New AMD processor details leak [AMD]

Oops! Looks like someone accident let some information out early. AMDs “Thuban” processors will be out next month, and there wasn’t a whole lot of information out there until recently. Turns out that somebody talked. Well, at least someone’s BIOS talked.

Gigabyte released a couple of BIOS updates recently, and Tech Connect spotted the news: The X6 1035T will have 6 cores, and be running at 2.6 GHz, and the X6 1055T is going to run at 2.8GHz. There was some news about the new Phenom II X6 as well; the 1075T will be clocked at 3.0 GHz, which is about 333 MHz slower then Intel’s new i7 980x. Bummer for AMD, but we’ll see who the real winner is when the pricing comes out; Intel’s new chip sells for $999 right now.
[CrunchGear]

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 Is Faster Than Every Other Graphics Card [Graphics]

The new Sapphire Radeon HD 5970—based upon the acclaimed ATI HD 5970 chipset—is the new world's fastest graphics card. Its 3DMark Vantage score is an insane 22,000.
The overclocked ATI GPU runs at 850MHz, which is supported by 4GB of DDR3 RAM (itself, clocked at 1,200MHz). And all this hardware necessitates three fans an a massive heatsink, making it thicker than your average video card. Outputs include two dual-link DVIs and one mini DisplayPort. Weird that there's no HDMI on here, like the 5870 has.

AMD expects that we'll see the HD 5970 from a variety of different manufactures, which is good because while we have no idea what the thing costs, it won't be cheap.
[Gizmodo via Fudzilla via SlashGear]

AMD's Plan to Take Back Laptops: The Llano "APU" [Processors]

If you want a laptop with graphics performance that isn't totally embarrassing, you're pretty much stuck with some combination of Intel and Nvidia gear. Now, finally, the AMD Llano, a CPU/GPU combo, or 'APU', could give us a serious alternative.
AMD running with the 'Application Processor Unit' name isn't as gimmicky as it sounds, because the Llano is genuinely unique: It's four processing cores and a DX11-capable GPU on a single processor die. In simpler terms, this means that AMD has created a tidy little system on a chip, aimed at a few portable markets. In the simplest terms, they've shrunk laptop graphics and processing into a single chip, which saves power and space.

So! Not much is known about the Llano right now, but we can pick out some broad themes. The chip's power regulation is novel, monitoring specific chip functions to gauge power draw rather than sensors. The graphics capabilities, though still generally a mystery, wouldn't have to be very good at all to trump Intel's lame integrated graphics. In other words, as Ars notes, this could be the first real baby of the still torrid AMD/ATI marriage, and the start of an ATI comeback, at least in laptops.

Or, given that we're not expected to see these processors in products until 2011, when everything could be completely different, it could be none of these things.
[Gizmodo via Ars Technica]

AMD Phenom II Breaks 7GHz Barrier [Amd]

7.08GHz. That's the record-shattering speed an AMD Phenom II processor was overclocked to using a massive amount of liquid helium. You can watch the whole process in this documentary video set to one kickass soundtrack.
[Gizmodo via Crunchgear]

AMD’s low-voltage ‘Congo’ platform due soon?

Not content to sit back and let Intel have all the ultra low voltage fun, AMD’s low voltage Congo platform is apparently due in the coming weeks – late October or early November, according to DigiTimes.
The processors will be used in ultraportable notebooks and will consist of various dual-core Turion Neo and Althlon Neo X2 chips, as well as a single-core Athlon Neo MV-40 chip similar to the one currently found in HP’s dv2 system.
So yes, the Congo platform is already kind of here but we can apparently expect to see more and more available systems in near future.
It’ll be interesting to see how the systems are priced. With AMD traditionally undercutting Intel’s pricing and current ultra low voltage notebooks hovering in the $600 to $1000 range, if AMD were able to, say, push out some models starting near $500, things could heat up.
[CrunchGear]

ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series Is First to Support DirectX 11, Drive 180 Inches of Monitors [Amd]

Do you remember that crazy, 6x30-inch monitor rig by AMD? Well their upcoming ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards are what drive the uber display.
The two new cards, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, are the first video cards in the industry to fully support DirectX 11. Beyond that tidbit, they're capable of producing 2.72 TeraFLOPS of computing power and are equipped with 1GB GDDR5 memory.
And yes, each is capable of driving six 30-inch monitors at once—what AMD refers to as "Eyefinity" technology.
Sadly, there's still no word specific on pricing or availability, but these obviously aren't bargain basement cards. [BusinessWire]

[Gizmodo]

AMD Confirms Six-Core Consumer Processors Codenamed "Thuban" [Amd]

Just one day before Intel's IDF conference, AMD dropped a little bit of a bomb on us, confirming that they will bring hexa-core processors to consumer computers. Even better, they'll be backwards compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ motherboards.
The processor will be a version of AMD's six-core server processors, and will place all six cores on one 45nm die. AMD warned that clock speeds will probably not be quite as high as current quad-core processors (MaximumPC suggests this may be due to "added thermal output from the two additional cores"), and will have 3MB of L2 and 6MB of L3 cache. It'll be competing with Intel's "Gulftown" (probably Core i9)when it debuts next year. But the best news here is the backward-compatibility—unlike Intel, you won't have to replace your motherboard if you want to upgrade to the "Thuban" procs. We hope Intel follows suit, and we'll let you know how they respond later this week from IDF. [MaximumPC via Engadget]

Fancy cellphone runs Windows XP, now up for pre-order

Cellphones are evolving into pint-size PCs, and this xpPhone from Chinese company ITG is the latest extreme example. This Windows XP-running slider started out as a murky demo at a trade show, and now the company is offering it for preorder at an as-yet-undisclosed price.
Its 4.8-inch 800x480 touch screen is almost big enough to be a digital picture frame, and it has two drives — an 8GB solid-state drive and a 30GB spinning hard disk. The company tried to put everything into this AMD Super Mobile CPU-running phone, including Wi-Fi, connectivity to any US cell network, Bluetooth, VGA output and the ability to use it as an external hard disk.

Too bad it's heavy as an anvil, weighing 2 ounces shy of a pound. That's hefty enough to pull your pants down if you want to pocket the thing. Its stated battery life could be an exaggeration, boasting talk time of five hours. Wonder how long that 'Internet experience' will last with its lithium-ion battery.
Slim this down to about half its thickness and weight, and install Windows 7, and you could be looking at the phone/computer of the future.

Tempting: AMD DX 11 Cards Support Six Monitors as a Single Display

AMD’s new DirectX 11 cards offer a very cool feature that most people will consider completely useless; they let you hook six monitors together and use them as a single display by way of the AMD EyeFinity tool.
While the concept might seem ludicrous to some, six monitors can pump out a whole lot of Modern Warfare 2 and it does offer cheap display technology to stores, so there will be takers for it; especially considering how cheap you can pick up an LCD monitor for these days. On the flip side, your power bill will go through the roof.
[HotHardware via Oh Gizmo]

AMD simplifies its brand again with “Vision”

AMD is sort of becoming the Mac of PC hardware. That is to say, they perform well, but in the end want it to be about a final user experience, not a piecemeal selection of parts and capabilities. In this spirit of simplicity, they’re shifting the bulk of their merchandising over from Turion and X4 and all that to three labels under the brand name “Vision.”
It reminds me of when they simplified their gaming line under “Game!” On that note, it’s not clear what the fate of Game! was, but it doesn’t seem to be present in the current lineup. It’s more of a desktop thing, really, so I’m not surprised either way.

Just as “Game!” had plain Game and Game Ultra, Vision will be divided into three parts, from basic to enthusiast to advanced: Plain, “Premium,” and “Ultimate.” Those particular epithets don’t have the greatest track record (they call Vista to mind primarily), but they do bespeak the small-medium-large idea going on here. There’s also a Vision Black, but we don’t talk about that.

The features differentiating the three levels are mostly video-related. Plain Vision promises dynamic contrast and improved video quality — essentially leveraging the GPU for video enhancement. Vision Premium adds better transcoding, and Ultimate supports improved HD video editing. These rely on packaged utilities like Cyberlink’s Power Director and ArcSoft’s upscaling technology — a necessary evil until GPU acceleration can be better implemented with any app you choose.
The new stuff is looking solid, and I wish them the best of luck with it. They’re also pushing that all their platforms support everything Windows 7 will throw at them (virtualization, hardware effects), so that’s one less thing for Best Buy employees to worry about.