AMD today announced wide availability of five new 55 watt ACP quad-core Opteron processors. The 45nm CPUs operate from 2.1 to 2.3 GHz. Also, AMD announced two new 45nm Opteron SE processors (2.8 GHz) operate in the 105 watt ACP range for higher-end performance.
Category: AMD
AMD drops quad-core Phenom processor pricing
In addition to reducing the price of current CPUs, AMD also plans to launch the Phenom II X4 950 in the second quarter with a core frequency of 3.1GHz.
Electronista | AMD releases Phenom-based Athlon X2 7000 chips
AMD on Monday catered to the budget set with a new, faster version of the Athlon X2. The 7000 series is the first based directly on the “Stars” architecture used for Phenom chips and carries both a 2MB smart Level 3 cache absent on previous Athlons and a faster 3.6GHz HyperTransport bus (up from 2GHz), all of which are said contribute to better performance per clock.
Electronista | AMD releases Phenom-based Athlon X2 7000 chips.
Thousands of Radeon 3800 Cards Found to be Faulty
Another graphics card company having some problems with faulty cards. Nvidia recently had some issues with many of its GPUs and now AMD is having some troubles as well.
In this case there are thousands of Radeon 3800 cards affected by this issue (around 15,000 to be little more exact). This isn’t nearly as huge as the Nvidia debacle but it is an issue in its own right.
Who is to blame isn’t exactly clear, the problem could have originated from ITC/GeCube, Diamond, Alienware, or AMD but no one really knows for sure. I’ve seen around the internet that Diamond will replace a card if it is problematic but I don’t know if that is specific to this issue or not.
I’m glad that this wasn’t a wide spread issue or the fact that no one really knows who to place blame on would have been a much bigger issue. It will surely be resolved soon and blow over much faster than the whole Nvidia thing which seemed to drag on forever.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6500+ To Be Released
Sources familiar with AMDs future processor plans said on Wednesday that the chipmaker plans to release dual-core CPUs based on the K10 micro-architecture under the AMD Athlon X2 brand-name.
The new processor, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6500+ will be released in early September. It will run at 2.3GHz with 1MB of L2 cache, 2MB of L3 cache and have a dual-channel DDR2 memory controller. It will have a thermal design power of 95W and should be compatible with the majority of AM2+ motherboards.
The 6500 is based on the Kuma code-name design and will feature an unlocked multiplier allowing enthusiasts to easily overclock.
Aside from the Athlon 64 X2 processor, AMD also plans to release AMD Phenom X3 8750 (2.5GHz), 8550 (2.2GHz) 8450e (2.1GHz), and 8250e (1.9GHz), all with 3 cores on September 2.
Photos of the Upcoming Radeon HD 4670
Not a whole lot to say about it, but it is definitely something to drool over while you wait to spend some cash on it. The Radeon HD 4670 is clocked at 750MHz core and 2GHz GDDR3 memory. The card will be able to get a P35xx under 3DMark Vantage, compare that to P32xx for a 3850 or P19xx for a 9500GT.
VR-Zone (with 5 more images)
AMD Radeon 4850 Details Show Up on Amazon
Amazon.com accidentally put the AMD Radeon 4850 graphics card on sale earlier then it was supposed to and because of that we now have some more information on the specs for the card.
The Radeon 4850 will be priced at around $200.
Amazon’s technical specifications:
“ASIC: RV7000, 512MB Memory, GDDR3 Memory Configuration, 256-bit Memory Interface, Display Formats:x2 Dual Link DVI + HDTV-out with built-in HDMI, PCI Express 2.0 support, 480 Stream Processing units, Direct X 10.1 / Shader Model 4.1,OpenGL 2.0, ATI Crossfire X Multi-GPU Support for highly scalable performance (Up to four GPU support with an AMD 790FX based motherboard), High-speed 128-bit-HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering, 55nm process technology, ATI Avivo HD Video and Display Technology, Game Physics processing capability, Up to 24X Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing, Unified Video Decoder (UVD) for Blu-ray and HD DVD, ATI PowerPlay energy conserving technology.”
As you can see above the cards are promoting “Game Physics processing capability,” which is most likely going to be using Havok. Amazon also says that it requires a 450 Watt or greater power supply and the card will ship with two DVI to VGA adapters, an S-Video cable, a Crossfire bridge interconnect, a component adapter, and a DVI to HDMI adapter.
Overall the graphics card looks like it will be a step in the right direction for AMD but I’m still worried that the only thing that will let AMD truly compete in the GPU space is integrating the GPU and CPU on one die.
Some AMD Based Computers Having Problems With XP SP3
The much anticipated Windows XP Service Pack 3 was recently pushed into Windows Update and is now causing a lot of headaches of AMD CPU users.
One user reported “I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to lad the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again.”
According to Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft, the problem is affecting only AMD equipped PCs sold by HP (and a few other manufacturers), because HP deploys the same image to Intel based computers that they do to AMD based computers.
These AMD computers have the intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power management on Intel based computers.
So hopefully if you are having this problem you are pointing your finger in the right direction, not towards Microsoft but towards your PCs manufacturer. I have installed Service Pack 3 on two computers and both of them are running as smooth as they ever have.
AMD ATI Radeon 4850 and 4870 Details Show Up Online
AMD has seen some great developments in the way of releasing the 4800 series of graphics cards and therefore will be moving up the launch of these graphics cards.
Manufacturing improvements will give these GPUs higher clock speeds, the mid-range will jump from a 670MHz core seen in the 3850 to more than 800MHz in the 4850, while the 4870 should be the first mainstream graphics chipset ever to top 1GHz.
Not only will the 4800 series have higher clock speeds, the chips will also be more efficient at the same clock speed as previous GPUs. With an increase to 32 texture management units both of the initial 4800 models will be able to handle more simultaneous pixel and geometry effects at once. Memory on these new cards will run between 1.8GHz and 2.2GHz thanks to newer GDDR5 memory.
AMD has already confirmed that it will be announcing new graphics chips in May and is also rumored to be releasing the new cards at the same time. The launch may also reveal new Mobility Radeon HD chipsets with similar improvements. Pricing has not been talked about yet but the 4850 and 4870 are both rumored to be coming with 512MB of memory and should price in at around $179 to $219. Other cards may come with as little as 256MB of memory or as much as 1GB.
Although AMD is bumbling around a little bit on the CPU side, they may be fairly future proof because of their capability to produce both CPUs and GPUs that run darn well, while Nvidia is only capable of producing GPUs and Intel is really only good at making CPUs and not very good with the GPU side of things.
AMD/ATI Launches Some New GPUs
The Radeon HD 3400 series includes the HD 3450 and the HD 3470, they both have a core clock of 800MHz and have 40 stream processors.
The HD 3450 will have 256MB of DDR2 500MHz memory and the HD 3470 will have 256MB of GDDR3 950MHz memory both of them with 64-bit memory interfaces. The HD Radeon 3400 series will be priced between $49 and $65.
The new mainstream graphics card is the Radeon HD 3650 with 120 stream processors. The HD 3650 will have two variations, the first with 256MB of GDDR3 800MHz memory and the second will feature 3 tiers of 500MHz DDR2 memory at 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB all of which will have a 128-bit memory interface. All of the HD 3650 cards will be clocked at 725MHz and will not support hybrid corssfire. The HD 3650 will be priced between $79 and $99.
AMD/ATI also announced immediate availability of the new high end Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card. This is the first graphics processor to break the Teraflop processing barrier. The HD 3870 X2 combines two Radeon HD 3870s on a single graphics board connected through integrated CrossFire technology. The new graphics card will be priced at $449, which is a fairly good deal considering the recent high end cards being priced at nearly $700 from Nvidia.
AMD Officially Announces ATI Radeon 3800 Series
I’ve talked about the 3800 series before but it is now officially out. AMD is launching the product with 10 partners for a total of 24 different available cards.
I mentioned earlier (here) that ATI has two different 3800 cards ready, the HD3850 and the HD3870. The cards will be available immediately and the 3850 should be priced around $179 while the 3870 will be about $219.
According to AMD, these are the world’s first graphics cards to support DirectX 10.1. The GPUs are made using 55nm process technology and have tri and quad multi-GPU support with ATI CrossFireX. 3850 has 256MB of GDDR3 memory while the 3870 sports 512MB of GDDR4.
The cards look pretty good and are priced pretty nicely, but, you’ll have to wait to see how the card does in the benchmark department.
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Presentation Leaked
MadBoxPC got their hands on what seems to be a marketing presentation for the ATI Radeon HD3800.
The presentation confirms information that has only been rumored until now. The price is set at $150 for the 3850 and $250 for 3870.
Both of the graphics cards are DirectX 10.1 compatible, DirectX 10.1 will be shipping with Service Pack 1 of Windows Vista.
With the release of these two cards the 2900XT will be discontinued. CrossfireX is mentioned in the presentation and Quad Crossfire will be the first DirectX 10.1 QuadGPU setup.
I am pretty confused as to why the 3800 cards aren’t really being talked about that much on the sites that I follow, usually when new graphics cards are coming there are rumors and so on going on all over the internet.
Check out the rest of the slides of the presentation here.