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April 17, 2007 Today NVIDIA and its partners are taking off the wraps of the GeForce 8600 GTS, GeForce 8600 GT, and the GeForce 8500 GT. These are now the budget and midrange DX10 cards that will most likely see a great rate of adoption with OEM's and retail customers. Based on the G8x architecture, these three products are based on chips made on TSMC's 80 nm process. The GeForce 8400 and 8300 cards are OEM only products which really won't be covered much by the press. These products are based on the same design as the 8500, but with differing memory configurations and lower performance. Currently the 8600 GTS and 8600 GT only support up to 256 MB of memory, but AIBs will likely change that in the near future. The 8600 GTS and GT are based on the G84 chip, which is comprised of approximately 289 million transistors, which is around the same size as last year's GeForce 7900 GTX. Its functionality is much improved of course, and its quality of output is far superior to what the 7 series cards could provide. In those 289 million transistors are 32 stream processors, 8 ROPS, 16 texture address units and 16 texture filtering units. On the 8600 GTS the core runs at 675 MHz, while the shader clocks are running at a blistering 1.45 GHz! A thing to remember is that the shader units are scalar units, and when doing vec3+scalar operations it acts more like a traditional 8 shader unit. However, its clockspeed of 1.45 GHz certainly overcomes any perceived weakness of the unit! The GDDR-3 memory runs at 1 GHz on a 128 bit bus, giving it an effective speed of 2 GHz and a potential bandwidth of 32 GB/sec (roughly that of the older GeForce 5900 Ultra which ran a 256 bit bus). Initial results show the 8600 GTS beating out the older 7600 GT by about 50% to 100%, depending on the application. The 8600 GT and GTS are meant to replace the older 7600 and 7900 series from the $150 to $230 price range. While the 8600's might be slightly slower in DX9 games than the 7900 GT or GS, its improvement in quality and DX10 support certainly give it an appeal the older products do not have. The 8600 GT sports the same G84 chip, just with lower clockspeeds (540 MHz core, 1.19 shader, and 700 MHz memory- 1.4 GHz effective). The 8500 GT is based on the G86 chip, which is another cut down version of the G8x architecture based on the 80 nm process. This is comprised of approximately 210 million transistors, features 4 ROPS, 16 stream processors, 8 texture address and 8 texture filtering units. This runs at a much more conservative 450 MHz core, 900 MHz shader clock, and features DDR-2 memory running at 400 MHz (800 MHz effective) on a 128 bit bus. This will slide in the $79 to $99 range, and still looks to be a nice addition to the budget lineup. It certainly will outperform the older 7300 and 6600 DDR-2 series of cards, plus throwing in the visual improvements of the G8x series and DX10 support. The G84 and G86 also have a new trick up their sleeve, and that is the PureVideo 2 decoder. This further offloads work from the CPU to make High Definition playback, so that even on very modest computers its performance will match that of much higher end products. I will have a further, full fledged article covering PureVideo 2 in the near future. Needless to say, Blue-Ray and HD DVD will have no problems playing back on even the lowest GeForce 8500 SKU. Gigabyte and Silent 8600/8500 Cards Gigabyte is making a huge push in the retail market with their new, silent GeForce 8600 GTS/GT and 8500 GT products. These passively cooled products have some really nifty engineering in them to take whatever airflow it has and utilize it to the greatest possible extent. The designs internally induce turbulence, which increases the heat transfer ability of metal to air. The 8600 GTS design further enhances this with a portion of the heatsink sitting outside of the rear panel, which due to convection will increase airflow over that portion outside of the hot case (heat will rise, thereby drawing more cool air through the external heatsink fins). You can take a look at this interesting technology here. The slightly lower end version 8600 GT also has a unique cooler, which can be viewed here. Gigabyte is also bundling in a full version of Supreme Commander with their 8600 series cards. Being a Supreme Commander addict, I feel this is a very attractive offering to those that have not yet purchased this game! On Gigabyte's 8500 GT silent product, they are offering a full version of Warhammer 40K (I am not as familiar with this game, as Supreme Commander takes all of my time). Having reviewed Gigabyte's 8800 GTS 640 and appreciating its quality and bundle, these new Gigabyte products would be high on my wanted list if I were to buy a new midrange card. The addition of silent operation is certainly appealing, especially after how noisy the older 7600 GT cards were running at full blast! Biostar Gets in the Mix with 8600/8500 I have become quite the fan of Biostar after seeing what they were able to offer the budget enthusiast with their TForce 550 motherboard. They have announced today that they too are sporting new 8600 GTS, 8600 GT, and 8500 GT products. These are based on the reference designs, but the 8600 GT and 8500 GT sport unique cooling from Biostar. Biostar has a history of making solid products at low prices, so for those on a budget would do well to take a good look at Biostar. You can read more about their new products here. March 27, 2007 For the past year or so I have been very impressed with many of Super Talent's offerings, and I have been using their PC6400 2 x 1GB DIMMS for the majority of my testing for about the last 10 months. I have had few complaints, and their products simply work as they were specified to. In the past few weeks Super Talent has put out a couple of very interesting releases. The big one is the upcoming availability of large Solid State Disk drives. These are SATA compatible and will reach sizes up to 128 GB. While the drives cannot get close to the 750 GB to 1 TB sizes that traditional platter/magnetic drives have reached, the power savings, durability, and light weight that these drives exhibit are pretty phenomenal. Prices have not been announced so far, but they are probably going to be far from cheap for the 64 GB and 128 GB capacities. Availability is said to be started in April to both OEMs and retail. The next release is nice, but not as surprising in the face of other memory manufacturers (namely Mushkin with their kits). Super Talent has decided to offer performance enthusiasts 4 GB DDR-2 memory kits. These 2 GB DIMMS have the somewhat fast timings of PC6400 @ 5:5:5:15 latencies at 2.1 volts. With the release of Vista, and the current drop in IC prices, Super Talent is able to offer these high density DIMMS at good speeds and latencies. While 2 GB of system memory is still the sweet spot, these 4 GB kits will start to really take over the enthusiasts's market. Super Talent estimates the street price to be in the vicinity of $438. Super Talent is definitely a company to keep eyes on, as they offer some very good products at truly rock bottom prices. The DIMMS I use for testing are now at a very tempting $189, and $169 with mail in rebate. For those that are looking into a bit more overclocking with lower latencies, Super Talent is also offering these numbers. 2 x 1 GB DIMMS running 4:4:4:12 timings at 2.1v at 450 MHz (900 MHz effective) is quite appealing for those looking to tweak their systems with a spot of overclocking. This is definitely a company to look out for when buying any memory products, and I am sure many cannot wait to get their hands on a fairly inexpensive SSD drive. March 6, 2007 BFG announced yesterday that they have released their 8800 OC2 series of cards. Previously their 8800 GTX and GTS products were given the OC designation, and they were mildly overclocked. Now BFG is releasing three new products that have a much better overclock, not just with the core and memory, but the shader units as well. The 8800 GTX OC2 will feature a 626 MHz core clock, 1450 MHz shader clock, and memory sitting at 1000 MHz (2000 MHz effective). This is compared to the regular clocks of 575/1350/1800 stock respectively. The 8800 GTS 640 and 320 models get the same treatment with new clocks of 580/1350/1700 as compared to the regular clocks of 500/1200/1600. The increase in the core and memory combined with a significant increase in shader speed should result in much greater performance across the board. The new boards should be showing up in retail this week. This is a bigger deal than most people think, as previous overclocked products usually kept the shader clock domain separate. So even though the core was overclocked, the shader units were kept at stock speed. With the entire chip overclocked, we should see some marked improvements in performance across the board. Now that the G80 has been in production for quite some time, obviously manufacturing is becoming better to allow much more aggressive clocking. The second piece of news is that BFG let me know their 590 SLI board has been EOLed (end of life), and new stocks will not be available to retailers from here on out. This means that whatever boards are on the market will be the last ones available. Newegg already sold out of them and removed the listing, but careful looking around will probably pop up a product or two. This is unfortunate, as the BFG 590 SLI was a nicely built and priced product, with a pretty outstanding motherboard bundle. Such is demand though, as AM2 products are no longer getting the enthusiast love these days. This may turn around with the Barcelona/Agena/Kuma products from AMD, but it is doubtful that the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI will be the big stick on the block when it comes to enthusiast level motherboard chipsets. I would expect NVIDIA to release a new high end chipset around the time of the new core release that will support AM2+ sockets. February 26, 2007 BFG Tech nForce 590 SLI Motherboard Review - Josh In what I believe to be a "world exclusive" review of the BFGRAN590S motherboard, I have discovered what may be one of the best values in the AMD AM2 market. While the board is based on the NVIDIA reference design, BFG adds its own certain flair to the motherboard, and could be one of the best buys for the AMD enthusiast. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire article here. February 20, 2007 AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Review - Josh Today AMD takes the wraps off of three new CPU's. One of which is the X2 6000+. This number takes over the top spot from the FX-62 on the AM2 platform, and it brings a couple of surprises with it in terms of power. The other two products are 45 watt TDP single core Athlon 64s based on AMD's 65 nm process. I take a look at the performance and scaling of the X2 6000+ against the older X2 5000+. So what does 400 MHz, extra L2 cache, and 1000 AMD marketing points get you? Here's a quote:
You can read the entire article here. February 12, 2007 Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB Review - Josh Gigabyte was kind enough to send me a sample of the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB card. This number proved to be one of the most exciting cards that I have had in my hands for a long time! Gigabyte did an excellent job getting a quality product to market, and the performance of the 8800 GTS is really second to only one card... its big brother the 8800 GTX. Here is a quote from the review:
You can read the entire article here. February 8, 2007 Biostar T-Force 550 Review When I reviewed the X2 3600+ I had originally bought it from Newegg along with the Biostar T-Force 550 bundle. Once I finished testing the X2, I figured I might as well plug in the T-Force and see if it was a good or bad board that happened to be bundled with the CPU. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and ability of this board, so much so that the wife's computer received a bit of an upgrade! Here is a quote:
You can read the entire review here. January 29, 2007 AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ - Josh Last week Newegg was one of the first to sell AMD's latest 65 nm products at retail. Before that point only major OEM's had them in stock, and due to the sometimes glacial movement of large product lines, nobody had really seen 65 nm parts outside of review circles. Last week it started with the X2 3600+, and has now moved on with the 4000+, 4400+, and the 4800+. In this little review I took a look at the overclocking potential of the X2 3600+. I am not an extreme overclocker by any stretch of the imagination, but even I was able to produce good results with this new chip. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire article here. BFG Unveils New Water-Cooled 8800 GTX With the help of Danger Den, BFG has announced their latest overclock 8800 GTX. With a blistering 650 MHz core (575 MHz stock) and the shaders clocked at 1500 MHz (1350 MHz stock), BFG finishes it off with a 2 GHz memory clock (1.8 GHz stock). This will be, hand's down, the fastest factory overclocked 8800 GTX in the world. This 768 MB card will also cost a pretty penny. At $899 it is the most expensive video card to pop up since the infamous GeForce 6800 Ultra 512 MB edition ($999 at introduction). Unlike other overclocked 8800's, BFG did increase the shader clocks by a large margin. In most other OC cards while the rest of the chip is overclocked, the shader clocks typically stay the same speed. BFG is pushing the envelope with a neat product, but it is definitely not affordable to those of us with meager budgets. ATI Releases Catalyst 7.1 for Vista The driver folks at ATI have feverishly been working to get out a production quality set of drivers for the new Vista operating system. From all indications, they may have set the gold standard for this introduction. Performance appears to be good in both Direct3D and OpenGL applications, it features Blue-Ray and HD DVD support off the bat, CrossFire support for Vista, and an improved and faster loading control center. You can download this number here.
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