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Radeon HD 3850 X2 might come in Q2
2008-03-30 10:13:00
Fudzilla - Radeon HD 3850 X2 might come in Q2: "According to HKEPC, AMD is considering letting its partners decide upon the fate of the Radeon HD 3850 X2 cards, and as we've already seen Asus experiment with a HD 3850 X3 card, it's not hard to see that there's an interest from the partners to make such a product.According to the article, AMD is looking for a card to compete in the US$299-375 market, as this is the current marketplace for the 8800GTS. However, AMD doesn't seem too keen to foot the bill when it comes to R&D of such a card, and this is why the company is hoping that its partners will come up with their own products.With companies such as Sapphire, PowerColor and GeCube having made their own efforts in the past with dual X1600, X1950 and HD 2600 parts, it's not hard to see where this is heading. It looks like dual-GPU cards are indeed here to stay; it's just a question of whether the market will accept them for being as good as a single GPU high-end card.HKEPC...

XP SP3 due next month
2008-03-30 10:02:00
XP SP3 due next month - The INQUIRER: "RECALCITRANT users refusing to get with the programme and move to the brave new world of Vista will be heartened to learn that Service Pack Three for the wizened and wrinkly Windows XP hits the newsstands in April.TechARP reports that SP3 will appear in two waves, with the Simplified Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish versions appearing in the last two weeks of April and all other variants following three weeks later.There won't be an integrated SP3 release for Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows XP Tablet Edition, meaning users will have to buy an old version and apply the service pack later.SP3 is almost certainly the proverbial it for XP - the OS drops off the reseller and retail list at the end of June and boards the train for the gulag on January 31st next year when system builders will no longer be able to get hold of it."
More About: Month

9800GTX in e-tail to cost $299
2008-03-30 10:01:00
Fudzilla - 9800GTX in e-tail to cost $299: "Nvidia plans to launch its 9800GTX on the first day of April. The new old card will replace the 8800GTS and it will launch with a higher clock speed, a bit better performance and 3-Way SLI support.The suggested e-tail price in America will be $299, which is about 50 bucks more than the current price of a Geforce 8800GTS.We believe that the Geforce 9800GTX has a great chance of being a successful card, as it will score well and it doesn’t cost a fortune, but it won’t be a viable upgrade option for those that already own a Geforce 8800GT or 8800GTS card."
More About: Cost , Tail

Geforce 9500 and 9400 are delayed
2008-03-30 10:01:00
Fudzilla - Geforce 9500 and 9400 are delayed: "Nvidia has its entry-level Geforce 9 parts ready, but it has decided to postpone them. It simply has too many 8400 and 8500 cards out on the market.Nvidia off loaded a lot of 8400GS and 8500GT cards to its partners and now cannot launch the Geforce 9500 and 9400, as the launch of the cheap Geforce 9 would instantly kill the sales of cheap Geforce 8 parts.Some companies sell quite a few 8500GT cards with 1024MB of memory, but the majority have a problem getting rid of the cheap 8400 and 8500GT parts.The original plan was to launch the Geforce 9500 and 9400 in Q1, but this obviously won’t happen as theis coming Friday is the last working day in Q1 2008 and it becomes clear that Geforce 9500 and 9400 are Q2 products."

Intel P45 chipset delayed
2008-03-30 09:59:00
Fudzilla - Intel P45 chipset delayed: "From what we've heard, Intel's P45 chipset plans have been somewhat delayed, although the official launch at Computex in June is still on. We're not sure about the reason of the delay, it might just be as simple as Intel wanting to get rid of some current stock of P35 chipsets.What we do know is that the first media previews of the new chipset will happen sometime next month and boards should hit retail sometime in May, as Intel will let its board partners sell products based on the chipset early, just as they did with the P35 chipset.We'd expect boards from all of the usual suspects some time in May, but if you can't wait that long, you might want to consider the X48 chipset, which is finally available in retail."
More About: Chipset

Nvidia Preparing G96 (D9M) Card For Launch
2008-03-30 09:17:00
Nvidia Preparing G96 (D9M) Card For Launch : "Nvidia plans to add another member to the GeForce 9 series soon with their G96 (D9M) card for the mainstream market. This G96 card is meant to replace the current GeForce 8500 GT card so most likely the official marketing name will be GeForce 9500 GT. Final specs are 550MHz core clock, 512MB (32MX16) GDDR2 memories clocked at 1GHz on 128-bit memory interface. It is using P729 PCB that has DVI-I, VGA and HDTV functions."

Palit 9600GT Non Sonic Edition Mini-Review
2008-03-24 17:26:00
I recently got myself one of the best midrange cards in the market, a Palit 9600GT Non-Sonic Edition . The card is clocked at 650 Mhz core/ 1800 Mhz Memory/ 1625 Mhz Shader. Specifications: Bus interface: PCI Express 2.0 SupportMemory: 512MBMemory Interface: 256 bitNVIDIA® unified architecture with GigaThread™ technologyFull Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 support16x full-screen anti-aliasingTrue 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lightingNVIDIA® Quantum Effects™ physics processing technologyDual Dual-link DVI outputs support 2560x1600 resolution displayNVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technologyOpenGL® 2.1 supportNVIDIA ForceWare® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)Certified for Microsoft® Windows Vista™NVIDIA® Lumenex™ EngineDual 400MHz RAMDACsDiscrete, Programmable Video ProcessorHardware Decode AccelerationHigh-Quality ScalingInverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)Bad Edit Correcti...
More About: Review , Mini

AMD works with Intel on switchable graphics
2008-03-24 14:48:00
Fudzilla: "ATI is working hard with Intel to offer what we call switchable graphics for notebook users. It wouldn’t be so surprising if it weren't for the fact that AMD works hard with Intel to offer its mobile GPUs for Intel notebooks.Intel will enable switchable graphics, where ATI’s GPU will work when the machine is plugged in to the power socket; while the Intel IGP will kick in when you are on battery power.Naturally AMD will have this for its own CPUs in the Puma platform, but it will be offered and accepted for Centrino, as there is a need for better graphics performance.It is still unclear if Intel will offer a Centrino-like platform with switchable Nvidia graphics, but it is highly likely to happen, as well."
More About: Graphics , Works

Noctua NH-U12P beats the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme
2008-03-24 14:34:00
Noctua NH-U12P: Top Performance AND Silence: "Conclusion: Past test results with Noctua coolers taught us to respect Noctua's claims. Like Thermalright, Noctua has a track record of delivering what they promise. However, the two companies really come to cooling with different areas of expertise. Thermalright has a long history of top-performing coolers. Thermalright doesn't ship coolers with fans, so Thermalrights require top-performing fans to end up as top performers. You can also control noise by selecting a fan that exhibits ultra low noise. Fans than can provide good performance with low noise tend to shine on Thermalright heatsinks.Noctua on the other hand has a sterling reputation for developing the lowest noise coolers around. Their fans are masters of low noise, with respectable performance that is always near the top but rarely challenging for first place performance. For this reason, we were a bit skeptical when Noctua claimed top performance with incredibly low publish...
More About: Extreme , Ultra , Beats , Noctua

New Vista patches speed up SLI
2008-03-24 14:23:00
New Vista patches speed up SLI: "Nvidia has a cool link for five hotfixes that can make a big performance difference in your game setups. These patches are mainly going to improve gaming performance under SLI.Alternatively, all 5 hotfixes are implemented in Service Pack 1 and at least Nvidia will urge anyone who tests to upgrade to Service Pack 1.You can get these hotfixes here or simply go and download Service Pack 1 at Microsoft’s Website."
More About: Patches , Speed , Speed up

AMD preps mainstream Radeon HD 3830 - The Tech Report
2008-03-22 15:29:00
AMD preps mainstream Radeon HD 3830 - The Tech Report : "As the rumor mill talks of price cuts AMD may apply to its Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 graphics cards soon, Hong Kong-based site HKEPC has posted a report that says the red team is also cooking up a mainstream Radeon HD 3830 for mid-April. This new card will be priced at $119-129, HKEPC says, which would place it well under rumored post-cut prices of $145 or less for the Radeon HD 3850 and $159 or less for the 3870.Hardware-wise, HKEPC says the Radeon HD 3830 will be based on the same RV670 graphics processor as the 3850 and 3870, and that it will have the same number of stream processors, texture units, and render back-ends. The site doesn't mention any clock speeds, but it does say the width of the 3830's memory interface will be reduced from 256 bits to 128 bits. That reduction should cut memory bandwidth by half, or possibly more if AMD pairs the 3830 with slower memory than the 3850 or 3870.At $119-129, this purported Radeon...

Nvidia plans 9800 GT
2008-03-22 15:27:00
Fudzilla: "We learned that Nvidia plans a new card that will be branded as Geforce 9800 GT. For all we know this could simply be a renamed 8800 GT. We strongly believe that Nvidia will quickly phase out all the 8800 GT cards and simply rename it with a new old card.The new thing that comes with Geforce 9 series is the ability to shut down under hybrid power marchitecture, and this might be the biggest difference between 8800 GT and the upcoming 9800 GT.We would suspect a bit higher clock, over 600MHz, but we are quite sure that as soon as partners sell them out Nvidia will quietly replace 8800 GTS with 9800 GTX, and 8800 GT with 9800 GT. The only other thing that comes to our minds is that a new 9800 GT might support Three-way SLI."
More About: Plans

After Nehalem in 2010 comes Sandy Bridge
2008-03-22 15:25:00
Fudzilla - After Nehalem in 2010 comes Sandy Bridge : "Intel still tries to follow its tick tock launch logic. Tick is a minor shrink and change of the existing core while Tock is the real deal.Nehalem is the tock planned to start in late 2008 and at some point in 2010, probably very late, Intel will replace the Nehalem marchitecture with something it today calls Sandy Bridge.Intel has a CPU planned for 2009 codenamed Westmere, but we suspect that is a Nehalem at 32nm that will make for reasonable thermals on eight-core CPUs. If we had to bet, the 32nm Nehalem derived and renamed to Westmere will launch in late 2009 as a server and high-end desktop part."

Dunnington 6-core part has 16MB L3 cache
2008-03-22 15:24:00
Fudzilla - Dunnington 6-core part has 16MB L3 cache: "Intel's new six-core processor has 1.9 billion transistors and it is made using the 45nm Hi-K process. It is made up of three dual-core Penryns stitched together and it's powered by 16MB of L3 cache.Intel wants to make this part as a server/workstation only product and it is socket compatible with the current generation of Xeon 7300 processors. It should fit in Socket 701.This CPU won't make it to the desktop market as there aren't any consumer applications that can benefit from so many cores, except rendering. Who knows, maybe Intel will be crazy enough to put two Dunningtons together and make a Skultraill 2 with a total of 12 cores. It is possible, though."
More About: Core , Part , Cache

Nvidia To Launch GeForce 9800 GTX On April Fool Day
2008-03-22 15:18:00
Nvidia To Launch GeForce 9800 GTX On April Fool Day: "Nvidia has informed their partners that the GeForce 9800 GTX launch has been pushed one week from March 25th to April 1st. No reason was provided for the delay but it is funny that Nvidia chose to launch a flagship product on April Fool day. GeForce 9800 GTX will be priced at US$349. On a side note, the industry is speculating that Nvidia might be forced to lower the price of the newly launched GeForce 9800 GX2 soon to better compete against Radeon HD 3870 X2 card which has a better price/performance ratio. Currently, 9800 GX2 is priced at ~US$599 while 3870 X2 is priced at ~US$410, nearly $200 difference. With that amount, you can get another HD 3870 card, set up a Hybrid Crossfire (3870X2+3870) and has a potential to achieve better performance than the GX2."
More About: Geforce

ATI cuts prices on the 3850 and 3870 - The INQUIRER
2008-03-22 15:17:00
ATI cuts prices on the 3850 and 3870 - The INQUIRER: "ATI IS GOING TO drop prices on the 3850 and 3870 in the next day or two. This is not a short term thing, it is a permanent cut.The price on the 3850/512 is going to sink to $145 or below, and the 3870/512 should hit $159 or less. At that money, many may ask, why bother with the 3850?In any case, these are screamingly good deals. You can buy three 3870s for the price of a 3870X2, or three and a mobo for less than a GX2. Not bad."
More About: Cuts , Prices , Inquirer

NV 790i pricing leaves plenty of margin - The INQUIRER
2008-03-22 15:16:00
NV 790i pricing leaves plenty of margin - The INQUIRER: "ONE OF THE things that does not get out all that often is OEM pricing. With the recent launch of the NV 790i board, the high-end of the market went from $250 to $350. Where did that money go?Well, OEMs tell us that the money basically went into NV's bottom line. The cost to the OEMs on the 790i chipset is $110, a huge premium over the older chipsets. For comparison Intel, a company that never prices low, charges $70 for its X48.A good rule of thumb is that supplier cost ends up translating into about double the price they pay by the time you hand over your credit card. If mobo maker X adds a $5 heatsink to board Y, the price you pay for Y ends up being $10 more.Given this, the $40+ price gouge for the 790i will end up ramping board prices by $80, or most of the $100 increase. If you look at the functional differences between the X48 and 790i, there is precious little to justify the more than 50 per cent price increase, especi...
More About: Margin , Plenty , Leaves , Inquirer

Windows Vista SP1 Now Available to the Public
2008-03-22 15:13:00
DailyTech - Windows Vista SP1 Now Available to the Public : "As reported by DailyTech yesterday, Windows Vista SP1 is now available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. The long-awaited service pack for Microsoft's latest consumer operating system is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The 32-bit download weighs in at 434.5 MB while the 64-bit download is a bit larger at 726.5 MB -- both versions include English (US), French, German, Japanese, and Spanish (Traditional) languages. SP1 ushers in a number of updates for the Windows Vista operating system including the following: Adds support for new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) industry standard PC firmware for 64-bit systems with functional parity with legacy BIOS firmware, which allows Windows Vista SP1 to install to GPT format disks, boot and resume from hibernate using UEFI firmware. Adds support for Direct3D® 10.1, an update to Direct3D 10 that extends the API to suppo...

Nehalem is based on the Core 2 architecture
2008-03-22 14:52:00
Fudzilla - Nehalem is based on the Core 2 architecture: "We will tell you a bit more about Nehalem as Intel has confirmed that Nehalem can come as 2 to 8-core designs, and that each core supports multi-threading, which can cope with two software threads simultaneously.It is the most scalable and dynamic design made by Intel and you can make a variety of products based on it, so you can expect dual-core, quad-core and eventually eight-core, but you shouldn’t exclude the six-core version, either. The first Nehalem to launch in Q4 2008 has four cores with eight threads and Intel said that the cores inside are derived from an advanced version of the Core 2 Penryn 45nm generation.Therefore, Nehalem is derived from the Core 2 marchitecture, but the new Nehelam core has 128 instructions, compared to 96 instructions for the original Core 2 Duo.Intel has increased the parallelism by some 33 percent, enhanced the algorithms that will enable faster access to cache and has implemented some ...
More About: Architecture

Nehalem looks like an advanced K10 / Barcelona
2008-03-22 14:47:00
Fudzilla - Nehalem looks like an advanced K10 / Barcelona : "Nehalem is a scary word that promises a huge step forward in the CPU business, but in reality it is something that we've already seen, years ago.The four cores inside are modified Core 2 45nm Penryn cores, the integrated memory controller is something that we saw with the K10 / Barcelona and Agena CPUs a while ago, and the shared L3 cache for all four cores is definitely something that we’ve seen from the Barcelona / K10.Yesterday's conference call with Intel reminded us of a conversation that we had with some Intel engineers in the Summer of 2007 when they said that the K10 is a great concept, but it is tough (impossible) to make at 65nm. They used these words: we (Intel) cannot make the K10 in 65nm and Intel is known to have the best transistors in the word.This now makes perfect sense, as Nehalem at its 45nm really looks like an advanced version of the K10 with integrated memory controller and L3 cache, but to be fai...

Nehalem supports only DDR3
2008-03-22 14:47:00
Fudzilla: "Intel has revealed to the world that the upcoming Nehalem generation of processors will only support DDR3 memory. As the memory controller is now in the CPU and the Northbridge as we knew it from Intel’s past and present will cease to exist, it won't be that easy to change the memory controller in order to support DDR2.At this point, it looks like Nehalem will only support DDR3, but we wouldn't be surprised if Intel makes a version of Nehalem to support registered DDR3 or FBDIMMs as this is what the server market needs. As Nehalem launches as a high-performance desktop part and a workstation/server part in Q4 2008, the DDR3 prices are likely to come down to more acceptable rates.Currently, DDR3 just can't compete with the ultra cheap DDR2 memory and motherboard manufacturers are still making high-end X48 motherboards with DDR2 support."

Intel confirms Larrabee samples in Q4 2008
2008-03-18 18:37:00
Fudzilla: "Intel ’s Vice President has said that the Larrabee should sample in Q4 2008 and that the actual products should follow soon. This confirms the current schedule that we’ve reported before where our sources have said that they expect to see Larrabee in Q4 and that the real parts are due in Q1 or later in 2009.Intel also said that Larrabee is a platform that can do all sorts of calculations very well. Intel sees a Larrabee as graphics, visualization products but at the same time it sees it as a highly computational platform that will help the massive calculation tasks.This also includes the computational modeling market where oil companies compile data and render terrain to make the drilling simulations possible."
More About: Samples

Larrabee is multi-capable computational device
2008-03-18 18:37:00
Fudzilla: "Intel said a few more words about Larrabee's Visual computing Architecture. We guess that we went from VGA (Video Graphic Adaptor) to GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) all the way to VCA or Visual Computing Architecture.Intel has revealed today that it believes that Larrabee is the best solution for graphics computation and other workloads. This makes Larrabee not only a GPU but also a nice computational platform for some things other than graphics. Nvidia calls this Cuda, while ATI calls this GPGPU, but no matter what you call it, it is the same concept. Larrabee is made of many smaller I/A cores, based on the X86 extending instruction set + vector operation, has more cache that is coherent across the Larrabee die. The vector instruction set is powered by vector memory operations, conditionals and integer and floating point arithmetic.Let’s not forget about the new Vector processing unit and wider SIMD support."
More About: Multi , Device

Six-core server part is confirmed
2008-03-18 18:36:00
Fudzilla: "Intel has just confirmed the existence of a six-core server part. It is basically a part with three dual-core Penryns stitched together.It has 1.9 billion transistors and it is developed in 45nm Hi-K technology. The biggest surprise is the 16MB L3 cache memory, which definitely confirms that Intel follows some of AMD’s original ideas.It is socket compatible with Caneland platform and the existing 45nm Xeons (we believe its 771 socket) and it should be available in 2H 2008. That is all Intel wanted to tell us today about it."
More About: Core , Server , Part

9800GX2 Review at AnandTech
2008-03-18 18:32:00
AnandTech: More Single Card Dual GPU Madness: NVIDIA's Flagship 9800 GX2: "And once again NVIDIA sets its self on top of the graphics card performance pile.AMD is able to keep up with 3x (or more) 3870 cards in Oblivion, but everywhere else it's the 9800 GX2 on top. As far as single card solutions, the 9800 GX2 is currently the alpha dog.Like the 3870 X2, we didn't have any trouble installing the driver and getting things rolling. The experience was smooth and clean as far as that was concerned. We did run into some problems that seem like they might be Skulltrail specific at this point. The latest BIOS and 174.53 driver from NVIDIA solve a graphics driver failure when playing Crysis, and we saw some strange scaling at lower resolutions, but we don't expect most users to run into those problems.Despite the fact that this card does lead the rest of the field counts for something, but its price tag will be a limiting factor. There are advantages to having the fastest card around o...
More About: Review

Vista SP1 tips up - The INQUIRER
2008-03-18 18:30:00
Vista SP1 tips up - The INQUIRER: "ALTHOUGH SPINVOLES refuse to confirm or deny the imminent arrival of Vista Service Pack One, those helpful folk at Amazon have spilled the beans by revealing that new orders for the OS will ship with SP1 included this week.This ties in with Microsoft's earlier promise that SP1 would ship in mid March and suggests the patch will appear on Windows Update tomorrow (18th) as well."
More About: Tips , Vista , Inquirer

Nvidia's 55nm parts to launch in June
2008-03-18 18:21:00
Fudzilla: "Nvidia should have its 55nm chips ready in Q2, and this time we got an even more precise date than just a quarter. When a company says it launches something in Q2, we always hope for early Q2; but in reality it always comes at the end of the quarter.Nvidia won't make an exception, as its 55nm parts should launch around June time, which is the last month of the quarter. As of today, Nvidia's 55nm chip looks like an advanced and die shrunk version of its well-known G92 chip, but we are still missing many details about it.At least Nvidia can show the world that it can do it, but we won’t miss the chance to remind you that this will occur more than six months after ATI managed to launch its first 55nm chip. In the meantime, all ATI chips are 55nm, while Nvidia is still at 65nm."
More About: Launch , Parts

AMD quad-core B3 Phenoms due - The INQUIRER
2008-03-18 18:19:00
AMD quad-core B3 Phenoms due - The INQUIRER: "TAIWANESE WIRE Digitimes reckons AMD will launch B3 stepping quad-core Phenom 9050 within a week or two.Numbers in the series include 9850, 9750, 9650, 9550 and 9150Loose-lipped motherboard makers say the 9850 will be clocked at a core frequency of 2.5GHz. Later launches will crank up the megahurtz they whisper.With triple-core Phenom 8750, 8650 and 8450 CPUs coming in April and Black Edition dual-core offerings simmering, AMD is once again banking on product to pull itself back in the running."
More About: Core , Quad-core , Quad , Inquirer

AMD thinks that L3 doesn’t boost performance
2008-03-18 18:14:00
Fudzilla: "A big chunk of AMD's K10 is the L3 cache memory, and from what AMD told us some time ago, the L3 cache doesn’t actually boosts the performance all that much.AMD's K10 CPU has 2x64KB L1 cache for data + instructions, each core has 512KB of L2 cache and 2MB of shared L3 cache.When you take out the L3 cache, on average you will lose 5 to 10 percent performance. The most affected applications will be some synthetic benchmarks such as Sysmark. In real life you will barely notice the difference.That is how the Propus K10.5 45nm quad-core without L3 cache was born and this chip is significantly smaller than the Deneb K10.5, 45nm quad-core with 6MB of L3 cache. In the semiconductor industry smaller usually means cheaper and more chips per wafer, which brings us to the fact that it makes more financial sense."
More About: Performance , Boost

9800GX2 owned by 8800GT in SLI
2008-03-15 17:10:00
Fudzilla: "It turns out that the numbers are either from a pair of manually clocked 8800GTS cards, or they might possibly have been found somewhere online. Thanks to the readers that pointed this out.ComputerBase.de has some benchmark numbers on what is meant to be the not-so-mighty 9800GX2. From the numbers they've compiled, it looks like the 9800GX2 will be the worst value card from Nvidia in the history of the company.It's getting its backside handed to itself by a pair of 8800GT cards in SLI in every test apart from Crysis and it never beats the pair of 8800GTS cards. Even a single 8800 Ultra beats it in World in Conflict. It looks like Nvidia has a lot of driver tuning to do before this mighty, overpriced, door stop of a card will perform anywhere near to the expectations people have for it.Nvidia seems to have something of a PR nightmare on its hands here, and we wonder how they'll manage to turn this one around. Some new drivers might convince people otherwise, but this t...
More About: Owned