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.

The crew from Gear Live slipped through the doors of AMD's performance testing labs and recorded their latest show of The Bleeding Edge over there. Mark Welker, who is the chief of the Client Analysis Performance Management department, explained in-depth what he and his team are doing. They showcase a Quad FX system running several applications and games at the same time, explain what you need a dual or multi core CPU for, how to properly benchmark a system and what will change if you switch from a single to a multi core CPU. Welker further adds details about the purpose of such a department, thorough testing of current hardware, the latest applications and games and as a conclusion the monthly summaries he has to deliver which you can find over here for example: AMD Processor Performance Evaluation Guide.
During such an investigating on Supreme Commander, one of the first few games that is stated to use four cores, they found out that it is not utilizing more than two cores at the moment in their labs. It remains to be seen if it's the fault of the AMD guys or a software glitch which has to be fixed by Gas Powered Games.
While you might think I am joking to bother you with a 40 minute video I can guarantee you it's worth every single one of it. The best thing is that you can download it in several formats in order to get a compatible file for your mobile video player:iPod-formatted H.264 (M4V) | Apple Quicktime TV High Resolution (MOV) | DivX (AVI) | MPEG-4 (MP4)

With all the recent and not-so-recent processor releases Intel has made, and all the recent-but-buggy NVIDIA graphics card releases, it's no wonder that AMD (which owns ATI) is losing some of its market share. All AMD can do to try and maintain market share in the USA is to continue to cut prices of existing products, while Intel and NVIDIA enjoy the performance crowns. However, all this is bound to change when AMD unleashes Barcelona. AMD told TGDaily that the Barcelona processor core is on schedule. However, to ensure enough stock at launch, we may not see the Barcelona core until Q4 2007, or maybe even Q1 2008. AMD is likely to regain some graphics card market share back with the HD 2x00 series.

Besides the usual R600 and K10/Barcelona talk that keeps us busy all day long there is another side of AMD that many people don't seem to realize: the financial part. If you are interested on being reading some well written thoughts I would suggest a recent two-part article at Overclockers.com. There Ed Stroligo explains AMDs actual financial situation with all the losses of revenue during the last quarter and gives some forecasts on how AMD will react to this.

Get to the first part here and don't miss the second part.

Btw.: There are several other interesting articles about various subjects of the computer sector at their front page.

We reported a while back that ASUS isn't the only one developing a solution for external graphic cards - ATI is in the game too, with its Lasso technology.

Fudzilla has more information regarding Lasso. It will be supported by the external version of the R600, and will allow you to link more than 2 cards for mindblowing graphics performance. Even odd numbers of cards should be supported - connecting five R600 GPUs should pose no problems.

The external R600, codenamed Lasso, connects to the computer via an external PCIe port.

As we pointed out earlier AMD in close collaboration with Microsoft and many other companies holds a tech tour this year which started in Tampa, Florida, on April 10th. The tour will stop by in several cities around the United States and you can register for it at the official AMD/Microsoft Tech Tour website.
Luckily for all the people who won't attend the tour the guys from Techware Labs are hosting a comprehensive summary about the show in Tampa. Read how they managed to get an 'impressive' AMD Athlon 64 4000+ and what they were bothered most with.

The soon to be released next CPU architecture named K10 was x-rayed a while ago. We know that the K10 won't hit the 3GHz mark, it will come in all flavors from 2.1GHz all the way up to 2.9GHz. What we missed there, and what AMD didn't let out of their labs yet, was a corresponding heat dissipation figure. Now as Fudzilla.com acts like their silent megaphone they tell the public that 95W will be the maximum TDP for Barcelona and Agena FX. That is quite low for a real quad-core CPU, and sounds very promising in terms of overclocking achievements.

AMD has published price cuts for its desktop processor range with prices falling up to US$200 for high-end Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors. Several products have also been discontinued including the socket AM2-based Athlon 64 FX-64, and the socket 745-based Sempron 3400+ and 3000+. AMD's official website still shows processor pricing effective 20th February 2007, while DigiTimes has the new price cuts chart here.

AMD plans to release two more dual-core Opterons in order to compete with Intel's latest Xeon processors. Server makers and channel sellers will gain access to the 3GHz(120W) Model 2222 SE and Model 8222 SE chips, which will slot in just above the already shipping 2.8GHz Model 2220 SE and 8220 SE processors. The 2000 Series products cater to servers with two-sockets, while the 8000 Series feed systems with four or more sockets. A similar 95W version of the new 3.0GHz chip for the 1000 Series line should also arrive in a few weeks. AMD has yet to release pricing for the 2222 SE and 8222 SE 3.0GHz models, as it does not plan to formally announce the product for two more weeks. These may be the last Opterons before the four-core Barcelona arrives.

As AMD launched the 690G and 690V chipsets at the beginning of this March manufacturers were upset with their long postponement. Today all all the fuss is forgotten and Gigabyte introduced three mainboards based on those chipsets. Two of them are micro ATX sized boards(GA-MA69VM-S2, AMD690V; GA-MA69GM-S2H, AMD690G), the third is a full ATX sized one (GA-MA69G-S3H, AMD690G). The mentioned motherboards support DDR2-800, all have four memory slots, of course the Socket AM2 for the CPU, a single PCIe x16 slot, at least a single PCIe x1 slot, two PCI ports, four SATA II connectors, one PATA port and Gigabit Ethernet and 8-channel audio.
The difference between the two µATX boards besides the different chipsets used is the support for HDCP (over HDMI) and an IEEE1394a port featured by the 690G based Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2.
The ATX sized Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H features a single PCIe x4 slot (CrossFire ready) and three PCIe x1 slots in total.

I came across a funny mistake on Gigabyte's German website. There it reads the GA-MA69VM-S2 I was just writing about is actually powered by an Intel 975X chipset. Look at the last picture or if you don't trust me follow this link.

Update: If you would like to see real life pictures of the AMD 690 board, check out our Gigabyte coverage during the CeBIT.

As I don't use Linux at all I found this article to be pretty informative for the penguin people among us. Its all about overclocking graphics cards with ATI chips and the new tool the people at Phoronix are using: ATIpower. It is compatible to the X1000 chip family where the older Rovclock still capitulates.

The price war between Intel and AMD gets more and more intense. While Intel's updated price list is known for some time now, it took spy agencies around the globe some time to uncover a similar document. After all the Germans from Au-Ja got their hands on the bespoken file. Here it is:

AMD today announced the availability of the AMD M690 chipset. Together with AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology, the new AMD M690 motherboard GPU technology further advances the mobile computing experience. The new platform enables leading global OEMs to design notebook PCs that provide users with better graphics and connectivity performance, increased energy efficiency for extended battery life and extraordinary overall value.

The AMD / Microsoft Tech Tour kicks off April 10th in Tampa, Florida.

In just a few weeks, the AMD/Microsoft Tech Tour 2007 will arrive in your area! Register now to be a part of it and learn first-hand about exciting and innovative offerings from AMD and Microsoft. Explore what AMD Quad-core will mean to your business and discover how to optimize the Windows Vista Experience.

DigiTimes is reporting that after Chartered recently confirmed 65nm production for AMD processors is expected to begin soon, AMD ought to announce another massive price cuts for its 90nm CPU product line. According to a report from Merrill Lynch Chia Song Hwee, CEO of Chartered, stated that AMD has completed all of its milestones for its 65nm ramp and production should begin soon. AMD itself announced the transition to 65nm process technology in December of last year. Meanwhile, despite several recent price cuts, inventory for AMD's entry-level 90nm parts remains an issue for the company, according to a recent report from Thomas Weisel Partners. The report indicated that AMD will likely cut related prices 30-35% on average on April 9.

Owners of AMD laptops know that AMD is working very hard to extend laptop battery life while maintaining a nice performance. Intel has been working just as hard to beat AMD at their own game, and with the Santa Rosa platform, it looks like Intel is becoming a serious threat to the battery life crown. And so, AMD will be updating the Kite platform, which hosts the Turion processors. The new Kite platform will support DDR2 RAM, 65nm "Hawk" processors, and socket S1. The new Kite platform will be based on the AMD RS690T chipset, which is a low power variant of the AMD RS690 desktop chipset. The graphics will be provided by an integrated solution not unlike the X700 series. The southbridge chipset will be an SB700, which will provide the various IO functions. We should see the new Kite sometime this year. AMD will further their work in saving power sometime in 2008, by applying some K10 architecture ideas to the "Griffen" architecture. As I said before, AMD is aiming to break the five-hour barrier for battery life, and not by buying a bigger battery.

A recent interview with ATI/AMD at ExtremeTech shows some insight to future versions of Catalyst Control Center (CCC) software. AMD/ATI knows that previous versions have been lagging, complicated, and somewhat bloated. AMD made a good effort to fix this by a complete rewrite of CCC, but it still feels a bit lacking to some people. Instead of working on making the current CCC faster and more streamlined (like the old control panel), AMD/ATI is focusing on making one centralized application to manage all AMD/ATI products.

Says AMD representative Phil Rogers: "Longer term our goal is continue to improve the user experience and to move towards a single or central user interface where AMD customers can configure the majority of AMD product settings... It is our goal and vision to eventually have a single UI for all AMD products (graphics, CPU, chipset), but this is of course a major project, and it will be quite some time before we're able to release such a product"

This means that AMD hopes to make their control center much more featured, but this may prove to backfire upon release. With great power comes great responsibility, as Spiderman's Uncle Ben once said. And if AMD can't quite handle the responsibility, we may be looking at one complex, bloated driver interface.

Fudzilla has a brief note about the upcoming RD790 chipset from ATI. The 690 chipset, launched not so long ago, will get a brother in the form of the 790, which is scheduled for late this year.

It will support Barcelona processors and especially the Agena FX as well as similar products that will be natively quad core.

The chipset also has the edge in the graphics department, as it can support multiple R600 cards and Quad FX. It comes with at least two PCIe 16X slots and two 1207+ sockets. Moreover, it supports Hypertransport 3. As with all ATI chipsets, it supports Crossfire.

Further demonstrating its commitment to lead the world to energy-efficient computing, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced strong ecosystem support for DTX, the open standard specification driven by AMD to enable the broad development of small form factor (SFF) PCs. DTX has been developed to empower industry stakeholders to deliver innovative, energy-efficient small form factor solutions that are smaller, quieter, and desktop-friendly, all while delivering rich visual experiences. Companies including Akasa, Albatron, ASUS, Asetek, Compucase, ECS, Founder, FSP, Gigabyte, Hedy, NVIDIA, Shuttle, SilverStone Technology, Thermaltake, and Tongfang have expressed support for DTX, as well as their intent to develop and bring innovative solutions to market designed that benefit both businesses and consumers.

It turns out that AMD has been producing Barcelona wafers for a while now. We thought you'd be very interested in the pictures that The Inquirer got for everyone that couldn't catch a plane to CeBIT in Germany.

Sapphire today announced its AMD 690G/SB600-based motherboard, the PURE Innovation HDMI PI-AM2RS690MHD. The new PURE Innovation HDMI board supports AMD processors designed for Socket AM2. It also has four memory slots supporting DDR2-800/667/533 modules with maximum capacity of 8GB. Sapphire's PURE Innovation HDMI board is based on the AMD 690G chipset with integrated Vista Premium certified graphics and DVI-D, HDMI, TV plus VGA outputs capabilities. The HDMI output is HDMI 1.2 compliant with support for HDCP and output resolutions up to 1080p. Other expansion slots include one PCIe x1 and 2x PCI slots, 10x USB 2.0, 1x PATA133 and 4x SATA 3.0Gbps ports. Integrated HD Dolby Digital Live audio with eight-channel analog and S/PDIF audio output as well as Gigabit Ethernet and two IEEE 1394 ports are also presented.

Like Intel's Viiv-logo the AMD-LIVE! logo allows you to select compatible multimedia hardware components but this time of course it suits the needs of your AMD LIVE! notebook/PC/Home Cinema and Media Server. If you look around at your local dealer or internet shop the Logo will guide safely around the dozens of premature Set Top Boxes, TV Tuners and Web Cames and whatnot right to the ones which work flawless (at least I hope so).

For more information look at the AMD-LIVE! website.

It appears that German journalists are a little bit faster then their English counterparts. Like the folks at MSI the guys at Global FOXCONN department are a bit slow in posting press news. But we still have the brave Germans at FOXCONN who post tidbits sometimes. So they did this time announcing three new mATX-sized motherboards for the Socket AM2. All of them feature the integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics solution and a single PCIe x16 slot just in case you want to upgrade. They will be available soon.

In 2004 AMD launched the 50x15 Initiative that will hopefully help to enable affordable Internet access and computing capability for 50 percent of the whole world's population by the year 2015. Now AMD together with SUN Microsystems presented the Open Architecture Prize to further develop this achievement and bring creative ideas to life. The 250.000 US$ prize will be donated every year for the design that fulfils the given task at best. This year's project is to create an "e-community center" - "a centralized building equipped with internet connectivity solutions designed to enable an entire community to access the transformative power of the Internet".

Windows Vista brags that it is one of the most efficient operating systems ever. AMD brags about how their Cool N Quiet technology helps save power. In the age of ROHS and Energy Star compliance, it sure seems like saving energy is a very important feature in computers. However, AMD has left out this little feature of just about every one of their recent processors in Windows Vista. There have been over 100 posts in a thread dedicated to begging AMD for Cool N Quiet support on Vista. We have yet to see anything from AMD on this issue. The Inquirer has been asking AMD for a comment for quite some time, but it seems that AMD is being cool and very quiet on this subject.