The Dawn of the DirectX 10 Era November 19, 2006
Posted by stoykish in Hardware.add a comment
We have been hearing about DirectX 10 hardware and the miraculous advantages it has over DX9. We have even seen the screenshots of games in development. However, until today, the hardware has been lacking. However Nvidia has finally delivered the hardware goods first over ATI. The first official hunk DirectX 10 compliant hardware is the Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS.
The new DX10 hardware has unified architecture which churns out more shader units as they can be utilized more efficiently than a fixed function layout. Ushering in the new era of computer graphics is the GeForce 8800GTX with 128 unified shader units and the GeForce 8800GTS with 96 shader units. These two bad boy pieces of hardware will run about $460 for the 8800GTS and about $670 for the 8800GTX.
The days of pipelines will soon be history.
Epic Battle(s): AMD vs. Intel November 19, 2006
Posted by stoykish in Computers, Hardware.add a comment
AMD over the past quarter has lost many of its bragging rights because of the new generation of Intel products. Now it is seeking to take back what it once had, the upper hand, by launching a new system platform that boasts two processors and is aimed at high-end users who are willing to pay top dollar for bleeding/killer/amazing performance.
A day after Intel unleashed its latest counterattack — a chip that features four processing cores on a single chip– AMD on Wednesday demonstrated 4×4, a system co-designed by Nvidia aimed at gamers and enthusiasts. This 4×4 beast can handle four PCI express slots, two Ethernet ports and support for as many as 12 hard drives. It will be available to consumers by the end of November, but of course this little guy will cost you over $1,000.
Both Intel’s quad core chip and AMD’s 4×4 platform are aimed at the extreme high end of the PC market. While that segment accounts for just 5 percent of the market, both companies see it as crucial.
