ATI Catalyst 8.5 Intel: up to -40% in the 3rd quarter Dunnington: up to $2729 per processor Standard mobile Core 2 Quads Q4 The RV770 in late June, a few details

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ATI Catalyst 8.5   Posted on 21/05/2008 at 21:49 by Nicolas

	ATI has just put Catalyst 8.5 online. As usual, it’s destined for all of this company’s DirectX9/10/10.1 GPUs and IGPs and is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions for Windows XP and Vista. There is now support for SECAM compatible TV outputs directly in the driver, a custom 1080p HDTV mode is present for display peripherals relayed via HDMI, and new 1080p24 mode support. In terms of performances, the Radeon HD 3000 will now be up to 12% faster in Call of Juarez and 5% to 35% faster in Lost Planet, in both cases in DirectX 10. World in Conflict is also improved with gains as high as 25% but only with the Radeon HD 3600 and 3800. In Halo, the entire line is between 10% and 30% more powerful. Finally, in Stalker with HDR activated, the Radeon HD 3800 improves 20% to 25%. There are also a number of bug fixes. In Windows Vista, this involves amongst others Colin McRae: DiRT, Crysis, Doom 3, Farcry, Gears of War, Enemy Territory Quake Wars, Halo 2, Hellgate: London, Team Fortress 2 and Tomb Raider Anniversary. In Windows XP, there are fixes for Crysis, DIRT, Company of Heroes, Lost Planet, SecondLife and World of Warcraft. The complete list is found in the release notes. You can download Catalyst 8.5 here!

Intel: up to -40% in the 3rd quarter   Posted on 21/05/2008 at 19:48 by Nicolas

	The following is what Intel’s price list should look like in the third quarter: We can note the introduction of four new models, the desire to gradually phase out eight others and various price reductions. The Q9550 will be much more interesting than before and the Q6600, the only survivor from the former 65nm family, will decrease in price again. Finally, the E8500 will be noticeably less expensive.

Dunnington: up to $2729 per processor   Posted on 21/05/2008 at 18:46 by Nicolas

	VR-Zone has published what seems to be the Dunnington’s price list which is expected out in the third quarter. Derived from Penryn architecture and based on as many as 6 cores, it will have an L3 cache (whose size is listed in the below ‘’Cache’’ column) in addition to L2. Intel has said the TDP should be equal or less than 130W. Contrary to the Nehalem, which will also arrive in the second half of the year, the QuickPatch Interconnect bus will not be used. With the X7470, Intel offers a CPU that is atypical in all domains as it has been years since this company has launched an x86 CPU at such a high price.

Standard mobile Core 2 Quads Q4   Posted on 21/05/2008 at 13:11 by Nicolas

	One of Ditigimes’ contacts has confirmed Intel’s roadmap, mobile price list and they especially mentioned the launch of the Core 2 Q9100 in the fourth quarter. Up until now, it was only a question of a single quad core Core 2, the QX9300, which would finally arrive in the third quarter. The X9100 is also a Core 2 Extreme but it only has 2 cores and will be launched in June at the same time as the « Montevina » Centrino 2 platform. The Q9100’s specifications unfortunately were not revealed and we simply find out it will be launched for a more moderate price (for comparison the T9600 will be at $530). Given the Core 2 Extreme’s characteristics, it’s impossible to say with certitude at this time if Intel will prefer to put the accent on cache (6 MB or 12 MB) or frequency (3060 MHz or less). Either way, the arrival of the first affordable quad core in notebooks before the holidays should make more than one person happy.

The RV770 in late June, a few details   Posted on 21/05/2008 at 01:37 by Nicolas

	AMD should soon launch the RV770 normally in the second half of June. It is now almost certain that it will have 96 vec5 units (or 480 stream processors) versus 64 for the Radeon HD 2900 and 3800. At least three cards should be initially equipped with this GPU engraved in 55nm. Unsurprisingly, all will use the PCI-E 2.0 interface and support DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1. The Radeon HD 4850 will be equipped with GDDR3 and arrive first. The Radeon HD 4870 will then come right after and have higher frequencies and GDDR5 whose availability will still be reduced in June. Finally, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 will have two GPUs and should enable AMD’s graphic division to offer a very high end card. With the GT200 that should arrive at the same time, summer ought to be interesting. We will also see if AMD’s wager, being the first to release a general public GPU (the RVxx obliges) and directly offering an X2 rather than a very high end GPU, will pay off...