Top Spec

All is quiet on the hardware front. I can’t seem to find any updates on the latest hardware whether it be graphics cards or motherboards there doesn’t seem to anything going on!  Usually when this is the case the manufacturers are getting ready for something big!  Well I hope so!  With the usual  mentions of Intels technology are all the vendors following  Intel’s white papers?  Are they designing for the next generation? Well we can only hope!

Bookmark Article:

So whats happening in the world of hardware? Well you guessed it! Nothing much! But we do have a lot of things to look forward to over the up coming months. As you well know I constantly talk about the Core i7 processor and the upcoming graphics/ motherboards that run along side the new architecture. For example we have the x58 motherboards with their new memory implementation (on chip) not to mention Nehalem the graphics card from Intel.

AMD’s side looks bland. They are releasing a new set of triple core processors for the consumer. The reason behind this move is to hopefully take stronghold on the main stream market and offer well priced and well performed products. Since i’m an enthusiast I like to look within the top end specifications and price ranges. This is where AMD are let down.  Lets remind our self’s that Intel are running processors on 45nm fabs and AMD on 65nm. Intel are now creating virtually a new articecture for the new genertion of processors. I have still not heard the Core i7 8 core processors but they should be round the corner.

Bookmark Article:

Thermaltake Xpressar case may be your next investment ! The case is the first DC inverter type micro refrigeration cooling system to be used in a pc case. The system is virtually a reworked air conditioning system that promises to keep your components 20 C cooler than your average liquid cooling system NOT air cooling, now that’s impressive.

I did predict this would happen over time, enthusiasts across the globe were demonstrating fridge elements that were used as water cooling devices to help condense the water particles. This is a similar device but more effective in its design.

The down side is that the case will only be compatible with a handful of motherboards including asus, gigabyte and MSI. You should also expect to pay a high premium as a result.

Bookmark Article:

So Corei7 is round the corner what can we expect from the current market of high end hardware? IT has come to my attention that the high end Intel core 2 quads are coming down in price by say 20 dollars! w00t I wouldn’t exactly say the price cut are a large margin.

With this said and the corei7 set to range between $400 to $999 the current quad core processors must drop considerably otherwise the consumer will think the two products are virtually in the same performance boundaries, which cannot be Intel’s interpretation.

With this said, are we looking at a socket 775 Intel processor this Christmas or will it be the latest architecture from Intel. With only four core version available this year I may wait to next year to see if a 8 core variant will be released! I must also add that current applications still do not take advantage of the quad core system. Current dual core processors are still performing well with quad core equivalents.

What do you do? this is deffinetely a tough one!

Bookmark Article:

Core i7 code named Nehalem could be released by November 2008. Intel have not confirmed this so far but reports are stating the launch dates are around late q4. Not only have the release dates been leaked but pricing of these processors follow.

The following specifications are the first three chips based on the bloomfield core which is the main stream version of the core i7 processor.

Intel Core i7 920 (mainstream) 2.66ghz, 4 cores, 8 threads, 45nm process
Intel Core i7 940 (mainstream) 2.93ghz, 4 cores, 8 threads, 45nm process
Intel Core i7 965 (extreme) 3.20ghz, 4 cores, 8 threads, 45nm process

All processors come with 256kb of cache per core and 8mb of l3 cache shared. The starting price is $284, $562 and $999.

The leaked information states that the 965 is an extreme version I beg to differ just because there are no 8 core processors available even though Intel stated that the Nehalem was based on this fact.

Bookmark Article:

I’ve seen acouple of previews of some future gaming releases, I was quite happy to see call of duty World at War. Instead of the usual world war 2 theme the developers have decided to go down the Vietnam route. To be honest I still miss the world war 2 games, medal of honor started the craze off and to be honest I’ve still not played Medal Of Honor Airborne. This was totally because my pc couldn’t cut it! Ever since I’ve been trying to upgrade my P.C I’ve been knocked back and keep waiting for the big release of Core i7 a good move or not I dont know!

Any who, Hopefully I can get back to the gaming platform and play COD5 (PC) Operation Flash Point 2 YES OFP 2! Not to mention the original developers decided to create their very own version of the game because they were axed from the development! I usually find that games created by different developers are never the same! Take counter strike condition zero and then counter strike 6! big difference in any gamers eyes.

It looks like there will be some good games next year with the directx 10.1 platform, lets hope that the Intel processors give us high performance at a fairly good cost! I’l be back into gaming in no time!

Bookmark Article:

Analysts reckon that Larrabee will not be the graphics hit Intel claim. Intel have claimed that Larrabee will be more powerful than Nvidia who have developed their products for a 10 year span. It takes years of practise to achieve good drivers, inter connects and memory bandwidth.

Intel have made great success in other processor markets, take the x86, server processors, mobile processors such as the Atom and mobile graphics processing. Even though a graphics device is very complicate consisting of billions of transistors and stream processors can they take on the likes of ATI and Nvidia?

Larry Seiler the senior principal engineer says Larrabee the Pentium derived design has five times as many cores, each core has a vector processor and is four times as wide. making the graphics processor 20x as fast as Nvidia’s existing offerings.

I guess its all talk at the moment, are ATI and Nvidia worried about the outcome? I assume so!

Bookmark Article:

JUST CHECK IT OUT! U’LL LOVE IT!

Now that I have your attention lets have a closer look at the video! You can see that the socket has now enlarged to compensate for the inbuilt memory controller which AMD thought of when they first started creating processors! What advantage Intel will have I’m not sure but i can imagine there will be no bottle neck between the memory and processor data transfer. I am also undecided whether I like the new memory configurations of asynchronous design. The double data rate is long gone! Lets put it that way!

The Intel Chipset x58 will be released by many vendors such as MSI, Asus and Gigabyte and should be released around last quarter of this year! w00t.

Bookmark Article:

So we had the EEE PC laptop that was fairly popular but then as technology moves on so would the eee pc/box specification. To those people who decided to get a asus EEE PC I would of personally waited for the release of Intels Atom processor. This could only result in more mobile technology, hence the boom in web books!

With the Atom processor being implemented into these mobile laptops the current technology would become obsolete. Take the existing EEE pc intel pentium 1 YES one! not a p3/p4! Obviously this was a bottle neck for end users and now with the Atom a laptop can be used like any current main stream computer!

The specifications for the EEE Box are below

• OS Windows XP Home
• Processor Intel Atom N270 (1.6 GHz, FSB 533)
• Memory DDRII 1 GB
• Storage 80 GB
• Chipset 945GSE + ICH7M
• VGA On-board Intel GMA 950, 1600 x 1200 max resolution
• Networking 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN, 802.11n WLAN

This machine looks promising! With web servers now using the Atom technology due its mobile strengths. I can easily see this as a good machine for watching hd 1080 films and general usage such as internet surfing and streaming internet videos.

Bookmark Article:

ATi have launched their 4600 series graphics cards. These cards are on the market for the low to mid range budget enthusiasts, not every one can fork out £400 for a HD 4870 X2 or a Nvidia 280.

The series is basically a watered down version of the 4800 series cards. The cards are set to compete against Nvidia’s 9500 card.  The models of the 4600 series cards include the 4670 and the 4650. Both cards are a 55nm build with 320 stream processing cores. They also support directx 10.1 which Nvidia cards do not.

The cards are easy on the wallet and with 50w of power used under full load you wont need to invest in another PSU. What is off putting is when Graphics vendors support the latest direct x version but they can barely render the graphics at that level. This usually miss informs the consumer but I’d see the card as a good directx 9 card than a 10.1.

Bookmark Article: