More DDR2 for Samsung DVD+R DL 8x for the 2nd quarter AMD reports fourth quarter results Western Digital 1-inch drives Gainward announces Water cooler SLI (update) Opteron dual core power consumption AOpen i915GM Micro ATX

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More DDR2 for Samsung   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 14:39 by Marc - source: Samsung

	In order to follow the release of i915PM and GM chipsets for laptops, Samsung announced a DDR2 strong production increase. In the beginning of the month, the manufacturer also said that it increased the DDR2 SO-DIMM production by 45% to meet integrator’s demand. Samsung also said that even if these chipset are DDR1 and DDR2 compatible, manufactures should choose DDR2 memory. With these laptop’s chipsets, DDR1 is restricted to DDR-333 and the DDR2 power consumption is lower. According to an analyst, DDR2 could reach 90% of market shares for laptops. Will efforts made for laptops finally bring economies of scale required for the desktop market success? Wait & See ...

DVD+R DL 8x for the 2nd quarter   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 14:32 by Marc

	last October, Philips (burner) and Mitsubishi / Ricoh (medias) made a DVD+R DL burner demonstration. The DVD+R DL broke a new record, 8X recording 8.5 GB in less than 16 Minutes. Expected during the first quarter 2005, this new recording speed shouldn’t finally be available before the second quarter. However final users, more than just recording speed increase, also expect DVD+R DL price reduction.

AMD reports fourth quarter results   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 14:26 by Marc

	AMD (NYSE:AMD) today reported record sales of $1.26 billion and net loss of $30 million for the quarter ended December 26, 2004. In fact the operating income is $20 million, but the fourth quarter includes charges of $49 million largely associated with the conversion and retirement of debt. Fourth quarter sales increased by five percent from the fourth quarter of 2003 and were up two percent from the third quarter of 2004. Sales growth was largely due to Record CPG sales increased by nine percent from $673 million in the third quarter of 2004 (operating income of $89 million). Memory Group sales of $504 million (operating loss of $39 million) decreased 11 percent from the fourth quarter of 2003. In the first quarter, AMD expects processor sales to be flat to down slightly and Flash memory sales to be down in the first quarter.

Western Digital 1-inch drives   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 13:59 by Marc - source: Western Digital

	Western Digital has just announced that the company will enter the enormous new markets for miniature hard drives with a family of 1-inch drives. According to Gartner, this market should exceeded 8 million units in 2004, up from only 903,000 units in 2003, and the compound annual growth rate should exceed 85 percent through 2008. WD's miniature drive entry is expected to ship in the second calendar quarter of 2005, and will spin at 3,600 RPM. Available in capacities up to 6 GB, it will have 12 ms access time and will fits into CF II devices.

Gainward announces Water cooler SLI (update)   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 13:49 by Marc

	Gainward has just announced the Gainward CoolFX PowerPack Ultra/2600 PCX « Golden Sample ». The GeForce 6800 Ultra and the water cooler set will cost 899 € and the set of two graphic card with the water cooler will cost 1699 €. This product specificity is that it is a dual SLI water cooler for two Gainward 6800 Ultra PCIe graphic cards. Probably developed with Innovatek, like the previous CoolFX, this new version shouldn’t however be compatible with all motherboards. All nForce4 SLI boards don’t have the same spacing between PCI Express slots (the CoolFX seems to be well adapted for the ASUSTeK A8N-SLI).

Opteron dual core power consumption   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 13:23 by Marc - source: The Inquirer

	We have received several mails following the SmithField power consumption news, asking about the future AMD dual core power consumption. For the moment AMD doesn’t have officially communicated on that subject, but several figures have been released on Internet at the end of last year. These figures concern the future Opteron dual core (the first number of the model number isn’t yet known): x80 / 2.4 GHz / 1.35V / 80A / 95 Watts TDP x75 / 2.2 GHz / 1.35V / 80A / 95 Watts TDP x75 / 2.2 GHz / 1.15V / 48A / 55 Watts TDP x70 / 2.0 GHz / 1.15V / 48A / 55 Watts TDP x60 / 1.6 GHz / 1.10V / 30A / 30 Watts TDP Are included in this list for each CPU: the frequency, nominal input voltage, maximum amperage and CPU heat dissipation. A 2.4 GHz version is also included in this list but that doesn’t men that AMD will release a CPU clocked at 2.4 GHz. These are only electric and thermal specification intended to AMD’s partners. In order to compare, here are the Opteron 130nm TDPs: - 1.4 to 1.8 GHz : 82.1 Watts - 2.0 to 2.4 GHz : 89.0 Watts It is sometime possible to find low power consumption 1.4 GHz processors with a TDP of 30 Watts (the EE), and also 2.0 GHz processors with a TDP of 55 Watts (the « HE »). 90 nm versions are clocked from 2 to 2.2 GHz and have a TDP of 67 Watts. If the dual core figures are accurate, it is clear that the last three are low power consumption processors. More expensive, they don’t exactly correspond to Athlon 64 dual core processors which will be in shops. For dual core processors it would be wiser to take the first two figures: a TDP of 95 watts. It is less than the 130 Watts of the future Intel dual core processors… but to make sure we will have to wait and see the results in practice.

AOpen i915GM Micro ATX   Posted on 20/01/2005 at 13:00 by Marc

	VR-Zone has published some information about the Aopen i915GMm-HFS, the first Micro ATX board for Pentium M and Celeron M based on chipsets announced yesterday by Intel. The i915GMm-HFS is based on the i915GM and supports FSB400 and 533 processors, DDR-1 266/33 and DDR-2 400/533 and PCI Express. The board offers one Socket 479, 2 DIMM 184 pins for DDR-1 and 2 DIMM 240 pins for the DDR-2 and one PCI Express 16 slot. It comes with ICH6M Southbridge with four Serial ATA ports, one PCI Express x1 slot and two PCI slots. This board also offers one additional FireWire chip and one Ethernet port (probably a Gigabit). AOpen has also decided to use the full i915GM graphic capacity and has integrated one DVI port and one TV output (directly on the board) additionally to the VGA D-Sub port. We don’t know yet the i915GMm-HFS availability and price. But our impression based on the previous motherboard is that it will be expensive. Of course, we hope that we will be wrong…