No more Parallel ATA on ICH8 Intel 20% faster than AMD? Socket AM2 roadmap X1900 XL & X1800 GTO

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No more Parallel ATA on ICH8   Posted on 20/02/2006 at 19:58 by Marc

	Intel's next Southbridge, the ICH8, to be used on Intel's Platform from mid 2006, will differ from current products because it will be the first that won't support ATA Parallel interface. This interface is still used by many peripherals such as DVD/CD readers/burners. In compensation, the number of SATA ports will increase from 4 to 6 with the ICH8R. We also noticed, but there is no direct relation, that the number of USB 2.0 ports supported by the two controllers will increase from 6 to 10 and that the Gigabit network will be included whether if it is for the ICH8 or ICH8R. AC’97 audio codecs will no longer be supported and replaced by HD Audio. Even if DVD burner prices have been strongly reduced, some motherboard manufacturers will probably include to future motherboards based on ICH8 an ATA Parallel controller under the shape of an additional chip.

Intel 20% faster than AMD?   Posted on 20/02/2006 at 19:45 by Marc

	Mooly Eden, Intel's vice president and general manager of the Mobility Group announced to News.com that the architecture to be used by the future Conroe and Merom, be expected mid-2006, will "deliver a performance advantage of at least 20 percent over chips from Advanced Micro Devices" in standard benchmarks and that "It will take at least a year and a half to two years to close such a gap." This statement of course lacks of precision, but it is interesting to see that Intel titillates AMD on the performances of a product that isn't even announced. We can't wait for the next IDF planned next March 7 during which Intel will unveil the last details of the next architecture.

Socket AM2 roadmap   Posted on 20/02/2006 at 19:05 by Marc - source: DailyTech

	AMD will release the new Socket AM2 that will allow the use of DDR2 memory during the Computex next June 6. Additionally to the Sempron that we mentioned earlier, AMD will release a full line of Athlon 64 that will be mainly dual cores. Only the 3800+ and 3500+ including 512 KB of cache will be single cores. Unlike the Sempron that changes from single to dual channel DDR support, the Athlon 64's P-Rating should remain unchanged with the Socket AM2 at equivalent frequency and cache level. Why changing to DDR2 under those circumstances? This is a question that is worth asking even if the products performances are still unknown. An Athlon 64 5000+ and an Athlon 64 FX-62 should be released with the Socket AM2. AMD is also planning on releasing in Q3 an 5200+ and we will have to wait until Q1 2007 for the 5400+ and FX-64. Low power consumption Athlon 64 processors named "Energy Efficient" are also expected on Socket AM2. They will stand out thanks to a lower thermal design power. There will be 65 and even 35 watts Athlon 64 X2 3800+ as compared to 89 watts for the standard version.

X1900 XL & X1800 GTO   Posted on 20/02/2006 at 18:39 by Marc

	In order to respond to several of NVIDIA's product launch scheduled during the CeBIT, ATI would have, according to HKEPC two cards in preparation: the X1900 XL and X1800 GTO. Based on the R580, the X1900 XL frequency would be slightly lower than the XT version and would include 256MB of GDDR3 memory as compared to 512 MB for the XT. This version will of course give a hard time to the already very low X1800 sales and ATI would also have planned a X1800 GTO to sell off these R520. This card will however only include 12 pixel pipelines.