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 Rage^TM 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 7^th 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 40^th 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.

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

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

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,672730/News/AMD_Phenom_II_mit_fluessigem_Helium_uebertaktet_PCGH_vor_Ort/

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.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/01/15/breaking-records-with-dragons-and-helium-in-the-las-vegas-desert/feed/ 9 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/27/unlocking-some-secrets-of-the-android-g1-video-capabilities/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/27/unlocking-some-secrets-of-the-android-g1-video-capabilities/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:17:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/10/27/unlock-some-secret-of-the-android-g1-video-encode-decode.aspx

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.

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.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/20/more-than-doubling-the-amd-phenom-x4-processor-overclock-capabilities-in-about-nine-months/feed/ 2 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/03/how-i-accelerated-my-outlook-performance-with-a-gaming-utility/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/03/how-i-accelerated-my-outlook-performance-with-a-gaming-utility/#comments Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:32:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/10/03/accelerate-outlook-2007-performance-gaming-utility-vista-fusion-microsoft-office.aspx

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.

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.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/09/17/first-weekend-with-the-fusion-for-gaming-utility/feed/ 3 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/08/14/how-on-earth-did-you-guys-deliver-the-worlds-fastest-graphics-card/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/08/14/how-on-earth-did-you-guys-deliver-the-worlds-fastest-graphics-card/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:58:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/08/14/quote-how-on-earth-did-you-guys-deliver-the-worlds-fastest-graphics-card-quote.aspx Two years ago, I was involved with some of the dealings of the ATI acquisition and also was part of the team who communicated it to our customers, analysts, and the press. And for the last two years I had to deal with questions like, “when are you guys going to exit the discrete graphics business” or even statements like, “you guys can’t compete, game over.” It has also been an immense pleasure getting to know the folks in the graphics division. So now, as AMD launched two days ago what press are saying is the “world’s fastest graphics card”, I am getting the question of “how did you guys do it?” And by “you guys”, they mean AMD’s graphics division. The new card, in case you have been, let’s say, on the moon, is the ATI Radeon ^TM HD 4870 X2 graphics card.

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.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/08/14/how-on-earth-did-you-guys-deliver-the-worlds-fastest-graphics-card/feed/ 9 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/06/05/day-2-computex-innovation-book-ends/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/06/05/day-2-computex-innovation-book-ends/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:27:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/06/05/day-2-computex-innovation-book-ends.aspx

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.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/06/05/day-2-computex-innovation-book-ends/feed/ 2 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/04/22/secret-find-of-the-family-network-administrator-hp-mediasmart-server/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/04/22/secret-find-of-the-family-network-administrator-hp-mediasmart-server/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:14:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/04/22/secret-find-of-the-family-network-administrator-hp-mediasmart-server.aspx My name is Patrick Moorhead and I am vice president of advanced marketing at AMD. Most of what I focus on is the non-traditional marketing like developing the new strategies to change the ways we would like people to relate to AMD’s technologies, new ways to leverage our platforms into the marketplace and new ways to communicate them. I think a lot about why people think and behave the way they do and develop how AMD can meet the needs in the consumer and commercial space. On the consumer side, there is no better way to learn about consumer pain points than to “just do it,” and maybe even have a little fun along the way. I guess if that approach is good enough for Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, it has to be good enough for me. :>

I am a gadget guy, particularly on the home side, so I wanted to keep my first blog informative and light.  In future blogs, I will be highlighting some of the industry’s misnomers or hype that need some light shed on them.

If you are also the Family Network Administrator (FNA), I want to let you in on a secret find I made over the the last few months: the HP MediaSmart Server. Normally I prefer to build my own rigs, so when I first heard about the MediaSmart server and its capabilities, I did a little bit of head-scratching. How wrong I was…….

I suppose “tech junkie” fully describes a household having 9 PCs, 3 DMAs (digital media adapter), 5 PMPs (portable media player), 4 DVRs (digital video recorder), 5TB storage, 3 switches, 1 router, an Xbox 360, 4 Nintendo DSs, a SlingBox and a 12Mbit internet connection. It is always a challenge to manage all of that technology and content, particularly keeping up with demands of the Moorhead User Group (MUG), already 4 members strong. MUG members include my wife and my three kids. The needs of MUG are far and wide, from crystal clear music to 15 years of pictures to the latest videos to 4 jitter-free game platform experiences to perfect internet connections …… all available 365 days a year, 24×7 in any room. Many of you can relate, I know, painfully, because you also need to manage all of that beautiful mess.

The HP MediaSmart Server simplifies and removes many of the mundane and often never implemented tasks like backups, network monitoring, and password and profile management. All of this stuff is automated and intuitive, unlike most consumer electronics and computer gear. The server also has some cool features like content sharing inside and outside of the house to your friends and family, and remote access to manage the network and PCs when the FNA is on a business trip. The HP MediaSmart server is powered by an AMD processor and is also part the AMD LIVE!™ family of products so you can really experience some AMD goodness, too!

Setup is easy. Attach the server to your wired network, load a CD on any PC you want connected, setup your passwords and you are on easy street. Now every PC and device in your house can share any of the same music, videos, movies, pictures and documents. Sounds easy and it is. It actually “works.”

It is kept safe and secure by password access control and with data replication. In other words, if you don’t want your 5 year old child to have rights to “delete” or “change” mom’s music files, you can restrict it. Complete or selective systems backups are done automagically without any effort but a mouse click. If data corruption is detected on the server, it will alert the FNA and because the data is replicated (written twice), it is safe and sound. The server will also alert the FNA if the backup was interrupted, anti-virus is out of date, malware detection is off, or if the firewall has been disabled.

The biggest benefit we experienced so far is the ability to have all of our music, video, and pictures in one place to “pull” from. Whether it’s one of the 5 iPods, Apple TV, Xbox 360, D-Link DSM-520, desktops, or laptops, they are all getting data from the same place, which means you are never hunting for that “one song that we downloaded on PC #5 that I can’t find anymore.” I am certain that when the first PC blows up and I can restore all of the data immediately, that will then be the next big feature I love. The other benefit is that the server can be left on all the time, and because it is very cool and quiet, it’s non-intrusive. Doing that on your main home PC is possible, but not optimal. The HP server hasn’t crashed once or turned off unexpectedly. It was built on Windows Server 2003 SP2, so you get years of real-world use before they sprung it on the consumer, as well as putting a happy face on it.  And, no, I havent encountered any of the data integrity challenges written about.

Remote access was a surprise hit. When I was in Las Vegas recently and the “PC broke and couldn’t play music,” I logged into the PC at home in Austin, reloaded a piece of software, and got MUG happy again. I hope that boosts my customer sat score this month. I doubt it.

In my opinion, you don’t need to worry about losing the investment you may have made in USB or eSATA external storage. They plug right into the server and it automagically becomes part of the server’s storage capacity. Also, don’t worry about running out of storage capacity any time soon. The HP MediaSmart server comes in two configurations, 500GB ($599) and 1TB ($749). It comes with 2 extra SATA hard drive bays so you can add two of the highest capacity SATA drives you can find when you need it. As it comes to storage, I recommend only buying it when you need it because the price per MB decreases so rapidly. When I checked today, I could buy 1TB SATA drive on Newegg for $199, so it seems to me that, when you need more next year, it could be half that price or at least much cheaper.

The next feature I want to test is the ability to invite friends and family to view and even post their pictures to the MUG server. Sort of my own protected Flickr. I am not sure exactly the incremental benefit that provides versus the photo posting services, but we will see. For the daring FNAs out there who want to build their own server, Microsoft sells Windows Home Server, the OS that HP has built their own server upon. Some of my compadres have built a beast of a server on this platform and it takes what HP has developed and extended the functionality to things like encoding video and audio content. HP has kept it simple, focused and didn’t overextend themselves in the spirit of maximizing the feature list. What it does, it does well.

I would love to hear from my fellow FNAs managing their home technology installations and how you deal with the complexity and management.