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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Thursday, January 24, 2008
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Starting with RV635, AMD has decided that instead of having separate Pro and XT cards like it did in the Radeon HD 2600 series, it would stick with just one model name in the Radeon HD 3650 series. AMD's Iain McNaughton explained that the company looked at the mainstream segment and asked itself "what can we do that is different and disruptive to our competitors, while offering more value to our customers?"
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While Intel has been quick to regain a lot of the popularity lost during the past few years, that is no excuse to forget about the #2 company in computer processing. AMD made a name for itself with the original Athlon and Athlon 64 processors and it would only seem logical that its next generation product called Phenom (K10) was to raise expectations all over the place, and it did. Today we will be comparing the Phenom 9500, 9600, 9700 and the 9900 (B2 Stepping) against the recently released Core 2 Duo E8400, as well as the very popular Core 2 Quad Q6600. An older Athlon64 X2 5200+ processor will be added to the mix as well.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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ATI is of the opinion that its entire line-up should now reflect the improvements brought by HD 3850/3870. To that end, it's releasing three distinct low-to-mid-range SKUs to replace the Radeon HD 2000-series.
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Today AMD is officially unveiling the Radeon HD 3650 and the Radeon HD 3450 / 3470, which are based on the 55nm RV635 and RV620 GPUs, respectively. Like the RV670 that came before them, the RV635 and RV620 are competitively priced DirectX 10.1 compliant GPUs that offer full UVD support. Built on the same advanced 55nm manufacturing process technology, these new cards should drop in cost effectively and with cool-running thermal characteristics.
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Monday, January 21, 2008
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Now why would AMD release an AMD Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition Processor? Try affordability and performance on for size. At a reasonable $115.00 for 2.6GHz of power running through two cores, this processor should be very capable of providing more than enough power for today's most graphic intensive games. Of course as with any of the newest processors, it should be teamed up with a good graphics card like the NVidia 8800 or ATI's newest series. This more affordable processor is basically AMD's way of thanking all of the people who have chosen and continue to choose AMD processors.
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Thursday, January 17, 2008
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From the results, if you can get 2.6GHz+ from one it should scale wonderfully, however given the problems AMD seems to be having with scaling its retail CPUs means it looks like getting a good chip is very much luck of the draw. And it could turn out to be an expensive mistake if you consider that every Intel Core 2-based CPU we've ever used has easily achieved 3GHz. We'd love to have some solid competition and choice again, especially for us enthusiasts but it unfortunately just doesn't look to be the case. What we risk is the current price difference between Q6600 and Q6700 - more than double for an extra 266MHz. That's only because the Phenom 9600 loosely relates to the performance of the Core 2 Quad Q6600 and Intel wants to be super-competitive. With Penryn CPUs literally just weeks away - more specifically, the new dual core Wolfdales, which should be positively bursting with potential, a wise investment for your hard earned cash would be to still overclock an Intel processor.
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Today we are looking at a Spider platform computer system from AMD. This particular machine is running a Phenom 2.4GHz processor in an Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe mainboard with a single ATI HD 3850 graphics card. I used the computer in my daily activities on average ten hours a day for nearly a month. I found that in normal situations like editing large photos, surfing the web and rendering video the AMD spider platform is every bit as speedy as my Intel based test machine with much higher specifications.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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ATI's HD 2600 XT is a pretty nice card. It plays games acceptably well, consumes a negligible amount of power, and has flawless video acceleration. It's my first choice for the mainstream. So where does that leave the HD 2600 Pro? Being a cut-down, budget version of a cool card, what, then, is missing? The HD 2600 Pro is targeted to anyone who wants a discreet video card, the casual gaming ilk, but doesn't really want either the lowest-end model or to spend over a hundred dollars. All that seems reasonable, but it's just not true. I think the GDDR3, 256MB HD 2600 Pro should be skipped altogether. It does a couple things right, but misses the mark too often.
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Friday, January 4, 2008
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Turbulent. Tumultuous. Bumpy. Disappointing. There's no shortage of unflattering adjectives to describe AMD's journey through 2007, including their graphics division, ATI. Purchased just over a year ago for roughly $5.4 billion, the acquisition's long-term verdict remains to be written. In the meantime, the short-term outlook hasn't been rosy up to this point, with ATI conceding defeat in the high end GPU arena and instead focusing primarily on the budget and lower mid-range sectors, much to the chagrin of the ATI-loyal. That's about to change. Before we get ahead of ourselves, ATI still doesn't have an answer for nVidia's flagship 8800GTX and Ultra GPUs, but with the release of the RV670 core, they're no longer relegating themselves to the lower end graphics market, and seem to be targeting the upper mainstream market with a vengeance.
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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AMD's first quad-core is now available for mass consumption and faster Phenom 9900 parts will be available starting early in 08. Today we look at three speed grades of Phenom, 9500, 9700 and 9900 and compare them to an Intel QX6700.
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AMD's first quad-core is now available for mass consumption and faster Phenom 9900 parts will be available starting early in 08. Today we look at three speed grades of Phenom, 9500, 9700 and 9900 and compare them to an Intel QX6700.
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Monday, December 17, 2007
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All in all I'd say AMD has a sure hit with the X2 5000+ Black Edition Processor. It does amazing speeds for its price, and manages to stay nice and cool when running them. If you're just looking to get into overclocking, then this would be a good place to start, as the unlocked multiplier makes setting the speed beyond easy. Of course, if you don't have any technical knowledge, this probably isn't the processor for you. You'll be able to spend a bit more and get a processor right out of the box running at these speeds, and not have to worry about overclocking. If you're an overclocker, check this one out, with its price and speeds you won't be sorry.
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Thursday, December 13, 2007
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The bottom line is that AMD's Phenom processors are currently too expensive and don't perform well enough to offer serious competition for Intel's quad-core processors. With the low clock speeds, AMD needs applications that make use of multiple cores to show off the benefits but, as most real consumer applications are single threaded (or maybe occasionally dual-core optimised), there aren't any real benefits to Phenom in its current state.
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Friday, December 7, 2007
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The AMD Phenom 9900 Spider platform looks fantastic on paper. But does reality reinforce or negate that opinion?
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Thursday, December 6, 2007
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The ATI Radeon HD 3870 was a solid performer in all of the benchmarks we tested and was able to run all the DirectX 10 game titles we threw at it with no problems at all. The CrossFire drivers still need some help on certain games, but hopefully that will clear up in the next couple driver releases. The Radeon HD 3870 was hands down a faster card than a Radeon HD 3850, but you'll pay for the extra performance. Is the Radeon HD 3870 worth the extra $60...
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