Archive for August, 2008

Advanced Overclocking Championship 2008

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

The advanced overclocking championship a world class overclocking event was held in Hong Kong on July the 29 and 29th. The overclocking championship was open to the USA, UK and European country’s also Asia. There were at least 20 countries taking part in the event globally.

The first challenge of the two day even consited of a two man team trying to get the best possible performance out of their processors which were exactly identical chips for all taking part.

The Event was sponsored by Asus so you can imagine the kit they handed out for all teams! The teams then had to benchmark their work using 3DMark 01, 3DMark Vantage and Super PI 8M.

For information on the results keep posted!

Crysis -Do We Need Full Detail?

Monday, August 18th, 2008

As we all know Crysis is the second version of the Crytek engine. The game was originally called Far Cry if I remember correctly which was back then a brilliant graphics engine for out door environments. I know Crysis (Crytek Engine 2) has been out a couple of months now but I think this game is a perfect way of benchmarking your system in terms of gaming performance.

Over these last few months I have read all about Crysis and how its engine needs a large amount of computation i.e an expensive computer. For example a crossfire/ SLI system running either of the latest graphics offerings with an Intel core extreme processor could run Crysis in full detail around 40 FPS. Ok that sounds good but is it really worth it? For the highest settings!?

Dont be fooled, I then had the impression that the game is basically unplayable on dual core processors and systems with 8800 series Nvidia graphics but I found this was not the case. If your a mainstream gamer then high settings or the word Ultra High dont exists.  But! whats up with medium detail? If you enjoy games as much as me then  you will like the game play, graphics and physics but remember, treat the game as a benchmark! Think of it as an investment for your gaming future!

Benchmarking. Ok so We have a system running a AMD dual core processor 2g of ddr2 and a 8800GS Graphics Card, what will this system produce in terms of performance? Well Medium detail would suffice. The only issue is under intense game play or open areas of the island which usually mean struggling hardware. So we can easily  pin-point the issue and diagnose the P.C with a low clock speed processor please upgrade! Eventually this should evolve into a fast gaming p.c. able to run the likes of crysis in FULL/ MEGA HIGH detail not to mention future games which will probebly use the crytek 2 engine.

Nvidia Loosing the battle?

Friday, August 15th, 2008

Nvidia have yet again lost profits this year. This quarter Nvidia have lost $120 million dollars. Revenue was around $890 million compared to $950 million made within the last quarter of last year. As we are aware the previous losses were due to weak die and packing which resulted in $120.9 million in losses.

The main reason for this quarterly loss is on the basis of competition. AMD/ATI have been getting their act together creating good strong prices for the main stream markets. With the 4800 series of cards being released last month Customers are not going to nvidia!

Nvidia has blamed the desktop GPU division which saw revenues down by 25%. Nvidia sort of said this was due to the pricing of their products, REALLY! Any way, the combined sales of notebooks, professional and MCP create 27% of their market!

My theory is on the basis o venturing into other markets! Nvidia have recently created miniature processors for their mini laptop series. Did ATI/AMD do the same? Well no they concentrated on their markets and thats why their sales are far better!

ATI today who’s to tomorrow?

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

ATI have released their latest offering the 4870 X2 yes I said it right! The X2! I dont have arcitecture information and what parts have exactly changed but  I can give you access to the general specifications of the Graphics Card.

The 4870 X2 was released today proving better than any other graphics card on the market. I was expecting ATI to bring something to the table but I wasn’t quite sure what exactly! TO be honest it has come to a shock as how good the current benchmarks look for the new dual processor card.

Here it goes, The Graphics card uses 2Gb of GDDR5 memory! memory clock 3600Mhz and core with a clock speed of only 750Mhz so what happened to the clock speeds here? not exactly double by my calculations anyway! To Finish, the GPU does use 1600 cores.

The Graphics card is priced at around £400 becayse there isnt any competition because Nvidia’s offerings are what, last year?

Memory Cooling Solutions

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Patriot a high end memory cooling solution company has released the vortex. The active cooling fan designed to increase performance and heat disipitation, not to mention overclocking capabilities. The company promises that the cooling solution will provide cooler memory by up tp 30%.

Vortex uses a spare unused DIMM solt not ideal when running your 4 GB memory kits! Despite this the product allows the user to direct the fan airflow in the direction they wish. The dual 40mm fans both run at 5,000rpm, vibration is also non existent due to the slot engineering.

OCZ 4GB to 16GB memory kits!

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Vista Ultimate anyone? Me neither! but for the Microsoft lovers out there if you have Vista ultimate and you consider your self a enthusiast/ gamer then why not endugle and get your self one of these memory kits!

Now the interesting information. The memory modules are classed as P45 special and are only DDR2 based which are considered high performance. Since corsair is Nvidia chipset optimised are OCZ targeting Intel P45 based chipsets? The move may also increase sales on the P45 based Chipset. I usually see benchmarking based on x38 and x48 based chipsets not the P45, moving to the fast chipsets and DDR3 memory instead of moving backwards.

Obviously Windows Vista x64 bit will give its users the 16GB memory compatibility but surely it would make better sense to find a DDR3 kit? IF you want something abit special then OCZ do special edition low latency Platium and Gold 8GB kits for the gamer. Theres no word on pricing but you can find more information at the links below.

AMD/ATi HD 470 X2

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

ATI partners have been jumping the gun, so to speak since their last generation graphics cards. So what are ATI partners doing now? Somehow the HD4870X2 is on pre-sale on a Austrian website selling the cards for under $400 which is $550 American dollars say around 275 before tax after tax £323, not to bad for a dual based card even though its hitting GTX 280 territory.

The official launch of the cards is 12th of August but as said previously the card can be snatched up at Austrian and German e-tailers. The specifications of graphics card is bellow.

Clock: 2X750Mhz
Memory: 2x 1024MB GDDR5, im sure its 2x 512?
Memory Clock: 900Mhz, should be higher for GDDR5
Stream processors: 2×800
Fabrication process: 55nm

Lets see how the benchmarks shape up!