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December 28, 2005 Back From Vacation and Intel's Latest - Josh Well, Christmas break was quite pleasant and I had a nice time with the family. Lots of food, plenty of sleep, and very few things to do with computers. That makes me happy. While I love technology, sometimes you have to take a break from it. Feeling refreshed and carefree, I am back in business. Intel officially released their first 65 nm part with the Intel Extreme Edition 955 processor. This processor is made up of two Cedar Mills cores (when together are called Presler) that are connected by the processor substrate using the "psuedo-FSB". These chips run at 3.46 GHz and each contain 2 MB of L2 cache, for a grand total of 4 MB of L2 between the two cores. Intel has the FSB running from the chip to the motherboard at 1066 (266 MHz quad pumped). This is a serious dual core processor, and as such it has some serious heat production and power draw. Intel's motherboard they sent with the samples is based on the i975X chipset, but the board itself has a 5 phase power supply. That is some hard core power circuitry directly from an Intel product. The chip performs well, and it is neck and neck with the best of AMD's products. That comes at a huge price though. Power and heat are negative factors to the overall performance of the chip. The Tech Report has stated on their page that they can't get any consistent numbers from their sample due to it throttling down. They have remedied this by applying a very serious cooler to the issue, but in any case the stock cooler Intel sent was not enough for their sample. Most other publications have not experienced this problem, but it could be an issue for consumers who live in warm climates as well as not having adequate airflow in their computers. MS at Lost Circuits has posted a very thorough review on the processor, as well as having a unique and accurate way at measuring power consumption by each CPU. Instead of reading the wattage between the wall outlet and the PC, MS plugs directly into the +12V supply lines leading to the CPU VRM. The numbers are quite telling. While Intel sees some savings in power and heat by using their brand new 65 nm process, there are some design aspects of the Netburst architecture that are not conducive to power savings in the first place. Performance per watt is still ruled by the Venice and Manchester cores from AMD (eg. Athlon 64 3800+ and the X2 3800+ respectively). It is good to see Intel moving forward here, but they are still at a disadvantage in terms of design due to the use of the Netburst architecture. Here are some previews from other websites: Some good reading there, but from what I gather this is the last gasp for the Netburst architecture. I really can't wait for Conroe and its variants, as they should give Intel a much better product to stand on. December 23, 2005 Merry Christmas! - Josh My family and myself are about to embark upon a small Christmas vacation to my folk's house, so things will be a little quiet here. I was hoping to get one more article up before this break, but no such luck! Funny how you can run out of time. Anyway, when I return I have a whole slew of reviews that have mostly been written. Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX, Albatron K8SLI, Tyan K8E, Sapphire X1800 XT, Blue Gears X-Mystique 7.1, AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and X2 3800+, and a couple of headphone reviews from another writer. There will also be other odds and ends being posted, so keep watch! Speaking of other writers, I think that the site could use a bit of new blood. If you have any desire to write about the industry, as well as do a few hardware reviews and whatnot, please contact me about your interest and a sample of your writing. I am only looking for one person as of now, and while I can't offer any wages, we can work out things like hardware. Traffic has been a lot more robust as of late, and I have a few advertising deals in the works, so if things get really nice then I am more than happy to actually distribute wages for work. But as of this moment, what revenue I get usually goes to server fees. So, have a safe and happy Christmas (and Holidays)! December 22, 2005 BFG Tech GeForce 7800 Series Copper Cooler Review - Josh BFG has catered to the enthusiast market since their very beginning, but their successes of making non-reference coolers has been hit and miss for the past few years. It seems they have bucked that trend and have created perhaps one of the finest single slot coolers to ever grace the face of a 7800 GTX/GT. I was able to procure a cooler and test it against the stock solution for the 7800 GTX graphics card. The results were quite impressive. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire article here. New Drivers and CrossFire X1800 Both ATI and NVIDIA have released some new drivers for the Holiday Season (Christmas to some). The Catalyst 5.13 drivers offer some fixes and performance improvements, but most importantly it unlocks a bunch of Avivo features for the X1x00 series of cards. I loaded these up and played a DVD with PowerDVD and I must admit that the quality is MUCH improved over what was previously available with this X1800 I am testing. Definitely a nice Christmas gift for users with the X1x00 series strapped into their computer. You can go to ATI to find these drivers. NVIDIA has released their 81.98 drivers, which again give a few performance gains as well as fixing some major bugs with certain applications. Finally it seems the X1800 CrossFire edition card has landed in retail. Newegg is selling this number for around $569, which isn't too far off from a standard X1800 XT in price. This version of CrossFire is MUCH improved over the previous X8x0 series of cards, and it is now well supported in a large number of applications. These cards appear to be in stock still as of this writing, and ATI has promised a goodly number of products at this release. December 21, 2005 News, News, and News - Josh Tis the season for acquisitions it seems. Seagate has announced that it is acquiring Maxtor in a $1.9 billion all stock transaction. This is big, as the number of hard drive players has now been chopped in a very significant way. You might remember that Maxtor bought out Quantum's hard drive interests some years ago. What I find most interesting about this transaction is that Seagate is now riding high on quality HD production, while Maxtor is suffering a lot of bad press about returns and defects. I certainly hope Seagate keeps the product's separate until the quality issues can be worked out at Maxtor! Still, both companies have some interesting products, and hopefully the synthesis of design teams and technology portfolios will create solid and fast drives. Albatron is announcing that they are releasing a GeForce 6800 GS for the AGP market this holiday. This should be a welcome sight to many users who continued to support the AGP infrastructure. There is one strange piece about this news though, and it is that the core is clocked at 350 MHz (though the memory is 256 bit running at 500 MHz- 1 GHz effective). I wonder if they are using older NV-41 chips instead of the standard NV-42 with HSI? If that is the case, then we can understand the clock difference as the NV41 was made on the IBM process and cannot clock as high as the redesigned NV42. I have a question put into Albatron about this. ATI has finally released the latest generation of CrossFire cards, the X1800 XT CrossFire Edition. This is like a regular X1800 XT in terms of features and speed, but it has an upgraded compositing engine that is able to handle the duties of CrossFire much better. Also, since ATI is using dual link TMDS's the 1600x1200 resolution is no longer an issue. These cards can support up to 2560x1600, and have a redesigned cable system to handle the extra speed and resolution of the transmitters. This is a big improvement over the previous CrossFire products. Not only does it work as it should, but quite a few games show a significant improvement in performance. CrossFire is finally starting to mature, but it isn't quite up to SLI standards yet. One more generation though might make all the difference in the world. For X1600's and below, no master card is needed to make CrossFire work, and in January we are expecting a new CrossFire motherboard chipset (RD580) to be released around the same time as the next gen ATI card hits the market (R580). Speaking of next-gen, NVIDIA should be releasing their new slew of cards based on TSMC's 90 nm process. G71, G72, and G73 are all expected to be released by the middle of next quarter (sometime around mid-February). G71 is the successor to G70, and will be an improved chip in terms of features and performance. There are suggestions that this core could be clocked as high as 700 MHz, but of course nothing official has been spoken of. Considering that Samsung looks to be releasing large quantities of 900 MHz GDDR-3 (1800 MHz effective) we will see a good bandwidth improvement over the previous generation of products. There are also some suggestions that NVIDIA may have already stopped GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB production, but my feeling is that they are just releasing very small quantities of this product, and will do so until the middle of January. At that time, I think all stock of this product will be flushed from the channel, and NVIDIA will start preparing to launch the high end G71 to compete against ATI's R580. Interesting times will be coming very soon it seems. It seems we are on the verge of some new processor releases as well from both AMD and Intel. It has been quite a while since the FX-57 has been released from AMD, and its price has not dropped by much since its introduction. While a very impressive chip, many bemoan the lack of dual core support. Well, that will change with the FX-60. Also, Intel will be officially releasing their 65 nm products for both desktop and notebook. I have heard that Intel has been having some issues with getting their 65 nm Pentium 4 based products running as they should, and the dual core versions (Pressler) are not as stable as Intel would like (most likely due to the design and limitations of two separate high speed cores on one substrate). Still, I expect Intel to hurdle these issues one way or the other. From all indications and previews, these will be cooler running products than the 90 nm versions. December 14, 2005 In a surprise move, NVIDIA is in a definitive agreement to buy ULi for $52 million. This is pretty much a shock to a lot of people in the industry, as well as end users. ULi has a history of making very solid chipsets that address the low end of the market. Their products are rarely flashy, but there are usually few complaints about the overall quality and performance of their products. NVIDIA acquires a solid engineering team, as well as a local presence in Taiwan as well as the rest of Asia (which is where pretty much all motherboard companies are headquartered). Now NVIDIA will have branded products that cover a variety of markets, both AMD and Intel. Of course one of the most interesting aspects of this acquisition is the use of ULi southbridges in many products sporting an ATI northbridge. ATI has had a history of issues with their southbridges, and in some cases motherboard manufacturers have decided to go with several different ULi southbridges to address some issues with the SB400 and SB450 chipsets. The majority of ATI motherboards sold still use ATI southbridges, but the ULi based boards are still important. In NVIDIA's press release they have confirmed that they will still honor current agreements and customers. So, the supply of ULi chipsets will not instantly become unavailable for ATI based products. What is in question are future products, and most likely NVIDIA will frown upon the suggestion of bundling their southbridges with future ATI products. I was able to contact Chris Evenden of ATI about the situation, and here is his prepared statement:
So, for at least the next year, motherboard manufacturers will still have the ability to buy the ULi southbridge and use it with the ATI product. I am unsure of when ATI will release their updated SB600 southbridge, but many certainly hope that this will be a much more solid southie than what ATI has delivered in the past. Still, manufacturers will continue to have the ability to pair a ULi southbridge with ATI northbridges for the foreseeable future. This was probably a good move by NVIDIA, but consumers do lose a bit in the deal. While ULi was not a major player in the chipset industry, they certainly did have some impressive products for their chosen market. Their latest single chip AMD product is turning heads, and they probably have some good patents out there as well. They made for a juicy target, and $52 million is not a whole lot to pay for what NVIDIA is surely getting out of the deal. December 12, 2005 ATI and the Holidays - Josh I have been quite lucky for the past week to be testing a Sapphire X1800 XT, and I must admit that I am impressed. It isn't a perfect product, but it is a strong performer. I have been using a 7800 GTX for quite some time, and when I plugged this in I didn't notice a huge difference, but the overall image quality with filtering is slightly better than what NVIDIA has to offer. The extra 256 MB of memory this product offers over the 7800 GTX 256 does help out on games like F.E.A.R. and Battlefield 2, but is of limited use for other games. I have always liked ATI's AA quality a bit better than NVIDIA's, but NV has done a lot in the past few years to get their quality up there. The one issue I am not pleased about is that to use the latest Cat 5.12 drivers, the user has to install .Net 1.1. I really dislike the .Net 1.1 framework. It is bloated, it causes some silly system changes, and I find that it is really unnecessary. Now, you can get around this by just using the driver and not installing the Catalyst Control Center, but by doing so you lose a lot of the advanced functionality (like Adaptive AA, angle independent filtering, etc.). I am going to try the Omega drivers with the ATI Tray Tools and see if that will offer the same amount of functionality as the CCC. Due to a bug, the CCC doesn't want to work with the .Net 2.0 framework, which is a big improvement over .Net 1.1. ATI has gotten a lot of bad press in the past year due to their inability to deliver product on time. Unfortunately, this happens to everyone at one time or another. I think the big thing to remember here is that the X1800 series are very solid. While the X1800 XL gets beat quite often by the 7800 GT, the X1800 XT certainly is a bit faster than the regular 7800 GTX. Only the 7800 GTX 512 is faster, but once the user decides to clock up the X1800 XT... then things even out a bit. The sample I have here can hit anywhere from 650 MHz core to 700 MHz (depending on cooling, power supply, motherboard, etc.) The memory hits 800 MHz (1600 MHz effective) with no problem at all. Once 700/1600 is reached, then the board simply flies through everything. Hitting near 9800 in 3D Mark 05 is no small feat, not to mention the overall smoothness of most other applications. Where NVIDIA has a big advantage this holiday is in numbers. They have had their 7800 GT and GTX products out for months, and the store shelves are stocked. Not only that, but they have near unlimited supplies of their 6800 GS, 6600 GT, and 6600 DDR-2 (which should be the top selling card this holiday season due to its amazing price/performance). The X1800 XL has a performance disadvantage to the 7800 GT, but unfortunately typically sells for a higher price than the GT. The X1800 XT is definitely a better deal than the 7800 GTX 512 (XT costs around $540 while GTX 512 is sitting pretty at $749), but the 7800 GTX undercuts it by a significant margin ($449 average). It is unfortunate that ATI was so late for the party, as it would be a much more positive holiday season for them if they had these products on the shelves for several months now. Also, due to being late, their products have not received as much coverage as NVIDIA's. Perception is almost everything in this business, and NVIDIA and its partners are probably going to sell more cards this holiday season than the competition. One good trend that I have noticed though is that the X1600 XT is finally being delivered now, and their prices are hitting around $179. This is much more in line with the performance of this product, as its initial price was set at $249. For $249 the X1600 XT just didn't provide for a compelling solution against other products that were readily available at that price point from both ATI and NVIDIA. But at $179, it is at a better position to compete. The X1300 is somewhat of an enigmatic product, but one that has not garnered a positive reputation. It just can't compete well with the current 6600's from NVIDIA which exist at the same price points. There will be quite a few reviews on this product coming up (including one here), and hopefully we can get a better feel for ATI's low end offering. The last thing I want to cover is Avivo. This is a set of technologies that ATI has integrated into their X1x00 series of products to improve video decoding and TV-out. NVIDIA's competing technology here is PureVideo. From testing both out, PureVideo has a definite edge over Avivo in overall quality. Even in watching regular DVD's PureVideo just looks and runs better. Now, this is supposed to change with the Cat 5.13 drivers that are due out before the end of this year, but further testing will have to be done to either prove or disprove that. We shall see, but the X1x00 series is a highly programmable set of products, and hopefully ATI will get its quality up there to match NVIDIA's. Otherwise, I simply can't recommend an ATI card for media PC's that will be doing a lot of video playback at high definition. December 6, 2005 News Around Town - Josh Geo at Beyond3D has started a thread about an interesting little company called AEG which recruits forum posters to become "unofficial spokespeople" for all kinds of companies. One of the more interesting ones is NVIDIA. Quite a bit of interesting information is shared, and a few funny posts here and there. My own personal opinion of the situation is that it is just another form of marketing. If a forum poster is "paid" by AEG and NVIDIA with cash/hardware/swag to talk nice about the products, their objectivity is of course suspect (and their relationship with the company is hidden), but we live in a economy where "buyer beware" is something we should all take into consideration. If you are interested in a product from any manufacturer, do your research and don't rely on any one single person's recommendation off a forum. There are plenty of good reviews out there, and not everyone posting on a forum is a paid representative of any one company. So before spending your hard earned scratch, take a good look around at the many reviews out there, and get the opinions from as many different people as possible. MS has taken a look at the DFI NF4 Ultra-D motherboard, and they modded the stuffins out of it. While it is not a perfect board, it does have some very unique features and exciting performance. As always, MS is incredibly thorough with the review. Tech Report is giving away 4 really nice computer bundles for some lucky folks. It is a nice Christmas giveaway! Good luck! HardOCP is hoping to make another big donation to Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity effort, and this time you can buy a ticket to enter a raffle for Kyle's personal computer. This is a great prize, as it is one really beefy machine! I am attempting to finish editing a review for release today, so keep watch! November 30, 2005 A Small Update and News - Josh I posted a small update to my Rising Cost of Graphics article. It seems I overlooked one somewhat interesting, yet utterly forgettable, $1000 product that was released not too long ago. How many of you remember what this is? Read the article again for your answer! I can't believe that even I had forgotten about this product. A mind like a mousetrap... Several analysts have recently downgraded NVIDIA's stock, and it took a fair beating yesterday. I think some investors have taken advantage of this, as the stock price is starting to rise. While NVIDIA won't have an easy of time with ATI this next quarter as they have for the past 1.5 years, there are other areas of growth and income that I think these analysts are overlooking. NVIDIA now has a solid set of notebook products that they are gaining marketshare with, and the recent introduction of the GeForce 6100/6150 integrated graphics will find its way into many sub $1000 notebooks by the end of Q1 2006. NVIDIA also has a very competitive, and sometimes overwhelming, group of products in the $79 to $249 range, which is really the meat of the market and the majority share of any quarter's revenues. One other area overlooked is the PS3/RSX deal. NVIDIA will start to receive royalties from that around the beginning of Q2 2006, and that will be a significant source of "free" income for work already done and paid for. So, while I don't think that NVIDIA will actually hit 45% margins on their products, I do believe that they will continue to expand their business, and revenues will continue to increase quarter on quarter (even through the typically slow Q1, which I believe NVIDIA will show to be pretty flat- mainly due to the notebook market which will be seeing a new product cycle around that time to take up the slack of the quarterly slowdown). I must admit, I honestly wonder what is happening in many of the testing labs of major OEM's, especially when they are evaluating the 6600 series against the X1300 and X1600's that ATI is trying to push out. While the shading power of the new ATI products is impressive, the overall performance of those products in current titles and applications are pretty mediocre. Cost will also be a huge factor, but one that will ultimately favor NVIDIA due to the age of the 6600 (NV43) chip vs. that of the new RV515 and RV530 chips from ATI. When comparing features and price at the $99 point, the 6600 DDR-2 certainly provides for a more compelling solution than the X1300 (standard, not Pro- which costs $149 currently). It will definitely be interesting to see what the next desktop product cycle brings for the major OEM's. November 29, 2005 The Rising Cost of Graphics - Josh With the recent release of the 7800 GTX 512 MB, and its subsequent sale at the stratospheric cost of $749 online, I thought it was time to explore the reasons for the rise in prices we have been seeing in the past few years with 3D graphics cards at the high end. In doing so I was able to get a good response from Brian Burke of NVIDIA about the situation, and I made some guesses as to what we will be seeing in the future. Here is a quote:
You can find the entire article here. November 28, 2005 Post-Holiday Post? - Josh Thanksgiving is over, and it was a pretty unproductive time here. I did get some testing done on a cooling product that will pique many people's interest, but more on that with some extra testing later! Testing is done on quite a few other products, and I really need to sit down and bang out the reviews. I also have a pair of headphones being reviewed by another guy that may be contributing now and again. I have an editorial that is almost ready for publishing, so keep the fingers crossed there. Speaking of cross, I most likely will have a CrossFire mobo and Master card coming my way for testing, so that is quite exciting for me! Some time ago I reviewed the XFX 6600 DDR-2 and I came away with the impression that is is an excellent product for its pricepoint. Well, we are finally seeing these cards in good numbers hitting the street, but most are selling for above the $99 price point that XFX mentioned. This happens with new parts when first released, and oftentimes this is due to the retailers trying to grab as large of a margin as possible on something new and exciting. Apparently NVIDIA and XFX sent out a metric ton of these products for review, as a whole group have just popped up in the past few days. Pretty much every review comes to the same conclusion: it is honestly one of the best buys for the money this holiday season. Shipping models of the XFX 6600 DDR-2 will all have dual DVI, two DVI to VGA connectors, S-Video cable, and a full DVD copy of Far Cry. Even though these are selling around $119, it is simply a bargain most people will not want to pass up. While NVIDIA will have a nice selection of products this holiday season, I think the 6600 DDR-2 should really lead the group with sales. NVIDIA and its partners have certainly been trying to get the word out, and with so many reviews popping up right before December, we can expect to see these selling like hotcakes. Here are some of those reviews I mentioned. Now onto more juicy stuff. The 512 MB 7800 GTX's have been selling out everywhere they are offered. NVIDIA and its partners were able to deliver a pretty good supply the first week they were introduced, but apparently production is rumored to be capped around 4000 boards a week. This is most likely due to a combination of factors, with the most limiting one being good quantities of 1.1 ns GDDR-3. Still, 4000 boards worldwide a week is not that much, and these products are increasingly hard to find in retail. While NVIDIA and much of the press has been giving ATI a hard time about availability of their high end product, it seems NVIDIA has fallen into the same hole. They are having a hard time delivering adequate quantities of this product. There is a waiting list for pretty much every retailer out there for this card, all at a time when ATI and its partners are finally delivering good quantities of the X1800 XT. So, if you are in the mood to buy a high performance 512 MB PCI-E graphics card this holiday season, the choices are to either get into the queue to get a 7800 GTX 512, or buy a X1800 XT. It will be a tough decision for a lot of folks, for while the 7800 GTX 512 outpaces the X1800 XT, the XT is available and it is under $600 at most places (while the 7800 GTX 512 is at a minimum of $699 and most retailers have them at $749). Still, they are selling out, so people are buying those puppies as fast as they are offered. The nice thing about this competition at the high end is that prices continually drop at the lower levels. The 7800 GT and 7800 GTX are very good products at their price points, and if the X1800 XL drops to the $320 level then it will be a very good product as well. This should be a really fun holiday season for a lot of folks hoping to upgrade their video cards, as there is quite a selection of products out there that should satisfy pretty much any user at every pricepoint. November 21, 2005 Monday, Monday - Josh After a relaxing weekend here, it is time to get to work! ATI has announced that they are immediately shipping the X1800 XL All In Wonder. This is again another swanky looking product from ATI, and it has all the features that we have come to expect from a AIW product. Hot Hardware has one of the first reviews of the product up, so those interested might want to go take a look. Again, the R520 doesn't look to last very long, as production for the part is supposed to cease by the beginning of December (which is amazingly close- where does time go these days?). We are starting to see the X1800 XT sporadically in retail these days, but nothing that comes close to being "widely available". Still, something is better than nothing. Anandtech has stated that there will be a X1800 XT/PE product to be released soon, but then that really brings up the question of availability. It is very possible that ATI will try to take the speed crown back from NVIDIA with this product, but if availability of the lower end R520 based products is bad, what do you think the PE version will be like? We really are going to see the R580 sooner rather than later, and I still would be surprised if it was by the end of January though (I would expect a full release to be nearer the end of February). If ATI does get it out around this timeframe, then they will have a good jump on NVIDIA, who shouldn't have their 90 nm G7x high end part out until at least the end of March. We will see if the timeframe hasn't been accelerated in the face of ATI's next gen part. Tech Report takes a look at Asus' latest SLI board, the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. This monster features the full 2 x 16X PCI-E Graphics slots for use in SLI, as well as a host of other wonderful features. The guys seemed to have liked it quite a bit, and I can understand why. Lots of goodies, good clocking, excellent performance... what isn't there to like? Ryan and the gang at PC Perspective have reviewed the most interesting Socket 754 board around, the EPoX 8NPA SLI S754. Socket 754 Athlon 64's are still very fast units, and those that laid down $400+ on a 3700+ (or any other processor) is loathe to get rid of it. So, EPoX provided a nice little product that will allow these users to upgrade to PCI-E and SLI. Nice move, and a good looking board. November 16, 2005 7800 Hangover and Other Disturbing News - Josh As you may as well guessed, I was one of the unlucky ones to not receive a 7800 GTX 512 MB card. Then again, NVIDIA doesn't have bottomless pockets to send out hundreds of cards to every website out there. Oh well, would have been fun, but I think my article was probably more fun to write than sitting down all weekend and doing endless benchmarks! How is that for sour grapes?! Surprisingly I received very few negative comments about my "Creating" article (in fact none that I could see), which really is a record for me. Typically I see a few emails or forum posts that say, "You moron, you have it all wrong..." but this one was the exception. I guess I probably came fairly close to the truth, though most likely not 100% accurate though. Still, it is interesting to see how fluid these companies are with their product placement and specifications. It really makes you question the possible turmoil that was going on at NVIDIA when they figured out the NV30 was going to look pretty poor against the monstrous R300, and how exactly they were going to place product against that beast? Anandtech has several interesting pieces today, but due to the "Taking apart the X-Box 360" the site is getting hammered. Badly. From what I was able to read of it, the X-Box 360 is an interesting piece, but the site died 1/2 through it. But that is not the only interesting article there. Anandtech was able to get a exclusive preview of the upcoming ATI RD580 chipset, which supports 2 x 16X PCI-E slots for CrossFire. They make some very interesting claims about overclocking the HTT connection to around 1600 MHz (320 x 5). They also have the X1800 XT CrossFire edition card, and it had none of the limitations the previous CrossFire version had. This is good news, and it appears as though ATI now has a true, dedicated ASIC controlling this solution (instead of using an off-the-shelf FPGA). I think everyone who owns a website though is pretty unhappy that ATI gave Anandtech exclusive rights to publish this information. There were a couple of other topics presented that really grabbed attention though. The first is that ATI was planning on releasing a X1800 XT/PE in short order. This of course is not available yet, nor is it officially announced. ATI is having a hard enough time fulfilling demand for the X1800 XT at this time, and it appears that supplies will be constrained throughout its lifetime. It looks as though all R520 chip production will be halted by December, so the final orders will be filled by finished products by March. Anandtech goes on to state that the R580 chip will be introduced by January. The timing of it all just confuses me. If this is true, then ATI is not giving itself or its partners much time to market and sell their products. But if ATI expects to sell these products beside each other, how expensive is the new top end going to be? Let's consider this further. The current X1800 XL is around the $399 mark average, while the X1800 XT is at $599. What will the X1800 XT/PE come in at? $699 would not be too much to ask (since that is what most 7800 GTX 512's are selling at). So this goes on through December and into January. Typically prices do not slide that much for ATI cards (just look at how expensive the older X800/X850 XT/PE's still cost!). So we can expect a small erosion of prices during that period, say $50 average. So, for the R580 introduction is ATI just going to wipe the slate clean of X1800's and replace them totally with new products? It has never been done before, and I don't think that it will happen overnight (though with the R520 being stopped in December, there will only be about a 3 to 4 month stock of chips to distribute). So I am guessing that this means the first R580's will be priced above $700. I am still not sure of Anandtech's information, but most likely it is good. I was expecting more of an early March timeframe for ATI to introduce this part in mass quantities and give its partners time to sell off their inventory of R520 parts. I guess we shall see. I am pretty convinced now that both NVIDIA and ATI are aiming for the $1000 range for their top of the line card. The original Voodoo Graphics was supposed to be introduced at $399 but a sudden drop in memory prices made it a $299 card. The Voodoo 2 was also $299 for the 12 MB edition, and two of them could be put together for $600 (ok, $598... but who's counting?). Now we are seeing introductory prices for the 7800 GTX 512 hit $749. Apparently the sky is the limit, and if the graphics guys have seen what the CPU guys have done recently ($1000 Athlon 64 X2 4800 or FX-57) then we can expect a $1K video card within the next year. This isn't going to make the enthusiast market happy. In less disturbing (for some) news Digitimes is reporting that quite a few Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers are having some real stability issues with the Intel Presler (65 nm Pentium 4 dual core). As you may or may not remember, Pressler is two single die Cedar Mills core placed on the same substrate (the two cores are not on the same die). This product is supposed to be released in January, but if there are stability issues then Intel could be in a bit of trouble. Not too much trouble mind, as they still have their Smithfield dual core processors to take up any slack. Still, Presler was supposed to drive down the cost of manufacturing dual core Pentium 4's for Intel.
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