Posts tagged with desktop
Commercial PC Buyers, How Do You Evaluate Client Software Performance?
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 8:43 AM
(6 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
Loading ...Even though the prices for desktops and notebooks continue to decline year after year, acquisition cost still isn’t insignificant. While in most circumstances software and services outweigh acquisition cost, buyers still want to make the best decision to save their small, medium, large business or government IT shop money. This has been amplified by the overall economy which has led to many reduced IT budgets.
Buyers look at many variables in making their client decision (ie brand, reputation, system quality and reliability, post-sales service and support, energy efficiency, managability), one which is software performance. One way purchase evaluators measure the software performance of the potential systems is through benchmark packages aka “benchmarks”. These are software packages that basically measure the software performance then use the results to compare different PCs being considered.
I wanted to poll the “community” of PC purchase evaluators in business and government to see what they use. Sure, we have quantitative information and have face-to-face meetings with key commercial end users, but the “community” never ceases to amaze me with their insight and answers. Please don’t let me down. 
Loading ...Each IP address can vote only once and you only get one choice. I’ll post a real-time summary of the aggregate results – I won’t be identifying individual voters or their choices.
Thanks for the insight and any details on “why” you chose what you chose would be apprecuated in the comments section.
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.
BlackBerry Bold: My Mobile Cloud Workhorse
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 7:03 AM
(As seen at Notebooks.com and Dell’s Digital Nomads)
Cloud computing is rising in interest even during these uncertain world economic times and AMD is taking an important leadership role in the creation of the cloud. And in opinion, smartphones are increasingly becoming one of the most important cloud clients. What makes smartphones cloud-unique is their portability and versatility. One minute a phone, the next a web browser, the next a video broadcast client. After blogging on the Android G1 and the BlackBerry Storm, and as co-owner of an iPhone (wife’s), people asked me why I didn’t blog on my personal workhorse, the BlackBerry Bold. Well, I aim to please and here it is.
(L to R: iPod touch, BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold, Android G1)
Net-net, the Blackberry Bold is my preferred device for work and also serves many good consumer functions as well. At work, I live off of email messaging, then the web, then phone functionality, and the Bold hits high marks on all fronts.
What I Like
- Physical keyboard with trackball: This is where RIM leaves everyone in the dust. I consider this the perfect smartphone keyboard, mastered over years by RIM. Whether you want to write a complete thesis of mankind or a 140 character Tweet, it’s the best, and I challenge anyone with an iPhone to a typing contest. I never took typing so those who did need not apply. Touch is cool and I like it on my iPod touch, but I find it so easy to screw up on long notes. With the trackball you can dart all over the screen in light speed and 360 degrees with just your thumb.
- Email Messaging: If you have Blackberry Enterprise Server, the Bold becomes the Godzilla of messaging. Many times I will get email on my Blackberry before it even hits my desktop. Spooky. You can also easily configure accounts from Yahoo Mail, GMail and Outlook. Fast and reliable, for work.
- Upgradeable storage and replaceable battery: Android G1, Storm, and Bold all have upgradable memory and replaceable battery. It’s kind of a pet peeve I have with the iPhone. Call me conservative, but I don’t like the thought of being on a long business trip and not have a spare battery. I carry a 16GB microSD in an externally accessible memory slot. No need to remove batteries, just a side door. It fits my documents, videos, and music quite well and theoretically limitless with every added card.
MicroSD door closed
MicroSD door open
- MS Office File Support: Built-in and free, you can download, save, view, and even edit the latest PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files. Excel wasn’t that useful given column width issues, but Word and especially PowerPoint was impressive. For an added fee, you can even create these documents.
- Rock solid: The Storm was solid physically, but the Bold is rock-solid. I have dropped it on every axis, 25x with no issues. Whenever I dropped my Pearl, I would get a SIM card error or the battery would pop out. Drop the Bold… pick it up where you left off. I suspect my Bold could easily survive a 5′ drop onto its screen. Would you say that for your iPhone?
From an application stability standpoint, I only get lockups or issues on some of the more sophisticated video streaming apps like Qik, but for the other 99.9% of the time, rock solid.
- Multitasking & Copy Paste: Unlike some phones, the Bold can multitask. If you are anything like me, you are bouncing between the phone, Google maps, the browser, email, address book, and want to go back at the stage where you left off, not start the app over again.
I can copy and paste literally between EVERY application on the Bold and its add-on apps. Very impressive and a huge time-saver.
- Screen: This display is 480×320 pixels and strikingly crisp. It’s only about half the size of an iPhone, but then again it’s 100% screen, and doesn’t share it with a keyboard. The only situation I want more screen is for videos, some web sites, and maybe some PowerPoint.
On web surfing, Bold makes up for the screen size with a very ingenious toggle. If you are on a web page that is wider than the page or the text too small, just press the “z” key and the browser reorients into column mode and you can see the web site much, much better. Press “z” again and it pops into page view mode. The trackball also lets you navigate web pages in 360 degree movement and magnify the area by clicking on it.
- Standard mini-USB port: Bold uses a standard mini-USB port and cable to charge and transfer data. I have a lot of gadgets and don’t have time for proprietary USB implementations. I can handle USB, mini-USB, and micro-USB, but have no time for Palm Centro’s or iPhone proprietary connectors.
- Digital camera: The Bold takes decent pictures at 2MP with 1600×1200 max resolution. The built-in flash is very bright, and I always get comments from envious iPhone owners wishing they had a flash. The Bold supports geo-tagging which uses the GPS capability to log the long/lat data to use with supported photo packages.
- Music player: Same as the Storm. I easily synched my iTunes playlists and all my non-DRM’d songs played. The album art also transferred which was a nice “extra” I didn’t expect. The speaker volume was unexpectedly loud, but not louder than the Storm.
- Video player and recorder: I am very impressed with the breadth of video formats supported; unlike other popular phones…. uh iPhone. The Bold supports DivX 4, DivX 5/6 is partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264, and WMV3 are supported. For me, it did play non-DRM’d video from my iPod and Nano with no alterations, very convenient. You can reconvert loads of video which can take advantage of four processor cores. I used an AMD Phenom TM X4 9950 quad core processor overclocked to 3.2Ghz (using AMD Fusion for Gaming utility) and was appreciating all four of those wonderful cores.¹
The video recorder function is awesome, but only in medium or high lighting. It records in .3gp format in low density quality, fine for streaming real-time to the internet or even emailing. I use Qik to real-time stream video to the internet.
Improvements I would like to See
- Faster web Java-script: Like the Storm, web surfing was fast on most sites until I hit java-script-laden sites, then the browser appeared to slow down. The default browser setting is “off” and if a site really needs Java-script to accomplish a major task, it asks you. My point of reference here is the iPhone and the Touch which has fast browsing with or without Java-script turned on.
- Improved popular applications: I can live without iPhone “Fart” or G1’s “Level” app, but not without a better functioning FaceBook and Twitter application. What a faux pas when compared to the iPhone. It has been months and would expect more from RIM. If iPhone ever got a physical keyboard and multitasking, I could be swayed. With that said, BlackBerry has some very good and differentiated applications like Qik for real-time video streaming, Flickr for photo uploads, SlingPlayer TV, YouVersion Bible and E*Trade Mobile Pro.
Summary
Today I prefer the Bold as my cloud workhorse to the alternatives (iPhone, Storm, Android G1) and has enough good consumer features to keep me happy and interested for the time being. RIM will need to improve web Java-script execution time and up the ante on the popular applications if they want folks to continue to cheer them on. With talk of iPhone’s improved multitasking, copy-paste, and video recorder functionality, I hope this will provide impetus for some improvements. If not, maybe the Palm Pre’.
I would love to hear from your experiences with the BlackBerry Bold.
¹ AMD’s PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN OVERCLOCKING IS ENABLED VUA AMD SOFTWARE. THE AMD FUSION FOR GAMING 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.
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.
Archos 7: The Best Portable Media Player You’ve Never Heard Of
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 4:09 AM
Everyone has heard of an iPod, most have heard of the iPod touch, and some of you may have even heard of the Zune or even ZEN, but how about an Archos? Well, if you haven’t, you should check it out, because if you get into watching video, in my opinion, it may be the best personal media player sold. Over the holidays, I got the chance to use the Archos 7 Internet Media Tablet (IMT), a portable media player, and I wanted to tell you about my positive experiences.
Quite simply, the Archos 7 IMT is a portable device that plays a wide variety of videos, music, and pictures and displays them either on its large 7″ touch-screen or through a docking station to your HDTV. Media can be pulled from the device’s hard drive, an external USB hard or flash drive, your personal LAN, and the internet. You can also surf the REAL internet given support for many Flash 9-based sites and finally, do full POP/IMAP email with attachments.
The Plusses
7″ Screen: At 3X the viewing area1 and 2.5X the resolution2 of the iPod touch, movies are viewable within feet, not inches from your eyes and, more than one person can view at a time. I admit, I watch videos on my touch on an airplane about five inches from my eyes when there’s no alternative, but that’s about it. For web surfing, this means you can actually read all columns and characters on sites like MyYahoo, CNN, Drudge Report and NYTimes. It’s cool on the touch, but there’s no need to pinch, squeeze, tilt, etc…. you just see it. To give you a sense of proportionality to the iPod touch, I normalized on the word “Travel” in the photo below:
LAN media streaming: Sure, the Archos 7 has a massive 160-320GB storage capability, but if you are massively into video, odds are that this still won’t be enough storage. That’s OK, because the Archos lets you wirelessly stream content via UPnP and even log into networked PCs and gain access to their content. I also streamed content over the web using AMD LIVE! On Demand software which can be configured to “automagically” recode your content based on our local circumstances like bandwidth. So don’t worry about not getting access to terabytes of family video and photos, just leave it on your home server. I accessed content from my AMD processor-based HP MediaSmart Server and my new hand-crafted, pre-released AMD Phenom™ II processor desktop system.
320GB Hard Drive: At 10X the storage of the 32GB on my touch, it’s no contest. You can also get an Archos 7 with and 160GB drive if you want to save $100. I moved over 10 years of pictures, 20 years of music, and my favorite videos and pictures in FULL resolution, not derezzed like many media players require you to do to fit.
HDTV Input/Output and DVR: With this optional docking stand (called “DVR Station”) , you can project videos on your TV at up to 720P and up to 5.1 audio. And of course, :> you can also record video to your Archos at 640×480 from your satellite box, DVR, cable box and even a VCR (DRM permitting…). On the side of the stand, there is also a USB port where you can plug in USB 2.0 hard drives or flash memory sticks. To control the unit from 10″, Archos ships a remote control. It took me a while to master its “unique” design, but once I did, I could even quickly surf the internet with it on my 120” projector or 50” HDTV.
Wide content format support: I don’t like the CODEC wars and you shouldn’t either, as it just limits everything and is a real pain in the rear. It played almost everything I threw at it. Although it doesn’t officially support Divx, I was able to play a few clips. I wasn’t able to test every CODEC and wrapper, but the Archos web site states the following support:
Video support (from Archos web site)- “MPEG-4 (ASP@L5 AVI, up to DVD resolution). WMV (MP@ML, up to DVD resolution) including WMV protected files, M-JPEG (Motion JPEG Video) in QVGA resolution. With optional plug-in (downloadable from your tablet on www.archos.com): HD support: MPEG-4 (ASP 720p) & WMV HD (MP 720p), H.264 up to DVD resolution with AAC, MPEG-2 MP@ML up to 10 Mbps (up to DVD resolution) and AC3 stereo sound (5.1)”
If you are serious about your video quality, I would recommend recoding your video into the highest resolution and bit-rate the Archos supports. You may even need to de-res any 1080I/P videos. Alternatively, if you want the maximum video storage on your system, I would recommend testing different formats, resolutions, and bit-rates that look “good enough” to you. Remember, though, that you may be projecting the video to your HDTV, which is a lot larger than 7″.
To recode all that video, I recommend a high-frequency, quad-core desktop system powered by a processor like the AMD Phenom II X4 processor. I overclocked my newly-built pre-released Phenom II processor-based system to 3.8 GHz from its stock 3.0 GHz on a stock AMD heat-sink without even trying hard and saw large improvements in recode time.3 On the software side, I like to keep it simple with Nero or even simpler with Movavi. Smarter people than I in the office prefer to use higher-end packages like Sony Vegas or even Adobe CS3/CS4.
Audio support (from Archos web site)- “Stereo MP3 decoding @ 30-320 Kbits/s CBR & VBR, WMA, Protected WMA, WMA pro 5.1, WAV (PCM/ADPCM), AC3 stereo audio and 5.1 sound files (via SPDIF output of DVR Station), Flac and OGG Vorbis audio files. With optional software plug-ins (downloadable from your tablet on www.archos.com): unprotected AAC, AAC+ stereo audio files.”
Kick-stand: It’s simple… you want to put the Archos on a flat surface like a desk or airline tray, just pop the metal stand out of the back and you are viewing or listening at a 45 degree angle.
Easy content transfer: Adding music, videos, and pictures is about as easy as it gets…. add your music to the device’s “music” folder, add your videos to the “video” folder, and add pictures to the “pictures” folder on the device. That’s so much easier than the touch, where I need to typically reformat the family video to an touch-supported format, import into iTunes, add to a playlist, then finally synch the touch.
Stereo speakers: I rarely listen to music on my touch without a speaker-bay, but you can with the Archos. It has built-in stereo speakers that were surprisingly clear and louder than many notebooks sold today.
Battery life: The Archos web site states 39 hours of music or 10 hours of video (at low backlight.) The iPod touch states on their web site 36 hours of music and 6 hours of video. On the Archos, I personally got more like 5 hours of video with a bright back-light, still very good for such a large 7″ display and 320GB drive.
Mixed Emotions
Application support: I bought the Archos 605 WiFi model last year and there are no new “Widgets” published since then. The following widgets were pre-installed: weather, contacts (vcards), calculator, currency converter, RSS reader, note taker, and a unit measurement converter. If one can access the “real” internet, why does one need 500 widgets? Well, besides games, you may not, but isnt the iTunes App Store fun? It would be real hard to live without apps like pour1out, Lightsaber, Kai Pond, or MazeFinger….. or on my G1 apps like Bubble, Compare Everywhere, and Flashlight. :>
The Minuses
Occassional lockups: Sure, I get these on my PCs, my Macs, my DVRs, my mobile phones, and my routers. But on the Archos I got them more often, particularly while using the 802.11b/g wireless.
Movie content service: CinemaNow is the only major provider where you can rent or buy movies. I don’t want all my subscription services all over the universe and I already buy video from Time Warner, NetFlix, iTunes, Movielink and BlockBuster, and I don’t want any more content that i can’t play on all my devices. I am sick of it and I protest.
Time to internet from standby: When I use devices like the iPod touch or the Archos, I use it sporadically, sending it automatically into sleep. I have become spoiled at how quickly the iPod touch turns on and connects to the internet…..about 3 seconds. The Archos takes about 20 seconds….5 seconds to turn on and 15 seconds to connect to the internet. I didn’t notice it until I realized how good the touch was, so maybe you won’t notice it, particularly as once it is “on” there are no issues.
Summary
My favorite features of the Archos were the 7″ screen, the media streaming capability from my home server, “open” video formats, and the gigantic 320GB hard drive. You can get the more compact Archos 5 IMT as low as $349 with a 4.8″ screen / 60GB hard drive and up to the top of the line Archos 7 IMT for $549 with a 7″ screen / 320 GB hard drive. You can also get the 160GB Archos 7 for $449, only $50 more than the $399 3.5″ / 32GB iPhone touch.
If you are really into video playback, want a large screen, want portability but don’t need to put it in your coat pocket, and want to display high-quality video to an HDTV, I would highly recommend looking at the Archos 7 Internet Media Tablet. That is, of course, if you don’t need ultra-portability or can’t live without iTunes or apps like Kai Pond or LightSaber. :> If you have a favorite portable media player, I would love to hear which one and why.
1) Viewing area; Archos 7: 15.64 in2; Apple iPhone touch 3.91 in2 (4:3. 1.33:1, NTSC)
2) Resolution: Archos 7: 800×480 pixels=384,000 pixels; Apple iPhone touch: 480×320 pixels=153,600 pixels
3) AMD’s PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN OVERCLOCKING IS ENABLED VIA AMD SOFTWARE.
Note: There is no business relationship between Archos and AMD.
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.
3D For the Masses
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 11:40 AM
One simple example is handsets. Almost every major phone maker has licenses some form of 3D technology for phones. Recent news regarding Freescale, STM, and QUALCOMM exemplify this and gives a sense of the future. The iPhone showed with its 3D (albeit, 2D engineered to look 3D) that the population as a whole prefers 3D. It makes sense, right? We see in 3D, so it makes sense that that we would prefer images that reflect our reality.
There are even more things going on in the PC space. It would make sense given the increase in monitor sizes, display resolutions, and the improvements to the 3D engines on mainstream systems. Larger average monitor size gives you the ability to see more on the screen. If you keep your resolution the same on that large display, everything will look huge. So you increase the resolution to, let’s say, 1920×1080 (1080p). Now you are set … except you need apps where you can actually benefit from the “z-axis”. For mainstream consumer computer users, games are obvious. Outside games, it may not be as obvious.
I have tested a few of these 3D apps and wanted to share them with you. Have fun!
- SpaceTime- 3D web search with its own UI. Images, video, and tabbed browsing. Very useful … I love it.
- CoolIris Piclens- 3D web search, images and video, but start search in Internet Explorer or Firefox.
- Google Picasa- Has a few 3D enabled viewing and organizational capabilities.
- Google Earth- 3D flythrough of terrain, buildings, even galaxies. Also, they just added a Flight Simulator feature which is cool.
- Google SketchUp- Simple way to create and share 3D models … like creating models for your deck, pool, or a home addition. You can embed these inside Google Earth also.
- Microsoft Live Search Maps- 3D terrain, buildings, fly-throughs.
- Microsoft Windows Vista Aero- Interface for Windows Vista Premium, Flip 3D features are most useful with a large monitor.
- Tactile 3D- 3D flythrough of your data on your hard drive and network. Not for the tech weary. Recommend 20″ monitor and above.
- AMD LIVE! TM Explorer- 3D media viewing of music, pictures, videos, and TV.
As you can see, 3D is here and available to the mainstream user. It’s only a matter of time, in my opinion, before every app will be 3D-enabled in some way, shape or form.
As you are selecting your systems, make sure you get enough 3D horsepower to accomplish the right task. We offer many types of solutions at many different price points to boost your 3D mojo, whether they be ATI RadeonTM solutions for desktop, notebook, workstations, motherboard graphics, and even the Mac!
You don’t need to hear from me on how competitive we are in 3D …. hear it from some select product reviews below.
- HardOCP- graphics cards
- AnandTech- graphics cards
- AnandTech- motherboard graphics
- Tech Report- motherboard graphics
So there we have it …. 3D is becoming more and more important … and consumers are letting the industry know how seriously they take 3D. Case in point? The “Vista Capable” class action lawsuit!
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.