18 posts tagged “amd”

 So I've been meaning to get a new CPU for quite a while now. Like, since I got the computer. I've upgraded pretty much everything else since I got it over a year and a half ago. Pretty much everything except the motherboard has been replaced, but the last thing that I need to change was the CPU. I worked a little over March break and went out and bought an AMD X2 4200+. It's not all that much much faster then my old 3200+, but it is Dual Core, which should speed things up like "backing up" DVD's *wink, wink* and things of that nature. I also fried a stick of RAM a little over a month ago, so I have to replace that, but it's only going to be about $15. After that, I might upgrade the RAM after that, but that's it for this box. After that, it's not really worth it in my mind to upgrade to either Intel Core 2 or AMD Phenom. That would involve getting a new motherboard and processor and possibly new memory, which I might as well go and get a new computer. No, I think go for a Mac for my next computer. Probably a Macbook, get a nice 20" display and be done with it. I'll keep the PC around, but I really don't think that it's worth it for the amount of effort and money  that's required to play games and such. I've never really been that kind of a user anyway, I always prefered to work with Digital Media such as music and video's.

  

   

So a few weeks ago, my cousin,who had Vista before I did (read:pirated) decided that he was going to move back from Vista to XP. Now why the heck would he do that you might ask? Well first of all, he had invested his money into 2 GB (4 x 512) of RAM. And it didn't feel like 2 GB in Vista. It felt more like 1 GB. Secondly, a lot of the programs that that he runs where not working either. Most notably the games. Now, I've tried gaming on Vista, and it seems to work pretty good. Except for the games that don't run at all! Like Rise of Nations and a few others. So that's the second reason. Thirdly, XP is stable. It's been locked down. We know what's inside it. It may not be as shiny as Vista, or as helpful (for example, desktop searching) however, it's faster, has all the hardware drivers you can imagine and all my programs will run fine. Of particular annoyance is my copy of Fireworks 8. It will run fine, but in order to run, it must revert back to the crappy "Vista Basic" theme, every time, and takes large amounts of time to boot besides. I'm planning on investing in a new AMD X2 processor at the end of the summer, but I think that I'm going to have to do it before then, just for the sack of productivity (school, etc.) So I'll probably go back either late this week when I get back from camping or early next week.   
  

    It seems that Price cuts seems to be the thing that everyone is doing to boost marketshare these days. First, on Monday, Sony cut the price of the PS3 by $100 in the US bringing the price of the 60 GB PS3 down to $500. They also announced an 80 GB PS3, although, I don't understand why you would by an 80 GB PS3 when the HD is upgradable. Anyway, I would buy a PS3 if a) I had the money and b) I didn't have all the stupid tax to pay on it. Unlike in the US, where there is no federal tax, here you have both Federal tax 6%) and Provincial sales tax (8%) which adds up for a total of 14%, which really kind of sucks when buying big ticket items like the PS3 or a computer or a HDTV. 
    Secondly, and the more exciting of the price cuts in my mind, is the fact that once again, AMD has cut prices on it's processors in order to compete with Intel. They have eliminated the 3600+ and 3800+ X2 processors from the lineup with the 4000+ Brisbane and 4200+ Windsor cores now the low end dual core processors with all the remaining dual cores processors priced under $200 (without tax). I'm quite excited about this because I'm looking to upgrade my single core 3200+ probably to either a 4000+ or a 4200+. That along with the memory is all I need to upgrade to make my computer a somewhat midrange gaming machine. I'm looking forward to putting an X2 into my machine by the end of the summer. If anyone was planning on building or upgrading there AMD based system, now would be the time to do it.

More and more, I'm seeing that you might need 2 PSU's if your building a high end or even a mid-range gaming PC in the next year. The fact of the matter is that graphics cards keep on sucking more and more power and PSU's just can't keep up. The highest rated PSU that I've seen are 1000W. Considering that the new ATI card the 2900XT draws an appauling 215W at peak load. That's esssentially the load of my entire system onto one video card. and things can only good uphill from here. So now high end enthuiseits are proposing that 2 PSU's be put into a system. One for the main set of components, the CPU, the RAM, the Hard Drive and Optical Drive, but a second PSU for t

he GPU. I can see it happening I mean, for the amount of performance that your getting out a GPU core, the top end I think is somehere around 600 MHz (granted the memory is clocked much higher, mine's at 1.45 Ghz, the new nvidia cards go somewhere around 2 Ghz.) 215W is a lot to ask for a graphics card. So say hpyithetically that OEM's do decide to go ahead with the 2 PSU concept. Can you imagine if you wanted to run SLI or Crossfire? You might as well put another 500W power supply in they're. This could cause amajor shakeup in the hardware industry. Not only will Intel have to reexamine the ATX power standard (currently there is only one ATX power connector on most motherboard, server motherboards might have more.) If your going to put a second power connector on the motherboard, your probably going to need to revamp the entire architecture. Case makers will also have to do some redesign, unless they can manage to put the PSU into a 3.5" or a 5.25" bay, which is unlikely. Needless to say that both ATI and nvidia need to figure out what they're going to do with the graphics card business. With AMD/ATI trying to tie the GPU into the CPU, graphics may become a thing of the past very shorty. For know though, I'm sticking with my new 7600 GT.

This is a bit delayed, but yesterday was interesting. Two of my favorite companies, ATI and Apple released new/updated hardware. First was Apple. They came out and updated the processors in it's Macbook line, bumping the low end to 2 Ghz and the mid and high end lines to 2.16 Ghz, matching that of the low end Macbook Pro and the 20 and 24 inch iMacs. That's the good news. Bad news is that you still have the same old Intel GMA 950 inside, which put's a stop to any series gaming on the Macbook. I mean, come on Apple, we really didn't need the processor update, if you really want to make us happy, put a graphics card then there. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Maybe just an X1400 or something, I don't care, just let us use T&L and all those shiny effects.That's no. 1. No. 2 is that ATI/AMD rolled out there high end Direct 10 GPU's yesterday, much to the glee of ATI's fanboy's such as myself. I'm waiting for the midrange HD 2600 to come out to consider my options. I was looking around at the new nvidia 8600 GT that just came out a few weeks ago. All I can say is shiny...... And since nvidia seems to have it's act together better then ATI does, I'm tempted to jump ship and buy the 8600 GT along with a new PSU next month. Ah well, we'll see.  

 The last few days have been very interesting. I've been getting some things worked out in Vista. Yesterday, Joost 0.9.2 was released which doesn't studder as much. Only problem was, that when I went to open the client, it said it couldn't connect to the network. So after hunting around for a solution,  I reinstalled it and it worked fine. Better than before as a matter of fact. Then something strange happened. I was trying to buy a song off of the iTunes store when it wouldn't connect. Even Apple.com wasn't working right. I un-installed, restarted and then reinstalled iTunes and it worked fine, but it's just another example of how iTunes isn't exactly ready for Prime time on Vista. Democracy doesn't work right without turing off Aero, which is a minor pain, but I live with it. I've been looking at the price of some parts lately. Things have dropped dramatically. The cheapest AMD Processor (3600+, 1.9 Ghz, 2 x512 KM L2) is only $95. The 4200 + (2.2 Ghz 2x 512 KB L2) is only $133. The X1650, the ATI midrange GPU, is only $148. 2 GB of Kingston Valuram is only $156. Mind you all these prices come with 0.14% tax tacked onto them, so it's not as great a deal as it appears. But it's still a good deal. I think once I pay for education and my trip to Germany, I'll go get me some upgrades.
Off to Youth Exec. I'll post more in the next few days.

 I'm sad to say this but there are politics in technology. There are politics anywhere you go. Although people try and avoid them, I'm sure, they do exsist. Take for example the other day. I was on a message board and there was an argument over processors. The Core 2 Duo is the king right now, but I'm still an AMD fan, as was the guy who was asking the question. He wanted a recommendation on a certain AMD processor. One of the upstanding members of the community (he really is.) tried to talk him into buying a Core 2 Duo when he clearly wanted an AMD. It's like being a conservative or Liberal in the real world. Your either AMD or Intel and ATI and nvidia. I'm a clear cut AMD/ATI guy. I hate NVIDIA for many reason's that I won't get into in this post. If you want to really UGLY then your either a PC, Mac or Linux User. Again, it's all about politics. Then you have the extremists. That would be the uber-fanboys that basically are like (excuse the LEET speak please) ZOMG! dOOD! New Hardware *falls over drooling* Or the political extremists such as Richard Stallman who want Linux to be called GNU/Linux for his own benefit. It goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's sad to see, but it's the truth.
I hope everyone is having a great Easter! Hope you guys get lots of chocolate!
*Pray's that weather will not disrupt celebrations*

 

    So today a f

ew more details of ATI's DX 10 graphics solution codenamed R600 where leaked on Engadget. Nvidia relea sed it's DX 10 graphics solution last year with the launch of the 8800 GTX and the 8800 GTS. Nvidia claims to have a leg up over ATI with the G93 GPU with a 384-bit interface, 768 or 640 of GDDR3 and a 90nm process. Well it looks like ATI is going to up the ante with it's R600. The XTX version of R600 will have 1 GB of GDDR4 a 512-bit memory bus and an 80nm process. So all of the nvidia fans saying that ATI is sucks, I've got news for you: They don't suck. They managed to get the 80nm GPU process is pretty cool. Considering that the least that Intel and AMD are getting down to 65nm right now so it's not that far away.
    Another piece of news in the tech world was that Intel demoed it's 80 core processor. I mean where just getting into quad core right now but 80 cores?!? Who needs that many? I imagine that if Intel does release this thing it's going to mean a complete redesign of computer architechture. Will they need to design whole new chipsets and socket? Probably. And how much L2 will be on this thing? If Quad Core is extreme I don't know what to call an 80 core processor. To say the least, I think that within the next few years, technology is about to make leaps and bounds beyond what anyone has ever seen before. I can see it now.....A Supercomputer in Every living room. Can we imagine what the world will be like in a year, 5 years, 10 years? If you asked me last July who to base your system around I would have said AMD. As Jerry Pournelle said famously "Intel had boxes you could bake Pizza in" which was true because the Pentium D was hog in terms of power consumption. And then there was the fact that you could use your box as a space heater as well as your computer. If you would have told me 9 months ago that Intel would be top dog again I wouldn't have believed you. I would have said that AMD  is still king and that Intel is a sinking ship.  But AMD is going to counter  in the next few months and this time next year AMD could be king once again. That's the thing about tech: It never stands still   

    So I got the results back from that rewrite that I did yesterday. 53. Not bad considering my other marks in the course. Teacher called all of us over to his desk during class today so he could chat with us about our marks. I'm marching into exam with a 52ish. Which means I have to come out of this exam with a 50 at least in order to pass this course. That shouldn't be to bad. Got the revised results of my C. History test back as well. 92%. My top mark in that class was a 97% on the economics test. I have a test on sovereignty which I'm going to study for in a few minutes. when Mom get's home we have to finish icing that cake and such. I finished my Powerpoint for one of my last Soc. assignments for the semester. Made some models that I placed under CC to share with people. I've decided to put all of my paper's and such under CC for people to use and to give me some recognition. I'll put some of them up on a site somewhere.
    Just saw an article on Ars (Technica) about Windows Home Server. One of the first lines in the article is "remember when you had XP home for home, XP Pro for work and Windows 2003 Server for Server?" He then goes on about the fact that Microsoft has muddied the water with numerous versions of Vista. I think that they did this  reason. No more one size fits all  Microsoft has given up on all the "one size fits all" model. They're targeting specific groups of consumers with specific versions of Vista. Home Basic for the granny that only does word processing and email. Home

Premium for the  people who enjoy lots of  multi-media. Business for well,  business. Enterprise for small  business and Ultimate for the power user/enthusiest/I want everything-all-the-shiny-stuff group. I think they learned over the past few years that people use computers for different things and they need specific programs and features for a specific user groups. It may be frustrating for me and you, but it makes sense-well kinda.
    I don't like all of the DRM in Vista. I don't like the fact that Microsoft bent over backwards for the RIAA and the MPAA again. These are all reason to not get Vista. Will I get Vista? Maybe. Maybe not. Right now I'm thinking not. Why? Well first of all money. I have much better things to spend my money on. Second of all you never never ever by the product the first six months that it's out. It took them 2 service packs to get XP somewhat secure. I don't even want to know how long it's going to take them to get Vista secure and working properly. Finally, the only reason I would consider Vista is if I can get a recently priced DirectX10 graphics card. I'm waiting for the midrange nvidea cards as well as ATI's initial offerings to come out this march. I'm heading down the Florida in march, so I might pick up one on the cheap. We'll see. Anyway back to the books.

How many computers do you have in your house? 
Submitted by Foomper.

A Lot. Our First Computer was a Pentium One with a 1 GB Hard Drive, which seems so small now. Our First "real" computer and with High Speed Internet which was a Dell Dimension 4400 with a 1.6 Ghz Processor 512 RAM and two drives, 1 for writing CD-R/RW's and a DVD Reader. For it's time it was one of the fastest computers for it's time. While we had 1.6 Ghz, while most of the budget computers had 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz processors as the standards. 5 years after we got that, our computer computer has been expanded to 4. Back in march mom and Dad bought a Dell Laptop . Slightly faster at 1.83 Ghz with 1 GB of RAM. It's a nice machine. With that came a wireless router that allows my sister and I to connect my computers to an Ethernet. But more on that later. The thing is though, my parents don't know the difference between LCD and CRT. They think that you can clean an LCD the same way you clean a CRT. The LCD is filthy. I've tried to get them to clean it many times, but they don't want to make the effort to go out and buy an LCD cleaning kit. Anyway, the next computer that was added was one my sister bought. A Dell (seeing a pattern?) Dimension 1100, which is a "budget" system from Dell. In comparison to the the Laptop or the older desktop. It has a Celeron in it *shudder* 512 MB of RAM a integrated graphics chip, which I despise. But it's not my computer. So that's 3 of them. Mine is different. Everything around me is Intel based. I'm AMD. Everything is AGP based. I went PCI-E. 2 of the computers have 512 GB of RAM. I went with 1 GB. I'm different I'm the odd one out. But whatever. All the other computers are in generic black cases, I have a silver case with a nice glowing fan. I forsee at least another notebook being added as I go into college in the next 2 years. And my brother or mother might get another computer for themselves, so we'll see how it shapes up.