Having recently been dethroned from the fastest-in-the-world position, NVIDIA is busy working on the G71 chip (set to launch in mid-March) to compete against ATI's newly released X1900 series. Until G71 based cards are launched, the company went after the last generation AGP market that needed an update frantically. Last year, insider sources reported that if there was enough demand for AGP cards, NVIDIA might change its stance from exclusively offering PCIe cards to releasing an AGP version of one of the cards. It looks like NVIDIA received more than enough feedback, which ultimately led to them to release the AGP version of the 7800GS.

A few months ago, a vendor accidentally gave away an engineering sample which then made big news. NVIDIA said it would never exist, but as we now know, the company's initial reaction was off the mark. How well does the 7800GS AGP performs? Read on and find out...


Sorce: CoolTechZone
[Submitted by tanka]

Dual-core processors and Conroe will take up the performance and mainstream desktop market for 2006

With increasing production investments on a global scale, Intel promised that 2006 would be the year of many changes. From what has happened so far, we can say that Intel is sticking well to its plans. Starting off with announcements that Intel will open new manufacturing facilities in Israel, India and Vietnam, the focus on driving strong production of 65nm products is well under way. According to Intel, dual-core will be its focus for all of this year, releasing products for both desktops and mobile platforms.

Intel's Conroe processor is receiving the most amount of press, is on high expectations with mainstream consumers and enthusiasts alike. Packing two cores, a next-generation architecture, and large amounts of cache, the Conroe family also comes in at significantly less than a Pentium EE. Conroe itself will be using LGA775 and so will the rest of Intel's desktop processors for the remainder of 2006. Expect the official Conroe platform announcement to come at IDF 2006 on March 7, 2006.

Most of Intel's single-core processors have already been announced and released, except for two Pentium parts running at 3.33GHz and 3.GHz, which are both slated for a release on May 28 of this year. Both processors will be sporting larger 512KB L2 caches and cost $117 and $103 respectively.

PPXE 965
3.73GHz / 1066MHz 2x2MB Q2'06 $999 (04/30)
PPXE 955
3.46GHz / 1066MHz 2z2MB Now $999 (now)
PPXE 840
3.20GHz / 1066MHz 2x1MB Now $999 (now)
Conroe E6700
2.67GHz / 1066MHz 4MB Q3'06 $530 (???)
Conroe E6600
2.40GHz / 1066MHz 4MB Q3'06 $316 (???)
Conroe E6400
2.13GHz / 1066MHz 2MB Q3'06 $241 (???)
Conroe E6300
1.86GHz / 1066MHz 2MB Q3'06 $209 (???)
Pentium D
960
3.6GHz / 800MHz 2x2MB Q2'06 $530 (04/30)
Pentium D 950
3.4GHz / 800MHz 2x2MB Now $637 (now)
Pentium D 940
3.2GHz / 800MHz 2x2MB Now $423 (now)
Pentium D
930
3.0GHz / 800MHz 2x2MB Now
$316 (now)
Pentium D 920 (no VT)

3.0GHz / 800MHz 2x2MB Now $178 (???)
Pentium D 920
2.8MHz / 800MHz 2x2MB Q3'06 $241 (now)

Conroe comes in later in the second half of this year, becoming the flagship family for Intel performance desktop processors. Official names for the new processors have not yet been revealed but technical details are there. Extreme Editions for Conroe are also planned but so far, no details have been released except for the fact that they will be based on LGA775. 2x2MB of L2 cache will be the base minimum for Pentium D 900 class processors and up except for Pentium Extreme Edition based on the Smithfield core, which has a 2x1MB L2 cache.

Intel is moving steadily through 2006, with a strong focus on dual-core processors. Now through to the end of 2006, we will see Conroe taking up roughly 20% of Intel's shipments by then end of the year while the Pentium D processor will remain the largest bulk of Intel's desktop shipments. By Q4 2006, the classic Pentium 4 will drop to roughly 30% of Intel's total desktop processor shipments.






[Submitted by Kcarrim]

OLD TAIPEI will be a grand place to launch a few of the new AMD marchitectures. We will see the Live® (Liver) platform launch, the socket AM2 launch. Last but certanly not least will be the dual core Athlon 5000+ and the dual core for gamers Athlon FX 62 launch. AMD will announce these marchitectures on the 6th of June at Computex 2006.

It seems that both 5000+ and FX62 come as socket AM 2 only things. We suspect that we are talking about a speed update of both cores and we expect that the 5000+ could end up at 2.6GHz while the FX 62 will rock at 2.8 GHz.

Both CPUs will have dual core under the hood. We cannot confirm the frequencies at this time but there is a possibility that AMD won't change the clocks, and that it will count DDR 2 as the speed update. We are not sure yet, but this has happened before.
This will come as a disappointment to some, for according to the current plans the FX60 will remain the fastest FX for socket 939. Athlon 4800+ will be the fastest 939 dual core CPU around. You should be able to grab those AM2 CPUs just after Computex.


[Submitted by tanka]