Yes, Duron is Spitfire with a cheesy AMD marketing name, but I can live with the name for the value. The high mark for price has been put at $175, and for clock speed is 700MHz. So we're looking at a 700MHz 128k full speed on die cache for 175 bucks. Where do I sign up?
As for overclocking potential, my (not so humble) opinion is that it will be a hell of an overclocker. Look at the K7 - err Athlon, and this is basically a K7 with on die cache. Rumors were that the release of Spitfire - err, Duron, was delayed because it was actually beating the Athlon in benchmarks. So like the Celeron the clock speeds will probably lag behind the Athlon.
As long as they overclock as well as I think they will, I know I'm getting one. As a hardcore overclocker (and op in #celeron, efnets biggest overclocking-based channel) I think getting a chip that's gonna run at 900mhz or 1ghz for less than 200 bucks is about as good as it gets. Don't be scared by the 'value cpu' label. This is the K7 core with faster cache, albiet less of it.
Bottom line? They'll probably be faster than a P3 at the same clockspeed, for at most half the price. And that's without even putting overclocking into the picture. Don't you love competition?
They rapped over Chics "Good Times" and I know that at least Big Bank Hank borrowed his rhymes from a guy named Casanova Fly. It was however one of the first recorded rap records; second only to Fatbacks "King Tim III". Even though it wasn't the very first recorded, most people credit the single "Rappers Delight" as being the first piece out of the genre that the public at large was exposed to.
Anyway, you basically just proved my point. Everyone is copying someone else somehow if you take a step back and look at it. That's why it's so rediculous to attempt to copyright something like that - no one can truly claim ownership.
John Carmack has been quoted saying that there just aren't going to be any more Quakes. Sorry Folks, no Quake 4. You gotta respect him for not trying to milk it too long, quit while your (pretty much) ahead.
The first fully 3d Game for the PC was Descent, then Quake 1, then a lot of stuff. Wolf 3d, Doom, Duke3d, they were all "2.5D". Someone mentioned a C64 game that was fully 3d but I've never heard of that. Regardless, pionering a genre is rediculous - that's like saying you can't write any more science fiction or you can't listen to any more rap because Sugar Hill Gang made it first. You would be laughed at if you attempted to copyright science fiction, the court system needs to realize this is the same thing...
As a long term avid overclocker, one-time writer for an overclocking site, and op in efnets biggest overclocking channel #celeron, I figured I'd give my opinion on something here on/. for once.
This article portrays overclockers as not only people trying to steal from Intel and other computer manufacturers, but as people who only do it to get the higher number. I quote, "And what do overclockers do with these faster computers? Not much, actually. The most popular application involves running a measuring program that proves exactly how much faster the overclocked chip is running. Overclockers make printouts of these speed readings and send them to each other." This is just prue ignorance. Yes bragging about it is fun, but that is by no means the main reason for overclocking. Ask any overclocker what they do most on their computer and I bet every one would tell you that it's play games. We don't make them faster just for shits and giggles. It's about getting enough frames per second in Quake 3 to be able to run it at 1600x1200 with all the pretty features turned on. It's about making your games look and work better - and I resent them reducing it to a form of compensation (as the hot rod makers often are accused of)...
Sure, they do touch on gaming a little bit. "Games like "Doom" also are popular. Overclockers who play them say the faster chips help them outlast their competitors" If they were going to write only one sentence about how it improves performance, they could at least get their facts right. Computers are about 8x faster than when Doom was first released (MHz-wise at least) - 'nuff said. Regardless, the article was exactly what I expected. The part at the end about discovering his computer working faster since it was probably ~8 cooler was kind of funny, but I suppose they're just trying to explain the concept to the ignorant masses (a group of people that they should probably be included in). I think I just expected more from an article about computers that is only available on computers...
I had wrote a lot in response, but it was a lot of stuff no one probably cares about. In short, I'll say this. AMD has said they could produce a 1GHz chip right now, but they're holding back for marketing reasons alone. So they're obviously not using the full potential of their great yields. Because their yields are so good, probably every single CPU they send out marked at 500mhz is good enough to run at 650, but the guys in marketing say they need to keep a 500mhz CPU on the market. This is the beauty of overclocking. The chip companies feel pressed to have a variety of speeds, the ubercheap consumer version and the uberexpensive 'power user' version. The smart ones among us realize the cheap ones usualy come from the same batch as the expensive ones, and the mhz rating isn't worth much. Intel most notably did this with the Celeron - which was originaly just a neutered P2, but now it's a P2 with 128k of full speed cache instead of 512k of half speed. For gaming, a lot of cache is useless - you really want raw power. The Celerons had to be clocked low because they were the 'cheap' version, but they could easily do more than there rating usualy. This was why there was such a big explosion with the 300a, the only reason they put out a 300mhz chip is because they thought the market needed one. There was also quite a bit of fuss over the 266 within the overclocking community, but it was fairly well contained. My point is, AMD and Intel are 'underclocking' as you call it. Most of their new chips can easily hit 650-750mhz, but they produce chips below that because that's what the market needs... Afterall, they couldn't just mark everything at the mhz it can run at, then they wouldn't make as much profit - god forbid.
Kryotech may be pretty cool (no pun intended), but it kind of defeats the purpose of overclocking. Overclocking is to get more for your money, and if it has the side effect of giving you some bragging rights than all the better. But first and foremost anyone who overclocks is just trying to get more performance for less money. The performance:price ratio is what it's all about, and spending a shitload of money on Kryotechs cooling system is kind of counter-productive. Except for those aforementioned bragging rights of course.
If you set up some insane cooling system like many people do, you still usualy at least break even with the cost of buying a processor of the speed you've overclocked yours too. For example, say you spend $40 for a Celeron 366, and overclock it to 550 mhz. You've saved ~$100 than if you bought a 500mhz Celeron (slower overall, and on a slower bus speed (66mhz)), and about $270 over buying a P3-550. So you've got $100-$270 to spend on cooling to either get it to reach 550 mhz, to make it stable, or just for a safety buffer. That should leave you plenty of money left over to buy some memory, a new hard drive, or to just put in your pocket.
I've been running a Celeron 300a @ 450mhz for over half a year with an 'aftermarket' heatsink & fan and it's still perfectly stable at 2.0v. I've got a 366@550 at 2.1v and will be getting another 366 and a BP6 as soon as I get the $$. So what? Well my point is the dangers of overclocking are usualy worth it. I've got some nice stable systems that I spent a LOT less money on than if I bought the processor at the clock speed it's now running at, with pretty much the exact same performance. If it takes a year off my processors life, big deal. With the increasing demands of (mostly gaming) software these days, the hardware gets obsolite long before it's going to burn out, even if you overclock it.
I'm not saying overclocking is for everyone, just for us smart ones:).
I know I'm not supposed to insult anything that Our Lord and Savior Linus is involved with, especialy on slashdot, but am I the only one that finds the recent news out of Transmeta rather disapointing? I tried not to hype myself up that much in the first place, but a mobile processor? Please.
I guess I just don't get it. If the speculation from the patents are right, and if it can translate x86 or any other architectures instructions in real time and actually emulate it faster than it can be run natively, then why mobile processing? The rumors seemed to be based on some type of small power consumption making it good for mobile processing - come on. Sure mobile this and portable that, but if there is a faster CPU out there please don't restrict it to a laptop or some similar device - all of us power users need the flexability of a Tower/Desktop computer, period.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it must be revolutionary in some other way. The "secret message" says nothing about being fast or even having anything to do with normal desktop computing. I'd have to assume Transmeta is either seriously misusing some potentialy revolutionary technology, or merely changed the direction they were going in since those first patents were made. I'm hoping for the latter...
- The m/b has an AGP slot and 3 DIMM slots, which means it is either a Socket 7 or Socket 370 motherboard; 486's ran on Socket 5 motherboards on which production was stopped on way before AGP or DIMM slots were created
- Socket 5 motherboards were not made to support processors at a higher speed than 133mhz since the fastest 486 ran at 133mhz, therefore there was no appropriate jumper setting to bring it up to 247mhz - Quake could never run on that processor (nevermind Half-Life), Quake does check for a math co-processor which a 486 sx doesn't have*. I know Quake won't run without one for a fact, I've tried and seen the error message... - A fridge won't cool to -40C, sorry guys. Not even with that elusive "11" setting;) - Adding beer or another alcoholic beverage to a fridge doesn't make it colder - "Well, actually that isn't entirely true. You see, all the notes, recordings, videotape and logs from the experiment were destroyed when the processor blew. Everything posted here is taken from eyewitness accounts. You'll have to take our word for it... " Doh.
* FYI - The 486 SX was in reality a 486 DX with a faulty math co-processor/floating point unit. Intel had no plans to make SX/DX models until the first crop of 486's had faulty fpu's. Later on in the production of 486's, the SX model was intentionaly made without an fpu.
It's the governments responsibility to fund the schools, bottom line. Every other country in the world does, and most of the first world countries not only do it but do it better than us. If you think tax money shouldn't go towards schooling than I'd glady take away your education from first to 12th grade, since I'm sure that's how your education was funded.
This is cheaper for the schools, gives publicity for Sun, rears less wannabe crackers deleting win.ini... The list goes on and on...
Possibly the best part would be the availability of information off the network from your house. There is a teacher at my school who posts not only homework assignments and class notes online, but grades from his class. It's good for the students, and the parents get to keep one eye on their kids grades if they wish. What more can you ask for?
...Rant... On a similar note; this type of technology and schools are the perfect fit if only schools recieved the funding neccisary. We're spending x billion dollars on a fruitless drug war (among other things) but the government can't put down the money to get this into all the schools? Or even the majority of schools, or even just a few schools? It's really unfortunate, considering how great this could be for our educational system. ...End Rant...
No, you are missing the point of the game. It is a GAME first and foremost - you don't buy the cards for the sole purpose of reselling them, you buy the cards so you can play the game. If you take that into acount the above statements really make no sense. The reason these cards become valuable is because they're rare, and they're rare because they're powerful to use in the game. The whole 'game of chance' thing is really a moot point because it's not one in the sense that the game is within the cards themselves, not actually for buying and trading purposes.
Now okay, it is a trading card game - and trading them may be part of the fun. But who's fault is that? Does the company force anyone to pay x dollars for a card? No. Do they set the prices on the cards? No. That's where it becomes most rediculous - there are so many places to attack this article it's not even funny, but I think one of the strongest points is that the prices are set by an independant company (at least AFAIK). Back in the MtG days WotC decided how many cards to produce but didn't decide that card x would be worth y dollars; it just worked out that way.
I know the site I write for ( fresh3d) uses some kind of database management. I have no idea how it works, but I know it involves MySQL - and that's about all I know. If you're at the end of your rope and want me to get in touch with the person who does it all go ahead and email me - I don't have my email linked because of spams but it's: tred@f+N0SPAM+3d.net
I think you can figure it out, just remove the +nospam+:). I'll get you in touch with him if neccisary.
I am myself a Highschool sophmore, and I may be able to provide here that view from the inside the media wants. I think people love to oversimplify - the Jocks and the Geeks and thats it? Hell no. I got my varsity letter in football this year (as a sophmore), but I'm here on slashdot as a 'Geek' - coding away like the rest of you.
There's a growing trend, as the internet and/or AOL becomes a popular place for kids to hang out, for computers to not just be for the 'geeks' anymore. Although most of these people may not have the same knowledge I have, it's a start. If this someday leads to the geeks being more accepted because of their skills I'm not sure, but it's a start.
How does this all fit into the grand scheme of things? The media will NEVER have it right, I think that's the bottom line. A good example (non computer related though) is that a video rental store opened up in my home town (a fairly small city of 26,000 in New Hampshire) that happened to rent out adult videos. Some people threw a fit over this, and some students from a private school that was right across the street from the store spoke out against it. Not that they cared, but it was worth some extra credit or something along those lines. The teachers all made them do it basicaly, and they said hey what the hell if it gets me on the teachers good side. I am close friends with someone who was a student there while it was going on.
What I'm saying is the media will get some tool student to tell them what they want to hear. Does this mean all media? Of course not, but enough to further mislead all the adults out there. To tell them to lock their kids up in their rooms and not let them use the computer because it's the devil incarnate. I'd love to give the media my point of view but I don't think it would change anything, or at worst they'd twist my words all around.
At one time I thought being a teenager was just a pain in the ass. I couldn't wait to get out of school, but as I look ahead of me I see 2 more years of highschool and 4 of college that I've got to deal with - I just try and take things as they come now. But the bottom line about school is that at least 99.9% of students (and I'm not exadurating, at LEAST that many) don't like school. If you ship someone off to what is basicaly a prison to them for the first 20 years of their lives you're bound to have someone act out, in whatever way they can think of. Sometimes that acting out goes way too far, and thats when we get the Columbine situation. Everyone feels neglected at one point in their life so that's not the issue. Hell if so many people were in this 'Trench Coat Mafia' they had each other to socialize with.
The issue is if we look back in history people longed to go to school. Kids just don't give a damn anymore, once they hit middleschool they think they know everything they need to know. I should know, I thought I knew everything I needed to know and to be honest right now I think I probably know everything I need to know. With 2 more years of English, Science, History, and Math ahead of me that is so usefull all my elders have forgot it already? If everyone forgets their Highschool math courses why are we learning it? I want to do something in computer science as an adult - I know that now - but I have to learn 6 more years of proper etiquet when writing a letter? I have to memorize the periodic table for what? This is the frustration people get with school, the social groups is just the icing on the cake.
It isn't so much that the new design is horrible, sure the basic black on white was good but now they're just trying to make themselves look a little better. The worst part in the new content, no longer is it registering Domain Names with Web Addresses in parenthesis, it's the other way around. And I agree with a comment I've seen made here, when are they going to start hosting themselves and take all the other companies out of buisness, if/when they do that they're just ASKING for another lawsuit. Domain Name registration is definately headed in the wrong direction.
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As for overclocking potential, my (not so humble) opinion is that it will be a hell of an overclocker. Look at the K7 - err Athlon, and this is basically a K7 with on die cache. Rumors were that the release of Spitfire - err, Duron, was delayed because it was actually beating the Athlon in benchmarks. So like the Celeron the clock speeds will probably lag behind the Athlon.
As long as they overclock as well as I think they will, I know I'm getting one. As a hardcore overclocker (and op in #celeron, efnets biggest overclocking-based channel) I think getting a chip that's gonna run at 900mhz or 1ghz for less than 200 bucks is about as good as it gets. Don't be scared by the 'value cpu' label. This is the K7 core with faster cache, albiet less of it.
Bottom line? They'll probably be faster than a P3 at the same clockspeed, for at most half the price. And that's without even putting overclocking into the picture. Don't you love competition?
Anyway, you basically just proved my point. Everyone is copying someone else somehow if you take a step back and look at it. That's why it's so rediculous to attempt to copyright something like that - no one can truly claim ownership.
The first fully 3d Game for the PC was Descent, then Quake 1, then a lot of stuff. Wolf 3d, Doom, Duke3d, they were all "2.5D". Someone mentioned a C64 game that was fully 3d but I've never heard of that. Regardless, pionering a genre is rediculous - that's like saying you can't write any more science fiction or you can't listen to any more rap because Sugar Hill Gang made it first. You would be laughed at if you attempted to copyright science fiction, the court system needs to realize this is the same thing...
This article portrays overclockers as not only people trying to steal from Intel and other computer manufacturers, but as people who only do it to get the higher number. I quote, "And what do overclockers do with these faster computers? Not much, actually. The most popular application involves running a measuring program that proves exactly how much faster the overclocked chip is running. Overclockers make printouts of these speed readings and send them to each other." This is just prue ignorance. Yes bragging about it is fun, but that is by no means the main reason for overclocking. Ask any overclocker what they do most on their computer and I bet every one would tell you that it's play games. We don't make them faster just for shits and giggles. It's about getting enough frames per second in Quake 3 to be able to run it at 1600x1200 with all the pretty features turned on. It's about making your games look and work better - and I resent them reducing it to a form of compensation (as the hot rod makers often are accused of)...
Sure, they do touch on gaming a little bit. "Games like "Doom" also are popular. Overclockers who play them say the faster chips help them outlast their competitors" If they were going to write only one sentence about how it improves performance, they could at least get their facts right. Computers are about 8x faster than when Doom was first released (MHz-wise at least) - 'nuff said. Regardless, the article was exactly what I expected. The part at the end about discovering his computer working faster since it was probably ~8 cooler was kind of funny, but I suppose they're just trying to explain the concept to the ignorant masses (a group of people that they should probably be included in). I think I just expected more from an article about computers that is only available on computers...
I had wrote a lot in response, but it was a lot of stuff no one probably cares about. In short, I'll say this. AMD has said they could produce a 1GHz chip right now, but they're holding back for marketing reasons alone. So they're obviously not using the full potential of their great yields. Because their yields are so good, probably every single CPU they send out marked at 500mhz is good enough to run at 650, but the guys in marketing say they need to keep a 500mhz CPU on the market. This is the beauty of overclocking. The chip companies feel pressed to have a variety of speeds, the ubercheap consumer version and the uberexpensive 'power user' version. The smart ones among us realize the cheap ones usualy come from the same batch as the expensive ones, and the mhz rating isn't worth much. Intel most notably did this with the Celeron - which was originaly just a neutered P2, but now it's a P2 with 128k of full speed cache instead of 512k of half speed. For gaming, a lot of cache is useless - you really want raw power. The Celerons had to be clocked low because they were the 'cheap' version, but they could easily do more than there rating usualy. This was why there was such a big explosion with the 300a, the only reason they put out a 300mhz chip is because they thought the market needed one. There was also quite a bit of fuss over the 266 within the overclocking community, but it was fairly well contained. My point is, AMD and Intel are 'underclocking' as you call it. Most of their new chips can easily hit 650-750mhz, but they produce chips below that because that's what the market needs... Afterall, they couldn't just mark everything at the mhz it can run at, then they wouldn't make as much profit - god forbid.
Kryotech may be pretty cool (no pun intended), but it kind of defeats the purpose of overclocking. Overclocking is to get more for your money, and if it has the side effect of giving you some bragging rights than all the better. But first and foremost anyone who overclocks is just trying to get more performance for less money. The performance:price ratio is what it's all about, and spending a shitload of money on Kryotechs cooling system is kind of counter-productive. Except for those aforementioned bragging rights of course.
If you set up some insane cooling system like many people do, you still usualy at least break even with the cost of buying a processor of the speed you've overclocked yours too. For example, say you spend $40 for a Celeron 366, and overclock it to 550 mhz. You've saved ~$100 than if you bought a 500mhz Celeron (slower overall, and on a slower bus speed (66mhz)), and about $270 over buying a P3-550. So you've got $100-$270 to spend on cooling to either get it to reach 550 mhz, to make it stable, or just for a safety buffer. That should leave you plenty of money left over to buy some memory, a new hard drive, or to just put in your pocket.
I've been running a Celeron 300a @ 450mhz for over half a year with an 'aftermarket' heatsink & fan and it's still perfectly stable at 2.0v. I've got a 366@550 at 2.1v and will be getting another 366 and a BP6 as soon as I get the $$. So what? Well my point is the dangers of overclocking are usualy worth it. I've got some nice stable systems that I spent a LOT less money on than if I bought the processor at the clock speed it's now running at, with pretty much the exact same performance. If it takes a year off my processors life, big deal. With the increasing demands of (mostly gaming) software these days, the hardware gets obsolite long before it's going to burn out, even if you overclock it.
I'm not saying overclocking is for everyone, just for us smart ones :).
I guess I just don't get it. If the speculation from the patents are right, and if it can translate x86 or any other architectures instructions in real time and actually emulate it faster than it can be run natively, then why mobile processing? The rumors seemed to be based on some type of small power consumption making it good for mobile processing - come on. Sure mobile this and portable that, but if there is a faster CPU out there please don't restrict it to a laptop or some similar device - all of us power users need the flexability of a Tower/Desktop computer, period.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it must be revolutionary in some other way. The "secret message" says nothing about being fast or even having anything to do with normal desktop computing. I'd have to assume Transmeta is either seriously misusing some potentialy revolutionary technology, or merely changed the direction they were going in since those first patents were made. I'm hoping for the latter...
* FYI - The 486 SX was in reality a 486 DX with a faulty math co-processor/floating point unit. Intel had no plans to make SX/DX models until the first crop of 486's had faulty fpu's. Later on in the production of 486's, the SX model was intentionaly made without an fpu.
It's the governments responsibility to fund the schools, bottom line. Every other country in the world does, and most of the first world countries not only do it but do it better than us. If you think tax money shouldn't go towards schooling than I'd glady take away your education from first to 12th grade, since I'm sure that's how your education was funded.
Possibly the best part would be the availability of information off the network from your house. There is a teacher at my school who posts not only homework assignments and class notes online, but grades from his class. It's good for the students, and the parents get to keep one eye on their kids grades if they wish. What more can you ask for?
On a similar note; this type of technology and schools are the perfect fit if only schools recieved the funding neccisary. We're spending x billion dollars on a fruitless drug war (among other things) but the government can't put down the money to get this into all the schools? Or even the majority of schools, or even just a few schools? It's really unfortunate, considering how great this could be for our educational system.
Now okay, it is a trading card game - and trading them may be part of the fun. But who's fault is that? Does the company force anyone to pay x dollars for a card? No. Do they set the prices on the cards? No. That's where it becomes most rediculous - there are so many places to attack this article it's not even funny, but I think one of the strongest points is that the prices are set by an independant company (at least AFAIK). Back in the MtG days WotC decided how many cards to produce but didn't decide that card x would be worth y dollars; it just worked out that way.
tred@f+N0SPAM+3d.net
I think you can figure it out, just remove the +nospam+ :). I'll get you in touch with him if neccisary.
There's a growing trend, as the internet and/or AOL becomes a popular place for kids to hang out, for computers to not just be for the 'geeks' anymore. Although most of these people may not have the same knowledge I have, it's a start. If this someday leads to the geeks being more accepted because of their skills I'm not sure, but it's a start.
How does this all fit into the grand scheme of things? The media will NEVER have it right, I think that's the bottom line. A good example (non computer related though) is that a video rental store opened up in my home town (a fairly small city of 26,000 in New Hampshire) that happened to rent out adult videos. Some people threw a fit over this, and some students from a private school that was right across the street from the store spoke out against it. Not that they cared, but it was worth some extra credit or something along those lines. The teachers all made them do it basicaly, and they said hey what the hell if it gets me on the teachers good side. I am close friends with someone who was a student there while it was going on.
What I'm saying is the media will get some tool student to tell them what they want to hear. Does this mean all media? Of course not, but enough to further mislead all the adults out there. To tell them to lock their kids up in their rooms and not let them use the computer because it's the devil incarnate. I'd love to give the media my point of view but I don't think it would change anything, or at worst they'd twist my words all around.
At one time I thought being a teenager was just a pain in the ass. I couldn't wait to get out of school, but as I look ahead of me I see 2 more years of highschool and 4 of college that I've got to deal with - I just try and take things as they come now. But the bottom line about school is that at least 99.9% of students (and I'm not exadurating, at LEAST that many) don't like school. If you ship someone off to what is basicaly a prison to them for the first 20 years of their lives you're bound to have someone act out, in whatever way they can think of. Sometimes that acting out goes way too far, and thats when we get the Columbine situation. Everyone feels neglected at one point in their life so that's not the issue. Hell if so many people were in this 'Trench Coat Mafia' they had each other to socialize with.
The issue is if we look back in history people longed to go to school. Kids just don't give a damn anymore, once they hit middleschool they think they know everything they need to know. I should know, I thought I knew everything I needed to know and to be honest right now I think I probably know everything I need to know. With 2 more years of English, Science, History, and Math ahead of me that is so usefull all my elders have forgot it already? If everyone forgets their Highschool math courses why are we learning it? I want to do something in computer science as an adult - I know that now - but I have to learn 6 more years of proper etiquet when writing a letter? I have to memorize the periodic table for what? This is the frustration people get with school, the social groups is just the icing on the cake.
It isn't so much that the new design is horrible, sure the basic black on white was good but now they're just trying to make themselves look a little better. The worst part in the new content, no longer is it registering Domain Names with Web Addresses in parenthesis, it's the other way around. And I agree with a comment I've seen made here, when are they going to start hosting themselves and take all the other companies out of buisness, if/when they do that they're just ASKING for another lawsuit.
Domain Name registration is definately headed in the wrong direction.