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Stories and comments across the archive that link to sharkyextreme.com.

Comments · 196

  1. Looks like the real deal! by stevarooski · · Score: 2 · on GeForce4 Ti 4200 Preview
    Seems that Nvidia's counter to ATI's cheap 128mb Radeon card went over rather well with reviewers.

    If you want some more information, here's some good reviews/articles I saw today during my daily browsing:

    Compare these numbers against Nvidia's previous attempt at the budget arena, the MX 440 here. A much needed improvement!
  2. PR Rating Stupidity by Syllepsis · · Score: 5, Informative · on Intel Funds AMD-bashing Report

    When AMD released the Athlon XP 1800+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1800+ not only beat the P4 1800 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.

    When AMD released the Athlon XP 1900+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1900+ not only beat the P4 1900 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.

    When Intel released the Northwood 2000 and 2200 MHz P4s and AMD released the XP 2000+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications the XP 2000+ beat the P4 2.0A but could not quite beat the P4 2.2A

    Then when AMD released the XP 2100+, many reviewers concluded that it tied or beat the P4 2.2A, although I really think that the 2.2A has the edge.

    Based on this data, what really happened, what is really happening, and what disinterested parties seem to believe, I would conclude that the AMD PR Rating system provides a very nice comparison of Athlon performance relative to P4 performance at the clockspeed of the PR rating. Even though AMD says the rating is to compare the Athlon XP to other AMD products, it is incredible how well it scales athlon performance to the P4 performance at the clockspeed of the rating.

    Therefore, if I wished to buy a machine, as a general purpose user, I think the best way to compare prices would be to match the AMD PR Rating against the Intel P4 clockspeed.

    OTOH, comparing raw clockspeeds would give a false conclusion that an Athlon XP 2000+ would not outperform a P4 1.7 GHz. Sure, this is true if you plan on using Newtek Lightwave (where all P4s beat all Athlons), but for most tasks you would be horribly in error.

    It would seem fairly obvious, that for this point in time, and with the current set of processors available, for the user who uses a variety of applications, the consumer would be better informed by using the AMD rating system than by just about any other comparison (other than carefully studying a battery of 30 different benchmarks)

    However, there has been a flurry of criticism of the PR rating.

    As much as I hate to cheerlead corporations, I just have to yell...

    FUD!

    ...and anyone who disagrees with me is invited to study any of the following review sites:

    Tom's Hardware
    Anandtech
    XBitLabs
    Sharky Extreme
    Lost Circuits

    etc... etc... etc...

  3. Re:Quantity vs Quality -- RAMBUS now affordable by cheezehead · · Score: 2 · on Is Rambus Destined to Return?

    In other words, isn't the amount of memory I have more important than how fast it is?

    I think this is probably true.

    However, as you point out, the price difference between RAMBUS and SDRAM is now very small. According to Sharky Extreme the difference between 512 MB of SDRAM and RDRAM is about $80, and DDR RAM (PC2100) is actually more expensive than RDRAM! So if you plan to put 2GB in your machine, SDRAM is appreciably cheaper, but if you plan to do that, you probably plan on some serious hardware as well, so you'll probably spend $3000+ (probably coulnd't get a motherboard that would take 2GB SDRAM anyway...).

    My point is that both SDRAM, DDR RAM and RDRAM have come down in price dramatically in the past year (although memory prices seem to be on the rise again). The price difference is very small when compared to the total price of the machine, so why bother? I have nothing against DDR RAM, but it'll have to win on technical merit nowadays.

    As an example, I had to specify and buy a PC for my job some weeks ago. Now, this PC will be running a very specialized application, and nothing else. No CD burning, MPEG/MP3 encoding, no image processing, and no games. I like a cool machine as much as the next guy, but I simply could not justify putting more than 512 MB in this machine. Same for the hard drive, 40GB should be more than enough. A decent monitor was a requirement however. So why save $80 on memory when we're spending $700+ on the monitor alone?

    Summarizing: if 512 MB is enough for you, why bother? If it isn't enough, you'll likely spend a lot of dough anyway, so again, why bother?

  4. Beware of AnandTech! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait · on Integrated Water-Cooled Case
    Even though Tom is a NAZI, I forsee that his site's traffic will double in the coming months. In the wake of 9/11, many hardware enthusiasts are reluctant to visit AnandTech, run by Terror-Arab "Anand the Shrimpy." Did you know that AnandTech's advertisement revenue funded the attack on the World Trade Center? Shun terrorist hardware sites. Visit American sites or visit German sites, but don't give the Arab Enemy the benefit of your pageviews.

    Thank you.

  5. Not to sound like a nay-sayer... by Rev.LoveJoy · · Score: 5, Informative · on AMD To Close Plants, Lay off 2300, Lose Gateway
    But with the power glut that's become the norm of a 'household' PC and the general economic slow down of late, news like this strikes me as making sense...

    However, the line about Intel "aggressively pricing" their P4's is just so much CNN tripe. A quick look at Sharkey's Extreme Weekly CPU prices shows this to be BS.

    (hint: top of the line AMD - 100 bucks, Intel -- 500 bucks)

    - Cheers
    - RLJ

  6. Re:How will this affect the Nintendo GameCube? by Osty · · Score: 1 · on XBox Delayed

    it'll set you back as much as a PC that has the same features

    Uh ... what? Last I checked, the cheapest price on a GeForce 3 was $260 (check Pricewatch). That leaves you a total of roughly $40 to spend on the rest of your PC for it to have the same features as an XBox. For argument's sake, let's just do a bit of a price comparison:

    • Motherboard - $45 for a P3, $44 for an Athlon (Pricewatch)
    • 1GHz P3 - $164 (see Sharky Extreme's Weekly CPU price list). Alternatively, an athlon 1GHz -- $74. Also, note that I'm using a higher speed CPU here, because with a PC you don't get the benefit of allowing the programmers to write directly to the hardware, so you need a bit more raw speed to compensate.
    • Sound Card - $150 Hercules Game Theater XP (or, you could go ~$100 for an SB Live!). Obviously, since nVidia designed the audio chipset for the XBox, you won't be able to get the exact same audio hardware (well, maybe not until nForce-based motherboards are released).
    • Video - $260 (the aforementioned GeForce 3). No other video card is worth mentioning, if you're strict about wanting near-XBox-level performance.
    • Gamepad - $35 Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad Pro (about as close as you'll get to an XBox game pad)
    • Hard Drive - $75 40GB hard drive (because you have to install an OS, install games, keep saved games, and so on) (again, from Pricewatch)
    • DVD-ROM - $27 10X drive (Pricewatch)
    • Necessary accessories (mouse, keyboard) - $4 (if you're really cheap -- again, Pricewatch)
    • Case - $11 generic case (Pricewatch)
    • Memory - $30 (price for PC133 512MB, since more memory is always better when developers don't have the ability to micromanage the memory how they please). (Pricewatch)

    That comes to a total of $801 (before S/H and tax) for a P3 system, or $710 for an AMD system. Both of those prices are more than twice the price of an XBox. Also note that I didn't take into account any software costs (I don't know what the expected OEM cost for XP Home is).

    Yes, I do realize that you can buy a PC for much less than that, but it's not going to be the "equivalent" of an XBox, either.

  7. Another few [fairly interesting!] reviews. . . by stevarooski · · Score: 3, Informative · on Pentium IV Hits 2 Ghz

    Didn't see these posted, so check these out:

    SharkyExtreme, and pcmag.com.

    Naturally, those seeking the zdnet advertising-big money-enhanced (tm) view should choose the latter, while those seeking that of an enthusiast should check out Sharky's. ;o)

    -S

  8. 2 more articles by nilstar · · Score: 1 · on Pentium IV Hits 2 Ghz

    Here is the article from tomshardware.com entitled Intel beats AMD to 2GHz And here is another from sharky extreme.

  9. Re:Intel is competing against AMD rather than itse by ergo98 · · Score: 1 · on Tom's Looks At The New P-III

    At the same time though AMD generally gets more done per cycle than Intel, rending the clockspeed somewhat irrelevant. Indeed Intel itself gets more done per clock cycle with the P3 than the P4 gets.

    While there are exceptions (I think primarily floating point), in the real world the AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz is the fastest mainstream processor you can buy today. While the P4 1.7Ghz sounds impressive (especially when you consider that the ALU is running at 3.4Ghz...I'm surprized Intel doesn't call the processor a 3.4Ghz), and it runs Quake really well if your video card isn't the bottleneck (which it is at reasonable resolutions), for most uses the AMD is actually faster.

  10. My quiet case project : it's an answer ... sort of by Prozzaks · · Score: 1 · on Building Quieter Computers

    Well, it seem these days, most of the power user just care to get something like 200fps in Quake III. Why ? Beat's me ! I'm not on a quest to get the ultimate frame rate, I just want my box to be quiet as possibly can be.

    To help you understand my take on the subject, here is the background :
    My PC has the following components :

    • A OEM case
    • A 235W OEM power supply
    • ASUS P3B-F
    • Intel Pentium II rated 400Mhz @ 400Mhz
    • A cheap OEM SECC2 Heat-Sink made of aluminum
    • A 128MB CAS2 no-name DIMM
    • Two 32MB CAS3 Samsung DIMM slowing down my memory timing, but preventing the appearance of the all mighty evil SwaP
    • A ATI All-In-Wonder Rage128 16MB
    • A Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
    • A Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC
    • My beloved USR 56Kbps ISA Real Modem. Sorry but to me a component that uses CPU power to do it's processing instead of taking the load off is not worthy of being in my computer. Not to mention the M$ Win part...
    • A Creative 48x CD-ROM drive. It's the loudest damned thing in my computer when it's spinning
    • A Quantum Fireball AS PLUS 40GB (7200RPM) in a removable tray
    • A Quantum Fireball CX1 10GB (5400RPM) mounted inside the case
    • Of course the stupid old 1.44 MB floppy drive only used for booting Tomsbrt in case of emergency

    Soon to be :

    • A Adaptec 2940UW
    • A Diamond Monster 3D II for Glide games

    It turn out that the Quantum Fireball AS makes less noise than the Quantum Fireball CX1. I still have to figure it out ...

    I use my PC for :

    • Running Linux and learning as much as time allows me (Jez I had so much time when I was a student... Think of all the time I wasted in High-School running the evil W monster)
    • Doing some gaming i.e. : Diablo II, Unreal, UT, Undying (Although that thing is going to cost me a new box)
    • Spending numerous nights filling my brain @ Slashdot, Tomshardware, Anandtech, Arstechnica, StorageReview, Developper.Intel.com, and most importantly, hounding the web for all the case manufacturers and their take at a quiet box.

    As I'm writing this post, that is probably going to be the base documentation for my Silent Case Project, you're guessing that my sleepless night of browsing have not yielded the desired result.

    I've check out many options such as water cooling, moving the PC to the closet, returning to the forest where a PC is pretty far from your everyday quest for survival. None of them suits me.

    The objective of my project is to build a case that meets the following criteria :

    • A silent as possible
    • Accessible
    • Provides sufficient ventilation to maintain all the components running within thermal specs
    • Be light enough to be easily transportable (Let's not forget the Lan parties ;-)

    To attain those goals I have to :

    • Read all I can about noise, sound, aerodynamics, PC specs
    • Find suitable materials : A case is not just a protection against unwanted fingers and dust ; it must provide EMI shielding, proper grounding, resist to impacts, and fit into my conception of the king of object you want in your bedroom (If you were thinking about plywood and a box of rusted leftover nails, forget it)
    • Find the tools or the companies or individuals with the means to work the materials I choose to build the casing

    For the sound isolation I was thinking about some kind of foam. Mineral lint would be affective but that takes too much space and it's not the kind of thing I want beside my bed. Form the casing itself, metal is almost inevitable if you want EMI shielding and grounding. And as for you who wonder why I have not mentioned water cooling yet, the greatest source of noise is not my CPU cooler and your just moving the problem out of the case (Nice ; you have water heating up but unless your reservoir is like a bathtub or something you will have to transfer the heat for the water to the air).

    That about as far as I am. If you have any idea that might help me, please fell free to send me some bits forming ASCII characters at Prozzaks@operamail.com

    To finish up, here is a list of thing that might help people wanting to achieve similar goals :

  11. Re:2D video: the best? by The_Messenger · · Score: 1 · on Matrox G550 Killer Video Conferencing Featureset?
    I'd at least check out the reviews before you count it out, maybe other people were more impressed.
    Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the reviews focus almost soley on the 3D performance. I'd like to find a hardware review site written by graphic design and Mac guys.

    A few years ago I was swapping hardware between an NT and a FreeBSD box, and I that was when I saw a first-hand comparison of the TNT2 and Xpert 98. Now in terms of 3D performance, the Xpert 98 can't touch the TNT2, but when I swapped cards and put the TNT2 in the FreeBSD box, I had to turn the monitor brightness up a whole lot to see the screen clearly. Conversely, I had to turn the brightness down on the NT box to keep from blinding myself. The TNT2 was dark and mushy on the desktop. Now that I have the GeForce, I wish I still had the Xpert98 for comparison.

    --

  12. Re:Q3A a poor benchmark for GF3 by djocyko · · Score: 1 · on GeForce3 and Linux

    Yes. Well.. not 200, but how about 60fps at max settings with 4X AA at 1024? Yeh, thats what I thought.

  13. Misrepresentation of Hypertransport by zealot · · Score: 1 · on When The PCI Bus Departs

    It seems many people do not understand what the AMD Hypertransport technology does. It is a high speed interconnect, meant to be used to hook different high speed, high bandwidth circuits or networks together. For example, look at this diagram of the Intel 820 chipset. The processor talks to the MCH (memory control hub), which itself talks to memory, graphics, and the ICH (I/O control hub). The ICH talks to all the various I/O devices. Hypertransport would not necessarily, and mostly not likely, try to replace PCI, but lets the motherboard designers use it to connect the MCH and ICH (or the equivalent on AMD and VIA chipsets), or connect the PCI bus to the ICH or MCH.

    From an interview here with an AMD representative:

    Arcadian asks: What are AMD's plans for LDT? Recently, there have been numerous press releases on AMD's success in getting various designers and developers to commit to LDT based designs in the next couple years. I want to know which applications AMD sees LDT competing in? In other words, what are some products where AMD sees LDT being implemented? Does AMD figure that LDT can compete as an alternative to the following technologies: I/O connections, chipset bridge communications, multiprocessor communications, or external communications?

    AMD: Well, by the time you read this you should have heard about all of the great things we have been doing over the past year related to our HyperTransport technology (what was previously codenamed LDT). Our HyperTransport technology is not meant to replace I/O connections, or be a competitor with any external communications (PCI/PCI-X, Infiniband, etc). Essentially, HyperTransport can be used to increase internal chip-to-chip communications within a system, and is up to 20 times faster than other technologies currently available. HyperTransport technology is ideal for not only chipset bridge communications, multiprocessor communications, but also for chip-to-chip communications within telecom and networking devices that require large amounts of internal bandwidth like Internet routers.

    In conclusion, Hypertransport is not an I/O standard for the end user, it's for board designers. As a consumer, it won't matter to you whether a board you buy has it or not, as it will be invisible to you.

  14. well... by sllort · · Score: 2 · on The Myriad Ways of Wiring Your Home?

    Sharky's Home LAN Guide
    Gamecenter's "Build a Home LAN"
    "Configuring an Internet Firewall and Home LAN With Linux"
    The CNET home LAN guide (if you're not a /. reader)
    The Home LAN Project
    The do-it-yourself under 50 bucks home LAN guide

    whew. um... anyone got something that ain't covered already?

  15. Not to mention the RDRAM cost by Baki · · Score: 1 · on Pentium IV As A Budget Processor
    OK you get 128MB with a P4 almost for free, but who sticks with 128MB these days. I'd say you need at least 512MB to use such a CPU.

    Add 512MB of PC800 RDRAM at 2*$280, versus PC2100 DDR-RAM at 2*$206, and the price difference gets $150 bigger (according to the weekly pricelist on sharkyextreme).

  16. Sharky helps you.. by PovRayMan · · Score: 1 · on Full Powered, Compact, Gaming Rigs?

    Here are some urls for you if you wanna build a nice gaming box...

    The urls explain themselves sorta.

    These two are buyers guides for computers...

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/value_game_p c

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/high_game_pc

    Now I suggest you look at these next ones for video cards since 3d cards are very essential to gamers. My card is a Hercules 3d Prophet2 GeForce2 GTS 64mb. If you plan on getting an NVdia card I suggeset getting any of the Hercules 3d Prophet Series. They are the best for gaming in my opinion. If you want TV out/in, dvd playback, and some decent 3d, you can go with the ATI Radeon, but I can't endorse it since I've never used it, I've only heard other people's stories.

    Anyways here are the urls.

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/val ue_3dcard_roundup_10-00/

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/sup er_he_video_shootout_10-00/

    That's about it...

    Disclaimer: I don't feel like running a spell check or grammer check on myself. I'll leave it up to the Anonymous Cowards to point out my mistakes or broken urls or whatever.

    -PovRayMan

    ----------

  17. Sharky helps you.. by PovRayMan · · Score: 1 · on Full Powered, Compact, Gaming Rigs?

    Here are some urls for you if you wanna build a nice gaming box...

    The urls explain themselves sorta.

    These two are buyers guides for computers...

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/value_game_p c

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/high_game_pc

    Now I suggest you look at these next ones for video cards since 3d cards are very essential to gamers. My card is a Hercules 3d Prophet2 GeForce2 GTS 64mb. If you plan on getting an NVdia card I suggeset getting any of the Hercules 3d Prophet Series. They are the best for gaming in my opinion. If you want TV out/in, dvd playback, and some decent 3d, you can go with the ATI Radeon, but I can't endorse it since I've never used it, I've only heard other people's stories.

    Anyways here are the urls.

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/val ue_3dcard_roundup_10-00/

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/sup er_he_video_shootout_10-00/

    That's about it...

    Disclaimer: I don't feel like running a spell check or grammer check on myself. I'll leave it up to the Anonymous Cowards to point out my mistakes or broken urls or whatever.

    -PovRayMan

    ----------

  18. Sharky helps you.. by PovRayMan · · Score: 1 · on Full Powered, Compact, Gaming Rigs?

    Here are some urls for you if you wanna build a nice gaming box...

    The urls explain themselves sorta.

    These two are buyers guides for computers...

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/value_game_p c

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/high_game_pc

    Now I suggest you look at these next ones for video cards since 3d cards are very essential to gamers. My card is a Hercules 3d Prophet2 GeForce2 GTS 64mb. If you plan on getting an NVdia card I suggeset getting any of the Hercules 3d Prophet Series. They are the best for gaming in my opinion. If you want TV out/in, dvd playback, and some decent 3d, you can go with the ATI Radeon, but I can't endorse it since I've never used it, I've only heard other people's stories.

    Anyways here are the urls.

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/val ue_3dcard_roundup_10-00/

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/sup er_he_video_shootout_10-00/

    That's about it...

    Disclaimer: I don't feel like running a spell check or grammer check on myself. I'll leave it up to the Anonymous Cowards to point out my mistakes or broken urls or whatever.

    -PovRayMan

    ----------

  19. Sharky helps you.. by PovRayMan · · Score: 1 · on Full Powered, Compact, Gaming Rigs?

    Here are some urls for you if you wanna build a nice gaming box...

    The urls explain themselves sorta.

    These two are buyers guides for computers...

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/value_game_p c

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/theguide/high_game_pc

    Now I suggest you look at these next ones for video cards since 3d cards are very essential to gamers. My card is a Hercules 3d Prophet2 GeForce2 GTS 64mb. If you plan on getting an NVdia card I suggeset getting any of the Hercules 3d Prophet Series. They are the best for gaming in my opinion. If you want TV out/in, dvd playback, and some decent 3d, you can go with the ATI Radeon, but I can't endorse it since I've never used it, I've only heard other people's stories.

    Anyways here are the urls.

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/val ue_3dcard_roundup_10-00/

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/sup er_he_video_shootout_10-00/

    That's about it...

    Disclaimer: I don't feel like running a spell check or grammer check on myself. I'll leave it up to the Anonymous Cowards to point out my mistakes or broken urls or whatever.

    -PovRayMan

    ----------

  20. Plagiarism? by RedWizzard · · Score: 3 · on AMD Challenges P4 With 1.33Ghz
    Why are those two articles using the same graphs?

    Take a look at this page from the Hardware Central article by Vince Freeman. In particular check out this graph (which is curiously not hosted on the Hardware Central website).

    Now look at the Sharky article by Chris Angelini and Ben Hirsch. Compare their graph.

    The second pages of both articles are also very similar in structure, both discussing (in the same order) the fact that it's the same core, the cache, the bus, and then the chipsets. The comments are different though. Are these two sites getting the same person to do the benchmarking?

  21. Plagiarism? by RedWizzard · · Score: 3 · on AMD Challenges P4 With 1.33Ghz
    Why are those two articles using the same graphs?

    Take a look at this page from the Hardware Central article by Vince Freeman. In particular check out this graph (which is curiously not hosted on the Hardware Central website).

    Now look at the Sharky article by Chris Angelini and Ben Hirsch. Compare their graph.

    The second pages of both articles are also very similar in structure, both discussing (in the same order) the fact that it's the same core, the cache, the bus, and then the chipsets. The comments are different though. Are these two sites getting the same person to do the benchmarking?

  22. The Other Big Reviews by pepermil · · Score: 4 · on More on the GeForce 3

    In case anyone wants a quick link to the other big reviews...
    Sharky Extreme: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/nvi dia_geforce3_preview/
    AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1426
    HardOCP: http://www.hardocp.com/articles/nvidia_stuff/gf3_t ech/i
    -pepermil

  23. Mac vs. Linux = Apples vs. Oranges by selkirk · · Score: 2 · on OS X on x86?

    Linux and the Mac can co-exist peacefully because they serve different markets.
    Its all about the apps.
    Apple should NOT port OS X to x86. Instead, they should work on methods for gracefully running windows apps under OS X. One way would be to come up with a classic environment for windows apps using emulation. Another would be to create a carbon type environment for cocoa apps that let them run under windows. Then developers could target either machine. Windows still has the most apps. People buy machines to run apps. [ Maybe this afternoon, Apple will announce they are buying Virtual PC :) ]
    Its all about the apps
    Linux on the desktop? Please. Everytime I sign into KDE on my Suse box, I giggle at those ugly optical illusion checkboxes. The day after Mac OS X is released it will be the unix variant with the largest installed base of desktop machines. The commercial base for desktop software for the mac is much larger than for linux. Soon after, I predict you will you be able to run the linux GUI apps under OS X, that is if you want to. If windows thrashes OS X in the desktop market because of its wealth of apps, OS X should in turn thrash linux.
    Its about the hardware, too If you want to see what pc hardware will look like in six months, look at the mac today. Apple's hardware is elegent and well designed and you pay a premium for it. Under no circumstances should they abandon this. It's the core market position of the company. That leaves a whole bunch of PCs that can't run OS X. Linux will always have an opportunity to be the secondary desktop OS on those multiboot windows machines. (Find me a primary boot of linux that doesn't also serve web pages or some other server task.) OS X will probably decimate the PPC based linuxes, and have virtualy no effect on the x86 linuxes. Windows will continue to dominate linux on the desktop x86 boxes.
    Its all about the apps
    Today, Linux towers over the mac in the server space because of its killer internet apps. People don't use linux to run linux on their server, people run linux so that they can run apache on their server. The arcane interface is nullified, because people are interacting with apache instead. The configuration nightmares are reduced because you do it once and forget about it. I think this is where Apple is a real sleeper. OS X can run all of the linux killer apps because none of them require a GUI. Once they make it so that grandma can administer unix (OS X) on her iMac, OS X will have some significant advantages over linux in the server space. That is not to say that they will even put a dent in linux's server market, but I think they will make surprising inroads.
    Summary
    So, to sum it up. Linux and the Mac are in different markets. The Mac is a high end product for the desktop market. Linux is a low end product for the server market. Apple should bring linux and windows apps to them instead of bringing their apps to windows and linux. No Mac OX on x86.

  24. OS X doesn't have to run on every x86 box by call+-151 · · Score: 1 · on OS X on x86?
    As has been pointed out, Apple makes money (when they do make money) on hardware. Releasing OS X to run on cheap hardware sold by other people would kill off their biggest revenue stream quickly, and would seem like a suicidal move from the stockholder perspective (but would be great for users, so it is nice to wish for.)

    But OS X on x86 doesn't have to be like a Windows release that is expected to run on every x86 box. It seems like if Apple is going to port OS X to x86, they would have their own boxes, their own hardware, and could specify a limited set of premium hardware (and charge more for it) to keep themselves from sinking their revenue stream. In other words, they could decide that they wanted to move processors without moving to the the entire x86 platform. These days, Athlons are such a good price/perf they might think about it more than usual, but it still seems unlikely.

    If they were to move to the Athlon, I don't seem them supporting all motherboards, (maybe only their own?) all legacy devices, and so on. What would be the incentive? Why would they do extra work so that customers don't need to buy something new, preferably from Apple? Also remember that the idea of a reasonably high "minimum specification" would sit well with a company that has been putting an emphasis on quality components all the way through. One reason that it is hard to compare prices Mac vs. PC is that you can't get a Mac without Ethernet, you can't get a general-purpose desktop Mac without the best, easiest-to-open case there is, you can't get a Mac with crappy video (remember those pages about how even the very first iMacs could be dismantled and 21" displays hung off of them?) , and so on. Those things add up.

    By the way, there was an little blurb on sharkyextreme (which usually ignores Mac stuff) the other day about how "Shocking as it may sound, many things we take for granted in today's PC, ... either started at or was proven successful at Apple Computer." Well, it doesn't sound shocking to all of us...

  25. Nvidia Has Softer 2D, Better 3D Only at 16/high by rjsjr · · Score: 2 · on Suggested Graphics Cards For The Macintosh?

    Note that the Nvidia GeForce cards tend to have noticably softer 2D images (IMO, and others) than the ATI cards (or Matrox, for that matter), which is likey to be a big negative for designers. Their higher end cards also lack DVI-I connectors for flat panel use (these are available on the MX cards).

    Also, the Nvidia cards only have significantly better 3D performance than the Radeons when used in 16 bit high resolution modes (its mostly comparable with a similar GeForce in 32 bit tests, until you get to high resolutions and compare against a GeForce 2 Ultra). Those tests were done on a PC comparing with a GeForce 2 GTS, which is faster than the GeForce 2 MX that Nvidia is releasing for Macs.

    I think the best all around performance you'll find on the Mac right now is from the Radeon Mac Edition (which is 32MB DDR to compare in the above charts). It has better 2D performance (IMO, its a subjective thing but many other people have noticed and commented on the difference).

    Regards, RJS

  26. Nvidia Has Softer 2D, Better 3D Only at 16/high by rjsjr · · Score: 2 · on Suggested Graphics Cards For The Macintosh?

    Note that the Nvidia GeForce cards tend to have noticably softer 2D images (IMO, and others) than the ATI cards (or Matrox, for that matter), which is likey to be a big negative for designers. Their higher end cards also lack DVI-I connectors for flat panel use (these are available on the MX cards).

    Also, the Nvidia cards only have significantly better 3D performance than the Radeons when used in 16 bit high resolution modes (its mostly comparable with a similar GeForce in 32 bit tests, until you get to high resolutions and compare against a GeForce 2 Ultra). Those tests were done on a PC comparing with a GeForce 2 GTS, which is faster than the GeForce 2 MX that Nvidia is releasing for Macs.

    I think the best all around performance you'll find on the Mac right now is from the Radeon Mac Edition (which is 32MB DDR to compare in the above charts). It has better 2D performance (IMO, its a subjective thing but many other people have noticed and commented on the difference).

    Regards, RJS

  27. If the road maps hold out, Intel is screwed. by be-fan · · Score: 2 · on The Pentium IV Dissected

    People keep saying that the P4 is a "different kind of beast" that is designed for pure clock speed. They argue that the P4 will attain such a high clock-speed, the inefficient architecture will not matter. The problem is, that its not certain whether the P4's clock advantage will hold. According to Intel's road map, they should have a 2GHz P4 out by the end of 2001. According to AMD's, the Athlon should be at 1.7 GHz by then. Quote from this Sharky Extreme article

    "AMD is hoping that the re-worked core will bring the Athlon to at least 1.7GHz by the second half of 2001. By this time the 1.2GHz Athlon CPU on 266MHz front side bus will occupy the lowest rung on AMD's performance ladder. Once the Palomino runs out of headroom, the next horse will escape from the barn."

    If the road-maps of both companies can be followed, then Intel has a serious mess on its hands.

  28. Re:My Big Concern by Osty · · Score: 1 · on 3dfx/Gigapixel: Where Did it Go Wrong?

    The Charisma (what ATI call their design) engine should be faster than NVidia's, as they compress things in hardware. As all tests indicate, however, that this is not the case due to poor drivers.

    Poor drivers aren't the only reason the Radeon isn't faster than nVidia's offerings. The GeForce line (especially the GeForce 2 GTS and GeForce 2 GTS Ultra) are extreme powerhouses. They have power down to the raw metal. Radeon's speed comes from fancy bit twiddling which may or may not (but usually does) make a difference in speed. Sharky Extreme has a good review of the Radeon, comparing it against the GeForce 2 standard. The interesting thing to note is that when they turned off all the fancy performance-enhancing stuff (ie, ran metal to metal against a GeForce 2), the Radeon suffered horribly. Sure, drivers can fix this to a certain extent, and ATI does have a bad reputation for their drivers, but without the hardware backing it, there's only so much fancy software-based performance enhancement that can be done.

  29. Re:Overclock? Really? by Strog · · Score: 1 · on ASUS P4 Motherboard Bests Intel, Says Sharky
    Didn't you even read the article? I'd have pasted directly from it if I didn't think I would be accused of being a karma whore. Obviously you have to increase the bus, that's whay I said they bumped the FSB(Front Side Bus). I know a lot of people have over-clocked Rambus on 820 and 840 chipsets but I'm talking about Sharky's experience on the pair of 850 chipset motherboards in his article.

    The article you supposedly read and an excerpt from it. The P4T charged Quake III up to 239.4fps- truly way too fast for anyone. The multiplier was set to 16x and the FSB only worked set up to 105MHz with a 4x multiplier for the RDRAM (420Mhz RDRAM). That was where it knocked itself out. We had to use the 3x multiplier for the RDRAM and thus it wasn't working as well as it could (wasn't quad-pumped).

    P.S. I'll just say it for you in case you needed feeding. "YHBT"

  30. Re:what about comparison this with other systems ? by Vahman · · Score: 1 · on ASUS P4 Motherboard Bests Intel, Says Sharky
    There have been passed reviews on Sharky Extreme, comparing an Athlon 1.2Ghz machine against the P4. In this article, they were focussing on comparing the Intel reference board's performance against that of Asus.

    If you would like to see the P4 compared against the Athlon, check this site.

  31. Why 10 - 15% Memory error rates? by teridon · · Score: 1 · on ASUS P4 Motherboard Bests Intel, Says Sharky

    This page shows that both Intel and AMD boards have 10-15% memory error rates. This seems pretty high to me -- is this typical? Why?

  32. Re:what about comparison this with other systems ? by cthugha · · Score: 2 · on ASUS P4 Motherboard Bests Intel, Says Sharky

    The article does make reference to an Athlon on a 760 board with DDR RAM at the bottom of this section, and makes note of the fact that the Athlon pretty well matches performance for a better price. I don't think that the authors are biased, maybe they thought the article was encrusted with enough numbers, and trusted readers who wanted to compare to check the relevant review.

  33. Sharky Extreme article by adpowers · · Score: 1 · on Intel Creates 30-Nanometer Transistors

    Sharkey Extreme also has an article about this located here.

  34. Iridium's memory cap.. by selectspec · · Score: 2 · on IBM Itanium Based Systems and Linux
    The first generation of Itanium systems, using the 460GX chipset, will be expandable with up to 64GB of memory. Generations beyond that will be able to take more memory. Higher end Itanium systems designed by the likes of SGI, IBM and HP should eventually be able to take far more than 64GB. While it may be hard to imagine 4GB or even 64GB of memory being a bottleneck to performance, when you consider SGI has mentioned plans to eventually build machines using 512 Itanium processors accessing more than a terabyte of data in main memory, 64GB of memory, let alone 4GB, begins to look rather small

    from Sharky Extreme Article

  35. Tiling? by be-fan · · Score: 3 · on Nvidia's NV20

    Wow, a real non-gamer crowd! Doesn't anybody remember the PowerVR Series chips? The reason NV20 will be 7x faster for complex models and only 2x faster for simple ones is that it will use tiling (my hypothesis only.) In a tiling-based architecture, the 3D renderer first sorts all the geometry, and then splits it up into small tiles. The tiles are then loaded into small on chip buffers and rendered. This has several advantages:

    A) It doesn't over-render. If geometry isn't going to be seen, it doesn't get rendered. Normally, cards have to render the pixel, and then discard it if the Zbuffer test fails. With tiling, there is no Zbuffer and pixels get discarded before they're rendered.

    B) The sorting allows transparency to be handled very easily since geometry doesn't have to be presorted by the game engine.

    C) It allows a hideous number of texture layers. The Kyro (PowerVR Series 3 chip-based) can apply up to 8 without taking a noticible speed hit. Also, it lower the bandwidth requirement significantly since the card doesn't have to access the framebuffer repeatedly.

    D) It allows incredibly complex geometry. Even though the Kyro is a 120MHz chip, it can beat a GF2Ultra by nearly double the fps in games that have high overdraw (such as Deus Ex.)

    The main problem with tiling is that standard APIs like OpenGL and D3D are designed for standard triangle accelerators. As such, the internal jiggering tiling cards have to do often outweight their performance benifets. Also, up until now, only 2bit companies have made tiling accelerators, so they haven't caught on.

    If you want to read the Kyro preview, head over to Sharky Extreme.

  36. Re:Proved, again... by vishakh · · Score: 1 · on Pentium 4 Re-evaluated, Again (Again)

    Frankly, I feel we users are at fault for this entire fiasco. It is we who drive companies such as Intel and AMD to dish out faster processors while hypocratically bashing them for doing something that was caused due to us. In this maddening race for a faster processor, Intel and AMD have slipped up so many times in the process of tryint to raise the bar one more notch. Similarly, hardware reviewers like Tom are under extreme pressure to churn out reviews and benchmark scores. Yes, it is we who are at fault for pushing the entire industry. However, it *is* true that Tom could have exercised some caution and carried out more prolonged, and exhaustive test like SharkyExtreme.

  37. Re:Summary please? by shepd · · Score: 2 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    This Page sez the winner is the ATI Radeon DDR 32MB card. Although it didn't score _that_ much higher than the others. Just a couple of points.

    3dfx, Leadtek, and the MSI card have the best price. The Radeon DDR is the highest in performance.

    The lamest cards for performance: The 3dfx and the Matrox G450.

    There are 28 pages in total, FYI.

  38. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  39. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  40. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  41. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  42. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  43. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  44. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  45. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  46. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  47. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  48. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  49. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!

  50. Easier to use links by shepd · · Score: 3 · on Cheaper Video Cards Compared

    If you're like me, the fact that Sharky Extreme doesn't use hyperlinks to their best extent is driving you insane. Although their info is always sound.

    Make you life easier and get straight to the goods you want:

    Enjoy!