C90 Update

In case you were wondering why the C90 is taking so long to come out, I got off of the phone with Ken from GentechPC not too long ago, who had a very interesting tidbit from the Asus Product Manager. He said that instead of testing 5 of every batch of 100 units that comes off of the line, Asus QA is testing EVERY unit that is coming off of the line. In addition, the C90S initial production run is higher than average because Asus wants absolutely NO shortages anywhere. This is apparently why the machine that was supposed to be released almost a month ago has not left the factory until now.

 

Well guess you cant complane about that.

But why must they test every machine.... if its not standard are they going for a perfect launch or does it mean something is prone to failure?

Id like to hear from sombody at asus if the C90p is dead in the water, and maybe more info on the C80 specs.

 

That's very impressive.

I think Asus is testing them at the individual level because they are a 1st gen product I'm guessing some reasons may be:

1)They have their rep on the line.
2)Repairs/replacements are probably very costly
3)There may have been complications in the manf/assembly they are checking for.

 

Did Ken tell you where his shipment was at? Still in Transit on a container ship heading to L.A.?

 

The general feeling seemed to be "Asus wants this launch to go smoothly, if not perfectly." It seems that the C90S is what Asus wants its flagship to be. Maybe their market identity will be "The incredible, upgradeable ASUS"

This is the timeframe:
--Asus will ship the C90S to the resellers by the end of the week
--Ken is located the closest to the NA shipping facility, so he will probably recieve some by the end of this week
--Ken has to inventory the entire load before starting shipping, and since no orders are processed nor shipped on weekends, shipping to End-Users will probably begin ideally next Monday. (though it could be later, no later than the end of next week, barring another delay from Asus)

 

sweet as soon i hear they got in stock my cc flying out of my pocket

 

Keep us updated Alex.

I wonder what my chances are of getting this in my hands before July 4th.

 

Pretty good if you have pre-ordered.

 

everybody going and buying makes it harder on me, but im still sitting firm.

Im waiting for the july intel cpu release to generate price cuts on the older ones, save me some extra cash, and I can probably get the e6700 for the cost of the e6600 due to the price cuts.

The overclocking software in the c90 is based on a precentage aparently and not a fixed max cpu clock speed (just raises the fsb to a certian point wich I forget right now) So due to the higher cpu multi in the e6700 it puts it just shy of 3ghz while the e6600 will go to 2.8ish.

There may be a way to manually overide the overclocking software down the road, if its there in the first place surly sombody can mod it. Id really like to put the quad core in here, the chipset supports it, its the same socket. The only thing asus said about support is (it doesnt support quad core at this time to do thermal restrictions) that to me means it works just fine but runs abit too high for the cooling the c90 offers.

And that to me means.... undervolt the cpu some ^^ and have at it.

I dont have the $$$ to buy a cpu just to test this tho. Maybe we can talk one of the big review sites into trying if they get a c90 to test, they probably have a quad core in a system they can use.

 

E6400 and up go to 2.93GHz. Statement from Asus via a preview not too long ago.

 

It wasnt documented correctly then Alex I did the research on this.

It boost the FSB to a set number. from there its all math

FSB X CPU mutli = clock speed.

Not to mention its said in several sites that the 6700 will be able to reach 2.9ghz it didnt say this about the other cpus.

Its simple math, the mobo can only handle a certian FSB before it craps out, the cpu multi's are locked so the only way for a higher clock speed on a lower processor is a much higher FSB. This is the same reason I sold my opteron 146 back in the day and got a opteron 148 for the 11x multi instead of the 10x multi.

Then in turn you have to remember your poor ol' ram the higher the fsb the faster it needs to be able to run without chanign the fsb/ram divider. Its obviously not 1:1 like I have in my desktop (250fsb x2 (ddr) = DDR500 speed) but the lower that divider gets the more of a performance cut you get.

Granted its not large, its still there. more cpu cycles before the ram can refresh with a divider.

 

http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=2582

The other thing I want to point out (and reason I want bearlake) is that the 945chipset apparently only will support 3gb of ram. So no x64 4gb lovin

(this is rather a mystery tho, I think it can do 4gb if its forced and had the right bios)

 

Due to the thermal profile of the system, Turbo Gear for the C90 does not allow the CPU to clock over 2.93 Ghz

 

Here is the deal with 4gb of ram:


http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

its not about the OS or CPU if you use vista x64 and use a c2d your covered its about the bios/chipset and if they allow memory remaping. Desktop = yes usually notebooke = no usually....

Intell's specs say up to 4gb of memory addressing.... that doesnt mean it can remap memory tho and actually have it all visiable and useable in windows.

It may reserve a large portion of the 4gb to the system and thus it wont be usuable or visible in windows.

 

No link??? and is that a single source?

I can give you 5+ links that say its a % and yesterday I was reading one of the newer articles and it had the exact explanation of the OC tech giving the exact FSB increase it was and everything because it was hands on.

 

The X6800 is not allowed to overclock, in other words.

 

Well I ordered the E6700, 2.66 GHz, called pre-sales to ask about how overclocking that would turn out, they said the software is limited to 2.93 Ghz

 

Testing electronic gear 100% is standard practice, except for really low end chines dumpatronic devices as far as I know.

 

It will clock the FSB as high as 1334, seeing as that is the maximum the board is currently capable of. This with a E6600 multiplier would be over 3 Ghz, a 25% increase. The company only advertises up to 20 percent increase. Why would that be?

 

The 20% spec was an early word it may not be accurate. Or chances are that it is and that 20% max is what you get so you may not get the full 2.9ghz on a low end cpu.

I am still looking for that recent hands on source I spoke of, been looking for it for the last 10 or so minutes here.

 

Well, if it overclocks as much as it says it does my CPU will reach 3.33 GHz. Which I highly doubt it will.

The only hands-on source I know of is Maximum PC's hands-on preview.

 

It was just posted the other day I swear it dissappeared. Sombody said they had some new pics and info and it was a link that had alot of good info.

It also had details on the overclocking tech. but I cant find it within the forum areas it should be in or with a search.

I may have been on another forum but I dont think so.

 

I think this was it...

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=421&type=expert&pid=3

20% increase upto FSB 1279... 20% is everywhere so I guess thats what it is.

So the advantage of a higher cpu is pretty much ram divider issues, and that it will run faster when not overclocked.

Lets take a moment and relax and just envy its sexy exoskeliton



As I was doing my hunt tho looks like more and more only 3gb ram supported.... We will have to wait for actual users to try 4gb I suppose before we know 100%

edit2:



from computex that took place not long ago

 

At least we can all agree that regardless of the overclocking, it is an awfully sexy computer. Simple and elegant. Also, OCZ and Kingston both make notebook memory with fast timings for overclocking, they are relatively expensive, but are worth a look I suppose in this case. That panel is where I got the 2.93 figure from as well. Because even with 1279, the E6700 should go to 3.2 Ghz.

 

2.9ghz is plenty of power in a C2D should be about 22% faster than my 2.8ghz Opteron I run now (opterons do have better x64 performance tho and I run an x64 OS)

Being that its a notebook the gpu and stuff are going to hold back the cpu, so its not like its super important anyways except for cpu only aplications like decoding a video or compressing a file.

 

I plan on getting the HD-DVD/BluRay drives coming out for it. So a super fast CPU I will need (The 8600M GT is HELLA powerful with HD video processing.)

 

Unless somthing has changed from the 7 series to have the gpu do any of the work for you, you must use the pure video codec. Quality is good and it does take a good part of load off the cpu... but one problem.

You have to purchase the codec... lol

Dont worry tho even without gpu help a C2D can handle 1080p HD stuff.

 

Something has changed though, they integrated HD capabilities onto the card, but only for the mainstream level GPUs so far.

 

They said the same for the 7 series....

its intergrated... if you look at the page it will say "support for pure video hd acceleration" but when I tried to use it after days of research... I found out that is an evil scheme and that sure the card supports it but the codec must be bought.

Its the same thing all over again I belive just its called Pure Video HD now on the 8 series.

 

Geforce 8 specs:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html

also note that the top cards (the 2900xt from ATI and the 8800 from nvidia) do not support hardware acceleration. The "guess" behind this is that they are marketed as gaming cards and not multimedia cards so it wasnt important. The other guess is that they figure you have a strong cpu if you have a top end card, and thus dont need it.

Now jump over to here:

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Go to multimedia software, and select pure video.. and boom you can choose a 30 day free trial or buy it.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_HD.html

Notice also if you read the diffrence from pure video and pure video HD, that the HD is only an extension of pure video that supports acceleration of HDDVD and Bluray DISKS, not HD stuff you downloaded. For that you need pure video... Wich you have to buy.

Im unsure if the "HD" version is part of the drivers or part of pure video. But reguardless for accleration of your content on your computer you need pure video.

 

According to one source: "It now includes GPU-based hardware acceleration for decoding HD movie formats, post-processing of HD video for enhanced images, and built-in High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support at the card level."

Basically, the PureVideo codec (20 bucks) will unlock PureVideo HD, which provides full support for HD DVD and Blu Ray. You don't need two.

 

So is there any news on the c90 new release date?

 

It has been released already. The first units are shipping from resellers at the beginning of next week.

 

I was under the impression PureVideo was XP-only, and PureVideo HD was only in other players, like PowerDVD, WinDVD, and Nero.

 

PureVideo is the codec for decoding alot of the HD material formats that takes alot of the stress off the cpu and puts it on the video card instead. Its a Nvidia thing, and the card must support it aswell.

PureVideo HD is the new codec made to do the same but for HDDVD's and Bluray Disks.

It has nothing to do with the operating system.

You do have to have a program that can use the codec. I think almost any of them can tho, you just need to know how to configure it.

PureVideo must be purcahses or otherwise obtained its not part of the forceware. PureVideo HD I am not sure about, its eather part of the PureVideo codec download that you have to buy, or its included in the forceware for free.

 

The PureVideo that you buy on the NVIDIA website is a plugin for Windows Media Player. It's included in most other DVD playback software as well, but these usualy include Avivo and other features as well, but for the same price. PureVideo HD isn't available by itself, only with other DVD playback software as far as I can tell.