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As of 2018, AMD chips are also vulnerable to Spectre1 and Spectre2, only Intel has Meltdown alongside these issues. As for now much more Spectre types have been discovered and this list keeps growing. Many Intel, AMD and ARM chips are vulnerable.

Already solved it. Bought a Ryzen 2700.

AMD List.

Complete List.

Already solved it. Bought a Ryzen 2700.

AMD List.

Complete List.

Nvidia, MediaTek and Rockchip are all listed as being vulnerable for some if not all of their ARM chips to at least Spectre, if not also Meltdown.

Of course, the drivers will probably be binary blobs.

Are there any ARM vendors actually providing full driver sources? nVidia made noises about Tegra GPU sources (outright stating that Tegra was not encumbered like GeForce was, and they were capable of such a release) but... ah yes, thank you google. Wow, nVidia released Tegra driver sources in February. Alas, all Tegra SoCs are allegedly vulnerable to both MELTDOWN and SPECTRE... all three variants, too. Whee! nVidia has put out a bulletin about these vulnerabilities, but note that there is not a whisper about Tegra anywhere in that document.

Is it presumptive to assume that their attempt to pretend Tegra doesn't exist effectively means that Tegra no longer exists? RIP my TF201.

Low cost devices that need a lightweight processor are well served by the lower end ARM core chips which don't do speculative execution and the other things that make them vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown. The Cortex-m series aren't on the list of vulnerable CPUs, for example.

Meltdown? On my smartphone? It's more likely than you think.

Some ARM CPUs are also vulnerable.

"Page 16 http://www.techarp.com/article..."

Mod up Informative, please.

The file "Computer_Forensics_for_Prosecutors_(2013)_Part_1".pdf has this gem in it.

"Users of mobile devices and cloud storage sign off on their rights to data scanning, There is no opt-out option."

This file showed up when a question of True Crypt being back doored came up, as out of the blue it mentions it is; if not set up correctly I would tend to agree.

Page 16 http://www.techarp.com/article...
article lies about Phil ZImermann but the only place I could find the file.

But because of that the privacy concerns raised are pointless. Casual use is exactly where biometrics are useful, they are very convenient but don't provide any real security.

In the USA the privacy concerns are very real.

* The Patriot Act allows for the ue of backdoors for counter-terrorist investigations.

* Vendors are legally and commercially prevented from acknowledging their backdoors.
Defense will not be able to prove their existence.

* Users of Mobile devices and cloud stroage sign off on their rights to data scanning. There is no opt-out option.

a few lines from http://www.techarp.com/article/LEA/Encryption_Backdoor/Computer_Forensics_for_Prosecutors_(2013)_Part_1.pdf

Showing that in the USA, Apple can't make the claim that biometric data is never transmitted over the network'

Digitial Forensics for Prosecutors presentation suggests Truecrypt has a backdoor.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=770&pgno=0

The entire link inadvertently explains why cloud storage shouldn't be used, and that mobile devices are your worst enemy.

The only mention of TrueCrypt is this sentence:
  "Currently available for major software - Microsoft bitlocker,
  FileVault, BestCrypt, TrueCrypt, Etc" (sic)

  It does have these gems

  "The Patriot Act allows for the use of backdoors for counter terrorist investigations"

  The use of backdoors cannot be detected or proven.

  Vendors are legally and commercially prevented from acknowledging their backdoors.
  Defense will not be able to prove their existence.

  The files can be described as "forensically obtained"

Users of mobile devices and cloud storage sign off on their rights to data scanning.
There is no opt our option.

Lots more...

PDF can be downloaded here:
  http://www.techarp.com/article/LEA/Encryption_Backdoor/Computer_Forensics_for_Prosecutors_(2013)_Part_1.pdf

Digitial Forensics for Prosecutors presentation suggests Truecrypt has a backdoor.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=770&pgno=0

The entire link inadvertently explains why cloud storage shouldn't be used, and that mobile devices are your worst enemy.

The only mention of TrueCrypt is this sentence:
  "Currently available for major software - Microsoft bitlocker,
  FileVault, BestCrypt, TrueCrypt, Etc" (sic)

  It does have these gems

  "The Patriot Act allows for the use of backdoors for counter terrorist investigations"

  The use of backdoors cannot be detected or proven.

  Vendors are legally and commercially prevented from acknowledging their backdoors.
  Defense will not be able to prove their existence.

  The files can be described as "forensically obtained"

Users of mobile devices and cloud storage sign off on their rights to data scanning.
There is no opt our option.

Lots more...

PDF can be downloaded here:
  http://www.techarp.com/article/LEA/Encryption_Backdoor/Computer_Forensics_for_Prosecutors_(2013)_Part_1.pdf

Digitial Forensics for Prosecutors presentation suggests Truecrypt has a backdoor.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=770&pgno=0

yes it called the $5 dollar wrench but only get used against you if they think your a terrorist (OR your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former room-mate is suspected terrorist.)

Digitial Forensics for Prosecutors presentation suggests Truecrypt has a backdoor.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=770&pgno=0

I thought one of the defining characteristics of a netbook was a smaller screen.

"Smaller" compared to the high-end for laptops yes, but the high end for WinXP netbooks was 12.1" (due to Windows XP Home UItra-Low Cost PC licensing limitations from Microsoft); the defining features were generally those smaller screens, network or peripheral dependence for loading software (due to lack of a built-in optical drive), and network or peripheral dependence for large data storage (due to small onboard HDD or even smaller SSD as the main mass storage unit) -- those last two features are the key defining features from which the "netbook" gets its name.

Now, netbooks feature 10.2" or smaller screens because of Microsoft Windows 7 Starter licensing arrangements, which make that version of Windows (and its low-cost license) only available for computers with certain specifications, including 10.2" or smaller screens.

You are missing the point ENTIRELY... you made no rational numbers backed points what-so-ever, just rhetoric.

The numbers are common knowledge and easy to find. If you havent looked, then you are being willfully ignorant of the performance of these processors. A stock E8400 encodes HD H.264 video using x264 at about ~27 frames per second, while the stock 2600K does so at about ~63 FPS. Here is a citation for the willfully ignorant The disparity grows when both are overclocked.

So now the question is, why are you willfully ignorant? Do you own an E8400, willing to pretend that its not a significant under-performer these days? ..essentially lying to yourself and for some strange reason willing to do so publicly here on slashdot?

x264 is a CPU-based open source video encoding library, used by many open source encoding packages. This is something real people do with their computers, and have done so for years now.

This is why I qualified my first post by users who are interested in other work based apps.

You didnt qualify it with games, which is the only place (GPU-bound) where your argument actually is accurate. For applications, the 2600K is significantly faster than the E8400. Photoshop benchmark.. 3x, Excel benchmark.. 3x, WinRAR benchmark.. 2x. It is only games where your bullshit 30% figure seems to ring true.. only games...

ATI had to do a number reset, as did Nvidia, simply because the numbers were getting too huge. It is actually pretty trivial to compare, simply look for the DirectX version. You can also search the net and find nice charts like this which will give you details like TDP which will help you make a more informed choice. With the bang for the buck firmly in the AMD camp right now that is what I use, and the easy rule there is 50>70>90, with the 50 being the budget (like my HD4650) followed by the 70 and the 90 being the hardcore chips. And of course for the ultra hardcore you have the X2, which is simply 2 GPUs.

If you are wanting a SFF gaming PC you would be MUCH better off building instead of buying. I have found unless you spend crazy money they tend to use cheaper parts in the SFF boxes and if you build it yourself you can get better choices on parts and CPU/GPU. If you don't mind the advice of an old greybeard PC builder I would probably go with a shuttle such as this one. Add a 95w Deneb quad, such as the 925 quad, along with one of the low power 5xxx GPUs, and you'd have a nice mini gaming rig. Unfortunately nearly all the "DVD player" styled boxes ATM are Atom based and Atom sucks. So unless you are simply wanting the biggest ePeen I'd look at a quad core AMD with an ATI 5xxx chip for graphics. That is what I've been building for my customers lately and they couldn't be happier with the performance or the power usage.

As for Linux and DRM, the way I always understood it is for DRM to have any kind of chance it has to have low level hooks that the user does NOT have access to, and of course since Linux allows you to get and recompile the source it would be pretty easy to have one person recompile a "DRM disabler" that feeds a false message to the DRM allowing it to run whenever. One of the other posters mentioned TiVo, but that is a "black box" where the DRM is enforced at the hardware level like a PS3 which of course doesn't work with a general purpose box like a PC. And as for steam itself being a form of DRM protection, most of the latest RAZR1911 games are actually Steam rips. So while steam has been bypassed on windows, with a much more "hacker friendly" OS like Linux I doubt it would take any time at all to bypass DRM, which is what I was getting at.

> but Windows has the multi-monitor down pat

No, it hasn't. Had been removed after XP. Server 2008 and Vista do not support Multi-Graphiccard-Multiscreen-Solutions any more.

Windows 7 does.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=637&pgno=8

Windows 7 supports heterogeneous multi-adapter configurations, whereas Windows Vista does not. In Windows 7, a system can have a heterogeneous multi-adapter configuration, with multiple GPUs that require different WDDM drivers. The WDDM model for Windows Vista required that all display adapters use the same driver.

Additional sources

The problem with that is Win2K and WinXP. As we saw with Win2K which is SUPPOSED to be supported until 2010 but can ONLY run IE6 because MSFT didn't want people using it MSFT has a nasty habit of tying a tech to a certain version of its OS even if there isn't a technical reason for it. See DX10 which hackers without the source code managed to get up and running on XP even though MSFT says it isn't possible. Who is to say if Win7 is another giant Vista style flop(and I'm betting its going to be) that Win8 won't have "IE9, now secure and standards compliant and ONLY for Win8!"

As a Windows user and a Windows repairman for 15 years I have to say when Gates quit running the day to day and left it to marketing drones like the Ballmer monkey the place quickly turned to shit. Frankly I wouldn't trust them to put out ANYTHING worth having while the Ballmer monkey is in charge. he is just too hooked on buzzwords like "monetization" to cook up anything that doesn't suck and sell you out at the same time. it is like the entire corporation is manned by the PHBs from Dilbert. And how would the PHBs get their "monetization" allowing for "vertical integration" and having "synergy across platforms" if they just made it to the same standards that everyone else uses?

Yup... price of a nice GeForce and the time it takes to hack the identifier as described here.

Yup... price of a nice GeForce and the time it takes to hack the identifier as described here.

Check this: Address Bar on taskbar missing. This is no longer available at the request of the US Department Of Justice (DOJ)

If those parasites don't like it they should ask for a private build. What's next?!?

ATI and NVIDIA guide

Update: Tech ARP has just updated the editorial with the details of the fake motherboard manufacturer and the company has issued an official statement about the issue as well.

ED#87 : Fake DFI Motherboards Rev. 2.0

I believe the current consensus is that Windows XP SP3 is due the latter half of this month. Think this was posted to /. a couple of weeks ago.

F_T

Forgot my source: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=526&pgno=1 also #winsupport on efnet. Not sure how reliable it is, but haven't heard any info to the contrary, which is why I said "supposedly." :)

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=526&pgno=2 (The pgno counter starts from 0 so 2 mean page 3)

There's no way the companies mentioned would say anything like that.

I suppose that you missed the second link in the summary that pointed to an update on the event, which mentioned the name of the journalist (Don Sambandaraska). It also stated that he and some other journalists refused to sign the NDA but were still allowed to attend. On day 2, they were asked to sign another NDA, which had a clause that seemed like a reworded version of the first. He then walked out. At that page, there's a link to Don Sambandaraksa's report on the matter, which has this tidbit: "Update: AMD issued an apology a week later saying the incident was a misunderstanding among certain local staff and that it is not, and has never been, AMD policy to vet the stories of tier-1 publications prior to publication."

It's not that they didn't list the hardware or settings, it's just that you are too blind to notice it. It's all stated here [techarp]. If you took as much time to read as you did to write that pointless comment, you would have noticed it.

They do test between different comparison levels. The problem is they haven't posted any of the results yet which makes this article incomplete and useless.

Er... did ya check out the comparisons? As you can see here here jpeg at least can be compressed considerably with Stuffit. According to this the program can "(partially) decode the image back to the DCT coefficients and recompress them with a much better algorithm then default Huffman coding." I've no idea what that means, but it does seem to be more thorough and complex than what you wrote.

Look at one of the references in the linked article: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=393& pgno=1

A "Vista Certified" device that:

A)Is incredibly difficult to get to install, and
B)Results in repeatable on-boot BSODs, and
C)Is incredibly difficult to get to uninstall, *and*
D)Leaves packages on your HD after uninstall that cause repeatable on-boot BSODs.

Either the Vista (display) driver development process is as much of an after-thought as Linux driver development, or Vista's "NEW AND INNOVATIVE" hardware environment is so incredibly buggy that wrestling with all the necessary work arounds is a very difficult task.

My guess? The new Vista driver model is so overly complex that developers will have a hard time working with it indefinitely. Either development budgets will have to go up (unlikely, for ATI and Nvidia, at least), or hardware release cycles will have to slow. Given that Vista has been in *public* development for such a long time (Betas & Release candidates), I'm guessing there is a systematic problem to driver development that most hardware companies cannot adapt to.

Take a look at this: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=357
"Finally, the complexity of these drivers is simply astounding. Diercks claimed that each of the six drivers that NVIDIA has to develop for Windows Vista is roughly 20 million lines of code long; about as much code as Windows NT 4! While I am sure there is some significant driver overlap between the six separate modules and the 20 million lines on each, projects of that magnitude are something most normal people couldnt even begin to wrap their heads around. "

Consider that Vista contains approximately 50 million lines of code, and took 5+ years to develop. Consider that Linux Kernel 2.6.0 was 6 million lines of code, and contains *thousands* of drivers.

Now, does this mean that Vista driver programmers are simply going to give up, Vista will collapse, and we'll all switch to another OS? Of course not; these companies *will* manage to overcome the overly complex development environment, and will create working drivers. In Time.

What we may see, however, is that Linux drivers will start improving faster than Windows drivers; and I can even potentially forsee a day when the Linux binary video drivers beat Vista drivers to the punch, in terms of properly supporting newer hardware. Architectural problems don't necessarily cause development to fail, but serious organizational difficulties impact release cycle, and result in more annoyance and security bugs.

The page admitting that it's just an April Fools: http://www.techarp.com/0104.htm

Here's the actual admission that this is a April Fool's Joke

The actual "secret page"


One Last Question...

Congratulations! If you made it this far, we are pretty sure you are NOT an NVIDIA lawyer, or from ATI. Have a beer on us.

We have just one more question for you... Do you know what day it is today?

Yes, my friend, it's April 1st. Adrian's uncle was born on this day, but it's really more commonly known as April Fool's Day.

Unfortunately, there is no secret page where you can buy cheap NVIDIA cards. How we wish it were true though. Graphics cards are so very expensive.

The good news is that there is no such bug in the vertex shader of the G80. So, if you are an owner of GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS cards, you can relax on that count. Your oh-so-expensive graphics cards are not crippled in any way.

But if you are one of those who were, just moments ago, feeling vindicated that it was the card that caused your gaming skills to suffer, we are sorry to bust your chops but as they say, don't blame the tool, blame the user.

Why Two Editorials?

Well, we couldn't decide which joke to go with. The NVIDIA editorial was more serious and more likely to fool more people, thanks to the serious types of questions we used. But we felt that the AMD editorial had a truly funny series of question that's probably more in line with the spirit of April Fool's Day.

In the end, we decided to run with both. A serious one to try to catch as many people off-guard.. and a funny one just for laughs.

Before You Leave...

We hope you enjoyed the little soiree. Remember, it is the journey that counts, not the destination.

With that said, you should be proud of your achievement. After all, you are one of the few who have taken the effort to get to this end. For that, you should not go unrewarded.

Unfortunately, we have no rebates or special sales of ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards to offer you. But as a token of our appreciation for your participation, we can offer you a discount on our online BIOS Optimization Guide subscriptions.

Normally, subscriptions go for £6 for 3 months and £12 for a full year. But you can now subscribe for only £5 for 3 months and £10 for a full year. Just use the coupon code 0104 when you register.

You can subscribe for as many years as you like. Even though the system only allows you to choose between 3 months and 1 year subscriptions, just select the 1 year subscription even if you want to subscribe for several years. We will adjust it manually on our end to reflect the subscription fees paid.

Current BOG subscribers can extend their subscriptions using this coupon code. Just e-mail Adrian at awsh @ techarp.com with your login and payment details.

In addition, if you are a member of our Tech ARP forums, you can PM any of the admins with the 0104 code and we will give you a special 0104 rank to commemorate your achievement. If you are not yet a forum member, well, what are you waiting for?

Disclaimer

Please note that the "facts" and questions and answers in the previous pages do not necessarily reflect the personal or professional opinions of anyone at Team ARP. They were created with comic intent in mind.

One Last Question...

Congratulations! If you made it this far, we are pretty sure you are NOT an NVIDIA lawyer, or from ATI. Have a beer on us.

We have just one more question for you... Do you know what day it is today?

Yes, my friend, it's April 1st. Adrian's uncle was born on this day, but it's really more commonly known as April Fool's Day.

Unfortunately, there is no secret page where you can buy cheap NVIDIA cards. How we wish it were true though. Graphics cards are so very expensive.

The good news is that there is no such bug in the vertex shader of the G80. So, if you are an owner of GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS cards, you can relax on that count. Your oh-so-expensive graphics cards are not crippled in any way.

But if you are one of those who were, just moments ago, feeling vindicated that it was the card that caused your gaming skills to suffer, we are sorry to bust your chops but as they say, don't blame the tool, blame the user.

If you RTFA you'll notice they tell you about a secret page you can reach by answering a quiz. Here's the link: http://www.techarp.com/0104.htm Quote from it: "Unfortunately, there is no secret page where you can buy cheap NVIDIA cards. How we wish it were true though. Graphics cards are so very expensive."

Nice way for http://www.techarp.com/ to try and sell us their products...

http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bog no=313 and http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html as well as http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-0 15988.htm has some more info.

Techarp has a great comparison between just about every major video card ever from just about every major video card maker ever. The 7900GS included. The format of the comparison (images) is terrible since you can't search through, but it is a pretty sweet chart. The comparison is more a technical one than a performance one, so take it with a grain of salt, but here are the results for a few cards.

Name_of_Card____Vertex_Pipelines___Textures/Cloc k____Core_Speed___Memory_Bandwidth
GeForce_7900GS________7______________20_________ __450mhz_________42.2_GB/s
GeForce_7800GT________7______________20_________ __400mhz_________32.0_GB/s
Geforce_6800GT_________6______________16________ ___350mhz_________32.0_GB/s
GeForce_6600GT________3______________8__________ __500mhz_________16.0_GB/s

On this site there are a lot of other important stats - memory clockspeed, pixel shader version, bus speeds & interfaces.

PS Sorry for the fugly formatting