Hardware News

[Dirk Broer]

Hi Guys/Girls,

I just read that nVidia is not going to let AMD steal the price for best/fastest video card without a challenge.
The next generation of nVidia chips, the so-called "Keppler" chips, are not even out of the test phase and nVidia is already thinking one step further (afraid of the HD 6990?).
Their next-to-be chip is called "Maxwell" and they claim a massive increase of double precision performance due to the inclusion of an ARM chip (hurray! says MilkyWay@Home).
No need to wait to buy a new card though: this is all planned for somewhere in 2013...

[vaughan]

Will that make it a smart card?

[Dirk Broer]

Well, smart..discussion on our local Dutch geek site tweakers.net is that by 2013 the CPU and GPU will already have integrated. Me myself I think there will still be market for a discrete video card, just as there is at the moment still market for high-end sound cards. By 2013 Windows 8 will be ready (128-bit?) and also be able to run on on ARM chips (But these are at present 32-bit, so why no i9/Itanium-128?).
AMD will of course have its 128-bit Bulldozers by then, including a DirectX11 capable onboard GPU (onboard as on on the same die as the CPU)
You might buy the future nVidia card just to be able to run certain BOINC projects at no performance penalty to the rest of your system, or do other specialized work with it

[plonk420]

i just want to know if Bobcat/Zacate will be fast enough to play a BD+ blu-ray processed realtime by AnyDVD HD... and if so, i want it on a SuperMicro full of PWM fans! ...not that it'll need fans, now that i think about it...

also an affordable AMD 8-16core, since Intel doesn't seem to be obliging that request :S

[Dirk Broer]

If one is to use Intel 6-cores, it better be cheap: Tomshardware is giving them away!
"We have some extra hardware here in the lab, as you can see from the shot below. To be exact, I'm talking about a pair of Core i7-990X processors, a Core i7-980X, a pair of Core i7-950s, and five Intel DX58SO2 motherboards (one to go with each CPU). We also have 50 cases of Sparking ICE water. And we're giving it all away. Read through and enjoy today's review and, on the last page, click the link to enter our random drawing. "
But what a bummer: Only USA residents (excluding RI)

[Area 51]

Hi Guys/Girls,

I just read that nVidia is not going to let AMD steal the price for best/fastest video card without a challenge.
The next generation of nVidia chips, the so-called "Keppler" chips, are not even out of the test phase and nVidia is already thinking one step further (afraid of the HD 6990?).
Their next-to-be chip is called "Maxwell" and they claim a massive increase of double precision performance due to the inclusion of an ARM chip (hurray! says MilkyWay@Home).
No need to wait to buy a new card though: this is all planned for somewhere in 2013...

...and considering how long Fermi took to nail down properly (ie, the 110 GPU), perhaps it will be 2014 - ish!!!!! Maybe I should look at a pair of ATI (sorry, AMD) cards in a year's time when I come to change!!!

[Dirk Broer]

HD 6990 officially introduced.

Today, Tuesday 8 March 2011, AMD finally brought us the long-awaited HD 6990.
To my disappointment with far less the number of shaders originally promised (instead of 2x 1920=3840 shaders a mere 2x 1536=3072), instead of 6 TFlop single-precision only 5.1 -so 1274 GFlop double precision instead of the promised 1500-, all this for a staggering 715 Euro's, which means an initial price/performance ratio of 7.13 GFlop SP/Euro and a long-term price performance ratio of 13.60 GFlop SP/Watt, as it will burn at 375 Watt doing DC...
I have the initial promises from http://www.igniq.com/2010/11/ati-rad...0-specs-leaked and these figures circulated on other sites (e.g. http://www.geeks3d.com/20101122/rade...a-tdp-of-300w/) as well, with official AMD slides.
The 7.13 GFlop SP/Euro and 13.60 GFlop SP/Watt are in fact less than the HD 5970, which offers 8.58 GFlop SP/Euro and 15.78 GFlop SP/Watt.
So my advice is to stay away from the 6990 till it either has dropped significantly in price or it has gotten its full amount of promised streamers and performance.

P.S.: Lets hope for a full HD 6990 version after the GTX 590 has been introduced by nVidia...

[Brucifer]

I guess you just have to approach this all from the perspective of what you are trying to accomplish as to how all these technology advances impact you. If you go back and read through past forecasts and pronouncements by companies and self-proclaimed know-it-alls, and such, one that that stands out is that the resultant direction of technology doesn't quite seem to fit the forecasts. The more technically advanced things seem to get, the more specific the end application of it becomes. ie how many home computers are you going to see out there with 32 cores, etc.? When in reality, that many cores will be directed towards servers or scientific related applications. The same with the graphic stuff, as the average use for the public, versus the average use of the science related labs is quite different. Those of us playing in the distributed computing world are a small minority of the computing public. And the manufacturers will target their products accordingly. Yup, there will be 32 core and larger stuff there, but by and large it will be aimed at the business/scientific world and the prices will be past folks like us unless we win the lotto's. lol So I just don't get too excited by all the announcements by manufacturers anymore and the majority of it is all vaporware.

[Dirk Broer]

The good news is that prices have the habit of dropping to the level where you can afford them. The HD 6990 can be bought for as "little" as 536 EUR now, while the "king of Vaporware", the ASUS Ares, still does 1.099 EUR. A 32-core CPU is still over the horizon, but a mobo supporting two 12-core Opterons is almost affordable, especially when fitted with two high efficiency, low-powered CPUs. This will significantly drop the amount of money needed to maintain a DC-farm, power-bill wise.

[Brucifer]

lol -- Yup, those would be fun to play with, no doubt about it! And that wattage suction factor is definitely nice looking! But I'll have to wait for my budget to be able to afford that stuff. :-)