Catalyst 11.4 : Early Preview

Maybe you guys have read review 6990, and got some mixup. Its like, what catalyst should I choose ? Its come at March, should I use 11.3 ? Or wait for 11.4 ? Well you got the answer, you can using Catalyst 11.4 right now.

AMD Catalyst™ Driver 11.4 early Preview Features:

·         Delivers performance enhancements for the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series & Windows 7.

·         Includes enhancements to the AMD Catalyst Control Center™

o    New task based Display Management controls

§  Simplifies the configuration of displays and display settings

o    New Eyefinity setup group

§  Setting up an Eyefinity group has never been easier

o    New branding (based on system configuration)

§  AMD based platform  – AMD VISION Engine Control Center

§  Discrete AMD GPU with Intel CPU – AMD Catalyst Control Center™

o    AMD Catalyst update notification (found within the Information Center)

§  Please note this functionality is not yet enabled, but will be in a future AMD Catalyst release

§  This feature will be used to notify users that new AMD Catalyst software packages are available

·         Fixed cases where Dragon Age 2 would hang in DirectX11 on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series products.

You can download it here :
Catalyst 11.4 for Win XP/Vista/7 at 32 and 64 bit

Review : AMD HD 6990

Another months has passed, now the Red will takeover the crown as the fastest GPU board in the world. As we know before, March 2011 is 6990 month. Two best chips on a plate is how they do it. And offcourse, you need big cash for this big monster. 709 USD is the lowest price. Let's go to the review...

Like always, the spesification goes first.

As you see above, there are HD 6990 and HD 6990+. The first one is the downclocked one. HD 6990 was derivative from HD 6970, so there is no way it only has 830 Mhz at GPU. While the second one has as 6970, 880 Mhz. But still it can go another step or two. The best and posible overclock with stock cooling were about 10% from the plus one. So it will goes smooth at 950-960 Mhz in GPU and memory can be pushed to 1350-1400 Mhz.

System :

Motherboard VGA X58 Classified
Processor Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz

Graphics Cards Radeon HD 6990 Reference 4096MB

Memory 6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 Corsair @ 1500 MHz

Power Supply Unit 1200 Watt

Monitor Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600

OS related software Windows 7 RTM 64-bit

Can wait to game review right ? Here are some review from guru3d.com :

Theres some "issues" at Anno 1404 when 5970 at the top. But who cares, it still more than enough FPS to enjoying the game while waiting the driver done. And like you see, overall the HD 6990 has taken the crown as the fastes single card GPU. In a month or two, the green will answer this call. What about you ?

MOBILE GAMING Q1/2011

Zup guys, its already months away from my last post. I got some work at somewhere not listed on a map. And here I back again with tons of news. For starter, lets read this first article at 2011.

For this moment, I dont have any mobile gaming that very superior from before. Its just some new technology appears base from before. Because this website still focussing at gaming and offcourse GPU are my top priority, so now we will discuss a GT 540M and HD 6650M

As the name mentioned, GT 540M is a brand from Geforce which 540 are derivative from 5xx series. And the GT means its targeting mainstream market. Mean while the HD 6650M from the green ultimate rival, AMD, and using 6xxx series for its base architecture. They using M at the back as sign of mobile GPU.

Acer Aspire AS5742G-6600 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Notebook

Lets see the green one at Acer Aspire AS5742G-6600. It use a large 4GB DDR3 with Intel Core i5-480M at 2,66Ghz. Using 15,6 inch LCD and 1366x768 resolution to show the power of GT 540M pack with 1GB memory. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit at 500GB HD, that about 100.000 storage of MP3.



 
Acer Aspire AS5742G-6600 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Notebook

With its red flag are at the same laptop brand, at Acer Aspire AS7552G-5430. Still with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is standby but with 640 GB HD. It play really good with its engine AMD Phenom II Triple Core N830 at 2.1Ghz. 4GB memory of DDR3 are they good friend afterall. AMD Radeon HD 6650M will start the party on a nice 17,3 LCD with 1600x900 resolution.



Like you see above, despite their colour, they have very similiar shape. Even they have a same price at $699.99. The green "hornet" with their fermi architecture or the red "blood" at 17,3 LCD and 1600x900 resolution, which one do you choose ?

Post your choose below hehe \\n.n//

Mobile Gaming

Bored using desktop ? Why dont try a mobile one ? Notebook is the best for mobile gaming right now. And forget about netbook for gaming, most of them only have GPU power just to do office work and browsing. But there is a downside using notebook for gaming, it is very expensive. Its only have about a third to half performance in the same price of desktop PC. So we say we have notebook at $1000, it only have performance of $400 to $500 desktop PC. But you have good time in your travel time.

Like we all know, there are only three big company that design GPU. Intel, NVIDIA and AMD. But forget about intel, its design only have power to do simple games. I can only recomending NVIDIA or AMD GPU for gaming in notebook, and desktop PC too. So with the high price if notebook, I can only divide into three level. Sub $1000, $1000 to $1500 and $1500+.

Let start with sub $1000 notebook. Like always, I just show my best option in my opinion. But still there are much expert out there, feel free to ask them too. Sadly I only found one notebook that really good. It has i7 processor and an HD 5730 from AMD.

ASUS N61 Series N61JQ-XV1 16" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit NoteBook

The next level is $1000-$1500 notebook. Its the best range since there are many good notebook in there. Hope you like my best recomended is the G73JH-X1 from ASUS. It has an i7 with HD 5870 from AMD and an Insane 8GB memory. While the second one with NVDIA GPU is TOSHIBA X505-Q984. It has an i7 core, 4GB of RAM, GTX 460M GPU and a big 18.4inch of screen.

ASUS G Series G73JH-X1 17.3" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit NoteBook
TOSHIBA Qosmio X505-Q894 18.4" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit NoteBook

Lastly is a $1500+ level. With label "$1500" doesnt mean a $4000 is best as gaming notebook. Its just a waste of money, there are ton and extremly high performance but has almost half the price. I got one winner here, it is from DELL with Alienware flavour M17x10-1847DSB. It has an i7 core with 6GB of memory and dual-GPU of AMD HD5870. Yess it has dual-GPU of HD 5870, not much desktop can beat this monster.

DELL Alienware M17x(m17x10-1847DSB) 17.0" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit NoteBook

Looks like the winner mostly from AMD. Well what should I do, what I choose is the best product right now. NVIDIA is in developing a 5xx series of GTX right now. There some rumors it will out at end of the year, maybe for christmas. Just wait a little longer if you want to see some NVIDIA strike back.

Genta3D.

Catalyst 10.10 With Its Fix 10.10a

aLooks like AMD is spoil its brand new HD 6800. Ever since the baby just born, AMD have two update catalyst the 10.10 and the 10.10a. And we are the winner, consumer. With this new catalyst, like always it have performance improvement and even some new features.

The performance improvement mostly are for games, like Metro 2033, World in Conflict, Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead and more. It was implemented for HD 6xxx and HD 5xxx. While the new hotfix catalyst 10.10a only affecting HD 6xxx, and the games are Star Craft 2, Aliens vs Predator, tesselation benchmark like Heaven 2.1 and some more.

For the new features, Catalyst 10.10, has APP a.k.a Accelerated Parallel Proccessing for windows. It has features like Blue-Ray 3D support, Video Acceleration for HD, and a nice Enhanced Dynamic Contrast for video control. While the hotfix, 10.10.a has a Morphological Anti Aliasing (MAA). MAA was a new technique to accelerate a post-process filtering, with help from Direct Compute offcourse. It use to give more performance with anti-aliasing up to DirectX 11.

Please keepin mind to always download the latest driver at official site here : 

            Catalyst 10.10

            Catalyst 10.10a hotfix 


Genta3D

EDIT : There is another fix, please see below link :
Catalyst 10.10c hotfix

Review HD 6850 and HD 6870

22 October 2010 is the AMD 6800 days. AMD has design the new GPU that have chip inherated from 5xxx series. It was a successor from AMD 57xx but it is almost double the power. It can play most of the games with smooth and playable gameplay. Furthermore it is very cheap.

The 6850 has a GPU with 775Mhz, 960 stream processors, a 4000Mhz memory and about 127 watt of power. While it big brother has a 900Mhz GPU, 1120 stream processors and 150 to 160 watt of power. Both of the cards have 256-bit memory bus, 1GB DDR5 and compatible with DirectX 11.

The 6800 are built for compete with their competitor from NVDIA, the 460GTX. With a very tight price, it try to steal some market. Let see the review below. All with 1920x1200 resolution. With a 950 i7, and 3x2GB DDR3 G.Skill @1333Mhz.

The lowest price is $160 for a GTX 460 768MB, $190 for a GTX 460 1GB, $180 for an HD 6850 and $240 for an HD 6870. They sure have a good line up there. For you that really need a sub $200 GPU, I recomended the HD 6850. It beat 460 most of the game, even the 1GB one. For the brand I recomended the first tier of AMD friend like HIS or Sapphire.

Genta3D 

Genta 3D normal VGA guide OCT 2010

Hello, this is my first guide. Hope you guys like it. Please remember on my guide, there are 4 option to choose. Entry level, daily, gamer, and hardcore. Entry level mostly use for office, and daily is for daily use. While gamer are for people who play game with nice resolution, lastly hardcore are for the one for extremly enthusiast for maxmimum resolution.

Entry Level.
Mostly entry level using onboard VGA. They use passive cooling, means they dong use any fan at all. At this level, ussually they using a one core processor like pentium 4. So just buy a mother board for pentium 4, it will have onboard VGA attached to it.

Daily
In this level, they will have two types VGA, onboard and PCI-E. PCI-E is a slot that we plug VGA card. ussually in this level they use their PC to browsing facebook, playing simple game or HTPC. HTPC is Home Theatre Personal Computer. For facebook or simple game, you can use an onboard VGA. I recommend a HD 4200 from AMD. Its very cool temperature and have good durabilty. Some internet cafe use it almost for 24 hours a day, and it can play good online games too like Lineage 2 with medium settings. For HTPC you can use HD 5450 from AMD for just $40. If you really need for playing game online you can use 5570 from AMD for just $70. They have directx 11 compatible.

Gamer
This is mostly reason people buy a VGA or two. I range this level with $100-$300. For the cheapest, I recomend  a HD 5770 from AMD for about $150 or a GTX 460 from Geforce for roughly $170. For better gameplay you can another good VGA with extra money. I recomend a Cyclone GTX 460 factory overcloced for $230. It is an upgraded for GTX 460 class. With this cards, most game can be played with 1920x1200 resolution. I cannt suggest more expensive card than this.

Hardcore
There are only have 2 option for Hardcore, a GTX 480 or HD 5970. If you just want to buy one, I sugest HD 5970 for $680. It has up to 50% better performance from GTX 480 for $450. But for the best result like using multiple card, I only sugest GTX 480. Because it can give better performance in multiple card mode known as SLI. Even some are using four card GTX 480 for maximum result.

So which one match for you ? Please give me some comment below.

Genta3D