Hasta La Gadget!

Hey, this interim CEO thing doesn’t seem to be too hard at all. Thomas Seifert, the temporary solution to the problem created by Dirk Meyer’s departure from AMD’s top spot, has had a pretty comfy ride reporting the company’s latest quarterly results. The pecuniary numbers themselves ($1.65b revenue, $375m net income) were tame and unexciting, but Seifert got to make a pair of juicy milestone announcements. Firstly, on the mobile and ever-so-efficient front, he noted that 1.3 million Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) have been shipped to partners since AMD started deliveries in November, and secondly, in terms of discrete graphics chips, he disclosed that the Radeon HD 5000 and HD 6000 series DirectX 11 GPUs have surpassed the 35 million units shipped mark. To give you some perspective on what that means, sales of Nintendo’s bestselling Wii console are hovering somewhere around the same figure. So yes, AMD, your wagon has momentum, but shouldn’t it have a driver too?

Continue reading AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, says it has ‘momentum’

AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, says it has ‘momentum’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Jan 2011 07:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tesla is touting the world’s biggest center console for its upcoming Model S today: a titanic 17-inch touchscreen display powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra chip. Infotainment, climate control and navigation will all be managed using the vast dashboard dominator, while NVIDIA’s hardware will also take responsibility for keeping the 12.3-inch instrument cluster LCD updated. Considering the Model S, like the Roadster before it, is an all-electric vehicle, you’d expect energy efficiency to be a pretty important consideration in the choice of infotainment system and Tesla points that out as a key advantage of Tegra, describing it as “power-stingy.” Another motor company hooking up with NVIDIA is BMW, who promises that all of its upcoming models for 2011 will benefit from Green Team GPUs powering their iDrive navigation and information systems. We don’t know what exact GPUs will be used, but a “visually rich” next-gen UI is being promised, stretching out to a 1280 x 600 resolution. You’ll find both press releases after the break.

Continue reading Tesla Model S to have 17-inch infotainment console powered by Tegra; BMW using NVIDIA tech too

Tesla Model S to have 17-inch infotainment console powered by Tegra; BMW using NVIDIA tech too originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s baaack. We’ve gone well over half a year without hearing a peep from black magic makers LucidLogix, but here on the doorstep of CES 2011, the company has resurfaced just in time to ride on the coattails of Intel’s forthcoming Sandy Bridge platform. Sandy is expected to take over CES when companies start to introduce new PCs in just a few days, and thanks to Lucid’s virtualization software, we wouldn’t be surprised if a few are served with NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. This here technology enables the two to play nice, making the outlandish fantasy of using a multi-GPU, multi-vendor setup a reality. DirectX 11 is also supported, with the only real requirement being to “connect the display screen directly to the motherboard’s Sandy Bridge display output.” We’ll be taking a closer look at the peacemaker once we land in Vegas, but for now, go ahead and prepare yourself for a beta version of ‘Virtu’ — it’ll hit at some point next month.

Continue reading LucidLogix virtualization tech enables AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to play together with Sandy Bridge

LucidLogix virtualization tech enables AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to play together with Sandy Bridge originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 08:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ah, the joy of getting something for nothing — that’s what this time of year is all about, right? The techPowerUp! guys seem to think so, and they’ve got the perfect gift for all you thrifty PC gaming enthusiasts: a BIOS flash for the Radeon HD 6950 that unlocks the full potential of its hardware (in other words, it turns it into an HD 6970). We already knew the two retail SKUs were built on the same Cayman core, but this hack confirms that all the 6950’s performance handicaps have been enacted in software rather than hardware, leaving you all to flip a switch, click a few confirmatory dialogs, and get your game on. You should be aware that the retail 6970 card uses an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector for its auxiliary power whereas the 6950 only has a pair of 6-pin intakes, which might cause trouble under extreme loads, and there’s also the fact that you’ll most likely be hacking your warranty away together with your GPU’s limitations. But hey, you can’t make eggnog without cracking a few eggs.

AMD Radeon HD 6950 can be turned into an HD 6970 using a BIOS hack originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 04:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s taken AMD a long time to refresh the top end of its graphics hardware, but today’s culmination to that wait has to be described as somewhat bittersweet. Sweet, because we’re finally getting a successor to the venerable HD 5870, one that offers improved power management and tessellation performance at a lower $369 price point, but also bitter because in terms of sheer firepower, the Radeon series doesn’t seem to have made quite the leap many of us had hoped for. The new top of AMD’s single-GPU pile, the HD 6970, offers 1,536 stream processors, an 880MHz core clock speed, and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM running at 5.5GHz for a total of 176GBps of memory bandwidth. Its partner in crime, the HD 6950, is expected to list at $299, for which saving you’ll have to sacrifice some clock speed (down to 800MHz) and processing units (1,408 in total). There’s a neat little addition to both new boards: a Dual-BIOS switch that will act like Google’s hardware jailbreak toggle on the Cr-48, allowing tweakers to unlock the extra (unprotected by warranty!) performance headroom in their cards.

Early reviews all seem to agree that both the Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 have struck a very fine price-to-performance ratio. The 6970 manages to spar with the much pricier GTX 580, but given that it’s priced similarly to NVIDIA’s GTX 570, it scores plaudits for being a more than viable alternative. The HD 6950 is seen as the real value item here, however, particularly since it occupies a relatively unique spot in the price range, and most reviewers tipped it as their new bang-for-the-buck leader.

Read – HardOCP
Read – AnandTech
Read – Tech Report
Read – Guru3D
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Hot Hardware
Read – techPowerUp!
Read – Hexus
Read – TechSpot

Continue reading AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 launch assault on enthusiast gaming market

AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 launch assault on enthusiast gaming market originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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