Heineken, AMD, And Dell
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 18th, 2008, in the categories: News
If you didn't have the chance to find out yet, let me tell you that Heineken is a pretty good beer, but it shouldn't have any link to AMD or Dell, in normal circumstances. Anyway, when it's about codenames, we shouldn't be surprised to see that Dell's soon-to-be-released Optiplex systems are currently known as "Heineken". The surprizing part comes when we check the technical specifications of these systems and see what did they put inside the box and how they got here...
Some older-but-not-so-old rumors were that Dell is dropping AMD, but those were nothing more than rumors, because Dell dropped AMD from its online desktop offer, just to get back with it now, a few weeks later. Global release of the "Heineken" is scheduled for February, 19th, so let's finally see what do we have here, shall we?
The new computers to arrive are going to carry the OptiPlex banner, and despite the fact that these new computers look about the same as the old Dimensions C/E series, the OptiPlex 740 and OptiPlex 740 Enhanced are going to open the Phenom era for Dell...
First, we have the OptiPlex 740, powered by a single or dual-core AMD Athlon 64, with onboard GeForce 6150LE graphics, and second, there's the 740 Enhanced, with triple- and quad-core Phenom processors, installed on GeForce 6150LE/nForce 430 motherboards. Obviously, this is only the beginning... but be sure we'll keep you in touch with this whole deal!
Some older-but-not-so-old rumors were that Dell is dropping AMD, but those were nothing more than rumors, because Dell dropped AMD from its online desktop offer, just to get back with it now, a few weeks later. Global release of the "Heineken" is scheduled for February, 19th, so let's finally see what do we have here, shall we?
The new computers to arrive are going to carry the OptiPlex banner, and despite the fact that these new computers look about the same as the old Dimensions C/E series, the OptiPlex 740 and OptiPlex 740 Enhanced are going to open the Phenom era for Dell...
First, we have the OptiPlex 740, powered by a single or dual-core AMD Athlon 64, with onboard GeForce 6150LE graphics, and second, there's the 740 Enhanced, with triple- and quad-core Phenom processors, installed on GeForce 6150LE/nForce 430 motherboards. Obviously, this is only the beginning... but be sure we'll keep you in touch with this whole deal!
Will NVIDIA Acquire AMD?
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 15th, 2008, in the categories: News
As we speak, AMD is pretty low, but not completely beaten up. While ATI has a bunch of good cards for the money on the market, including a very competitively priced dual GPU card, the 3870 X2, AMD processors are getting beaten up by Intel's Core 2 Duos on all fronts. If everything works as it should in 2008, AMD has serious chances of getting back the market share lost, and I am not talking about the processors market. With a lot of interesting things planned for the near future, they may recover on other areas what has been lost so far, but more and more rumors about them being acquired by a "bigger fish" can be heard...
...and today, the time has come to note what Doug Friedman, analyst with American Technology Research, has to say about this matter. "The Intel/AMD roadmap of integration of the CPU/GPU could pose a risk to Nvidia, and buying AMD propels Nvidia into a formidable competitor for Intel with the upside coming from Huang’s ability to re-architect AMD’s design.", he said.
The problem with this, if NVIDIA makes the move and AMD agrees, is that the cross-licensing agreement between AMD and Intel, believed to cover the x86 instruction set, may render any third party buying AMD unable to produce x86 processors or use any other technology from Intel that is covered by the mentioned agreement.
While the above scenario doesn't have many chances to become reality, in my opinion, it is interesting to know about it. Even if you don't like AMD at all, I am sure you must agree the market needs competition, and if the above happens, we'll be left with NVIDIA and Intel, which is not good at all, not even as a rumor!
...and today, the time has come to note what Doug Friedman, analyst with American Technology Research, has to say about this matter. "The Intel/AMD roadmap of integration of the CPU/GPU could pose a risk to Nvidia, and buying AMD propels Nvidia into a formidable competitor for Intel with the upside coming from Huang’s ability to re-architect AMD’s design.", he said.
The problem with this, if NVIDIA makes the move and AMD agrees, is that the cross-licensing agreement between AMD and Intel, believed to cover the x86 instruction set, may render any third party buying AMD unable to produce x86 processors or use any other technology from Intel that is covered by the mentioned agreement.
While the above scenario doesn't have many chances to become reality, in my opinion, it is interesting to know about it. Even if you don't like AMD at all, I am sure you must agree the market needs competition, and if the above happens, we'll be left with NVIDIA and Intel, which is not good at all, not even as a rumor!
NVIDIA Says Multi-GPU Is Not The Right Path To Follow
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 14th, 2008, in the categories: News, Video Cards
ATI's 3870X2 card is the best buy of the moment, despite the fact slightly more powerful NVIDIA-based video cards exist on the market, but if you consider paying over 50 percent more for a performance gain below 20 percent, in most cases, do as you wish. I don't have anything against NVIDIA, in fact I have seen a lot of excellent NVIDIA-based cards at work, from Riva to the GeForce 8800 series, but when they say that "multi GPU is not the way", something's fishy, especially because ATI has the 3870X2 available, and their 9800 GX2 is currently "on hold"...
Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA, said "If you want to put two GPUs on an add-in card and you deliver the absolute highest performance in the world, the enthusiast that uses that particular PC will certainly tolerate the fact that it’s a much larger solution. But if it’s not the highest performance solution in the world, as in the case of the X2, then it’s just really problematic. You know, there’s no market really for a product that’s larger, louder, and not as high performance. So, I think that GeForce 8800 GTX is still absolutely the best DX10 and highest graphics performance GPU in the world".
Well, Mr. Huang, I think you have some problems with ATI's 3870X2, and you may have even more problems in the future. Think about the Catalyst drivers with full CrossfireX support, and users that will use 2 or 3 such cards, with drivers that had enough time to get better, in a head to head competition with one 9800 GX2 card, which I guess will be pretty expensive when first released, and the new NVIDIA drivers won't probably work perfectly in first place. Do you feel a chill down your spine? If you don't now, you may feel it this spring, as soon as you manage to release the 9800 GX2 (or maybe not...).
Anyway, the 8800 GTX and Ultra still hold the performance crown, and this may be one of the reasons making Jen-Hsun Huang to say that "a single GPU is a better approach". After all, if you have a dual GPU card that fails to work properly in more than just "a few" games, where's the big deal?
These being said, I don't have anything else to add, apart from the fact that I hardly wait to see NVIDIA's 9800 GX2 at work. Most chances are to see it outperform the 3870X2 by a significant margin, but is it going to arrive in time and for the right price tag?
Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA, said "If you want to put two GPUs on an add-in card and you deliver the absolute highest performance in the world, the enthusiast that uses that particular PC will certainly tolerate the fact that it’s a much larger solution. But if it’s not the highest performance solution in the world, as in the case of the X2, then it’s just really problematic. You know, there’s no market really for a product that’s larger, louder, and not as high performance. So, I think that GeForce 8800 GTX is still absolutely the best DX10 and highest graphics performance GPU in the world".
Well, Mr. Huang, I think you have some problems with ATI's 3870X2, and you may have even more problems in the future. Think about the Catalyst drivers with full CrossfireX support, and users that will use 2 or 3 such cards, with drivers that had enough time to get better, in a head to head competition with one 9800 GX2 card, which I guess will be pretty expensive when first released, and the new NVIDIA drivers won't probably work perfectly in first place. Do you feel a chill down your spine? If you don't now, you may feel it this spring, as soon as you manage to release the 9800 GX2 (or maybe not...).
Anyway, the 8800 GTX and Ultra still hold the performance crown, and this may be one of the reasons making Jen-Hsun Huang to say that "a single GPU is a better approach". After all, if you have a dual GPU card that fails to work properly in more than just "a few" games, where's the big deal?
These being said, I don't have anything else to add, apart from the fact that I hardly wait to see NVIDIA's 9800 GX2 at work. Most chances are to see it outperform the 3870X2 by a significant margin, but is it going to arrive in time and for the right price tag?
Is AMD Puma All Right, Or Not?
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 14th, 2008, in the categories: News
While AMD has a very tough time on the desktop processors market, things don't look great for them on the mobile market either, but their upcoming Puma platform may be a success... if they manage to make things right, and especially avoid delays and bugs. I don't want to estimate anything based on recent happenings, but it seems some analysts are thinking the wrong way, because there are rumors about potential problems of this future mobile platform from AMD...
Doug Freeman, American Technology Analyst, said that "Our channel checks suggest AMD’s Puma platform for notebooks may have a technical glitch. […] We believe the mere potential for a problem with Puma, even if a fix is in the works and the platform is scheduled for an ‘on-time’ launch, will likely have an impact on initial volumes for the [refresh of the notebook product line for the spring]." Obviously, Freeman didn't say anything specific, so this isn't more than just a hoax to me.
Maybe he didn't found out yet that AMD's Griffin processor, the one included in the Puma platform, is immune to the TLB bug found in Phenoms, but let's leave him with his own issues and see what AMD had to say about this...
According to AMD, everything's just fine. “We remain on track for AMD’s commitments from AMD’s financial analyst day and we are looking forward to a record number of notebook platform offerings from all key OEM customers in Q2.”, said their spokesperson Suzy Pruitt. Well, if not even AMD knows about problems of their Puma platform... let's hope Freeman's crystal globe is wrong and everything will work as planned.
We'll get back to Puma as soon as new information becomes available, because this platform looks like an interesting choice for laptops that are going to be available in the not-so-far future...
Doug Freeman, American Technology Analyst, said that "Our channel checks suggest AMD’s Puma platform for notebooks may have a technical glitch. […] We believe the mere potential for a problem with Puma, even if a fix is in the works and the platform is scheduled for an ‘on-time’ launch, will likely have an impact on initial volumes for the [refresh of the notebook product line for the spring]." Obviously, Freeman didn't say anything specific, so this isn't more than just a hoax to me.
Maybe he didn't found out yet that AMD's Griffin processor, the one included in the Puma platform, is immune to the TLB bug found in Phenoms, but let's leave him with his own issues and see what AMD had to say about this...
According to AMD, everything's just fine. “We remain on track for AMD’s commitments from AMD’s financial analyst day and we are looking forward to a record number of notebook platform offerings from all key OEM customers in Q2.”, said their spokesperson Suzy Pruitt. Well, if not even AMD knows about problems of their Puma platform... let's hope Freeman's crystal globe is wrong and everything will work as planned.
We'll get back to Puma as soon as new information becomes available, because this platform looks like an interesting choice for laptops that are going to be available in the not-so-far future...
New ATI Catalyst Available
Published by Codrut Nistor, on February 13th, 2008, in the categories: News, Video Cards
It seems ATI is moving fast, and the version 8.2 of its Catalyst drivers arrived just as expected. This new version is available for Vista and XP, but no new drivers for Linux are available. Well, hopefully, one day, everyone will release drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux at the same time(disregard that, I was dreaming!)...
According to ATI, the new set of drivers comes with a large performance improvement for Company of Heroes - "DirectX 10 performance improves as much as 20% on the ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series of products.
DirectX 10 performance improves as much as 30% on CrossFire configurations using the ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series or ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series of products". What a pity, no improvement for the "ancient" DirectX 9 X1000 series...
The list of resolved issues includes various video corruption problems noticed in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, World of Warcraft, and even Doom 3. A serious problem with TianXia2 has been solved, so launching the game no longer results in the Windows XP operating system rebooting, while the strange white dot that appeared on the desktop when launching the Control Center doesn't appear anymore, but "this issue may still be experienced under the Windows XP operating system"(???!).
To download your version of the driver, simply go to this page, pick your OS, video card model, and then press the Go button... I am sure you know how to do it, so "Good luck!"...
According to ATI, the new set of drivers comes with a large performance improvement for Company of Heroes - "DirectX 10 performance improves as much as 20% on the ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series of products.
DirectX 10 performance improves as much as 30% on CrossFire configurations using the ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series or ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series of products". What a pity, no improvement for the "ancient" DirectX 9 X1000 series...
The list of resolved issues includes various video corruption problems noticed in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, World of Warcraft, and even Doom 3. A serious problem with TianXia2 has been solved, so launching the game no longer results in the Windows XP operating system rebooting, while the strange white dot that appeared on the desktop when launching the Control Center doesn't appear anymore, but "this issue may still be experienced under the Windows XP operating system"(???!).
To download your version of the driver, simply go to this page, pick your OS, video card model, and then press the Go button... I am sure you know how to do it, so "Good luck!"...
PAGES