The chipmaker will unveil its Athlon 64 processor on Tuesday. Along with added performance, the chip offers PC buyers the option of upgrading to 64-bit software--a feature Intel's Pentium doesn't offer. Such software, which offers improved graphics capabilities, will start hitting shelves later this year.
Analysts have said that in order for AMD to set itself apart in the PC processor race, it needs two things: competitive performance and something its archrival doesn't have. "AMD needs to demonstrate that it's competitive with Intel and at the same time is offering some differentiation--one of the things it is doing through 64-bit capability," said Dean McCarron, analyst with Mercury Research.
On the performance front, sources familiar with AMD's plans said the Athlon 64 will run at higher-than-expected clock speeds, a measure that will help against Intel. That leaves the 64-bit angle. The payoff from upgrading to 64-bit software involves higher performance from applications such as video-editing programs, along with more "cinematic" graphics for games. The improvements come mainly from a 64-bit computer's ability to use much more RAM than 32-bit computers can.
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News source: news.com
Analysts have said that in order for AMD to set itself apart in the PC processor race, it needs two things: competitive performance and something its archrival doesn't have. "AMD needs to demonstrate that it's competitive with Intel and at the same time is offering some differentiation--one of the things it is doing through 64-bit capability," said Dean McCarron, analyst with Mercury Research.
On the performance front, sources familiar with AMD's plans said the Athlon 64 will run at higher-than-expected clock speeds, a measure that will help against Intel. That leaves the 64-bit angle. The payoff from upgrading to 64-bit software involves higher performance from applications such as video-editing programs, along with more "cinematic" graphics for games. The improvements come mainly from a 64-bit computer's ability to use much more RAM than 32-bit computers can.
View: The full story News source: news.com
Features
* Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
* Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3
* Audio formats supported through official addons: MPEG-4 AAC, FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio,
WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR & ZIP archives
* Full Unicode support on Windows NT
* ReplayGain support
* Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
* Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
* Highly customizable playlist display
* Customizable keyboard shortcuts
* Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)
Fb2k 0.7 changelog :
0.7:
- nuked compatibility with pre-0.7 components
- massive changes in API: new menu_item class (replaces old contextmenu and componentsmenu
classes) new audio_chunk class (affects input, DSP and others), playlist callbacks, replaceable user
interface, visualisation support, utf8api.dll with UTF-8 wrappers for commonly-used win32 API calls,
public config variable services, improved tag reading/writing APIs, improved input API, proper support
for realtime file info changes
- added new contextmenu manager page
- no more separate win9x/winnt versions (you just need proper utf8api.dll build for your OS)
- changed .cfg file format
- separated standard UI to a dll, now fully modular
- corrected "mouse-drag-outside-playlist-area" behavior, now scrolls like old pre-0.4 listbox used to
- some changes in titleformatting (third $pad param, $if3, %_playlist_total%)
- new HTTP reader, using jnetlib
- option to use custom system tray icons
- fixed minor issue with playback stopping when user seeks past the end of track
- added separate preamp slider for files that dont have RG info
- new commandline parameters
- new icon
- fixed bugs in floatingpoint WAV input
- option to create subdirectories according to filename formatting in diskwriter
- range selection in ABX component (range display doesn't work with winxp silver theme, meh)
- fixed issues with replaygain scanner not working without foo_dsp_extra.dll installed
- fixed issue with vorbis playback stopping when seeking-past-end-of-file
- Case added APL support, embedded cue support for FLAC and fixed bugs in cue reader
- option to write APEv2 tags to WAV files
- new rightclick to remove tags from files
- improved handling of drag&drop operations, now supports dropping URLs from browser
- support for gapless playback of lame-encoded MP3 files
- new "Fix MP3 header" right-click for fixing VBR headers in MP3 files (implemented in standard inputs),
allows manual editing of gapless playback info
- moved titleformatting help to an external HTML
- cleaned SDK structure up (now you add dependency of foobar2000_component_client instead of
including the cpp), SDK and included projects compile much faster now
- .URL parser (for dropping internet shortcuts)
- improved compatibility with large font settings
- improved albumlist contextmenu
- improved dithering speed, dithering now disabled by default to avoid cpu usage issues
- made waveOut default on all OS's
- mp3 decoder bugfixes / speed optimizations
question is will the prices still be low
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