Slashdot Mirror

Tom's Hardware - Copying a DVD Video to CD-ROM

Anyone else noticing that some of these high traffic ''review'' sites are serving up less and less on a page?

It is getting that adverts are becoming a new form of punctuation that you use at the end of a paragraph.

At least Andandtech and Tom's Hardware give you a table of contents for the review so you can cut through filler like the exact details of the test platform.

It is all the more irritating since browsers do not have a serious problem with monstrously long pages, and the aggregation of the whole review on a single page would have raised no eyebrows.

Considering that the radeon has been getting reviewed since the 17th of July.
No matter how good ATI's architecture might be on paper, the simple fact of the matter is that ATI can't write drivers to save their lives and NVIDIA has the best driver dev team in the industry combined with a very mature and stable driver set.
Plus the GF2 kicks ass under linux.
As if that wasn't enough, the GF2 chip is bandwidth constrained, so as supplies of 4ns DDR SDRAM increase, GF2 ultras will become common. The Radeon doesn't have the horsepower to take advantage of these improvements in memory technology.
--Shoeboy

Considering that the radeon has been getting reviewed since the 17th of July.
No matter how good ATI's architecture might be on paper, the simple fact of the matter is that ATI can't write drivers to save their lives and NVIDIA has the best driver dev team in the industry combined with a very mature and stable driver set.
Plus the GF2 kicks ass under linux.
As if that wasn't enough, the GF2 chip is bandwidth constrained, so as supplies of 4ns DDR SDRAM increase, GF2 ultras will become common. The Radeon doesn't have the horsepower to take advantage of these improvements in memory technology.
--Shoeboy

Neither Perens nor Becker has suggested how the GPL could, or should, be changed. But Becker knows one thing - he wants Sun to stop peddling the kit, which he says includes "explicit instructions on taking a copyrighted work and converting it to unlicensed use with the Solaris operating system."

Of course this means nothing to 99% of users because RDRAM is slower for just about every other application.

Ooh, that sounds familiar. Remember when everyone on Slashdot was saying that MP3 was virtually the same as CD?

Thank god we're over that.

I use MP4, I like MP4, but if anyone thinks that it's the same quality as MPEG2 at 1/11 the bandwith, take another look at Trinity's nose.

The two images he shows for comparison (original MPEG-2 and MPEG-4) are at wildly different JPEG compression levels. The original is compressed at "7" and the MPEG-4 is compressed at "2." So of freaking course one's going to look shitty.

The two images he shows for comparison (original MPEG-2 and MPEG-4) are at wildly different JPEG compression levels. The original is compressed at "7" and the MPEG-4 is compressed at "2." So of freaking course one's going to look shitty.

The language of the article above compared to the actual images within the article and observed quality are strikingly different.

I would score the difference as a 10 on the "I never had sexual relations with that woman" scale.

The difference in the propaganda and the actual images/sound has been a feature at all the levels of the compression discussion. Most of these disconnects come back to some fundamental misunderstandings about a little thing called "playback fidelity".

Playback Fidelity Recap follows:

As anyone who has ever chased "great sound" will know, half-decent stereo systems start at around $3000 with $1500 of these dollars being spent on the speakers alone. Listening to MP3s on half -decent stereo systems is a painful experience - fortunately outlawed as "cruel and unusual punishment".

But there are (at least) two other forces at work in the world of sound. Firstly, the bald fact that very very few people listen to music on half-decent stereo systems. Secondly, the bald fact that for around 20 years, the people making the music have had access to technologies known collectively (of course) as "compression". This is the process whereby, in post-production, the "raw" recorded sound is "dumbed down" or "compressed" to fit the sound qualities of most people's playback equipment. It is lossy compression - as parts of the sound are "thrown away" to concentrate on the most "noticed" parts.

This 20(odd)year process has resulted in a number of things, including the incredible "bass" that people feel that they get from ghetto blaster sized and priced playback units and (standard) car stereos. Also, people have become accustomed to the "compressed" sound and have actually come to really like it. Try playing these same tracks on half decent stereos (actually, don't) the experience is very different. Examples of extreme compression would include most rap/dance music, Britany Spears et al, etc. etc. Or really any music made for people with limited access to high quality playback.

And so at the playback fidelity that most people experience (PC speakers - $100) MP3s of course sound great. Likewise, at the playback fidelity of television tubes that are tuned for VHS in PAL or NTSC, I bet that DVD video ripped to 750MB looks fine.

Get a monitor quality TV set (you'll probably be able to afford one in a few years) - and suddenly VHS is unwatchable, free-to-air has chunks missing, cable "rips" every half minute or so, and DVD is almost acceptable, but you'll secretly hunger for something more.

I feel that playback fidelity shouldn't be forgotten when claims like "Barely noticible quality loss" are made.

Toms has some benches showing a Duron 600 or 700 whooping the arse of a 900mhz celly :)

This is hardly a cause for concern, seeing as how Tom's Hardware has an article on how to change the settings without needing the pins.

Before you ask who pays this "Tom" guy's wage you shold at least consider reading the article (thus helping to pay tom's wage) and following the links, for example to HardOCP.

Then you would notice, that
a) Tom gave intel ample time for reaction (he even called them prior to posting his first article) and really tried to get in contact and get some statements out of intel afterwards when it should have been intel (being concerned about their product) contacting Tom
b) Later HardOCP confirmed, Tom's findings, namely that Tom (and they too) got a production CPU that wasn't up to spec and that no 1.133 GHZ PIII could be relied on compiling a Linux Kernel

Considering the chain of events (especially intels noncommunication) I consider it highly likely that intel would have tried to hush it all up hadn't Tom acted as he had.

Also things would have been much worse for intel if the glitches where discovered later, since then there would have been much more systems already sold, and maybe intel would have started a major PR campaign about the fastest processor on the market (or somesuch). So Tom might have saved intel from a much bigger faceloss.

Had intel reacted quicker on Toms first article they could have come out of the story even better, and hadn't intel brought their 'fastest processor' to the market with uncalled for haste to beat AMD's announced 1.1 GHZ Athlon the whole story wouldn't have happened at all.

So please stop shooting at the messenger when hearing bad news.

According to Tom's Hardware (located withing the last couple of sentences on the page), the 1.13GHz perform fine when underclocked to 850MHz.

Although I don't always agree with Tom's sensationalistic style, it looks like he spotted the rat.

the above links on Tom's Hardware were published a month ago. For an article published today on thje AMD 1.1 Ghz, go here

In this article (I couldn't follow the link above - looks broken) I can't help but notice Tom's consistant use of the term "Satan Clara." Now maybe he's gone through a rough time with Intel, but this term really doesn't bode well for Subsequent reviews of Intel's products.

Noticed some similar stuff with Tom's infamous Q3Test disaster of '99. Very passionate fellow. His reviews are still worth the effort.

IMHO, as per

J:)

In this article (I couldn't follow the link above - looks broken) I can't help but notice Tom's consistant use of the term "Satan Clara." Now maybe he's gone through a rough time with Intel, but this term really doesn't bode well for Subsequent reviews of Intel's products.

Noticed some similar stuff with Tom's infamous Q3Test disaster of '99. Very passionate fellow. His reviews are still worth the effort.

IMHO, as per

J:)

Seeing as how Toshiba is an invester in Transmeta, I'm willing to dimiss this article as FUD. It makes no sense, but neither does the goverment.

The TRUE test of this chip will be when Uncle Tom gets his hands on these chips and beats the crap out of them. Toshiba can label the chip vaporware as long as they want to but I'm not listening until I see the specs.

"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson

The 'normal' IDE controllers, like the ones sitting in my humble little PII/300 right now, are dual-channel. Each IDE controller can access 4 devices. Then Asus went and added another one, for another 4 devices.

From Tom's Hardware:

• "As you know, the BX chipset itself does not support UltraDMA/66. Even so, Asus integrated an additional UltraDMA/66 IDE controller chip from CMD, adding two IDE channels. Thanks to this, the CUBX comes with a total of four IDE ports (allowing up to eight drives)."

Yes, this is an older design (Tom reviewed it in May), and it's based on the 440BX chipset. Asus apparently got around the "no ATA/66 on 440BX" by using a different chipset for the controller -- and put in two of them for good measure!! Cool.

I haven't looked around much, but with the proliferation of IDE/ATAPI Zip drives, DVD drives, CD-RW drives, and the incredible availability of cheap hard drives, I have to think this idea [of multiple IDE controllers] is going to stick around. Other motherboard manufacturers should get the clue very soon, if they haven't already.

Yes, this is an older design (Tom reviewed it in May), and it's based on the 440BX chipset. Asus apparently got around the "no ATA/66 on 440BX" by using a different chipset for the controller -- and put in two of them for good measure!! Cool.

I haven't looked around much, but with the proliferation of IDE/ATAPI Zip drives, DVD drives, CD-RW drives, and the incredible availability of cheap hard drives, I have to think this idea [of multiple IDE controllers] is going to stick around. Other motherboard manufacturers should get the clue very soon, if they haven't already.

Good cards for Linux are definitley the NVidia cards (open vs. closed-issue aside) they provide you with good drivers and have a great performance.
Tom's Hardware even tested the GeForce 2 in Linux(!): http://www.tomshardware. com/graphic/00q3/000811/index.html
and you _can_ compare it (using Quake 3 in Windows and Linux), which he did.

• DDR vs. Dual Channel RDRAM at InQuest.
• Very early comparison article (also at InQuest): DDR vs. Rambus A Hands-on Performance Comparison
• arstechnica's RAM guides: part one, and part two.
• Couple links from Tom's: Performance Impact of Rambus and the famous Dissecting Rambus
• And a pretty good MRAM PDF

• DDR vs. Dual Channel RDRAM at InQuest.
• Very early comparison article (also at InQuest): DDR vs. Rambus A Hands-on Performance Comparison
• arstechnica's RAM guides: part one, and part two.
• Couple links from Tom's: Performance Impact of Rambus and the famous Dissecting Rambus
• And a pretty good MRAM PDF

Hi Sips,

Hmm yes, linux is resource heavy in it's fullest glory, but at least you can customize the load. Ok, if you really know what you're doing, you can also customize the load of NT, but unless you order 10 manuals first and have a permanent hotline straight into Gates kingdom, chances are you are going to long for a pinguin again soon.

One thing I must give you though. Motherboards are a kill factor. Slot A, Socket 7, Socket 1, Socket A, Slot 7.. can they please make up their fucking mind!! Chip cache is finally on-die. Yes! Rambus is allmost gone, and DDR SDRAM is stronger than ever. Finally! AGP is probably the next source of trouble for the next generations of motherboards, as current nVidia's have a bandwith problem. Fuck! The AMD's and Intel's are frequency locked, and so are supporting boards. You must allmost be a soldering electro cowboy if you want to overclock your stuff. In a way, it is cool to do stuff like that, get your hands dirty again just like in the old days (if you don't screw up your board ofcourse) but it also kinda sucks. Luckily, there's this haven in hardware land called www.tomshardware.com, which kicks major ass time and time again. Worth a peek, if you didn't allreally do so.

Actually, regarding motherboards, things have somewhat stabilized right now, which is scary because 64bit processors are just round the corner and will no-doubt require a whole new set of wheels to go. But in the end the consumer is usually fucked anyway, without even knowing it. The industry has allready set out it's roadmaps. God knows how they will really play it.

As for 3D cards.. you don't NEED a 3D card. It's just like with soundcards. They're all over the place, but you don't NEED them. I don't know why everybody keeps talking about getting their throat smacked up with a 3D board, because it's crap. Get a low-end Matrox board and shut up.

For instance, I didn't get a soundcard untill the very moment that I realised that I could make music with it myself (and I still do). Meanwhile just about everybody was allready enjoying Sounblaster 16's in stereo. So I bought me a wavetable card, because I thought it was a smarter design (and it was, if you added enough RAM on top to store the tables). But the point was that, unless I NEED to work with it, I don't buy it. And I think that goes for every fan, wire or led I have in this little grey and quite sexy box I have here :)

But anyway. You are right. It's hard assembling a lasting and upgradable configuration these days. The strategy I use is to just buy very high-end at one time and then hold my breath and see what happens. If you don't bet on the bad horses, that usually works quite ok.

my 0.02 euro.

A couple months back Toms hardware posted a review of Gainwards CardEXPERT video card which had a 400mhz DDR clock and 200mhz clock The card blew many out of the water including the newly released GTS.

The review is here
Not too long after that review nVidia expressed their concerns about the card and told them that they cannot ship it in volume. Back then I didn't think it would not have much impact on nVidia, now I know why.

Anyone else notice a trend in increased costs for a 3d card these days? When released TNT = $150 and GF2 Ultra = $500?

Hmmn

At tom's.. he has a interesting quote. on.... this page here

Basically he says that the NV20 is going to be fully designed around/for DirectX8 and then he goes to say most Manuf's havent caught up to DX7 which leads him to think that MS may be leading their nose some.

he ends the page with some trailing dots ......

Whether his assumptions are true or not its fairly easy to just show the flaws in the logic by pointing out all of the things you did it still is an interesting sitaution

But credit where credit is due :)

Jeremy


If you think education is expensive, try ignornace

According to Toms Hardware the D3 drivers will be out for linux sometime inside the next week. Looks like they'll have to redo the recent article they compared linux and win98 3d benchmarks in. I wonder what the new drivers will do for CAD performance under linux?

Yeah, I'm a dork : Tom's Hardware

Most of the reviewer sites just spew out the old GF2 reviews + ultra info/benchmarks. Herr Doctor has a good one at 8 14/index.html>Tom's Hardware</a>. It cuts out most of the fat.

AMD Sledgehammer

SuSE Linux

VIA PC 266 chipset (64bit equiv.)

DDR SDRAM

Mobo for all of that

Overclocking tips from Tom's

SCSI controller and 4x45GB 10000RPM drives

A 3D supported LCD letterbox montor

THX surround sound

DVD burner

A DSL provider who actually delivers

100 lbs Kona Espresso beans, 500 lbs mixed Jelly Bellies (no apple, please) & a Thai delivery which stays open past 10 PM

Thanks!

Vote Naked 2000

Sales of Linux 3d games should have been expected to be low prior to XFree86 4.0 and its DRI hardware GL acceleration. Maybe within another year, when the new XFree4 DRI supports more video cards, sales will pick up. Right now, you still have to be a bit of a hacker to even get hardware acceleration to work in Linux. Just go read the article at Tom's Hardware about NVIDIA 3D Under Linux and you will get an idea of what you have to fiddle with just to get it to work.

Nevertheless, I'm running Quake3 under Linux with a GeForce256 DDR and its working fine. I'd like to improve its performance a little if I could by applying the AGPGART kernel patch. Actually, I tried to patch kernel 2.2.16 with the AGPGART patch for 2.2.16 and could not see any option for it in make menuconfig afterwards. Instructions that I found said that after you patch the kernel, you'd see options about enabling it under character devices but I didn't see anything so I deleted the source and went back to a plain 2.2.16. If anyone knows exactly how to patch and enable the 2.2.16 kernel for agpgart, please send me an email - thanks. I'm thinking about upgrading to a 2.4.0 test kernel to see if I can get it that way but before I can think about running a 2.4.0 kernel, I have to upgrade some other system software first.

I don't agree with that... The quake3 benchmark for the Quadro 2 @ 640X480 is .1 fps faster in Linux.
I just wanted to mention this...

"Tom's Hardware has posted up their dealings with the new PIII 1.13GHz processor. Apparently without a special board with a new bios from Intel it will not even run correctly. Any motherboard that has not got the special micro code update for this very processor will ultimately fail. The review has some interesting facts about the processor as well."

Seems the Intel PIII pretty much stank up the place, when it could be made to run..

Anybody think this new vapor-chip will perform any better?

And does anybody think this thing'll run with an aftermarket mobo?

Not me...

t_t_b

--
I think not; therefore I ain't®

400mhz WOULD be a big jump from the industry standard 100mhz, except for two things which we have discussed here before and which was discussed at some length on Tom's Hardware.

First, RDRAM transmits two bytes per read (And I DO mean transmits; RAMBUS is most closely related to networking protocols) and SDRAM is read eight bytes at a time. This means that RDRAM has to be four times as fast as SDRAM to have the same bandwidth as SDRAM.

Second, RDRAM has significantly higher latency than SDRAM. SDRAM and RDRAM both have a base latency of about 10ns, even when you have the 6 and 7ns SDRAM. However, SDRAM has the chips on a "grid", more or less. RDRAM has the chips along a bus (Hence the name RAMB(U)S) (ha ha) which means that some chips will actually take longer to get their messages down the bus to the PC.

This is not a joke; It actually takes the electrons a measurable amount of time to propagate down the traces on the board. Furthermore, it takes even longer for the electrons to travel down the traces on the inner layers of a multi-layer PCB, which RDRAM DIMM boards definitely are. If you are the last RDRAM [chip] on the RIMM (Boy does that sound nasty) then you may be experiencing as much as 10.5ns of additional latency. This is not an exaggeration; RDRAMs have a circuit in them that generates between 2.5ns (minimum) and 10.5ns (maximum) latency so that they don't talk over each other. It's a teensy tiny little LAN of RAMs inside your PC, and it's not switched. Of course, they never generate collisions.

There is a third thing that makes RDRAM slower than SDRAM, which is the fact that you can only read half the data at once. I don't know if it's broken down into words, pages, or whole RAMs, but you can only read the odd or even whatevers at a time. This means that long-ass memory reads/writes will be slow because it has to bank switch, causing more latency. In all fairness though, you could solve THAT problem with either a good memory controller or judicious use of the MMU.

The bottom line is that RDRAM is a great deal of expense for a very small return. PC800 RDRAM is indeed faster than PC133 SDRAM, but it is actually slower in every way when compared to PC133 DDR SDRAM, which runs (of course) at 266mhz, 8 bytes at a time, 10ns latency, as compared to 800mhz, 2 bytes at a time, 12.5ns or greater latency. You do the math, because I can't figure out a clever way to put it together.

The Pentium 4 is coming soon, but it is only the first of a number of products coming from Intel in the next 16 months.

Translation: RSN (an acronym for the big lie of the 80's)

The company is preparing to launch its Pentium 4 early in the fourth quarter and will follow the release with a number of processors for different product segments, according to sources. The chip will run at 1.4 GHz, Intel has said.

At the best it will be out and will not have bugs. A the worst it's a bluff attempt to encourage buyers to put off that purchase of a Ghz AMD for the holidays. Considering the problems observed noted on Tom's Hardware Page with a PIII attempting to run 1.13 Ghz, this seems excessively optimistic. IMHO Tom Pabst jumped the gun a bit to trample Intel, shoot first and call Intel PR later, I'm cynical enough to consider this a ploy to prop up Intel reputation, if not 4th quarter stock value.

Toward the end of the third quarter in 2001, the company will come out with Northwood, an improved version of the Pentium 4, according to Bert McComas, an analyst at InQuest Market

Improved: With the Bugs worked out?

Before that, in the middle of 2001, Intel will come out with Tualatin, a version of the Pentium III made on the 0.13-micron process, more advanced than the current 0.18-micron process, McComas said. The micron measurements refer to the size of certain features on the chip. By shrinking the features, a manufacturer can make the chip smaller as well as boost its performance.

Along with being faster, Tualatin will also contain a larger secondary cache, a bank of memory close to the processor that boosts performance, according to one source. Tualatin Pentium IIIs will contain 512KB of integrated cache, compared to 256KB of integrated cache on current Pentium IIIs.

Maybe Titilation would be a better name. Why continue to develop the PIII and Celeron with the PIV out? Shouldn't one of these (PIII | Celeron) be dumped?

Tualatin will also come with a 200-MHz system bus.

This actually sounds more exciting.

The Pentium 4 and its successors come at a pivotal time for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker. The company has not been able to meet demand for many of its processors since last November. The chronic shortages, combined with the success Advanced Micro Devices has enjoyed with Athlon, have allowed AMD to capture a substantial position in the consumer market.

The most telling, "RSN, RSN!!"

The Pentium 4 is expected to give Intel the advantage over AMD in performance, according to analysts.

Analysts who haven't read about the AMD 64bit CPU.

Northwood will be made on the 0.13-micron process. The shift to this more advanced manufacturing process will allow Intel to boost the clock speed.

Just 0.13 microns thicker than vapor. Wow!

Overall, Rambus will occupy only a niche, he said. "It's a pretty clear admission that Intel is not going to make more of Rambus than the market is willing to make of it," he said.

Rambus would make a good name for a clown...

Intel could not be reached for comment and typically does not comment on product code names or unreleased products.

But their happy to comment on vapor.

Intel executives have said that Pentium 4 will be ready for the holiday buying season in 2000.

Read: Gift buying season.

Vote Naked 2000

Let's leave aside completely the question of what or who a 1.4 GHz Pfoo is currently useful for. The CPU race is engrossing enough as morbid entertainment, chronicled in all its awfulness by sites like Tom's Hardware and the Register. Instead Slashdot features this bland little piece from CNet. Funny there's no mention that the release schedule for this wonder has apparently already slipped. Funny how Intel's current woes with CPU supply, motherboard supply, the competition, and Rambus (oh, Rambus!) get um, let's say a soft touch. Now this could just be down to laziness. Or it could be another case of big-time tech journalism rolling over for powerful Intel. Could it even have something to do with the fact that Intel is a CNet shareholder? (I haven't had time to verify this from a more neutral souce yet.)

This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened here, is it? (Or indeed the first time it's involved a company partly owned by Intel.) You'd hardly believe Slashdot is also the platform for John Katz's increasingly overblown denunciations of big-corporate influence-peddling.

Let's leave aside completely the question of what or who a 1.4 GHz Pfoo is currently useful for. The CPU race is engrossing enough as morbid entertainment, chronicled in all its awfulness by sites like Tom's Hardware and the Register. Instead Slashdot features this bland little piece from CNet. Funny there's no mention that the release schedule for this wonder has apparently already slipped. Funny how Intel's current woes with CPU supply, motherboard supply, the competition, and Rambus (oh, Rambus!) get um, let's say a soft touch. Now this could just be down to laziness. Or it could be another case of big-time tech journalism rolling over for powerful Intel. Could it even have something to do with the fact that Intel is a CNet shareholder? (I haven't had time to verify this from a more neutral souce yet.)

This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened here, is it? (Or indeed the first time it's involved a company partly owned by Intel.) You'd hardly believe Slashdot is also the platform for John Katz's increasingly overblown denunciations of big-corporate influence-peddling.

The release of their 815i chipset already pointed in this direction (Rambus didn't really like that move :)

Also, the 815i chipset seems to be faster then the 820i chipset (which uses expensive Rambus memory). Now, it looks like they're indeed going to drop it. Look at some of these articles:

• This article posted earlier today mentions that the new 1.4 Ghz Pentium IV will also support SDRAM, not only Rambus memory.
• This article at Tom's Hardware talks about the performance of 820 and 815 chipsets.

hehe :) good point. for reference, read Tom's Hardware and his article on the *new* pentium 3 1133. it's hilarious. he's so bitter at intel...

From what I've read about the 1.13 GHz Pentium-III (for example in the article and update at Tom's Hardware Guide), I seriously doubt that Intel is the position of being able to ship a stable 1.4 GHz CPU within a year, not to think about 2 GHz ...

From what I've read about the 1.13 GHz Pentium-III (for example in the article and update at Tom's Hardware Guide), I seriously doubt that Intel is the position of being able to ship a stable 1.4 GHz CPU within a year, not to think about 2 GHz ...

From what I've read about the 1.13 GHz Pentium-III (for example in the article and update at Tom's Hardware Guide), I seriously doubt that Intel is the position of being able to ship a stable 1.4 GHz CPU within a year, not to think about 2 GHz ...

The AMD Duron is the Celeron competitor. It has 64K L2 cache.

The AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) is the PIII (Coppermine) competitor.

Supposedly, we will see an Athlon Thunderbird with more on die cache, and that will be the Xeon competitor. (The "Athlon Professional" I think)

The Sledgehammer, being a 64 bit chip, will most closely compete with Intel's Merced (Itanium) or McKinley.

cot

The 533 Samual may have been overclockable to 733MHz, but even then it couldn't beat a Celeron 500! This is what Van Smith had to say:

"We thought the floating point performance of the original Cyrix III was poor, but the new Cyrix III has a staggeringly poor FPU. To achieve the feeble FPU potency of a 500 MHz Celeron, the Cyrix III would have to run at greater than 1.6 GHz!"

Geez, the Samual has to run at 1.6GHz to be equivalent to a Celeron 500. 1GHz doesn't sound so great to me, even if it is overclockable. It'll probably do okay for simple integer-based applications like business suites, but gamers will stay away from the Samuel for a while. Thankfully, we still have AMD to turn to as an alternative to Intel... so competition so far is good (AMD's going to drop the price of their 1GHz Thunderbird to below $500... can you say SWEET!)

According to Tom's Hardware, the problem with using VLIW in complicated microprocessors is writing a fast compiler, which is really hard since instruction have to be executed concurrently (or if this is impossible you'll lose much performance). Read the article for further information.

This is also why the Crusoe is not as fast as a Pentium III or Athlon (the Crusoe uses VLIW too). However, in the Crusoe case it might not be a problem since Transmeta is targeting another market: PDA's, laptops and such, requiring low power usage and long battery live.

Obviously, the Itanium (stupid name!) is targeted at the server market, where power consumption does not really matter (except when running into cooling problems ofcourse!), so it had better be fast.

And until now it looks like it isn't! Little problem for Intel that has yet to be solved!

You obviously never read Tom's Hardware. Look at this article describing how Tom thinks about Intel's IA64 architecture (Itanium, formerly Merced) in relation to AMDs SledgeHammer technology.

Why do you think it's called SledgeHammer in the first place???

You also have to note that MegaHertz are a very very bad way to measure chip speeds. ALL Celerons are currently still on a 66MHz bus, which severely limites their capiabilities to be a high end chip. Celerons are also more expensive since all they are is a bus speed locked P3 with 3/4 of the Cache disabled (at least the newest ones are).

With the K6-2+ and K6-3+ chips out now, which eliminate many of the previous problems associated with the K6-2 line. If you check out Tom's Hardware, you notice that they say a computer upgraded with these chips can now perform like a modern PC. With 128k of L2 cache integrated onto the chip at full speed, it takes the place of the celeron. And those manufacturers still smart enough to put cache on motherboards, can take the same advantage of the K6-3 Processors, and have up to 2MB of L3 Cache. It still has all the same MMX support, and 3DNow! Support, and takes up even less power at max than the traditional K6-2 and K6-3 chips took.

Another thing that's great. This processor starts to move to what the Crusoe processor will be able to do, VARYING CLOCK SPEEDS DURING OPERATION. It's like overclocking a chip automatcially while you're working. And speaking of Overclocking. Guess what, the K6-2+ chips can overclock, another rarity of the line. I'd also suggest you take a look at the benchmarks Tom's Harware Provides, I think you'll notice that Not only does the K6-2+ out perform the standard K6-2 at 500MHz, but it also scores 1 point higher than the CELERON 500! Though for game playing it still lags behind.

So let's go over this: It's cheap, not much more than a normal K6-2 processor, it's faster, it's overclockable, it has much better performance. AMD has another new winner with this. BTW, how can this round of Mobile Computer might go to Intel. AMD controls 60% of the laptop chip market right now. Last I checked, that would only give intel at most 40, if not counting any competitors.

Please note, Duron's will prolly not see the notebook market for a while, since they use massivce amounts of power compared to the P3.

Well... the announcements are many, many moons old, but actual notebooks with the + chips are still fairly new, and not very common.

Being a broke owner of an old K6-2, I am waaayyyy interested in sticking a 550 K6-2+ in my desktop, which both Aces Hardware and Tom's Hardware say is not only possible, but also much better than a regular K6-2 550, or K6-3 400 (the highest clocked, realistically priced, Super7 chips out there).

Problem is, you can't get these chips hardly anywhere without getting a notebook around it... :P
-----
#o#