News Bits: More Dells With Penryn, New Firefox Beta, AMD Graphics

New AMD GPUs revealed, Nvidia prepares competition

Nvidia is currently shrinking its G92 GPU core from a 65nm process to a 55nm to compete better with AMD's upcoming RV770. AMD is currently preparing its RV770 series graphics card for the mobile market and it will be released by the end of Q2 this year, which is around the same time Nvidia will release the 55nm G92.

Read More (VR-Zone.com)
Read More (DigiTimes.com)
Special thanks to forum member 2.0 for submitting this bit

AMD 780M integrated graphics outperforms Intel's best

In a behind-the-scenes look at CeBIT 2008, HEXUS.net was able to grab footage of AMD's latest 780M mobile chipset with integrated graphics outperforming a desktop with an Intel G35 motherboard and Penryn CPU by up to 3x in a Half-Life 2 timedemo. The video can be viewed here. AMD launched the desktop 780G last week, which is based almost entirely on a DirectX 10-compliant Radeon HD 2400 graphics core. Many of the desktop 780G's features and performance have been carried over into the mobile variant.

Expect to see Puma platform-based notebooks appear in the latter half of this year. Intel will offer significant competition with its Centrino 2 platform, which also promises DirectX 10 graphics.

Read More (HEXUS.net)

Dell XPS M1530 finally available with Penryn

The new 45nm Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU has finally been made available on the Dell XPS M1530. From the base T5450 65nm Merom processor, the Penryn T8300 (2.4GHz/3MB L2) is a $175 upgrade, the T9300 (2.5GHz/6MB L2) is a $300 upgrade, and the T9500 (2.6GHz/6MB L2) is available for a hefty $575.

Source (Laptoping.com)
Product Link (Dell.com)
NotebookReview.com review for the Dell XPS M1530

Faster ExpressCard standard on the way

The PCMCIA International Association has announced that a new revision of the ExpressCard format is on the way, ExpressCard Standard 2.0. Transfer rates with the new standard will be between 2x and 10x faster than the current ExpressCard Standard 1.2. SATA and video adapters are two devices that will benefit from the higher transfer rates. The new 2.0 standard will be backwards compatible with all previous versions.

Read More (Laptoping.com)

Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 released

Mozilla has released the Beta 4 of its upcoming Firefox 3.0 browser. The new beta is doing well in the real world so far. The appearance of the browser has changed slightly, with a much larger back button and the placement of the Home button has been moved to the left side of the bookmarks bar.

Read More (BetaNews.com)

 

Oh ho ho, Intel is probably pissed they got beat by AMD. That makes me laugh.

 

Those are integrated cards. That's like winning in the special olympics.

 

People that go with integrated graphics care about battery life than performance.

 

AMD finally sets some fire on, more competitions, better products, lower prices, customers benefit...great !

 

For the XPS M1530 why aren't Penryn CPUs compatible with the 8400m GS?

 

Its marketing more than anything probably. There is no technical reason, other than possibly power distribution and total power draw, for those two parts to not work.

My hunch is Dell figures you have enough money to burn to get both.

 

i bought integrated graphics and i game on it, i care about performance, im sure many others do

why not have great graphics performance AND great battery life, thats what next-gen IGPs are going to give us

but im sure the Montevina IGP wont be much slower once the drivers are all ironed out (lenovo wont put AMD MBs in their thinkpads anyway)

 

It's going to be mediocre graphics performance, up from very low. If you could freeze time and ensure that newer games never got released, and companies stopped designing dedicated cards, maybe in a couple years an IGP will be on par with a dedicated GPU. Otherwise, it's always a race to the top, and even though IGP performance doubles or triples, so do the graphical requirements of the games.

 

Just FYI, I think the new Firefox look is only in Vista. If you have XP, it will still have the same back, forward, and Home buttons and the previous versions. At least, that's the way Beta 3 was.

Also, Firefox Beta 4 has new themes for Linux and Mac versions as well.

 

I'm on XP and noticed the new Firefox look (since Beta 3). I'm not sure how the new interface looks on any OS but XP, but personally I like the old look better.

 

LOL! thats a good one!

still.. its better than intel.. isn't the new intel intergrated graphic coming out soon?

 

Isn't intel promising the X4500 to be X3 faster than the X3100. They were tooting for a 1500ish score on the 3Dmark06. The 780G on desktop scores 1600+ for 3Dmark06, I'm curious about the score for notebook.

Eitherway, the recent IGP solution for AMD has been much better than intel. But people buy intel for their faster and more power efficient CPU.

 

I would say Dell is phasing out the 8x00 series cards and thus trying to get a more even distribution going. They must have tons of 8600 cards laying around and want to dump them before the switch to 9500. Same thing with 8400 -> 9300.

 

Intel can promise all they want...its means nothing to me. The X3100 was "promised" to be much more capable than it actually ended up being. Show me performance silicon Intel, and then I'll wait a few weeks or months for AMD or nVidia to again outperform you.

 

The real benefit of the 780M is hardware decoding of high-definition video.

As fas as the desktop version, the 780G, its at the top of it's class in terms of integrated performance in games, video decoding, and power utilization. Not all bad things to throw into a notebook.

 

They never mention the settings the achieved an average of 50 fps on...

But never the less that seems pretty cool. When I go to college I probably won't buy a laptop for gaming, but having one with a "high end" IGP solution that will play games on medium(and having good battery life) would be pretty cool.

 

I'm curious as to why the price of the T9500 is almost double the T9300 while adding only 0.1 GHz.

 

Meaning....?

 

They were running the game at 1024x768 resolution, but didn't mention anything other than that.

That's the way Intel prices their processors, they have pricing slots for various models. It can seem a bit ridiculous, but it has been done that way for a long time.

 

That's a really good move by AMD actually.

They're behind in processor, they're behind in GPU.
But what they do have that others don't is the fact that they're developing both. And when you see through Intel's poor integrated GPU performance and nVidia's not a competition in the integrated market, you got yourself a killer move.
If this chipset means satisfactory performance without the dedicated GPU pricetag, then AMD's back into the biz as it's a better choice than Intel chipset, and once you get this chipset you probably won't put another dedicated GPU on it (killing nVidia).

 

A solid product like the 780G is just what AMD needs to be competitive with Intel. Hopefully they will continue doing this.

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=n60bafkGjew

 

AMD may lead the performance for integrated graphics, but I suspect there will be a power penalty. The 1250M GPU came out several months before the X3100, has similar performance but worse battery life. If AMD can address the power consumption aspect when running on battery then there will be much more interest.

John

 

Weird. Everyone seems to be talking about ATI's integrated graphics. No doubt the PUMA platform looks to be a winner, per se.

But...

The RV770 (a dedicated GPU solution, probably to be named Radeon 4870) will be strong competition to Nvidia's 88xx/98xx series of dedicated GPUs. In fact, it'll more than likely exceed the performance of 8800M GTX.

Looks like this will be the year ATI returns to the throne.

 

Well. You do have to remember that the high-end 9xxx cards have not come out yet (or have they...) so we don't know how it's going to be. The reason AMD can produce such exceptional integrated graphics is, yes, because they have a partnership with ATI.

 

Partnership? They own ATI. And not in the internet "pwnage" type of own. They literally own ATI.

 

This is supposed to be Hybrid Crossfire capable, and eventually, for battery life, with the ability to autosleep a dedicated GPU when not needed (still able to decode H.264 vids), so AMD could have a nice potential for combination with a dedicated HD3400.

 

he said he was performing the test on battery. Would that be the performance when on power? And does the x3100 have a massive power conservation mode when on battery to make the results more in favor of ati/amd?

 

That comment made me cringe. The person calling it was funny further on validated my feeling. To quote Michael from The Office:

The second quote is satire, the first is distasteful.

 

Though it might be a forum about PCs, it doesn't mean it will always be very PC.



BTW, since neither AMD, Nvidia, or Intel is retarded, that comment then becomes satirical. So it's all good.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last couple generations of integrated graphics available on AMD-equipped notebooks have been superior in performance to their Intel counterparts, reguardless of chipset mfr (x200m, 6150, 7150 vs. 950, X3100). This is hardly a new trend that will suddenly spin the market in AMD's favor....

Take into consideration that the oems have the option to use whatever chipset they prefer with Turion models, as AMD is not nearly as restrictive on cohesive component certification as Intel. For all we know, HP and Dell could use an nVidia chipset with the next-gen models. This leaves much open to interpretation reguarding the success of AMD's newest platform......

 

AMD/ATI is looking forward to discrete graphics solutions as well.

They expect to take 50%+ of the market this year.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080201PD210.html

 

The thing about the AMD graphics comparison was that they were claiming that the Intel notebook includes the G35 chipset (implying the use of the GMA X3500), while in actuality there is no such thing on notebooks. The current generation Penryn uses the Santa Rosa platform which is based on the 965 chipset series. Centrino 2 in June, will use the Montevina platform and be based on the 45 series (G45, P45, etc.). So there is no mobile derivative of the 35 series and there never will be, which kind of brings into question what they were actually comparing to.

 

Alright, I just got through watching that (AMD v. Intel GPU), and one thing that bothers me is that the AMD system ran the frame rate test in half the time (or less) than the Intel system.

Now, I'm starting to sound like a fanboy here, but I don't get that at all. When framerates fall, the GPU is skipping frames, not just rendering them slower. The game is still going on at the same speed in the background, you just can't see all of it. So why in the world would it take different amounts of time for two systems to run the same demo?

 

I have 8400gs but i really prefer integrate one cuz i'm no happy with my battery life lol

 

Haha. My bad. Have a cookie. +1

 

Just a guess, maybe it doesn't frameskip, so it needs to process all the frames in both cases, so the slower FPS gives a longer process time.

 

Just gave Firefox 3.0b4 a tryout and was extremely impressed. Even in the portable format, booted from a flash drive, the browser is clearly faster than 2.0. Some things still need to be cleaned up, such as the automatic resizing of newly-opened windows, but the project is certainly on the right track.

Can't wait until the official version comes out.

 

Really!

Hmm, my experience was different.

Damn, AMD is getting vicious.

 

It figures. The upper-hand keeps swinging back and forth. Although, I hope this is nothing like all the other AMD promises. In the past, they just haven't followed through very well. I'll just have to wait and see.