February 12th, 2011 Published by: VR-Zone 1 VR-Zone.com | Stuff for the Geeks! AMD plans aggressive transition to next-gen CPUs/ APUs February 12th, 2011 Xbitlabs reports that AMD is planning to produce 100% of its desktop processors at 32nm (or 40nm in case of Ontario/ Zacate) as early as Q2 2012, completely eliminating the current 45nm+ Athlon/Phenom CPUs. After several delays, 2011 is surely the turning point for AMD. With Ontatio/Zacate APUs already released, next in line is the Llano APU and the next- gen Bulldozer architecture as implemented in Zambezi CPUs. By Q2 2012, 20% desktop products will be based on the AM3+ platform with Bulldozer CPUs, 10% on the FT1 platform with Brazos APUs, and finally, a vast 70% on the FM1 platform, which accommodates the mainstream Llano APUs. Llano and Bulldozer will be fabbed at 32nm SOI, while Brazos remains at 40nm Bulk. AMD is also rumoured to simplify branding with the next-gen products. Ontario and Zacate are already branded as C-series and E-series respectively, with Llano expected to be A-series and Bulldozer (Zambezi) FX-series. Complicated branding such as "Phenom II X6" is likely to be dropped with the new generation of AMD products. It is clear that AMD is extremely confident and ambitious about its upcoming products. By contrast, Intel's largest selling (by volume) product continues to be Pentium branded CPUs, manufactured at 45nm/65nm, and in general, Intel takes several years to transition to a new generation of CPUs. The Daily VR-Zone News Summary - 11 Feb 2011 February 12th, 2011 In today's daily news roundup: - MSI presents its absolute high-end motherboard, the Big Bang Marshal P67, for Intel's latest Sandy Bridge platform; - CSR announces CSR8600 wireless consumer audio platform for embedded platforms; - Rumour has it that the successor to the iPhone 4 will be smaller than its predecessor by at least a third, and - Halo Reach appears to be receiving a follow-up add-on bundle to the previously released 'Noble' map pack. Hardware News: ASUS GeForce ENGTX560 Ti DirectCU II Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews Description: The ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DirectXU II Top edition video card proved itself to be faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX560 Ti reference design in our testing, but that was expected since it operates at a 900MHz versus the standard 823MHz clock speeds. We also found that it ran cooler at full load and was able to overclock better than the reference design thanks to the voltage adjustment feature (VoltageTweak) in the SmartDoctor utility. Being able to reach 1GHz on the GeForce GTX 560 when overclocking was nice... CSR announces CSR8600 wireless consumer audio platform Description: Wireless chip firm CSR has announced the CSR8600 wireless consumer audio platform, which it claims will offer superior high-fidelity audio quality for integrated system-on-chip devices. Zalman N-Series Sandforce SSD Tests @ Benchmark Reviews Description: Zalman is best known for their very quiet coolers, stylish computer cases, and power supply units. Now they're adding high-speed storage devices to their product stack, begining with a SandForce-driven Zalman N-Series SSD. The Zalman N-Series solid state drive is capable of 50,000 IOPS, with read bandwidth topping 280 MB/s while maximum write speeds reach up to 270 MB/s. In this article, Benchmark Reviews demonstrates that 4K IOPS performance is more important than speed for high-power computer users tests, and tests the 128GB Zalman SSD0128N1 SSD against some of the most popular storage devices available. MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 - Layout and Design @ ocaholic Description: With the Big Bang Marshal, MSI presents its absolute high-end motherboard for Intels latest Sandy Bridge processors. Therefore it comes for example with a truly sophisticated power design as well as eight PCI-Express x16 slots and numerous other features. GIGABYTE HD6970 2GB Review @ Vortez Description: Back in December, AMD released their much awaited Cayman based HD69XX series of cards. It represented a transition to a revised architecture that was more catered towards compute performance with new features such as Morphological Anti-Aliasing and enhanced tessellation performance to meet the requirements of newer DX10/11 titles. For the most part, the HD6970 was a success despite its specifications appearing subtly different to the highly popular but ageing HD5870... AMD May Axe Microprocessor Brand-Names Description: Advanced Micro Devices may can specific brand- names of its microprocessors in order to emphasize its corporate AMD Vision trademark and attract attention to its corporate brand. As a result of the move, Athlon, Phenom and Sempron will vanish into oblivion. Enermax presents two new high-end cases Description: In January, Enermax introduced its new flagship midi tower for gamers, Hoplite. However this is just the beginning of the new generation of Enermax cases, which will be presented on CeBIT in Hannover for the first time.