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mike@mikeshardware.co.uk

Q3 2006

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07

AMD Price cuts for the Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 and Sempron occurred on July 24th. See the AMD CPU prices page for more information.

Intel Core 2 Duo / Extreme (Conroe) desktop CPU was released on July 27th on a 65nm process. Conroe is a dual core CPU based around the Merom architecture but optimised for the desktop market by removing some of the power constraints from Merom in order to increase performance. Like Merom, Conroe features a 14-stage pipeline and will be a 4-issue core. Conroe additionally features SSE4 support, virtualization capabilities, LaGrande technology and 64-bit capability in addition to EDB, EIST and iAMT2. The standard edition CPUs will feature a 1066Mhz FSB speed, with the initial members of family being as follows:

E6300 (1.86GHz), $183
E6400 (2.13GHz), $224
E6600 (2.4GHz), $316
E6700 (2.67GHz), $530
X6800 (2.93GHz), $999
E4300 (1.8GHz, 800Mhz FSB), Q1 07

Preliminary benchmarks show that the top of the range Core 2 Extreme 6800 outperforms an AMD FX-62 by 17.5-26% in Office benchmarks, 15-25% in gaming benchmarks and around 25-30% in Media Encoding tests.

Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo (Merom) processor, the successor to Yonah and part of the Santa Rosa platform, was released on July 27th on a 65nm process. Merom is the Mobile equivalent of the desktop Core 2 Duo, and contains an identical featureset although the FSB runs at 667Mhz rather than 1066Mhz for power conservation. Merom is a Dual Core CPU combining the architecture of NetBurst and the Pentium-M to achieve both high performance and lower power consumption. Merom utilises the FSB and EM64T of NetBurst, but is largely based around the Pentium M architecture. The CPU is a 4-issue design (compared to the 3 issue cores of the Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 architectures) with a 14 stage pipeline - significantly shorter than that of NetBurst CPUs (from 20 in Willamette to 31 stages in Prescott). The shorter pipeline will ensure that Merom and it's derivatives will not clock as high as Precott, but it will likely clock as fast or faster than the Athlon 64 - i.e. around 3Ghz. However, the IPC of Merom is likely to be better than the Athlon 64 due to it's 4 issue superscalar design and vastly better than the P4.
Merom features 4MB of L2 cache shared between the two cores and a direct L1 to L1 cache transfer system between the L1 caches of each of the cores to improve performance. Merom also features a number of enhanced prefectching schemes to improve cache utilization. Merom will feature SSE4 support, virtualization capabilities, LaGrande technology and 64-bit capability in addition to EDB, EIST and iAMT2. The initial members of the Meron family are:

T7600 (4MB L2, 2.33GHz), $637
T7400 (4MB L2, 2.16GHz), $423
T7200 (4MB L2, 2.0GHz), $294
T5600 (2MB L2, 1.83GHz), $241
T5500 (2MB L2, 1.66GHz), $209 - Q4

The performance of Merom is around 5-15% higher than Yonah with the roughly the same power usage (slightly lower in some cases).

08

AMD Opteron 2xx (Santa Ana) was announced on August 15th. Santa Ana is a Dual Core, Revision F CPU targeted at Workstations on the Socket AM2 platform.

AMD Opteron 8xx (Santa Rosa) was announced on August 15th. Santa Rosa is the Socket F (1207 pin LGA interface) version of Santa Ana, targeted at the server market.

ATI X1950XTX / Crossfire (R580+) was released on August 23rd on a 90nm process. R580+ is simply a clock-enhanced version of R580, featuring a 600Mhz core clock (same as X1900XTX), cherry picked from current R580 GPUs, interfacing to 2Ghz GDDR4 memory (compared to 1550Mhz GDDR3 in the X1900XTX). Initial benchmarks show that the enhanced memory clock speed does little for performance under normal circumstances (0-7%, mostly one or two percentage points), although the X1950XTX is certainly the fastest overall single GPU at the time of release. In addition to the enhanced memory performance, all "Built By ATI" products will be HDCP compliant (over DVI) and all boards will feature an improved heatpipe cooling system, offering better cooling alongside reduced noise levels. The initial price of this product is expected to be around $449.

ATI X1650 Pro was released on August 23rd , although it won't be available in retail until around September 14th. The successor to the Radeon X1600  the X1650 Pro is based around the same core with the only difference being modified clock speeds and a reduced price. The X1650 Pro features a 600Mhz core clock interfacing to 700Mhz DDR (1.4Ghz) memory and will retail around $99.

ATI X1300XT was released on August 23rd , although it won't be available in retail until around September 14th. Unlike previous members of the Radeon X1300 series which were built on the RV515 core, the XT model is based around the same RV530 core as the X16xx series. The X1300XT features clock speeds of 500Mhz core and 400Mhz DDR (800Mhz) memory and will retail around $89.

Intel Xeon 7000 (Tulsa) was released on August 29th. Tulsa is the dual core 65nm successor to Paxville MP (NetBurst architecture), featuring a 16MB shared L3 cache, and is built from 1.3 billion transistors. Tulsa is based around the Bensley platform with the Blackford chipset offering dual independent front side busses for 17GB/s of bandwidth between the two cores and a quad channel FB-DIMM memory controller supporting up to 64GB of memory. The initial members of the Tulsa family are as follows:

Xeon 7140M - 3.40GHz, 16MB L2, 800MHz FSB - $1980
Xeon 7140N - 3.33GHz, 16MB L2, 667MHz FSB - $1980
Xeon 7130M - 3.20GHz, 8MB L2, 800MHz FSB - $1391
Xeon 7130N - 3.16GHz, 8MB L2, 667MHz FSB - $1391
Xeon 7120M - 3.00GHz, 4MB L2, 800MHz FSB - $1177
Xeon 7120N - 3.00GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB - $1177
Xeon 7110M - 2.60GHz, 4MB L2, 800MHz FSB - $856
Xeon 7110N - 2.50GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB - $856

ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset for Intel processors was released on August 29th. The Radeon Xpress 1250 features integrated DirectX 9.0 graphics with hardware accelerated H.264 video, HDMI output, and TV-Out for video formats up to 720p and 1080i. The chipset also features a PCI Express x16 graphics interface as well as ATI's SB600 south bridge.

nVidia GeForce 7100GS was released on August 30th. Based on the NV44 core used in the GeForce 6200 series, the GeForce 7100GS is a budget card featuring a 350Mhz core clock, 333Mhz memory clock, 4 pixel shaders and 3 vertex shaders. Despite using the same core as the 6200 series, nVidia's drivers add support for Intellisample 4.0, SLI and PureVideo HD acceleration which are not found in the GeForce 6200 series.

Intel 3000 & 3010 (Mukilteo 2/2P) chipsets for the Intel Xeon series were released on August 30th. This chipset is designed for single processor (dual and quad core) Conroe based Intel Xeon processors.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 was released on August 31st.  See the final Firefox 2.0 Roadmap entry for more details.

09

Windows Vista RC1 was released on September 6th. See the Windows Longhorn Roadmap entry for additional information.

AMD Athlon X2 5200+ was quietly released on September 6th. The Socket AM2 5200+ is identical to the Socket 939 Athlon FX-60 apart from it's socket and memory support. The 5200+ features a 2.6Ghz clock speed alongside 2x1MB L2 cache. The 5200+ retails for $403 for 1000 units.

nVidia GeForce 7900GS was released on September 6th. The GeForce 7900GS a 20 Pixel Shader, 7 Vertex shader version of the 24PS/8VS GeForce 7900GT. The GeForce 7900GS features the same 450Mhz core, 1.32Ghz memory, but the loss of 4 Pixel Shaders and one Vertex Shader means that performance is roughly 0-15% less that it's older brother. The GeForce 7900GS is expected to retail for around $199-$249.

Internet Explorer RC1 was released on September 12th for Windows XP, XP x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003. See the final Roadmap entry for additional information.

 nVidia GeForce 7950GT was released on September 14th. The GeForce 7950GTX is the successor to the GeForce 7900GT. Built on the same G71 core the 7950GT features a 550Mhz core, 512MB of 1.4Ghz memory, 24 Pixel Shaders, 8 Vertex shaders and 16ROPs (compared to the 7900GT's 450Mhz core and 1.32Ghz memory clock).
Initial benchmarks show that the 7950GT's performance lies around half way between a 7900GT and a 7900GTX, and roughly the same as it's ATI rival the Radeon X1900 XT 256MB (although the ATI card does generally outperform it slightly). The 7950GT will be released at a price of between $300 and $350.

nVidia GeForce Go 7700 was released on September 14th. The GeForce Go 7700 is the first nVidia part to be built on an 80nm process technology and features 12 pixel
shaders and 5 vertex shaders. The clock speeds are 450MHz core interfacing to 1Ghz memory over a 128-bit bus.

ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 was released on September 25th on a strained 90nm process. The Mobility Radeon X1700 features 12 pixel shaders and five vertex shaders.

ATI Mobility Radeon X1450 was released on September 25th on a strained 90nm process. The Mobility Radeon X1450 features four pixel shaders and two vertex shaders.

ATI Mobility Radeon X1350 was released on September 25th on a strained 90nm process. The Mobility Radeon X1350 features four pixel shaders and two vertex shaders.

Intel CPU Price cuts are expected on September 24th. See the Intel CPU Prices page for more information.

nVidia GeForce 7650 GS is expected to be released Late September. Featuring a G73-B1 core, this desktop GPU will be built on an 80nm process. The G73-H-B1 core additionally integrates native support for HDMI and HDCP to reduce cost for boards supporting these features.

Q3

Intel Crestline-GM chipset for Merom is expected to be released in Q3. Crestline-GM is part of the Santa Rosa platform and is expected to support an 800Mhz FSB speed, DDRII 800 SDRAM and PCI Express in addition to a reduction in power over the Calistoga chipsets. Crestline also features next generation integrated graphics and Robson NAND cache technology. The next generation graphics, GMA X3000 and GMA 3000,  offer faster clock speeds than their predecessors alongside support for DX9 Pixel Shader 3 and Vertex Shader 3.0 support, providing full support for Vista Aero Glass. Robson combines NAND flash integrated into the motherboard with some caching algorithms to help speed up system boot time and application startup time. Crestline is expected to interface to ICH8-M, which features support for 10xUSB2 and 3xSATA 300 sockets, and the Kedron wireless chipset. Kedron supports 80211a/b/g and 11n WiMax. 802.11n offers a maximum throughput of 540Mbit/s, and will offer a better operating distance than 802.11a/b/g.

Intel Celeron D 356 is expected to be released in Q3. This 65nm Celeron D processor features a clock speed of 3.33Ghz and a 512KB L2 cache.

Intel Celeron D 360 is expected to be released in Q3. This 65nm Celeron D processor features a clock speed of ?Ghz and a 512KB L2 cache.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2006 'Diamond' is expected to be released in Q3. MCE 2006 is the successor to MCE 2005 UR2 'Emerald'.

Windows Server Longhorn RC1 is expected to be released in Q3.

nVidia MCP61 series of chipsets for the Athlon 64 platform is expected to be released in Late August on a 90nm process. The MCP61 series are expected to be single-chip solutions, featuring both a GPU and MCP in the same package.  The integrated graphics will be based around a GeForce 6/7 core with other common features being two PCI Express x1 slots, D-Sub output, two Serial ATA-300 ports with RAID support and at least 10/100Mbps Ethernet. There are expected to be three initial members of the MCP61 series:

MCP61P - sVDO (Serial Digital Video Out), Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express x16.
MCP61S - Analogue VGA, 10/100 Ethernet, PCI Express x8.
MCP61V - Analogue VGA, 10/100 Ethernet, No PCI Express graphics.

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