A Dutch retailer briefly lists a “Radeon 5870 X2,” along with specs — conspiracy? Coincidence? Sham? Legit? Or just a typo?
Well, check out the specs and then… you be the judge. → Read More
Although we were a little underwhelmed at what Fusion actually turned out to be (it got a lot of hype), the good news is that it’s helpful anyway, and it’s not bound to hardware. AMD doesn’t want you to do this of course, and the usual caveats of “at your own risk, etc” apply, but there is a way to make Fusion work on your Intel or (I should think) even VIA processor. → Read More
More bad news for AMD. They announced today that they would be reducing their workforce even further. This will be their third round of layoffs, and things are not looking good for the future. At least with Intel, NVIDIA, and other semicondunductor companies also feeling the hurt, AMD doesn’t have to suffer alone. → Read More
While it has been a sort of unspoken truth that AMD has ceded the performance cup to Intel over the last couple years, they’ve instead provided an extremely compelling value option, with their processors doing nearly the work of the more expensive Intels for far less money. The new Phenom II processor was to be the keystone in AMD’s new Dragon platform, and while the other features of the platform are still great, it looks like the new processor isn’t going to bring any competition to the table. → Read More
A lot of attention has been on Intel’s Nehalem/Core i7 lineup, but AMD hasn’t been slacking. They’ve been working on rolling out their next platform, which is really much more of a complete package than I’ve seen in a while. The new 45nm Phenom II X4 processor is designed to work with the Radeon 4000 series of video cards and the newest 790 series of motherboards.
They’ve got a real triple threat here, as when you buy into their whole little ecosystem, you get some serious benefits. → Read More
Today during an Industry Insider Series keynote at CES in Las Vegas, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer and OTOY CEO Jules Urbach announced that AMD has been working on what it’s calling the world’s “fastest supercomputer ever”, designed “to break the one petaFLOPS barrier and to process a million compute threads across more than 1000 graphics processors”.
The supercomputer, dubbed the “Fusion Render Cloud”, will run OTOY’s graphics rendering software, which as we reported last July, is intended to deliver high-end 3D graphics through the cloud by preprocessing them on servers before delivering them over the web to thin devices. → Read More
AMD announced recently that they are releasing the next version of their Catalyst driver, 8.12. It’s currently available for download from their site. The new version of the driver includes speed increases for some of the most popular games, along with improved video transcoding and filters. On the other side of things, Nvidia’s new 180.84 beta drivers have been released in response to issues with GTA IV performance, and while some users are reporting up to an up to 10 FPS frame rate improvement, most are reporting no change at all. In some cases, users have been reporting that the frame rate has actually even dropped, or that the new drivers have decreased stability. Given the fact that the drivers are still very much in beta, it’s probably best to skip them for now. [via Tom's Hardware] → Read More
The video card business pendulum has had its swing into AMD territory, but bit by bit NVIDIA is making its comeback after an embarrassing early last generation. This time it’s not more frames per second, but favorable alliances which are gaining ground for the graphics giant: EA and 2K Games (creators of Bioshock) have both agreed to use NVIDIA’s PhysX technology to drive their physics engines in upcoming games. Okay, so some big companies licensed some technology. What does that mean for you and me, who are thinking how to get the most gaming performance out of our $150 or whatever? Well, combined with recent performance increases and AMD insolvency, it means buy GeForce. Physics simulation is becoming so standard a feature in games that developers will be relying on hybrid technology like PhysX to make sure their games are running as smoothly as possible. AMD may leapfrog them later, as they did with the 4870, but that’s speculation at this point and what we can say with near certainty is that Bioshock 2 and the next Crysis are going to run best on a GeForce-based system. → Read More
I’ve been trumpeting Radeon superiority in this video card generation for months, but it seems that the seesaw is tipping the other way now and NVIDIA is back on their game. Doubtless the cost-for-performance of the 48xx series early on caused NVIDIA to panic and drop prices, but now that the platforms have matured a little bit, drivers have been updated, and new games are being tested, it seems that GeForce is once again taking the lead. I’ve just read two head-to-head reviews of a GTX 260 and Radeon 4870, one at DriverHeaven and one at Bjorn3d, that suggest that at the enthusiast level (~$300), the GTX 260 has as much as 10-15% performance lead across the board. That’s huge, and what with PhysX and CUDA ascending, I think I know what my next card will be. [via Rage3D] → Read More
I think you have to be a real hardware geek to find this stuff funny, so it’s no surprise that it made me smile. Although it’s not exactly credited, it’s pretty clear that this is a low-key effort by AMD to discredit NVIDIA — the cartoon casts a bediapered dinosaur as NVIDIA’s troubled last generation of video cards and makes fun of their limited and faulty hardware. Whether it’s “official” or not is hard to say, but it’s fun no matter what. [via HardOCP] → Read More
AMD, Intel’s arch nemesis, is rolling out its first 45nm quad-core Opteron processors today. The move to 45nm brings lower power consumption (a decrease by about 35 percent) and increased (by 35 percent, too) “performance,” a term so nebulous it can mean anything. The processor uses the code name Shanghai. The previous 65nm Opterons went by Barcelona, who are absolutely tearing up La Liga, as it were. The new Opterons run from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz. → Read More
Likely irked by the rapid adoption of Intel’s Atom CPU, it’s expected that AMD will announce its own netbook-specific processor this week, according to APC Magazine. The company is claiming that battery life and video performance are the two key areas that need to be better addressed. AMD’s VP of Advanced Marketing, Pat Moorehead, says that we should expect 8 to 9 hours of battery life out of a netbook and that the “hottest” netbook he’s tested only topped out at an hour and 45 minutes. → Read More
There’s word that Acer may well release a nettop, sort of a headless netbook, without the Intel Atom processor early next year. It’s not that Acer is tired of the Atom or anything, but because sales of its Aspire series of netbooks are doing so well that the company doesn’t want to jeopardize the supply of Atom processors. So, it’s reportedly looking at using processors from the likes of AMD and VIA Technologies. Or, if the supply turns out to be in tip-top shape, Acer might just continue with the Atom. And maybe after that we’ll find out exactly who nettops are designed for! → Read More
Yet another big, successful company feels the crunch; 500 people were eliminated from AMD’s worldwide operations today, although AMD did not say what jobs were cut or where. We haven’t heard similar announcements from the other major players in AMD’s game, Intel and NVIDIA; the former may be banking on the its new Core i7s to buoy earnings, the latter probably made a packet on the Apple deal. That’s two blows against the embattled AMD, which is having trouble competing despite the excellent performance of the 4800 series of video cards. It may also have something to do with the company splitting in two, although that wouldn’t jive with their stated goal of “eliminating duplication of efforts.” Good luck to those given the boot. → Read More
AMD’s 4000 series has been exceptional in that not only has it exceeded NVIDIA at the high end while keeping the price down, but the budget offerings going all the way down to <$100 are good performers for the money as well. The new HD 4830 slots right in between the 46XX series ($70-80) and the 4850 (~$170). At around $130 or less, the Radeon HD 4830 provides DirectX 10.1 support and pretty decent performance. There’s a good review over at Hot Hardware with more info, but it’s pretty much what you expect. Support for everything you need and every dollar’s worth of performance but not more. The graphics card market is stuffed to the gills right now and you can find competition and clear choices practically at every $10 interval. If you’re looking to upgrade, just set your own price, be it $100 or $500, and seek out the best deal for that money. [image credit: Hot Hardware] → Read More
In systems where both energy limitations and heat flow are major considerations, passive cooling has been an increasingly popular solution, though not always the best one. Heatsinks are often just not enough to do the job, but as they become more sophisticated they are closing the performance gap with active heat reduction like fans or piping. Celsia has made the heatsink into something more complicated, with water vapor and micro-scale grilles aiding in spreading the heat around faster and better. AMD is teaming up with these guys to make something nice for its high-end video cards. That’d be another leg up on NVIDIA, as they’ve already pretty much got them beat in price and performance; efficiency and low heat would be icing on the cake. → Read More
Every so often, hardware makers strike out in a new direction, improving their product in an almost random manner — double the shader processors! stick two cards together! — and sometimes it actually has good results. The big move happening right now is a vast increase in the amount of RAM available to the video card, even though that’s not really what’s limiting game performance these days. But if you trust HardOCP (and I do), that doubling of video RAM makes for a simply better gaming experience , and at a relatively small premium to boot (a 512MB 4870 costs ~$275, a 1GB 4870 ~$300). Although games are pushing more on the performance front than the RAM front, it helps to have that cushion of space for swapping, caching, and so on. → Read More
Oh my. Facing mounting debt and increasing costs, AMD is splitting into two parts: one to design chips and one to make them. The move is made possible by a $6bn infusion by two Abu Dhabi investment firms, an amount which will go a long way toward relieving debt and covering the cost of establishing the manufacturing arm (“Foundry” for now) as a workable partner. They’ll be splitting the debt and building a new chip fab in upstate New York (with some help from the state — where’s that money coming from?) If this desperate move doesn’t succeed, AMD will surely fall, and then Intel will reign supreme. And those would be dark days indeed. → Read More
Direct X 11 is on track for a 2009 release, according to AMD’s little slide up there. You’ll also note that the company expects Windows 7 in 2009, too. That’s cute. And how many Direct X 10-only (or even DX10-enhances) games have there been since its release, what, two years ago? Doesn’t look like too many to me. Also, just what is “HD+” supposed to mean? via Gizmodo → Read More
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