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Posted by Hanners
on Thu 7th Aug 2008
We've heard plenty about Intel's desktop Nehalem plans now, but when is this technology going to start penetrating the notebook market? Not for another year, according to DigiTimes.
| Intel's next-generation notebook platform (Calpella) is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2009. As with other Nehalem generation products, Capella will abandon the current northbridge and southbridge chipset arrangement and transfer many typical northbridge components to the CPU package. A single integrated chipset codenamed Ibex Peak-M will coordinate other features on the motherboard, according to sources at notebook makers. |
Read the full story here.
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Posted by Hanners
on Wed 6th Aug 2008
Need I say more, apart from reminding you to note November the 18th and 21st in your diary (depending on where you live)?
Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), is proud to announce that Grand Theft Auto IV will be arriving on the PC on November 18th and 21st in North America and Europe, respectively.
"We are very excited to be releasing the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "The whole team is dedicated to bringing an amazing gaming experience to the PC. The game looks and plays beautifully on PC and we can't wait for people to play it." |
You can see the full press release at Take 2 Games.
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Posted by Hanners
on Wed 6th Aug 2008
While normal users won't be able to get their hands on it until August 12th, a number of web sites (ourselves included) have been given the opportunity to spend some time with NVIDIA's latest PhysX enabled graphics drivers together with a handful of both already available and unreleased game titles to put it through its paces. If you want to see how PhysX on the GPU is shaping up, check out our comprehensive list of content below:
- Elite Bastards
- Driver Heaven
- Firing Squad
- Hot Hardware
- Tech Gage
- The Tech Report
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Posted by Hanners
on Wed 6th Aug 2008
After years of hearing copious amounts of spin and information about the advantages of calculating physics on the GPU over the CPU, NVIDIA's purchase of AGEIA in February of this year finally looked likely to give rise to some movement in this direction. Indeed, that's exactly what's happened, with the graphics giant quickly porting their acquired PhysX capabilities to supporting GeForce graphics boards.
Next week will see the launch of NVIDIA's "PhysX pack 1", offering users the ability to enjoy some of the goodies surrounding GPU-based PhysX for themselves. In advance of that however, we've been able to spend some time playing with NVIDIA's latest PhysX-capable drivers, as well as a handful of both existing and as-yet unreleased game titles, to see if GPU-based physics can live up to the hype.
| In a certain sense, adding PhysX to a game title doesn't need to be implemented specifically for the CPU or GPU from a developer point of view, it's simply handled by the PhysX driver's HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), which can then pass on commands to the CPU, GPU or PhysX PPU. Of course, life isn't quite that simple because of the performance disparity between those three hardware platforms we mentioned just now - If you fill your game up with a massive amount of physics to make use of a high-end GeForce GPU's processing capabilities, then your game will crawl for anyone using the CPU for PhysX acceleration, whereas conversely only using a small amount of in-game physics effects to target CPU acceleration will lessen the effect in-game and mean that a GeForce GPU has virtually nothing to do. |
As always, your thoughts and comments are very welcome in our forum.
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Posted by Hanners
on Wed 6th Aug 2008
AMD's 790FX motherboard chipset has been around for a while now, although not as long as the company's SB600 south bridge. However, both of these parts will be getting a refresh, courtesy of a new pairing launched today - The 790GX motherboard chipset together with the SB750 south bridge.
The AMD 790GX is a tough product to categorize. It is targeted at value conscious gamers, enthusiasts, and multimedia buffs all at the same time. The block diagram above gives a high-level overview of the chipsets main features and illustrates how each component is connected in the architecture.
The AMD 790GX Northbridge is connected to the AM2+ socket through a HyperTransport 3.0 link and it sports and integrated graphics core, along with a flexible PCI Express lane configuration. PATA, 6 SATA ports, HD audio, and 12 USB ports are supported by the SB750 Southbridge. Also, at the bottom of the diagram, a new feature you may not be familiar with, makes its debut - ACC, or Advanced Clock Calibration. More of ACC a bit later. |
Check out the full list of coverage below:
- bit-tech
- Hot Hardware
- Legit Reviews
- PC Games Hardware
- The Tech Report
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Posted by Hanners
on Wed 6th Aug 2008
While a few of NVIDIA's AIB partners were quick to offer US and Canadian GeForce GTX 260 and 280 buyers rebates following a series of swift price cuts, European customers haven't been so lucky... Until now. BFG Tech seems to be the first AIB to extend its rebate offer to Europe - Let's hope others follow suit.
We are now accepting rebate requests from European customers (only) for BFG GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 products purchased between June 16 and July 16, 2008.
Due to recent price drops in the market on the GeForce GTX series graphics cards, BFG is pleased to offer European customers up to $120 USD (based on the model and price paid), who have purchased a BFG GTX 280 or 260 graphics card between June 16 and July 16, 2008. |
You can read more, and find the application form for a rebate, at BFG Tech's web site.
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Posted by Hanners
on Wed 6th Aug 2008
We've already taken a look at Sapphire's Radeon HD 4850 parts in both reference[/b] and TOXIC flavours, but today the company have launched yet another board based around this SKU. Quite simply, this new offering will make use of AMD's reference core and memory clock speeds, but do away with the reference cooler in favour of a custom, dual-slot copper affair.
| This new version of the HD 4850 has been production engineered by SAPPHIRE to bring a number of benefits to the end user. Still carrying 512MB of DDR3 memory and offering the same performance as the original model based on the reference design, with clock speeds of 625MHz (core) and 993MHz (memory), the SAPPHIRE model features a revised PCB layout with quality components and a new dual slot cooler with copper core which delivers more efficient and quieter operation. This version is shipping from the first week in August and will be available at a lower price than the launch model. |
You can read the full press release, and take a look at an image of this new board, here.
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Posted by Hanners
on Tue 5th Aug 2008
The Tech Report put together some excellent power supply reviews these days that are well worth a look, and this is no exception, as they put no less than seven units with ratings from 600 to 800 Watts through their paces.
Finding a good PSU - or, more specifically, the best power supply - in a sea of largely look-alike competitors is no easy task, particularly when your needs are complex. On one hand, enthusiasts need plenty of wattage and clean power delivery to feed high-performance components. CPU power use may be falling, but GPU power consumption continues to rise, and you want to be sure there's plenty of wattage in reserve to handle The Next Big Thing. At the same time, power efficiency has become an important consideration not only as a token effort to reduce one's carbon footprint (which is really just a ploy to impress that cute, hippy barista at Starbucks), but because lowering power consumption reduces a system's cooling load, allowing for quieter operation.
So which among the mob of new models on the market delivers the cleanest, coolest, quietest, and most efficient power? To find out, we've rounded up seven PSUs between 600 and 800W from BFG Tech, Enermax, ePower, Mushkin, OCZ, Thermaltake, and Zalman. We've thrown them all into the ring against not only our beastly load generator, but also our current favorite in this wattage range: PC Power & Cooling's Silencer 750W. |
Read their full analysis here.
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Posted by Hanners
on Tue 5th Aug 2008
The speculation surrounding AMD's combination of CPU and GPU, codenamed 'Fusion', has been rife ever since the company's intentions were announced some time ago. However, TG Daily claims to have the latest information about AMD's plans, suggesting that they'll be contracting TSCM to manufacture the first 'Fusion' offerings on their 40 nanometre manufacturing process rather than using AMD's own fabs.
It appears that AMD's engineers in Dresden, Markham and Sunnyvale have been making lots of trips to little island of Formosa lately - the home of contract manufacturer TSMC, which will be producing Fusion CPUs. Our sources indicated that both companies are quite busy laying out the productions scenarios of AMD's first CPU+GPU chip.
The first Fusion processor is code-named Shrike, which will, if our sources are right, consist of a dual-core Phenom CPU and an ATI RV800 GPU core. This news is actually a big surprise, as Shrike was originally rumored to debut as a combination of a dual-core Kuma CPU and a RV710-based graphics unit. A few more quarters of development time gave AMD time to continue working on a low-end RV800-based core to be integrated with Fusion. RV800 chips will be DirectX 10.1 compliant and are expected to deliver a bit more than just a 55 nm-40 nm dieshrink. |
Read the speculation in full here.
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Intel to launch Calpella notebook platform in Q3 2009