Licensing 800MHz FSB from Intel may mix up chipset maker positions

Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and HLSL officially announced

AMD Barton 2500+: the first test results

Licensing 800MHz FSB from Intel may mix up chipset maker positions

As it has turned out, no Taiwanese makers have obtained Intel’s license for 800MHz bus. If, for example, VIA hasn´t strived for this anyway, SiS and Ali might suffer from the additional license expenses. As you know, the market share of Intel P4 chipsets grew to 60-70% in 2002. The share of SiS grew up to 20%. VIA Technologies, that hasn’t obtained the license for Pentium 4 from Intel, and Ali, which hasn’t shown the particular interest to this market, shared the remaining 10%. So, it seems that SiS will have to pay most to keep its market part. Ali will suffer as well, having recently announced the resumption of interest to the desktop chipset market.

Source: The DigiTimes

Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and HLSL officially announced

The long wait with the constant searching for release links and gathering rumours about DX9 is finished at last. Today Microsoft officially announced the DirectX 9.0 along with the DirectX 9.0 Software Development Kit (SDK), including the HLSL (High-Level Shader Language).

I guess, there’s no need to describe Microsoft DirectX 9: "a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX 9.0 includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX 9.0 APIs".

Now you can download or just get more information about DirectX 9.0 here. Though, professionals better go to DirectX @ MSDN to find various variants of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) along with the description of its key parts, including HLSL brief.

Naturally, the DirectX 9.0 support has already been announced by graphics market leaders: ATI Technologies announced the final DirectX 9.0-enabled CATALYST 3.0 drivers; NVIDIA announced the complete DirectX 9.0 support in the new Detonator drivers.

AMD Barton 2500+: the first test results

First, about the CPU itself. The first photos were introduced on November 25 (see The photo of AMD Barton).

What the marking means — AXDA1833DKT4D. Athlon XP (AXD), A – desktop, 1833 MHz (how much is it in QuantiSpeed?), D — OPGA, K – 1.65V core voltage, Ò — +90°C temeprature limit, 4 – 512Kb L2 cache, D – 333MHz FSB. So, it’s actually AMD Barton with 512Kb L2 cache and 333MHz FSB. The larger crystal is illustrated on the following photos of Palomino, Thoroughbred B and Barton, and the more detailed Thoroughbred B and Barton:

Where did they get 2500+ from? First, it’s how WCPUID 3.10 determined, second, it’s how BIOS determined (166 x 11.0):

Barton Cache Info:

Well, all the interesting discussion of Thoroughbred B and Barton, QuantiSpeed, along with conclusions are too much for the news format. Here are just tables for Thoroughbred B and Barton along with the rating forecasts:

About the testing. The testbed:

• Epox 8K9A2+ (VIA KT400)
• DDR SDRAM Cosair PC3500 DDR433 512MB
• VGA WinFast A250 Ultra TD (GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB)
• Display Mode 1024 x 768 32Bit @75Hz
• HDD IBM IC35L040AVER07-0 7200RPM 2M Cache 40GB ATA-100
• Patch File VIA 4 in 1 V4.43

The test results:

Some brief comparatives (Barton 2500+ vs. Athlon XP 2200+):

Super Pi 1M

CPUmark 99

3DMark 2002 SE Build 330

Content Creation Winstone 2002 1.0.1

Business Winstone 2001 1.0.3

N-Bench V2

PCMark 2002 Pro-CPU

All who needs more information can look at the original review here. There’s actually much to read.

Source: OC

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