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I've been a fan of AMD chips for years,

Perhaps you should take a look at this video from Tom's hardware.

Recent AMD chips are a fire hazard.

Of course, you pay for good SCSI, big time.

Checkout this Toms Hardware article on software RAID arrays in Win2k. At $100 for 40Gb I can get a 160Gb four-drive array for $400, with a *sustainable* speed of 150Mb/s. How much would 160Gb SCSI drive cost that can do that? $800? $1000? Of course, you pay for it in CPU usage. However, if you get a supertrak 100 controller you can mirror and stripe six drives.

For me, when one of my drives fails, I like to pay $100 for whatever is the sweet spot size. When my single 160Mb/s SCSI 18Gb HD fails, I'm not going to spend $650 on another one!

It's a good thing they're looking into better heatsink design. Because what if one happens to fall off, guess what happens?

And you can't blame my AMD for that! It was the heatsink not being there!!!

Does it work with NetStumbler?

Yes. 801.11b and 802.11a are physical layer protocols. Toms hardware has more details, but basically they operate in different frequency bands but once you get to link layer the differences begin to dissolve. by the time you get to network layer, it's the same protocol. which means it has all the same security holes outlined by the recent paper on the subject and exploitable by airsnort.

So yes, you can use NetStumbler to steal more bandwidth now. Whether or not someone will figure out how to solve the solved problem of mutual authentication for the wireless community remains to be seen.

...overclocked dual athlon VIA motherboards... without a cooling fan

Dear Lord! I hope not - have you any idea [tomshardware.com] what that can do to the CPU? (Yes, that really is molten solder and I think *copper* on the die) We're talking Over Three Hundred degrees Celsius (580 F).

Tom's Hardware notes that the AMDs can cook really fast and beyond the ability of the motherboard sensor to flag. I guess these have on-die sensors but these were noted as being fairly ropey as well.

Intel's P4 seemed to do quite well out of the test as the clock slows automatically as the die temperature increases (in effect the processor ignores the clocks until the temperature goes reasonable). This means that it will even run without a heatsink (but very slowly).

I just get very nervous about having high-end silicon that is vulnerable to a SPOF. It a heatsink detaches or the processor fan fails - blam. If the chassis fan fails, at least there is some chance of a shutdown, but those processor heatsinks make me uncomfortable. Yes, I know I can buy quality, but MTBF is just that, a fan can still fail early.

So I wait for AMD to get a bit more serious about thermal protection and stick with using cheaper processors as thermal fuses.

Tom's Hardware notes that the AMDs can cook really fast and beyond the ability of the motherboard sensor to flag. I guess these have on-die sensors but these were noted as being fairly ropey as well.

Intel's P4 seemed to do quite well out of the test as the clock slows automatically as the die temperature increases (in effect the processor ignores the clocks until the temperature goes reasonable). This means that it will even run without a heatsink (but very slowly).

I just get very nervous about having high-end silicon that is vulnerable to a SPOF. It a heatsink detaches or the processor fan fails - blam. If the chassis fan fails, at least there is some chance of a shutdown, but those processor heatsinks make me uncomfortable. Yes, I know I can buy quality, but MTBF is just that, a fan can still fail early.

So I wait for AMD to get a bit more serious about thermal protection and stick with using cheaper processors as thermal fuses.

If you read Tom's Hardware, you may have seen this fantastic article and brilliant video, which shockingly demonstrates how AMD vs Pentium chips cope with heat emergencies. Considering the disastrous results with so many of the AMD chips, I'd be hesitant to buy anything OTHER than a Pentium until AMD can conclusively show that their chips are "smart" when faced with heat emergencies (heatsink fan stops, heatsink falls off?)

If you read Tom's Hardware, you may have seen this fantastic article and brilliant video, which shockingly demonstrates how AMD vs Pentium chips cope with heat emergencies. Considering the disastrous results with so many of the AMD chips, I'd be hesitant to buy anything OTHER than a Pentium until AMD can conclusively show that their chips are "smart" when faced with heat emergencies (heatsink fan stops, heatsink falls off?)

If you read Tom's Hardware, you may have seen this fantastic article and brilliant video, which shockingly demonstrates how AMD vs Pentium chips cope with heat emergencies. Considering the disastrous results with so many of the AMD chips, I'd be hesitant to buy anything OTHER than a Pentium until AMD can conclusively show that their chips are "smart" when faced with heat emergencies (heatsink fan stops, heatsink falls off?)

A 1.5 GHz athlon based on old 0.18 micon technology.... That thing must REALLY cook.

Just don't let the heatsink get loose, we know what happens then...

-Berj

If you want to reconsider a professional data recovery choice, try Drivesavers. I've seen them in various computer publications and they seem to be pretty honest, but I have never used their services so I'm not sure.

Searching C|Net Downloads I found Recover98 which seems to be the best package there. It costs $169 to register, which provides access to all features, and support for Windows 2000 dynamic drives(Software RAID arrays), NTFS 5, and it's really small. Again, I haven't tested it, but it looks decent. The trial has save features partly disabled but you can at least see if it looks good, and it is certainly cheaper than a professional data recovery service.

I haven't had the (mis?)fortune of using an IBM hard drive since my 12.5GB one in an older system of mine. Are there any thoughts of a class-action lawsuit based on the drives' failure to perform properly? If new drives are failing this often, there is a definate problem.

JKoebel

But! You can now buy off-the-shelf parts (here, for example) that all work together and can just be bolted together. You can build sealed systems, removing the risk of spills if you move the machine and meaning you don't have to top the system up to allow for evaporating levels. You can get dinky little 120mm radiators which can be fitted inside the case, meaning the entire system can be self-contained. And if the system is well-built enough, the risk of a joint bursting and soaking your motherboard is a lot less than your HSF falling off and frying your Athlon.

Balanced against that, you can get cooling performance superior to a fan-based system and a hell of a lot quieter. And the disadvantages of watercooling will only get less as they become more and more commoditized.

*SIGH*

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q4/011009/athlon xp-12.html#amds_new_model_policy

Ahhh...Slashdot keeps refusing my connection....

No... wrong again. Reread the story. Carefuly this time. The manufacturers are prohibited from displaying the clock speed durring startup. Or, in AMD's own words:

"Motherboards will not pass AMD validation or be posted on the AMD recomended motherboard Web site, if the frequency is displayed by the BIOS durring bootup for AMD Athlon(TM) Model 6 desktop and multiprocessng (sic) processors." (emphisis mine)

It makes no mention of displaying the frequency in the BIOS config screens, where most of the L Users will never tred anyway, so AMD has no reason to want it kept out of there. Same goes for Windows Control Pannel. When't the last your grandmother went tweeking BIOS settings, or started changing IRQs in device dammager? AMD doesn't care it it's listed in those places because the people computer savy enough to venture there will probably already know what the clock speed is (unless they went there to find out, of course).

And as for Windows, they clearly showed a screen shot of Win XP (German) showing both the model number (1800+) AND the clock speed (1,53 GHz).

This is something that, right or wrong is aimed at the general consumer, who isn't buying AMD because of a precieved lack of speed. I'm not sure what a great idea it is, and I'm sure AMD is going to take some flack for it, but I know it's not going to affect me one bit.

No... wrong again. Reread the story. Carefuly this time. The manufacturers are prohibited from displaying the clock speed durring startup. Or, in AMD's own words:

"Motherboards will not pass AMD validation or be posted on the AMD recomended motherboard Web site, if the frequency is displayed by the BIOS durring bootup for AMD Athlon(TM) Model 6 desktop and multiprocessng (sic) processors." (emphisis mine)

It makes no mention of displaying the frequency in the BIOS config screens, where most of the L Users will never tred anyway, so AMD has no reason to want it kept out of there. Same goes for Windows Control Pannel. When't the last your grandmother went tweeking BIOS settings, or started changing IRQs in device dammager? AMD doesn't care it it's listed in those places because the people computer savy enough to venture there will probably already know what the clock speed is (unless they went there to find out, of course).

And as for Windows, they clearly showed a screen shot of Win XP (German) showing both the model number (1800+) AND the clock speed (1,53 GHz).

This is something that, right or wrong is aimed at the general consumer, who isn't buying AMD because of a precieved lack of speed. I'm not sure what a great idea it is, and I'm sure AMD is going to take some flack for it, but I know it's not going to affect me one bit.

From the article ... 1800+ = 1500MHZ.

"SPEC benchmarks are all legitimate, real world applications (or do you consider gcc to be a toy benchmark?). Where are you getting your information from?"

Check out the Anandtech review of the new Athlons referenced in the Slashdot article, or the HardOCP review, or the Tom's Hardware review.

There you'll see the AthlonXP1800 beating or matching the P4 2GHZ in the majority of real-world benchmarks. When I say "real-world" benchmarks, I mean games, office applications, and graphics apps that are what the majority of people use 99%. As seen in SPEC's own FAQ, "Typically, the best measure of a system is your own application with your own workload".

SPEC benchmarks are designed to be purely CPU intensive, although I'm sure they stress the memory subsystem somewhat as well. Unlike "real-world benchmarks", they're designed specifically to stress the rest of the system as little as possible. This makes SPEC benchmarks valuable in the sense that you can compare one CPU to another more-or-less directly, but this has the downside of not making SPEC results directly relevant to day-to-day computing tasks.

Talking about SPEC benchmarks is sort of like talking about the "potential" that athletes had before they entered the big leagues. It's interesting, but doesn't really matter. What matters is how they actually perform in real situations.

Tom's Hardware states that the new package does include a thermal diode. There's no more discussion than that, but I figure if you're too lazy to even read the article you won't take the time to find out how the thermal diode is implemented either.

how come on this page it says © 1999 on the chip?

Seeing as no one has mentioned this yet...

The reason for the new motherboards is because the chipsets have to recognize a lack of voltage on pin AF36, so that they run the chip at 1.25v. Otherwise, they will run at 1.5v. That should answer all the questions.. yes the tualatins should run in older boards, however it will be at a higher voltage than specified. There are a bunch of other new pinouts (and not NEW pins), for full details, see Toms Hardware

Sorry, I meant new pinouts, not 10 additional pins. Here's the skinny:

New Pinouts

I have had the best luck with speed using IBM drives, make sure it is 7200 RPM, low seek times are always good and the highest possible media rate.

AFAICT the Deskstar 60GXP is one of the fastest drives out there (in IDE land), with the highest platter density, and a 40MB/sec sustained transfer rate (slightly higher than the 75GXP). The 60GB model has a mere 3 platters.

www.tomshardware.com just did a review on high speed drives, he claims that the Seagate Barracuda and the new Western Digitals are slightly better, but I would buy an IBM, having had great luck with them.

It's too late to be a karma whore, but there's an old article at tomshardware.com regarding just how hot the Athlons can get. With as much as a basic system has nowadays, heat's a real problem; the puny proc and power supply fans just can't keep up.

I think having a cluster of Athlons would create a miniature sun with all that heat.

That would actually be good since WD drives don't fail. you should check the last drive they put out at tom's hardware WD 100GB
Fastest ide drive of all time with hardly no heat for the performance.

While the GeForce3 is a pretty sweet card, I find the new marketing tactics of NVidia distasteful. The GeForce3 Ti-200 and GeForce2 Ti are actually slower cards[tomshardware.com] gussied up with new drivers and a new name. Not only that, but they timed the release [tomshardware.com] of their new Detonator XP drivers to spoil the release of the Radeon 8500.

I know that "business is war" and all that, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

While the GeForce3 is a pretty sweet card, I find the new marketing tactics of NVidia distasteful. The GeForce3 Ti-200 and GeForce2 Ti are actually slower cards[tomshardware.com] gussied up with new drivers and a new name. Not only that, but they timed the release [tomshardware.com] of their new Detonator XP drivers to spoil the release of the Radeon 8500.

I know that "business is war" and all that, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

As you all will notice once you read Toms interesting review there is not much new in the Titanium version of Geforce3 except a better price/performance ratio. All the added functionality is already available in current GeForce3 boards once you download the new driver.

Maybe now I will buy a Geforce3 TI200 instead of the Geforce2 Pro that I was planning on.

--
Keep your hats on. It's only money.

I use a Noisecontrol Silverado. It's really quiet and was the winner in a Tom's Hardware roundup, and the quietest at 38db.

It cools my 1.2Ghz Athlon running at 1.35GHz just fine, and I can't hear it at all over the Antec case fans (which are quiet as well).

Price is an issue though -- it was $88 shipped to the US from Germany, but it arrived quickly.

It's 80mmx56mm, but it's 133mm tall because it uses twin squirrel-cage fans, so it's certainly not going to fit in a rack-mount, but it fits in a tower just fine.

I use a Noisecontrol Silverado. It's really quiet and was the winner in a Tom's Hardware roundup, and the quietest at 38db.

It cools my 1.2Ghz Athlon running at 1.35GHz just fine, and I can't hear it at all over the Antec case fans (which are quiet as well).

Price is an issue though -- it was $88 shipped to the US from Germany, but it arrived quickly.

It's 80mmx56mm, but it's 133mm tall because it uses twin squirrel-cage fans, so it's certainly not going to fit in a rack-mount, but it fits in a tower just fine.

I use a Noisecontrol Silverado. It's really quiet and was the winner in a Tom's Hardware roundup, and the quietest at 38db.

It cools my 1.2Ghz Athlon running at 1.35GHz just fine, and I can't hear it at all over the Antec case fans (which are quiet as well).

Price is an issue though -- it was $88 shipped to the US from Germany, but it arrived quickly.

It's 80mmx56mm, but it's 133mm tall because it uses twin squirrel-cage fans, so it's certainly not going to fit in a rack-mount, but it fits in a tower just fine.

Get an ECS K7S5A mobo for $70. SiS735 chipset, stable, best deal in town. I've built two boxen with 'em. See Tom's Hardware here or the AnandTech forum here.

yah, now if they could just figure out how to keep the heatsinks from falling off so that the processors don't fry in, like, 1/4 second.

*ducks*

It's cheaper for them to just source Intel CPU's and motherboards than to run two product lines, basically. I'm stunned that the price difference in the CPU alone wouldn't be enough to keep Gateway using AMD, but there you have it. For once, Intel is a cheaper decision.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/index .html

I can't think of a circumstance where I would want to trust a 4-way server to an AMD chip. Love it for my desktop though.

If you cared to read the article on Tom's Hardware, then you might think again. All those nifty sensors work shit when your TBird fires up to 300C in just a few seconds when your cooler falls off!

Dave

Here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010702 /index.html

The question now is, who will be interested in it? It is true that it will make Pentium 4 much more affordable due to its PC133 SDRAM support, but its lackluster memory performance impacts Pentium 4 so badly, that it makes AMD's Athlon an even more attractive solution than it already is. I personally would consider everyone as close to crazy if he should choose Pentium 4 plus i845 and PC133 SDRAM.

If you do get an Athlon, be sure and cool it properly. They'll keep processing till they burst into flames... :)

Which is less than a second without a good heat sink, apparently... :) Tom's Hardware lit some on fire for a test. I'm glad he does shit like that, so I don't have to.

I will now crawl back into my igloo and warm up next to my Athlon. It gets really hot from all this compiling.

Hope that heat sink is on nice and tight. You know what happens if it isn't ...

No, expect Via to come out with the real cost/price performer based on DDR SDRAM, which is of course why Intel is suing Via so that Intel can keep control of of the P4 platform and thereby increase it's revenues.

For more info, read the i845 review on Tom's Hardware: http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010702 /

But let me save you your time: The i845 sucks. Really sucks.

I couldn't follow the link, so I navigated the site a little... Not sure if tomshardware is slashdotted or if the link was wrong... in any case here's the mirror I got to, page came up immediately:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/index .html

I tried the same link both in the www6 and in the root subdomain, and both gave me a 404... try this link if thats still the case...

I hate these stupid lameness filters...

This improved the Pentium IV results significantly, but, surprisingly, it also improved the Athlon performance. View the results here.

Under Asus Notebook Upgrading you'll find a close inspection of an Asus Notebook. How to reach the inner parts, how to upgrade them, etc. Perhaps Tom's hardware has some other notebook articles like this.

Bye egghat

There are basically two ways to increase the performance of hard drives: increase the rotation speed or increase the data density. Increasing the rotation speed definitely enables better sequential performance, but only if you adjust the read/write mechanism accordingly.

80% of the wealth is controled by 10% of the population. If we have 50% of the web controled by 1% of the population, that's a little bit better in some respects.

The thing that scares me is that we have so many opinion sites that are advocating new products and they arn't revealing their affilations. A good example is Tom's Hardware. And while this is a guy who had a bias from the start (and the bias isn't that bad), what happens when we have only a few media companies and everything is spawn by them? You might read some reviews on yahoo, unable to know they are owned by the company that is releasing the products. And while not directly lying about what's good and bad, they might put the 'good' reviews of their own products closer to the top.

Eventually, you'll have things like "AT&T would like you to get 3 months of free cable modem service, but only if you go see the great movie 'Plotless'!" The ideas of cross promotions are only just starting to be explored on the internet. Or imagine that search engines tend to exclude items. It just goes down hill from there.

This is why grassroots sites will always be helpful, until places start astroturfing. The question is, where does slashdot fall in this range?

So they'l clock like a Lockheed Blackbird, while performing like a Brewster Buffalo; which is what Intel's done with the Pentium 4's p7 core.

Personally I think AMD's approach is a lot more honest.

Traditionally when a new generation core came out, clock for clock it performed better than the previous generation core.

Hence Intel's p5 core (the 1st Pentium) Pentium 100 (100mhz) ran better or equal to a 486 running at 120 to 130mhz. The same thing occured when the p6 core design came out (the core design of the Pentium Pro, Pentium II & Pentium !!! CPUs) - the Pentium Pro 150 performed better or equal to a Pentium running at about 180mhz (especially with full 32bit OSes)

Where as Intel's p7 cored P4 performs noticebly worce, clock for clock, than Intel's previous generation p6 cored P!!!

In effect Intel's gone & performed the same dodgy trick VIA did with their Cyrix III mark II design.

When the Cyrix 3 1st came out it had Cyrix's next generation (Cayenne/Joshua) core, which had the best performing X86 integer core in the game (the 686 integer core), dual 80 bit floating point units, 2 MMX units & 2 3DNow units, 64K L1 cache & 256K L2 cache & it was designed to run on any bus from 50 to 150mhz.

& clock for clock it was a screamer - the Cyrix III (Cayenne/Joshua) PR500 (400mhz model) ran up to 60% faster than a 500mhz Celeron, on the same hardware/software platform, going by Tom's Hardware Guide (I figured I'd link them seeing this thread started with a link with them). But it just wouldn't clock much faster than that, which wasn't good enough for VIA so they replaced the Cyrix III (Joshua/Cayenne) with IDT Centaur's Winchip Samuel core & called that the Cyrix III instead. This Samuel core performed like a dog (it even had no L2 cache, though it did have a K7 like 128KB L1 cache) but it could clock up to a GB, which is what VIA wanted.

The Samuel Winchip cum Cyrix III wasn't/isn't all bad, relatively speaking it runs very cool, VIA even demonstrated it running without a fansink. So it could definitly have a place in X86 based embedded platforms.

The hardware review sites like Tom's Hardware and Anand Tech don't seem to fit into the category of tech sits described in this rant... Although I agree with the characterizations made, in general, and as they relate specifically to sites owned by C|Net (ZDNet, etc.). The hardware sites , however, don't seem to have the same incentive with regard to supporing a software product through download services, and tech tips, as, these types of support related content don't really apply to hardware (other than perhaps discussion boards per product). It still is critical for the hardware sites - as with the software sites - to keep focused on their primary business, but thet seem like they'd be less prone to the influences outlines in the rant (article, posting, whatever).

--CTH

Not exactly what you're looking for, and not text, but here's a link to a series of charts I've found very useful. They cover pentium era through late P3, plus Athlons up to the 1GHz Slot A. They show handy stuff like clock speed, bus speed, multiplier, cache size, votages, etc.

Processor and Chipset Tables