The title speaks for itself. DailyTech has managed to run through some benchmarks with the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB graphics card. The tests were conducted on an Intel D975XBX2 BadAxe2, Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 and 2x1GB DDR2-800 MHz. The operating system on the test system was Windows XP, with a fresh install before benchmarking each card. Testing of the AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT was performed using the 8.361 Catalyst RC4 drivers, while the GeForce 8800 GTS used ForceWare 158.19 drivers. All game tests were run with the maximum detail settings at resolutions of 1280x1024.The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is expected to be widely available in mid-May, with a suggested retail price of $499.

Despite reports of Microsoft only managing a feeble 244 sales of its new Windows Vista OS, the software giant is now denying that there is any truth in the story. "Recent speculation regarding sales data in China is inaccurate," said Microsoft. "We're pleased with the positive consumer response we've seen around the globe to the security and usability enhancements in Windows Vista--and China is no exception."Although Microsoft has not given any exact figures on sales, it has said that Vista sales in China during the first month after its release were double those that XP had in its first month. Microsoft has been facing some criticism for its new OS, with a big blow coming when PC manufacturer Dell decided to reintroduce XP.

NVIDIA's latest Windows XP ForceWare release notes on page 26(now fixed), appeared to reveal yet another new video card, the GeForce 8800GS. NVIDIA responded immediately to the rumours of this 8800GS model:

The initial release notes for the NVIDIA ForceWare 158 Driver had a typo that referenced a product that does not, and will not exist. NVIDIA has no plans to release a GeForce 8800 GS. We have corrected the mistake and will be replacing the document on our website.

It's no secret that many XP users are holding off any OS upgrades until they see the improvements that Vista's first service pack will have to offer, but Intel CEO Paul Otellini has given quite a firm indication of when that should be. During an earnings conference, Otellini let the release date slip when saying "…the [Vista] deployment [in enterprises] will actually happen when the Service Pack gets released in the fourth quarter time frame, probably the October-November time frame." Microsoft still refuses to give any details itself about when we can expect to see SP1 for Vista, but assuming there are no major delays in its production, it's looking very likely we could see it before next year. As of yet, there are no concrete details about what issues the service pack will deal with, but Microsoft has already hinted that Vista's service packs won't be nearly as major as those provided for Windows XP.

NVIDIA is working on its 45 nanometre part. This year, the company plans to migrate to 65 nanometre as much as possible, but by the end of 2008 it should have 45 nanometre parts ready.

The company first has to shrink its 65 nanometre chips to 55 nanometre as this is the optical shrink and later it will go for 45 nanometre. Intel announced it will go 45 nanometre in late Q4 07 / early Q1 2008, AMD said that for its CPUs it will be able to do it by the mid of 2008.

The good thing about 45 nanometre chips is that on 15x15 square millimetres die you can put 1,350 millions of transistors or roughly twice as much as you can do with 65 nanometre.

After that the next big step is 32 nanometre scheduled for 2010.

A few big retailers and etailers have confirmed that Intel actually can check if you overclocked your CPU. When you burn your CPU Intel asks its retailers and etailers to return the CPU back to its factory. Intel then reads data from a hidden part of the CPU, and instantly finds out if the CPU has been overclocked or overvolted.

Retailers and etailers said that they are not sure about Intel's methods of judging who gets the new CPU, but they said that Intel gets back to them if you overclocked too much, and simply refuses to RMA the part.

Fudzilla claims that the Radeon HD 2900 manages an impressive 102.4GB/s memory throughput. The card uses a 512 bit memory interface and 1600 MHz GDDR3 memory. The core was clocked at 800 MHz. For comparison, NVIDIA's G80 with its odd 384 bit memory controller scores 86.4 GB/s.

The new HD 2900 XTX with GDDR 4 memory clocked at 2200 MHz, as originally planned, can theoretically have 140.8 GB/s. Both cards have twice or close to twice more memory bandwidth from ATI's Radeon X1950XTX card. This card was limited to a now modest 64GB/s.

Editors note: The NDA on the R600 makes it impossible for anyone to release accurate benchmarks of the R600. In fact, the NDA is so strict, we'll be lucky if the leaked R600 pictures have any accuracy. The theoretical memory bandwidth was attained by simple math: 512bit * 1600MHz / 8bit = 102.4GB/s.

Microsoft spent millions of dollars advertising its next generation OS 'Windows Vista' in China, in fact the IT juggernaut threw up the biggest Vista Ad on the 421 meter high Jin Mao tower in Shanghai China. However after 2 weeks (Jan 19 to Feb 2) from launch Microsoft managed to sell a mere 244 copies of Windows Vista. Software piracy is rampant in the middle kingdom and a pirated version of Vista sells for a mere $1 on the streets.

Have you ever played 'Ground Control', the game made by Massive Entertainment from Sweden? I didn't but the interview with Massive's lead game designer Magnus Jansén over at Shacknews immediately made me drool over the upcoming sequel 'World in Conflict'. This real time strategy game won't take place in the science-fictional past-third-world-war setting as the former Ground Control games, instead the cold war in the 1980's is the battleground now.

"If you have war where tanks roll over white picket fences and BMX bikes, it's not just some desert town that's getting destroyed that you can't relate to. You say, 'That's a swing set on fire, I fully grasp the power of this event.' Putting it in the middle of familiar environments immediately gives people a sense of the power and the horror of the war."

Massive adds a lot of really cool features to enhance the visual storytelling effects, for instance if you zoom in on a map really close to your troops you will suddenly pick up the radio transmissions between the units.
The game itself is comprised of three parts, one taking place in the US, the second in the European region and the third place wasn't disclosed yet.
As Jansén says the relationship to the publisher Vivendi is exceptionally good, the funding is there and even patience, it sounds like 'World in Conflict' could easily be one of the best games released in 2007 (this fall, for PC only). Just take a look at the screens and of course the rest of the interview and you will realize it yourself.

We brought news about a suspicion that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stole from Half life 2 and Doom 3. It now looks like the issue has been resolved, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did not steal a thing from the two aforementioned games. Half Life 2, as well as S.T.A.L.K.E.R., use textures from Marlin Studios - hence, the similarity. Furthermore, the IMP_Light texture, which also played part in the scandal as being taken from Doom 3, was, in fact, just a standard Impact Light texture, rather than referring to the Doom 3 monster.

Fuad has word that the upcoming K10 server processor codenamed Barcelona is 50 percent faster in specfp_rate2000 then Intel's quad core Kentsfield. As the CPU speed was not disclosed it will be near the stated 2.5GHz which applies for its fastest desktop counterpart, the Agena FX. The slowest Agena's will however start at 1.9GHz and will have the 95W TDP for sure.

NVIDIA plans to play a "trick" on us all - to compete with ATI's R600 chip, which is hopefully getting closer by the minute, NVIDIA should launch a GeForce 8800 Ultra card. The Inquirer, which we all have a problem trusting now and then, brings shocking news: the 8800 Ultra will be a revamped 8800 GTX card (it will use the same PCB, but a different cooler), and instead of being mass produced, it will be manufactured in "tens of units, not tens of thousands". This should therefore be a swift marketing move: NVIDIA will perhaps be able to claim the crown of performance king, yet us, end users, will not have access to the powerful cards.

It will be difficult to find one card, yet alone two for SLI.

More Radeon HD2900XT benchmarks - Crysis demo and 3DMark06 again - Update

Another day another benchmark score and this time again from a Turkish website. BilgiUstam got some results for 3DMark06 and for the first time from another application: a Crysis demo. They compared the Radeon HD2900XT to a GeForce 8800GTX on the same test platform.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800
Asus P5W DH
2×1GB PC2-6400 (5-5-5-12)
Western Digital Raptor 150To sum it up: While the G80 card was faster in the theoretical benchmark 3DMark06, the R600XT outperformed the G80 card everytime by a slight margin in the Crysis tests.

Update: Here we have some more screenshots from PCINLIFE showing how the R600 card performs in 3DMark06 using 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 as resolution. This time the test platform was powered using an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2x 2.40GHz) and 2GB of RAM. OS was Vista Ultimate together with the ATI Driver 8.351. The whole system managed to get 9685 3DMarks at the 1280x1024 res and 8756 3DMarks at 1600x1200. Not that bad considering the rather slow CPU.
The last shot is from the same setup now with 8x Antialiasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering enabled. Sadly you can only guess the whole score because the first digit was painted over.

I hope that everyone who is reading this and the other news posts regarding the R600 performance numbers is judging on it with a good portion of common sense. The final cards aren't on the market and the Non Disclosure Agreement wasn't lifted yet.

While we already reported that the X2900 got a name change to the HD 2900 series, The Inquirer sought to find out what happened to the rest of the Radeon line-up. Here are the latest R6x0 rumors, along with their new names.

• RV610LE will be called the HD 2400 Pro. This can support HD playback in 720P (1280x720) resolutions, and comes with up to 256MB of 64-bit DDR2 RAM clocked at 800MHz.
• RV610PRO will be known as the HD 2400 XT. It should come with 128-bit GDDR3 RAM, and support full 1080P (1920x1080) HD playback.
• RV630PRO will be known as the HD 2600 Pro. It is basically an RV610LE with a fancy memory controller, higher clock speeds, and the ability to play 1080P HD content.
• RV630XT will be known as the HD 2600 XT. It is a higher-clocked version of the RV630PRO, with the ability to support higher-clocked and more memory.

All of these cards should come with a native HDMI port, can be ported to AGP, and have HD audio codecs.

Our last findings on how fast R600 cards perform in 3DMark06 caused a lot of buzz. Let's see how the following tidbit shapes up:
The VR-Zone has some numbers they couldn't keep for themselves regarding a Radeon X (sorry...), HD 2900 XT coupled with a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (quad core) processor. They say with the latest 8.361-RC4 drivers they got around 12K with that R600XT card which is faster 2000 points higher than the scores from FX57.net. They price of this card will be 399USD which would be quite a bargain.

Starcraft: Nearly ten years old but still fun to play and the game has a huge community in Southeast Asia. But let's face it, it's time for a sequel.
And it seems like there is a Starcraft 2 on the horizon. A Korean website called Fighter Forum mentioned an interview with someone out of the eSports industry and this person said.

"...there will be a beta version of SC2 coming out end of the year..."

He adds there will be a fourth race and every race get's a couple of new units to play with. Get all the details from the direct translation at Team Liquid.

The Turkish website FX57.net spilled the beans today. They allegedly tested the R600XT and XTX model on a Conroe 2.93Ghz with 2GB DDR2-800 RAM together with an Intel i975x motherboard. They came up with the following results in 3DMark 06:

Radeon HD 2900 XTX: 12k | GeForce 8800GTX: 10.5k
Radeon HD 2900 XT: 10k | GeForce 8800GTS: 9k

The operating system used was Windows Vista. They used the Catalyst 7.1 (8.33) which seems rather strange, other reviewers report about issues with drivers, so newer ones should be more likely to be used for testing/benchmarking. That could mean the results are not that meaningful at all. Either the scores are made up or there's a little bit of headroom for newer drivers. Decide for yourself...

A few days ago we reported about a demo that shows the special DirectX 10 effects the R600 will support. Now I came across a forums entry at Beyond 3D which says this demo would look like Call of Juarez, a Western-themed first-person shooter from the Polish game developer Techland. Just out of pure curiosity I looked for some reference material and it turns out to be a correct statement. Just look at the attached screenshots from IGN PC the wooden hut in Fudzillas shot (first picture) looks exactly like the one in the IGN PC shot (second picture). The fence in the tech demo looks exactly like the fence in the other IGN PC screeny. Though the lighting and the details on the stones in front and the steep hill on the far side look different because these are the enhancements made in order to show the beef-up using the DX10 routines. After all, if this is a tech demo it's made of content out of Call of Juarez.

The website PCINLIFE got hold of more pictures of the OEM R600 yesterday. Thanks go out to Flint who was kind enough to alarm us.
Btw.: The pictures are still there at PCINLIFE but its a real pain to create an account if you can't cope with Chinese symbols.

Fudzilla has managed to snap a picture of the R600 card - this time, with the cooler off. By the looks of it, pictures of the core found on the web a few months ago didn't lie:The card above has 1024 MB of memory and "some dodgy drivers". It is interesting to see the core tilted the way it is. This will disable all current water cooling blocks (and perhaps air heatsinks) from being compatible with the card. An adapter, or a different retention mechanism, could perhaps fix this. Also note that ATI's R600 does not use a heatspreader on the core.

In addition, the card uses 2 power connectors: 1 standard 6-pin PCI Express, and 1 8-pin connector:All of the pictures are from the 12 inch card, which should be identical to the smaller version (except for the heatsink).

Graphics Card Tidbits Part V - Update

Today in a week we will be enlightened on what NVIDIA was working on during the last few months. Will there be a GeForce 8800 Ultra or a 8850 GTX or a dual GPU card very likely named 8850 GX2? The names put aside, NVIDIA will give AMD/ATI again a run for their money, though things could change very likely another week later. It's all over town already that Tunisia will be the birthplace for AMD's first product troika (K10 CPUs, RD790 Chipset and R6x0 GPU family) on April 23rd. The invited crowd, most of them being journalists, will among other things, get shown Techdemo which Fuad got a screenshot from. He's got a second file as well, probably out of an official Powerpoint presentation, that finally solves the naming scheme riddle of the R600 high end cards. AMD's upcoming high end boards will be called X2900-Series.

THQ has announced that the sequel to last year's Company of Heroes will be DirectX 10 ready. The proprietary Essence Engine of the original Company of Heroes series, developed in-house by Relic, will be upgraded in COH2 to support a dynamic weather system and more realistic physics, as well as the graphical joys of Shader Model 4.0. Since the game will be DirectX 10 ready, it will be playable only with Windows Vista OS. The game will be out in Q3 2007, until then enjoy the newly released Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts expansion pack.

The biggest shortcoming of notebooks has been the limited upgradability. ASUS is looking to change all that with the C90, which lets you upgrade all the major parts: CPU, memory, graphic card, hard drive & optical drive. While you may think, that some of these can already be upgraded in todays notebooks, ASUS will make it really simple to do with the new C90. Click on "Read full story" for the detailed specs.

A rumor has it that the publishing company behind Tom's Hardware was sold for a whopping $15 million to $20 million US dollars. All the site's CEO, Omid Rahmat, confirms at the moment is that the company has been sold and they will make an official announcement soon.

That is, on their legitimate movie and music delivery service, not the extremely-misused data transfer protocol. Some of you may have heard of a BitTorrent store. BitTorent has caught onto the idea that people are used to BitTorrent being associated with free content. And so, to keep themselves out of legal trouble while still offering free movies/music, the legal version of BitTorrent will support an advertising plan similar to YouTube's. BitTorrent will post the free content as soon as it's done testing their advertising scheme, which is done with the help of YuMe networks.