WED 23rd AUGUST 2002 ---AMD 2600+ ARRIVES!!!!
Finally, after months of speculation, AMD has finally sent it's 2600+ out to a number of
testing houses. What becomes immediately apparent is that AMD's engineers have not been
sitting idly by eating chocolate cake. A few months back, AMD introduced it's thouroughbred
Core. Basically a revision and a die shrink of it's predecessor, the Palomino. Thoroughbred
is made using the 0.13 micron process, as opposed to the 0.15 micron process used for the
Palomino. With the introduction of the Thoroughbred core, AMD fans expected great things,
but the Thoroughbred was a little disappointing. The first wave came out with great fanfare
and replaced Palomino's from 1700+ upwards, plus gave us the new top model. The 2200+. The
2200+, running at 1800mhz showed negligable overclocking capability and lagged badly behind
the Pentium IV 2533.
Enter the 2600+. NOT just a hike in clockspeed. The 2600+ actually has a completely redesigned
core, which is actually a little LARGER than the previous Thoroughbred Core. SO, the new
version is dubbed "Thoroughbred B", while the older core is now labelled "Thoroughbred A".
The best piece of news here is that the 2600+ now runs at a staggering 2133mhz! Which
is a FULL 333mhz jump over the real clockspeed of the 2200+. Finally a SERIOUS jump in cpu
speed from AMD. Up till now we were doled out 66 mhz jumps in clockspeed which left
us thinking that AMD were really struggling to get any more speed out of the poor old Athlon.
Here's another revelation. Most testing houses were able to overclock the 2600+ up to a real
clockspeed of 2800mhz! THAT represents a HIGHER real clockspeed than the currently available
Pentium at 2533mhz! THAT has not happened for a long time. Always the Pentiums were clocked
much higher than the Athlons, but the Athlons able to process more data per clock cycle, which
is why the two have similar data processing capabilities. This fact, is also why AMD introduced
it's PR rating system which is designed to show people just what AMD cpu is meant to be of about
the same capability as the corresponding Pentium CPU. For instance, the AMD 2200+ running at an
actual clockspeed of 1800mhz is of the same cabability as a Pentium 4 running at 2200mhz. So,
if you apply AMD's PR rating to an Athlon running at 2800mhz, you come out with a 3600+ CPU.
short of that is WATCH OUT INTEL!
Many speculated that the 2400+ and 2600+ would actually be the BARTON core, as AMD seemed to be
taking it's merry time bringing out faster processors. That turned out to be false. Many also
hoped that the new processors would recieve either an L1 cache upgrade from 256k to 512k or
be designed to run with a 166mhz Front Side Bus speed, instead of 133mhz. Unfortunately we luck
out on BOTH those counts. The Thoroughbred "B" core will still use the 133mhz FSB and still only
have 256k of L1 cache. Thoroughbred "B" is planned to span from the 2400+ up until the 3400+.
We alrerady know that the "B" can make 3600+ so there'll be NO PROBLEM getting the new Athlon's
to those speeds. But 3600+ is reserved for the BARTON CORE, which WILL have the 512K of L1 cache
and use 166mhz FSB.
So Is the 2600+ FASTER than the Pentium 4 2533??? Yes and no. The 2600+ is hampered by slow
memory performance. Even with the just released VIA KT400 chipset coupled with the newer PC3200
(200mhz) memory, the 2600+ struggles to surpass the Petium 4 running on the i845 chipset with
Rambus memory. Many seem to think that the KT400 COULD do better as a memory controller, as the
i845 really seems to be doing something right, where the KT400 still has a few things to learn.
However, in some benchmarks the 2600+ does indeed surpass the Pentium 4 2533, sometimes by a
Decent margin. But in others, the 2533 is clearly superior.
AMD fans can breathe a sigh of relief. AMD has clawed it's way back into a serious contenders
position for worlds fastest processor. Not quite on top yet, but dangerously close to INTEL's
now famous Pentium. With a miraculous upgrade to their Thoroughbred core, plus a staggering
(for AMD) 333mhz jump in clockspeed. The Athlon finds the fight it needs to continue the struggle
against the Pentium 4. Did you just buy a Pentium?? You poor fool!
THU 18th JULY 2002.---EXTREME SYSTEM IS HERE!!!!
Whoah! 2 updates in 2 days!!! Talk about overload! Anyhow I've now completed the EXTREME
GAMING computer. Not that I've actually built it. But I've researched all the hardware
and just where you might find such equipment in Australia. Mostly I had to turn to the
NET to get the kind of EXTREME stuff I was looking for. It comes in at a grand total of
7 GRAND! But I could have added more! Go see what kind of monster I've dreamt up! Press
the EXTREME SYSTEM button up top.
WED 17th JULY.---MID SYSTEM UPDATE
Well I have really been waaaaay too busy to give this section of the site much attention.
It is regrettable as I constantly follow all the latest developments in the world of PC
hardware. The trouble is finding the time to write about what I find out. Since the 30th
of may the middle of the range system has changed surprisingly little. The Geforce 4
TI 4200 is coming down in price nicely and now sits at around $360.00. But in such a
system I thought the power of the older Geforce 3 TI200 was enough for such a system.
Still we sit with a 1900+ processor. CPU prices remain agonisingly stagnant and will
remain so until AMD gets it's act together with its new 0.13 micron process core'd
THOROUGHBRED processors. The 2200+ IS out but availability remains very scarce as of
now. All in all I managed to shave around $200 off the price of the system. Remember
you could go out and buy this PC NOW! As these prices have been gathered from PC
businesses around PERTH, Western Australia.
THURSDAY 30th MAY.---MATROX PARHELIA SPECS
The much rumoured phantom video card from Matrox has fianlly been announced! Thats right!
MATROX is releasing a new video card that is set to blast the current graphics chip makers to
Smithereens. Not much is known about the card at this stage except the specs you'll see right
here. We don't know how the card will perform in real world applications. Will it be
another ATI event with terrible drivers?? Or will it leave Geforce 4 in the dust?? We'll have
to wait and see.---PAWS---
"Parhelia-512 is an 80 million transistor, 0.15µ, 2D, 3D and DVD/video GPU with a true 256-bit DDR
memory interface providing over 20 gigabytes per second (GB/s) of raw memory bandwidth. This AGP
device supports unified frame buffers up to 256MB in size and integrates two RAMDACs, a TV encoder
and support for dual TMDS transmitters. Designed to surpass the expectations of the most demanding
professional users and PC enthusiasts, Parhelia-512 has three major goals: to dramatically increase
the quality of all aspects of visualization, to sustain extremely high performance for the most
complex and demanding graphics rendering and to deliver a number of innovative and substantive
features."
THURSDAY 16th MAY.---MIDDLE RANGE SYSTEM REPORT!
THE FIRST of three system reports I hope to get going in this section is now up. I have also
compared the system to AUSTIN COMPUTERS "POWER PACK" computer that they advertise. You will
quickly see that what they consider powerful, I consider not much. In fact their system specs
are more like what my Money Saver system will be like. I designed the system to have at least
average performance in games, as well as breeze through any office tasks that you might have in
mind. It is surprising what level you can achieve for just those few extra dollars. Hit the MID
SYSTEM button up top and see what I've included.
---PAWS---
SAT 11th MAY. NV30 SPECS!
Well here is the first tidbit of information I have managed to find. It concerns the next generation
graphic chip from NVIDIA. You must remember that these specs have likely been fudged by somebody to
get attention for themselves. But it is likely that the as yet unnamed NV30 will be somewhere around
the mark depicted below in the stats I gathered. We DO know that the NV30 will be using the technology
gained from the takeover of 3DFX such as the gigapixel technology. It is known that at the time of
their demise, 3DFX were on the verge of releasing a new graphics chip called RAMPAGE, vastly superior
to their then current VooDoo 3 and anything NVIDIA had at the time. However, now we get to see that
fabulous 3DFX technology finally hit the light of day. Various sources on the internet, including a
press release with the NVIDIA CEO, have stated that the NV30 could be here as early as August. Add
at LEAST a month onto that for setbacks and a further month and a half for it to reach Australia and
we COULD be looking at a NOVEMBER 'hands on' date.---PAWS---
-200 million polygons per second almost doubled that of the GeForce 4
-RAM will be running at 900Mhz
-Nvidia is banking on massed produced 900Mhz modules from Samsung
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Old Specs
-AGP 4x and 8x
-Copper Core GPU Processor 0.13 m default clock 450 MHz
-73 million transistors
-8 pipes
-128 MB DDR-SDRAM @ 375 MHz x2 = 750Mhz and 256 bit yes 256 bit
-370Mhz RAMDAC
-DirectX 9.x compatible
-Quad Vertex Shaders
-Dual Pixel Shaders
-85 bone capable
-Lightspeed Memory Architecture III
-Quad Cache memory caching subsystem
-Dual Z-buffers for greater compression without losses visibility subsystem
-NvAuto advanced pre-charge
-Advanced Hardware Anisotropic Filtering - A new 12nvx mode that delivers improved
subpixel coverage, texture placement and quality.
-12nvx mode should deliver 80% better subpixel coverage and placement than previous modes
-Hardware bumpmapping
-4 Textures/Pixel in a single clock cycle "loop back" can also apply an additional 4 textures
per rendering pass
-A separate second copper processor running at 450Mhz an 0.13m as well - handle all T&L
now called TT&L (True Time and lighting) and
-NVAutoShaper a new prechached and precacheable system
-Programmers can also add shapes to be temporarily stored in precache to speed things up
-Latest OpenGL
-Backward glide game capable thanks to NvBlur (Yes a new version of Glide!)
-NView Multi-display Technology
-Built in re-programmable DVD and TV decoder chip
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