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So, I guess it will be business as usual on Slashdot, commenting without actually reading the article.

However, from the summary, it does sound like they are taking the wrong tack. They claim that the AMD methodology is wrong, because they are using the wrong aspects of the processor to measure. However, the argument they completely ignore is that MHz is a stupid way to measure anything in the first place... Whatever. It certainly sounds purchased.

From all the articles I've seen on Tom's and elsewhere clearly state that the rating is a somewhat conservative way of comparing Intel and AMD.

Now, from my standpoint, I don't really care about Mhz (although whenever I upgrade, I want to double my Mhz!), I do care about relative performance and cost. It'd be nice if Intel and AMD (and others!) could agree on some benchmarking methodology, but baring that, AMD comparing their number with Intel Mhz does exactly what it needs to, helps people understand how AMD processors compare with Intel processors using Intel's own method, clock speed.

So, I guess it will be business as usual on Slashdot, commenting without actually reading the article.

However, from the summary, it does sound like they are taking the wrong tack. They claim that the AMD methodology is wrong, because they are using the wrong aspects of the processor to measure. However, the argument they completely ignore is that MHz is a stupid way to measure anything in the first place... Whatever. It certainly sounds purchased.

From all the articles I've seen on Tom's and elsewhere clearly state that the rating is a somewhat conservative way of comparing Intel and AMD.

Now, from my standpoint, I don't really care about Mhz (although whenever I upgrade, I want to double my Mhz!), I do care about relative performance and cost. It'd be nice if Intel and AMD (and others!) could agree on some benchmarking methodology, but baring that, AMD comparing their number with Intel Mhz does exactly what it needs to, helps people understand how AMD processors compare with Intel processors using Intel's own method, clock speed.

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...

Anyone remember that Tomshardware article?, Dissecting Rambus, I think the ocassion deserves to remember it, specially the High-bandwidth Misinformation. 'Love will make you do things that you know is wrong': "Dell is perhaps the world's largest manufacturer of personal computers. Dell is also widely considered closely wedded to Intel. On the computer titan's site, the speed of the RDRAM used in its systems is difficult to find and, for the typical consumer, difficult to interpret. After drilling down to the RDRAM specifications for the Dell XPS B, the computer giant provides information that is not only misleading, but also simply false. Dell boasts that "RDRAM provides up to 1.6 GB/sec of memory bandwidth versus only 800 MB/sec with conventional SDRAM," but elsewhere on this page the frequency of the RDRAM used in the system is stated at 356 MHz. As already explained in this article, this indicates in an indirect way that the system is equipped with the slower PC700 RDRAM which will never reach a bandwidth of 1.6 GB/sec. Also on this page Dell states correctly that the bus width for its RDRAM systems is 16 bits, but IT ALSO STATES THAT SDRAM'S BUS WIDTH IS ONLY 8 BITS when, as you already know, SDRAM has a 64-bit bus. Incorrect at best, misleading at worst, Dell should be harshly criticized for providing this disservice to its customers. In light of other misinformation currently surrounding RDRAM, Dell's actions are cast in an unfavorable light."

Not sure you know what the hell a shim is, dude.
A shim refers to a piece of metal that is sandwiched between the heatsink and the proc to prevent crushing the proc core.

Not sure why the hell you'd use this stuff for a shim. As documented here and here, shims are generally useless and can cause more damage to processors because of heat/electrical distribution. Thus, shims are generally used to insure that shipping of the core by an over-zealous heatsink install will not occur. There are problems, however, being that if the shim is not exactly perfect, it will be either useless will create a gap between the heatsink and the proc, causing fryage.

Thus, most shims are made of light, nonconducting, cheap, oxidized aluminum. I could see abolutely no reason to make a shim out of this stuff.

Unless you meant to talk about the cap on the Pentium 4 procs. In which case, the purpose of the cap is just to spread heat around, and it serves its purpose fine. Intel isn't gonna make their procs a hundred bucks more expensive to help overclockers, whom they don't support anyway.

Take a look at the nVidia nForce (linked to a Tom's Hardware review) boards. They have an integrated Geforce 2 GPU, DDR support, 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, and seem to be priced fairly reasonably. They don't have the performance of a real high-end system, but they do have decent upgradablity and fairly good 2D and 3D performance (at least compared to the old ATI chips that seem to be common on all-in-one motherboards).

I dunno man. My webpage is hosted at Pair Networks and they have FreeBSD boxes. I never thought *BSD was bad ass, but I have hosted off and on through them for the last 3 years or so after getting a recommendation from Tom's Hardware. If I had a server I think I would look into it, but for me Linux works just fine.

JOhn

Tom's hardware story

This could come in very useful when you're trying to MP-enable your chip.... or maybe you can unlock the multiplier and MP enable it at the same time? =) BWAHAHA.... Where else, but Tom's? =)

-Berj

Tom even has a manual how swap the harddisk with a bigger one for the nomad.

While the rest of the world gets more storage on portable mp3 players.. canada will have special models (Imagine a mordern nomad.. with todays HD, the price tag will be HUGE....). The tech savvy guys are just swapping out the HD. Shouldnt hurt the average slashdot reader that much :P.

I write my own homepage. it has links to here, tom's, my ftp, my web site, my free spam collector, comics, and satire. I realized i didn't want to connect to the internet everytime i want to open up mozilla. so i wrote myself some html, and now my homepage is fast and i can go the places I need to in one link. I'm thinking of adding some weather and some news...

The Reg usually makes for an interesting read
The Inquirer is a good source for AMD/Intel roadmaps and bleeding edge tech news.
Anandtech is not updated that often but the often have the best coverag and reviews of new products and technologies.
I don't visit Toms Hardware often but it is another good source for benchmarks and reviews.

Well, I haven't heard of an entirely homemade version of a TiVo. It's a pretty complicated device -- MPEG compression isn't all that easy to do on a chip. Toms recently had an article describing a hard drive hack for it, which explains what a TiVo is pretty well in the introduction. This place also has a pretty good FAQ which answers a bunch of random questions that are likely to come up.

Google is your friend!

adpowers writes: "Anandtech is running an article about their preview of AMD's Hammer. They had one machine running 32-bit Windows and the other running 64-bit Linux. The Linux machine had a 32 bit program and an identical program that was compiled for 64-bit processor support. Both processors were less than 30 days old and running without any crashes, but they weren't at full speed." We did one Hammer story a day or two ago, but there have been several more posted since then (wild guess: the NDA expired). Tom's Hardware has a story, so does Gamespot.

It might be possible to get around bandwidth constraints using a different method. If I'm not mistaken, Microsoft's XBOX uses dual-channel DDR memory based on Nvidia's nForce board to get two times the theoretical bandwidth. (Though, based on Tom Hardware's recent review of the board, dual-channel doesn't seem to have as great a real-world performance as one might hope.)

...when it first came out, but here is something I think is just about right. Portable, does networking, configure it the way you need it, connect to monitor or TV, ad nauseaum. Hmmmm....

saw some more stories on this subject.

Tom's Hardware has a story about there visit to AMD and the demo they got. They even got to take pictures, but unfortunately were not allowed to reboot to view BIOS messages.

The Register has an article that covers the same basic turf as the c|net article mentioned at the top. maybe slightly more in depth.

and of course, everyone around here seems to love to loathe ZDnet these days.

in the pictures at tom's it looks like this thing has a pretty honkin' heat sink. i wonder how much the silicon-on-insulator process used to make these things reduces heat and power consumption.

The thought of what these beauties could do just makes me feel all warm inside. i hope they live up to my expectations.

Rambus got a bad rap over the years, the PR part was deserved, but the performance part was not. See, Rambus really didn't provide any real benefit for the extra cost on a P3 platform (which the Athlon/Tbird is also based on.) However, on P4 based systems, Rambus performs wonderfully (much better than DDR,) as these machines are designed to use more memory bus speed than bus width. Where DDR pushes 2-32 bit chunks at 133 mHz, Rambus pushes 16 bit chunks at 400 or 533 mHz. Neither technology alone is "better" (though many people favor DDR/SDRAM for obvious licensing and cost reasons) but paired with the right CPU and chipset, they can be just as fast. Toms Hardware has an excellent comparison between the platforms here.

Note that I personally use an Athlon XP with DDR. It's just that I hate to see misconceptions running around. In the past, yes, DDR was faster than Rambus, but that's not really the case anymore.

Not so...

Rambus is, for all intensive purposes, equal in price to DDR.

Combine this with its sincere speed, it looks like intel should have hung on for a bit longer.

Just check out this article.

Its easy to jump on the bandwagon, but now that they've finally got their technology running well, it looks like the best performance machines over the next couple of years will likely have RIMMS.

Sorry, but Tom Pabst is hardly the best hardware journalist on the Net. In fact, I find it hard to call him a journalist, period.

His articles are continuously, and blatantly biased -- and while the target of that bias does change, it remains that most of the articles read like National Enquirer stories.

Take, for example, the KT266A vs nForce 420 test. The benchmarks show the nForce in the middle of the pack for most tests - roughly half the KT266A boards faster and half slower. And with margins of 2% in most tests. Yet the "Conclusion" was that "KT266A Trounces nForce 420D" and that "the nForce 420D is currently no match for the new KT266A". What a load of crap. Of course little things like total system cost and features were ignored - the nForce has a significantly better sound chip than the KT266A and all nForce boards have integrated network (only some KT266A's do).

The P4/2666 and 533 MHz Rambus article is nothing more than sheer yellow journalism. Benchmarking a system that won't be available until at LEAST the end of the year, comparing it against currently available systems, and concluding that "this will put it quite a distance ahead of its competition from AMD" isn't journalism. It's being a patsy to the latest company to show you a new toy.

Sure, there's the Claw hammer preview... with nothing more than a few snapshots. At least it appears to be mostly devoid of sensationalist statements though. The above review of an unavailable system would've been just fine had Tom and his staff not stooped to phrases normally seen at the supermarket checkout lines. They even tried to put in some moderating comments, but they are overshadowed by the sensationlism elsewhere in the article.

Sorry, but Tom Pabst is hardly the best hardware journalist on the Net. In fact, I find it hard to call him a journalist, period.

His articles are continuously, and blatantly biased -- and while the target of that bias does change, it remains that most of the articles read like National Enquirer stories.

Take, for example, the KT266A vs nForce 420 test. The benchmarks show the nForce in the middle of the pack for most tests - roughly half the KT266A boards faster and half slower. And with margins of 2% in most tests. Yet the "Conclusion" was that "KT266A Trounces nForce 420D" and that "the nForce 420D is currently no match for the new KT266A". What a load of crap. Of course little things like total system cost and features were ignored - the nForce has a significantly better sound chip than the KT266A and all nForce boards have integrated network (only some KT266A's do).

The P4/2666 and 533 MHz Rambus article is nothing more than sheer yellow journalism. Benchmarking a system that won't be available until at LEAST the end of the year, comparing it against currently available systems, and concluding that "this will put it quite a distance ahead of its competition from AMD" isn't journalism. It's being a patsy to the latest company to show you a new toy.

Sure, there's the Claw hammer preview... with nothing more than a few snapshots. At least it appears to be mostly devoid of sensationalist statements though. The above review of an unavailable system would've been just fine had Tom and his staff not stooped to phrases normally seen at the supermarket checkout lines. They even tried to put in some moderating comments, but they are overshadowed by the sensationlism elsewhere in the article.

Rambus was just starting to become affordable (on par with DDR), there are a ton of new benchmarks showing that in several applications, the P4 at high clock speeds actually benefits tremendously from Rambus. Just when it actually starts to look good, they decide to drop it?

Check out:

Tom's Hardware

"This is because the Pentium 4 has a problem: the increase in clock speed (e.g. P4/2533 or P4/2666) will be rendered useless by the slow DDR SDRAM memory bus of the 845 platform. In the mass market, the 845 chipset dominates by nearly 100% - and this will remain the case for the next six months. But only 533 MHz RDRAM enables the processor to attain high performance. Eventually, the dual-channel DDR solution will receive some sort of technological boost, however there's still no sign of development in this area."

I guess there's only one thing left to say: GO AMD!!!

This is a really odd announcement, especially considering this article released by Tom's Hardware Guide yesterday. Basically, the article tested the upcoming P4 chips at 2666mhz and 2533mhz, and stated many times that the performance gained by using both a 133mhz FSB and 533mhz memory clock would show enormous gains over any current Intel or AMD processor. Some of the performance numbers on THG's graphs were rather impressive.

So I see one of two things here. Either this report is wildly inaccurate or misinterpreted, or Intel sure is shooting themselves in the foot yet again. As soon as they create technology that can utilize Rambus' enormous memory bandwidth, they can the technology? Something about that doesn't sound right. Intel may be dumb, but they're stubborn too. If this is true, they sure picked a hell of a time to seriously rethink their relationship with Rambus.

This is a really odd announcement, especially considering this article released by Tom's Hardware Guide yesterday. Basically, the article tested the upcoming P4 chips at 2666mhz and 2533mhz, and stated many times that the performance gained by using both a 133mhz FSB and 533mhz memory clock would show enormous gains over any current Intel or AMD processor. Some of the performance numbers on THG's graphs were rather impressive.

So I see one of two things here. Either this report is wildly inaccurate or misinterpreted, or Intel sure is shooting themselves in the foot yet again. As soon as they create technology that can utilize Rambus' enormous memory bandwidth, they can the technology? Something about that doesn't sound right. Intel may be dumb, but they're stubborn too. If this is true, they sure picked a hell of a time to seriously rethink their relationship with Rambus.

Dude Read This Are you telling me the state of the art 96/97 system is 'good enough' for anyone? That kinda system can't handle a java applet nowadays, and a flash applet would choke that system to a crawl.

I'm sorry but 200 MHz is _not_ enough for an average user. Even a modern word processor can load in a fraction of the time on a modern sytem compared to a 25-30 second load time on a 200 MHz.

Based on the evolution of technology I would have to say that anyone using technology from late 96 is going to be very sad compared to the performance they can get from even the cheapest gigahertz celeron system.

And those people who mistakenly choose a celeron 1 GHz system today will be crying tears in three years as .net applications slow them to a crawl. meanwhile people with 1700+ Athlon XP processors aren't going to run into serious issues until well into 2007 for memory and resource hungry internet based applications.

True, using an athlon until 2007 is going to leave you in the dust for many many years, but there will be few applications except in the gaming and professional markets that require better systems much before 2007.

Normal users are generally happy with the computers they're running until they hit that road block where something they want to do can't be done. In that sense I'm sure there are many happy ignorant P-200 users out there. There are also some happy relatively bright people who've never seen a reason to leave a Command line interface who are more than happy with a 200 MHz cpu. However the command line is not enough of an interface for everyone especially normal people. For those people the gigahertz CPU will be fine for years on end, but eventually progress will march on and that gigahertz cpu will end up leaching heavy metals into a river in china.

Someday the technology will stop getting faster every 18 months. When that happens, then a computer can be bought as a 30 year appliance that people run until it breaks down. There is another dynamic that this will cause. Microsoft's business model is more driven by new technology than intel's is. If hardware stops advancing intel could lay off all but a skeleton crew of developers there to fix glitches or bugs. As long as microsoft's model is based on making people buy a new OS every year then they need an awful lot of R&D. If people only buy a computer every 30 years and never change the OS where does that leave microsoft? They still have to develop and refine the product to fix bugs. It's proven that supporting an old OS becomes too expensive to continue supporting it 6 years after developing it. So where does this leave Microsoft? Up shit creek without a paddle. If people come to expect 30 years of software support instead of 3 well there is nothing that microsoft can do to remain a viable company except plead the government for funding.
Welcome to the amtrack of the 22nd century.
Microsoft is on the same track as the railroads, assuming linux doesn't overwhelm them. The last great leap in computer technology is the last nail in the coffin that microsoft has made for itself.
And people wonder why microsoft wants to convert windows into a time restricted product that will stop booting when you stop paying. They've seen the light at the end of the tunnel and they're deperate to make that tunnel longer by hook or by crook.

to arrive... they're the best thing for preventing those nasty athlon core meltdowns.

I would enjoy a 64 bit proc, but my question is how much heat will it produce? A friend of mine just bought a new AMD and the cooling fan melted off the heat sink and then not only the processor burned but also the new board. According to Toms Hardware AMD processors are more prone to burnt logic. See for yourself Will AMD have a better thermal protection? That is my worry, I don't want to fork over money just to have it go up in smoke.

I would enjoy a 64 bit proc, but my question is how much heat will it produce? A friend of mine just bought a new AMD and the cooling fan melted off the heat sink and then not only the processor burned but also the new board. According to Toms Hardware AMD processors are more prone to burnt logic. See for yourself Will AMD have a better thermal protection? That is my worry, I don't want to fork over money just to have it go up in smoke.

I sometimes keep my case open and once in a while i'll touch-test my T-bird 1200 and Slot Athlon 500 (from back in the day) to see if my temp monitor is lying to me. they aren't too hot...really...I don't get burned or anything. Well, unless i leave the fan off but Tom told us that already.

Actually a recent version was optimized by Intel themselves, as they seemto like to use this to demonstrate the 'power' of the Pentium 4.

Intel directly sent us a manipulated version of the conversion tool FlaskMPEG 0.6, although we don't recommend using it. This utility is only faster when used in conjunction with Pentium 4 processors, which will disappoint many users. CPUs from other manufacturers are out of luck. We'll include these effects in our benchmarks.

You can get the file here.

Actually a recent version was optimized by Intel themselves, as they seemto like to use this to demonstrate the 'power' of the Pentium 4.

Intel directly sent us a manipulated version of the conversion tool FlaskMPEG 0.6, although we don't recommend using it. This utility is only faster when used in conjunction with Pentium 4 processors, which will disappoint many users. CPUs from other manufacturers are out of luck. We'll include these effects in our benchmarks.

You can get the file here.

I don't know what others here think, but while reading the article, I had a feeling that it either underwent several translations through the `fish' or it was severely rushed out the door. Their technical writing, at best, is rather vague, wordy, and at times very confusing.

Why? Just look at the number of mistakes and inconsistency. I observed a handful of mistakes particularly dealing with application version numbers. Since when did WinACE 4.1 come out? Did they benchmark using SiSoft Sandra Pro 2001 as mentioned here [THG] or with Sandra Pro 2002 as mentioned here? Th some inconsistency applies with DivX 4.11/4.12 and mention of the Intel i845e chipset when it's supposed to be i845d in the conclusion (it's emphasized in bold too).

Unless THG writers learn how to proofread (or update their template "wizard", their articles and reliablity will remain questionable.

I don't know what others here think, but while reading the article, I had a feeling that it either underwent several translations through the `fish' or it was severely rushed out the door. Their technical writing, at best, is rather vague, wordy, and at times very confusing.

Why? Just look at the number of mistakes and inconsistency. I observed a handful of mistakes particularly dealing with application version numbers. Since when did WinACE 4.1 come out? Did they benchmark using SiSoft Sandra Pro 2001 as mentioned here [THG] or with Sandra Pro 2002 as mentioned here? Th some inconsistency applies with DivX 4.11/4.12 and mention of the Intel i845e chipset when it's supposed to be i845d in the conclusion (it's emphasized in bold too).

Unless THG writers learn how to proofread (or update their template "wizard", their articles and reliablity will remain questionable.

Hate to say it but they're probably right. Linux is 32 bit code made to run on a 32 bit processor. Remember when the 386 came out? DOS ran slower on most 386's, but the new windows ran much faster on a 386 than a 286. While I haven't personally ported linux to a 64-bit processor, it seems likely that you would have more performance issues with the "upgrade." Take for example these benchmarks from tomshardware.

These dual proccessor motherboards both scored worse in kernel compilations with both processors active! It was faster to run the kernel compilation on a single processor. While two 32-bit CPUs != 1 64-bit CPU, it does illustrate how a major hardware change can make linux (or indeed any OS) flounder around.

Did you actually read those articles?
Kevin

Tom's Hardware has a good article up.

"A total of 26 various benchmark tests clearly shows that the VIA KT333 chipset the best and most capable chipset for AMD CPUs. With only a few exceptions, not even the Nvidia nForce with its expensive dual-channel technology (DDR266) can put up a real fight against the newcomer KT333. With the launch of the KT333, the KT266A will become a thing of the past - you simply won't want to miss out on all the new features such as ATA/133, USB 2.0 or DDR333 support."

So does Anandtech: here.

"When the KT266A was launched it completely blew us away; the performance of the chipset was spectacular and it was clear that it would quickly become a top pick for all Athlon owners. The KT333 doesn't have nearly as great of an impact but the reasons behind that are understandable; both new features supported by the chipset, DDR333 and Ultra ATA 133 aren't features that will result in tangible improvements in performance today. Instead the KT333 is more of a technology enabling platform for VIA. The chipset will not cost any more to manufacture than the KT266A and thus motherboards won't increase in price. While DDR333 SDRAM isn't officially available today (the specification isn't complete), when it is first made available it will carry a price premium over DDR266 SDRAM."

Sega didn't design the graphics in the Dreamcast. Powervrused their pvr series 2 chip in there with tile based renmdering engine, currently I have a pvr series 3 chip in my computer right now that rocks. I'm waitng for the mysterious kyro 3 to come out soon and whoop some ass for a hundred and change. Anyone that pays upwards of 200 dollars plus for a graphic cars is insane.

That's right folks. This article (RIMM vs. SD-RAM) at Tom's Hardware shows even more the self-contradiction within that site. That time Rambus was smacked down comletetly. It even has figures and (some kind of) proof for its conclusions. Something I am missing at the newest pro-RIMM article
Have you noticed? There is no nothing to back-up their claims! No cool diagram showing some magic number difference on Tom's Hardware???.

Seems like Rambus found a good use for all those precious marketing-$s.
Don't trust Tom's anymore. It's labelling ads as editorial columns!

>You should be grateful the site is even there.

Spreading information that PCChips likes to glue on its motherboard boxes?

Blech. Any site caught supporting their shit deserves to R.I.P. I want my motherboard to last more than a few months -- and I don't want it to flake out because a certain speed of CPU (oh anything +/- 200 Mhz of 1.4 GHz) causes it to freak out (my own personal tests -- you know, those things Tom's doesn't seem to bother with anymore). BTW: This board is identical to some Amptron model (well -- the silkscreening of the FCC logo is in a different area, and they used red paint on the PCB). This is how I know the K7S5A is a PCChips rebrand (Amptron is absolutely famous for selling PCChips rebrands).

I'm bored now, so I'm going to pick apart those conclusions. Should be great fun.

"Neither ECS nor Chaintech is known as a top motherboard company."

No shit.

"This is certainly not because of their inability to make good products"

Translation: They don't make anything at all. ECS specifically whores themselves to the whims of PCChips crap.

>but because they lack consistency in their product lines and usually concentrate on the OEM market as well.

Oh, and I suppose the OEM market is so well known for top notch products now?

>Although both companies have been known to design good motherboards

ECS doesn't. WTF are you smoking Tom? ECS is a house brand name for PCChips as far as their website goes. Less than 5 seconds on 2400 baud DIAL-UP and I could show it to you. How the hell much did they pay you to say this?

>they have not been able to get favorable reviews on a regular basis

That couldn't be because they sell shitty products, could it? No way!!!

>as is the case for Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI, for instance.

Huh? Usually these companies get way better reviews than PCChips. I am supposing they forgot to send you samples this week.

>First of all, they were the first to show courage by releasing their SiS 735 motherboard

Yes, and PCChips released one of the only motherboards running the slow as hell Cyrix GigaPro CPU soldered onboard (M787). Will you be giving them a medal as well?

>Secondly, the board is suitable for the vast majority of users due to its features

No it isn't. My experience building machines with this shit board is it works well when you put a 1 Ghz (sometimes 1.2 GHz) Athlon (original) in it. Anything else is suicide.

>even though both SiS and ECS might consider it as a low-end product

Oh dear God, a low end ECS product? What is the substrate made of? Recycled toilet paper?

>Thirdly, the K7S5A comes with both excellent performance and stability

ROTFLMAO! LOL! Stability?!?!?!? Oh man this is some funny shit! I never even bothered to look up the article till I wrote this comment. It was SO worth it!

Best laught of the day.

>which is mandatory for a motherboard if it wants to receive high marks.

I thought it was mandatory it be made by companies known for remarking CPUs and Cache Chips?

Oh, and who exactly are you going to get support from when this cheap trash goes belly up?

I really hope you didn't say from the Computer Store you bought it from because most respectable computer stores find out this month's PCChips rebrands and won't sell them.

Instead of focusing upon some benchmarks with overclocked CPUs squaring off against one another, why not pay attention to another article from Tom's that shows some benchmarks of the P4 2.0 ghz operating at factory spec on a number of different P4 boards with different memory configs(P4 + i850 + RDRAM vs P4 + Sis645/ViaP4X266/ViaP4X266a/i845 + DDR). As you can see from that article, at least on the pre-Northwood P4s, DDR did pretty well on the non-Intel chipsets, particularly on the Sis645 when PC2700 was used.

The article you reference talks about RDRAM performance with the P3. The P4 presents an entirely different picture, as it fully utilizes the bandwidth of the dual-channel RDRAM architecture. See this article for details. A brief quote from the conclusion:
The memory benchmarks from above show that Pentium 4 really requires the 3,200 MB/s of data bandwidth supplied by the two Rambus channels. I doubt that it will perform as well with DDR-SDRAM, unless two channels will be used.

The business practices, of course, are a different story.

The article you reference talks about RDRAM performance with the P3. The P4 presents an entirely different picture, as it fully utilizes the bandwidth of the dual-channel RDRAM architecture. See this article for details. A brief quote from the conclusion:
The memory benchmarks from above show that Pentium 4 really requires the 3,200 MB/s of data bandwidth supplied by the two Rambus channels. I doubt that it will perform as well with DDR-SDRAM, unless two channels will be used.

The business practices, of course, are a different story.

Have a look at the SUSE linux kernel compilations with dual athlons here. As everyone with dual processors knows, compiling kernels is one of the main advantages of having dual CPUs. In this test however the athlon dual boards got worse scores than their single processor counterparts. If they had just run make with the "-j 2" option they would likely have gotten around 80% faster than than the single processor boards.

Given the bad performances of RDRAM due in large part to its insanely high latency, and Rambus' dubious business practices based mainly on trying to milk patents to leech on the entire memory industry's back, why on earth should anybody give then the opportunity to make a come-back ?

Tom's also has an article on the first cards by Leadtek and Gainward to incorporate 128MB onto a GeForce3 Ti200 card. Interesting results.... Makes you wonder how long until 128 megs of video memory is standard. Only ID knows that...

Like above... I'm not entirely fussed about this whole article. Hey, I didn't even read the whole thing. I did see Jay Allards shoes though (here)... And I want a pair.

Someone tell me where I can get these...

.. And they are ugly.

Tom's seems to think that microsoft has done some amazing things with their controllers but it doesn't look so new to me. I'd like to examine this claim by claim.

They[Analog sticks] can be easily operated with the two thumbs, and their excellent progressiveness proved to be better than on the PS2 pad.

Mmmm.. Progressiveness, this is always what I look for in an analog stick. I've used XBox and DualShock2 controllers and they do have a different feel to them, although I don't have a progressamomater to measure which is superior. I find that individual games are more resposible for the movement and response than the actual controller. To be honest, both feel to be a high quality, but I'd still give the edge to teh Dual Shock for it's smaller size and also because the controller is almost totally symetrical, and it makes good use of extra fingers with the R + L 1-3 buttons.

The digital direction pad with its cavities and its bumps is as good.

Here, I would have to agree. I don't much care for the "d-pad" design. But it's still needed for tekken anyway.

The two triggers are also analog, which will be a plus for all the automotive games. There too, the superiority over the PS2 pad is obvious.

Right, because having two triggers w/ analog capability is far superior to ALL of the buttons on the dual shock w/ 255 levels of sensitivity. How many levels does the XBox have again? Where's that obvious superiority?

I'll tell you what superiority I can see for automotive games.. It's called Gran Turismo. It was the best on PS1, now it's better. More cars, higher res models, great physics, better interface and oh yeah, it's owned by SCEA. Don't think it'll be coming to XBox anytime soon, and Project Gotham sucks.

I'm pretty dissapointed in Tom's w/ this review. It seems obvious that these people are not real gamers. From the reading it also seemed to be pretty much written from a microsoft marketing package that probably came with the demo unit. Stephane, Stephane, Jerome and Roland shouldn't be writing about things they have little or no experience with.

If people are looking for good reviews on the systems, check them out for yourself. Coconuts and wal-mart have xbox and ps2 systems up and running all over the place. Or if you must rely on others, at least look to peer reviews. Epinions.com has over 300 reviews for both and you'll be likely to get an honest review when you listen to someone who will never be getting a free lunch, demo unit, or any other kind of perk for giving a good review.

At the moment, the only way to play with other people via Internet is through the Gamespy Arcade Tunnel utility.

Tom,
You're a M$ lover aren't ya? First off that statement is just plain wrong, I know you frequent /. so you had to know about the XBox Netplay Already article we had a few months back. Secondly I saw this article advertising chipzilla the entire time I was reading the article. Considering your chipzilla bashing roots, kinda amazing how hard times is making you change your stance. Might as well be wearing a bunny suit you sellout.

Yours Truly
Senior Troll

But there are segments of today's market that are willing to pay almost any price for a high-performance chip. These people will fork over a $1000 without blinking an eye if they think it will speed up their business.

Look at any commercial server available today. They're priced around $15000 - $20000. If chip prices go to $1000 instead of the $400 they're probably paying, that makes a difference of $2400, or about 12%, in a 4 way box. Even if chip prices went to $2000, it's a $5600 difference, or a 28% difference. If your processors are your bottleneck, then you've gained a lot of improvement for not-very-much delta in money.

Sure, a $2000 chip is out of reach for most home users today, but there is always a market for just about anything faster they can produce.

And there are enough crazed overclockers out there that'll spend whatever it takes to raise their frame rates on Quake III. It'll sell. It'll also drive the market to a new standard, which also sells chips.