Showing posts with label PCs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PCs. Show all posts
PhysX middle-ware is used to simulate the laws of physics on a variety of platforms, such as PCs and game consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3), and is meant to add realism and, obviously, improve the overall gaming experience. Most processing of such effects is performed by the x86 CPU that powers said platforms. Some games, however, can take advantage of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs' ability to handle physics computing using CUDA, NVIDIA's proprietary API that, naturally, is not supported by ATI cards.

The lack of PhysX support on AMD adapters gives NVIDIA GeForce adapters a certain edge on the gaming hardware market. On the other hand, not many game developers use GPU PhysX exactly because AMD cards cannot handle it. In seeking to make its API more universal, NVIDIA has decided to port it to OpenCL. Doing so will allow any graphics card to perform the necessary computations even in the absence of CUDA.


“In the future it is a possibility that we could use OpenCL, but at the moment CUDA works great. [Our GPU] architecture allows for acceleration by other things like OpenCL. Nvidia works very closely with The Khronos Group, actually Neil Trevett is president of the group and he’s part of Nvidia, so we’ve been driving that standard also, and it’s an excellent standard,” Nadeem Mohammad, a director of PhysX product management at Nvidia, said in an interview with Bit-tech.

Porting PhysX to OpenCL definitely has its advantages, but, as with all steps forward, there seems to be a catch. While NVIDIA can create a version of GPU PhysX that does not rely on CUDA, how well it runs will be determined by the graphics processor's actual GPU computing capabilities. In regards to AMD adapters, NVIDIA says that there may be some performance issues.

“If we start using OpenCL, then there’s a chance that the features would work on ATI, but I have no idea what the performance would be like. Previously, looking at things like Folding@home, ATI GPU computing performance seems to be behind Nvidia. That probably reflects the fact that their GPU computing solution is probably a couple of generations behind ours,” Mr. Mohammad explained.

Source: Softpedia
PhysX middle-ware is used to simulate the laws of physics on a variety of platforms, such as PCs and game consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3), and is meant to add realism and, obviously, improve the overall gaming experience. Most processing of such effects is performed by the x86 CPU that powers said platforms. Some games, however, can take advantage of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs' ability to handle physics computing using CUDA, NVIDIA's proprietary API that, naturally, is not supported by ATI cards.

The lack of PhysX support on AMD adapters gives NVIDIA GeForce adapters a certain edge on the gaming hardware market. On the other hand, not many game developers use GPU PhysX exactly because AMD cards cannot handle it. In seeking to make its API more universal, NVIDIA has decided to port it to OpenCL. Doing so will allow any graphics card to perform the necessary computations even in the absence of CUDA.


“In the future it is a possibility that we could use OpenCL, but at the moment CUDA works great. [Our GPU] architecture allows for acceleration by other things like OpenCL. Nvidia works very closely with The Khronos Group, actually Neil Trevett is president of the group and he’s part of Nvidia, so we’ve been driving that standard also, and it’s an excellent standard,” Nadeem Mohammad, a director of PhysX product management at Nvidia, said in an interview with Bit-tech.

Porting PhysX to OpenCL definitely has its advantages, but, as with all steps forward, there seems to be a catch. While NVIDIA can create a version of GPU PhysX that does not rely on CUDA, how well it runs will be determined by the graphics processor's actual GPU computing capabilities. In regards to AMD adapters, NVIDIA says that there may be some performance issues.

“If we start using OpenCL, then there’s a chance that the features would work on ATI, but I have no idea what the performance would be like. Previously, looking at things like Folding@home, ATI GPU computing performance seems to be behind Nvidia. That probably reflects the fact that their GPU computing solution is probably a couple of generations behind ours,” Mr. Mohammad explained.

Source: Softpedia
WD Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation, making them ideal for notebooks and other portable devices.

With available SATA or PATA interfaces, WD Scorpio Blue drives offer high-performance, low power consumption, and cool operation, perfect for notebooks and other portable devices. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Scorpio Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability.

The new Scorpio Blue 750GB SATA hard drive from Western Digital (model WD7500BPVT, ~$120 street) is the new mac daddy in mobile hard drives, raising the bar for 9.5mm, 2.5-inch mechanisms to a massive 750GB. Previous 9.5mm high, 2.5-inch hard drives maxxed out at 640GB. The new WD drive spins at 5400 RPM and features a 3Gb/second SATA interface and 8MB of cache.

Hard drive capacity is important if you work with large audio and video files or if you’re a music junkie or a data pack rat. The perfect setup in a MacBook Pro is a super-fast Solid State Drive (SSD) as your boot volume and the new 750GB WD HDD in an MCE Optibay enclosure, which is what I use.
The 750GB Scorpio Blue features:
  • Massive capacity These drives offer the highest capacity for space-hungry operating systems with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.
  • Quiet WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market.
  • Reliable and rugged ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off.
  • Fast and efficient Ultra-fast 3 Gb/s SATA interface speed yields performance fit for demanding mobile applications.
  • 3 year limited warranty
WD also makes a 1TB notebook drive, but alas, its taller 12.5mm enclosure will only fit in the 17-inch MacBook Pro (the 13 and 15-inch MBPs require the smaller 9mm mechanisms).
WD Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation, making them ideal for notebooks and other portable devices.

With available SATA or PATA interfaces, WD Scorpio Blue drives offer high-performance, low power consumption, and cool operation, perfect for notebooks and other portable devices. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Scorpio Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability.

The new Scorpio Blue 750GB SATA hard drive from Western Digital (model WD7500BPVT, ~$120 street) is the new mac daddy in mobile hard drives, raising the bar for 9.5mm, 2.5-inch mechanisms to a massive 750GB. Previous 9.5mm high, 2.5-inch hard drives maxxed out at 640GB. The new WD drive spins at 5400 RPM and features a 3Gb/second SATA interface and 8MB of cache.

Hard drive capacity is important if you work with large audio and video files or if you’re a music junkie or a data pack rat. The perfect setup in a MacBook Pro is a super-fast Solid State Drive (SSD) as your boot volume and the new 750GB WD HDD in an MCE Optibay enclosure, which is what I use.
The 750GB Scorpio Blue features:
  • Massive capacity These drives offer the highest capacity for space-hungry operating systems with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.
  • Quiet WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market.
  • Reliable and rugged ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off.
  • Fast and efficient Ultra-fast 3 Gb/s SATA interface speed yields performance fit for demanding mobile applications.
  • 3 year limited warranty
WD also makes a 1TB notebook drive, but alas, its taller 12.5mm enclosure will only fit in the 17-inch MacBook Pro (the 13 and 15-inch MBPs require the smaller 9mm mechanisms).
Today, April 27, 2010, AMD released its first six-core processors for desktops, only a few weeks after Intel released its first six-core desktop chip. Unlike Intel’s “Gulftown,” which is available in limited quantities and costs more than $1,000 in retail, AMD’s “Thuban” processors start at around $200. AMD claims computer makers should be able to build complete desktops with Phenom II X6 chips for about the same price as the Core i7-980X Extreme alone.
The two new processors are the 2.8GHz Phenom II X6 1055T, which costs $199, and the 3.2GHz Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, which is $295. (With the Black Edition processors, you can overclock not only the CPU, but also other parts of the system, to further boost performance.) In addition to the six-core processor, this new high-end platform includes a supporting chipset, the 890GX, and Radeon HD 5000 series DirectX 11 GPUs. AMD refers to this platform as Leo. The Phenom II X6 can also be used as a drop-in upgrade in any AM2+ or AM3 motherboard.

Though it is manufactured by Globalfoundries using the same 45nm Silicon-On-Insulator process and shares the same basic design as the six-core server chips, the Phenom II X6 has one new feature: Turbo Core. Like Intel’s Turbo Mode, this feature improves performance on lightly-threaded applications that can’t really take advantage of six cores (or 12 threads, in the case of Gulftown) by powering down some cores and boosting others. AMD says this will push up to three cores on the Phenom II X6 1090T from 3.2GHz up to 3.6GHz simultaneously.
AMD also released a new version of its OverDrive utility, which simplifies overclocking. OverDrive 3.2.1 adds support for the Phenom II X6 and Turbo Core, memory profiles for the fastest DDR3 memory, and new application-specific profiles.

The new chipset also a few distinguishing features. It supports the faster SAT 6Gbps disk storage interface and, according to AMD, nearly all 890GX motherboards will also have an NEC USB 3.0 controller for connecting peripherals that support the new standard.


Desktops based on Leo platform will initially be available from “whitebox” companies such as iBuyPower, CyberPower, Systemax, MainGear and Velocity Micro. The boxed processors will also be sold in places such as Newegg and TigerDirect. Given the pricing, it will be interesting to see if the Phenom II X6 will also show up in desktops from the tier-1 computer companies, as well as on the shelves at Best Buy.

The benefits of six- and eight-core processors–as well as HyperThreading–are straightforward in servers. They are less clear, however, on the desktop. The real competition for Phenom II X6 isn’t Gulftown; rather it is Intel’s quad-core processors that are priced around the same level such as the Core i5-650 and Core i5-670. It will be interesting to see how they stack up. Several sites have already posted reviews of the Phenom II X6:
Today, April 27, 2010, AMD released its first six-core processors for desktops, only a few weeks after Intel released its first six-core desktop chip. Unlike Intel’s “Gulftown,” which is available in limited quantities and costs more than $1,000 in retail, AMD’s “Thuban” processors start at around $200. AMD claims computer makers should be able to build complete desktops with Phenom II X6 chips for about the same price as the Core i7-980X Extreme alone.
The two new processors are the 2.8GHz Phenom II X6 1055T, which costs $199, and the 3.2GHz Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, which is $295. (With the Black Edition processors, you can overclock not only the CPU, but also other parts of the system, to further boost performance.) In addition to the six-core processor, this new high-end platform includes a supporting chipset, the 890GX, and Radeon HD 5000 series DirectX 11 GPUs. AMD refers to this platform as Leo. The Phenom II X6 can also be used as a drop-in upgrade in any AM2+ or AM3 motherboard.

Though it is manufactured by Globalfoundries using the same 45nm Silicon-On-Insulator process and shares the same basic design as the six-core server chips, the Phenom II X6 has one new feature: Turbo Core. Like Intel’s Turbo Mode, this feature improves performance on lightly-threaded applications that can’t really take advantage of six cores (or 12 threads, in the case of Gulftown) by powering down some cores and boosting others. AMD says this will push up to three cores on the Phenom II X6 1090T from 3.2GHz up to 3.6GHz simultaneously.
AMD also released a new version of its OverDrive utility, which simplifies overclocking. OverDrive 3.2.1 adds support for the Phenom II X6 and Turbo Core, memory profiles for the fastest DDR3 memory, and new application-specific profiles.

The new chipset also a few distinguishing features. It supports the faster SAT 6Gbps disk storage interface and, according to AMD, nearly all 890GX motherboards will also have an NEC USB 3.0 controller for connecting peripherals that support the new standard.


Desktops based on Leo platform will initially be available from “whitebox” companies such as iBuyPower, CyberPower, Systemax, MainGear and Velocity Micro. The boxed processors will also be sold in places such as Newegg and TigerDirect. Given the pricing, it will be interesting to see if the Phenom II X6 will also show up in desktops from the tier-1 computer companies, as well as on the shelves at Best Buy.

The benefits of six- and eight-core processors–as well as HyperThreading–are straightforward in servers. They are less clear, however, on the desktop. The real competition for Phenom II X6 isn’t Gulftown; rather it is Intel’s quad-core processors that are priced around the same level such as the Core i5-650 and Core i5-670. It will be interesting to see how they stack up. Several sites have already posted reviews of the Phenom II X6: