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mike@mikeshardware.co.uk

Q4 2006

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10

Windows Vista RC2 was released on October 6th. RC2 is expected to be the last Release Candidate before RTM.

nVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX was released on October 13th. The Go 7950 GTX is the successor to the GeForce Go 7900GTX. Featuring the same core, the 7950 ups the clock speed to 575Mhz core (from 500Mhz) and 1.4Ghz memory (from 1.2Ghz).

Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 was released on October 20th. IE7 is features Anti-phishing technology (blocking URLs that appear to come from another location), a Traffic Encryption feature to prevent eavesdropping, modifying data before it reaches your machine or silently redirecting you to another server, improved Security Zones and ActiveX opt-in technology to prevent undesirable ActiveX controls from being installed onto your system. IE7 will also feature tabbed browsing and RSS support. It should be noted the no new version of Outlook Express will ship with IE7.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 was released in October 24th. Version 2.0 is based on Firefox 1.5 with an enhanced featureset including a new Bookmark and History System, Tabbed browsing UI improvements & defaults, Extension Manager enhancements and Search Engine UI improvements.

ATI Radeon X1950 Pro (RV570) was released on October 17th on on an 80nm process. RV570 is an upper mid range part featuring 36 pixel shaders, 8 vertex shaders and 12 ROPs. RV570 interfaces to 256MB of 1.38Ghz memory through a 256-bit memory bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 44.1GB/s. RV570 features a core clock speed of 575Mhz. Perhaps the most notable improvement made in this card is the improved Crossfire implementation. Crossfire is now incorporated at a chip level, removing the need for a separate Master card, and uses a pair of internal connectors, each similar to that of nVidia's SLI, removing the necessity for the external dongle. The use of two 12-bit channels allows the daisy-chaining of GPUs together, providing support for multi-GPU systems (using  more than two cards). The maximum resolution supported by the new Crossfire connection is 2560x2048 at 60Hz. The X1950 Pro will retail for around $199.

Initial benchmarks show that the performance of the X1950 Pro is significantly better than it's main rival, the GeForce 7900GS, providing benchmark results of around 15% to 25% better than the nVidia part.

AMD CPU Price cuts occurred on October 23rd. See the AMD CPU Prices page for more information.

Intel CPU Price updates occurred on October 22nd. See the Intel CPU Prices page for more information.

ATI Radeon X1650XT (RV560) was released on October 30th on an 80nm process and is due to hit retail in Mid November. RV560 features 24 pixel pipelines, 8 vertex shader pipelines, 8 texture address units, 8 ROPs and interfaces 256MB of memory through a 128-bit memory bus, providing 21.6GB/s of memory bandwidth. The clock speed of this part is 575Mhz core and 1.35Ghz memory. As well as the performance improvements over it's predecessor, the X1650XT also features the same new Crossfire technology as found in the Radeon X1950 Pro and performance significantly greater than the Radeon X1600XT, although generally speaking the GeForce 7600GT does beat it. The Radeon X1650XT retails for $150.

Windows Media Player 11 was released on October 31st. WMP11 (Polaris) is the successor to WMP 10. WMP 11 is a significant upgarde to WMP10, with the main improvements being an improved user interface, fast integrated searching and improved access to portable media devices.

11

Microsoft Office 2007 RTM took place on November 6th. See the final Office 2007 Roadmap entry for additional information.

nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX / GTS (G80) GPU was released on November 8th on a 90nm process. G80 is the successor to the G71 core and is the first DirectX 10 / Shader Model 4 compliant GPU on the market featuring 681M transistors (compared to 278M in G71). G80 is a total core redesign over G70/G71 with the implementation of a Unified Shader Model (SM4) architecture, which processes vertices, pixels and (new in DirectX 10) geometry through the same multi-purpose pipelines using a common instruction set.
The architecture of G80 consists of up to 8 "thread processors" (6 in the GTS model), each of which consists of 16 stream processors (for a total of 128 stream processors) running at 1350Mhz, 4 texture units (for a total of 32) and a L1 cache. The thread processors interface to up to 6 sets of L2 cache (5 in the GTS) and 24 (20 in the GTS) Render Back Ends (ROPs). The architecture is extremely modular, with varying numbers of thread processors, L2 caches and ROPs being possible.
The G80 core interfaces to GDDR3 memory over a 384-bit (256-bit+128-bit - GTX model) or 320-bit (256+64 - GTS model) memory interface, providing 86.4GB/s of memory bandwidth for the GTX and 64GB/s for the GTS - a significant increase over previous 256-bit memory interfaces.
The design of DirectX 10 & the G80 core allows a number of new possibilities and levels of efficiency. Having many unified processors ensures that the pixel, texture and geometry loads can be balanced to make full use of the GPUs units - with DirectX 9 you had a fixed number of pixel and vertex processors, so could find yourself using all your pixel processors and having some vertex processors running idle, or vice versa. Geometry shading, which is newly introduced in DirectX 10, allows the creation and deletion of vertices and the ability to perform operations on entire groups of vertices. The output of Geometry shaders can also be written directly to video memory allowing for more efficient Physics processing. G80 also features improved branch efficiency, decoupling of mathematical operations from texture operations to reduce pipeline stalls,= and improved Z culling.
The thread processors also offer general purpose programming, allowing the GPU to be used as a fast and highly parallel FPU, and nVidia offers a C compiler to compile native code for the GPU, removing the requirement for programmers to use the DirectX API.
Image quality is also improved with a new form of Anti Aliasing - Coverage Sampling Anti-Aliasing (CSAA) - which can output an AA quality similar to 16XAA at roughly the same performance as standard 4xAA. Anisotropic filtering quality has also been improved by removing the optimisations required to improve performance on previous generation cards - AF now works correctly at all angles. Simultaneous Antialiasing and HDR (high dynamic range) lighting is now supported with 128-bit HDR (32-bits per colour component) now available - previous generation cards just supported 64-bit HDR. Finally, G80 now supports 10-bit per pixel colour depth.
In terms of video functionality, G80 implements a new PureVideo HD video processor, allowing hardware decoding of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 alongside spatial-temporal de-interlacing, inverse telecine (3:2 & 2:2), better quality scaling and better video noise reduction. All G80 cards will also feature HDCP content protection necessary for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray video support.

The initial members of the GeForce 8800 range are as follows:

GeForce 8800GTX - 575Mhz core, 128 x 1350Mhz stream processors, 768MB of 900Mhz (1.8Ghz) GDDR3 over a 384-bit memory interface, 7 TCPs. $599
GeForce 8800GTS - 500Mhz core, 96 x 1200Mhz stream processors, 640MB of 800Mhz (1.6Ghz) GDDR3 over a 320-bit memory interface, 6 TCPs. $499

It should be noted that the GTX requires 2x6-pin PCI Express power connectors (the GTS requires one). The GTX also requires a 450W or better PSU and the GTX a 400W or better. The power requirement of the GTX is a maximum of 180W.

In terms of performance the 8800 series has no current rival, offering performance similar to a pair of 7900GTX SLIed but additionally full DirectX 10 support and improved image quality, video engine and featureset.

nVidia nForce 600i series chipset for the Intel Socket 775 platform was released on November 8th. The nForce 600 series supports the Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron D processors and is a refinement of the nForce 500 series released earlier in the year. The major improvements to the 6 series are a significant overclocking headroom (up to around 525Mhz FSB compared to around 350Mhz in the 500 series) and, in the 680i chipset, support for 3 PCI Express x16 slots (16-16-8-6x1 configuration), a 1333Mhz FSB and 1200Mhz memory clocks. The members of the 600i series are as follows:

nForce 680i SLI - 46 PCIe lanes (16-16-8-6x1), 1333Mhz FSB, 1200Mhz memory, 6xSATA, 2xGBe, 10xUSB2, Linkboost. $249-$299
nForce 650i SLI - 18 PCIe lanes (8-8-2x1 or 16-2x1), 1066Mhz FSB, 800Mhz memory, 4xSATA, 1xGBe, 8xUSB2. $149-$199
nForce 650i Ultra - 18 PCIe lanes (16-2x1), 1066Mhz FSB, 800Mhz memory, 4xSATA, 1xGBe, 8xUSB2. $99-$149

Windows Vista RTM took place on November 8th. See the release Roadmap entry for additional information.

Sony Playstation 3, the successor to the PS2, was released on November 11th (Japan), November 17th (North America) and March 2007 (Europe). The main elements to the Playstation 3 are a 7 SPE version of IBM's Cell processor and nVidia's Reality Synthesizer GPU. The Cell processor in PS3 runs at 3.2Ghz and consists of 1 PowerPC Processing Element (PPE) - an IBM PowerPC-based core - alongside 7 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). Note that the Cell processor actually contains 8 SPEs, but for yield reasons Sony have decided to disable one of the cores. The PPE features 64KB L1 cache, 512KB L2 cache and also features Symmetric Multithreading (i.e. two threads can run concurrently rather like Intel's Hyperthreading). The SPEs are simplified processors, not being as general purpose as the PPE, but are ideal for highly parallel computations such as AI and physics, which is expected to be their main role in the gaming environment of the PS3. Each SPE has 256KB of local memory and seven execution units, of which one is dedicated to integer tasks (the remaining 6 are floating point units). Cell also contains an on-die dual channel XDR memory controller, which in the case of the PS3 connects to 256mb of Rambus XDR memory clocked at 3.2Ghz, giving a memory bandwidth of 25.6 GB/s.
The Graphics processing in Cell is provided by nVidia's Reality Synthesizer, a 300 million transistor GPU built on a 90nm process. It is based on nVidia's next-generation (G70) core and is expected to be more powerful than a pair of SLIed GeForce 6800 Ultras, with 136 shader operations/s being processed as opposed to 53 in a GeForce 6 series GPU. The GPU itself runs at a clock speed of 550Mhz and is connected to 256MB of dedicated 700Mhz GDDR3 local graphics memory. It can additionally access the 256MB of XDR main memory via the CPU with a technology based on TurboCache, with the GPU-CPU interface having a bandwidth of 35GB/s (20GB write, 15GB read). In terms of output, the PS3 supports dual screens up to 1080p (better than the X-Box 360's 1080i), allowing Panoramic gaming, an extended game display or even a different application on each head.
The PS3 additionally supports a removable hard disk, which will be available in either 60GB (Premium model) or 20GB (Basic model) sizes - although any size drive can be inserted, support for up to 7 controllers via Bluetooth, 1 External and 2 'Internal' (?) Gigabit Ethernet ports, built-in WiFi 802.11b/g (Premium model only), 6xUSB2 ports, a card reader (Premium model only) supporting CF, MS and SD memory cards, an AV Multi output port and an SPDIF audio port. Software will be distributed on BluRay disks, with the BluRay drive being backwardly compatible with CD and DVD media. The Playstation 3 will be backwards compatible with the PS2 and also most PS1 titles.
The PS3 is expected to be released at $499 for the base model and $599 for the 60GB model.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (Kentsfield) desktop CPU was released on November 14th (although pre-announced on the 2nd). Kentsfield is the first x86 Quad Core CPU , albeit containing two Dual core CPUs in a multi-chip package (i.e. 2 x Conroe processors). The first iteration of Kentsfield is the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 CPU which features a core clock speed of 2.67Ghz, contains 2x4MB L2 cache and run on a 1333Mhz FSB. The power management between the two cores is rather rudimentary -  both cores have to run at the same voltage and frequency - although the efficiency of the Conroe design means that Kentsfield is not an overly power hungry CPU.

Initial benchmarks show, as expected, performance to be very tightly coupled to the type of application being benchmarked, with highly threaded applications such as rendering and encoding software offering huge performance boosts, but others such as standard desktop applications offering similar performance to an equivalently clocked Core 2 Duo.

Intel Xeon 5300 (Clovertown) CPU series was released on November 14th alongside Kentsfield. Clovertown is a quad core CPU based on Kentsfield, featuring 4MB of L2 cache. The initial members of the family are:

Intel Xeon E5355 - 2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 8MB L2, $1172
Intel Xeon E5345 - 2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 8MB L2, $851
Intel Xeon E5320 - 1.86GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB L2, $690
Intel Xeon E5310 - 1.60GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB L2, $455

Nintendo Wii, formally known as Revolution, was released on November 19th in the U.S., December 2 in Japan and December 8th in Europe. The hardware of Wii is based around a PowerPC based IBM processor, codename Broadway, running at 729MHz, an ATI GPU 'Hollywood' running at 243Mhz, 91MB of memory (23MB of main memory - 1T-SRAM - 64MB of "external" memory - also 1T-SRAM - and 3MB of texture buffer on the GPU) and 512MB of built-in Flash memory. Despite using the same CPU and GPU brands as the X-Box 360, the hardware will be significantly less powerful. The media used by Revolution will be 12 cm Wii optical discs of a proprietary format, but the drive will also be able to read 8 cm GameCube disks and standard DVD disks for DVD playback. Unlike the PS3 and X-Box 360, Revolution will be a games machine only and won't offer any digital hub functionality. However, it will have built-in WiFi support, with which Revolution owners will be able to download every console game Nintendo has ever made, from every console it has ever shipped (some of which will be available for a small fee and some older titles for free) over the Internet - Revolution is fully backwardly compatible with all Nintendo's previous hardware. Revolution can communicate with the Internet event when the unit is turned off, providing game updates and additional content when the user is not actively using the system. Revolution will additionally feature wireless controllers, 4 Nintendo GameCube controller ports, 2 Nintendo GameCube memory card ports, two USB 2.0 ports and two SD memory card slots. The standard game controller features three-axis motion-sensitive with an integrated speaker, rumble feature and expansion ports. Revolution will also feature Nunchuk controllers, which feature an analogue control stick and C and Z buttons.
Wii will retail for $249 in the US, £179 (€249) in Europe and ¥25 000 in Japan.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is expected to be released in Late November. The 6000+ is expected to feature a clock speed of 3Ghz, 2x1MB L2 cache and a 125W TDP.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ is expected to be released in Late November. The 5600+ is expected to feature a clock speed of 2.8Ghz, 2x1MB L2 cache and an 89W TDP.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ is expected to be released in Late November. The 5400+ is expected to feature a clock speed of 2.8Ghz, 2x512MB L2 cache and an 89W TDP.

AMD Athlon FX-74 is expected to be released in Late November on the Socket F platform. The FX-74 is expected to feature a clock speed of 3.0Ghz, 2x1MB L2 cache and an 125W TDP.

AMD Athlon FX-72 is expected to be released in Late November on the Socket F platform. The FX-72 is expected to feature a clock speed of 2.8Ghz, 2x1MB L2 cache and an 125W TDP.

AMD Athlon FX-70 is expected to be released in Late November on the Socket F platform. The FX-70 is expected to feature a clock speed of 2.6Ghz, 2x1MB L2 cache and an 125W TDP.

Windows Vista (Longhorn), the successor to Windows XP, was released in two phases, with the business oriented products on November 30th and the consumer versions on January 30th 2007. Vista features improvements in networking and mobility, digital media and entertainment, smart displays (Mira 2.0), A/V streaming and concurrency, and compatibility with new TV/client adapters that will connect next-generation "Media Center" PCs. Vista also features native support for Mt Rainier for CD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, HD DVD and probably other formats (e.g. Blue Ray) and will also feature native Spyware detection (Windows Defender), but not Anti Virus protection. Vista also features a technology called "superfetch" which makes use of externally connected memory (e.g. a USB memory stick) as virtual memory, significantly speeding up application load times. Vista also features an improved graphics interface (referred to as the Longhorn Graphics Infrastructure), enabling a 3D interface to Windows. Other new features include Microsoft's Visualize and Organize Instant Desktop Search, which will still be included despite the removal of WinFS, new SyncManager for syncing content to mobile phones and other PCs through both wired and wireless networks, and enhanced security. Users will be created as standard users, instead of administrative users, which lessons the damage the user can make with the system. Additionally, Vista features whole-volume encryption preventing unauthorized access to data and a much improved version of Internet Explorer, which is expected to be a significant upgrade to IE 7.0 for Windows XP, including support for the parental control system included in Vista, advanced graphical capabilities, and revamped search functionality linked in with the search built into the OS. Vista IE will be much safer than XP SP2 + IE 7 due to it's integration into the more secure OS.

Windows Vista will be made available in the following editions:

Starter Edition - Lacks Aero UI,  Rolodex, Tab previews, and Taskbar previews. Supports a single 32-bit processor and 256 MB of RAM. Resolution limited to 1024 x 768.
Home Basic Edition - Same UI restrictions as Starter, although the resolution is not limited. Adds support for a single 32 or 64-bit processor and 8GB of memory on x64.
Home Premium Edition - Adds DVD authoring, Movie Maker HD publishing, Photography features, Premium games (3D Chess, Shanghai Solitaire etc), Integrated Media Center functionality & the ability to act as a Media Center Extender, Tablet PC functionality, support for auxiliary displays, added mobility-oriented features. and the ability to join "Home Domains" (but not Active Domains). Supports up to 16GB of memory on x64.
Professional / N - Adds Microsoft Windows Web Server, Windows Fax client and Active Directory support. Adds dual 32 or 64-bit processor support alongside support for up to 128GB of memory on x64. N Editions will not include WMP.
Small Business - ?
Enterprise - Adds the Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA) and single-session Virtual PC as optional installs and 'Cornerstone' Secure Startup technology
Ultimate - Adds the Media Center functionality of Home Premium Edition that the other business oriented editions lack.

The cost of the initially available versions of Vista will be as follows:

Windows Vista Home Basic - $199, $99.95 upgrade
Windows Vista Home Premium - $239, $159 upgrade
Windows Vista Business - $299, $199 upgrade
Windows Vista Ultimate - $399, $259 upgrade

Microsoft Office 2007, formally known as Office 12, is expected to be released to business on November 30th followed by a second consumer release on January 30th alongside  Windows Vista. Perhaps the most notable improvement is the significant user interface redesign with menus and toolbars being replaced by Tab bars, for choosing Ribbons, and Ribbons themselves - advanced toolbars featuring the most commonly used features for the task you are performing. Amongst other improvements, Word, Excel and Powerpoint will save documents in a zipped XML format by default, with Microsoft providing a royalty-free license for the format. Office 12 is also expected to feature native support for Adobe's PDF format. Office 12 is expected to be made available in the following versions:

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Office Communicator (instant messaging), InfoPath, OneNote, Office Groove 2007 (peer-to-peer collaboration), and server-based content management, forms management, and information rights and policy capabilities. This version is expected to only be available to volume licensing customers.
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Office Communicator, InfoPath, and server-based content management, forms management, and information rights and policy capabilities. This version is expected to only be available to volume licensing customers.
Microsoft Office Professional 2007 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, and Publisher. Full version $499, Upgrade $329.
Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Publisher. Full version $449, Upgrade $279.
Microsoft Office Standard 2007 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Full version $399, Upgrade $239.
Microsoft Office Basic 2007 - Word, Excel, and Outlook. Available only with a new PC purchase.
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. $149 with 3-PC family license. No upgrade price.

Intel CPU Price cuts are expected in November. See the Intel CPU Prices page for more information.

ATI Radeon Xpress Crossfire 3200 (RD600) is expected to be released in November for the Core 2 platform. RD600 is the Core 2 version of the AMD AM2 and S939 chipsets of the same name and will offer a similar, but slightly enhanced, featureset to its AMD forebears. As Intel chips do not have a built-in memory controller, RD600 features a DDR-2 controller that can support a 1333Mhz FSB speed (and above - up to 1500Mhz). The memory controller operates asynchronously from the front-side bus, allowing the FSB to be overclocked independently of the memory without being limited by memory dividers. RD600 motherboards will also support up to three PCI Express x16 slots, two of which can be used for Crossfire whilst the third GPUI can be used as a physics processor. Like the nForce 5xx series LinkBoost technology, RD600 features a 25% PCI Express bus overclock to improve dongleless Crossfire performance and features an nTune-like utility called ATI System Management (ASM) to perform memory, PCI-Express and FSB timings and voltages from within Windows. RD600 will be paired with ATI's SB600 South Bridge for SATA, USB and Audio functionality.

12

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (65nm) CPUs are expected to be announced on December 5th, and released in volume in Q1 2007. The CPUs released are expected to be as follows:

Athlon 64 X2 4000+ - 2.1Ghz, 2x512KB L2, 65W TDP
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ - 2.3Ghz, 2x512KB L2, 65W TDP
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ - 2.5Ghz, 2x512KB L2, 65W TDP

Q4

Intel Allendale desktop CPU is expected to be released in Q4. Allendale is expected to be the low-cache version of Conroe, being a Dual core CPU containing 2MB of L2 cache.

Intel Conroe E6900 (3.2GHz) is expected to be released in Q4.

Windows Longhorn Server RC2 is expected to be released in Q4.

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