Socket 900 Processor from AMD?

May 26 2004 @ 08:23AM by MikeC

With the new 939 chipset just coming up in the market, there are already plans for a 900 pin processor according to this article on The Inquirer. This new processor would be a 90 nm SOI processor and is due out second quarter of next year.

"A REPORT ON AMD Board claims that Advanced Micro Devices is testing a 90 nanometre DDR silicon on insulator (SOI) processor using a new-fangled 900 pin socket and codenamed Toledo."

Read the article

 

Video Card Benchmarking Editoral

May 24 2004 @ 06:31AM by MikeC

HardOCP writes up an editorial about how benchmarking video cards with synthetic benchmarks may be misleading to some buyers out there. It's true that most websites benchmark their video cards without ever using them as intended by the final buyer of the product.

"To put it simply, current synthetic benchmarks overall, do a disservice to the hardware community and everyone that will ever buy a 3D video card or a computer that has one installed. Outside of the possibility of being misleading by focusing on performance factors that are not representative of actual game play, there is another dark ?secret? that is actually being paid for with your money, and at the same time forces hardware manufacturers to deliver less to you."

From their editorial, seems that they will be doing away with all synthetic benchmarking and any pre-recorded demos that may be driver optimized.

We will be keeping a keen eye on the developments and if they seem to favor the reader, we will follow suit.

Read the editorial

 

AMD Launches Low Power Geode Processors

May 24 2004 @ 06:22AM by MikeC

The Inquirer reports that AMD has launched a low power processor, Geode. Like all other AMD processors, they are subjected to "performance to power usage" rating.

"Now AMD has released a fresh range of Geode X86 compatible chips targeted at products from low power embedded systems to high performing servers, the firm said."

Check out the article.

 

Athlon 63 3800+ Socket 939 Review

May 24 2004 @ 06:17AM by MikeC

French website X86 Secret comes up with a review on this socket 939 processor a week early. Review is in frech, but the numbers speak for themselves.

Read the review

 

MSI K8N Neo-FIS2R Platinum NF3-250Gb Motherboard Review

May 19 2004 @ 07:09PM by MikeC

PCStats works up a review of MSI's nForce3 250Gb motherboard.

"Now, almost a year after 64-bit AMD Athlon64 processor was introduced, we're getting a taste of nVIDIA's new nForce3-250Gb chipset. It comes care of the very well equipped MSI K8N Neo Platinum motherboard which is based on this latest nVidia chipset. In terms of goodies, the K8N Neo-FIS2R Platinum boasts onboard native Serial ATA/RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 1394, an onboard 7.1 audio controller and of course, MSI's well known "CoreCell technology." We'll dive deeper into the technology behind the NF3-250Gb a bit later in the article."

Read the review.

 

AMD pushes Opteron to 2.4 GHz

May 19 2004 @ 04:57AM by haysonw

Today marks the launch of AMD's Opteron 150, 250, and 850 cpu's tacking on another 200 MHz pushing the total cpu speed to 2.4 GHz.

Like all previous Opterons, the x50 series is built using AMD's 130nm fab process. Since this is just a speed bump for the Opteron, we decided to throw a party and spice things up a bit by testing the new Opterons against over twenty different competitors.

Check out what The Tech Report has to say about the new chips here

 

Socket 939 Mainboards to Retail by End of May

May 17 2004 @ 07:41AM by MikeC

Xbit Labs reports that AsusTek will be supplying Socket 939 motherboards by the end of May. However, for those of you waiting for PCI Express to come along, you'll have to wait a bit longer.

"ASUSTeK?s mainboard for the new 64-bit microprocessors from AMD will not feature new technologies, such as PCI Express interconnection, despite of being very advanced in terms of capabilities. Because VIA Technologies had delayed the commercial release of its VIA KT890 core-logic from the second quarter to the third quarter of the year, ASUS had to stick with VIA?s latest K8T800 Pro chipset that sports 1000MHz HyperTransport bus ? a requirement for all AMD?s new Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX products, but does not bring PCI Express bus ? the next-generation interconnection bus for add-in graphics cards.

Read the article

 

AMD tops off 300mm 64 bit facility

May 17 2004 @ 07:36AM by MikeC

Dresden, Germany -- May 17, 2004 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) marked an important milestone in the construction of its next-generation 300 millimeter (mm) manufacturing facility, AMD Fab 36, with a ?topping-off? ceremony held today.

?AMD Fab 36 will play an important role in furthering AMD?s leadership in world class manufacturing capabilities and will help ensure we have the capacity required to meet our customers? ? and their customers? ? needs for pervasive 64-bit computing solutions powered by AMD64 technology,? said AMD chairman of the board, president and CEO Hector Ruiz. ?Thanks to Hans Deppe?s exemplary leadership of our Dresden operations, the support of Saxony, Germany, the European Commission and the many other dedicated professionals committed to the AMD Fab 36 project, I am proud to report that the entire AMD Fab 36 project is on plan, on time and on budget.?

?Less than six months after we broke ground for AMD Fab 36, the first significant phase of our 300 mm wafer fab project has been completed successfully, and we are well on our way to meeting our overall project schedule,? said Hans Deppe, vice president and general manager for AMD Saxony. ?We have now begun to install the necessary infrastructure that will allow us to be ready for equipment towards the end of the year in preparation for our planned first production shipments in the first half of 2006.?

PR Link

 

Dual Core AMD Processors

May 17 2004 @ 07:29AM by MikeC

According to CEO and President of AMD, Hector Ruiz, AMD might be producing multi core processors in the future, possibly for desktop purposes.

"Our plans and roadmaps have included for quite some time the use of multicores to achieve the performance that customers need".

Other details on AMD's future include support of DDR-2 by 2006 or later.

The Inquirer has the article.

 

Dual Graphics Acceleration in Parallel?

May 13 2004 @ 07:30AM by haysonw

With nVidia and ATI battling it out to see who can be king of the hill, Alienware (with a little help from intel) has developped a way to couple two graphics cards to allow combined graphics acceleration from an "array" of graphics cards.

Video Array is an accelerated graphics processing subsystem that will allow users to add multiple, off-the-shelf video cards to their Alienware computer systems and have both cards process graphic commands in parallel. Understanding the wide-ranging wants and needs of its customers, Alienware designed its solution so that it is not tied to any one specific video card. This design will allow users to take full advantage of the fastest video card on the market for a significant performance increase.

Get a more in depth look at ArsTechnica

 

Radeon X800Pro Limited NA Release

May 12 2004 @ 12:05PM by haysonw

The Inquirer reports that a limited number of Radeon X800Pro cards are to be released in the US and Canada sometime this week. Only a small number of cards are to be released however. Either way, ATI beats nVidia to the punch as the Geforce 6800 cards aren't to be released by the time the X800Pro's hit the shelves.

ATI said it will be able to ship the cards on those small quantities distributed in US and Canada. It even has a small fab that could make dozens of cards and might do that as well.
As you already know ATI will first have Radeon X800PRO available at $399, and the X800XT Platinum will follow at least a month after its PRO brother.

Check out the brief summary at The Inquirer

 

nForce Unified Drivers

May 11 2004 @ 06:15PM by MikeC

A little late but nevertheless, nVidia released new drivers out for their nForce chipsets. Grab them here.

 

Intel Releases New Pentium M: "Dothan"

May 11 2004 @ 05:26AM by haysonw

We've known that Intel was going to start with a new naming scheme on their chips and they have started with their new Pentium M chip dubbed "Dothan". Looks interesting since these new M chips are faster and make no noticable difference in battery life.

Whatever the case, Dothan is here, which represents Intel's first mobile CPU based on its 90-nm process. We look at the CPU's features and how it matches up with its predecessor, Banias. In order to make a comparison between Banias and Dothan, we chose to use the Winbook W series notebook.

Check the Review at Tom's Hardware

 

Browswer Hijacking Dojo

May 10 2004 @ 07:04PM by MikeC

PCStats has a beginner's guide on how to prevent malicious code from hijacking your web browser with pop ups or even a complete takeover.

"If you though Pop-ups were annoying, just wait until your web browser is hijacked! In this guide, PCstats shows you how to regain control and kick out the hijackers, kung-fu style. Browser hijacking is one of the web's constant dangers. Whether it arrives in the form of a flood of obscene pop-up windows assaulting you after a mistyped URL, or malicious code taking over your browser completely, chances are good that every Internet user will be subjected to this practice in some form. Fortunately, avoiding a browser hijacking is not impossible if you stay aware, and take a few simple precautions. To sum it up, this PCstats Beginners Guide will show you how to avoid and defeat these annoying and potentially embarrassing attacks on your computer, starting with seven preventative measures."

Check it out

 

OCZ DDR600

May 10 2004 @ 07:01PM by MikeC

"OCZ is pleased to be making such big advancements in the memory market," said Dr. Michael Schuette, Director of Technology Development with OCZ Technology Group. "OCZ has spent a considerable amount of time developing memory able to consistently run at 600MHz DDR, and are very pleased with the end results, as we have produced the highest speed DDR memory available today."

PR Link

 

nForce2 Ultra 400GB Reviews

May 10 2004 @ 04:05PM by MikeC

Old dogs still have new tricks. That's what nVidia is proving with the launch of the new revision of the nForce 2 line of chipsets. Teamed up with gigabit onboard ethernet and a firewall, there might still be life in the old Athlon XP processors yet. ^_^

Preview from HotHardware.
Review from Overclockers Club.
Review from PC Perspective.

 

Google's Gmail beta Reviewed

May 09 2004 @ 09:00PM by haysonw

Back on April 1st we mentioned google's announcment of their 1 GB gmail service. Extremetech has gotten deep and dirty with their beta gmail account and have written up an interesting review for us to get a glimpse of what this service could be like when the rest of us get our mitts on it.

So far, so good! We're already loving Gmail and it's only been a few days since we started using it. Since we constantly hop back and forth between Linux and Windows boxes, Gmail is a godsend. We don't have to mess around with local pop3 e-mail clients. We can just open our browser ? in Linux or Windows ? and get immediate access to all of our e-mail. And, unlike Yahoo or Hotmail, we simply don't have to worry about running out of space. At this point we're only up to 39MB out of our 1GB total.

ExtremeTech has the review

 

Epox 8HDA3+; Athlon 64 Motherboard Review

May 09 2004 @ 06:18PM by MikeC

The guys at Metku Mods work up an Athlon64 motherboard review from Epox.

"Epox has taken brave leap forward and offers altogether six SATA ports in this particular motherboard model. There are also two network-controllers present, which are manufactured by 3Com and VIA. 3Com controller offers gigabit connection speed whereas VIA is only 10/100. Integrated audio features are carried out with VT8237 southbridges integrated AC97 audio controller and Realtek ALC655 audio codec."

Check out the review

 

VIA Chipset Prices Going Up

May 05 2004 @ 01:29PM by MikeC

VIA is set to raise its chipset prices in July by 6-10% meaning motherboard prices should follow suit. We recently saw a price uppage in March of about 5%.

"VIA Technologies will hike its chipset prices by 6-10% starting July 1 to reflect its rising production costs, according to sources at the chipset maker. This will be VIA?s second price increase this year, following a 5-8% increase in March."

Digitimes has the story.

 

AMD's New Value Line

May 05 2004 @ 01:24PM by MikeC

AMD is set to launch their 939 pin chips in the near future along side the AMD64 3700+. Their plans seem to have all their desktop lines running 939 pin processors by the end of 2005, meaning that those of us with S754 sockets will be downgraded to their value line.

"There are some big changes in store for AMD though. What happens to socket 754 after the 3700+ comes out? The new AMD value line, that?s what. It seems AMD is about to launch a new ?son of Duron?, with a completely new name. Since AMD?s stated goal is to have all desktop chips on 939 by the end of ?05, there has to be something for the cheaper S754, big box price conscious retailers won?t sit still."

The Inquirer has the article.

 

Athlon XP != PCI Express

May 05 2004 @ 01:15PM by MikeC

Bad news for people with Athlon XP machines. According to this article on The Inquirer AMD will not have PCI Express support for their Athlon XP processors. This doesn't bode well for those of you want to keep their existing processor and upgrade to the next generation video cards.

"This might leave Athlon XP owners with no hope of future graphics upgrades, but it comes as no surprise. AMD has publicly said it wants to displace its XP chips with 64-bit processors."

Scope out the article for details.

 

Worm Alert

May 02 2004 @ 06:36PM by MikeC

There's a new worm out there called SASSER. Basically if you have the virus, you get a count down timer telling you there's been an error about lsass.exe. Check Microsoft and your antiviral program provider for updates.

Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.asp

Symantec:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sasser.worm.html

McAfee:
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=125008