Slashdot

Vigile writes "Even though both companies have a common foe in Intel, NVIDIA and AMD have jump-started their summer time marketing teams and are heavily pushing mid-range graphics options to gamers. Just this past week, both AMD and NVIDIA released new products: first AMD's highly anticipated RV770 technology saw debuted with the Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. The very same day, no doubt as a response to the pressure from AMD, NVIDIA released details of the new GeForce 9800 GTX+ built around a 55nm version of the very popular G92 chip. Both products are priced around $200 and bring a completely new level of graphics performance to that price range and hopefully some more life into an ailing PC gaming market."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=580&type=overview

Vigile writes "While AMD might claim that the first consumer triple-core processor is an achievement in technology, the reality is of course that these are in fact slightly crippled quad-core processors that didn't pass the qualification test. Regardless, it is the performance of these parts that truly matters and PC Perspective has taken the new AMD Phenom X3 8750 processor through a solid assortment of tests and benchmarks. The results show that in the majority of circumstances the triple-core part will in fact fall between current dual-core and quad-core offerings from both AMD and Intel with a few notable exceptions in media encoding. The budget pricing, and great overclocking potential, should make it a great option for many budget PC builders."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=550&type=expert

SizeWise writes "Intel officially unveiled the Atom processor and platform this week and the power numbers that Intel is showing are impressive if they stand up to testing. A completely new architecture designed from the ground up to be power friendly rather than just plain powerful, the chip that was previously called Silverthorne is a single-issue, multi-threaded CPU that will have at least one model that runs at 800 MHz and uses only 80mW of power while at idle and still only use 0.65W under a full load. This all fits in a 47 million transistor die measuring less than 24mm^2 that can also scale up to 1.86 GHz and remain under 2.5W."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=541&type=overview

Intel previewed the information set to be released at IDF next month including details on a wide array of technology for server, workstation, desktop and graphics chips. The upcoming Tukwila chip will replace the current Itanium lineup with about twice the performance at a cost of 2 billion transistors and Dunnington is a hexa-core processor using existing Core 2 architecture. Details of Nehalem, Intel's next desktop CPU core that includes and integrated memory controller, show a return of HyperThreading-like SMT, a new SSE 4.2 extension and modular design that features optional integrated graphics on the CPU as well. Could Intel beat AMD in its own "Fusion" plans? Finally, Larrabee, the GPU technology Intel is building, was verified to support OpenGL and DirectX upon release and Intel provided information on a new extension called Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) for SSE that would improve graphics performance on the many-core architecture.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=534

After Intel's prominent work in ray tracing in the both the desktop and mobile spaces, many gamers might be thinking that the move to ray tracing engines is inevitable. NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Kirk, seems to think otherwise as revealed in an interview on the topic of rasterization and ray tracing. Kirk counters many of Intel's claims of ray tracing's superiority such as the inherent benefit to polygon complexity while pointing out areas where ray tracing engines would falter like basic antialiasing. The interview rounds out discussion on mixing the two rendering technologies and whether NVIDIA hardware can efficiently handle ray tracing calculations as well.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=530

An anonymous reader writes "AMD just dropped some major chipset news on buyers, 780G. This is a new chipset with integrated graphics but it offers the most powerful integrated graphics of any motherboard currently available. So that means powerful graphics (think playing Crysis at a low resolution) on a $80-100 motherboard's IGP. Additionally, 780G can handle CrossFireX hybrid graphics, so you can throw in a $50 video card and double your graphics performance. A number of sites previewed 780G today."

JeatWorld writes "AMD's newest core logic chipset, previously known as RS780 and now officially called 780G, is the first to combine the power of an integrated graphics core with that of a discrete GPU for increased PC gaming performance. This Hybrid CrossFire technology will allow vendors like Dell to offer higher quality gaming experiences for a modest $50 price increase over an integrated graphics system alone. AMD's Radeon HD 3450 and HD 2400 cards, when plugged into the PCI Express slot of a 780G motherboard, will increase the performance of an already impressive new IGP solution and this article at PC Perspective has a $350 computer playing games like Call of Duty 4 at somewhat decent quality settings. The 780G also offers a range of other features including great HD video playback, HDMI and DisplayPort support all while pulling less than 2 watts of power at idle."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=527

SizeWise writes "If the idea of combining two different graphics cards for better PC gaming is appealing to you, then AMD's offering of up to four GPUs in a single system will definitely peak your interest. The new CrossFireX technology on display allows for any combination of up to four AMD RV670 GPUs including different cards such as the HD 3850 and the HD 3870 X2. Performance scaling is proving to be somewhat difficult for four GPUs even though three GPUs seem to be working very well on the handful of current titles that were tested. However, the flexibility of the CrossFireX technology over NVIDIA's SLI will allow many more gamers to see the benefits of multi-GPU technology."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=523&type=overview

Vigile writes "AMD appears to be back in the saddle, at least on the GPU side of the company. After successfully releasing the Radeon HD 3800-series last year based on the RV670 GPU, AMD promised support for three and four-GPUs working in a single system. The new CrossFireX software is finally evaluated at PC Perspective as they put one, two, three and four GPU configurations through a good set of gaming tests. It turns out that in most cases the fourth GPU isn't pulling its weight but moving up to three GPUs shows considerable advantages over two."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=523

bluephone writes "Today AMD announced that they're now opening the source to the AMD Performance Library (APL) under the Apache license. The newly opened code is now hosted at SourceForge (the corporate overlord of Slashdot) under its new name, Framewave. Phoronix says, "The AMD Performance Library / Framewave covers a multitude of operations from simple math operations to media processing and optimizations for multi-core environments." No word as to if it does your laundry. The SourceForge page says that while Framewave is 'sponsored' by AMD, it is "very much an open-source venture. While AMD will continue to participate in and contribute to the project, third-party developers are welcome and encouraged to implement all or part of the code base and/or to create derivative works." Being Apache licensed, it's quite open, so this doesn't seem to be mere lip service."

Ian Lamont writes "A bunch of hardware and software vendors have formed the PC Gaming Alliance, which was just announced at the GDC. A lot of the big players have joined, including Intel, Microsoft, Dell, AMD, Acer, Epic, Nvidia and Razer USA. The mission of the alliance seems pretty standard ("accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience," etc.) but the article suggests that discussions about piracy and hardware requirements will be front and center. There's no mention of earlier efforts to address compatibility, such as Microsoft's Games for Windows effort (see the Slashdot discussion). When it comes to PC games, what areas do you think the PCGA needs to tackle first?"
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/19/gdc-top-technology-companies-form-gaming-alliance

Vigile writes "The new Intel Skulltrail platform has been getting a lot of attention since its release due to the raw performance that eight 3.2 GHz cores can bring to media encoding, rendering and other multi-threaded application types. Performance in standard benchmarks like CineBench 10 and POV-Ray is simply unmatched by anything that AMD can offer. What is disappointing though is the gaming aspect of Skulltrail: originally one of Intel's major marketing points of the platform was both SLI and CrossFire support. While it does allow multi-GPU gaming, PC Perspective found the overall performance was a let down because in most cases a single processor, dual-core system was able to offer nearly identical or better overall frame rates without the stability issues Skulltrail exhibited."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=514&

Kaz writes "The Skulltrail platform has been hyped by Intel as the ultimate enthusiast solution and reviews like this one at PC Perspective are finally showing the true story. Based on a dual processor workstation design, the Skulltrail motherboard uses two quad-core processors running at 3.20 GHz and fully buffered DDR2 memory to power four total PCI Express x16 slots. This is the first non-NVIDIA chipset board to support SLI, and it does CrossFire for good measure as well. The only problem is that while the CPU performance is substantial in media encoding and rendering applications, the actual gaming performance was littered with performance and stability issues. Looks like another strike against these uber-expensive desktop/workstation hybrid solutions."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=514&type=expert&pid=2

Vigile writes "The Skulltrail platform has been hyped by Intel as the ultimate enthusiast solution and reviews like this one at PC Perspective are finally showing the true story. Based on a dual-processor workstation design, the Skulltrail board uses two quad-core processors at 3.20 GHz along with fully buffered DDR2 DIMMs to power four total PCI Express x16 graphics card slots. This is the first non-NVIDIA chipset board to support SLI, and it does CrossFire for good measure as well. The only problem is that while the CPU performance is substantial in media encoding and rendering applications, the actual gaming performance was littered with performance and stability issues. Looks like another strike against these uber-expensive desktop/workstation hybrid solutions."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=514&type=expert

Kaz writes "As it would seem, after all the excitement and buzz around Intel's Skulltrail motherboard being the first to support SLI, NVIDIA is holding back 3-Way SLI support from the platform. Is this REALLY a technical issue or simply a billion-dollar PR cage match? NVIDIA is claiming that because of the specific features on their nForce 200 chip, featured only on the nForce 780i and 780a motherboards, 3-Way SLI isn't even possible on any other chipsets; even with driver changes or firmware updates. There are serious concerns over this argument though since NVIDIA's own 680i chipset motherboards, without an nForce 200 chip, were used in the demonstration systems when 3-Way SLI was released. Users looking for more open multi-GPU solutions on Intel's Skulltrail will have to look, somewhat ironically, towards AMD's 3000 series."
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=513