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 A few weeks later than expected, Creative has released the beta version of the ALchemy drivers. We remind you, that the objective of this software layer is to round up some of the limitations inherent to Windows Vista preventing the possibility for a specialised DSP to deal with DirectSound 3D effects. In practice, this "wrapper" intercepts DirectSound 3D sound requests and converts them in OpenAL to continue to benefit from audio hardware acceleration and advanced functionalities such as EAX.
 Games currently supported are Battle for Middle Earth 2, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Diablo 2, Everquest 2, FEAR, Full Spectrum Warrior, Full Spectrum, Warrior: Ten Hammers, Guild Wars, GTA: San Andreas, Hitman: Blood Money, Max Payne 2, Midieval 2: Total War, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, NOLF 2, Rome: Total War, Serious Sam: Second Encounter, Star Wars Empire at War, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Titan Quest, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Tron 2, Warcraft 3 & World of Warcraft. It is also possible to use ALchemy with other games by copying dsound.ini and dsound.dll files in the game sub-directories. It will, however, be sometime necessary to manually edit some of the variables in the dsound.ini file.
The only criticism one can make about this solution is that it is only restricted to a some of the SB X-Fi, SB X-Fi Exteme Audio cards and that the previous ones aren't compatible.
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 AMD has discreetly introduced a new version of the Athlon 64 X2 3600+. We remind you that a few months ago the manufacturer released a version dedicated to OEMs. The processor was clocked at 2 GHz and had 2x256 KB of L2 cache.
The new 65nm version has a slightly lower frequency of 1.9 GHz but a doubled L2 cache to 512 KB per core. Selling price will be probably equivalent to the 90nm version and 5 to 10€ less expensive than the X2 3800+. |
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Today, AMD announced new price reductions mainly for Athlon 64 X2 processors:
 The most important reduction is for the 5200+ with a pretty nice -26.8%. The price gap with the 5000+ is now only of $10. This is the processor that AMD has chosen to compete with the E6600 as the E6400 is now between the 4600+ and 4800+. The 4000+, which was up until today $6 more expensive than the E4300, is now $5 cheaper. Two other interesting points, the A64 3200+ has disappeared from the price list and the 3800+ price decreased from $108 to $101. The price of the 3500+ is still at $91. For the Sempron, the 3200+ and 3000+ prices decrease to $51 to $41 from $67 and $56. |
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 11 months after Intel, AMD starts its own 65 nm fabrication process. Will this new revision of the Athlon 64 X2 allow us wait 6 to 8 months before the new K8L architecture?
> Athlon 64 X2 5000+ : 90nm vs 65nm |
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