Looks like AMD has a fighting chance in the high end this generation

Ars sums it up best here:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/06/amd-fury-x-reviews-show-strong-4k-performance-but-doesnt-beat-980-ti-overall/

As much as I love the top end I've kinda given up on it as it's usually let down by poorly supported drivers and price premiums which don't reflect the experience expected of them. I usually end up going for a midstream card with a good few months on the shelf and release drivers that have been a little more fine-tuned.  I'm running AMD in my main Windows machine at the moment and am pleasantly surprised as I didn't think i'd go back.

AMD’s Big Bet on ARM Powered Servers: Opteron A1100 Revealed

Looks like CDN farms might find a new processor king in the near future.... AMD  are really doing some innovative stuff with Mantle and now this. Good to see them keeping Intel humble.  

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8362/amds-big-bet-on-arm-powered-servers-a1100-revealed

NASA scientists have created 460GHz vacuum tubes

Won't be replacing those 4GHz Intel / AMD CPU's anytime soon though..



http://hexus.net/tech/news/industry/71493-nasa-scientists-created-460ghz-vacuum-tubes/

Intel approached AMD about access to Mantle

Looks like Intel knows a good thing when it sees it...

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/intel-approached-amd-about-access-to-mantle/

AMD opens new SoC design centre

AMD opens new SoC design centre

AMD losses slow, predicts return to profit soon

AMD losses slow, predicts return to profit soon

AMD diversifying

It had been a little while since I regrettably gave up on AMD until my recent graphics purchase. They do seem to have quite a wide portfolio at the moment which is hinted at in the read below.

It focuses more on AMD's look towards using the ARM architecture for processors.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/23/amd-reveals-g-series-x-embedded-chips/

Shuttle SP35p2 and a AMD HD 7870 will work happily.

Everything went beautifully with the upgrade in physical terms.

UPDATE: Sadly after months of trying to diagnose the reboots I was getting I seem to have established that the cards cooler is pretty poor. I saw temps as high as 80oC in the case. I even modded a 120mm into the roof of the shuttle (looks so cool with blue LEDs) but I could not get it to stay cool.

I think it's only once ever got to the end of a run of 3D Mark and that was when I under clocked the card massively using the catalyst drivers sliders.It's pretty disapointing. You would have thought they would have designed the coolers to force the hot air out of the case and though the fins that way instead of having such as open design.

Even with the case off and all fans at 100% (it sounds like a jet engine) you still reboots.

The old GTX 275:

Without the GPU:

The new card (left) and the old (right):

Top down view:

The new card going in:

Everything back in the case:


PSU info (I doubt the Shuttle PC55 would make a difference as it not got the same efficiency rating):

Shuttle SP35P2 Vs VTX3D HD 7870 Black Edition 2 GB

Time to see if a VTX3D HD 7870 will fit in my Shuttle. It's in the post. It'll be replacing a Nvdia Asus GTX 275. It recommends a 500W power supply and the shuttle has a 450W gold PSU so it'll be an interesting combo. I just hope it fits! 

Replacing my old GTX 275:

Mac Pro News

The Mac Pro is well over due a complete overhaul.

Media & VFX houses demand computational power and Apple has been losing market share for a while now. Yes they have a nice unix based OS vs but Microsoft has come a long way with Windows Server 2012 and software companies really driving their software to do more on PC!

It's good to see some rumours and developments on the Mac Pro front.

The Mac Pro is off the market in the EU at the moment and from the articles below it's going to be a while before we see a new one as Apple wait on Intel's new chips (a good call in my opinion).

I would love to see Apple experiment with some own brand Thunderbolt graphics solutions.

Nvidia with CUDA, SLI and some Thunderbolt arrays would be an interesting mix. Same goes for AMD and crossfire... You could turn a little Mac mini a rather dent little gaming machine and revive an ageing MacBook Pro.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/04/apple-building-2tb-solid-state-drives-for-next-mac-pro-release/

http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Radeon-Hardware-255597/News/Sapphire-zeigt-Radeon-HD-7950-Mac-Edition-auf-der-Cebit-1058864/&authuser=0

Graphics upgrade?

OK so I have some fairly hefty constraints on what I can upgrade my ageing Shuttle PC with.

First and foremost is power constraints with only a 450W PSU in the case ...
Then comes dimensions...With a precarious motherboard power connected in the lower left. I barely got my GTX 275 in there!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-275,2266-14.html

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/graphics_cards_buy_now_uk.html

I'm thinking this Zotac will fit the bill in terms of size and power draw.

http://www.ebuyer.com/393783-zotac-gtx-660-ti-2gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-zt-60801-10p

Steam claim Faster Zombies under Ubuntu linux...

Doesn't really sound like a fair comparisona dn there are way too many variables for a fair test but it's interesting to see they are working with hardware manufactures to improve their drivers overall for the platform. It'll be interesting to see how OpenGL keep up with a AAA grade developer on their back for new feature sets to be included in the API (OpenGL's last release was Aug 2011)... Then again Valve might even end up writing some in!

Blog post here: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/