LightspeedHardware.com - News and rumours about next generation hardware

Intel Gulftown to be launched as Core i7

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:27:59 +0000

Intel will adopt the Core i7 brand identifier to sell Gulftown, the six core processor based on the Nehalem architecture. Chinese website PCOnline shows a leaked Intel slide that clearly describes a Core i7 980X processor as one built on a 32nm process and based on the lga1366 chipset. Clocked at 3.33 GHz, on march 2010 this chip will replace Intel current flagship desktop processor, the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition, at the very same price of US $999. The Gulftown core features 6 processing cores with 12 threads thanks to HyperThreading Technology, triple channel DDR3 1066 MHz memory with its integrated memory controller, 6.4 GT/s QPI link, 12 MB of L3 cache, compatibility to motherboards that support the current Core i7 9xx processors, and 130W TDP.

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Intel shelves Larrabee gpu project

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:46:31 +0000

Intel has shelved plans to continue development of Larrabee graphics processor. Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer said that Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where Intel hoped to be and as a result the first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone graphics product, rather it will be used as a software development platform for internal and external use. At SC'09, Intel demonstrated Larrabee computational power which peaked at over 1 TFLOP. Market analysts said that Larrabee is being repositioned as an HPC coprocessor and since Intel learned a whole lot from this project, is not going to throw that investment or knowledge away. Intel could now decide to follow the high performance trail like AMD is doing with Fusion.

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US $396.89

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US $970.00

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US $1,119.99

48-core Intel processor

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:49:03 +0000

Yesterday Intel demonstrated an experimental 48 core processor called Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC). This chip boasts about 10 to 20 times the processing engines inside today's Intel processors. Actually a 48 core processor, the chip is a prototype of a very early 100 core project where each one of the full x86 cores is communicating with each other at full speed. It also includes newly invented power management techniques that allow all 48 cores to operate efficiently at as little as 25 watts or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance. Intel engineers say the primary obstacle to the processor is software optimization, since most of the existing software is designed to address a small number of cores and needs to be modified to operate with many tasks running in parallel. Some features of the SCC are due to show up in Intel's 2010 processor line, like the upcoming Core i9. This milestone represents the latest achievement from Intel's Tera-scale Computing Research Program, aimed at breaking barriers to scaling future chips to 10s-100s of cores.

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US $396.89

Intel Quad Core i7 940 Extreme 293 GHz Desktop PC FAST
US $970.00

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Nvidia GT300

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:05:47 +0000

Nvidia presented the main competitor to Amd Radeon HD 5800 series, the GT300 chip (codenamed Fermi), the first DX 11 chip from Nvidia. According to information presented on GPU Technology Conference the GT300 will have 3 billion transistors, 512 shader processors (referred as CUDA cores), 32 cores per core cluster, 384-bit memory interface and maximum 6GB of GDDR5 memory. GT300 includes native support for execution of C (CUDA), C++ and Fortran code plus introduces Nexus, the world’s first fully integrated heterogeneous computing application development environment within Microsoft Visual Studio. The first cards based on the Fermi architecture could be expected at the end of the year, expected price is still unknown.

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ATI Radeon HD 5800 series

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:02:58 +0000

AMD today launched the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards, the world’s first to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 included in Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. AMD will initially release two cards: the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, each with 1GB GDDR5 memory. The 5850, which is a cut down version of the 5870, is clocked at 725Mhz for the core and 1Ghz for the memory, giving it a maximum compute performance of 2.09 TFLOPS. It features 1440 stream processors divided among 18 SIMDs, 72 texture units and a 256bit memory bus. Load power consumption is 170W, while idle power consumption is around 27W. AMD is pricing it at $259.
The Radeon HD 5870 features 1600 stream processors divided among 20 SIMDs, 80 texture units and 1GB of GDDR5 memory connected to a 256bit memory bus. Clocked at 850MHz for the core clock and 1.2GHz for the memory, the 5870 is the most powerful graphics card now available on the market with a maximum compute performance of 2.72 teraflops. Load power consumption is 188W, and idle power is 27W. Price should be around $379.

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LGA 1156 socket lineup

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:59:42 +0000

The LGA 1156 socket lineup consists of quad core desktop chips, clocked at 2.66, 2.8 and 2.93 GHz, that will start selling from September 8. These new cpus will feature an integrated dual channel DDR3 1333 memory controller, 8MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 95W. The cpus will launch as the Core i5 750 (2.66 GHz), Core i7 860 (2.80 GHz), and Core i7 870 (2.93 GHz), and these could be priced US $194, $284, and $562, respectively. The difference between i5 and i7 core is that i5 doesn't support Hyper Threading.

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US $396.89

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US $970.00

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US $1,119.99

Phenom II Black Edition TWKR 42

admin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:40:26 +0000

AMD created a small number of limited edition TWKR processors expressly for the extreme overclocking community. Called the AMD Phenom II X4 42 Black Edition TWKR processor, it has a part number of 42 that means 4 cores at 2 GHz. Based on Deneb C2 core, it comes with an unlocked multiplier and a default vCore value of 1.44v. TWKR 42 features 6 MB shared of L3 cache, each individual core also features 64 KB of L1 data cache, 64 KB of L1 instruction cache, and 512 KB of L2 cache. It is not for sale, is provided as is and it's not covered by AMD’s product warranty. It seems that only 100 of these processors are going to be sold.

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US $380.00

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US $345.00

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AMD R800, RV870 and RV840 Expected Late 2009

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:18:41 +0000

According to Hardware-Infos AMD is set to release a lineup of DirectX11 compliant 40nm GPUs within 2009, targeting NVIDIA’s upcoming G300. Besides RV870, there will be R800 that consists of two RV870 chips, RV840 for mainstream market and RV810 for entry level market. Probably named as Radeon HD 5870, RV870 will be powered by 1200 stream processors, GDDR5 memory and bandwidth of 143 GB/s. RV840 and RV810 GPUs specifications are still unknown. NVIDIA G300 launch date is scheduled for late 2009, so AMD will release RV870, RV840 and R800 by the end of this year.

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GT300 to feature 512-bit interface

admin — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:58:31 +0000

Over the past six months, we heard many rumors about the upcoming nVidia GT300 GPU. The last information surfaced on the web reveals that GT300 might feature a 512bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. If this is true, this would mean that nVidia has a playing field of eight 32bit memory controllers connecting to multiple 32 core clusters for a total of 512 cores. If the GT300 chip ends up connected to quad data rate memory at 1000MHz we'll have a memory bandwidth of 256GB/s per single GPU. At least from these little information leaks, we're looking at one beast of a GPU. GT300 is expected to be released in Q4 2009.

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Phenom II X4 955 Coming on April 20th

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:28:17 +0000

Based on the 45 nm Deneb core, Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition supports AM3 socket motherboards, and DDR3 memory. It features a core clock speed of 3.20 GHz (16.0x200 MHz), 512 KB of L2 cache per core, 6 MB of L3 cache and and a TDP of 125W. Being a Black Edition CPU, it should be overclocker friendly thanks to its unlocked multiplier. Slated for an April 20 launch, retail price will be around 270$ to compete with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550.

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US $380.00

AMD Phenom 23Ghz X4 9650 Quad Core 2GB Memory Computer
US $299.00

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US $345.00