Roughly 1.5years back, ATI introduced the Radeon 3 series. It was an upgrade and speed bump for the Radeon 2 series which based on the same architecture R600. The 3 series from ATI wasn’t that competitive agaisnt the Geforce 9 series. But ATI lowered their price and compete in the middle and lower end segment. The Radeon 2 series  from my opinion, wasn’t a good product. It was reminiscent of the Phenom K10 architecture. It only starts to shine when AMD/ATI make a transition to 55nm manufacturing process for its 2400 and 2600 graphic processing unit. We can get cheap mainstream graphic card back then like the 8600GT from nvidia or the 3670 from ATI.

In the mid of 2008, is an even better time for graphic market. This is when ATI introduces the R700 family of graphic cards. The spotlight is on ATI 4850, the fastest mainstream at a reasonable price at that time. Performance was close and faster in some cases than the Geforce 9800 GTX which priced higher than the 4850. Nvidia couldn’t afford to lose market and lowered down their high end product to mainstream prices to compete with 4850. From top to bottom, ATI 4 series(R700) own all the performance crown in every segment. It was indeed a good year for ATI and a better year for consumers.

Ok, enough of history lesson. Today we have the Geforce GT200 series, the ATI 4 series (R700) and 5 series (Evergreen). The GT200 wasn’t really shine untill nvidia migrate the manufacturing process to 55nm earlier this year (or the very end of 2008). It was too hot and too expensive to produced using the 65nm. While ATI doesn’t have any new graphic other than the 4770 and 4890 for the first 9months of this year. Therefore, with competitive pricing from nvidia and the newly improved GT260 and GT285 later on, ATI would have to lower their prices as well. A very good first half of 2009 for consumers I would say. To sum up for today’s graphic card market, starting from the oldest to newest graphics family and from low end to high end segment:

ATI R700 family of GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), Radeon 4 series:

• The 4650 and 4670 remained the best bang for buck in the lower segment.
• Scant availability of 4830 means it is in the process of phasing out. And with the price that is almost similiar with 4850. It’s best just to forget the former and get the later for more performance at just slightly few bucks more.
• The same goes to the 40nm Radeon 4 series – 4770 GPU. Worst is, 4770 is getting pricier than 4850.
• The most popular card of 2008 – Radeon 4850 is getting pricier, no thanks to the fact that this card is getting lesser due to low production from ATI. But anyway, is still the best lower mid range card for today’s standard.
• With strong competition from nvidia GTX260, the Radeon 4870 is tied with GTX260 at the same price range. It’s hard to recommend either one, it boils down to which game you played most. But I would recommend 4870 as it is faster in most games, if Phsyx matters for you then GTX260 is the one to go.
• Radeon 4890 while just an overclocked version of Radeon 4870,  was more overclocker friendly than 4870. With 30-40% higher selling price than 4870, 4890 has the upper hand in performance after maximum overclock. But if you’re not into overclocking, it’s best just to settle with nvidia GTX260 or 4870 or maybe the new Evergreen 5850( more on it later).

Nvidia GT200 GPU

• Lower end for these family of GPU is better be left out for recommendation list. However, the newly released GT240 which is based on 40nm and doesn’t require extra power connector is the one to look for. But since it couldn’t be found selling anywhere in stores and with unknown price yet, this segment had AMD’s Radeon 4650/4670 won hands down.
• GTX260 is only worth for your penny if you are looking for GPGPU applications . Else, just go for Radeon 4870.
• In the range of high end GT200, it’s hardly recommendable for anyone. With ATI’s Evergreen took back the performance crown at competitive pricing, I don’t see reasons to get the GTX285. The GTX295 is still reasonable choice as ATI Radeon 5970 is simply overpriced.

ATI Radeon Evergreen GPU (R800)

• There are no low end cards in this family of GPU yet, but expect AMD/ATI to release Redwood early next year (January possibly). My speculation is, given the performance that we see from this new Evergreen architecture, this would make 9800GT and GTX240 irrelevant as Redwood will be position at that price range. It wouldn’t replace 4650/4670 initially, but expect it to do so by end of next year.
• Juniper is the latest mid range card from AMD/ATI. It is basically half of horse power from Cypress(see below). The 5770 is almost as fast as 4870, but in some cases it was actually slower by few frame rates. Well, that doesn’t concern me with an extra added feature like DirectX 11 and bit streaming. 5770 vs GTX260 vs 4870 at the same price range, I definitely be going for 5770.
• The fastest single chip GPU fall into the hands of Cypress. There are two variant, 5870 and the cut down version 5850. Though 5870′s performance is remarkable, but its price is a bit on the high side no thanks to the non-competition from nvidia and the limited stock available. 5850 on the other hand is really the card to get this year, having performance which is faster than nvidia GTX285 with lower price tag. But it faces the similiar problem with 5870 as well, is very hard to get this card and some shops actually marked up the price above market level.
• ATI/AMD decided to name their dual chip Cypress as Hemlock with their high end named 5970. Boasting two 5870 chip in one card, this is a beast. The 5870 is already insanely fast, having two of them makes nightmare to nvidia. While having the fastest frame rates in all games, this card is not for the faint hearted. Prepare to churn out a big hole in your bank account for this card.

So there you have it, a detailed summary of every discrete graphic families available in the market now. But many of you have guessed, why it isn’t a good time to upgrade your 2-4 years old graphic card now?( thats a different story if you are getting a new PC man )  Well, first of all, availability problem causes some of the most popular graphic card to hike up in price. The Radeon 4850 and nvidia GTX260 is actually pricier than few months back. The new Evergreen graphic from ATI is even in the worst case here, the Radeon 5850, 5870 and 5950 have very little available globablly. Inadvertently causing some stores to mark up their prices. While the cheaper variant of the Evergreen; 5770 and 5750 is just slightly better in the position. The lower end card like the Radeon 4670 and 4650 are still available and getting very affordable these days, but if you are upgrading your graphic card, you won’t get these cards right? My advice, is actually worth to play the wait game just for few more months now. This is what will happen: ATI will ramp up production for their Evergreen graphics family in January, the lower end Redwood will show up Q1, nvidia Fermi will show up by March best case scenario. It’s a very interesting 1st half. If Fermi perform half as good as what nvidia claim, that would be already enough to make ATI lower down their pricey Cypress and Hemlock, and price wars ignite. It’s good for the consumer in the end, you see, im not a fan boy in either side. I’m a fan boy of any side which can produce cheap, efficient, and high performing card, and I believe everyone should.

The AMD Sempron 140

Just when you thought Phenom II X3 (or some X2s) are the best bang for buck by having free cores (yeah, literally), hold on, as Sempron 140 will likely to be the next bang for buck by having a free “core” unlockable core by costing just half of Phenom II X3, well more than half actually.

Kudos to a Thai moder from Vmodtech. Where by simply using a supported motherboard with Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC), basically any motherboards with SB710 and SB750, you’ll be able to unlock the extra core. Hmm…that’s a great deal considering this cheap babe cost just USD40 (can’t see it anywhere in local stores though )

By tweaking the voltage and maybe installed with a better heatsink, this guy was able to achieve a whopping 3.7GHz! That’s an extra 1GHz from the default of 2.7GHz and another extra 1 core. 1GHz and 1core, seems like a good number to get a winning lucky number for some gambling .

I see a good budget deal by having this unlocked Sempron 140 and 780G as a good combination for internet, simple gaming and multimedia needs. But not much are into overclock or unlock in this case, so it’s better left for budget overclockers.

Anyway, I’ll wrap up here and this link will let you see more details of this Athlon II X2 440 (ya, this is what the unlocked Sempron 140 becomes).

*Sempron 140 is a new budget processor from AMD where it has 1MB of L2cache and clocks at 2.7GHz. It was derived from a faulty Athlon II dual core processor, but of course as many agreed that AMD make some non faulty Athlon II into Sempron 140 for marketing purposes.

The new AMD 785G chipset

The days are numbered when IGP (integrated graphic processor) offers miserable graphic performance. Thanks to AMD, we got a very solid IGP solutions with the 780G chipset released last year. A year later, which is today, AMD bumped up and inject the 780G with extra speed and some tweaks here and there. And voila, we got the 785G.

The new 785G supports any current Phenom II, Athlon II and the older brethren Athlon X2. The 780G will be phased out once 785G is in full production swing. 785G will be positioned between 780G and 790GX, but will eventually replace 780G.

Motherboard with AMD 785G chipset will come with SB710 southbridge. The SB710 southbridge is a an improvement over the SB700 southbridge. It’s basically a SB750 southbridge (which comes with 790GX) minus RAID 5 support, which is not much an issue considering majority of users never use RAID at all.

However, one issue with the 785G is the lack of support for 8 channel LPCM over HDMI. The older 780G and 790GX doesn’t have 8 channel LPCM support and many were hoping AMD to upgrade a little for this new 785G chipset. A bit of disappointment for those planning to do a 7.1 channel HTPC system. Well, for most of us, a 2 channel is already sufficient enough for a great audio experience.

Some of the improvements over 780G are:

• Faster graphics with AMD HD 4200 graphics
• DirectX 10.1 support
• ATI stream technology
• Universal Video Decoder 2.0(UVD)
• AMD powerplay

With AMD HD 4200 build in to 785G, we can expect DirectX10.1 support. However, clockspeed remained the same at 500MHz. But 785G motherboard usually comes with DDR3 sideport memory, so we can see some extra frame rates over 780G.

For those working on Microsoft Powerpoint or using the Cyberlink’s Espresso media converter, you’ll be delighted to have 785G as your working companion. With ATI Stream, expect to see substantial performance improvement where it offloads the processing power to the 40 stream processor at 500MHz each. More than 2times the performance gain without upgrading the processor, how’s that? More applications will be taking advantage of this ATI Stream GPGPU technology in the future.

Watching HD videos just got better with UVD 2.0. With additional features for BD video like picture in picture, dynamic contrast and better HD post processing.

Another big improvement is the AMD Powerplay. It dynamically adjust the clockspeed of the chipset anywhere from 60MHz idle to 500MHz full load. The new Powerplay adjust the clockspeed constantly depending on the work load on the GPU. Think of it as the Cool n Quiet feature of Phenom II. A greener PC indeed.

This new chipset has been released by AMD on the early of August’09 and expect to see the availability at your local store soon. Pairing a budget Athlon II (don’t be fooled by the Athlon name, it’s a Phenom II in disguised without the L3 cache) and 785G can be seen as a perfect couple stealing market shares away from Intel’s G41 and nvidia 9400 IGP solutions, but not for HTPC enthusiast.

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Core i7 CPU Nahalem

If you’ve got a Core i7 system, regardless of the fastest 975 Extreme or the slowest Core i7′s family 920 processor, you may come across of different memory configurations. Few queries may pop up in your head;

-How much RAM capacity do I need?

-Do I need the faster and pricier DDR3 1600MHz RAM?

-Do I need the much hyped triple channel configuration?

The answer for the first question is pretty much straight forward, 2GB is the minimum for a decent system. This holds true for any system you planning to build, be it an AMD Phenom II system, Core 2 Duo or Core i7. 2GB is the minimum standard of today’s. Moreover, the price for 2GB DDR3 just cost a fraction of your total system cost as DDR3′s price has gone rock bottom in recent months (though still 20-40% pricier than DDR2).

The optimum RAM bandwidth that was needed for a Core 2 Duo system would be a 1:1 ratio to the system’s front side bus (FSB) bandwidth. However, this no longer holds true for Core i7 as the architecture is so different and is more reminiscent to AMD’s Phenom/Phenom II design. First, the memory controller was build in the CPU’s die, memory bandwidth is thus increased and latency was reduced. The FSB was being replaced by a faster point to point interconnect – QPI. Thus, you don’t have to run in 1:1 ratio anymore for Core i7.

Theoretically, performance on Core i7 system will increased accordingly with every increase of memory bandwidth. However, in real case scenario, Core i7 needs a balanced memory timing and bandwidth. Faster memory with triple channel doesn’t benefit much for Core i7. It was best to get a dual channel configuration for Core i7 as there were very little performance boost going to triple channel over dual channel configuration. You saved RM125++(USD 35) for opting with dual channel instead of triple channel. A DDR3 1066MHz with 6-6-6-18 timing running in dual channel is the recommended configuration for the best price/performance configuration for Core i7 system.

1600MHz DDR3 cost a lot more and you only get very little or in some cases, no benefit of faster performance for your system. You wouldn’t go wrong with a 2x2GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM for your Core i7. When applications started to benefit from higher bandwidth, you always got the option of getting an additional one stick of RAM to run in triple channel.

So that’s it, Nahalem Core i7 is the king of CPU of today and it will remain so for at least 1.5 years before Intel ‘Tock out’ the next generation CPU architecture end of 2010. Do you need a fast memory for Core i7? Absolutely no, and the much hyped triple channel is much more of a marketing gimmick. Well, maybe it’s time for applications developer to take advantage of the available bandwidth in triple channel configuration.

Have a quick check in Plaza Lowyat price’s list, if you don’t mind to burn a big hole in your wallet, the Core i7 965 Extreme cost RM3950 (about USD 1,000).

Of course, my facts aren’t without reference as I don’t have the opportunity of testing the hardware with my own hands, these are my sources:

Tweaktown

Tom’s Hardware

Ninjalane (synthetic benchmark only, but with very detail view of the RAM bandwidth in different configurations)

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