YouTube videos about AMD Phenom X3 and AMD780G

There are some videos from AMD recently, in response to Intel's FUD video and presentation that was made to ruin Phenom X3 reputation.

First: AMD Phenom X3 + 780G: Blu-ray and Gaming Demo



Second: AMD 780G vs Intel G35



Third: AMD Shows High Performance at Low Power

Local review of Sempron X2 'Sherman'

The first but limited wave of Sempron X2 2100 have hit Indonesian capital and Yogyakarta and the response is quite convincing. Enthusiast users were glad and excited by the performance, especially ability to overclock over 3 GHz without raising the VCore and there were no drastic temperature increase.

CPU-Z detected it as codename 'Sherman' but still reported wrong string name as Sempron LE-1210.

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=360718

This guy in Yogyakarta, name 'Ronny Damajaya' have voluntarily benchmarked and posted it at CHIP forum.

AMD GAME! Platform for Gaming PCs

AMD has pulled a certification for gaming PCs out of its sleeve. Machines that bear the new AMD GAME! badge couple AMD processors with Radeon HD 3000-series graphics cards, and AMD guarantees them to deliver "an enhanced and simplified mainstream PC gaming experience."

To qualify for an AMD GAME! logo, a system must include at least an Athlon X2 5600+ processor, an AMD 770 or Nvidia nForce 500-series chipset, a Radeon HD 3650 graphics processor, and 2GB of RAM. AMD says such PCs should crank out 30 frames per second or more at 1280 x 1024 in current games like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, World of Warcraft, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and Sims 2 Deluxe.

There's also an AMD GAME! Ultra spec that mandates at least a Phenom X4 9650 CPU, AMD 780G chipset, and Radeon HD 3870 graphics. GAME! Ultra machines should manage a 30 FPS minimum at 1600 x 1200 with the same titles.



The idea is to help consumers more easily identify systems suited for increasingly demanding gaming applications. And it aims to do so with a special logo on machines with AMD microprocessors and graphics chips.

AMD says its target is the 52 million people, or 20% of PC users, who play games with 3-D graphics. AMD says two-thirds of PCs sold in 2007 weren't capable of playing sophisticated video games adequately, and shoppers need to be better educated about which PCs will provide a good gaming experience.

Trend for bashing AMD

A few years ago it was fashionable to bash Intel's Pentium 4 as a braindead architecture. It is now trendy to bash AMD. One" PC doctor" at ZDNet goes as far to say that:

"When I look at AMD’s current product line, all I see is a forest of deadness. Intel has products trump every category of products going. Server, desktop, mobile, low-end, high-end, dual-core, quad-core. Intel has all these markets stitched up."

Like any design, the K10 is a trade-off. And most trade-offs were made in favor of the applications in the server and HPC market, at the expense of games and other desktop applications.



A 2 GHz Barcelona is capable of keeping up with the best 65 nm Xeons in those applications.

It is pretty clear why AMD focused on the server market. Without a complete redesign it is not possible to beat Intel's integer crunching power and the fast and big L2-cache and that is exactly what a modern game needs. Barcelona built further on the K8 architecture and inherited the relatively inflexible integer pipeline. While Core 2 has sophisticated reordering of loads and stores, Barcelona does a limited reordering of loads. While Core 2 offers a 32 entry queue to the integer units, Barcelona has 3 rather inflexible separated 8 entry queues.

So the right way forward for AMD was to focus on HPC and server applications where it could leverage it's strong points. We can bash AMD for being so late, and coming up with relatively low clocked CPUs, but even a 2.8 GHz Phenom would not have raise AMD's ASP significantly in the desktop market.

Projecting the bad performance of the desktop chip to say that "AMD's products are a dead forest" is ... just silly. AMD is very competitive in the HPC / Server market.

Quoted from : Anandtech weblog by Johan de Gelas

AMD Puma is nearly ready

Underdog chipmaker AMD says it is seeing unprecedented uptake by PC makers for its forthcoming “Puma” notebook platform. Upwards of 100 notebooks are being designed with Puma chipsets, said John Taylor, of AMD's Graphics Division, speaking at a technology update event in Singapore.

According to Taylor, notebook manufacturers are recognizing Puma’s key advantages over competing notebook platforms (read: Intel Centrino), particularly in the area of graphics.

AMD has devised a system called “hybrid graphics” where an integrated GPU does the low-powered 2D and 3D work (for example, Vista’s GPU-accelerated windowing system) while a discrete GPU chip can be fired up instantly to take on the heavy lifting 3D tasks when a demanding application like a game or Google Earth is loaded.

For example, a Puma-based notebook might come with AMD’s RS780M integrated GPU for basic graphics work (which in itself provides up to four times the performance of current generation Radeon X1200), as well as an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 with full DirectX 10.1 support. In notebooks, this hybrid graphics capability will be called AMD PowerXPress.



PowerXPress means you'll be able to have a low-power consumption integrated GPU doing your light graphics work, but a full-blooded discrete GPU can kick in with full force if you start doing anything that needs 3D graphics heavy lifting. The rest of the time it sits quietly, consuming next to no power.

On the CPU front, Puma-based notebooks will be based on the AMD Turion X2 Ultra mobile processor which uses Hypertransport 3 bus for extremely fast (20.8GB/s) data transfer between CPU and chipset, power management that can turn whole segments of the chip off on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis to save power.

Finally, AMD says its “WiFi certified” program means notebook makers will have a lot more flexibility in building notebooks with parts that are certified as compatible with the WiFi standard by the vendor-neutral WiFi forum, rather than Intel’s competing Centrino certification. Puma notebooks will offer 802.11a/b/g/n networking from vendors such as Broadcom, Atheros, Marvel and Ralink.

We can expect to see the first Puma-based notebooks launched at Computex Taiwan in June.

Advance tickets are sold out for F4 Japan Concert

F4 Concerts are on its way to Tokyo and Osaka this October
30,000 advance booking tickets are sold out, snatched $120 millions
Fans urge for more showings

After two and a half years separation, F4 will reunite again for Japan Concerts. Shortly after the announcement for online advance ticket booking, 30,000 registration quotas for the 3 shows are full rapidly in only a few days. Fans strongly complaint about the insufficient openings and urge the organizers to add more showings. Whether it is feasible to extend for more showings remain as an unknown. Nevertheless, F4 snatched $120 millions from only 3 shows, revealed how amazing their extra-ordinary profit-potentials.

Open Concert in Japan for the first time

March 2006, F4 held concert with 5 showings in Hong Kong. Once again, the 4 members will reunite to hold concert in coming October. This is their first time to open concert in Japan. Accordingly, there will be 3 concerts, scheduled on October 7th and 8th at Tokyo Nippon Budokan and on October 17th in Osaka. Beginning 21st of this month, fans started to register online for advance ticket bookings through the official fan clubs of Jerry Yan, Vic Zhou, Vanness Wu and Ken Chu respectively.

Online advance bookings are full

Based on our understanding, F4 will hold 3 concerts in Japan. Each showing is able to accommodate 10,000 audiences. If the openings are divided evenly among the 4 official fan clubs for advance booking, each artist enable to offer 7,500 quotas. According to our investigation, all quotas are being filled up in less than a week ever since registration was open for online advance booking. However, even one is able to register with the official fan club, he or she has to undergo for a ticket lottery in May. Presently, the registration does not guarantee a ticket to watch the concert.

Fans urge for more showings

Many fans are quite disappointed for the limited quotas. It is so hard to even get a single ticket. Other than voiced out their eagerness for more showings online, fans even made complaints with F4's management company Fulong. Zhi Xiang Li, the manager from Fulong who is in charge of coordination, indicated that there are thousands of members in each fan club of F4. Running a ticket lottery is the only way to give all a fair chance for the ticket.

In respect to fans earnest requests for more showings, Zhi Xiang Li expressed that it is impossible to extend for more showings at once. Many factors have to be taken into considerations, such as the artists availabilities, venue coordination in Japan, as well as the schedules of the production team. Therefore, more has to be negotiated with the Japanese counter-parties. Whether it could be pushed-through remain as an unknown.

This is another reunion of F4 since 2006. No matter it will come with more showings or not, the 30,000 concert tickets, each worth $4,000 (NTD), drawn $120 millions gain from the 3 concerts alone. No doubt, F4 is definitely the strongest profit-generating idol band.

Source: Liberty Times
Reported from Taipei by: Yi Wei Ci