Heading to AMD.com will bring you a splash page with a link to “learn more” about AMD’s Phenom CPUs.
Clicking brings you a nice page that shows you this:
Very interesting, what is going to happen on June 10th, we will have to wait and see.
Category: AMD
RD790 Brings Quadfire
AMD’s new RD790 chipsets will bring some cool features but one really interesting one according to the Inquirer is the use of 4 graphics cards in a crossfire-like set up. They will have to be X1k and X2k series cards however.
The motherboards will sport 4 full length PCIe slots running 4 of them at 8x or two of them at 16x.
OCZ has some pictures of one of the motherboards that you can check out here.
I don’t really see the use in 4 graphics cards unless you are doing some kind of crazy work that would require you to have 8 monitors set up. That just seems like way to many monitors to me.
AMD Barcelona Launch Date Up in the Air
Barcelona may be delayed until August or September according to DigiTimes. The Barcelona chips that are being made are still a little buggy and not polished enough to be sold yet.
You can read DigiTimes article here.
You have to wonder what has caused this change to AMD just a year or so ago they were on top of the world beating Intel in almost every benchmark including power consumption. It could have been the acquisition of ATI or could have been a poorly timed acquisition of ATI, when Intel began to kick back into gear and bring out the Core Duo chips. AMD just couldn’t compete, they lost the mobile market first and now are losing the desktop and server market. Barcelona isn’t exactly their last chance but it definitely will cause a lot of people to think so.
But now its not only AMD having problems it is also ATI which finally shipped their first DX10 parts less than a week ago. AMD of course has control over ATI but ATI was already starting to slip and now two companies are having problems with power consumption and performance. If they don’t start buckling down, and I hate to have to keep saying this, many bad things will be in the future for them.
Radeon HD News Around the net
The ATI Radeon HD 2000 series has launched and a flood of news and reviews have hit the internet. Here are the ones that I found interesting:
AMD Phenom CPU and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT finally official
ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT – AMD’s Long awaited R600 DX10 GPU arrives
AMD Releases 2000 Series Radeons
AMD’s R600 has something of the flawed diamond about it
AMD Launches ATI Radeon HD Family, Finally
5/14/2007 Daily Hardware Reviews — ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Edition
AMD unveils ATI Radeon HD 2000
AMD’s ATI R600 launched for desktops, laptops
AMD finally introduces ATI Radeon HD 2000 series, performance reportedly disappointing
Power Supply Makers Lining up for R600
PowerColor Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card
AMD Announces ATI Mobility Radeon HD Family
ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series Launched, from $99 to $399
Radeon HD takes out hardware site
After a long wait, ATI’s next-gen 3D cards arrive
Yea I know thats a lot and there today has been nothing but links but the new Radeons are very interesting and very important for AMD, so check them out.
AMD Says Quad-Core by Christmas
AMD showed off some of its Quad-Core CPUs, showing single socket and dual-socket configurations. This is the first time that AMD has shown off a computer with 8-cores in it.
The barcelona server chips will hit July or August with the desktop part later this year.
AMD showed off these chips by encoding a 1080p movie in h.264 at near real-time.
The machines were also running with Radeon HD 2900XT cards which will be launching May 14th.
ATI Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 Details
DailyTech has some information on ATI Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 boards. Two Radeon HD 2600 flavors, Pro and XT. Partners will have many variations of the 2600. They will include GDDR4, GDDR3, and DDR2 in 512MB and 256MB. Radeon HD 2400 will have 256MB and 128MB of memory.
The 2600 and 2400 cards will be much cheaper than the 2900 cards and they all will feature DirectX10 support.
Find out more here.
ATI Radeon HD 2900XT and XTX Benchmarks
DailyTech had some time with the two cards and was able to benchmark them against a Geforce 8800GTX. The 2900XTX is really fast but is nothing compared to the 8800GTX, although the 2900XT is faster than the 8800GTS.
Seems like both sections of AMD are having some problems graphics cards and CPU’s.
In Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion:
Radeon HD 2900XTX got 75.1 FPS
Radeon HD 2900XT got 73.4 FPS
Geforce 8800GTX got 98.4 FPS
all of the other data looks very similar but I would suggest checking it out.
Radeon HD 2900XT Benchmarked
DailyTech has some benchmarks of AMD’s upcoming Radeon HD 2900XT.
They ran 3DMark06 and got 11447. I don’t know what CPU they used or anything but you should go there and check it out.
R600 Hits May 14th and now called Radeon HD
AMD has decided to name its upcoming line of graphics cards the X2000 series cards Radeon HD graphics cards.
Also according to the Inquirer AMD will hold some kind of launch party for 200 selected people 3 weeks before it launches on May 14th.
This seems a little early to me and I don’t understand why they didn’t wait at least another week or two to have the party. All of those at the party will need to be hush hush about the product until May 14th but I think that there may be some leakage in the form of rumors.
New Pictures of R600 Graphics Card
HardOCP has some great pictures of the upcoming R600 graphics card. It looks great but the card is still looking too long.
Dramatic AMD Price Cuts
AMD has yet again slashed prices to compete with Intel cutting prices on its entire line of processors. The highest end AM2 processor now tops out at $241. Even the Quad-FX processors have been cut in price the highest end being priced at $799/pair.
On the low end you will be able to pick up a Athlon 64 3200+ for $58 and a Athlon 64 X2 3600+ for $73. This is exactly what AMD needs to do until they can get Barcelona out, just keep working on Barcelona to make it as fast as possible all the while cutting prices to keep up with Intel.
AMD isn’t really hurt by not having the fastest processor. That is not where the mass market is, home users anyway, it is at the lower end where you see the most movement of processors. I think this price drop will help them tremendously. Even though Intel clearly has the best architecture AMD will soon roll out Barcelona, the only problem is it is only a matter of time before Intels next processors come out and blow Barcelona out of the water.
AMD get on the ball, I love your processors but your not quite up to speed with Intel. We all need you for lower prices, competition is great for consumers.
[via TG Daily]
R600XTX Benchmarked
VR-Zone was able to have some alone time with the upcoming Radeon X2900XTX, this thing is fast, with a benchmark in 3DMark06 of 9700 or so, which is about 200 points more than the 8800XTX, maybe thats why Nvidia has decided to create an 8800 Ultra (also here). VR-Zone also has a bunch of new pics of the card up.