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IN THE HIGH END ARENA the AMD Radeon HD6990 and Nvidia Geforce GTX590, both dual GPU cards, now share the top performance position in PC 3D. Both cards have very high power usage, large size and lots of RAM. The 3GB of memory on the GTX590 and the 4GB on the HD6990 equal the average mainstream PC main system memory capacity.

The Radeon HD6990 is particularly interesting as there has been barely any clock frequency sacrifice over the single GPU HD6970, despite fitting two of these on a single card and adhering to all the power limitations. The only other performance penalty (and very slight at that – below one per cent) is the PLX PCIe bridge chip on each card, required to enable two GPUs to share one PCIe x16 interface to the host computer.

In applications beyond gaming, multi GPU setups like this are usable in workstations and even in supercomputing application niches, where each GPU can run a task, handling accelerated threads or specific routines that make sense to run on them. After all, the single HD6990 can offer nearly 6TFLOPs in single precision and 1.5 TFLOPs in double precision. However, running a single thread across multiple GPUs efficiently is right now still very hard to do as there is no clear shared memory model between two or more GPUs due to the PCI express bus communication. Once this is solved, though, there will be many more suitable applications for multiple GPU usage.

But back to the gaming world. Since new AMD Catalyst drivers did improve multi GPU Crossfire scaling quite a bit last year, it was an interesting question of how high scores would be achieved in the usual 3Dmark benchmarks with two HD6990 cards, with four GPUs in total. Of course, with that many high end graphics processors there has to be sufficient CPU horsepower to feed them.

So we combined the new Intel Core i7 990X CPU, running at 3.46GHz with the trusted Gigabyte X58A UD9 mainboard, the well featured top end overclocking reference and possibly the most expensive high-end single processor mainboard ever. It has two NF200 Bridge ASICs from Nvidia to enable four full x16 PCIe slots, resulting in a little larger than usual size. The 6GB of GEIL DDR3-2133 gamers’ memory, Intel X25-M 160GB SSD and Antec 1200W high end power supply, are easily capable of feeding the high-end hardware. The 64 bit Windows 7 install used default settings in the drivers and benchmark test applications.

Here are the 3Dmark Vantage and 3Dmark 11 test results. They speak for themselves:

As you can see, the combination of four GPUs and six CPU cores on a good motherboard can – even at default mode without any overclocking – achieve very high scores. This is up to some three times the score of a single HD6970 on the same processor platform, a very reasonable scaling benefit in either test.

Yes, the benchmark is just a benchmark, but it still shows well the scaling results and the platform’s performance potential. Now, the issue of heat does come up, so you’d better ensure that the case is spacious enough with strong airflow to match, as graphics cards these days create way more heat than the processors. µ

KOREAN ELECTRONICS GIANT Samsung will build a smartphone with a 2GHz dual core processor by the end of the year.

Speaking to the Korean website daum.net, a spokesperson for Samsung said, “We are planning to release a 2GHz dual core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year.” This is an improvement of 800MHz on the 1.2GHz dual core processor that’s found in the Galaxy S II smartphone, which is currently the fastest chip in a phone.

Maybe the handset to feature this processor will be the Galaxy S III. The INQUIRER has contacted Samsung for comment but we’re still waiting for its reply.

Apparently it’s likely that the chip will be launched under the Exynos brand that Samsung launched in February. At 2GHz the chip will rival or even surpass some PC and laptop processor speeds, and we think it’s likely that we’ll see more products like the Motorola Atrix Lapdock, which uses the phone to power a netbook.

Samsung is also said to be putting this fast chip up for sale as an individual component, under the Exynos brand, for other manufacturers to use for their own smartphones or other devices.

Perhaps if Samsung does sell its hard drive business it will be able to put more investment into developing faster processors for smartphones, tablets, netbooks and hybrid devices. µ

At both CES and MWC, Qualcomm teased us with their dual core Snapdragon SoC, the MSM8x60. First we saw it from afar, then they let us run tests on it, finally they let us take one with us to benchmark thoroughly. We've got the first Adreno 220 GPU benchmarks from the MSM8660 in a Qualcomm Mobile Development Platform already taken care of and are ready to share.

Read on for all the results!

THE CURRENT reference design single card graphics performance leader is the AMD ATI Radeon HD5970. Basically a combination of two HD5870 1GB GPU blocks slowed down by some 20 per cent to accomodate the heat and power limits of the PCIe card specification, and connected via an on-board PLX PCIe bridge, the HD5970 has led the market for nearly all of the past year. Now, prior to the arrival of the AMD ATI Radeon HD6000 ‘Southern Islands’ GPU line in October, there is a kind of unofficial refresh going on at the high end.

Basically, the key vendors like Asus, Gigabyte, XFX and Sapphire are offering sped-up top end graphics cards that would have otherwise qualified to be called, say, HD5890 and HD5990, but since it’s not a full new product SKU rollout, they are considered the accelerated factory pre-overclocked units. At the very top of the pack is Asus’ Ares.

The card has the same architecture as the normal AMD ATI Radeon HD5970 dual GPU setup, and even the PCB dimensions are about the same. However, the GPUs on board run at the full HD5870 individual speed of 850MHz GPU and 4.8GHz GDDR5 memory, and, on top of that, each GPU has 2GB of RAM for a total of 4GB on the card. Wonderful! But, the changes required a brand new cooling system barely fitting the two slot width and, of course, much more power. Here you have two 8-pin plus one 6-pin graphics power connector on the card. Put two of those cards in a QuadFire parallel GPU setup on a, say, Intel Core i7-980X six core platform, and you’ll exhaust a 1000W PSU.

The card comes in an ultra large carton box, larger than even server mainboard packaging. Inside it is a black suitcase, James Bond style, which when open reveals the card and its accessories.

At the first look, the Asus Ares card is big and beautiful, a statement that fits this monstrous card just perfectly. It is impressive looking and, in a defensive situation, with its combination of weight and sharp edges, it could be a deadly weapon.

It took a bit of extra care to insert the card into our initial test platform, the Asus Rampage III Extreme mainboard using the Intel Core i7-980X six core CPU running at the default 3.33GHz clock. The 6GB of Geil Black Dragon DDR3-1600 RAM and an Intel X25-M 160GB SSD, as well as the Thermaltake 1000W PSU in our trusty Xigmatek Midgard-S chasis, which by now has survived three board swaps without a scratch, rounded out the test bed system configuration. The card was surprisingly silent, even during the benchmark runs at full load.

In this initial test, before we try to overclock the card further and use its Asus Smartdoctor and GamerOSD utilities, I ran the usual Windows 7 64-bit platform with the 3Dmark Vantage DX 10 and Unigine Heaven 2 DX 11 tests, as well as Sandra synthetic GPU performance benchmarks. Here they are:

3Dmark Vantage on Ares:

And on the generic Asus HD5970 on the same system:

Unigine Heaven:

Sandra GPU render:

Sandra GPGPU compute, over 5 TFLOPs single precision and 1.2 TFLOPs double precision floating point on a single card, with plenty of local RAM for the job:

And GPU memory too:

Impressive! This is by far the fastest GPU setup in a single slot I’ve ever seen. I wonder how it’d scale in a quad GPU dual card configuration, but what I can say is that Asus has, with this extra bit of engineering, created a true multi GPU performance monster, without sacrificing single GPU performance or memory capacity.

Note yet another configuration opportunity here. If you’re using the card for GPGPU compute applications, where the extra 2GB of memory per GPU chip helps a lot, you are not bound by the Crossfire limits. In fact, in a mainboard like the EVGA SR2 or the Gigabyte X58A-UD9, you could insert four of these ARES cards, each with its own PCIe X16 link, and have eight GPUs for over 20 TFLOPs single precision and over 4 TFLOPs double precision floating point capability, in a single box. All that, of course, assuming that your compute routines are happy with relying on the AMD Stream or OpenCL programming approaches.

In Short
Asus set another record here with the Ares Limited Edition ATI Radeon HD5970 graphics card, at least until and if it releases the rumoured Mars 2 dual Nvidia GTX480 GPU Limited Edition on a single card.

Maybe Nvidia will be nice enough to provide Asus with those rare, kept aside, full 512-shader bins of the GF100 chip to make a thousand core dual GPU card. That thing would need three 8-pin power plugs, even more than the Ares. Compared to the dual Nvidia GF100 card’s projected 600W power draw, this dual ATI Radeon HD5970 Ares card will look positively power saving.

In the meantime, we’ll look more closely at the Asus Ares card’s graphics performance against other GPUs in more environments, as well as how well it overclocks. Watch this space. µ

The Good
Top performance, reasonably compact design, large memory, limited edition card.

The Bad
Since AMD’s next-generation ‘Southern Islands’ HD6000 line of GPUs is just around the corner, there might have to be an Ares 2 soon.

The Ugly
Nothing.

Bartender’s Score
9/10

 

 

LAPTOP MAKER Acer will release a dual boot netbook in the hope that it will entice users to ditch Microsoft’s Windows.

The Aspire One AOD255, first shown at this year’s Computex, will feature Google’s Chrome operating system along with Microsoft’s Windows XP.

The hardware specifications of the AOD255 are pretty standard netbook fare, with a 10.1-inch screen, an Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.

Shipping netbooks with multiple operating systems should allow for better alternatives to Microsoft’s Windows to finally reappear on the pint sized devices. Although Asus initially loaded its EeePCs with Linux, Microsoft managed to barge in and get vendors to load its operating system, with the majority of netbooks now sold shipping with a crippled version of Windows.

Though netbooks might come loaded with Windows, users do have the ability to install Linux, with dedicated distributions aimed at netbook users. Canonical’s Ubuntu Netbook Edition has proven to be a popular choice, marrying ease of use with the security, speed and stability of the Linux kernel.

Acer has said that the AOD255 will be priced at 5 (£235) though did not announce when the netbook will be available. µ

THE INQUIRER

Review GA 7TCSV2 with L5640 ultra low power Xeons