Top Spec

I have been meaning to write some sort of short article on skulltrail. If you are not aware by now what skulltrail is I would consider directing your attention to this post.
Skulltrail is a motherboard for the enthusiast, the board uses Xeon socket ‘771′. The best bit is the motherboard has TWO sockets for extreme clocks. So thinking about it the board can support 8 processors! It is considered the first dual socket motherboard for the desktop market. The FSB runs at 1600mhz but the motherboard uses DDR 2 memory modules running at a top speed of 800mhz not over-clocked.

Intel state that they created the first desktop dual socket motherboard. I remember when AMD had dual socket motherboards using Operton processors years ago. Now how is this any different from Intel? The motherboard is based on the server market with ECC memory and uses the socket 771 for Xeon processors. I’d consider this a server motherboard more than anything else!

Back when AMD released their 64bit architecture it was well known that using two processors with one motherboard had no advantage. Gamers preferred to splash out for higher clocked singular processor set-ups. There was even a debate on the actual performance increase of using SLI/Crossfire. Using SLI/Crossfire found hardly any gains in performance, im beginning to see a pattern emerging! Now that Nvidia have released their Nvidia 790i Chipset I would like to see what the performance differences actually are in the current gaming market. I guess some research is to be considered: P.

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There has been yet another cut to the AMD team. Director or ex-director as I should say of the Marketing graphics group has left the building. Vijay Sharma stated that his reasoning for leaving was to pursue other business non-related to the graphics market. His decision to do so was apparently very sudden.AMD has lost four or so senior members of staff, what’s going wrong? To be honest this is not looking good for AMD and ATI’s partnership.

When AMD and ATI came together I was expecting considerable improvements on their side of the computer markets. AMD don’t seem to be making their dent in the current markets. Ok they have their quad core processors but they are no match to Intel’s quad core extreme products. This also applies for ATI’s market against Nvidia.

I remember when I was against Intel’s products. Back in the day it was all about multiple operations per one clock cycle! This made AMD chips considerably cheaper than Intel’s products. AMD lead the processor markets but the tables have turned. With Larrabee on the way AMD are heading south!

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As you are all aware the Nvidia 9800 x2 also known as the GX2 is the fastest card on the market to-date. Nvidia have just released their latest chipset the nforce 790i SLI to accompany their latest graphics card. Sounds like a great match!

I’m un-sure at this time if the latest Chipsets support 3x GX2s, at this point I don’t think the drivers, software and other hardware support the 3x GX2s. I can imagine at this stage using 3x GX2s would create an impressive 3D Benchmark score but with this in-mind, in lower level benchmarks standard SLI seems to keep up.

Where the configuration currently excels is within AA and AF filtering with impressive scaling performance. Using the Quad GX2 setup, games such as COD4 and ET quake wars have impressive performance. It is said that using one GX2 is problematic for most games, probably ATI optimised games. Considering the board is new, teething issues will remain until a dedicated driver is created for the GX2.

There are a number of Quad 9800 GX2s being reviewed over the web. The GX2 uses two pci-e 2.0 PSU connectors (6 and 8 pin). Now put that into perspective, with a quad GPU set up that’s 4 pci-e connections for one setup! So if you’re considering buying two GX2s don’t expect to use a 400x power supply.

Over the next few weeks hopefully there might just be a 3x GX2 SLI setup but who knows, just wait and see.

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I would have to say Intel own a higher profit share than AMD. On the other hand Nvidia and ATI are easily on par with each other. Where does Intel’s Graphics come into this market?

When creating a fresh build for games there are a lottery of CPU, Chipsets and Graphics card models at your disposal. What do you choose? A Intel Processor with ATI Graphics, AMD processor with ATI Graphics or AMD processor with Nvidia Graphics.

With the current hardware trends an Intel Quad core system with an Nvidia graphics card looks like a good option. What about the chipset? What’s the best motherboard to use? This must be taken into consideration when building the system.

Now that Intel and Nvidia are constantly battling it out over current hardware trends, who’s to say Intel will suit an ATI graphics card? Intel could easily optimise their hardware for ATI but ATI already have partnership with AMD. So what’s next :S.

So, as I said earlier with Intel and Nvidia colliding what does the future hold? Intel are now implementing a new architecture for Graphics Processing called Larrabee which uses Intel’s X86 processor combined with a embedded graphics processor! Could this minimise the bottleneck of the chipset? In any ideal situation the Processors clock speed should sync at the same speed of the motherboard hence, why cache memory is used to speed up on-chip processing, this eliminates the graphics communication with the motherboard or so we are lead to believe.

Intel is now fighting back with their implementation of the graphics market which will affect Nvidia’s status in the market. Even to this day I would still prefer a Intel and Nvidia Combo system. This is because they have complemented each other perfectly in-terms of raw performance. Where is this heading? How will Nvidia fight back? Will Intel take over ATI/Nvidia’s place in the market? Stay tuned and find out!

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I’ve been waiting sometime now for the appearance of Nvidia’s latest Chipset based on the socket 775. I have seen Intel with their crossfire and Sli x3 configurations running at PCI-E 2.0. I was also interested to see non existent DDR3 module support for quad core processors. The only implementation before today was the x48. Nvidia’s competition was their older version of the 790i which had DDR2 and a 3-way SLI configuration not to mention the lack of 45nm support. Obviously Nvidia had to fight back.

The new Nvidia 790i ULTRA (the alpha male) of all Nvidia products is here to give Intel a run for their money. The DDR clock runs at 2,000mh, sli is running in x3 mode with version 2.0 PCI-e. Ok this board might not sound amazing but to all those Nvidia Chipset lovers, this is the board of all boards.

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Over the past couple of years S3 Graphics manufacturer have been non-existent well in the gaming markets thats for sure. The gaming community even thought S3 were non-existent; this is simply not the case!

S3 are claiming their Chrome 430 GT will out perform the current Nvidia and ATi counter parts. The board is priced at around $59 which seems to me as a bargin if current Nvidia and ATi cards are priced around $350. The card is directx 10.1 supported and includes third party features such as ChromotionHD which is S3’s video architecture for HD.

I take that the board is mostly targeted at the High definition market over 3d graphic acceleration. Let just wait for those Benchmarks.

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A lot of manufacturers of graphics boards are pushing their high ended cards to the water-cooled approach. Sapphires 3870 GPU uses just that. Sapphire uses the ATOMIC water-cooling kit for their means to cooling. By using a water-cooling unit the GPU and memory temperatures are lowered considerably.

Tests have shown that the card on idle will equate to 4 or 5 degrees lower than the non water-cooled brother. Where the water-cooling unit really shines is when the GPU is under load (running a game for example). Here the temperatures are 20 to 30 degrees under a conventional fan cooled board.
I’m un-sure if the board will beat its Nvidia rival but whos to say Nvidia won’t fight back with their own water-cooled machine which may have better over-clocking capabilities.

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So we have yet again a new leader in the constant battle of the graphics cards. Who may you ask? Nvidia already released their 9600 X2 graphic boards which weighted in around the main stream budget price bracket. You can imagine the processor and memory clock speeds won’t be as fast as say your enthusiast graphics boards.

Right let’s get to it! We now have our latest contender the Nvidia 9800 as you can guess with nvidia naming convention the 9800 is the daddy compared to the 9600. The typical GPU clocks are 600mhz with memory clocking at 2000mhz using DDR3 technology. Prices are around £400 give or take a few pounds (literally).

Benchmarks are quite impressive with 30 fps lead in Quake Wars compared to Nvidia’s older brother the 8800 Ultra. The results start to drop in the higher filtering ranges but this is the usual trend of Nvidia based cards. ATi are lagging behind with almost half the fps results with their HD 3870 X2. Even so I would still like to see the benchmarks run on an ATI optimised game such as Half life 2 for example.

Who knows what will happen with ATi. ATi are lagging on the quad core front with INTEL competition but with Nvidia and ATI always in close battle what will the future hold? Keep a check on Top Spec! to find out.

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I’m sure you are all aware that the latest contenders in the Graphics market have to be ATI and Nvidia. Nvidia have there 9800GX2 Graphics module which is basically two PCBs glued together how original! :/. ATIs idea of a dual processing graphics board is totally different, we have the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2. The board has two processor units included on the one PCB.

The guys at AlienWare have decided to use crossfire for their ALX CrossfireX platform. This includes two ATi 3870 X2’s which has a dedicated 1gig of ram each. Now that’s some power. But does the system really give you that double performance you would expect? Well the short answer is no. [I will hopefully include an article into why this is true].

AlienWare claim that their gaming platform is the first quad core directx 10.1 system. This may be so but with a price tag of £3, 577 pound is it really worth the re-mortgage of your house? For some reason I don’t think so some how!

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I’d like to welcome all you viewers to Top Spec. Over the next couple of months I’m hoping to give YOU yes YOU the viewer a comprehensive look on all the latest hardware out there! Over the up-coming months I will be posting messages based on all the latest architecture from C.P.U’s, Motherboards and my favourite piece of hardware Graphics Processor Units. If you’re lucky, may be a look into Random Access Memory but with DDR3 already alive who says what’s on the drawing boards?

This week I will be posting an update on the quad core front from INTEL and AMD, may be even competition from third party sources who can tell at this stage? The Cebit Show also un-leashed some very interesting designs from Nvidia and ATI AMD. Keep looking for updates! You would be stupid to miss out!!!.

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