Hardware Geeks !

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT Round-up: PNY, MSI, ASUS

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:58:00 +0000

NVIDIA's GeForce 9 Series was first introduced in February of this year by way of the 9600 GT launch. Admittedly, we thought it was interesting to see a new GeForce series launch, not with the flagship card, but rather with a new midrange offering. It makes perfect sense, though, considering that more people can afford midrange cards than can afford high-end, flagship cards. Since this launch, NVIDIA has added to the GeForce 9 Series by introducing the dual-GPU GeForce 9800 GX2 and the GeForce 9800 GTX. So far, the GeForce 9 Series seems to be another successful line from the NVIDIA camp.

In this article, we are going to expand our coverage of the GeForce 9600 GT by doing another round-up of three retail cards: the PNY Verto 9600 GT, the MSI N9600GT OC, and the ASUS EN9600GT SILENT. As you might expect, all three of these cards sport 512MB of GDDR3 and a 256-bit memory interface. What you may not expect is how different these three cards actually are. Two feature custom coolers, one of which is passive, making it silent. Because of these custom coolers, these two cards are dual-slot solutions while the third uses the single-slot reference cooler. Only one of them ships with a factory overclock while the other two utilize NVIDIA's reference clocks. We are eager to see how these three cards compare when it comes to performance, noise and heat. Let's jump right in and take a look at the specifications of all three side-by-side.

PNY Verto 9600 GT
• more info •

NVIDIA G94 Graphics Processing Unit

650 MHz GPU Clock Speed

64 Stream Processors

1,625 MHz Shader Clock Speed

512 MB GDDR-3 Memory

256-bit Memory Interface

1,800 MHz Memory Clock Speed

57.6 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10) Support

PCI Express 2.0 Interface

6-pin PCI Express Power Connector

Supports 2-Way SLI Configurations

Single-Slot Cooling System (Reference)

HDCP Ready

2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDTV/S-Video Outputs

Warranty: 1 year (plus an additional 2 years upon completion of a registration form on PNY's website)

MSI N9600GT OC
• more info •

NVIDIA G94 Graphics Processing Unit

700 MHz GPU Clock Speed

64 Stream Processors

1,680 MHz Shader Clock Speed

512 MB GDDR-3 Memory

256-bit Memory Interface

1,900 MHz Memory Clock Speed

60.8 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10) Support

PCI Express 2.0 Interface

6-pin PCI Express Power Connector

Supports 2-Way SLI Configurations

Dual-Slot Cooling System (Custom)

HDCP Ready

2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDTV/S-Video Outputs

Warranty: 3 year limited warranty (2 years Parts & Labor, and the third Year Parts ONLY)

ASUS EN9600GT SILENT
• more info •

NVIDIA G94 Graphics Processing Unit

650 MHz GPU Clock Speed

64 Stream Processors

1,625 MHz Shader Clock Speed

512 MB GDDR-3 Memory

256-bit Memory Interface

1,800 MHz Memory Clock Speed

57.6 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10) Support

PCI Express 2.0 Interface

6-pin PCI Express Power Connector

Supports 2-Way SLI Configurations

Dual-Slot Cooling System (Custom, Passive)

HDCP Ready

2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDTV/S-Video Outputs

Warranty: 3 year limited warranty

As you can see, the MSI N9600GT OC sports a slight overclock of 700 MHz for the core clock, 1,900 MHz for the memory clock, and 1,680 MHz for the shader clock, while the PNY Verto 9600 GT and ASUS EN9600GT SILENT ship with no overclock (which puts them at the reference speeds of 650 MHz, 1,800 MHz, and 1,625 MHz, respectively). All three cards support the PCI Express 2.0 interface, 2-way SLI and DirectX 10. Each card sports two dual-link DVI outputs, one HDTV/S-video output, and a 6-pin PCI Express power connector.

Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB SATA HD

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:34:00 +0000

Western Digital's Raptor line of high performance hard drives has been a long-time favorite of PC enthusiasts since its introduction several years ago. When WD's Raptors first hit, their 10K RPM spindle speeds allowed for much lower access times than the more common 7200 RPM desktop drives of the time, and overall relative performance was strong. Many users were put off by the relatively low capacities of the Raptor, which debuted at 36GB and topped out at 150GB, but they were still wildly successful amongst enthusiasts regardless.

As time wore on though, Western Digital's competitors introduced faster and faster, high capacity drives, that began to out-perform the Raptor in a number of key metrics. WD too released some fast, high-capacity drives that out-performed even the fastest Raptor in many scenarios. WD released a number of more eco-friendly drives under their "Green Power" badge as well, which may have led some to believe WD's focus on the enthusiast sector had diminished. However, as you'll see today, that is definitely not the case.

Today, Western Digital is unveiling the brand new Velociraptor WD3000GLFS 300GB hard drive. Like the previous generation Raptors, the new WD Velociraptor sports a 10K RPM spindle speed, but the drives are actually quite different. As you'll see, this new Velociraptor is simply in a league of its own, thanks to some innovative design choices.

Western Digital Velociraptor VR150 300GB Hard Drive

Specifications and Features

*Note: MTBF now estimated at 1.4M hrs.

In a side by side feature comparison, the WD Velociraptor resembles the older Raptors. The drives share the aforementioned 10K RPM spindle speed, they have the same 16MB buffer, the same reliability ratings, and acoustic and environmental characteristics. The WD Velociraptor's new design, however, offers significantly increased performance, both in terms of access times, IOPS, and data transfer rates.

We should also point out, that while the Raptor line and Velociraptor share the same acoustic specifications, the drives definitely do not sound alike. With the new Velociraptor, the high-pitched whine emitted from the previous-gen Raptors has seemingly been eliminated. However, the Velociraptor's heads can easily be heard chunking along within the drive.

AMD Phenom X3 8750 Tri-Core Processor

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:31:00 +0000

When AMD first announced plans to introduce triple-core processors back in September of last year, reaction to the news was mixed. Some felt that AMD was simply planning to pass off partially functional Phenom X4 processors as triple-core products, making lemonade from lemons if you will. Others thought it was a good way for AMD to increase bottom line profits, getting more usable die from a single silicon wafer and mitigating yield loss. We were somewhat perplexed by the first reaction. This is an age-old strategy in the semiconductor space and after all, the graphics guys have been selling GPUs with non-functional units for years. AMD was simply borrowing a play from ATI's playbook.

If you take a step back and think about it though, who really cares outside of the enthusiast niche'? Isn't it the ultimate quality of the end-product what's most important? If tri-core processors end up outperforming competing dual-core chips, and are less expensive than quad-cores, wouldn't salvaging otherwise unusable die from a wafer be a good move on AMD's part?

Without actual product, it's tough to argue either way, of course. But thankfully, AMD has delivered their first batch of triple-core processors and we can finally put the whole debate to rest.

AMD Phenom Retail Box

AMD Phenom X3 Processors

Specifications and Features

Model / Processor Frequency:	AMD Phenom Processor Model X3 8750, 8650, 8450 / 2.4GHz, 2.3GHz, 2.1GHz
L1 Cache Sizes:	64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (384KB total L1 per processor)
L2 Cache Sizes:	512KB of L2 data cache per core (1.5MB total L2 per processor)
L3 Cache Size:	2MB
Memory Controller Type:	Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller, capable of being configured for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes
Memory Controller Frequency:	Up to 1.8GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
Types of Memory:	Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz)
HyperTransport 3.0:	One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 3600MHz full duplex
Total Processor Bandwidth:	Up to 31.5 GB/s bandwidth
Packaging:	Socket AM2+ 940-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA) (backward compatible with Socket AM2)
Fab location:	AMD's Fab 36 wafer fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany
Process Technology:	65nm (.065-micron) Silicon on Insulator (SOI)
Approximate Transistor count:	approx. 450 million (65nm)
Approximate Die Size:	285 mm2 (65nm)
Nominal Voltage:	1.05-1.25 Volts
Max Ambient Case Temp:	70 degrees Celsius
Max TDP:	95 Watts
ACP:	*to be announced after launch
Future Memory Controller Note:	Future 45nm processors versions are planned to include support for DDR3 memory

AMD Phenom X3 8750

As you probaly expect, the new AMD Phenom X3 8750 looks exactly like any other socket AM2+ processor outfitted with AMD's standard heat spreader. The chip also uses the same packaging and socket as current Phenom processors; it is only the silicon underneath that has changed.

The AMD Phenom X3 8750 is a 2.4GHz processor manufactured using AMD's 65nm Silicon on Insulator process technology. The chip has a Max TDP of 95W and has official support for a 1.8GHz memory controller and HT 3.0 frequency with Dual Dynamic Power Management technology. Although some AMD processors have support for a 2GHz memory controller and HT3.0 link frequency, not every CPU is rated for these high-end frequencies. Also note the "50" in the processor's model number. That "50" means the CPU is based on the recently released B3 revision to the Phenom core which does not suffer from the infamous TLB errata.

Samsung SyncMaster 2243BW Wide Screen LCD

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:59:00 +0000

For each type of product and in each market, there is usually a specific price segment that will provide the best value proposition for consumers, often known as the 'sweet spot'. For quite some time, the 19" widescreen was the sweet spot of the consumer LCD monitor market. Hovering between the cheaper but aging 17" screens and the expensive but only slightly larger 20" screens, the 19" widescreen LCD provided the best value for a long time. However, in the last 8-10 months, LCD monitor production has increased and the price of LCD panels has fallen dramatically. The 20" screens which once seemed like such a poor value proposition, costing up to $100 more than 19" screens despite only offering one more inch of screen real-estate were now within $20. However, the biggest shift in LCD monitor value came with the introduction and proliferation of new 22" widescreens.

Perhaps introduced to help mitigate the large market gap between 20" and 24" monitors, or more likely because it is simply more efficient to produce 22" sheets of glass at the current batch of LCD panel factories, 22" LCDs came in just above 20" models in cost but offered two more inches of screen real estate. Over the last half year, the price of 22" inch LCDs has creeped lower and ever closer to 20" LCDs to the point where they can regularly be found for nearly the same price. A quick look at the HotHardware price matching system reveals that 22" monitors currently start at $190, with 20" monitors starting at $180 and 19" monitors occupying the $160 area. At around $8.5-$9 per inch, the 22" screen size is one of the current sweet spots in the LCD market. This makes the 22" screen size very attractive and luckily most LCD monitor manufacturers have at least one 22" to offer, so there are plenty of models to choose from. Today we will be looking at one of the latest additions to the 22" market segment, the Samsung 2243BW.

Samsung is one of the worlds largest LCD panel manufacturers and they offer an extensive line of LCD products including one of, if not the biggest catalog of 22" monitors of any LCD manufacturer. Samsung's website displays 8 different 22" models and that is just on their US website. There are literally dozens of 22" models that Samsung offers outside of the US, although many of these are nothing more than localized versions. Part of the reason why Samsung has so many 22" models is because they offer monitors tailored to just about any setting, from sleek multimedia sets to minimalistic business models. The Samsung 2243BW we are looking at today is one of the newest members of the 22" LCD line-up and it appears to be aimed at the business market.

Samsung 2243BW 22" Widescreen Monitor

Specifications and Features

Display Size	22" (55.9cm) diagonal and viewable image
Display Type	Thin-Film Transistor LCD Active Matrix, TN panel
Display Viewing Angle	170 degrees horizontal, 160 degrees vertical
Scanning Frequency	Horizontal: 30-81 KHz, Vertical: 50-85 Hz
Input Terminal	Analog (15-pin D-sub VGA) and Digital (DVI-D)
Display Brightness	300 cd/m2 (typical)
Native Resolution	1680x1050 @ 60 Hz
Contrast Ratio	DC 8000:1 (1000:1 static contrast ratio)
Display Color	16.7 Million
Response Time	5 ms (GTG)
Pixel Pitch	0.282 mm
Power Source	Input Rating: 100 to 240V~
Power Consumption	45W in operating mode, <1w>
Operating Environment	50-104 degrees F, 10-80% RH (non-condensing)
Storage Environment	-4-113 degrees F, 5-95% RH (non-condensing)
Stand	Height Adjustable, Pivot, Swivel, Tilt
Mounting	Standard VESA 4-hole 100 mm x 100 mm
Dimensions	19.9 x 13.1 x 2.8 in. (505.5 x 331.5 x 67.6 mm)
Dimensions (with stand)	19.9 x 16.4 x 8.6 in. (505.5 x 417.2 x 217.5 mm)
Weight	Monitor with Stand: 14 lbs. (6.35 Kg) Package: 18.07 lbs. (8.20 Kg)
EMI Standard	FCC Class B
EPA Energy Star	This monitor is EPA ENERGY STAR® compliant and ENERGY2000 compliant when used with a computer equipped with VESA DPM functionality.
TCO Certification	TCO'03
Included Accessories	AC Power Cable, D-sub Cable, Cable Management Clip
Special Features	MagicBright3, Off timer, Image Size Colour Effect, Customised key, MagicWizard & MagicTune with AssetManagement, Windows Vista Premium, DVI with HDCP, MagicRotation S/W (Pivot) Safe Mode (DownScaling in UXGA)

While the Samsung 2243BW may be aimed at business use, its specifications suggest that it should be capable of quite a bit more than just spreadsheets and word documents. With good viewing angles, decent 5ms response time, good brightness and excellent 1000:1 static contrast ratio, the 2243BW should be well equipped to handle any multimedia you may throw its way. The 2243BW is actually slightly better specified than the wildly popular Samsung 226BW, one of the most widely and highly recommended 22" monitors.

One sign that gives away the 2243BW's business orientation is the prominently displayed TCO'03 certification badge. TCO is a series of certifications for office equipment that stipulate requirements for products to help improve the working environment. The requirements for each TCO certification focuses on four main areas; ergonomics, emissions, ecology and energy. The certifications are categorized in years, although this does not mean a TCO certification for one year is necessarily better or more up to date than another. Instead each certification is meant for a different class or group of office product. The TCO group of certifications cover a wide variety of products including computers, mobile phones, printers, furniture and of course, monitors. The TCO'03 certification that the Samsung 2243BW bears, for instance, specifically pertains to monitors. TCO'03 certifies that any monitor bearing its mark meets a minimum level of specification concerning display resolution, brightness, contrast, reflections, color reproduction, ergonomics, electromagnetic emissions, electrical safety, energy usage and environmental impact (ecology). All TCO'03 certified displays manufactured after 2006 are also required to meet the RoHS directive. While the TCO'03 isn't a mark of distinction like a THX certification would be for speakers, it does somewhat guarantee that a certified product will be relatively pleasant to use in an office environment.

The Samsung 2243BW is actually a member of a group of monitors that share the 2243 numerical designation. At this time we can only confirm two other members, the BWX and the WM. However, there are reports that a BWP was spotted at CeBIT which uses a different panel with a rather odd native resolution of 2048x1152. According to the official specifications we have seen, the BW, BWX and WM are functionally identical and differ only in peripheral features. The BW seems to be the business oriented model as it is the only one with TCO'03 certification and it sports flat black paint. The BWX offers a 2-port USB hub built into the stand as well as shiny, gloss black paint. Finally, the WM has built-in stereo speakers. All three models may be offered with either a 4-way adjustable stand or a simple stand with only limited tilt adjustment. Which stand you get seems to depend on where the monitor was purchased. For this evaluation, we will be looking at the basic 2243BW with a 4-way adjustable stand.

WD Caviar and RE2 GreenPower 1TB Hard Drives

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:58:00 +0000

We wish the current "green" trend would have happened a long time ago, and we actually hope that it results in a permanent mentality adjustment rather than fading like so many trends do. We are happy to see that companies are now expected to be somewhat environmentally-conscious. We love to see companies compete on metrics like performance per watt and we know we aren't the only ones who have an affinity for new architectures and designs that result in both efficiency improvements and performance gains. It wasn't so long ago that efficiency and performance were almost always inversely related. In the end, we (including the planet itself) all benefit when people and companies try to be more green.

However, we know you didn't come here to read just about recycling, carbon footprints or hugging trees, so we'll move on to the topic of this review. Many PC hardware manufacturers are taking steps to become greener or at least help their customers green up, and Western Digital (WD) is one such company. You might wonder how a storage company like WD can do that. Well, it's quite simple really: they offer a whole line of hard drives that use significantly less power than other drives on the market. WD gives the drives in this line the "GreenPower" label to indicate their reduced environmental impact. The nice thing about going green in this case is that the power reduction could lead to lower electricity bills. According to WD, "WD’s GreenPower platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. GreenPower drives from WD deliver average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over competitors’ drives, ultra-cool, quiet operation and solid performance."

We are fortunate enough to have two of WD's GreenPower drives, the 1TB Caviar GP and the 1TB RE2-GP, on the test bench for this article. With its high MTBF (mean time between failures) rating of 1.2 million hours and RAID-specific optimizations, the WD RE2-GP is aimed at the enterprise market, while the WD Caviar GP is marketed towards the consumer desktop segment. A very interesting feature of the GreenPower drives is IntelliPower, which is a "fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance" according to WD. What this means to potential users is that WD isn't telling us the exact spindle speed of these drives. We know that they are likely spinning at a speed between 5400 and 7200 RPM and that each GreenPower model may use a different, invariable RPM. So, while WD made power the priority with the GreenPower platform, it did so without disregarding solid performance, a wise choice in our opinion.

In addition to IntelliPower, the Caviar GP and the RE2-GP feature perpendicular recording technology and some unique WD features, such as IntelliSeek (which tweaks seek rates to decrease power utilization, noise and vibration) and IntelliPark (which also helps decrease power utilization). Because of its likely home in a large, enterprise-level storage environment, the RE2-GP also sports WD's RAFF (Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward) technology. RAFF's intent is to ensure that RE2-GP drives operate optimally even when installed in rackmounted servers that are prone to high levels of vibration. To many of you, these features don't mean much if performance gets sacrificed along the way, and the enthusiast in us has to agree. On the following pages, we'll see how well both of these GreenPower drives perform in an assortment of benchmarks.

Western Digital GreenPower 1TB SATA HDDs

Specifications & Features

WD Caviar GP 1TB (MODEL: WD10EACS)<>

PHYSICAL SPECS
Capacity: 1 TB (1000 GB)
Interface: SATA 3Gb/s
Spindle Speed: N/A
Cache Buffer: 16 MB
Number Of Platters: 4 (250 GB each)
Bytes Per Sector: 512
Height: 26.1 mm (Max)
Length: 147 mm (Max)
Width: 101.6 mm
Weight: 0.73 kg

PERFORMANCE SPECS
Seek Times
Average Read (msec): 8.9
Average Write (msec): N/A

Latency
Average Latency (msec): 5.6

Transfer Rate
Buffer To Disk (Mb/s): 1156
Sustained to Disk (Mb/s): N/A

Acoustics
Idle Mode (dBA): 25 (average)
Seek Mode (dBA): 25-27 (average)

Power Consumption
Read/Write: 7.50 Watts
Idle: 4.0 Watts
Standby: 0.97 Watts

WARRANTY LENGTH
3 Years

FEATURES

IntelliPower™ — A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each GreenPower™ drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM.
IntelliSeek™ — Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration.
IntelliPark™ — Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag.
StableTrac™ — Secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations (750 GB and 1 TB models only).
Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) — Proactively monitors and prevents magnetic wear during high read/write duty cycle applications.
Large capacity — Up to 1 TB of storage—ideal for graphic design, video editing, gaming, advanced business computing, and other high-end desktop applications.

WD RE2-GP 1TB (MODEL: WD1000FYPS)<>

PHYSICAL SPECS
Capacity: 1 TB (1000 GB)
Interface: SATA 3Gb/s
Spindle Speed: N/A
Cache Buffer: 16 MB
Number Of Platters: 4 (250 GB each)
Bytes Per Sector: 512
Height: 26.1 mm (Max)
Length: 147 mm (Max)
Width: 101.6 mm
Weight: 0.73 kg

PERFORMANCE SPECS
Seek Times
Average Read (msec): 8.9
Average Write (msec): N/A

Latency
Average Latency (msec): N/A

Transfer Rate
Buffer To Disk (Mb/s): N/A
Sustained to Disk (Mb/s): 672

Acoustics
Idle Mode (dBA): 24 (average)
Seek Mode (dBA): 25-29 (average)

Power Consumption
Read/Write: 7.40 Watts
Idle: 4.0 Watts
Standby: 0.97 Watts

WARRANTY LENGTH
5 Years

FEATURES

IntelliPower™ — A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. Additionally, GreenPower drives consume less current during start up allowing more drives to spin up simultaneously resulting in faster system readiness.
IntelliSeek™ — Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower unnecessary power consumption, noise, and vibration.
IntelliPark™ — Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading recording heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag and disengages read/write electronics.
Active Power Management – WD GreenPower drives monitor work load and automatically invoke idle mode whenever possible to further reduce unnecessary power consumption. Drive recovery time from idle mode is less than one second, providing seamless power management between the drive and the host controller.
StableTrac™ — Secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations (750 GB and 1 TB models only).
RAID-specific time-limited error recovery (TLER) — Pioneered by WD, this feature prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.
Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF™) optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone multi-drive systems such as rackmounted servers.
1.2 million hours MTBF — The highest available reliability rating on a high-capacity drive.

The physical appearance of the WD Caviar GP and RE2-GP is 99% identical, as you can see in the three images above. Besides some of text and bar coding, the drives look the same. Both sport a big, green GreenPower label to let you know that these drives will help you reduce power consumption. The two drives also feature the same connectors: one SATA power connector and one SATA data connector.

In addition to the connectors, both drives sport a set of eight pins that can be jumpered to change the drives' configuration. The close-up of the label above shows you the three jumper settings: jumpering pins 1 and 2 enables SSC (Spread Spectrum Clocking), jumpering pins 3 and 4 enables PUIS (Power Up In Standby), and jumpering pins 5 and 6 enables 1.5GB PHY.

Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:42:00 +0000

In late January, ATI unveiled several new entry level GPUs manufactured using the 55nm process that was first employed with the more powerful RV670 GPU. Not only did the new process help ATI deliver more competitive graphics cards at attractive price points, it also improved on such things as power consumption, which is of growing interest to energy conscious users. For these newer entry level cards, the RV635 and RV620 GPUs were crafted with many of the same features as the RV670 , yet condensed into a smaller, more affordable product line.

Today, we're evaluating the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 to assess its qualities and features as an entry level graphics solution. With a RV635 GPU at its core and backed by 512MB of GDDR3, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 aims to win the attention of those looking for an affordable graphics card priced less than $100, that doesn't skimp on features. In the pages ahead, we'll take a closer look and assess the card's performance as well as its position in the current market to see how it stacks up as a current entry level solution.

Sapphire HD 3650 512MB GDDR3

Features & Specifications

378 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
128-bit DDR2/GDDR3/GDDR4 memory interface
Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support
- Shader Model 4.1
- 32-bit floating point texture filtering
- Indexed cube map arrays
- Independent blend modes per render target
- Pixel coverage sample masking
- Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
- Gather4 texture fetching
Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
- 120 stream processing units
  - Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
  - Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shader
  - Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
- 128-bit floating point precision for all operations
- Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
- Shader instruction and constant cache
- Up to 40 texture fetches per clock cycle
- Up to 128 textures per pixel
- Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
- DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
- High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
- Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
- Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
- Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
- Lossless Z & stencil compression
- Lossless color compression
- 8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
- Physics processing support
Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
- Programmable tessellation unit
- Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
- Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance
Anti-aliasing features
- Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4 or 8 samples per pixel)
- Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
- Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
- Temporal anti-aliasing
- Gamma correct
- Super AA (ATI CrossFireX configurations only)
- All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
Texture filtering features
- 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
- 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
- Bicubic filtering
- sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
- Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
- Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
- Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support
OpenGL 2.0 support
ATI Avivo HD Video and Display Platform
Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats

High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats

Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration
Motion compensation and IDCT
ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
- Color space conversion
- Chroma subsampling format conversion
- Horizontal and vertical scaling
- Gamma correction
- Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
- De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
- Detail enhancement
- Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
- Bad edit correction
Two independent display controllers
- Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
- Full 30-bit display processing
- Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
- Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
- High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
- Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
- Fast, glitch-free mode switching
- Hardware cursor
Two integrated DVI display outputs
- Primary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)
- Secondary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI only)
- Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content
Two integrated DisplayPort outputs
Supports 24- and 30-bit displays at all resolutions up to 2560x1600
1, 2, or 4 lanes per output, with data rate up to 2.7 Gbps per lane
Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x153623
HDMI output support
Supports all display resolutions up to 1920x1080
Integrated HD audio controller with up to 2 channel 48 kHz stereo or multi-channel (5.1) AC3 enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution
Integrated AMD Xilleon HDTV encoder
Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite)
Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
Underscan and overscan compensation
MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
VGA mode support on all display outputs
ATI PowerPlay
- Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
- Performance-on-Demand
  - Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
  - Clock and memory speed throttling
  - Voltage switching
  - Dynamic clock gating
- Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required
ATI CrossFireX Multi-GPU Technology
- Scale up rendering performance and image quality with two GPUs
- Integrated compositing engine
- High performance dual channel bridge interconnect

NVIDIA nForce 790i SLI Ultra and GeForce 9800 GX2

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:36:00 +0000

Way back in late 2006, NVIDIA simultaneously unveiled a new flagship GPU and desktop chipset that became the foundation of what NVIDIA was calling the "ultimate gaming platform". At the time, the combination of a pair of GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards and an nForce 680i SLI-based motherboard was clearly the most powerful hardware combo available for gamers. And here we are, nearly a year and a half later in early 2008, and still that combo is tough to beat, which is truly a testament to NVIDIA's engineering abilities and execution.

Since the introduction of 2006's version of NVIDIA's ultimate gaming platform, the company's product stack has changed quite a bit. New GPUs have hit the scene in all segments of the market and desktop chipsets for both Intel's and AMD's respective CPU platforms have been released as well. But NVIDIA never went all out and released a full-on update to the ultimate gaming platform, complete with a new flagship graphics card and nForce chipset - until today that is.

Rumors abound for the last few months regarding the GeForce 9800 GX2 and nForce 790i SLI Ultra, and today we can finally show you what all the fuss has been about. This is a big day for NVIDIA. A new desktop chipset complete with a DDR3-based memory controller is here, along with a dual-GPU powered monolith of a graphics card that is NVIDIA's most powerful to date. Together, the combination of a GeForce 9800 GX2 (or GX2s) with the nForce 790i SLI Ultra chipset redefine the high-end of desktop PC gaming hardware. Read on for the details and to see just what 2008's version of the ultimate gaming platform can do...

NVIDIA nForce 790i SLI Ultra

Specifications and Features

First, let's talk a bit about the nForce 790i SLI Ultra. Although the main focus of this article will revolve around this chipset, NVIDIA is actually releasing a few others as well. The nForce 790i SLI and 750i SLI will also be debuting soon, with similar capabilities and feature sets. As has historically been the case with NVIDIA's desktop chipsets, as you move further down the product stack, prices go down, and a few high-end features are stripped away. In this case, the 750i SLI is a DDR2-based chipset, capable of 2-way SLI, with a single Gigabit Ethernet connector and PCI Express 2.0 support by way of the NF200 chip.

The nForce 790i SLI and 790i SLI Ultra, however, are more difficult to differentiate. Essentially, the two chipsets are identical. The Ultra version of the chipset though is more vigorously binned and is capable of DDR3 memory speeds in excess of 2000MHz. The non-Ultra 790i SLI is officially supports DDR3 memory speeds as high as 1333MHz. Other notable features to the 790i SLI chipset include 60 lanes of PCI Express connectivity with native gen 2 support, with 10 USB ports, ESA, Media Shield, and First Packet support, in addition to three-way and Quad-SLI support.

Mobile Hard Drives Hit 500GB

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:21:00 +0000

New Hitachi drive represents a giant leap forward in notebook storage.

Notebook PC disk storage leaps into the stratosphere today, hitting the half-terabyte mark with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' announcement of a 500GB 2.5-inch mobile hard drive.

Due out in February 2008, the $400 Travelstar 5K500 drive will dramatically expand the capacity possible in today's notebook PC designs.

Hitachi's announcement makes it the largest capacity mobile 2.5-inch hard drive. Previous high-water capacity marks for 2.5-inch drives included Fujitsu's 300GB drive and Toshiba's 320GB drive. Hitachi's jump to 500GB represents a whopping 36 percent increase in a single bound. (Hitachi also announced a 400GB version for $350.)

Mondo Capacity
In order to achieve this landmark capacity, Hitachi didn't so much advance areal density as it did rethink the drive's design. Hitachi moved to a three platter design, as opposed to the typical two-platter approach for a 2.5-inch hard drive.

According to Hitachi, although the drive itself will occupy a 2.5-inch chassis, the drive mechanism inside the drive enclosure will be a bit thicker than the usual height of a drive. Typically, drives are 9.5mm in thickness; the 500GB drive will be 12.5mm, due to the additional disk platter.

The 5400rpm 500GB drive has 167GB per platter, the highest capacity per platter drive announced. Toshiba's 320GB drive packs in 160GB per platter.

Notably, the power consumption of this drive is practically the same as that of Hitachi's two-platter drive, the 5K250.

"We did not want consumers to sacrifice battery power in exchange for the increased capacity. We spent a lot of time designing the motor, and designing the electronics that control the motor and represent a large portion of the power consumption of a hard disk drive," says Larry Swezey , director of consumer and commercial hard disk drive marketing at Hitachi.

New Product Design
The 500GB 2.5-inch mobile drive provides the grounds for a seismic shift in how notebooks--and other devices that rely on 2.5-inch drives--can be perceived. Current notebooks offer much of the power and capabilities of desktop PCs, but have been constrained by the hard disk drive's size. "I look at this as a new product category, syas Swezey. "We thought this was a good evolution of the mobile drive to meet the changing needs of consumers who are buying notebooks."

One notebook manufacturer, Asus, has already jumped on board. The Taiwanese notebook manufacturer is co-announcing with Hitachi that it will offer the 500GB drive in a striped RAID configuration to provide 1 terabyte of storage. "Asus will be the first in the world with a 1TB notebook," says Swezey.

Another benefit of such a high-capacity, 2.5-inch drive? "We now offer a way for manufacturers to migrate from using 3.5-inch drives to 2.5-inch drives in consumer electronics devices and computers," says Swezey. Desktop manufacturers who want to go to a smaller form factor chassis or DVR manufacturers who want to integrate a drive can do so, "all while staying at the same capacity as with a 3.5-inch drive, but at a lower power draw."

DVR Future
In addition to aiming the 500GB drive squarely at notebook manufacturers, Hitachi is also pushing the drive for digital video recorder applications. The company is offering a second version of the drive, dubbed the Travelstar E5K500, where the "E" stands for Enhanced Availability (EA), a Hitachi approach to optimizing the drive for DVR applications.

AMD Spider Platform - Phenom, 790FX, RV670

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:41:00 +0000

A few days ago, AMD officially unveiled their RV670 GPU, the chip at the heart of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series of graphics cards. new Radeon HD 3800 series is but one part of an entirely new platform from AMD dubbed “Spider”.

The rest of the Spider platform is comprised of not only new desktop processors, but core logic as well. The second piece to the Spider puzzle is AMD’s native quad-core Phenom processor and the third is the new 7-series chipset.

News of Phenom and the 7-series chipset has been circulating for what seems like an eternity. We’ve shown you glimpses of the platform and talked about its new features in a number of articles and news posts here at HotHardware. But today we can finally give you all of the details and show you just how AMD’s new processors and chipsets perform.

Before we get started, some specifications are in order. What we have for you in the table below are the main specifications and features of the AMD Phenom 9600 and 9500 processors. Take a gander at the specifics and then strap yourself in as we take a hands-on look at AMD’s latest and greatest and even check out the Phenom 9700, which won’t be available until early next year.

AMD Phenom Retail Box

AMD Phenom Processors

Specifications and Features

Model / Processor Frequency:	AMD Phenom Processor Model 9600 / 2.3GHz
Model / Processor Frequency:	AMD Phenom Processor Model 9500 / 2.2GHz
L1 Cache Sizes:	64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)
L2 Cache Sizes:	512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor)
L3 Cache Size:	2MB
Memory Controller Type:	Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller, capable of being configured for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes
Memory Controller Frequency:	Up to 1.8GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management
Types of Memory:	Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz)
HyperTransport 3.0:	One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 3600MHz full duplex
Total Processor Bandwidth:	Up to 31.5 GB/s bandwidth
Packaging:	Socket AM2+ 940-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA) (backward compatible with Socket AM2)
Fab location:	AMD's Fab 36 wafer fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany
Process Technology:	65nm (.065-micron) Silicon on Insulator (SOI)
Approximate Transistor count:	approx. 450 million (65nm)
Approximate Die Size:	285 mm2 (65nm)
Nominal Voltage:	1.1-1.25 Volts
Max Ambient Case Temp:	70 degrees Celsius
Max TDP:	95 Watts
ACP:	*to be announced after launch
Future Memory Controller Note:	Future 45nm processors versions are planned to include support for DDR3 memory

ATI Radeon HD 3870 and 3850: 55nm RV670

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:24:00 +0000

When the R600 GPU hit the scene last May in the form of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, it wasn't very well received by enthusiasts for a few key reasons. For one, the Radeon HD 2900 XT generally consumed more power and generated more heat than NVIDIA’s already well established GeForce 8800 GTS. In addition, the 2900 XT was also louder, more expensive, and also didn't quite perform as well as the 8800 GTS, not to mention it was missing UVD support. A home run product the Radeon HD 2900 XT was not.

From a technical standpoint, however, the R600 was promising. It had full DX10 support, top notch image quality, gobs of memory bandwidth, and a number of innovations like HDMI output with audio and new anti-aliasing modes. After testing the Radeon HD 2900 XT and watching it mature in the marketplace these past few months, we couldn't help but wonder how the R600 would have been received had AMD built the chips using a more advanced manufacturing process that could help mitigate some of its fundamental shortcomings.

We can stop wondering now it seems. Today is the day AMD has chosen to officially unveil the RV670 GPU, a derivative of the R600, manufactured using a 55nm process. The RV670 will be the GPU that powers the new ATI Radeon HD 38x00 series of graphics cards. However, we should point out that the RV670 isn’t a straight-up shrink of the 90nm R600. In this iteration of the 55nm RV670, AMD has also tweaked the GPU in a few areas in an effort to increase relative performance and efficiency.

We’ve had a quartet of RV670-based cards in house for a short while and have put them through the wringer with an entirely new and up-to-date test-bed running Windows Vista Ultimate and powered by a Quad-Core Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU. Read on for the full scoop...

ATI Radeon HD 38x0

Features & Specifications

666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process

256bit 8-channel GDDR3/4 memory interface

Ring Bus Memory Controller

Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes
Optimized for high performance HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering at high display resolutions

Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture

320 stream processing units
- Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
- Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
- Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
128-bit floating point precision for all operations
Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
Shader instruction and constant caches
Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle
Up to 128 textures per pixel
Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
Physics processing support

Full support for Microsoft DirectX 10 / 10.1

Shader Model 4.0
Geometry Shaders
Stream Output
Integer and Bitwise Operations
Alpha to Coverage
Constant Buffers
State Objects
Texture Arrays

Dynamic Geometry Acceleration

High performance vertex cache
Programmable tessellation unit
Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance

Anti-aliasing features

Multi-sample anti-aliasing (up to 8 samples per pixel)
Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
Temporal anti-aliasing
Gamma correct
Super AA (CrossFire configurations only)
All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering

CrossFire Multi-GPU Technology

Scale up rendering performance and image quality with 2 or more GPUs
Integrated compositing engine
High performance dual channel interconnect

Texture filtering features

2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)

128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering

Bicubic filtering

sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)

Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)

Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support

Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support

ATI Avivo HD Video and Display Platform

Two independent display controllers
- Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
- Full 30-bit display processing
- Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
- Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
- High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
- Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
- Fast, glitch-free mode switching
- Hardware cursor
Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
- Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)
- Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content
Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
- Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x1536
HDMI output support
- Supports all display resolutions up to 1920x1080
- Integrated HD audio controller with multi-channel (5.1) AC3 support, enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution
Integrated Xilleon HDTV encoder
- Provides high quality analog TV output (component / S-video / composite)
- Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
- Underscan and overscan compensation
HD decode for H.264/AVC, VC-1, DivX and MPEG-2 video formats
- Flawless DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-Ray playback
- Motion compensation and IDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transformation)
HD video processing
- Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
- De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
- Edge enhancement
- Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
- Bad edit correction
- High fidelity gamma correction, color correction, color space conversion, and scaling
MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
VGA mode support on all display outputs

PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface

OpenGL 2.0 support

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - Yorkfield Has Landed

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:05:00 +0000

It seems like Intel started talking about the Penryn core as soon as the Conroe core launched in the form of the first Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors. Penryn was to be the next evolution in Intel’s Core microarchitecture and would be the foundation of a new class of mobile, desktop, and server processor built using the company’s advanced 45nm manufacturing process.

Penryn wouldn’t be a straight die-shrink of Conroe, however. With Penryn, Intel planned to introduce new SSE4 instructions, increase the amount of L2 cache per core, reduce power consumption, and generally enhance overall performance, clock for clock. All things that sound good to a PC enthusiast.

After many months of trickling out information regarding Penryn and Intel’s 45nm manufacturing process, we’re finally able to offer you some firsthand information regarding Yorkfield, Intel’s quad-core, desktop Penryn derivative. We recently got our hands on a new Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor and were able to run it through a host of benchmarks and overclock it as well. Read on to see how the QX9650 performed and whether or not Intel’s 45nm manufacturing process is all the company has claimed it is cracked up to be...

A Penny For Your Thoughts...

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Processor

Specifications & Features

Core Frequency - 3.0GHz
System Bus Frequency - 1333MHz
TDP (Thermal Design Power) - 130W
Stepping - 6
Number of CPU Cores - 4
L2 Cache - 12MB (2 x 6MB)
Max processor input voltage (VID) - 1.360v
.045-micron manufacturing process
Shared Smart Cache Technology
PECI Enabled
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled
Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled
Intel 64 Technology
Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)

Packaging - Flip Chip LGA775
Total Die Size: Approximately 214mm2 (107mm2 x2)
Approximately 820M Transistors
MSRP - $TBA

Penryn Die (Yorkfield = 2X)

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650: Top and Bottom

Intel X38 Express Chipset Debuts

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:46:00 +0000

It has been quite some time since Intel launched a desktop chipset targeted squarely at power users and PC enthusiasts. Of course, the P965 and current P35 have both been very well received by motherboard manufactures and the enthusiast community, but these chipsets were actually designed for the upper-mainstream space. In fact, the 975X Express, which launched almost two years ago, was the last desktop chipset Intel specifically marketed for enthusiasts.

With today’s launch, however, the Intel desktop chipset line-up gets a new flagship. To lay the foundation for the upcoming arrival of Intel’s 45nm dual- and quad-core processors, the company is officially introducing the X38 chipset. The X38 takes all of the things that have made the P35 a success and adds a slew of new features designed to increase memory and graphics subsystem performance.

Like the P35, the X38 supports both DDR2 and DDR3 memory technologies. The X38 also supports Intel Fast Memory Access and Turbo Memory technologies and ushers in a new feature called Extreme Memory. Like EPP (SLI Memory), Intel Extreme Memory compatible modules can be detected by a supporting motherboard and the board’s BIOS will be automatically programmed to properly support the RAM. DDR3 speeds up to 1333MHz are officially supported, but through overclocking much higher speeds are possible. Intel actually claims the X38 is capable of DDR3 speed of roughly 2.13GHz.

With the X38 chipset, Intel will also be offering a new application dubbed the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. The Extreme Tuning Utility is akin to NVIDIA’s nTune System Utility, which gives users access to a number of performance and overclocking related features via a Windows-based software tool. To further support the enthusiast pedigree of the X38, the chipset is designed with flexible (i.e. unlocked) bus ratios and it will eventually support 45nm processors with a 1600MHz front side bus speed.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the X38 is support for PCI Express 2.0 connectivity, with a full 16 lanes each dedicated to a pair of PCI Express x16 PEG slots. The X38 Express chipset has 32 PCI Express 2.0 lanes dedicated to graphics, whereas the P35 has only 16 PCI Express 1.0 lanes.

Many X38 boards will sport a third PCI Express x16 slot as well, but it will be outfitted with only an x4 electrical connection. PCI Express 2.0 is backwards compatible with current PCI Express 1.1 / 1.0 graphics cards, but when next-gen GPUs arrive that natively support PCI Express 2.0 arrive, PCIe 2.0 slots will offer twice the bandwidth of current solution.

The State of DirectX 10

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:07:00 +0000

DirectX 10 (DX10) has been one of the hottest topics for discussion and news coverage since the first DX10 compliant hardware appeared in the second half of last year. Touted as the biggest milestone in games development since programmable shaders were introduced with DirectX 8, nearly seven years ago, DX10 has generated a lot of buzz. Unlike the older versions of DirectX which were each built on top of the previous version, DirectX 10 is a completely new beast. With Windows Vista, Microsoft fundamentally changed the way drivers are designed, and they also completely redesigned DirectX from the ground up.

Before DirectX 10, each new version of DirectX was an incremental improvement over the previous version and it was also backwards compatible. This meant that many of the limitations of the previous versions were carried forward to each new version of DirectX. Microsoft broke this cycle by completely redesigning DirectX 10. The overhaul of both DirectX and the way drivers work in Vista is so complete that Vista actually comes with multiple versions of DirectX in order to support DX10 while still remaining backwards compatible with older software.

While DirectX 10 has seen heavy coverage both in the press and in forum discussions across the 'net, most of the discussion has been centered around the potential of DX10 since, at least initially, no one had any actual real-world, reproducible performance data. Since the first DX10 game didn't appear until June, nearly seven months after DX10 hardware first hit the shelves, no one had any idea how DX10 hardware and software would perform until rather recently. Due to its reliance on Vista's new driver model, DirectX 10 is only available for Vista and there are no plans to make a version available for Windows XP. Thanks in part to the relatively slow uptake of Vista, especially in gaming circles, developers didn't have a huge incentive to implement DirectX 10 in their games and as a result, games with DX10 support have been somewhat slow in coming.

One of the biggest issues holding back the maturation of DirectX 10 is the need for DirectX 9 support for the immediate future. It will take years for DX10 hardware to be ubiquitous and until then developers will be unwilling to alienate the section of the market that still uses DX9 hardware by releasing a DX10 exclusive game. This forces developers to compromise between DX9 and DX10 and currently the logical choice is to lean towards DX9 since most of the hardware out there today doesn't support the newer API. However, it's been nearly a year since the first DX10 hardware appeared and there are now several DX10 capable games on the market. And it looks like things are about to really pick up.

This holiday season is shaping up to be one of the most exciting for PC gamers in years with dozens of highly anticipated PC games set to be released. Hotly anticipated titles like Crysis, Hellgate: London, Unreal Tournament 3 and the PC version of Gears of War are all due to arrive in the coming months and they share another thing in common; they all feature DirectX 10 support. In fact, the holiday release cycle has already started and two highly anticipated DX10 games, Bioshock and World in Conflict, have already been launched. With all of these big holiday releases right around the corner, we think it's about time we looked at the current state of DirectX 10 and answer the big question; are we ready?

OCZ Reaper Heat Pipe Conduit DDR2

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:50:00 +0000

For the last several months, DDR2 memory development has been largly stagnent. The fastest DDR2 memory kits from last summer were, for the most part, still the fastest DDR2 memory kits this spring. We haven't seen any truly significant developments in DDR2 since Micron stepped up to the plate with their D9 chips. Although manufacturers continue to release new DDR2 memory, speed increases are fewer and harder to come by. It seems that even the mighty D9 has run out of headroom and it's becoming very difficult to produce faster DDR2 memory while still maintaining acceptible production yields. With the relative standstill in DDR2 development, manufacturers determined to keep pushing DDR2 speed boundries have resorted to increasing voltage and improving cooling. Voltages on performance DDR2 modules now far exceed JEDEC's specification of 1.8v and values of 2.2v and higher aren't uncommon. As a result, these modules need better cooling and the standard heatspreaders that we've seen on performance RAM since the hayday of DDR are being replaced with more effective cooling methods. We looked at the current DDR2 speed leaders back in March; Corsair's Dominator series and OCZ's Flex XLC series. Both of these product lines are good examples of recent attempts at pushing DDR2 speed boundries and they both utilize high voltages and relatively drastic cooling techniques. While Corsair went with the traditional big heatsink + fan method with their Dominator series, OCZ decided to go the water cooling route with their Flex XLC line. In recent years, heatpipe cooling has gained immense popularity in PC cooling and it was only a matter of time before they would also be applied to our memory. The wait seems to be over because the distinguishing feature of OCZ's latest line of DDR2 memory is the use of a large heatpipe assembly.

OCZ Reaper HPC Performance DDR2 Memory

Features and Specifications

OCZ's latest solution for cooling their high performance memory modules is the Reaper Heat Pipe Conduit (HPC) system. The Reaper HPC memory uses a combination of an aluminum heatspreader, copper heatpipe, and aluminum fin array to quickly dissipate heat. Heat generated by the memory is absorbed by the heatspreader, where it is then transported to an aluminum fin array which then dissipates the heat into the surrounding air. In theory this method should cool the memory modules much more efficiently than the flat heatspreaders most other memory modules sport. The Reaper HPC currently comes in four flavors and we've summerized the juicy details in a table for your convenience.

OCZ Reaper HPC Edition DDR2 Memory

While not as well specified as OCZ's Flex XLC series, the Reaper HPC series of memory modules certainly won't be mistaken for generic value RAM and they occupy the next highest spot on OCZ's product line. Like the Flex XLCs, all Reaper HPC memory modules get the benefit of an EPP (Enhanced Performance Profiles) programmed SPD which allows them to automatically boot at the rated specs when used on NVIDIA SLI chipsets. All Reaper HPC units are also covered by OCZ's lifetime warranty.

OCZ's Reaper HPC series originally consisted of two high performance memory kits rated at PC2-9200 and PC2-8500 speeds. Two new kits were recently added to the Reaper HPC line-up, an affordable PC2-6400 kit and a low-latency Enhanced Bandwidth Edition PC2-6400 kit. For the purposes of this article, we have obtained the original PC2-8500 Reaper HPC kit and the new Enhanced Bandwidth Edition PC2-6400.

ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT: Calling a Spade a Spade

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:39:00 +0000

While AMD will tell us that R600 is not late and hasn't been delayed, this is simply because they never actually set a public date from which to be delayed. We all know that AMD would rather have seen their hardware hit the streets at or around the time Vista launched, or better yet, alongside G80. But the fact is that AMD had quite a few problems in getting R600 out the door.

While we couldn't really get the whole story from anyone, we heard bits and pieces here and there during our three day briefing event in Tunis, Tunisia. These conversations were short and scattered and not the kind of thing that it's easy to get a straight answer about when asking direct questions. Keeping that in mind, we do have some information and speculation about a few of the road bumps AMD faced with R600.

Apparently, the first spin of R600 silicon could only communicate over the debugging interface. While the upside is that the chip wasn't totally dead, this is not a good problem to have. We also overheard that a later revision of the hardware suffered from fragments getting stuck in pixel shaders. We even overheard one conversation where someone jokingly remarked that AMD should design hardware but leave the execution to NVIDIA.

In a wild bout of pure speculation on our part, we would have to guess about one other problem that popped up during R600's creation. It seems to us that AMD was unable to get their MSAA hardware to work properly and was forced to use shader hardware to handle MSAA rather than go back for yet another silicon revision. Please know that this is not a confirmed fact, but just an educated guess.

In another unique move, there is no high end part in AMD's R600 lineup. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is the highest end graphics card in the lineup and it's priced at $399. While we appreciate AMD's intent to keep prices in check, the justification is what we have an issue with. According to AMD, it loses money on high end parts which is why we won't see anything more expensive than the 2900 XT this time around. The real story is that AMD would lose money on a high end part if it wasn't competitive, which is why we feel that there's nothing more expensive than the 2900 XT. It's not a huge deal because the number of people buying > $399 graphics cards is limited, but before we've started the review AMD is already giving up ground to NVIDIA, which isn't a good sign.

More than anything, we'd guess that the lack of a high end part has a lot to do with the delays and struggles AMD saw this time around in bringing R600 to market. We expect to see the return of a very high end part by the time R700 comes around, assuming that there aren't similarly debilitating delays.

The delays and lack of a high end would be beyond perfect if the Radeon HD 2900 XT could do to NVIDIA what the G80 launch did to ATI, unfortunately the picture just isn't that rosy. ATI's latest and greatest doesn't exactly deliver the best performance per watt, so while it doesn't compete performance-wise with the GeForce 8800 GTX it requires more power. An ultra high end power requirement in a sub-$400 graphics card isn't exactly ideal.

Despite all of this, there's a great deal of cool technology in the R600, and as ATI is now a part of a CPU company, we received more detail on the GPU than we've gotten during any other GPU launch. AMD takes graphics very seriously, and it recently reaffirmed its commitment to continue to deliver high end discrete graphics cards, so amidst countless delays and rumors of strange problems, the R600 architecture is quite possibly more important to AMD than the graphics cards themselves. An eventual derivative of this architecture will be used in AMD's Fusion processors, eventually making their way into a heterogeneous multi-core AMD microprocessor.

With AMD's disappointing Q1, it can't rest too much on the hope of Fusion changing the market, so we'll have to start by looking at where R600 is today and how it stacks up to NVIDIA's latest and almost greatest.

DX10 Redux

Being late to the game also means being late to DirectX 10; luckily for AMD there hasn't been much in the way of DX10 titles released nor will there be for a while - a couple titles should have at least some form of DX10 support in the next month or two, but that's about it. What does DX10 offer above and beyond DX9 that makes this move so critical? We looked at DirectX 10 in great detail when NVIDIA released G80, but we'll give you a quick recap here as a reminder of what the new transistors in R600 are going to be used for.

From a pure performance standpoint, DX10 offers more efficient state and object management than DX9, resulting in less overhead from the API itself. There's more room to store data for use in shader programs, and this is largely responsible for the reduction in management overhead. For more complex shader programs, DX10 should perform better than DX9.

A hot topic these days in the CPU world is virtualization, and although it's not as much of a buzzword among GPU makers there's still a lot to talk about the big V when it comes to graphics. DirectX 10 and the new WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) require that graphics hardware supports virtualization, the reason being that DX10 applications are no longer guaranteed exclusive access to the GPU. The GPU and its resources could be split between a 3D game and physics processing, or in the case of a truly virtualized software setup, multiple OSes could be vying for use of the GPU.

Virtual memory is also required by DX10, meaning that the GPU can now page data out to system memory if it runs out of memory on the graphics card. If managed properly and with good caching algorithms, virtualized graphics memory can allow game developers to use ridiculously large textures and objects. 3DLabs actually first introduced virtualized graphics memory on its P10 graphics processor back in 2002; Epic Games' Tim Sweeney had this to say about virtual memory for graphics cards back then:

"This is something Carmack and I have been pushing 3D card makers to implement for a very long time. Basically it enables us to use far more textures than we currently can. You won't see immediate improvements with current games, because games always avoid using more textures than fit in video memory, otherwise you get into texture swapping and performance becomes totally unacceptable. Virtual texturing makes swapping performance acceptable, because only the blocks of texels that are actually rendered are transferred to video memory, on demand.

Then video memory starts to look like a cache, and you can get away with less of it - typically you only need enough to hold the frame buffer, back buffer, and the blocks of texels that are rendered in the current scene, as opposed to all the textures in memory. So this should let IHVs include less video RAM without losing performance, and therefore faster RAM at less cost.

This does for rendering what virtual memory did for operating systems: it eliminates the hard-coded limitation on RAM (from the application's point of view.)"

Obviously the P10 was well ahead of its time as a gaming GPU, but now with DX10 requiring it, virtualized graphics memory is a dream come true for game developers and will bring even better looking games to DX10 GPUs down the line. Of course, with many GPUs now including 512MB or more RAM it may not be as critical a factor as before, at least until we start seeing games and systems that benefit from multiple Gigabytes of RAM.

Continuing on the holy quest of finding the perfect 3D graphics API, DX10 does away with the hardware capability bits that were present in DX9. All DX10 hardware must support the same features and furthermore, Microsoft will only allow DX10 shaders to be written in HLSL (High Level Shader Language). The hope is that the combination of eliminating cap bits and shader level assembly optimization will prevent any truly "bad" DX10 hardware/software from getting out there, similar to what happened in the NV30 days.

Although not specifically a requirement of DX10, Unified Shaders are a result of changes to the API. While DX9 called for different precision for vertex and pixel shaders, DX10 requires all shaders to use 32-bit precision, making the argument for unified shader hardware more appealing. With the same set of 32-bit execution hardware, you can now run pixel, vertex, and the new geometry shaders (also introduced in DX10). Unified shaders allow extracting greater efficiency out of the hardware, and although they aren't required by DX10 they are a welcome result now implemented by both major GPU makers.

Finally, there are a number of enhancements to Shader Model 4.0 which simply allow for more robust shader programs and greater programmer flexibility. In the end, the move to DX10 is just as significant as prior DirectX revisions but don't expect this rate of improvement to continue. All indications point to future DX revisions slowing in their pace and scope. However, none of this matters to us today; with the R600 as AMD's first DX10 architecture, much has changed since the DX9 Radeon X1900 series.

Will AMD Barcelona kill off high-margin AMD CPUs?

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:51:00 +0000

AMD was riding high a year ago dominating sales in the dual-processor Server market and virtually owned the multi-processor (4+) Server market.

Then Intel launched the Core Micro-architecture on the desktop and dual-processor Server market and momentum swung from AMD to Intel overnight in both of those markets. The one exception was the multi-processor Server market where AMD continued to reign virtually unchallenged. That all changed this week when Intel launched the 7300 series “Caneland” platform with the “Tigerton” 7300 series CPU.

Intel flips fortunes on multi-processor servers
Intel went from being a virtual non-player in the multi-processor Server market to a dominator overnight on everything except for the niche HPC (High Performance Computing) market. AMD quickly responded by saying that Intel’s Tigerton CPU “falls short”. But how much more of a beating does AMD want if a 91% increase over AMD’s 8222 3.0 GHz 4-processor server on SPECint_rate_base2006 isn’t enough? While SPECint_rate2006 already represents a lot of mainstream workloads, Intel also broke 4-processor x86/x64 records for SPECjbb2005, SPECweb2005, and TPC-C by large margins.

Next week’s “secret” Barcelona launch
One of the worst kept secrets is next week’s imminent launch of AMD’s new Barcelona quad-core CPU. Even AMD admitted in their response to Intel’s 7300 platform that Barcelona will be a few days away. Even the leaked prices have been widely distributed and AMD fans are cheering at the arrival of sub-$300 Barcelona quad-core DP (Dual Processor) CPUs and the $1004 (at quantity 1000) top bin Barcelona 2.0 quad-core MP (Multi Processor) CPU.

Note: AMD declined to comment on these prices saying that they won’t comment on “speculation”. But being this close to the launch date, it’s very unlikely the leaked prices are wrong.

Barcelona: The Opteron dual-core killer
If we stop to think about the ramifications of cheap low-frequency Barcelona processors, AMD could be facing a real pricing dilemma. Barcelona at 2 GHz will only threaten high-margin AMD CPUs but it will not threaten high-margin Intel CPUs because the clock speed isn’t high enough yet. When a $250 Barcelona DP quad-core kills a $750 Opteron DP dual-core processor on performance, who will buy that $750 part? When a $700 Barcelona MP quad-core kills a $1600 Opteron MP dual-core processor, who will buy the $1600 part? Barcelona will effectively erase all of the high-margin CPUs in their line-up next week when it launches.

AMD has priced the Barcelona processor for volume which is critical to keeping those Fabs busy and critical in maintaining market share. This is pretty much what Intel has been forcing AMD to do for the last year in the desktop market and AMD had to choose between losing margins and losing market share. Three quarters of back-to-back ~$600M losses makes it clear which choice AMD made.

What makes a quad-core a quad-core?
Of course this wasn’t what AMD intended because they had planned on launching Barcelona in the mid 2 GHz range but things fell through. AMD likes to boast about their “native quad-core” technology where they build a quad-core processor out of a single huge 283mm squared die, but the brutal challenges of manufacturing this ambitious chip has meant that AMD has had to ship Barcelona 6 months late and 600 MHz lower than originally planned. If underperformance and delays is what “native quad-core” buys you, Intel’s strategic decision to hold off on native quad-cores until late 2008 seems to be the right choice.

Leaked - AMD Barcelona versus Intel Clovertown and Tigerton

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:38:00 +0000

It appears that some slides for AMD’s Barcelona launch next Monday has come in to my possession and SPECint_rate2006 benchmarks were included. AMD caught wind that I was going to be analyzing and posting the leaked data and they just called me explaining that they wanted to give me some updated slides. I don’t know exactly what it was but I know that some of the numbers posted for Intel on SPECfp_rate2006 were outdated. I explained that I never signed (or verbally agreed to) an NDA on these slides and I didn’t intend to sign an NDA at this late point in the game and the gentleman from AMD was fine with that. But once I explained what I was going to do, AMD’s rep asked me for 30 minutes to check on some numbers.

When he called back, I never got any updated slides but I did get a strong hint that I might be posting inaccurate information on Barcelona performance and that maybe I wouldn’t be journalistically accurate. The gentleman strongly hinted that the numbers may change on the official launch next Monday compared to the numbers that I’ve extrapolated for now. Now this sounded nothing like the first call and it sounded to me like AMD just didn’t want the numbers posted. Of course it’s quite possible that newer SPEC benchmark numbers were submitted and the slides that I have are using older numbers. Since the word “change” was used, that tells me that the numbers I have are legitimate but they may have been tweaked a bit since.

Since the leaked slides indicated that the performance estimates were submitted to SPEC.org on 8/20/2007, that looks fairly new to me though it does not rule out the possibility of newer and better numbers for AMD. I *cannot vouch* for the accuracy of the Barcelona leaked numbers and I cannot rule out the existence of newer Barcelona numbers. But since the slides look authentic and the performance numbers are within the expected range, I’ve decided to post the performance numbers and let the reader decide if they’re authentic or not.

AMD Barcelona versus Intel Clovertown and Tigerton

[Update 11:00PM] Added September numbers for Intel. Note that it is possible that AMD has numbers newer and better than the ones submitted on 8/20/2007 in the leaked slides so it’s possible the number for AMD will go up a little.

AMD Barcelona versus Intel Clovertown

The numbers here are as of August 2007.

Barcelona SPEC CPU numbers allegedly submitted 8/20/2007

The 160 score for the Barcelona 8350 2.0 fall within 4% of my “mid 150s” estimate. Unless AMD has better numbers for Monday’s Barcelona launch (they are hinting they do), it appears that even a Tigerton 1.86 GHz 4-socket Server beats a Barcelona 2.0 GHz 4-socket Server on SPEC CPU 2006 16-thread integer performance. This latest picture on integer performance also explains why AMD priced Barcelona so low against Intel.

[Update 11:00PM] Here are the SPECfp_rate2006 peak numbers which are used for the niche HPC market. The leaked Barcelona 2.0 numbers are based on AMD’s slide that claims a 35% advantage over Intel’s 5345 as of 8/28/2007 (this is the date that these slides were generated). The numbers below show updated September numbers for Intel but it is possible that AMD has newer and better scores than the ones submitted on 8/20/2007.

Intel 2-way servers to get 45nm boost in 4Q

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:21:00 +0000

The 2-way server market can expect a boost of holiday season cheer in the fourth quarter as Intel is lining up to launch 12 new processors based on its latest 45nm designs, according to sources at server makers.

Of the 12 chips, nine will fall into the Quad Core Xeon 5400 series (Harpertown), while the other three will be in the Dual Core Xeon 5200 series (Wolfdale). From the lineup, it looks like Intel is trying to make sure it fields a full team of quad-core products to face off against Barcelona going into next year.

Core frequencies for the 5400 series will range between 2.0GHz and 3.16GHz while L2 cache size will expand to a paunchy 12MB. The leaner 5200 series will weigh in at 1.86GHz to 3.4GHz with 6MB of L2.

Most chips will run on a 1333MHz FSB, but two Harpertowns and one Wolfdale will up the pace to 1600MHz. The 1.86GHz chip will run at a moderate 1066MHz.

Pricing is expected to range from around US$200-US$1,200.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Processor >sweetest Processor<<

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:08:00 +0000

What goes faster than a Core 2 Quad processor at 3GHz? Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, nothing from AMD at the moment. Thankfully Intel has a few more "MHz in the can", or so to speak. Actually, it appears they may have a lot more, as you'll see in the pages that follow. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though. First, Intel had to lay the platform foundation to support higher performance. After all, a faster engine is no good to you, sitting idle.

The introduction of the Intel P35 "Bearlake" chipset and soon-to-be-released X38 chipset back in May, allowed a platform goose of the Front Side Bus speed to a snappy 1,333MHz and ushered in support for DDR3 memory synchronously, pun intended, at the same speed in concert with the FSB. It also afforded Intel the opportunity to characterize their Core 2 Quad architecture at the same quad-pumped FSB speed--perhaps a lot like many enthusiast overclockers have already been doing for a while now? You can bet on it.

So the answer to our initial question is fairly straight-forward and Intel is answering that definitively today with the launch of the new Core 2 Extreme QX6850 quad-core processor. What goes faster than a Core 2 Quad QX6800? Like a Ferrari or Lamborghini it's going to cost you a few Lira but read on paisano and we'll wind her out and see how she handles.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Processor

Specifications & Features

Core Frequency - 3.0GHz
System Bus Frequency - 1333MHz
TDP (Thermal Design Power) - 130W
Stepping - B (G0)
Number of CPU Cores - 4
L2 Cache - 8MB (2 x 4 MB)
Max processor input voltage (VID) - 1.350v
.065-micron manufacturing process
Shared Smart Cache Technology
PECI Enabled
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled
Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled
Intel 64 Technology
Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)

Packaging - Flip Chip LGA775
Total Die Size: Approximately 286 mm2
Approximately 582M Transistors
MSRP - $999

Core 2 Extreme QX6850

Abit IP35 PRO and AB9 QuadGT Motherboards >>Explained<<

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:26:00 +0000

It’s been almost one year since Intel launched the 965 series of chipsets, which were originally designed to be packaged with Intel’s Core 2 Duo series of processors. While the 965 series didn't perform quite as well as Intel’s flagship 975x chipset in some cases, most notable in multi-GPU configurations, it made a name for itself due to its more flexible nature along with lower power consumption and heat output, and strong overclocking, which were made possible due to the more refined manufacturing process used to build the chipset. Not only was the 965 series a great overclocking chipset for the money, but over time, it’s evolved to support the changing needs of the market. While this chipset was originally a solution for 1066 MHz FSB-based dual core processors with DDR2-800 memory and single graphics card, newly launched 965 series boards support quad-core processors, multi-GPU ATI Crossfire, and unofficially, 1333 MHz FSB speeds and memory speeds far greater than DDR2-800.

While the 965 is definitely still a viable player in today’s market, Intel’s own newly launched P35 Express series of chipsets are eyeing to take over the 965’s market share in the near future. The P35 Express brings new features to the table, such as (official) 1333 MHz FSB processor support, optional support for DDR3 memory modules, native eSATA, and additional USB ports, as well as a few other smaller features. The P35 Express is definitely a solid follow-up to the 965-series, as the two products share much of the same core architecture.

The dilemma is, if you wanted a mid-range to high-end Intel powered system using an Intel-built chipset, which is the best choice? While most enthusiasts gravitate towards the latest and greatest, there is definitely something to be said for new products which are based on more mature chipsets like the 965. The kinks have been worked out, feature sets are typically stable and perform well, and they usually offer a much better experience ‘out of the box’ rather than dealing with first generation hardware and their usual driver issues and quirks. However, as the P35 Express is largely based on the same architecture as the 965, the risk of stability / driver issues is likely minimal, coupled with the fact that Intel typically has very solid chipset drivers out of the box, even for brand new products.

Abit will help us solve this dilemma today. They’ve recently launched two new motherboards, based on nearly identical designs, with both the 965 and P35 Express chipsets being used. On the 965-side, we’ve got the AB9 QuadGT, whereas their P35 Express board is tagged with the IP35 Pro name. Both boards support quad-core processors, feature interesting heat-pipe based cooling systems, along with impressive arrays of storage and multimedia connectivity options. Before we dig in too deep, let's have a look at Abit's wild, automobile-themed retail shipping boxes for these two boards. Is Abit insinuating that one is more rugged (like a monster truck) while the other is fast and hazardous? Perhaps we're just reading too much into them.

Abit IP35 Pro (P35 Express) Box

Abit AB9 QuadGT (P965) Box

Abit IP35 Pro & AB9 QuadGT

Specifications and Features

Abit IP35 Pro (Intel P35 Express)

Socket-775 Form Factor, Supports Intel Core 2 (Dual/Quad), Pentium Processors
Supports 1333, 1066, 800 MHz Front Side Bus Speeds
Intel P35 / Intel ICH9R Chipset
Silent OTES Dual Copper Heatpipe Chipset Cooling System
4 x DDR2-800 Memory Slots, 8 GB Maximum Capacity
1 x PCI Express x16 Slot, 1 x PCI Express x4 (x16 Sized), 1 x PCI Express x1
3 x 32-bit (33 MHz) PCI Slots
2 x 32-bit PCI Based Realtek Gigabit Ethernet Ports
Realtek ALC888 HD Audio 7.1 CODEC, 8-Channel Analog w/ Optical SPDIF In/Out
6 x Intel Serial ATA-II/300 Ports, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 Support
2 x JMicron Serial ATA-II/300 eSATA Ports, RAID 0, 1, JBOD
12 x USB 2.0 Ports, 2 x Firewire 400 Ports
Integrated Clear CMOS, Reset/Power Buttons, LED Code Display

Solid State Capacitor Design

Abit AB9 QuadGT (Intel P965)

Socket-775 Form Factor, Supports Intel Core 2 (Dual/Quad), Pentium Processors
Supports 1066, 800 MHz Front Side Bus Speeds
Intel P965 / Intel ICH8R Chipset
Silent OTES Single Copper Heatpipe Chipset Cooling System
4 x DDR2-800 Memory Slots, 8 GB Maximum Capacity
1 x PCI Express x16 Slot, 1 x PCI Express x4 (x16 Sized), 1 x PCI Express x1
2 x 32-bit (33 MHz) PCI Slots
1 x 32-bit PCI Based Realtek Gigabit Ethernet Port
Realtek ALC888 HD Audio 7.1 CODEC, 8-Channel Analog w/ Optical SPDIF In/Out
6 x Intel Serial ATA-II/300 Ports, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 Support
2 x JMicron Serial ATA-II/300 eSATA Ports, RAID 0, 1, JBOD
10 x USB 2.0 Ports, 2 x Firewire 400 Ports
Integrated Clear CMOS, Reset/Power Buttons, LED Code Display
Solid State Capacitor Design

As you can see by the images and specification sheets above, these two platforms are incredibly similar, and likely were designed in conjunction (or right after each other). Both boards sport the same PCB color, many of the component placements are identical, and we only see small differences in terms of feature sets. In a side by side comparison, the newer IP35 Pro board boasts a newer chipset design, support for newer processors, along with a second Gigabit Ethernet port and two more USB 2.0 ports.

Layout : Abit IP35 Pro

The Abit IP35 Pro is an eye-catching design, featuring the dark blue / teal PCB color which Abit has used several times before, along with some vibrant copper colored chipset cooling components which really make this motherboard design “pop”. As expected, the board is based on a standard ATX design, meaning it will fit in all modern cases. The board requires a 24-pin primary ATX connector and an 8-pin +12V secondary ATX connector, both of which are elegantly placed on the sides of the PCB in order to not interrupt airflow to hot components.

IP35 Pro - North

IP35 Pro - South

The board supports all manner of Socket-775 processors, and Abit leaves plenty of room around the CPU socket for large sized heatsinks. The processor’s VRM modules are passively cooled by the onboard cooling system, as they sit below the copper heatsink. The board officially supports quad-core chips along with Intel’s new 1333 MHz (or 1.33 GHz, if you prefer) front side bus based Core 2 processors, giving it additional lifespan in comparison to 965 platforms. Abit also keeps plenty of 3-pin and 4-pin fan connecters around these vital components, which isn’t normally worth noting, although the amount of connectors available struck us as abnormally high, which is definitely a good thing.

The board has four DDR2 DIMM slots, capable of holding up to 8 GB of DDR2-800 memory in a dual-channel configuration. The memory modules talk to the P35 Express Northbridge, which is housed under a large copper heatsink, connected to two other heatpipes. The P35 Express Northbridge does consume more power in comparison to the P965, which makes larger chipset cooling necessary for silent operation, although overall heat output and power consumption levels are still quite low. In testing, we found that the chipset cooler only got mildly warm during long term operation, which basically tells us that Abit’s cooling system is more than sufficient in handling the job of cooling this chipset. With this additional cooling power and flexible BIOS controls, chipset-level overclocking is a piece of cake.

The board is equipped with dual PCI Express x16 sized slots, which are capable of running dual ATI graphics cards in a Crossfire configuration (although this is not labeled on the box). The primary PCIe x16 slot runs at full x16 timings, whereas the secondary slot runs at x4 speeds, so it’s not completely optimal for ultra high-end gaming systems. For mid-range Crossfire configurations, though, you should be plenty happy. You can also use the secondary PCI Express x16 sized slot for other high-end peripherals like PCIe RAID / LAN cards, or another dedicated graphics card for multi-monitor purposes. There’s also a four-pin molex connector which sits right above the secondary PCI Express x16 slot. For those who want to use two high-end graphics cards, this connector provides a little extra juice for stability purposes.

In addition to these two slots, we also have a single PCI Express x1 slot (located above the primary PCIe x16 slot) along with three 32-bit PCI slots, which makes for an expansion configuration that most will appreciate. Abit’s Southbridge chipset cooler is also short enough that full-length PCI/PCIe cards will have no problem sitting over the length of the motherboard. Abit’s also mounted the storage ports at a right angle which helps eliminate cable clutter in this area.

Expansion Slots, and the LAN, Firewire, and Audio Chips

Storage Connectivity, Southbridge, and uGuru Chip

The Intel ICH9R Southbridge controller supports six Serial ATA-II/300 ports in both RAID and non-RAID configurations. The board supports RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5, and fully supports Serial ATA optical disks as well. The board is also equipped with a single Ultra ATA/133 port, for those with legacy optical drives. Even more storage abilities are available through an onboard JMicron PCI-based Serial ATA-II/300 controller, which powers two eSATA ports on the I/O panel. These ports also support RAID 0 and 1, if required. Abit does not bundle any eSATA cables with their board, but does bundle six latching Serial ATA-II/300 cables and Ultra ATA/floppy cables with the board. Beyond basic storage cables and driver CD/manuals, the motherboard bundle with this board is actually quite bland.

Sitting next to the SATA-II/300 ports is a diagnostic LED array, which provides POST codes during booting, which can help you diagnose motherboard issues quickly and easily. There are also hard power and reset buttons on the board itself, which are handy if you’re testing or using this motherboard outside of a chassis. The board is equipped with headers for an additional eight USB 2.0 ports (four on the I/O panel for a total of twelve), along with two Firewire 400 ports. Abit does not have any Firewire ports on their I/O panel for this board, but they do bundle an adapter which brings one 6-pin Firewire and one 4-pin Firewire port to the back of the chassis, connecting to the internal headers.

Abit IP35 Pro I/O Panel

Looking at the back panel, we can see the aforementioned USB 2.0 and eSATA ports. Audio-wise, the board is equipped with a Realtek ALC888 HD Audio CODEC, which powers the board’s 8-channel analog/ 7.1 channel S/PDIF digital audio ports, seen above. The board is also equipped with TOSlink Optical S/PDIF digital input and output ports, which is an interesting (and not often used) choice. To the right, we can see dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, both of which are powered by individual Realtek PCI based GigE chips. We would have preferred newer PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options, although as Abit is dealing with limited PCI Express lanes to utilize with the Intel P35 Express chipset, we can see why they opted to stick with a tried and true solution.

If you look closely to the right of the PS/2 ports, as well, you can see an interesting Abit-only solution. There is a small switch here, which when flipped, clears the motherboard’s CMOS quickly and easily. If you go a bit too far with your overclocking endeavours, instead of hunting down a set of pins and moving a jumper to reset the CMOS, all you’ll have to do is flip the switch once, and the motherboard will reset to its factory settings. Nice and simple, a feature we definitely made use of. All in all, a very solid board design with no major flaws to be pointed out.

The AB9 QuadGT motherboard has a design which is very similar to the newer IP35 Pro. However, the QuadGT does have some subtle but notable differences beyond the chipset which separate the two to different price points. While the QuadGT is decidedly less feature packed, it still has some interesting features which help set it apart from competing 965 boards.

AB9 QuadGT - North

AB9 QuadGT - South

The AB9 QuadGT motherboard is also based on a standard ATX layout with a dark blue / teal colored PCB. The board runs off Intel’s P965 chipset in combination with the widely used ICH8R Southbridge controller chip. The board supports Socket-775 Core 2 based quad and dual-core processors, along with support for older Socket-775 Pentium models as well. Officially, the board only supports 1066 MHz front side bus based processors based on the retail box, but Abit has just released a new BIOS revision as of a few weeks back which allows the board to support 1333 MHz front side bus based processors. Hopefully newly shipped QuadGT motherboards will include this BIOS revision out of the box.

Sitting alongside the right side of the board, we have four DDR2 DIMM sockets, capable of supporting up to 8 GB (2 GB per slot) and speeds up to DDR2-800. At DDR2-800 speeds in a dual-channel memory configuration, this means that the board can utilize up to 12.8 GB/s of memory bandwidth, on par with other platforms at this price point.

The cooling configuration is one of the stronger points of the platform, as Abit has equipped this board with custom copper heatsinks in order to keep the P965 chipset cool while producing zero noise. Granted, the 965-series runs fairly cool as it is, and plenty of platforms have launched with passive cooling. However, Abit’s cooling design is sleek and efficient, moving heat away from the Northbridge chip and cooling the VRM modules at the same time with the use of their Silent OTES heatpipe system. Abit also includes small slits in the I/O panel shield, which helps move air over the copper fins. Abit’s cooling system should allow for flexible overclocking as well, as you can push the chipset voltage up without having to worry about overheating.

As for expansion, the board is equipped with an interesting configuration, which should please most users, but undoubtedly some will have issue with. First off, the board supports dual PCI Express x16 sized slots, both of which can hold graphics cards if need be. The board has support for ATI Crossfire technology for multi-GPU rendering as well, or you can use them independently for multi-monitor puposes. The lower PCIe x16 slot actually has an x4 electrical connection, similar to other Crossfire-enabled 965 platforms, due to the PCI Express limitations within this chipset. Thus, high-end gamers will likely want to look elsewhere for a multi-monitor solution, although the 965 can provide a solid boost for two mid-range cards to give performance levels of a high-end card.

The board is also equipped with a single PCI Express x1 slot along with two 32-bit PCI slots. The ICH8R chipset supports up to ten USB 2.0 ports, which the AB9 QuadGT uses fully, as the motherboard is equipped with four USB 2.0 ports on the I/O panel along with pins for up to six more underneath the last PCI slot. The board also supports Firewire 400 connectivity through a dedicated PCI-based Texas Instruments Firewire controller, which Abit uses by putting one six-pin Firewire 400 port on the I/O panel and allowing pin-level connectivity for one more.

Dual PCI Express x16, Realtek GigE LAN / Audio, Firewire

Serial ATA Ports, Southbridge, Abit uGuru, Diagnostic LED

The board is quite flexible in terms of storage, supporting Serial ATA-II/300 RAID, eSATA, and Ultra ATA/133 as well. The Intel ICH8R Southbridge supports six Serial ATA-II/300 ports, which supports RAID levels 0, 1, 10, and 5 natively. The board is also equipped with a JMicron Serial ATA-II/300 controler which supports the two eSATA ports on the I/O panel, which also can support RAID levels 0, 1, and JBOD if need be. The board also supports a single Ultra ATA port which can support up to two legacy IDE drives.

AB9 QuadGT I/O Panel

The I/O panel is nearly identical to that of the previously seen P35 Express board, although slightly modified. The AB9 QuadGT also uses the Realtek ALC888 HD Audio CODEC, which allows for 8-channel analog and 7.1 digital S/PDIF audio, which Abit makes full use of with this board, including both optical TOSlink input/output ports. This board also uses the same 32-bit PCI Gigabit Ethernet chip from Realtek as the IP35 Pro, although there is only a single GigE port here. With the secondary GigE port excluded, Abit can put a full-sized Firewire 400 port on the I/O panel, which the IP35 Pro doesn’t have. The I/O panel also features an identical USB, eSATA, and PS2 configuration as the IP35 Pro, including the Abit custom clear CMOS switch.

Like the IP35 Pro, the QuadGT has a very solid design which will please both normal home users and enthusiasts. It’s obvious that they’ve had a lot of time to refine their 965 based designs, and this is the fruit of that labor.

Both the IP35 Pro and the AB9 QuadGT use BIOS technology from Phoenix, and in typical Abit fashion, quite a bit has been added to the stock BIOS menu in order to make them unique. Both boards feature Abit’s own onboard uGuru system monitoring chip onboard, which allows for more flexible overclocking, fan controls, and thermal sensing. Abit keeps all of their custom BIOS options in a separate menu for ease of use purposes. As you would expect from modern day Abit motherboards, you have full control over voltage levels and timing controls, giving plenty of overclocking functionality without getting too overly technical.

One of the core differences between the BIOSes which we noticed is that the newer IP35 Pro platform supports a wider range of memory speeds in comparison to the AB9 QuadGT. As the IP35 Pro has official support for 1333 MHz FSB speeds (and since memory speeds are tied to front side bus speeds on Intel based chipsets), the IP35 Pro has to support additional memory divisors in order to run memory modules properly. However, even if you’re not using a 1333 MHz FSB based processor, you can still benefit from additional memory flexibility on this board.

With identical hardware configurations and cooling, we set out to see which platform could overclock better with our 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor. We’ve seen Nvidia platforms take this chip up to 490 MHz FSB (1960 MHz FSB quad-pumped), although since Nvidia platforms can run the FSB independent from the memory bus, they have an inherent advantage. With our new P35 Express platform, we were able to take our chip nearly as high, topping out at 466 MHz FSB (1866 MHz FSB quad-pumped) speed. Our P965 platform undortunately did not fare as well, as the board topped out at 425 MHz FSB (1700 MHz FSB quad-pumped). While both are healthy overclocks, we were a bit surprised at how low our AB9 QuadGT overclocks were, considering how the P965 has been an excellent overclocker in the past.

Overclocked on IP35 Pro - 1866 MHz FSB

Overclocked on AB9 QuadGT - 1700 MHz FSB

i was also curious to see if there were any major differences in terms of power consumption between these two boards. Thus, we set them up with identical configurations (2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB memory, Radeon X1950 Pro graphics) with the same PSU and other hardware, and watched power usage levels on a watt meter. Here are our results.

In both cases, we found that Abit’s newer IP35 Pro (P35 Express) consumed less power (about 12W) in comparison to the AB9 QuadGT (P965). With lower power consumption, we also have less heat production, which leads to overall cooler and quieter system configurations. The IP35 Pro consumes about as much power as Nvidia’s 650i Ultra platform, which has a similar feature set to the IP35, and also runs with passive cooling.

ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT - R600 Has Arrived

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 14:10:00 +0000

Take a look at the red-head standing over there. If you're a hardware geek then, you know exactly who she is. That's ATI's adventurous and oh-so-curvaceous front-woman, Ruby. And she's holding that 'Perfect 10' sign for a very good reason. It's probably not the reason you're thinking of, however. For a digital personality, she's definitely pretty darn hot; maybe not a 10 in our book, but pretty darn close nonetheless. No, she's holding that sign not as proclamation of her hotness, but rather to give you all a hint as to what ATI has in store for the PC in the coming days, weeks, and months.

Today is the day many PC enthusiasts have been waiting for. And we say this with some hard data to reference. In January we ran a poll and nearly 40% of over 4,000 respondents said they were waiting to see ATI's next-gen R600 architecture before passing judgment on the already-released GeForce 8 Series. Despite the arrival of a clearly more powerful and significantly more feature-rich GPU architecture, an almost equal number of you decided to wait to see ATI's hand before betting on NVIDIA's G80. Today, we can finally tell you what ATI's been working on for the past few years and that 'Perfect 10' sign reveals part of the story.

ATI has chosen today, May 14, 2007 - my second wedding anniversary, incidentally - to reveal a line-up of 10 desktop and mobile GPUs, all derived from their R600 architecture. The line-up consists of sub-$100 entry level graphics cards to a $399 high-end part that's designed to do battle with NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS. What about taking on the GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra, you ask? Well, the new, AMD-owned ATI is moving in a somewhat different direction now, and at least currently, they don't plan to produce a low-volume, ultra-high performing part that only a fraction of the enthusiast crowd can afford. We know, some of you are crestfallen right now; we were too at first. But don't sweat it. The arrival of the R600 and its derivatives is a very good thing. We'll try to better explain on the pages ahead. For now, here are the specification of ATI's new flagship graphics card, officially named the Radeon HD 2900 XT.

ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT

700 million transistors on 80nm HS fabrication process

512-bit 8-channel GDDR3/4 memory interface

Ring Bus Memory Controller

Fully distributed design with 1024-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes
Optimized for high performance HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering at high display resolutions

Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture

320 stream processing units
- Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
- Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
- Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
128-bit floating point precision for all operations
Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
Shader instruction and constant caches
Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle
Up to 128 textures per pixel
Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
Physics processing support

Full support for Microsoft DirectX 10.0

Shader Model 4.0
Geometry Shaders
Stream Output
Integer and Bitwise Operations
Alpha to Coverage
Constant Buffers
State Objects
Texture Arrays

Dynamic Geometry Acceleration

High performance vertex cache
Programmable tessellation unit
Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance

Anti-aliasing features

Multi-sample anti-aliasing (up to 8 samples per pixel)
Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
Temporal anti-aliasing
Gamma correct
Super AA (CrossFire configurations only)
All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering

CrossFire Multi-GPU Technology

Scale up rendering performance and image quality with 2 or more GPUs
Integrated compositing engine
High performance dual channel interconnect

Texture filtering features

2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
Bicubic filtering
sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support

ATI Avivo HD Video and Display Platform

Two independent display controllers
- Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
- Full 30-bit display processing
- Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
- Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
- High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
- Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
- Fast, glitch-free mode switching
- Hardware cursor
Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
- Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)
- Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content
Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
- Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x1536
HDMI output support
- Supports all display resolutions up to 1920x1080
- Integrated HD audio controller with multi-channel (5.1) AC3 support, enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution
Integrated Xilleon HDTV encoder
- Provides high quality analog TV output (component / S-video / composite)
- Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
- Underscan and overscan compensation
HD decode for H.264/AVC, VC-1, DivX and MPEG-2 video formats
- Flawless DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-Ray playback
- Motion compensation and IDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transformation)
HD video processing
- Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
- De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
- Edge enhancement
- Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
- Bad edit correction
- High fidelity gamma correction, color correction, color space conversion, and scaling
MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
VGA mode support on all display outputs

PCI Express x16 bus interface

OpenGL 2.0 support

Hot Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 mainboard for PC enthusiastics

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:28:00 +0000

Gigabyte has almost always been a well respected brand amongst PC enthusiasts, but it seems the company has come on very strong in the last year or so. Gigabyte has released a number of highly praised motherboards is recent months, like the GA-P35T-DQ6 and GA-965P-DQ6 2.0 that were all lauded for their feature sets, performance, and overclockability.

In this article, we're going to showcase yet another Gigabyte-built mobo - the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 - that seemingly out does every other current desktop motherboard in a number of key areas. How do four Gigabit LAN controllers, 10 SATA ports, 100% solid capacitors, and a unique wrap-around, passive, cooling apparatus strike you? And did we mention the board is based on NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI chipset and has three full length, PCI Express x16 slots for multi-GPU action?

As you'll see on the pages ahead, Gigabyte has gone all out with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6. If you're a fan of Intel processors and also want to run a pair of GeForce cards in SLI mode, you're going to want to flip through the next few pages to see just what the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 is made of...

Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6

Specifications and Features

BIOS

2 4Mbit flash ROM
Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 1.0b

Chipset

NVIDIA NFORCE 680i SLI MCP (Northbridge: C55XE, Southbridge: MCP55PXE)
Marvell 88E8052/88E8056 chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
Marvell 88E1116 phy (10/100/1000 Mbit)
Realtek ALC888 DD audio codec
T.I. TSB43AB23 1394 chip

Processor

LGA775
Support Intel Core 2 Quad/Core 2 Duo/Pentium D/Pentium 4 Processor
Supports 1333/1066/800/533 MHz FSB

Internal I/O Connectors

1 24-pin ATX power connector
1 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
1 4-pin PCIe 12V power connector
1 floppy connector
1 IDE connector
10 SATA 3Gb/s connectors
1 CPU fan connector
1 system fan connector
1 power fan connector
1 front panel connector
1 front audio connector
1 CD In connector
1 S/PDIF In connector
3 USB 2.0/1.1 connectors for additional 6 ports by cables
2 IEEE 1394a connectors for additional 2 ports by cables
1 TPM connector
1 LPT connector
1 Power LED connector
1 Chassis Intrusion connector

Form Factor

ATX
30.5cm x 24.4cm

Rear Panel I/O

1 PS/2 keyboard port
1 PS/2 mouse port
1 serial port
1 IEEE 1394a port
1 S/PDIF out port (optical)
4 RJ-45 port
4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
6 audio jacks

Expansion Slots

2 PCI Express x16 slots
1 PCI Express x8 slot
1 PCI Express x1 slot
3 PCI slots

H/W Monitoring

System voltage detection
CPU / System temperature detection
CPU / System / Power fan speed detection
CPU warning temperature
CPU / System / Power fan failure warning
CPU / System smart fan control

Other Features

Supports @BIOS
Supports Download Center
Supports Q-Flash
Supports EasyTune (Note 2)
Supports Xpress Install
Supports Xpress Recovery2
Supports Xpress BIOS Rescue

Memory

4 DDR2 DIMM memory slots
Supports up to 8 GB memory
Support Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 unbuffered DIMMs
Supports 1.8V DDR2 DIMM
Supports DDR2 667/533/400 DIMM
Supports ECC type DRAM

Gigabyte offers a wide arrary of accessories with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6. Included in the package, users will fine a detailed user's manual and quick setup guide that explain all of the board's features and clearly illustrated the various steps necessary to install and configure the board. In addition, a driver / utility CD is included, along with a hard SLI bridge connector and reinforcement bracket, a Gigabyte case badge, and a custom, color coded I/O shield. There was also a plethora a brightly colored SATA cables included, and 80-wire IDE and floppy cables included too. Perhaps the best accessories included with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6, however, are a pair of slot-mounted brackets that house eSATA ports. These brackets bring eSATA and power connectors to any open slot location, and data and power cables are included. If you're sick of the pokey transfer speeds of your external USB hard drive, you can connect basically any standard hard drive to one of these ports and get the same performance as if it was connected internally to one of the board's SATA connectors.

The Monster of Graphics is Here !

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:13:00 +0000

It's springtime here in the United States. The rain is pouring, the trees and flowers are blooming, and as usual NVIDIA is ready with a new product to refresh their existing high-end GPU line up. A few weeks ago we showed you the new mid-range GeForce 8600 GTS, GT and 8500 GT cards, which expanded NVIDIA's DirectX 10-compatible offerings to include products with price points ranging from $89 all the way on up to $649. But today we've got something for the hardcore enthusiasts among you, and along the way we'll have to revise the upper end of that price range a bit.

Despite the fact that their main competition - AMD/ATI - hasn't launch a new product in months and that they don't have a DX10 capable part on store shelves just yet, NVIDIA saw fit to turn the screws add some more virtual horsepower to their 'Ultimate Gaming Platform'. The result is the card we'll be showcasing here today, NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce 8800 Ultra.

As you'll see on the proceeding pages, not much has changed since the introduction of the GeForce 8800 GTX, but NVIDIA has made some tweaks to their high-end design to wring out more performance, while keeping the card's TDP and acoustic signature within the same general ranges. We've got lots to talk about and plenty of performance data to share, so let's jump right in and get down to business...

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Series
Features & Specifications

NVIDIA unified architecture:
Fully unified shader core dynamically allocates processing power to geometry, vertex, physics, or pixel shading operations, delivering up to 2x the gaming performance of prior generation GPUs.

GigaThread Technology:
Massively multi-threaded architecture supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next generation shader programs.

Full Microsoft DirectX 10 Support:
World's first DirectX 10 GPU with full Shader Model 4.0 support delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realism and film-quality effects.

NVIDIA SLI Technology:
Delivers up to 2x the performance of a single graphics card configuration for unequaled gaming experiences by allowing two cards to run in parallel. The must-have feature for performance PCI Express graphics, SLI dramatically scales performance on today's hottest games.

NVIDIA Lumenex Engine:
Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rates.
16x Anti-aliasing: Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.

128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR):
Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects - now with support for anti-aliasing.

NVIDIA Quantum Effects Technology:
Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation enable a new level of physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU - all while freeing the CPU to run the game engine and AI.

NVIDIA ForceWare Unified Driver Architecture (UDA):
Delivers a proven record of compatibility, reliability, and stability with the widest range of games and applications. ForceWare provides the best out-of-box experience and delivers continuous performance and feature updates over the life of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs.

OpenGL 2.0 Optimizations and Support:
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.

NVIDIA nView Multi-Display Technology:
Advanced technology provides the ultimate in viewing flexibility and control for multiple monitors.

PCI Express Support:
Designed to run perfectly with the PCI Express bus architecture, which doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X to deliver over 4 GB/sec. in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

Built for Microsoft Windows Vista:
NVIDIA's fourth-generation GPU architecture built for Windows Vista gives users the best possible experience with the Windows Aero 3D graphical user interface.

NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology:
The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video.

Discrete, Programmable Video Processor:
NVIDIA PureVideo HD is a discrete programmable processing core in NVIDIA GPUs that provides superb picture quality and ultra-smooth movies with low CPU utilization and power.

Hardware Decode Acceleration:
Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies.

HDCP Capable:
Designed to meet the output protection management (HDCP) and security specifications of the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats, allowing the playback of encrypted movie content on PCs when connected to HDCP-compliant displays.

Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing:
Sharpens HD and standard definition interlaced content on progressive displays, delivering a crisp, clear picture that rivals high-end home-theater systems.

High-Quality Scaling:
Enlarges lower resolution movies and videos to HDTV resolutions, up to 1080i, while maintaining a clear, clean image. Also provides downscaling of videos, including high-definition, while preserving image detail.

Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction):
Recovers original film images from films-converted-to-video (DVDs, 1080i HD content), providing more accurate movie playback and superior picture quality.

Bad Edit Correction:
When videos are edited after they have been converted from 24 to 25 or 30 frames, the edits can disrupt the normal 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown cadences. PureVideo HD uses advanced processing techniques to detect poor edits, recover the original content, and display perfect picture detail frame after frame for smooth, natural looking video.

Video Color Correction:
NVIDIA's Color Correction Controls, such as Brightness, Contrast and Gamma Correction let you compensate for the different color characteristics of various RGB monitors and TVs ensuring movies are not too dark, overly bright, or washed out regardless of the video format or display type.

Integrated SD and HD TV Output:
Provides world-class TV-out functionality via Composite, S-Video, Component, or DVI connections. Supports resolutions up to 1080p depending on connection type and TV capability.

Noise Reduction:
Improves movie image quality by removing unwanted artifacts.

Edge Enhancement:
Sharpens movie images by providing higher contrast around lines and objects.

Dual 400MHz RAMDACs:
Blazing-fast RAMDACs support dual QXGA displays with ultra-high, ergonomic refresh rates - up to 2048x1536@85Hz.

Dual Dual-link DVI Support:
Able to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600.

NVIDIA G80 Wafer

Intel Win Over AMD Quad Core Microprocessor

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:19:00 +0000

AMD's dual-socket Quad FX platform is official. Code named the 4x4 platform, its AMD's answer to Intel's Quad Core chips. The platform is powered by two dual-core Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors. Its based around Nvidia's nForce 680a chipset and as we've already seen from Asus' initial 4x4 mobo, can support up to 12 SATA ports and four PCI-Express cards. The folks at PC Watch and ExtremeTech have done some early benchmarking on the chips comparing them to Intel's Quad Core CPUs and found this out.

AMD's QuadFX power consumption is far higher than Intel's Quad Core. In fact, it uses almost double the amount of watts (589 vs 318). The irony is that in the past the tables were usually the other way around.

Performance-wise, ExtremeTech found out in multiple tests that Intel's solution usually came out ahead of AMD's Quad FX platform. Again, this doesn't look good for AMD, who's not only late to the party, but is now taking a beating from the competition.

However, compared to Intel's $289 (13000 INR) Core 2 Extreme QX6700, AMD's chips ( FX-74) will be sold in pairs for Intel's $289 (13000 INR) . And when AMD's quad-core CPUs are unleashed next year, you'll be able to pop them into the Quad FX platform and build yourself an eight-core Quad FX system (and take over the world).

(in assosiation with gizmodo)

AMD QuadFX Platform & FX-70 Series Processors

noreply@blogger.com (Sharon) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 17:13:00 +0000

By now you're all familiar with Intel's Core micro-architecture, as well as the dual and quad-core Core 2 Duo, Extreme, and Quad processors based on it. With the launch of their Core 2 processors, Intel no longer played second fiddle to AMD in terms of overall performance or power efficiency. And for the last few months since their release, Intel has been steadily re-gaining fans in the enthusiast community that were put off by years of relatively hot-running, and under-performing Netburst micro-architecture based processors.

Today, AMD aims to re-capture the hearts of those hardcore enthusiasts with the official launch of their QuadFX platform. News about QuadFX has been trickling out for months under the "4x4" banner. But today we can show you exactly what QuadFX is all about. At its most basic level, QuadFX is AMD's vision of a high-end quad-core desktop computing platform. There's a lot more going on under the virtual hood, however. We'll start with some quick specifications and move on to some of the more juicy details on the pages ahead.

AMD QuadFX Platform & FX-70 Series Processors

Specifications & Features

AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 And Athlon 64 X2 5000+ For Socket AM2

DDR2 Comes To The Athlon 64

Model: Athlon 64 FX-70 Dual Athlon 64 FX Cores Clocked at 3.0GHz _._Frequency / Cache Sizes: 3.0 w/ 1MB L2 cache-per-core (2MB total L2 per processor) _._L1 Cache Sizes: 64K - L1 instruction + 64K - L1 data cache per core (256KB total L1) _._Memory Controller: Shared integrated 128-bit wide memory controller AMD64 Instruction Set Architecture Integrated DDR2 memory controller: _._FX and X2: DDR2 memory up to and including PC2 6400 (DDR2-800) unbuffered _._A64 and Semperon: DDR 2 memory up to and including PC2 5300 (DDR2-667) unbuffered An advanced HyperTransport link: HyperTransport Links: 1 HyperTransport Spec: 2GHz (2x 1000MHz / DDR) Effective data bandwidth: 20.8 GB/sec (8GB/sec HyperTransport link + 12.8GB/sec memory) Large level one (L1) and level 2 (L2) on-die cache: _._With 128 Kbytes of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache per core, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 and Athlon 64 X2 processors are able to excel at performing matrix calculations on arrays. _._Programs that use intensive large matrix calculations will benefit from fitting the entire matrix in the L2 cache.

Fab location:
_._AMD's Fab 30 wafer fabrication facility in Dresden, Germany

Process Technology:
._.09 micron SOI (silicon-on-insulator)
_._Packaging: Socket AM2 organic micro-PGA
Packaging:
._Socket AM2 organic micro-PGA
._Redesigned 4-bolt heatsink tray for better stability

Die Size:
_._Windsor Core - 230mm2

Transistor count:
_._Windsor Core - Approximately 227.4million

Nominal Voltage:
_._1.35V - 1.40v

Max Thermal Power: 125 W
Max Ambient Case Temp: 55-63 degrees Celsius
Max Icc (processor current): 90.4A
Min P-State (with C'n'Q): 1.0 GHz
Nominal Voltage @ min -state: 1.1V
Max Thermal Power @ min -state: 38.0W
Max Icc @ min -state: 31.8A

Model: Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Dual Athlon 64 Cores Clocked at 2.6GHz _._Frequency / Cache Sizes: 2.6GHz w/ 512KB L2 cache-per-core (1MB total L2 per processor) _._L1 Cache Sizes: 64K - L1 instruction + 64K - L1 data cache per core (256KB total L1) _._Memory Controller: Shared integrated 128-bit wide memory controller AMD64 Instruction Set Architecture
Integrated DDR2 memory controller: _._A64 FX and A64 X2: DDR2 memory up to and including PC2 6400 (DDR2-800) unbuffered _._A64 and Semperon: DDR 2 memory up to and including PC2 5300 (DDR2-667) unbuffered An advanced HyperTransport link: HyperTransport Links: 1 HyperTransport Spec: 2GHz (2x 1000MHz / DDR) Effective data bandwidth: 20.8 GB/sec (8GB/sec HyperTransport link + 12.8GB/sec memory) Large level one (L1) and level 2 (L2) on-die cache: _._With 128 Kbytes of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache per core, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 and Athlon 64 X2 processors are able to excel at performing matrix calculations on arrays. _._Programs that use intensive large matrix calculations will benefit from fitting the entire matrix in the L2 cache.

Fab location:
_._AMD's Fab 30 wafer fabrication facility in Dresden, Germany

Process Technology:
._.09 micron SOI (silicon-on-insulator)

Packaging:
._Socket AM2 organic micro-PGA
._Keyed Ziff socket
._Redesigned 4-bolt heatsink tray for better stability

Die Size:
_._Windsor Core - 183mm2

Transistor count:
_._Windsor Core - Approximately 153.8 million

Nominal Voltage:
_._1.3V - 1.35v

Max Thermal Power: 89 W
Max Ambient Case Temp: 55-70 degrees Celsius
Max Icc (processor current): 66.2A
Min P-State (with C'n'Q): 1.0 GHz
Nominal Voltage @ min -state: 1.1V
Max Thermal Power @ min -state: 31.0W
Max Icc @ min -state: 25.5A

As you can see in the specifications above, AMD's new FX-70 series of processors, which are the heart of the QuadFX platform, are very similar to current socket AM2-based FX processors. They differ only in their packaging, the number of HyperTransport links incorporated into the CPU, and of course by their clock speeds.