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Anandtech has had a review for a week or so:
part 1
part 2
their conclusion:

"We recommend this beautiful notebook to those looking to tackle the best of desktop gaming, high-end multimedia users, and even those looking for an alternative to the very popular Pentium 4 desktop replacement notebook, like those that are ODM through Clevo (Sager/Eurocom/Hypersonic). At the moment, this is the only notebook on the market to use a processor from the Athlon 64 family, and we are sure there will be more to follow. We are particularly excited to hear about AMD?s upcoming mobile Athlon 64 processor, which should breathe a breath of fresh air that mobile systems have yet to fully appreciate"

later,

Anandtech has had a review for a week or so:
part 1
part 2
their conclusion:

"We recommend this beautiful notebook to those looking to tackle the best of desktop gaming, high-end multimedia users, and even those looking for an alternative to the very popular Pentium 4 desktop replacement notebook, like those that are ODM through Clevo (Sager/Eurocom/Hypersonic). At the moment, this is the only notebook on the market to use a processor from the Athlon 64 family, and we are sure there will be more to follow. We are particularly excited to hear about AMD?s upcoming mobile Athlon 64 processor, which should breathe a breath of fresh air that mobile systems have yet to fully appreciate"

later,

I wish the both of them the best of luck, and one of these days, may good engineering prevail. I hope.

They sure do, IMHO, but it's not going to happen unless they find a spine and use it. Has anyone else checked the fatwallet forums and noted that the "Hopefully FatWallet will stand up for themselves again..." doesn't seem to be happening? Heck, seems to me that Tim from Fatwallet has folded faster than Superman on laundry day, to wit:

Here's FW's current position:

Message from the FatWallet, inc.

At approximately 11PM CST on 11/14/03, We became aware of a D.M.C.A. notification and subpoena from what appears to be the legal firm representing Best Buy Enterprise Services, Inc. (The email appears to have been sent at 5:20PM)

Due to the late hour and legal counsel not being immediately available, we are taking the action to remove the content we believe the notification is referring to. We ask that FatWallet members do not post further information regarding this matter or links to third party sites containing the information. Under the terms of the D.M.C.A., we will have an obligation to remove such information as we become aware of it.

We will follow up with legal counsel and take further action as appropriate.

Thank you in advance for your patience, cooperation and understanding.

Tim Storm
President
FatWallet, inc


What does the unavailability of counsel have to do with anything, other than as a weak excuse to cave instantly? I mean, it's the same thing as last year, and it's the same DMCA, yet there are thirty-five (35) instances of "content removed" in that thread alone. More in others. Even links to other sites with the balls to keep the info up are being removed!

FYI, some of the deals sites with spines (so far!) include: slickdeals, Anandtech's hotdeal forum, and Dealcatcher. I've posted the "offending info" in as many places as I can and will continue to do so in hopes that increasing the number of potential defendants will increase the odds that one of them sticks up for sanity in this.

AnandTech also has an article about the new XGI Volari.

AnandTech also has an article about the new XGI Volari.

Nvidia really isn't close to being put out of business. Sure, ATI's $500 card is slightly better than Nvidia's $500 card, but guess what, very few people spend $500 on a video card. Look at the GFFX 5700 Ultra vs Radeon 9600XT if you want to see a more mainstream comparison. Nvidia is very competitive in the mainstream market where are the business is at. Oh, and if you are running anything other than Windows you might want to go grab a Nvidia card because their drivers are still better than anything ATI has for Linux/BSD.

Anyhow, this thread isn't about XBox vs. PS2. It's about the shitty proc in the GC.

And you previously said:
I'm sorry you invested in a shitty console, but don't take it out on me.

Jesus Christ, can you be any more of a fanboy?

Yes, the XBox has a slightly more powerful Celeron processor than the GC PPC, but the differences aren't that big and there's a trade-off for smaller size, better heat dissipation (XBoxes can overheat way too easily), and lower manufacturing cost. GC's CPU also has more cpu cache and a faster FSB. Don't take my word for it:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1566&p =2

Slap a wireless card in a sexy Shuttle XPC SK41G2, and you'll be all set.

I'm not vouching for them, but Legit Reviews bought retail memory for a recent review. I also liked Anand's recent test of OCZ memory, comparing pre-production and retail parts.

Cost. Most review sites, especially in the PC industry, don't have much cash to purchase the products themselves. Instead they rely on vendors sending their hardware to them for free.

It definitely isn't an objective model, but one that allows multiple people to review the same product. Ultimately, you have to make two really shaky assumptions in such a model.

1. The vendor is sending the reviewer a consumer level product (or nearly so).
2. The reviewer is objective and honest enough to verify the capabilities match that of the consumer available product and disclose where the product came from.

For the most part the model works. Point 1 is completely out of the consumer's control and cannot even be known to the consumer without point 2. As a result, there is only one thing that consumers can do, and that is learn to spot the honest reviewers from the frauds, fanboys, and sponsored reviewers. For example, Anandtech and Tom's Hardware Guide do a pretty good job. They clearly indicate where the hardware comes from, identify any differences between it and the shipping hardware, and do their homework as best they can to prevent getting duped. Contrast this with many reviewers who seem to be simply paying lip service to the vendors so they can get quoted in an advert and continue to get free hardware to play with. Researching the product also means researching the reviewer if you don't wanna get burned. It's like taking advice from the Gartner Group without seeing who paid for their latest study. :)

I'm starting to get fed up with review sites that have so many adverts they don't bother to actually include a picture of the product they're talking about. CNET is a big offender, as is Anandtech, but the site on the end of this link is just as bad. I mean, it's a cliche but a picture really does tell a thousand words.

If you want to see what benefit 64bits gives you when compared to 32bits, then click here. A 34% improvement in a real-life app when using 64bits.

Chaintech ZNF3-150, FIC K8-800T, and MSI K8T

Chaintech ZNF3-150 = nVidia nForce3
FIC K8-800T and MSI K8T = VIA K8T800

Wow, another olde tyme Debian user! For historical interest there are early pics of Ian and Deb from interviews some time ago.

If you'll notice, Athlon 64s and Opteron's get rid of this stupid design (finally) and offer screw in heatsinks. THANK GOD!

Pictures and more

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1799

10k-SCSI vs 10k-SATA vs 7.2k-SATA vs 7.2k-PATA.

Not only that, but according to anandtech, BTX will be taking over case/mobo/power supply architecture during 2004. Better get a new case and PS too.

IRQ sharing occurs with Windows 2k/XP on older computers (older than P4/Athlon XP) with ACPI enabled.

First of all, this "information" is misleading. IRQ sharing is NORMAL. It does NOT mean you have conflicts among your devices. IRQ sharing is a feature of ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) computers, and it is a capability of all modern computers that have an ACPI-compatible BIOS and devices. Sharing IRQs is intentional, and all hardware that is ACPI-compatible is required to support a shared IRQ environment. This does not involve a significant performance penalty: shared interrupts are still "triaged" in a first-come, first-served basis and handled according to their priority. The "share" is resolved by having the driver query its device to see if it was the one requesting the IRQ. As long as the driver was written properly, this works out just fine. For reference, see this Anandtech FAQ.

Some computers have something called an I/O APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller), traditionally only present on multi-CPU systems, that allows Win2k and WinXP to assign IRQ's above 15 to each device on the system, essentially giving every device its own "virtual" IRQ. If your computer has one of these, you probably won't see IRQ sharing, but there is no guarantee of that. For example, I type this on a brand new Compaq Evo that has an I/O Apic, and my ATI Radeon 7000 is sharing IRQ 18 with one of the USB Host Controllers. But like I said, they know how to work together, so it's all good, and I have no problems. The easiest way to tell if you have an I/O APIC is to go to Device Manager and expand the "computer" entry: if it says "ACPI Uniprocessor PC" rather than "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface PC", then you have an I/O APIC. All multi-processor computers have an I/O APIC because the I/O subsystem has to figure out a way to distribute interrupts between the multiple processors.

If you follow some people's advice, they will tell you to ditch ACPI mode all together and go back to "Standard PC" mode where each device MUST have its own IRQ or things don't work properly. This is not a good idea. Some systems have too many devices to assign a separate IRQ to each device, and this is part of the reason why IRQ sharing was part of the ACPI requirements. Not only that, but ripping out the HAL that sits underneath Windows NT is a tricky operation to perform correctly without screwing up your system.

Instead, you should check to see if your computer has any BIOS Updates, and if your hardware devices (especially any PCI cards) have new drivers. These are generally the main reasons that IRQ sharing might be causing problems, if that indeed is the real culprit.

So you're saying that if the code is recompiled and reoptimised for 64 bit processors, there will be a difference?

There's also the very noticable lack of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition... They claim they were not available at the time, though AnandTech's Athlon 64 article includes it though it was published more than two weeks earlier.

As others have said, Eternal Darkness $14.99 Gamestop. I just got it, and it's awesome.

I recently got a GC because of the price drop, and I get free rentals at one of the video stores in town, so I figured it'd be worth the $99.

Keeping in mind that I get free rentals, I now own more games for GC than I do for Xbox and PS2 combined. There's so many games so good I want to be able to pop in and play whenever I want without having to run down to the store. And there are even more games that I'm wanting to buy, but I'm forcing myself to wait and finish what I've got!

As far as the price, look into used games a lot of the time you can get some great games for less than $20. There's also many games you can get new for very low prices: Check here

And while I'm talking about GC, I don't know how people get off saying it's a "kiddy console". There may be more games for kids on GC than on Xbox or PS2, but that's only because there are no kids games for those two consoles. Hell, I'm 22 and I've found far more games I enjoy on GC than I have on Xbox and PS2 combined.

AnandTech wrote a similar article about an ECS factory. IMHO, motherboard production is MUCH more interesting than case production. Anand isn't as blatent about how much he got paid for the article either.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=2066 2&ATVAR_START=81&p=5

Please, fellow slashdotters and linux lovers, please add your thoughts (anonymously, of course) to this discuss to help bring balance to the argument.

Thank you.

Found it! It was Anandtech. Check out the bottom of the 32 bit vs 64 bit page of the review.

Found it! It was Anandtech. Check out the bottom of the 32 bit vs 64 bit page of the review.

Don't forget Anandtech.

Here are some more benchmarks

AMDzone
AnandTech
XbitLabs
Ace Hardware

There are even more at AMDZones main page.

And Anandtech has a good article up, as well.

or just click here.
/karmawhore

That's because its CPU doesn't have Intel's NetBurst technology!

P4 has had 3 sockets (including the new Prescott) with the same types of changes that Athlon has gone through. Don't forget that the server chip (Xeon) has had a few sockets of its own. Athlon has had 2 (including Slot A). Since Thunderbird, there have been no changes to Athlon's socket. Compare the amount of time that each chip has spent on its current socket. Athlon has had around 2 years, P4 around 1.

Here's some press about Prescott:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10438
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8011

And to prove that I don't only read The Inq:
http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=2001 4

I could probably dig up some more if you are really interested.

$740 in 1,000 unit quantities. I think I'll pass.

I was just reading-up on PCI Express (since it is mentioned in the BTX PDF and I didn't know much about it), and look at the image of this "BigWater reference form factor shown at IDF 2002".

That looks just like the microBTX layout as shown labeled "Desktop (Top View)" in Figure 1 (page 9).

And you will note that the expansion slots are on the other side of the rear panel i/o from our beloved ATX.

I rest my (soon-to-be outdated) case.

-Richard L. Owens

damn-- too much sierra nevada pale ale... hosed the hyperlink to the article

causing hit counters to go up artificially just to see 'next page' drives me nuts!

Also, Anandtech and Tom's have had some reviews in the past.

Personally, I've had bad experiences with my onboard Promise in Win2k... worked fine with 40GB IBM, but when I got a 60GB IBM, vague errors started appearing in event viewer. Promise & Gigabyte did not answer any of my emails. IBM said they normally like Promise, but had no suggestions. I gave up and plugged back in to the Intel controller, and haven't had a single problem since then (over 2 years now).

I've also seen vague errors on Linux when using Promise controllers, and they still don't have an open source driver.

Look at the Anandtech.com's Q3 1024x768 CPU scaling benchmarks on the same chipset (Intel875P) as the Dell Dimension 8300 in the test with *lower* performing vid card (9700 vs the 9800 in apple's test) and tell me how it can score that low. Was Apple testing a 2GHz P4 CPU by mistake? Thats about where it should be by every Q3 bench I've seen with a modern mobo and an ATI R300 chipsetted GPU.

There are some slight variations here (slightly different q3 engine versions, unsure what 3ghz intel 3GHz CPU (3.0c or 3.06) the Dell dimension is actually using.

Anandtech

Apple White Paper

Augur your Comments, please.

The Q3 benchmarks Apple posted for the 3GHz P4 don't match up with benchmarks posted elsewhere. In fact, the first Q3 benchmark I found of a P4 using a Radeon 9800 Pro was at 333 fps, 4 less than the G5 benchmark (as opposed to the 275 posted by Apple for the P4).

So, what is your basis for saying that occasional memory errors are acceptable?

More and more companies are basing their business plans on taking advantage of the overclocker, gamer, case modder, or PC enthusiast who doesn't have much technical knowledge. These have slick sales literature and fancy graphics. They also may have no one at the company who knows or cares about the technical details of the product. I feel qualified to say this because, back when I was an electrical engineer, I have designed power supplies and industrial power control devices.

"Monster cables" won't give you better audio than cheap wire of the same gauge. Similarly, paying a lot of money for a power supply is very unlikely to get you any difference in computer performance, provided you buy a quality low-cost supply.

We pay $26 wholesale for our 350 Watt KingWin Kwi-350W power supplies, and they are fine. Froogle.google.com says they can be bought retail for $32. The AnandTech article discusses the Kingwin KWI-450, which they say costs $95. Why didn't they review the supply from Kingwin that is 1/3 the cost?

One guess is that the entire AnandTech article is a hidden Directron.com advertisement. Maybe Directron.com does not want you to know that you don't need to pay more, and that you will derive no benefit from giving Directron more profit.

The AnandTech article says, "Directron.com let us pick one of every new power supply off their shelves in order to put together a sample of 18 of the newer power supplies on the market right now."

The article says about the Kingwin KWI-450WABK, "We received our quad fan Kingwin supply well before the TTGI units had hit American soil. The unit was well received in the lab, but as we noticed when the TTGI units arrived, practically identical in construction. TTGI and Kingwin obtain their components from the same manufacturers in Taiwan."

"Practically identical" does NOT mean identical. Directron's 350 Watt TTGI TT-350SS is $28.99. It looks a lot like the KingWin 350 Watt supply, but is different; the TTGI supply does not have most of the labels that are on the KingWin supply, for example.

Look below at that link for what Directron says about their warranty: "Customer is responsible for returning defective products including DOA due to manufacturer unless testing is paid before shipping." DOA means "Dead on Arrival". Very clearly, Directron says that they do NOT stand behind their products.

Directron's warranty may be translated as, "If what we ship you doesn't work, tough luck, don't bother mentioning it to Directron, you are on your own, complain to the manufacturer, and pay the shipping costs to where the manufacturer is located, but we won't tell you in advance where that is, because you might buy directly from the manufacturer." Only if you pay more will Directron stand behind what they ship. So the true cost is not $28.99, unless you want to take your chances.

I suspect, and I have plenty of evidence, that when companies ask you to pay more for testing if you want a warranty from them, you get absolutely no testing. What you get is only the right to return a DOA unit to them.

Notice something else about that Directron page. The price is an image, not text, from a different server, yimg.com. Does anyone know why they do that? I don't.

There is plenty of evidence that the people at AnandTech have little technical understanding. Maybe the site makes money by doing things their advertisers want, which may be different from what is good for you.

The first page of the AnandTech article says, "We then ran several exhaustive tests on these pow

More and more companies are basing their business plans on taking advantage of the overclocker, gamer, case modder, or PC enthusiast who doesn't have much technical knowledge. These have slick sales literature and fancy graphics. They also may have no one at the company who knows or cares about the technical details of the product. I feel qualified to say this because, back when I was an electrical engineer, I have designed power supplies and industrial power control devices.

"Monster cables" won't give you better audio than cheap wire of the same gauge. Similarly, paying a lot of money for a power supply is very unlikely to get you any difference in computer performance, provided you buy a quality low-cost supply.

We pay $26 wholesale for our 350 Watt KingWin Kwi-350W power supplies, and they are fine. Froogle.google.com says they can be bought retail for $32. The AnandTech article discusses the Kingwin KWI-450, which they say costs $95. Why didn't they review the supply from Kingwin that is 1/3 the cost?

One guess is that the entire AnandTech article is a hidden Directron.com advertisement. Maybe Directron.com does not want you to know that you don't need to pay more, and that you will derive no benefit from giving Directron more profit.

The AnandTech article says, "Directron.com let us pick one of every new power supply off their shelves in order to put together a sample of 18 of the newer power supplies on the market right now."

The article says about the Kingwin KWI-450WABK, "We received our quad fan Kingwin supply well before the TTGI units had hit American soil. The unit was well received in the lab, but as we noticed when the TTGI units arrived, practically identical in construction. TTGI and Kingwin obtain their components from the same manufacturers in Taiwan."

"Practically identical" does NOT mean identical. Directron's 350 Watt TTGI TT-350SS is $28.99. It looks a lot like the KingWin 350 Watt supply, but is different; the TTGI supply does not have most of the labels that are on the KingWin supply, for example.

Look below at that link for what Directron says about their warranty: "Customer is responsible for returning defective products including DOA due to manufacturer unless testing is paid before shipping." DOA means "Dead on Arrival". Very clearly, Directron says that they do NOT stand behind their products.

Directron's warranty may be translated as, "If what we ship you doesn't work, tough luck, don't bother mentioning it to Directron, you are on your own, complain to the manufacturer, and pay the shipping costs to where the manufacturer is located, but we won't tell you in advance where that is, because you might buy directly from the manufacturer." Only if you pay more will Directron stand behind what they ship. So the true cost is not $28.99, unless you want to take your chances.

I suspect, and I have plenty of evidence, that when companies ask you to pay more for testing if you want a warranty from them, you get absolutely no testing. What you get is only the right to return a DOA unit to them.

Notice something else about that Directron page. The price is an image, not text, from a different server, yimg.com. Does anyone know why they do that? I don't.

There is plenty of evidence that the people at AnandTech have little technical understanding. Maybe the site makes money by doing things their advertisers want, which may be different from what is good for you.

The first page of the AnandTech article says, "We then ran several exhaustive tests on these pow

Yes?

Single-page link.

The results of the memory tests are amasing. The MTBF is about an hour on some of the power supplys. I'm not sure If I understand the setup but that is appauling. I expect a MTBF of about 100+ years not an hour.

BTW, a tip for you. You can order bound manuals for the Pentium I/II/III/4 directly from Intel's website AT NO COST. Apparently, this is a result of their deal with the justice department to resolve possible anti-trust charges. They take a month or two to get, but they are nice manuals with plenty of detail.

PUUHHleeasse. Why bother with Intel when AMD offers the same deal? Quit obscuring the truth!!! Surely any company who can deliver a superior, innovative, reliable product has something to hide!

I'm not buying it...

p.s. If you must belong to the dark side, follow along with that other sheep.

BTW, a tip for you. You can order bound manuals for the Pentium I/II/III/4 directly from Intel's website AT NO COST. Apparently, this is a result of their deal with the justice department to resolve possible anti-trust charges. They take a month or two to get, but they are nice manuals with plenty of detail.

PUUHHleeasse. Why bother with Intel when AMD offers the same deal? Quit obscuring the truth!!! Surely any company who can deliver a superior, innovative, reliable product has something to hide!

I'm not buying it...

p.s. If you must belong to the dark side, follow along with that other sheep.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1841

That Anandtech article is sort of a followup to one they did in January between Vantec, Enermax, ThermalTake, Antec. They measured ripple and stuff like that too. It's nice to be able to see (at least in the case of the 4 tested) if quality has increased, decreased, or stayed the same.

Here .. try this. I think there are 17+ power supplies that they reviewed. All the way from top end to bottom of the barrel in some cases.

power supplies review