For years even before the ATI acquisition, AMD has been supplying the memory modules for Radeon GPU’s production-line, making them a pretty big market-player in the memory industry behind the lines.  The company claims that they have used the AMD OverDrive performance optimization tool to test and optimize DRAM in conjunction with their APUs, CPUs, GPUs and chipset platforms.

For those interested in trying them out, AMD’s DDR3 memory modules will be available in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities and each will be available in several variants:

Entertainment

• 1333MHz
• 1600MHz

Performance

• 1600MHz in matched pairs
• 1866MHz in matched pairs

The high-end performance modules are are tuned, tested and certified for specific AMD platforms.

No word on pricing yet but AMD’s memory DIMMs wil be available through major retails including Amazon.com, Bestbuy.ca, Fry’s, Memory Express, Micro Center, NCIX, Newegg, Tiger Direct, VIP Computers (UK) and others in the near future. s

source AMD

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According to Nvidia, SLI support will trickle into AMD’s chipsets starting with the 990FX, 990X, and 970, with support from top motherboard manufacturers Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI. Looking at the mentioned chipsets, their names that AMD hasn’t officially announced yet but rumor has it that they will be released alongside Bulldozer-based Zambezi processors—the chipmaker’s next flagship CPU family.

Nvidia’s blog post announcing the company’s decision to license AMD reads:

Long term gamers probably remember that for a long time AMD offered great high-end CPUs, but in recent years, AMD’s stature as the preferred gaming CPU fell by the wayside and Intel CPUs have been the gamers’ choice. For this reason, we’ve only licensed SLI for motherboards with Intel chipsets. However, we’ve been recently hearing chants of “SLI for AMD CPUs”, and figured that now is a great time to do it. After all, we want to make sure gamers can benefit from the new CPU competitive landscape and ensure they have NVIDIA SLI.

To sum up, this is good news for enthusiasts and gamers looking forward to the Bulldozer-line for their next PC build. Hopefully Nvidia can eke out something like AMD’s Hybrid Crossfire solution (integrated + discrete in Xfire) but that’s probably wishful thinking.

source Nvidia

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If the Radeon 6990 is basically two 6970 in crossfire configuration, embedded into a single chip, then the GeForce GTX 590 is basically two GeForce 580 in SLI.

The GeForce GTX 590 is clocked a bit slower than it’s single core brother the GTX 580 at just 607MHz and memory speed of just 853MHz. However, as with the case is with AMD’s Radeon 6990, lowering the card’s clock speeds help trim down this monster’s TDP to just 365W.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 specs are as follows:

Reviews:
AnandTech
Hothardware
Expreview

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The Radeon HD 6990 is clocked at 830MHz GPU frequency (@1.12v) and 1,250MHz for the memory (5.0Gbps effective data rate) and is equipped with 4GB of on-board frame buffer memory—2GB per GPU, 3072 stream processors enabled, 192 texture units, and 64 ROPs. Added up, that’s about twice the specs of a Radeon HD 6970s (almost as the 6970 cards are clocked at 880MHz). This dual GPU monster has a suprisingly low idle TDP of just 37W and a TDP at load of 375W (lol, it’s a monster card indeed).

AMD Radeon HD 6990 specs are as follows:

Reviews:
AnandTech
Hothardware

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Who knows how many chips Nvidia currently has .

Nvidia sends it’s thanks to everyone of it’s customers and to it’s new partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

The company shares a few interesting facts about the size of 1 billion GPUs:

If you lined the chips all up in a row

* They would wrap around the world more than twice
* They’d stretch across 315,000 American Football fields or 275,000 Soccer fields
* You’d need the entire population of Shanghai, China standing on each others’ shoulders to match it

Now if only Nvidia offered a price drop to celebrate I’ll switch in no time .

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The Radeon HD 6850 is equipped with 960 stream processors, a 775MHz core clock and 1GB of GDDR5 memory at 1GHz while the HD 6870 with 1120 stream processors and 900MHz / 1,050 MHz clocks respectively.

If you’re wondering ATI chose this naming scheme, the company says it’s to keep from confusing customers as they will keep the 5700-series, the Cypress chips that will be replaced by the 6800 series, in production.

The HD 6870 is priced at $180 and HD 6850 $240.

As for the reviews, hit these sites:

Read – AnandTech
Read (1), (2) – Guru3D
Read – HardOCP
Read (1), (2) – Bit-tech
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Legit Reviews
Read – Techgage
Read (1), (2) – TweakTown
Read – Hexus
Read (1), (2) – TechPowerUp
Read – HotHardware
Read – TechSpot

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View the pricelists after the jump.

The price of Intel Core i3-550 has reduced to US$117 from $138, only $4 more expensive than Core i3-530 so it be a no brainer which processor has more value . Intel has also dropped prices on it’s mobile processors, a cut which you’ll see in the months to come on newer notebooks.

Intel usually slashes prices whenever they are about to release a new line of processors so we can expect Sandy Bridge anytime soon.

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Apples to Apples?  Huh?

For some reason, Dell’s marketing thinks it’s own offerings are comparable and superior to the MacBook equivalents.

The page pits Dell’s Studio 15 and 17 laptop line up against the equivalent MacBook Pro models and its desktop offerings up against the Mac Mini and iMac.

Here’s some of the comparisons made by Dell:

System Studio 15 MacBook Pro 15 Studio 17 MacBook Pro 171 Processor Intel® CoreTM i7 Intel® CoreTM i7 Intel® CoreTM i7 Intel® CoreTM i5 Color Available in 6 colors Silver Available in 6 colors Silver Webcam Built-in 2.0MP Built-in iSight Built-in 2.0MP Built-in iSight Screen 15.6” TrueLifeTM 15.4” Glossy 17.3” TrueLifeTM 17” Glossy Memory 4GB 4GB 4GB 4GB Hard Drive 500GB 500GB 500GB 500GB Graphics Mem. 1GB 512MB 1GB 512MB Software Windows® Live Essentials iLife® Windows® Live Essentials iLife® Warranty 1 Year Limited 1Yr LoJack for Laptops Theft Protection 1 Year Limited 1 Year Limited 1Yr LoJack for Laptops Theft Protection 1 Year Limited Price $1348.99 $2,199 $1268.99 $2,299 Discount $399 $0 $219 $0 Total $949.99 $2,199 $1049.99 $2,299 Savings: $1249 $1249

Dell seems to have forgotten the comparison of some of the more technical aspects, such as battery life, size and weight, display panel type and resolution, among other things but hey, at least the site is up so we can draw our own conclusions from it.

source Dell’s comparison site here

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For the first time in four years, AMD has taken control of the discrete graphics market from Nvidia, with 51.1% market share, up 10.4 points from Q2 2009. In that same period, Nvidia lost 10.4 points.

In the lucrative Desktop discrete market, AMD gained 11 points in the year, standing at 44.5% market share. This was a direct loss for Nvidia, who fell 10.9 points in the same period.

In the fast growing mobile discrete market, AMD gained another 2.4 points, now standing at 56.3% market share.

Nvidia has 48.9 percent of the discrete market (no doubt thanks in Part to Apple’s decision to use their chipset on their MacBook and MacBook Pro products) but it’s a trend that AMD hopes to tip over.

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BXDL’s secret lies in the addition of more recordable layers and allows for three to four recordable layers, while current 50GB Blu-ray discs have just two recordable layers.

By the numbers, Sharp’s VR-100BR1 can store up to 12 hours of regular digital TV broadcasts or nearly nine hours of digital satellite broadcasts. No word on pricing or a US release date but you can bet that upon seeing that number a lot of folks have had their curiousity piqued.

source PC World

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