Posts tagged with 3D
Real-time Gaming from the Cloud
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 5:33 PM
(8 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)
Loading ...Will we soon game from the Cloud?
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!
Finding the processor that fits you – maybe dual core is jusssttt riiight
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 2:38 PM
Look carefully at these 2 processors before buying anything else!
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 PhenomTM II X2 550 Black Edition and the AMD AthlonTM II X2 250 processors.
The press release reads as such:
“AMD AthlonTM II processor delivers new native dual-core architecture, efficient 45nm technology and 3 GHz performance at an affordable price –
AMD PhenomTM 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 PhenomTM 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 PhenomTM II quad-core processors.
The AMD AthlonTM 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:
| Gaming | Gaming+Video | Video + TV | Photo+Music | Heavy Video Editing | Overclocking | ||
| Dual Core | Quad Core | Triple Core | Dual Core | Quad Core | Quad Core |
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.”
“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.”
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.”
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.
ATI Catalyst 9.6 Driver – Everything you want to know
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 1:51 PM
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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:
|
AMD Phenom II 940 (3.0GHz) processor |
|
Asus M3A79-T(790) |
|
4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-18 |
|
Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit |
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.
Water Cooling – Are you nuts?
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 12:27 PM
Does the CoolIT Domino make the grade?
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 RadeonTM HD 4890 discrete graphics
- Corsair DDR3 Ram 8G
- AMD PhenomTM 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.
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.
Why we should get excited about DirectX 11
Posted by Richard Huddy in 7:33 PM
As an admitted gaming technology geek, it’s hard not to get excited about the advancements in game technology. As many of you know, DirectX 11 is just around the corner, offering a dazzling array of new toys for game developers and people like me to play with. But as excited as the developer in me is about DirectX 11, I’m even more excited as a gamer, and you should be too. That’s because DirectX 11, in combination with new graphics hardware, and in some cases Windows 7, brings significant changes to the computing experience, changes that mean upcoming games and other applications are about to get a lot better. Let me explain how.
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 RadeonTM HD 2000 series right up to the latest ATI RadeonTM 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 PhenomTM 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 RadeonTM 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.
ATI Catalyst 9.5 Driver – Everything you want to know
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 1:49 PM
Do you regularly update your graphics drivers?
With 2 months of ATI CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 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 CatalystTM 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 RadeonTM 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 AVIVOTM 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 CatalystTM Control Center Basic View) for a better experience when transcoding video files.
Game Optimizations: ATI CatalystTM 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 CrossFireXTM configurations with anti-aliasing enabled.
- Company of Heroes - enables performance gains for both single GPU and ATI CrossFireXTM configurations.
- BattleForge- enables performance gains for ATI CrossFireXTM configurations.
And last but surely not least, my favorite community: Linux® ATI CatalystTM 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.
HP Pavilion dv2- Does it have game
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 11:49 AM
Does an Ultrathin Notebook ‘got GAME?’
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!
Check out what others are saying:
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.
Hitting 40 has never felt this good
Posted by Guest Blogger in 6:25 PM
The number 40 gets a bad rap. We’ve all heard the age-related jokes about being “over the hill” or “on the way” out when someone turns 40, but in the world of graphics processors, there’s nothing better. In fact, if you’re not 40, you wish you were. Of course I’m referring to 40 nanometer process technology -- the latest, greatest process node for graphics processors, and one that AMD is once again first to bring to market in the form of the new ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 graphics card launched this week.
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.
The Inside Scoop on Corsair’s Andy Paul and DDR3
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 11:28 AM
Memory Guru and owner/founder of Corsair Andy Paul on the PC Industry
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.
ATI Catalyst™ 9.4 Driver – Everything you want to know
Posted by Ian McNaughton in 2:04 PM
Do you regularly update your graphics drivers?
Hot on the heels of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 launch complete with astounding reception from journalists, customers, gamers and winning over 40 awards to date, Terry Makedon and his team have a Catalyst update to launch as well! The ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 driver was only released 22 days ago, so don’t expect a lot of optimizations, but the driver team has built in a few goodies for ATI Catalyst 9.4 that are worth the update.
[NOTE: Some readers took advantage of my last blog to raise some driver support issues - I wanted to remind readers that this blog is not meant as a driver support page, and ALL driver support issues should be communicated through the proper channels so we can capture them correctly and fix the issues. So please report all driver related issues here. I am happy to read and comment on some of them that you feel are relevant to this blog, but no support will be given via this blog, sadly I am not a driver engineer!]
Marketing sound bite: ATI Catalyst™ 9.4 - New ATI OverDrive™ auto-tuning application*
ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive™ auto-tune application finds over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive supported ATI Radeon™ Graphics accelerators. This new added support is designed for the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series of GPUs.
We work hard to deliver the best platform solutions that consist of CPU and GPU. As the only company in the industry that can deliver both we have the unique opportunity to develop free software to optimize performance across AMD-based platforms.
I don’t think we say enough about our gaming software, here are links to download all of our recent applications:
- AMD Fusion for Gaming Utility*
- AMD Overdrive Software*
- ATI Catalyst™9.4 Drivers with ATI OverDrive™ auto-tuning application*
Some of the other notable highlights in ATI Catalyst 9.4 are that this driver is optimized for the upcoming highly anticipated game The Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena. Catalyst 9.4 also supports the new ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 as well as fixes a load of bugs; please check out the release notes for full details.
And last but surely not least, my favorite community: ATI Catalyst™ 9.4 for Linux
We will have support (once the driver is available on or about April 17th) for new operating systems:
- RHEL 5.3 production support
- Ubuntu 9.04 early look support
So, what does this all really mean to you, the gamer? It is further commitment to the enthusiast community that overclock or want the ability to tweak their systems.* That is, you own an AMD processor and an ATI Radeon GPU, you will be enabled to have a superior PC experience with our gaming software products, and of course, if you are a Linux user, a broader set of platform support.
See you next month!
Cheers!
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
*AMD product warranty does not cover damage caused by performance tuning, even when enabled using AMD software.
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.