Mobo Makers Announced AM3 Support

Asus have announced that 15 of their Socket AM2+ motherboards will support AMD's AM3 CPUs. This seems to be most of the newer boards to come out the past year from the AMD 700 series, and Nvidia GeForce 8000 and 7000 products.

Gigabyte also have announced a wide range of motherboards which will support the AM2+ and AM3 45nm versions of AMD's processors. It looks like they're going deeper as they support Nvidia's 750 chipset as well as 790FX boards with the dated SB600 chipset.

MSI has put up a similar list of 26 motherboards that can accommodate the upcoming processors through BIOS updates.

Other motherboard makers:
Biostar
ECS Elitegroup
Jetway
J&W

Phenom II Overclocks Well

As we all know, the Phenom II (codename Deneb) will be AMD's second 45 nm part (the first is officially the Shanghai server part) that is scheduled to hit Q1 09. This heavily redesigned processor based on the Phenom architecture has already showed some significant per clock performance gains over the older product, and AMD considers this to be their best design ever in terms of performance, functionality, and eventual clockspeed. The first desktop products are expected to hit 3 GHz at the top end, but AMD has been hinting that the Phenom IIs can do a lot more in the hands of an enthusiast.

The first leaks were that the Phenom II could hit 4 GHz on air cooling. Yesterday AMD had some actual demonstrations at their AMD Austin Tech Day gathering, and the Phenom II was able to hit 5 GHz at 1.6v by using dry ice cooling. Dry ice is CO2, and it goes directly from solid to gas (sublimation) at a temperature of -109.3 F (-78.5C for the rest of the world) at 1 atmosphere.

The original Barcelona is a 65 nm part and really the first of its architecture. Since its release and the subsequent shuffling around of design teams, AMD has refocused their energy on delivering a design that would not only have a better per clock performance than the older part, but allow the design to scale in clockspeed on AMD's new 45 nm process. So far what we have seen shows that AMD has done very well.

With AMD's constant process improvement program, and tweaks to the Phenom II design that we typically see in the manufacturing stage, AMD could theoretically have a 3.4 to 3.6 GHz processor at moderate TDP levels (125 watts) that would more adequately perform against the Core i7 within the next 8 months.

For now, we have to sit and wait for the Phenom II to hit the market. Intel certainly needs the competition, and this product might just deliver enough of it to keep things interesting.



The die shot of the 45 nm Phenom II. 2 MB of L2 (512 KB per core) and 6 MB of L3 shared makes this an interesting part. Throw in some serious refinements to the underlying Phenom architecture, and suddenly AMD has a chip that can much more adequately compete with what Intel has out there currently (and upcoming).





Read here :
AMDZone
TechReport
Legit Reviews
AMD Austin Tech Day - Phenom II Dry Ice / LN2 leaked info

Introducing AMD "Dragon" and Phenom II

AMD plans to bring higher-performance and more energy efficient 45nm processor technology to the desktop PC market in Q1 2009 with the AMD platform codenamed “Dragon”. This platform will be the second generation AMD performance desktop platform, featuring all next-generation components in comparison to the first generation AMD “Spider” platform released in 2008. The AMD “Dragon” platform is designed to harness the power of fusion by optimizing the performance of new 45nm AMD Phenom™ II X4 quad-core processors with award-winning AMD 700 Series chipsets and award-winning ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics.




For introduction slides explaining AMD Dragon, please download here:
Geocities (Limited Quota)
MegaUpload

Branding logo of AMD Dragon, the replacement platform for Spider:

Opteron 45nm Quad-Core "Shanghai" Available

AMD today announced widespread availability of its 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, delivering up to 35 percent more performance with up to a 35 percent decrease in power consumption at idle. With IT decision-makers looking to do more with less, the newest Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor can help drive data center efficiencies and reduce complexities with innovations that offer superior virtualization performance and increased performance-per-watt. Global OEMs are expected to immediately offer enterprise and SMB customers more than 25 systems, available between launch today and the end of the year, based on the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed “Shanghai”

The latest Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors at the 75-watt ACP ranging from 2.3 to 2.7 GHz are available immediately, with enhanced Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE (55-watt) and SE (105-watt) processors planned to follow in Q1 2009.

“Shanghai” will be a truly global product launch for AMD. A major online and print marketing campaign in support of the launch kicks off today and launch events are happening worldwide beginning today and continuing over the next few weeks.

Anandtech has tested out AMD's "Shanghai" Opteron with a few database tests.

As you've seen, AMD is still competitive with Intel's 3.0 GHz Harpertown in the database workloads that we've shown here. We were quite surprised that Shanghai was able to meet and, in some cases, pass Harpertown at various workload levels in some of the benchmarks. Obviously, when it comes to power, AMD is still leading this space by a significant margin. FB-DIMMs obliterate any power efficiency in Intel's processors, especially when you have eight (or more in some cases) of them present in a server.

"Shanghai" stories:
Computerworld-AMD speeds up, shrinks its Shanghai quad-core
Infoworld-AMD bails out IT
ZDNet blogs-AMD: Does the resurrection start with ‘Shanghai’?
Information Week- AMD Refreshes Opteron With 45nm 'Shanghai' Quad-Core Processors
CRN-First Look: AMD's 'Shanghai' Opteron
Reuters-AMD announces fast, energy-saving chip

Shanghai 45nm wafer:

85 Server Motherboards and Barebones Servers for Shanghai

More than 85 server motherboards and barebones servers are validated to support the upcoming 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor and are available today. Leading server infrastructure providers including ASUS, Supermicro, and Tyan are currently shipping high-performance server motherboards.

These boards are optimized for OEMs, ODMs, solution providers and business customers to take full advantage of the enhanced power management and virtualization capabilities and unprecedented levels of price/performance-per-watt delivered by the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed “Shanghai”

EE Times believes AMD is back on track with Shanghai.

Advanced Micro Devices is back on track with its latest 45 nm Shanghai processor driving an uptick in sales in high-end server markets, according to a handful of integrators. Longer term, high performance computing (HPC) companies expect to see neck-and neck competition between AMD and Intel as both move to six-core server processors in 2009.

ATI Radeon HD 4850 Becomes The Most Popular Graphics Card in the U.S. Retail

The recently released market share numbers by Jon Peddie Research clearly show that ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, is starting to fight back market share from the arch-rival Nvidia. According to another market tracking firm, NPD, the latest products by ATI – Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 – are indeed gaining popularity in the U.S. retail market.

Even though 7 out of top 10 spots are still occupied by Nvidia GeForce graphics cards, the best selling graphics board in the U.S. retail in September was Visiontek Radeon HD 4850 512MB, reports TG Daily web-site citing NPD Group. The whole list looks as follows:

1. Visiontek 512MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon HD 4850 : 4197 (units)
2. PNY 512MB DDR2 Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT : 4106
3. PNY 512MB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT : 3080
4. BFG 512MB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS : 3079
5. Visiontek 512MB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 4870 : 3052
6. EVGA 384MB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce 9600 GSO : 3011
7. EVGA 256MB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT : 2670
8. EVGA 512MB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT : 2634
9. EVGA 512MB GDDR3 Nvidia 8800 GT : 2561
10. Asustek 512MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon HD 4850 : 2509

It should be noted that the majority of advanced graphics cards are acquired from online stores due to their lower pricing. However, since retail buyers are not usually as technically savvy as those who use electronic stores, the success of rather expensive graphics cards based on ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 may be an indicator that gamers begin to feel confidence in ATI’s performance-mainstream products.

Despite of financial crisis, total available market of graphics adapters increased dramatically in the third quarter of 2008. According to figures released by JPR, in Q3 2008 over 111 million graphics adapters (both standalone and integrated) were shipped. During the same quarter last year, only 91 million graphics products were shipped, and 94 million units shipped in Q2 2008, which means that shipments of graphics cores increased 22.5% year over year and 17.8% quarter-to-quarter, an unbelievable boost in general and especially noteworthy considering the current market conditions.



ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, was the biggest winner in Q3 2008 thanks to successful launch of ATI Radeon HD 4000-series products. The company managed to boost its shipments by 33.8% and increase its market share to 20.6%. Intel Corp. also managed to boost shipments of its chipsets with integrated graphics processors (IGPs) by 23%. Nvidia Corp. did not manage to increase its sales inline with market trends and only reported 4.4% increase in shipments during the quarter as well as market share decline to 27.8%. Also, despite of positive market conditions, Silicon Integrated Systems reported 28.9% decrease in IGP shipments in Q3, whereas Via Technologies/S3 Graphics succeeded in increasing its graphics products sales by 2.1%.



Mr. Peddie noted that Q4 2008 should be an interesting quarter as ATI and Nvidia are not expected to release any more new GPUs given the large number of introductions in the last three quarters, and Intel and AMD have stabilized on their integrated offerings.

Hercules eCAFE Netbook

Hercules eCafe netbook is AMD Geode powered. Technical specifications:

* AMD Geode LX 800
* 512MB DDR RAM
* 8" LED-backlit LCD screen (1024x600 interpolated)
* 1.8" 20GB P-ATA HDD
* Ethernet 10/100
* WiFi 802.11 b/g
* 2 USB ports
* 1 multiformat card reader (SD/SDHC/MMC/MS)
* 80 key keyboard
* Integrated touchpad
* Integrated 300,000 pixel webcam
* Integrated microphone
* Audio input and output
* Integrated stereo speakers
* 4000 mAh battery (4 cells)
* 100-240V, 50/60Hz power adapter