September 7, 2004

GeForce 6600 GT Day and Other News - Josh

Today is the day where the wraps were taken off the anticipated GeForce 6600 GT.  This $199 card promises to blow the socks off of the mid-range video card market, and from all indications it has.  In many situations it competes very well with products in the $300 range (GeForce 6800 and Radeon 9800XT), except when AA or high AF is used.  It of course provides much better performance than other products around its price range (X600 XT, 9600XT, 9800 Pro, 5700U, and 5900XT).  This is truly an impressive card for its price, and eventually the regular GeForce 6600 will also be released at the $149 price point (where it should still compete quite nicely with products in that price range).  I didn't have a chance to test out this card, but I was given the PDF with all the information and some NVIDIA generated benchmarks.  Due to several other reviews in the queue, I was unable to write-up anything concrete about this product, so I will summarize my thoughts:

TSMC's 110 nm process is really nothing more than an optical shrink of their 130 nm process, which essentially means that transistor performance should be nearly identical for the two processes, but the 110 nm process is more optimized for size.  That being said, the ability of NVIDIA to clock a 130 million transistor part to 500 MHz without using Low-K bodes well for the future of this process.  We can expect to see higher end parts possibly be transitioned to this process in the future, which would allow for cheaper parts that can still be clocked quite high.  TSMC will continue to improve this process, and I would expect that one day they will include things like Low-K on it as well and make it their performance/mainstream process (much as the 150 nm process was for so long).

The GeForce 6600 GT is clocked at 500 MHz core with GDDR-III running at 500 MHz as well.  The 6600 GT features 8 pixel pipelines and 3 vertex shaders, which puts it about on par with ATI's 9800 series (8 pixel pipes and 4 vertex shaders).  The 6600 also has such niceties as a working video encoder, an improved AA algorithm, as well as AF optimizations.  Currently it only comes in PCI-E, but an AGP version is expected "soon".  Availability is scheduled for later this month.  Overall, it performed as well as the ATI 9800XT in most situations, except at higher resolutions and AA/AF when the 9800XT's 256 bit memory bus really gave it a boost.  Overall this is a very, very attractive card for the mainstream user.  It has shown that it can play many games with high resolutions and AA/AF enabled, and even in the latest games it can play at solid resolutions with AA/AF enabled.  NVIDIA has billed this as the ultimate Doom 3 card, and they might have hit upon something here.  The average user who has a GeForce Ti 4200 or ATI Radeon 8500/9000, and doesn't want to spend a lot of scratch to improve their gameplay performance, will find the GeForce 6600 GT a very provocative product.

Here are a couple of GeForce 6600 GT Previews that I found helpful:

HardOCP

Tech Report

Hot Hardware

Beyond 3D

September 6, 2004

Intel Q&A with George Alfs - Josh

Though I was promising the Athlon 64 3700+ review would be up today, I thought it more appropriate to kick off Intel's Fall IDF with a quick interview with George Alfs.  George has been in PR for Intel since the days of the dinosaur (386, and possibly before), and he was kind enough to take the time to answer a series of questions for me concerning their current and future lineup of products and technologies.  Here is a quick example:

Much has been said about the 90 nm node that the latest Pentium 4’s are produced on, but what is being done behind the scenes to ensure good yields, and how is Intel engineering around the heat and power issues of its latest products?

Alfs: Our 90nm process is mature.   We make a million Pentium 4 processors a month on this process, as well as Dothan-based mobile products.    I see a lot of industry pundits confuse our industry leading process technology with individual product characteristics.   As far as Prescott, we ensured industry support was in place at launch for running millions of transistors at incredibly fast speeds.   We will continue to ramp up our products capabilities, as well as ensure infrastructure is in place to handle those capabilities.

You can read the entire interview here.

September 3, 2004

Sick as a Dog - Josh

Well, once you have a new child in the house, and they attend daycare, the parent's immune system certainly takes a beating from what the kids bring home.  I have been trying to finish up my Athlon 64 3700 review, but it just isn't moving along very well due to the way I am feeling.  I will probably get it up on Sunday, so if you are interested in it, check it out then.

ATI released their new control panel app, and it runs on .Net.  I am unsure how to feel about this, as the CCC (Catalyst Control Center) does look to be a nice application, but it is some serious bloatware!  It takes a 60 MB download to get everything, and it appears that eventually the regular driver and control panel will be phased out.  So those of you with 56K modems who were unhappy about the 25 MB downloads of the current Catalyst driver will be really unhappy trying to download 60 MB!  I didn't mind the old control panel at all, but quite a few new things could have been done with it without having to go to .Net.  I am not a huge fan of .Net yet, as it is another layer of software that I am unwilling to put on top of Windows XP.

I do like the direction ATI is going though, but the tools they are using to get there are a bit suspect.  I guess we shall see what kind of feedback they receive from customers.  If it is negative enough, I imagine ATI will change it as they have been very responsive to suggestions from the Catalyst Crew.  I really like what ATI has done with their drivers, but I am seriously suspicious about a 60 MB download for this feature.

September 2, 2004

Fall is Heating Up - Josh

It looks as if we will start off the Fall season with some interesting releases, some of which are AMD PCI-E, reviews of the GeForce 6600's, ATI's X700 (RV410 based), as well as some other odds and ends.  Closer towards November I would expect to see some new CPU speed grades hit the market from both AMD and Intel, as well as a clarification on where Intel is going with their current products.  On that note, I recently sent off some questions to Intel, so as soon as I get those back I will post them.  Included are questions about the future of the Pentium M and the desktop space, Intel's dual core strategy, as well as several process questions.

We are working on a couple of reviews here, and I will have an Athlon 64 3700+ review up in the next few hours.  Steelpad sent me a sample of their new S&S mousepad, and I have to admit that I am in love with it.  This is by far the best mousepad I have ever used.  Ever.  I used to enjoy Ratpadz, and while the GS was a step in the right direction they wore down rather quickly.  After many days of use and gaming, the S&S shows no signs of wear, and is consistently smooth over the entire pad.  I will reveal a few other findings on this mousepad in the full review, so keep checking back.  D-Link also sent an entire "High Speed Network" to the labs for testing, and it lives up to its billing.  After all of the security problems that Linksys has had recently with their products, D-Link is really trying to take advantage of the situation and appeal to the home user who wants a home network that won't bog down with a lot of traffic.  We have some other odds and ends that we are working on, so September looks to be a busy month around here also.  August turned out to be pretty good, and I was quite pleased by the traffic increase (of course, releasing new articles on a regular basis certainly helps things a lot).  Hopefully September will be even better!

August 30, 2004

AMD Shows Its First Dual Core Chip - Josh

In a surprise move, AMD has shown a HP Proliant server with four dual core Opteron chips running.  This is nothing short of impressive for several reasons:

The first is that the dual core is made on AMD's 90 nm process.  This bodes well for AMD's 90 nm process, as the dual core chip is a very complex piece of technology.  It also features a relatively large die as compared to the standard Athlon 64 and the Intel Prescott.  To have all four dual core Opterons running with the glueless HT connections, and to show up as a 8 processor server, should make many peoples' mouths water.  While AMD did not release the clock speeds of these cores, the very fact that they work as advertised is pretty amazing.

If you remember, AMD only announced that they had done an initial tapeout of the dual core Athlon 64 early this summer.  To have not only taped it out, but to have produced a working sample in less than 3 months time is a very impressive feat, and it bodes well for the health of the dual core product.  The fact that the dual Athlon 64 core products do share the same design as its single core brethren should give a good hint at the reason for the speed of development.  Still, a chip this complex is no walk in the park.  Not only that, but quite a bit of new logic had to be designed to get the two cores to work together, as well as share the same memory controller (though each core has its own separate L1 and L2 caches).  There must have been very few revisions of the design to have already received working silicon, not to mention silicon that can support up to four processors (and 8 cores) working in concert!

AMD plans to release the first dual core Opterons by mid-2005, with dual core desktop parts in the 2nd half of 2005.  Intel plans to release more information on their dual core parts at this Fall's IDF.  I would be very curious if AMD shows up in a nearby hotel to show off the dual core products to "interested media and industry personnel".  They have done this before in the past, and with a product such as this, I would be very surprised if they didn't.  Truth be told, I honestly did not expect to see news of this part running until late November at the earliest.  That AMD has been able to produce working parts at 90 nm is very impressive and surprising.

August 25, 2004

NVIDIA's Chipset Business - Josh

A lot of speculation is going on around NVIDIA's upcoming Athlon 64 chipsets (some are tentatively calling them nForce 4, but that is definitely not certain yet).  Any way that it is sliced, they look to be impressive parts still based on the single chip design.  One thing that I am just not certain about is why NVIDIA has stayed with a single chip Athlon 64 part.  It would seem to make more sense to go with two smaller chips (usually less defects per wafer when using smaller ASIC's), and that would give NV the opportunity to mix and match chips a little more effectively.  VIA has done this with great success so far, especially considering that their Southbridges can be interchanged between Intel and AMD product lines.  NVIDIA is supposed to be releasing at least three new versions (possibly four) of the next nForce product, and it would really seem like good economic sense to create a single Northbridge that handles the AGP/PCI-E, CPU interface, and possibly other functions, while the Southbridges can be very different in terms of functionality.  This would make the die sizes a whole lot smaller, and it would make motherboard trace design a whole lot easier (not to mention cut down on the number of pads each chip has to interface with the motherboard).  Hopefully we can get some answers about the reasons why NVIDIA went with a single chip design.

As for the business itself, NVIDIA is starting to look very good.  It has been whispered that NVIDIA now has around 40% of the Athlon 64 chipset market (with VIA and SiS sharing the rest).  This is a significant percentage more than even during the heyday of the nForce 2 chipset.  At most NVIDIA commanded about 10% of the AMD chipset market at that time, but to take such an early and commanding stake with the Athlon 64 market, NVIDIA is poised to have significant growth and income potential from this product line.  With NVIDIA seemingly on the cusp of unleashing its next series of chipsets supporting PCI-E, it will continue to support the AGP market with the excellent nForce 3 250 parts.  If NVIDIA can hit good price points with these chips, as well as supply excellent speed and features, then it can make a very significant dent in VIA's Athlon 64 marketshare.

I know that many users are anxiously awaiting the release of AMD PCI-E supporting chipsets, and I know that OEM's are also looking forward to this transition (well, at least the marketing people are).  If NVIDIA can get these parts out en-masse before its competitors, and if they can beat them on the feature sets while keeping the pricing competitive, then NVIDIA could take a commanding lead in the Athlon 64 chipset market.  Only time will tell.

Reading of Interest - Josh

Marco at Hot Hardware let me know that they have reviewed the Asus V9999 Gamer Edition GeForce 6800.  Now, this is no regular 6800, and it is quite a bit more than even the Chaintech 6800 overclocked.  This thing has a full 256 MB of GDDR-3, and it uses the same PCB as the much more expensive 6800 Ultra.  These things apparently clock through the roof, and they give the 6800 GT a run for its money.

Neoseeker has the AOpen XC Cube AV Edition, and this looks to be a very quick and focused SFF computer aimed directly at the home theater.  While Shuttle has held the top spot in the SFF market, AOpen has a history of putting out very innovative products that don't always get a lot of attention.  This looks to be the case with this product.

Simon from Overclockersonline sends news that they recently reviewed the PDP PC3200 and PC4000 1 GB dual channel kits.  I have never heard of PDP before, but it is always nice to see new players (or at least new to you) on the scene.  The DIMMS do look quite nice, and apparently they perform well.

Designtechnica takes a look at the Niro 1.1 Pro Home Theater System.  This little number promises surround sound while using only one speaker and one subwoofer.  I had heard of this technology before, but I was not aware that it had already made it to market!  For those looking for a good surround sound system, but do not want lots of speakers and wires running around, this review is a must-read.

PimpRig is one of the first to review the Sapphire X600 Pro VIVO PCI-E card.  While the RV380 chip that makes up the X600 is nothing to write home about, it does produce some decent numbers.  Also, the fact that it has VIVO capabilities raises the bar over other midrange products.  This card will most likely make somebody happy!

That is all for tonight, and if we are lucky, we might see something new come out of here tomorrow!

August 23, 2004

AMD and Strained Silicon - Josh

Late last week it was unofficially released that AMD had integrated strained silicon into their 130 nm and 90 nm Athlon 64 products.  I took this opportunity to go over again what strained silicon entails, how it effects a processor, and what kind of advantages it brings to the table.  In particular, I have gone over how this advancement has affected AMD and their product lineup.  Here is a quote:

            The one silicon strategy that has proven to be cost effective in mass production is strained silicon.  The basic idea behind this is if silicon atoms can be forcibly pushed apart, then electrons flowing between gates will be less impeded.  Less impedance means better flow and better flow means faster moving electrons, less power consumed, and less heat generated.  The problem with this was finding an economical way to stretch out these atoms.

You can read the entire article here.

Reading of Interest and Site News - Josh

Sorry that I didn't get this up sooner, has been somewhat of a busy morning!  If you noticed, the site was hacked into on Saturday by a nice Brazilian group.  They also wreaked havoc on the forums, so that is down at the moment.  Trying to find out how they got in, but it may be through a cgi script.  If that is the case, then I lost Ikonboard.  That really sucks.  Thanks to all the lovely hackers out there, you have made my life somewhat of a living hell for the past year and a half.  For all the hacker creed about not hurting the individual who works hard and doesn't hurt anybody else, they certainly have done a number on me, my site, and my time.  I am not a programmer, and web development is something that comes very hard for me, so these little intrusions that destroy parts of my site are no laughing matter for me, and it takes many hours of my time to get it back up and running.  So, thanks once again guys!

Gruntville takes a look at the new Crucial branded Ballistix PC4000 DDR memory.  While the timings are not terribly impressive at PC3200 speeds, the fact that it can do PC4000 stable at only slightly higher settings is the key.

Dave B. is at it again at Beyond 3D as he takes a good look at the GeForce 6800 GT PCI-E edition.  This product actually has the HSI bridge chip on the GPU packaging, so board partners at NVIDIA don't have to make extra space on the PCB to get the NV40 chip to work with PCI-E.

Carl at Hardcoreware let me know that they put up a comparo of three different Socket 754 motherboards that would be ideal for the K8 based Sempron.  All of the boards in the review are based on the K8T800 chipset from VIA.

Abit, in yet another move to keep customers in their corner, have upgraded their eRMA service to ensure fast RMA authorizations are given to the paying customers.  Abit has done a lot in the past two years to clean up their image, and their products really have come around.  I don't hear nearly as many stories as I used to about bad Abit boards!

Solomon from 3D Chipset let me know that they have a copy of the latest NVIDIA Forceware 66.00 drivers at their site, ready for download.  These guys do a great job in repackaging and altering drivers so that they are smaller and easier to use, not to mention they excel at getting the latest leaked drivers!

Finally, Ronald from 3D Center has let me know that they put up the first of a three part series of articles surrounding the NV40's architecture.  These guys definitely know what they are talking about, so it is more than worth your time to take a look what they have to say.

August 19, 2004

Grado Labs SR-125 Review - Josh

Most computer users have never heard of Grado, but if you are an audiophile it is more than likely that you have.  Originally Grado was made famous by the phonograph cartridges, but once the era of tapes and CD's hit, Grado had to make a change to survive.  Headphones turned out to be the product that helped Grado to continue growing, and their headphones have made quite an impact in the audio market.  One area where Grado has rarely been featured is in computer and multimedia use, and this is an area where they really should focus on!  I took the SR-125's for an extended spin, and I am very happy with what I have found.  Here is a quote:

            Anyone who has more than a passing interest in high end audio products has probably heard of Grado.  Grado is a very small company based out of Brooklyn, NY that caters to the audiophile market, but their products are not all just aimed at the high end.  The area where Grado is most well known today is that of high quality headphones, or in audiophile terms, cans.  Grado’s designs are like nothing I had ever seen before, and when I first saw them I was not impressed by the physical appearance.  I still had a lot to learn at that time.

You can read the entire article here.

August 17, 2004

AMD Hits 90 nm Milestone - Josh

Today AMD announced that they are completing revenue shipments of their introductory 90 nm parts.  The first 90 nm chips off the line are all Mobile Athlon 64's, and next month AMD expects to introduce desktop chips based on the 90 nm parts.  AMD did not do a significant redesign for their 90 nm product, but it does feature some improvements over the 130 nm Athlon 64's.  By not radically redesigning the Athlon 64 AMD says it has been able to work around the transistor leakage problem that Intel has run into.  The first 90 nm desktop products will be aimed at the midrange Athlon 64 speeds, as AMD says it can make more money by keeping the speed bins down and producing more Athlon 64's per wafer over the 130 nm process.  Eventually when things are more ironed out, AMD will be increasing the speed of the Athlon 64's.  Due to Intel's inability to deliver 3.6 GHz parts, AMD feels no pressure to increase the clockspeed of current Athlon 64's to any great degree.  Their FX-53 part still is the fastest all around processor for the X86 world, and the price tag reflects that!

AMD was very smart in its transition to 90 nm.  While Intel probably has the more advanced process, they also introduced a much larger chip than its previous model, and they also designed it to run at very high clockspeeds.  This combination has led to many problems for Intel getting out significant quantities of the higher end Prescott based parts.  The faster a design (and transistor) is pushed, the more leakage occurs.  To get overcome the leakage, more power has to be applied, and of course more heat is produced.  By staying with the basic Athlon 64 design (and just tweaking and optimizing it), AMD hasn't tried to push the MHz, so it has in fact probably lowered the power requirements for the 90 nm parts (as evidenced by the low power Mobile Athlon 64's that are the first 90 nm product).  Also, AMD has not notified any of its motherboard or cooling partners about any kind of increase in power or cooling requirements.  This is very good news for AMD and users alike hoping to either buy a new 90 nm part, or upgrade to one.

AMD continues to work on their 90 nm process, and I would imagine that in 6 months they will have really improved the yields and speed bins of the Athlon 64 products, and we should see some improvements in clockspeeds.  This will be a good time, because more than likely Intel will be releasing faster Prescotts at that point (at least 3.8 GHz).  The competition that AMD has provided Intel as of late has been tremendous, and the average user is the primary beneficiary of such competition.  We have seen a steady downhill march of prices on both AMD and Intel processors, and now there are a lot of very fast parts for the $300 and below market.  In an upcoming article I will be taking a look at what is turning into a great midrange system, the i875/Northwood 3.4 GHz combination.

Reviews and Articles of Interest - Josh

MS takes a second look at the LGA 775 architecture from Intel.  Instead of just relying on some synthetic memory benchmarks, this time he takes a look at some real world type applications and games to see how the new architecture performs.  Enlightening reading.

HardOCP takes a look at the Abit A8V Pro, the K8T800 Pro Socket 939 product.  Abit has been staying with VIA since the great NVIDIA fallout of a couple years ago, and they have made some very strong products around the VIA platform.  As a side, Abit and NVIDIA have patched things up, and we can expect another Abit/NVIDIA product to see the light of day soon.

Extreme Overclocking reviews the new Crucial Ballistix 1 GB PC4000 memory kit.  Micron has released a new batch of chips to the market that promise not only high clockspeeds, but low memory timings across the board.

Finally Hardware Avenue has a review of the Gigabyte GA-X800 XT PE.  This is the top of the line ATI offering from Gigabyte, though they are rare as hen's teeth these days.  Apparently much of the stock of XT PE parts have been going directly to OEM's and not the retail market.

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