*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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.

 If you thought gaming was for dark rooms and late nights, you could not be more wrong!  As I wrote in this blog, I got my butt kicked in gaming by these twins, Athena and Athena Twin. Well, when WCG went looking for the top 12 gamers worldwide, it was no surprise that one of the twins would make the grade!

Athena (Amy Brady) earned herself a trip to the WCG Gamers House as 1 of 12 of the best gamers in the world! So, here is how it works, think WoW meets Survivor or Big Brother meets Fear Factor.

Photo courtesy of World Cyber Games (WCG)

 The first episode aired on Sci-fi and has been a huge hit!

Did you jump to the conclusion that 12 gamers would be sitting around playing games and being judged on who played those games the best??

NOPE!

This is true reality TV, they LIVED the games. The first episode had a tag of “Are you ready to ROCK”?  Rockband was on the menu, but not with plastic instruments in front of a PC monitor, the contestants donned real instruments (even though they were not musicians) and played in front of a live audience as a real rockband! Sound interesting, well, it was sort of like watching a car wreck in slow motion, which made for good entertaining TV! This ain’t American Idol!

 How do they top real life RockBand, well, enter Virtua Fighter 5 and a whole lot of whining and drama! Episode 2 was all about “Kicking and Screaming”!

<would insert pic of the whiney pre-Madonna here but legal edited it out>

 Check out Athena stomping the episode ending challenge and dominating VF5!

Episode 3 encompasses a theme of “Shut up and Drive”, this is sort of self explanatory! Project Gotham Racing 4 (PGR4)

Crazy gamers behind the wheel of a car driving like stuntmen! It’s all about the DRIFT!!

And last week’s episode was all about “Move it or Lose it”! Are you all familiar with this massively popular Youtube dance video, well, lessons could have been learned!

Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3 is not for the faint of heart OR public broadcast in my opinion!

Seriously, bringing gaming to “Real-Life” is utterly entertaining! Especially when the gamers don’t expect it!

Episode 5 proves to be another explosive event, boasted as being “Things get Explosive”!

Photo courtesy of World Cyber Games (WCG)

 Athena is a gaming rockstar and holds her own in this reality series as well! Now, the overall winner is not known yet, as its only 4 episodes in, so keep checking it out!

Next episode Tuesday night April 7, 2009 on Sci-Fi channel or online @ www.wcgultimategamer.com for full episodes!

Check out Athenas blog here.

WCG Site  is where you can find episodes, previews, commentary, and behind the scenes footage and more behind the scenes here

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.

Twist my arm, unreleased GPU meets, unreleased CPU meets unreleased Microsoft OS! When I was asked to build out a totally “unreleased product” PC and experience/blog on the tremendous gaming capabilities of such a system, I was all over it!

First things first, collect all the necessary components; as you can imagine this is a very easy task at AMD.

Components – CHECK

Chassis – Antec Skeleton (as this is easy to do quick uninstalls and reinstalls)

Birthplace – yes, we are human, even though we work and live in grey cubes

Lifting the veil!

Motherboard – Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P (AM3)

Memory – 8G Corsair XMS3 DHX DDR3 1333

CPU – Unreleased AMD Phenom™ II Quad Core (3.2Ghz)

GPU – ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 OC (unreleased at the time, available today)

OS – A super secret version of Windows 7

CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4 quad core running at a stock frequency of 3.2Ghz, this CPU is scheduled to be available sometime in Q2.

The GPU is a third generation DirectX10.1 graphics card that is powered by the most powerful gaming GPU under $2601.. Availability of this GPU is April 2nd worldwide (today) and I was excited to test it early!

Some of the specs to the GPU are:

Compute Power – 1.36 TFLOPS

Core Clock Speed – 900 Mhz

Memory – GDDR5

Frame Buffer – 1G

Memory Bandwidth – 124.8 GB/s

Transistors – 959 million

Stream Processors – 800

On to the gaming experience.

Home office and test area – Yes, that is Tweetdeck open, yes that is an HP dv2 on the left and yes that is an Optimun Prime helmet beside my Master Chief helmet! Me=Geek

Just for clarity, I installed a really mature version of Windows 7 as the OS to go with the ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 software driver that we just released. This excluded me from using AMD Overdrive™ for overclocking2 or Fusion Gaming Utility3 as I did not have time to fully test these apps on Win7 (rest assured we’ll get to those in other blogs). Not to mention, I really wanted to give you a sense of the coolest gaming PC build possible!!!

If you have read any of my previous posts, you will quickly come to realize that I love Call of Duty 4: World at War, Left 4 Dead and F.E.A.R.2. These were my games of choice. As you can clearly see above, I hooked them up to one of my 30” DELL monitors and cranked all the game settings to the max. It was simply beautiful, truly cinematic HD gaming.

L4D, killing zombies on a 22” screen is boring, killing zombies while rendering with an HD4890 on a 30” screen was scary!! I have never been so stressed out while gaming (minus my first time playing DOOM).

Did I mention the system was almost silent, it was cool and quiet!

F.E.A.R. 2, can’t say I’m tired of playing the first few levels of this game, especially on such a massive screen with so much horsepower!Between the CPU and GPU, F.E.A.R 2 purred along at 2560×1600 without a hitch, flicker or anomaly! It was the way the game was meant to be played! (no pun intended here)

Did I mention the system was almost silent, it was cool and quiet!

The experience of CoD4 WaW was awe-inspiring! Nothing like running into a fox hole – gun a’blazin’ (or in this case, flame thrower a’flamin’) without the distraction of load times or annoying interruptions from hitches and flickers!

Did I mention the system was almost silent, it was cool and quiet!

If you are a hard core gamer looking for the best GPU value in the market – and when I say value I do not mean cheap or thrifty, I mean hardnosed best product for the money – the ATI Radeon HD 4890 needs to be a consideration! Market leading performance, exceptional price AND actual availability on launch day! No PR gimmicks here folks, no paper launches, no “ball and cup” games, just innovative product, with industry leading features built by gamers for gamers!

Don’t take my word for it; here are some very reputable 3rd party review sites to verify my experience!

“Editor’s choice Enthusiast Gold Award”

Mark Warner, Brent Justice, HardOCP

“Bon” Award (performance 4/5, features 4/5)

“It is hardly known if the GTX 275 will be available in volume or at the price promised”

Clubic.com (France)

“It is not a completely new design, but the Radeon HD 4890 is an exciting product nonetheless. To put it simply, the Radeon HD 4890 is the fastest, single-GPU powered graphics card AMD has ever produced. And its competitive pricing and overclocking headroom should further its appeal amongst enthusiasts.”

“HotHardware Recommended Award”

Marco Chiappetta, HotHardware.com

Now, I need to get back to gaming on this beautiful piece of engineering…until next blog!

(BTW: I respond to most all comments personally, catch me here or on Twitter)

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

1 Internal calculations show that the ATI Radeon HD 4890 delivers 1.36 TFLOPs of raw compute power. Third-party testing shows that the fastest competing GPU, the GeForce GTX 280 graphics processor, delivers 1.06 TFLOPs of raw compute power. http://www.gpureview.com/GeForce-GTX-285-card-605.html.

2 AMD product warranty does not cover damage caused by performance tuning, even when enabled using AMD software.

3 THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING

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.

• AMD Phenom™ II X3 720 Black Edition (2.8GHz)
• Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H (AMD 790GX-based mobo)
• ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 X2 (single card without ATI CrossFireX™ technology enabled)
• 4G Corsair Memory DDR2
• 150G WD HDD
• Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit

The test system

WEI and 3DMark System Specs

After the install and boot up was complete, I did what ALL gamers should do (on a monthly basis) and updated my ATI Catalyst^TM GPU software drivers… The idea of triple core was a novel approach for CPUs, normally, or better, historically we (the industry) went from 1…2…4… etc, always in multiples of 2x. AMD broke this trend as we had the world’s first native quad-core processor for desktop PCs which allowed us to offer the market a triple-core processor. The significance of this is that now consumers had more choice, OEMs and the channel had more differentiation and AMD offered a product that its competitor could not replicate. But I digress, moving on to gameplay. The FarCry 2 play test:

DELL 30" monitor displaying FC2

I loaded a fresh copy of FarCy 2 and proceeded to crank the settings: 2560×1600, AA 4x, DirectX10 (would have elected DirectX10.1 if available) all other settings were on High or Ultra High. The load time was quick; the game play was smooth, no hitches, no visible issues, a solid great experience. The GPU did not have ATI CrossfireX^TM technology enabled as I wanted to play the game with the equivalent of a performance mainstream card such as the ATI Radeon HD 4870. The picture above does not do the experience justice but it looked beautiful, 30 inches of monitor in all its splendor powered by a $145 CPU, unbelievable. But, it’s not a magic trick; I played a few more games to make sure this experience was not an anomaly.

Crysis - Advanced settings on HIGH, 1600x1200 AA 4x - picture taken right before I died

The AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition was a champ, the game experiences were awesome, and why is that you ask? The answer is quite simple, the system I built was a balanced system, I invested more in graphics, which allowed me to have the ultimate gaming experience while not having to invest in a $1000 CPU. Oh, did I mention that these processors are DDR3 AND DDR2 capable, meaning you can use them in your existing AM2+ socket motherboard as an upgrade OR in our new AM3 DDR3 socket motherboards. One of the things I give AMD huge credit for is their continued support of past generation infrastructure, this means cheaper alternatives for consumers and gives YOU the gamer the choice when you want to upgrade.

Enemy Territory-Quake Wars, All settings on HIGH, Shader Lvl Ultra and AA 8x

The old school belief was that to get the best PC experience, one must invest as much as possible in the CPU; this is now a myth, tales of long ago, fallacy, make believe! Don’t believe the Blue hype in the market, you can have a brilliant multi-core gaming experience with overclockability for less than $145. This little triple-core processor is proof of that!¹ The GPU and the chipset have become vital decisions when building a PC, the old adage of “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” holds true in PCs today. I was thoroughly impressed with this product, especially when you take into account its price point, its headroom and the market leading chipsets it gets slotted into. Harness a system like this with the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility² and the AMD OverDrive software and you have the makings of a fantastic mainstream gaming system. Check out these 3^rd party reviews to see for yourself: Bjorn 3D: “Phenom 2 X4 940 BE, X4 810 & X3 720 BE

”

• AWARD:  “Seal of Approval”

HardOCP: “Phenom II Gets Affordable with DDR3 & AM3 ”

• AWARD: “Editors Choice Gold Award”

Firing Squad: AMD’s AM3 CPUs: Phenom II X4 810 and Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Hot Hardware: AMD Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720 BE Processors Also check out this video and these photos.

¹AMD warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, even when using AMD OverDrive™ software.

² THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING 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.