Recently Microsoft had announced a big feature of Windows 7, “XP Mode” as most call it. This allows people to install all their favorite XP software that won’t run in Vista or 7 in a XP virtual pc. Or at least as it was supposed to work, but many people with Intel processors won’t be able to use this feature. Microsoft is requiring that the computer on which 7 is installed to have hardware virtualization support. Since VirtualPC that the XP mode uses is a software hypervisor the decision makes no sense.

AMD processors have AMD-V (hardware virtualization) on all but their Sempron line. Intel on the other hand used the feature as a way to divide their processor models and don’t have as many models with the support. Tom’s Hardware has a list of all the Intel models that support VT-x.

Source: ArsTechnica

AMD’s new 45nm processor the Phenom II looks to be set to take the on Intel again. While being demoed for the press they were able to overclock the quad-core processor to 5Ghz using dry ice. It had been leaked earlier that 4Ghz was possible using on air but no reports have officially come out on that. It was also reported that the chip hit 6Ghz using liquid nitrogen, which I don’t know about you but I don’t have an abundance of.

Source: PC Perspective

AMD just released this press release, stating that they now have a single machine capable of hitting the teraflop range of calculations. The machine has an Opteron dual-core processor and two next-generation AMD R600 “Stream Processors”(GPUs). ZDnet has an article elaborating on the new R600 from ATI and AMD. The amazing thing is that the machine is running a standard verison of Windows XP.

I just got to order a new pc for myself at work. Although it was a Dell (state contract with Dell for K-12 education) it has a Pentium Core 2 3.0Ghz with a gig of ram and a nice 19 inch lcd. All for under a thousand dollars too. I’ve been wanting to try out one of the Core 2 since I built my gaming machine to see if all the hype about AMD getting beat by the Pentium chip was true. Anything will be better than what I have now, a Celeron 1.7 with 512 mb ram. It will be almost quadrapole the processing power.

I know it’s been a while since I last posted but things got a little hectic when the school I work for started back. Now I’m gathering pieces for a new gaming machine. So far I’ve got the case (Antec P180) and video card (eVga 7900 GT PCI express, going to get another one eventually for SLI). Parts to come are OCZ mod stream 700W SLI power supply, 2GB OCZ Dual Channel DDR2, AMD X2 4600+, Abit Fatitly board, WD 160GB Raptor SATA, Maxtor Diamond Max 10 300 GB SATA, and a 250 GB external Hard Drive. I’ve already got two 18′ LCDs, a Logitech Laser mouse and Microsoft keyboard. Hopefully I’ll have all these parts within the next two months and play some F.E.A.R and Battlefield 2 and get back some benchmarks.