AMD

AMD Entertainment Booth

I found the AMD booth to be a little quiet. While hoping to meet with senior marketing, I settled for a little video game racing action. Unfortunately, the racing was a little too jittery for my liking, so it was on to their AMD Competition where you get to answer various questions on many of their survey terminals. After a certain number of questions, you gained points which could result in a random prize anywhere from a mouse to money. Some where in all the questions, I managed to win a Sapphire ATI HD 2400 PRO 256MB graphics card. Did anyone else realize there were duplicate booths out there as well which resulted in incorrect answers?

AMD Duet

Racing Issues

Someone Working?

The booth had a real world home feel with even the home office setting and was decorated with various modified custom cases from Lian-Li and Coolermaster, many of which had some cool paint jobs and power house graphics cards. There were also various laptops containing ATI's strongest graphics processors for sampling and viewing pleasure. They worked just fine for me, so I'm not sure what the fuss is all about. There was also some drum games going on that kind of follow suit of guitar hero. Stay on beat and score.

Custom Cases

Coolermaster & Spider

AMD also had their AMD Live Explorer software running on a large HDTV, for easy viewing as well as showing off the software's potential. AMD Live offered features for movies, music, photos, TV, and internet via your system viewed on your biggest screen of choice. Anything you wanted to listen to was listed by genre within the ALE software and basically gives you option of full connectivity no matter what you want connected. It also allows you to browse quite a bit of downloadable content which quite obviously where the industry is turning for ease of use and functionality.

AMD Live Explorer

Lot's To Browse

Intel

Entering the central hall, many were greeted by Intel's familiar blue colors and white construction themes. This year, they seemed to go with a more technical feel displaying samples and videos of what it is they really do best, make processors. While there, Intel handed us an unlocked sampled 45nm Quad Core Extreme to test. Yeah, I'm only pulling your leg.

Got intel?

Various samples of their past, present, and future processors were centered so we could get a glimpse at their 45 nanometer processors already under way. Lower fabrication processes mean lower heat and power consumption, which really isn't a problem for current Core 2 Duos and Quads. It isn't hard to cool their current generation, but that doesn't stop them from improving the good in to great. In case you aren't privy to just how small 45nm transistors appear, they can now put over 400 million on the same size die surface. That's extremely small and equates in to larger L2 cache. Put it this way, L2 cache makes things go faster.

45 nanometers - 410,000,000 Transisorts

Intel's new Hi-K silicone process, a significant transistor switching speed increase as well as limit transistor gate leakage. Gate leakage can cause all kinds of havoc for a processor or any kind of electronics for that matter. You can still find much larger transistors in today's components. That's the black square thing with three little metal legs soldered in to a PCB. Now imagine that 1/4 inch component so small, it could easily float around in the blood stream like a hamster on a water park slide.

This Place Was A Mad House!

And of course, you can't forget Intel's ViiV technology. This is Intel's own ultimate connectivity software support via supporting hardware. In a world where there are over 10,000 music players, movies players, or internet TV services, connectivity that can mesh and integrate it all together is a welcomed center piece. It's really nice when so many devices and features can work together to manage the chaos out there.

Die Displays

Free Laptops

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