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June 27, 2005 FX-57 and a Relaxing Weekend - Josh AMD finally released the fabled FX-57, which is based on the San Diego core, and is clocked at a staggering 2.8 GHz. While this is still a single core product, it has tremendous performance across a large series of applications. Gaming is definitely its forte, but it can also handle a lot of other applications quite well. It of course does not shine like the X2-4800 in multi-threaded applications, but its 400 MHz clockspeed advantage over that part certainly helps it overall, and in some mutli-threaded apps it almost catches up. This is not a cheap product, so for those without big bills in their pockets, they need to look elsewhere. AMD has been making a habit of selling their top end products at $800+. It also seems that the FX-55 will continue to be on sale for a while yet, because AMD does not plan to have another single core Athlon 64 mainstream product ever again (as with the FX-53 turning into the Athlon 64 4000+). So, with the FX-55 staying around $800, and the X2 4800 and FX-57 being over $1000, AMD is certainly trying to push their ASP's well above $100! It is actually pretty amazing to see AMD's products getting close to 3 GHz, as they absolutely destroy the top end single core Pentium products. I had a friend at Intel who basically said, "If AMD hits 3 GHz, we have nothing that can compete with it in single core form." Now we see why Intel is really pushing the dual core products, especially the 820D (their $280 low end P4 dual core). The fastest that a current generation P4 will ever achieve is 3.8 GHz, and with the fastest Athlon FX running at 2.8 GHz... makes you wonder if AMD will actually release a FX-59 at 3 GHz, or if they will simply have the FX-59 be a dual core processor at 2.6 GHz (which I find more likely). I think 3 GHz would be a tough nut for AMD to crack reliably, but dual cores at 2.6 GHz certainly seems much more feasible. It also keeps their ASP's high (since the next FX would be dual core at 2.8 GHz and the Athlon X2 5000+ would be 2.6 GHz with 512K L2 each core, and the X2 5200+ would be 2.6 GHz with 1 MB L2 each core. Seems pretty logical to me! Here are a few reviews so far: This weekend I was able to make it up to my hometown, Thermopolis, WY. It was a very nice weekend, the weather was nice, and I was able to get away from the ringing phone. My son Tai had a great time there, but unfortunately we didn't have time to visit the hot springs there and swim around. Maybe next time! I am continuing to work hard on the site, and we should have at least two articles up this week plus daily blurbs and news items. So far traffic for June has been great, and it has far exceeded anything I have done here for years. Hopefully we can keep it up! June 24, 2005 What a Week! - Josh It seems the past two weeks have been nothing but nonstop writing for me, but it is good to get in a groove again. The 7800 GTX certainly looks to be a great card, but I honestly wonder if the R520 might not show it up a bit (when it gets released that is). I listened to the ATI conference call and I gleaned some good info. The guys are claiming to have solved all their issues with the R520, and are very comfortable where they are at with it. Apparently TSMC is showing that there is limited 90 nm production going on with this part, so while it will be launched in July, I seriously wonder when it will actually be available. R520 silicon has been back for quite some time now (first silicon was delivered in December 2004), but apparently ramping this part up has been a real issue. I do believe that they are past all of the big problems, but again, this could be a very hard part to fabricate and meet yield and speed bins. Apparently work is going on with the midrange and low end versions of this product, and we can expect to see these in the Fall. One thing that is a big hit to ATI is the Fall/back to school OEM cycle. In the conference call I thought I heard them basically say that they lost all of the high end machine bids, with the exception of one OEM (they didn't name it). So, it looks like for this upcoming sales cycle that the 7800 GTX will be included in all top end SKU's. This is a huge win for NVIDIA, as the X800/X850 products have held that top spot for over a year in many machines. While end users can complain that the X8x0 series hadn't been widely available in retail until 2005, OEM's have had thousands upon thousands delivered to them, and it was a very successful part for ATI. NVIDIA of course concentrated on retail with their 6800 Ultras, as well as a couple of major OEM's picking them up for top level products. Still, ATI held a firm advantage in OEM wins with their top cards. If you want some proof to this, look at Dell's PC offerings. The top models feature the X850, and the first NVIDIA offering is the made for OEM 6800 GTO (12 pipelines, 350 MHz core). This will change in the fall, and the 7800 GTX will be the top choice for many OEM's. Other than the delay in the R520, things do appear to be going well for ATI. They are achieving record sales in their chipset department, but due to the slim margins on those products it really affected the bottom line. Handhelds were also very good for ATI, but again margins are incredibly slim for those types of products. So, while ATI had good revenue from sales, their overall profit margins fell fairly significantly. With the typical softness at this time of year, and the changeover in desktop SKU's giving the advantage to NVIDIA, this quarter was overall not what they wanted. Still, missing a product cycle for ATI is not nearly as bad as it could have been. The X800/X850 series are still very competitive, and I imagine we will start to see the price on these top end ATI offerings erode a bit with the competition from NVIDIA. That is good for the consumer, as these are still very good cards. I still have Scott's case review waiting to finish editing, and I am also itching to finish a speaker and headphone review. I have strayed away from audio for too long, and I really want to get a couple of good articles out. Just awfully hard to make time to sit down and really listen and test these systems with everything else going on. I did find a couple of really good reviews floating around that have nothing to do with the 7800 GTX, so I thought I would share them. Anand takes a really good look at the PS3 and X-Box 360, and he was able to glean quite a bit of good information. While the RSX is based on the G70 (ok, so he did kinda mention the 7800 GTX...), the underlying Cell processor makes it a very fascinating system. All of the other bells and whistles certainly make it stand out as well. Microsoft is taking a bit different approach with their ATI based Xenos GPU tech, and the overall system is not as impressive in terms of features as the PS3, but it should be a lot more affordable and it will be out much sooner. MS has taken his usual sweet time in getting out his Pentium 840 Extreme Edition and 840 D reviews, but they are always well worth it. He gives an excellent discussion on thread level parallelism. Always a good read. HardOCP takes $1,500 and spends it most wisely (in their opinion). Always interesting to see what is available, and for how much. For the first time builder, this is a very good guide (and for those who have built in the past, it might freshen up some of your current ideas). Chris Tom takes the Athlon 4800+ up and over 3 GHz. This is just damn impressive. Dual cores running above 3 GHz. Ouch. That is about all I have time for today. If I don't get anything posted this afternoon, then have a good weekend! June 22, 2005 GeForce 7800 GTX Preview - Josh Last night NVIDIA held their GeForce LAN 2.0 and launch party for the GeForce 7800 GTX. This next generation part is comprised of 302 million transistors and is produced on TSMC's 110 nm process. While the 430 MHz core clock does not exactly scream "next generation", the performance of this part far exceeds anything else offered as of today. Only one SKU is announced today, but in the coming months I would expect to see other G70 based parts be introduced. Here is a direct quote from the preview:
You can read the entire preview here. Other 7800 Previews - Josh After browsing through a few of the other notable previews, I think we are seeing some very impressive results with the 7800 GTX. In some cases it matches the 6800 Ultra SLI, but those are mainly applications which are more shader bound. Again, the 7800 GTX only features 16 ROPS, which is the same number as the 6800 GT/Ultra series of cards. So in pure pixel fillrate numbers, the 7800 GTX is only slightly faster than the 6800 Ultra. Once we start going into shading and multi-texturing operations, the 7800 GTX really takes off. Something also to note is the multisampling functionality is essentially the same as the previous generation. Each ROP can perform two samples per cycle, with a maximum of 4 samples. So, while the AA unit has received some upgrades in terms of usable algorithms and performance, they are not dramatically changed from previous tech. I of course am quite disappointed that I was not able to receive hardware for this release, but we do the best we can. Here is a list of some other previews: BFG 7800 GTX OC BFG has announced their enthusiast level product, the 7800 GTX OC. This is overclocked out of the box to a pretty impressive 460 MHz core (vs. 430 MHz standard) with a memory speed of 650 MHz (1300 MHz effective). This should give a very healthy boost in performance over the standard 7800 GTX, and the best news is that it is available now from a variety of online retailers! I am still amazed by the whole launch/availability thing! Not only that, but BFG provides some extra goodies in the box that should pique your interest. You can read about the product here. Currently the cooling on this product is stock, but you can expect BFG to do something special with it in the future. June 20, 2005 NVIDIA SLI Review - Josh It was literally ages ago when I first received these two GeForce 6800 GT cards, well before any concrete facts about the upcoming G70 were ever leaked. I was beset by countless interruptions and hardware failures, but after all of it I can finally release the finished product. NVIDIA introduced SLI late last fall, and actual parts were available at the beginning of this year. While it showed a large amount of spit and polish at introduction, there were still some birthing pains for such a complex technology. NVIDIA has worked through all of this and has delivered a truly outstanding product. While SLI may not be for all of us, it is certainly an interesting technology. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire review here. June 17, 2005 An Interesting Summer So Far - Josh Who said that summers were boring for the tech industry? Typically we have seen Fall, Winter, and early Spring as the times when the interesting stuff has been released, while Summer was spent readying the industry for the Fall buying season. That is not the case this Summer. We have the Athlon 64 X2's finally hitting retail, and those seem to be very nice products! One day I will probably get to try one, but unfortunately I have been swamped with other projects to even think about bugging AMD about getting a processor! I have been trying to finish up a handful of other things so I could get to the 3800+ Venice that they sent some time ago! Hopefully after next week I can even begin to work on that one. Pretty much most of the 939 chips have been transferred over to the Venice/San Diego core, and at the major OEM venders (Ingram, Tech Data, etc.) most of the 939 products are based on those parts vs. Newcastle/Clawhammer/Winchester. This is very good for consumers, as they have better processors to choose from and AMD appears to be having excellent production results with these new processors. The X2 processors take up about as much die space at 90 nm as the older Clawhammers did at 130 nm, so that means that AMD can still produce a lot of dies. Their single core offerings have excellent power characteristics, and the X2's eat up about as much juice as the older Clawhammer cores. So, this is very good news on a variety of levels for AMD. Intel has been a bit more reserved as of late it seems, but their dual core products are on the market as well. Unfortunately for Intel, the power characteristics of these new parts are not as good as AMD, and the whole motherboard compatibility issue is a big sticking point for a lot of users (most current 939 boards only require a BIOS update to support the X2 processors). Still, a $280 dual core 2.8 GHz Pentium is not a bad thing. Many users will certainly grab these, and Intel will likely sell many boatloads. On the graphics side we have NVIDIA releasing their latest product next week, and according to all the rumors floating around, it will be a very solid step up from the 6800 Ultra. Faud over at The Inq is also reporting that boards designed around this new chip will be available the day after launch. So, hopefully this means no more paper launches! Usually limited availability is only achieved a month or so after launch, and mass availability achieved after about 2 to 3 months after launch. So, hopefully both ATI and NVIDIA will continue to pursue this course with their launches. Not only does this reward the consumer, but when the hype is at a fever pitch I think that more people would be a lot more willing to buy a much more expensive card than if they had a three months wait to think about it. So, with NVIDIA launching and having good availability, I wonder where this leaves ATI. I still have not heard much about ATI making big orders on TSMC's 90 nm process for their R520, and more rumors have popped up that the R520 did go for another respin. The current rumor is a July 26 launch, but if the R520 is not in mass production now (the current rumor, but that is a RUMOR and I don't have access to people at TSMC to back this up) then I don't see how ATI can have any kind of availability before a late September timeframe for this part. I guess we shall see. Again, comparing the R520 against the NV30 is not a good thing. I think that the R520 will be a excellent performing part, but it appears at this time that it is just a hard product to fabricate. The NV30 of course was a poor performing DX9 part that was also hard to manufacture. Other than poor yields, I think the two parts share very little in common! So, not even a 1/3 of the way into Summer, and we already have a bunch of things covered, and even more to look forward too. I hope all Summers can be like this! June 15, 2005 Sapphire Radeon X800 AGP Review - Josh Scott finally finished up school for the year, and he found he had time to actually write a review! Sapphire was kind enough to send the X800 AGP version, which has the added benefit of including VIVO functionality for this model. This is definitely a midrange card, and while it won't break any speed records, it could be a very nice upgrade for users of older cards. Scott compared its performance to that of the venerable Radeon 9700 Pro. There are definitely some interesting results in there.
You can read the entire review here. June 14, 2005 GeForce LAN 2.0 Reminder - Josh If you hadn't noticed as of yet, NVIDIA is putting on another GeForce LAN this next week in San Francisco. Last year's event was a big success, and it was also the unleashing of the 6800 series of chips from NVIDIA. This year appears to be more of the same, except with a bunch of new prizes and a free copy of Battlefield 2 for every BYOC attendee. Here is what NVIDIA has to say about it: GeForce LAN 2.0
Join NVIDIA and hundreds of gamers at the second GeForce LAN in San Francisco! Register today for the BYOC, or as a spectator - all members of the BYOC receive a FREE retail copy of EA's Battlefield 2 - on the spot! NVIDIA will host a BF2 tournament, a UT2004 CarBall tournament, and a 4-category case mod competition - all for huge prizes from NVIDIA and its industry sponsor partners. After the LAN, gamers are invited to join NVIDIA for the launch of its next generation GPU - no one goes home empty handed - but some will leave with more than they can carry! Register today before your spot's take - only 250 seats are available in the BYOC! Here is also a list of prizes that will be given out: Antec: 10
cases, 10 PSUs, 25 accessories (fans, lights, etc.) Sounds like fun! June 12, 2005 When it Rains... - Josh I was in my back room doing some testing when suddenly a huge crack was heard and all the monitors I was using turned rainbow hues. Lightning struck the 100+ year old pine next door to us, and the thing literally exploded. Wood and branches were thrown quite far away from the hit, and even broke windows across the street (and pieces of wood impaled themselves into the roofs and sides of the neighboring houses. My car of course got nailed, and has some significant dents and pieces ripped off of it. Hopefully the neighbor's homeowner insurance will take care of it! With the way my luck has been as of late though...
The tree itself was probably about 70 feet tall, but now it is 1/2 that. The part you see laying against the house is the top 1/2, and the remains of that half are scattered around the neighborhood. So, first a blizzard in June, then lightning strikes. I guess I should have bought a lottery ticket or something.
Luckily fire didn't break out from the strike, but it has been so wet here for the past several weeks everything was just soaked (and it was raining very hard when this picture was taken).
My wife and child were literally about to walk out the front door of our house when Tina felt that Tai needed a kleenex. She turned around, and that is when it hit. If my son didn't have a runny nose, they could have easily been right where the Explorer is in this picture when the lightning hit. Nobody was hurt, so we are all happy. Crazy stuff! June 10, 2005 Sapphire X800 XL Ultimate Review - Josh Sapphire US was kind enough to send me a sample of the X800 XL Ultimate. While it is still based on the standard X800 XL design, Sapphire added a few of its own touches to really make this a superb card. Sapphire has always had excellent quality in their parts, and this is no exception. The addition of a high performing, yet low noise cooling solution really makes this product stand out from the competition. Here is a direct quote:
You can find the entire review here. Digging Out and Repairing - Josh For the past few days we have not had our internet connection at the house, so I had to rely on other connections to post articles and whatnot. One thing I didn't ever get around to was posting a picture of what happened here on June 4. Yes, it snowed 8+ inches on June 4. Sometimes it is hard to forget that I live in Laramie, WY. A city slightly above 7,200 feet, with winter weather for a good 6+ months out of the year. It is now raining like we are in Seattle. I don't get this weather sometimes.
Many trees lost lives and limbs from this very heavy, wet snow. We were lucky, but our electricity was out for some hours. Some unfortunate folks were without power for 14+ hours. ATI and the R520 - Josh Well, needless to say the Trouble for ATI article has caused quite a bit of commotion. It is always fun to read of people slamming me of being a fanboy of one stripe or another when I simply pass on information that I have received. Even Faud of The Inq commented on this information "coming directly from NVIDIA" when it in fact did not. I received this info from some folks who had talked to some of the board partners at Computex, but ultimately I cannot pin down exactly where the information originated. So, take this speculation with a grain of salt (which you should always do with speculation). Apparently Goldman Sach agrees with this, as they put out a warning about ATI stock, and specifically mentioned design problems and low yields. My overall feeling, now that a lot of discussion has been held, is that ATI is not yet producing the R520 at this time. First silicon was received in December of 2004, and we have yet to see production quality silicon come from ATI. I think that the R520 is probably a very fast and competent design, but I feel that up until this point it is a hard product to actually fabricate. ATI has done quite a few major and metal revisions on the design to get the yields up, but as of this point, they apparently have not yet sent the finalized design to TSMC for mass production. Rumors also have it that ATI will launch this product in late July, but it is still up in the air when we will actually see retail products. An interesting bit of speculation that has been making the rounds is that the R520 is actually a 16 pipeline design. Now, what they consider to be a pipeline may not be exactly what we are used to now with the current X800/X850 or 6800 series of cards. I would not doubt that the R520 is a 16 ROP chip, with 16 general "pipelines" with multiple ALU's and texture units per pipe. Supposedly the clockspeed is going to be very high with this product as well. If this is true, then I don't see why the R520 wouldn't compete with, or even exceed the G70 in performance. Again, I think the issue here is economical yields for the product. I guess we shall see. I am also finishing up my Catalyst Review/Preview, and it should be up later this weekend. ATI has done a lot of things right in the past, and I think this hiccup will be short lived. The only real worry that I have about the situation is if yields cannot be improved on the R520, and if these issues trickle down to the mainstream and value products based upon the R520 architecture. Again, nothing official has come from ATI about this, so it should be considered speculation on rumors and hearsay that have been going around. June 7, 2005 Trouble for ATI? - Josh I recently received some information that rang true to me regarding ATI and their upcoming R520 part. This story was further corroborated by a second source, and so it does appear to be close to legitimate. The R520 was originally supposed to be introduced in a Spring 2005 timeframe, and then was backed off until Computex, and now is looking to be released in early Fall. In my little article I have gone over the apparent reasons why the R520 is not making it to market, and the possible repercussions to ATI's business for the rest of the year. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire article here. Lack of News - Josh I would like to apologize for the lack of news, but I have been having internet issues at my home (where I do the vast majority of the web work and testing). This situation should be resolved by Thursday, and expect to see more content being put up.
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