New patch for SLi/Crossfire in Vista The TDP of Opterons underestimated P45, G45 & G43 chipsets for Q2 Phenom 8600 & 8700 in February

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New patch for SLi/Crossfire in Vista   Posted on 04/12/2007 at 23:44 by Nicolas - source: The Tech Report

	The proper functioning of SLi and Crossfire systems in Windows Vista doesn’t seem to be the most simple to the extent that Microsoft has just published another new patch. The one available since the end of July appears not to be entirely satisfactory. An article in the Solution Center indicates that in certain games and benchmarks performances can be lower than what they should be when GPUs have very unequal work loads and use DMA (Direct Memory Access). The creators of this hotfix insist on the fact that it should only be used for the specific problem in this article as the patch has yet to be fully tested. This explains why you cannot simply download it and you will have to submit a request to the company for access.

The TDP of Opterons underestimated   Posted on 04/12/2007 at 22:41 by Nicolas

	AMD has recently very discretely raised the TDP of "Barcelona" Opterons. A document published at the release of these processors mention a TDP of 120 Watts for the Opteron SE, 95 Watts for the Opteron, and 68 Watts for the Opteron HE. The latest update of the same document titled The Truth About Power Consumption Starts Here states a respective 137 Watts (+14%), 115 Watts (+21%) and 79 Watts (+16%)for the same Opteron SE, standard and HE. Strangely enough, the ACP (Average CPU Power) remains unchanged. It therefore seems that the Barcelona not only has problems in increasing in frequency, the launch of the Phenom 9700 set at 2.4 GHz was delayed, but they also produce more heat than expected. In addition, AMD sold processors with under estimated TDPs on the professional market. We can hope in practice this won’t cause any real problems in servers or supercalculators, but in markets where credibility and reliability are crucial, this type of news is not necessarily to the benefit of AMD’s image...

P45, G45 & G43 chipsets for Q2   Posted on 04/12/2007 at 18:05 by Nicolas - source: HKEPC

	Some new information on Eaglelake chipsets which will succeed the P35, G35 and G31 has been published. Expected out in the second quarter of next year, they will be engraved in 65nm. Intel seems to be eager to raise the level of current IGPs and therefore, besides DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.0 support, the G45 (Eaglelake-G) will also offer hardware decoding of VC1 and H.264 in 1080P. HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI connections are planned as well as SDVO compatibility. As for the G43 (Eaglelake-GV), it will be stripped of most advanced video functions and will manage memory on two channels, each being limited to a single DIMM port. They will serve in making PCI-Express 2.0 and DDR3 more common; however, they will especially be the last Intel chipsets with a memory controller as the arrival of the Nehalem will signal their integration to the CPU.

Phenom 8600 & 8700 in February   Posted on 04/12/2007 at 17:08 by Nicolas

	DailyTech has obtained some information on AMD’s triple core processors. The Phenom 8600 (2.3 GHz) and 8700 (2.4 GHz) should be launched in February with an announced TDP of 95 Watts. You may recall, these Phenom "Tolimans" are in fact an "Agena" in which 1 of the 4 cores has been deactivated. Once the transition to 45nm has been made, another triple core, the "Heka" will arrive with DDR2 and DDR3 support. Versions with and without L3 cache coming from the "Deneb" and "Propus" quad cores, respectively, are expected out in 2009.