Friends at TechPowerUp! recently reported that Noctua, well-known firm in the cooling business decided to give a very pleasant present to the owners of their CPU coolers. With the arrival of Intel Core i7 processors, Noctua announced that the company is giving away free mounting kits for LGA1366 socket. Named SecuFirm2, this socket adapter is compatible with all Noctua coolers since the company arrived on the market, three years ago. As soon as Nehalem processors and motherboards reach the stores, you can go and visit Noctua’s website and file an online request. You have to give out proof of purchase of either Noctua cooler or
AMD wins big in GPU wars
In this industry, the rule of “second generation” is the one that always work. And if you’re lucky, you’ll continue the sales tradition for 2-3 generations, if your competitor does not make “1-2”. In case of ATI, the company struck gold with Radeon 9700 (R300 GPU), but the company sold 9800 and X800 like hotcakes. Nvidia came out with GeForce 6800 at X800 time and didn’t achieve the success the company expected, but 7800, 7900 and 8800 scored majorly. ATI came out with 3800 and did rather well, but GeForce 9000 outsold ATI parts. Now with Radeon 4000 series, AMD/ATI scored big with the “second
Microsoft to release Windows 7 in August ’09 for “Back-2-School”!?
Even though the company management does not want to admit it, Vista is a dud. Just like Intel execs neatly forgot the crappy marchitecture that NetBu(r)st was and started touting otherwise brilliant Core 2 architecture, don’t expect that Ballmer & Co. will say “Sorry for Vista” until Windows 7 comes out. Just like during PDC 2008 conference, Microsoft will be giving away pre-beta build of Windows 7. What makes this conference announcement important is the following tagline: WinHEC is the only chance for you to engage with the team at this level – there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released. This
Nvidia’s $50 card destroys ATI’s $500 one or “Why ATI sucks in Folding?”
As you might already know, I am a bit enthusiastic when it comes to distributed computing. I’ve been looking for aliens through SETI@home, later with BOINC… but then, Folding@Home showed up and I became an enthusiast for this valuable project from Stanford University. My family had some share of dealings with Alzheimer’s (aka AD) and Parkinson’s diseases (aka PD) and I won’t go here into what psychological and ultimately financial stress that families around the world, including my own – have to endure. Folding@Home is also a project that pioneered the use of GPUs for distributed computing (if I am wrong on this one, feel
Intel starts to phase out 65nm CPUs
If anyone doubts Intel’s leadership in the world of CPUs and manufacturing, just think of the following: its nearest competitor is yet to ship its 45nm products in any volume, while Chipzilla started to phase out 65nm CPUs as 45nm ones took over. While the world is waiting on AMD’s Shanghai and Deneb, Intel’s 45nm Core and Xeon processors overtook 65nm ones and the company decided to phase out or EOL (End Of Life) no less than 31 different 65nm processors. Intel claims the company has achieved break point between 45nm and 65 and that majority (roughly 60%) of CPUs in Q4 will be manufactured
Badaboom’s CPU utilization issue explained
After the first look here, I managed to again speak with Sam and Mike of Elemental fame, who got back to me regarding my comments on high CPU utilization. I’ve experienced close to 100% load on AMD’s dual-core processor, while AMD’s quad-core worked normally. According to Elemental, CPU utilization can be high on a dual-core processor if you do low-resolution transcodes (which is kinda the natural purpose of this application). This is a natural latency between the CPU and the GPU that happens during moving frames between the GPU video memory and the CPU and its (system) memory. Guys haven’t experienced this on Intel platform,
UPDATE: EVGA to launch Intel X58 motherboards
When it comes to add-in board vendors, EVGA is probably the most faithful company in the business. Ever since the company launched, Nvidia was the only name EVGA wanted to hear about. But, things are about to change. Here are the facts: 1) EVGA does not want to miss the Core i7 train 2) Nvidia is not making a chipset for Intel Core i7 3) EVGA poached excellent engineering team from now-defunct EPoX and does not want that team to do nothing until MCP8-series show up Well, those facts end with a really simple result. EVGA is preparing to launch its first non-Nvidia based motherboard,
Best buy introduces custom design notebooks from HP, Toshiba
In a bid to win more customers, Best Buy introduced Blue label series of products. Starting with two notebooks, BB is introducing products that were designed based upon customer feedback. BB received feedback from their sales spots and decided to do something about it. It seems that most customers demanded discrete graphics card, 4GB of memory, baclkit keyboard improved battery life and a 64-bit operating system. Said – done. First two Blue label products are HP Pavilion dv3510nr and Toshiba Satellite E105-S1402. Both notebooks come with similar features and boast more than four hours of battery life. Personally, I like HP more due to integrated
AMD reports $1.78B revenue, records first profit in years (non-GAAP)
On Thursday, AMD reported its Q3’2008 results and the company managed to “Experience Black” (marketing slogan behind 4870X2). When we look at overall (non-GAAP) numbers, AMD filed $1.776 billion revenue and a profit of 80 million dollars. This was the first filed profit in seven quarters, and in a way, Hector J. Ruiz kept its promise of AMD becoming profitable by Q3’08. However, the results that Wall Street calculates are GAAP ones, and without that one-time revenue of $191 million (selling equipment to JSC Angstrem, as I first reported here), the company filed a net loss of $67 million on a revenue of $1.56 billion.
Atom helps Intel to score a big one, beats expectations
In a stark contrast to conservative projections by analysts, Intel (stock: INTC) announced that the company achieved a revenue of $10.22 billion, beating the estimates. Chipzilla achieved clear two billion dollar profit in Q3’08, or 35 cents per share. The reason for this 12% jump in profits is no other than Intel Atom, chip that reportedly costs only $8 to make, giving Intel additional $200 million in its Q3 revenue. Without Atom and associated chipsets, their revenue would dip below 10 billion. This only goes to show that Intel executed properly and went for the segment of market that has just started to expand. Cheap
