The MPU and GPU thread

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This thread is exclusive for discussion and news regarding MPUs and GPUs.

 

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Intel six core Gulftown named i7 980-X

PC online has leaked an Intel published slide showing the name of the new Core i7 six-core processor. Many had assumed an I9 naming convention but this appears to be incorrect - the clock speed is said to be around 3 ghz and is backed up by 12mb of L3 cache as well as Turbo Boost Technology.

This CPU is targeted to users who already own a X58 board and who want the fastest possible performance with a whopping 6 cores at hand. This 6 core processor is based on the 32nm Westmere process and rumours have emerged that Intel are aiming for a March 2010 release. The price is set to be high as always and although nothing is confirmed we can expect little change, if any, from a grand.

 

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Below is a snapshot of software titles that are optimized for the CPU to take advantage of 4 or more core/threads or micro architecture improvements

GAMING ( 25)

* THQ* Relic Company of Heroes
* EA* Flagship Hellgate: London (extra particle effects)
* Capcom Co., LTD (HQ-Japan) Resident Evil 5
* Codemasters Software Company Limited [HQ] (UK) Operation Flashpoint
* CJ Internet Prius Online
* Crytek* Crysis Warhead (Windows XP only)
* Ubisoft* Assassin’s Creed
* Ubisoft* Far Cry 2+ (patch)
* Capcom* Lost Planet Colonies
* Kingsoft* Mission Against Terror
* Kingsoft* JX Online III
* Midway/Epic* Unreal Tournament 3
* Codemasters* Race Driver (GRID)
* Havok* SDK v5.5 (Tool / Middleware)
* NC Soft* Project Aion
* Neowiz* AVA
* Sega* Football Manager 09
* Sega Europe Ltd. Empire: Total War (Patch)
* Simul Software Ltd Simul Weather (Middleware for generating live, moving, animated skyscapes)
* Terminal Reality Ghostbusters
* Trinigy* Vision Engine v7 (Middleware)
* Ubisoft’s HAWK
* Ubisoft’s World in Conflict: Soviet Assault
* Winking* Sakura
* Illuminate Labs * Beast 5 (Tool/Middleware)



CONSUMER/MAINSTREAM CONTENT CREATION ( 19)

* Adobe* Flash Author
* Cyberlink* Media Show, MediaShow Espresso
* Cyberlink* Power Director 6 Plus
* Corel* WinDVD
* ProShow* Gold 3.2
* Pegasys* TMPEGEnc* XPress 4.4
* Avid* Pinnacle Studio 12
* Corel* DVD Movie Factory 7
* Cyberlink* Power Producer 5
* Cyberlink* Power Director 7
* Corel® Video Studio X2
* Corel® DVD Movie Writer 7
* Magix* Video Deluxe
* Microsoft* Expressions Encoder
* Nero* Nero V9
* Sony * Vaio Movie Story 2
* Sonic* Easy Media Creator 10
* Sonic* Video Wave
* Sonic* Video Copy and Converter



PROSUMER/PROFESSIONAL CONTENT CREATION ( 25)

* Adobe* Photoshop CS3
* Adobe* After Effects CS4
* Adobe* Premiere Pro CS4
* Arcsoft* Media Converter 3
* Arcsoft* ShowBiz
* Cakewalk* Sonar
* DivX* Codec v6.8
* eFrontier Shade 10 (3D Modeling)
* Autodesk* 3d Studio Max
* Ichikawa Silky Pix Developer Studio Pro
* POV-Ray* 3.7 Beta 23
* Main Concept* Reference Encoder and Decoder v. 1.5
* Maxon* Cinema v11
* Maxon* Cinebench v11
* Nik Software * Silver Efex Pro
* 3ivx* MPEG 4 v5.0
* Sobey* Edit Max 7
* Newtek* Lightwave v9.5
* Sony* Vegas v8.0c, v8.1 (64-bit), v9.0 (64-bit)
* Cineform* Aspect HD
* Thompson Canopus* EDIUS Pro 5
* Thompson Canopus* EDIUS NEO (Video Editing)
* Steinberg-Yamaha* Sequel (Audio Editing)
* Steinberg-Yamaha Cubase 5
* Steinberg-Yamaha Nuendo 4.3 (Audio Production)



OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY ( 2)

* Microsoft* Office Excel 2007
* Abbyy* FineReader v9.0



INTERIOR DESIGN ( 1)

* Yuan Fang* InteriCAD6000, R2



CODECS/TOOLS ( 2)

* On2 Technology* VP8- Encoder
* Sony* H.264 Decoder v4.5

 

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ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Graphics

ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 - The fastest graphics card on the planet

Engineered for speed, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 delivers an unrivaled HD gaming experience so you can play the latest, most demanding HD titles like never before.2 Featuring cutting-edge graphic, display and memory technology, this next-generation powerhouse delivers unprecedented performance straight out of the box. Unlocked, this graphics card has massive headroom so you can take control and push your hardware to its full potential!

 

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ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Graphics

Features & Benefits

* Get unrivalled visual quality and intense gaming performance and for today and tomorrow with support for Microsoft® DirectX® 11
* Expand your visual real estate across up to three displays and get lost in the action with ATI Eyefinity Technology. 4,5
* Using ATI Stream technology, accelerate even the most demanding applications and do more than ever with your PC.6
* Enable rich, realistic visuals with explosive performance so you can dominate your gaming competition.
* State of the art overclocking capabilities give you the control and flexibility to tune your rig for maximum performance and unleash its true potential3
* ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode with support for up to 4 GPU's7
* Ultra-high bandwidth GDDR5 memory

 

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ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Graphics Feature Summary

* Dual GPUs with a total of 4.3 billion 40nm transistors
* TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture
o 3200 Stream Processing Units
o 160 Texture Units
o 256 Z/Stencil ROP Units
o 64 Color ROP Units
* GDDR5 memory interface
* PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
* DirectX 11 support
o Shader Model 5.0
o DirectCompute 11
o Programmable hardware tessellation unit
o Accelerated multi-threading
o HDR texture compression
o Order-independent transparency
* OpenGL 3.2 support1
* Image quality enhancement technology
o Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
o Adaptive anti-aliasing
o Super AA
o 16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
o 128-bit floating point HDR rendering
* ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology2,3
o Three independent display controllers
+ Drive three displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
o Display grouping
+ Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
* ATI Stream acceleration technology
o OpenCL 1.0 compliant
o DirectCompute 11
o Double precision floating point processing support
o Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling4,5
+ Native support for common video encoding instructions
* ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU technology6
o Dual card performance scaling
* ATI Avivo™ HD video & display technology7
o UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
o Advanced post-processing and scaling8
o Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
o Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
o Independent video gamma control
o Dynamic video range control
o Support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2
o Dual-stream 1080p playback support9,10
o DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
o Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP11
+ Max resolution: 2560x160012
o Integrated DisplayPort output
+ Max resolution: 2560x160012
o Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
+ Max resolution: 1920x120012
o Integrated VGA output
+ Max resolution: 2048x153612
o 3D stereoscopic display/glasses support13
o Integrated HD audio controller
+ Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
+ Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
* ATI PowerPlay™ power management technology7
o Dynamic power management with low power idle state
o Ultra-low power state support for single and multi-board configurations
* Certified drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

Speeds & Feeds

* Engine clock speed: 725 MHz
* Processing power (single precision): 4.64 TeraFLOPS
* Processing power (double precision): 928 GigaFLOPS
* Polygon throughput: 1.45 billion polygons/sec
* Data fetch rate (32-bit): 464 billion fetches/sec
* Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 116 Gigatexels/sec
* Pixel fill rate: 46.4 Gigapixels/sec
* Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 185.6 Gigasamples/sec
* Memory clock speed: 1.0 GHz
* Memory data rate: 4.0 Gbps
* Memory bandwidth: 256.0 GB/sec
* Maximum board power: 294 Watts
* Idle board power: 51 Watts

 

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ATI Radeon HD 5970

 

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AMD Penom II X 4 Black Edition

The previous flagship from AMD, the Phenom II X4 955, was clocked at 3.2GHz, which was already considered an increase from the previous previous top quad-core, the Phenom II 940. However, the 955 did not only bring that 200MHz to the table. Support for DDR3 was also added, all of that while keeping the same TDP.

The folks over at AMD managed to push the Phenom II's stock clock another 200MHz, bringing it to 3.4GHz. This time, it is labeled the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition.

This time however, a minor increase in TDP was a must. Remember the previous Phenoms? The fastest of them, the 9950, originally had a TDP of 140W. That's what's happening with the Phenom II X4 965. Its stock core voltage is now up to 1.40V, from the 1.35V of the 955, and the 1.325V of the 940. It seems that the rumor was wrong about the TDP - for now -. The next core revision is currently in the works at AMD and most probably that is what would allow making 125W TDP Phenom II X4 965s, pretty much like the 125W Phenom X4 9950 that was made later on.

I was also saying in my news that "I would not be surprised if the Phenom II X4 965 had a bit more overclocking potential than the 940 and 955", which reached pretty much the same levels. Will I be right? Sincerely, if it does not offer more headroom, then anyone familiar with overclocking should just grab a 955 Black Edition, bump its core multiplier to x17, and I am sure it will be able to run it at that same 1.40V. For people that don't want to mess with overclocking and/or don't want to void their warranty however, the 965 will be the right processor. Otherwise, as I have just said, one could save a few bucks. Oh, while we're talking about money, let's take a look at what the pricing becomes today with the launch of this new processor:

* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz: $319.99
* Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz: $279.99
* Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHz: $269.99
* AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE 3.4GHz: $249.00
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz: $219.99
* AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE 3.2GHz: $199.99
* Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz: $189.99
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz: $189.99
* AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0Ghz: $169.99
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66GHz: $169.99

It's amazing. That 3.4GHz unlocked quad-core is cheaper than Intel's 3.33GHz locked dual-core. This means for a few bucks less, you have double the number of cores, unlocked multipliers and a tad higher frequency. We had also seen in the Phenom II 955 review that it dominated the Q9650, let alone the Q9550, so the performance per dollar should be amazingly good; its price is now down to $199. Furthermore, there will be some deals in the upcoming days that will make it even more attracting. The new Phenom II will be bundled with various motherboards, allowing discounts of $40 or more. There will also be some discounts on Corsair memory sticks and Radeon graphics cards when purchased along the X4 965, roughly doubling the savings.

 

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i7

In a world where fast is never fast enough there's a rare breed of people that are always chasing down and hunting the even better products out there. We call them gurus. Today their curiosity will be satisfied as Intel decided to make their fastest processors even faster, and sure... we like that.

Yes it is the much rumored Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor that is launching today. A new stepping and build revision (D0) for the Core i7 series processor combined with a petit frequency increase and some minor subtle changes that make the fast even faster.

So while we all expected Intel to launch their Core i5 processors, which I feel is a much needed product release, we see the best and most expensive processor getting a little better. Kind of weird when you think about it, especially in a time where people have way less money to spend. Since we touch on the topic of Core i5, let us inform you that the Core i5 processor series is now delayed to early September 2009, according to sources at motherboard makers, not Intel. When that time arrives, Intel plans to launch three Core i5 CPUs with frequencies of 2.93 GHz, 2.8 GHz and 2.66 GHz and priced at US$562, US$284 and US$196 in thousand-unit tray quantities. All of them will feature a TDP of 95W.

But heck, let's get back to Core i7 shall we? The processor tested today will run at a steady 3.33 GHz, roughly 133 MHz faster than its 965 Extreme predecessor. It is running steady at 6,4GT/s QPI as well. This also will be an Extreme Edition processor, meaning it will have unlocked multipliers, and that means we can overclock the living daylights out of it.

Today at launch day the processor popped up in several webshops already at a selling price of 999 USD and in the EU roughly 950~999 EUR is what we are seeing right now. That is the same price as the Core i7 965, and as such we expect to see the Core i7 965 XE slowly being phased out.

What we'll do today is to have a deeper look inside the Core i7 processor, the technology, the architecture, a nice little photo-shoot and obviously a decent benchmark session to see where this product establishes itself performance wise. All in all we've got a lot to cover, so hover onward to the next page where I'll show you what specifically is being launched today.

Oh yeah... and this is what we'll be testing with, an eVGA X58 Classified motherboard and OCZ Blade 2133 MHz DDR3 memory. Life here at Guru3D.com does not suck, no Sir

Core i7 975 review