During morning hours in US, I was contacted by several high-level executives who asked me is it true that AMD was sold to a private investor. Timing of such rumor was without any doubt, pure FUD attack to steal the thunder from today’s announcement that got the press and enthusiasts tingly like elementary school girl. The announcement is expiry of embargo on AMD’s Press Preview, held recently in Austin, Texas. Like I hinted in an article just days ago, AMD worked with selected hard-core overclockers to tune up the Phenom II CPU and Dragon platform (790GX chipset with AM3 socket, nothing earth-shattering here). The results
Akasa’s little “Made in Europe” cooler is absolutely brilliant
Long time ago, I received Akasa REVO Cooler. This cooler is based on new concept, and it is not “yet another heatpipe cooler”. Instead, REVO is designed around concept called “bubble-pump” – dual-component coolant that circles in hermetically sealed environment. All in all, product that should be compared to water-cooling products, not heat-pipe or vapor chamber ones. The downfall of the part was its unattractive looks, because performance-wise, this baby packs some serious punch. When I spoke to Adrian and Caterina, they were quite cautious about the performance, claiming the part was oriented towards silent computing, and not enthusiasts. While this may be true, this
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
45nm Phenoms to offer excellent overclocking capabilities
Behind the scenes of Analyst Day 2008 (held on November 13), AMD decided to execute hard and unpopular political decision. The company decided to help the bottom line by leaving the Q4 desktop and notebook market to Intel, and focus on server/workstation markets. AMD decided to postpone 45nm desktop chip (Deneb, e.g. Phenom II) for hard launch on January 8, 2009 – first day of CES 2009. This way, complete 45nm production in 2008 will be branded as Opterons and target higher ASPs. But don’t think for a second that AMD decided to drop the towel on desktop market: Deneb and Deneb FX are turning
TSMC introduces 40nm volume production, advances in front of Intel
A while ago, I spoke with my sources at TSMC, who were quite decisive to make it to the front on the field of chip manufacturing. Heads of this Taiwanese giant decided to invest more than 10 billion USD in order to become world’s most advanced manufacturer, and their roadmap is more aggressive than anyone in the industry. The results of that investment are slowly coming to life, and as of today, TSMC has more advanced manufacturing process than any other competitor in the manufacturing business. Intel will argue its (very important, though) Hafnium or High-K material, but ever since I became a journalist, Intel
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
GPGPU Revolution: OpenCL to launch next week
If you’re wondering what is next week’s outlook for tech news, brace yourselves for impact. During the past three weeks, I was briefed by several companies and everybody is gearing up for SC08 (SuperComputing) conference in Austin, Texas. There will be a lot of announcements coming from AMD, Nvidia and Intel, but more importantly, Khronos group will show OpenCL (Open Computing Language) to the general audience. Many people view OpenCL as an API that will make the very same impact on consumer and professional applications that DirectX made in the world of games. If you’re in Austin, you can head over to Rio Grande Mexican
AMD keeps on killing its saviors, continues malicious benchmark practice
When it comes to AMD, this is the one company that is really a talent when it comes to destroying its own golden gooses. Sometimes out of knowledge, sometimes out of pure malice, the company’s heart is far from one that was the core when Colonel Sanders was in charge. The company that Sanders lead was always on the edge, but it was that edge that created AMD K7 and K8 architecture (NexGen), it was the edge that went into sponsorship deal with Ferrari and commanded with 45% of 4P server space (for a while). Reactive AMD was the one that stopped investment in 65nm
Power Color brings the “cool” to 4870 series with LCS model
I’ve just got word from Andre Santos, PR rep for most of EMEA region that his company finally entered the world of water-cooling products with style. TUL introduced LCS4870, or ATI Radeon 4870 with water-cooling block slapped on top of it. Engineers went at it, since the core clock is upped to 800 MHz, and memory is set at 950 MHz (3.8 GT/s or “GHz”). Of course, if you decide to void your warranty and install ATI Tool for massive overclocking, this water-block should help you into 1GHz GPU range, and memory should go to 1.1 GHz QDR (4.4 GT/s) and have bandwidth of 138
CoolIT preparing something new…
Maker of world’s most effective water-cooling setups, CoolIT Systems – is currently putting a pedal to the metal in development of their new product. I managed to learn that the company is working on greatly improving their product and designing robust solution that will be an ideal product for LAN party lunatics, which have to be really careful with their water-cooling setups during transport from their homes to LAN parties and back. You can expect that the new product will also be price-friendly, and hopefully, one day water-cooling will be mainstream. There is nothing better than putting a Noctua 120mm fan on Freezone Elite and
Deneb set to launch end of November, again in Channel
Roughly a year after the debut of AMD’s Spider platform, 45nm processors are coming in the frame. Under codename Deneb (Phenom) and Shanghai (Opteron), these babies are starting to appear from thin air. We’ve received word that the new Phenom is again repeating the history of original Phenom, and that is launching too late for major system design wins from the likes such as Dell, HP and others. So, AMD is going to launch Deneb in channel first, and you can expect those Black Edition processors appearing out of thin air. Overclocking results are really promising, and on 790 boards with SB750 Southbridge, you can
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
Some Radeon 5870 rumours are BS… some aren’t ;)
I’ve received word from a reader that some Germans wrote a story containing details about RV870, e.g. Radeon “5870”. Neoseeker brought the translation forward , and while some parts make a lot of sense, some really don’t. First of all, the RV870 is supposed to be a 40nm part, but that’s not something that we didn’t know already. Both Nvidia and AMD are going to bring 40nm half-node parts first, followed by 32 and 28nm full-nodes. According to the story, the GPU is supposed to contain 25% more shaders than Radeon 4800 series, bringing the theoretical computational power to 1.5 TFLOPS. Well, you don’t need
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
OPTiGate: AMD and Intel in the same boat as Nvidia
Earlier today, my friends at Fudzilla ran a story that hit at Nvidia, with claims that Nvidia disabled PCI Prefetch due to patent infringement. That story was true, without any doubt. But that story was actual back in late 2006, as DVhardware confirmed. When OPTi left the PCI chipset market and decided to do what Silicon Valley companies do when they leave the competition world: sue everybody they can. Just like Integraph milked money from their stolen IP from AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Gateway, Dell, HP and others, OPTi decided to cash in by opening negotiations with AMD, Intel, Nvidia and others – VIA included. The
Sapphire’s 4850X2 shows some promise…
Time for custom-designed X2 boards has come. Sapphire Technologies is getting close to release of its own 4850X2, featuring no less than four DVI ports for connection to four possible displays. My colleagues from VR-Zone got a hand on a review sample and published first scores. The board scored a index of P12741 and X5728 in 3DMark Vantage, but bear in mind that the test system was Intel Core i7, so naturally the scores are a bit higher than current Core 2 setups. All in all, another interesting product arrives. But unlike Sapphire Atlantis 2600X2, which featured quite similar layout, this time AMD/ATI is standing
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
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
UPDATED: Elemental’s video transcoder rocks the world
Back in May 2008, Nvidia’s Editors Day hosted a presentation by young guys from Elemental Technologies Inc (ETI). The demonstrated software was Badaboom, CUDA-powered video transcoder that demolished Intel’s Core 2 Quad processor when used in conjuction with GeForce 8800GTS. Months have passed, and guys worked hard on developing Badaboom in order to be ready for August release. But, their second project, RapiHD encoder for Premiere CS4 Pro needed some engineering help. So, the guys pushed back the release of Badaboom and Badaboom Pro until after the launch of CS4. It was a tough call, but with the release of Adobe Creative Studio 4 over
Nvidia makes a “stupid” call with brilliant RapiHD
With the release of Adobe Creative Studio 4, Elemental Technologies finally launched their own RapiHD CUDA-accelerator for Premiere Pro. As team of users of Sony 1080p and RED One (4K FTW!) camera, my guys expected that RapiHD will be a brilliant add-on to my configuration consisted out of two 4-core Intel Xeons@3 GHz, brilliant ASUS Skulltrail-lite motherboard and Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 SDI. SDI is a paramount when working with HD signal and RED camera, since it tremendously speeds up the workflow. I am first to admit that I am not exactly at home with video production per se, but I well know what to