Category: AMD
More R600 Pics Found
ZDNet has a few photos up of the R600. The thing is the biggest graphics card I’ve ever seen. You can check out the pictures here.
AMD Releases their first Integrated Graphics Chipset
AMD has released the RS690 chipset this chipset is ready to become the next top dog in AMD chipsets. The video processor on it is ready for Aero Glass features in Vista and is no slouch against its competition.
This is the whole reason AMD bought ATI, they wanted a piece of the integrated graphics business. Mostly so they could sell a total package to OEM’s. This is one big step in the right direction and I think that AMD could give Intel an even better run for their money as soon as they get Barcelona out.
More about the RS690 here.
R600 Delayed till 2Q
ATI’s upcoming R600 based card the X2900 has been delayed untill the second quarter according to Extremetech’s Mark Hachmen. The card is delayed due to problems in the chip itself, he did not mention exactly what the problem was but would mean that they may need to remake the chips. May be a modification due to low yields or just a problem in the chips design itself, that is unconfirmed however.
This is bad news for ATI and AMD though because this will give Nvidia a big lead in the race for the DX10 king. This is a similar lead to what was given to Nvidia after Nvidia’s release of the 7800GTX. Let’s hope that ATI will get things straightend out for all us consumers, we need competition so that those $550 8800GTX cards will get a price drop.
AMD Releases ATI Catalyst 7.2
Like I mentioned yesterday, Nvidia has released their second Vista driver and ATI released their yesterday aswell. The driver is similar to the Nvidia one because it does not support all of the features of the cards that it says it supports (Radeon 9500 and later, mobility radeon 9550 and later). There is no support for Radeon X1950XTX cards and no support for Vivo and All-in-Wonder functionality. The drivers seem to be significantly faster than previous drivers.
AMD ATI Radeon users can download the new Catalyst 7.2 for Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP x64, Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista x64
AMD Releases 3GHz CPU [update]
UPDATE: Bit-tech.net has a review with a bunch of benchmarks up for the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ you can read it here.
AMD released a new flagship Athlon 64 X2 6000+ which is being sold in bulk for $464. The new chip is the fastest processor that AMD has released.
This is the last processor that AMD plans to release under its 90nm Windsor core. AMD will be switching to 65nm for its upcoming processors.
Although this processor is a bit late, it looks like AMD may be back on track, it is about up to speed with Intels processors of the same price. With this AMD may be able to come a little bit closer when they release the 65nm versions.
AMD Barcelona will have new power features
AMD’s upcoming Barcelona processors will feature an enhanced PowerNow feature. Each of the four cores on this chip will be capable of running at completely different clock speeds depending on load. AMD claims this will cut another 10Watts per chip, even though they are adding an additional 2 cores.
This is pretty amazing and will no doubt put AMD back in the game when it comes to raw speed and power efficiency against Intel.
Lower Prices for AMD chips today
AMD should be rolling out price cuts for its processors today after finally getting all the kinks out of its 65nm chips. The company will be cutting up to 35 percent on some high end chips.
The price cut is primarily due to Intels price cuts in the recent months. AMD and Intel have been in a pricing war for the past year or so now and have been undercutting each other left and right. AMD having disapointing 4th quarter results in the server market I’m sure they are glad that they got the 65nm manufacturing process going now. The 65nm process allows them to make more chips per wafer which allows them to produce more then previous 90nm process.
Intel however has been making 65nm chips for over a year now and may decide to either cut prices too or decide to leave them as they are seeing as they have much faster processors then AMD does right now.
AMD’s new price list can be found on their website here and is listed as price for OEM’s in 1,000 chip quantities.
ATI R600 12.4″ and 9.5″ Long!
This has got to be one of the biggest graphics cards I’ve ever seen, Its huge. The R600 sizing up at 12.4″ is the OEM version, the retail version is 9.5″ long. Why the difference? I don’t really know, it seems odd that the card will have two versions that are so different in size yet seem to be the same except for a difference in power consumption.
Check out the story as told by X-Bit Labs
Quad-Core Opteron Specs
DailyTech has a post up that talks about the Quad-Core Opterons, they have a spec sheet and all. The earliest of them are going to start production in June of this year, they will begin selling them in the middle of this year aswell. The desktop consumer level on socket AM2 will be under production in Q4 of this year and the launch is to be determined.
Check out the whole article here at DailyTech.
AMD has high hopes for Quad-Core design
“We expect across a wide variety of workloads for Barcelona to outperform Clovertown by 40 percent,” AMD’s corporate vice president for server and workstation products, Randy Allen.
The quad-core processor will be built with 65nm manufacturing process. The new chip is said to be built with the same thermal and electrical envelope as existing dual core opterons. The quad core chips with feature some L3 cache which most of the AMD chips do not have. The total will be 2MB for the L3 cache. The chip will also feature AMD virtualization technology.
The chip will fit into socket F systems and will only require a bios update.
If what AMD says is true then Intel will mean some trouble for Intel. I’m really excited about this, the new chips should debut in the middle of this year. What’s great about this is that the consumers will get better prices after some price drops because Intel and AMD are only really competing on the amount of computing power you get per $1
AMD Announces TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner
AMD announced a cable card capable TV tuner. This is big because this means that now, people can get their nice digital cable TV through their computer. I’m personally excited about this because I have a computer in my living room and now I plan to buy this, with a copy of Vista, and a Media Center Remote control. Anyway you can check out more about the device here.