Triple Core Phenoms To Show Up At CeBIT, Quad Cores Delayed
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 4th, 2008, in the categories: CPU, News
While ATI's latest cards are all very good deals for their prices, offering an excellent performance/price ratio, AMD processors are completely overrun by Intel's ones, and with the latest low-end offers, such as the E2xxx series, they seem to have lost the entry-level processors market too. To make things even worse, it seems some retailers are only selling a few AMD processors, and I say this because my favorite hardware store had a lot of them around Christmas, and now there's almost no AMD CPU there... Anyway, now I have some good news, because AMD announced the triple-core Phenoms should arrive at CeBIT 2008 Expo!
According to latest statements from various sources at motherboard makers, the triple-core Phenoms, 8400 and 8600, together with the low-power quad-core 9100e, should be presented at CeBIT 2008. No matter how interesting sounds a low power quad-core (maybe I can get one for my "ancient" 3 months old motherboard...), the high-end Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors are not going to arrive as previously scheduled, due to the TLB bug.
This bug delayed AMD in raising the frequencies of the cores, and I hope they make it in time. Each new delay ads another nail to AMD's coffin, and while the situation is not that worse, they should be very careful, because now is the worst time for any new delays or bugs discovered after releasing processors to the public.
Finally, the sources also noted that Phenom 8700, 9700 and 9900 will be released as the Phenom 8750, 9750 and 9950, so the triple-core processors available in the first quarter will be labeled 8450, 8650 and 8750. For the others, we will have to wait until the second quarter, if everything works fine.
According to latest statements from various sources at motherboard makers, the triple-core Phenoms, 8400 and 8600, together with the low-power quad-core 9100e, should be presented at CeBIT 2008. No matter how interesting sounds a low power quad-core (maybe I can get one for my "ancient" 3 months old motherboard...), the high-end Phenom 9700 and 9900 processors are not going to arrive as previously scheduled, due to the TLB bug.
This bug delayed AMD in raising the frequencies of the cores, and I hope they make it in time. Each new delay ads another nail to AMD's coffin, and while the situation is not that worse, they should be very careful, because now is the worst time for any new delays or bugs discovered after releasing processors to the public.
Finally, the sources also noted that Phenom 8700, 9700 and 9900 will be released as the Phenom 8750, 9750 and 9950, so the triple-core processors available in the first quarter will be labeled 8450, 8650 and 8750. For the others, we will have to wait until the second quarter, if everything works fine.
DDR3 Goes Beyond The 2GHz Barrier
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 3rd, 2008, in the categories: RAM
Currently, memory speeds are going higher and higher with each day, and while it isn't such a big thing to see DDR2 memory rated somewhere around 1000MHz, most DDR3 modules produced so far were rated as "DDR3-1333", and sometimes "DDR3-1625" or "DDR3-1800"(of course, nothing stopped various producers coming up with their own speed ratings, less common). I said "so far" because, one of these days, Team Group released a new product that broke the 2GHz barrier!
Team Group's memory modules rated DDR3-2133 are a part of their older Team Xtreem series, and they are currently providing the highest bandwidth available in memory modules that can be found on the market. Apart from the 2133-rated ones, Team Group also offers DDR3-1700 and DDR3-1600 modules.
All these DDR3 memories available under the Team Xtreem flag use custom heat spreaders to keep them cooler, increase reliability, and overclocking possibilities, as well as to make them more attractive to our eyes. For now, probably not many of us would consider buying 2GHz DDR3 memory, because the performance of this kind of memory doesn't fully justify its price yet, but it's good to know where we stand and where we're headed...
Team Group's memory modules rated DDR3-2133 are a part of their older Team Xtreem series, and they are currently providing the highest bandwidth available in memory modules that can be found on the market. Apart from the 2133-rated ones, Team Group also offers DDR3-1700 and DDR3-1600 modules.
All these DDR3 memories available under the Team Xtreem flag use custom heat spreaders to keep them cooler, increase reliability, and overclocking possibilities, as well as to make them more attractive to our eyes. For now, probably not many of us would consider buying 2GHz DDR3 memory, because the performance of this kind of memory doesn't fully justify its price yet, but it's good to know where we stand and where we're headed...
Faster Flash Memory From Intel And Micron
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 2nd, 2008, in the categories: News
At this time, flash memory prices are extremely low, and since price is no longer a problem, producers are already moving towards new and faster technologies. The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) group came up with a high speed interface able to provide 5 times the performance of current flash devices, and Intel, together with Micron, are the first ones to announce NAND flash memory chips using it.
Today's NAND flash memory reaches read speeds of up to 40MB/s, and data is written on this medium with up to 20MB/s. According to sources from Micron, the new high speed NAND memory is fully compliant with ONFI's specifications, achieving 200MB/s reads and write speeds of up to 100MB/s. Currently, they are manufacturing SLC 8Gb units, as well as stacked 16Gb and 32Gb versions.
Anyway, we won't get to see devices using this new NAND memory too soon, since USB 3.0 devices should take full advantage of it, but since mass production is scheduled to start in the second half of the year, we won't get old until then either..
Today's NAND flash memory reaches read speeds of up to 40MB/s, and data is written on this medium with up to 20MB/s. According to sources from Micron, the new high speed NAND memory is fully compliant with ONFI's specifications, achieving 200MB/s reads and write speeds of up to 100MB/s. Currently, they are manufacturing SLC 8Gb units, as well as stacked 16Gb and 32Gb versions.
Anyway, we won't get to see devices using this new NAND memory too soon, since USB 3.0 devices should take full advantage of it, but since mass production is scheduled to start in the second half of the year, we won't get old until then either..
Hot Video Cards From MSI
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 1st, 2008, in the categories: Video Cards
MSI has just announced the release of not one, not two, but three video cards based on the Radeon HD 3000 series graphics chips from AMD/ATI, and I thought it would be a good idea to give you an all-in-one news package too. Anyway, you won't probably buy all of them at once, but if your family is large enough, I am sure you can find a good card for every computer in the house... These being said, let's move on and face these three new beauties from MSI, all of them being officially released on the 31st of January, shall we?
I'll start with the cheapest member of the family above, the MSI R3400 series cards, pictured at the bottom of the image... so, we have an entry-level card featuring the new 55nm chip and based on the same architecture as the R3600 series, with less stream processors, texture units and ROPs, but with the same HD capabilities, DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 support. Although it won't blow gamers out of their seats, its low power requirement and passive cooling solution recommend this card as the perfect choice for your family's media center PC.
Next on the list, we have the mid-range R3600 series, featuring a 256 bit ring-bus, 512MB of GDDR3 memory and 120 stream processors, and a decent active cooling system, as you can see in the right corner of the image. With a gaming performance about the same as previous generation 2600XT cards and superior multimedia capabilities, a R3600 card would fit perfectly in your office/Internet/casual gaming computer, but when we're talking about kids...
...kids should take care about school, first of all, but how can they give their best at school, if their gaming PC doesn't live up to their expectations? If you don't want your kids to think about why a certain game doesn't run as smooth as possible on their computer, then you should grab the R3870X2 for them, without any doubt! In the end, you may be about $450-$500 lighter, but those money would buy your kids a high-end card featuring two 55nm graphics chips, 1GB of GDDR3 memory, no less than 640 stream processors, 32 texture units and 32 ROPs, with simply outrageous processing capabilities (over 1 teraFLOPS of GPU data processing power). Oh, and this card will also bring you a bit of rest & relaxation, because you won't see the kids complaining about their sluggish gaming computer for quite a while!
At this time, the MSI official website doesn't show the products from these series yet, but they'll appear for sure in the coming days, so keep your eyes on it!
I'll start with the cheapest member of the family above, the MSI R3400 series cards, pictured at the bottom of the image... so, we have an entry-level card featuring the new 55nm chip and based on the same architecture as the R3600 series, with less stream processors, texture units and ROPs, but with the same HD capabilities, DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 support. Although it won't blow gamers out of their seats, its low power requirement and passive cooling solution recommend this card as the perfect choice for your family's media center PC.
Next on the list, we have the mid-range R3600 series, featuring a 256 bit ring-bus, 512MB of GDDR3 memory and 120 stream processors, and a decent active cooling system, as you can see in the right corner of the image. With a gaming performance about the same as previous generation 2600XT cards and superior multimedia capabilities, a R3600 card would fit perfectly in your office/Internet/casual gaming computer, but when we're talking about kids...
...kids should take care about school, first of all, but how can they give their best at school, if their gaming PC doesn't live up to their expectations? If you don't want your kids to think about why a certain game doesn't run as smooth as possible on their computer, then you should grab the R3870X2 for them, without any doubt! In the end, you may be about $450-$500 lighter, but those money would buy your kids a high-end card featuring two 55nm graphics chips, 1GB of GDDR3 memory, no less than 640 stream processors, 32 texture units and 32 ROPs, with simply outrageous processing capabilities (over 1 teraFLOPS of GPU data processing power). Oh, and this card will also bring you a bit of rest & relaxation, because you won't see the kids complaining about their sluggish gaming computer for quite a while!
At this time, the MSI official website doesn't show the products from these series yet, but they'll appear for sure in the coming days, so keep your eyes on it!
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