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Let's review.

1. Michael posts a story on TiVo which has been discussed ad naseum on /. before.

2. Michael posts a story which claims the writer doesn't want to pay for hundreds of feaures (s)he'll never use.

Enough people have beat up on Michael on point one that I won't bother to.... whoops.

As to point two. Does no one look at Anandtech forums? Amazon PAYS YOU to get a new cell phone. See such threads as this one.

I have asked this questions at Form Factors forum, but no one seams to be able to answer the question. So can any of you Slashdot readers help me on the way?=)

When I look at this picture of the new PSU, I can't help to think; Why the wierd shape? =)

If the tetris shape is because of the power connector, I have an idea:

"Cut off" the block with the power connector, so the case is almost cubic, and move all the output cables to the side of the PSU.

Make the power connection mountable in the tower/desktop just like an USB extenteder.

The wire from the power connector could have a small socket on the other end that is pluged in to the side of the PSU.

Or the wire from the power connector could access the PSU together with all the output cables.

What do you think?

Try Anandtech instead.

To relieve the slashdotted server, a similar review:
The actual spec (PDF!):
Intel's info about it:

I agree, in the AnandTech article they talk about BTX "will also bring us closer to a fully legacy-free PC, with PS/2, serial and parallel ports already beginning to disappear from prototype motherboards." Its 2004. You don't need all those medieval connectors on the back of your board. I'm sure you can get a USB adapter for your clicky-clack 40 pound IBM keyboard from 1985.

Here's a few other links to similar data:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876
http://www.dvhardware.net/article.php?sid=1894 Has PDF's of the Spec.
http://www.intel.com/update/contents/dt10031.htm

half cocked attempt to keep the intel/MS upgrade spiral happening.
Some informed information is avaialable here.
However this is also half cocked.

Sure you can direct link to Anand with no advertisements / bagillion pages for a printable article ;)

Just replace the
/category/showdoc.html?i=article_number with
/printarticle.html?i=article_number
in any AnandTech article.

Actually, you can link it. Its still a large ammount of information to take in though. Good midnight read, I guess :|

You can click once more at Anand's to get a Printer-version, which is really nice. It's how I usually read their content. Can't direct-link you (I think), since it's a JavaScript thing. Scroll down, and click on "Print this Article".

I disagree; the 400SC is a great PC and can frequently be had for $350 or less

Link

reviews found at:

bigbrui.com, overclockersclub.com, modthebox.com, pcextreme.net, Tom's Hardware, AnandTech.com, etc...

Tom's Hardware has been running a great series of articles reviewing motherboards for the Athlon64. ExtremeTech also has a good review of Athlon64 motherboards. And AnandTech recently wrote up a useful AMD 2004 CPU roadmap.

I've been looking at this a lot lately since I was just about to build a new box. Ultimately, I decided not to go with a Athlon64 (too expensive for the limited benefit), but I did find reading all these articles useful in making that decision.

Tom's Hardware has been running a great series of articles reviewing motherboards for the Athlon64. ExtremeTech also has a good review of Athlon64 motherboards. And AnandTech recently wrote up a useful AMD 2004 CPU roadmap.

I've been looking at this a lot lately since I was just about to build a new box. Ultimately, I decided not to go with a Athlon64 (too expensive for the limited benefit), but I did find reading all these articles useful in making that decision.

I find it entertaining that you sometimes wish you were stupid, then immediately proclaim that you don't understand something. ;-)

Seriously though, Anandtech has a decent explanation of AMDs rather creative roadmap here.

It's much more likely the size of the L2 cache is affecting you (i.e. your working set does not fit into P4's L2 cache but it does in Barton's).

It takes a couple of hundred cycles to service an L2 miss

It's much more likely the size of the L2 cache is affecting you (i.e. your working set does not fit into P4's L2 cache but it does in Barton's).

It takes a couple of hundred cycles to service an L2 miss

Read this thread: thread over at Anandtech. The problem reports start on the 2nd page. You could try disassembling your USB enclosure to check the chipset temperature. If it is really hot, try cooling it and seeing if it fixes the problem. If so, bad equipment.

Apparently it is enough because many of these chips only have 512k and that is how it is going to be with the majority of the new Athlon 64s sold in the future, I suspect. There is a lot of information available at Anandtech, as mentioned previously on Slashdot.

Running at full CPU load, an Athlon 64 3200+ uses less power than an Intel P4 3.2GHz. Furthermore, with AMD's Cool and Quiet power management enabled the Athlon 64 CPU slows down to 800MHz and drops to 1.275v when you don't need much CPU performence, ie, while I'm typing this message. ASUS has a nifty little program that displays the current CPU speed and core voltage on my desktop.

AMD CPU power requirements are expected to drop substantially when they switch to 90nm in the second half of this year. OTOH, Intel's prototype 90nm Tejas CPU burns up 150 watts .

AMD chips haven't used more electricity than Intel chips for years. Pay attention.

BTW, Athlon 64 notebooks are out. $1,550 for a widescreen 64-bit notebook! I'm going to stick with my Athlon 64 desktop, at least until I come up with an excuse to buy a portable. Really, I am...

Anyone know what they blocked out in the socket picture?

What could possibly be there that they wouldn't want us to see? Or is is that they're not allowed to show us?

Background: I've used single CPU systems, HT systems, and SMP systems. I've taken courses on OS design and even in the process of writing my own. I'm quite familiar with the 80x86 32-bit instruction set and aware of the new 64-bit design as planned by AMD.

My $0.02 (this GREATLY SIMPLIFIED)

In the beginning there were CPUs. And CPUs were good.
Soon we realized the limitations and said.. Hey! Why not add another CPU and SMP was born.

SMP was good as well, however the additional cost was something of a deterrent for all but the power-users (and commercial applications of course).

Then Intel tried to develop a middle-ground, HyperThreading. It was a decent idea, however did not work quite as well as originally expected. AMD does not use it for a reason

From my experience I see HT as a hack developed by Intel, trying to duplicate true SMP. Might work sometimes and in certain environments but it's been show to actually slow execution in some situations (cache thrashing). In addition, SMP systems have much better responsiveness than HT ones under a high CPU load.

Which is why AMD is working on multi-core CPUs. This is the *correct* way (at least in my opinion) to tackle the problem, asides from getting true multiple CPUs. More can be read about it here. This combined with the new 64-bit instruction set (read more about that at the above link) will truly create a new era of CPUs.

AnandTech did an excellent article on hyper threading a while back. Well written and worth reading.

Excepty that Celery 2.6 gets his ass kicked pretty badly by a 1.6 Duron

See benchmark at Anandtech Budget Shootout

So it is, and it's not all that fast either. Then again, you shouldn't believe all that you read on the Intarweb.

Are you kidding?? This review linked to from /. a few weeks ago shows that a 1.8ghz Athlon XP easily beats the 2.6ghz Celeron in the DivX encoding test. With their 128kb L2 cache (384kb less than a P4) the Celerons just can't keep up with the P4. And the lower end P4s can't keep up with the Athlon XPs. Celerons are a complete waste of money, IMO.

Check out the anandtech article from several posts above.

It's compare there to the EE chip. I believe that I remember hearing that the price for the 3400 is less then the FX chip and out performs it as well.

Why not go straight to the one-page printable version?

http://anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1941

They mainly focused on the price/performance ratio as it is truely a killer to everything out there.

Link to Anandtech Article

Basically, they are predicting the death of the AMD FX51 as the 3400+ has equal or better performance and MUCH cheaper.

Anandtech

Looks like a winner to me!

And how much of this is because of 64-bit? The memory architecture of a dual Opteron is much better for high memory loads than a dual Xeon (independent memory bus for each processor, for starters), which Anand even attributes the performance increase (speaks of the on-cpu-die memory controller) in his Final Words

Anandtech recently had an article where they compared two-way systems running as web servers -- AMD Opteron 248 against Intel Xeon 2.8ghz. The AMD system was a stunning 40% faster running the same applications.

Chip H.

Using 32bit OS's and 32bit programs there would be no difference.

Here are some benchmarks that show the difference once programs start to get rewritten/recompiled for 64bit (for the Athlon64)

If you haven't seen any documentation it's only because you haven't looked hard enough!

There have been a number of tests comparing Opteron and Athlon64 processors in 32-bit and 64-bit mode under Linux and even a few that use Windows (beta version of WinXP). Here are a few links:

First off, some SPEC CINT2000 numbers: 32-bit OS + 32-bit apps, 64-bit OS + 32-bit apps and 64-bit OS + 64-bit apps. Unfortunately there are no similar CFP2000 numbers since GCC Fortran isn't up to the task, so you end up with lots of different variables making it nearly impossible to compare.

There is also this areticle at Ace's Hardware, and this little bit on Anandtech. Other tests exist.

Long story short, 64-bit support on the Opteron can and often does improve performance, even on apps that don't require lots of memory or use 64-bit integers. The extra registers help.

As for compilers, Microsoft plans on supporting AMD64 in their Visual.net 2003 compiler (beta versions are available now) and GCC supports the instruction set now. That makes up the compilers used for the vast majority of applications. As you mention, PGC is also doing a compiler, and it seems that Sun will support AMD64 with their compiler as well. Here is the AMD64 Developer Resource Kit page which lists all sorts of software with support for the AMD64 instruction set.

I don't know if you have checked ATI's website lately, but MMC 8.8 just came out and it is very good. All the bugs that I experienced in the past are gone.

It also has a cool feature where it can dynamically compress and broadcast TV to other computers on your network. So, if you have an AIW card in one computer, any other computers that have an ATI card can also watch TV. Check out anandtech for more info on this very cool feature.

One caveat, I am using a AIW 9700 Pro, things may work differently for you with an older card...

I also do know that the latest DVD decrypting software is not released for the 7500, you have to have an original MMC 8.x disc to install it. You may want to consider purchasing that cd from ATI, or purchasing an AIW 8500 or higher card, which comes with the MMC 8.x disc. The DVD software really works great these days.

Ace's (Recommended)

Ars

HardOCP

Tom's

Anandtech (Recommended)

Take all benchmark results with a grain of salt. Many things can influence the results, and some sites like Tom's have long been known to be quite biased. If you read enough sites though, you tend to get a much better overall picture of how things really are.

Anandtech is generally the best place to find information on anything you're looking for and is where all the cool kids go. They go above and beyond the call of duty in all of their reviews, and their monitor reviews are unsurpassed.

As noted in an earlier Slashdot story, AnandTech reviewed 4 laptops and the battery life on a Centrino is impressive... 6 solid hours from the winner of the roundup.

I found this little gem while going over AMD64 reviews...

#8, I'm typing this on an XP2100+ and we can both sleep soundly tonight knowing this has nothing to do with my ego or with blinders. I am farting sunshine over the fact the A64 performs so well clock-for-clock and I am looking forward to building my next workstation as a 64-bit platform.

Granted it was a few months back, but I think we're all farting sunshine now.

Well, I'd wager that's a 2.6Ghz Celeron machine. Give me a 1.6Ghz Duron anyday -- it's half the price, 133% of the performance (even on OLD boards!), and it gives me more money for things that matter (like, say, RAM and video card).

I can't believe OEMs are still selling Celeron machines. People must really believe the "MHz Myth", because you can get a Barton 2500+ for the price of a Celeron 2.6Ghz that simply makes the Celeron go and hide in shame for its utter lack of competency. Pair it with an older KT400A board (<$50), and you've got a hell of a system (RAM+motherboard+processor) for under $200. Check out this review over at Anandtech to see what I mean.

the difference i was trying to point out is that lately, it seems as if developers have to -wait- for 'entry level' systems to become pervasive enough to find a profitable market.

maybe feature creep due to hardware advances pushes up the minimum requirements. maybe the upgrade cycle slowed down as game development cycles grew, and hardware advances stayed at the same rate.

whatever it is, it definitely looks as if the games that are sold heavily on their graphics are staying in 'when its done' mode so long that you can't help but wonder why they -still- require such powerful machines to run acceptably when they release. if they were just working on gameplay and bugs, it's unlikely to push up system specs.

I mean, how could they be 'delayed' for 6-12 months and yet the minimum requirements still carry sticker-shock for all but the most hardcore gamers?

doom3 was -announced- in 2001. being gracious enough to consider that their 'start' date, and looking at anandtech's high end system guide for 2001, the best gaming rig you could buy then was an amd 1.3ghz and a geforce3.

i think the minimum requirements will still be a bit higher than that when it releases.

They have most of it covered, here.

I had the same problems, and decided to go with DVD+RW (Just for video, not data storage.) Dual format burners are coming down in price, too, so you don't have to settle for one side.

An FAQ
Useful link

have fun, nothing like getting a new geek toy :D

Movies: RottenTomatoes, imdb, and MetaCritic have saved me dozens of hours of time I might have wasted on crap (like Matrix Revolutions, or TimeLine).

Books: Amazon, despite its evils (patents/privacy), is a very nice filter (with a few shills and idiot-reviewers). I [ab]use amazon as a filter, and then buy them cheaper new or used.

News: Popular Daily News Tidbits, Blogdex, Daypop, and slashdot.

Music: iRATE radio, and word of mouth. Need more Collaborative Filtering in this area to root out the Clearchannels/RIAAs function as a giant pusher of "cool"

Ads (aka: mental engineering): I use PopFile to filter SPAM, and Privoxy to filter out slow-loading, privacy-invading, all-around-annoying ADS. I'm still missing a proxy for my eyeballs in the real world. Soooon. :)

Cheap Products: Not a quality filter exactly, but a quantity filter: PriceWatch, PriceGrabber, Froogle, Anand's Hot Deals ...

Phew, that's a lot of linkage. Anyway, I couldn't function without these and other filters; I'd really be info overloaded.

Collaborative filtering in general has a very bright future IMO.

--

Sounds interesting. I have a Tungsten E with an SD/MMC card slot {126MHz OMAP processor IIRR}. Will that run such a player? Or will I have serious trouble with battery life?

The specs on that aren't too different than my Tungsten T...but more specifically, the Tungsten E is listed as a supported device. With a 256MB card, I usually get about 4 hours' worth of music at a time (give or take, depending on the bitrates). Playing all of that will run a fully-charged battery down to about 50%. I recently scored a deal on a 512MB card that should last all day, if I should ever need that much runtime.

Make sure you get a card reader if you don't already have one...it's the fastest way to load music. (I've not gotten music to load through a HotSync...I'm not even sure if that's supported.)

Duron 1.6+MB $50 (fan not included)
Case $35 (- $15 MIR)
MEM $90 (- $30 MIR)

Cant go wrong, it'll run GNOME for 2 years or so and these prices are not comming down much (well, the memory will for sure).

If you don't live near fry's, move.
- from Anandtech hot deals forum]

I doubt it very much. They don't give full specs, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if it has a 100MHz bus, 24X CD-ROM, and generally low-end components for everything not listed. You can get a comparable system from microtel for $330. (I'm figuring that a 1.6GHz Athlon is at least as good as a 1.7GHz Celeron.)

According to this AnandTech article on processors under $100, an Athlon XP 1600 (which actually runs somewhere near 1.4 GHz) would leave a 1.7-GHz Celeron (which will be a P4-derived product, not a P!!! derivative) so far behind that it's almost an unfair comparison. Hell, I'm typing this on an old Thunderbird-core 1.0-GHz Athlon that, between the DDR memory and AGP graphics (Radeon 7000...nothing too fancy), would probably still give that Celeron a run for the money. That a nearly three-year-old system could do that says something.

Woo!

I've never cared for Fat Wallet's layout, and as such, spend a lot of time lurking in Anandtech's Hot Deals forum. Basically, if there's a deal on anything computer-related going down, you can probably find it there, and most of the better deals from FW manage to drift there fairly quickly as well. =)