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Spawn Nightking
It's a measure of how far CPU technology has come when you can buy a CPU with four cores on a single die for about $235. That would be the AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition. It's also true that for under $300, you can buy an Intel quad-core CPU manufactured on a 45 nanometer (nm) process.
If you consider that the original Pentium processor, which ran at 66MHz (and that was the high-end model), was built using an 800nm process, with a measly 3.1 million transistors—well, you get the idea. And people spent upwards of 1,000 1993 dollars to buy one.
It's worth putting all this in perspective before we dive into the performance numbers of these two quad-core CPUs in our showdown today. The Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition and Core 2 Quad Q9300 are capable products and faster than the generations preceding them. One, of course, is faster than the other. As you might predict, it's the more expensive one who's manufactured by the company starting with the letter "I".
On the other hand, the new B3 stepping of the Phenom, even if you don't consider the critical TLB bug fix, just seems a little more well mannered than the original Phenom we reviewed back in December. Rated at a 2.5GHz clock speed, our Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition is currently looping 3Dmark06 at 2.8GHz—and the CPU fan is spinning at normal speeds.
Still, it's worth comparing performance between these two mainstream quad core CPUs. Just for grins, we'll also toss in performance numbers of an Intel Core 2 E8500 dual core CPU, which also costs around $300.
The Core 2 Quad Q9300 is an interesting beast, as it only has half the L2 cache per die of the more expensive quad core CPUs in Intel's product line. For example, the Core 2 Quad Q9450, clocked at 2.66GHz, has 6MB of L2 cache per die, or 12MB total. But the Q9450 also costs about $80 more, so the Q9300 is aimed at a more budget-minded audience who might desire quad-core performance.
Of course, AMD's Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition is even more affordable, at $235, give or take a few dollars. The X4 9850 is a 125W TDP part, while the Q9300 is a 95W TDP processor, and both seem to be fairly overclockable, though the edge in overclockability most likely lies with the Intel CPU—that 45nm high K plus metal gate technology has been quite the boon for overclockers.
Let's check out the system and benchmark setup next.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Posted by
Spawn Nightking
For some of you, Windows 7 is here. For others, it's coming soon. The question we as gamers all want to know is will Windows 7 finally deliver on all the hype that began during the run up to Vista’s launch. Will it finally "unite the clans": gamers who love Windows XP's performance and scalability, versus the Vista gamers who have been enjoying DirectX 10 visuals and performance enhancements found in games like Far Cry 2.
I’m not going to spoil the answer on the first page of this article – that’s what the benchmarks are for – but I will say that as much as I rightly criticized Vista’s gaming performance back in January 2007, it ultimately did get a bit of a bad rep.
Sure, eye candy features like Aero Glass performed terribly with some hardware, USB transfers were slower, and user account control was so annoying most people just turned it off, but just as Microsoft was to blame for some of Vista’s problems, equally culpable were the hardware manufacturers. Intel had no business lobbying Microsoft to lower requirements in order to get their 915 chipset certified as “Vista Capable”, and nearly all the manufacturers were too slow in optimizing their Vista drivers for performance, if they had a Vista driver at all. Despite the fact that Microsoft had issued numerous public betas and release candidates for Vista, graphics drivers for instance were missing features and suffered from poor performance in some games on launch day.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Posted by
Spawn Nightking
Quite possibly my most disliked graphics card of 2009 was the Radeon HD 4890. Although the naming does suggest that the 4890 is not a great deal faster than the 4870 that was not what bothered us. Rather it was the fact that this newer slightly improved version cost anywhere from 20 – 30% more while providing just a few extra frames per second in most games.
With the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 selling for just $180 US in April when the Radeon HD 4890 was released, we found it hard to accept this new graphics card at $250 US. After all Radeon HD 4890 is in essence just an overclocked Radeon HD 4870 with far greater overclocking abilities. ATI fine-tuned the RV790 XT core allowing for incredible core frequencies.
Although the default core speed of 850MHz is a moderate bump over the 4870, many users are reporting overclocks in the order of 1GHz and beyond. Still despite the great overclocking abilities of the new Radeon HD 4890 we were not sold as the price premium was just too difficult to justify.
Furthermore Nvidia was able to swiftly counter the Radeon HD 4890 with what I considered at the time to be a better product, the GeForce GTX 275. As luck would have it, the GeForce GTX 275 was not just a quick and easy counter for the Radeon HD 4890, it was the perfect counter. Prior to the launch of these two cards the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 were already doing battle. The Radeon HD 4890 was meant to outclass both products and conquer the $250 price range but evidently that didn't go as planned.
Today however things are a little different as the Radeon HD 4890 is now a $200 US graphics card while remaining 4870 stock is priced at just $150. Therefore while the Radeon HD 4870 still remains the best value part in our opinion the Radeon HD 4890 is no longer the outcast we made it out to be. The Radeon HD 4890 actually offers gamers an impressive level of performance at $200, particularly if you plan to do a little overclocking.
In fact the particular Radeon HD 4890 graphics card that we are looking at today has been engineered with overclocking in mind. The new Radeon HD 4890 iCooler x4 (1GB) graphics card from HIS has been designed to allow users to achieve maximum overclocking potential from their RV790 XT GPU and as a result we received some pretty impressive results without much effort.
Posted by
Spawn Nightking
It's more the fact that AMD, when they released the HD 4870/50 said they were back on a 6 month refresh cycle for the higher end cards. I would like to buy another 4850 and Crossfire them, but why should I when the HD 5000 series is due any time now and is rumored to bring at least 25% more performance (and that rumor is not worth a grain of salt) and finally doing away with -very- old GDDR3 for all but the lowest models. But I think the biggest reason is to be able to keep the heat on nVidia.
Now don't get me wrong, I DO NOT want to see another fiasco like in the opening weeks of the HD 4850/70 which had no official driver support and were (and some like he 4870 x2 still are) full of bugs and glitches. Like I said, it seems very suspicious that Catalyst 9.1 is so late (actually it is NOT on the drivers page as of this post, it says Catalyst 9.1 but the files are all Catalyst 8.12) and so little has been heard of the HD 5000.
Following a successful run with the codenamed R700 family of GPUs, which was originally released back in June 2008 as the Radeon HD 4000 series, AMD is launching the highly anticipated R800. Debuting to no one's surprise as the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series, on our test bed today we have a reference HD 5870 graphics card packing some 2150 million transistors and produced on a 40nm process.
The new Radeon HD 5000 series is said to deliver around 2x more performance than previous generation Radeon cards, and brings DirectX 11 support to desktops for the first time. Even while Nvidia is downplaying the latter, AMD sees it as a great advantage and expects DX11-capable games to start shipping before the end of the year.
Nvidia will also support DirectX 11 on future hardware of course, but the way things are going it looks as though we'll still have to wait a few months before their response to the new Radeon HD line arrives.
AMD's pricing strategy with the Radeon HD 5000 series will be quite interesting too, as for the first time in a long while the company will be looking to take the performance crown from Nvidia. Previous generation ATI graphics cards have been unable to compete with the fastest Nvidia solutions, forcing AMD to heavily discount their products in an effort to deliver better value.
In the end the Radeon HD 4850 was competing with the much older GeForce 9800 GTX, while the Radeon HD 4870 ran somewhat unopposed at $299. At this price point the 4870 delivered an impressive level of performance, though it was overshadowed by improved GeForce GTX graphics cards over the next 12 months.
Posted by
Spawn Nightking
As BSN notes, Microsoft wouldn't develop a 128-bit OS without the hardware to back it up, and this would certainly explain the delays Bulldozer has encountered over the years. What isn't known is when Intel plans to offer their first 128-bit CPU. We know for sure that their next-generation Sandy Bridge CPU due this time next year won't support it, but the generation after that, codenamed Haswell, just might.
According to the latest AMD roadmaps, Bulldozer isn't expected until 2011.
It is never boring in the world of CPUs. Regardless of who's on top, plans for next generations tend to excite everybody in the eco-system… if you deliver, that is. AMD had a lot of tough times of late, and lost a lot of good people due to lack of proper management. In this article, we bring you a look into the architecture that everybody in the industry has been impatiently waiting for. But this time, AMD cannot afford to fail.
The Ex-Alpha engineering teams lead by Dirk Meyer that created K7 and K8 architecture messed everything up with Barcelona/Agena and the infamous TLB-bug [Translation-Lookaside Buffer]. Shanghai/Deneb cleaned a lot of things up and AMD is back being competitive again, but Intel is pushing hard: Intel is operating in tick-tock architectural mode, and so far - AMD isn't able to answer back. K10 and K10.5 were nothing else but improvements over the K8 architecture. Last time we saw a completely new architecture from AMD, the stock market thought that an online dog-food shop was worth half a billion US$, mainstream media was touting that the world is going to end with that horrible Y2K bug... Yes, quite a long time ago. But before we dig into Bulldozer's architecture, let's set the record clear, with a simple architectural comparison between AMD and Intel.
Posted by
Spawn Nightking
From the original Far Cry to the upcoming Crysis 2, German developer Crytek has built a reputation for technologically impressive games. Now the studio hopes to turn that reputation into real money, as today it launched CryEngine 3 for use by other developers.
As the underlying technology for Crysis 2, the CryEngine 3 technology reflects Crytek's recent expansion into multiplatform development. The engine is designed to support development not only on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PCs, but Crytek claims its scalability will also make it a viable choice for the next generation of platforms.
When it comes to licensed engines, Crytek is chasing Epic Games and the Unreal Engine 3, the oft-licensed technology underneath the hood of a huge swatch of games, from the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum to the much-reviled Hour of Victory. However, Epic's support for Unreal licensees was castigated in an ongoing lawsuit from Too Human developer Silicon Knights. It's little surprise, then, that one of the features Crytek is centering its promotional push for the engine on isn't in the technology at all; it's in customer service.
"Of course, our international team of more than 20 dedicated support staff are available right now to help our licensees make the most of CryEngine 3; at their studio or at one of our support centers around the world," Crytek director of business development Carl Jones said in a statement heralding the launch of the engine.
Crytek's CryEngine technology has previously been used in creating the studio's own titles and was licensed out to NCsoft for use in the company's recently released massively multiplayer online role-playing game Aion. It's unlikely gamers will get to see the CryEngine 3 in action anytime soon; although Crysis 2 was originally revealed in June, no release window for the game has been confirmed.
