CPUs on the Horizon

AMD is going to both add to and subtract from their product linup in the second half of the year. The newcomers are reported to include two dual-core Athlon X2s (B21 & B23), two triple-core Phenom X3s sporting 7.5MB of on-die cache (2.5MB per core) -- B71 & B73 -- and two quad-core Phenom X4s with 2MB per core -- B91 & B93. All six of these fall in the 2.6 to 2.9 GHz range, and will hopefully offer meaningful headroom in terms of overclockability, though they still lag a bit behind their competition at Intel.

Slated for retirement (excuse me, "last order notices announced") are the Phenom II X4 9850B, 9750B, 9600B and Phenom II X3 8850B, 8750B, 8600B as well as Athlon X2 5600B, 5400B, 5200B, 5000B, 4850B, 4450B and Athlon 1640B. Let us just say that we're not going to miss the awful naming convention for the previous generation of CPUs as they process off into the sunset.

Intel's recent introduction of the i7 means that they're shifting back to the "tock" phase of their "tick-tock" development cycle, so expect new steppings and price cuts for the 900 series throughout the year. Bargain-hunting overclockers, rejoice!


Video Developments

Nvidia's dual-GPU variant of the 260 is going to be officially released into the wild Real Soon Now (UPDATE: The GTX295 is available at online retailers as of 7 Jan 09; thanks to reader Xanthonus for the tip!). That will tide us over until the big news, leaked over the weekend, that their next-gen GPU will hit the market later this spring. Current chips use the internal designation 200/200b; the upcoming 212 is going to trump them both, by what looks to be a very impressive margin, the biggest gains are in the stream processor count, which is jumping from 240 to 384 (somewhat less endearing is the narrowing of the memory pipeline from 512 to 256 bits, but the move to GDDR5 and its lofty 5GHz frequencies should hopefully keep overall memory bandwidth from taking a hit. Stay tuned).


It's a Bird, It's a Plane, it's... BigDownload on My Television?!?! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

LG has announced the first of what will almost certainly become the next ubiquitous household electronic device, the Broadband TV. Yep, a boob tube with an ethernet jack... the better to stream your Netflix to, my dear. "It's hugely symbolic. The holy grail has always been to give the TV an Internet jack in addition to the cable jack. It's an early glimpse of the long-term future," said Netflix' Reed Hastings.

Panasonic, Samsung, and other players in the market will almost certainly field similar products before the year is out.


Elsewhere in the Geekisphere....

LCD makers have finally said that we've hit the bottom of the price trough, and they've adjusted production to more accurately reflect market demand. Rats. Solid-state disks (SSD) continue to get bigger and cheaper (can BI get an "Amen"?). The Xbox 360's new avatar system continues to be fugly, but the Netflix-streaming is apparently a big hit (as someone who last visited a movie theater in early 2007, and spends their free time gaming, rather than watching TV or movies, BI has to assume that this is a good thing); in a similar vein, pointed criticism of Sony's new Home feature for PS3 users has been widespread. Whether or not either or both of these will be revamped remains to be seen, but BI rates it as "fairly unlikely."



Resolutions

1920x1280, thanks for asking. We don't go in for those "resolution" things around here; as a wise but unknown person said, "Today is always the right day to start improving yourself."



Rafe Brox spends his days wielding a phone in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. When not causing friends and enemies alike to /facepalm electronically, he can be found extolling the virtues of the weird peripherals in his life, from kettlebells to the Trackman Marble. If you also share an unhealthy passion for PC hardware or know a good place he can get help for this addiction, the target coordinates are rafe.brox AT weblogsinc DOT com.