If AMD/ATI’s upcoming RV770 will end up costing as much as or a bit more than the current HD 3870, then the mid-high graphic card sector will continue to remain under AMD/ATI’s rule. However, since prices for the R700 series haven’t been disclosed as of yet, we can only hope that AMD/ATI will come up with decent prices, at least for the single GPU models. NVIDIA, on the other hand, is quick enough to announce prices for their GT200 cards, so we can start saving money for them as we speak.

No confirmation for now, but it seems that the GT200 card will end up selling for $499 and it will be the perfect replacement for the current Geforce 9800GTX. I don’t really know why NVIDIA even released the 9800GTX model. Probably they just wanted to give us a sneak peek at what GT200 would be capable of. As for the official name of the GT200-powered cards, the truth is nobody knows for sure how NVIDIA is planning to “baptize” the new wave. It could be named Geforce 9900GTX or GT for the sake of continuity, but nobody can confirm anything about the final names.

According to Fudzilla, NVIDIA was kind enough to announce that they are willing to show the GT200 cards to journalists in the last week of May and it’s highly likely to see the launch in June, with simultaneous retail availability. If the GT200 ends up faster than the GX2, then, again, I don’t see the point of rolling out a couple of overpriced cards and then, after 3 months, launching the real next-gen thing.

Released on the 22th of April, 2003, with the SledgeHammer(K8) core, the Opteron server processor line is Intel Xeon's direct competitor, and was also the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture. A few years later, in September 2007, AMD announced the Opteron line moves up to the AMD K10 architecture, to feature a quad-core configuration, and now, they just revealed the first energy efficient quad-core Opterons.


Unfortunately, AMD won't break any performance barrier this time, and probably the new Opteron processors won't event offer the best performance-per-watt ratio, but they are an interesting upgrade option for those already using them in their servers.

According to Randy Allen, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's server and workstation division, "Our new Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processors were designed to help datacenter managers who see power consumption and virtualization as the keys to solving their overall performance equation."

The new chips for dual processor servers from AMD are the following quad-core Opteron models: 2344 HE (1.70GHz), 2346 HE (1.80GHz) and 2347 HE (1.90GHz), while those having multi-processor machines can get the quad-core 2346 HE (1.80GHz) or the 2347 HE (1.90GHz) chips. All these processors feature so-called ACP of 55W, a considerably lower value when compared to existing quad-core AMD Opteron processors, but it seems the TDP is not going to be that low. According to AMD's own estimations, microprocessors with 55W ACP may have up to 79W TDP.

"These new processors which feature AMD’s advanced power management and virtualization innovations offer a compelling platform for power-conscious datacenter managers who are changing the way they think about performance,” Mr. Allen concluded.

Don't worry, I didn't forget about pricing, so here you go - for 1000-unit quantities, the AMD Opteron 2347 HE, 2346 HE and 2344 HE cost $377, $255 and $209. If a dual processor computer is not enough, then you may have to spend even more, because the AMD Opteron processors 8347 HE and 8346 HE are priced at $873 and $698, respectively.

PC soundcards haven’t seen much improvement since the release of Creative’s X-Fi technology. That’s because Creative apparently owns this market sector, at least the gamer and multimedia side. Sure, there is M-Audio and Terratec, but those brand names are known for their semi-pro soundcards, rather than consumer products. A couple of days ago, Creative finally announced a new X-Fi model (no new generation?).

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 is considered to be the first USB 2.0 audio solution that provides users with the easiest upgrade from basic, onboard audio (which isn’t that bad, by the way) to the premium Xtreme Fidelity (X-Fi) audio experience for their PCs and notebooks. All you need to do is connect the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1’s to your computer or notebook via the USB port and the sleek black box takes care of your MP3 and iTunes music, enhancing the quality and making you feel like in the middle of your own personal concert.

The sleek black box knows how to handle cinematic sound and game sound fx as well. It allows you to get immersed in full cinematic surround sound while watching the latest HD movies or downloaded videos, while Creative's EAX ADVANCED HD effects provides realistic game play.

The X-Fi Surround 5.1 USB works with all kinds of speaker systems, plus gamers can rest assured that their headphones will sound outstandingly better. It seems that Creative keeps this new product exclusively for Singapore at the moment, retailing for $99.00.

How old is your graphics card? If you have one with GDDR2 memory, than I am sorry to say it, but you already have a vintage piece of hardware inside your computer! Anyway, it is interesting to notice that, while most graphics cards on the market feature GDDR3 memory, the performance war may skip GDDR4 and move right to GDDR5, a faster memory that started being mass produced these days...


Announced back in late 2005 by Samsung, GDDR4 memory was only used for a few video cards, such as Radeon X1950 XTX, as well as some of the Radeon HD 2900 XT and 2600 XT cards from ATI, and while there were rumors about NVIDIA using this memory for its GeForce 8-series GPUs, this didn't happen.

Now, Qimonda, formerly a division of Infineon Memory Products, decided to skip developing GDDR4 memory, and announced volume production of 512 MB GDDR5 modules at the impressive 3.6 GHz, 4.0 GHz, and 4.5 GHz clock speeds.

Here's what they have to say about it: "Qimonda was the first to announce samples of GDDR5 back in November 2007. We have proven the technology and we can deliver in volume production to the market today. If you look at the best performing GDDR3 parts today, they are running at about 2Gbit/s. With our GDDR5 we are able to at least double this data rate. We believe that Qimonda offers the highest performing graphics memory. There is a price/performance curve, and we are well-positioned to accommodate market demand as adoption increases."

At last, I ask myself when will we get to see video cards really able to use the insane amount of memory bandwidth provided by the GDDR5 memory, considering the fact that fast GDDR5 could surpass the 200GB/s barrier!

While AMD is shedding more light on the upcoming 6-core and 12-core CPUs, Intel silently discloses some more interesting facts regarding their soon-to-be-released Nehalem CPU.

According to Expreview the Nehalem architecture is capable of triple-channel DDR3 which will provide a 32GB/s memory bandwith. Although this sounds quite impressive compared to what AMD has, it really isn’t much of an improvement over Intel’s current X48, capable of 25.6GB/s in dual-channel.

It appears that the Nehalem tests were performed using only DDR3 1,333MHz modules, while the X48 can use DDR3 1,600MHz, so Nehalem could easily improve the bandwidth using 2GHz memory. But that won’t necessarily be the case, as Intel apparently decided to stop at DDR3 1,600MH with Nehalem, as well. I bet Intel will carefully take all these specs into consideration and up the support over 1,6 GHz by launch time.

Nehalem will also require a new chipset, the X58, which should handle up to four graphics cards in CrossFireX mode. Now, don’t expect to see 4 X 16 PCIe lanes and insane improvements, as sources are estimating only 32 lanes. The X58 chipset will feature the ICH10 which will connect to the X58 via Intel's DMI interface.

As an aside, Intel is also considering physics engine scaling, which might have something to do with Intel's purchase of Havok. Chances are that some sort of physics engine could be integrated into the Nehalem processor, and NVIDIA’s integrated PPU would therefore become redundant.