Archive for the category Enthusiast
AMD: 40 Years of “Just Doing it”
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 10:30 PM
(17 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5)
Loading ...AMD celebrates its 40th anniversary May 1st and I want to provide my thoughts and perspective. Yes, I am a proud AMD employee, so this blog is biased in that I am personally invested in AMD’s future success and its history. To me AMD means a lot of things, but the best way I can express it is to say: AMD means “We can” and “Can do”.
Let me tell you about that.
I met up with AMD during my tenure at Compaq Computer Corp. starting in 1995. Back then, lots of PCs sold for as much as $2,000 and the idea of notebooks for consumers instead of just business people was new. AMD helped change the entire landscape on both those fronts and the market has never been the same.
I also fondly recall loving the ATI RageTM Pro graphics card. In fact it was at that time that Compaq actually soldered the ATI Rage Pro engine onto the motherboard [it was in fact the first motherboard-resident AGP graphics chip]. Soldering anything on a mobo back in the day was a huge commitment and vote of confidence.
In late 2000, I joined AMD and have called it home ever since.
I admire AMD for a lot of things, but three things come top of mind:
1. Integrity, the highest levels.
2. Putting customers first, sometimes seemingly at its own peril.
3. Defying the pundits and “just doing it”
#1 and #2 are reasonably self-explanatory so I will drill down into #3. I will provide the “dialogue” as people may have heard it play-out many times before:
- 1990 Pundit: “You have the 386 mask set, but not the microcode. No way can you make a 386.”
But AMD did it.
- 1992 Pundit: “You don’t have the 486 mask set or the microcode. No way can you make a 486.”
But AMD did it.
- 1997 Pundit: “You have relied on Intel’s infrastructure this whole time so no way you can make a 7th generation CPU with an AMD-based motherboard infrastructure. You are dead.”
But AMD did it.
- 1999 Pundit: “New and proprietary instruction sets from massive companies are the way to go. You are nuts if you think you can drive a 64-bit instruction set by yourselves. You will be dead.”
But AMD did it.
- 2003 Pundit: “No way you can get into the datacenter. You are just a consumer desktop CPU company. Get back in your box.”
But AMD did it.
- 2007 Pundit: “You’ve lost graphics technology leadership and you won’t ever get it back. The competition is too tough.”
But AMD did it.
So I hope I refreshed your memory banks on what pundits may have said, how AMD said “we can” and how AMD “just did it”. I want to highlight that we didn’t do anything on our own without the support of our customers, their customers, and technology and infrastructure partners.
I am excited about AMD, our employees, and our future. I am excited about what we plan to bring to our customers on cloud server computing and media-rich consumer usage models. Pundits will take shots and that’s okay, as it tends to motivate us and enhance the sweetness of our successes in the end.
Pundits laughed when Kennedy set his challenge to send a man to the moon and return him safely by the end of the 1960s. We like our moon-shots at AMD, too, and surprising the pundits again and again. 
AMD, happy 40th and I promise I will keep promoting the “we can” attitude and we’ll just do it.
Note: Nigel Dessau, CMO and SVP at AMD is also providing his unique blog perspective on the 40th anniversary here.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
I’m No Social Media Expert, but Dig Our New Blog Platform
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 10:33 AM
(8 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)So if I am not the in-house “social media expert”, web guy, or IT guy, why do I care about our new blog platform the team is rolling out next week? Well, I am a strategy guy and social media has been invaluable to have real-time conversations with some real smart folks in the community. I have also used social media to create new relationships and make existing ones stronger. Plus it’s real time and productive, I love the efficiency of 140-character ideation.
So I am excited about some new features in our blogs we are rolling out for readers like you and authors like me. Here is a run-down of the feature highlights you should see next week.
For readers (You):
- Post rating - Ability to rate each post. You can tell me if you like the post or if you think it stinks.
- Polls – Tell us quickly what you think. Participating in polls helps us out, too.
- ShareThis – allows you to send a post to the social network of your choice.
- Look & feel – New look and feel that’s easier to read and navigate
- Video content inside posts – No we didn’t have that before… shame. (head shaking). Look Mom, a real video:
- Threaded comments - Comments are still easy to submit and with threading, you can now see where the conversation is going more easily. There’s a “reply-to” option that notifies you if you want to hear about all replies to a post.
- Easy comment authentication – If you are already signed up on OpenID and Gravatar, login and you are commenting. Asking people to exclusively sign up for your site is “so 2008”.
- Improved smartphone view – View the blog better from mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. OK, I wanted it optimized for Bold, Storm, and G1 Android too, but maybe later.
For Authors (You and I):
- Posting flexibility- I want to blog the moment I get that “big idea”- no matter where I am. I get increased flexibility of where I can post, doing it through ping.fm, iPhone, etc. without a SecureID dongle which I needed on our old system. This means I can more quickly start conversations and blog more often and spend less time doing it. I used to go from a)Word to b)LiveWriter to c)LiveWriter and fix broken content to d) old platform tool to e) fix broken content in old platform tool to f) publish. This removes most of those steps.
- Improved rich media tools- I won’t even bore you with how many steps I would need to go through to post media. Don’t get me started. I can do it now and do it fast. You want videos and audio, we got it.
- Comment SPAM filtering- I used to get 50 per day. That’s real productive. I’d hate to look at my inbox in the morning. For the last time, no, I don’t want Cialis or oil paintings.
- Robust tracking & measurement- Let me know what interests you and what doesn’t. Simple. You don’t care, I don’t write.
So we hope YOU like the new blogs and features. Please tell us what you think; we’ve made it much easier to do so.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Breaking Records with Dragons and Helium in the Las Vegas Desert
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:55 AM
How do I describe what happened in a tent on the edge of the Desert in Las Vegas on the last night of CES? Completely over the top…. I can say that it was a story that included dragons and helium at temperatures near the point where atoms and molecules cease to move. While I wasn’t at the event, I had droves of people come to me within and hours to tell an account of what happened. After researching the night’s activities, I wanted to bring it to you.
“The Experiment” was held on the edge of Las Vegas with the goal to push AMD Phenom TM II X4 processors to the absolute limits1 using the most extreme techniques and methods available. The testing was done on AMD Dragon platform technology complete with dual ATI Radeon TM HD 4870 X2 and motherboards based on the AMD 790FX chipset.
Overclockers Macci, Hardman, Sampsa and SF3D were given 500 liters of liquid helium and an arsenal of motherboards from DFI and Gigabyte. I am an absolute neophyte when it comes to overclocking and have lots of fun with it, but when you add the pros and put great gear in their hands, the results are stunning. This proved quite true on this special night in the Vegas desert.
A world record score of 45,474 on 3D Mark 05 capped off the evening with all four processor cores at 6301MHz, the memory controller running at 3843MHz, and memory at DDR2-1100MHz. A pair of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards using ATI CrossFireX™ technology were air-cooled at 800/950MHz.
The team was reinstalling drivers and cold booting on what the meter read as -242C but at that point the meters are only an approximation….amazing stability at temperatures on the verge of absolute zero (-273C at which atomic motion ceases). The team even got a run with one core operating at 6.8 GHz.
Remember, almost all of this stuff is certain to void your hardware warranties and could cause serious damage to your PC hardware. We burn through motherboards, processors and graphics cards at an alarming rate doing it. And liquid helium is incredibly dangerous in untrained hands. Only the most experienced, safe and methodical overclockers should every even think of attempting something this extreme.
There is some great initial posts out there, check it out.
English
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3570593&postcount=432
Event Thread (English)
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=211726&page=18
German
Finnish
http://plaza.fi/muropaketti/3dmark05n-maailmanennatys-suomeen
YouTube Video of The Event
The team would like to break that record as they refine their techniques and the community goes beyond. We appreciate the support from the OC community that AMD has had over the years and hope that our Black Edition processors continue to raise the level of fun and competition. I am hearing that Dragon technology is proving to be a compelling platform for overclockers and we hope that the community enjoys it.
1) AMD’s PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN OVERCLOCKING IS ENABLED VIA AMD SOFTWARE.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Unlocking Some Secrets of the Android G1 Video Capabilities
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 9:17 AM
In my last blog, I covered my first experiences with T-Mobile’s G1 Android-based phone. I liked it, but could learn to love it if the promise of open-source software comes true. One of the drawbacks I saw on Day 1 was the lack of a video player to playback videos on the phone, and I would like to provide an update to that. I will provide the good news, the bad news, and then provide some suggestions on how to improve the situation.
The Good News
The good news is that on Day 2, one day after launch, a video player became available on Android Market, right off the phone. Android Market says “Video Player 1.0” comes from a chap named “Jeff Hamilton”, and states that, the “File should be MPEG4 or 3GPP with H.264 or H.263 video and MP3, AAC, or AMR audio. Videos need to be 480×352 or smaller to play back properly.” This is a good start, but not the whole equation.
The Bad News
The bad news is that if anyone has played around moving video onto mobile devices, there are a lot more variables you need to know to make the video play well. For example, video bit rate, profiles (ie baseline, simple), and frames per second are important. For the audio inside the video file, sample frequency, bit rate, and channels are key.
The Apple iPhone provides all this data. As an example, data from the iPhone’s technical specifications page clearly states:
“Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats .”
While to many, this sounds like gibberish, whoever wants to put their own content (not purchased from iTunes, like family videos) it gives you enough to work from.
The Android G1 didn’t have any of these detailed support statements, which provided a medium-sized challenge. :>
Some Suggestions
After some hunting on the internet and about 12 hours of my own testing this weekend, I found some interim solutions that I hope can help.
The first thing you need is a program out there that can convert video from one specification to another specification. For example, you want to take video from your digital camcorder and put it on your Android G1, you must change the format of the file and key specifications (listed above) inside the file. Software packages come in a wide range from consumer, to prosumer, and to professional versions, priced from free to $600, and everything in-between. I use Movavi Video Converter, Nero 8 Recoder/Vision, Pinnacle Studio, and sometimes Sony Vegas for tasks like this, but it’s your choice.
So below, please find what worked for me:
· Apple nano-optimized setting: If you have any videos already in iPod nano-optimized format, most of mine worked OK, but the quality wasn’t as good because the nano has a smaller 320×240 screen.
· IPod generic video down-scaled settings: Take that profile and reduce some of the quality settings: 426×240 pixels, progressive, MPEG4 L1, 350-600 Kbps, 30fps, AAC audio, 48 KHz.
· IPod Generation 5 video down-scaled settings: 426×240 pixels, progressive, MPEG4 L1, 300-900 kbps, 30fps, AAC audio 48 kHz.
· MPEG 4 home-made brew: .mp4 format, 480×320 pixels, MPEG 4 Simple profile, 384 kbps, 25 fps, AAC audio, 22050 sample frequency, 64 kbps bit rate.
· H.264 home-made brew: .mp4 format, 480×320 pixels, H.264 Baseline, 384 kbps, 25 fps, AAC audio, 22050 sample frequency, 64 kbps bit rate.
So there we have it, video on your Android G1. One thing I failed to mention here is that most of this video recoding requires a heavy-duty processor. Of all the packages I tried, all but one heavily taxed all four cores of my AMD Phenom ™ X4 9950 processor, some up to 100%. So don’t skimp on CPU performance, it matters on video encoding. Having moved from a dual core to quad core CPU configuration was one of the best upgrades I made at home.
I hope this is helpful and I would love to hear about your suggestions.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Ten CPU Overclocking Tips
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:18 AM
My last blog covered how much progress the AMD Phenom X4 has made with overclocking (1) during the last 9 months. I have been overclocking systems for 10 years in my spare time and wanted to share with you a few tips…. OK, you’ll see I am having fun when you read some of these, but I think many of you overclockers can appreciate these. I Twittered on a few of these last weekend and got good private responses so I decided to finish the list below. Some responses I got were very serious so I will go out of my way again to point out that I am having some fun here.
#1: Wear safety goggles. Don’t get thermal paste in your eye as it burns…. burns badly. I was informed from a Facebook friend that this is because of the “silver” in the paste. It might as well have been made out of razor blades. Plus heavy-duty eyewear is in.
#2: Keep all appendages away from those thermally effective, but sharp and finny heat sinks. I have 17 symmetrical cuts on one finger…..almost like an “overclocking tattoo”. I have the pictures but if anyone is eating while reading this I will spare you.
#3: Don’t question why on some motherboards to get dual channel memory working you must plug your DIMMs into the same color slots while for other motherboards you must plug into different color slots. Better yet, with 64-bit operating systems, fill ‘em up!
#4: If you hear a firecracker sound and smell smoke but the PC reboots fine, you probably just smoked your MOSFET in the core VRM (voltage regulator module) on the motherboard. You didn’t blow up your CPU. This is my personal favorite….sound, smoke then working fine.
#5: PS/2 ports are actually still your friend, not some “wonder-why-its-still-here” legacy deal. Stick with a PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard while experimenting. Sometimes USB likes to take a one boot “nap” after a failed OC. In case you have forgotten what PS/2 ports look like, I put a picture below.
#6: Buy a motherboard with power and reset button on the board itself. If you are using a bench-set, this will save time and headache versus plugging in a switch. Small but useful.
#7: Get a power supply with those cool plug-in power modules to reduce clutter in your workspace. Don’t mix the connectors between different makers of power supplies. I have heard it’s like Ghostbusters “crossing the streams.”
#8: Go for the high-end CMOS clearing jumpers with a real handle. If you have big fingers or bad eyes you will be thankful. It’s OK, you can admit it… real men do clear CMOS. There is counseling for this as well, I hear.
#9: Don’t spend any time gazing at your motherboard wondering why there is space for convenient, vertical serial and floppy connectors yet no room for convenient vertical SATA connectors.
#10: Don’t spend any time wondering why different motherboards have consistent colors for back panel connectors, but different colors for the power switch, power LED, reset, and hard drive light. There is no good reason. Differentiation?
I would love to hear from you if you have any CPU overclocking tips, serious or funny.
1) ***WARNING*** AMD and ATI processors are intended to be operated only within their associated specifications and factory settings. Operating your AMD or ATI processor outside of specification or in excess of factory settings, including but not limited to overclocking, may damage your processor and/or lead to other problems, including but not limited to, damage to your system components (including your motherboard and components thereon (e.g. memory)), system instabilities (e.g. data loss and corrupted images), shortened processor, system component and/or system life and in extreme cases, total system failure. AMD does not provide support or service for issues or damages related to use of an AMD or ATI processor outside of processor specifications or in excess of factory settings. You may also not receive support or service from your system manufacturer.
DAMAGES CAUSED BY USE OF YOUR AMD OR ATI PROCESSOR OUTSIDE OF SPECIFICATION OR IN EXCESS OF FACTORY SETTINGS ARE NOT COVERED UNDER YOUR AMD PRODUCT WARRANTY AND MAY NOT BE COVERED BY YOUR SYSTEM MANUFACTURER’S WARRANTY.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
More Than Doubling the AMD Phenom X4 Processor Overclock Capabilities in About Nine Months
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 4:09 AM
As I discussed in earlier posts, when building, specifying, or buying a computer, it is important to have a balanced platform. It is vital to have that balance of processor, graphics, and chipset to help get the very best experience. In this blog, though, I will drill down on the CPU and specifically on CPU overclocking (1), and share with you the details of more than doubling the headroom in about nine months.
While historically the exclusive realm of technology enthusiasts, CPU overclocking has opened up to a much wider audience. This has been driven by huge improvements in the overclocking tools from motherboard makers and component manufacturers like AMD. As an example, a few weeks ago we launched a new utility called AMD Fusion for Gaming and last year AMD OverDrive™ which when combined together provides simple, one-click CPU (and even GPU) overclocking.
In addition to simple and effective overclocking software, you obviously need a good CPU and chipset. I have been very happy with the progress we have made in the nine months with the AMD Phenom X4 processor and I wanted to share this with you. So last weekend I started building and testing a few rigs to document how far we have come, having more than doubled the overclock. So onto the data I generated…
|
Processor |
Stock Frequency (Mhz.) |
Over-clocked Frequency (Mhz.) |
Improvement(Mhz.) |
HT Reference Clock (Mhz.) |
Over-clocked |
CPU |
|
Phenom X4 9500 |
2,200 |
2,508 |
308 |
228 |
1.29 |
November 2007 |
|
Phenom X4 9600 BE |
2,300 |
2,800 |
500 |
200 |
1.45 |
December 2007 |
|
Phenom X4 9750 |
2,400 |
2,940 |
540 |
245 |
1.3 |
March 2008 |
|
Phenom X4 9850 BE |
2,500 |
3,200 |
700 |
200 |
1.45 |
March 2008 |
I wanted to point out that I used all stock components I bought from the internet or from my local Fry’s store. As important, I used the same AMD heat-sink and paste that comes with our processors, not a special one that could have delivered even better raw results. I used an AMD 790FX-SB600 motherboard for the AMD Phenom X4 9500/9600BE processors to coincide with what was sold at launch and a 790GX-SB750 (2) motherboard for the AMD Phenom X4 9750/9850 processors which are primarily sold today. I am certain I am getting a bump from the SB750’s Advanced Clock Calibration (thank you chipset, BIOS teams, and mobo partners). I only had to go into BIOS once ( for the AMD Phenom X4 9500) and changed all other settings through AMD OverDrive. Like reviewers, I used a bench-set to save time versus screwing all the components into a case. Finally, to test stability, I successfully ran the AMD OverDrive benchmark and the stability test. I want put an exclamation out there that your results will vary, sometimes higher, sometimes lower.
So as you can see, according to my experiences, we have more than doubled the raw overclock of the AMD Phenom X4 processor, going from 300 Mhz. in November, 2007 to 700 Mhz. in August, 2008 when the SB750 became available. Given some of the comments and questions I still receive from some folks on the AMD Phenom X4 processor, I hope they find this interesting. I would love to hear their recent experiences.
Configurations: Stock AMD heatsink and thermal paste, Foxconn A7DA-S motherboard (BIOS 81BF1P03) for AMD Phenom 9750/9850 BE, MSI K9A2 Platinum (BIOS V 1.5) for AMD Phenom X4 9500/9600 BE, 4GB Corsair dominator CM2X2048-8500C5D RAM Ver 1.1, Seagate Barracuda 7200 1TB hard drive, 900 watt PSU, AMD Overdrive 2.1.4.
1) ***WARNING*** AMD and ATI processors are intended to be operated only within their associated specifications and factory settings. Operating your AMD or ATI processor outside of specification or in excess of factory settings, including but not limited to overclocking, may damage your processor and/or lead to other problems, including but not limited to, damage to your system components (including your motherboard and components thereon (e.g. memory)), system instabilities (e.g. data loss and corrupted images), shortened processor, system component and/or system life and in extreme cases, total system failure. AMD does not provide support or service for issues or damages related to use of an AMD or ATI processor outside of processor specifications or in excess of factory settings. You may also not receive support or service from your system manufacturer.
DAMAGES CAUSED BY USE OF YOUR AMD OR ATI PROCESSOR OUTSIDE OF SPECIFICATION OR IN EXCESS OF FACTORY SETTINGS ARE NOT COVERED UNDER YOUR AMD PRODUCT WARRANTY AND MAY NOT BE COVERED BY YOUR SYSTEM MANUFACTURER’S WARRANTY.
2) AMD 790GX chipset with SB750 announced August 6, 2008.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
How I Accelerated My Outlook Performance with a Gaming Utility
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 2:32 AM
In Nigel’s latest blog, he wrote about using the Fusion for Gaming utility 1 to improve his notebook battery life while in-flight. Since launching and blogging on the Fusion for Gaming utility last week, I have also done some simple, ad-hoc testing outside of the gaming space. While it may seem counter-intuitive to do so given the name, I wanted to see if the underlying technology could help me with a challenge I have “at work.” I am excited to say, after a few hours of testing, my Outlook experience feels significantly faster with the utility running.
At work, like many AMD employees and enterprise users, I run Microsoft Outlook 2007 along with the full Office 2007 suite. I run a Microsoft Vista Enterprise-based, multi-monitor desktop in order to do many different things at the same time. I “megatask,” which is simply hard-core multi-tasking.
If you have used Outlook lately, you know that it’s a lot more than just an email client. Outlook links to literally everything… it connects your email to your calendar to your task management system to your journal to your contact list to your … you get the idea. Good product. But for about a year now, I have experienced inexplicable “pauses” when I task-switch between Outlook apps, or when Outlook is synchronizing (you know, when you get the two envelopes in your systray). I had all the obvious things checked out: hardware, corporate software image, Exchange Server settings, archiving, vaulting, network, etc., which always yielded some temporary relief. Then Outlook would start ”pausing” a few weeks later, which I chalked up to doing a lot of work and getting a lot done while increasing my Exchange folder size: I fully plead guilty to AMD IT in using the folders as a file system.
So I loaded the Fusion for Gaming utility and saw an immediate improvement in my Outlook performance. Things loaded quicker, those inexplicable “pauses” went away and it is simply delivering a more productive and enjoyable compute experience. Sounds bizarre, I know, you should see the looks on the faces of my co-workers when I tell them this! So I did some simple digging into the Performance Tab in Windows Task Manager to see if I could attempt to explain any of this.. and it became clearer. On the left, you can see the relative performance data without the Fusion for Gaming utility enabled, and on the right, with the utility enabled.
It appears that on my system, Outlook likes a more limited number of “threads,” “handles” and “processes” or simply put, background tasks. I am sure there is a more comprehensive, long-winded technical explanation from folks who are much smarter than I will ever be, but this is my experience and of course, your mileage will vary :>.
It has worked for me on Outlook, and I urge you to give the Fusion for Gaming utility a spin and let me know what you think.. also, if you are one of those scary-smart guys who can explain why technically my Outlook is faster I would love to hear from you.
My desktop work rig: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ processor @3.2GHz., ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics, Gigabyte GAMA69GM-S2H motherboard (BIOS F3A 8/3/2007) with AMD 690G chipset, 150GB Western Digital Raptor hard drive (10,000 RPM), 4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM (recognized by Vista 32 as 3GB), ATI Catalyst Control Center 8.8, AMD OverDrive 2.1.4.
¹ THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
First Weekend with the Fusion for Gaming Utility
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:36 PM
In Nigel’s latest blog, he gives the big picture of what the new AMD Fusion campaign means to our customers and business partners. Being the new tech lover that I am, I decided to explore the new AMD Fusion for Gaming utility. I‘ll start broad, then get to the juicy details, but first a teaser from my personal numbers: I saw a best-case gaming experience frames-per-second improvement of over 100% using the new utility.
First, as I have covered in previous blogs here and here, for PCs, AMD innovates around usage models. Whether it’s productivity, home media, or playing games, we work with customers, channels, and end users to better understand their pain and pleasure points, apply the right integrated technologies to meet those needs, and then help deliver the complete experience through our customers and channels.
Console and PC Gaming are very important usage models to AMD, and we apply many hardware and software innovations for both “hard-core gamers” and “consumers who like to play games.” Hardware innovations include our ATI Radeon™ HD graphics, AMD Phenom™ and AMD Turion™ processors, and the chipset platforms. On the software side, we deliver drivers and the award-winning ATI Catalyst™ Control Center that lets you tweak almost every aspect of your graphics card with respect to 3D, video, color, power management, multi-GPUs, and display connectivity. Also, AMD Overdrive™ allows you to tune the performance of your CPU, memory, and chipset.
When the AMD Fusion for Gaming development team asked me to try out their newest software creation last weekend, I jumped ALL over it and wanted to share my experiences.
Hard core gamers know that to have the best experience possible, they need a bad-ass graphics card like the ATI Radeon™ HD 4870, a beefy CPU like the Phenom™ 9850 processor, a great performance chipset like the AMD 790GX, software tools like AMD Overdrive and ATI Overdrive™, and as few applications and tasks as possible running in the foreground and background. Historically, even for knowledgeable enthusiasts, this would be a time-consuming process. For the mainstream user who likes to play games, this type of performance optimization was completely out of reach. To solve these pain points, we created the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility.
The AMD Fusion for Gaming utility was designed to optimize your AMD-based PC for smoother, more responsive game play in the latest PC games with the touch of a button; the utility helps achieve the performance previously only available to highly technical enthusiasts. It works by temporarily shutting down background processes and intensifying processor performance with AMD Boost. That means you can keep all the features, tasks, and applications running on your Microsoft® Windows Vista® PC ready when you need them, but turn them off when you are ready to get down to serious gaming.¹
”Simplicity” was the design principle for the utility, but we still let you peek behind the curtains into the advanced interface to change how the utility works. You can customize with user selectable profiles to individually optimize your PC for gaming. Also, you can easily build your own profile and choose exactly what you want disabled for a leaner footprint. If you want to squeeze every bit of performance from your system, engage our most advanced acceleration technologies such as AMD Overdrive, Auto-Tuning and Hard Drive Acceleration.²
So with that long-winded intro, let me tell you what I personally experienced…
Desktop Gaming
I saw a big improvement in my desktop gaming experience using Fusion for Gaming. This was not surprising given I used Expert Profile that initiates AMD Boost, Hard Drive Acceleration, AMD OverDrive and ATI Overdrive in addition to shutting down unneeded services and third-party applications. Playing games just felt “better”. I know that doesn’t sound like science, but real gamers know what I mean. On Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, my system felt more responsive and snappier. I did a few rudimentary benchmarks on these two games using FRAPS, and saw about a 23-29% improvement in frame rates. Using some canned benchmarks, I saw the following:
- 3D Mark: 15% overall score improvement in 3DMark
- World In Conflict: Based on the setting, improvements in frame rates were 55% for the “average” setting, 157% for the “minimum” setting and 116% for the “maximum” setting
- Lost Planet: 5.8% “Snow” and 24% “Cave” scene frame rate improvement
Very impressive, but again, not surprising, given I was overclocking the CPU, GPU, hard drive, and shutting many Windows services, foreground and background apps. I am not a professional benchmarker like Kyle Bennett or Marco Chiappetta, but these numbers make sense given the “feel” of the game. And remember – these are my results achieved on the platforms indicated below – your experience may differ.
Notebook Gaming
One of the things I love to do with my 6 year old son is play PC games. We place a notebook on the coffee table in the living room, plug in two controllers, and go to town. We play games like Lego Star Wars II, Lego Indiana Jones, and IronMan… age appropriate stuff.I would consider this usage model to be about “people who like to play games”, NOT the “hard core gamer”. Surprisingly, I saw some of the largest boosts here. I didn’t expect it because I didn’t initiate AMD OverDrive or ATI Overdrive, just AMD Boost, Hard Drive Acceleration, and turned off unneeded tasks and applications. My hunch is that because it was a 2GB integrated graphics system where graphics shares memory and I run a lot of background tasks, shutting those down really helped. Again, the experience of Lego Star Wars II just “felt better.”
Like the desktop system, I ran some rudimentary benchmarks on the notebook:
- 3D Mark:8.9% improvement in 3DMark
- World In Conflict: Based on the setting, improvements in frame rates were 140% for the “average” setting, 600% for the “minimum” setting and 53% for the “maximum” setting
- Lost Planet: No improvement in frame rates
I didn’t expect to see any improvement, honestly, so I was surprised to see the World in Conflict numbers. Again, my hunch is that it is the memory impact and all the tasks and the applications that were shut down plus the fact that I used a 2GB integrated graphics system. And again – these are my results, yours may differ.
All in all, I was impressed at the simplicity AMD Fusion for Gaming utility brought to my desktop and the improvement to the gameplay. And on the notebook side, I was very surprised at how much it improved my gaming experience and framerates. While not perfect without some glitches as the utility is in beta, I think the AMD for Fusion for Gaming utility pulls together the strength of AMD’s CPU, GPU and chipset franchises better than ever, and pays off on the promises AMD has made to its customers, channels, and end users on the “fused” value of the three components.
You can download the Fusion utility here and AMD Overdrive 2.14 here, and I would love to hear about your experiences.
¹ THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING.
² AMD’S PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN ENABLED VIA AMD SOFTWARE.
Desktop configuration: AMD Phenom X4 9850 processor, ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics, Foxconn A7DA-S motherboard (BIOS 81BF1P03) with 790GX chipset and SB 750, 1GB Seagate hard drive (7200 RPM), 2GB Corsair XMS2 RAM, ATI Catalyst Control Center 8.8, AMD OverDrive 2.1.4.
Notebook configuration: Toshiba L305D-S5873, AMD Turion X2 RM-70 processor, ATI Radeon 3100 graphics, 2GB RAM, 160GB (5400RPM) hard drive, ATI Catalyst Control Center 8.8.
Applications: GooglePack, Digsby, Tweetdeck, Picasa 2 media detector, Windows Defender, Orb, Internet Explorer 8.0, Windows Home Server Connect, AT&T Communications Manager, CD/DVD Acoustic Silencer and Config Free (On Toshiba)
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD.His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
“How on Earth Did You Guys Deliver the World’s Fastest Graphics Card?”
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 6:58 AM
I had the pleasure of watching the graphics team as they were developing it. What I saw was an incredible desire and passion to do what was right for the end user as it related to games and video and to do what was right for the customer, the OEMs and the AIB (Add-In-Board) partners. The intensity, drive and sheer will was amazing to watch. And, at the same time, a humble nature…… You just knew that something amazing was going to come out.
The other factor in “how” is history….. a long history of incredible feats in 3D graphics and video technologies. While you never want to rest on history, it is a factor or variable in repeating future success. I had worked with ATI Technologies since 1995 when I ran a consumer desktop product line at Compaq Computer during the “glory days.” I worked with guys like Phil Eisler and K.Y. Ho, ATI’s founder. I picked what I considered the “top 10” (O.K. 13, no discipline) feats I am talking about:
1987 – First graphics accelerator cards released (EGA Wonder & VGA Wonder)
1991 – First Windows accelerator released (Mach8)
1996 – First 3D graphics accelerator chip released (3D Rage)
1997 – First AGP products released and first graphics chip with motion compensation acceleration for DVD playback released (Rage Pro, Rage II+ DVD)
1999 – First AGP 4X products released from ATI
1999 – World’s first dual GPU card (Rage Fury Maxx)
2001 – First GPU supporting DirectX 8.1 programmable shader technology released (Radeon 8500)
2002 – First DirectX 9 GPU with 2x the performance of any existing product released (Radeon 9700 Pro)
2003 – First integrated graphics chipset with programmable shader support released (Radeon 9100 IGP)
2004 – First gaming GPU optimized for HD resolutions released (Radeon X800)
2005- ATI GPU is featured in Microsoft Xbox 360 with first unified shader
2006 – World’s first GPU accelerated physics demo with effects and particle physics
2007 – AMD breaks the teraFLOP performance barrier and first with DX 10.1 and 55nm (ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2)
Again, historical accomplishments are a factor of future success, but as we all know in high-tech, you better not rest on it or you will get your “lunch eaten.” This attitude was best exemplified by an answer to my question to one of the graphics executives, “what’s it like to be on top?” The answer was basically, “we only won one round in a 15 round fight and we aren’t even looking back for a second. It’s off to the next product.” Man, I love that….. anyone who has ever seen the movie “Rudy” has to love that……anyone who has an ounce of passion has to love that.
So there we have it….. having the “world’s fastest graphics card” means something for a day then it’s off to the next product. Maybe history does matter though, and in my opinion, when you hear a large CPU manufacturer talk about incredible claims in graphics and video technologies sometime in 2009 or 2010, you may want to ask them for their “Top 10” graphics and video list as well.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD.His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Day 2 @Computex: Innovation Book-ends
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:27 AM
Today was a huge day for AMD which was capped off with the launch of our next generation mobile platform, formerly code-named “Puma”. For me, it was really a tale of book-ends ranging from checking out some of the coolest technology on the show floor to sharing AMD’s innovation vision with Taiwan’s top 100 tech companies.
With so much technology on the floor, I thought the best way to bring you some of the coolest AMD stuff was to shoot it on video and pics so you can see for yourself. There were a ton of our next generation notebook platforms on the show floor with varying configurations. Check out these videos of new notebooks from HP and Acer and MSI. I especially appreciate MSI’s HDMI port so a user can connect their new AMD-based laptop with a single cable to their TV and get great video and audio. On the desktop front, I thought Gigabyte had a very cool Spider platform that you can see here. Not only was it cool, it was water-cooled with an AMD Phenom™ X4 processor and dual ATI Radeon™ 3870 graphics cards in ATI CrossFireX™ mode.
There were also some unique desktop form-factors as well. Acer had a very cool Aspire L5100 SFF desktop, and at less than 1 liter, it was only slightly taller than my business card. I like SFF but I really love big cases, and Thermaltake had some wicked AMD LIVE!™ and AMD GAME!™ chassis on display. You can see all these below.
The highlight of the day was the launch event of our next generation mobile platform. We had over 400 in attendance and from the feedback I received, we hit the mark with our customers, partners, press and analysts. I caught up with In-Stat’s Jim McGregor and asked him his thoughts about the mobile market and AMD’s platform which you can find here:
Finally, if you missed the event live, you can view it on-demand at Mogulus.
My final event of the day was providing the keynote speech to Business Next’s 2008 Taiwan Info Tech100 Award Ceremony and Forum. The forum included high level executives from Taiwan’s top 100 industries and government officials from what was described to me as “The Executive Yuan”. The theme of the entire forum was “exploring the power of innovation “ and covered a variety of topics from strategy to research and development, operating and executive management……the main point being that innovation has been the key point of technology competition with distinguished companies. One of the biggest treats was the greeting from Taiwan’s Vice President, R.O.C., Mr. Vincent Siew. This certainly isn’t something that I experience every day. It was also an honor to speak alongside Mr. Johnny Shih, Chairman of AsusTek, Adam Judd, senior vice president of Asia Pacific at Juniper, and Mr. Charlie Lee, Tainan factory director of Corning. They really know how to do big events well in Taiwan and this was no exception. Here are some pics below…..
So there we have it, Computex day two, a day of mobile innovation, and certainly a day of innovation book-ends.
(1) From left to right speakers are Mr. Adam Judd, senior vice president of Asia Pacific at Juniper; Mr. Patrick Moorhead, vice president of Advanced marketing at AMD; Mr. Johnny Shih, Chairman of AsusTek; Mr. Charlie Lee, Tainan factory director of Corning.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.