This Monday, Intel filed papers claiming that Nvidia’s four-year chipset license does not apply to Nehalem architecture (Core i3, i5, i7, new Xeons) e.g. that Nvidia has no right in manufacturing chipsets for Intel processors that use integrated memory controller. These news come just after Nvidia enabled SLI on Intel’s X58 chipse6t, including Intel’s own DX58SO motherboard. Given the current state of affairs between the two companies, I was not surprised that Intel is going to oust Nvidia from the chipset market. How Nvidia came into the Intel chipset market is another story – at the time, Intel was seriously hurting with its Prescott marchitecture
Biohazard Annihilation F.A.T.E.: Life with a Ferrari
Supercars, supercomputers… they all have things in common. Regular cars and regular computers can do things just like supercars and supercomputers. But, there is something special in owning something “super”. Biohazard Annihilation F.A.T.E. is member of supergamingcomputers. Is it good enough?
Alleged Core i7 TLB issue is NOT a story at all
Earlier today, the world started to turn around news coming from a fellow website that claimed that ominous TLB-bug stroke Intel’s latest baby, Core i7 series. Transition Lookaside Buffer erratas/bugs are notorious and took financial and reputational tool from Intel and AMD in the past. Hearing news about TLB bugs happening with Core i7 had the potential to become a story of the year, just like AMD lost huge chunk of market confidence 12 months ago with TLB-bug on Barcelona/Agena (Opteron/Phenom). Could it be that Nehalem architecture has a similar flaw? Well, prior to running my story, I decided to read the document in question
Core i7 is much bigger than Core 2 or Phenom
During the past couple of days, quite a few friends and acquaintances asked me about the differences in packaging between Core 2 and i7 series of processors. It seems that there is belief that there is no need to replace the motherboard (huh? New CPU Socket people – yes, you have to replace the motherboard). But also, I failed to find a good Core 2 vs. i7 vs. Phenom shot on the internet, so there you go. On the left, we have AMD Phenom X4 9850+ Black Edition, middle spot is taken by Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and Core i7 Extreme 965 is on
EVGA debuts final version of its X58 motherboard
Today is Monday, November 17, 2008, the official launch and availability date for the Intel Core i7 platform. The whole platform is officially on sale, just in time for Black Friday/Cyber Monday madness. As revealed weeks ago, the motherboard itself is designed by ex-EPoX/now-EVGA design team, hand-tuned by K|ngP|n and Shamino, and manufactured by Jetway. This combo is responsible for (probably) the world’s first motherboard with limited lifetime warranty, and 90 Day Step-up program should be available for this motherboard as well (upgrading from, probably not upgrading to 😉 ). In Europe, customers will not get lifetime warranty, as that is impossible by EU laws
Arctic Silver 5 goes whoopsie or “No silver paste for me”
Recently, my friend decided to upgrade his system from AMD Athlon 5000+ Black Edition and GigaByte 7-Series motherboard to Core 2 Duo E8500, hopefully to run at 3.8 GHz (FSB1600). 5000+ worked hard for almost a year at 3GHz, a nice speed bump from default clocks. Back in July, he replaced previous cooler with OCZ Vendetta, and bought Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste (high density one) for better heat transfer. Fast forward to November, and the time for upgrade has come. Ivan decided to keep his OCZ Vendetta cooler, and we removed the motherboard from the case. This was followed by CPU cooler removal, but
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
