Dave Orton leaves AMD/ATI
Dave Orton, the former CEO or ATI is leaving AMD at the end of the month according to a press release posted on AMD's website today. This is indeed sad news and it seems like most of the key ATI staff has left AMD since the merger of the two companies. Dave Orton held a press conference about AMD's new graphics products here in Taipei at Computex, just a month ago.
It is worrying times for AMD and if they keep losing key ATI staff at this rate, there won't be much of a graphics team left at AMD. Adrian Hartog and Rick Bergman will be reporting directly to Hector Ruiz as an effect of Dave Orton's resignation.
"Dave's passion and relentless drive catapulted ATI into a solid leadership position in each of the company's graphics, chipset and consumer electronics businesses," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and chief operating officer. "More recently, Dave was one of the key drivers in the successful integration of AMD and ATI. With his integration work complete and the successful launch of key graphics and chipset products earlier this year, the time was right for Dave to take his personal and professional life in a different direction."
New integrated graphics chipset from SiS
SiS is going to have a new chipset with integrated graphics for the 1,333MHz FSB Core 2 Duo processors from Intel, the SiS 680SCE. The specifications are pretty basic, as this new chipset only supports single channel memory. It will feature SiS' new Mirage 4 graphics engine which is meant to have DX10 support, but with a single channel memory controller, we have to wonder how well this new graphics engine will perform.
The Mirage 4 does support HDMI with HDCP, which might make this an interesting platform for media center type applications. The chipset also supports a x16 PCI Express slot and four x4 PCI Express slots. Additionally it also supports up to three PCI slots, HD audio, SATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet and up to 10 USB 2.0 ports.
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Dell Vostro small business computers
Dell has launched a new range of PCs and notebooks for the Small Business market and the Vostro range looks to be quite a decent option for those looking for simple, but serious business machines. The desktop systems starts at US$319 for the mini tower version and the slim tower starts at $349.
Both of the desktop systems are based on the Intel G33 chipset. The basic model comes with a Celeron 420 and 512MB of RAM for either model, as well as an 80GB hard drive and a 16x DVD-ROM. You can of course as always configure your own system and Dell offers a wide range of options up to an E6700 processor and various graphics options.
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Australian Quad Core notebook
Pioneer Computers Australia is offering quad core CPU options for its DreamBook Power D90 SLI notebook. Well, to call it a notebook is almost wrong, as this is more of a mobile desktop. With a 17-inch display that has a native resolution of 1,920x1,200 and a weight of 5.4kg, it's hard to call this a notebook.
Still, it has some rather interesting features, as for starters, it's based on the P965 desktop chipset. This gives away the fact that the quad core CPU is going to be a desktop part as well. The D90 comes with a choice of processors from the basic E4300 to the Q6600 quad core and the X6800 Extreme Edition.
AMD Unveils Two New TV Wonder Products
Along with further price cuts and a trimmed down production line of their CPUs today, AMD have also released a couple of new "TV Wonder" tuner products.
The first offering is their new "TV Wonder 650 Combo PCIe", a PCIe x1 card featuring the Theater 650 Pro video processor (which debuted around a year ago). Dual tuners reside on the card, one purely for receiving digital, and the other analogue. Both are capable of operating simultaneously, allowing the user to watch and record from two individual sources at the same time.
Next up is the "TV Wonder 600 USB", featuring a hybrid TV tuner design which is capable of tuning into both digital and analogue broadcasts, but don't confuse that for being able to provide dual tuner functionalities like the TV Wonder 650 Combo card, as it does not sport dual tuners. This should be a great little addition to your notebook though.
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AMD RD790 to do tripple CrossFire?
If we're to believe information posted on HKEPC, AMD is working on CrossFire for three cards and the RD790 chipset will be the first to support three cards. Although not a lot of information is known at this time, the addition of HyperTransport 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0 makes this chipset a clear candidate for new features.
Add to this 41 PCI Express lanes and its clear that AMD is working on something, although Physics is of course one of the most touted applications for a third card. However, HKEPC claims that the performance improvement of adding a third card raises CrossFire performance from 1.8x to 2.6x by going from two to three cards over a single card.
If AMD indeed can pull this off, then AMD should have a solid lead over Nvidia's SLI technology, as long as they can convince their customers to spend the extra money on a third card.
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QuakeCon 2007 Around The Corner
Good news for avid Quake fans, it has been confirmed that Nvidia are sponsoring QuakeCon 2007. This is set to take place at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas from August 2 through 5, and the organizers are expecting to draw around 6,000 gamers from around the globe. They anticipate it will be the largest and most successful QuakeCon to date.
The total prize pool will be a whopping $100,000. No doubt competition will be more fierce than ever, so get training HARD if you want to be in on the action!
In a recent announcement it's been mentioned that this year's QuakeCon event will also see the first ever "Quad Damage" tournament, this will span across all four Quake games. It will be a great way to find out who is the most multi-talented challenger out there, and worthy of being dubbed the true "Quake Master".
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ThermalTake Mozart iP iPod dock case
ThermalTake has released a new case in its Mozart media center range, the Mozart iP. ThermalTake claims that this is the world's first case with an integrated iPod dock and we believe them. The dock is integrated into the fascia of the desktop case and it looks rather smart on the pictures. You can see the iPod screen and access the scroll wheel via a cut-out in the case. The dock will also charge your iPod while it's plugged into the Mozart iP.
What's more is that the Mozart iP comes with a dedicated remote control for the iPod dock and there's a special controller that fits into a rear slot in the case that allows the iPod audio to be easily mixed with the sound from your sound card and then passed onto the speakers.
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$9.99 for Audigy Alchemy drivers
It seems like Creative has caused quite a stir among its users by charging US$9.99 for its EAX enabling Alchemy Windows Vista driver for the Audigy series. It might seem cruel by Creative to charge for something that should be free, especially since you can still buy a brand new Audigy card. Most of this comes down to changes in the Windows Vista driver model and EAX is no longer supported in DirectX.
The Alchemy project allows Direct Sound commands to be translated into OpenAL commands and thus EAX will work. Creative released a free version of Alchemy for its X-Fi customers a while back and has been working on improving the Alchemy drivers since. However, Creative went out with a statement when the X-Fi version arrived that it was going to charge a small fee for the Audigy version of the same software.
You can now order the Audigy version of Alchemy from Creative's web shop for a $9.99 fee, although this has upset many Audigy users and it seems like a workaround has already appeared on the least of expected places, Creative's Forums. A user called daniel_k has posted a link and instructions to how to use the X-Fi version to get free EAX support for Audigy cards.
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Super Talent Expands DDR3 Options
Memory maker Super Talent have released a new series of DDR3 modules this week, starting with the W1333UB2G8 kit. This kit comprises a couple of 1GB sticks rated for 1333MHz speeds with timings of 8-8-8-18.
However, the most exciting is their two DDR3-1600 kits. The best of the two happens to run fantastic timings (as far as DDR3 goes for now) at 7-7-7-18 with 1.8V, very nice indeed for 1600MHz modules. Then there's the other 1600MHz rated kit, operating with slightly looser (but still quite reasonable) latencies of 9-9-9-21.
Another highlight of the new family is the introduction of a 2GB DDR3 module, up until now I hadn't spotted a 2GB DDR3 module yet (only 2x1GB kits). This module is designed to operate at up to 1333MHz with 8-8-8-18 timings at 1.8V.
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