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June 14, 2006 What's Going On? - Josh As you have noticed, things have been pretty quiet here as of late. I haven't decided on how to redo the forums as of yet, so that is still offline. Articles have been sparse as well, but that doesn't mean I have been slacking around. I am working on a really big project that you should be hearing about within the next week, and there should be some teasers up and around shortly for it. We have also decided to move out of our current house, and get something a bit more affordable. In doing so we are going to be reducing the amount of our debt by a large amount. That is a wonderful thing if you ask me. So, we are very busy with the current house getting it ready for sale, and that is taking up a lot of time. I have also done some freelancing with The Inquirer, and I have a couple of articles out with them. It is a fun little freelance bit, and I hope to be able to continue it, along with this site as well. Lot's of things going on to say the least. June 5, 2006 NVIDIA Releases the GeForce 7950 GX2 - Josh I am lucky enough to have one of these cards in my possession, but unfortunately I was unable to complete the review this weekend. We will be selling our house, and much of the weekend was spent cleaning, yardwork, and getting the house ready for sale. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! The 7950 GX2 has been a pretty poorly kept secret, as leaked photos and benchmarks have been common in the past couple of months. NVIDIA put out a very good product in the 7900 series of cards, but they obviously felt like they needed to push the envelope a bit more. NVIDIA placed two G71 class GPU's onto two PCB's and connected those PCB's by both a PCI-E switch (each chip has a full 16 lane implementation to this switch) as well as the NVIDIA SLI connector proprietary to those chips. This gives a lot of bandwidth to communications, and because the PCI-E signals don't have to pass through the chipset, latency is really not a factor here. NVIDIA claims that these are "new" 7950 GPU's, but in fact they are still based on G71. Not only that, but from what I have been able to gather, these are mobile steppings of the G71. If you were to separate the two PCB's and look at the design, it looks very much like a MXM version of the GeForce Go 7900 GTX. The stock clocks are in fact identical between the two products (500 MHz core and 600 MHz memory). The thing is just plain fast. It has good support out of the box, and I have been testing it in a variety of motherboards, all with complete success. NVIDIA has worked hard to create SLI profiles for many applications, and there are currently well over 200 applications supported so far officially. I have tested other apps (such as Quake/Tenebrae) with great success, though I have to go through and manually create those profiles (it takes about 30 seconds to create a working SLI profile). The card remains quiet, and only once have I noticed the fans spooling up, and even then it is not nearly as annoying as the ATI cooling solutions on their latest high end cards. The only real issue I have run into is some strange video playback issues. Using the NVIDIA decoder in WMP causes 1/2 of the screen to disappear in video playback, but that issue is not showing up when using a 3rd party decoder like PowerDVD. I have also found that HD Quicktime movies suffer from bad performance and a lot of dropped frames. I am double checking these results and seeing if it may just be a botched install on my end. The good news is that with the latest 90 release drivers, video playback is MUCH improved over previous versions. There is now much better cadence support for standard and High Def playback, as well as things like image sharpening and noise reduction. NVIDIA really stepped up to the plate on this release when it comes to video quality. What is nice is that you no longer have to buy a separate decoder from NVIDIA to enjoy the benefits from PureVideo. These drivers will work with a variety of 3rd party DVD playback software. I will hopefully have my full review of this product later today (much later), but so far I have been impressed by what NVIDIA has offered. Not only that, but it is a heck of a card(s) for $599 to $649. May 25, 2006 The Launches - Josh As you have noticed, there were several launches this week! I was lucky enough to receive a Athlon X2 5000+ AM2 processor from AMD (as well as the Asus M2N32-SLI motherboard and 1 GB of Corsair DDR-2), and have been doing testing on it for the past week. I ran into a few hitches that have delayed the review, but I am hoping to get it done by this evening. I took a different tack than most of the other reviews out there, and I feel I answered some questions that some have passed over in their reviews. Needless to say, I think my review will be worth reading (but I am biased about that I guess). This week really had three major announcements from AMD and its partners. The AM2 launch was very important for AMD, as they now support DDR-2 memory. From an upgrader/enthusiast point of view, this is probably a bit of a disapointment. Yes, the X2 5000+ and the FX-62 are both very fast products, but many in the power user circles thought that AMD should have done more with the design and produced a faster processor overall. Unfortunately for AMD, they really didn't have the luxury of redoing major portions of their design. The main reason for this is time and space. Time in that there are only so many design teams at AMD, and they are working on next generation products that will compete against Intel's mighty Conroe products. AMD has groups working on the 65 nm designs, as well as the K8L, not to mention the generation of products after that. AMD has to tightly manage their teams to get the most out of them, as they do not have the resources that Intel does when it comes to R&D budgets and personnel. The space factor is twofold: AMD only has one fully working Fab and another that is ramping up, and they are also still sitting on the 90 nm node. AMD could have added to the transistor count and improved overall efficiency and IPC, but the current AM2 processors are already very large as compared to other historical CPU's. The AM2 dual core processors with 512 KB L2 cache per core are about 183 mm square, while the 1 MB versions weigh in at a pretty hefty 230 mm square. The AM2 processors are about 20% larger than the previous 939 versions due to changes in the memory controller, as well as the virtualization hardware. AMD also went through the design with a fine toothed comb to eliminate hot spots and to lower the power consumption dramatically over previous generations. All of this took transistors, and that in turn made the dies a lot larger. With Fab 30 running full tilt, and with Fab 36 still ramping on the 90 nm node, as well as still being set up for 65 nm production, AMD didn't have a lot of leeway to make a hyper-performing part that would give Conroe a run for its money. Still, AMD now has a nice lineup of parts that support DDR-2, as well as expanding upon the potential market of people wanting the Energy Efficient processors. Because of the advantages of HyperTransport in terms of connectivity, AMD did not have to re-invent the wheel when it came to chipset support. Companies like VIA, SiS, and ATI have been able to employ their current products in AM2 motherboards without major modifications. Because AM2 was initially looking to be released in a March timeframe, motherboard and chipset folks have had extra time to work on their products. So far there are already more than a handful of motherboards available online that the user can buy, and we are starting to see AM2 processors hitting as well (Monarch Computer actually has the full range of AM2 processors). The X2 5000+ I have in my possession was produced in late January of this year, so AMD has been fabricating these products for quite some time now. I would expect that by the beginning of next week we will see good availability of standard single core AM2 processors, and by the week after that we will see good supplies of the X2 models. This whole launch was about power, memory, and virtualization. I can see how the AMD enthusiast looks to be let down by this launch, but it was a much needed change for AMD. Much akin to Intel going from Prescott 478 chips to the LGA 775 and DDR-2 support. We saw few performance differences there, but Intel felt the need to go DDR-2 at that time. With AMD, the only real difference is that DDR-2 has finally reached the crossover point with DDR in terms of price and overall latency. NVIDIA has released the nForce 5x0 series of chips, and the featureset they support is pretty fantastic. At the top end is the 590 SLI, followed by the 570 SLI, then the 570 Ultra, and finally the budget level 550. These four chipsets will address a wide range of price points, and even at the low end will give the end user a nice experience when it comes to features. I will be covering these chipsets more within the next week with a standalone article. If NVIDIA does not suffer from non-working features (such as the TCP-IP offload engine in the nForce 4 series), then these could easily be the chipset of choice for AMD users (and eventually Intel users, as NVIDIA will transition these parts to the Intel side). ATI is using the same RD580 northbridge, but they are finally releasing the long awaited SB600 southbridge for AM2 enabled products. Previously ATI had a very spotty record with working southbridges, and the SB450/460 southies were notorious for having poor PCI/IDE/USB performance. SB600 fixes these issues and adds things like NCQ and SATA 3Gbps support. ATI still believes that 3rd party GigE controllers hanging off the PCI-E bus are better than having that functionality integrated into the southbridge. It is good to see ATI finally get solidly into the program, and these parts will be welcomed by motherboard manufacturers (especially Sapphire, which has stayed 100% ATI with their motherboard products). May 19, 2006 The Dell News - Josh While it may not be nearly as exciting as when the Berlin Wall fell, it is a pretty historic day for AMD. Dell has finally crumbled under the pressure and will adopt AMD processors for its high end 4 socket servers. As you all know, Dell has been historically an all Intel shop, and really only in its first years of existence did it ever use AMD chips as a second source. Since that time Intel has offered Dell outstanding deals to stay all Intel, as well as basically handle all of the processor inventory needs of Dell. This was obviously a very good deal for Dell, as they got matching marketing dollars, first pick of new processors, and outstanding support from Intel. It hasn't always been easy for the two of them, and times have been strained before. The last time there was any significant break between the two was when AMD had first introduced their 1 GHz Athlon processor, and for the next six months supplied 90% of the 1 GHz+ market. Dell was in negotiations to create a product line based on the original Athlon, since it was beating the Coppermine based Pentium !!!'s at the time. They even went so far as to enter into negotiations with MSI to provide the motherboard that would be used. Intel gave Dell a lot of concessions at that time, and they promised that the low quantities of 1 GHz P3's would eventually end. They also promised Dell that they would get first pick of the Pentium 4's that would be showing up in the Fall of that year. So, Dell dropped the idea of an AMD based line, and kept chugging along with Intel only solutions. Now that we are in 2006, Dell has started to see their server shares erode due to increased competition from guys like HP and Sun. Both of those manufacturers feature a wide selection of AMD server parts, and the four socket variants are selling very well in that space. There are several reasons why the Opterons are really popular there, and mainly it revolves around price, lower power requirements, non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA), native 64 bit support, and the glueless MP that HyperTransport enables. While Intel and AMD are about on even footing in many ways when considering 2 socket architectures (AMD uses HT, while Intel features a dual FSB, so neither really have a bandwidth advantage when it comes to communication between processors and the memory subsystem), the situation is drastically changed when dealing with 4 socket and 8 socket products. Scalability on the Intel side takes a pretty dramatic hit once we go beyond 2S/4P products. Things get pretty bad for Intel once 4S/8P gets thrown into the ring. A lot of the bandwidth between processors and main memory is taken up by the cache coherency protocols, while AMD does not suffer as much due to their more comprehensive MOESI protocol, as well as the three HT links that each processor features. Dell, throughout the years, has claimed availability as a negative for adopting AMD products, and they were very right in saying so. Until this Spring, AMD only had one Fab producing CPU's, and at the beginning of this year they were selling nearly every good die that came off the line. They simply didn't have the production capacity to fulfill orders from a company the size of Dell. Now that Fab 36 is ramping up, AMD now has a lot more manufacturing flexibility. While Dell will not officially release a AMD product until late this year, they will start stocking up on processors and enable the line to become functional so Dell can have a full blown release. This should mean some nice extra income for the next two quarters until Dell officially unveils the line and starts selling product. It is interesting that Dell jumped in now, and I think another enabling factor is that Dell is pretty much all DDR-2 now. While current Opterons are all DDR-1, this July we are supposed to see the introduction of the Socket F Opterons. These will be 1207 pin Revision F chips, and it seems very likely that the extra pins could mean expanded HyperTransport links between the processors (16/16 links moving up to 32/32 links). This will give the Opterons a lot more bandwidth to communicate with each other (if in fact true). These chips will also support DDR-2 for server configurations, which will be a definite plus for Dell. AMD is not shirking away from Woodcrest this Summer, and I think that the answers that AMD will provide to this new architecture will be interesting to say the least. Dell is a big win for AMD and their server level aspirations. While Dell will not likely release lower level products anytime soon, AMD could win Dell over as a customer by continuing to support the company well, and produce quality processors that can address multiple markets. May 18, 2006 Lots of Processor News - Josh Yesterday AMD officially announced their Turion X2 processors, ranging from 1.6 GHz to 2.0 GHz at the top. The lowest end version is the TL-50, which is a dual core chip running at 1.6 GHz with 256 KB of L2 cache per core. The next two are 1.6 GHz and 1.8 GHz with 512 KB of L2 cache per core. The highest end member of the family is the TL-60 running at 2.0 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache. These processors have a power range of 31 to 35 watts TDP. They compare quite well to Intel's Core Duo/Centrino Duo products in terms of performance, power consumption, and heat production. As you may have guessed, these processors are based on the redesigned Rev. F core. With these new processors AMD is introducing their S1 mobile socket. S1 is a 638 pin socket, which replaces the older 754 pin socket for mobile platforms. Even though the pin count is down significantly, the S1 actually includes a 128 bit DDR-2 memory interface. Because these new mobile chips are made for low power consumption, a lot of the extraneous power and ground connections could be eliminated. It does appear to keep the 1.6 GHz HT connection to the system though. AMD is expecting these new processors to start showing up next month, and motherboard support appears to be pretty robust from both ATI and NVIDIA (Xpress 1100 and GeForce 6100 series respectively). The new platform appears to be very healthy, and support is growing at a pretty impressive pace among OEM's. The addition of DDR-2 running at 1.8 volts should also help the power consumption of AMD mobile processors, and they can support speeds up to DDR-2 667. Needless to say, buying a mobile dual core processor from either Intel or AMD is a good idea for those needing the extra performance these processors can provide. Speaking of Intel, I had the chance recently to really sit down with one of their 1.6 GHz Core Duo processors in a laptop. I was very, very impressed by the overall smoothness and performance of this solution. Intel does have a very significant lead in getting good quantities of their mobile dual core processors out, and they have a further advantage of being able to deliver these products on their 65 nm process. AMD is still working on their 65 nm process, and until December or so all chips will still be produced on AMD's 90 nm process. Even though AMD is at a process disadvantage, they have really tuned their Athlon 64 design to be very power efficient, and their 90 nm SOI process is also very power friendly as well. So even though it is a full node older than Intel's latest products, we can expect only slightly more power consumption than what Intel offers. Still, those Core Duo processors are neat. Finally AMD has let a few details slip about the upcoming K8L processor family. At the Spring Processor Forum, AMD unveiled details of the quad core K8L architecture. This appears to be an evolutionary product in many ways, but overall it seems that every portion of the processor has seen a pretty hefty redesign. One of the big features they were pushing was the enhanced FP/SSE performance of these chips. This should make it more competitive with the upcoming Core 2 products, as well as make it more interesting for the server folks. There are a lot of changes under the hood, and Realworld Tech's David Kanter has a pretty good summary and discussion about what was covered. Now, what they have shown was a quad core K8L, and they basically intimated that we will see the first quad core implementation of the K8L in early 2008. They also mentioned that the first quad core products that the market will see will not be based on K8L, but rather on the current K8 design (most likely a respin of the Rev. F core). So, this means that in the 2H 07 AMD should release a server level quad core processor. I find what AMD did not mention the most interesting though. While the K8L is a native quad core product, it will presumably also be offered as a dual core variant for the desktop. AMD said several somewhat contradictory things in their presentation, mainly that K8L will be introduced in the first half of 07, while the first K8L quad core will not make it til 2008. I am guessing that the progression of products from AMD will go like this... We will see the introduction of the Rev. F processors soon, which are 90 nm processors. In December we will see the introduction of the 65 nm variant of Rev. F (as AMD doesn't like to mix a new process node with a totally new core design). AMD will ramp production up on these parts and keep the clockspeeds going strong against Intel's latest Core 2 processors at the time. Most likely AMD will lose the performance crown, even with 65 nm production going full bore. Around late Spring of 2007 we will start to hear rumblings of the desktop/mobile K8L dual core products, and likely an introduction of these parts in early Summer 2007. From what AMD has released on K8L, it looks to be more than a match for Intel's Core 2 products, but since Intel will likely be introducing a new variant of Core 2 around that time as well, we shall see how the two stack up against one another. The good news here is that both manufacturers are not standing still, and the products we will see in the next two years will keep them toe to toe in performance. AMD may not take away as much marketshare as they have in the past three years, but the company will continue to grow with the market and it is doubtful that Intel will overshadow them as they have in the past. Definitely good news for the consumer. I for one really hope this scenario pans out, as I would love to get my hands on a K8L dual core by next summer. To find out more, keep an eye on this page for the next week or so, should be some interesting stuff popping up soon! May 16, 2006 AMD Announces Energy Efficient Processors - Josh In a very interesting move, AMD has announced that they will start shipping their new Energy Efficient and Energy Efficient Small Form Factor processors this month. Energy Efficient processors are based on a 65 watt TDP (the max wattage these processors will ever suck up), which means that really only the X2 4800+ is going to get anywhere near that number, while the lower clocked versions will of course run cooler and more efficiently. These include the X2 4800+, X2 4600+, X2 4400+, X2 4200+, A64 4000+, and the X2 3800+. The EE Small Form Factor products will run at a max of 35 watts TDP. The EESMF processors include the X2 3800+, A64 3500+, and the Sempron 3400+/3200+/3000+. These chips will come at a small premium, which generally will be between $26 to $52 more, depending on the model. AMD has achieved these power savings through a variety of factors. We can assume that many of these products will be based on the Rev. F cores, which are the redesigned AM2 based processors. AMD didn't do anything really radical to these processors except for redesigning the memory controller for DDR-2 support, adding virtualization, as well as jumping in internally and tweaking some things for power reasons, and not so much for performance. This has allowed AMD to take the TDP on the standard parts from around 110 watts TDP down to around 85 watts TDP. So, design has played a factor in these parts being more energy efficient. A second reason is that AMD uses their APM software to really tweak wafer batches individually. This software and engineering system can individually track each batch of wafers at Fab 30 and Fab 36 and can customize the individual process to get the desired results. So, instead of running a product line exclusively to get the fastest switching transistors to get the fastest parts, AMD can customize each product batch. For example, if they need energy efficient small form factor parts they adjust the process for that batch of processors to have slower, yet more efficient switching transistors. This will affect the top speed of these parts, so do not assume that these energy efficient parts will be great overclockers. On the same line, AMD could flag a batch of wafers to be high performance, which allows the 2.6 GHz+ parts to be put out with acceptable yields. AMD can yet again target a batch to provide good performance and good efficiency, yet adjust the process to have excellent yields at the target speed. The flexibility that AMD's APM allows the company to customize their line depending on market needs. With the opening of Fab 36 it has allowed AMD even more flexibility with their product lineup, which is exactly what these Energy Efficient processors reflect. AMD sees a market for these products, and now has the extra capacity to address the market. This is a very good idea, since Intel is really pushing the lower power of the Core 2 products (Conroe family) that will be showing up this summer. AMD may not have the highest performing part after Intel releases the Core 2 family, but they are certainly carving out more niches for themselves to survive the onslaught of new products from Intel. AMD will continue on just fine in the face of these new products from Intel, and once AMD gets their 65 nm parts out the door (which should be December), then they will be better able to compete with Intel. We can look at the past to see exactly what AMD will be doing with their jump to 65 nm. As you remember, when AMD jumped from 130 nm to 90 nm, the 90 nm Winchester core was basically just a slightly tweaked and shrunk 130 nm Newcastle core. AMD is not fond of going to a new node with a completely new processor design, as it involves a LOT of risk (just ask Intel with their Prescott design). At 65 nm we will see two things happen: the first is that the speeds of AMD's processors will increase at the high end, and secondly we will see a better selection of Energy Efficient parts as well as a general lowering of TDP for the standard parts. AMD is trying to get their little fingers everywhere they can, as Intel has woken up and will be introducing a very impressive family of parts this summer. Again, AMD will probably lose the performance crown, but they will not be knocked down entirely by these new products. It will take Intel a while to switch everything over to the Core 2 parts, and by the time that mostly happens, then AMD will be releasing their 65 nm parts. The two processor companies are actively slugging it out, and it will certainly be a good time for buyers, as a lot of really good technology will be had for not a whole lot of scratch. Next week we will see the first salvo of this summer, and I can tell you that it might hold a surprise or two. May 15, 2006 When it Rains... - Josh If you may have noticed, the site availability was pretty spotty this weekend. Well, the reason for that is apparently a hacker invaded the stack where my server is located and destroyed everything. I am not terribly pleased about this, as it has taken out the forums as well. The forums may or may not be restored to how they were, but we shall see. I did have a complete backup of the site, so I was able to restore pretty much everything. Except forums. I don't know if I will go with Ikonboard again, but I was starting to get the hang of it, so we shall see. The last hack attack happened in May/June of 2003, and it also wiped out the site. At that time though I didn't have a complete backup as I do now. Well, isn't May turning out to be an interesting month here. I just want to say thanks to all the folks that have donated to help us out in this very tight month. I have tried to write each and every one that has donated, but I am not always sure that the emails got through. Oftentimes the email addresses that Paypal provides are old and no longer functioning. So, if you have sent money, I did write to say thank you personally. If you didn't get an email from me, then you might want to update your Paypal contact email! Again, thank you all for your very generous support through this trying time. There is probably a 10% chance that we will keep our house at this time, which means we are actively looking around for another option. Hopefully we can pull it out with a miracle of some sort (I did ask for a raise, and Tina is getting more hours starting in July), but for now we are cleaning/painting/fixing up the house cause it certainly looks likely we will have to sell. Biostar Announces 7300 GT Based Cards The kind folks at Biostar have let me know that they have released two new video cards to the market based on the officially unannounced 7300 GT chip. The first version is a passive product, but with enhanced core clocks off the base 7300 GT. Apparently the 7300 GT has a core clock of 350 MHz and features 400 MHz (800 MHz effective) DDR-2, but the passive version of this card from Biostar has a 400 MHz core clock (but the memory stays the same). The second version is a souped up product with plenty of cooling power. This has a 500 MHz core clock and features 1 GHz GDDR-3. The 7300 GT is rumored to feature 4 ROPS, 8 Pixel Shader pipelines, and 4 vertex shaders. This should make this product slightly faster than the old 6600 GT mainly due to the performance optimizations in the G7x architecture.
Biostar is making a very aggressive push into the graphics market, and though the 7300 GT's are not posted on their site at this time, you can browse around and see what they are doing. Biostar makes quite a few motherboards, and they want to expand quickly into video cards. From what I am seeing, their aggressive product placement (as well as some unique designs) could quickly win them support in this very competitive market. Note the robust cooling that the high end 7300 GT from Biostar will be featuring. May 11, 2006 May is an Interesting Month - Josh Well, we have a handful of releases coming up here soon, and we will be covering at least one of them. I am quite excited about this prospect, but you will have to wait and see which one it is. The Ageia PhysX cards are now available, but reviews so far have been pretty negative. I think the main reason for this is just the lack of good content for the technology. Another reason is that the driver support for these new cards is also very new, and very raw. I think a third reason (I'm on a roll) is the use of PCI to shuffle pretty significant amounts of data to and from the card, main memory, the CPU, and the GPU. I was really hoping for PCI-Express based cards at the introduction, but apparently the folks at Ageia wanted to keep it simple at launch. Probably a good idea on their part. ATI, NVIDIA, and Havok are all taking advantage of this situation by saying that their upcoming support of Havok FX engine. One big point of contention for their arguments is that Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is powered by the Havok engine for most of the physics effects, but the PhysX engine was only used for some advanced particle effects. It is something of a patchwork system, as the PhysX/Novodex engine is supposed to handle everything. Personally, I like the idea of the PhysX processor, but it definitely needs more work before it is ready for prime time. Many are expecting Unreal Tournament 2007 to be the killer app for this product, and let's hope that is true. The only thing that is a downside to PhysX is that it is a separate card, and it will suck up more power, and possibly create more heat. Plus they are expensive. With dual core processors now becoming more the norm in new computers, do we really need a separate physics processor? I guess time will tell if it is worth it or not. My suspicion is that such a product is pretty unpalatable to a lot of people. We should be seeing a new batch of sound cards based on the C-Media 8788 Oxygen HD chipset coming out very soon. Both Auzentech and Bluegears have product specifications out on these cards, and I had the fortune to test a pre-production 8788 card for internal review, and I must admit that I came away VERY impressed. These products really look to give Creative and their X-Fi products a run for their money. I can't go into details yet, but if you are considering buying a standalone sound card, wait until the first reviews come out on these 8788 cards. It is not clear when exactly these cards will be available, but they should be out by the middle of summer this year. C-Media is really looking competitive with the 8788 chip, and I am glad that there is another good competitor in the standalone sound chip field. The 8788 Oxygen HD is a very feature packed chip. Something to pay attention to on the Auzentech card is that it still has the upgradeable OPAMPS, but these sockets are filled with the high end Burr/Brown-TI OPAMPS that I used in my "Upgrading OPAMPS" article. I am curious if they will stay with these nicer OPAMPS, or go with the cheaper ones when they ship this card. As you all well know, E3 is going on now, so we will be inundated with gaming news. Hardware is going to take a back seat for the next week, but after that we will start seeing the new releases. In the meantime I am trying to finish up my Auzentech X-Plosion review, but it seems my other job keeps interferring with getting it done (not to mention my son refusing to leave me alone during the evening so I can write). Such is life. We are still hanging in there, and we appreciate the donations that many of you have given. Thanks again for all the help! We are still unsure if we will be staying in our house, as a few more things need to fall into place for that to happen. We appreciate your kind thoughts and prayers, as well as the donations that have come in. Thanks again! May 8, 2006 I Hate Money - Josh Don't get me wrong, I'm a good capitalist, but it really sucks when there isn't enough of it. We tried to put my wife through school for a degree, and we hit a bad stretch of luck. Things look grim, and I'm guessing that we will be selling our house. We aren't in a world of hurt yet, but making ends meet every month (especially with the way natural gas and electricity have gone up in price over this winter, so the heating bills were pretty nasty, not to mention our daycare bill has increased over $200 in the past six months) is just becoming really tough. Growth at the site has been good, but not enough to catch major advertisers' eyes. What money I do make for advertising usually covers bandwidth, and that's about it. So if you are an advertiser looking for a site to spend money on, I welcome you to contact me and we can make a nice deal. If you are a reader and have derived any help from this site, or have really enjoyed reading it, if you could make a donation through PayPal (look to the left of here for the quick and easy button), then I would be eternally grateful! While I do not expect donations to help us through the rest of this year while my wife finishes her schooling, it would certainly make a huge difference with us getting through the rest of this month. Unless something major happens through an advertiser, I think that we will end up selling the house and downsizing. It is really unfortunate, because I love the current house we are in, and it fits our needs perfectly (plenty of space, a nice area for my testing lab and office, yard for the dogs, another bedroom waiting for the child we are hoping to adopt next year, etc.). But reality is dictating that we can no longer thrive with the income I make from my sys-admin job and network consulting (not to mention the many hours I spend writing, testing, and researching for the content on this site). So if you can give, then great! Know that anything is appreciated, and I certainly do not expect people to send me their life savings. Thanks for the help, and hopefully if my internet and power are not turned off we will have some new content this week! May 5, 2006 AMD AthlonX2 3800 and Athlon 64 3800+ Review - Josh AMD was kind enough to ship me out a couple of processors for testing, and I have finally been able to finish the testing and put out this article. Both processors are in the sub $300 range, but what would be the best option for users? Obviously the answer relies on the type of use it will see, but AMD has given us two good options with these co-branded 3800+s. Will the promise of fast single thread performance trump the future possibility of an all multi-threaded world? I take a look at the tradeoffs for each product, as well as their relative performance to each other. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire article here. May 3, 2006 eVGA GeForce 7600 GS Review - Josh For the past few weeks I have had the chance to work with the eVGA GeForce 7600 GS. This product based on the G72 chip from NVIDIA features a 400 MHz core clock and 256 MB of 400 MHz GDDR-2 memory (800 MHz effective). The key selling point to this card is the passive cooler, not to mention the price which is approaching $100 US retail. Here is a quick quote:
You can read the entire review here. Some Interesting Links - Josh First off Johan at Anandtech takes a very fascinating look at the internal architecture of the Conroe and K8 architectures, and really helps the reader understand the strengths and weaknesses of both. There is no doubt that Intel and its engineers have done an amazing job with the Conroe architecture, and it will certainly be a product worth watching later this summer. You can read the entire article here. Definitely a must-read. HardOCP sits down with ATI and really digs into the upcoming DX10 release from Microsoft. While we may not see DX10 except in the release of Vista, the hardware guys are busily working on new architectures to take advantage of this upcoming API. Again, some very interesting stuff is contained in that article, and it should give the reader a good idea what new features and functionality DX10 will bring to the PC. The Tech Report, though based in Missouri (and the EIC is a rabid Chiefs fan... for some reason), put out a really interesting article on S3's MultiChrome setup. This is comprised of two S27 cards from S3, and the results are interesting to say the least. While not as mature or feature packed as NVIDIA's SLI or ATI's CrossFire, it does seem to work in a limited fashion. S3 has a long ways to go before they have a product that can truly compete, but they are starting to shape up to be a potential 3rd party contender in the 3D graphics world. Speaking of Multi-GPU, there are quite a few sites out there with some pre-production looking Quad SLI setups, and the results are somewhat all over the map in terms of quality and performance. Some have been very positive, while others have experienced little to no performance increase as well as quite a bit of instability. I would imagine that many of these issues and concerns are being attended to ASAP...
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