NVIDIA's GDDR5 Stance Differs from AMD's

I posted yesterday about AMD's decision to use GDDR5 chips with their upcoming Radeon 4000-series, and from what it seems, NVIDIA doesn't share the same ambition that they do. At the Nanotech: The Circuits Blog... blog, a quote from NVIDIA doesn't discredit GDDR5 at all, but they note there isn't a need for it right now.

Barry Wagner says, "We aren't particularly attached to any given interface technology", although both their current generation and next-generation (GTX 200) both use GDDR3. He goes on to note that they'd adopt it if it made sense for their business, which at this point doesn't seem to be the case.

The true benefits of GDDR5 might not be seen with gaming, at least until incredibly memory-intensive games come out, but AMD's keen to improve upon stream processing and parallel calculations (along with NVIDIA), and they feel the improved bandwidth of GDDR5 would be beneficial there. The same goes for DDR3 in the desktop market, but for those who own such memory, they likely know just how specific an application needs to be to fully exploit it, and nothing will be different on the GPU.

Nvidia is supporting the technology but taking a more cautious approach. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based graphics chipmaker holds a vice chair position in the GDDR5 task group, said Barry Wagner, director of technical marketing at Nvidia. "We're involved in the specification of GDDR5 so if we want to build products around it, at least the spec is architected in a way that we would be content with," Wagner said.

Source: Nanotech: The Circuits Blog

Top 10 Firefox 3 Features

With Firefox 3 right around the corner, have you thought about upgrading now? I personally have, but for some reason, the latest version looks incredibly ugly under my Gentoo Linux, on top of having ugly fonts... so I've stayed away. On my laptop, though, the latest beta works rather well, so it may very well depend on your distro, which shouldn't (hopefully) be an issue at launch.

But that aside, Lifehacker loves Firefox 3 and gives us ten good reasons as to why. Their number one feature is a little surprising, as it's not really a feature, but rather a performance increase. The sad thing is that 2.0 was so inefficient, it's hard to not agree with them. Other new favorites include a revamped add-on manager, smarter location bar, native looks for each OS (which I've not seen apparently) and a streamlined "remember password" feature.

I admit that I'm still not blown away by FF 3, and at this point, I'm really unsure whether I will upgrade when the final stable version is launched. I personally haven't seen huge performance increases, nor have I found the new features entirely useful, but I admit I haven't given them that much of a chance. Another reason might be the fact that FF 3 seems to be the last of their priorities anyway, so I guess it should be somewhat expected. Hopefully my beefs are just that... mine only.

Your browser is a serious part of your computer time, so having it look like nothing else on your system can be seriously annoying. Firefox's designers made system integration a priority with this release, and it shows-even Windows XP's and Vista's button layouts have subtle differences in color and shading. There's differences at deeper levels, too, with Cover Flow-type styling in the add-ons manager for OS X, transparencies in key places in Vista and OS X, and other tweaks that make your browser feel like a natural extension of your system.

Source: Lifehacker

Will Microsoft Become 'Directionless' After Bill Gates Steps Outside?

With Microsoft's chairman set to "retire" next month, people are wondering what's going to happen within the company, and what direction, if any, they will go. There's little debate that Bill Gates has been the lead driving force for the company, and one of the reasons Microsoft has proven so successful has been due to his keen focus and intellect, so who can replace him?

As a little self-debate at C|Net shows, there's not supposed to be a "replacement", in a real sense of the word, because the fact is, Gates is irreplaceable as a person. But the worry is still there. Will Microsoft be directionless without Gates at the helm, or will they continue to conquer the market for the next ten years, as they have for the last fifteen or twenty?

Some might argue that Microsoft is directionless now, but I believe part of that is incorrect, since they obviously conquer various markets. They might not be overly successful in the online/search market, but it's their software that's their bread and butter. Vista sure didn't help matters much, but if "7" shapes up to become what Vista should have been, then people may take back the "directionless" comment.

Regardless of my or your opinions though, it's going to be a very interesting next few months at Redmond.

No one can replace Gates--that is not the point. Microsoft is in several businesses and generates more than $50 billion in revenue and a very healthy profit. The company is fighting battles on a lot of fronts, especially with Google, which could generate nearly half the revenue Microsoft does just selling search ads. That's not something Gates has been able to fix during the last few years.

Source: Outside the Lines Blog

May 22nd Tech Roundup

Motherboards & Processors
• Asus M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe - InsideHW
• ASUS P5E3 Premium WIFi-AP @n Edition - Motherboards.org

Displays & Video Cards
• AMD Catalyst 8.5 For Linux - Phoronix
• Chaintech GeForce 9600GT OC 512MB - TweakTown
• Diamond Viper Radeon HD 3650 1GB - TechSpot

Memory & Storage
• Aeneon Xtune DDR3-1600 2GB - Think Computers
• Synology Disk Station DS107+ - Modders-Inc
• Western Digital My Passport Elite 320GB - OzHardware

Peripherals & Gadgets
• ASUS BC-1205PT SATA Blu-ray Disc Optical Drive - Benchmark Reviews
• Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 Gaming Headset - Tech-Reviews
• Logitech diNovo Mini Remote - Overclockers Club
• Saitek Cyborg Laser Gaming Mouse - Think Computers

Cooling
• CM Z600 vs Scythe Ninja CU - Madshrimps
• CoolIT Freezone Elite CPU Cooler - Overclock3D
• Nexus HOC-9000 CPU Cooler - MikhailTech
• Thermaltake DuOrb CL-G0102 VGA Cooler - Hardware Logic
• Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler- Hardware Canucks

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Cooler Master CSX Shag Wagon Aluminum Chassis - Big Bruin
• Eagle Tech N and I Series HDD Enclosures - OCIA
• Hiper Type RII 680W & Type M 780W Power Supplies - 3D Gameman
• Sigma Unicorn Case - Overclockers Club
• Thermaltake BlacX Hard Drive Docking Station - Techware Labs
• Thermaltake Kandalf Case - Techware Labs

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Sony MDR-AS50G Headphones - Digital Trends