Results tagged “amd” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

Lack of competition is never a good thing.

For us consumers it normally means higher prices and less choice, so the news that Intel's new Nehalem processors, due for release this winter is looking like a cracker is a mixed blessing.

Back in the day the AMD 64 series of single cored processors absolutely killed everything Intel had on the market, and so everyone bought one.

The launch of the Conroe dual cored type from Intel completely turned the situation on its head - Intel was now the daddy - and AMD's fortunes have somewhat waned.

With early reviews suggesting the Nehalem is 20 - 50 per cent quicker than anything around at the moment shows Intels dominance is assured.

This is quite a leap forward in computer processor terms, and AMD will be struggling to reply.

The ball's in your court AMD - and for all our sakes I hope you can come up with a winner.

For your titillation here's a pic of the new Nehalem on the left, compared to the current Penryn on the right - enjoy computer fans!!!

It would be fair to say that anyone technically unaware, looking for a new graphics card capable of playing the latest games at the moment would be somewhat confused.

The situation has not really been helped by nvidia's naming policy - the 8800 series has had so many revisions that anyone could be forgiven for wondering what's going on.

For your reference the cards in order of speed (including AMD's top cards) go 8800gs 384, 3850, 8800gt 256, 8800gts 320, 8800gts 640, 3870 512, 9600gt, 8800GT 512, 8800gts 512, 8800 GTX, 9800 GTX, 3870 X2, 9800 GX2.

Confusing eh? Especially as Nvidia reused the GTS tag for newer cards. So which card would I buy? Clearly budget is an issue and it depends on what your system is, as there's no point in pairing a £400 9800gx2 with a ageing cpu as the graphics card will be hopelessly bottlenecked.

The recent king of the middle market has been nvidia's 8800gt 512 - released as a spoiler for the 3870 from AMD it actually spoiled it's own 8800GTS 512 which was released shortly afterwards. Who would want to spend £210 on the GTS when the £150 GT did the job nearly as well?

Since then the 9600gt has come out as well, and is only marginally slower than the 8800GT.

The graphics card market is saturated with minor revisions, slightly overclocked versions of the same cards and so on, but I think that I'd still go for the 8800GT 512 - if you can find it for around the £115 mark!

SOUND card manufacturer Creative got into a bit of a pickle lately after a computer whiz released new drivers for free.
Creative has hitherto steadfastly refused to release software to make its older products work properly with operating system Windows Vista.
This means that anyone who has an Audigy 2 card, for example, wouldn't be able to use all the features, or in some cases even get it to work at all. Creative have stuck to the line that for full functionality people have to invest in the lastest X-Fi cards, which can set you back a pretty penny.
So, as is the way of the internet, someone released drivers on their own website, which allowed the older cards to work in Vista, and also unlock the features which hitherto had been shut off. The did ask for donations, although this wasn't needed to be able to download the software.
Creative had previously said that it had been unable to produce these drivers - with a huge team of software designers. But one bloke, presumably operating in his bedroom, managed to do what this multinational company could not.
Cynics have said that the tardiness might have something to do with trying to force everyone who upgrades their operating system to buy a new soundcard.
The guy, calling himself Daniel K posted a threat on creative's forums - causing them to go absolutely mad.
As the above link shows, they've been subject to a certain amount of editing, with Creative's line changing from 'get off our intellectual property!" to "However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties.
"We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers."
Just goes to show the power of the internet - a big company like Creative forced to do big-style grovelling.
After all some on the initial comments from Creative were less conciliatory: "By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods."
The potential backlash prompted something of a reversal. But it goes to show what happens if one company effectively has a monopoly on one kind of component - and use it to force consumers to buy the latest product.
So all the nvidia and intel fanboys out there had better hope for more competition from AMD and ATI - otherwise perhaps the same thing could happen.
The question is whether daniel_k is a modern day Robin Hood or a thief of intellectual property. I know what I believe, but it's surprising how many people have different views.

The new computer-killer on PC, as many gamers have discovered to their cost is Crysis.
Many people used to mega-high frames per second rates on their huge widescreen flatscreens were horrified as the latest title was reduced to a slideshow at high detail levels.
People who lashed out massive wads of cash on their rig realised a crucial fact which has been covered up by the graphics card manufacturers - DirectX 10 does not work very well on their equipment.
So all those people who spend half their lives running synthetic benchmarks, while overclocking their components, have realised they have got obsolescent kit - and they can't buy their way out of it.
A friend of mine recently lashed out an eye-watering amount on a PC which included an Intel QX9650 cpu, and two 9800x2 graphics cards in SLI.
He installed Crysis and, not unreasonably, expected it to sing and dance on his 2560x1600 screen with at least 60fps rates. Er, sadly not and the most he could eke out was 40fps at medium settings, which is reasonable, but not that fast.
So with a cpu retailing for £630 and two just released graphics cards at £375 EACH, the newest DX10 games struggle a bit. Don't forget in the Hexus review I linked to above the 9800X2 absolutely batters every other card on the market into submission.
I wait to see what, if any, changes in terms of new hardware are on the horizon - but this certainly shows that flinging money at an 'enthusiast' system is not necessarily the right solution to the current problem.
It actually puts me in mind of the last real 'computer killer' - Far Cry. That wouldn't just work slowly on lower end systems - it wouldn't work at all. And it inspired me to build my first computer - a system based around the hot at the time Athlon 64 4000 and 6800GT graphics card.