Computex 2007: AMD's Barcelona and Other Products
by Gary Key on June 11, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
SeaSonic
SeaSonic had several power supplies at the show but focused our attention on their new X900 that features true 900W output, comes with four dedicated PCI-E connectors with two 8-pin adapters, and claims an efficiency rating up to 88%.
Arctic
Arctic Cooling introduced their new X-treme lineup of cooling products with the 8-heatpipe design being the one designed for overclocking. The unit features a 226 fin twin tower design, a 120mm fan, patented fan holder to eliminate humming, push-pin install design (yeah, we know...), and a six year warranty. The unit should be available shortly with an estimated street price around $50~$60.
Thermalright
Thermalright had samples for their upcoming IFX-14 twin tower heatsink that is expected to improve upon the already class leading Ultra-120 eXtreme unit. However, the hit of the show was the much needed water cooling unit designs on display for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 game consoles.
CoolIT Systems
CoolIT Systems showcased their new Liquid Cooling system for the AMD R600 reference design video cards that was jointly designed with AMD. The system is self contained; the main cooling system fits in a dual 5.25" drive bay and allowed an easy overclock to 950/983 in our RD600 CrossFire demonstration run. The cooling plates fit any standard reference design R600 card and will support the upcoming 1GB GDDR4 equipped XT cards. Estimated street price will be around $299 with availability next month.
More to Come?
Like many, we always want more, and in this case we want more information about how Barcelona will truly perform. Oh, we got some initial benchmarks, but performance is so clearly off at this point that it's not worth showing results. We do intend to get updated performance results once the BIOS/motherboards are up to speed, but for now we have to wait. We'll be working on a few final updates from the show on our return flight, but for now we leave you with this parting shot of a really cool (Ed: sorry!) booth, perhaps even with a booth babe just visible if you look close enough....
SeaSonic had several power supplies at the show but focused our attention on their new X900 that features true 900W output, comes with four dedicated PCI-E connectors with two 8-pin adapters, and claims an efficiency rating up to 88%.
Arctic
Arctic Cooling introduced their new X-treme lineup of cooling products with the 8-heatpipe design being the one designed for overclocking. The unit features a 226 fin twin tower design, a 120mm fan, patented fan holder to eliminate humming, push-pin install design (yeah, we know...), and a six year warranty. The unit should be available shortly with an estimated street price around $50~$60.
Thermalright
Thermalright had samples for their upcoming IFX-14 twin tower heatsink that is expected to improve upon the already class leading Ultra-120 eXtreme unit. However, the hit of the show was the much needed water cooling unit designs on display for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 game consoles.
CoolIT Systems
CoolIT Systems showcased their new Liquid Cooling system for the AMD R600 reference design video cards that was jointly designed with AMD. The system is self contained; the main cooling system fits in a dual 5.25" drive bay and allowed an easy overclock to 950/983 in our RD600 CrossFire demonstration run. The cooling plates fit any standard reference design R600 card and will support the upcoming 1GB GDDR4 equipped XT cards. Estimated street price will be around $299 with availability next month.
More to Come?
Like many, we always want more, and in this case we want more information about how Barcelona will truly perform. Oh, we got some initial benchmarks, but performance is so clearly off at this point that it's not worth showing results. We do intend to get updated performance results once the BIOS/motherboards are up to speed, but for now we have to wait. We'll be working on a few final updates from the show on our return flight, but for now we leave you with this parting shot of a really cool (Ed: sorry!) booth, perhaps even with a booth babe just visible if you look close enough....
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TA152H - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
And if they had, they would have probably gone with the memory disambiguation of the Core 2, instead of the non-speculative load reordering of the Pentium Pro to III. They may not have realized when they were making it Intel was going to raise the bar.Either way, it's impossible.
Regs - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
Sure..maybe they just decided to pick up a plan that was considered dead and go through with it. It was all ready reported they were trying to re-spin the K8 before the Core Duo was ever announced though it was cancelled because it was dependent on highly-threaded applications that are simply not coming any time soon.TA152H - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
That's a different processor design that they killed. But, you bring up a huge misconception that most non-programmers have, that with more work you can get really great performance out of threading. All you have to do is put in the time and rethink how to code. It's utter nonsense, and there is something called Amdahl's Law that is worth reading for people that don't understand or believe this.Some algorithms will work well with threading, many, many will not. So, yes, AMD killed that dog and luckily so. If they came out with that, I'd be really, really worried for the company.
But this new processor isn't anything particulary risky or scary. It's a very nice upgrade in many areas, and considering the K8 is obsolete, but not horrible like the P7, it should turn out to be a fine processor and at the minimum competitive for a while.
6-12 months is absolutely incorrect. If you're saying that because you believe it, you need to do a little more research on this type of thing because it's entirely implausible. If you're saying it because you're frustrated with AMD and just lashing out, I can understand that completely. But, try to keep it in perspective; it's still a good processor but it just has a few problems before it's release.
Regs - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
Highly frustrated. If this was a long planned project then their execution is well, I guess we have to see. Like the bias before the Opteron launched I guess we should not make the same mistake twice.TA152H - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
While I can understand your frustration, try to keep a few things in common.This is pre-release silicon, of course, and that might not seem like such an important thing, but keep in mind that EVERY processor on that core has to run at the designated speed. So, if one can run at 2.8 GHz, one at 2.6 GHz, another at 2.3 GHz, and one at 1.8 GHz, you're stuck at 1.8 GHz for the entire part. The margin for error is so small because of native quad core decision, it's not surprising the numbers are so low considering the stage of development it's in. At this point, the manufacturing is still fairly new, the processor is of course very new, and with the low margin for error it's going to look bad. But, AMD is a weird bird, they seem to come out with terrible processors on the first version of a new lithography, and continue to improve it quite a bit, much moreso than Intel does. This and getting less scatter with regards to maximum frequency should allow the Barcelona to improve pretty quickly through the iterative improvements AMD does with their manufacturing.
I can understand why you'd be frustrated, but I think it's early to give up on them compeletely. I think most of it is the sting of going native quad-core right off the bat with a brand new processor architecture. It's a lot to deal with in one shot, especially with a fairly new manufacturing process. They probably should have done one thing at a time, but sooner or later they'll get it right. I don't think it will be too late for it to matter either, but who knows?
Regs - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
Yes trust me I read a lot of articles about the "Bark". From its symmetric ALU's, down to the non-speculative memory access reordering.I'm not giving up on AMD at all but it's a ton of fun seeing too CPU manufactures diverge. Just like how you talk about how badly your team is doing mid-season, it some how enlightens your hope for them during the post-season.
TA152H - Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - link
Go Yankees?TowerShield - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
I was figuring the product might have died after it didn't show up in May.Gary Key - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
It worked beautifully under XP Pro with my laptop, Vista compatibility still needs some fine tuning before the unit is launched. ASUS is intent on completing the project within the next four to six weeks.poisondeathray - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
Is the XG Station still designed with the Express Card interface (480Mbit or 2.5Gbit depending on USB or PCI Express)?What impact on high resolution gaming does this limited interface bandwith present?