iTunes doesn't actually host podcast. I guess that makes sense.
SERVER TROUBLES? I'm having trouble downloading from the podcast links. I've also noticed that images in articles have been flaky today.
I wonder if there will be an Anandtech story in the coming days about the causes of this downtime and the technology issues behind it. It might be interesting, depending on the root cause.
Are we certain that we always need 10-25% spare area or is there a hard GB limit - a point of diminishing returns?
Do you need 10-25% free for ALL capacities? I don't want to lose 512GB when we get to 2TB SSDs. If the point is to ensure that you have the necessary space to allow garbage collection to properly do its job, wouldn't that mean that it mostly depends upon how much data is written between collection processes?
Obviously we know that 20% free shows improvements for nearly all drives, but what if we don't need that much for larger drives? If 20% of a 256GB drive (50GB) works well, would 50GB of free space work just as well on a 512GB or 1TB drive? The consistency of the 960GB M500 doesn't appear to improve all that much when you move from the stock 9% (64GB) spare area to an arbitrary 25%.
Also, I'm curious if spare area is spread out across all NAND dies or if spare area takes up NAND dies in some sort of sequential fashion and how that impacts the performance gains of spare area among different drives/controllers.
It was interesting to hear about the Asus Fonepad in the podcast. After reading some other reviews the battery life seems great and the performance is decent. Are there any plans for a review of some kind?
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33 Comments
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mike55 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Does anyone know of any drives planning on using 3-bit-per-cell, 128 Gb NAND dies (dice?)?Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
So far the only drive to use 3-bit-per-cell (TLC) NAND is the Samsung SSD 840. At least both Samsung and IMFT have 128Gb TLC but as of today I have not heard it being used in an SSD. The successor of SSD 840 will probably move to 128Gb TLC NAND to cut costs even more but that's at least a quarter away (this is just a guess, we don't have any info yet),mike55 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
The funny thing about the ambiguous picture modes Samsung uses is that they're not even consistent among Samsung products. Natural mode on my Samsung TV makes people look like Nicki Minaj.Also about the dynamic contrast thing. I think Brian's talking about CE dimming where it dims the backlight based on the brightness of content on the screen. Of course this makes absolutely no sense to me with a edge-lit LCD. If you rename the input to PC, it disables some of the image processing, including CE dimming. Unfortunately, it disables a lot of the features like motion interpolation. Fortunately, most of Samsung's features serve only to make the picture worse somehow. I actually get less input lag with the input renamed to PC than with game mode on.
Brian Klug - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Interesting, I'll have to try this. I've almost given up on ever having just a simple 1:1 dumb monitor mode on my Samsung 55-inch.-Brian
Zandros - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Can we pretty please get a higher resolution image for the podcast feed? It looks ugly in Downcast. ;)jeffkibuule - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Yes please. Much appreciated.darwinosx - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Agree, its pretty awful.Coup27 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
links are broken!freedom4556 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
I think that whole server is down. If you look at the links, they point to a server named images.anandtech.comsecretanchitman - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
yep! also having trouble downloading the podcast in itunes as well..Earthmonger - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Can we please get a podcast that doesn't include phones or tablets? Is technology so dead that only mobile devices are worth talking about? 4 out of 5 casts are based around this crap. It's too much.THizzle7XU - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
You should get a refund! Oh wait, it's free. Don't listen then.Earthmonger - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
I need an edit button. I just realized podcasts were now under the smartphone category on the site. The Anandtech Podcast is officially dead. When did that happen? Ah well, completely ignorable now, so nevermind.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Podcasts are not under smartphones, they have their own category:http://www.anandtech.com/tag/podcast
It's true that most of the podcasts discuss smartphones/tablets (some more, some less) but there have been episodes that have focused on other topics. For example episode 18 was about the site redesign and GPUs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6874/the-anandtech-p...
What are the topics you would like to see discussed?
Sabresiberian - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
I think one of the things that makes Anandtech podcasts great is that you guys talk about what you are passionate about. That happens to be smart phones much of the time, and I'm fine with listening to talk about smart phones, even though I'm not really interested in buying any of the phones that exist. I always come away from Anandtech podcasts knowing more about the technology discussed and the industry and what goes on in it. I enjoy listening to people who know their hind quarters from the proverbial hole in the ground, and the Anandtech editors give me that better than any other site I've listened to. I never have the thought "That guy is freakin clueless" when I'm listening to an Anandtech podcast; I can't say that about any other site's podcast I've listened to.And, frankly there just isn't a lot of exciting things to talk about in the PC world right now. People are still doing reviews of socket 1155 boards, and I have no interest in any of them. Basically, if it isn't about Haswell or maybe Ivy Bridge-E, I could care less. There isn't anything cool happening with GPUs, CPUs, or even SSDs right now. You talked about the most exciting thing going on, which was the price breakthrough of the M500 @ 960GB, and that's about all there was to say anything about. I would like more discussion about PC components, that's what I'm really interested in, but, really, what is there to say?
The most important thing to me is knowledgeable, enthusiastic discussion, and that's what you are delivering, so, no real complaints from me. As it stands right now, the most movement is in the mobile industry, so that deserves the lion's share of the podcast, in my opinion. When June hits and we have real information about Haswell and the related products, hopefully there will be something we can all sink our proverbial teeth into and we'll get more of that in the podcasts, but that's then, not now.
Brian Klug - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
We kind of have settled into a pattern where we alternate between primarily PC focus, and primarily mobile focus. The reality is that the previous week was dominated by mobile related news, so that's what we talked about. Haswell is almost imminent, at which point I'm sure things will change back the other way as mobile slows down (hopefully).-Brian
Bakes - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
I have been reading Anandtech for years but only just started listening to the podcasts in May. I am current with the podcasts now. I have never really been too interested in the technology that makes cellular phones possible but as the market shifts to mobile computing I am finding myself more interested. I've learned much catching up on the podcasts here. Many times your contributions are a bit over my head but Anand does a good job stopping and clarifying some of the details you gloss over. In my experience you two have provided a good balance in the discussions. As a generally inquisitive person I have been motivated by these discussions to learn more than I would have without them.I think we are close to the point where the term smartphone isn't really the best description of today's flagship mobile devices since the phone functionality is no longer the dominant feature.
I agree with Sabresiberian's comment above. The enthusiasm of the discussion really hooks me as much as the topics do.
Keep up the good work.
Devfarce - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
+1 on broken links. iTunes and direct links are both broke. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember iTunes doesn't actually host podcast. I guess that makes sense.TrackSmart - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
SERVER TROUBLES? I'm having trouble downloading from the podcast links. I've also noticed that images in articles have been flaky today.I wonder if there will be an Anandtech story in the coming days about the causes of this downtime and the technology issues behind it. It might be interesting, depending on the root cause.
Sm0kes - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
It's broken on ITunes as well.FYI -- ITunes for OSX is pretty solid. It's nothing like the bloated Windows port.
watersb - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
(FWIW Anand says it's DNS: some hours for the update to percolate throughout the net, should be working now...)Vi0cT - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Good episode, just waiting for the Lumia 920 review now...roberta - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Unfortunately direct links for both mp3 & m4a are still broken... :(Regards,
Roberta
PHlipMoD3 - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Loving these podcasts.Only problem I have is that Brian often talks about the review he is working on (EG Lumia 920) and the review never surfaces on the site.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Are we certain that we always need 10-25% spare area or is there a hard GB limit - a point of diminishing returns?Do you need 10-25% free for ALL capacities? I don't want to lose 512GB when we get to 2TB SSDs. If the point is to ensure that you have the necessary space to allow garbage collection to properly do its job, wouldn't that mean that it mostly depends upon how much data is written between collection processes?
Obviously we know that 20% free shows improvements for nearly all drives, but what if we don't need that much for larger drives? If 20% of a 256GB drive (50GB) works well, would 50GB of free space work just as well on a 512GB or 1TB drive? The consistency of the 960GB M500 doesn't appear to improve all that much when you move from the stock 9% (64GB) spare area to an arbitrary 25%.
Also, I'm curious if spare area is spread out across all NAND dies or if spare area takes up NAND dies in some sort of sequential fashion and how that impacts the performance gains of spare area among different drives/controllers.
darwinosx - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Your Mommy likes iTunes.slatanek - Thursday, May 2, 2013 - link
I couldn't agree more with smartphone camera UX limited control rant. Why-o-why can't there be a manual focus slider?Jamesjunky - Friday, May 3, 2013 - link
Brian is going to get the Shoelace, but it's going to be the Sprint version.stuhad - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
What was the AMD thing Anand went to, that he briefly mentioned? Did I miss the news on it, can we get it in the next the podcast?bleh0 - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
It was interesting to hear about the Asus Fonepad in the podcast. After reading some other reviews the battery life seems great and the performance is decent. Are there any plans for a review of some kind?ezorb - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
For the love of god, Put up a new podcast it been a monthyvess - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
Can't wait for the next podcast! Missing it! Don't let me suffer any longer :-)MadAd - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
oh well, looks like ill give up on these, might as well rename it anandtech phonecast and call it good