August 4, 2004

Doom 3 Mania and other news - Josh

I went on an aborted trip last night to try and procure a copy of Doom 3, but it of course ended in failure.  We got to Best Buy approximately 3 minutes after they sold their last copy.  Living in Wyoming certainly does have its downsides, and one of them is availability of new software titles.  I am trying to finish up a GeForce 6800 review, and I thought that a few Doom 3 benchmarks would really top it off.  Such is life.  I did find a few articles of interest though:

Anand takes a look at Doom 3 performance with a series of different processors and chipsets to find out who rules the roost, and who needs to be replaced.  Keeping with all modern gaming benchmarks, the Athlon FX-53 takes command of the situation.

Native Command Queuing is explained at CoolTechZone.  SATA appears to have some serious legs when it comes to technology, and it is most certainly a worthy successor to the parallel ATA format.  I am not sure of the timeline, but I imagine we will start to hear more and more about the second generation of SATA within the next few months (SATA-300).

Finally, Hexus takes a look at some of Asus' latest motherboards featuring the i915P and i925X chipsets.  For those interested in migrating to the LGA-775 format for Pentium 4 processors, these boards are certainly ones to look at.

I am trying to finish up another speaker review, so look for that later on!

August 3, 2004

Site news and webnews - Josh

I would like to welcome our new advertiser to the site!  As you can see, Corsair has decided to take a banner with us, and I couldn't be happier!  They also sent along some of their XMS 3200 XL Pro memory, which is being utilized in a i875 platform that is being tested as we speak.  Unfortunately, KD Computers have not renewed their advertising, which is a bit of a bummer as they were a pretty good retailer for many cooling and mod supplies.  If you or your company is interested in advertising with Penstarsys.com, please contact me and we can discuss prices and traffic.  I can create plenty of ad space, so that shouldn't be a concern!

While browsing around I noticed a few reviews that caught my eye:

MS at Lost Circuits has finally been able to sit down and test out the new LGA 775 products from Intel.  He takes the i915 and i925 based boards out for a spin with a 3.6 GHz Prescott, and compares them to a i875 based board and the last generation of Pentium 4 processors.  You can check out the entire article here.

Hot Hardware reviews one of the first SATA optical drives on the market, the Plextor PX-712SA.  While the SATA port won't speed things up, the drive itself is very quick and up to Plextor's standards.  Read the entire review here.

Let us not forget The Tech Report and their latest review on the Athlon 64 3500+.  With the recent price cuts AMD made on their entire processor line, the 3500+ can now be considered a viable product for the midrange market and the new Socket 939 platform.  Even though it has 1/2 of the cache of the Athlon 64 3400+ and is clocked at the same speed, its dual memory channel architecture gives it a leg up on most benchmarks.  You can see their findings here.

August 2, 2004

eMachines M6805 Laptop Review - Josh

eMachines was once a name despised and hated by most in the enthusiast crowd, mostly due to their low performance and cheap build quality.  Times have changed though, and eMachines have changed with it.  After being bought out several years ago, the new management decided to totally reinvent the company.  While it is still focused on the value market, they streamlined their supply chain and their retail presence, and started to use higher quality parts to improve performance.  Their latest M68xx series of laptops are shaking up that status quo.  Based on the speedy Athlon 64 mobile processor, these products are some of the best performing laptops ever, and this is still considered a value level of laptop!  Here is a direct quote:

     Taking a look at the laptop itself it has a nice, sleek, black exterior highlighted with silver.  The unit itself also has blue LEDs that highlight the power button and several other spots.  A 15.4” widescreen display tops everything off.  One nice thing about the laptop is that it does include a 4 pin Firewire adapter so for those who are looking to hook up something like a DV camera so the user will not need an additional card.  There is also a “Media Reader” where I was able to throw in a Sony Memory Stick and it was able to read photos I had taken just fine.  On the front of the laptop, there is also very easy access to the harddrive.  Simply one screw and you can swap out harddrives, which seems to be a really nice feature for those who may need a lot of space or multiple operating systems.

You can read the entire review here.

July 30, 2004

Some Friday Comments - Josh

The process article seems to be getting a few hits here and there, which is never a bad thing.  The subject matter can be very confusing, and I am learning more and more about it all the time (especially the more I discuss with others).  I may have to do a follow-up on it if I can get a hold of somebody from Intrinsity, because they offer a very interesting product with their Fast-14 technology.  Keep the comments rolling in!

I just read one of the better Sempron reviews at PC Perspective today, they did a very good job in comparing it with the new Celeron D from Intel on a similar motherboard.  The Sempron products appear to be well placed in terms of performance and value, and with a die size of around 84 mm square, AMD could have theoretically 320 die per 200 mm wafer.  So, with mature yields, AMD could make a pretty decent little profit off of each wafer of Semprons.  You can read the review here.

Of course I need to mention HardOCP's Doom 3 Hardware Guide.  Kyle and Brent did a great job in getting this article to us, and their results should not be missed if you are in the mood to play a little Doom 3 when it comes out next week.  I for one am really looking forward to this game!

July 29, 2004

Slowing Down the Process Migration - Josh

After several months of researching this, as well as revising it several times, I am finally able to publish my article on the state of process migration concerning 3D graphics processors.  This should only be considered a very basic introduction behind the design and implementation of modern processors and fabrication.  Eric Demers of ATI provided a great amount of insight and help with this article, as well as correcting the major mistakes I have made.  This is a very interesting piece that shows how the design landscape may change due to the problems the foundry companies are faced with the major node transitions.  Here is a quote:

            The question that should spring into any readers mind is, if all of these designs are starting to become more similar in overall structure, why are current GPU’s running at a max of 530 MHz on the 130 nm process, while CPU’s from AMD and Intel are running 2 GHz+?  The answer to that one is transistor design and layout.  As it was once explained to me, transistor design is the “secret sauce” of any company that manufactures high performance chips.  These designs are typically held very close to the chest of any company, and they are very shy of sharing any of these secrets with competitors.  Design lifecycles also play a significant part in this, as companies like AMD and Intel do not release new processors at the rate that ATI and NVIDIA do, so they have the chance to build in a lot of headroom into their processors in terms of transistor design and transistor layout.  These extra years spent in engineering these products pays off in much higher clock speeds.

You can read the entire article here.

July 28, 2004

Making a Big Jump - Josh

For better or for worse, I am making Penstarsys.com my full time job!  While I still will be doing some work outside of the website, I am going to dedicate the majority of my time to really getting the site moving.  I opened up PenStar in March of 1999, and I only just got it rolling when the big tech collapse happened, which of course made living off of such a site impossible.  Throughout the years I have been active, and then inactive, and it has never particularly helped keep traffic steady with the site.  This is going to change.

First off we will be doing at least two articles a week, and in the meantime we will have daily postings on the front page, as well as links to reviews that we have found personally interesting.  At the end of August we will be working to modernize the site, which includes better forums, comments on articles, and some personalization for each reader (if they so desire).  Currently we work in just plain HTML, but to get the site to where it needs to be, it really should be database driven.

I am actively looking for new advertisers on the site, so if your company is interested in pursing this option, please contact me.

For those of you who are readers, and would like to see both my site and my finances survive, I have set up a donation through PayPal at the top left.  If you have found this site to be helpful, then I ask you please to make a donation to help us all make it through this transition period.  Anything donated would be a great help to me, the site, and my family.

July 27, 2004

Altec Lansing VS4121 Speaker Review - Josh

Admittedly, I have had these speakers in my possession for quite some time now, and they are the most thoroughly tested speakers I have ever had the pleasure to use!  These 2.1 speakers are aimed at the mainstream sound market, where people make most of their decisions on aesthetics and price rather than power and audiophile sound quality.  While Altec designed these speakers around this idea, they didn't skimp on the sound quality one bit.  Even though these speakers are rated at 31 watts RMS, they produce some very clean sound.  At a price of $99, they are hard to beat!  Here is a quote:

The sound field sitting in front of the speakers is actually quite good, and due to the nature of the downfiring mid-bass drivers, it is wider than usual for desktop speakers of this power.  When closing one’s eyes and listening to a well recorded piece, the sound field does extend well beyond the area where the speakers are located.  After a while it is very easy to sit back and imagine that you are no longer in a small office.

You can read the entire review here.

July 26, 2004

PCI-Express Hits Mainstream - Josh

I for one did not expect PCI-Express to be as available as it is now, but we are now seeing a pretty decent selection of products in terms of both motherboards and graphics cards.  Both NVIDIA and ATI have released products supporting PCI-E, but these are mainly FX 5700/5900 and X600/X300 products.  So far I haven't seen any of the high end X800 Pro/PE and GeForce 6800 variants, but I would imagine that they should show up within the next two weeks.  On the processor side of things, there are great quantities of the 500 series of processors from Intel.  These stretch from the 520 (2.8 GHz) to the 550 (3.4 GHz).  Unfortunately the 560 (3.6 GHz) is not available yet, and don't expect any until early fall.

Still, this step was pretty quick to come along, and even though the video cards are not terribly high end anymore, they are pretty decent.  Shortly we will see the high end stuff, so those of you hoping to hop on the PCI-E bus for Intel products, the wait should be nearly over.  For those waiting until AMD based solutions, I would think there is still a two month wait on that one.  The good news there is that it appears that NVIDIA is sampling their nForce 4 product, so they may actually have one of the first PCI-E implementations for the Athlon 64.  Quite exciting news, especially considering the features that are supposed to be included in that product (dual PCI-E 16x, SATA RAID, GbE, firewall, SoundStorm 2, etc.).  At this point in time it does not appear that AMD will release an 8000 series of chipset that will support PCI-E.

AGP is far from dead though, and I don't expect it to be totally phased out for another 2 years, though within one year most of the high end cards will debut in PCI-E first.  The use of PCI-E bridge chips will allow these high end products to make it into the AGP slot.

July 22, 2004

Tyan: Where are you now? - Josh

Recently I had the chance to ask John Nguyen of Tyan a few questions, as well as see what Tyan is up to now.  It has been quite a while since Tyan has been a major player in the desktop market, but it now appears that they are poised to address that market once again.  Here is a direct quote:

            I am sure many of you are acquainted with Tyan, but as of late they have been keeping a very low profile.  Their primary market has been supplying high end server boards, which typically have significantly higher margins than desktop mainboards.  They have also been very active in supporting the AMD Opteron, and these mainboards feature anywhere from quad processors to single processor boards (both server and workstation class).  On the Intel side Tyan also has a slew of offerings that cover the bases from quad Xeon’s to single processor workstation class boards.

You can read the entire article here.

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