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ATI will release in the weeks to come a new GPU named X550. This chip will be less efficient but also less expensive than the X600. We don’t know yet however exactly the differences between the two of them.
It would be apparently a RV370 (X300) with higher functioning frequencies, for example 400 MHz for the VPU and 200-250 MHz for DDR memory. The X600 and X300 share the same architecture, but the X600 has a 130 nm fabrication process instead of 110 nm for the X300 cheaper to produce.
 Here are the current GPU and memory frequency combination for X600 and X300 chips: - GPU at 500 MHz, 370 MHz of DDR 128 bits : X600 XT - GPU at 400 MHz, 300 MHz of DDR 128 bits : X600 Pro - GPU at 325 MHz, 200 MHz of DDR 128 bits : X300 - GPU at 325 MHz, 200 MHz of DDR 64 bits : X300 SE In the future the Radeon X550 could replace the X600, just like the Radeon 9550 replaced the Radeon 9600. |
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Gigabyte has the intention to democratize the Ramdisk on a PCI daughter board with the i-RAM. This 32 bits PCI board, sold around $50, supports up to 4x1GB of DDR200 and feature a FPGA chip (Field Programmable Gate Array) manufactured by Xilinx. This chip is used as a SATA to DDR converter. The 4GB of DDR200 will be perceived by the system as a standard SATA hard drive.
 The board doesn’t feature any external power supply connector like the costlier Ramdisk. Its only power comes from the PCI slot. A rechargeable battery is also present to keep data during 16 hours when the computer is shut down. Performances reached are 115 MB /s for sustained transfer rate and an access time no longer expressed in milliseconds like a hard drive but in nanoseconds. With the lack of external power supply, its low autonomy and capacity, the i-RAM will be limited to uses such as a disc dedicated to swap or very specific works. We hope that the i-RAM 2 will be released soon! |
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 ATI made the first demonstration of their future GPU R520 during the Computex. ATI choose however not to make a 3D demonstration but to show the H.264 decoding acceleration which will be used for future HD movies (Blu-ray & HD-DVD).
The H.264, included in the MPEG-4 norm (its other denomination is MPEG-4 Part 10), goes one step further for compression and is of course more complex to decode and encode.
So if reading a H.264 video with a transfer rate of 25 Mbits /s used 90 to 95% of the Pentium 4 3.6 GHz resources without acceleration, it only needs… 33% with! We need however to put these figures in perspective as with this transfer rate (which won’t probably be much used in practice) 11 GB would be required for one hour of video.
Anyway, the H.264 is a very heavy codec and the release of hardware decoding acceleration is a good thing. Apparently it would also be possible to implement this solution in some of the current ATI and NVIDIA GPUs, just like with WMV videos. Now we will have to see in practice if this functionality will be implemented or if it will be only used as a functionality of the new GPU generation … |
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Iwill showed during the Computex their future mini-PC, the ZMAXd2. Just like the ZMAXdp announced one year ago, the d2 supports two Opteron Socket 940 processors (mono or dual core). The system is no longer however based on the nForce3 250 Gb but on an nForce Pro SLI and includes two PCI Express x16 slots to use two graphic cards in SLI. The two graphic cards here are GeForce 6600 GT and as Iwill hasn’t developed any specific cooling system it will be impossible to use two 6800 GT for example.
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 The release of fast panels with very wide viewing angles for 19” monitors is good news but not for everyone. Wide monitors’ enthusiasts fell that they are left aside. It is true that for the moment they only have the choice between IPS or VA panel with for the two of them strong afterglow effect in games.
If you are one of them, you will have to wait a little bit more but it is coming! We have heard about a new and faster generation. One monitor expected at the end of the year will be a Belinea based on a 20” panel manufactured by AU Optronics. It will be a Premium MVA, 8 ms panel derived from the one present in the ViewSonic VP191b. One small difference, it will be a wide format: 1680 x 1050 pixels. |
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 XGI today announced a new PCI-Express graphic solution, the Volari V8300. Based on a G47 chip, this 2.0 Shader chip features a 64 bits memory interface, four pipelines with two able to process pixel shaders, is capable to calculate Z data at double speed and supports the eXtreme Cache (similar to NVIDIA TurboCache and ATI HyperMemory). It is an entry level solution which correspond to XGI’s strategic orientation announced during the CeBIT. The Volari 8300 had already been mentioned during this show. |
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Last April, ABIT released the Silent OTES, a passive heatpipe cooling system for chipsets. Today, ASUSTeK released a similar system, the AI Cool-Pipe. It will be used for the first time with the A8N-SLI Premium, an A8N-SLI Deluxe without manual switch to change from standard to SLI configuration.
 The AI Cool-Pipe includes one radiator to place on the chipset which connects via a heatpipe to another radiator located near the processor to benefit from the airflow generated by the CPU fan. ASUSTeK announced a chipset temperature of 69.2°C in use. The nForce 4 is supposed to be able to reach up to 90°C. ASUSTeK also said that the A8N SLI Premium will be able to work with a noiseless fanless cooling system that won’t fail…situation that some of the A8N SLI / Deluxe will encounter (sic). |
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AOpen is the first to release an ATX Socket 479 motherboard, the i915Ga-HFS. Dedicated to Pentium M & Celeron M processors, it is based on the i915G chipset coupled to the ICH6.
 It also features 1 PCI-E 16x slot, 1 PCI-E x1 slot, 3 PCI slots, 4 Serial ATA ports and 1 standard ATA port. AOpen chose to support DDR2 memory (400 or 533) additionally to the DDR1. The motherboard also includes a FireWire 400 and a Gigabit network chip, an HD Audio chip and all outputs supported by the integrated i915G graphic solution (Sub, DVI, S-Video, D-connector, YPbPr). If this product could have been really exciting a few months ago, we have to say that the release of the ASUSTeK CT-479 adaptor has considerably reduced the interest of this type of motherboards… |
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 AMD announced during the first day of the Computex, the immediate availability of Athlon 64 X2 processors. You can take a look at our article about AMD dual core CPU here. 4 versions are available:
- A64 X2 4200+ : 2.2 GHz, 512 KB of cache L2 per core, US $537
- A64 X2 4400+ : 2.2 GHz, 1024 KB of cache L2 per core, US $581
- A64 X2 4600+ : 2.4 GHz, 512 KB of cache L2 per core, $803
- A64 X2 4800+ : 2.4 GHz, 1024 KB of cache L2 per core, $1,001.
According to AMD, several OEMs such as Acer, Alienware, HP and Lenovo will release configurations based on Athlon 64 X2 processors. The Athlon 64 X2 is still however currently absent from HP and Alienware websites. “Immediate availability” doesn’t means for AMD the availability for the end user and we feel that “immediate shipment” would have been preferable. Anyway Athlon 64 X2 processors sales won’t be titanic and chances to find one in retail are reduced… |
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