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04
AMD Opteron 856 & 256 were quietly released on April 10th. These single core CPUs, based on the Athens and Troy cores respectively, have a Socket 940 interface and are clocked at 3Ghz.
AMD CPU Price changes occurred on April 10th, with single core Opteron 8xx series being reduced in price and all Athlon 64 processors seeing a slight increased in price. See the AMD CPU Prices page for additional information.
Intel Celeron M 4xx (Yonah) series were released on April 12th. The Celeron M 4xx series is based on a single core version of Yonah featuring 1MB L2 cache, a 533FSB, and no EIST support. The first members of the Yonah based Celeron M are the 420 (1.6Ghz) and 430 (1.73Ghz).
nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX (G71M-Ultra) was released on April 17th. The GeForce Go 7900GTX features a core clock of 500Mhz and a memory clock of 1.2Ghz DDR (compared with the 7800GTX's 400Mhz core and 1.06Ghz memory). Architecturally the 7900GTX features 24 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex shaders and runs at around 45W.
Intel CPU Price cuts occurred on April 23rd. See the Intel CPU Prices page for additional information.
05
Intel Pentium D 960 was quietly released on May 2nd. The Pentium D 960 is based on the Presler core and features a 3.6Ghz clock speed.
AGEIA PhysX PPU was released in retail on May 5th, although OEM shipments started before this date. AGEIA's Physics Processing Unit provides hardware physics acceleration, providing support for up to 32,000 rigid body objects, soft body objects, particle systems containing 40,000-50,000 particles, fluid modeling and collision detection. Support for the PhysX PPU will initially only be built into AGEIA's own NovodeX engine - although hopefully other engines will provide support in the future - with titles built on the Unreal Engine 3 and Ubisoft's games utilising this engine. The first games supporting PhysX hardware will be Ghost Recon, Advanced Warfighter, Unreal Tournament 2007, City of Villians (with a patch), Rise of Legends, Vanguard, and Bet on Soldier (with a patch). PhysX cards will consist of a PPU, a 125 million transistor chip built on TSMC’s 130nm process, connected over a high bandwidth bus to GDDR3 memory, and are expected to retail for between $249 and $299.
ATI X1900 GT was released on May 7th. The X1900GT are based on the R580 core, with a pixel pipeline quad disabled, leaving 36 pixel shaders, and a lower clock speed of 575MHz core and 1188MHz memory. The suggested retail price for the X1900 GT is $349.
nVidia GeForce 7300 GT was released on May 15th. The 7300GT is based on the G73 core, like the GeForce 7600 series, but runs at slower clock speeds with a 350Mhz core clock and has a pixel quad disabled (leaving 8 pixel pipelines). The GPU interfaces to memory through a 128-bit pipeline.
AMD Turion 64 X2 (Taylor) mobile processor was released on May 17th on a 90nm SOI process. Taylor is a dual core CPU with 256KB of L2 cache designed for Thin and light laptops. Taylor was released on Socket S1 and features a DDR2-667 memory interface alongside Pacifica Virtualization and Presidio Security technolgies. Taylor will feature a 35W TDP. The Taylor core is expected to feature in the following processors:
Turion 64 TL-50 (1.6GHz/256KB x 2)
AMD Turion 64 X2 (Trinidad) processor was released on May 17th on a 90nm SOI process. Trinidad is a dual core CPU with 512KB L2 cache designed for desktop replacement notebooks, feature a 62W TDP. Trinidad is the large cache, higher power version of Taylor. The Trinidad core is expected to feature in the following processors:
Turion 64 TL-60 (2.0GHz/512KB x2)
Turion 64 TL-56 (1.8GHz/512KB x 2)
Turion 64 TL-52 (1.6GHz/512KB x 2)
AMD CPU Price reductions occurred on May 17th, with reductions in price of the Sempron range. See the AMD CPU Prices page for additional information.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 (Windsor) was released on May 23rd for the Socket AM-2 platform on a 90nm SOI process. Windsor is a dual core CPU featuring AMD's Presidio Security technology and Pacifica Virtualisation technology. Windsor introduces a new Socket AM-2 platform (940 pins) and is features DDR2 800 support alongside either a 2Mb (2 x 1MB) or 1MB (2 x 512KB) L2 cache. Windsor is expected to feature better power management to previous steppings and lower power consumption through the optimisation of transistor leakage currents. The fastest initial version is the 5000+ which features a clock speed of 2.6Ghz. The initial members of the Windsor family are expected to be the following:
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz, 512KB x 2)
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz, 1MB x 2)
Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz, 512KB x 2)
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (2.2GHz, 1MB x 2)
Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz, 512KB x 2)
Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (2.0GHz, 1MB x 2)
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz, 512KB x 2)
AMD Athlon 64 (Orleans) was released on May 23rd for the Socket AM-2 platform on a 90nm SOI process. Orleans is the cut down version of Windsor, featuring a single core design with 1Mb L2 cache alongside the features of Windsor such as DDR2 support (only up to DDR2 667 for single core processors), Presidio Security technology and Pacifica Virtualisation technology. Like Windsor, it is built for the Socket AM2 platform. Initial members of the Orleans family are as follows:
Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4GHz, 512KB)
Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2GHz, 512KB)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (Windsor) was released on May 23rd for the Socket AM-2 platform on a 90nm SOI process. The Athlon 64 FX-62 is based on the Dual Core Windsor platform, with 2x1MB L2 caches, and runs at a clock speed of 2.8Ghz.
AMD Sempron (Manila) was released on May 23rd. Based on the Orleans core, Manila is a single core CPU featuring 512Kb L2 cache and DDR2 667 support. Manila does not feature Presidio or Pacifica technologies, but will be based on the Socket AM-2 platform. The initial members of the Manila family are as follows:
Sempron 3600+ (2.0GHz, 256KB)
Sempron 3500+ (2.0GHz, 128KB)
Sempron 3400+ (1.8GHz, 256KB)
Sempron 3200+ (1.8GHz, 128KB)
Sempron 3000+ (1.6GHz, 256KB)
nVidia nForce 500 series chipset for
AMD's AM-2 platform was released on May
23rd with a Conroe version available upon it's release. The
successor to the nForce4 and
nForce 4 X16, the nForce 500 is based around the
same design, but with an enhanced featureset. The top of the range
nForce 590 SLI consists of two chips, the C51XE SPP (90nm) and the
MCP55PXE (130nm), with the lower featured chipsets supporting utilising
the MCP only. The SPP contains 18 PCI Express lanes, two of which are
currently used and the remaining 16 going to the first PCI Express x16
graphics port. The MCP supports 28 PCI Express lanes - 1 X16, 1 X8 and 4
X1 - and supports the connectivity features of the chipset (SATA, PATA,
Ethernet, etc). In addition to the featureset of the nForce 4 the nForce
500 series adds a number of new technologies and improved featuresets.
The improvements to the chipset include support for 6xSATA 3Gb/s ports,
1xPATA port (reduced from 2 in the nForce4), 2x1Gb Ethernet ports,
10xUSB2 ports, an increased number of PCI Express lanes and Azalia High
Definition Audio. The new technologies introduced are Linkboost, TCP/IP
offload, teaming and prioritisation, SLI Ready memory and an improved
MediaShield featureset.
"Linkboost" technology increases the bandwidth of the SPP to MCP
Hypertransport link and the x16 PCI Express links by 25% - from 1Ghz and
8GB/s to 1.25GHz and 10GB/s - and is only found in the nForce 590SLI.
The idea is to increase the performance of the graphics buses, both
between cards for SLI and for single cards. Generally speaking, however,
the CPU HyperTransport link is the bottleneck and this remains at 8GB/s
so performance improvements are hard to come across.
nVidia's SLI Ready memory technology uses the manufacturer information
area of the memory's SPD chip to define non-JEDEC memory performance
profiles. The information stored includes supported voltages and clock
rates, memory timings, drive strengths etc. The idea is that high
performance memory manufacturers can include this information to
alleviate problems during memory overclocking or if the memory does not
correspond to a standard JEDEC profile.
The Ethernet offload engines have seen a number of changes. Like the
nForce4, the nForce 500 chipsets feature TCP/IP offloading, reducing CPU
overhead. The data corruption bugs found in the nForce4 have also been
fixed with this release. However it is not all good news - the
ActiveArmor firewall found in the nForce4 has been dropped and the
TCP/IP offload will be disabled when used in conjunction with a software
firewall. Other changes consist of the introduction of DualNet and
FirstPacket technologies. DualNet is nVidia's Ethernet teaming
technology, allowing both Gigabit Ethernet ports to be 'teamed' (have
the same IP address). This allows for both redundancy (if one port loses
connection, the other picks up the load) and a doubling of bandwidth
(when both ports are active). FirstPacket is nVidia's Packet
Prioritisation technology, allowing defined applications to have a
higher outbound priority. This can reduce the latency of packets from a
prioritised application when other network activity is taking place
(e.g. a game can have priority over a P2P download manager).
MediaShield has been improved to support six SATA controllers and
allowing two independant RAID 5 arrays, each with three drives, to be
used. Like the nForce4 series, on-the-fly migration to other RAID types
is supported as is the automatic rebuilding of storage volumes upon disk
failure.
The nForce 500 series is
initially consists of the following members:
nForce 590 SLI - Quad SLI, 46 PCI-E lanes, full featureset
nForce 570 SLI - SLI, 28 PCI-E lanes, No Linkboost
nForce 570 - Single GPU, 20 PCI-E lanes
nForce 550 - Single GPU, 20 PCI-E lanes, Single Ethernet with no
enhancements, 4xSATA ports and no RAID 5 support, Sempron support.
ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 & 1150 were released on May 23rd. The Xpress 11x0 chipsets features integrated Radeon X300 graphics (clocked at 300Mhz for the Xpress 1100 and 400MHz for the Xpress 1150), interfacing with up to 128MB of memory via ATI's HyperMemory technology and featuring Vertex Shader 2.0, Pixel Shader 2.0 and SurroundView technology for the support of up to three monitors. The Radeon Xpress 11x0 series additionally feature one PCIe x16 link and four PCIe x1 links. The Radeon Xpress chipsets will interface with ATI's SB600 South Bridge.
ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200 for AM2 was released on May 23rd. This chipset is the AM2 version of the Socket 939 Crossfire Xpress 3200. The Socket AM2 Crossfire Xpress chipset will interface with ATI's SB600 South Bridge.
ATI SB600 South Bridge was released on May 23rd. The SB600 is the successor to the SB450, featuring support for 10xUSB2 ports (with fixed USB2 performance), 4xSATA-II with RAID and NCQ, and HD Audio.
Windows Vista Beta 2 was released on May 23rd. Beta 2 is more feature complete and thus far more impressive - from a users point of view - than Beta 1. See the Windows Longhorn Roadmap entry for additional information.
Windows Server Longhorn Beta 2 was released on May 23rd alongside Vista Beta 2.
Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 was released on May 23rd.
Intel Xeon DP 5000 (Dempsey) was released on May 23rd forming the Xeon 5000 series of CPUs and part of the Bensley platform alongside Blackford. Dempsey is the 65nm, Dual Core successor to Paxville featuring support for a 1066MHz FSB and containing two sets of 2MB L2 cache, one for each core. Dempsey will also introduce the Socket 771 interface, the successor to Socket 603/604. The initial members of the Dempsey family are expected to be as follows:
Xeon 5030 - 2.67GHz
Xeon 5050 - 3GHz
Xeon 5060 - 3.2GHz
Xeon 5063 - 3.2GHz (Low Voltage)
Xeon 5080 - 3.73GHz
Intel 5000P (Blackford) chipset for Dempsey, forming the Bensley platform, was released on May 23rd. Blackford features dual independent front side busses, allowing 17GB/s of bandwidth between the two cores, and a quad channel FB-DIMM memory controller supporting up to 64GB of memory. This chipset also features support for a 1066Mhz FSB speed, Intel's I/O acceleration, Intel Virtualisation Technology (formally Vanderpool) Intel Active Management technology and PCI Express.
Intel Celeron D 356 & 352 (Cedar Mill) were released on May 28th. These CPUs are based on the Cedar Mill core and feature 512Kb of L2 cache and run on a 533Mhz FSB speed.
Celeron D 356 - 3.33Ghz, $89
Celeron D 352 - 3.2Ghz, $79
06
nVidia nForce 500 series chipsets for the Intel Socket 775 platform were announced on June 5th. The variety and featureset of the Intel chipsets is identical to that of the AM2 chipsets released earlier in the quarter and features support for Core 2 Duo, Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron D processors.
Intel i965 (Broadwater) chipset series is expected to be released on June 7th. Broadwater is part of the Averill platform and is expected to replace all desktop chipsets from the i955X down. All chipsets will feature support for a 533/800/1066MHz FSB and Dual Channel DDR2-800 and will feature two full PCI Express x16 slots (although ATI Crossfire and nVidia SLI do not currently look as if they will be supported, despite the fact that the Intel 945, 955X and 975X chipsets do feature Crossfire support). Additionally Broadwater chipsets are expected to introduce Intel's Active Management Technology 2 (IAMT2), ICH8 and the LaGrande security system. The integrated graphics in G965 and Q963 will feature support for Pixel and Vertex shader to DX9 SM3 level and will feature hardware decoding of WMV9b HD high-definition video streams. Broadwater is expected to comprise the following chipsets:
P965 - No integrated graphics
G965 - Integrated graphics
Q965 - Intel GMA, iAMT, SIPP
Q963 - DDR2-533/667, Intel GMA, iAMT, SIPP
Intel ICH8 South Bridge is expected to be released on June 7th alongside the Broadwater chipset. ICH8 is expected to have the same featureset as ICH7 with the inclusion of an additional 2 SATA ports (for 6 in total) and 2 USB2 ports (for 10 in total) alongside USB port disable technology, Intel AMT, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, advanced fan speed control and enhanced SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface). Support for the legacy Parallel ATA and AC97 audio technologies will be dropped.
Intel i946 chipset is expected to be released on June 7th alongside Broadwater. This chipset is expected to replace the i945 chipset in low end systems and feature the ICH7 South Bridge.
Intel 946GZ chipset for Pentium series processors is expected to be released on June 7th. This chipset is the replacement for the i945GZ with support for Conroe in addition to the current Smithfield and Presler cores. The 946GL is expected to feature support for an 800/533 FSB, 2 DIMM slots for up to 4GB, Dual Channel DDR2-533/667 and built-in Intel Graphics (Vista compliant)
Intel 946PL chipset for Pentium series processors is expected to be released on June 7th. This chipset is the replacement for the i945PL with support for Conroe in addition to the current Smithfield and Presler cores. The 946GL is expected to feature support for PCI Express x16 in addition to the featureset of the 946GZ.
nVidia GeForce 7950GX2 was released on June 5th. The 7950GX2 is a quad-SLI capable card, featuring two GPUs per board, although Quad-SLI is initially limited to third party vendors. The GeForce 7950GX2 features two circuit boards arranged back to back with an SLI connector between the GPUs and a 48-lane PCIe switch, enabling 16 lanes to each of the GPUs and onto the system PCIe X16 connector. Each board features a GPU with a 500MHz core clock alongside 512MB of 1.2GHz GDDR3 memory. The card also has built-in HDCP support over the two on-board DVI connectors and the HDCP chip will be present in products from all vendors. It should also be noted that the 7950GX2 will require a BIOS update on many motherboards in order to recognise the PCIe switch and the GPUs beyond it. The 7950GX2 is expected to retail for between $599 and $649 and offers performance consistently better than a 7900GT SLI setup and, of course, a single 7900GTX.
AMD Mobile Sempron (Keene) mobile processor was quietly released in June on a 90nm SOI process. Keene is a single core CPU with 256KB or 512KB L2 cache designed for Thin and light laptops and is the single core version of Trinidad and Taylor. Keene is expected to be released on Socket S1 and feature a DDR2-667 memory interface and have a 25W TDP. The initial members of the Keene family are:
Mobile Sempron 3500+ (1.8GHz/512KB L2)
Mobile Sempron 3400+ (1.8GHz/256KB L2)
Mobile Sempron 3200+ (1.6GHz/512KB L2)
Intel Xeon 51x0 (Woodcrest) processor was released on June 26th. Woodcrest is the successor to Dempsey, but is based on the Conroe core. Woodcrest features 4MB of L2 cache and feature Intel's Dual Independent Bus system. The Processor Side Bus for Woodcrest is clocked at 1333Mhz, compared to 1066Mhz in Conroe processors, making Woodcrest CPUs slightly faster than their desktop counterparts. Power consumption is 80W TDP for the 3Ghz 5160 and 65W for all lower clockspeeds. The initial members of the Woodcrest family are as follows:
Xeon 5110 - 1.6GHz, $209
Xeon 5120 - 1.86GHz, $256
Xeon 5130 - 2.0GHz, $316
Xeon 5140 - 2.33GHz, $455
Xeon 5148 - 2.33GHz, $519 (Low Voltage, Q3)
Xeon 5150 - 2.66GHz, $690
Xeon 5160 - 3.0GHz, $851
nVidia C51XE North Bridge for Athlon 64 Socket M2 is expected to be released in Late Q2 alongside the DDR-2 Socket M2 AMD processors. C51XE is based on the C51 (GeForce 6100) North Bridge and will interface to the new MCP55 South Bridge.
nVidia MCP55 South Bridge is expected to be released in Late Q2. MCP55 is based on MCP51 (nForce 430) but offers an additional Gigabit PHY alongside 28 PCIe lanes.
nVidia C51PV chipset for Sempron Socket M2 is expected to be released in Late Q2. C51PV is expected to be a cut down version of C51XE and will interface to MCP51 (the nForce 430 South Bridge)
Q2
Intel 5000X (Greencreek) chipset for Dempsey is expected in Late Q2. Greencreek is part of the Glidewell platform for Workstations and is based on the Blackford platform with the addition of PCI Express x16 support.
Intel Pentium 960 (Presler) is expected to be released in Q2. Based on the Presler core, this CPU is expected to be released at a clock speed of 3.6Ghz.
Intel 945GMS chipset for Yonah is expected to be released in Q2. Based on the Calistoga chipsets, the 945GMS will feature a 667Mhz FSB, and single channel DDR2-533 memory interface.
Intel 940GML chipset for Yonah is expected to be released in Q2. Based on the Calistoga chipsets, the 940GML will feature a 533Mhz FSB, and single channel DDR2-400 memory interface.
ATI Radeon Mobility X1900 (M68) is expected to be released in Q2.
Intel Itanium 2 9001 series (Montecito) IA-64 CPU is expected to
be released in Mid 2005. Montecito is the follow up to Intel's previous
Itanium 2 (Madison) IA-64 CPU core,
and will be a dual-core design. Montecito will be built on a 90nm process
and will feature up to 24Mb of on-die L3 cache - a 12MB
cache for each core. Montecito is expected to consist of 1.7 billion
transistors and feature a number of new technologies including Pellston
(Enhanced cache reliability) and Silvervale (Virtualization).
Hardware x86 support will be dropped in Montecito, with x86
compatibility supported through a software emulation called the IA32
Execution Layer.
The first members of the Montecito family will be:
Itanium 2 9011 - 1.6Ghz, single core (6MB L2, 667Mhz FSB)
Itanium 2 9021 - 1.4Ghz, dual core (18MB L2, 667Mhz FSB)
Itanium 2 9031 - 1.7Ghz, dual core (8MB L2, ?Mhz FSB)
Itanium 2 9041 - 1.6Ghz, dual core (18MB L2, 667Mhz FSB)
Itanium 2 9030 (?) - 1.7Ghz, dual core (8MB L2, ?Mhz FSB)
Intel E8870 chipset for Montecito is expected to be released in Mid 2005. E8870 is expected to feature support for PCI Express and DDR2.
Intel Bayshore chipset for Montecito is expected to be released in Mid 2005. Bayshore is expected to feature support for PCI Express and DDR2.
Windows Server Longhorn RC0 is expected to be released in Q2.
Visual Studio .NET 2003 SP1 is expected to be released in Q2. This is the first set of updates for Visual Studio.NET 2003 since it's release in April 2003.
