AMD Launches New 690G and 690V Chipsets

Feb 28 2007 @ 01:59AM by jimmy

DailyNDABreak reports that tomorrow AMD will launch the 690G and 690V chipsets.

AMD will finally launch its long-awaited 690-series chipset-family tomorrow. Two variants will spearhead the release: the RS690-based mainstream AMD 690G with ATI Radeon X1250 graphics, and the RS690C-based value AMD 690V with ATI Radeon X1200 graphics.

AMD?s 690-family hit plenty of snags along its development cycle. Early roadmaps showed a 2H?2006 launch, however, AMD kept pushing the launch back. Motherboard vendors blamed the delayed launch on AMD for multiple delays with the RS690. AMD?s discrete RX690 variant that was to launch in the same timeframe as RS690 has yet to make an appearance.

The integrated ATI Radeon X1250 and X1200 graphics cores are identical, in terms of 3D capabilities. Although the ATI Radeon X700-series provides the foundation for the ATI Radeon X1250/X1200 IGP, it is a neutered derivative. The ATI Radeon X1200-family IGP features two pixel-pipelines and two vertex-shaders. Unlike some ATI Radeon X1000-series GPUs, the pixel-pipelines have not been decoupled ? the ATI Radeon X1200-family only has two pixel-shaders. AMD specifies a 400 MHz GPU-core clock for reference designs.

 

Athlon 64 X2 5200+ vs Core 2 Duo E6400

Feb 28 2007 @ 01:56AM by jimmy

Legion Hardware compares the Athlon 64 X2 5200+ versus the Core 2 Duo E6400.

"Of course the Athlon64 X2 5200+ was never meant to cost just $220 US, especially in the first quarter of 2007, but for obvious reasons it does. Even though the 5200+ never won a gaming benchmark it was able to match the E6400 on a number of occasions. Given the age of the Athlon64 X2 this is a tremendous achievement and although the 5200+ does have a fair clock advantage, it is still rated at well below 3.0GHz! These Athlon64 X2 processors will have to do for now, as backup is not expected until 2008 and even then AMD does not expect a speedy transition to their new platform."

 

AMD predicts slow transition to K8L

Feb 24 2007 @ 12:42PM by jimmy

In a bit of sad news for AMD fans, Hector Ruiz, Chief Executive for the company, has stated that K8L will not take off this year. K8L is the future answer to Core, and represents a significant change in architecture that could vastly improve the performance of AMD processors.

That is something sorely needed right now, with the Core and its variants again and again winning the performance battle. However, AMD instead will continue to push their existing architecture for a while yet.

That doesn't mean they aren't going ahead with their plans for launches ? just that propagation and adoption aren't going to be anything impressive. AMD is estimating it will be around 9 months to transition their desktop products to the new technology, whereas with Intel it was around 6 months to transition to Core. Given the blazing success of the Core as it stands and these figures, it could easily be early 2008 before we see them make a comeback.

Source: Xbitlabs

 

G90 will be a 65nm G80 with 512-bit GDDR4

Feb 24 2007 @ 12:33PM by jimmy

While we debate the current R600 rumors, The Inquirer is claiming that their "senior industry sources" have let loose the first G90 details rumors. The G90 will undertake the monumental task of putting the G80 through a die shrink. If all goes well, this will allow for very high clocks, much lower power consumption, and a lower production cost. NVIDIA also hopes to get hold of some GDDR4 for the G90, and will put it on a 512-bit bus.

 

AGP is not dead - NVIDIA brings the G84 AGP

Feb 24 2007 @ 12:29PM by jimmy

NVIDIA plans to introduce a DirectX10 and AGP compatible graphics chip in April of this year. The G84 AGP will be pin-compatible to the GeForce 7600 GPU, so it should not be that complicated to build a graphics card around it. More on the Inquirer

 

New Blu-ray laser can result in write speeds of up to 10x

Feb 24 2007 @ 12:27PM by jimmy

Nichia's new laser diode is able to emit pulsed light at 320mW, while it offers a stable operation of 1,000 hours, according to the company. The diode could be used for optical discs including Blu-ray and HD DVD, allowing 10X speed recording with a double-layer disc and 2X speed recording with a four-layer disc.

Nichia hopes to make these available by mid 2008. Of course, Blu-ray disks have to be made that can actually support this gigantic boost in burn speeds.

 

AMD Sees a Heterogeneous Future

Feb 24 2007 @ 12:14PM by jimmy

HPC Wire says that AMD sees a heterogeneous future. The interview AMD's Phil Hester.

"HPCwire: How about homogeneous multi-core? Does your roadmap stop at eight cores for AMD's Opteron line?

Hester: There are classes of workloads in the SMP server space that scale pretty well with homogeneous cores. As we scale up, I'd say the biggest single problem is not the number of cores, but the balance of memory bandwidth with the compute capabilities of those cores. As I'm sure that you know, there's a growing disparity between the rate at which the parallel execution units can consume data and the memory technology to deliver it. So we don't think as much about the absolute number of cores as how we balance the system with the available memory technology and board-level interconnect technology. In many cases, you can actually get better system level performance for a given affordable die size, by devoting more of the die to the memory hierarchy as opposed to cores.

We really approach it from the standpoint of the market requirements to determine how we spend the silicon. The cores are certainly a visible piece, but at the system performance level, it's now my view that it's more important to deal with the memory hierarchy than anything else."

 

New AMD Desktop Processors Designed for Both Performance-Hungry and Energy-Conscious Users

Feb 24 2007 @ 12:09PM by jimmy

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Feb. 20, 2007 - Underscoring its commitment to delivering the right products at the right time, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced desktop processors designed for users seeking the ultimate in energy-conscious or high-performance computing. The new energy-efficient 45-watt AMD Athlon(tm) 64 single-core processors 3500+ and 3800+ can help consumers and businesses save energy and experience significant performance-per-watt benefits. And for those who crave high performance, AMD has also introduced the AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 dual-core processor 6000+. These new processors are expected to be immediately available in the channel and from OEMs including Alienware, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Systemax and Voodoo, representing the latest in a succession of innovations based on the award-winning AMD64 processor architecture.

 

Seven GeForce 8800 series graphics cards compared

Feb 16 2007 @ 12:09PM by jimmy

NVIDIA'S GEFORCE 8800 SERIES is a jaw-dropping marriage of performance and image quality that has raised the bar for PC graphics substantially. Not since ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro have we been so impressed by a single graphics card. The G80 GPU is simply a marvel, and if you're looking to buy a high-end graphics card today, it's the only chip you want. Of course, your quest for the best graphics card won't end there; you also have to choose between GTS and GTX flavors of the GeForce 8800. And you're still not done, because GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX cards are available from a wide variety of manufacturers, each of which tries to bring something unique to the table, be it through bundled extras, tweaked clock speeds, or exotic cooling. As daunting as the selection of GeForce 8800 series graphics cards may be, choice is a good thing. To help you wade through the options, we've rounded up a collection of GeForce 8800 series cards from BFG Tech, EVGA, Foxconn, MSI, OCZ, PNY, and XFX to see how they stack up.

Read on to see which cards rise to the top and which get lost in the reference card shuffle.

 

AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 Overclocking

Feb 16 2007 @ 12:06PM by jimmy

Firing Squad has overclocked the Athlon 64 FX70.

Without a doubt, the Quad FX CPU we?re most enthusiastic about right now is AMD?s Athlon 64 FX-70. The FX-70 has got all the key specs found in the rest of AMD?s Quad FX lineup, only it runs a little slower at 2.6GHz and most importantly, FX-70 processors can be had for a few bucks over $300. This isn?t a bad price considering the features of the processor (although the equivalent X2 CPU, the X2 5200, is now officially priced at $232), although it?s a shame AMD didn?t shave a few bucks off the FX-70?s price with their latest round of price cuts...at least the FX-70 has the unlocked clock multiplier.

The real upside to 4X4 will be when Barcelona is moved to it, and you have a full 8 cores

 

AMD Aiming For 30% Market Share

Feb 16 2007 @ 12:04PM by jimmy

DigiTimes says that AMD?s goal is to reach a 30% share of the quad core server market this year.

"With Intel having reportedly pushed back its new quad-core server CPU schedules to late 2007 and early 2008, industry sources suggest that if AMD's plans to launch its new Quad-Core AMD Opteron (Barcelona) CPUs in the second half 2007 remain on target, the company should be in a good position to compete with Intel for market share.

 

AMD Commissions Energy Consumption Study

Feb 16 2007 @ 11:55AM by jimmy

In a keynote address at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit in New York today, Randy Allen, corporate vice president, Server and Workstation Division, AMD, revealed findings from a study that comprehensively calculated, for the first time, the energy consumed by national and global data centers annually. Addressing the need for thorough, credible estimates on data center power use, the study found that in 2005, in the U.S. alone, data centers and their associated infrastructure consumed five million kW of energy, the equivalent of five 1,000 MW power plants.

 

AMD Commissions Energy Consumption Study

Feb 15 2007 @ 05:58PM by jimmy

Analysts reports alerting their clients to a possible price war between AMD and Intel. Analyst Y. Edwin Mok notes that AMD has cut its prices three times in three weeks. He says that Dell has been playing off the two chipmakers against one another to drive costs down. He suggests that bargain-hunting clients avoid both AMD and Intel stock for now. As an aside, Mok notes that so far Vista is not causing a spike in demand for chips. This story hasn't been picked up very widely; other coverage is at Seeking Alpha.

 

AMD Recognized Among Leading Corporate Citizens

Feb 15 2007 @ 01:56PM by jimmy

AMD today announced its No. 2 ranking on the ?100 Best Corporate Citizens? list for 2007 by CRO magazine. The ?100 Best Corporate Citizens? list identifies companies that excel at combining strong financial performance with responsible practices on environmental and social issues. This is the second consecutive year AMD has been recognized in the top five on the list for its corporate and social responsibility practices.

 

AMD Offers New Products, Expands AMD64 Longevity Program

Feb 14 2007 @ 01:54AM by jimmy

Embedded World, Nürnberg, GERMANY - Feb. 13, 2007 - At the Embedded World Exhibition & Conference this week, AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced the next step in the evolution of its embedded business-including the addition of Second-Generation AMD Opteron(tm) processors and AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 dual-core processors to the AMD64 Longevity Program, plus the release of the new AMD Geode(tm) LX900@1.5W processor. With a commitment to lowering customers' time to market, AMD is also offering several new Reference Design Kits (RDKs). Spanning high-end to very low power embedded markets, these new AMD solutions are part of a continued focus on delivering a stable, consistent, high-performance architecture for embedded designers.

 

GeForce "320" Edition

Feb 14 2007 @ 01:35AM by jimmy

The big news is NVidia's new GeForce 8800 GTS. The card's memory has been scaled back to "only" 320MB and priced in the sub $300 range. Some of the review today include...

BFG 8800 GTS 320 MB OC at the Hard|OCP.

NVIDIA?s third GeForce 8 series GPU is ready to be added to their lineup, and this time at a very attractive price point that should appeal to a lot of people. We?ll test the new BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB against the competition as well as its older sibling to see exactly what the better value is, prepare for some shocking results.

Reference NVidia 8800 GTS 320MB at Anandtech.

Another Reference NVidia 8800 320MB board at The Tech Report.

Foxconn 8800 GTS 320MB and XFX 8800 GTX 320MB at Hexus.

XFX 8800 GTS 320MB at I4U Reviews.

Sparkle 8800 GTS 320MB at Madshrimps.

XFX 8800 GTS 320MB at Bjorn3D.

XFX 8800 GTS 320MB at Legit Reviews.

XFX certainly is looking to increase their visibility I'd say.

If that isn't enough for you; not overclocked but SUPERCLOCKED! What marking rep came up with that one? EVGA e-GeForce GTS 320MB Superclocked card at NVNews.

 

New AMD Imageon Media CPUs

Feb 13 2007 @ 12:52AM by jimmy

February 12, 2007 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the AMD Imageon? 2298, 2294 and 2192 media processors, offering ultra-fast, high-resolution image processing, DVD-quality video and high-definition audio for compelling mobile multimedia experiences. These new processors further enhance the industry-leading AMD Imageon family of discrete media processors, helping handheld manufacturers to quickly and cost-efficiently deliver the latest multimedia features that consumers demand.

Source: Advanced Micro Devices

 

NVIDIA Vista Drivers Update: Future Plans Unveiled

Feb 13 2007 @ 12:47AM by jimmy

PC Perspective has published a report from their discussion with NVIDIA's Vice President of Software Engineering Dwight Diercks. This report contains additional details about Windows Vista and how the new OS affects NVIDIA's graphics drivers.

"One difference between developing SLI for Windows XP was drastically different than it was for Windows Vista is that the NVIDIA hardware and driver could basically work together to make SLI function without letting the OS know what was going on. This put the entire software stack in NVIDIA?s hand, making it easier to find patches and loop holes to get SLI performance to scale well."

 

Nvidia Fails The Vista Test

Feb 13 2007 @ 12:41AM by jimmy

Nvidia is scrambling to improve the low performance of its graphic-card drivers on Windows Vista.

The maker of the GeForce graphic processors and related daughterboard products has received lots of flack from gamers who say their computer games crashed as a result of Nvidia drivers that have proven to be incompatible with Microsoft's latest operating system. Nvidia has acknowledged that its Vista drivers haven't performed as well as they should, and said in an e-mail on Wednesday that driver development for Vista is "the highest priority in our company.

Run that by me again? Nvidia is scrambling?

 

AMD Touts Quad Core Power Consumption

Feb 13 2007 @ 12:36AM by jimmy

CNet talks about AMD touting power consumption in quad core.

The processor, which AMD will discuss at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) next week in San Francisco, will sport a new version of AMD's PowerNow technology that will let all four cores simultaneously operate at different speeds, depending on their work loads, to curb power.

If one of the cores is running a 3D simulation, for instance, it can crank past 2GHz, while the other three can slumber at 1GHz. The cores can run at one of four different speeds.

 

PowerNow! Going Driverless

Feb 13 2007 @ 12:34AM by jimmy

The Inquirer reports on AMD's new power saving features, and amongst them is a PowerNow! that does not require drivers to work. That is a great improvement in my opinion. Here is some other news.

More interesting is the memory controller power savings. New to K10 is the ability to manage DDR channel power. If K10 sees that memory is using only writes, it can shut down read channels. If it is only reading, it can shut down write channels. This again saves a chunk of wattage.

 

PC Sales Jump in Vista's Debut Week

Feb 09 2007 @ 01:17AM by jimmy

Cnet News reveals that PC sales jumped 173% during the week of Vista?s debut. Though I've seen many articles stating that Vista's not worth the purchase for now, it seems enough people were interested in it to boost sales significantly.

I'd have to say this is good news for me as well working in the hardware industry, either we'll get a quicker promotion or a fatter wallet thanks to MS :)

Snip:

"After five weeks of sluggish PC sales, retailers received a big boost during the first week of Vista's launch, according to a report released Thursday by Current Analysis. PC unit sales soared 173 percent at U.S. retail stores during the week ended February 3, compared with PC sales in the previous week, according to the report."

 

NVIDIA "MCP72" Revealed

Feb 09 2007 @ 01:05AM by jimmy

DailyTech reports that the MCP72 from Nvidia is on its way. This is another single chipset solution from Nvidia.

Memos sent to DailyTech reveal new details of NVIDIA?s upcoming MCP72 single-processor chipset. This will be NVIDIA?s first HyperTransport 3.0, or HT3, compatible chipset and a successor to the current nForce 500-series MCP and the upcoming AMD MCP68 chipsets.

MCP72 will support AMD?s socket AM2 and HT3 enabled AM2+. Socket AM2+ will house AMD?s upcoming Athlon 64 Agena and Opteron Budapest quad-core processors.

Unlike the nForce 590 SLI, the upcoming MCP72 is a single-chip solution similar to the previous nForce 3-series, mainstream nForce 4-series and nForce 500-series. It will also offer a small footprint and have low power consumption.

 

World?s Fastest RAM - Corsair Dominator PC2-10000 Tested

Feb 08 2007 @ 01:08AM by jimmy

I'm currently running my system with a pair of Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 which I thought was a killer! But to run a PC2-10000 is unthinkable! I'm not exactly sure if my Asus Crosshair motherboard is able to keep up with OC'ing to synchronize with the speed of the Dominator! I guess we'll have to see when I get a pair of these babies.....if I plan to sell my farm for it!

Looks like Tweaktown was able to get thier hands on it for thier review

 

Video games train the visual system

Feb 08 2007 @ 12:58AM by jimmy

Arstechnica runs an interesting article on how some games can improve our visual performances.

"The researchers recruited matched sets of gamers and nongamers, and put them to the test. Gamers consistently outscored their peers in terms of their ability to tolerate proximity between the target and distractors. This held not only when the symbols were projected at the center of their field of vision, but also as the symbols were shifted to the periphery. But does gaming train the brain, or are people attracted to games because they fit in with their visual skill set?

To answer this question, 32 students were recruited and asked to play between five and eight hours a week until a total of 30 hours of gaming was reached. Half were trained on Tetris, where visual crowding plays a minimal role, the other half on Unreal Tournament. In gaming terms, everyone's scores went up. But in terms of the visual resolution test, only those playing the first-person shooter improved."