Kendle’s World

The three-core Phenom X3s, first announced back in September 2007 just ahead of AMD arch-rival Intel’s bi-annual Developer Forum, are detailed just before the next IDF is due to kick off in Shanghai.

The initial line comprises the 2.1GHz 8400 and the 2.3GHz 8600, but AMD’s launch presentation also detailed their successors: the 2.1GHz 8450, the 2.3GHz 8650 and the 2.4GHz 8750.

AMD said the 8450 and 8650 will be priced at, respectively, $160 and $180 when sold in batches of 1000 CPUs – pretty much what the 8400 and 8600 chips cost. The processors have 1.5MB of L2, 512KB per core, and 2MB of shared L3 cache.

Interestingly, AMD’s benchmarks show the 8650 forecast to outperform the current, 2.3GHz X4 9600 by a couple of percentage points and the 2.3GHz 8600 by just over nine per cent. The 2.3GHz 9650 is eight per cent faster than the 9600.

That’s the the improved ‘B3′ core stepping, a feature of the 9×50 and 8×50 CPUs, coming into play. The B3 X3s are expected in May, so there’s arguably little point jumping straight to the 8400 and the 8600. AMD insisted the older core was “perfectly fine”.

AMD also took the wraps off the 2.2GHz 9550, the 2.3GHz 9650, the 2.4GHz 9750 and the 2.5GHz 9850. Like the X3s, these X4s consume up to 95W of power and almost all of them sit on a 3.6GHz HyperTransport bus. The exception is the 9850, which has a bus clocked at 4GHz. It’s also a ‘Black Edition’ part, aimed at gamers and unlocked for overclocking.

AMD announced the 9100e, a 1.8GHz four-core part that consumes 65W. Like the other new X4s, it has 2MB of L2 – again, 512KB per core – and 2MB of shared L3 cache. It runs on a 3.6GHz HT bus.

The part’s pitched at media centre systems, and AMD claimed it was the “only 65W TDP quad-core processor on the market”

The 9550 will cost $199, the 9750 $240 and the 9850 $260, AMD said.

The chip maker also mentioned the existing 3GHz dual-core Athlon X2 6000+, which was handy because the old processor manages to out-perform the 8650 and 8450 in certain AMD-run benchmarks, including MPEG 2 to MPEG 4 video transcoding, and generating a slideshow movie from a stack of JPEG photos.

Actually, AMD’s presentation slide covering the latter test doesn’t mention the three-core part at all – presumably because the comparison with the 6000+ is not flattering. The video test has the 6000+ down as three per cent faster than the 8650.

To be fair, the 8650 is 27 per cent faster than the 6000+ at converting an “HD video file” to a mobile screen-sized MPEG 4 file.

 

Please welcome GoogleNaps

Click pic to enlarge

 

Are you running Vista?  If so, look what Microsoft finally released!  Service Pack 1 which is mostly bug fixes and perfomance tweaks. 

Since the machine I am writing this on is running Vista and for the most part I HATE the absolutely horrible, memory hog from hell operating system, I will be performing this update.  Anything is worth a shot!  Windows ME was a better build than this bloated LongHorn infection. 

Besides my whining, here is the release log:  SP1 Release

With the second phase of its 45 nm generation microprocessors — what it calls “tock,” using a metaphor that drives rival AMD mad — Intel will move to a processor design that utilizes scalable cores, from two all the way to eight, it will introduce another new microarchitecture for processing instructions, and it will phase out the front-side bus as a component of its architecture. We’ve known these facts based on bits and pieces of information compiled from Intel hints over the past six months. Now we know this as absolute fact, confirmed by senior vice president Pat Gelsinger during a special presentation this morning.

Now we know when it will all happen for certain. The six-core Dunnington server CPU platform using Penryn architecture (the “tick” generation of 45 nm), with 16 MB of L3 cache, goes into production as soon as this summer. The 45 nm Nehalem architecture (“tock”) enters production in the fourth quarter of this year. That will be the beginning of the end of the era of Intel x86 computers with a front-side bus (a separate circuit linking the CPU to memory, with a dedicated clock).

And Itanium lives on, as the company’s new Tukwila architecture will carry the intrinsically multi-threaded instruction set into datacenters and mainframe replacements, with six cores sharing 30 MB of cache.

But it will be Nehalem that is expected to provide one very thunderous “tock.” One key feature that literally creates an entirely new dimension to parallelism will be simultaneous multithreading (SMT): the ability for each core to process two threads at a time, not alternately like hyperthreading but truthfully at the same time.

An updated Nehalem white paper today (PDF available here) describes SMT as “a more energy efficient means of increasing performance for multi-threaded workloads. The next generation microarchitecture’s SMT capability enables running two simultaneous threads per core — an amazing eight simultaneous threads per quad-core processor and 16 simultaneous threads for dual-processor quad-core designs.”

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So a four-way quad-core Nehalem system may have to be quantified as “4 x 4 x 2,” in a designation that is sure to give a new source of headaches for AMD. A few weeks ago, that company began gathering support for its first 45 nm generation, even though it won’t yet feature AMD’s version of the high-k-plus-metal-gate manufacturing technology it developed with IBM; that’s being reserved for a future generation.Meanwhile, one of AMD’s remaining design “edges” against Intel — its Direct Connect memory bus — will no longer be an edge once Intel inaugurates its QuickConnect architecture. Replacing the front-side bus will be a more direct link that Intel now calls its “QuickPath Interconnect.”

“A big advantage of the Intel QuickPath Interconnect is that it is point-to-point,” reads a new white paper on the subject (PDF available here). “There is no single bus that all the processors must use and contend with each other to reach memory and I/O. It also improves scalability, eliminating the competition between processors for bus bandwidth. Coupled with Intel’s great cache memory, this technological achievement will enable the performance of servers and workstations to take another leap forward.”

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Source: http://www.betanews.com

Some day, some how, some person should fly me to this event!  This would be amazing to see in person.  Imagine the noise of 10,000 people typing/clicking at the same time, and the amount of caffinated drinks consumed while proving themselves worthy of selected games

The lan party know as DreamHack is the worlds largest gaming lan event which holds the “Largest Lan Party” world record.  The record was 7,752 attendants and 7,788 computers connected to the network.  With temporary visitors, sponsors and crew included, the total attendance of DreamHack Winter 2006 was 10,638 people.

click pic to enlarge

 

Read more about this event here: http://web.dreamhack.se/index.php?language=en#a1331

Ever wondered what Chicago looks like at night from 36,000 feet in the air?  I never have, but I came across this pic and found it rather cool.

 Click on the pic to enlarge

Now it is even more easy to run HomeBrew Apps on your wii!  All you need now is a SD card.

 The changelog is below but the Twilight hack has been updated to allow the use of the Wii SD slot rather than the gamecube memory adapter previously used. For those that missed it is a fairly simple to set up exploit involving the wii version of Zelda Twilight Princess that allows the user to run homebrew code, see the official site for a setup guide.

Several applications have made an appearance already including a proof of concept linux port, a megadrive/genesis emulator, an atari ST emulator, a snes emulator and an MP3 player. There also exists a DOL to ELF converter that allows some gamecube homebrew to run via this exploit. 

Check out the Wii HomeBrew apps here http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=Homebrew_apps

Changelog

0.1alpha3a

• Correctly loads geckoloader code from USBGecko flash

0.1alpha3

• Front SD slot is now supported; SDGecko slot support has been removed.
• FAT16 is now supported; you should save your ELF executable on your SD card as “boot.elf”.
• RZDJ is now supported
• Added support for Geckoloader stub: If you have a USBGecko installed and have already run the Geckoloader program to install into flash, then the Twilight Hack will try to load that stub if it does not detect an SD card.

 

Its here!  Super Smash Bros Brawl!

I stayed up for the GameStop 12:01 SSBB release with a line of 100+ cold eager people (zero degrees) for a first look at the greatly reviewed game.

 

First impressions of this game?  Well HOW do I play it?! This is going to take a little getting use to.  The wiimote pointer is not used at all ingame, which I actually like.  TV size is going to make or break you in this game, as it zooms out I find myself squinting to see where the hell I am.  The initial gameplay for myself was trying to figure out how to jump in mid air to stay ontop of the platform, which I still after 2 hours of play, still cannot manage this.

 

FRIENDS LIST!  Much better!  It seems to refresh alot better and the system all-in-all seems much more user friendly.  Anyone that has used the Guitar Hero 3 multiplayer knows the pains of online playing.  The “Wii-Fii” is alot better so far on SSBB. 

 

I need a little more time to get used to this game.  So far I have been trying to play online, yet the skills of players is greater than my own making me a SOLID 3rd place everytime.

 

My online code is 4038-5660-0372   

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