The first iPod and AMD’s second-generation Bulldozer “Vishera” (PCGH-Retro, October 23)

… 2001: Portable digital audio players are actually nothing new: the first designs for such a device were made in 1979 by the British Kane Kramer, in 1995 the German company Pontis developed a prototype called MPlayer3 with MMC memory cards; the first MP3 player on the market was the MPMan from SaeHan Information Systems in 1998. The Rio from Diamond Multimedia celebrated greater success from September 1998, in the same year Compaq developed the first device with an integrated hard drive.

But the MP3 player only became a mass product with the product that Apple, of all people, launched on October 23, 2001: the iPod. It’s not particularly innovative, but it combines a pretty design and a simple operating concept in a relatively small case that can hold 5 gigabytes of music thanks to the integrated 1.8-inch hard drive. The display is still monochrome, it does not show images or even videos like in later models. The first generation only gets along with Apple’s Mac, only the second generation also supports Windows PCs in the following year – and thus starts its triumphal procession: in a short time Apple becomes the market leader, launching new generations with new functions and larger hard drives, later also with flash memory, in quick succession; In 2007, the 100 millionth iPod was sold, and two years later the 200 million mark was broken. A decade after the first MP3 player, everyday life would be unimaginable without this product – and “Ipod” is synonymous with the entire device category. Only the spread of the smartphone wave, also led by Apple, overtakes portable music players such as the iPod.

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… 2012: With the second Bulldozer generation, codename Vishera, AMD wants to increasingly appeal to gamers starting October 23rd. Our test of the FX-8350 shows that the new chips were just as convincing in terms of speed as they were in terms of price. However, the still comparatively high power consumption remained a weak point. Here is an excerpt from our test of the AMD FX-8350. We tested the smaller models in a separate article.

AMD is officially launching four new FX processors today, along with a fifth model purely for OEM manufacturers (the FX-8300). The new flagship is the FX-8350 with a full four gigahertz base clock and four modules, which AMD has positioned against the Core i5-3570K ($235) with a list price of $195 – we’re more likely to see the Core i5-3470 here (187 USD) as an opponent. Among them, the FX-8320 for 169 US dollars ranks quite alone on the floor; The Core i5-3330 (187 USD) might also be suitable in terms of price. The six-core FX-6300 ($132) and the four-core FX-4300 ($122) have to compete with the Core i3-3220 ($125) – the smallest FX only has four instead of eight MiByte L3 caches, but it does exist no extra chip here.