Phenom 9750: 95W or 125W? GeForce Release 174.74 for all! The P45 delayed one month Return rates of power supplies

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Phenom 9750: 95W or 125W?   Posted on 28/03/2008 at 18:40 by Nicolas

	In addition to the "standard" Phenom 9750 announced on the 27th whose TDP attains 125W, another 9750 appears on AMD’s price list but with a TDP of 95W. Curiously, the two CPUs are offered for the same price. Some attribute this to rather particular Vendor Managed Inventory (stock managed by the distributor) agreements which bind AMD to some of its partners. In practice, it can actually lead to price differences between these two CPUs; however, this is only a hypothesis. Nevertheless, one thing is sure; we should verify the TDP given by the retailer if we opt for a Phenom 9750.

GeForce Release 174.74 for all!   Posted on 28/03/2008 at 15:21 by Nicolas

	Nvidia has put the GeForce Release 174.74 beta on line for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista. While the 174.53 WHQL recently published only supports the GeForce 9, the 174.74 are destined for some 77 cards/mGPUs from the GeForce 6100 up to the 9800 GX2 and including the 6700 XL, 7350 LE and other 8600 GS. Moreover, the GeForce FX are supported in Windows XP. In addition to the usual bug fixes specified in the Release Notes and announced performance gains, the firm indicates having added GeForce 3D Stereo Technology only in Windows Vista 32-bit for the GeForce 6, 7, 8, or 9 equipped with at least 128 MB.

The P45 delayed one month   Posted on 28/03/2008 at 15:03 by Nicolas - source: Digitimes

	Intel has decided to delay the launch of the P45 initially planned for May or early June at the Computex with availability effective mid-June according to motherboard manufacturers. The reason given is a compatibility problem between the PCI-Express x16 port and some graphic cards. This would not have gone unnoticed but can be rapidly corrected (2 to 4 weeks) and motherboard production should normally start in mid-April. The P45 is only a minor evolution of the P35. We remain at FSB1333, make the transition from DDR3-1066 to DDR3-1333 (in practice this mode already functioned) and from 8 to 16 GB of memory. There is also PCI-Express 2.0 support like with the X38/X48. Motherboard manufacturers will thus have more time to unload P35 stocks without having to cut prices. In addition, we should logically expect the release of the G45, P43 and G43 to be delayed by as much.

Return rates of power supplies   Posted on 28/03/2008 at 14:08 by Marc

	After yesterday’s news item on hard drive return rates, here are those for power supplies given by a major online French retailer. These statistics involve power supplies sold from April to September 2007 or in other words 6 months to 1 year of functioning. Figures by brand are based on a minimum sample of 500 unit sales. - Enermax : 1.0% - Corsair : 1.1% - Akasa : 1.6% - Cooler Master : 1.6% - Fortron : 1.6% - Thermaltake : 2.5% - Seasonic : 2.6% - Antec : 2.8% - Max In Power : 3.4% - Hiper : 4.8% Enermax, which was second a little more than a year ago, now arrives in first place. Antec which had a return rate of 9.5% due to a defect on the SmartPower series now ranks better, while Hiper is in last place. We should point out that one of its most widely sold models, the HPU-4S350, has a breakdown rate slightly higher than 9%! The second least reliable model sold in significant volumes (> 100) still with Hiper is the HPU-4M530 (8.5%) followed by the HPU-4M670 (6.9%).