[skip nav] www.ackadia.com
ant worker




  • Alexa



« Computer News from January to March, 2005 »

NEWS 2005 ~ January to March

[][]

I must have links to a several hundred news announcements and gossip I 'meant' to type up recently. Still, I'm getting over my previous lethargy and should get back up to speed in an another month or so, all being well. Muttered apologies done, here's a few items I thought of more interest…

~ Paul





AMD FX57 and FX59 coming soon?
I've seen a few rumours and that bandied round and I will be rooting for a more concrete answer next month, but, looking at the AMD roadmap, I will give you this educated guess of my own:

May will see the formal announcement of the AMD FX57 and it will be based on the 'San Diego' chipset. Actually, for my money it will be the same FX55, but at 90nm will run a little cooler and maybe 10% faster.

Again, an educated guess, maybe November will see the dual core 'Toleda' let onto the course as the AMD FX59. Needless to say, if everything I've seen and read comes true, this upcoming racehorse is a veritable Red Rum! Dual-core Opterons are expected out a few months earlier, if you are wondering.

I don't doubt it will be formally announced rather earlier to match Intel's promise of an August release of their own dual core 800 series, but realistically… Anyway, price wise I reckon they will initially sell for $999 / £499, give or take $50.

On related interest is this article from the Register: Dual-core AMD Athlon 64 benchmarks emerge. This also directs you towards an Italian website, Hardware Upgrade, where an engineering sample was apparently benchmarked with CineBench 2003. Suffice to say it stomped all over everything else, practically.

If you prefer something direct from the horses mouth, as the saying goes, AMD's Opteron page has a link to this five minute long .wmv (4.77Mb) video about dual-core Opterons. This includes showing HP ProLiant 585 server using the chips as four socket (effectively 8 way) and running quite happily.




Dell release a 24" LCD for just £729 ex vat
If you follow my Custom PC page you'll find this firmly on the list. I've recently read a lot about this and, for the price, am seriously considering treating myself to Dell's monster 24" LCD, the Widescreen UltraSharp 2405FPW. At just USD $1,199 (£624.74 at today's rate)) or in the UK, £729 ex vat (£856.58) it really is a bargain. Stats are impressive too, though I'd like to see a better refresh myself:

Related review links:

PC Mag, who gave it 4.5/5
Extract:

One key parameter for fast-moving video and high-frame-rate gaming is the response time. Dell rates the 2405FPW at 12 ms gray-to-gray (from one shade of gray to another). Several action movies we viewed showed no visible signs of smearing or streaking - once we updated the graphics card driver. If you buy one of these, make sure you update your video card with the latest drivers. Games also looked good, and we saw no ghosting even in fast-paced 3D game play. Most games, however, are still mired in 4:3 aspect ratio, so you'll want to set the scaling of the display to Aspect Ratio; the default stretched mode makes some games look really odd.


ExtremeTech gave it a similar 9/10
Extracts:

…where a 4:3 image was scaled to widescreen, we did see some expected distortions…
Dark-level detail was pretty good - for an LCD. For example, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, we saw good detail in the dark cave scenes in the opening action sequence, but some inevitable loss of detail in the shadows was visible when we compared it with a CRT displaying the same scene. Fast action sequences, such as those in Spider Man were rendered with no visible streaking or ghosting.

Another issue to consider for gaming: At times, the display seemed almost too big. We'd find ourselves panning our vision across the screen, something you don't typically do with a smaller display. But it's great to have such a big window into the virtual world.