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Karmic Koala Causes Anger and Frustration amongst Early Adopters

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:56:09 -0600

Exactly a week after the much anticipated launch of Windows 7, Canonical rolled out Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). Although it may not have been as keenly awaited as Windows 7, Karmic Koala's launch was special for a particular demographic that romances Linux, and especially its subset that dotes on Ubuntu. But early adopters of the latest Ubuntu release are having a torrid time.

Excited users have been rewarded with a plethora of problems in exchange of their bravura and enthusiasm. Karmic Koala's poor handling of graphics drivers - blank and flickering screens are quite common - and its failure to install the latest 2.6.31 Linux kernel figure prominently on the list of flaws. Also, the latest version of Ubuntu is not too good at spotting hard drives, according to initial reports.

According to a poll on Ubuntuforums.org, more than one-third of about 1,500 people polled so far have encountered some major flaws. Users upgrading to 9.10 are experiencing more issues than those opting for a fresh install.

Image Credit: EeePc.Itrunslinux.com

Intel Quietly Promoting Larrabee in China

Paul Lilly — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:44 -0600

Intel hopes to eventually make a thunderous entrance in the discrete graphics market with its upcoming GPGPU chip codenamed Larrabee, and to do that, the company needs to line up some chip partners willing to jump on board. Intel CEO Paul Otellini set out to do that recently, talking privately to several China-based videocard makers.

According to what un-named sources have been whispering in DigiTimes' ear, Intel plans to offer preferential pricing for just the GPU by itself, as well as when bundled with other Intel products. This is a similar strategy to what Intel has been doing with its Atom platform, and it remains to be seen how many graphics partners will warm to Larrabee in this manner.

As it stands, some first-tier graphics card vendors are a bit leary about Larrabee on fears that the first release may end up buggy. But within the next couple of years, vendors expect Larrabee will be able to hold its own against what AMD and Nvidia have to offer.

Image Credit: Intel via Engadget

Leaked Photos of the Radeon HD 5970 Dual-GPU Card Emerge

Justin Kerr — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:24:58 -0600

Last month we posted a link to some early spy shots of the Radeon HD 5850 X2 & 5870 X2, but aside from the pictures, the post was a bit short on details. The card which still hasn’t been officially unveiled by AMD is still somewhat of a mystery, but the gang over at Alienbabeltech.com got a hold of some new photos and information that answers some, but not all of the questions we have about the new design.

Based on the reference card shown in the pictures, it appears as though this monster will require two power connections, one 8-pin and one 6-pin which are located just above the fan. Even if the power requirements of this beast don't shock you, the overall length of the card just may. Measuring in at a whopping 13.5 inches long, most enthusiasts without a full tower case will have a hard time fitting this into their machines. AMD responded quickly by stating that the photos were of an engineering sample, leading us to wonder if the card won’t shrink an inch or two prior to release.

The other big change since our last update is the new naming conventions. It now appears as though AMD will be dropping the “X2” designation and the cards will be known as the Radeon HD 5950 (Dual 5850’s), and the Radeon HD 5970 (Dual 5870’s). Questions remain, but hey, its better then nothing right?

Leaked Pics of Fermi-Rendered Images Look Awesome Update

Paul Lilly — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:00:27 -0500

We're hoping for great things out of Nvidia's upcoming "Fermi" graphics chips, and we can only hope the leaked pics showcasing what the GPU can do turn out to be legit.

The pics come courtesy of Chinese website PCZilla and show a pair of human face renderings like nothing we've ever seen before, at least not on the desktop. There's so much detail the images could pass as real photos, but let's hope they're not.

There's also an image of a ray-traced demo that may not look as impressive at first glance, at least until taking in the various lighting sources and reflections, which requires a second and third look to fully appreciate.Take a peek at all three here.

Update: These scenes are actually taken from a promotional video for Playground Festival -- an AudioArts/Motion Graphics event in the Netherlands. We're not sure if Fermi is actually rendering these scenes in real-time (and even so, it's still texture mapping, and not ray-tracing), or if Nvidia was just using screenshots from the source video to demonstrate the promise of Fermi. (Thanks, Andy!)

Image Credit: pczilla.net

Nvidia's DirectX 10 Hack Suggests That Features Really do Exist in Ion LE Chip

Paul Lilly — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:10:32 -0500

It's pretty common for hardware vendors to artificially gimp their budget or lower cost parts. Take AMD's tri-core chip, for example, which comes with a core disabled that isn't necessarily bad. And who still remembers Nvidia's vanilla 6800 graphics card that came with 4 software-unlockable pipelines to transform it into a 6800GT? As it turns out, Nvidia may have taken the same software-based approach to its Ion LE platform.

Nvida's Ion LE sports the same 1080p HD playback capabilities as its pricier sibling, but in order to cut costs, LE kicks DirectX 10 support to the curb. But as MyHPMini forum member runawayprisoner discovered, his may be entirely software-based, and a quick driver hack is all it takes to get the regular Ion drivers to install.

All runawayprisoner did was is add Ion LE's device driver ID to the Ion drivers, and once he did that, they installed like a charm, DirectX 10 support and all.

Whether or not that means full DX10 support remains to be seen, but according to runawayprisoner, if nothing else DX9 gaming stands to receive a sizeable boost in performance up to 50 percent.

Image Credit: imageshack.us runawayprisoner

GPU Market Skyrockets 21 Percent in Third Quarter

Paul Lilly — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:10:05 -0500

According to Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the graphics market performed extraordinarily well in the third quarter, which bodes well for the upcoming holiday shopping season. How well? Graphics processors spiked 21.2 percent over the second quarter,, which JPR says was already strong to begin with.

"A total of 119.45 million units were shipped in the third quarter, exceeding the record 111 million units that shipped in third-quarter 2008," said Jon Peddie, president of JPR. "So the market has caught up with, and exceeded, last year's highs. The crash of fall 2008 is now behind us."

AMD fared particularly well with on-quarter growth at 30 percent. Intel wasn't far behind, noting on-quarter growth of 25.2 percent on shipments of 63 million units, or twice as many as Nvidia, its nearest competitor.

And these weren't all integrated graphics, either. According to JPR, "integrated graphics in notebooks, including netbooks, increased 27 percent over the second quarter -- a great gain, but less than discrete."

Image Credit: AMD

ATI Catalyst 9.10 Drivers Now Available

Paul Lilly — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:45:40 -0500

AMD's latest graphics drivers -- ATI Catalyst 9.10 -- are now available for download, and it appears that most of the attention was placed on squashing bugs.

On the performance side, AMD claims the latest release adds GPU acceleration for the Windows 7 Drag and Drop video converting application, and super anti-aliasing for the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series has been tossed into the mix as well. And that's it, at least according to the release notes.

Bug fixes are another story. Catalyst 9.10 resolves several issues, some of which include:

Video preview in Avivo Video - Basic Quality page no longer flickers while playing SD/HD Blu-ray titles
Switching profiles in Avivo Video - Basic Quality now works as it should
Ghostbusters game no longer flickers between desktop and game play when AA is set to 8X and game resolution set to 2560x1600 in under Windows 7
Combat Mission Shock Force no longer fails after a duration of game play (Vista)
Intermittent flashing no longer visible in Windows with ViewSonic VE150m displays (Vista)
No more corruption during Blu-ray DVD H.264/VC-1 content playback (XP)

For the full list of changes and bug fixes, reference the Release Notes here (PDF). Driver downloads here.

Image Credit: ATI

Trick or Treat? EVGA to Launch Hybrid Graphics Card on Halloween

Paul Lilly — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:45:04 -0500

Ghosts and goblins aren't the only things you'll see this Halloween. According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, EVGA and Nvidia have joined forces to launch a hybrid graphics card on October 31st.

It's mostly speculation at this point, but the card is rumored to combine GT200b and G92b GPUs onto a single PCB. Why the mix? The GT200b will be responsible for rendering all those pretty graphics while you're saving the universe, and the GT92b will flex its PhysX muscle.

Fudzilla says the hybrid card will most likely sport a GTX 275 and GTS 250, which would give the card 240 stream processors and 896MB of memory for rendering, and 128 stream processors and 512MB of memory for PhysX duties. Not a bad idea to combine the two on a single piece of hardware, albeit it could be somewhat risky this close to the launch of Fermi.

No word yet on price.

Image Credit: EVGA via Fudzilla