Nvidia prepares a launch of 55nm parts for 2008 – nope, they’re not going to wait for CES 2009. At least, that’s what I heard from couple of sources…
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?
Nvidia 55nm GT206 reviewed, dramatic reduction in power consumption
A while ago, I wrote a piece stating that Nvidia decided to launch 55nm GT206 as Quadros first. The reason for that is the number of problems that Nvidia had in die-shrink process, so the company had to roll-out GT206 in the same way as its old NV30 (Quadro FX 2000 shipped before GeForce FX5800) or as AMD likes to launch its CPUs – commercial parts (Opteron) are launched first, followed by consumer ones (Phenom, Athlon, Turnmeon). Thus, GT206 (G200 B Series – A series marked 65nm parts, B series denominates 55nm parts, G200 C series should mark the 40nm GPUs) debuted as Quadro
UPDATED: Nvidia’s “deadly” flaw and how to fix it – no more squealing!
It is no secret that I am huge fan of Folding@Home project, or that I love to play computer games (when I find time :-(. Both of these activities put high amounts of strain on components inside the computer, and any weakness in product design can be easily discovered. This tale speaks of a company that makes great chips, but also has a serious design flaw: PCB design. As long as story about “Built by Nvidia” components was told, there were isolated cases of “squealing”. This squealing is caused by vibration of copper coils, and is not present on products designed by people that take
ANALYSIS: Why will GDDR5 rule the world?
This memory standard will become a pervasive memory during next four years in much more fields than “just” graphics. Just like GDDR3 ended up in all three consoles, network switches, cellphones and even cars and planes, GDDR5 brings a lot of new features that are bound to win more customers from different markets. Background The reason for development of radical ideas inside GDDR5 lies in the fact that ATI was looking at future GPU architectures, and concluded that the DRAM industry has to take a radical step in design and offer interface more flexible than any other memory standard. Then, ATI experienced huge issues with
ATI vs. Nvidia: Payback is a beach
Following newly introduced Saturday Light Special, I’ve received an e-mail from anonymous source (yes, I know who you are 😉 ), linking to a YouTube video which portrays the fall of a cute little dinosaur named “G4saurus Defectus”. Pun is definitely intended, and personally, the world would be a better place if the author didn’t mention some of the things which ATI copied badly (anyone remembers the historical SNAFU patchwork called Crossfire pass-through cable… ah, right. Never existed), but the video is a laugh. Over the past several years, it looks like we haven’t seen anything but bashing of the red team, and now the
Zotac releases affordable DisplayPort cards
Since DisplayPort will be the “Flavor of the year” in 2009, and start to replace DVI and analog D-SUB, more and more companies are joining in with their products that feature this connector. Zotac decided to launch the most affordable cards so far – based on GeForce 9400GT and 9500GT, these boards are targeting those entry-level systems that will be inside those “Christmas special” systems that will be equipped with “displays for 2009”. All in all, interesting parts.
Nvidia officially unveils civil “CX” and FX5800 monster
Last week, I did a short piece about the way how Nvidia is trying to bridge the 32-/64-bit divide, and today, the company officially unveiled Quadro FX 4800 and FX 5800. Quadro FX 4800 shares a lot of similarities with Adobe-oriented CX, but features 216 shaders (yes, GTX-260 brother here, if my sources were correct) and 1.5 GB of GDDR3 memory. But the star of the today’s launch is FX 5800, the new flagship of Quadro fleet. In a way, we already know everything about FX 5800, since Nvidia demonstrated the product back in August at Siggraph 2008, followed by Nvision 08 – so, specs
Nvidia relaunches 9600GSO, buyers beware
During previous conference call, Nvidia let analysts know that the company is in the middle of the transition to 55nm and that the future will bring only 55nm GPUs with a transition to 40nm at the end of Q1’09. First victim of this transition is GeForce 9600GSO. As you probably know, 9600GSO is without any doubt, best bang for buck – for as low as 50 bucks after rebate (where available), you can get a renamed 8800GT card with 112 or 96 shaders, and with a bit of cut-down memory controller (192-bits). These cards can overclock as hell, but just like previous GeForce4 Ti4200 and
AMD’s Folding performance explained, future development revealed
Following the article about Top graphics cards for Folding@Home, it seems that I managed to get some doors opened and receive answers from the people closely involved with the project. I had that luck of being contacted by people who were or still are involved with the project, and thus their answers were quite interesting. Names will remain unrevealed, of course.;-) In order to keep the clarity of the article, I’ve dumbed down some items that came up in discussions – I will try to keep it both technical and simple. Impossible task, I know. Onto the matter then – the reason for ATI’s problems
Nvidia aims at workstation market, desktops and notebooks
Fudo and his gang discovered MCP7A-GL motherboard over at Chinese Iworkstation.com.cn. This motherboard is “body of evidence” that Nvidia finally found the guts to go after the workstation market with embedded Quadro chipset. Over the course of years, I’ve seen couple of Quadro motherboards, but Nvidia never dedicated themselves to creating a market. Personally, I saw that as a big mistake, and often questioned chipset guys about professional solutions. Nvidia was afraid that the move would cannibalize their cash cow, Quadro series of cards, but that fear just didn’t made any sense – at the end of the day, a company has to increase the
Intel Core i7 965 Gallery – from Silicon to Benchmarks!
Following my yesterday’s article, I received news that GTX280 kicked the bucket so my friend decided to install the ATI Radeon HD 4870X2 as a replacement, and the machine is now working like a clockwork. I won’t go into fashion decisions, as I am not a big fan of acrylic cases, but I wish my friend all the best when it comes to cleaning up. When it comes to the CPU itself, Intel Core i7 965 (codename: Bloomfield) works at 1.6 GHz in SpeedStep mode, and works at 3.4 GHz by default. E.g. it works in ASUS motherboard at 3.4 GHz by default, since the
World, meet Nehalem e.g. Core i7 965 pixellated
This coming monday (Nov 3rd), Intel will officially unveil Core i7 line-up. The line-up is consisted out of i7 920, 940 and 965, which will retail as the “Extreme Edition” and feature a lot of overclocking-friendly technologies. I’ve just received word that a buddy of mine got his Core i7 in Croatia. He and decided to assemble a system for ultimate gaming and Photoshop action. The system will be consisted out of Core i7 Extreme 965, Corsair DDR3 memory kit, ASUS Rampage II Formula motherboard and EVGA GeForce GTX280. But for starters, this is his majesty, Core i7 965, formerly known as Nehalem: Also, 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
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
New “nForce for AMD” chipsets take shape under GeForce name
Last week, Chinese site Expreview.com published a story about the new generation of nForce chipsets for AMD processors. We managed to find more details through course of the weekend. For starters, the lineup will consist out of three (not two) chipsets with various capabilities. MCP82-S1, MCP82-S2 and MCP82-S3 will round the lineup, all targeting their respective markets (high-end, mainstream and entry-level). The S1 and S2 will support SLI, while S3 targets lucrative OEM/ODM deals – our sources indicate that this variant will be pitched as a successor to GeForce 6150 line that conquered many Dells, HPs and Acers out there. MCP82-S1 targets the high-end, with
Folding@Home team update, new stats page ;)
I’ve been a fan of distributed computing since late 1990s, with SETI@Home running on every computer that I ever had. However, the real attractive proposition to me was running distributed computing applications on graphics cards. GPUs are much more efficient in stream computing than any CPU you could find, and I’ve tried DC apps on computers with DEC Alpha, Intel Pentium onwards, AMD K6-II onwards etc etc., but biggest jump in performance was Folding@Home on ATI Radeon X1800XTX graphics card. With the launch of this blog and the new website, I’ve decided to launch a new group, number 69864. Current name is the name of
nForce is dead: Zotac releases its GeForce 9300 motherboard
I saw first motherboards based on MCP7-series chipset back on Computex 2007. Yup, after a year and half nVIDIA is finally releasing MCP7 series to market, featuring GeForce 8-class GPU for Intel processors. It is hard to understand what kind of problems delayed this part for over a year, but one of theories could be that nVIDIA didn’t want to cannibalize the sales of GeForce 8400 and 8500 series, which is give-or-take the performance that you’re going to get with GeForce 9300/9400 chipset. Zotac is well known manufacturer of nVIDIA graphics cards, and also known as the company that produced highest clocked 8800Ultra, 8800GT and
Sparkle’s excellent idea: Cheap PCI Express x1 cards
One of more interesting niche markets is the one named “how to fix the computer crippled with integrated graphics?”, and the solutions that are being sold in that area. We saw interesting products coming from Albatron, Sparkle, MSI and others, but it is a rare occasion to see a card in sub-$50 range that offers DX10 support. The company released a series of PCIe x1 cards for those unlucky owners of motherboards without PCI Express x16 slot. Sparkle released no less than eight models based on GeForce 8400GS graphics chip. Sadly, memory controller is limited to 64-bit, but this was Nvidia’s doing. Memory is either
