Tech Link: CES 2012 Coverage

If you are like me that always wanted to go to CES but never got the chance (*hint* work, budget, and family restrictions), then you're probably prowling the web for bits of information and whatever pieces you can sink your drooling mouth on about the latest and greatest upcoming gadgets in the future. But fear not, because of the popularity of the event, lots of tech websites have decent coverage, where they post pictures and even videos of products. Of course, I'm pretty sure some site will also post umm, the hot BOOTH BABES, but I digress. Here's some of my favorite sites, listed based on my preference (the first being my favorite):

• CNet
• PCWorld
• Engadget

Then there's the old-school gawking at some tech-sites like Tom's Hardware and Ars. I normally don't trust TehInq (yes, wrong spelling I know), but if you need more CES fix, you can also check it out.

As for the gadget I am excited about, I really would like to have a:

• Glass-cased Ultrabook ala HP's Envy. If only it has a dedicated graphics like Radeon or nVidia, then I'm pretty sure I'll snag one as soon as it is released. I guess I might have to wait a little longer though.
• Then I'm also rooting for a better DVR, DISH has some cool things brewing, but I am more a PC guy so I'm looking for a better solution than what Ceton currently has to offer. (And no, SiliconDust sucks, unless they improve their product, won't buy any SD product anymore).
• And lastly, I'm contemplating whether I'll get a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 LTE. Or whether I should just skip it and get a Windows Phone since I never had one.

And so the noodle-every-night meal begins today. I'll save up and see what I can scrounge up to buy the cool gadgets.

Tech Link (GPU): AMD's Next-Gen GPU Is Here! (Or Is It?)

Instead of reading thru all the reviews and sorting out the worthy ones from scrap, I found a blog post summarizing most, if not all, of the conclusion and thoughts about the new video card. I will not sugar coat it, the new AMD/ATi video card sucks major behind. Don't get this video card, it's bad for your wallet and your electric consumption. Expand to check out the gathered conclusion from PC World Game On blogger.

* Check the following sampling of conclusions about the HD 2900 XT ($399 MSRP) from a few of the enthusiast sites, with links to their reviews below each quote. (While the HD 2900 XT is available as of today, the lower-end cards are paper launches only, with a July 1 street date.)

"As it stands right now the Radeon HD 2900 XT, in our opinion, is a flop."

- [H]ard|OCP

"If ATI can lick the noise issue, we would recommend this card over all others in its price range, even despite the power requirements."

- Extreme Tech

"[AMD has] delivered a pretty good value in a $399 graphics card, so long as you're willing to overlook its higher power draw and noise output while you're gaming."

- The Tech Report

"AMD might not have retaken the performance crown but that does not mean that the GPU’s [sic] still are not impressive."

- Bjorn 3D

"Not the fastest video card in the market for sure, but definitely holds it's [sic] own at it's [sic] current price-point."

- VR-Zone

"Everybody was expecting and hoping for a product that would wipe the floor clean with NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX/Ultra. That's just not the case. Performance wise the Radeon HD 2900 XT has a very hard time coming even close to these product [sic] in a lot of scenarios."

- Guru 3D

Source:AMD's Next-Gen GPU Is Here! (Or Is It?)

Tech Link (Industry): AMD praying ‘Barcelona’ makes up for four-core mistake

Woah, they finally realized it's the performance that matters and not how the technology is implemented. If products performs, within the consumers' budget, and works like a charm, end users will grab them like hotcakes. I wonder why they never said MCM is better than their 4x4, that is, you need two dual cores to achieve quad core (cripes!!!!). Quotable quotes from the Register:

“If I could do something different, I wish we would have immediately done a MCM - two dual cores and call it a quad-core,” said Mario Rivas, an EVP at AMD, during a recent interview in Austin, “because, I guess, the market sucks it up.”

Expand for more...

By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View (ashlee.vance@theregister.co.uk)
Published Saturday 17th March 2007 00:05 GMT

Exclusive Bruised by a resurgent Intel, AMD wishes it had tackled the four-core era with a different approach. The chipmaker stands behind the technical merits of pumping out a so-called native four-core chip with all four cores on the same piece of silicon.

It, however, admits that Intel gained a major marketing edge by melding a pair of dual-core processors with a multi-chip module (MCM) when it released the "Clovertown" version of Xeon last year. That four-core chip allowed Intel to claim a server processor technology milestone ahead of AMD for the first time in about three years.


“If I could do something different, I wish we would have immediately done a MCM - two dual cores and call it a quad-core,” said Mario Rivas, an EVP at AMD, during a recent interview in Austin, “because, I guess, the market sucks it up.”

Before Clovertown, AMD enjoyed one of the more remarkable runs in server chip marketing and production. It beat Intel to 64-bit extensions for x86 chips and then nailed the release of mainstream, dual-core chips. Besides hitting these milestones, AMD clobbered Intel’s Xeon on overall performance and performance per watt - two of the server world’s favored metrics.

While a high-end part such as Clovertown misses the mainstream, it has proved popular enough with the most demanding customers and analysts to toss the technology and marketing edge back toward Intel. Recent sales figures show that Intel has regained server processor share from AMD, and Intel has shown leading performance on a wide variety of benchmarks.

So, AMD is going retro with its upcoming release of the four-core Barcelona chip, hoping to tap into the momentum of yesteryear.

“Barcelona is as much of event in the x86 world as Opteron was when we launched it,” Rivas said.

Other AMD executives have used this line in recent months, although we’re not sure the pitch fits.

The release of Opteron, as mentioned, gave AMD the first 64-bit x86 chip. More importantly, it turned AMD into a real contender in the server market for the first time.

Barcelona seems like less of a game changer. At the most basic level, it’s simply a better performing chip than today’s dual-core Opterons. AMD expects the processor to provide a 40 per cent surge on most software loads and a much higher boost on floating point-heavy software. Best of all, the chip slides right into existing systems.

AMD hopes to continue the socket compatibility with the four-core follow-on to Barcelona called Shanghai and the eight-core follow-on Montreal - a tidbit you may consider a Register exclusive.

El Reg: Will the upcoming chips Shanghai and Montreal be socket compatible as well?

MR: Yes. That’s the goal. We have not released detailed specs that I know of on those two devices, but that (strategy) has served us well.

Rivas declined to discuss what might happen with Bulldozer - meant to be a native eight-core chip - but hinted that “we have analyst day coming up, and I don’t want to share any more than I have to (before that).”

Channel Stuffing
While Barcelona's release may not match Opteron blow-for-blow, it will stand as a crucial product for AMD’s near-term success.

Sources tell us that the chip is cranking through software at an unreal clip in the labs, beating out AMD’s oft-cited 40 per cent performance gain figure.

Over the last couple of months, AMD executives seemed to change the language around Barcelona’s delivery date, making us wonder if the chip was suffering from a delay. Top staffers started talking up a “late Summer” release rather than a “mid-year” shipments as previously promised.

Rivas said the mid-year plan holds, and we’re looking for Barcelona to ship in July.

The chip can’t come fast enough for AMD’s channel partners who have suffered at the hands of Tier 1 demand.

“We got a little bit distracted,” Rivas said.

AMD has, in fact, blamed its channel shortfall for a recent revenue warning. Rivas said that an unexpected spike in demand for mobile processors along with Tier 1s gobbling up all the available Opterons hurt the supply of gear to the channel.

The channel excuse has rubbed us the wrong way because AMD has spent the last three years celebrating new programs for smaller partners, saying such efforts have been a huge success.

“It was a combination of a boom in our OEM customers and a mix issue that made us not look at our distribution perhaps as well as we could,” Rivas said. “And now we are (suffering) the consequences.”

Moving forward with Barcelona, AMD expects that it will have Opterons for all.

“We will have plenty of silicon” Rivas said. “We will make certain that everyone gets their fair share of the pie.”

Should Barcelona prove as successful as AMD hopes, then the company could be poised to gain server market share against Intel before beginning another game-changing phase.

AMD expects its ATI buy to pay serious data center dividends when the company shifts to 45nm chips in 2008. The chipmaker is looking to combine x86 processors with graphics engines to make products capable of cranking through scientific workloads with unprecedented performance. Such products will be complemented by third-party accelerators that plug right into Opteron sockets - an attack where AMD still enjoys a healthy lead over Intel.

So, come 2008, AMD should gain a shot at seizing the marketing high-ground once again rather than agonizing over missed opportunities. That is if all goes according to plan . . . ®

Source:AMD praying ‘Barcelona’ makes up for four-core mistake

Tech Link (Industry): Tech Gloves come off in Intel and AMD chip wars

vnunet has posted an article about the heated war going on between Intel* and AMD*. I will not be posting the full news, but do expand to check out the source.

After a relatively quiet period in the competition between AMD and Intel, AMD has once again lashed out against its chip rival.

AMD is accusing Intel of making outdated and skewed comparisons between the chips of the two companies.

Source:Gloves come off in Intel and AMD chip wars

Tech Link (Processor): AMD Athlon64 X2 5200+ vs Intel Core 2 Duo E6400

This is a cheat post :) done on Saturday, March 03. But hey, I have to make up for the days I haven't posted since I was out on vacation. Anyway, enjoy this head to head review by LegionHardware.

It is amazing to think that the Athlon64 X2 processors are now 2 years old while the original Athlon64 architecture is 4 years old. For so many years the Athlon64 processors made Intel’s numerous versions of the Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors look somewhat silly. Only in the last 7 months or so has Intel been able to take the performance crown from AMD. Of course, to do so they had to completely redesign the Core 2 architecture from the ground up and while the result is incredibly impressive, it hardly makes the existing AMD processors look silly.
Of course the Athlon64 X2 5200+ was never meant to cost just $220 US, especially in the first quarter of 2007, but for obvious reasons it does. Even though the 5200+ never won a gaming benchmark it was able to match the E6400 on a number of occasions. Given the age of the Athlon64 X2 this is a tremendous achievement and although the 5200+ does have a fair clock advantage, it is still rated at well below 3.0GHz! These Athlon64 X2 processors will have to do for now, as backup is not expected until 2008 and even then AMD does not expect a speedy transition to their new platform.

AMD has done a lot for the industry and even more for the consumer and this is something everyone should recognize. Unfortunately, the only mistake made by AMD over the years that has hurt the consumers is their crazy need to re-invent new sockets. The Athlon64 started life as a 754-pin processor and then after everyone purchased one, AMD quickly migrated to a 939-pin socket. At the same time they managed to pull off a big juggling act between the 939-pin and 940-pin platforms before they became one when the AM2 socket was introduced. This also saw the demise of the 754-pin socket which was still being used by the Sempron processors.

For the moment at least the AM2 platform is a safe option uniting Opteron, Sempron and all Athlon processors. So given the option between the Core 2 Duo E6400 and Athlon64 X2 5200+ which would you choose? Personally I would still go with the Core 2 Duo as it really is a remarkable processor series. As I have stated in the past when on a tight budget, I would select the E6300 and if funds allow the E6600 would be my high-end option. However, if you have a similar budget to that of my friends which allows for a $220 US processor, the E6400 is a fine option.

While I would chose the E6400 based on the results seen here today, my friend still went with the Athlon64 X2 5200+ and with reason. As I said earlier, he wanted a high-end ASUS motherboard, preferably something that supports SLI should he choose that path, and a Nvidia chipset was a must. If he was to purchase the E6400 the ASUS P5N32-E SLI was the number one choice and with a price tag of $250 US it would have cost more than the processor. Therefore by going with the 5200+ he was able to pick up the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe for just $180 US. At the end of the day the performance difference between these two processors is quite limited.

The reason I would chose the Core 2 Duo processor is because I am always seeking the very best performance for my dollar. This is what the Core 2 Duo delivers and given there are relatively cheap motherboard solutions out there, I see no reason not to purchase a Core 2 Duo processor. Both platforms have matured to a point now where building a system based on either can suit a number of budgets. Overall, I must admit I am amazed at how cheap the Athlon64 X2 processors have become and how well they compete with the Core 2 Duo’s at their price point!

Source:AMD Athlon64 X2 5200+ vs Intel Core 2 Duo E6400

Rant: Welcome the sucky AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+

I've read a few reviews about this newly launched processor and what can I say, they suck big time. They can barely compete with Conroe and they even have the gall to label it with "6000+" (which is like saying, 6GHz).

Boy oh boy, this new processor just can't cut it. A brand spanking new processor, can't even go toe-to-toe with an aged Conroe. HotHardware has this to say:

Ultimately, the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ isn't fast enough to wrestle the performance crown from Intel's high-end Core 2 Duo processors, but it does push AMD's performance up a rung on the ladder. At this point it's clear that it's going to take much higher frequencies, or rather a new architecture for AMD to overtake Intel again. But for now, another round of price cuts will put AMD on somewhat equal footing in terms of overall value.

XbitLabs also posted their review and they aren't impressed as well:

Frankly speaking the launch of the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processor is not a very big event. Until promising new cores based on K8L micro-architecture come out, AMD will hardly be able to surprise us with anything. After the launch of Intel Core 2 Duo processor family, AMD K8 micro-architecture turned pretty obsolete. While in the budget and mainstream market AMD manages to success just fine thanks to smart and aggressive pricing policy, then the high-performance segment seems to be a tough nut to crack for AMD at this time.

So if you want to suck, or a masochist wanting to have a crappy system, or just plainly insane, you can go ahead and own such system. On the other hand, you can still stick with your Conroe!

Brag: Initial Clovertown Benchmark

I have uploaded an initial benchmark of Clovertown since I am really bored tonight. I don't really know what to do so I decided to fire it up and load a simple benchie, one that doesn't really require attention to run. SANDRA seems to be a good one to start with, so I fire it up and whoopsie daisy and it hits me like a champ (which it really is anyway). No more Mr. Nice Guy, this is one bad ass system. If you are looking for an ultimate multimedia stuff or into Virtualization, look no more because this is it.

Scrap that AMD* 4x4, which is a sorry solution to have four cores. Oh, if you don't have any idea of how powerful it is, click on the graph for a comparison against a wide array of Conroe processors and a Presler.

Tech Link (Platform): Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron Battle Head to Head

Whether the topic is on the desktop computing, laptop computing or server computing, rest assure that Intel's great processor and chipset uA is the best. In this review, THG puts Woodcrest head to head with the competition and comes out the big winner. Expand to check out the conclusion...

The Woodcrest platform performed very well, exceeding our initial expectations. It is the fastest in all of the tests and completely dominates our benchmarks. The new Xeon 5100 series helps Intel to get back on track, providing class-leading server/workstation processors. The now older 5000-series (Dempsey) Xeon, based on the Netburst architecture, is often last in the competition and merely serves as a point of reference in our tests.

Intel has retaken the throne from AMD in the server/workstation sector and sent AMD back to the drawing board. Next month Intel will release the quad core Clovertown CPU with 2 combined Woodcrest cores. AMD is ready for this threat with the introduction of their X4 Opteron, which is reported to have a L3 cache. Servers will benefit more from these quad core processors than desktop users due to the limited deployment of multithreaded-capable applications in the desktop sector in comparison to the server sector.

In mid-2007 AMD is expected to answer Intel's new threat with a line of faster Opterons utilizing the new Socket F, as well as support for DDR2 memory. Whether or not this will be enough to regain the performance lead has yet to be seen, but with no major architectural changes, it is expected that Intel will still retain the overall better performance per watt status.

In all, both platforms perform quite well, but the nod goes to the Xeon 5100 series for its superior performance and greater efficiency.

Source:Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron Battle Head to Head

Tech Link (Industry): Second Life plays AMD vs. Intel

You got to love this FanBoyz.

During a session exploring Second Life at the AMD Global Vision Conference, Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka (pictured below) outlined the basics of the virtual world, which he said attracted 750,000 users in August and is growing at 15 percent per month. Unfortunately for AMD, Ondrejka said that his company has switched from AMD dual core Operton’s to Intel’s new Core Duo chips, which he said have a superior CPU/$ ratio, including the cost of power to run servers. However, he threw AMD a bone, saying that he was looking forward the quad-core AMD chips, which aren’t due until mid-2007.

I asked AMD CTO Phil Hester when he would get Second Life back in the fold. He acknowledged the horserace, and noted that Second Life’s benchmarks are atypical–100 percent utilization on a 24×7 basis. Hester hopes that Ondrejka will take a look at the new Rev F Opterons, which add new AMD-V virtualization technology and Double Data Rate (DDR2) memory. Intel also has hardware virtualization and is FB-DIMM (fully buffered dual inline memory modules), a sequel to DDR2 that provides higher capacity.

Ondrejka, of course, likes the competition between AMD and Intel. It pushes the technology, drives up performance in Second Life’s 250 square miles of virtual world and lowers the cost to deliver the bits

Source:Second Life plays AMD vs. Intel

Tech Link (Industry): Intel Fires Back at A.M.D. Over Bragging Rights on Chip

So I remember some AMDroids saying how I am just a "braggart", in fact, being such a braggart, I even make my own image brag about brag so I don't hide the fact that I am such (much more like I don't hide the fact that I am a FanBoy). So yeah, you can't hurt me with such empty words.

But yeah, I guess it's not just "me", but Chipzilla is such a braggart too. In fact, The New York Times covers what the uber FanBoy said over at IDF, and I quote:

“This is about bragging rights,” the Intel chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, said in an interview after his speech opening the three-day Intel Developers Forum, an annual event for makers of PC’s and accessories.

Expand for more FanBoyz...AMDroids, you can go away now!

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 26 — A war of words between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel is heating up as they vie to claim the advantage in creating a new generation of chips with four processing cores.

A week after A.M.D.’s chief executive, Hector Ruiz, called Intel an “abusive Goliath” using monopoly tactics, his Intel counterpart responded Tuesday that the harsh words were those of a rival losing ground on a new battlefront.

“This is about bragging rights,” the Intel chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, said in an interview after his speech opening the three-day Intel Developers Forum, an annual event for makers of PC’s and accessories.

Mr. Otellini announced that Intel would begin shipping quad-core processors for both high-end PC’s and servers in November, at least six months before quad-core processors are due from A.M.D.

Advanced Micro was first to make dual-core chips, featuring two processors, an approach the industry has taken in recent years to gain performance without increasing PC energy consumption. And in the last two years it has made significant inroads in Intel’s market share of both desktop and server computers.

But Intel, despite a deep round of cost-cutting announced Sept. 6, is beginning to reverse its market-share decline based on the success of its first two generations of dual-core processors, analysts said.

“I think that Intel now has the initiative,” said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technology Associates, a computer industry consulting firm. “They’re hitting their deadlines and even pulling them in a bit.”

Intel’s success in quickly bringing to market several generations of multiple-core chips is reflected in its winning back customers like Rackable Systems, a server maker that had moved almost entirely to A.M.D.

“We’re hearing a lot behind the scenes about new customer wins for Intel during the next nine months,” said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering, a computer industry consulting firm in Seaford, N.Y.

Intel and A.M.D. are taking different routes to the next generation. On Monday night at a dinner for reporters here, A.M.D.’s chief technology officer, Phil Hester, displayed a test wafer holding prototypes of the company’s quad-core processor, to be commercially available in mid-2007.

A.M.D. is beginning to focus on new designs that it is planning for 2008 based on its soon-to-be-completed acquisition of ATI Technologies, a maker of graphics coprocessors. By combining aspects of the two types of processors on a single chip, A.M.D. will be able to create a more balanced system in the future, he said.

“This is not just technology for technology’s sake,” he said.

In contrast to Intel, which will initially make its quad-core processor by packing two connected dual-core chips in a single package, A.M.D. will wait until its manufacturing process can achieve features as small as 65 nanometers, compared with the current 90, permitting it to place all four processor cores on a single chip.

Intel has a substantial lead in 65-nanometer manufacturing, and said Tuesday that it planned to add capacity in Arizona and Israel for a total investment of $9 billion in the most advanced generation of chip making. But the company decided to package two dual-core chips in a single package to gain a half-year lead in the new quad-core approach.

At a news conference, Mr. Otellini defended the approach, asserting that it would not result in any performance disadvantage. “The initial ones are multi-chip, but so what?” he said. “You guys are misreading the market if you think people care what’s in the package.”

Intel also announced that it was making quicker progress on an initiative it introduced at its annual developer conference last year to reduce the power required for processing by a factor of 10. “In 2008 we’ll meet our decade goal of a 10X reduction in power,” he said.

According to Intel executives, this degree of power savings is needed to enable a future generation of ultra-light and portable computers.

Mr. Otellini also described a new research effort to build a processor capable of a trillion mathematical operations a second on a single piece of silicon. The research prototype, which contains 80 specialized math processors controlled by a single general processor, will be commercially available within five years, he said.

The project is an effort to match the processing power of what was in 1996 the world’s fastest supercomputer. That machine was used by weapons designers and was composed of 10,000 Pentium microprocessors, occupied about 2,000 square feet of floor space and cost $50 million.

In the interview after his speech, Mr. Otellini said that the new teraflop chip did not undercut the need for Intel’s troubled Itanium microprocessor, which the company has aimed at the high end of the computing marketplace.

Intel executives also described a new notebook design code-named Santa Rosa, to be available in the second half of 2007. It will include the coming 802.11n wireless standard, potentially five times as fast as current Wi-Fi systems.

Source:Intel Fires Back at A.M.D. Over Bragging Rights on Chip

Rant: Kenstfield’s Rival: AMD Athlon 64 FX-2P

Wow, AMDroids are gearing up for a screwy offerings from A*. As the uber FanBoy Rahul Sood said about "4x4" "“AMD may create a new category of enthusiast”", he is really just turning a blind eye to the fact that this so-called 4x4 is nothing but a "workstation" type of machine. Wow, innovation my a**, I'd say A* really did a good job relabeling their SMP-based system into this "4x4". As for Mr. FanBoy Rahul, well, he is still a FanBoy and covering up for A*'s behind no matter how badly beaten the freakin' A* processors are already.

AMDroids, you suck big time! Expand for more (that is, if you are not an AMDroid).

As Intel announced last week that the company plans to release Quad-core Kenstfield Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (2.66GHz/4MB L2 x2/1066MHz FSB) in Nov 2006 for enthusiastic market, AMD also got their plan on defense. This plan is so called 4x4 enthusiast platform as reported before. Here we get more information about the new platform.

4x4 enthusiast platform is simply an introduction of SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor) of Operton from the server segment. 4 threads processing ability is accomplished by using 2 Athlon 64 FX-2P dual-core processors, very simple idea indeed. Athlon 64 FX-2P family will be released in Nov 2006 as well like Kenstfield. The first round models include Athlon 64 FX-70 (2.6GHz), FX72 (2.8GHz) and FX74 (3.0GHz). They feature Windsor core with 1MBx2 L2 cache and 125W TDP. Our first sight is that Athlon 64 FX-2P is simply the DDR2 version of Opteron 2P.

From the latest roadmap from AMD, AMD has cancelled 1P support to Athlon 64 FX, but grant the support to Athlon 64 X2. 4x4 enthusiast platform will be supported in Athlon 64 FX family. In addition, Athlon 64 FX-64 has been cancelled in the latest roadmap and the last order date of Athlon 64 FX-60 and Athlon 64 FX-62 are both in 31/12/2006.

As the 4x4 platform is high in production cost as well as not much in performance boost, the industry indicates that AMD Athlon 64 FX-2P is just a technology show off product rather that mass production product. It’s no point for a user to spend more while there is a cheaper solution for the same performance. This platform would appear to the OEM like Dell and HP only.

The roadmap tells that the hybrid Quad-core processors from AMD would appear in late 2007 or early 2008. It’s codenamed Greyhound which based on the upcoming K8L architecture. It will support DDR2/3, with shared L2 cache and packaged in AM3 interface. Although it’s a year late then Intel, the industry said AMD would not suffered a lot as quad-core they expects the growth on market is slow.

Source:Kenstfield’s Rival: AMD Athlon 64 FX-2P

Tech Link (Processor): Intel Core 2 Duo Vs. AMD X2 AM2--Top to Bottom

ExtremeTech whips out a decent article on the new Chipzilla processor and match it up against the competition. This is just another reference for you FanBoyz out there, in case you ran out of ammunition to go head to head against AMDroids. Ownage!

Final Thoughts: Your Needs

It's clear that Intel's Core 2 Duo lineup offers superior performance across the product line when compared with AMD's Athlon 64 X2. In some applications, even a lower-cost Core 2 Duo can outperform some of the higher-end Athlon 64 X2s.

Source:Intel Core 2 Duo Vs. AMD X2 AM2--Top to Bottom

Tech Link (Processor): Pushing Conroe Further : Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800

Another FanBoy-licking review! You just got to have to hand it to the new uA to rule the roost. No more denial, no more excuses, pure ownage at its best. Nothing beats this baby, nothing on the competition can touch this. Go give it a spin boyz! Expand for more....

The Final Word
It shouldn’t come to a surprise to anyone at this point, but we’ll simply go ahead and say it. Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800 is the fastest desktop processor available today, bar none. The X6800 beats AMD’s top of the line FX-62 processor in every CPU benchmark, even when the FX-62 is running at overclocked speeds. In order to truly compete with the X6800, AMD would have to put out dual-core chips in the 3.6 – 4.0 GHz range, as Intel’s performance per clock is quite a lot better compared to the Athlon64 X2 product line. With AMD’s current manufacturing process technology, these kinds of clock speeds aren’t going to come about any time soon, which means Intel will likely hold the performance crown for the foreseeable future. It’s looking more and more like quad-core technology will be the savior of AMD on the desktop. However, if rumors are correct, Intel may even beat AMD to bring this technology to market as well.

Source:Pushing Conroe Further : Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800

Tech Link (Mobile): AMD's Dual Core Laptops Have Arrived: Introducing the Turion 64 X2

"Summary: Second Choice, If At All" woah, what a load crap Turion 64 is. It's up to you if you still like to read that article, but surely, that "quote" is enough "conclusion" for all of us Chipzilla boyz.

...compared to an Intel platform based on the Core Duo and the company's own GM 945 chipset, the combination of AMD CPU and ATI chipset is inferior in terms of battery time and multitasking performance. Therefore, under equal conditions, it can only be regarded as the second choice - if it is worth getting at all. The Core Duo 2, Intel's next generation of laptop processors is already at hand, and first measurements show that the Core Duo 2 is even more powerful while not consuming more power.

Source:AMD's Dual Core Laptops Have Arrived: Introducing the Turion 64 X2

Tech Link (Technology): Conroe vs. AM2: Memory & Performance

AMDTech just posted a comparative memory and performance between I* and A*, and guess what who won? They had some decent graphs and analysis there, so if you're wanting to spice up your heating appetite for this processor, avoid this review or you'll be drooling to get one now! Expand for more...

2.93GHz with DDR2-1067 Performance Comparison

It is clear enough that despite the poorer memory bandwidth, Core 2 Duo is the performance leader by a substantial margin at stock speeds. You have seen that in all of the results posted in this article. This conclusion will not satisfy all our readers, however. Many have theorized every incarnation of performance imaginable with AM2 having higher clock speed, higher bandwidth, or higher speed memory than it currently does.

Source:AMD Tech's Conroe vs. AM2: Memory & Performance

Rant: AMD users finally changing heart?

Recently, I have been seeing many AMD users planning or even drooling to have their hands on Conroe. Some even have jumped to the dark side, preparing with the motherboard and memory, ready for Conroe. Seems like there's a big change of heart for these users, and for a good reason. I still remember, how many AMD users were buying the A* CPUs because they are bang-for-the-buck rather than pure performance, wasn't it the war cry back in Socket A vs Socket 478? Many weren't buying Chipzilla CPU even if benchmark shows Chipzilla is winning, because of the so called bang-for-buck thingamajig? And then when cheaper PD 805 came, their song changed, it's all about "performance" and not "price" anymore.

On the other hand, Chipzilla users are used to the price already, so if the price lowered down, it was like a "bonus". If anything, AMD users (not AMDdroids, they are unchangeable) may have understood that, well, AMD wasn't lowering the price because they were a "nice" and "consumer-friendly" company. It's all about business strategy.

So yeah, changing heart isn't a bad timing, and you'd better change for good now. Once you get used to Chipzilla performance, there's no turning back. So long suckers, AMDroids suck!

Tech Link (Industry): Intel takes back lead in U.S. retail

Woohoo...

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant saw its share of computer processors sold in retail outlets in the United States rise from 42.2 percent in May to 51.2 percent in June, according to Current Analysis. Meanwhile, the percentage of PCs running processors from Advanced Micro Devices declined from 57.4 percent in May to 48.5 percent in June.

Expand for more..

Intel takes back lead in U.S. retail
By Michael Kanellos
http://news.com.com/Intel+takes+back+lead+in+U.S.+retail/2100-1006_3-6092226.html

Story last modified Mon Jul 10 17:17:03 PDT 2006

Intel is back on top in retail in the United States, and it can thank Toshiba.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant saw its share of computer processors sold in retail outlets in the United States rise from 42.2 percent in May to 51.2 percent in June, according to Current Analysis. Meanwhile, the percentage of PCs running processors from Advanced Micro Devices declined from 57.4 percent in May to 48.5 percent in June.

The shift came because of an emphasis on inexpensive notebooks containing Celeron M chips, according to Sam Bhavnani, director of research at Current Analysis. In notebooks, Intel expanded its market share from 57.3 percent in May to 66.2 percent in June. AMD's notebook share dropped from 42.3 percent in May to 33.4 percent in June.

A lot of those Celeron notebooks were Toshiba models selling for $599 and less, Bhavnani said.

"They are challenging HP-Compaq," he said, referring to a Hewlett-Packard division. "Where Intel really came back strong is notebooks."

AMD still holds the lion's share of the desktop market. AMD accounted for 73 percent of all retail desktops in the United States, while Intel accounted for only 26.8 percent. But it's a mixed blessing, Bhavnani noted. AMD in May was dominant in the machines that cost $750. The chipmaker accounted for 84.5 percent of desktops costing up to $500 and 88.9 percent of desktops priced between $500 and $750.

By contrast, Intel accounted for 52.1 percent of desktops costing $750 to $999 and a whopping 91.7 percent of those starting at $1,250 that month. The fancy Viiv computers, geared for home entertainment, have done well, going from a nonexistent product category at the start of the year to 10 percent of the U.S. retail desktop market. Intel CEO Paul Otellini has said the goal is to sell more Viivs this year than it sold Centrino notebooks in 2003, the first year those came out.

"Above $750, Intel really controls things," Bhavnani said. "It's been the story for the last four years."

Intel steadily lost market in 2005 and continued to lose ground in 2006. But since the first part of the year, Intel executives have said the company would become more aggressive due to manufacturing advances and new chips.

Price cuts have also dented AMD. A similar reversal occurred in 2001.


Copyright ©1995-2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

Source:CNet

Rant: Ahahha, AMDroids are going to get screwed again...

Ok, this is not my own finding, but I just got the chance to open up a friend's email and he asked me what is odd about AMDTech's newsposting here. Well, I said, A* is reacting to the upcoming release of Chipzilla's processor and that's normal, nothing too spectacular, just their re-action to be "competitive". Bah, until I got told and pointed to the direction of discrepancy in pricing and lo and behold, I got what he meant. I never really clicked on the image, because my attention is focused on this:

* AMD Athlon 64 price cuts will receive price cut up to 30%
* AMD Athlon 64 X2 will receive price cuts up to 50%
* AMD Sempron processors will receive price cuts up to 15%

Expand for more...
However, if one scrutinizes the pricing scheme, it reveals that A* is going to screw the pricing of its product line! Remember how AMDroid keeps mentioning how their Athlon XP is like bang for the buck if all you want to do is game since Northwood C has been bashing the Athlon XP to the ground when it comes to performande, so they just console themselves with such crap (they said, Northwood C only has negligible performance increase, but price is so much more on Chipzilla so AthlonXP is the better bang for the buck). Yet this same AMDroids keeps going against purchasing an Intel® Pentium® D 805 and yet performance increase is negligble against, the *ehem* A64 X2 3800+. For Pete's sake, it's a 3800+, it's not a match. Anyway, I know it's not directly related, I just want to show how AMDroids are thinking (they were screwed before in this situation) and how they are going to get screwed with the new pricing scheme.

X2
* 5000+: $403
* 4800+: $645
* 4600+: $301
* 4400+: $470
* 4200+: $240
* 4000+: $328
* 3800+: $169

A64
* 4000+: $343
* 3800+: $142
* 3700+: $240
* 3500+: $109
* 3200+: $99

Ahahahahaha, AMDroids are going to get really screwed here. For just double the cache, the lower rated A* CPU is more expensive than the higher rated processor. Omigosh, see how confused these people are, they can't really tell how fast their processors are or how different they are with one another that if you happen to buy a higher rated processor before, on July 24, your processor is actually so much cheaper than the supposedly much cheaper processor. Confused about my double use of the word "cheaper"? You're not the only one. Ahahahaha, screw you AMDroids.

Here's the pricing scheme: Image Pricing

Tech Link(Industry): Intel Woodcrest, AMD's Opteron and Sun's UltraSparc T1: Server CPU Shoot-out

Nuff said...

The Intel Xeon 5160, a.k.a. Woodcrest, will simply be the most powerful server CPU this year (though it's not yet available for purchase of course). As our extrapolated calculations show, even a 2.6 GHz Woodcrest will outperform the current Opteron 285 with a 5 to 55% margin, nothing short of impressive. The new Xeon is however not invincible: the Opteron can still give some serious resistance when running some instruction mixes with lots of rotates, add-carry or load effective address instructions. RSA, AES and other benchmarks clearly show this. Intel will still have to convince some software vendors to port to SSE if it wants Woodcrest to be the completely superior CPU. The advantage in MySQL is also rather small, a result of the relatively high latency of the FB-DIMMs. But we are nitpicking: Intel's newest Xeon has taken back the performance/Watt crown. In one word: Woodcrest rocks!

Source:AMDTech

Tech Link (Industry): Will AMD's fastest CPU be obsolete next month?

That freaking sharikou seems to be everywhere, pimping his website and spamming Intel-related articles with his own research and "expose'". This guy is pathetic, I even saw his post over at Dev2Dev JRockit-based SPECjbb2005 records by Dell! This sharikou guy is like a plague. Anyway, enough of the troll and let's proceed with the discussion.

Will AMD's fastest CPU be obsolete next month?
Posted by George Ou @ 1:07 am

Digg This!

When I attended AMD technology day last Thursday, senior AMD managers poked fun at Intel's NetBurst architecture and the fact that Intel will be "going back to their previous generation architecture, and that would be an improvement". Most of the industry analysts in attendance began to laugh in the room and I couldn't quite figure out what's so funny and if they would still be laughing next month when Intel's Core2 architecture is released.

I asked some senior AMD managers what they were going to do when Intel releases their Core2 architecture next month and what they thought of the dire initial benchmarks posted at AnandTech and the response was "who set up the benchmarks" and more laughter ensued throughout the room. What everyone was laughing about was the fact that Intel had actually set up the test bed for those initial benchmarks, but what's forgotten is that AnandTech (responding to readers and critics) made Intel change certain aspects of Intel's test bed to address perceived inequities in the first set of tests. I say "perceived" inequities because in the end the changes didn't make a bit of difference and the results were just as bad for AMD's simulated FX-62 (without the faster socket and memory). Since these results were theoretical because the actual AM2 based FX-62 with faster memory access weren't being used and the test bed wasn't completely independent, we couldn't draw any decisive conclusions.

So last Friday when I saw the first set of independent benchmark results pitting a mid-end Intel E6600 "Conroe" 2.4 GHz CPU (due next month) against the just released flagship extreme edition AMD FX-62 CPU, I started wondering if AMD worst nightmare was coming true. Intel's ~$250 E6600 CPU annihilated AMD's ~$1000 Extreme Edition AM2 based FX-62! This effectively means that AMD's flagship desktop performance CPU will be obsolete by the end of next month when Intel released the CPUs codenamed Conroe. The 2.4 GHz Conroe E6600 CPU is a 65 watt part while Intel's Extreme Edition Conroe CPU will operate at 2.93 GHz and still be 40 watts lower than AMD's FX-62 which runs at 120 watt TPD. AMD's power advantage over Intel's current Pentium 4 NetBurst architecture just vanished in to thin air with the introduction of Intel's Core 2 architecture next month.

If that wasn't enough of a beating, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes who writes for our new "Hardware 2.0" blog linked to these phenomenal overclocking feats with the Conroe 2.4 and Conroe 2.6 GHz CPUs clocking to 4.0 GHz and 4.26 GHz respectively! I'm hearing that these kinds of numbers can be achieved with self-contained water coolers from multiple sources while the AMD FX-62 can barely get to 3.6 GHz with sub-zero temperatures. As Adrian pointed out, even AMD's "4x4" which is two dual core CPUs and two dual core GPUs is a stop gap measure that won't be practical since you can do just as well with a single mid-end Conroe 2.6 GHz CPU clocked to 4.26 GHz at 1/6th the price in CPU cost.

While I'm still eager to see more independent results that replicate these results, it is beginning to look more and more certain that Intel's Core 2 architecture will "leap ahead" as Intel's new slogan implies. AMD pointed out that they've been ahead of the game for 3 years (on most benchmarks and the results were always close) and it's inevitable for Intel to have a slight lead once in a while. The problem here is that this new Intel lead is not the usual leapfrogging where one competitor edges out the other, it's a massive lead across the board! AMD will be shifting to a 65 nm process by the end of the year and adding 128 bit floating point processors by the middle of next year though it's not certain if they can make a massive performance gain while making a massive reduction in power consumption.

Intel on the other hand told me that they won't be standing still and they don't ever intend to make the same mistake of allowing the NetBurst architecture to stay around for more than 4 years again. The Core 2 architecture will only be around for 2 more years until Intel shifts to something new. I asked Intel's representative if this is the kind of paranoia that would make Andy Grove proud and he laughed. The truth of the matter is that AMD is what's making Intel paranoid because they've taken a beating for the last 2 years at the hands of AMD. Who's going to win the processor wars doesn't matter because this is competition at its best and the consumer is the ultimate winner with better products at lower prices so let the wars begin!

Source:ZDNet Blog