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heatseeka writes "There is a great article at Ars Technica comparing the Motorola G4 and the AMD Athlon. They discuss every detail of the design of the CPU's, and give credit where credit is due. " Hannibal does a great job dissecting the different chips, as well as explaining the background behind each chip.

Matt writes "Saw over at Ars Technica that Loki Games has announced that Quake 3 Arena for Linux is hitting stores like EB and Fry's today! I will certainly have to run by EB after work to see if this is true. Man, screw the egg-nog action - I'm gonna need some fraggin' if I'm going to survive a day with the in-laws."

Gina writes "The guys over at Ars Technica have an interesting story regarding the schemes that marketing types try to combat bad hype. The story started last week in one of the Ars Comdex reports, when Hannibal said that ArtX's Alladin chipset didn't look too hot, and continued in an email dialog between Hannibal and Rick Calle. The story gets really weird when Mr. Calle went on Ars' forum and started posting stories discounting Hannibal's take on the situation as two different anonymous cowards. How'd Hannibal know it was Mr. Calle? The IPs of users are automatically logged (you know this before you submit your post) and both the anonymous cowards turned out to be from the same IP, which resolved to artxinc.com. Here's Mr. Calle's response to the allegations, "P.S. you're good. snagged my IP, huh?! i'm rotfl - rick." "

Gina writes "The guys over at Ars Technica have an interesting story regarding the schemes that marketing types try to combat bad hype. The story started last week in one of the Ars Comdex reports, when Hannibal said that ArtX's Alladin chipset didn't look too hot, and continued in an email dialog between Hannibal and Rick Calle. The story gets really weird when Mr. Calle went on Ars' forum and started posting stories discounting Hannibal's take on the situation as two different anonymous cowards. How'd Hannibal know it was Mr. Calle? The IPs of users are automatically logged (you know this before you submit your post) and both the anonymous cowards turned out to be from the same IP, which resolved to artxinc.com. Here's Mr. Calle's response to the allegations, "P.S. you're good. snagged my IP, huh?! i'm rotfl - rick." "

Gina writes "The guys over at Ars Technica have an interesting story regarding the schemes that marketing types try to combat bad hype. The story started last week in one of the Ars Comdex reports, when Hannibal said that ArtX's Alladin chipset didn't look too hot, and continued in an email dialog between Hannibal and Rick Calle. The story gets really weird when Mr. Calle went on Ars' forum and started posting stories discounting Hannibal's take on the situation as two different anonymous cowards. How'd Hannibal know it was Mr. Calle? The IPs of users are automatically logged (you know this before you submit your post) and both the anonymous cowards turned out to be from the same IP, which resolved to artxinc.com. Here's Mr. Calle's response to the allegations, "P.S. you're good. snagged my IP, huh?! i'm rotfl - rick." "

A reader wrote to us about the latest press release from 3dfx regarding the Voodoo 4 and 5. The V4 and V5 will apparently be released in March of 2000. The V4 will be single processor, but the V5 will have both a commercial and professional version, respectively supporting up to 4 and up to 32 VSA-100 processors, and up to 128 and 2GB of RAM each. The release for the V4 and V5 is rolled in with the VSA-100 talks - definitely worth checking out.

Shauna writes "Ars Technica has an informative article on the differences and similarities between Sun's new MAJC and Intel's IA-64 plans on the design-level. I think it shows in a round-about way that MAJC is going places while Intel sleeps. " The article is definitely designed for the chip fetishists in the audience.

levendis wrote to us about Ars Technica, who is currently running a feature piece about Intel's FUD-like attempts to bash down the Athlon. The chip-wars have gotten pretty bloody this time around, with all of the hype behind Coppermine and the Athlon - what do you folks think about all of this?

levendis wrote to us about Ars Technica, who is currently running a feature piece about Intel's FUD-like attempts to bash down the Athlon. The chip-wars have gotten pretty bloody this time around, with all of the hype behind Coppermine and the Athlon - what do you folks think about all of this?

S. Casey writes "Ars Technica has a very cool article up that takes on the typical RISC versus CISC debate. The author argues that today's microprocessors aren't RISC or CISC, really, and covers the historical/technical reasons why these two distinctions aren't particularly useful anymore. It's pretty convincing (to me). " Essentially, the author argues that it is difficult, if not impossible, to have the normal debate because both chipsets have evolved features that used to be found in the other chipset.

Hal-9001 writes "I saw this link over at Ars Technica; apparently, the G4 has a bug that keeps it from running at 500 MHz or above. The story is over at MacWeek. "

Since the NDA was lifted early this morning, several sites have released reviews of AMD's new Athlon chip (coming in 500, 550, 600, and 650MHz versions). The first was Bill Henning's CPUReview site. He reviewed the Athlon 600 and has several nice things to say about it. Next up is The Upgrade Center's review, and two more submitted by kimmo, the first at Ace's Hardware, and the second at AGN Hardware. Next, Magnetism submitted a link to Tom's review. Finally, as submitted by pmmay, the ZDNet review. To finish, an article at the SJ Mercury that discusses AMD's strategy for the chip market (thanks to Greg Miller for that one). Update: 08/09 12:31 by J : Thanks to The Evil Dwarf from Hell for links to the AMD Benchmark Page, which even has SPECint and SPECfp scores, and to an anonymous reader for the Ars Technica review.

Reporting live from New York's Javits, Ars Technica has gone the latest round of coverage, with info about Quake III and BeOS, amongst others , including Simcity 3000 on Be, along with the sorry state of the Linux "pavilion". That's one of those down sides - the Linux shows themselves are usually pretty rocking, but outside of that turf, the showcasing is pretty lacking - preaching to the choir situation.

rippy writes "It seems like AMD is following in Intel's footsteps and giving a goofy name to their processors. Insted of K7, the name is now changed to "Athlon". I saw it on Ars. " I'm still waiting for chips to have model years just like Operating Systems (cough)

moonboy writes "I saw this over at Ars Technica. This dude submerged his entire motherboard in mineral oil. As if that weren't enough, he then and got a 5,000 BTU (window?) unit and circulates the oil through the coils to keep it all cool." Don't expect Gateway to be offering these any time soon... I suspect it will a bit more than just void your warranty. It'll probably make motherboard engineers come to your home under cover of darkness carrying loaded shotguns :)

Ryandav writes "An excellent article for discussion has been put up on ars technica reguarding how we look at code, whether or not code is a form of speech, and therefore protected under those same laws. " Thats the debate isn't it? Upon it hangs encryption law, software patents, and much more.

D-Fly writes "MSNBC is running an article, quoting a lot of anonymous PC manufacturing executives, about how Intel uses its "Intel Inside" branding campaign to gouge PC manufacturers. Apparently everyone's favorite IC monopolist adds about 6 percent to the price it charges for chips, then gives the money back to companies for advertising purposes. If they screw up--ie the Intel logo is too small, they use a single non-Intel processor in the machine, Intel keeps the money Saw it on Ars "

Matt writes "Much hype has followed the release of latest version of SuSE (6.0), and judging by the review over at Ars Technica of this hot distribution the hype is well justified. While packing a big bang, SuSE incorporates tools like YaST, SaX, KDE, StarOffice 5.0, and so forth to get users of any experience level up on their feet and running productively. As a long time user of RedHat I find SuSE to be a worthy competitor, as well as a strong indication that distributions as a whole are continuing to do positive things to stimulate the growth of the desktop OS user base for Linux. Definitely a worthy read, check it out!" CowboyNeal swears by SuSE. I'm itching for a new Debian CD.

Matt writes "Much hype has followed the release of latest version of SuSE (6.0), and judging by the review over at Ars Technica of this hot distribution the hype is well justified. While packing a big bang, SuSE incorporates tools like YaST, SaX, KDE, StarOffice 5.0, and so forth to get users of any experience level up on their feet and running productively. As a long time user of RedHat I find SuSE to be a worthy competitor, as well as a strong indication that distributions as a whole are continuing to do positive things to stimulate the growth of the desktop OS user base for Linux. Definitely a worthy read, check it out!" CowboyNeal swears by SuSE. I'm itching for a new Debian CD.

Matt writes "Much hype has followed the release of latest version of SuSE (6.0), and judging by the review over at Ars Technica of this hot distribution the hype is well justified. While packing a big bang, SuSE incorporates tools like YaST, SaX, KDE, StarOffice 5.0, and so forth to get users of any experience level up on their feet and running productively. As a long time user of RedHat I find SuSE to be a worthy competitor, as well as a strong indication that distributions as a whole are continuing to do positive things to stimulate the growth of the desktop OS user base for Linux. Definitely a worthy read, check it out!" CowboyNeal swears by SuSE. I'm itching for a new Debian CD.