AMD IS BACK BABY!!!

as a certified fan of the UAE owned semiconductor giant, and as a long time athlon fan, i am tremendously excited to see AMD's fine return to form with the phenom 2 x4 920 and 940 processors.

i know that benchies on the net give them a negative rating vis a vis core i7, but for me it was interesting to note that clock for clock, outside of hardcore video editing environments, they ran neck and neck with the core 2 quads (45 nm) and almost matched the core i7 in a few benchmarks.

for me, that's a tremendous achievement if you consider the fact that right now, the phenom 2 is only working with DDR2 ram. once we get the AM3+ mobos readied and throw in a couple of DDR3 sticks in, i fully expect the phenom 2s to leave the C2Qs in the dust.

but let's get down to where it really matter, gaming. i was most excited to see the phenom 2 perform outstandingly in games, where it was a 30-40 % faster than the older phenom quads. 

and the price!!! for the price of a phenom 2 quad, and with AM2 mobo and a 4 gig stick of DDR2 ram, i will have more than enough cash to throw in a 4850x2, a 260 core216 or even a 280 video card, for the same price as a bare bones core i7  setup.

that to me seems like a tremendous value for money proposition, which will give us a reasonable system that can finally answer the only question that has mattered to PC hardware in the last year and a half.

yup, we got an answer to " Can it Run Crysis Bro?"

yeah man, 1250 $ will give you what you need

leaping off the edge

this is right around the time when shopping for new games becomes a massive headache. all the best titles seem reserved for this time and you see ur good friends indulge in flaming fanboy wars that are utterly futile.

i had the followed games pencilled on my list of must haves around august.

fallout 3

fable2

gears of war 2

tomb raider underground

prince of persia 

saints row 2

mirrors edge.

since then though, i've had to scratch out fallout 3. the reason being that i had had enough of dystopia, and wanted to play some good old fun games again.

i agree gears isnt the most positive outlook on life, but any game that lets you chanisaw enemies stays in my list.

but i must admit to having been completely floored by mirror's edge so far. from what i've seen so far, this game looks to be the 'portal' for 2008. and in my books, that's just about as high praise as one can offer games.

i admit being disappointed with the games released this year thus far. it's not a patch on last year, when i tearfully parted with my earnings but felt justified with hours of pure pleasure playing Bioshock, Assasin's Creed, Gears, Halo 3, R6 Vegas, Fifa 08, PGR3 and Mass Effect.

this year, i have only been impressed by Burnout Paradise, which i think is the best reason to get the wireless steering wheel and the beloved and unfortunately banned GTA 4.

but just like Assasins and Portal(love that song btw, look up "portal- i am still alive"), Mirror's edge has become a game changer. 

a different protagonist from the usual stereotype? check.

a game world played entirely on nausea inducing rooftops? check

total dependance on wits and not guns, to survive? check

total sense of immersion into the game world? check

dont know about you, but while i wouldnt mind not getting any of the above listed games well into next year, Gears and Mirrors edge have made a move from should haves to must haves for me.

that and the nokia 5800 xpress coming to UAE and India in December and rest of the world in 2009(yay!!)

Nehalem headaches for AMD

oh my god!! that was my first reaction when the nehalem(aka intel Core i7) benchmarks hit the net.

they say that imitation is the best form of flattery, but what happens when the imitation outperforms the original?

Intel's version of the AMD Hyper Transport is called Hyper Connect, and boy, does it connect or what..

even in the conroe days, AMD always held the edge in Memory latency and read write tests due to the pioneering integrated memory controller design they implemented in the athlon 64 over 5 years ago. (has it been that long? wow)

well, intel decided to bury the grizzled Front Side Bus and usher in their version of the integrated controller in the core i7. where they really blew AMD away of course, was by making it a triple channel controller, over the dual channel approach that AMD has favoured.

while the Core i7 is an absolute delight for workstation applications, gaming scenarios arent all that clear.

the cheapest core i7 (which would be the 920), isnt all that faster in games when compared to the similarly price Q9770. in fact, if you get right down to it, you could get a much cheaper dual core, say an E8500, add in a solid water cooling kit, OC it to near 4 Ghz and get double the gaming performance.

this is because most of the games right now are written to take advantage of dual core systems as the lowest common denominator in performance.

the few games that do utilise the extra cores (which right now seems to be supreme commander, not convinced that Crysis, Bioshock or UT3 make good use of quaddies), benefit far more from the much higher clock speed that u will get with a dual core.

there's the rub. since the i7 is in it's infancy, u have to shell out huge money, to get a decent motherboard, DDR3 memory(it wont run on DDR2).

plus there's also the fact that intel offers much better performance when it revises and refreshes product lines. it happened when it made a transition from 65nm to 45 nm and will happen again when they move from current 45nm to 32 nm sometime next year.

bottom line is, the i7 is mostly a fancy piece of nanotech that will be an absolute must 6 months down the line, when prices drop.

my suggestion till then, is to get an 8500, OC it to 4Gs, pair it up with a pair of radeon 4850s in crossfire(much better than the 4850x2 imho) and pack in 4 gigs of ddr2 1066 ram and u will have a system that will serve u fine for atleast 2 years.