World Domination – the PC Industry Perspective

Firstly, apologies dear reader, I’ve been out of the NAG loop for a while now. Simply put, life has happened to me – work piles up, I had my first real car accident, and I’ve to deal with writer’s block (seriously, it’s terrible, it eats at your soul each second that passes by when you can’t write). But here I am, hopefully with renewed vigor, so let’s see what comes out today.

I’ve been patiently watching the industry these last few weeks, and things have taken a few interesting turns. Some things to take note of include:

Not even Brain had thought this far.

INTEL BUYING OUT MCAFFEE

This caught me by surprise. Not only does it mean that my least favorite anti-virus is linked to the industry leaders in microprocessors, but it may now mean that Mcaffee will still be in every single machine that sports a Sandy Bridge CPU and motherboard. What’s likely to come out of this deal is hardware-assisted virus protection – similar to Data Execution Prevention, Intel’s processors may actually be tasked to deal with viruses before they execute themselves onto your drives. I know many anti-virus programs already feature prevention measures such as a firewall, but it’s mainly software driven; there are Trojans capable of filling up your hard drive at ten times the speed it takes you to delete just one of them. If anything, having raw muscle behind your protection would help tremendously.

This, however, still means I’ll have to deal with Mcaffee, which is only the world’s worst consumer anti-virus. If anyone else has been paying attention to Intel lately, this is another one of their bully-the-market tactics; by partnering with Mcaffee, they can help Mcaffee to penetrate even more market share with each machine sold (perhaps there’s a free CD included, a download link somewhere, I don’t know). By muscling in with threats from other industries, they can consolidate their efforts and achieve their ultimate goal: WORLD DOMINATION.

NVIDIA GF104 IS A CRACKER

Nvidia’s Geforce GTX460 has taken the world by storm. It’s cheaper than a GTX465, it’s cooler than a GTX465, runs better than a GTX275, and retails for less than R3000. Nvidia has hit the nail in the head here by targeting the mainstream market with a GPU that, while slower than it’s rival the ATI (ahem) HD5850, manages to seem as if it offers inherently more value.

And well, it does. Nvidia can now boast Stereoscopic 3D support on all its cards, as well as a solution not unlike Eyefinity for the most immersive gaming experience imaginable. Add that to the mountains of data showing that Physx and CUDA support is a hot topic for developers and gamers, we can well see that Nvidia’s finally managed to pull out something from the hat that could work. Now they have to solidify their lineup with the low-end graphics cards, and that’s where they achieve their ultimate goal: MARKET DOMINATION.

AMD IS GOING ALL-OUT

Holy hell, AMD is on a cracker of a homerun. Their ATI brand has pulled off an astonishing win from Nvidia with the HD4000 and HD5000 series, and their HD6000 series is just in time for Christmas. ATI has, from the launch of the legendary HD3870, gone from strength to strength, and I’m proud to say I own an HD5750 and an Athlon II CPU.

But now there won’t be any DAAMIT jokes, no fanATIcs, no ATI to refer to anymore. The internet is chock-full of rumors that suggest that the HD6000 cards will be the last to feature the ATI brand. From November this year, AMD will fully consolidate its ATI brand into the company’s portfolio. ATI Radeons will now be known as AMD Radeons, and FirePro will be added to the lineup as well.

It makes sense, with Llano around the corner the company has to move to make its Fusion brand the focus of its integrated lineup. Mind you, discrete graphics cards will still take the cake, but for laptops, ultra-portables, and netbooks, the future is Fusion.

Intel already realized this years ago (rather unfortunately for AMD), and now it’s a race to see who can make the new tech work for the public, and who can profit off it first.

Posted by Wesley Oct 04, 2010

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Gimmick or no gimmick?

Guess what? I'm still yawning. *yawns*

I have to admit, a lot of new tech that I read or hear about, or see, is enough to get me pretty excited. My internal hype engine is tuned only to technology and games these days — the newest Lamborghini only gets a yawn from me; it’s far too much like the Batmobile. But there are a few new toys on the block that pique my interest — while these look kind of gimmicky, I thought I’d share these with you anyway.

THE APPLE iPAD

Seriously, who thinks up these silly names in the Apple labs? Not only is it in direct violation of Fujitsu’s own marketed iPad brand, but it just sounds really silly in this, the 21st century. We’re in an age where computing is more a part of your life than a necessary evil. It is my opinion that the sandbox environment for iPad users will be more frustrating than previously thought possible, and here I believe Google’s Chrome tablet will impress to no end.

Fail in most areas, but the iPad may be another feather in Apple's ridiculously priced cap.

Additionally, the iPad is already in trouble from both the HP and Notion Ink Adam tablets, both of which are far more capable devices than the iPad. Apple also makes a killing off various models, and starts off with $208 profit from the low-range model. This is clearly a ripoff for most. Gimmick spotted!

EYEFINITY

I’m unsure about this one. With this, ATI has single-handedly changed the way game developers are looking at gaming on multiple screens. In the past, you could only play on the one monitor while the other sat idle [Assuming that SupCom never did this, of course. -Ed]. Well, its no longer the case, and there are games out there right now that can easily take advantage of this sweet feature. But is it a gimmick?

I recently saw this in action in a couple of cellphone-shot videos (because I’m obviously not rich enough for something like this) and can really see the benefits of having three screens. On the one hand, I’ll never have to dig around for that app I left open buried underneath all the others – I can leave it on the one screen and monitor what it’s doing. On the other hand, this picture below:

eyefinity

NVIDIA, eat my left nipple. THIS is the way that games are meant to be played. Just look at that – the view, the wrap-around feeling is completely amazing, and I already know a few people who have similar setups. Eyefinity on six or more monitors is a gimmick, but on 3, it’s perfect. I’m getting a setup like this in the near future.

DRM

Yes, I know, DRM has never been something people can actually use to their benefit, and to this day neither has any company strived to do that. There are many other gimmicks out there, but this one always deserves mention — because no stupid gimmick leaves us sitting with a dead game that requires the Internet for LANs. Please, developers, release your games with Steam integration in the future — Valve knows a hell of a lot more than anyone else about how to satisfy their customers offline.

drm

Posted by Wesley Feb 22, 2010

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GT300 is Fermi

It looks like we’ll getting a repeat of the 4-series versus GT200 battle, with a twist. Where nVidia went with a huge, power hungry core and the performance crown, ATI went for affordability and power efficiency on the smaller 55nm process, while nVidia were still using 65nm. ATI’s approach gained them a lot of market share, and now nVidia is on the back foot again. ATI were the first to get to the 40nm process with the 4770, and now they are the first with DirectX11 hardware as well.

nvidia-physx NVidia’s DirectX10.1 cards are coming in the form of GT220 and G210 on October 12 and the GT240 in November. The GT220 will have 48 processor cores, a 128-bit memory interface and will be available in both DDR3 and DDR2. Reference clocks will be 615MHz for the core, 1335MHz for shaders and 790MHz for 1GB of DDR3 memory. As for the G210, it will have 16 processor cores and a castrated 64-bit memory interface. Reference clocks will be 589MHz for the core, 1404MHz for shaders, and 800MHz for DDR2 memory. With performance below ATI’s 4670, GT220 and G210 will have to be cheap to have a place in the market.

Nvidia hopes to change its fortunes with Fermi. Not going solely for gaming performance, Fermi will be heavily concentrated towards parallel GPGPU computing. With support for C++ and ECC memory, Fermi is definitely getting closer to CPU territory than other GPUs before. Therein lies the twist: nVidia is pushing CUDA and PhysX hard, and one cannot deny the improvements PhysX makes to Batman Arkham Asylum.

While on the topic of PhysX, those that were hoping to use an ATI card like the 5850 as the main display card and something like a 9600GT for PhysX should be fuming at nVidia right now. NVidia have recently disabled PhysX support in their drivers if a card from another vendor is detected on your system. Quite frankly, it’s disgusting and will most likely backfire. People don’t like being forced to use what companies tell them to use – 3DFX learnt that lesson the hard way.

Getting back to Fermi, the chip will support DDR5 and should be bigger, hotter, and more powerful than the 5870. Even though the chip is based on a 40nm process, it will only be slightly smaller than GT200. The top Fermi card being released looks to have 512 shader cores in 16 clusters, with 3.1Billion transistors, and will include DirectX11 support. The performance should be stellar – according to nVidia, this is the biggest architectural change since the G80 (8-series).

3 Fermi cards are set to get released at the end of this year. Most likely there won’t be any real quantities available, while ATI should have volume up within the next few weeks, as 3 months is a long time to get yields up. Notebook Fermi cards are only expected some time in 2010.

nVidia isn’t too bad off when it comes to DirectX 11 games, as DiRT 2, Alien vs Predator, and STALKER: Call of Pripyat are all being released late 2009 or early 2010.

Posted by JP Dormehl Oct 12, 2009

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The dual core vs quad core duel

Whenever someone considers building a new PC, the question always comes up: dual or quad?

It’s well known that games aren’t the pinnacle of multi-threaded software, understandably so. Dual core processors out-sell their quad core counterparts many times over, not to mention that Windows isn’t that great at juggling multiple cores.

Looking at local prices, a PhenomII x2 550 (3.1Ghz dual core with 6MB L3 cache) goes for between R1200 and R1300, while the Phenom II x4 945 (3.0Ghz also with 6MB L3 cache) goes for between R2600 and R2700. The argument could be made that, when speaking about a gaming PC, the extra spent money on the quad could rather be spent on a better graphics card. That ~R1300 could make the difference between a 4850 and a 4890.

So, if you only use your PC for gaming, a 3.1Ghz dual with a Radeon 4890 or Nvidia GTX 260, will give you better frames per second (FPS) than a quad with a 4850 or a GTS 250. Who only plays games on their PCs though? To anyone who does a lot of video editing or 3D rendering, the quad would be far more useful. While you are busy with other tasks, your graphics card sits there twiddling its thumbs, it’s your CPU that gets the work done, crunching those ones and zeros.

AMD_Phenom_X3_logo What makes things more interesting are the triple core processors. A PhenomIIx3 920 (2.8Ghz tri-core with 6MB L3 cache) can be had for between R1700-R1800.

Let’s compare identically-clocked dual, triple, and quad core processors. When encoding a song with iTunes, they all perform identically. Converting a video using MainConcept Reference shows the triple core as being 33% faster and the quad core 48% faster than the dual. In AutoDesk 3Ds MAX 2009, the quad completed rendering a 1920*1080 frame 46% faster, while the triple core was 23% faster. An AVG scan completes 42% quicker using a quad and 23% quicker using the triple. In Winrar, the quad performs 25% quicker and the triple 20% quicker.

When it comes to gaming, things are slightly different. In Crysis, the triple core performed 17.4% better, with the quad giving virtually identical results. In Left 4 Dead, the triple core performed 9.7% better, with the quad improving marginally. World in Conflict showed virtually no difference; it is only when an AVG scan is performed concurrently with the World in Conflict benchmark does the quad really shine. The triple performed 6.25% better, while the quad showed a massive 156% increase in the minimum FPS over the dual.

So when it games to gaming, the quad really isn’t necessary, a triple core would be my recommendation. Although I haven’t listed the percentage improvements, GTA IV and Far Cry 2 are two games that make use of the extra core that a triple core provides. With DirectX 11 also bringing improved multi-threading support, a triple core is the perfect middle ground if you, like me, want the best bang for your buck.

Posted by JP Dormehl Aug 17, 2009

4 Comments

Mine’s smaller than yours!

Many of us gamers who attend LANs regularly have this problem: where the hell do we put our PC in our car? How do we transport our beloved 22” LCD safely to rAge? More importantly, how do we make sure that our stuff will be kept safe? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to offer a solution, one which you will have to look at from a logical point of view. Many will argue that I’m a laptop fanboy (which I happily admit to), and that my solution is rather expensive; but I think the pros outweigh the cons.

The HP Pavilion DV5-1130ei: not many people know about this gem

Gaming laptops: they’re out of reach for most of us, right? The majority of gamers can only drool over the Alienware range, as those systems cost more than a second-hand sedan. However, gaming laptops do exist at lower prices, disguised from view, and noticed only by those who know what to look for.

I’ll be honest here: these laptops are not cheap. My recommended starting point is the HP Pavilion dv5-1130ei. Boasting an Athlon dual core with 1MB cache, 2GB RAM, an ATI HD3450, and a 15.4” LCD, it’s perfect for a quick Call of Duty 5 zombie assault, or a few sprints in Need for Speed Undercover. You’ll have to tone down the settings a bit, but for R7500, it raises the performance standard for laptops to this basic level. You don’t want to go lower than this: it wouldn’t be fair on the gamer in you.

After this, however, things go awry. From the R7500 price bracket onwards, we see a lot of the same systems with similar specs popping up all over the place, and none of them look much better than the HP. To see a real boost, we have to jump to R9700 to reach the heights of the Toshiba Satellite A300D-17E. It boasts an Athlon dual core, 4GB RAM, an HD3650, and an awesome sound system. Crysis on medium-ish settings runs moderately well. Likewise COD5, Bioshock, World in Conflict, and just about any game you can think of runs well at medium-to-high settings.

For those who don’t have the kind of cash asked here, follow these tips to get a laptop within your budget that can game!

The Toshiba Satallite A300: a touch expensive, but not a disappointment by any means

1)    The baseline entry-level GPUs are the Intel 4500MHD, ATi HD3200, ATi HD2400, and Nvidia 7400M. Do not sink lower than this.
2)    Do research on the CPU model. Load CPU-Z on a flash drive and ask to check the specs using the program. 1MB L2 Cache is the going baseline for games.
3)    Try for a dual core, even if it’s a Celeron. Trust me, it works wonders.
4)    Stick to the 15” screens. 12” is the smallest size that’s still comfortable.
5)    Clock speeds should be at least 2Ghz for the CPU
6)    Use HD Tune on a flash drive to assess hard drive performance – it can be a pain of a bottleneck, especially in a laptop.

Posted by Wesley May 13, 2009

7 Comments

Evolution…or is that revolution?

Evolution: it is the key to the PC industry’s survival. It’s how ATI has grown from being the underdog of the industry to one of the most interesting GPU manufacturers on the planet. Normally this process is slow, taking thousands and thousands of hours… but every so often, evolution leaps forward!

Back when ATI released its HD 38xx series, we were stunned by the performance benefits with the move to the 55nm process. It was far beyond anything we expected, mainly because up to that point most of the company’s products left something to be desired. Granted, Nvidia did come back and take away the performance crown again, but ATI didn’t care – it was now competing on a value-for-money basis, and ever since then they’ve been slapping Nvidia around for fun.

This latest slap to Nvidia’s face comes in the form of the HD 4770. Not only has ATI beaten Nvidia in the race to be the first to the 40nm process, but it’s also been released at a price that, well…is marvellous! R1400+ for a card that has more power than the outgoing HD4830? Most would think I’m joking, but I’m not, really.

The HD 4770 has the new RV740 core architecture, and it comes endowed with a 750 MHz core, 3,2 GHz GDDR5 memory, a 128-bit bus, and it just misses the required power mark that would enable it to run off the PCI-E slot exclusively. The 80 watt TDP doesn’t stress the PSU at all, so this is your replacement for your HD 4670, HD 4650 and lower-version cards if you’re looking for more muscle.

The two biggest highlights are the 40nm process and the GDDR5 memory. With the new process, higher clock speeds than previous generations are possible (971 MHz is possible on the Asus HD 4770 with a voltage boost), less power is required to operate the hardware, and to top it all off, it is much cheaper to produce. It also enables ATI to squeeze in 826 million transistors, very close to the 956 million on the HD 4830/4850. On the 55nm process, this card would easily have been more expensive than the HD 4830, and would suck up more power to boot.

The GDDR5 memory is surprising on a card like this, especially in the highly-contested budget segment. Normally with GDDR3 on a 128-bit bus we’d see average bandwidth return, but on the HD 4770 bandwidth is at 51.2GB/s, again very close to the 57.6GB/s run by the HD 4830. All this adds up to 960Gflops of power, just 40Gflops short of the HD 4850. By now I’m sure you can see for yourself why this card is special. Never before has the budget range had so much power – yes, the HD 4670 did a similar thing, but the HD 3850, which it mimics, was already old hat.

If nothing else, then this should convince you: Crysis Warhead on the Gamer setting, at 1920*1200 resolution, with AA turned off will give you 27fps. At similar settings, Far Cry 2, GTA IV, and World in Conflict all run in the high 30s.

Posted by Wesley May 07, 2009

2 Comments

Coming soon: ATI’s RV790 and RV740

This time last year, if you wanted a high-end graphics card, Nvidia’s 8800 series was by far the best choice; ATI’s 38xx series just couldn’t keep up. Then, when Nvidia released their GT200 series cards, the performance bar was set even higher. Massive graphics cards with massive performance, massive power draw, and a massive price to boot.

Then ATI released the 4850 and 4870 and took everyone by surprise – including Nvidia. They did not compete on performance with GT200 but they competed on price, bringing high-end performance at mainstream price points.

Fast-forward to today and soon we will see the launch of ATI’s RV790(4890) and RV740. The 4890 will be a 55nm product, and AMD says to expect a 20% performance increase over the 4870. That should really give the GTX285 a run for its money. We know the 4890 will have a different pin layout to the 4870, which suggests that is it more than just a speed-binned 4870.

The 4890 has a 100MHz core speed bump over the 4870, setting the core at 850MHz and a 75MHz speed bump for the memory, setting it at 975MHz(3900MHz effective) for the GDDR5 memory, providing 124.8 GB/s of bandwidth. It will also require a 6pin and 8pin power connector. RV790 will have the same number of stream processors, ROPs and TMUs as the 4870 – so how exactly does a 13% core speed bump and an 8% increase in memory speed increase performance by 20%? According to AMD the RV790 will have more efficient shaders that might just be enough to achieve that claimed 20% performance increase. Nvidia is already preparing a card for release to combat the 4890, the GTX275. This is essentially just a single, higher clocked GPU from the GTX295 that will operate at 633MHz on the core and 1164MHz(2328MHz effective) on the GDDR3 memory with a 448bit memory interface.

ATI’s HD4890 will launch on 9 April, with RV740 coming at the end of April or early in May.

RV740 will be a 40nm card, meaning it should stay cool and require very little power to run. It will also have a 128bit memory interface to keep costs down. It will have 640 stream processors with 8 ROPs, 32 TMUs and a 650MHz core clock paired with GDDR5 memory running at 800 MHz, which boils down to 3200 MHz effective. That’s just over 50 GB/sec of bandwidth. All this means that RV740 has performance close to the 4850 at a lower price point. Rumours place this card below $99 and will be the successor to the RV730 (4650/4670).

RV740 engineering sample

In the gaming benchmarks, the RV740 was 5-10% faster than the 4830 on average .

Please keep in mind with engineering samples specs can change, but not much. Drivers will also improve performance once the card hits retail, meaning RV740 should come within spitting distance of the 4850.

The next few months before the DX11 cards hit in Q4 will surely be interesting. RV740 will definitely shake up pricing. One thing is certain though – we as consumers will win.

02/04/2009 Update: The RV740 will known as the Radeon HD 4770 and will feature a core clock speed of 750MHz – A 100MHz speed bump over the engineering samples. This means its performance will be right on the 4850′s doorstep. The card should use about 80Watts, comsuming less power than the 55nm Radeon HD 4850 and 4830. The card is expected to retail for around $99 USD.

Posted by JP Dormehl Mar 24, 2009

4 Comments

PC gaming is expensive!

This is not meant to be a console vs PC diatribe. Each has its pros and cons.

One of PC gaming’s cons is that it’s expensive. That’s a “fact”, right? Even among PC gaming circles and people in the know, PC gaming is considered to be expensive. It is very easy to spend over R20 000 on a machine only to have it become outclassed in 6 six months by something new.

One thing that does get to me is when people say no matter what you buy it becomes obsolete in 6 months. If your graphics card can run CoD4 at 40fps at 1280*1024, will it suddenly now only give you 30fps because a new range got released? Your hardware does not have an inferiority complex. As long as your hardware does all that you require, it’s all that should matter. Outclassed does not mean obsolete.

You don't need the top of the range to enjoy your games

When choosing the right components, a PC should easily last you 2-3 years without needing to be upgraded.

Of course, you have those that take everything to the extreme. They always have to have the best of the best, with flashy lights, super silent, super fast hotrods of PCs. They have no business exclaiming that PC gaming is expensive. Do you ride a bicycle because the Mercedes AMG SLK55 you want is too expensive, or do you buy a Corolla instead?

Why can’t people that can tolerate a Corolla when they want the Mercedes, not apply the same principle when it comes to PCs? You don’t need that Mercedes to drive to work, just like you don’t need a 20k rig to game.

A R6000 PC is more than enough to game at 1280*1024 or even 1680*1050 at max or very close to max settings, with current games.

Case in point:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Black Edition processor R996.00

HIS Radeon HD 4830 R1872

MSI AMD K9A2GM V3 Motherboard R608

Western Digital 320GB HDD R652.59

Coolermaster eXtreme Power Plus 460W PSU R525.04

LG GH22LP20 20x LightScribe dual-layer DVD writer Price: R 317

Transcend JetRam High-Performance 2GB DDR2-800 R323.60

Cooler Master Elite 334 Chassis R591

Microsoft Basic Keyboard & Mouse R230.03

Total: R6115.26

These are online prices and are correct at the time of writing. Be prepared to pay between 10-20% more from a brick and mortar store. Please keep in mind that a monitor and operating system are excluded. As the components are from different shops, the PC will require assembly.

Such a PC can run Left 4 Dead at 1280*1024 0AA 0AF, highest settings at 65fps, Crysis at 1280*1024 0AA 0AF, all medium settings at 32 fps and Far Cry 2 at 1280*1024 0AA 0AF, high settings at 47 fps.

The HD4830 is great value for money

As can clearly be seen, the Corolla gets the job done quite convincingly. One could even swap the 4830 for a 4670 and the 460watt PSU for a 390watt, save R1000 and still have completely playable framerates.

If you are using a resolution below 1280*1024 the ATI 4650 is also a great choice.

Moral of the story: a gaming PC is only as expensive as you want it to be.

Update 06/04/2009: After some further digging we’ve encountered possible compatibility issues between the CPU and the motherboard originally selected. We’ve updated the link to a new motherboard.

Posted by JP Dormehl Mar 09, 2009

21 Comments