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Elpida Develops DDR3 Memory Chips that Can Function at 2.50GHz.

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:41:57 +0000

Intel Unveils USB 3.0 Spec to Third Parties

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:35:34 +0000

Intel Corp. on Wednesday said that it had made available the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision 0.9 in support of the USB 3.0 architecture, also known as SuperSpeed USB. The xHCI draft specification provides a standardized method for USB 3.0 host controllers to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack.

This specification describes the registers and data structures used to interface between system software and the hardware, and are developed to be compatible with the USB 3.0 specification being developed by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group. The Intel xHCI draft specification revision 0.9 is being made available under RAND-Z (royalty free) licensing terms to all USB 3.0 Promoter Group and contributor companies that sign an xHCI contributor agreement.
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790GX BIOS’ and Zotac GF8300 lab notes

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:34:48 +0000

When we posted our 790GX preview there were still a few significant problems with the motherboards and drivers. Mind you, the problems we encountered primarily revolved around overclocking and other performance settings on the motherboards. Stock operation and stability were never a problem for us, but stepping outside of the norm created a fair share of frustrating moments for us. In addition, the beta drivers that implemented PowerPlay had their own set of problems with CrossFire X operation along with some weird interactions with our TV tuner and network cards in the PCI slots.

Our final opinion was that this launch occurred about two weeks early. As such, the motherboard suppliers and AMD have been in overtime mode to get the boards and drivers tuned properly. The good news is the last set of BIOS releases we have received from ASUS, Gigabyte, Foxconn, and MSI have solved about 95% of our problems. The last five percent are mainly performance or tuning requests that we deem optional for the most part. The last set of beta drivers have improved overall stability and performance greatly along with CrossFire operating correctly. Granted, the 8.7 Catalyst drivers will work fine, but performance enhancements and PowerPlay improvements in the latest 8.8 betas have us wishing that AMD would get the final drivers out quickly.
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Nvidia Takes A Big Hit In The Second Quarter

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:31:10 +0000

Santa Clara (CA) - The replacement of faulty graphics chips as well as a much stronger than expected AMD /ATI pushed Nvidia deep into the red during the second quarter. The company reported a revenue decline of 23% sequentially and a triple-digit loss.

The company posted sales of $893 million, down 23% from $1.15 billion the first quarter and down 5% from $936 million year over year. In a rare event, Nvidia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia reported a hefty loss of $120.9 million, compared to a net income of $211.8 million in the first quarter.
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VIDEO: Falcon NW HD 4870 Quadfire Rig

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:22:46 +0000

Quick Look: Falcon NW Mach V Quadfire System Could this rig finally bring Crysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis to it’s knees? Thanks to a pair of AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards, Falcon Northwest says this Mach V gets frame rates 3-times that of a similarly equipped 3-way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Way SLI system.

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Swiftech Launches Apogee GTZ Processor Water Block

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:19:23 +0000

ap·o·gee: The farthest or highest point; the apex; a final climactic stage
The Apogee™ GTZ is Swiftech’s new flagship water-block. While it shares the same name with its predecessors, it also leaps beyond the GT and GTX performance charts thanks to an entirely new design that pushes and refines both thermal and mechanical specifications to the limits of today’s technology. (more…)

AMD Bids on DirectX 11, OpenCL to Popularize GPGPU.

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:32:31 +0000

General purpose processing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) has been discussed for years, however, without standards that are accepted by the whole industry popularity of the technology is not high to say at least. But that may change once Microsoft Corp. unveils its DirectX 11 application programming interface and Khronos Group finalizes the OpenCL language.

“Industry standards are essential to unlocking the compute potential of GPUs and driving broad adoption of this capability in mainstream applications. GPGPU is now moving past the era of closed and fully proprietary development chains. With the advent of DirectX 11 and OpenCL, C/C++ programmers worldwide will have standardized and easier ways of leveraging the GPU’s computational capabilities,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, graphics product group at AMD.

At present AMD is promoting GPGPU with its proprietary Close-to-Metal, Brook+ and Stream SDK technologies, whereas Nvidia is pushing its own CUDA technology as a part of GPGPU popularization. (more…)

Report: All Nvidia G84/G86 Chips Defective

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:28:50 +0000

It appears that Nvidia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia ’s notebook chips aren’t the only ones that could be defective, if an Inquirer report is to be believed.

According to sources, the entire line of G84 and G86 chips all suffer from the same defect, regardless of desktop or notebook application. The chip generation utilizes the same Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), which supposedly has an issue with an “unnamed substrate or bumping material, and it is heat related.”

As expected, Nvidia is staying mum on the topic, but analysts are spilling various details. One story is that HP was the recipient for the majority of the defective chips – only limited to a specific batch. Further explanation reveals that it was isolated to an end-of-life batch that used a different bonding/substrate process. (more…)

NZXT Launches Avatar Gaming Mouse

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:23:58 +0000

NZXT has unveiled a gaming mouse called Avatar. Equipped with a 2000 dpi optical sensor, this USB mouse features an ambidextrous design and has 7 programmable buttons (that have a life span of 5 million clicks) that allows the users to customize their games configurations. A rubber grip helps avoid slipping during intense game play. It’s MSRP is of USD 60.

ASETEK FIRST TO COOL AMD’S NEW ATI RADEON HD 4870 X2 DUAL GRAPHICS PROCESSOR CARDS

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:21:36 +0000

Asetek’s industry-leading, LCLC liquid cooling solution is now available for AMD’s much anticipated multi-GPU cards, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 family of graphics cards (codenamed R700). The unique, liquid cooling approach is exactly what OEMs need to extract the highest performance from the graphics card and produce top-of-the-line gaming and entertainment products. (more…)

AMD split rumors accelerating

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:29:14 +0000

San Francisco (CA) – Hector Ruiz’ time at the AMD as we know it today is coming to an end. Ruiz recently stepped down from his role as CEO, but kept his position as chairman of the board with the purpose of launching AMD’s Asset Light and Asset Smart strategies, which are expected to split AMD into two entities. And this event is only weeks away, industry sources told TG Daily.

It is widely expected that Asset Light will part AMD into two companies – one that is led by newly crowned CEO Dirk Meyer and a focus on the development of chip technologies and a manufacturing arm that will take over AMD’s fabs. Our sources indicated that critical decisions are being made at this time and the official announcement of Asset Light and Asset Smart will be made next month.

Hector Ruiz’ future role remains a mystery, but it is expected that Ruiz will remain with AMD in one capacity or the other, possibly as CEO of the manufacturing company. We previously published an extensive analysis that sheds some light on the company’s future direction. It appears that much of Ruiz’ future has already been ironed out and AMD’s marketing team is now working on a way to preserve Ruiz’ legacy in AMD’s history books to avoid the perception that the executive caused the company’s current critical state. (more…)

Intel Launches New Processors

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:25:22 +0000

Following the official announcement of Nehalem processors’ name, Intel has launched four new 45-nm processors. See them below:

Processor	sSpec	Internal Clock	External Clock	L2 Cache	Price (1000-unit )
Core 2 Duo E7300	SLAPB	2.66 GHz	1,066 MHz	3 MB	USD 133
Core 2 Duo E8600	SLB9L	3.33 GHz	1,333 MHz	6 MB	USD 266
Core 2 Quad Q9400	SLB6B	2.66 GHz	1,333 MHz	6 MB	USD 266
Core 2 Quad Q9650	SLB8W	3 GHz	1,333 MHz	12 MB	USD 576

Intel Set To Introduce Mobile Quad-core Processors

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:23:25 +0000

NewsFlash: San Francisco (CA) - Lots of new processors will be announced next week at the Intel Developer Forum. Among them will be two special processors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit for enthusiast notebooks.

Intel’s first two quad-core http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core processors for notebooks will be the Core 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2 Quad Q9100 and Core 2 Extreme QX9300. The 9100’s four cores http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coree will run at 2.26 GHz, while the Extreme Edition will be clocked at 2.53 GHz. Both CPUs integrate FSB1066, but only the QX9300 has an unlocked multiplier.

In terms of price, don’t expect these new flagships to be cheap. Tray-pricing for the Q9100 will be $851; the Extreme QX9300 will go for $1036. Vendors are likely to charge even more for dual-core to quad-core upgrades. For example, Eurocom charges $1220 for an upgrade from a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 to a Core 2 Extreme QX9300.

Both quad-core CPUs are identical to their desktop counter-parts, albeit with a reduced FSB clock (266 MHz QDR instead of 333 MHz QDR or 400 MHz). The CPUs will also feature 12 MB of L2 cache.

This unlocked multiplier is necessary to allow overclocking or increase the speed or the GHz rating of a CPU. Overclocking a CPU can be beneficial in many ways. For instance users can purchase cheaper components and overclock it to achieve the speed of more expensive ones. This process is not advised for simple tasks like web browsing with broadband Internet connection or whatever type of Internet connection.

AMD’s Radeon HD 4870 X2: R700 First-Look : Two Times The Compute Power

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:20:51 +0000

Although AMD took the hardware community by surprise with the performance of RV770 and the derivative Radeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon HD 4850/4870, things didn’t go entirely according to plan. The company launched its boards immediately after Nvidia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia , which turned around and slashed the prices on its own models, determined to win this round of the ongoing graphics card war.

And yet, a month and a half after the launch of AMD’s newest round of products, the verdict hasn’t changed. Neither the GeForce GTX 260 nor the GeForce 9800 GTX+ (only recently made available) can take on the Radeon HD 4870 with regards to price or performance, even in light of heavy cuts from Nvidia.

But AMD’s not out just to make waves with the gamers looking for value. It also wants to reclaim a crown it lost a long time ago to Nvidia’s last two generations of large, monolithic programmable graphics architectures. As a means to that end, the company is putting a pair of its most impressive GPUs on a single PCB and calling it the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Now the question remains: does the new board have the muscle to take on Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280, the single fastest card?
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Nehalem is now i7

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:54:31 +0000

Intel has been on a roll these past few weeks with future product announcements ranging from Larrabee to System on Chips. They announced today that desktop processors based on the company’s upcoming new micro-architecture, the processor family formerly known as Nehalem, would carry the “Intel Core Processor” nomenclature. Considering the success of the Core series, this does not come as a surprise to us. However, the i7 designation has us wondering what the next series in the Core family will be called since i8 leads to all sorts of phrase variations. Without further adieu, here is the official press release from Intel.

The first products in this new family of processors, including an “Extreme Edition” version, will carry an “i7” identifier and will be formally branded as “Intel® Core™ i7 processor.” This is the first of several new identifiers to come as different products launch over the next year. (more…)