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mike@mikeshardware.co.uk

Q1 2003

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01/03

Windows Media Player 9 was released on January 7th.

SiS 746FX chipset for the AMD Athlon platform was released on January 7th. The SiS 746FX is the successor to the SiS 746, featuring support for DDR400, a 333Mhz FSB speed and AGP8X.

Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP was released on January 7th. Plus! DME will feature the following applications. Plus! Photo Story provides narrateable, moving and panning slideshows of photos. Plus! Alarm Clock uses WMP9 to wake you up to a playlist. Plus! Analog Recorder helps you to record music from Analogue sources such as Tape and LP. Plus! Audio Converter converts between WMA, MP3 and WAV formats. Plus! CD Maker label is similar to the Label Maker found in the origional Plus!, but with support for MP3 and WMA data CDs. Plus! Dancer integrates into WMP9, providing animated dancers on your desktop. Plus! Party Mode converts your machine into a jukebox, allowing access to your playlist and various visual effects, but prevents access to the rest of your personal files. Finally Sync & Go for Pocket PC allows you to sync audio and video between your PC and Pocket PC. Plus! DME will retail for $20 and will be made available as a download.

S3 / VIA DeltaChrome GPU, formally codenamed Columbia, was announced on January 7th. The DeltaChrome core will be released in multiple guises for both the Notebook and Desktop sectors, with the Desktop version scheduled for release by the end of Q2 and the notebook version (AlphaChrome) reaching volume production by Q4. DeltaChrome is a DirectX 9 part, featuring an 8 pixel pipeline and supporting Vertex and Pixel Shader 2.0 standards and beyond (the featureset is very similar to NV30). The core will, however, contain significantly less transistors than either ATI's R300 or nVidia's NV30 cores (around 80-90 million compared to the R300's 110 million and NV30's 125 million). DeltaChrome is expected to clock to at least 300Mhz (possibly up to 30% higher), with a number of different clock speeds being made available (200-240Mhz for the base model featuring 4 pixel pipelines, 300Mhz for the mid range part and 300Mhz+ for the high end part). The core interfaces to standard DDR memory over a 128-bit bus, utilising four 64-bit memory controllers much like nVidia's NV25 (GF4). At 300Mhz DeltaChrome will have a fill rate of 2.4Gpixels/s (compared to the R300's 2.6Gpixels/s) and a memory bandwidth of 11Gb/s (compared to the R300s 19.2Gb/s). The DeltaChrome does contain occlusion culling (read memory bandwidth saving) technology, but not quite to the same degree as the R300 (let alone NV30). DeltaChrome also features a 400Mhz RAMDAC for 2D output.

Windows Movie Maker 2 was released on January 8th.

Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M 2.4Ghz was released on January 14th.

Intel Mobile Celeron 2Ghz was released on January 14th.

Compaq Alpha 21364 (EV7) was released in January (20th?) with an initial maximum clock speed of 1.15Ghz. The EV7 is built on a 0.18 micron process and  contains around 90 million transistors (it will dissipate around 155W). The processor core is expected to contain an integrated Rambus memory controller, on-chip switching (for "glueless SMP", eliminating the need for off-chip crossbar switches in SMP systems) and up to 1.75Mb of L2 cache. It will be housed in a 1443-pin LGA package. The processor is expected to deliver around 804 SPECint2000 and 1253 SPECfp2000.

VIA C3 (Nehemiah) CPU was released on January 22nd, with initial clock speeds of 1.0, 1.06, 1.13 & 1.2Ghz and manufactured on a 0.13 micron process. The Nehemiah core has a very long 16 stage pipeline to help increase clock speeds and includes 128Kb L1 (64Kb data, 64Kb instruction) and 64Kb L2 cache, improved FPU and integer performance, enhanced branch prediction, SSE support and Out Of Order MMX execution. Never the less, the performance of Nehemia, whilst being significantly better than Ezra-T, lags behind Intel's Celeron by a very wide margin. The Nehemiah core is a low power Socket 370 processor, with a core voltage of 1.4V generating just 18.4W.

02/03

AMD Athlon MP 2600+ was released on February 4th. See the Thoroughbred Roadmap entry for additional information.

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) was released on February 10th. Barton is the followup to the AMD Athlon XP Thoroughbred core and is built on the same 0.13 micron process. The Barton core is identical to its predecessor, Thoroughbred B, except it contains 512Kb of L2 cache rather than 256Kb. As well as the 3000+ (2.167Ghz) CPU, a 2800+ (2.083Ghz) and 2500+ (1.83Ghz) CPUs will shortly become available. All the initial Barton processors will run on a 333Mhz FSB, although later processors may well migrate to a 400Mhz FSB. The performance of Barton compared with its predecessor Thoroughbred B largely depends on the applications use of additional cache. Benchmarks which do not reply heavily on cache, such as content creation, scientific applications and 3D rendering programs, can show the 3000+ Barton being outperformed by the slightly higher clocked Thoroughbred B 2800+. Office applications, however, provide around a 5% improvement over the 2800+ and Games offer up to a 7% speed up (often 2-3%).

nVidia GeForce FX 5800 / 5800 Ultra cards became available in Late February. The GeForce FX 5800 series cards are built around nVidia's NV30 GPU. The GeForce FX 5800 Ultra runs at a core clock speed of 500Mhz and contains 1Ghz (500Mhz DDR-II) memory over a 128-bit bus. GeForce FX 5800 Ultra cards are expected to retail for around $399. The GeForce FX 5800 is expected to run at a core clock of 400Mhz, interfacing to 800Mhz memory over a 128-bit bus.

Initial benchmarks show that the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is, generally speaking, slightly faster that ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro, although it can be slower under certain benchmarks (benchmarks fall between 89% and 139% of a 9700 Pro, but on average are around 5-10% faster).

Intel Price cuts occurred on February 23rd. See the Intel CPU Prices page for additional information.

AMD Price cuts occurred on February 24th. See the AMD CPU Prices page for additional information.

03/03

ATI Radeon 9800 / 9800 Pro (R350), were released on March 6th. The R350 is a slight enhancement to the Radeon 9700's R300 core, manufactured on the same 0.15 micron process. The R350 core includes a slightly improved featureset over the R300, offering an improved version of Hyper-Z III (Z cache optimisation, particularly tailored for stencil operations used in newer games such as Doom III), improved Z- and colour compression algorithms (increases AA performance) and SMARTSHADER 2.1, allowing shader programs of unlimited length using a Fragment stream FIFO buffer (F-Buffer). Optimisations made to the core allow for higher clock speeds and lower power consumption, with the top-of-the-range Radeon 9800 Pro offering 380Mhz core and 680MHz memory clocks (compared with the Radeon 9700 Pro's 325/620Mhz). The standard Radeon 9800 features a 325Mhz core connected to 580Mhz DDR memory (compared to the Radeon 9700's 275Mhz core / 540Mhz DDR). As well as the standard 128Mb Radeon 9800 Pro, a 256Mb model will also be produced - possibly with a higher clock speed and featuring DDR2 memory. The clock speeds of the members of Radeon 9800 series are listed below:

Radeon 9800 Pro - Core 380Mhz, Memory 680Mhz
Radeon 9800 - Core 325Mhz, Memory 580Mhz
Radeon 9800 LE - Core 325Mhz, Memory 600Mhz (128bit)

The Radeon 9800 Pro notably outperforms nVidia's NV30 (GeForce FX 5800) series and ATI's own Radeon 9700 Pro. Initial benchmarks show that clock-for-clock the R350 core performs virtually identically to that of the R300 core when Anti-aliasing and Ansiotropic filtering are not used, but between 10% and 30% faster when these features are turned on. Generally speaking, the Radeon 9800 (non-Pro) performs very similarly to the Radeon 9700 Pro in AA and Ansio situations. The Radeon 9800 Pro is between 0% and 50% faster than the Radeon 9700 Pro, usually around 10-20% faster.

ATI Radeon 9600 / 9600 Pro (RV350) were released on March 6th on a 0.13 micron process. The RV350 is the successor to ATI's RV300 core found in the Non-pro Radeon 9500, featuring the same 4 pixel pipelines and 2x64-bit memory controllers, but operating with increased clock speeds. The 0.13micron process has allowed the core to be significantly redesigned, optimising the core for the 2x64bit memory controllers (compared to the 4x64-bit optimisation of RV300) and a superior Hyper-Z engine (even to that found in R350, due to the extra die space available with a 0.13 micron process). RV350's Hyper-Z implementation gives a Z compression ratio of 8:1 rather than 6:1.
The Radeon 9600 Pro will be clocked at 400Mhz core & 600Mhz memory over a 128-bit bus (compared to 275/540Mhz in the Radeon 9500 Pro, although the 9500 Pro had twice the number of pixel pipelines). The clock speeds of the members of Radeon 9600 series are listed below:

Radeon 9600 Pro - Core 400Mhz, Memory 600Mhz
Radeon 9600 - Core 400Mhz, Memory 400Mhz
Radeon 9600 LE - Core 325Mhz, Memory 400Mhz

ATI Radeon 9200 (RV280) was released on March 6th. The RV280 is based around the RV250 (the Radeon 9000/Pro) core, but includes AGP 8X support. The Radeon 9200 comes in three varieties:

Radeon 9200 Pro - Core 275Mhz, Memory 550Mhz
Radeon 9200 - Core 250Mhz, Memory 400Mhz
Radeon 9200 LE - Core 200Mhz, Memory 333Mhz

nVidia GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (NV31) was released on March 6th. NV31 is targeted at the performance end of the mainstream market, replacing the GeForce4 Ti line with a fully DirectX 9 capable part. NV31 is a cut down version of the NV30 core, built on the same 0.13micron process but featuring 4 pixel pipelines, as opposed to the 8 in NV30. NV31 actually has a slightly more efficient memory controller and improved Z- and Colour compression algorithms compared to NV30 (due to NV31 being a later design), but its lower core and memory clocks, along with the reduction in pixel pipelines, mean that it will not approach NV30 in performance. NV31 additionally features an integrated TMDS transmitter, not found in NV30, along with 2x400Mhz RAMDACS (taken from NV30). The core features 80 million transistors (compared to NV30's 125 million) and runs at a clock speed of 350Mhz (5800 Ultra is 500Mhz) interfaced to 700Mhz DDR memory (5800 Ultra is 1Ghz DDR2). Unlike the 5800 series, however, NV31 does not require additional power or extreme cooling measures.

The GeForce FX 5600 Ultra is expected to retail for around $199. Initial benchmarks show that the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra offers similar performance to the GeForce4 Ti 4200 without AA or Ansio, but outperforms it when these features are enabled.

nVidia GeForce FX 5200 / 5200 Ultra (NV34), the mainstream version of the GeForce FX (NV30) and the successor to the GeForce4 MX series, was released on March 6th. NV34 is based around the NV31 core, but has a number of features removed and is built on a 0.15micron process. The NV34 core contains 45million transistors and features 4 pixel pipelines, but it lacks the Z- and colour compression features of NV31. The pixel pipelines, whilst being functionally identical to NV30/NV31 contain fewer pipeline stages (more stages allow for higher clock speeds). NV34 also features two 350Mhz RAMDACs, compared to the 2x400Mhz units found in NV30/NV31. Never the less the NV34 is fully DirectX 9 capable and beyond, having identical capabilities to NV30. The GeForce 5200 Ultra features a core clock of 325Mhz interfacing with 650Mhz DDR memory. The non-Ultra part will be clocked slightly lower.

The GeForce FX 5200 Ultra is expected to retail for around $149, with the GeForce FX 5200 coming in at around $99. Initial benchmarks show that the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra offers slightly better performance than a GeForce4 MX 460 without AA or Ansio enabled. With these features turned on, performance is close to a GeForce4 Ti 4200.

VIA KT400A chipset for the AMD Athlon platform was released on March 10th. The VIA KT400A is the successor to the KT400 chipset, featuring an enhanced memory controller (marketed as FastStream64), full DDR400 support and a soon-to-be-released updated South Bridge. The enhancements made to the memory controller include deeper command and data buffers along with larger pre-fetch buffers. VIA's new South Bridge - VT8237 - will not be ready for mass production until Q2, but it's enhancements include a native 4 channel Serial ATA controller (as opposed to a PCI bus based controller), 8 x USB2 ports and support for VIA's Ultra V-Link North to South bridge interconnect, providing 1.06Gb/s bandwidth.

Initial benchmarks show the KT400A falls 7-8% behind nForce2 on business applications (where nVidia's fast IDE drivers provide a significant boost), but a smaller 2-4% slower on game benchmarks. Note that these comparisons are with nForce2's Dual Channel 128-bit memory access mode. Compared to the KT400 chipset, however, these are marked improvements - up to 15% on business applications and 8% with games.

Intel Xeon 3.0 & 3.06Ghz (Prestonia) were released on March 10th.

Microsoft Office System 2003 Beta 2, formally called Office 11, was released on March 10th. See the final Office 2003 Roadmap for additional information.

Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 & 1.6Ghz mobile CPU, formally known as Banias, was released on March 12th. Whilst being x86 compatible, Banias is Intel's first CPU designed specifically for mobile usage with a much greater emphasis on power conservation. Banias reduces power consumption through aggressive clock gating (switching unused processor blocks off when they are not in use), the use of Intel's MicroOps Fusion technology to make more efficient use of the processors execution units, a power optimised bus (400Mhz and low voltage with the ability to switch parts of the bus off) and a dedicated hardware stack manager (reduces the performance penalty caused by stack operations - push, pop, call & ret - which reduces the number of micro ops that need to be processed). The L2 cache of Banias is 1Mb in size and is arranged in banks, each of which can be turned on and off to reduce power requirements.

The performance of Banias is extremely competitive with the more power hungry Pentium 4-M, with a 1.6Ghz Pentium-M generally offering superior performance to all current Pentium 4-M processors and roughly equivalent to the Desktop P4 2.66Ghz.

Intel i855PM chipset, formally known as Odem and part of Intel's Centrino technology, for the Banias processor was released on March 12th. The i855PM features AGP4X, support up to 1Gb of 200 or 266Mhz DDR memory and usees the ICH4M South Bridge, providing USB2 support.

Intel i855GM chipset, formally known as Montara GM, for the Banias processor was released on March 12th. The i855GM chipset adds an integrated graphics core with Digital Video Out, LVDS support and TV-out to the featureset of the i855PM.

nVidia GeForce FX Go 5600 (NV31M) Mobile GPU was released on March 13th. The NV31M is the high-end successor to the NV17M is based around the desktop NV31 core, combined with the power saving features of the NV17M (GeForce4 Go). The GeForce FX Go 5600 features a core and memory clock of 350Mhz - the same as the desktop GeForce FX 5600 Ultra.

nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200 (NV34M) Mobile GPU was released on March 13th. The NV34M is the value oriented successor to the NV17M, and is based around the desktop NV34 core, combined with the power saving features of the NV17M (GeForce4 Go). The GeForce FX Go 5200 features a core and memory clock of 300Mhz - slightly less that the desktop GeForce FX 5200 Ultra's 325Mhz/325Mhz DDR.

ATI Radeon 9600 / 9600 Pro Mobility mobile GPUs were released on March 13th. The Radeon 9600 Mobility series are the mobile equivalent of the Desktop Radeon 9600s. The core and memory speeds of the 9600 Mobility are 350Mhz core, 300Mhz DDR memory (between the Desktop 9600 and 9600 Pro). The Pro version will have a higher clocked core and will feature support for GDDR-IIM memory. The exact clock speeds were not disclosed at the time of the announcement.

ATI Radeon 9200 Mobility (M9+) mobile GPU was released on March 13th. The Radeon 9200 Mobility is the mobile equivalent of the Desktop Radeon 9200, adding AGP8X to the Radeon 9000 Mobility core. The core and memory speeds have been increased over the Mobility 9000, with the Mobility 9200 featuring a core and DDR memory clock of 275Mhz (compared to the 250Mhz core, 230Mhz DDR memory of the Mobility 9000).

ATI Radeon 7000M mobile chipset, the successor to the IGP 330, was released on March 13th. The Radeon 7000M supports DDR333 memory and replaces the integrated Radeon VE graphics with integrated Radeon 7500 graphics.

Microsoft DirectX 9.0a was released on March 25th. This release resolves issues found with the original DirectX 9 release, including issues with ATI's Catalyst drivers, MSN Messenger and some Multiplayer games.

Microsoft Windows Server 2003(RTM) was released to manufacturing on March 28th. See the release Roadmap entry for additional information.

Intel Celeron 2.2 & 2.4Ghz were released on March 31st.  See the Celeron (Northwood) Roadmap entry for additional information.

Q1/03

Rambus PC1200 memory is expected to become available in Late Q2, following availability of SiS R658 chipset motherboards. PC1200 RDRAM will run at a clock speed of 1200Mhz and is expected to be available with memory interfaces of 16 and 32bits. The memory bandwidth of PC1200 is 2.4Gb/s for 16bit RDRAM and 4.8Gb/s for the 32bit variety.

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