Archived news: July 2012 - September 2012

We previously reported that the second generation of Accelerated Processing units (APUs) from AMD will launch on October 2. New A-series processors, codenamed "Trinity", are expected to have better CPU and GPU performance then older "Llano" counterparts. The upcoming A-Series products are produced in socket FM2 form factor, incompatible with previous generation of socket FM1 motherboards.   [Full story]

This month Intel released a handful of Core i3 and Pentium Ivy Bridge desktop processors, including two budget Pentium models, priced lower than $100. The official prices of Core i3 CPUs are currently higher than Pentiums by as much as $50, although the i3s do come with some nice extra features, like two additional threads and AVX instructions, for that price difference.   [Full story]

The launch of AMD "Trinity" mobile lineup back in May included two low- and ultra-low voltage microprocessors. Featuring only 25 Watt or lower Thermal Design Power, new chips were supposedly to be cheaper than Intel's ULV offerings. A quick look at current prices shows that AMD thin-and-light notebooks are indeed less expensive than Intel-based ultrabooks, although this partially can be explained by more stringent Ultrabook requirements, such as notebook's height and battery life.   [Full story]

Yesterday Intel published several Product Change Notification (PCN) documents, advising their customers about upcoming discontinuation of Core i5 and i7 processors, and one Celeron SKU. Most of retired microprocessors are based on older Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, and they were introduced in the January - October 2011 time frame.   [Full story]

While Intel is almost done releasing new desktop processors for the rest of the year, AMD has only started. Next month we will see new lineups, based on the latest AMD Piledriver microarchitecture, which is a tweaked for better performance and power consumption Bulldozer architecture. A-Series "Trinity" Accelerated Processing Units will target budget / mainstream segments of the desktop market, and, according to SemiAccurate, they will be introduced on October 2.   [Full story]

Just in time before the Christmas shopping season, Intel has scheduled to introduce a large number of mobile Core, Pentium and Celeron processors. So far we counted 8 released mobile chips, with 10 or 11 more to be available in the next few weeks. Some of the released CPUs, like Celeron B830 and Core i7-3740QM, were already added to official price list and/or Intel product database, while a few others were spotted in shipping notebooks.   [Full story]

Many CPU family pages on CPU-World website include a table, that shows previous and next generation families, along with similar families from the same manufacturer. Most of that information was added manually, and some of that data became obsolete for newer families, when they were refreshed. The good news is that I finally finished a backend tool, that should simplify adding new and editing existing relationship data. Using the tool, I checked current data on the site, and corrected and/or expanded quite a few of the specs. All relationship tables on the site are now up to date, and should be correct. Some families don't have relationship information yet, I'm planning to add it in the near future.

Last week we reported on Pentium 2000-series mobile CPUs with Ivy Bridge core, coming in the Q4. As a refresher, new processors are Pentium 2020M with 2.4 GHz operating frequency and 35 Watt TDP, and ultra low voltage 2117U with 17 Watt TDP, clocked at 1.8 GHz. Based on benchmarks of Core-branded Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips, we expect 2000-series CPUs to be a few percent faster than older generation of Pentiums.   [Full story]

AMD's Southern Islands GPU line-up was completed 6 months ago with the launch of the Pitcairn based Radeon HD 7800 series graphics cards. NVidia recently launched the GeForce GTX 650 and GTX 660, filling the line-up of GPU cores, and they set to launch a GTX 650 Ti to plug a large gap in their mid-range models. Now is the time we can start expecting leaks and rumors about next generation products.   [Full story]

NVidia have been slowly launching the Kepler series GPUs and graphics cards over the last few months. The most recent of these, the GK107 based GeForce GTX 650 with 384 CUDA cores, and the GK106 based GeForce GTX 660 with 960 CUDA cores, leave room for a couple more mid-range cards. A report at ArabPCWorld says that NVidia are planning a cut-down GK106 based card, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, to fit in this gap in October.   [Full story]

Next generation of AMD FX microprocessors is around the corner. Built on "Vishera" design, new FX chips will have from 4 to 8 CPU cores, and pack as much as 16 MB of combined L2 and L3 cache on a chip. The CPUs will feature better performance than the first Bulldozer models, partially due to more efficient "Piledriver" microarchitecture, and partially due to higher stock frequencies. The FX processors will be available in October, while some reports place the launch as early as October 1.   [Full story]

Later this year Intel is going to introduce Bordenville platform, aimed at microserver market. The main component of this platform will be 32nm Atom microprocessor, codenamed "Centerton". New processors will run at frequencies up to 2 GHz, and feature less than 10W of Thermal Design Power. Ultra low power consumption and small form factor of new Atoms and support chips will allow Intel to achieve higher server densities than with low voltage and ultra low voltage Xeon parts.   [Full story]

We previously reported on mobile Intel Pentium microprocessors, coming at the end of Q3 or at the beginning of Q4 2012. The new CPUs are a mix of Sandy Bridge-based 987 and B980, and Ivy Bridge-based 2020M and 2117U chips. In addition to these models, later this year Intel will also launch ultra low voltage SKU with processor number 997.   [Full story]

NVidia have launched two new graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 660 and the GTX 650. The GTX 650 uses GK107, the die introduced with the GeForce GT 640 cards, and has 2 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMX) with a total of 384 CUDA cores. GTX 660 cards use a new die, GK106, which has 5 SMX for a total of 960 CUDA cores.   [Full story]

AMD announced SeaMicro SM15000 server with Freedom Fabric Storage this week. The SM15000 server is aimed at big data and could computing applications, and it houses 64 compute cards per ten rack unit, with a total capacity of up to 512 cores per system. The SM15000 server can also have up to 4 TB of RAM, up to 64 SSD or hard drive drives, and up to 16 10GBit Ethernet links. Each SM15000 system employs second generation fabric technology, called Freedom Fabric, that links processing, network and external disk arrays together.   [Full story]

Presumably in October, AMD will introduce second generation desktop APUs with "Trinity" core. While one of the main features of this core is a greatly improved on-chip GPU, some "Trinity" processors will have the graphics unit disabled. These chips will be branded as Athlon II X4 or Athlon X4. Obviously, systems with these microprocessors will require discrete graphics cards to operate.   [Full story]

After last week's introduction of new socket 1155 microprocessors, there is only one desktop Intel CPU left to launch this year. Core i7-3970X, which is a slightly faster version of i7-3960X, will be available later this quarter. In the past we reported on features of this CPU, and, once again, they were confirmed by slides, published by Bright Side of News. According to the slides, the new Intel extreme processor has 6 CPUs cores, and 15 MB L3 cache shared between the cores.   [Full story]

Less than two weeks ago Intel launched large number of budget and mainstream processors for desktop market, including 4 Pentium SKUs. Two of them were "Ivy Bridge" Pentium microprocessors, positioned as better performing products in the legacy market segment. Two other Pentiums were based on Sandy Bridge core, and they were offered as less expensive, albeit slower, alternatives to Ivy Bridge counterparts.   [Full story]

Last week at IFA electronics show in Berlin, Lenovo announced new IdeaPad notebooks, including three S series models: S300, S400, and S405. The S300 and S400 laptops will be based on Intel ULV CPUs, whereas the S405 will be shipped with three ultra low voltage AMD APUs with "Trinity" core. The most interesting part is that two out of three processors are not yet released. These are A4-4355M and A8-4555M.   [Full story]

I modified filter section on CPU family/sub-family pages. The filter options are now grouped by associated feature, and they are now prefixed by that feature name. As a result, it should be easier to find desired filter option. Please see how it looks on Intel Core i7 page.

I've made a few tweaks to "Compare with:" field, that you can find on many CPU pages. Before, to compare current processor with any other CPU, one had to click on the "Compare with..." button to show input field, enter full or partial CPU name or model into the field, and select one of a few suggested choices. I changed it so that the input field is now always displayed. When you enter CPU name or model, you can now select from the suggested choices, or you can press "Enter" key or "Compare" button to go to a separate CPU selection page, and choose processor there. The new CPU selection method works even if you have javascript disabled.

Next year Intel is going to introduce Haswell microarchitecture, that will offer numerous enhancements over existing Ivy Bridge processors. The first Xeon CPUs, transitioned to the new architecture, will be E3-1200 series, that will be dubbed as E3-1200 v3. The v3 products will be released as a part of Denlow server platform, that is also going to include Lynx Point chipset. Most Haswell new features will make their way into Xeon E3-1200 v3 series family.   [Full story]

This summer we reported on several Core i3 mobile microprocessors, that were scheduled to launch in the third quarter. The processors are mainstream Core i3-2308M and i3-2328M, and ultra low voltage i3-2365M and i3-2377M. The unusual part about them is that the CPUs are based on older Sandy Bridge architecture, even though Intel already released a few Core i3 mobile products with Ivy Bridge core.   [Full story]

As we expected, Intel just launched large number of Celeron, Pentium and third-generation Core CPUs for desktop market. Information about these processors appeared in official Intel price list, that was published yesterday. The unexpected part was that Intel also refreshed mobile Celeron and Core i7 families, which was supposed to happen at the end of September or beginning of October.   [Full story]

The first generation of AMD Accelerated Processing Units was based on "Llano" core, that merged Star/K10-based CPU cores with Radeon HD 6000 graphics. The A series processors had average CPU performance, however, thanks to integrated powerful GPU, they were well suited for graphics and video applications. In the forth quarter 2012 "Llano" parts will be replaced with faster second-generation "Trinity" APUs, featuring 1 or 2 Piledriver modules (2 or 4 CPU cores), and Radeon HD 7000-series graphics unit.   [Full story]

Shortly after the launch of 22nm Ivy Bridge microarchitecture in April 2012, all Core i5 and i7 desktop products were transitioned to the new technology. Until today, less expensive Pentium and Core i3 processors stayed on older 32nm process. It all changed today, when Intel released Pentium and Core i3 "Ivy Bridge" microprocessors, and refreshed Celeron and Pentium lineups. Overall, the company launched 16 new mid-class and budget SKUs, including one previously unknown model, Core i5-3335S.   [Full story]

AMD is going to launch FX-Series microprocessors with Vishera core in the fourth quarter 2012. New FX lineup will consists of 4-, 6- and 8-core models, and they will operate at slightly faster clock speeds than current generation of "Bulldozer" CPUs. Additionally, Vishera processors are expected to have up to 15% better performance due to enhancements in the Piledriver microarchitecture.   [Full story]

Earlier this week computerbase.de posted slides of a leaked Intel document, containing roadmap for embedded microprocessors up to Q2 2013. According to the roadmap, there won't be new Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge embedded processors before the launch of Haswell CPUs in Q2 2013. Sadly, the document doesn't contain any information on Haswell specific SKUs, but there are details on package options, chipset and CPU features, and support of these features on different Haswell processor families.   [Full story]

At present, Intel Core i3 mobile family consists of two Ivy Bridge SKUs, and a large number of older, and very likely cheaper, "Sandy Bridge" processors. Ivy Bridge-based CPUs are Core i3-3110M for mainstream notebooks, and ultra low voltage Core i3-3217U for thin-and-light laptops. In the fourth quarter of this year the i3-3110M will get a slightly faster successor, i3-3120M, also built on Ivy Bridge microarchitecture.   [Full story]

This fall AMD will release large number of new desktop processors, built on the latest Piledriver microarchitecture. With the exception of a couple of chips, details of upcoming lineup were known well ahead of the launch. Yesterday Expreview published a slide, titled "2012 Consumer Platform Quick Reference Guide for Desktops", that confirmed clock frequencies of upcoming "Piledriver" products, and shed some light on supported technologies.   [Full story]

Next year Intel is going to transition Atom processors to 22nm microarchitecture, codenamed Silvermont. New Atoms will be aimed at embedded, along with entry-level mobile and desktop markets, and they will replace previous generation of 45nm Bonnell chips and current generation of 32nm Saltwell CPUs. Details of Silvermont processors were published today by computerbase.de, who discovered a leaked Intel document on Baidu website.   [Full story]

AMD have launched two new server class graphics cards, the single-slot FirePro S7000 and the dual-slot FirePro S9000, aimed at compute, VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and workstation graphics markets. Built using Graphics Core Next architecture, the cards also feature AMD PowerTune and ZeroCore Power technologies, providing up to 95% power reduction when idle and offering reduced operating costs.   [Full story]

On Friday we reported on new FX-4130 microprocessor, as well as price cuts across all A-Series, FX-Series and Phenom II families, coming on August 27, that is today. Starting today, A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are 15.7% cheaper on average.   [Full story]

TUL Corporation in Taiwan have launched the world's first Radeon HD 7990 graphics card with two Tahiti XT GPUs. The PowerColor Devil13 HD 7990 is a dual-BIOS monster, boasting speeds as fast as the Radeon HD 7970. With an overclocked speed of 1 GHz on the second BIOS, it can run all the latest games and HD movies with high frame rates.   [Full story]

AMD today updated A-Series, FX-Series and Phenom II pricing pages, lowering prices on full range of "Llano" APUs, and high performance K10 and "Bulldozer" CPUs. The pages shows effective date August 27, which suggests that the price drops will happen next Monday. Overall, the prices were cut by 1% - 23%.   [Full story]

Intel Haswell microarchitecture and Shark Bay platform, expected to launch in 2013, will incorporate many improvements to existing chip components, along with new features. This week we already provided details on die and packaging options for Haswell microprocessors, and mentioned All-In-One version of the chip with both CPU and Lynx Point chipset integrated in a package.   [Full story]

In good old days of K10-based processors, AMD had quite a variety of different Athlon and Phenom SKUs. In addition to mainstream chips, the company shipped mid- and low-power versions, as well as "business-class" models, that offered greater longevity than consumer grade counterparts. Current generation of "Llano" APUs and FX CPUs doesn't offer that kind of variety, but that should change with the launch of "Trinity" chips in October.   [Full story]

Following last months price cuts, AMD have now added more price cuts to their high-end GPU line-up - specifically the Radeon HD 7850, HD 7870 and HD 7950 cards. Although the Radeon cards overclock much better than NVidia Kepler based products, for the typical user the cards will be run at or near stock speeds, where NVidia beat AMD by a significant amount. These new prices bring the Radeon GPUs down to prices, which more closely match similarly performing Kepler counterparts.   [Full story]

NVidia have silently launched the GeForce GTX 660 GPU for the OEM market. With 6 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMX), this card is aimed at the mainstream user, and operates at a slower speed than previous Kepler based mainstream and enthusiast class GPUs. As with other Kepler cards, it uses PCI-E 3.0 on platforms which support it, as well as having other features that were introduced with Kepler.   [Full story]

In July, when we posted the launch schedule of Haswell microprocessors, we mentioned that they will come with three different tiers of on-chip graphics: GT1, GT2 and GT3, with the GT3 having the best performance from all three. As you may guess, Intel is not going to make one die design with GT3 GPU, and then disable some execution units to turn it into GT2 or GT1. Like with Ivy Bridge CPUs, that had separate GT1 and GT2 configurations, there will be two die variations for Haswell, one with GT3 graphics and one with GT2.   [Full story]

Since the introduction and FX series of high performance processors in October of last year, AMD released 9 different quad-, hexa- and octo-core FX models, three of which were exclusively shipped in OEM computers. During that time, another 7 SKUs were spotted in leaked AMD documents and in CPU support lists for socket AM3 motherboards. The SKUs are 4120, 4130, 4150 and 4200 from FX-4000 series, 8140 and 8170 from FX-8000 series, and FX-6130. These FX processors were expected to be launched in the 1st and 2nd quarters of this year, but that never happened.   [Full story]

Earlier this week we reported on newly released Pentium 1405 microprocessor, that we spotted in Intel's ARK product database. The Pentium, destined for single-processor systems with socket 1356, has two CPU cores, and supports Turbo Boost and all other Sandy Bridge-EN technologies, but Hyper-Threading. Shortly after that report we learned about another socket 1356 CPU, Xeon E5-1428L, launched by Intel.   [Full story]

In the last few weeks I spent quite a bit of time working on the online database of graphics processing units (GPUs), that we called www.GPUZoo.com. That website is a combined effort of Gennadiy Shvets (i.e. me) and Debbie Wiles. My duties in the development of this site involved programming and design, and Debs collected GPU specifications. The first cut of the GPU Zoo website contains only GPU specs and site search feature. Still, with more than 1000 different graphics cards listed from 34 manufacturers, and very detailed specifications on the latest cards, it should be already useful to people, researching their next graphics card purchase.

As you may know, current lineup of "Llano" Accelerated Processing Units from AMD is being slowly transitioned to new "Trinity" core design. Even though the company launched mobile "Trinity" parts back in May, desktop retail products will only be available in October. It's peculiar that some "Trinity" desktop APUs are already shipping in OEM computers. We previously reported on A8-5500 and A10-5700 chips sold in HP Pavilion p7-1235 and p7-1240 PCs. We just discovered that A6-5400K APU is available in HP Pavilion All-in-one (AIO) desktops.   [Full story]

ARM launched the second generation MALI-T600 graphics processors on August 6th. The Second Generation MALI-T600 Series comprises three models, MALI-T624, MALI-T628 and MALI-T678, each offering around 50% performance improvements against comparable first generation SKUs. They are also the first products to feature Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC), a texture compression technique developed by ARM to optimize GPU performance while also significantly increasing battery life.   [Full story]

Nvidia today launched the GeForce GTX 660 Ti graphics card, the third in their line-up of GK104 based cards. Similar to the GTX 670, the reference specs differ only in the memory bus width, and hence bandwidth. The specs at NVidia also indicate this to be one of the first cards to support the new OpenGL 4.3 spec, launched on August 6th of this year.   [Full story]

In the 4th quarter 2012, Intel's Extreme segment of desktop market will be updated with Core i7-3970X. Details of this CPU were revealed by DonanimHaber, and later confirmed by a roadmap, leaked by VR-Zone. Existence of this SKU was also confirmed earlier this month by Intel, when the Core i7-3970X was added to Intel's Material Declaration Data Sheets (MDDS) database.   [Full story]

We previously reported that, in addition to dual- and quad-core Accelerating Processing Units (APUs) for socket FM2, AMD plans to introduce several quad-core Athlon II microprocessors. Like A-Series chips, Athlon IIs will be based on "Trinity" core, support the same CPU features, while lacking on-chip graphics unit. It seems that AMD may also release dual-core Athlon II and Sempron "Trinity" processors.   [Full story]

The launch of Sandy Bridge-EN processors in May of this year was accompanied by introduction of two OEM-only Pentium chips. New CPUs, dubbed as Pentium 1403 and 1407, came with 2 CPU cores and 5 MB L3 cache. The microprocessors had all Sandy Bridge technologies enabled, with the exception of Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost. Recently Intel launched Pentium 1405, the third member in Pentium 1400 series.   [Full story]

Intel plans to discontinue several Sandy Bridge core i7 microprocessors, including quad-cores for mainstream notebooks, and a few dual-core CPUs for thin-and-light mobile devices. Affected part and S-spec numbers, as well as end-of-life dates, were published in a Product Change Notification, that was released today.   [Full story]

In May AMD launched second-generation Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) with "Trinity" core. The launch included only mobile chips, whereas desktop "Trinity" APUs were announced in June, and so far appeared in only in desktop computers from such OEM manufacturers as ASUS and HP. Retail "Trinity" products were delayed, and they are expected in late October. Pictures of these accelerated units were published today by Japanese website Hermitage Akihabara.   [Full story]

Intel plans to refresh mobile performance lineup with three new "Ivy Bridge" chips later this year. Core i7-3740QM, i7-3840QM and i7-3940XM are going to replace i7-3720QM, i7-3820QM and i7-3920XM, that were launched back in April. New SKUs were first spotted on Intel website, but so far we didn't have reliable information about their launch date and clock speeds. We recently learned that the CPUs will be available in the Q4 2012. We also found processors' details in a user's manual (PDF file) of EUROCOM P370EM Scorpius notebook.   [Full story]

This week AMD launched first Accelerated Processing Units (APU), aimed at entry-level graphics workstations. Built on the latest AMD "Piledriver" microarchitecture, new FirePro A300 and A320 products integrate Graphics Processing Unit, which is capable to power CAD, modeling, and media and entertainment applications. The A300-series APUs can be used along with standalone FirePro graphics cards to improve GPGPU performance of non-graphics applications. The APUs work with AMD Catalyst Pro software, and they are certified to work with variety of professional programs.   [Full story]

We will be on vacation from August 5 to August 12. During that time we will only provide minimum site support, which includes keeping the site operational, and moderation of submitted comments. E-mails will be answered after August 12. It's likely there won't be any news stories posted that time, although we will try to come up with one or two stories.

This week VR-Zone published a slide from the latest Intel desktop roadmap. The slide is only for the Extreme and performance segments of the market, nevertheless it does have some interesting information. According to the roadmap, Intel will release Core i5-3350P and Core i7-3970X processors in the 4th quarter 2012. Details of these processors were previously disclosed by DonanimHaber here and here. The slide also reveals that Ivy Bridge-E extreme processors are coming in the third quarter 2013. Finally, the roadmap confirms Haswell microarchitecture launch in the Q2 2013.   [Full story]

Processor manufacturer Cavium has announced Project Thunder Initiative, which will provide a family of highly integrated, multi-core system-on-a-chip processors. The SoCs will have highly optimized ARMv8 cores, with features, performance, power and price designed for cloud and datacenter markets. Solutions, prepared in collaboration with other leading providers, will be available alongside their existing OCTEON and NITROX processor families, providing compute and storage applications for their target market.   [Full story]

In the first half of this year Intel transitioned their performance Core families, comprised of Core i5 and Core i7, to Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. It seems that Core i3 family will be transitioned slightly differently. The company already released two Ivy Bridge Core i3 mobile processors, but they are also planning to launch several Sandy Bridge chips. In the past we reported on Core i3-2308M, i2-2328M and i3-2365M SKUs, expected later this year. We recently learned that there will be also Core i3-2377M in Q3 2012.   [Full story]

Intel started shipping samples of the B0 stepping of Xeon Phi co-processor cards, using the Knight's Corner-62 die, to some partners last week. Spawned from the ashes of the Larrabee graphics processor project, there are expected to be 5 different SKUs, with 57, 60 or 61 cores on a single die. The Xeon Phi coprocessors will run standard x86 code.   [Full story]

AMD's flagship dual-GPU graphics card, Radeon HD 7990, has been delayed again. Originally touted for a June launch, then delayed until July, it is now expected to be available around the middle of August. Featuring two Tahiti XT cores (not the newer Tahiti XT2, used in the 7970 GHz edition cards), it will be AMD's top-end card.   [Full story]

Last week we reported that Intel is going to release budget desktop CPUs later in the Q3. New chips, that will use Sandy Bridge core, are Celeron G465, G550T and G555, and Pentium G645 and G645T. While the launch date of upcoming SKUs was known, their specifications were not confirmed. Fortunately, details of two microprocessors, Celeron G550T and Pentium G645T, slipped into Intel's Q3 2012 reference chart. The chart also contains specifications of not yet released mobile Celeron B830 processor.   [Full story]

Today Intel revised their official price list, and added 4 new Celeron microprocessors, based on older Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. New Celerons are 807 and 877 for thin and light notebooks, as well as B730 and B820 for entry-level mainstream notebooks. First details of these products were disclosed by Fudzilla in March and April of this year, and the processors were expected to launch this quarter.   [Full story]

AMD introduced A-Series family of Accelerated Processing Units (APU) in June of last year. Those chips employed up to 4 tweaked Stars / K10 CPU cores, and required new socket: socket FM1. New feature of the APUs was integrated Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), that could be also used to run highly parallel applications. Not all microprocessors for socket FM1 came with the integrated GPU, though. AMD produced several SKUs with disabled GPU, all of which used old Athlon II and Sempron branding.   [Full story]

In June Intel released the first two Core i3 mobile SKUs, i3-3110M and i3-3217U, that utilized Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. These third-generation processors offered better CPU and graphics performance than Sandy Bridge counterparts owing to enhanced microarchitecture and GPU design. Core i3-3217U also boasted higher operating frequency than the fastest second-generation Core i3 CPU with comparable power consumption. Earlier this month, presumably this week, Intel released two new Ivy Bridge Core i3 processors.   [Full story]

NVidia have been gradually releasing the GeForce 600 series graphics over the last few months, starting with the high-end cards and followed by low-end SKUs. As previously reported, the next card in the line-up will be the GTX 660 Ti. According to a report by sweclockers, this will have the same core as the GTX 670, with a narrower bandwidth.   [Full story]

AMD Athlon brand has been on the market since 1999, when AMD launched seventh generation x86 chips, initially for Slot A and then for socket A. Over its life, there were many variations of Athlon processors. At first, processors from Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon 64 and 64 X2 families were offered as high-performance chips. When AMD announced Phenom brand, "Athlon" name was repurposed for budget Athlon X2, and later for Athlon II X2/X3/X4 families. The brand didn't die with introduction of A-Series "Llano" Accelerated units in 2011.   [Full story]

Last week we published details of two unreleased Pentium G2100T and G2120 desktop processors. The microprocessors are coming in September 2012, and they will be the first Pentiums, built on Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. What's interesting is that simultaneously with the release of these chips Intel is going to introduce new Sandy Bridge desktop models: G645 and G645T. Also in September, Celeron family will be updated with new G465, G550T and G555 SKUs.   [Full story]

Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors for two-way systems, that became available at the end of the first quarter, were based on Sandy Bridge-EP core. These CPUs integrated up to 8 cores, up to 20 MB L3 cache, quad-channel memory controller and 2 QPI links. In May Intel released E5-4600 series for quad-processor servers, that utilized the same Sandy Bridge-EP core. Also in May, Intel introduced Sandy Bridge-EN CPUs, which had reduced set of features.   [Full story]

Two weeks ago we reported on Core i3-2308M and i3-2365M CPUs, coming later this quarter. The unusual thing about them is that they are based on older micro-architecture, even though Intel already released mobile Core i3s with the latest Ivy Bridge architecture. The 2308M and 2365M are part of small and medium business platform (SMB), and they are engineered for inexpensive business-class notebooks. The processors, however, don't support Intel's Small Business Advantage tools, such as USB blocker, PC health check, data backup and wireless display.   [Full story]

Leaked AMD roadmaps from February of this year indicated that the company was planning to launch second-generation FX microprocessors in the third quarter 2012. New processors will be built on Piledriver (enhanced Bulldozer) micro-architecture, which main goals were to reduce power consumption and improve processing efficiency. Based on the reports from Fudzilla and Digitimes, the FX processors are now scheduled to launch in the 4th quarter, presumably in late October. Details of upcoming eight-core CPUs from FX-8300 series were revealed by Fudzilla last week. This week they published specifications of quad-core FX SKUs.   [Full story]

NVidia are rumored to have the GeForce GTX 660 Ti ready for launch around the middle of August. So far, only the high-end Kepler GPUs and a number of entry level 600-series GPUs have been launched, competing against AMD full line-up of Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs. This means anyone wanting to buy a mainstream graphics card has recently been limited to either a current generation AMD card, or a previous generation NVidia card.   [Full story]

Intel Ivy Bridge (IVB) desktop microprocessors were launched in April of this year, and so far only Core i5 and i7 families were transitioned to the new architecture. According to the launch schedule, that we posted back in March, Ivy-Bridge based Core i3 CPUs should be available in the third quarter. We now have more details on the schedule. Based on information, that we have on hand, Core i3-32xx products will be released in the second week of September (the week that starts on September 2nd). Along with Core i3s, Intel will introduce Pentium G2100T and G2120 SKUs, also based on the Ivy Bridge core.   [Full story]

Anandtech reported that AMD are officially cutting the price for their high-end GCN based graphics cards on July 16, with the Radeon HD 7970, Radeon HD 7950 and Radeon HD 7870 all getting the cut. The 7970 will have it's price cut from $479 to $429, the 7950 from $399 to $349, and the 7870 from $349 to $299. These represent a significant reduction over the launch prices of $549, $449 and $399 respectively.   [Full story]

We previously reported on new AMD FX-8350 eight core microprocessor, coming in the fourth quarter. Due to improved micro-architecture and higher stock frequency, that part will offer moderate performance boost over current flagship AMD FX-8150. The FX-8350 is not going to be released alone. According to Fudzilla, AMD plans to launch FX-8300 and FX-8320 eight-core models together with the 8350.   [Full story]

The launch of Ivy Bridge micro-architecture in April of this year included three OEM microprocessors for mobile market. Core i7-3610QM and i7-3615QM were 45 Watt chips, that differed mostly by packaging. The third part, Core i7-3612QM, was the only Ivy Bridge-based mobile processor with 4 CPU cores and 35 Watt TDP. We recently learned that two additional OEM models are coming in the 4th quarter: Core i7-3630QM and i7-3632QM.   [Full story]

The first generation of AMD Accelerated Processing Units, based on Llano core, hasn't been refreshed since the beginning of this year. Considering that AMD plans to replace Llano products with "Trinity"-based ones, and that some "Trinity" parts has already been launched, we didn't expect to see new Llano processors. However, recently updated CPU support information for Biostar motherboards revealed new A4-3450 APU.   [Full story]

In June we reported on several unreleased 9500-series CPUs, spotted in one of Intel's Product Change Notifications (PCN). Later it was confirmed that the processors are upcoming Itanium products, based on not yet released "Poulson" core. The Itaniums were supposed to launch last month, but, as we recently learned, they were delayed until the third quarter. The processors are not announced yet, however some details about them already surfaced on Intel website.   [Full story]

For many years Intel used "tick-tock" development model to design new generations of microprocessors. In this model, each tick cycle uses new manufacturing process to produce more refined version of existing architecture, and each tock cycle introduces new microarchitecture on existing manufacturing process. The last "tick" was Ivy Bridge micro-architecture, launched less than three months ago. The next "tock" cycle will be Haswell micro-architecture.   [Full story]

AMD's flagship Southern Islands dual-GPU graphics card, Radeon HD 7990, is set to launch in the second half of July, according to various reports. Sporting two Tahiti-XT GPUs, there will be a total of 4096 GCN cores, along with 256 TMU and 64 ROPs, as well as 6 GB of GDDR5 memory for the reference design.   [Full story]

Recent reports indicate that AMD will soon be launching a Radeon HD 7950 GHz Edition card. Compared to the reference specs of the Radeon HD 7950, with a clock speed of 800 MHz, and up to 900 MHz on factory overclocked models, it amounts to a clock speed boost of 25% or more. This suggests that, following the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards, AMD have enough good dies to guarantee the higher clock speeds even on dies which don't meet the full specs required for the 7970.   [Full story]

At the end of June Intel introduced first Core i3 CPUs with "Ivy Bridge" core, including one mainstream and one ULV part. Introduction of Ivy Bridge SKUs didn't make the previous generation of Core i3s obsolete. Quite to the contrary, the company plans to release new i3 models, built on Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. Two of these models, Core i3-2308M and i3-2365M, are part of small and medium business platform, and they will be available in business-class notebooks.   [Full story]

In February Donanimhaber leaked AMD roadmap, that so far has been very accurate. The roadmap's second quarter included new A8-Series and A10-Series "Trinity" processors, as well as E1-1200 and E2-1800 APUs from Brazos 2.0 platform, all of which were either announced or launched in June. Based on the roadmap, planned new SKUs for the third quarter are A4-5300 and A6-5400K Accelerated Processing Units, as well as FX-8350, FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4320 high-performance chips. The roadmap slide doesn't have detailed specifications of unreleased chips, but many details of the A6-5400K and FX-8350 SKUs were recently disclosed by Fudzilla.   [Full story]

Last month AMD released two low-power Accelerated Processing Units (APU) for netbooks, entry-level notebooks and all-in-one computers. The faster processor from the two was E2-Series E2-1800, which had 50 MHz higher clock speed than its predecessor, E-450. The E2 chip also had better graphics performance, that was due to higher frequency of on-chip GPU. Fudzilla today revealed that even faster E2-2000 processor will be available later this year.   [Full story]

In May AMD launched second generation of Accelerated Processing Units (APU), based on "Trinity" core. The first "Trinity" products were mobile processors, that were quickly followed by embedded chips. Desktop "Trinity" CPUs were announced in June, and their planned availability date in OEM systems was the end of June. One of these OEM systems, HP Pavilion p7-1235 with AMD A8-5500 processor, is already offered in US. The HP desktop PC is currently available on Walmart and Best Buy online websites.   [Full story]