If it wasn't for a certain person AMD might have bought the other GPU guys
Subject: General Tech | February 23, 2012 - 04:05 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, nvidia, jen-hsun huang, hector ruiz
Take this story at The Inquirer with a grain of salt as the source might just have a bit of an axe to grind with their former employer; regardless it makes for an interesting read. The idea that Jen-Hsun's desire to be top boss of the company that absorbed the one he was running at the time certainly fits the personality he shows publicly. Then again Hector lasted a mere 2 years after the purchase of ATI so perhaps a change in leadership at that time would have changed AMD's future somewhat. ATI could still be around and AMD might be more focused on SoC and HPC as opposed to the APU route they took.
"CHIP DESIGNER AMD wanted to cut a deal with Nvidia before settling for buying ATI instead, according to former AMD employees.
AMD completed a deal to buy ATI for $5.4bn in 2006, but only after it couldn't agree on terms with Nvidia, according to former AMD employees interviewed by Forbes. One of the stumbling blocks to the deal was Nvidia's colourful CEO Jen-Hsun Huang wanting to become the CEO of the combined company, effectively ousting then AMD CEO Hector Ruiz."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Intel vs phones vs ARM vs laptops @ SemiAccurate
- Finally a use for PlayBook: Tab bodged into Windows, PS3 remote @ The Register
- SteelSeries Desmo @ LanOC Reviews
- Samsung WB750 Camera Review @ Tech-Reviews
Make The Right Choice And Win Big! NVIDIA's Mass Effect 3 contest
Subject: General Tech | February 22, 2012 - 12:24 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: contest, nvidia, mass effect 3
Here’s your chance to show off your knowledge on all things Mass Effect. All you have to do is complete the five Mass Effect 3-based trivia questions for your chance to win. Just for participating, you’ll get access to an exclusive Mass Effect 3 digital asset. There’s a new one each week, so keep playing! Plus, you can win awesome prizes like graphics cards—or even a complete gaming rig. Make the right choice. Enter today and gear up for victory!
Week 1 is now over, but Week 2 just started!
Week 2 prizing: 3 GTX 570 (1 winner each)
Week 2 Grand Prize: A MAINGEAR gaming PC valued at over 3K!
The landing page is for the global contest, choose your country and see if you can answer the questions and not only get a chance to win great prizes but you also get a mysterious in game bonus for playing.
HP dates NVIDIA on Valentine's Day. We get Z1 workstation.
Subject: General Tech, Systems | February 17, 2012 - 10:39 PM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: workstation, nvidia, hp
Here is a story for the professional computer users out there.
Professionals have standards: be polite, be efficient, and have a multi-year plan to cram as much hardware into a small case as you can seat. NVIDIA and HP have obviously played too much Team Fortress -- or I did -- let us just all three of us have. The engineers have dispensed with the desktop tower and crammed everything in the monitor with their Z1 product series. While not original, it does hold a number of nice features.
… But honestly, what the user really wants is for it to dispense Bonk!
As soon as I read the announcement I immediately jumped over to HP’s product page and confirmed the existence of external display connections. Sure enough, HP did not entirely botch this product and allows the connection of one extra monitor by display port. While being limited to just two monitors is a bit disappointing -- I currently have a three monitor setup -- if they were to introduce a workstation computer with just a single monitor it would have been product suicide. Thankfully they had enough sense.
The real flaunted feature of the Z1 workstation is its ease of upgrade. The included power supply is rated at 400W which to my knowledge is decent for a single-card workstation class computer. HP claims support for up to 2 internal 2.5-inch drives or a single 3.5-inch drive; unfortunately they do not clarify whether you can install all three drives, or if you must choose between the one larger versus the two smaller drives.
HP and NVIDIA go on a date -- they dress workstation classual.
The workstation is expected to start at $1899 when it ships sometime around April. Unfortunately HP’s technical specifications list an Intel Core i3 and Integrated HD 2000 GPU -- most likely to hide the price of the products with the components that you actually want. I guess you will need to wait a couple of months to find out what you will actually be paying.
MSI's Alex Chang Speaks Up
MSI was founded in 1986 and started producing motherboards and video cards for the quickly growing PC market. Throughout the life of the company they have further diversified their offerings to include barebones systems, notebooks, networking/communication devices, and industrial products. While MSI has a nice base of products, they are still primarily a motherboard and video card company. In the past 10 years MSI has become one of the top brands in North America for video cards, and they have taken a very aggressive approach to design with these products.
I had the chance to send MSI quite a few questions concerning their video card business and how they develop their products.
What is your name, title, and how long have you worked at MSI?
My name is Bob, and I’m…. actually, I’m just Alex Chang. I’m the Associate Marketing Manager. I’ve been with the company for 2 years.
Typically how long does it take from the original reference design card release to when we can first expect to see a Twin Frozr III based card hit retail? How much longer does it take to create the “Lightning” based products?
Historically, we’ve seen the introduction of a non-reference thermal solution within 2-4 weeks of product launch. As an example, GTX580 was launched in November 2010, and by December there was already a reference PCB GTX580 w/ the Twin Frozr II cooler.
In the case of Lightning cards, the development timeframe is longer due to more R&D, validation, and procurement of components. With GTX580, the timeframe was around 6 months, but moving forward MSI is pulling in the launch timeframe of our flagship products.
Quarter Down but Year Up
Yesterday NVIDIA released their latest financial results for Q4 2012 and FY2012. There was some good and bad mixed in the results, but overall it was a very successful year for NVIDIA.
Q4 saw gross revenue top $953.2 million US with a net income of $116 million US. This is about $53 million less in gross revenue and $62 million down in net income as compared to last quarter. There are several reasons as to why this happened, but the majority of it appears to be due to the hard drive shortage affecting add-in sales. Simply put, the increase in hard drive prices caused most OEMs to take a good look at the price points of the entire system, and oftentimes would cut out the add-in graphics and just use integrated.
Tegra 3 promises a 50% increase in revenue for NVIDIA this coming year.
Two other reasons for the lower than expected quarter were start of the transition to 28 nm products based on Kepler. They are ramping up production on 28 nm and slowing down 40 nm. Yields on 28 nm are not where they expected them to be, and there is also a shortage of wafer starts for that line. This had a pretty minimal affect overall on Q4, but it will be one of the prime reasons why revenue looks like it will be down in Q1 2013.
Podcast #189 - AMD Radeon HD 7750 and 7770, Mechanical Keyboards from Rosewill, Windows on ARM and more!
Subject: Editorial | February 16, 2012 - 03:49 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: WOA, rosewill, podcast, nvidia, Intel, gpu, cpu, amd
PC Perspective Podcast #189 - 02/16/2012
Join us this week as we talk about AMD Radeon HD 7750 and 7770, Mechanical Keyboards from Rosewill, Windows on ARM and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still
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, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano
This Podcast is brought to you by
Program Schedule:
- 0:00:29 Introduction
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- 0:01:45 AMD Radeon HD 7770 and 7750 Cape Verde GPU Review
- 0:20:15 Rosewill Second Generation Mechanical Keyboard Review: RK-9000, RK-9000BR, RK-9000BL, RK-9000RE
- 0:23:20 ASUS Transformer Prime TF201 Keyboard Dock Review
- 0:25:45 This Podcast is brought to you by
MSI Computer , and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards! - 0:27:45 WOA! We wanted Windows 8 on ARM details. We got them.
- 0:31:00 Intel Haswell Processors To Launch In First Half of 2013
- 0:37:25 CTO Eric Demers to Leave AMD
- 0:41:15 OCZ Launches Z-Drive R4 CloudServ 16TB Solid State Storage System
- 0:46:00 Asustek? Your Ultrabook orders are ah pulled.
- 0:48:25 Take that Moore! Electron beam etching set to take us to the 10nm process
- 1:00:55 Email from James
- 1:02:45 Email from Dave
- 1:05:45 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Ryan: HINGES!!! YouTube video
- Jeremy: SilverSands Active Directories Migration tool
- Josh: Apparently quite fun.
- Allyn: NewerTech Power2U
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing
NVIDIA is up for a rough year
Subject: General Tech | February 16, 2012 - 12:45 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, 28nm, TSMC, kepler, tegra, tegra 3
If you caught the podcast last night you would have heard Josh discussing NVIDIA's year end financial conference call, otherwise you will have to wait until the 'cast is posted later this week. Until then you can read SemiAccurate's take on the call here. There is a lot of news about NVIDIA and none of it is good, from wafer yields to chip demand nothing seems to have gone right for them. Attempting to move off of their cursed 40nm line and switching to 28nm, NVIDIA has run into big yield problems as in entire wafers having issues as opposed to just some dies being bad.
Tegra is not doing so well either, with sales of Tegra 2 dropping as we approach the release of Tegra 3, which is getting a lot of bad press. SemiAccurate refers to the chip as bloated in size as well as being downright expensive to make. Combine that with the fact that NVIDIA is lagging on A15 adoption and Samsung and Apple turning their backs on Tegra and it doesn't look good for NVIDIA's mobile plans. The one ray of sunshine is that even combined Samsung and Apple do not account for even half of smartphones on the market, so there is still room for NVIDIA and Tegra to grow.
"Nvidia seems to be so far ahead of the curve that they are experiencing problems that are unique in the industry. In their recent year end financial conference call, there was enough said to draw some very grim conclusions.
Today’s conference call was a near complete validation of all the things SemiAccurate has been saying about Nvidia. Remember when we asked if Nvidia could supply Apple? Anyone notice the part about dumping early 28nm capacity, and the disappearance of 28nm Fermi shrinks? Remember how 28nm was not an issue for Nvidia, even if their product roadmap slips said otherwise. How well does this mesh with the quotes from Jen-Hsun himself on the topic?"
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Danish researchers invent 2nm components @ SemiAccurate
- Space; it’s a junkyard until the Swiss get their way @ Hack a Day
- From encryption to darknets: As governments snoop, activists fight back @ Ars Technica
- Intel to postpone mass shipments of Ivy Bridge processors @ DigiTimes
- Acer expects double ultrabook shipments in 2Q12, improving gross margin each quarter @ DigiTimes
- High Orbits and Slowlorises: understanding the Anonymous attack tools @ Ars Technica
- Samsung SCX-4728FD Multifunctional Printer @ Overclockers Online
- Norton 360 Version 6.0 Review @ TechReviewSource
- CoolerMaster MASSIVE Giveaway @ eTeknix
Podcast #188 - Featuring David Hewlett - White Space Wireless, AMD and NVIDIA GPU roadmaps, Hard Drives with lasers and more!
Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 9, 2012 - 04:08 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: wireless, whitespace, ssd, podcast, nvidia, mdt, intel 520, Intel, gpu, APU, amd
PC Perspective Podcast #188 - 02/09/2012
Join us this week as we talk about White Space Wireless, AMD and NVIDIA GPU roadmaps, Hard Drives with lasers and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still
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, Allyn Malvantano, and David Hewlett
This Podcast is brought to you by
Program Schedule:
- Introduction
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- 0:01:30 Introduction with David
- Okay, seriously, how nerdy are you really?
- What kind of hardware systems and specs do you have?
- What games are you playing today?
- 0:13:25 AMD Processor and GPU Roadmaps Through 2013
- 0:28:30 Galaxy MDT GeForce GT 520 Graphics Card Review
- 0:32:00 Intel 520 Series SSD Full Review - SandForce on Steroids?
- 0:43:00 This Podcast is brought to you by
MSI Computer , and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
- 0:45:05 White Space Wireless Discussion
- Links for reference: - Wikipedia, US Radio Spectrum Chart (2003),
- 0:56:00 Increased Hard Drive Write Speed and Density - Using Frickin' Lasers
- 1:02:00 An academic collaboration leads to a GPU/CPU collaboration
- 1:07:25 AMD shows 18mm thin reference ultrathin notebook based on Trinity
- 1:11:05 Tablets / Ultrabooks in Schools
- 1:16:45 NVIDIA Kepler Graphics Cards Lineup Leak To Web
- 1:22:30 PC Perspective Office Tour - Feb 6th, 2012
- 1:26:40 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Josh: Just got one for the wife. For great justice.
- Allyn: ioSafe SoloPRO
- David: Samsung Flexible Displays
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing
NVIDIA Kepler Graphics Cards Lineup Leak To Web
Subject: Graphics Cards | February 6, 2012 - 06:23 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, graphics, gpu
Although there were quite a few rumors leading up to AMD's Radeon 7000 series launch, the Internet has been very quiet on the greener side of the graphics market. Finally; however, we have some rumors to share with you on the Nvidia front. As always, take these numbers with more than your average grain of salt.
Specifically, EXP Review managed to uncover two charts that supposedly detail specifics about a range of GeForce 600 series Kepler cards from the number of stream processors to the release date. Needless to say, it's a lot of rumored information to take in all at once.
Anyway, without further adieu, let's dive into the two leaked charts.
| Model | Code Name | Die Size | Core Clock (TBD) MHz | Shader Clock (TBD) GHz | Stream Processors | SM Count | ROPs | Memory Clock (effective) GDDR5 | Bus Width | Memory Bus Width |
| GTX690 | GK110x2 | 550mm2 | ~750 | ~1.5 | 2x1024 | 2x32 | 2x56 | 4.5 GHz | 2x448bit | 2x252GB/s |
| GTX680 | GK110 | 550mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 1024 | 32 | 64 | 5.5 GHz | 512bit | 352GB/s |
| GTX670 | GK110 | 550mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 896 | 28 | 56 | 5 GHz | 448bit | 280GB/s |
| GTX660Ti | GK110 | 550mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 768 | 24 | 48 | 5 GHz | 384bit | 240GB/s |
| GTX660 | GK104 | 290mm2 | ~900 | ~1.8 | 512 | 16 | 32 | 5.8 GHz | 256bit | 186GB/s |
| GTX650Ti | GK104 | 290mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 448 | 14 | 28 | 5.5 GHz | 224bit | 154GB/s |
| GTX650 | GK106 | 155mm2 | ~900 | ~1.8 | 256 | 8 | 24 | 5.5 GHz | 192bit | 132GB/s |
| GTX640 | GK106 | 155mm2 | ~850 | ~1.7 | 192 | 6 | 16 | 5.5 GHz | 128bit | 88GB/s |
From the chart above, we can see the entire lineup of Kepler cards from the NVIDIA GTX 640 to the dual GPU GTX 690. The die size in the higher end GeForce cards is approximately 50% larger than that of the AMD Radeon HD 7970, but not much bigger than that of the GTX 580. If only we knew the TDP of these cards! In the next chart, we see alleged performance comparison versus the AMD competition.
| Model | Bus Interface | Frame Buffer | Transistors (Billion) | Price Point | Release Date | Performance Scale |
| GTX690 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2x1.75 GB | 2x6.4 | $999 | Q3 2012 | |
| GTX680 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2 GB | 6.4 | $649 | April 2012 | ~45%>HD7970 |
| GTX670 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.75 GB | 6.4 | $499 | April 2012 | ~20%>HD7970 |
| GTX660Ti | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.5 GB | 6.4 | $399 | Q2/Q3 2012 | ~10%>HD7950 |
| GTX660 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2 GB | 3.4 | $319 | April 2012 | ~GTX580 |
| GTX650Ti | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.75 GB | 3.4 | $249 | Q2/Q3 2012 | ~GTX570 |
| GTX650 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 1.5 GB | 1.8 | $179 | May 2012 | ~GTX560 |
| GTX640 | PCI-E 3 x16 | 2 GB | 1.8 | $139 | May 2012 | ~GTX550Ti |
If these numbers hold true, NVIDIA will handily beat the current AMD offerings; however, I would wait for reviews to come out before making any purchasing decisions. One interesting aspect is the amount of GDDR5 memory. It seems that NVIDIA is sticking with 2GB frame buffers (or less) per GPU while AMD has really started upping the RAM. It will be interesting to see how this affects gaming in NVIDIA Surround and/or at high resolutions.
What do you guys think about these numbers, do you think Kepler will live up to the alleged performance scale figures?
Podcast #187 - Our thoughts on Ultrabooks, the Radeon HD 7950, ASUS DirectCU GTX cards, and more!
Subject: Editorial, General Tech | February 2, 2012 - 03:11 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, sandforce, radeon, podcast, patriot, nvidia, Intel, gtx, arm, amd, 7950
PC Perspective Podcast #187 - 02/02/2012
Join us this week as we talk about our thoughts on Ultrabooks, the Radeon HD 7950, ASUS DirectCU GTX cards, and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still
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
Program Schedule:
- 0:00:40 Introduction
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- 0:01:20 Ultrabooks: Intel Knows What's Good For You
- 0:08:30 Patriot Pyro and Wildfire SSD Review - IMFT Async vs. Toshiba Toggle-mode Flash
- 0:14:20 AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB Graphics Card Review
- 0:25:50 This Podcast is brought to you by
MSI Computer , and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
- 0:26:38 Asus DirectCU II Roundup: ENGTX560, ENGTX570, and ENGTX580 Review
- 0:40:35 Raspberry Pi Linux Computer Will Have Fast GPU For The Price
- 0:44:20 If you thought Intel did well wait until you see ARM
- 0:47:00 AMD 7700 and 7800 Release Dates Leak To Web
- 0:51:20 Live Blog: AMD Financial Analyst Day
- 0:52:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Josh: And it is on sale! $770 off!
- Allyn: Corsair Force 3 - very good pricing.
- 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing
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