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CES 2012 Day 0 Podcast - 1/7/2012

Subject: Editorial, General Tech | January 8, 2012 - 02:20 AM |
Tagged: ultrabook, podcast, nvidia, Intel, CES, amd

PC Perspective CES 2012 Day 0 - 1/7/2012

Join us tonight as we talk about our CES predictions for this year, from Las Vegas!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Matt Smith and Allyn Malventano

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

Source: PC Perspective

Letting the enthusiast down is one thing AMD, disappointing a major partner is another

Subject: General Tech | January 6, 2012 - 01:02 PM |
Tagged: amd, cray, interlagos

Many consumers have been annoyed with AMD this year, from the enthusiast on the bleeding edge trying to track down the elusive HD6990 to the bargain conscious market looking for  a Llano based system.  It certainly hurt AMDs bottom line to have product shortages and it has alienated customers to the point where they may not consider AMD parts in the future.  The shortages also ensured that AMD will miss an entire generation of laptops and pre-built PCs since assemblers like Dell and HP needed a guaranteed solid supply of chips before they would consider selling a product line based on those chips. 

The Register reported on even worse news for AMD this morning, it seems that Cray will miss their targeted revenue for Q4 2011 and it seems to be AMDs fault.  The delay of the Interlagos based APUs which Cray was basing its new line of high powered clusters on.  This is not the first time that this has happened, Cray has been burned by Opteron delays before.  In response Cray is designing a new cluster architecture that will be able to interconnect Intel and AMD chips over PCIe 3.0 lanes.  

These Cray machines that are being delayed have another problem as well.  Not only do they depend on the delayed Opterons they are also planned to incorporate NVIDIA's Kepler HPC cards which are suffering from a serious case of the delays as well.  Seems like it is a bad quarter to be Cray.

cray.png

"Cray is going to miss its revenue targets for the fourth quarter, the company warned Wall Street this morning before the markets opened, and it has pointed its finger (without naming names) directly at its main processor supplier, Advanced Micro Devices, as the cause of the miss."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: The Register

Podcast #184 - Asus Llano Notebook, a Quad Core Sandy Bridge-E CPU, HD 7000 Series rumors and more!

Subject: Editorial | January 5, 2012 - 04:12 PM |
Tagged: snb-e, podcast, nvidia, llano, Intel, HD7000, asus, amd, 7970

PC Perspective Podcast #184 - 01/05/2011

Join us this week as we talk about an Asus Llano Notebook, a Quad Core Sandy Bridge-E CPU, HD 7000 Series rumors and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:19:23

Program Schedule:

  1. 0:00:32 Introduction
  2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  3. http://pcper.com/podcast
  4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  5. 0:01:41 ASUS K53T Review: Mainstream Llano Offers Inexpensive Mobile Gaming
  6. 0:04:34 Seasonic Platinum 80 Plus 1000W Power Supply Review
  7. 0:06:25 GSkill Ripjaws X 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR-3 1866 Review
  8. 0:12:50 Video Perspective: Corsair Carbide 500R and 400R Case Review
  9. 0:16:00 Intel Core i7-3820 Processor Review - Quad-Core Sandy Bridge-E under $300
  10. 0:27:30 Cooler Master Cosmos II video
  11. 0:31:30 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
  12. 0:34:00 HDD Warranties Slashed By More Than Half - But Why?
  13. 0:45:10 AMD Radeon HD 7700-series Details Leak - $149, 896 SPs, 128-bit
  14. 0:49:00 Does AMD have a 2304 stream processor GPU in waiting?
  15. 0:56:30 ... and the winner is Shamino with a world record 3DMark11 score on an HD7970
  16. 0:59:30 Lenovo Unveils ThinkPad Ultrabook, ARM-Powered Laptop Ahead of CES
  17. 1:03:50 Email Rapid Fire 
    1. Email from Nabokovfan8
    2. Email from Tom about 7970 CrossFire
    3. Email from Mike about SSD purchases
  18. 1:05:10 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: Transcend USB 3.0 Super Speed Multi-Card Reader
    2. Jeremy: OCZ Agility 3 240GB only $300 after you count the stupid MIR
    1. Josh: Only if on special for $99  A lot of fun, decent game titles with it.  Powered by the Beard!
    2. Allyn: This- just got 50% better. (HDD model with fans here).
  19. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  20. http://pcper.com/podcast   
  21. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  22. Closing

Source:

... and the winner is Shamino with a world record 3DMark11 score on an HD7970

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 4, 2012 - 05:47 PM |
Tagged: ROG, overclocking, LN2, HD 7970, asus, amd

rog_logo.png

ASUS' Republic of Gamers is off to an incredible start this year with the release of the HD7970, though there are always those who cannot leave their GPUs at reference speeds.  For instance Shamino, who is not just a ranger in the Ultima series, but is also now the ultimate champion of extreme GPU overclocking.  Taking a brand new HD 7970, removing the stock cooling and replacing it with LN2 cooling has netted him the record for single GPU performance.  He scored 15,063 on 3DMark11 and 54,725 on 3DMark Vantage with an 84% overclock, the GPU was running at 1700MHz when he hit the record.

3dmark11-shamino-1700mhz-hd7970-799x589.jpg

It can certainly be hard to get into a game when you need to constantly replace the evapourating LN2 cooling the GPU but for overclocking purposes you simply cannot beat the cooling ability of LN2.  His record may not stand for long, they never do in OCing competiton, but for now he is king of the ring and is looking to move onto bigger and better things ... in this case a quad-CrossFire system which he intends to use to take the grand title of fastest graphics performance on the planet.

shamino.jpg

Source: AMD

Does AMD have a 2304 stream processor GPU in waiting?

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 2, 2012 - 07:23 PM |
Tagged: amd, southern islands, rumor, leak

The review for the AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB card based on the Tahiti GPU and the new Southern Islands architecture was released on December 22nd with expected availability on January 9th.  In that review we show a diagram of the Tahiti GPU and its 32 Compute Units (CUs) that combine to form the total 2048 stream processors (SPs).  

We asked and asked, but a die shot was never given to us for our review - a very non-standard practice for new launches.  That started us wondering - was there something AMD was hiding from reviewers about the architecture?  Were there some disabled CUs on the 28nm GPU that they had disabled for business, yield or clock speed reasons?  Think of what Intel has done with Sandy Bridge-E or what NVIDIA did originally with the GTX 480 GPU.  

AMD assured us that was not the case - Tahiti is the full die enabled, 32 CUs and 2048 SPs.  And, based on some of our own internal information, that seems to be 100% the case.

But, an interesting image started floating around last week:

amd2304-1.jpg

This image from the site ChipHell.com appears to show the development sheets for Sapphire's upcoming Radeon HD 7000 series products and their internal codenames.  There are some really noteworthy things to look at though starting with the Atomic lineup.  

amd2304-2.jpg

While the Flex 6G is a 6GB card with 6 mini-DP ports on it running at the same clock speeds as our reference designs did initially, the Atomic RX card has a clock speed of 1335 MHz running on 2048 SPs and a pretty good memory overclock as well.  If that is accurate, the performance difference between the Atomic RX and "Da Original" (likely the reference card) would be tremendous!

amd2304-4.jpg

Here is what is more interesting - another card listed above the HD 7970s that seems to include 2304 SPs, or 36 CUs.  Running at a reference speed of 1000 MHz, this card would have a noticeable advantage over the current HD 7970 cards.  What's more...?

amd2304-3.jpg

The Toxic ZX, if it exists, would run with 2304 stream processors at 1225 MHz!  The performance of this card could easily beat out the Radeon HD 7970 3GB card by 35-45% with the shader and clock speed differences.

So, what does this all mean?  Probably nothing, but it is fun to speculate on a few things.  It seems possible that AMD either HAD or HAS another GPU waiting in the wings based on Southern Islands to compete with NVIDIA's Kepler when it finally gets released.  Even though these documents seem to indicate that, I kind of find it hard to believe that AMD would have been able to keep this secret from the media and the competition for this long.  It is also equally unlikely that AMD was able to quickly tape out another chip that we are unaware of as even a somewhat moderate change like adding in four very modular CUs takes many months.

And of course, we have to take in the possibility that these are all fake, or a decoy or were written up 18 months ago and plans have changed.  Those are much less fun though. 

Source: Guru3D

More HD 7970 reviews that you would want to shake a stick at

Subject: Graphics Cards | January 2, 2012 - 02:03 PM |
Tagged: tahiti, southern islands, radeon, pcie 3.0, dx 11.1, amd, 7970, 28nm

If somehow you ended up feeling that Ryan missed something about the HD 7970 that was important to you, we offer a long enough list of HD 7970 reviews that you will find it somewhere.  Come next week when these cards hit the market at about $800 apiece (the MSRP is $550USD so hope that number is inflated), you might want to know just how well the cards scale, assuming you are able to spend the better part of $2000 just on your graphics subsystem.  The Guru of 3D has answered your Croesus-like desires by running two HD 7970's in CrossFire.  The power usage turned out to be quite interesting, the total power used by two HD 7970s is comparable to that of a single HD 6970, which will at least help you save a bit on your PSU and electricity build.  More important to most is the performance scaling, which Guru3D tested exhaustively and are happy to report scaling between 1.6 to 2 times the performance.  Keep in mind you need huge resolutions to make this worth your investment, it takes a lot of money to play Battlefield 3 @ 2560x1600.

HD-7970_G3D.jpg

"We review the AMD Radeon HD 7970 in Crossfire. With two reference cards in-house, we figured well, you might be interested in some multi-GPU lovin from AMD.

Let's take it to the next level -- multi-GPU gaming in 2-way Crossfire mode."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

 

Source: Guru of 3D

AMD Radeon HD 7700-series Details Leak - $149, 896 SPs, 128-bit

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 30, 2011 - 10:23 AM |
Tagged: southern islands, radeon, hd 7770, hd 7750, cape verde, amd

According to a story posted over at Fudzilla, there are new details leaking out about the February release of the AMD Radeon HD 7700-series of graphics cards.  Based on the 28nm Cape Verde chip we first heard about last month at the AMD GPU Tech Day in Austin, this is the smallest die based on the new Southern Islands architecture.  If you haven't read about all the changes that SI brings to the table (and there are many) then you should check out our Radeon HD 7970 review while you're here.

silineupe.jpg

The specifications of the Radeon HD 7700 (Cape Verde XT) according to the leak are 896 stream processors (14 CUs), 56 texture units and 16 ROPs with a clock speed of 900 MHz.  The memory system will be based around 1GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit memory bus at a 1375 MHz clock rate for a total bandwidth of 88 GB/s.  The Radeon HD 7750 (Cape Verde Pro) steps down to 832 stream processors (13 CUs), 52 texture units and 16 ROPs with a 900 MHz clock speed.  The memory system will still be 128-bit with slightly slower memory for a total of 80 GB/s of bandwidth.

Compared to the Radeon HD 7970, these specs are pretty meager.  The Tahiti GPU has 2048 stream processors and a 384-bit memory bus which would likely make a dramatic difference in performance, as expected  Still, for the estimated $149 price tag AMD could have a winner on its hands.

capeverdediagram.jpg

Our estimation of the Cape Verde GPU based on the rumored specifications.  It is also possible that AMD would remove the dual geometry engines at the top and go with a single.

Finally, there is less information about the 7800-series (Pitcairn): it could include a 256-bit memory bus and will obviously include more compute units for its $299 and $249 price tags.  If those leaked prices are legit, that is a HUGE gap in price between the HD 7870 and the HD 7970 currently set to be sold at $549!  

Source: Fudzilla

Podcast #183 - AMD Radeon HD 7970, HDD Price Analysis, a 4K Display, GTX780 Rumors, and more!

Subject: Editorial | December 29, 2011 - 02:11 PM |
Tagged: ssd, podcast, nvidia, Intel, hdd, amd, 7970, 780

PC Perspective Podcast #183 - 12/29/2011

Join us this week as we talk about the AMD Radeon HD 7970, HDD Price Analysis, a 4K Display, GTX780 Rumors, and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:13:37

Program Schedule:

  1. 0:00:30 Introduction
  2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  3. http://pcper.com/podcast
  4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  5. 0:02:08 Galaxy GeForce GTX 570 MDT X4 Overclocked Graphics Card Review
  6. 0:12:33 AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Graphics Card Review - Tahiti at 28nm
  7. 0:29:25 SSD and HDD Price Analysis: End of Shortage In Sight?
  8. 0:37:15 The EIZO DuraVision FDH3601 is a 4k x 2k Display, and We Want It
  9. 0:41:53 GeForce GTX 780 Leak
  10. 0:45:47 Battlefield 3 Frame Rate Drop Issue with GeForce GPUs
  11. 0:49:42 AMD Refreshes the A-Series APUs for the New Year
  12. 0:53:40 Richard Huddy is now Intel Inside. Well I'll be d'AMD.
  13. 0:55:40 Intel Releases New Cedar Trail Atom Processors
  14. 0:57:35 http://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/Intel-Medfield-x86-SoC-Targets-Android-Phones-and-Tablets
  15. 1:04:00 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: AIDA64
    2. Jeremy: Ice Machine
    1. Josh: If you haven't bought one before...
    2. Allyn: Google Voice to PSTN (OBi100)
  16. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  17. http://pcper.com/podcast   
  18. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  19. Closing

Source:

ASUS K53T Review: Mainstream Llano Offers Inexpensive Mobile Gaming

Author:
Date: December 29, 2011
Subject: Mobile
Manufacturer: ASUS
Tagged: llano, k53, asus, amd, a6

Introduction and Design

P1050281.JPG

Back in June of 2011, we reviewed AMD’s new Llano mobile processor line by taking a look at a testbed system. The overall review was favorable, but it was also based on the best AMD had to offer, a quad-core A8-3500M processor running alongside a separate Radeon discrete GPU. 

If you take a tour through your local electronics retailer, you’ll find that this is not the most common combination of parts on store shelves. The less expensive and less powerful A4 and A6 processors are more common. In our original Llano laptop review, I theorized that these would remain competitive at their respective price points, but we didn’t have the opportunity to test a laptop equipped with the less expensive hard. 

Now, via the ASUS K53T, we finally have a chance to thoroughly examine a mid-range Llano laptop.

Continue reading our review of the ASUS K53T Llano Notebook!!

AMD Radeon HD 7990 Dual-GPU Card Coming Q1 2012

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 26, 2011 - 12:05 PM |
Tagged: tahiti, southern islands, radeon, amd, 7990, 7970

The big talk during the holiday break was AMD's release of the Radeon HD 7970 3GB graphics card - the new single-GPU performance leader.  I gave the card our Editor's Choice award for simply impressing the hell out of us, all while keeping power consumption in check thanks to the TSMC 28nm process technology it is built on.  Being the first card to support the upcoming DX11.1 and PCI Express 3.0 are just a bit of icing on the fruitcake. 

06.jpg

During our talks with AMD they teased a dual-GPU version of Southern Islands they were calling "New Zealand".  According to a report from Softpedia that card might be available sooner than we thought - sometime in the first quarter of 2012.  Because the new Tahiti GPU is actually more power efficient than Cayman, seeing the pending Radeon HD 7990 with two full powered GPUs isn't out the question though we would expect to see slightly lower clock speeds.

79902.jpg

Because of the ZeroCore Technology implemented this generation of GPU from AMD, the HD 7990 will be able to run at basically the same power levels as the Radeon HD 7970 at idle and at the Windows desktop. 

The most interesting part?  This would give the HD 7990 a 6GB frame buffer, 3GB per GPU as we see today on the HD 7970.  Chances are this would give the graphics card more memory than many of our readers primary computer...

If you are interested in this type of card, start saving your pennies now.  When the Radeon HD 6990 launched (the Cayman-based dual-GPU card) it was priced at $699 and never went any lower.  With the price of a single Southern Islands GPU curently at $549, expect to see even higher numbers than the HD 6990 has.  I hope we don't see the same availability issues with the pending HD 7990 release but you can't be sure.  

Source: Softpedia

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