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Far Cry performance *IS* improved with SLI as long as you are running above 1024x768 so says Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284 &p=14

and if you are going to drop $800-1200 on video cards, you are not likely to still be gaming at 1024x768, but your credit card might be weeping.

A bit off topic... but PPC? I keep hearing they'll be using a PPC arch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but 1) Microsoft is not experienced with the PPC arch (okay, MS Works for Mac does not count, nor IE, I mean on the whole), nor is the majority of the gaming industry.

Ummm...

Ok, maybe Nintendo's not "the majority" of the gaming industry, but it's not like nobody's ever used a PPC before or written software for it. And MS has certainly written more than Works and IE for the PPC (MS Office, anyone?).

Let's face it, there is no Wintel monopoly in general-purpose CPU's anymore, and that's a good thing. And nobody except Sony actually custom-designs their own game console CPU's anymore, it's just too expensive (but even the Cell is supposedly intended for use outside the PS3, so they're obviously going to try to make their investment back in general-purpose machines). I just lament the fact that AMD is not getting their chips into any of these machines.

I definitely think the Cell is going to be a tougher nut for the industry to crack than the PPC. The Cell, while basically PPC-based, is a mostly-new architecture... the PPC itself, though, is pretty well worn-in.

That doesn't mean I think the Xbox 2 will be a success. If history's a guide, I think it will be absolutely crushed by the PS3. The game console market doesn't work the way MS thinks it works.

Not only that, but it isn't even original! You can get a PREMADE acrylic case that is in the form of a briefcase from ClearPC. Not only that, but it fits ATX motherboards. Here's the product page and a couple reviews:

• Product Page
• AnandTech
• ModTheBox.com
• TweakNews.net

What a shame.

Nvidia at the time I bought my 9500, did not have a competing card.

Actually, the quality of ATI's Linux drivers is so horrid that even ATI's newest high-end cards can't compete with nVidia's previous-generation mid-range cards. If you read this article (it's a multi-page article...don't just read the first page), you'll see that cards as old as the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and 5900 regularly outperform even the Radeon X800 Pro. The GeForce FX 5600XT is the only tested card that doesn't regularly outperform ATI's most powerful cards.

Because the hard drive is slow (4200 RPM)

Some are 5400 RPM. Luck of the draw I heard.

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2343.
Same article without 90% of the ad-bloat.

As it turns out, Anandtech mentioned this today.

ANANDTECH ARTICLE

If you have the time, monitor a "Hot Deal" forum such as Anadtech or fatwallet and jump on Dell's occasional sales on low end servers and the like.

I got a my latest hot rod gaming rig for a song!

And unlike some other posters my support (and sales) experience has been terrific.

Cheers

Bill

I believe the consumer version of the dual-core Pentium 4 will not have Hyper-Threading enabled [1] whereas the more expensive Xeon version will. Part of it is due to market segmentation and power consumption.

[1]: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2329 (page 3)

I do see dual-Xeons working on an i875, though, so I wouldn't be shocked at all if there's an LGA775 dual-core CPU.

Read the review from AnandTech. It is very comprehensive (18 pages!) and doesn't fail to point out the design features Apple put in to enhance the user experience. Nor does it fail to hilight the weak points of the design.

In my experience, it is very rarely "form over function" with Apple, it's function intersecting form.

There's better coverage on Anandtech.

While I grant you that Linux drivers are available for some ATI cards, those from NVIDIA are clearly a cut above.

The NVIDIA "universal driver architecture" or whatever they call it works very well. The same driver works on my GeForce2 Go and my GeForce 6800.

With ATI you have to worry about what specific card you have, and the performance of those drivers is generally inferior (the xfree drivers don't have any hardware acceleration at all).

Check out this article for acomparison of ATI vs. NVIDIA under linux.

http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2302

ATI does slowly seem to be making progress, but NVIDIA is still the clear hands down winner in the Linux arena.

-Mark

Too bad the hard drive in a real mini is too slow for this anyway...

Actually they are CPU limited at least for the most recent high end graphics cards. It varies with the game and the current state of CPUs though.

Even Anand is predicting that CPUs will become more and more of a bottleneck as games become increasingly complex.

For games your money is still best spent maxing out the graphics card before the CPU, but a faster CPU definitely helps with a lot of games.

Yes. The link to the article started at the 3rd page, skipping the part about Intel's move to 64-bit on the desktop (even Celerons) in Q2 2005. From the 2nd page of TFA:

Single Core Desktop

Now for desktop processing; we have good news and better news. The good news is almost all desktop Prescotts (including the Celerons) will get a 64-bit makeover real soon. Unfortunately, you'll still need to buy a new processor but the roadmaps indicate there will be virtually no price premium on the 64-bit versions. With Windows XP 64-bit release less than a few months away, it makes sense that Intel's 64-bit push comes strong and hard in the 9th inning. We are particularly interested in how fully committed the roadmap details EM64T; even the puny Celerons get the instructions.

I also think that would be smart, but this might be a "race" to dual-core just like the race to 1 GHz in March 2000. AMD won that race by 2 days, but 1 GHz chips were not widely available from either Intel or AMD for months.

Also, here's a one-page version of the whole Intel roadmap article that covers chipsets, single-core desktops, dual-core, mobile CPUs, and "unannounced secret stuff":

The Consequence of Waking Up a Sleeping Giant: Intel Roadmaps Inside

Yes. The link to the article started at the 3rd page, skipping the part about Intel's move to 64-bit on the desktop (even Celerons) in Q2 2005. From the 2nd page of TFA:

Single Core Desktop

Now for desktop processing; we have good news and better news. The good news is almost all desktop Prescotts (including the Celerons) will get a 64-bit makeover real soon. Unfortunately, you'll still need to buy a new processor but the roadmaps indicate there will be virtually no price premium on the 64-bit versions. With Windows XP 64-bit release less than a few months away, it makes sense that Intel's 64-bit push comes strong and hard in the 9th inning. We are particularly interested in how fully committed the roadmap details EM64T; even the puny Celerons get the instructions.

I also think that would be smart, but this might be a "race" to dual-core just like the race to 1 GHz in March 2000. AMD won that race by 2 days, but 1 GHz chips were not widely available from either Intel or AMD for months.

Also, here's a one-page version of the whole Intel roadmap article that covers chipsets, single-core desktops, dual-core, mobile CPUs, and "unannounced secret stuff":

The Consequence of Waking Up a Sleeping Giant: Intel Roadmaps Inside

I'm a bit concerned about the nforce4, from what i read already, there are 3 models, a "normal" nforce4, a "ultra" nforce4, and a "sli" nforce4. But altough you can't use SLI on the non-sli models, there are ways to enable SLI, on at least the ultra model ( http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2322/ ).
To quote the article, "Just as quickly, we learned that nVidia was not happy with this "SLI hack" and they changed their drivers quickly so that "semi-SLI would not work with current and later Forceware drivers." It appears that the later Forceware drivers check the chipset ID and if the driver sees "Ultra", then SLI is not enabled. MSI decided to kill the "semi-SLI" board because it would be a nightmare supporting a board that would only run with older nVidia SLI drivers."

So, how will this be (un)supported by the opensource community? Is nvidia doing to chipsets what they did to graphic cards? Everyone remembers how they locked out rgb overlays and unified front+back buffers from the geforce4 cards, altough the chips had the funcionality built-in, the drivers would disable these features, and save them for the more expensive quadro cards (there were some quick fixes for this, for windows, mainly rivatuner and softquadro4).
Does this means that now they're going to lock-out funcionality available on the chipset to maximize profit? I can't imagine how (linux) kernel developers will support a chipset which relies on closed drivers to enable or disable a specific funcionality, and judging by nvidia's attitude in the graphic cards department (which has a point, up to a certain extent nevertheless), i can't imagine nvidia releasing the specs for opensource drivers for this chipset, therefore loosing the income from the sli model, which would become redundant.
Do we now have to taint the kernel with chipset drivers? If so, i'm out of it, this is certainly a chipset to avoid.

Normal view: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2327

All in one page/"print" version: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2327

Lots of intersting possibilities. Seems to me that given a motivated/visionary motherboard maker, the only real limits are based on the form factor. Is there a super-ATX out there that would allow for say 8 PCI-e slots, 16+ hard drives, and all the rest of the goodies, all in one case?

Some will ask if there really is a need for this. Anandtech's Derek Wilson points out that having all the onboard disk controllers could add up to substantial savings-- apparantly expansion card controllers are quite pricey.

Now, if only those Opteron 8XX processors didn't cost $8XX... (or thereabouts... you get the idea!)

Normal view: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2327

All in one page/"print" version: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2327

Lots of intersting possibilities. Seems to me that given a motivated/visionary motherboard maker, the only real limits are based on the form factor. Is there a super-ATX out there that would allow for say 8 PCI-e slots, 16+ hard drives, and all the rest of the goodies, all in one case?

Some will ask if there really is a need for this. Anandtech's Derek Wilson points out that having all the onboard disk controllers could add up to substantial savings-- apparantly expansion card controllers are quite pricey.

Now, if only those Opteron 8XX processors didn't cost $8XX... (or thereabouts... you get the idea!)

+5, Funny.

Mods: please refer to this.

You should read about the new BTX standard on anandtech. They not only have the mini standard but they have a case design even smaller called pico-BTX which you can read about here. The basic idea is that BTX improves overall cooling to the CPU and reduces noise and size.

I am getting the 1.42Ghz with 80GB HD. It'll have the bare minimum 256MB of RAM and the regular combo drive but if push comes to shove I'll get an external Firewire DVD writer and might even open the case myself and add some RAM. Who knows. It'll all depend on how well it performs for me.

Unless you're planning on running one application at a time, you will want to get at least 512 MB. MacOS X is slow as molasses with 256 MB, and it's a shame that Apple still sells computers with that little memory. As Anandtech points out the machine swaps quite a bit with 256 MB, and the 2.5" HD is rather slow.

Or perhaps they read Anandtechs's review saying it was positively scandelous to sell the unit with 256MB RAM with such expensive upgrades.

Good review for those who care.

Or perhaps they read Anandtechs's review saying it was positively scandelous to sell the unit with 256MB RAM with such expensive upgrades.

Good review for those who care.

Anandtech has a review and they have found some different hardware from spec.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2328&p =5

"Although it uses desktop memory, the Mac mini uses a 2.5" notebook hard drive. The base $499 version comes with a 40GB drive and the $599 version comes with a 80GB drive. What is surprising however is that some units appear to come with Seagate's 5400RPM Momentus ST94011A drive, including the unit reviewed here today. The 5400RPM drive features a 2MB buffer and is fairly snappy for a 2.5" drive, it's still much, much slower than a 3.5" desktop drive, but it's a nice surprise to see a 5400RPM drive used in the mini. We have been getting reports of some units coming with 4200RPM drives however, right now it seems to be luck of the draw as to which drive you get. "

and

"The other surprise we got was that the memory installed in the mini was in fact CAS 3 DDR400 and not DDR333 as Apple's spec sheet suggests. Granted anything above DDR333 does absolutely nothing for the mini as the G4 is FSB limited to the bandwidth of single channel DDR333 SDRAM."

That being this (Anandtech.com).

Anandtech had a pretty good article last month about SpeedStep on the Dothan with linux on its website. Reading from the beginning of the article however it looks like gcc (you need gcc >3.4 or else it looks just like a pentium pro to any lesser gcc's) is not fully optimised for pentium-m arch yet. If your using any debian based distro they don't recommend the use gcc 3.4 yet. I hope patches get backported so it can, maybe they have but I haven't seen anything so far.

Dev Anand, the legendary actor and film maker from India, is also amongst the first to collaborate with Cinema on Web (COW).

That's it, I'm revoking his membership from our Anonymous COWherd X club.

A comment on burn-in by an Intel employee

AnandTech to the rescue, again.
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317

Are you sure? Intel showed a dual-core Pentium 4 at CES last week and Anand thinks 2005 is realistic.

Not many it's true :)

The 6800 Ultra and 6800 GT on AGP and PCIe (NV40/45) are not fully compatible with the video acceleration stuff. The regular 6800 (NV41) is OK. In fact all that's missing is accelerated WMV9 playback, the de-interlace etc works on all chips.

This explains it more

Wow it's like CoolTechZone paid to get these posts. Here is an article written by someone who has a clue:

Intel: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=2
AMD: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=12
Transmeta: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=13

Notice the $700 price point on dual core Athlon 64s (socket 939). Start saving up now.

Wow it's like CoolTechZone paid to get these posts. Here is an article written by someone who has a clue:

Intel: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=2
AMD: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=12
Transmeta: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=13

Notice the $700 price point on dual core Athlon 64s (socket 939). Start saving up now.

Wow it's like CoolTechZone paid to get these posts. Here is an article written by someone who has a clue:

Intel: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=2
AMD: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=12
Transmeta: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=13

Notice the $700 price point on dual core Athlon 64s (socket 939). Start saving up now.

How about a working link?
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2315

Again, AnandTech saves the day

BTX: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=15
Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=6

More Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=5

God forbid CTX actually covered the show instead of just rewriting press releases...

Again, AnandTech saves the day

BTX: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=15
Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=6

More Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=5

God forbid CTX actually covered the show instead of just rewriting press releases...

Again, AnandTech saves the day

BTX: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=15
Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=6

More Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2317&p=5

God forbid CTX actually covered the show instead of just rewriting press releases...

A much better review is to be had here:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2315

Anandtech didn't seem to be too impressed by this solution.

From Anandtech: Unfortunately, in light of the performance tests, there really isn't much remarkable to say about the 3D1. In fact, unless Gigabyte can become very price competitive, there isn't much reason to recommend the 3D1 over a 2-card SLI solution. Currently, buying all the parts separately would cost the same as what Gigabyte is planning to sell the bundle.

The drawbacks to the 3D1 are its limited application (it will only run on the GA-K8NXP-SLI), the fact that it doesn't perform any better than 2-card SLI, and the fact that the user loses a DVI and an HD-15 display connection when compared to the 2-card solution.

Something like this might be very cool for use in a SFF with a motherboard that has only one physical PCIe x16 connector with the NVIDIA SLI chipset. But until we see NVIDIA relax their driver restrictions, and unless Gigabyte can find a way to boot their card on non-Gigabyte boards, there aren't very many other "killer" apps for the 3D1

They pretty much say Stick with true SLI unless size restraints force you into a single card solution

Have any of you tried the Anandtech price engine? It's like froogle but with less BS it seems.
http://labs.anandtech.com/

Perhaps this will change your mind: AMD and Linux: Reaching for the 64-bit Trophy

Of course, the submitter's reference to the Celeron was a joke (Turion = Asparagus, Celeron = Celery). I mostly agree that AMD has kicked Intel's arse in budget CPUs in the past. But I don't think AMD currently beats Intel in every budget segment.

Consider Anandtech's conclusion from a Sempron vs. Celeron test they did last July

Also consider current pricing (from Newegg) for the Sempron and the Celeron D. In Anandtech's benchmark results, the Socket 754-based Sempron 3100+ did beat the Socket 478-based Celeron D 335 in most of the bechmarks that count. However, the Sempron 3100+ costs $123/$108 (retail/OEM) while the Celeron D 335 costs $109/$89. The benchmarks also showed that the Socket A-based Sempron 2800+ ($109/$99) was about even with the Celeron D 335, but would you choose an aging Socket A platform (PCI, AGP, IDE, 333MHz FSB) over a modern platform (PCI Express, SATA, 533/800MHz FSB) that you can get with the Celeron D?

Of course, we're talking about building our own desktops, which is very different from what the big-name computer makers offer. Us home builders would choose nForce or 915 chipsets for Sempron and Celeron D CPUs. HP and Dell are more likely to offer VIA/SiS/ALi chipsets for Semprons and 865/845 chipsets for Celeron D. Ugh.

If I was building a budget desktop, I would choose a Socket 775-based Celeron D over a Socket A or Socket 754-based Sempron. I value the whole platform just as much (if not more) than the CPU itself. If AMD made a Socket 939-based Sempron, I'd reconsider.

I'll be interested to see how this unfortunately named "Turion" chip compares to the PentiumM.

Back to the article's topic (notebook CPUs), it looks like AMD will not have an answer to Intel's Celeron M. The Celeron M is based on the Pentium M core and performs almost equivalently clock-for-clock in Tom's Hardware benchmarks. Also note that Intel's Sonoma platform (533MHz bus, PCI Express, DDR2, GMA900 graphics, HD Audio) is about to be lauched.

Of course, the submitter's reference to the Celeron was a joke (Turion = Asparagus, Celeron = Celery). I mostly agree that AMD has kicked Intel's arse in budget CPUs in the past. But I don't think AMD currently beats Intel in every budget segment.

Consider Anandtech's conclusion from a Sempron vs. Celeron test they did last July

Also consider current pricing (from Newegg) for the Sempron and the Celeron D. In Anandtech's benchmark results, the Socket 754-based Sempron 3100+ did beat the Socket 478-based Celeron D 335 in most of the bechmarks that count. However, the Sempron 3100+ costs $123/$108 (retail/OEM) while the Celeron D 335 costs $109/$89. The benchmarks also showed that the Socket A-based Sempron 2800+ ($109/$99) was about even with the Celeron D 335, but would you choose an aging Socket A platform (PCI, AGP, IDE, 333MHz FSB) over a modern platform (PCI Express, SATA, 533/800MHz FSB) that you can get with the Celeron D?

Of course, we're talking about building our own desktops, which is very different from what the big-name computer makers offer. Us home builders would choose nForce or 915 chipsets for Sempron and Celeron D CPUs. HP and Dell are more likely to offer VIA/SiS/ALi chipsets for Semprons and 865/845 chipsets for Celeron D. Ugh.

If I was building a budget desktop, I would choose a Socket 775-based Celeron D over a Socket A or Socket 754-based Sempron. I value the whole platform just as much (if not more) than the CPU itself. If AMD made a Socket 939-based Sempron, I'd reconsider.

I'll be interested to see how this unfortunately named "Turion" chip compares to the PentiumM.

Back to the article's topic (notebook CPUs), it looks like AMD will not have an answer to Intel's Celeron M. The Celeron M is based on the Pentium M core and performs almost equivalently clock-for-clock in Tom's Hardware benchmarks. Also note that Intel's Sonoma platform (533MHz bus, PCI Express, DDR2, GMA900 graphics, HD Audio) is about to be lauched.

AMD doesn't need to release a whole new line of processors just to compete with the Celeron -- they've had the Celeron beaten for years. AMD's Duron line was consistently cheaper and faster than Celeron -- I refer you to any one of a number of tech sites. Anandtech had a good "budget processor" article comparing Durons and Celerons a while back. Tom's Hardware would do too.

More recently, AMD released the Sempron, meant to replace the Duron as its budget-level processor. Consider Anandtech's conclusion from a Sempron vs. Celeron test they did last July:

"Sempron, at a glance, surpasses its goal to be a powerful budget processor. Cheaper than the current fastest Intel Celeron, both flavors of Sempron that we tested here outperform the competition in almost every test."

In the performance market segment, Intel and AMD have been locked in battle for ages -- sometimes one is up, sometimes the other -- but if you're building a budget system, AMD offers more bang for less buck.

I'll be interested to see how this unfortunately named "Turion" chip compares to the PentiumM.

Demos never show the defects in a product? Are you sure?

Office Mac, which is, by the way, a nearly completely different(and completely better) product than Office XP/2003/whatever on Windows.

Of course the Socket A one must be based on the Athlon XP core. It would be very difficult to modify a Socket 754 processor (with built-in memory controller) to work in Socket A (where it's in the northbridge), not to mention the fact that the Athlon XP uses the EV6 bus, descended from the DEC Alpha, whereas the Opteron-derived processors have Hypertransport (a descendent of the technology in the Sun E10k) and all sorts of other fancy stuff.

Silly me :-)