Dual-core : Intel Pentium D and Intel Pentium EE ATI releases X300 HyperMemory Radeon Xpress 200 for P4 2"1/2 120 GB hard drive X850/X800/X700 AGP availability Memory price cuts

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Dual-core : Intel Pentium D and Intel Pentium EE   Posted on 01/03/2005 at 20:07 by Damien

	Less than two hours after the IDF opening, Intel has unveiled the sales names of the dual-core Pentium 4: Pentium D Processor and Pentium Processor Extreme Edition. The first one is the "mainstream" and the second one the high end version. The Extreme Edition will include the HyperThreading and will support four threads. Both processors are based on the Smithfield core with two 90 nm Prescott and a grand total of 230 millions of transistors. The first dual core processor should be the Extreme Edition 840. It will be clocked at 3.2 GHz and will work with the i955X chipset which supports amongst other one PCI Express x16 port or even two with an additional chip. Intel announces performance gains in all areas. Of course general public application performances won’t be improved as long as they won’t be adapted. To demonstrate the dual core improvements, Intel also made a demonstration of the processor performances under Cinebench 2003. The computer configuration was one Pentium Extreme Edition 840 and one chipset i955X. Performances have been improved by three by using four threads instead of one.

ATI releases X300 HyperMemory   Posted on 01/03/2005 at 15:53 by Marc

	ATI has just officially announced the HyperMemory technology. This technology is the equivalent to the NVIDIA TurboCache which allows the graphics processing unit (GPU) to share the capacity and bandwidth of dedicated video memory and dynamically available system memory via the PCI Express bus. Two graphic cards with rather equivocal denomination will be released: - Radeon X300 SE 128 MB HyperMemory - Radeon X300 SE 256 MB HyperMemory The first graphic card includes 32 MB in 64 bits, and the second one 128 MB in 64 bits. Memory is clocked at 300 MHz instead of 325 MHz for the X300 SE. This time again, we feel that is unfortunate to see a misleading denomination. We would have preferred to see: - Radeon X300 SE 32 MB / 128 MB HyperMemory - Radeon X300 SE 128 MB / 256 MB HyperMemory Unlike NVIDIA, ATI’s offer doesn’t include a X300 SE with 16 MB of local memory in 32 bits like the GeForce 6200 TurboCache 16-TC/128MB (we however recommend you to choose the GeForce 6200 TurboCache 32-TC/128MB which features 32 MB in 32 bits). The price of the entry level graphic card is $59. This price isn’t exceptional because it is already possible to find standard X300 SE with 128 “real” MB for $40 to $50. The price of these graphic cards will have to be lowered to provide a better performance/price ratio compared to existing entry level products. It is also important to keep in mind that the X300 SE and other 6200 TurboCache are good enough for 2D but doesn’t provides good enough performances for serious 3D. Of course it is better than integrated chipsets such as the i915G, but our advice it to increase your budget to buy a standard 6200 128 MB or a X600 Pro or even better a standard 6600. Now let’s hope that they will also release soon the HyperCache…

Radeon Xpress 200 for P4   Posted on 01/03/2005 at 15:10 by Marc - source: UAC

	Initially, four versions of the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset were available: - RS480 : Athlon 64, integrated graphic - RX480 : Athlon 64 - RS400 : Pentium 4, integrated graphic - RX400 : Pentium 4 Because of technical or marketing reasons or because of the memory controller integration, the Pentium 4 version has been delayed compared to the Athlon 64 release end of last year. Even if it hasn’t been announced yet, the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset for Intel processors has been released by ASUSTeK with the P5RDV-1. This Socket 775 motherboard features 4 DIMM 184 pins for DDR PC2700/3200, 1 PCI Express x16 slot, 3 PCI Express x1 slots, 3 PCI standard and 4 Serial ATA ports. Like with the Athlon 64 version, it will be possible to play in 640*480 32 bits with the chipset integrated graphic. It is better than Intel’s i915G, but it is only enough for 2D games!

2"1/2 120 GB hard drive   Posted on 01/03/2005 at 14:56 by Marc

	Fujitsu is the first manufacturer to announce a 2"1/2 drive for laptops with a capacity of 120 GB. The density has been increased from 50 to 60 GB per platter to reach 120 GB with two platters. The MHV2 AT drive rotating speed is 4200 Rpm and it features 512 KB of cache, 12 ms average access time and 7.14 ms of latency. Such a density improvement is a real progress. If 2"1/2 50 GB platters surface density was close to the last 3"1/2 100 GB platters, this time it is better. This density is close to 12.5 Go / inch² which is considered as the limit of the LMR (Longitudinal Magnetic Recording) technology. We don’t know yet if it will be possible to transpose this density to 7200 Rpm drives. The next step will be the much expected PMR (see this news Perpendicular Magnetic Recording in French) technology. This technology should double the density as soon as it will be released and its limit would be around 125 Go / inch². If everything goes well this technology will be available this year.

X850/X800/X700 AGP availability   Posted on 01/03/2005 at 14:03 by Marc

	Tul today announced the PowerColor AGP GameFX graphic cards. This announcement gives us more information about the X850/X800/X700 AGP version availability. It is important also to remind you that AGP and PCI Express version frequencies are similar. Tul speaks of the end of March for the release of the PowerColor X850 XT PE, X850 XT and X850 Pro AGP, which natively supports AGP. We will have to wait a little bit more for AGP graphic cards which feature the PCI Express to AGP bridge additionally to a PCI Express VPU. According to Tul, The PowerColor X700 and X700 Pro will be available end of March, but we will have to wait mid April or even maybe for the worst-case scenario end of June for the X800 and X800 XL AGP. Our guess is that these graphic cards will be available during April.

Memory price cuts   Posted on 01/03/2005 at 11:57 by Marc

	RAM memory prices have been strongly reduced over the past few days to reach 2.83$ for a 32 MB DDR400 chips after another 9% price cut in one day. In January, the same chip costed $4 and $3.49 one week ago. 19% price cut in one week and 29% in a month is a great result, but it is hard to tell today if this tendency will continue. Anyway, we are eager to see the results of these price cuts on products in shops. This process might take one or two weeks according to existing stocks.