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September 18, 2007 Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P Review - Josh After an extended testing period, I have finally been able to post my review of the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P motherboard. This Intel P35 board is set towards the midrange-enthusiast market with an average price of around $172. While it lacks some of the higher end features of its $200+ stablemates, it is a really impressive board with quick performance and excellent overclocking potential. Here is a quick quote:
You can read the entire article here. September 13, 2007 Supertalent and "Sexy" - Josh Two words that would rarely come together, but somehow Joe James of Supertalent fame was able to pull it off. No pun intended. Joe introduced the latest Project X DDR-3 DIMMS which feature a new and improved heatspreader design. Two models will be making their way to retail shelves soon, coming in DDR-3 1800 and 1600 flavors with very tight timings. Supertalent is certainly on the cutting edge of DDR-3 development, and they have been about a month ahead of even their fastest competitors in getting products out. DDR-3 is still very expensive as compared to the fastest DDR-2 DIMMS, but expect to see prices start to drop dramatically around the end of the year. Supertalent is also releasing a new series of MP3/4 players that have improved screens and greater functionality. The top end Vidego 28 features a color touchscreen and capacities up to 4GB. This model is not available yet, but should be within the next month. The next one down is the Vidego 24T which also features a touchscreen, but with a smaller screen and lower capacities. The final new member is the Vidego 24 which has no touchscreen capabilities and a maximum storage space of 1 GB. These all can play .avi video back, as well as FM tuning, voice recording, and of course MP3 playback. I will have the Vidego 24 in for testing very soon, and I will let you know how well it does. I have heard complaints of the headphone jack on earlier models going bad very quickly, so I will pay close attention to the construction of this particular player. Auzentech Sells out of X-Prelude The Auzentech online store has announced that they have exhausted their stocks of X-Prelude cards. These cards are still available from Newegg, but the price has been increased from the MSRP $199.99 that Auzentech was selling them for. The second production run for this card should start in the middle of this month, which means the Auzentech store will probably not have new product until the beginning of October. I am continuing to test the X-Prelude, and it continues to amaze. I was finally able to plug my Grados into the front panel ports, and was greeted with absolutely clean and refreshing sound. This card can really push my Grado SR-125s, even without an amplifier. Details in even MP3s that were once overlooked are now popping to the fore. Truly amazing audio. September 5, 2007 Auzentech X-Prelude First Impressions - Josh I must admit that I have been anxiously awaiting this card for some time. Auzentech originally estimated that they would have the card out by a April/May timeframe, then it got delayed a few times for reasons that nobody is really talking about. Finally, last week, the first shipment of cards hit the States and Auzentech shipped out review samples and retail products to Newegg. Just to let you know, last week the retail price of the card was $199.99, but now it has jumped up $30 due to demand. There were two primary reasons why I was so excited about this card. The first is that I have never had the chance to try an X-Fi based product, and the second is that Auzentech makes some very impressive soundcard designs that are exceptionally clean. Another aspect that did appeal to me was that Auzentech would use one of the latest driver builds from Creative for the introduction of this product. The drivers that came on the CD are dated August 13, 2007. Creative will still be doing the majority of the driver work for Auzentech to support this product, so expect to see updates on the same schedule as what Creative's cards do (which apparently is not so often). Initial impressions of the sound quality are high. All of the chips used are very high quality parts, and the S/N ratio is around an honest 120 dB. Which really makes it one of the highest on the market. Clean is a good word to describe the output. Not only that, but the older X-Mystique had some really hot analog ports which could cause some nasty crackle and clipping if the user didn't turn down some of the levels manually. This does not seem to be a problem with the X-Prelude. Currently there is no support for Dolby Digital encoding or DTS encoding. These are expected Q4-07 and Q1-08 respectively. The best we can expect is pass-through or PCM playback. In 2 channel mode the card can handle up to 24 bit/192 KHz, but in 5.1 channel mode we are limited to 24 bit/96 KHz. This really should not cause too many problems for users, mainly because most 5.1 content is already limited to 96 KHz at the most. In gaming so far I have noticed very few issues. In Quake 4 with EAX HD enabled I do hear some crackle now and then, but nothing significant or annoying. In Battlefield 2 with the X-Fi features fully enabled, the audio is very clean and smooth with no issues that I was able to hear. Other games such as World of Warcraft show some significant improvement in overall ambience and sound quality when the highest audio settings are enabled with the card. In fact, it is a significant improvement from the previous X-Mystique that I had been using (and required to pull the audio properties down a notch to get it to work properly). The full review is coming very shortly. August 29, 2007 The Joy of AMD 690G - Josh About two months ago AMD sent me competing setups of CPUs and integrated motherboards. The AMD X2 5600+ was paired with an Asus 690G motherboard, and for comparison they provided the Core 2 Duo 6420 and a G965 based Asus board. At the time the combinations were nearly identical in price. At this time, AMD has about a $60 advantage in overall cost. When considering that both processors perform about the same, and featured nearly identical power draw for the system as a whole, AMD still can be shown as an incredibly competitive entity in the X86 market. The 690G has really caught my attention and has honestly made me think twice about how good an integrated solution can be. Based on the X700 chip technology, the 690G features 4 SM 2.0 shader pipelines and 1 vertex shader. It also features the entire Avivo suite of acceleration features. A recent driver update has uncovered the ability to perform Avivo functionality on 1080p content, as long as a 2.4 GHz or above processor is used. Frankly, I can't think of a better basis for a HTPC machine than this chipset. Many other 690G based boards feature native HDMI output, such as the Biostar TA690G AM2. Combine these boards with a (relatively) inexpensive Blu-Ray or Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, and high definition content is very easily attained for a very low price. Because the board is integrated, and the motherboard solutions are passively cooled, the only thing making noise is the power supply and CPU fan. Unless either of those parts make a terrible amount of noise, the HTPC based on the 690G should be nearly silent. When it comes to gaming the 690G handles pretty much everything. The only current game that does not play with the 690G is BioShock, which requires SM 3.0 capable hardware. The 690G is a very nice chip for casual gaming, and the image quality is definitely well above average when considering integrated solutions. When it comes to compatibility and image quality, the 690G overshadows the G965 and G33 chips from Intel. NVIDIA is very comparable when it comes to quality and compatibility, but the 690G just has a little bit more oomph than those solutions and provides a much smoother experience at playable resolutions. 1024x768 is about the most you can expect out of this chip with most games, and the very latest applications will require 800 x 600 with fewer quality features enabled. Still, for those not wishing to go hardcore into gaming, and just stay with apps like World of Warcraft, then the 690G is a very impressive product. AMD/ATI sure hit this one out of the park when considering the marketplace it is aimed at. I will attempt to get the full article showing all of the results, as well as go into the tech behind the 690G in a bit more depth, as soon as I possibly can. It is first on my list, but so far life hasn't been terribly kind as of late when it comes to sitting down and banging out a comprehensive article. Still, if you are looking to make an inexpensive computer that is very capable, the 690G and X2 processor combination is something that shouldn't be dismissed. High Definition playback support with the latest firmware and drivers should certainly sell a few more boards here and there. Auzentech X-Prelude On the Way - Josh I was just informed that Auzentech finally has the X-Prelude in the US, and they are shipping boards to reviewers as we speak. Not only that, but the first batch is going exclusively to Newegg and is being shipped to them via next day air (or perhaps they are just driving the product there). Anyway, by the end of this week Newegg should have the X-Prelude in stock! Is SuperTalent the New Corsiar? - Josh Looking at the way memory has been going for the past several weeks, this thought slowly occured to me. Corsair used to be on the cutting edge of memory development. If a new product was released that was low latency and could overclock, it was usually Corsair. For many years I had a very personal relationship with Corsair, and I featured their products in most of my reviews. As time went on, Corsair became bigger. As the company went in more of a corporate direction, I was cut off rather abruptly from their parts. Yes, I was a little unhappy about it at the time, but I understand where they were coming from as times are always tough in the memory industry and my traffic was not up to the level they wanted. That was one of the first indications that Corsair had gone from an very enthusiast based company to a more traditional corporate environment. SuperTalent has been around for over 20 years now, but their primary focus had always been OEM type sales. Retail was something they had never dipped into, and catering to enthusiasts was something that had not occurred to many in the company. When SuperTalent hired Joe James, he made a big push to make SuperTalent a common name in the retail environment, and worked very hard to push their product development into higher speed and lower latency memory. Their first really big success story was the excellent T800UX2GC4 DIMMS. These were some of the first DDR2-800 DIMMS that featured 4:4:3:8 latencies, and could also overclock quite nicely. SuperTalent is now focusing on DDR3 production and development at this time. Currently they are shipping their low latency DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1866 modules, and are one of the few to do so. Corsair just recently released their low latency DDR3-1600 DIMMS and have announced their DDR3-1800 modules, but they have not gone faster as of yet. Neither of those products are available at retail yet. When looking at product placement and time, it seems SuperTalent is about a month and a half ahead of nearly everyone else (other than Patriot who has some competing products but at slightly higher price ranges). Unfortunately for me, I am still really fond of DDR2 and I feel the tech still has a lot of legs. Not only that, but we have yet to see how the Phenom cores perform, and if they are as good as rumor has it, we could see a renewed interest in DDR2 development. I for one can foresee the demand for 2 x 2 GB DDR2-1066 modules running at CAS 4 latency. Hopefully memory manufacturers can fulfill that demand in a timely manner. So it is interesting to see that as Corsair goes more corporate, has lengthened out their development time, and is not as enthusiast oriented as they once were, SuperTalent has gone the other way. Here was a very corporate environment that focused on traditional OEM sales without an enthusiast base whatsoever, and in very short order has released some very impressive products that have wowed the enthusiast community. Their latest DDR3 offerings have further cemented their reputation for delivering high performance memory in short order. Hopefully Corsair will go back to its roots and continue their tradition of being an enthusiast run company with a focus on cutting edge products. Getting big can be a blessing, but it also means there is more paperwork, more overhead, and more people getting their fingers in the pot. None of these are positives when it comes to making truly enthusiast based products and bringing them to market in a timely fashion. August 15, 2007 Sick for Weeks Sorry for the lack of updates on the site! My family and I are finally recovering from a nasty bug that we picked up in July. I honestly haven’t been that sick in ages! Anyway, we are on the mend and I have plenty of news for those interested. Auzentech X-Prelude Good news on the Auzentech front! Apparently this week we should see the first samples of the X-Prelude hit the streets, with Newegg being the first distributor to get their hands on it. Auzentech is also distributing quite a few samples to interested parties, so expect reviews within the next two weeks. As you may or may not remember, the X-Prelude is the first non-Creative branded product to use the X-Fi chip. Auzentech looks to have done a very nice job with the design, and the output circuitry is almost second to none. Hopefully the analog outputs will not be as hot as those on the X-Meridian (a little too much power there which caused clipping and other distortions if volume levels weren’t adjusted correctly. Drivers for the X-Prelude will still be primarily developed by Creative, so those hoping that Auzentech will be supplying those from scratch will be disappointed. Auzentech will probably do the “packaging” of the drivers, but Creative is keeping close watch on their source code. The X-Fi chip has a lot of DSP power behind it, but currently it does not support Dolby Digital and DTS encoding (like the X-Meridian does). Support for that technology will be integrated into the product sometime in Q4 this year. AMD @ 3.2GHz I was sorta right when I said that AMD would be releasing faster X2s. Instead of being the 65 nm part though, the old 90 nm Windsor based Athlon X2 is heading to 3.2 GHz. AMD already started selling the Opterons at that speed, but later this month we are expecting to see the Athlon X2 6400+ which is clocked at the same 3.2 GHz. AMD’s continuous process improvements seemed to have paid off, as the 3.2 GHz part is still within the same power range as the older 3 GHz X2 6000+. It will come in a special black box and be priced below $250. AMD Scores at Apple While the graphics portion of AMD has been making news as of late for all the wrong reasons, they do have one positive piece that came up recently. The Radeon 2400 and 2600 series of cards were picked up by Apple in the latest iMacs. While this is good news for AMD, the bad news is that they were dropped from the Macbook lineup. I’m not entirely sure how iMacs sell compared to the Macbooks, but I am assuming that it is an overall net loss for AMD. Penryn Intel recently released a performance preview for their upcoming Penryn based Core 2 processors. These 45 nm based products build upon the outstanding performance of the current Core 2 Duo parts. We will not see the first examples until late this year, but Intel looks to aggressively ramp production. AMD will have a pretty small window of opportunity to take back some marketshare, as well as keep their prices at a higher level to help ASPs. Penryn is a pretty major refresh of the Core 2 architecture, as it improves per MHz performance, and adds SSE4 to the mix. Initial offerings are expected to clock upwards of 3.33 GHz for the extreme versions, and the TDP of these parts will all be around 80 to 120 watts (depending on the amount of cores and overall clockspeed). It is good to see that Intel really is back on track and will continue with excellent parts. Once these hit the street, then we will start to look forward to Nehalem, which is a brand new architecture which will utilize many of the same features as the Athlon 64 (namely CSI interconnects and integrated memory controller). July 23, 2007 The Graphics Crystal Ball - Josh It has been a while since I last put on the speculation hat, so I figured it was time. With the release of the HD 2400/2600 cards, we are now in the doldrums of 3D graphics releases. I have been keeping my ear to the ground to hopefully catch a few tidbits of information, but right now things are amazingly quiet. On the AMD/ATI side the next big announcement will be the 65 nm shrink of the R600. Initially many were expecting this part to be released around the end of August, but the seeming lack of reliable leaks and sightings has led me to believe that we might not see that particular product anytime soon. Perhaps end of September, early October at the earliest. Seeing that we are very close to August as it is, I really doubt that the 65 nm R6x0 is close to being ready. But what can we expect from this new high end chip from AMD? The most obvious answer will be cooler and more power efficient. AMD chose a specialized 80 nm product from TSMC, and it has been shown to be fast but pretty leaky. The 65 nm process that AMD is currently using for their 2400/2600 products is far less leaky, and with better overall transistor switching performance. It would not be surprising to see 850 MHz+ clock speeds from the upcoming high end part. In terms of architectural improvements... AMD will include the full UVD functionality with this next product. This apparently takes up a few transistors, and it was left out of the original R600. This obviously is not a shocking revelation. But what about other features? Will they include multi-sample resolve in the RBEs (render back ends)? I highly doubt it. What I would expect is that they further optimize the necessary read/writes from RBEs to shaders to improve multi-sampling performance. I do not think they will be able to match the performance of that fixed function hardware, but they will improve it. I think that AMD will keep about the same ratio of shaders, tex units, and RBEs for the time being. Honestly I doubt they will increase the shader count by any great degree, if at all. I believe that most of the hardware that is in the current R600 is not utilized as well as it could be. Most of those problems rely on how efficient the compiler is in the driver. I do firmly believe that AMD will improve on its command processor and ultra threaded dispatch processor to improve the overall efficiency of the chip. Oh, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to put another RBE and Tex unit into the mix, but that could very well upset the orthogonality of the setup. Perhaps if AMD decided to cut down the number of shaders in each of their 4 SIMD units and reallocate those extra units to a 5th SIMD, then we could add another RBE and Tex unit without upsetting the boat. That means that each SIMD would contain 64 stream units instead of 80. This would help a lot in terms of pixel and texel fillrate, improve multi-sampling performance, and actually make the GPU a bit more fine grained in terms of internal threading. Considering how AMD has designed the RV610 and RV630 parts, perhaps these units are more flexible in how they interact with each other than I am assuming? For example the RV630 has three SIMD units featuring a total of 120 stream processors, two tex units, and one RBE. On the NVIDIA side, things are a bit spread out. We will not be seeing the updated high end products until November at the earliest. These will be 65 nm based and I would guess that we would see much the same differentiation as we did with last year's G80 release. We will have a complete chip running at higher speeds be the top end, while a cut down chip at lower speeds will be less expensive and not quite as fast. So basically the 8800 GTX/GTS again, but with a lot more power. We will likely see an increase in stream processor units, but I think we will see the numbers of ROPs and Tex units stay pretty static. Core clock speed will increase to around 700 MHz to 800 MHz, and stream processor speeds will reach up to 2 GHz. The combination of faster speeds and second generation stream processors from NVIDIA will likely result in yet another monster card from NVIDIA. I am unsure what NVIDIA's plans are for memory bus widths, but I think it more than likely that they will keep with the 320/384 bit busses we see on the GTS/GTX parts of today. Combined with GDDR-4, it will keep the chips well fed with data. As we all know, while the HD 2900 XT features a 512 bit bus and 105 GB/sec of bandwidth, it really does not help the overall performance of the card. When it comes to 65 nm refreshes of NVIDIA's midrange and budget products, I am not entirely sure what Big Green could be doing. If we go by what the company has been saying in their conference calls, we see that they refresh the high end every 12 months in late Fall/early Winter, and then refresh the budget/midrange products the following Spring. So, will NVIDIA follow that particular pattern this year? I'm really on the fence with this one. NVIDIA is a pretty nimble company, and they have consistently moved with the ebb and flow of the fabrication industry. 65nm production is running full bore at TSMC and the results are pretty spectacular in terms of power and switching performance. Will NVIDIA wait until next Spring to release a 65 nm refresh? Will they in fact use the 55 nm line for those parts? Or will they buck their own schedule and attempt a 65 nm refresh of the budget/midrange parts this fall alongside their high end refresh? While the 8600 and 8500 series of cards are not dogs, they are not as impressive as previous midrange and budget products (such as the very successful 7600 series, as well as the 7900 series after they dropped in price with more budget oriented SKUs). It really is hard to say, as it could easily go either way depending on the long term planning of the folks at NVIDIA. Then again, considering how the current 65 nm AMD parts compete with the 80 nm NVIDIA parts, perhaps NV does not feel as much pressure to make the shrink any sooner than necessary.
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