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At the Nvision event in San Jose, California, Nvidia outlined another plan: it will certify certain Intel X58-based mainboards for SLI compliance and will provide âoeapproval keys that will be integrated into the system BIOS for boards that pass certificationâ. The company said that it will charge mainboard makers for SLI compliance, but right now the terms are unknown.

This smells like yet another "we'll put arbitrary software restrictions in our stuff because we're greedy. Wonder why they are the only ones with no free drivers whatsoever?

I call bullshit. I stopped using their chipsets long ago, but now I'll actually switch to AMD for video. No more NVidia - hello, software freedom.

Now if I could only find a P45-based board that can run FreeBIOS....

USB monitors exist. Here is a review of one. As mentioned in the review, the problem is that there are not any USB graphics cards, so the graphics are not hardware accelerated. They get around the bandwidth problem by using "DisplayLink" compression.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/print/20080801105547_Nvidia_Set_to_Quit_Chipset_Business_Multi_GPU_SLI_Tech_in_Danger.html

I've read most of the comments, and the amount of FUD and baseless comments is amazing

1) From a technological standpoint, Intel is no better off than AMD. The Q9300 is only about 6-8% faster than their previous CPU (the Q6600), and it trails at many task because it has 2MB less L3 Cache than the Q6600. In addition, not only does it run hotter, but it doesn't overclock nearly as well. Of course you could go up to the Q9450, but you'd be paying $325 for a CPU with an 8X multiplier and a faulty temperature sensor (which is a known problem for their 45nm CPUs).

2) In terms of efficiency, nothing Intel makes comes even close to the 4850e. 2.5Ghz Dual Core CPU, running at only 45w. That's more than enough muscle for the average joe, and quite impressive if people weren't so thirsty for quad cores they don't even need.

3) The AMD A770 and 780G are both excellent chipsets, and the 3800 series GPU's marked the return of ATi, while the 4800 even further closed the gap from nVidia. Meanwhile, the G35 chipset has compatibility issues with DDR2 1066, as well as another chipset (who's name escapes me at the moment), and the GeForce 9600GT suffers from the Black Screen of Death. Now, can someone PLEASE tell me why purchasing ATi was such a bad idea, seeing how they're the only division of AMD that's actually gaining momentum at the moment?

The only part of AMD that need to be fixed is their flagship CPU department. The Phenom is an exact repeat this idiot CEO did with the 64-Bit transition. In short, he let the Athlon XP line go completely to shit because he knew Hammer was coming soon. Only this time when he put his all his eggs in one basket, the basket had a hole in the bottom of it. Granted, needing a better flagship product is quite the problem to fix, but to say that the company sucks from top to bottom is hyperbole at its finest.

I've always thought grey-to-grey was going from [128,128,128] to [0,0,0] (or [255,255,255]) and back.

from:
http://www.presentationtek.com/2008/03/13/lcd-display-response-time/

"The two most common measurement methods are "rise-and-fall" and "gray-to-gray". A technical specification for rise-and-fall is available from VESA (the Video Electronics Standards Association). Rise-and-fall is measured as the time taken for a pixel to change from black to white (rise) and back to black again (fall). Gray-to-gray is the time to change from one shade of gray to another. Transitions between the fine graduations of gray-to-gray can be 3 to 4 times slower than those of rise-and-fall because of the lower driving signal for the transition."

and from

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/response-compensation.html

"It may seem that the process of switching from black to gray should go faster than switching from black to white since the crystals are turned round by a smaller angle, but the fact is the applied electric field not only determines the orientation of the crystals, but also the speed of their turning round. The force that affects the crystals is proportional to the square of the applied electric field. So it takes a four times smaller force to turn the crystals round by a two times smaller angle."

This again confirms that g2g (gtg) is slower than black-white.

And the reason it takes longer for g2g transitions is that you use smaller electric fields to turn the crystals, which in turn means the crystals orient slower. Thus the smaller the transition, the slower the transition.

Overdrive works because it hits them with a strong field to get them to quickly orient to a new position (in the wrong position), and then hits them with another strong field to get them to the target intensity, back near where they started. And it works out that these two quick transitions with strong fields is faster than one slow transition with a weak field.

Either way, grey-to-grey is faster than a standard measurement (be it white-to-black or white-black and back, or whatever "standard" panel manufacturers use), almost always by a factor of 2.

My experience, and the links above agree, is the opposite. I have no idea what the newegg ad is trying to disclose... maybe thats the gtg transition speed with and without overdrive? Or maybe its the rise-fall and the gtg with overdrive?

I'm now seeing new XBox 360s for sale sub-$260 (while the PS3 is at the same $399 that it's been at for well over a year)

I think that has more to do with Xbox 360 launching a year earlier than the PS3. All consoles go through price reductions during their lifetime just other electronics. It works on the basis that different demographics will buy at different price points.

Microsoft have also reduced the production cost of the Xbox 360 by 40% since it launched which means they can offer it a lower price without losing revenue. The PS3 on the other hand set a record for console manufacturing costs losing Sony an estimated $250 per console sold. The Xbox 360 was also originally sold at a loss but not to the same extent.

You seem to be trying to make the point that Microsoft are selling the Xbox at a lower price because they are finding it difficult to compete with the blu-ray equipped PS3 while ignoring the fact that the price of a PS3 is only just cheaper than buying an xbox 360 and a stand alone blu-ray player.

• March 4, 2008: AMD demos 45nm server and desktop processors
• September 12, 2007: AMD K10 Family Chips Support DDR3 Memory - Documents.

It's not necessairly a limit of the board design, but a limit to what game engines can be optimized for. Most game engines do not scale well beyond two cards, as can be seen here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/zotac-9800gx2.html

While there are a few key games that get no boost out of 2-way SLI, the vast majority of games do see improvement. 3-way, on the other hand, can actually cause WORSE performance.

It probably has to do with limitations on how the SLI/Crossfire drivers can fake-out the game engine. There are probably limits to how many frames the game engine allows to be in-flight at once, limiting how much performance boost you can get from AFR SLI. And although you can get around game engine limitations with split-screen rendering, this mode needs specific game support, and shows less potential performance increase. Plus, split-screen rendering and has to be selected explicitly in Crossfire (AFR is the default).

Beaten by ATI Radeon: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce9800-gx2.html

"If you have a 30-inch monitor that supports 2560x1600 resolution, then your choice is clear: ATI 4-way CrossFireX
outperforms the similar solution from Nvidia or runs at comparable speed offering acceptable gaming performance
in such titles as Battlefield 2142, BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and ompany
of Heroes: Opposing Fronts.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad SLI platform, however, leads in Call of Duty 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of
Chernobyl and Tomb Raider: Legend. In other games, both quad-GPU configurations either work incorrectly or
cannot provide acceptable performance in 2560x1600 resolution.

So, the total score would be 5:3 in favor of AMD/ATI that offer better compatibility, scalability and fewer technical
issues for the users."

___

So, beaten by Quad Radeon in some games.

However, anyone willing to bet on the Linux 3D performance on Radeon? I'm not...

This player was not a CD/MP3 player. The F10 had 32 Megs of memory which was not expandible. The next verion (the one that I have!) the F20 had an expandible memory slot for SmartMeida cards (those thin memory cards, remember?). You could expand it to a whooping 64M of total memory. I tried inserting a 128M card but it wouldn't play. Also the interface for uploading songs was conected to the _parallel_ (LPT) port of the comp. It was pretty unstable. The filesystem was also not FAT12/16/32 based so it was a hassle to get the songs on the player a few yeras after when it was hard coming by Win98 (for which the software was written). There was a Linux driver released by I digress... :) .. I still wish I had gotten the F10 just for its potential legendary status. BTW, my F20 is still running after all these years, while I've had several other "el cheapo" players die on me.

Cheers!...

I don't think so. I found these numbers from 2006, where ATI's market share was almost 10 percent points larger than NVidia's. However, on Steam's Hardware Survery NVidia is in the lead, with 62% against ATI's 33%, and Intel's 2.5%. I think these latter stats are seriously scewed, though, since I've often heard that Intel has the largest share.

You mean this little piece of chippery?

But there was also, The Tualatin, the last of the P3's. .

Much to AMDs dismay, the new Intel 45nm chips are remarkably good. Only 4 watts idle and 50W when at max load and also a bit faster per clock. That idle figure is quite amazing considering 20-30W was considered good a generation or two ago.

So if Sony gets similar benefits from 4nm+high k, the new PS3 will use much less power. They managed to get it to work without active cooling as it was, so this should give them a lot of headroom to shrink the box or do something new (build in PS2 hardware again would be a good idea...).

Tests show the water in Bioshock is 76.5% more badass in DX10 than DX9.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/dx10-part2_2.html

You're in luck:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20070831215028.html

Feasable: an ExpressCard with a low-power GPU designed to add another display to your laptop. Minimal 3D gaming capability, and no way to drive the laptop main display.

The reason why you can't have a powerful gaming GPU in an ExpressCard slot is because the maximum thermal design power for a full-size ExpressCard is 2.1w. Also, a gaming GPU would push the limits of the PCIe x1 interface, which is barely twice as fast as regular PCI. Worse, to get the GPU to display on the laptop screen, you would have to hack a way to route every completed frame back to the built-in video card (it is the only device connected to the LCD).

In reality, if all you want to do is add another display for simple 2D Windows work, you might be better off with a Samsung USB display. And yes, you can buy them right now for around $300.

That's exactly the potential outcome - HD-DVD could still win out unless all 174 Corporate Blu-ray backers figure out how to make cheaper consumer examples of their players.

There are 138 Corporate HD-DVD backers of which Microsoft is one. Microsoft has recently primed the pump by helping (funding/bribing) studios to create lots of HD-DVD titles - the other factor of format choice for consumers. There's some contention that Microsoft is just trying to fuel the format wars so they can swoop the download market.

Oh, yeah.. the download market. LG and Netflix partnership, Apple and a dozen others may obsolete both physical standards.

Well, if what you're saying is true, it runs contrary to what I've read in the past, and every bit of info that I just found via a quick Google search on the matter. Also, you'll find that many high end LCDs for graphics work are S-IPS, or some variant there of, such as the LaCie 319.

Do you have any sources to back up your claims? If not, I'm afraid I'll have to stick with my original statement.

http://xbitlabs.com/ is also a good place for monitor reviews. http://xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/20inch-5.html http://xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/24inch.html

http://xbitlabs.com/ is also a good place for monitor reviews. http://xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/20inch-5.html http://xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/24inch.html

http://xbitlabs.com/ is also a good place for monitor reviews. http://xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/20inch-5.html http://xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/24inch.html

As a consequence of a loony civil way between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Microsoft, apple and now Netflix will kill both formats.

Microsoft has helped keep the civil war alive.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20071205123352_Microsoft_Accused_of_Eventual_Blu_Ray_HD_DVD_Formats_Fiasco.html

Without a stalemate Christmas 2007 would have seen massive buying of cheap HD players. We would all being watching HD movies and be getting used to them. We would get so spoiled by the superior picture quality that we would not succumb to inferior download quality.

However now that there there is a stalemate going on people are nervous to buy either standard and each standard is still quite expensive. Some people including myself don't want to buy some standard that wont play all movies because some are exclusive to only one format.

Now people will simply say since there is no reliable HD standard why not download a lesser quality version from Netflix or apple or Microsoft. They will do this for both rental purposes and to buy a permanent copy. Then they will get very habituated to it. As time goes watching movies buy obtaining a physical medium will seem less and less attractive. In 2012 there will be enough bandwidth for most high speed internet connections to download HD movies. HD-DVD and blue ray will be both be dead and buried by 2014.

But this requires the stupidity of both Sony and Toshiba to keep their rivalry going and be unwilling to compromise even though it is both of their interests to do so. They seem though to have come through 100% on the doofus front.

Why the AC post? +1 Interesting

I'm not so sure the writing is on the wall, though. Much like they learned with DirectX (D3D specificly), Microsoft knows they can substantially influence the future development of other companies. They pretty much dictate an API and the graphics guys tailor their hardware to it (to be fair: along with extentions to OpenGL... but at least with those they control what device-specific parameters to use).

I mean, you even have John Carmack commenting, "I especially like the work I'm doing on the [Xbox] 360, and it's probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I've worked with."

The thing is that the XBox line has to permiate all levels in the market, like DirectX was carried on Windows' shoulders. They probably do have an ultimate plan to drop hardware altogether and just release a specification, but it's an ultimate plan. The money their games division is dwarfed by the revenue generated by Microsoft as a whole. If it's part of the business plan, they really don't ever have to turn a profit on the games division, if it so pleases the shareholders. It'd be a relatively short-term sacrifice for a long-term cash cow.

Now I'm not saying there's a tricky part to this, but, if there was, it'd be staying one step ahead of the PS3 and Sony's responses. So far they're doing ok, but IMHO it's not so much marketing prowess as it is Sony being just so out of touch with the gaming public. Since the XBox landed on the scene in 2001, it seems to be held in place by that unholy barrel o' cash of Microsoft's and nothing else. I won't believe the console market truly is big enough for three separate companies until I see all three of them post a profit.

If you rewind a 8 years or so and have Sega with the assets and unrelated income that Microsoft has today, I wonder if the Dreamcast would be following the same footsteps.

I mean, seriously, the 8800 GT has a theoretical floating-point performance of 520 GFlops (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gf8800_4.html). A single computer with dual 8800's could potentially out class Iran's "super computer". This is not totally crazy, either. The GPU Folding@Home client is two orders of magnitude more productive than the average Windows client. (http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats)

Wiis are in short supply but it isn't because they aren't making many. They are putting out 1.8million/month now and still having 100% sellout. That is because they are selling, and have been selling, 500k consoles/month in North America.

I think even without the 'buzz' of having 100% sellout Nintendo would be doing quite well.

On a somewhat related note, the PS2 is outselling the PS3. Source

That isn't true with regards to the Xbox. They did 155K in May, 170K in July, 276K in August. September is expected to be higher and I'm sure the trend will continue till Jan. Here is a nice chart for you. http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20070914235723.html

But if an average consumer sees a $250 Linux sub-notebook that will do all of these things, and then sees a $350-400 Windows box which does the same things, more and more of them are going to start thinking that there is no real good reason to pay a 40% Microsoft tax. And the tax rate is only going to go up from here on out.

Xandros is a non-free linux distribution which also does a pretty good job. Coincidently, it is being bundled with this very small very cheap sub-notebook.

Foxconn and MSI showed "hybrid" DDR2/DDR3 boards based on this chipset at June's Computex.

I guess you have a poor memory. How about a refresher?

I used my G400 MAX to play Counterstrike, Quake III, MDK2, etc. The 32-bit Direct3D performance was second to none. The OpenGL performance using the TurboGL was outstanding, and supported all OpenGL games in existence. I had a lot of faith in Matrox, until they casually ignored the powerful GeForce 256 and announced the G450. What a horrible memory.

Okay, you're either trolling or being a moron. Let's take a quick look at your argument.

draw seems to have lessened in recent years though since the new consoles are coming out on faster and faster release cycles (with the new advent of releasing 'better' versions of the same console during the console's release cycle - see the 360 elite as an example of this),

Actually, developers have complained that the multiple SKUs on the 360 have caused them to always default to the lesser SKU - they can't count on having a hard drive. See Oblivion for example - it actually got to the point where you were required to have the hard drive. Multiple SKUs might be nice if they're just upgrading the disk size or adding a non-necessary feature, but what about adding 1080p output to the 360? Who's going to support it if just a small percentage of the install base actually has that feature? I think a constant hardware base is probably the best bet, while improving hardware manufacturing will help lower costs.

Oh, and faster release cycles? I think that's basically Microsoft that has that problem, and even then it's only been one generation change. They entered the game late last generation and early this time around. The PS2 has been out for 7 years already, and they've committed to the PS3 for at least as long, if not longer. I'm not sure how long the Wii will last, but the gamecube has been around 5 years...that's not a short lifetime at all, considering that I tend to have to upgrade my computer every 3 years or so to keep up with the latest in computer game technology.

want to play games, not have an inferior (in almost every case) HD/Blu-Ray player or DVR.

Inferior Bluray player? Just about every review of the PS3 movie playback has said it's the best BluRay player on the market - and sales suggest that consumers agree. I've actually thrown out my DVD player in favor of using just one device - the PS3 - for all my entertainment needs. Hell, I don't even have to load my music onto the PS3 at this point, I just stream it from my NAS using mediatomb on Linux. Add in the remote play via the PSP and I don't have to take my music on the road either, I can access it from any WAP.

Sony is taking a big hit because they supposedly don't have many great games out (I have 8 that I swap out regularly, and I haven't touched Resistance in 6 months). The only people complaining are the ones who own two or three consoles, and why you'd want to buy both the 360 and the PS3 and then complain about price and game availability is beyond me.

...those SLI motherboards for AM2 are around $150 vs. the $220 + for Intel ones.

A friend of mine and myself both upgraded our desktop PCs. They chose an Intel Core 2 Duo because "Intel wins in all the benchmarks." I bought AMD instead.

I knew right away, from your tone and your friend's quote, that you would buy for price/performance and your friend would buy for performance only. An unfair, biased comparison would follow. Did your friend know he or she was competing in a price/performance contest?

Their system is based around a E6600 ($270 at the time), mine is based around an X2 3600+ 65nm ($75 at the time).

"At the time" is not the "current lineup," which the GP was referring to. Way to go there, comparing a mid-range (at the time) Intel CPU to a low-end (at the time) AMD CPU. Don't mention that $270 currently gets you Intel's E6850 (3GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB) and almost gets you Intel's Quad Q6600 ($280). $75 currently gets you Intel's (Core 2 based) Pentium Dual-Core E2140.

Their system has 2gb of RAM, mine has 4gb of RAM.

RAM costs the same for both platforms.

My motherboard (with nVidia chipset) was $80 cheaper than their P5B Deluxe.

I'm sure "they" could have bought a significantly cheaper motherboard. Currently, an ASUS P5NSLI motherboard (with nForce 570 SLI Intel Edition chipset) is $45 cheaper (at Newegg) than your ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe (with nForce 570 SLI AMD Edition chipset).

Overall my system was $400 cheaper -- with double the RAM.

You bought a low-end CPU and a mid-range motherboard. Your friend bought a mid-range CPU and a high-end motherboard. You also bought at a time when AMD drastically slashed prices in response to Intel kicking their arse in the mid-range and high-end. At the time, AMD was only competitive in the low-end (where Intel still only offered Netburst CPUs).

I go into my Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe BIOS and change the clock rate of my CPU from 1.9Ghz to 2.4Ghz with no ill effects and get the same # of 3D Marks as them because I have the same kind of video card (8600 GTS PCI-E).

Yeah, that's a fair comparison. Overclock your low-end AMD CPU and compare it to a mid-range Intel CPU at stock speeds.

They're happy because they bought "performance" (as sold to them via Intel marketing), and I'm happy because I bought the same performance (as proved by benchmarks) for a lot less.

If they're happy, then they probably didn't know they were competing in a price/performance contest with you.

For my workstation use in Linux compiling and rendering and working with large images, 4gb of RAM that run at the same speed as L2 cache (thanks to AMD's integrated memory controller) beats the piss out of that Intel setup (which has much lower memory bw and also half the RAM). For gaming use, I get the same # of 3D Marks and similar performance because an Intel 2.4Ghz CPU and an AMD 2.4Ghz CPU happen to be within a few % of each other on the same video card (which is the true bottleneck; don't lie to yourself and say it's that CPU that's 14-18x faster than RAM).

Today, a $280 Quad Q6600 on a $130 ASUS P5N-E (nForce 650i SLI) beats the piss out of an equivalently priced AMD workstation in compiling, rendering, and large images. If you're willing to risk stability and reliability by overclocking (like you did), then a $90 Pentium Dual-Core E2160 can be overclocked to 3.4GHz (according to X-bit Labs) and beat the piss out of any Athlon 64 X2 system with the same RAM, GPU, and class of motherboard.

I got the same performance for $400, but with more RAM. My CPU was $190 cheaper. My motherboard was also cheaper.

Your friend did not need to spend so much on his/her motherboard. Your friend did not overclock. Today, a cheaper system built around an overclocked Pentium Dual-Core E2160 and an nForce 570 SLI moth

There is a switch time (called rise and fall time) associated with turning an LCD pixel from full bright to full black. I saw an article that did some real world tests on LDC monitors to compare the rated response time to measured response times and typically the rated was half of the actual (some times much less than half). E.g. monitors rated at 10 milliseconds were actually performing in the 20 to 25 millisecond range. Here's another article that talks about CRT and LDC response time. From looking at their results, your statement about the CRT refreshing at 200Hz but the phosphor doesn't is correct. You'd need to jack the refresh up to 500 or 600Hz from looking at the picture from the previously mentioned link.

On a CRT - afterglow time on a modern phosphor is about 1 millisecond. Average full white to full black time on an LCD is more than double the rated screen response time. The human eye's persistence of vision is about 10 to 15 milliseconds.

X-Bit Labs has got some pretty interesting reviews, ranging from the in-depth to the novel. Their LCD monitor reviews, for instance, are awesome.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/200608 28031933.html

old data...Motorola is a close second. However, I now consider Motorola a global company.

Thus, more recently:

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=29705

You missed the point, same as the last clown. America has historical significance in the computing world, and is still considered the biggest player in the internet from several fronts. In fact, many people still bitch b/c American retains control over key core Internet routers. China and India have sheer numbers to compensate, but on a per capita basis, U.S. expenditures on computers is significanly higher than most other countries. We were here first and we've shared with the world. World, using eqully impressive brains (if not equally impressive capital) now contribute significantly. My point was, exclude the U.S. from mail routing and you'll be cutting your legs out from underneath you. Sure, you can still pull yourself around on your arms or use a wheel chair, but it wouldn't be the same.

Mobile phones have been weak in the U.S. ever since inception. This is partly b/c we have such a strong land-line infrastructure. I've heard that there is more fibre in the U.S. than in the rest of the world, but lack citation to point it out as fact. Many other countries have used mobile phones b/c that's all they have. If they tried to get copper/DSL/Cable to all the residencies, their local telcos would go bankrupt. (Ours are now offering entry level DSL for $15/month. FIOS and other fibre offerings are now bringing 15MB+ to the home for less than $100/month) Now matter how cool a cell phone gets, it won't replace the beauty of raw data througput pulling down movies/ISOs/VLF (Very Large Files) in minutes instead of hours/days that most of the rest of the world currently enjoys. Plus, why can't they figure out how to simply billing in the rest of the world. Most mobile operators I've experienced South/Central America, Caribbean, UK, and Europe all have confusing rates which are constantly changing, all varying depending on if you're calling another mobile phone, a land line, and one of 3 time options. Nevermind that the U.S. enjoys free long distance to all of its massive continent while Europeans are paying different rates to 20+ countries all in near proximity. I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth thinking about it...

But, if we must, lets look at the heart of cell phones.

Qualcomm is 90% of CDMA phones. Qualcomm is US company.
Quite a few video components rely on TI components. (Texas Instruments...wonder where that was founded?)

I'd ask you to take a look at a vendor market share report, http://www.marketresearch.com/map/prod/1334374.htm l, but that would cost money...something I know linux lovers are loathe to hand out. Here's a free one for you though:
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbugenconte nt.tsp?contentId=4605&navigationId=12046&templateI d=6123
TI has largest market share followed by Qualcomm in 2nd place. So, Nokia's first place hold on the cell phone market is dependent on the chipsets from 2 American companies, and wireless technologies, while collaborative, require significant technical innovations.

Suck it. If it makes you feel any better, you should realize that many of the "Americans" working for our companies here are 1st generation foreign nationals who came here for the superior education and stayed on for the superior pay and lifestyle. We import your best and brightest all the time. Its the American way.

Just because our politicians blow doesn't mean the rest of our hard work goes unnoticed or unrewarded.

The problem is that the 360 was in the exact same position until last November. Estimates at the time were that Microsoft was losing about $150 per unit sold. They're probably actually turning a profit now, but they're not dropping the price. So why is it that Microsoft hasn't run out of early adopters willing to pay release price a year and a half after launch, but Sony has already cleared that market segment in a bit over half a year?

I do understand what you're saying and I'm sure that accounts for much of the difference, but were I an investor I'd be worried about why my company is having to make concessions that its competitors aren't.

Profit from Live is probably at least 30%. Microsoft makes a 30% profit from downloads. If someone is a Live subscriber and buys $50 worth of downloads a year (movies, television shows, Arcade, expansions, downloadable content), that would be $30 a year. Over 4 years, that's $120 profit. With publishers paying Microsoft $8 for every game sold, 20 games over 4 years adds up to $160. Both of those together would be about $280. If Microsoft's cost of manufacturing a 360 is about $300 http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20 061120132150.html/ (the article is dated November 20, 2006 and I'm assuming that it's lower now) and their cost of shipping, assembling and store profit is about $100, their total cost per console would be $400.

Make Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy exclusive to the 360

The Wii is sold out pretty much as soon as it enters stores. A price INCREASE might may sense, but a price decrease doesn't make sense until you start having demand problems. I don't think they'll increase the price due to public outrage, but the demand is there.

A price cut on the PS3 would bring an immediate price cut on the 360. Comparing a $500 PS3 to a $300 360, the $300 console is going to sell much better. Especially with a better game library right now. Sony should hope and pray that price cuts don't happen for any console until Sony has significantly reduced the manufacturing price.

Microsoft should have cut the price of the 360 in May. The Wii is very quickly gaining ground on the 360 and will catch up soon. The lead over the PS3 may disappear when Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 come out. Microsoft should drop the 360 core (sell them with a hard drive for $249 until there are no more) and focus on a $299 360 premium. Anyone who wants to pay more can buy a $399 Elite. 360 sales are not very good and there is a lot of stock at stores. Pretty much everyone who wanted to buy one at $399 already has one.

Microsoft has non-traditional sources of income for the 360. Live brings in $50 a year per subscriber. Profit from Live is probably at least 30%. Microsoft makes a 30% profit from downloads. If someone is a Live subscriber and buys $50 worth of downloads a year (movies, television shows, Arcade, expansions, downloadable content), that would be $30 a year. Over 4 years, that's $120 profit. With publishers paying Microsoft $8 for every game sold, 20 games over 4 years adds up to $160. Both of those together would be about $280. If Microsoft's cost of manufacturing a 360 is about $300 http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20 061120132150.html/ (the article is dated November 20, 2006 and I'm assuming that it's lower now) and their cost of shipping, assembling and store profit is about $100, their total cost per console would be $400. Once the 65nm chips are out, it will only cut the cost further. You could make an argument for any price between $199 and $299. A $299 price would get them many more sales and would still be a profitable position in the long run. I don't think a price less than $299 is in the planning, but I think it could be justified.

If Microsoft wanted to screw over Sony, they would buy Rockstar and Square Enix. Buying Square Enix is probably the only way they could break into Japan. Make Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy exclusive to the 360. Release it for Windows Vista 6 months later. It would piss the Japanese off, but they would grit their teeth while buying a 360 to get some FF action. Losing Grand Theft Auto would kill the PS3 in North America and Europe, it would probably be enough to take it down worldwide. The Wii will continue to be profitable for Nintendo.

Actually even if all cores are on the same silicon, inter-core communication is not as good as it could be. This artical has some interesting information on the topic:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/dualc ore-dtr-analysis_12.html

I mean, I've been checking out the reviews out there... For example, http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39580/ http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39603/ http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39605/ http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39635/ http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1335&Itemid=1/ http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1325&Itemid=1/ http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1336&Itemid=1/ http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1337&Itemid=1/ http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/r60 0-architecture.html/ http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988 / http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2900_XT/ I see that everyone came to pretty much same results. I'm not sure this "HD2900XT" thing will be repairable. I think that perhaps AMD's announcement that they're targeting best-buy in high-end is more valid. Although that one might have been said in pure desparation....

Actually, it seems as though IT-review.net actually did the whole shabbang of testing on various platforms, check these: http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1335&Itemid=1 http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1325&Itemid=1 http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1336&Itemid=1 http://it-review.net/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1337&Itemid=1 Also included, some links to other big websites with pretty much the same results: http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39580 http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39603 http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39605 http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39635 http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/r60 0-architecture.html http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988 http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_2900_XT/

X-bit labs always measure power and noise for GPUs, but they don't have a review up yet.
Here's the power-and-noise for the 8600GTS.

I don't understand why this is bad. If they make a profit, they stay in the business and make more fun games in the years to come. If they don't they go bust, and we don't get the shiny games. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo aren't in the games business as an extra - it's the only thing they do. There is no Office division making obscene profits to subsidize the games division. They can't wait for the next massive movie to bring in some profit. And that's why gamers love Nintendo, not because they're somehow a "man of the people", but because they exist to make games. Nothing else.

a profit on per-console sales. This is unheard of, ESPECIALLY for Nintendo

Not sure where you got that from, but I've read that Microsoft are no longer making a loss on the 360 - one year in was the break-even point. I've also read articles in dead-tree format (Edge, probably) to the effect that Nintendo made a profit on the Cube from very early in its lifecycle, about 6 months in, and before that never took a loss on their hardware. Sony also made a profit on the Playstation and PS2 for most of their lifecycles. Sega took losses only on the Saturn and Dreamcast, and MS lost money all through the original Xbox's run. It's not the norm for gaming hardware to be a loss leader, companies only do it when they're desperate (trying to get into a market or maintain position) and think they can cover it from elsewhere and/or reduce costs quickly enough to survive.

previous difficult launches such as the DS

Well, its first year sales were worse than the GBA, but it outsold the PSP over the first 6 months of their lives, then had a worse second Christmas season, then the Lite turned things around to the point where sales by the end of '06 were 3:2 vs the PSP. At this point they're trouncing Sony in hand-held and under-TV consoles. Whether they can maintain this or not, it has been worth doing because they have made money. Which is kinda the point of being in business.

From Anand, AMD, News.com and X-bit labs the numbers tell of an ever increasing marketshare for AMD. Note that this is for all servers, not just against Intel, meaning that Sun, IBM, and other servers are included. Then there's the 4 socket server category, where AMD has 48% of total marketshare in Q2 2006, and is the category I'd be more interested in as that is a true high-end server market. Then there's the Top 500 Nov 2006 List which lists 4 Opteron systems and a single Intel Itanium system in the top 10, along with 5 PowerPC systems. I should also note that only 31 Woodcrest systems are on the list vs 76 dual core Opterons.

Basically, AMD's server market share has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past 2 years, and has broken Intel's x86 monopoly in the space, especially once you exceed 2 processors. With Dell now finally offering AMD CPUs, I expect that number to grow.

Anandtech not enough for you, huh? How about. . .

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article. php/3261_3660771__12

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2 193&cid=2&pg=12

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-e nergy-efficient_8.html ... but I'm sure you'll just stick your fingers in your ears , complain about a massive conspiracy to pay-off hardware sites, and continue to claim that "Intel's got nothing on AMD as far as Performance-per-watt goes" . . .

I think that it's a little more likely that intel finally realized there weren't enough marketing gimmicks in the world to beat a better product at a better price, and shifted some dollars back over to killer engineering. Then along came Core Duo...

The problem with NetBurst wasn't that it lacked Killer Engineering. In many respects NetBurst was (still is) a much more sophisticated architecture, than Core. In fact, it was overly complex and suffered some major flaws (i.e. Replay). More importantly, it did not anticipate where the market was headed to (i.e. Performance overruled any other requirement).

OTOH, AMD had hit the mark repeatedly - staying with DDR, point-to-point links, integrated memory controllers. They have somewhat rested on their laurels in the last couple of years, but they've given a company 10 times its size a hell of a fight, and hopefully will continue doing so.

The Radeon X1950 beats the NVidia cards in every single test save for the "synthetic" crapmark test that has nothing to do with reality.

Interesting, that's not what I've been seeing in tests. In fact, in most tests it seems the 8800 GTX beats the X1950 XTX with a comfortable margin. Here's one review that goes through a number of games: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gf8 800-games.html

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/dualc ore-roundup.html sums things up rather nicely.

Not a good idea to do a price/performance comparison when prices and lineup are about to change.

Intel will be releasing a few new CPUs and cutting prices on April 22. The E6320 and E6420 for example, identical to their 6x00 counterparts except with 4mb of L2 cache. They'll go for $163 and $183 respectively.

Benchmarks for next month's processors with price list:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2 duo-e6420.html

A 20-30% price cut is expected from AMD on April 9.

Even now the prices Techreport lists are outdated! The Athlon X2 4600+ dropped to $122 a week ago - faster and cheaper than the $170 4400+ techreport tested (which is actually more like $159).