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I have a definite list and surprisingly an order too (anyone else do this compulsively?)

1.) CNN
2.) LinuxToday
3.) OSnews
4.) KernelTrap
5.) Yahoo! Mail - Only including this because it's in my list.
6.) ExtremeTech
7.) AnandTech
8.) Tom's Hardware
9.) 2cpu
10.) Slashdot - Last because it takes the longest.

Hmm, come to think of it I have some wierd habits while surfing too. When I'm traveling my path of websites, I picture them on a 2d plane with distance in between. CNN on the left, linuxtoday in the lower middle, etc. Anyone else do this?

No you don't. Tomshardware just did some Windows XP benchmarks on a Pentium 100.

I don't know why you think its so bad that they have added features. Thats a pretty natural progression of software development. Look at Linux, KDE, Gnome, Mozilla, etc.

Just about.

Assuming you can borrow a CDROM for the initial OS install and already have a mouse, keyboard, and monitor you get...

Micro ATX Case = $52
Nforce Motherboard = $78
Athalon XP1600 = $58
256MB PC2100 RAM = $41
20 GB Hardrive = $69

Subtotal = $298

If you insist on building a complete system you need to add...

Keyboard and Mouse = $20
52x CDRom = $28
15" Monitor = $99

Subtotal = $147

For a grand Total of $445

You can put together a cheaper system. You could save $25 dollars by going with an 1100Mhz Duron processor and save $20 more by shaving the RAM down to $128. That would bring you down to $400. It just seems like that extra $45 buys a hell of a lot extra power. (check out Toms CPS Performance Check)

Prices courtesy of Five O'clock Computers

For what it's worth, the above desktop system BLOWS AWAY my current desktop system (a PIII 700). So I know its possible to do some serious work on it.

The reference to Barton is because 1. It is performing better than expected

Is it really? It didn't do so hot in these benchmarks. There, the old T-bred Athlon 2800+ beat the Barton Athlon 2800+ in over half of the benchmarks, and the Barton XP 3000+ only beat the P4 3.06 GHz in 1 benchmark test.

2. Has to hold the fort on the desktop until MS and / or Opteron is ready.

I would bet that this is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Microsoft isn't going to release an OS for non-existant hardware, so they are probably waiting for AMD just as much as AMD is waiting for them.

Anyway it is probably a bit of both and the strategy chosen by AMD seems prudent.

Most analysts agree that AMD has given up a lot of its potential market advantage by waiting until Fall for the release (see the Yahoo article above).

Just complile yourself a Linux kernel and do software RAID. Tom's
Hardware Guide had an article on software raid performance on here (this is about Windows 2000, but anyway).

If one compares the claimed 42fps with other cpu:s, it seems it is at a level of a Celeron 500 MHz...
There is something fishy here as the UT2k3-makers themselves claimed there is a 15% increase in 64-bit mode (on Windows). Normally Quake3Arena for Linux is on par with the Windows version, so it should not be the OS' fault either.

Unfortunately for you, it will install on Pentium-class systems running at frequencies less than 200MHz. Tom's Hardware managed to install and benchmark WinXP on a Pentium 100, despite Microsoft's claimed minimum system requirements. TH also claims that, at least in theory, you could install WinXP on a 486.

Even construing your assertion charitably, I have to disagree. There is a sweet spot for each component in a PC. Let's use NewEgg for a price check on the Athlon XP.

price, UT2K3, CPU speed and type
$ 63, 152 FPS, 1.47 GHz
$117, 176 FPS, 1.8 GHz
$156, 185 FPS, 2.0 GHz
$261, 190 FPS, 2.08 GHz (166 MHz DDR)
$380, 210 FPS, 2.08 GHz (166 MHz DDR, 512 KB L2 cache)

You can certainly argue that the $120 premium for the most expensive Athlon XP at NewEgg is not worth 20 FPS (i.e., 46% more expensive, compared to 11% faster). I agree. On the other hand, $120 will not buy you an upgrade from a 120 GB "special edition" IDE drive to a comparable SCSI drive. Even if you did spring for a 10,000 or 15,000 RPM SCSI drive, you would be unlikely to experience faster game play.

The problem with arguing that the PC architecture is unbalanced is that the game writers already know that. They limit texture detail, so that your main memory is barely a factor, let alone your hard drive. I recommend the following for a serious gaming system:

CPU "sweet spot," currently around 2 GHz
video card current generation, 64 MB (e.g., GeForce 4 Ti 4200)
memory 512 MB, 133 MHz DDR or faster
hard drive 60 GB, 7,200 RPM or faster

Sysmark 2002 Benchmark

I thought similarly numbered Athlons were supposed to be as fast as similarly numbered Pentiums? (ie, 2400+ = 2.4Ghz, 2800+ = 2.8GHz, etc, etc)

Even more striking is the comparison between the "(Thoroughbread) DDR333 Athlon 2400+" and the "(Thoroughbread) DDR333 Athlon 2100+". Sysmark is reporting the exact same performance (158)! Granted, it's only one application, but Tom seems to think it's relevant ;)

Too bad there isn't a stability and heat dissipation comparison.

The thing that drives me batty about Tom's Hardware is that he spends hours and hours running all these benchmarks and then presents his data in the most asinine way. He has 65 data points on a slew of scales and all he can think of to represent this is a dozen bar charts. Yippee.

Tom, how about a scatter plot comparing release date with performance? Or a line plot comparing Intel's top performance with AMD's over the years? Maybe put the theoretical Moore's law curve in there for comparison too. The gentle sloping curve of your performance-sorted bar chart is meaningless. It's a waste of our time and yours.

Another example of Tom being a graph ass is last years printer roundup. He created one graph per printer per group of scales. So we get to compare the hp deskjet's speed at standard resolution with it's maximum motor speed, but we can't compare the speed with that of the canon i850 without flipping back and forth to a different page.

What a waste of good data.

Erik

The thing that drives me batty about Tom's Hardware is that he spends hours and hours running all these benchmarks and then presents his data in the most asinine way. He has 65 data points on a slew of scales and all he can think of to represent this is a dozen bar charts. Yippee.

Tom, how about a scatter plot comparing release date with performance? Or a line plot comparing Intel's top performance with AMD's over the years? Maybe put the theoretical Moore's law curve in there for comparison too. The gentle sloping curve of your performance-sorted bar chart is meaningless. It's a waste of our time and yours.

Another example of Tom being a graph ass is last years printer roundup. He created one graph per printer per group of scales. So we get to compare the hp deskjet's speed at standard resolution with it's maximum motor speed, but we can't compare the speed with that of the canon i850 without flipping back and forth to a different page.

What a waste of good data.

Erik

Toms Hardware has an interesting review of 65 processors ranging from 100 MHz to 3066 MHz.

Oh, wait. My bad.

I believe TomsHardware, in a review of the GeForceFX, stated that Geforce4/FX drivers had problems w/ Serious Sam 2 Z-Buffers, which the Geforce 3 processed w/o incident. I thought someone said unified drivers were consistent in controlling the Gfx cards and thus were a valuable asset to NVIDIA.

This article for a review of the Linksys G device:

Toms Hardware Review

Lot's of possible headaches listed.

I bought one anyway, since my SMC Barricade Router broke down the other day. I could have bought an A or a B, but since I try to hang onto my equipment as long as possible I decided to risk it by going with a G machine.

I don't have any wireless client machines yet, my house has plenty of cat 5 in it already, so I cannot attest to Tom's review.

BTW, I do not recommend SMC, their device was constantly overheating on me. It's just not acceptable to have to walk all the way to the other end of the house when I want to use the internet (i.e. to turn on/off the stupid Barricade router).

If you've decided to acquiesce on the "no-Windows" stance, I'd suggest looking at the CNET Notebook section for info. There are sections are for value as well as thin and light notebooks, among others, and looking through those sections is a lot quicker than navigating through the separate laptop sections on each manufacturer's website.

My take on notebooks (currently); wait. Banias is around the corner (March 12 last I heard) bringing +3 hour battery time coupled with excellent performance (it's easy to find slower laptops with significantly longer battery times though). Cost will be an issue (if you're looking at sub-$1500), so I'd suggest waiting even longer after Banias. Having performance, price and portability all in one laptop is about to become possible though; all you need to do is hold off from purchasing for a bit more.

If you'd read the article, you'd know what he was talking about.

He means burning a picture onto the unused space on a CD - not writing data - all burners can do that!

Nick...

My personal preference as far as hardware review sites is Tom's Hardware Guide (formerly http://sysdoc.pair.com). He gives much more insight into testing methodology and has access to a greater variety of hardware than the article linked to in the story. He also does more testing than game framerates, like Solidedge and 3D Studio Max benchmarks.

In addition, Tom sorts his results! The results in the story's article aren't sorted by performance, so if I want to find the card that performed the best in any specific benchmark, I have to scroll up and down the chart to see which number is highest.

Admittedly, your mileage may vary on a system with multiple processors, but in the end, this is a video card test, isn't it?

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20020927/yamah a-01.html

Thats not what was meant. By "image" the writer meant a pattern on the surface of the disk itself. More info available here.

Hmmm, although some people recognized this as old news, nobody seems to have read the Tom's Hardware's Guide article comparing 1.6GHz Pentium-M with a Pentium 4-M 2.2GHz

http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030205/index. html

I'll only say that under most applications P-M beats P4-M, maybe because of it's 1Mb cache and design changes ... VERY interesting article, read it, and it should leave you drooling for one of those laptops ...

How apple can dope people into thinking that Macs are just as fast as PCs in terms for performance is beyond me.

Buy a Mac because it has OS X, buy it because you like the low power consumption, the overall design and the unique style. Don't buy it because you think that it's faster.

Application benchmarks.

How Macs are faster than PCs and other lies.

Benchmarks.

"A Pentium 4 without proper cooling will die just as quickly as an Athlon without proper cooling."

Hardly.

Just in case anyone was confused by the name, this is the processor that was codenamed Banias. Depending on when this product is publicly available, this could be the final straw for transmeta. Transmeta's Astro looks like a great product, but if the stronger Intel has the first mover advantage, Transmeta may be SOL.

Here is some better info about the 855 chipset and the rest of it.. Im not sure why this wasn't linked instead of a press release..

Toms Hardware

check out the highpoint and dawicontrol offerings unless you need RAID5.

You can get excellent performance for less than $100. Why pay more?

As far as IDE channels, many many motherboards these days have about 4 ide channels (mine does, and it's not even NEW) 4 ide channels can make a good raid.

Isn't that just 4 IDE plugs, but only really 2 IDE channels? RAID embedded in your motherboard is usually of the Promise variety and cheap hardware raid isn't much better than software raid. Tom's hardware has an informative article on the difference between hardware and software RAID and they reported that this is the case.

Here's the Link http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030210/index.htm l

It's seems like they say that AMD'S 3000+ rating is extremely aggressive and they do not seem to think it should have had that rating. They also have a good point in there about price gouging essentially eliminating the comeptitive price difference. Since the chip is so hard to get the price skyrockets. It's kind of disturbing that AMD recommends testing this chip with DirectX 7 that definitely does not speak well of AMD's confidence in competing with Intel's stengths.

Tom's Hardware pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's time to put the Athlon XP model out to pasture and focus more on the Athlon 64 with Hammer core.

NVidia still offers the best value out there for mainstream users in the GeForce 4 Ti4200

Then you obviously haven't heard of ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro which performs exactly like a GeForce Ti4200 but is actually lower in price.

I'm in pretty much the same situation, and I've been looking at this baby. Asus A7N8X Deluxe with:
DDR400
USB 2.0 x 6
IEEE 1394 x 2
Ethernet x 2
ATA/133 + SATA x 2
Onboard 5.1 Audio
$140

Review

The A7N8X (or any other of the NForce2 boards) is a far better choice than the A7V8X for AMD, particularly since you're already planning to get two sticks of fast RAM. See the Tom's Hardware article from several months ago.

Transmeta's next offering is going to put the Penitum-m to shame, if it doesn't Linus will be looking for a new job.

You might recall this notebook from a while back. Now, if your make an honest assessment of the features, you may find that at ~$1400 after rebate, this notebook, from a price/performance point of view, might compare favorably with these. Now I'm not talking about originality or color schemes. I'm talking about what you get in terms of functionality for the money that you paid.

Now, the BestBuy notebook has a significant weak point in terms of battery performance. The Pentium-4M processor that it uses consumes more power than Motorola G4s found on PowerBooks but runs somewhat faster. Depending what you want to do, you can still, therefore, make a good case for a PowerBook.

However, you take the Pentium-4M, and replace it with a chip that's this much faster, with as good battery performance as the G4 (notice the fpu performance at 600 MHz, for example), and the remaining advantage of the PowerBooks evaporates.

People may still buy PowerBooks because of style and OS X, but in terms of overall functionality, a Centino notebook will blow away a PowerBook. I'm looking forward to getting my widescreen one six months down the line (and no, I'm not affiliated in anyway with any of the companies involved, I've just been looking into purchasing a notebook lately since lots of my colleagues have gotten PowerBooks).

PowerBooks are GREAT devices, but the Wintel world is fast over taking them due to their reliance on Motorola's G4 processor. Let's hope that Apple gets one of those other processors into their product line real soon.

The Pentium-M system has the GeForce 440 Go and 64 MB, and the Pentium-M system has to make do with an ATI Radeon 7500 and 32 MB video memory.

I don't know about the eco-system part, but the phase-change aspect has me wondering.

According to the article, the external temperatures on the CPU cooler box was 24 C. According to this page, if you reduce the pressure in your water system down to 3% of 1 atm pressure (relative vacuum), that would be enough to get the water to boil. Once you got the pressure down, you probably wouldn't need any kind of pump. Simply have the water boil at the CPU cooler, then run it through a long heat-sink attached to a copper tube. The water would cool enough to condense back to a fluid, running back down the tube, and repeating the cycle.

Oh, yeah. That already exists; it's called a heat pipe. The one in the linked article is relatively small and has a fan blowing through a radiator for active cooling. How long until somebody out there "rolls their own," with a long, passive heatsink? The author of the article was looking for "quiet," and that would certainly fill the bill.

FWIW, there were news pieces posted on Ace's Hardware and Tom's Hardware that quoted AMD as saying that the Athlon64 is 15% faster clock for clock than the Athlon XP chips. So, yes, there is some potential for a "better computing experience".

The Opteron's debut is set for April 22nd .

Yes- I'm well aware of how the XP numbering system is supposed to work. I haven't seen any benchmarks yet- maybe the Barton core does help that much, but those numbers look pretty optimistic IMO.

BTW- I guess you haven't looked at many benchmarks. Here are some for your reference. The XP 2800 is pretty close to the P4 2.8 Ghz with a slight edge to the P4, but the 3.06 P4 beats the Athlon pretty soundly.

As a user of exclusively dual CPU PC's since the P2-300, I have decided I will switch to HyperThreaded single CPUs now that the 3ghz HT is out. People dont understand the benefit of dual untill they use one for awhile. Even a dual 500Mhz PC is far smoother and more productive in general than a single 2.4Ghz proc, unless all you do is play games. On a single proc PC, using one application that requires some CPU attention just brings the whole machine to it's knees. If you haven't seen it yet, check out Tom's Hardware video showing HT vs non-HT head-to-head. It's really enlightened alot of friends and family as to the value of 2 CPUs or HT vs 1. Well worth the extra cost, though I am patiently waiting for the 3Ghz to drop from its excessive $650 for just the CPU.

Why is RDRAM a bad thing for computer users? I think promoting better technology is a good thing for users. If people promoted the better technology instead of the cheaper one, companies couldn't dump their obsolete products on the market in order to decrease sales of the better technology. If people bought a product based on its quality, we would have things like organic LED displays instead of truly obsolete LCD screens and CRT monitors.

I don't know where to stand on the issue of who had prior art, but I have talked to people on both sides and they seem to both have valid arguments. I don't believe any of the companies involved are boyscouts. What I am interseted in is which is the better technology. Obviously, if you look at the specs of Rambus, you will see that although DDR 266 is just a lower stepping of PC133 Ram and the bus is double-pumped. Rambus, on the other hand, has a lot more going for it. Its bus has less traces and allows you to more easily have more than one channel. It is also capable of shutting off portions of itself not in use.

If you look at a Tom's Hardware article It mentions that there is a limitation with using parallel designs due to uncontrolled impedence.

Not to mention that memory benchmarks available on many sites show that DDR can't continiously maintian its bandwidth like Rambus can. Instead, its bandwidth is spurty.

Also, Rambus has many new things on the backburner.

Rambus memory has also become much cheaper. I believe in leaving the decision of whether or not
Rambus infringed on patents to the courts and going for what is the best technology so you can give it a boost. What holds back RDRAM in terms of price is that there isn't enough being sold.

God. there's even THREE mp3's you can download to hear the sound of the FX in comparison to the 9700. RTFA. :)

From http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/gefor ce_fx-05.html


A further problem is the noise level. The fan produces an incredible racket on par with a vacuum cleaner - there's simply no other way to describe it. You can hear the card even if you're in another room of the house.

Check out this for the noise level

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/image s/geforcefx-3dmark-hq.mp3

God. there's even THREE mp3's you can download to hear the sound of the FX in comparison to the 9700. RTFA. :)

From http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/gefor ce_fx-05.html


A further problem is the noise level. The fan produces an incredible racket on par with a vacuum cleaner - there's simply no other way to describe it. You can hear the card even if you're in another room of the house.

Check out this for the noise level

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030127/image s/geforcefx-3dmark-hq.mp3

Ok everyone do me a favor, after you've read the Tom's review PLEASE read the Anandtech review.

I started to feel sick to my stomach when I realized how sloppy and shallow Tom's review was done. Anand truly is "the wonderboy"; he reveals some highly critical issues and has some sweet rollovers comparing the antialiasing and anistropic filtering of each card. He reveals that at the same visual quality settings, the 9700 Pro tops the FX in almost all the benchmarks. "NVIDIA takes the crown! No question about it..." Oh paaleease Tom, research the product before you post! Kudos to Anandtech.

> But if you're buying with an eye toward the future then you'd be smart to buy a DX9 compliant card, whether it's the ATI 9700 or GFFx. That or buy a $100 GF4 Ti4200 now and the 9700/Fx a year or so from now for $150ish.

Yes, I' of the same opinion. In case any one is curious, here's the Bang for the Buck ratios. (Yes, I know a straight linear equation is accurate, but it's "good enough.")

Performance from: Tom's Hardware VGA Charts - 3D Mark 2001 SE
Prices from: Price Watch - Video Cards


Video Card Name ...Performance Price .. Perf / Price
Radeon 9700 Pro ... 15497 .... $225 ... 68.88
GeForce 4 Ti4600 .. 13464 .... $216 ... 62.33
GeForce 4 Ti4400 .. 12805 .... $187 ... 68.48
GeForce 4 Ti4200 .. 12122 .... $112 .. 108.23
GeForce 3 Ti 500 .. 10232 .... $206 ... 49.67
GeForce 3 Ti 200 ... 8440 ..... $82 .. 102.93


Cheers

--
People's morality is like water going down hill - it takes the shortest path to reach its goals
- Poho

The geforcemx noise levels are ridiculous. I can't believe how voodoo5/3dfx-goes-out-of-business the card seems. Brute force instead of finesse, they went more overboard than I can believe, and the results aren't very impressive.

My video uses the AGP, but then sound is on board (and it's good), usb/firewire/serial-ATA RAID/regular ATA, etc are all on board PLUS two NICs.

Of course, not every new motherboard (much less slightly old ones) is so heavily integrated.

Even then, the problem is that the GeForce FX is a high-end user's card. The users who will run into slot problems with the GeForce FX are the same ones who will want more expansion cards than the averague user. I assume they'd want at least a better sound card (Audigy, Santa Cruz, or the like). I would guess that they're more likely to have SCSI drives (or a card for the latest version of Serial-ATA), TV-tuners (not built in to all video cards!), dual monitors (not all video cards support these either), or other oddball devices (slot coolers?) than the average user as well.

Having said that, with the 5-6 PCI slots standard on most motherboards nowadays, losing one probably doesn't matter much to anybody :) The real problem will be people who use tiny cases (like those Shuttle cases) or other small motherboards.

These shots were done with this card

Athlon XP
0.13mu process, 37.2 million transistors, 1.67GHz
GeForceFX
0.13mu process, 125 million transistors, ~500 MHz

You might notice that there is a rather large fan/heatsink on the Athlon...

And you also might notice that rendering games at 1600x1400 with just your CPU isn't very fast.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021118/gefo rcefx-03.html