AMD has released, with little fanfare, the beta for 12.9 Catalyst.

This is the third entry in my series of reviews for the Steam Indie Bundles. Each review is short and subjective, and is geared to give you a quick look at the game. Indie Bundle 3 includes: BIT.TRIP BEAT, Bunch of Heroes, Darwinia, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and Runespell: Overture.

AMD has been prepping an update to its Fusion line of APUs. These chips offer both a CPU and discrete-class GPU functionality on one chip. The goal is to offer a better experience for machines built around "integrated graphics".

AMD's APU line is targeted at Intel's Core-i3 line with HD4000 integrated graphics. Pricing is not yet available on the forthcoming releases, but AMD has provided us with a review sample and some press material.

Last year we reviewed the flagship A8-3850 APU. It offered 4 processing cores, clocked at 2.9GHz. These processing cores were matched with a Radeon HD 6550D GPU, clocked at 600Hz. By contrast the upcoming A10-5800K offers 4 processing cores at 3.8GHz and a Radeon HD 7660D clocked at 800Hz.

Also worth noting is that the A10 natively supports Eyefinity, and the MSI motherboard that AMD provided has DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. While I don't expect it to be able to perform in Eyefinity gaming, the A10 is designed to allow Eyefinity for normal computing and productivity tasks, and respectable gaming on a single 1080p.

Check out this article for our first gaming impressions and benchmarks.

I was recently in the market for a large USB 3.0 drive. Looking at Amazon, I found the Corsair 64GB Survivor, for $67. This pricing places it at just over $1/GB, and right in the middle of the pack with regards to pricing. I picked one up and ran some benchmarks on it, and tossed it into the washing machine to test its water resistance claims. The drive performed well in the Quick Bench tests, almost hitting it max read speed of 85MB/sec. It came through the washer cycle just fine. I Highly Recommend this drive for anyone needing mobile storage.

Summary:
+ Large size makes it hard to misplace
+ Very fast
+ Good price/MB
+ Water resistant
- Bulk makes it hard to use on thin notebooks
- No lanyard included

A while back (a year actually) AMD sent me an FX-8150 CPU (and motherboard). I didn't end up doing much with the hardware, except for building a second test rig that sat on a shelf in my office. Around this same time, AMD sent me chips and boards in their APU line line. During this timeframe I was able to get reviews out for these APUs - the E-350 and the A8-3850, but the FX-8150 sat dormant on my shelf.

So, I thought I'd dust off the old FX-8150 and set some baselines here at the WSGF. Last year I did some benchmarking with a Radeon HD 6970 card, and that is the benchmarks you see here. Granted, that is now an "old" card, but I think the data we present will be applicable none the less. I have started retesting my current platforms I have on hand with newer GPUs (the Radeon HD 7k series), and I think that data will be interesting as well - especially considering that I'm now testing APUs that aren't on the market quite yet...