AMD releases new Catalyst 9.9

Written by Slobodan Simic

Monday, 14 September 2009 11:53

A few minor tweaks AMD has released a new version of its Catalyst driver, the 9.9. The new driver supports Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000 and HD 4000 series card and only features some minor tweaks. The new driver doesn’t bring any new features and even the new .inf file doesn’t include the new HD 5800 series card that should come out on September 22/23rd, depending on the region. It looks like the next Catalyst driver is the important one as the 9.9 brings anti-aliasing support for Ghostbusters game, ATI CrossfireX for Resident Evil 5 and a fix for graphics corruption in Sims 3 game. The rest of the new tweaks include fix for CCC which now responds properly after exiting quick adjust video settings, edge enhancement and de-noise sliders in Catalyst Control Center which no longer lags or appear out of sync with mouse movement, proper HDMI detection as DTV (HDMI) instead of DTV (DVI) when the HDMI display is hot-plugged for the first time and some minor tweaks with Cyberlink’s MediaShow Espresso after transcoding process. The rest of the bug fixes and tweaks can be found in release notes here where you can also find the driver as well.

AMD 890FX launch is April 2010

Written by Fuad Abazovic

Monday, 24 August 2009 10:12

Quarter+ delay AMD has internally delayed its 890FX chipset. Even though samples should be available in September time, initial production won’t start before January 2010. This looks like a whole quarter delay to us, but if all goes well AMD hopes for mass production in February 2010. The launch is now planned for April, which is surprising as Cebit was usually the time when AMD launched its chipset, and Cebit usually takes place in the first week of March. The VP of chipsets at AMD Phil Eisler went to Nvidia and this might cause some changes in the company’s chipset strategy but overall, AMD won’t really have any new CPUs until this time either. The 32nm AMD quad-cores are expected in mid-2010, if all goes as planned. Currently AMD calls this chipset AMD 890FX, while the official brand is still to be decided. It might very well end up as 890FX. source: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15177/1/

PCI Express 3.0 delayed

Written by Nick Farrell

Friday, 21 August 2009 09:16

Will not be in the shops until 2011 PCI SIG has decided to delay the release of the PCI Express 3.0 specification until the second quarter of 2010. This means that any products that will ship with the new specification won’t be released until 2011 According to PC Magazine. PCI Express 3.0 was supposed to be released this year, with products due about a year after the spec’s release, or in 2010. Al Yanes, the president of the SIG said that there were problems getting backward compatibility with current PCI Express standards, such as the older PCI Express 1.0 and PCI Express 2.0. He said that while PCI gen 3 providing so much more capabilities but with the need to be still backwards-compatible it was taking longer than expected. Most of the delays are tied to verifying products in the lab. However the standard boffins have managed to move the 8-bit and 10-bit encoding schemes to 128-bit and 130-bit encoding. However the real trick was to enable the proper encoding schemes at the three speeds used by the three PCI Express versions: 2.5-GHz, 5.0-GHz, and the new 8.0-GHz speed. Apparently most of the members in the standards group were happy with the delay. source: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15159/1/

AMD officially launches Catalyst 9.8

Written by Slobodan Simic

Tuesday, 18 August 2009 10:03

CrossfireX performance and OpenGL 3.1 After releasing it few days early at Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton’s AMD blog, AMD has now officially released its new Catalyst 9.8 version. The new driver brings some CrossfireX performance gains in various games, as well as OpenGL 3.1 support. The games that will see a performance boost in CrossfireX modes include Battleforge, Company of Heroes, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Farcry, World in Conflict and Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., all in DirectX 10 mode and with gains from 5 to 77 percent depending on the game. The new Catalyst 8.9 also brings support for OpenGL 3.1 which includes 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), texture buffer objects (GL ARB texture buffer object), rectangular textures (GL ARB texture rectangle), uniform buffer objects (GL ARB uniform buffer object), and some other various OpenGL 3.1 related topics. You can find the new driver and full release notes here. source: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15091/1/

Catalyst 9.8 out, boosts CrossFireX with AMD chipsets

by Cyril Kowaliski — 5:09 PM on August 14, 2009

AMD has released a new set of Catalyst graphics drivers, and there’s a twist. The drivers shouldn’t hit the AMD Game website until Monday, but AMD marketing chief Ian McNaughton has posted links to them on his blog.

You can grab the drivers right now for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 in their 32-bit and 64-bit variants. We can’t link the actual files, though; some sort of anti-leeching technology is afoot. (Oh, and we were asked not to post hard links, too.)

AMD tells us the drivers deliver “enhancements specific to Performance Platforms that improve system performance in CPU bound situations.” What does that mean? Well, using a system based on the Dragon platform (so Phenom II, 790GX, and Radeon HD 4800 graphics), the company says it measured considerable gains with multi-GPU configurations running at resolutions of 1680×1050 and higher.

Purportedly, performance can increase by as much as 50% in Far Cry 2, and you can also expect meaty gains in Battleforge, Company of Heroes, Crysis, H.A.W.X., S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and World in Conflict. AMD notes that the gains apply to both conventional CrossFire setups and the single-board Radeon HD 4870 X2.

source:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17418

AMD 785G chipset launches tomorrow

AMD 785G chipset launches tomorrow

Written by Fuad Abazovic

Monday, 03 August 2009 11:07

Windows 7 DX10.1 ready AMD is about to launch its new IGP chipset simply called AMD 785G. The new chipset should have exceptional Windows 7 mainstream PC performance and of course it still has DirectX 10.1 support. A DirectX 11 IGP is still far away and we don’t expect it before sometime next year. The graphics in the AMD 785G is based on the RV620 core. It has 40 shaders and it will be branded as ATI Radeon HD 4200, something that we wrote about many moons ago. The GPU supports DirectX 10.1, UVD 2 GPU enabled and ATI Stream technology for faster video transcoding and application performance, when supported. The new chipsets brings DisplayPort support to chipset as well as HDMI 1.3 and the board is going to be accepted by many partners. It supports AM3 / AM2+socket and many Athlon and Phenom CPUs in both DDR2 and DDR3. Officially it launches tomorrow, August 4th.

Catalyst 9.6 is out

Written by Fudzilla staff

More performance, more Linux support AMD has released the latest Catalyst incarnation, and 9.6 brings us several performance tweaks as well as improved Linux support. Here’s what AMD is promising in terms of improved performance: 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 dual CrossFire 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. Our favorite Scotsman, AMD’s Ian McNaughton says his favorite community is the Linux community, and it also got a treat, in the guise of SLED and SLED 11 production support and RHEL 4.8 early look support. You can find the full release notes here, and you can download the new drivers here. http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14238/1/

New Catalyst 9.4 ready for download

Written by Slobodan Simic

Brings new auto-tune in Overdrive As promised, AMD has released its new Catalyst driver, version 9.4. The new driver supports all the cards in the ATI Radeon HD 2000, 3000 and 4000 series, as well as ATI’s 3000 IGP series. Beside some minor fixes in Windows Vista, XP and 7, the new driver comes with a new ATI Overdrive auto-tune application designed for the Radeon HD 4000 series cards. The new auto-tune application in Overdrive is part of the ATI Catalyst Control Center. As you probably already know, ATI Overdrive auto-tune application is used to determine the best overclocked GPU and memory values. The new auto-tune is designed for the Radeon HD 4000 series cards. The new driver fixes some flicker issues in Crossfire with WOW and WOW: Wrath of the Lich King, Google Sketchup no longer displays blank screen, resolutions above 1,024×768 will have proper full screen for specific HDMI displays and artifacts in Age Of Conan DX10 are fixed. The new driver also fixes CAL driver, Overlay Theater Mode corruption after enabling 3D screen saver and OS display setting for Component Video under Windows XP, as well as bunch of issues under Windows 7 which include fix for City of Villains which now redraws correctly after changing graphics settings. It also fixes some component video mode issues, custom format modes, issues with diplay profiles restore after system sleep, jitter and flicker issues in WinDVD9 HD playback, and errors in device manager after express driver uninstall. The new Catalyst 9.4 driver can be downloaded here, while you can check out the full release notes here

ATI finally releases its Catalyst 9.1

Written by Slobodan Simic

Updated: Full OpenGL 3.0 support ATI has finally decided to release a newest version of its Catalyst driver pack, the Catalyst 9.1. The new Catalyst 9.1 supports almost all cards since the 9500, R300 model time and the only new feature is the full OpenGL 3.0 support. ATI’s Catalyst 9.1 comes with v8.573 graphics driver. The new driver pack does fix a lot of bugs and issues but unfortunately we can’t see any performance gains noted in the release notes. According to the tests over at Ati-forum.de website, there is some gain in Crysis, FarCry 2 and 3DMark Vantage, but nothing serious as you get just a single frame per second more. The more interesting fact is that the power consumption was a tad bit higher with a new driver. You can download the new Catalyst 9.1 here and you can check out the release notes here. We are happy to report that it fixes some of the instabilities that we had with 8.12 drivers. Update: The new Catalyst 9.1 also brings some interesting new features to Linux platforms, including Hybrid CrossFireX support for AMG 780G/780D and an ATI Radeon HD 3400 and ATI Radeon HD 2400 series graphics accelerator, support for Ubuntu 8.10, MultiView support under Linux, as well as the full OpenGL 3.0 support with all the OpenGL 3.0 extensions listed in Catalyst 9.1 release notes.

Noctua offers free mounting kit for Intel Core i7

Vienna, October 27th 2008 – Noctua today announced the impending
availability of a new mounting kit which makes it possible to install
Noctua CPU coolers on Intel’s upcoming Core i7 processors for socket
LGA1366. The new SecuFirm2™ mounting kit is compatible with all Noctua
CPU coolers since 2005 and will be supplied to Noctua users free of
charge after uploading a proof of purchase on Noctua’s website.

“We always strive to provide premium quality service for premium quality
products and we like to think of our coolers as safe long-term
investments”, explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. “That’s why we’ve
decided to stick to our policy of providing mounting kits free of charge
with the new LGA1366 socket so that our customers can continue to use
their coolers on the new Core i7 CPUs.”

SecuFirm2™ doesn’t only ensure the same degree of security Noctua’s
SecuFirm™ mounting systems have become renowned for, but also makes it
easier than ever before to install a Noctua cooler. Designed to combine
outstanding reliability, optimal contact pressure and easy,
straightforward installation, SecuFirm2™ is an enthusiast-grade mounting
system that meets the highest demands in safety, performance and
ease-of-use.

The new SecuFirm2™ mounting kit is backwards compatible with all Noctua
CPU coolers since 2005 and will be available free of charge via Noctua’s
website as soon as Core i7 mainboards and CPUs are in store. A proof of
purchase (photo, scan or screenshot of the invoice) of both a Noctua CPU
cooler and either a socket 1366 mainboard or socket 1366 CPU will be
required. In addition, the new mounting kit will be available for
purchase at a low service charge via selected resellers.

About Noctua
Noctua comes from a cooperation between the Austrian Rascom
Computerdistribution Ges.m.b.H and the Taiwanese Kolink International
Corporation and has a development partnership with the Austrian
Institute of Heat Transmission and Fan Technology (Österreichisches
Institut für Wärmeübertragung und Ventilatorentechnik, ÖIWV). These
connections form the key to the development of sound-optimised premium
components “Designed in Austria“: The partnership with the ÖIWV permits
the application of latest technology in methods of scientific
measurement instrumentation, calculation and simulation in the R&D
process. Rascom’s long, customer-orientated experience in developing and
distributing sound-optimised high-end components ensures a clear focus
on the users’ needs. The use of Kolink’s advanced manufacturing
technology and ultra-modern production plants allows Noctua to
efficiently implement its technical edge and provide solutions of the
highest standard in quality and performance to the customer.

Links
Details:
http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=23&lng=en
Photos: http://www.noctua.at/inc/imageviewer.php?item=23&pnr=0

Nvidia wants 3-way SLI with PhysX

Written by Lars-Göran Nilsson

Does anyone else care? Another interesting slide we’ve seen consists of various scenarios for 3-way SLI with a side of PhysX power in a seven slot motherboard and according to it, Nvidia is hoping users will go for three dual slot graphics card and a fourth single slot card for physics acceleration. It seems like Nvidia has managed to incorporate PhysX to a fairly decent level into its products by now, although believe the performance can still be vastly improved with some more time to tweak the CUDA integration. We’re still waiting for the killer application that will make people go “oh, ah” etc. but it seems like we’ll have to wait a wee bit longer until this happens. It’s also likely that Nvidia will have to wait for people to spend more money on extra cards until this happens. It’s the whole chicken/egg effect and no-one is really going to care about hardware accelerated PhysX performance until there’s a game out there that really takes advantage of it. However, we’re not sure about this whole three graphics cards plus PhysX thing. Wasn’t PhysX supposed to lower the processing demands? In saying that, it’ll do nothing to help crunch polygons and maybe that’s where Nvidia needs the extra cards so that they can keep on top of AMD.

Nvidia plans SLI 2

Written by Fuad Abazovic

A new brand Nvidia plans to launch a new brand and it will simply call it SLI 2. Like the logic implies SLI 2 will be better than SLI and it will actually mean you will have more than one graphic card rendering your graphic and an additional card to do your PhysX. SLI 2 = SLI + PhysX and this cannot be more simplified. We don’t know when will this launch but the new driver that supports PhysX is finally out so any board with three PCI express slots should be able to cope with this new SLI 2.

45nm, Socket AM3 Phenoms to work in current sockets?

Yesterday, we spotted a couple of reports that hinted AMD would have 45nm Phenoms with both DDR2 and DDR3 memory support out before the end of this year. One of the reports, which was whipped up by Fudzilla, said DDR3 support in Phenoms would imply a new AM3 socket incompatible with current AM2/AM2+ sockets.

The same site has now retracted that claim. While Phenoms will indeed require a new AM3 socket to tap into DDR3 memory, Fudzilla says today, the AM3 socket will be backward-compatible with AM2+ sockets. If true, that means users will be able to slap a Socket AM3 Phenom into a Socket AM2+ motherboard and have the chip use DDR2 memory. If mounted into a Socket AM3 board with DDR3 slots, however, the same chip will be able to use DDR3 RAM.

Fudzilla goes on to say these Socket AM3 Phenoms will come out late in the fourth quarter of this year, with production to follow in greater numbers in the first quarter of 2009. AMD itself told us in April that volume shipments of 45nm processors would begin in the fourth quarter.

Source: http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/15047

Foxconn officially announces the Destroyer

After the initial introduction three months ago, Foxconn has finally introduced its Quantum Force Destroyer motherboard based on Nivida’s Nforce 780a SLI chipset.

The new Quantum force series Destroyer comes with support for AM2/AM2+ CPUs, DDR2-1066 memory, HyperTransport 3.0 and four PCI-Express x16 slots for those that love SLI or Tri-SLI setups. The PCI-Express slots can be set to work in x16,x16 for the SLI, x16,x8,x8 for the tri-SLI, and four x8 mode if you decide to plug in four graphics cards in it.

The entire motherboard is cooled by a unique heatpipe cooling system which has a heatsink that ends up behind the memory slots. It is nothing innovative, but a rather strange looking cooling system called “extended heatpipe solution”.

Other notable features include 7.1 channel HD audio, six SATA 3.0 ports, two eSATA ports, dual Gigabit LAN, 100% solid capacitors, support for Nvidia Geforce Boost and HybridPower Quantum BIOS, Aegis panel and much more.

According to the press release, the Destroyer motherboard will be priced at around $299 and it should be available sometime this month.