Computex 2007: AMD's Barcelona and Other Products
by Gary Key on June 11, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Hitachi
Hitachi was showcasing several new CinemaStar drives with capacities up to 1TB in the 7k1000 family but we were most interested in their new GGC-H20N optical drive that features DVD/CD writing and Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD, and CD read capabilities in a native SATA interface. While it lacks the ability to write to either the Blu-ray or HD-DVD standards, the drive would make for a very good playback device in an HTPC.
Super Talent
Super Talent was displaying several new USB flash drives but one stood out from the rest. Their new Exelerator series is a high speed USB flash drive that comes in capacities up to 4GB, is Windows Vista ReadyBoost approved, and attaches directly to the USB header port on your motherboard thus freeing an additional USB port on the back panel.
AMD
While it wasn't Barcelona, AMD had several product demonstrations with Call of Juarez being shown on several R600 CrossFire Systems in full DX10 glory. Also making an appearance was Team Fortress 2 on several notebooks featuring the ATI HD 2600XT graphics solutions.
Oh yeah, after scouring several computer shops in the greater Taipei area we happened to find a pair of Barcelona chips available. Okay, maybe we broke into an engineering lab and ran off in the middle of the night with them but hey, nobody caught us. (Ed: and you thought all that time playing Ghost Recon was useless....) Once we get proper motherboard/BIOS support, we'll be ready to actually discuss performance.
Hitachi was showcasing several new CinemaStar drives with capacities up to 1TB in the 7k1000 family but we were most interested in their new GGC-H20N optical drive that features DVD/CD writing and Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD, and CD read capabilities in a native SATA interface. While it lacks the ability to write to either the Blu-ray or HD-DVD standards, the drive would make for a very good playback device in an HTPC.
Super Talent
Super Talent was displaying several new USB flash drives but one stood out from the rest. Their new Exelerator series is a high speed USB flash drive that comes in capacities up to 4GB, is Windows Vista ReadyBoost approved, and attaches directly to the USB header port on your motherboard thus freeing an additional USB port on the back panel.
AMD
While it wasn't Barcelona, AMD had several product demonstrations with Call of Juarez being shown on several R600 CrossFire Systems in full DX10 glory. Also making an appearance was Team Fortress 2 on several notebooks featuring the ATI HD 2600XT graphics solutions.
Oh yeah, after scouring several computer shops in the greater Taipei area we happened to find a pair of Barcelona chips available. Okay, maybe we broke into an engineering lab and ran off in the middle of the night with them but hey, nobody caught us. (Ed: and you thought all that time playing Ghost Recon was useless....) Once we get proper motherboard/BIOS support, we'll be ready to actually discuss performance.
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Kooky Krusher - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
Ok, so I started reading this article in hopes that there would be some glimmer of light for Barcelona, but I was saddened by the fact that there just isn't any...yet. I'm not big on placing myself in any one chip maker's camp, but man! AMD can't buy good PR right now. At least abit and shuttle made me smile. As an SFF builder and absolute NUT, I'm happy about any kind of matx/SFF news.erwos - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
I agree - I'm drooling at the idea of stashing one of those Hitachi combo drives into an SX38P3.Let us not even speak of the debacle that is Barcelona and the HD 2900XT. Just not AMD's year, it seems.
Bjoern77 - Monday, June 11, 2007 - link
right now i'm more worried about the lack of competition in the video card market. the r600 more or less failed to deliver, therefor nvidea keeps the price up. Especially the dx10 mid/lowrange price/performance sucks. Especially if you want to build a new pc now, cpu/memory/storage is so damn cheap, but a suitable gpu...ok, and than i can start to worry about BArcelona again, because if it fails cheap cpus will be history for a while.neweggster - Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - link
True but look at it this way, by the time Dx10 becomes a major part of the gaming market share you will start to see an even battle between Nvidia and ATI. So for now any midrange card will suffice for Dx9 gaming, a 7600gt runs really great for the price right now for a midrange offering. Just because the GPU and memory gets faster doesn't mean the performance gap increases enough to make older models obsolete from being defined as midranged or whatever.You can still add 10 new models with all progressively increased performance and a older video card models will still be considered midranged. Take into consideration current game performance, across the board a 7600gt will still be midrange to me for years to come till we start seeing DX10 games dominating the market where the high end cards start to define the gap in performance vs models.