Some Details About AMD’s 7000 Series Graphics Cards Leak To Internet

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 9, 2011 - 07:05 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: tahiti, radeon, pitcaim, HD 7000, amd

AMD has had a good run with it’s 6000 series cards, but the show must go on and in that vein the company has been working on manufacturing their next generation of graphics cards. The new cards will be of the 7000 series variety and will be broken into the same two architecture model for the upper tier/performance parts and the budget and small form factor fitting parts with the Tahiti and Pitcairn GPUs respectively. As the launch window for the new graphics cards gets closer tidbits of information is starting to leak out. In fact, popular news and rumor site Fudzilla recently got their hands on a few leaked 7000 Series details!

Included in the leaks are information on the performance parts as well as the mid-range GPUs. On the Tahiti front, a photo of two AMD Radeon HD 7900 series cards in CrossfireX has emerged, showing the underside of the PCB, crossfire connectors, PCI-E power connectors and a possible opportunity for a math wiz to approximate the size of the card based on the known dimensions of that particular PSU (heh). Because there are 12 memory chips on the card, the site claims that the rumored 384-bit memory bus is all but confirmed. Further, the cards require both an 8 pin and 6 pin PCI-E PSU connector for power. These cars are engineering samples and things could change between now and release; however, the speculations seem reasonable. The Tahiti based graphics cards will allegedly be priced at $399 and $499 for the 7950 and 7970 respectively.

The Pitcairn GPU based cards will represent the mid-range of AMD’s 7000 series lineup. According to un-named sources, Fudzilla believes that AMD may be releasing the mid-range graphics cards around February 20th, 2012 or about a month after the Chinese New Year. The cards will be carrying similar naming conventions to their predecessor, including the Radeon HD 7850 and Radeon HD 7870. Due to Tahiti pricing, it’s likely that the mid-range 7000 series graphics cards will be priced at $199 USD for the 7850 and $299 USD for the Radeon 7870, at least until Nvidia’s Kepler arrives to shake up the pricing.

Personally, I’m excited for the 7000 series, and am anxious to see what kind of F@H and gaming performance I can wring out of it! Are you planning an upgrade next year, or will you skip this generation?

Podcast #181 - Hybrid Storage Roundup, the ASUS US36SD-XA1 notebook, News of the week and more!

Subject: Editorial | December 8, 2011 - 05:44 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: revodrive hybrid, podcast, nvidia, notebook, Intel, hybrid, asus, amd

PC Perspective Podcast #181 - 12/08/2011

Join us this week as we talk about our Hybrid Storage Roundup, the ASUS US36SD-XA1 notebook, News of the week 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: 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: 1:03:02

Program Schedule:

1. 0:00:40 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. 0:02:05 Hybrid Storage Roundup: Seagate Momentus XT vs. OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid vs. Intel Z68
6. 0:15:20 ASUS U36SD-XA1 Notebook Review: The Battery That Never Dies
7. 0:21:00 Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Intel Core i3-2105 Gaming Comparison
8. 0:24:20 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
   
9. 0:25:12 ASRock Z68 Extreme 7 Gen 3 LGA 1155 Motherboard Review
10. 0:27:15 Asus GeForce Direct CU II Series Reviews
11. 0:28:16 Intel, Micron double single-chip flash capacity
12. 0:33:46 Mobile madness minus benchmarks; new mobile GPUs from AMD & NVIDIA
13. 0:40:39 Ivy Bridge should be here by the spring
14. 0:46:05 Chrome passes Firefox and is now the 2nd most used browser
15. 0:49:50 It's a bit early for 11.12, but how about Catalyst 11.11c?
16. 0:51:15 Memorieeessssss lots of memoriesssss
17. 0:55:06 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Jeremy: Twine ... so called physical computing; made easy
    1. Josh: Treat yourself for Christmas with a new vid card and game
    2. Allyn: Ready Player One - (Audiobook)
18. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
19. http://pcper.com/podcast   
20. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
21. Closing

Mobile madness minus benchmarks; new mobile GPUs from AMD & NVIDIA

Subject: General Tech | December 7, 2011 - 12:25 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, mobile gpu, 7400M, 7500M, 7600M, nvidia, GT635M, GT630M, 610M, turks, Caicos, GF106, GF108, GF119

Before you start to get too excited when you read about the AMD Radeon 7000M announcement today; realize this is a rebranding of Turks and Caicos, not the arrival of Southern Islands.   While AMD might disappoint, at least the performance of the chips has been increased; NVIDIA went for a straight rebadge.  Even if you squint, the stats for the GT630M are the same as the GT540M and same with the 610M and 520MX.  There looks to be a slight difference in memory bandwidth between the 635M and 555M but AnandTech is doubtful that it is truly the case.

While we still don't know the exact frequencies that the so called 7000M chips will have in the end, they will be higher than the parts that they replace and will come in two flavours.  The less expensive part will be DDR3, with a DDR5 alternative for those who want a bit more performance.  Read on for all the gritty details or just look at the tables below.

AMD

NVIDIA

"We just covered the AMD side of things, but yesterday NVIDIA quietly refreshed their entry-level and midrange mobile GPUs in a similar manner. We weren’t briefed on the updates, most likely because there’s not much to say. Like AMD there are three "new" 600M parts. Here’s the overview of what NVIDIA is offering, with the previous generation equivalents listed for reference."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• AMD Launches the HD 7000M; Mobile Market Déjà Vu? @ Hardware Canucks
• Windows 8 beta coming in February, too late for a final release in 2012? @ ExtremeTech
• Physical computing just got a lot easier @ Hack a Day
• Intel, Micron double single-chip flash capacity @ The Register
• US military pays SETI to check Kepler-22b for aliens @ The Register
• Military contractor warns of new Adobe Reader exploit @ The Register
• Sunwayman V20C T6 Tactical Flashlight @ 3DVelocity
• SteelSeries Desmo Digital Eyewear @ Benchmark Reviews
• Ars Technica's 2011 holiday gift guide extravaganza

Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Intel Core i3-2105 Gaming Comparison

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | December 6, 2011 - 04:45 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: video, sandy bridge, core i7, APU, amd, a8-3850

Our collection of videos comparing the AMD A8-3850 Llano APU to the Sandy Bridge-based Core i3-2105 have been very popular.  We thought we would wrap up 2011 with one final video that looks at the integrated graphics solutions on both processors in five of the top games released in 2011.  Here is what and how we compared them:

• Batman: Arkham City - 1920x1080 - Low
• Portal 2 - 1920x1080 - Very High
• Battlefield 3 - 1366x768 - Low
• Skyrim - 1920x1080 - Low
• Modern Warfare 3 - 1920x1080 - High

Not to give away the secret but...

Be sure you check out our Video Perspective below!!

Hate the platform; not the processor. XBox Next chip revealed

Subject: General Tech | December 6, 2011 - 12:16 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: xbox next, oban, amd

The XBox Next will be another win for AMD as SemiAccurate has confirmation that the GPU portion of the console will be an AMD chip.  The supplier for the CPU portion is a little less clear.  SemiAccurate has it as an IBM PowerPC chip similar to the current generation which uses a Xenon processor.  The newer XBox360 S used a XCGPU which was a 45nm version of the Xenon processor and an AMD Xenos GPU on the same die along with eDRAM, all wrapped up into one small package.  It does make sense that Microsoft would go that route as it should make supporting the previous generation of games much easier than implementing a new architecture.  It is very unlikely to be Cell based, even though that architecture shares the same PowerPC roots.

[H]ard|OCP has a dissenting opinion, or at least rumour, pegging the new XBox as a complete win for AMD.   They suppose it is possible that Bulldozer might find its way into the new console along with the already known GPU core; a fully AMD designed APU.  This also makes quite a bit of sense as AMD will have no trouble pairing the GPU and CPU as they've had quite a bit of practice.  Plus, it gives them something to do with the Bulldozer chips.

Either way the new chip will be named after a lovely Islay Scotch.

"Yeah, basically, the chip is ‘done’, and first silicon likely went in to the oven in the last two weeks. If this is true, Microsoft should have silicon back in time to give the families of XBox systems engineers a miserable holiday season, their loved ones will be doing breakneck bring-up work on Xbox Next."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• AMD Driver Support State For Radeon HD 7000 Series, Trinity @ Phoronix
• IBM unveils high-capacity, high-speed storage chippery @ The Register
• PC experience expected to help Nvidia have advantage in WOA market @ DigiTimes
• Flash prices FALL @ The Register
• Seagate, Western Digital to see supply gap to drop significantly in 1Q12 @ DigiTimes
• Cnet is accused of bundling malware with downloads @ The Inquirer

GSkill Heard You Like Memory…

Subject: Memory | December 6, 2011 - 11:35 AM | Josh Walrath
Tagged: x79, SB-E, Sandy Bridge E, Intel, gskill, DDR-3 2400, DDR-3, bulldozer, amd, am3+, 64 GB

So they are giving us as much, and as fast, as we could possibly handle.  GSkill has announced their latest Ripjaw-Z kits specifically aimed at the latest Intel Socket 2011 chips on the X79 platform.  These kits range from 4 x 8GB @ 2100 speeds with 1.5 v up to 8 x 8GB at 2400 speeds at 1.65 v.  For those wishing to push clock speeds up higher, they offer a 4 x 4GB kit at 2500 speeds at 1.65v as well.

Red is the new black.  This is what 32 GB of memory looks like now.

The past few months I have been using a few sets of GSkill memory with the latest Llano based chips from AMD.  These are 4 x 4 GB 1866 products that run at 1.5v, and they have been pretty phenomenal for me.  Now that we are moving into new CPU architectures from both manufacturers, memory speeds have become important again.  For quite some time people could easily get by with DDR-3 1333 modules and not experience any kind of performance bottleneck.  The reasons for this were due to CPU designs (quad core CPUs rarely required more than 12 GB/sec of bandwidth in most applications) as well as the non-integrated nature of graphics for the most part.

Read the full post here.

It's a bit early for 11.12, but how about Catalyst 11.11c?

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 2, 2011 - 11:28 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, catalyst, radeon

AMD has pushed out a third performance driver built off of their Catalyst 11.11 driver build.  In this release you get all of the improvements from both 11a and 11b, along with new improved CrossfireX performance in Skyrim.   If you have skipped the two previous updates it is probably worth grabbing this release if you are having any performance issues with the games listed below.

Elder Scrolls Skyrim

• New in Catalyst 11.11c: Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for the AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
• Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling for AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
• Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations
• Resolve corruption seen when enabling Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 Series

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

• New in Catalyst 11.11b: Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling

Batman Arkham City

• Improves DirectX 11 performance for single GPU configurations

Rage

• Delivers AMD CrossfireX performance scaling Resolves a number of image/stability issues seen with the title: Fix geometry corruption, sometimes seen in Bash TV entrance
• Fix issues with Low-memory conditions on 32bit systems.
• Fix issue with extreme corruption with missing textures on 32bit systems.
• Fix memory leaks when deleting/reusing sync objects.
• Fix hitching and pausing, especially noticeable on some Quad Core systems when doing races and Stanley Express runs.
• Fix some missing shadows

Battlefield 3

• Resolves intermittent corruption seen when playing the game at specific camera angles

Download and install the Driver from the following location: (direct links)
AMD Catalyst 11.11c Performance Driver for Windows vista & Windows 7
AMD Catalyst 11.11c Performance Driver for Windows XP