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CeBIT '07: The Trend of Changes |
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Written by Enis Sahinovic
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Sunday, 25 March 2007 |
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Page 2 of 6 It is hard to start the story about the fair without mentioning the main innovators in the field of hardware industry, companies Intel and AMD. Although both companies failed to show some revolutionary products during CeBIT, all thirsty of information such as your reporters, had enough space for digging up new information. All Intel partners exhibited motherboards with Bearlake family chipsets (P35 / G33 / G35), and X38 chipsets were also mentioned. These chipsets will replace the current Intel chipsets for Core 2 Duo processors and give the support for multicore 45nm Intel processors, currently known under the code name Penryn, 1333MHz FSB, and DDR2 / DDR3 memory.
As expected, Asus and Gigabyte were leading by number of the offered models on mentioned chipsets, the existence of DS3 and DQ6 models of new Gigabyte boards is sure to make every overclocker smile. P35 and G33 (has improved version of GMA950) based motherboards are expected in the second quarter, while G31, G35 (support for DX10) and X38 mother boards will appear in the third quarter of this year. Intel hopes that through Bearlake family they will finally be able to start their Viiv brand as an answer to AMD which with better performance and strategy so far had better results with their Live! platform. Same as during Computex, both companies organized different tournaments and presentations in order to attract the visitors.
Speaking about DDR3 memory, all well known manufacturers of the memory modules had DDR3 samples shown on their booths, but no one was too enthusiastic about DDR3 memory. It seems that DDR3 memory will "start" with 800 and 1066MHz while modules with frequency up to 1600MHz will be released later; however it is hard to expect significant market success of the first chips since due to the high latency DDR3 memory, DDR2 modules of the same frequency will be somewhat faster. The transfer to DDR3 memory will not be fast, and many indicators show that DDR3 memory will not be long on PC platform and that it will be replaced with DDR4 memory.
We will also mention the continuing trend of representing SS (solid state) disks, although we have the impression that for faster adjustment to this memory type the manufacturers of the notebook computers should be more supportive and present more models of their products with SSD. AMD prepared for CeBIT 690G-based boards already mentioned (along with the less popular 690V) so the stress was on the first benchmark results, and estimated board price of around 70EUR. AMD 690G together with SB600 brings integrated Radeon X1250 graphic core and support for DVI and HDMI outlets, as well as the optional support for HDCP. Considering that the performances of the 690G boards in 3D applications are above the ones offered by the currently available IGP solutions from Intel and Nvidia, we predict the good sale of these boards, and as interesting products we should mention ASRock ALiveA960G-DVI/H / 4Core1333-DVI/H motherboards with HDCP support with the addition of PCIe slot for the physics accelerators.
Regardless of the war between Nvidia and ATI, now a division of AMD, Nvidia and AMD want to keep their partnership. It makes sense since Nvidia so far was the biggest manufacturer of the chipsets for the AMD processors, which cannot be ignored by AMD, while it is also easier for Nvidia to work with AMD than Intel. After presenting very good and rather expensive 680i chipset for Core 2 Duo processors, Nvidia realized that they are no match to the somewhat cheaper Intel 975X chipsets, so they announced the presentation of 680i LT SLI chipset with similar overclocking abilities like the original version, but with the reduced support from DDR2-1200 SLI memory to DDR2-800, 2 PCIe x16 slots instead 3, less USB ports, single Gigabit Ethernet etc., which gave the recommended price of 200EUR, which is 50EUR less compared to original 680i.
Besides, Nvidia had aggressive promotion of 650i chipsets for Intel processors, but the engagement of the market is questionable since the sale of P965 chipsets is very good. Nvidia also announced George 7050 chipsets for AMD and Intel processors and officially discarded nForce brand for IGP platform. The new chipset brings the improvement of the 3D performance although it is still DX9 chip, and according to Nvidia partners, GeForce 7050 should be by far the best IGP chip for Intel processors (Windows Experience Index mark above 3).
The bad news for Nvidia is the fact that the performances were compared to G965 and that their new chipset will not be released before the third quarter, when we will also see Intel G35, while on the other hand AMD already has strong support for 690G chipset. GeForce 7050 for AMD processors is expected in the first half of April. After a decade on CeBIT VIA missed this year's show, and if the company does not extend the license contract with Intel, it might give up on further development of chipsets and focus on the productions of the cheap integrated solutions with their own processors.
On the other hand, SiS used all the faults of ATI and VIA regarding chipsets for Intel processors and presented 7 new chipsets with 2 chipsets for AMD processors. These chipsets have full support for Vista, while SiS integrated solutions still do not have support for DirectX 10. However, the good news for SiS is the fact that with the new chipsets they got the significant support of the leading motherboard manufacturers, which together with the estimated success of their memory business could make this company a strong competitor on the market.
Regarding processors, everyone is looking at AMD which did not show off with the information on new quad-core processors known under the code name Barcelona. However, we managed to find out that Barcelona will bring up to 40% better performance, but in comparison to the current Opteron generation, which should at least for a while place AMD above Intel Clovertown-based Xeon processors. It is interesting to point out that the all four of the cores of Barcelona processor can be set to the separate frequency, while the operating voltage of the processor is 1.1V. All processors will be made in 65nm process, and AMD will increase the processor frequency during the year in order to, with the price policy, be more leveled with Intel.
Intel, apparently satisfied with its architecture and the processors, has turned to audience on this year's CeBIT, that is the players so with the motto "Intel Everywhere" they offered a lot of fun for the visitors in a number of halls. Intel is planning to present new processors soon and to decrease the price of the existing ones. In the server field Intel will increase the frequency of quad-core Xeon processors to 3GHz with FSB on 1333MHz and addition of 8MB L2 cache memory. Regarding desktop processors, Intel will present 4 processors for mainstream market in the frequency scope from 2.33 to 3.00GHz, while all these processors will have 4MB L2 cache memory and FSB on 1333MHz. The expected price of the above mentioned processors in the third quarter will be from 163 to 266USD, by which Intel will increase the pressure on AMD offer.
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