ATI Radeon HD5790

We recently announced the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970, the fastest graphics card on the planet¹. It’s been an exciting few months with our launch of the first DirectX 11 capable graphics cards, still the only cards in the world to support gaming over three monitors enabled with ATI Eyefinity Technology. This time around, we’re spicing up ultrahigh-end PC gaming with a massive jump in raw performance.

It has really been a huge privilege to be the product manager for the ATI Radeon HD 5970 since we get to work with some of the best hardware and software engineers in the industry and everyone’s been enthusiastically working around the clock to get this product out to you guys. One of the unique facets of this project was that we weren’t necessarily designing towards a strict product definition, but instead had the freedom to go a little wild in overdesigning and over-engineering this board to create something that can overclock like crazy.² Why did we do this? Let me give you a little glimpse of this monster in the making…

When we were first designing the ATI Radeon HD 5970, we came to a crossroads surrounding the board’s power consumption. We had two major options available to us. On one hand, we could cap ourselves at 300W and stay within the PCI Express specification. In doing so, we would stay compatible with the majority of the high-end power supplies in the market with 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors. On the other hand, we had the potential to fill a 400W power budget with performance, so we were considering using two 8-pin connectors and pushing this thing to its limits.

Ultimately, we went with a hybrid approach. We decided to appeal to the broader market and use a 6-pin + 8-pin power connector, but use the components from the 400W board design. We squeezed as much performance as we could out of the 300W, and left all the rest of the headroom as overclocking potential for you guys. It’s kind of like our Black Edition CPUs, where the premium chips are picked and shipped with unlocked multipliers so that you guys can overclock the @#$* out of them.

To give you an idea of some of the stuff that we’ve purposely over-engineered, here’s a few examples of some of the components we added purely for overclocking:

• The GPUs themselves were picked with three main criteria in mind:
  • 1600 stream processors for full performance
  • High-speed-capable for extra overclocking headroom
  • Low leakage for better power characteristics
• Digital Volterra Regulators that are capable of delivering far more current than the board draws at default settings
• Japanese 47 μF pure ceramic capacitors for ultra-clean power delivery to the GPUs
• High-speed 5.0 Gbps-rated GDDR5
• Massive vapor-chamber capable of pulling up to 400W worth of heat away from the GPUs
• External discrete SMSC fan controller to monitor multiple temperatures and optimize fan performance and acoustics

We’ve built all of this headroom into the board itself, and we’re also doing some special stuff in the software as well. The bar in the ATI Overdrive™ utility goes higher than ever before, and we’re working with some of our AIB partners on software that will unlock even more overclocking potential through voltage tweaking applications.

Note: AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by overclocking, even when overclocking is enabled via AMD Software.  As well, unlike previous generations of ATI Radeon graphics cards, the overclocking potential of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card has been left uncapped. You control the amount of overclocking to which you subject your card. Please use discretion and caution when overclocking.

^{1. As of November 18, 2009, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5790 scores X12011.1 in 3DMark Vantage Extreme preset, which is the highest recorded single-card score.  System configuration: Intel Core i7 965 processor @ 3.33GHz, Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard, Corsair XMS 6GB memory (3×2GB) at 1600MHz (8-8-8-24 timings), Windows 7 RTM x64, ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 1GB GDDR5, Drivers: ATI Catalyst™ 9.10  Beta (8.663.1) / NVIDIA ForceWare 191.07WHQL}

Devon Nekechuk is a Product Manager 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.

*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new in ATI Catalyst™ 9.11:

New Features

GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format.

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduced system resource utilization, and to help preserve battery life.

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is expected to be available for download from Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com) before the end of the year. This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800, ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 and ATI Radeon HD™ 4000 Series of products.

High Quality downscaling for Video Transcoding MSE

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users Transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920×1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320×240 @30p – iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive.

Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:

• RHEL 5.4 support
• openSUSE 11.2 early look support

To download the driver, click here.

Till Next Month,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Public Relations Manager 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

DirectX 11 & HD Gaming:

You may have already seen a lot on what to expect from DirectX 11, the top 11 reasons for DirectX 11, and so on.   I often get asked “when will DirectX 11 titles begin shipping”.  When I say “quicker than you’d expect…like now”, I get a lot of surprised looks.  Having been through past DirectX transitions, I can’t remember another instance when game developers were this amped about working on a new DirectX version, with ‘AAA’ game titles lining up so quickly.  One of the key reasons for the excitement from the developer community is because they feel DirectX 11 offers them some really cool features that can enable both improved game play performance and new levels of realism.  Check out this YouTube video from DiRT 2 showing some of the features that Codemasters incorporated from DirectX 11, creating an incredibly realistic gaming experience:

On the titles front, I think the rapid development cycle has been aided by our seeding of ATI Radeon HD 5700 series graphics cards for several months prior to launching the product.  As a result, game developers have had a chance to literally play around with the hardware and get a jump on coding awesome games that are scheduled for release in this year and throughout 2010!

Studios around the world have announced support for DirectX 11 – more than 20 titles are in development, with more to come. Here’s a small list of upcoming DirectX 11 titles, with the first two, BattleForge and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat, available now:

• BattleForge (EA)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (THQ)
• DiRT 2 (Codemasters)
• Aliens vs. Predator (Rebellion)
• Lord of the Rings: Online (Turbine)
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited (Turbine)

Speaking of the latest games, a friend of mine recently picked up a new HD monitor (1920x1200 resolution) as the price was right (under $200).  He tried playing some of the latest games on his new display and quickly discovered that at HD resolutions, his old video card struggled with frame rates.  The ATI Radeon HD 5770 is the perfect solution for situations just like this; it easily handles  today’s game titles at HD resolutions and, with support for DirectX 11, it will be able to play soon-to-be released titles as well.  The best part is that the price of this card is less than the price of many HD monitors.  And if you got a really good deal on those HD monitors why not splurge and buy 3 Then you could use ATI Eyefinity multi-monitor technology to get a truly immersive HD gaming experience.  Imagine being able to see your enemies as they try to sneak up from beside you in first person shooters, or seeing the whole track while driving your car in DiRT 2.

Power Efficiency:

In addition to performance and image quality, gamers care more and more about power efficiency.   For the performance that you’re getting, we’ve never before been able to offer power efficiency like this – the ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card consumes as little as 16 watts at idle, almost a quarter of the power consumed by a standard 60 watt light bulb! There are lots of reasons to be happy that the GPU is using less power, one of which is the money you save heating your case – it may not be a lot but every little bit helps!

For instance, have you ever been in the middle of a crazy fire fight in Call of Duty 4 when all of a sudden the GPU fan kicks into full gear, drowning out the sound of the bullets whizzing past your head? It really takes you out of the game quickly. Because the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series uses less power (only 108 watts when gaming) and it runs cool – there is less need for the distracting noise of a loud fan.

Because of its low power needs, the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series requires only a single 6 pin power connector.  If you purchased a graphics card about 2 years ago, such as a card in the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series, you’ll already have a 6-pin power connector so this card can be a drop-in replacement. It’s the perfect card for those gamers looking to upgrade.  No need to gut your system when you buy a new power supply!

Media Centers

Media centers or home theater PCs (HTPCs) have been talked about a lot in the past few years.  With the amount of HD content that is available on the web in the form of downloadable or streaming content, it’s easy to see why their popularity is increasing.  With the ATI Radeon HD 5700, you now have the perfect card for use in your Media Center.  Its low power consumption make it an ideal candidate for a media center as it operates quietly, even during HD decoding, due to the 2nd generation unified video decoder (UVD2) processing engine.  A really cool feature is the ability to pass through 8-channel (7.1) lossless high bit rate audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) that is found on Blu-Ray. In the past, this would have required an additional sound board, a cost of up to $200.  With the ATI Radeon HD 5700, this feature is supported without the need for any additional hardware.

We hope that you have as much fun playing on the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series as we did in building it.  We’d love to hear your comments!

Simon Vivera is the product manager for the ATI Radeon HD 5700 graphics series. 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

A little about me: I have been working in the GPU industry for approx 16 years, with most of that time at ATI Technologies doing many different jobs, from working in a lab testing for Hardware Qualification on ATI GPUS, to Product Marketing for ATI’s motherboard chipsets, to my current role as Public Relations Manager for AMD supporting reviews of our ATI GPUs and ATI Catalyst drivers.

The ATI Catalyst driver blogs have been gaining momentum, and interest is growing each and every month. The ATI Catalyst team is dedicated to keeping users informed about any and all updates on our drivers.

Between Windows 7, DirectX 11, and the new ATI Radeon GPUs, we are taking your visual experience to the next level with DirectX 11 support and new features like ATI Eyefinity technology. ATI Catalyst drivers are at the center of this innovation, driving new features and functions, while focusing on compatibility, and stability for all.

It is the ultimate tool for your GPU!

I have made you wait long enough – on to the ATI Catalyst 9.10 driver release!

New Features:

• Official ATI Catalyst WHQL release supporting ATI Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs. ATI Catalyst 9.10 now includes full GPU support for the award winning ATI HD Radeon 5800 series GPUs!
  

• Super Sample Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. ATI Catalyst 9.10 provides support for a new Anti-Aliasing method on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series.  Users can now experience the high level of anti-aliasing image quality using Super Sampling anti-aliasing while maintaining good performance levels.
  

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.10 release for Linux includes:

• This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems: Ubuntu 9.10 early look support

Highlights of resolved issues

• Ghostbusters video game no longer flickers between desktop and game play when anti-aliasing is set to 8X and game resolution set to 2560×1600
• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in “Riddick 2 Dark Athena” no longer causes the game to fail under Multi-GPU configurations
• Severe flickering no longer observed while running 3D games/samples on specific HDMI displays with configurations using ATI CrossFireX™ technology in tri and quad modes
• Desktop flashing no longer observed after driver installation and reboot with systems configured with Radeon ASIC in the primary PCIe slot and ATI Fire Stream™ ASIC in the secondary PCIe slot
• “Combat Mission Shock Force” no longer fails after a duration of game play
• Underscan/Overscan settings for TV can now be applied from the ATI Catalyst Control Center – TV Properties Adjustments page
• Changes to the “All Settings” and “Basic Quality” pages in ATI Catalyst Control Center - Avivo™ Video will now be retained after reboot

To download the driver, click here.

Discuss Catalyst 9.10 in our Forums.

See you Next Month!

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Public Relations Manager 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied.

The ATI Radeon^TM HD 5800 series graphics card were released today – a culmination of efforts from an enormous team of people spread across the world and I get the privilege of being the product manager for it. No doubt that if you’re reading this posting, you’ll already have heard about the headline features of this new generation of graphics boards: Expand the PC experience with ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, Accelerate with ATI Stream technology and Dominate your competition with Microsoft DirectX® 11 support (and 2x the engine of the previous generation with 2.72 teraFLOPS of processing power!).

Many of AMD’s employees take pride in directly interacting with customers and listening to what they want; likewise in my former life running a community-based site, I like to try to stay in touch with what people are looking for in their graphics cards. So, I’d like to expand a little on how these graphics cards have been effectively designed based on product and feature feedback provided by you!

First off, let’s consider some of the new image quality features present in the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series GPUs. Following the feedback we’ve received, the texture filtering quality has been improved such that we now have a near perfect circle in the anisotropic filtering tests – the same level of filtering can be achieved irrespective of the angle the texture is at as it appears into the screen. However, beyond this, all the texture weights and levels of detail are now calculated at higher precision than previous generations of AMD GPUs (i.e. the ATI Radeon^TM HD 4800 series).

Game image quality improvement doesn’t stop with texture quality though. Anti-Aliasing also sees some improvements. We’ve made some architectural changes to improve the performance of our CFAA (Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing) modes and also the performance delta between 4x Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) and 8x MSAA is very small, making 8x AA attainable to use in many more cases. Additionally, largely due to your feedback, Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing makes a comeback. Although Super-Sampling is one of the oldest types of AA we did need to make hardware changes to iterate each of the subsamples over a single draw call and this, coupled with the raw performance of ATI Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs, makes for good use-case scenarios in many DirectX® 9 and OpenGL titles.

Then we come to power. There is a general industry trend towards great power efficiency, but we’ve certainly heard that echoed from many end users, especially where GDDR5 products are concerned. With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series we’ve implemented a new memory controller that, despite higher memory speeds and data rates, is incredibly power efficient at load and idle.1 Coupled with the 40nm process and other architectural power improvements this enables a peak board power of 188W whilst providing up to twice the performance of the previous generation (i.e. the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series GPUs)1. Additionally, we now have the capability of switching the memory speed of GDDR5 devices dynamically and enter into “low strobe mode” (a mode with similar signaling as GDDR3) enabling us to crank up to 4.8Gbps bandwidth at peak operation, and down to 0.6Gbps bandwidth at idle. When taken in conjunction with a low idle engine speed of 157Mhz this enables us to get great idle power figures of 27W or below. 1 We didn’t stop there and offered something extra to those of you running multiple GPU’s per system – by making use of Windows Vista® and Windows® 7’s “Linked Adapter” mode we can determine when the additional GPUs in a multi-GPU setup are not required to be used (such as in desktop operation) and drop their idle power even lower than 27W, thus enabling you to have fantastic performance on tap when its needed but not chewing up loads of power when it’s not.

Low power operation allows us to take care of another area that registered a lot of feedback from our users of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series, and that is in the area of GPU heat. Although ASIC’s can typically run at very high temperatures with no issues, many users expressed their concerns on the previous generation (i.e. the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series), but on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series we are able to run full speeds at much lower peak temperatures. What may be perceived as the obvious trade off for lower peak operating temperatures would be that this has come from fan speed and the audibility has increased, however in the case of the ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card, the increased board size facilitates greater surface area for heat dissipation via the fansink, so in fact we don’t need to trade off in fan speeds. Likewise, with such low idle/desktop power thanks the low idle/desktop power we can also run the fan as low as 1200RPM, much lower than we’ve run in previous generations (i.e. the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series), while the ASIC stays in approximately a 40-50C operating temperate range (in an open case). 1 The fan itself has had changes, with new bearings that produce a much lower tone, effectively making it barely audible while idling and producing a less piercing note at speed.

We’ve also put additional protection on to the board in order to better cope with runaway power scenarios. Whilst our previous boards have been able to capture unusual thermal events in a graceful manner, runaway power scenarios resulted in the board protecting itself by shutting down. With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series we’ve implemented a hardware-level overvolt protection scheme where a signal from the regulators can be fed into the GPU directly and the GPU can take action if the regulators indicate they are operating out of their specification. In the unlikely event that such a scenario happens, rather than the board turning off, the GPU is designed to clock down to get the regulators back into a normal operating zone and then clock back up when they have done so.

Finally, we wanted to give a little something else back to you, in the form of a new look and feel for the product. We set out to make a new fansink design that would make the board seem more of an all encompassed product, rather than merely another PC component, but still unmistakably say “ATI Radeon” (quite literally as it turns out!). Whilst the PCI Express specification would tend to dictate a fairly rectangular box, we sought to give these boards some more visual cues and styling’s, and we hope that you’ll like the result – judging by some of the images and avatars already cropping up, it appears to have already captured some people’s imaginations, and we’re getting a kick out of seeing them.

Lots of direct feedback from our user community has gone into making these new graphics processors, a product we are proud of, and one that I personally consider to be the best high-end ATI Radeon graphics board produced so far. We hope you like the fruits of your labours. Happy gaming!

Want more? See the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series in action with an ATI Eyefinity technology demonstration. Or learn more about the advanced 3D graphics capabilties build into Microsoft DirectX 11.

1 All results cited in this blog were performed on AMD reference design and measured in AMD internal labs.

David Baumann is a Product Manager 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.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM9.9 Driver
With last month’s release of the ATI Catalyst^TM 9.8 driver, we saw huge game performance increases, given that, this month the driver team focused on other applications and optimizations.

ATI Catalyst^TM 9.9 Driver has no new features but does have the following resolved issues:

Anti-Aliasing support for Ghostbusters
ATI CrossFireX^TM support for Resident Evil 5
Graphics corruption fix for Sims 3
ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center – Basic mode now responds appropriately after exiting Quick Adjust Video Settings
Edge enhancement and de-noise sliders in ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer lags or appears out of sync with mouse movement
Launching Hotkeys Manager in ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer causes an unhandled exception error
The “Desktop Rotation” page in ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer shows additional information for the second display when the secondary adapter is connected
HDMI is now detected properly as DTV (HDMI) instead of DTV (DVI) when the HDMI display is hotplugged for the first time
ATI Catalyst Control Center no longer displays error message when specific HDMI displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back
Intermittent failures no longer occur with Cyberlink MediaShow Espresso once a transcoding process has been completed

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.9 driver for Linux!

Support for new Linux operating systems
This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:

• openSUSE 11.1 production support
• SLED and SLES 10 SP3 early look support

To download the full release notes, click here.

See you next month!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Back when I started my career with ATI, I was working in marketing for a product called the ATI All-in-Wonder^TM HD Card (AIW) --basically a high performance graphics card for gaming coupled with a TV tuner to allow you watch, record, and edit HD content. It was a brilliant concept; we were years ahead of the curve. And, consumers-at least the video mavens-loved them. We had our own little cult following. Fast forward a few years and HD video is a mainstream application. Consumers now enjoy video content on their notebooks, desktops and use their PC’s to power their big screen HD experiences every day.

Today, the AIW concept of watch-record-edit has made its way into AMD-based mainstream notebooks via ATI Theater^TM HD, enabling consumers to edit and consume their content on virtually any device. For example: Mom takes a video of little Johnny playing soccer with any video recorder, such as a popular, unbelievably easy-to-use, FlipCam. Now, the game’s over and all Mom has to do is plug the camera in via USB to the family notebook and voilà! In minutes or even seconds, the content she captured at the game is converted to the desired format and ready to post to YouTube. Spectacularly simple. No engineering degree required.

Let’s break this down into two parts: GPU Video Encode & Video Playback

GPU Video Encode

The definition of a video transcoding is simple:

“Video transcoding is the process of converting data from one video format (e.g. MPEG2) to another format (e.g. H.264). Historically, the CPU has been the one sole compute engine to do all the converting needed by an end-user”.

With High-Definition (HD) video gone mainstream thanks to digital TV transition in different countries around the world and HD camcorders (such as AVCHD) becoming more affordable, there is now more demand for additional processing capability to edit and convert HD content. In order to edit and convert with relatively reasonable speed, end-users needed a PC with high-end CPU configuration…that is, until recently.

Consumers are now able to convert their video files leveraging their GPU hardware inside their PC. Simply put, with graphics cards and applications specially constructed to take advantage of the GPU, you are now able to tap into the massive amounts of parallel compute power, you may not even have been aware your PC had. Cool, huh?

If you are in the market for a notebook, make sure you have ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000 Series Premium graphics. And, with notebooks powered by VISION Premium and Ultimate technologies from AMD, you will be able to take advantage of GPGPU Video Transcode with ATI Stream Accelerated Plug-in with either CyberLink MediaShow Espresso or Sony® Movie Studio 9 Platinum.

In a nutshell, when you need to convert video from its original format to fit on your media player or posting to YouTube, the fastest and most efficient way is to harness the performance capabilities of your GPU.

And, if you have ever encoded/converted video to play on an your multimedia device, you know it can take upwards of 3-4 hours (depending on resolution and format conversion and-not to mention--the configuration of your PC) with average CPU usage hitting close to 100% most of the time during the conversion.

However, utilizing ATI Stream Technology from AMD, on certain notebook designs powered by Vision technology from AMD, based on the 2009 AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform, we are seeing upwards of 75% faster conversion times and up to 2x times the performance with GPGPU transcoding enabled versus standard CPU enabled transcoding. This is because ATI Stream leverages all the processing resources of an notebook powered by Vision technology from AMD, both CPU and GPU for a fast transcoding, while keeping the PC responsive to ensure a good user experience. That’s the AMD balanced platform advantage at work!

Video Playback

Have you ever looked at your DVD movies on your HDTV videos and thought “Man, I wish these looked better?”

Fear not, AMD has a solution.

We have collaborated with ArcSoft to enable them to develop software that will up-convert your DVD videos into near HD quality videos. Believe it?
Here is an example of what’s possible:

ArcSoft launched SimHD in July 2009, this software will enable a consumer to take their ATI Radeon HD 4000 series GPU and put it to some real work, DVD upscaling. As the video above clearly showcases, the image on the left is near HD quality and is almost crystal clear and very vibrant. The image on the right is standard definition and is kinda blah and boring….

No magic to behold here, DVD upscaling is a function of the the GPU matching the pixel count from a standard video or DVD to match the pixel count of the HDTV. This is done in real-time and accelerated on the GPU using ATI Stream Technology.
The result is taking a 480i/p image and processing it to a new image size of 720p or even 1080i.

The GPU used to be all about FPS (frames per second). But today, the GPU is all about delivering the “visual experience,” either in more productivity time via fast transcoding, more lifelike gaming via DirectX 11 or enabling end-users to view their SD videos in almost-HD quality. The GPU has become one of if not the most important decision factor when purchasing a PC, either a notebook or desktop.

Make sure that when you are at a retail store, you ask about the GPU; make sure it will enable you to be more productive and have a true HD experience. It’s not all about gaming anymore. AMD is the only company to deliver a balanced platform for computing, a balance between CPU and GPU is the right solution for the today and tomorrow.

Our very own Pat Moorhead has done a great review of a new AMD Next-Generation laptop with the above features enabled here.

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. 
Have you wondered what all the hype around Microsoft Windows 7 and DirectX 11 is all about? We will shed some light and answer some of those questions in this blog.

Let’s start with Windows7, everyone, including my own mother, is talking about this amazing operating system. Microsoft is rumoured to be launching the successor to Windows Vista in late October. What does it mean to you the PC user?

I cover my experience with Windows 7 in this blog; in a nutshell, the experience has been fantastic. It seems that Microsoft has worked out all the kinks and quirkiness of Windows Vista and are about to launch an incredible OS for the PC. Windows 7 (when compared to Windows Vista) is designed to offer the user a much more refined experience, smaller footprint, faster response times, long battery life and a much more visually intense and enjoyable PC experience.

Wrapped up in all the new Windows 7 OS splendour is a new API (Application programming Interface) called DirectX 11. Basically, the API allows developers to program software that uses a standard set of terms to communicate with the libraries and the OS. Think of it as game developers have some new toys to play with inside Windows to allow them to deliver better software.

DirectX has been around since 1995 with the launch of Windows95, a full history can be found here.

Let me break down the features and benefits of DirectX 11 -- the main features being:
-Tessellation  -- Multithreaded Rendering  - DirectCompute

Tessellation is a technology that has been around for a few GPU (graphics processing unit) generations. AMD has had Tessellation support since 2001, which was then called Truform; we also implemented Tessellation in the XBOX 360 GPU, then codenamed “Xenos”. Tessellation is a feature which increases the number of polygons in an image. Basically, Tessellation enables a more lifelike image, both of objects and landscape. Back in the day characters who were CG (computer generated) looked very blocky, almost cartoon like; with the use of Tessellation, developers are now able to significantly increase the number of triangles to draw an image, thus creating a more lifelike quality in games.

Multithreaded Rendering is a feature which allows DirectX to be processed via multiple CPU threads. This means that a dual-, triple- or quad-core CPU can have a higher utilization across all cores than DirectX APIs in the past. Historically the OS would load up a single core for commands to the GPU, in essence creating an overload on the first core and under utilizing the additional cores. With only one core issuing commands to a GPU, we have seen CPUs hold back the potential performance of the GPU. With Multithreaded Rendering, DirectX will take better advantage of all the available cores. This should result in a better experience for the multi-core user because of a faster processing pipeline and increased scaling.

DirectCompute is a feature which allows access to the shader cores/pipeline for Stream Computing (graphics acceleration) type applications and physics acceleration. One of the biggest technology breakthroughs of the past 5 years has been the notion that processing can be moved from the traditional CPU to the much more parallel GPU. Simply put, the CPU manages tasks sequentially; it accomplishes a task then moves on to the next task in a very orderly fashion and with tremendous speed. Today’s CPUs can work at speeds of up to 108.8 GigaFLOPS (Floatingpoint Operations Per Second).

A GPU is designed to work with many slower cores in parallel, giving a much wider vector -meaning a wider road for more cars to travel on -- than a CPU. This allows tasks to be completed faster if the program or software is developed to take advantage of many-many cores, albeit slower ones. Today’s GPUs can work at speeds up to 1.36 TeraFLOPS, giving the GPU a significant (almost 11 times faster) advantage when the proper software is run. This advantage truly delivers on the processing capabilities of Stream Computing. DirectCompute allows easier access to the GPU’s many cores for parallel processing; if the user is running applications that take advantage of Stream Computing then the performance experience increases considerably. We are seeing transcoding as the first type of task that is seeing tremendous benefit using Stream Computing. This means if you are an avid HD video or music user you will benefit when converting files to play on your laptop or iPod type devise; Stream Computing can significantly cut down the wait-time for enjoying your converted media.

Now, if you are a gamer you undoubtedly will be asking me “What games are going to support DirectX 11″? This is always a tightrope to walk for us as we are unable to pre-announce our technology partners titles and the specs around those titles; still, we want to give the consumer confidence that we’ve been assured there will be substantial titles in the market that take full advantage of your ATI Radeon DirectX 11-compliant graphics card. So, as this blog is published, here are the future DirectX 11 games we can talk about:

Dirt2 by Codemasters
BattleForge by EA
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat by GSC Game World

- Check out this early spoiler for Dirt 2 -

Some industry folks have stated that we will see more titles that support DirectX 11 then we did for DirectX 10. Some even say that DirectX 11 is the full implementation of what DX10 should and could have been, but that is subjective opinion and conjecture.

Game developers discuss the benefits of DirectX11

Windows7 and DirectX11 are right around the corner, as is the newest ATI Radeon family of graphics cards. As always, it’s our goal to blur the lines between reality and what is rendered. I believe we have made a major leap towards crossing that chasm with our ATI RadeonTM HD 5000 series products and their support for DirectX 11.

Tessellation - Minimized

With Tessellation - Maximized!

Between now and the launch of Windows 7 and DirectX 11, we will continue to uncover the technical details, as well as the visual implications, for the user experience.

At the time of this blog, AMD will be the first GPU vendor to market with a fully compliant and enabled DirectX 11 graphics product. So don’t be fooled by claims in the market about DX10 GPU’s supporting DirectX 11….

My good friend Tim Smalley from bit-tech.net has a great in-depth article on DirectX 11: A look at what’s coming – Check it out.

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.8 Driver

Our test system configuration is:

AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0GHz) processor

Asus M3A79-T(790) motherboard

4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 memory

Windows VISTA Ultimate SP1 64bit

This month we are seeing a massive performance increase with a whole host of games as compared to the ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver. Detailed release notes are available for most of the game optimizations; here are the highlights:

• Battleforge DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance improves of up to 50% with the largest gains in configurations using ATI CrossFireX^TM technology.
• Company of Heroes DirectX 10 performance improves of up to 77%.
• Crysis DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 10% and quad mode performance improves of up to 34%.
• Crysis Warhead DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 7% and quad mode performance improves of up to 69%.
• Far Cry 2 DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 50% and quad mode performance improves of up to 88%.
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. DirectX 10/DirectX 10.1 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode improves of up to 40% and with quad mode performance improving of up to 60%.
• UnigineTropics OpenGL performance improvements of up to 20%.
• UnigineTropics DirectX 10 performance of ATI CrossFireX technology in quad mode improvements of up to 20%.
• World in Conflict DirectX 10 performance improvements of up to by 10%.

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst 9.8 – Open GL^TM 3.1 Support

It’s fitting that last weekend AMD was in attendance at Quakecon 2009 in Dallas,Texas where the world’s most prolific OpenGLsupporters gathered for 4 days of ‘peace, love and rockets,’ that we are announcing support for OpenGL 3.1 and the following details:

This release of the ATI Catalyst driver provides OpenGL 3.1 extension support.  The following is a list of OpenGL 3.1 features and extensions added in ATI Catalyst 9.8:

• Support for OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 and 1.40.
• Instanced rendering with a per-instance counter accessible to vertex shaders (GL ARB draw instanced).
• Data copying between buffer objects (GL EXT copy buffer).
• Primitive restart (NV primitive restart). Because client enable/disable no longer exists in OpenGL 3.1, the PRIMITIVE RESTART state has become server state, unlike the Nvidia extension where it is client state. As a result, the numeric values assigned to PRIMITIVE RESTART and PRIMITIVE RESTART INDEX differ from the NV versions of those tokens.
• At least 16 texture image units must be accessible to vertex shaders, in addition to the 16 already guaranteed to be accessible to fragment shaders.
• Texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object).
• Rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle).
• Uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object).
• SNORM texture component formats.

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.8 driver for Linux!

Support for new Linux operating systems

This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems: 

• RHEL 4.8 production support
• Ubuntu 9.04 production support

ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center – Linux Edition support for RandR 1.2

This release of the ATI Catalyst driver for  Linux introduces ATI Catalyst Control Center –  Linux Edition support for the RandR 1.2 extension API.  The following new features are now available in the ATI Catalyst Control Center – Linux Edition Display Manager:

• Display rotation
• Multiple display arrangement and desktop sizing

To download the full release notes here.

Please report all technical support issues here.

See you next month!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

“Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn’t take Lorraine out that he’d melt my brain”. – George McFly

PMS Clan and a future gaming superstar on our Quakecon booth

Well, its day 2 at Quakecon 2009 and my brain hasn’t melted, but I have seen a Darth Vader or two… In thinking about the ‘right’ title for my blog, “The Future” was an obvious choice seeing as how we have packed up #Area64 and transported it all the way to Dallas.

What is #Area64 you ask, well, it’s the secret place in Austin where AMD has all of its unreleased products, engineering secrets and where we keep the flux capacitor. As one can imagine, we need to keep such a place heavily guarded and hard to find, so, what do a bunch of AMD gamers do, we packed it up and rebuilt it in the Gaylord Hotel for Quakecon. I am currently writing this blog from the heart of our mobile #area64, the sounds of next generation technology humming away behind me!

Pete and Chris from AMD showcasing our Quakecon shirts...

Wait a minute, Doc. Ah… Are you telling me that you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean? – Marty McFly

No, we didn’t bring our time machine but I am not going to comment on if AMD has built a time machine, that’s a completely different blog. But, we did bring what we expect will revolutionize the way you play games on PC’s in the future.

How does one gain access into #area64 and who gets access, great questions, here is what you have to do:

AMD will be limiting access to #Area64 to 100 almost random gamers, meaning anyone and everyone has a fair shot at “Seeing the Future”, just follow these AMD’ers on Twitter;

@IanMcNaughton – @Tweetoe – @Catalystmaker - @AMD_Unprocessed & @Caseygotcher

We will be tweeting hints and actions during Quakecon, it could be as simple as “The first 5 gamers who meet us at XX, gain access” or “Make a short video about Why you need or should have access to #Area64 and post to Youtube, gain access”.

Or, you could simply track us down and ask for an “on the spot action for access”.

Here are the shirts we are giving away, they are unique and numbered from 1-100, if you see anyone wearing them in the halls or BYOC, you know they have “SEEN THE FUTURE”!

The Future is Awesome!

As a special treat to all the readers of my blog, via this blog, you will be the first to download the latest ATI Catalyst 9.8 driver here:

XP

XP 32

Xp 64

Vista and Win7

Vista/Win7 32

Vista/Win7 64

[Update: Official ATI Catalyst 9.8 Drivers are available here]

Enjoy!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Back in the early nineties, there was a game that truly defined all video games that followed, do you remember? Well, for those readers who were not born yet, the game was called Wolfenstein 3D and its introduction was a defining moment.  Some believe that Wolfenstein 3D defined the FPS as we know it. I would have to completely agree! 

If you were a Doom player then you can thank Wolf 3D for blazing the trail for what was, is, and continues to be an amazing gaming franchise.  Fast forward to August 2009 and transport yourself to Dallas, Texas and you can relive those original Wolf 3D experiences with AMD at Quakecon 2009.

id Software has teamed up with Raven Studios to develop a new game called “Wolfenstein”.  In the new game you play the original character William B.J Blazkowicz who just happens to be a super metalled out member of the Office of Secret Actions (OSA).  Come on, how cool would that business card be?

Ian McNaughton
AMD
Office of Secret Actions

Will need to print some of those up for Quakecon!

The new Wolfenstein looks fantastic, I was able to score an early copy to hone my skillz in preparation for this weekend’s festivities and the game is awesome so far…

AMD will be showcasing Wolfenstein on our booth as well as in #area64. 

We will also be providing live updates via Twitter and vlogs via blogs.amd.com.

#Area64 will be exclusive access only, meaning, you can try to find it, but its hidden and being kept secret.  AMD will be showcasing what we lovingly refer to as “The Future”, if you want to see the future, follow me as well as @AMD_Unprocessed ,  @Catalystmaker, @caseygotcher and @Tweetoe for ways to get invited.

Strap in and hold on, Quakecon 2009 is about to begin!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Here’s a few thoughts I committed to video before the ceremony kicked off:

Check out the rest of the groundbreaking ceremony and the video interviews with AMD CEO Dirk Meyer and Globalfoundries Chairman Hector Ruiz.

Great things are on the horizon!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

With four months of ATI Catalyst^TM driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a steady engagement from the community via this blog site.  Please keep up the comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can.  So, without further ado – let me introduce the ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver Release!           

 Please report all driver related issues here. 

*If you are having technical issues with your graphics card or are in need of driver support, please use the proper channels to submit those issues here.*

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst 9.7 – AMD’s first official unified Windows 7 / Windows Vista Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for the Windows 7 RTM

ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver is AMD’s first official unified WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified graphics driver designed for Windows 7 RTM (Release to Manufacturing) as well as Windows Vista.  Being able to have a single unified driver can enable power users to continue to support their existing OS while also experiencing the great new features of Windows 7 while running dual OS’s.

In a previous blog I highlight my own personal experience but for the purposes of this blog here are the Windows 7 highlights:

• Superior gaming performance when compared to previous Microsoft OS’s using either a single GPU configuration or ATI  CrossfireX^TM technology configurations
• Superior stability via AMD’s WHQL certified and unified Windows 7/Windows Vista graphics driver
• Leadership in Innovation with support for all the Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 features and ATI Catalyst^TM features with current ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 series of products.

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7 – ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center – Enhanced user interface

When our customers provide feedback, we listen! Case in point, we have received feedback that the Catalyst GUI needed a refresh, some parts of the GUI were not efficient and required a makeover, AMD listened and delivered. 

In this new beta version of Catalyst^TM Control Center we have a newly redesigned user interface to enhance usability and end user efficiency, which includes a newly designed Desktops and Displays Manager which will enable users to quickly configure and arrange their displays.  Most of us power users have multiple monitors and as such, this will help with the frustrations of multi monitor management, especially with scenarios where a laptop is removed from a docking station prior to sleeping and returned prior to sleeping.  ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7 has full support for Hydravision under Windows 7.

We have designed in a new streamlined look where the settings and controls are now found in the new “Graphics” and “Options” drop down menus allowing users to very quickly select different tabs and adjust the desired settings.

All of the above enhancements to ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center are supported under Windows 7 and Windows Vista. This beta version is the first in an exciting transition for CCC and we await feedback!

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7 – ATI Video Converter update – support for Windows 7

With the introduction of Catalyst^TM 9.7, we are introducing support for the ATI Video converter under Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit versions. 

With the massive explosion of mainstream consumption of HD video, owners of ATI Radeon^TM HD 4800 and ATI Radeon^TM HD 4600 series of graphics cards can now take advantage of the video conversion tool found in the ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center under Basic View.  Using this video conversion tool, users can benefit from substantial performance improvements when transcoding video files.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7

Our test system configuration is:

This month we are seeing a further performance increase with Crysis and Lost Planet Colonies as compared to ATI Catalyst 9.6.  Following are some of this month’s highlights. Detailed release notes are available for most of the game optimizations; I have simply picked a few to highlight in this blog.

• Crysis – performance gains at ‘very high’ quality presets increase by up to 8% on ATI Radeon HD 4800 series products. 
• Lost Planet Colonies – performance increase of up to 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing  is used on the ATI Radeon HD 4800  series products

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI Catalyst^TM 9.7

This month’s release has support for the following new operating systems:

• RedFlag DT 7.0 production support

To download the full release notes, click here.

See you next month!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Did you skip Windows Vista waiting for Windows 7 with bated breath? 

Let’s call out the “white elephant” in the room: Gamers have resisted Windows Vista in favour of Windows XP.  I have to admit, I was one of those gamers, just didn’t see the benefit vs. cost to upgrade my OS, especially given my usage model which was mainly gaming at the time. 

Fast forward a year or two and it’s a totally different story, I still game, but I also am doing a lot more video consumption and creation (albeit creating n00b videos of my kids).  It also helps that I have had early access to Windows 7 prior to the RC being publically available.  This has completely changed my view and opinion on when (not if) a user should embrace and get excited about the upcoming release of Microsoft’s newest OS, Windows 7.

So, I expect the flames in the comments, and I am happy to have the debate. Maybe I am a lone voice in the world, perhaps I am drinking the kool-aid.  I had a discussion the other day with a friend of mine, a hardcore gamer and content consuming machine, a true AMD enthusiast.  This guy lives, eats and breathes AMD, and during this discussion he basically called me out as being a n00b for running Windows 7 on my main home PC and work laptop, he actually laughed.  This made me start to question the experience I thought I was having, which by the way has been awesome, flawless and very favourable in terms of recommending to others to adopt.  I questioned myself until I came across a Facebook post from another friend who is a true enthusiast – former AMD’er, now with the world’s largest PC OEM – a working dad, video editing guy and casual gamer, he summed up his experience with Windows 7 nicely, I thought I would share it with you:

So the debate will rage on, sides will be taken, lines will be drawn, artillery will be engaged and the battle will ensue.  It’s funny how something as simple as an OS evokes such emotion in the PC enthusiast.  MAC users will gush over the superiority of the “chosen ones” MAC OS X Snow Leopard, PC users will throw daggers at Redmond in hopes they will listen, the penguin community will continue to garner more and more OEM wins and mainstream adoption, but at the end of the day we have one major OS option and this time around, it’s a really good option!

Would like to hear from the community, how has your Windows 7 experience been so far? Please post in comments.

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

What do you get when you cross extreme engineering with extreme overclockability?

You get an AMD TWKR CPU.

**WARNING: Extreme overclocking is an activity that should be carried out only by experts, using expert tools in a safe and secure environment. Use of extreme cooling methods and materials, including but not limited to liquid nitrogen, can be extremely hazardous.  Extreme overclocking is not for everyone – AMD urges caution and disclaims all liability for any damages, of any type or character (including without limitation, system damage, loss of data or personal injury) caused as a result of or while engaged in engaging in extreme overclocking activities.

AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by overclocking, even when enabled via AMD software. 

As they say, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! 

Matt Davis aka @dattymavis

@dattymavis and I ventured over to AMD’s “AREA 64″ with a newly minted AMD TWKR CPU to give it a testdrive under some extreme Ln2, and what ensued was pure overclocking awesomeness!

First, let me introduce to you the AMD TWKR:

AMD created a small number of limited edition AMD Phenom^TM II TWKR Black Edition processors expressly for the purpose of commemorating the record performance feats with the AMD platform technology codenamed “Dragon” and AMD Phenom^TM II processors. These processors are designed to reach the utmost performance barriers of the AMD Phenom II processor and operate beyond the specifications of typical production level processors.

Called the AMD Phenom^TM II X4 42 Black Edition TWKR processor, it is not currently for sale, and not covered by AMD’s product warranty. This processor is provided “as is” and AMD disclaims any and all liable for any damages, of any type or character (including without limitation, system damage, loss of data or personal injury), caused as a result of or in connection with the use of this processor. 

These processors demonstrate the sound engineering and superior process technology that is in each AMD Phenom II processor.

With our TWKR in hand and a solid warning from our buildings management staff, we headed across Austin to AMD’s Secret Lab – AREA 64.

The lab is fully stocked with all the hardware an overclocker could ever imagine or dream of, shopping made easy! Did I mention the 9,000 gallon Liquid Nitrogen tank outside with direct piping into the AREA 64 lab, yup, doesn’t get much better than that!

The motherboard of choice was a Gigabyte 790X.

4G of Corsair memory,

An ATI Radeon^TM HD 4870 X2 GPU.

And a TWKR CPU.

Hmmm, why is it not posting???

After 20 minutes of no posting at all, we finally realized that the DIMMS had been previously whacked and were no good… Step 1: Always make sure you have working hardware!

Once we had working hardware, we fired it up and started the “slow pour” of Ln2.

The steps we followed are detailed in this blog.

Ln2 engaged! First thermos of Ln2 got us to -120C, time for thermos #2.  The second pour brought us down to -139C!  Time for more!

The third thermos of Ln2 brought our TWKR part down to -186.6C – Ah, overclocking bliss!

At this point in time, I let @dattymavis take over as he is the obvious safer one between the two of us…

@dattymavis jokingly dons full protective gear and looks like something out of an alien movie…

Now time to see what this badboy can do!  We pushed the proc to a single core overclock of 6.42Ghz at a voltage of 1.725volts.  This was accomplished just having Windows at idle.  We will leave it up to the professional overclockers to push the proc’s with a heavy workload.

As for a 4-core OC, we achieved 6.2Ghz at 1.8 volts.  Again, this was at a temp of -182F with a light workload.

All in all, we achieved significant frequency for a couple of hacks with unlimited Ln2.

The TWKR is not currently for sale, but is designed to make a statement to the OC community: Thank you to each and every enthusiast who continues to support AMD and fights the good fight!

Ah, the sweat smell of Ln2...

If I’m lucky, I may be able to give away some of the TWKR processors via Twitter in the coming weeks.  I’m not making any promises, but follow me if you are on Twitter and you just might be lucky enough to become a proud owner of a TWKR yourself someday.

Also follow @AMDDesktop…they have some goodies for the community too!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

While social media has been the “new shiny toy” for some time, attracting the headlines and the VC dollars as companies and individuals try to  monetize this phenomenon, another, related subject may be about to thunder and lightning. Yes, I’m talking about the “Cloud”.

For this hardcore audience, my question is: “Can you game in real-time from the cloud?”

I spent some quality time this week with Charlie Boswell, the guru behind so many cool programs at AMD. Think OTOY, LucasFilm, the digital music recording Industry, and you quickly understand that Charlie has one of the best jobs at AMD in working with these customers and technology partners. Here’s our conversation:

Ian: Charlie, thanks for taking the time today, can you give us the background on our efforts at CES around demo’ing “gaming in the cloud”?

Charlie:

Hello Ian…I’m really pumped about this so I appreciate the chance to discuss. …..here’s the deal. 

At this year’s CES AMD rolled out a demo that shows how our platform technology (CPU, GPU, combined with Direct Connect Architecture) is enabling fully interactive cloud gaming. Sounds cool but what exactly is that? 

Cloud computing on AMD Fusion technology allows fully interactive game play from virtually any type of client over the Internet because the heavy lifting is being done “server side” in the cloud. The user logs on, clicks open a browser and then starts blasting away. No hours of game installation, no exotic authorization dances, just instant gratification and that’s why I’m excited. My team’s role at AMD is to ensure our technology removes barriers so the user can be about his/her task rather than the technology. That is the main story of cloud computing. Enough preaching but I had to let that fly because it’s a powerful look at a better future for gaming.

The CES demo consisted of an AMD Fusion Render Node (based on AMD “Dragon” platform technology PC platforms) that hosted an off-the-shelf version of EA’s amazing “Mercenaries II” served up via the Internet. The laptop powered  by AMD technology was given a URL to click and Mercenararies-II fired up.  Playback was full screen at 60 frames/sec (see the video on YouTube for yourself <link>).

How is this accomplished? Is it a parlour trick? Well, this is not easy to pull-off. Jules Urbach, the CEO of OTOY, is the wizard of GPGPU. The software that made this work is from his company.  He is to the GPU what Robert Rodriguez (another artist who employs AMD technology) is to digital moviemaking.

Jules is a true innovator and someone who chose AMD because we have all the pieces to make this work. We are the only one-stop-shopping platform solution for cloud computing hardware. The OTOY software harnesses the full power of the AMD platform including CPU, GPU and our Direct Connect high bandwidth interconnect.  

In short, the game source code unaltered is hosted on the AMD Fusion Render Cloud hardware and served up on the web via breathtaking OTOY compression technology made possible by the AMD combined platform power. The OTOY software allows multiple instances of a game to be hosted on the AMD Fusion Render node so the solution scales for all the right economic reasons such as energy efficiency, space,  quiet operation, etc.

Ian: That technology seems very cool, how is it similar or different to OnLive?

Charlie:

Yes, after the CES announcement of the AMD Fusion Render Cloud with OTOY, OnLive announced their solution at GDC in March. I was thrilled to see their announcement because it was further validation of the space. Both OTOY and OnLive have their unique business models and architectures, but they are similar in that they both require a truly scalable enterprise class backend solution. Implementing a technique I call “Invasion of the Client Snatchers” where you simply connect up a single client machine in the cloud to a user won’t work. It’s not practical or adaptable. You’re just snatching the client from the user and housing it. The Cloud server must behave like a compute cluster and scale organically with the statistical behaviour of the Internet user traffic. It must adapt to available power and bandwidth. It must scale for energy efficiency. It must allow for extensibility. This is where the AMD Fusion Render Node comes into play. You can host multiple simultaneous users on these devices and cluster them in true enterprise class style. Anyway, it’s great to see more teams jumping in. We celebrate the free market because it’s good for the user. Cloud computing is happening and OnLive is another fantastic example.

Ian: TechCrunch had an article a week ago, where they highlighted a game character jumping from a monitor to a notebook while the game was being served from 400 miles away, can you explain the technology behind that?

Charlie:

This is OTOY’s server side rendering in action. The heavy computing, drawing, and encoding are happening server-side in the cloud through the magic of the OTOY architecture host on an AMD Fusion render node. The client is entirely browser based. The bandwidth and latency required for full on interactive game play is made possible by/through the OTOY codec architecture. The performance of this codec meets the “real-time” requirements for first person shooters. Enough said. The AMD Fusion Render Architecture is the scalable foundation that could make this practical, scalable, and deployable across the global Internet. 

Ian: To take it a step further, TechCrunch was given an exclusive this week that showed off the AMD/OTOY technology at work on a cell phone! Is this the future of mainstream gaming?

Charlie:

As I said a few moments ago, the uniqueness of the OTOY approach is their ability to serve to a variety of client types: smart phones, PDA, thin client, etc., etc. This is a great proofpoint that the heavy lifting is all done server side on OTOY-AMD Fusion Render Cloud. This is one future for Cloud Computing…turn it on and play. You never get exposed to the seedy side of technology (drivers, installation, updates).  All that stuff is under the street just like in Disneyland.  This is the future I want….Walt Disney had this figured out a long time ago.

Ian: So, gaming in the cloud is real, when might we see availability?

Charlie:

Ian, you’re seeing some of the promise now. We expect that you’ll see implementations later this year and full-on deployments in 2010.

Ian: Thanks Charlie, one last question, What’s next?

Charlie:

Let me answer that loaded question first by stating the cloud offers the planet at least the hope of a better user experience.  My cause celeb on the past 10 years has been to help lobby for a better user experience by shielding the artist from both the tech and its culture. Technology can be unbelievably needy. Example, “hey man, you forgot to load the latest driver or OS update.” I don’t want that ever even said in my presence. I reject that. That is an example of technology sitting on top of humanity. The cloud is going to help eliminate the entire culture that perpetuates useless complexity. The revolution is next because the users demand it. The revolution is next because the economics demand it. If you only market to the geeks, the numbers don’t work do they…..

Simply put and a great way to close out this blog.  Feel free to comment, both Charlie and I will be actively monitoring the comments and replying. 

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Cheers!

The mainstream CPU market is awfully crowded these days, a full line-up of model numbers from AMD and a further full line-up of confusing model numbers from Intel.  Is the C2D E8600 better than a C2Q 8200, what about an i7920, is a 920 better or worse than a X4955?  Is it about frequency, cores, memory channels or controllers, DDR2 or DDR3??? #$%^&*()_#$%^&* WHICH CPU SHOULD I BUY?

This blog hopes to help answer that question.

At AMD we have tried to make things very simple – we started with graphics and moved that model numbering system into CPUs. The bigger the number, the more performance you will get! Simple. Clean. Easy.

On June 2, 2009 we launched the newest addition to our mainstream CPU line-up, the AMD Phenom^TM II X2 550 Black Edition and the AMD Athlon^TM II X2 250 processors.

The press release reads as such:

“AMD Athlon^TM II processor delivers new native dual-core architecture, efficient 45nm technology and 3 GHz performance at an affordable price –
AMD Phenom^TM II X2 Black Edition processor combines value and unlocked potential for gamers and tuners on a budget”

Very well stated I must say!  This sums up the benefit of each processor and now I will endeavor to take it one step further.

When a shiny new toy, like a quad core CPU, enters the market people tend to mentally move on and forget about past products, like the once dominant dual core. Historically, enthusiasts are the first to clamor for the latest and greatest, often regardless of cost.  But let’s keep this ‘bleeding edge’ in perspective, currently only a small proportion of shipping CPU’s are quad core, the rest are made up of triple-, dual- and single-core processors. Usage and computing continue to evolve to take advantage of multicore processors but dual core processors still have a big piece of the pie.

Let’s bring this all back to the two little gems we launched on June 2.  The AMD Phenom^TM II X2 550 Black Edition is the single fastest dual-core client CPU we have ever engineered and brought to market. Incredibly, you can buy it at Newegg today for only $102.00 with free shipping.

That is just short of astounding! And this processor is built off the same die as the acclaimed AMD Phenom^TM II quad-core processors.

The AMD Athlon^TM II X2 250 is another product we launched on June 2, 2009 in Taipei; it’s simply an incredible little performance monster.  Currently priced at $87.00 on Newegg with free shipping, this processor is born from its own die, meaning its half the size of its sibling mentioned above and does not share the same wafer.

How does that impact you, the consumer? Lower cost, lower power consumption.

This processor has a maximum design spec of 65W; average daily use can often fall well below even that..

Both processors feature the AM3 socket, which means they’re compatible with AM3 motherboards using DDR3 memory, OR they can be dropped into an AM2+ motherboard with DDR2 memory (which can further help reduce your overall system price).

Which one should you buy?

Well, here is my quick swag at generalizing which processor I think you should buy:

Like with any recommendation, take it with a grain of salt, it all comes down to your budget and expected longevity of your system.

It’s always tough for a corporate spinner like me to write about our own products.  I try not to prop AMD products unless I have used them or I am extremely passionate and knowledgeable about them, in this case, I am all three: A user of an AMD Phenom II X4 550 processor in my system at home, absolutely passionate about the tremendous value these parts offer a consumer and a bit of an expert as I was part of the product management team who helped birth these products to see the light of day on our roadmaps.

It’s confusing to know what to purchase, I can honestly say, I don’t think you can go wrong with choosing either of these processors.  But as always in my blogs, please, don’t take my word for it, check out what the reviewers have been saying:

“With the Athlon II X2 250 and the Phenom II X2 550 AMD has released two very competitive dual-core parts. They both perform and overclock well and are easily competitive with Intel’s Pentium E6300…I’ve really got no complaints here. AMD has done very well in both the pricing and execution of its first 45nm dual-core products.”

- Anand Shimpi, AnandTech

“Zipping along at 3.0GHz, the Athlon II X2 250 will take its place as the fastest Athlon processor in AMD’s lineup. Other vitals include a 45nm manufacturing processor, 65W TDP, and an AM3 package allowing it to support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory. Perhaps best of all, the new chip is being priced at a budget-friendly $87.”

- Paul Lilly, Maximum PC

Lost Circuit’s Michael Schuette on the AMD Athlon II X2 250, “Overall, well done, AMD, this little gem might be poised to capture even more market share.”

“If you are looking for great performing processors at an even greater price, you would be a fool not to consider the Phenom II X2 550 BE or the Athlon II X2 250. Their price to performance ratio is unmatched, and will not leave you hanging.”

- Alan Matson, Overclockers Club

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

With three months of ATI Catalyst™ driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a steady engagement from the community via this blog site.  Please keep up the comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can.  So, without further ado – let me introduce ATI Catalyst 9.6!       

Please report all driver related issues here. 

*If you are having technical issues with your graphics card or are in need of driver support, please use the proper channels to submit those issues here.*

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst™ 9.6

Our test system configuration is:

This month we are seeing a further performance increase with Company of Heroes and some significant performance increases for Crysis Warhead, Crysis and World in Conflict, compared with last month’s ATI Cataylst 9.5 driver.  Following are some of this month’s highlights. Detailed release notes are available here.

• Company of Heroes – performance gains of up to 25% for the ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series, and performance gains of up to 10% for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
• Crysis Warhead – performance gains of up to 11% for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual configuration. 
• Crysis – performance gains of up to 13% for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual configuration. 
• World in Conflict – performance gains of up to 30% for high settings that were previously CPU limited with the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series.

Of course, your performance may vary, depending on your particular system configuration.

And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI Catalyst™ 9.6 Driver

This month’s release has support for the following new operating systems:

·         SLED and SLED 11 production support

·         RHEL 4.8 early look support

ATI MultiView™ for Consumer users

·         Allows users to render applications using a multiple GPU configuration with a unified workspace

·         Enables Xinerama in single or multiple GPU configurations

·         Supported on any combination of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000,  ATI Radeon™ 3000 Series and ATI Radeon™ 2000 Series of graphics cards

To download the full release notes, click here.

See you next month!

 Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

When the guys from CoolIT approached me for a quote for their Domino press release, my immediate reaction was, “Let’s get it in the lab and send me a review unit to test”…

Here at AMD we have a full scientific test lab for thermal devices. We all know that a properly built PC is a careful dance of core temp, ambient temp, chassis temp – all at idle, mid and full load. We like to test for real-world conditions, especially for those lazy Sundays when the air-conditioning breaks and your PC whizzes away stuffed in a cabinet under a desk collecting large deposits of dust.  It’s our business to make sure our products run under the most grueling and sometimes strange environments.

Our lab guys were impressed with the Domino coolers they received. It was once thought that cost effective water cooling was impossible.  Unfortunately I cannot share any of the details from those tests as they are all still very cloak and dagger (considered as internal trade secrets), but to say the least, I was impressed that they – our thermal fellows – were impressed.  Now before I would ever give a “nod” to any product, I have to use and experience it first.

My hands on time with the Domino consisted of building out a new system based on AMD “Dragon” platform technology:

• Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P Motherboard
• ATI Radeon^TM HD 4890 discrete graphics
• Corsair DDR3 Ram 8G
• AMD Phenom^TM II X4 955 3.2GHz processor
• 3x Western Digital HDD Totaling 1 Terabyte
• Corsair HX1000W PSU
• Coolermaster Cosmos 1000
• CoolIT Domino A.L.C

Domino installed in my Dragon System

The setup was surprisingly easy; I fiddled with the brackets and little bolts until I got it right. It took just as long to install a Domino cooler as it did to fully install a PSU.

Once it was fully installed, I checked for leaks, cracks, breaks and/or other signs of water in my system prior to plugging it in and firing it up!

Water flowing through your PC is absolutely foreign to many and frankly most PC users.  Why would anyone in their right mind want to have a water contraption in their PC, the answer is quite simple, superior cooling!

Water cooling has always been very expensive, labour intensive and a little dodgy at times.  Horror stories of broken piping, reservoirs cracking and water leaking that swiftly destroys your entire PC have been whispered everywhere in the enthusiast community.  A costly breakdown to say the least!

The old adage was “Cost effective water cooling is impossible”, well, until now.

The Domino made a tremendous difference in the hot air being expelled from the back of my chassis, it’s no longer “hot”, it’s simply a mild warm.  This helps in a room full of PC’s and 2 giant monitors, trust me, personal comfort becomes paramount.

Domino's operations screen

When I did a play test, I used CoD WaW and saw the Domino report a temp of 99degrees, 2079 rpm fan speed and 3123rpm pump speed on medium.

I switched it to the high setting and saw a decrease in temp, but an increase in ambient noise. The Domino reported a temp of 94degrees, 2824rpm fan speed and 3105prm pump speed.

The increase in noise levelled off to something more than bearable, but regardless, I game with headphones so the increase in ambient noise doesn’t bother me.  I really liked the “beep” feature, it audibly lets you know when something has been changed or goes wrong.

The Domino does not seem to be intended for a DIY’er who makes lots of changes to her/his PC on a regular basis.  It seems better suited for the gamer or enthusiast who builds and uses their PC in that config for awhile.  How often do you really upgrade your mobo and CPU anyway, every 6months? 9months? 12months?

As I am not a reviewer, nor do I claim to be, I almost completely rely on the reviewer community to recommend or not recommend a product, here is what they have to say:

Maximum PC gave it a 9/10 in its June issue.

PCPRO

PCWorld

TechRadar

CPU3D

OverclockersClub

FiringSquad

LegitReviews

Bit-Tech

Almost unanimously reviewed positively and recommended.

If you are a gamer looking to add “H2O” to your system, the Cool-IT Domino is a good option.

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Microsoft, and those of us in the graphics business, have been openly talking about DirectX 11 for around a year now – in fact, to be honest we’ve been talking about it since even before Windows Vista shipped at the very end of 2006!  It takes a long time to put together a new version of DirectX and there are often tough decisions about what to leave out while finalizing any one version.  So we often agree that the parts which are being left out in the ‘current’ version will find their way into the next version. 

So let’s take a good look at what’s in DirectX 11.  I’m not going to go into painful technical detail; instead, I will try to look at the consequences of those technical details.  One important note, unlike DirectX 10, DirectX 11 isn’t tied to Windows 7, so those of you sporting a Windows Vista system will get to reap the rewards as well.

There are three main areas of impact in DirectX 11:

1.  A beast called the tessellator has been added which enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games. This is the change you’ll probably be most aware of. And it’ll show up when you look at the silhouettes of hills and mountains or the profiles of characters in games. Where artists previously had to trade off quality for performance, now artists will have the freedom to create naturalistic scenery. We’ve gotten used to seeing strangely blocky ears and noses on our opponents. But the new generation of games should allow those opponents to scare the heck out of us instead. The tessellator represents a natural next step in gaming hardware (in fact the Xbox 360 graphics chip that AMD designed already has a tessellator, and AMD graphics hardware has featured tessellator technology starting with the ATI Radeon^TM HD 2000 series right up to the latest ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000 series cards today).

[An example of tessellation giving characters more definition.]

2.  Games programmers will also be given a radically new way to program for AMD graphics chips. The second new beast in the menagerie is the excitingly named “Compute Shader”. It allows games programmers to treat the GPU in a much less graphics-oriented way; indeed, they can almost treat it like a highly parallel CPU. [The buzzword for this is "GPGPU" , see http://blogs.amd.com/play/2008/11/05/the-gpgpu-chronicles/ for details.]

Up until DirectX 10.1 a graphics programmer always had to think in terms of triangles – but the compute shader changes that and allows the programmer a much freer expression of their thoughts.  If you try to solve a problem of artificial intelligence or physics, you probably don’t think the problem through in terms of triangles.  So the compute shader is a more natural way for the programmer to approach his or her task.  On top of that it allows access to some of the features that would otherwise have been hidden away inside our present and future chips and for that reason it will often allow significantly more efficient implementations than heretofore (that means “higher frame rates” to you and me ).

3.  DirectX has been sliced and diced and the internals redesigned to ensure that it is much more efficient at using the horsepower present in multiple CPU cores. This will be a huge win on chips like our AMD Phenom^TM II quad and triple core processors [http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_15331_15332,00.html] and it will provide the opportunity for both higher frame rates and games which are more realistic, because they contain dramatically more detail.

There are numerous other, less important changes aimed to make the games programmer’s tasks easier.  Some so small that you’d have to be a games programmer to care, some (like improved texture compression) are big enough to help out significantly with performance in corner cases.

Quite often you get to hear rather bland but optimistic statements about the future versions of DirectX.  “It’ll be faster and better” – but you don’t get to hear much in the way of substantial justification.

This time around I hope it’s abundantly clear – I predict that:

• We’ll see higher frame rates because the way DirectX 11 uses CPUs will be more efficient.
• We’ll see higher frame rates because games developers will be able to use our GPUs more like CPUs.
• We’ll see smoother, more realistic characters and more realistic terrain as we move away from blocky polygonal representations to the kind that are used in movies.
• And a side-benefit, that will help PC gaming generally, is that the new version is easier to use, so it will help to keep game development costs down.

On top of that there’s something worth mentioning here about the evolution of computer graphics.  Every generation of DirectX has been designed to be an improvement upon the previous generation.  We always make a point of including all the old functionality (so that you can run any of your existing games).  This time is no exception; the nearest thing to DirectX11 is DirectX10.1.  And it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I can’t resist mentioning that this means that owners of ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000 series graphics have a distinct advantage, since AMD is the only major supplier of graphics chips that supports DirectX 10.1 http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd4800/index.html .  DirectX 10.1 is the closest you can get to DirectX 11 until Windows 7 ships.

When it does ship though, get ready for a significantly improved gaming experience thanks to the combination of DirectX 11 features enabled by phenomenal new DirectX 11 hardware from AMD.

Richard Huddy is Sr. Manager Developer Relations 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.

With 2 months of ATI Catalyst^TM driver blogs under our belt, we are seeing a steady engagement from you guys in the community via this blog site.  Please keep up the comments and suggestions and we will endeavor to answer as many as we can.  So, without further ado – let me introduce ATI Catalyst 9.5!

Please report all driver related issues here. 

*If you are having technical issues with your graphics card or are in need of driver support, please use the proper channels to submit those issues here.*

Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5 – Unified Microsoft WHQL certified graphics driver for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista®

WHQL is the word of the month for this blog; AMD was the first to introduce a fully certified single unified WHQL approved graphics driver for Windows® 7 and Windows Vista®.  By meeting Microsoft’s WHQL certification requirements in ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5 driver for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista, we clearly showcase our continued focus on delivering an extremely stable and robust Win 7 experience.  First to market is important, but best to market first is how we roll at AMD in terms of graphics driver support for new operating systems.  AMD led the market with early support for Vista and now continues that graphics driver leadership with the launch of Catalyst 9.5.

All ATI Radeon^TM GPU users with an ATI Radeon HD 4000, 3000 and 2000 series product will enjoy WHQL certified support under Win 7 with ATI Catalyst 9.5.

Marketing sound bite: ATI Stream update:

<Insert Drum roll here please>

The comments section of my blog has been filled for 2 months with questions on when we were going to deliver 64-bit support for ATI AVIVO^TM technology under Windows Vista, today is the day!

With today’s release of ATI Catalyst 9.5 a number of issues that you may have previously experienced using the ATI Video Converter have been resolved! Also, ATI AVIVO technology is now supported under Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit.

Using ATI Stream technology, users of ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of new optimizations in this video conversion tool (found in ATI Catalyst^TM Control Center Basic View) for a better experience when transcoding video files.

Game Optimizations: ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5

One of the items I want to cover each month is optimizations in games and highlighting those for you in this blog; now, I want to be honest and upfront, I intend to highlight the top games and/or optimizations but not all of them! All of the details and minutia are listed in the release notes of each ATI Catalyst Driver and that can be viewed here.

 For this month the highlights are:

• Unigine Tropics DirectX® 9 – enables performance gains for single GPU and ATI CrossFireX^TM configurations with anti-aliasing enabled. 
• Company of Heroes - enables performance gains for both single GPU and ATI CrossFireX^TM configurations. 
• BattleForge- enables performance gains for ATI CrossFireX^TM configurations. 

 And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI Catalyst^TM 9.5

No new features this month but a host of fixes included in this month’s release.

See you next month!

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

Recently I got my mitts on a DV2 and I thought I’d have some fun gaming with it.  Now you may not consider the HP Pavilion dv2 a “gaming” notebook, but hold that thought for a few moments…

My HP Pavilion dv2 config as given to me was:

AMD Athlon™ Neo Processor @ 1.6Ghz

ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3410 Premium Graphics

DDR2 – 2G

12.1” Screen

3.8lbs

External BluRay

HDMI output

And a whole lotta coolness

As stated above and as clearly obvious from the specs, there is no dual or quad core cpu, no high-end GPU (let alone ATI CrossfireX™ technology), no 20” screen. So all in all, not a normal spec’d gaming notebook, BUT, that has never stopped me before and it won’t this time!  Let’s load this little badboy up with some tier1 PC games and see how it handles.

Let’s level set though, this notebook is beautiful, its sleek and stylish, has good mainstream battery life and (as of the writing of this blog) is the only comparable laptop in its class under $750 (after a limited time $50 Mail-in rebate), BUT, I believe some mainstream consumers might want to game on it from time to time so this blog is solely a service to them (and to us enthusiasts who love to see silicon sweat under load).

On tap today is Left4Dead, Tom Clancys H.A.W.X and CoD WaW! A tough bunch of games, no Pong or Tetris here folks!

Left4Dead was played @800x480 2x AA, 4X AF, Shader Detail – High, Effect Detail – Low, Texture Detail – High!

L4D

The gaming experience was fantastic; especially when I reminded myself that this was an inexpensive Ultrathin Notebook weighing under 4lbs and that I was playing on a super portable platform.  The game play dropped below 30FPS a couple times but if this actually reduced or impacted game play I could have simply reduced the quality settings to adjust, but even at lower FPS, it was a good experience.

Tom Clancys H.A.W.X is a newly released game from Ubisoft which is one of 2009’s best Flight Sims.  I loaded up the Demo and put the little HP Dv2 to the ultimate flying test!  Seeing as how Ubisoft “recommends” a dual core AMD processor, I was a little apprehensive, but in the end, the Dv2 shined again. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 inside the Dv2 delivered a great gaming experience at native resolution and the other settings were: 1280x800 – Environment – Low, Texture – High – HDR – Off.

Here is a video capture of the gaming experience on the HP dv2:

A zombie shooter and a flight sim pwned, what was next? My failsafe, CoD WaW! I know, I know, you are now “wincing,” expecting the game to beat the PC; the verdict is in, the Dv2 “got GAME!” I was almost knocked off my feet at the ability to play CoD WaW. Seriously, this is one mean little piece of innovation all wrapped up in an ultra thin chassis.

Xavier over at Notebooks.com captured some sweet video of his experience playing CoD WaW that is worth checking out!

A little nugget of info to pass along, my version of the Dv2 came with 40 preinstalled games, titles like Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile all the way to and including ZUMA Deluze and Wheel of Fortune.  While not first intended to be a gaming notebook, the HP Dv2 does not disappoint!

Buy here.

Check out what others are saying:

Pat Moorhead here and here

Pat Moorhead on Batterylife

Nigel Dessau

Notebooks.com

TGDaily

SLASHGEAR

PCMAG.com

Cheers,
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

The launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4770 card marks the first use of a 40nm processor on the desktop, and the fifth consecutive time that AMD has been first to launch graphics processors based on a new process node. Considering this track record, you would think getting to 40nm was a cakewalk, but that was not quite the case.  Being the first to 40nm was the result of some incredibly talented AMD people not settling for the status quo, but instead working tirelessly to deliver to you the best product they could. 

As a gamer, you may ask how this impacts you. The reality is that 40nm delivers a number of benefits, including:

More performance and better energy efficiency: AMD was able to improve performance-per-watt by more than 30% and lowered power consumption by 30 watts-a tremendous feat for our engineering team, thanks in large part to their tremendous experience in bringing high-performance graphics parts to market.¹

High performance gaming at incredibly affordable prices: Harnessing 40nm technology has helped AMD reduce prices and deliver advanced gaming and HD multimedia technologies at previously unheard of prices for the desktop market.  The ATI Radeon HD 4770 card launched this week with a suggested retail price of only $109 USD, with some add-in-board partners adding a limited-time $10 mail-in rebate -- resulting in launch prices as low as $99. As you can see, gamers are excited about the idea of ATI Radeon HD 4770 graphics.

Future products: Looking forward, 40nm processors are a big deal for both AMD and gamers.  We anticipate that the knowledge we’ve gained from our experience with the ATI Radeon HD 4770 product will enable AMD to generate even better yields and performance from our 2nd generation 40 nm parts.  For gamers, we expect this to result in widespread availability and good prices for these products.  When you combine that with the fact that the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series is the only top-to-bottom line of DirectX® 10.1 hardware available, and that all DirectX 10.1 features will be fully supported in Microsoft’s forthcoming DirectX® 11 API, it bodes well for AMD and our ability to continue to introduce leading technologies that help enable an excellent gaming experience.

Choosing to be first to deliver new technology before the competition has its challenges. In fact, the entire semiconductor industry has learned from experience that major architectural changes and process node transitions are best undertaken separately. There have been stories reporting 40nm manufacturing challenges and the reality is that 40nm was initially a difficult process technology, even more so because AMD was the first to try it. We mitigated our risks by strategically choosing the ATI Radeon HD 4770 as the first desktop product to make use of this new technology.  Not only is it a real product, with real-world dynamics, but it is based on the proven, stable and refined RV7xx graphics processor architecture. That fact helped us deliver an exceptional performer at an incredible price.

For AMD, working in the demanding and always changing semiconductor space, innovation is core to keeping our company and our industry moving forward to help us provide better products at greater value to businesses and consumers alike.  Between DirectX® 10.1 gaming support, high-performance GDDR5 memory and now 40 nm processors, I can’t remember another time in our industry where we could say we delivered so many industry firsts at such affordable prices.  As a gamer, that gets me excited.  Hopefully you are too, and like me, you’re excited to have reached 40.

¹ Comparing the ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 GPU to the ATI Radeon HD 4850 GPU

Simon Vivera is the product manager for the ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 GPU. 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.

Does your PC have overclock potential?  Our new AMD Phenom^TM II processors certainly do, and to showcase this I ventured over to our super secret lab buried deep inside the bowels of our Austin campus to prove the point!

Picture long hallways of unmarked doors, the hum of machinery, people milling about eyeing you up and down, wondering who you are and why you’re there.  Now imagine a dream job for an enthusiast, one where you have almost limitless access to silicon, hardware and time to hone your craft. This is the life of Pete Hardman, one of AMD’s in-house overclocking gurus!

Pete comes into work every day, passes through the “MI6″ type security barriers, enters his lab and proceeds to break records the world may never ever know about (at least that’s what he tells us)! All in a day’s work I say!

You may have seen some of the insane things we’ve done with Dragon platform technology and liquid helium, both at CES and with our friends in Finland. But for this blog we’re going to keep it simple and break down a ‘tried and true’ method for getting more performance out of your AMD Phenom II processor.

Check out his classy nameplate

Pete's work desk - a little unorthodox to say the least

Pete and I took the new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor and walked it through a proper overclocking methodology using AMD OverDrive^TM software*.  Here are the steps we went through in detail:

Overclocking 101

Step 1 – Figure out your goals, small increase or one shot big gain? Power efficiency, is it important? Going for a full system max overclcok? Find the limits?

Step 2 – Procure the right hardware and software.

Our test system:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition quad-core processor

ASUS M4879T Deluxe DDR3 Motherboard 

4G Corsair DDR3 Memory

ATI Radeon^TM HD4870 X2 GPU

Thermalrite Ultra 120 Extreme “TRUE”

2 – 120mm high volume fans

Software add-ons:

AMD OverDrive software

Maxon Cinebench benchmark R10

3DMark® 05 benchmark

CPU-Z

Step 3 – Prep system – thermal paste the CPU, mount your air cooling solution as per guidelines.  Keep the thermal paste to a nice thin amount; this will be beneficial once the heatsink is applied and pressure is added.

Step 4 – Power on system and boot to the OS – Install AMD OverDrive software*

Step 5 – Change frequency; make small incremental changes to the systems multiplier.

Once you have made your frequency multiplier changes, run a benchmark like Cinebench or 3DMark® to check for stability.  Adjust frequency using stock voltage first before increasing voltage.

Step 6 – Increase multiplier and redo step 5 until the benchmark does not complete.

Step 7 – Once you have established the ‘ceiling’ in terms of frequency at stock voltage, do a cold reset/reboot.

Step 8 – Now increase voltage; this should also be done incrementally. You need to know how the voltage scales with frequency. As you increase voltage, frequency should increase, but there is a limit where too much voltage will start to reduce frequency; this is the “Sweet Spot” – find it!

Step 9 – Make a small 50mv increase, now retry the benchmark at the same frequency you previously failed at.

Step 10 – Continue to increase frequency at the new voltage until you find a fail case (meaning your computer hangs or blue screens).

Step 11 – Once you have a fail case at the new frequency, increase the voltage another 50mv and redo Step 10

Step 12 – Once you have established a threshold on voltage and frequency, we now move to the Northbridge and we make those changes via BIOS

Step 13 – Restart and enter BIOS

Step 14 – Click on CPU/NB Frequency and make an increase; we went from 2G to 2.4G which is a large jump and ended up at 2.8Ghz.

Step 15 – Continue to make incremental increases until you have a fail.

Step 16 – Take the results from steps 5, 8 and 12 and put them all together into a total system overclock. CPU cores, Voltage and North Bridge frequency all overclocked to establish a high performing PC experience

Overclocking can be a lot of fun; I personally like to do a moderate overclock and leave my system at that performance level.  Pete, on the other hand, is pushing the boundaries of silicon every day.  Chances are you are wondering what frequency we ended at, well, the results may vary, and what Pete and I achieved may not be representative of what everyone can do.  With that caveat clearly stated, our final frequency was 4.2G on air without overclocking the memory.  Not bad considering we did not spend a lot of time tweaking, we simply followed the steps above that delivered a good 1 Ghz OC.

*And remember kids, AMD’s product warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, even when enabled via AMD OverDrive^TM software.

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.

The PC industry has many cool companies, lots of innovations and a ton of great people! One such company is Corsair, which I have worked with for many years. At their helm a very interesting, some say eccentric and down to earth personality – the one, the only, Andy Paul.

Andy Paul - CEO Corsair

Having known Andy for years, I thought it appropriate to ask him the hard memory questions that most enthusiasts never get the opportunity to ask.  Andy freely shared his wisdom, opinions, thoughts, intuitions and even a few wild predictions.

5 random Andy Paul facts:

1.   When I started my career, Intel was a leader in the memory world, microprocessors were 4 bit and the volume applications were washing machines

2.  I am from England; I have two English cars and two English dogs

3. I have a Degree in Physics from City University in London

4.  My wife, Lisa, is American and is a writer and a blogger

5.  I own a small vineyard and have been making wine for a few years

Andy in his Vineyard

Ian – Andy, first thanks for taking the time to do this for us and for the community, don’t worry I will be gentle.  Let’s kick this off by telling us the story of Corsair? How did it begin and where are you guys now?

Andy – Well Ian, this is probably before your time, but back in the early nineties, CPUs did not have onboard L2 Cache. So we started Corsair as a specialist supplier of L2 Cache modules to large OEMs. That was a great business for a while – until cache got moved onto the processor. Fortunately for us, at the same time, DRAM was transitioning from EDO to SDRAM, and we decided to jump into the DRAM market. We were one of the few suppliers in existence that understood that SDRAM required high speed circuit design and carefully controlled BOMs in order to perform well. We quickly developed a reputation for performance and stability, and we decided to build a company based on that reputation. Now Corsair is one of the most recognized brands out there for computer components, particularly among those who love performance hardware. We now sell not only memory, but power supplies and flash drives as well.

Ian – Corsair was born from humble beginnings; and speaking of memory, let’s dive into some questions from the community that I queried via Twitter and game.amd.com forums.  How do you think the transition from DDR2 to DDR3 memory is going?

Andy – It’s going quite well; this has been an easy transition for the customer. DDR3 has entered the market with no real compatibility problems or performance glitches. And, the cost of DDR3 has continued to trend downwards as expected. 4GB or even 6GB of DDR3 is now easily within the component budget for a typical system build. And we are hitting speeds of 2000 MHZ.

Recently the core i7 CPU has mainly been driving the volume of DDR3 in the enthusiast market but we expect the socket AM3 AMD Phenom™ II CPU with DDR3 to help the transition

Ian – Well, cost is always a factor in the PC industry. You mentioned that DDR3 cost is trending downward, which is great, what are the benefits and why should a gamer make the investment?

Andy – Well, as I mentioned before, cost on DDR3 really is not an issue so much any more. In fact, you can buy 6GB of premium, overclocked Corsair memory for less than $100. It’s the bargain of the century! For high performance, for ultimate bandwidth, and for compatibility with the future, you’ve got to go with DDR3.

However, DDR2 still meets the needs of most user applications.  At the moment the purchase choice isn’t really made at the RAM purchase level but at the system level.  If it’s a 65nm AMD Phenom processor or Core 2 Duo then it’s going to be configured with DDR2 motherboards and memory.  If a user goes with Core i7 or a new AMD Phenom II processor with DDR3, then he would pick a DDR3 motherboard and DDR3 memory.  The point is when you add up the cost of a high performance DDR3 system compared to a volume DDR2 solution, only a small premium will be from the memory.  So that’s not what drives the decision, it’s more about the overall system features.

Ian – I understand the bandwidth benefit but what about latency? Gamers demand lower latency and DDR2 delivers that. When will DDR3 catch up and when will it surpass DDR2 in terms of latency?

Andy – DDR3 has already passed DDR2 in terms of latency. Remember, latency is notated in clock cycles, but actually represents elapsed time. So, 1600MHz CAS-8 is actually LOWER latency (and thus, faster) than 800MHz CAS-5. Corsair’s fastest available part is 2000MHz CAS-7, which means that the latency is 3.5 nanoseconds. This is the same latency as 800MHz CAS-2.8 which of course does not exist! So, we have already seen this crossover.

Ian – As the trend towards more memory increases (I have 8G in my home system), is DDR3 better suited for denser memory? i.e. 2G or 4G memory sticks.  How do you see the memory piece of the PC puzzle working out?

Andy – DDR3 is not intrinsically higher density than DDR2. However, DDR3 is better suited for denser memory in that it is now the focus of development technology for memory. So, as fabs come up with new process geometries and new device densities, the development focus will be on DDR3, and DDR3 will be the first technology to market.

From a density standpoint, we see the sweet spot for memory being at least 6GB for three channel configurations, and at least 4GB for dual channel configurations. By the end of the year, I think many or most dual channel builds will transition to 8GB. Memory cost will continue to trend downwards, Windows 7 will be out there and applications programmers will produce applications and games that are designed to take advantage of 64-bit memory addressing.  Even now many of our customers are populating machines with 12G.

Ian -  Are there any memory trends on the horizon you think would have a cool geek factor?

Andy – Well, Corsair definitely has lots of products here and on the horizon which have serious geek appeal. And since we are the leaders here and others tend to copy what we do, I suppose the trends will follow!  Just one example of a cool enthusiast product we offer is a cooling system for memory which actually takes the memory BELOW ambient temperature. The technology is TEC based, but employs humidity and temperature sensors to keep the modules just ABOVE the dew point to avoid condensation.  Also, of course, our Dominator GT modules with racing red heat sinks and the world’s fastest performance are also very appealing to “geeks!”

Ian -  With PC ASP’s driving down to historical lows and in an extremely challenging economy, where do you see the PC industry going?

Andy – Well, Ian, being at AMD I suspect you have a better view of that than I do. My standpoint is heavily tilted towards the home system builder community. We still see a lot of activity but, combined as you might expect with some degree of fluctuation based on the economic uncertainty, as you might expect.  I would think that there will be a lot of fallout this year, especially with companies that lack premium features in their products, or companies without strong brands.

For component areas with a lot of suppliers, like memory, graphics cards, etc., I would expect to see the most casualties.  But the companies that continue to innovate and offer their customers features with good value will continue to do well.  What I do see is that with lower prices, most families now have multiple PCs; this doesn’t have to be a major family purchase anymore.  In fact the last cell phone I bought cost me more than the general purpose PC I just built, and I just put a small format 12V PC in my boat.  So I think there are plenty of opportunities for the market to continue to expand.

Of course it’s high graphics content games that really drive the performance market, and until those achieve TV level reality, I don’t think the market will slow down in terms of technological advancement.

PC Nav Station on Andy

PC under the berth

Ian – Make a wild prediction for enthusiasts and gamers?

Andy – I would expect that in 3 years from now, Corsair will be as well known for the cases and power supplies we make as for high performance memory.  Actually that’s not that wild is it? How about Intel merging with Nvidia?

Ian – Finally, is the story true about the Corsair business plan being figured out on a boat?

Andy – Yes, that is true. I used to spend almost every weekend sailing and racing boats. When a few of us got talking about starting a new company it seemed a good place to have the discussion, over a few beers I think.

That’s how the pirate name, Corsair, came into being.

Ian – Andy, thank you for your time; how can gamers and enthusiasts get more info on Corsair?

Andy – Well, at www.corsair.com, of course… as well on enthusiast forums, review sites, and blogs (like this one!), and at most computer component retailers worldwide…

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Andy Paul is CEO and President of Corsair Memory. His opinions are his own and may not represent those of AMD.

Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.