News Archive

Intel has not invited Rambus Inc to join it's upcoming memory standards forum. Other memory manufacturers, including Samsung and Micron, have invitations. The reason for the lack of a Rambus RSVP is that these hardware hounds are discussing ways of integrating PC-133 and Double Data Rate SDRAM support into future Intel chipsets. Expect Rambus' stock to take a hit.

This may be "too-little too-late" in terms of support for these memory standards, since the brand new line of chipsets from Intel have no support for these memory types. Unless Intel breaks all it's R&D records for development of a new chipset line, expect a long delay before the new chipsets with support for faster memory are actually available for purchase.

The holidays have left many hardware distributors with shelves as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboards. We have noted shortages of almost all major computer components, including Pentium III CPUs, high-end video cards, hard drives, motherboards, and memory. These continuing shortages will almost certainly keep prices higher than they would have been if supplies were more plentiful.

Computer purchases have traditionally remained high just after the holidays, so the shortages may continue for several more weeks. But by the end of January, new parts which have been in production should enter the market, relieving some of the supply shortage. The earthquake in Taiwan a couple months ago occurred at a time when manufacturers were gearing up for the holiday rush. So we may still be feeling it's aftereffects on supplies.

December 28th

The recent space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope was successful, and Commander Curtis Brown safely landed Discovery yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Hubble was fitted with new gyroscopes, a new protective outer layer, a new radio transmitter, a new digital solid state data recorder that replaces an old, tape-based unit, and the Hubble also got a new computer. NASA reports that the new computer is 20 times faster, with 6 times as much memory as the previous Hubble computer.

The new computer has been in development for at least 4 years, and is called the HST486. That stands for Hubble Space Telescope 486. That's right. The new "Advanced Computer System" upgrades the Hubble from a 386 computer to an Intel 486 computer! It's obvious that the folks at NASA won't be playing any Quake 3 Arena on the ol' Hubble. But the original Frogger might be an option.

December 24th

We want to wish everyone happy holidays from all of us here at KickAss Gear. Don't forget, this is just a practice session for the real turn of the millennium which occurs in 2001! But it ought to be a great dry run! Cheers!

December 19th

Many rumors were spread when the Athlon was first introduced that they could not be overclocked without special equipment. Like many Internet rumors, they were wrong. The early Athlons that were tested could not be overclocked because they were tested on motherboards that did not have overclock bus settings.

The Asus K7M has the Front Side Bus frequency settings in 1MHz increments between 100MHz and 125MHz, as well as having 133MHz and 150MHz settings. The Athlons we received recently were packaged in mid October, and will overclock very well to approximately 50MHz above their rated speed. Newer Athlons are reported to overclock substantially better. This may be due to the new Copper-interconnect technology that AMD is now using for fabrication.

We will have a full review of the Athlon's overclocking potential on the K7M soon.

December 16th

Many computer parts are in very short supply leading up to the last few shopping days before the holidays are over. Perhaps manufacturers were worried, and did not want to over-produce and over-stock this holiday shopping season.

You will be hard pressed to find Voodoo3 cards, IBM 7200 rpm drives, new DVD drives, 450MHz and 500MHz Pentium IIIs, and many other computer items. New items are in extremely short supply, including GeForce video cards, and high-speed Athlon and Pentium III processors. Some prices are rising slightly due to the increased demand for limited stocks of popular items.

December 12th

Many motherboard manufacturers have begun to turn out Slot-A Athlon motherboards, and some of them are very high quality! The Asus K7M is finally available in limited quantities, and looks like a very good mainboard. We will have Athlon CPUs, and the K7M for sale next week. Even companies like FIC seem to have fixed some of the problems with the early version of their Slot-A boards.

Unfortunately, the new "Coppermine" Pentium III is dead in the water, and sinking at the bow. Most of the problems appear to be a result of Intel getting too big for one section of this mega-corporation to know what the other sections are doing. Throw in a touch of greed, with their plan to get the entire computer industry to switch to the much more expensive Rambus DRAM, and you end up with a disaster. As we have said before, any plan that makes one essential part of a computer much more expensive, without drastic performance gains, is doomed to failure.

We wish we could offer both Coppermine and Athlon systems now, but due to a complete lack of acceptable motherboards for the new, 0.18 micron Pentium IIIs, this is not possible. Based upon rumors we have heard from very reliable sources, motherboards based on the i815 chipset, which will have PC-133 SDRAM support, may not be ready until June or July of 2000! This gives AMD plenty of breathing room to expand into the high-end market, where Intel has always been King.

December 10th

Intel keeps an updated specification sheet for the Pentium III Coppermine CPUs which describes the "bugs" (errata) in the design, and prescribes workarounds for them when possible. We downloaded the latest version from Intel, and were surprised to see the number of bugs is already up to 58!!! Errata number 56 is particularly interesting. Some of you may remember how much trouble the math bug in the original Pentium chip was for Intel. Called the FDIV bug, it caused Intel's first big-time processor recall.

Now a math bug (errata #56) has been found in the new Coppermine Pentium III CPU that can turn a positive number result into a negative number result! Oops! According to Intel, the system BIOS can be changed to eliminate this problem.

For those of you who know nothing of Scientology, it's the pseudo-religion created by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950's which suggests all personal and emotional problems stem from bad experiences you had as a child. Called "Engrams", these deeply buried bad memories rule your life, always with negative consequences, whether you know it or not! For an immodest fee, they will fix your problems for you.

Who cares if these nuts want to believe such drivel? Businesses and consumers thinking of upgrading to Windows 2000 might. The disk defragmenting utility built into Windows 2000, "Diskeeper 5.0", was written by a group of programmers at ExecSoft, who are all self-professed Scientologists. You can check out the CEO's "About Myself" here. "Diskeeper" even has a semi-religious tone, doesn't it?

While this is probably no big deal to most Americans, Germans have been doing battle with Scientologists for years, and the European Catholic Church has even suggested it may boycott Windows 2000 if the situation is not addressed by Microsoft. What's next? Maybe there will be a new Win2K backup utility, perhaps called Jihad, which is written by terrorists ;).

December 8th

Intel quietly relegated the Pentium III 450 CPU to the scrap heap without any fanfare. The internal logic behind this retirement is that higher end CPUs are available, and the low end then becomes expendable. However, what this line of thought neglects is the simple, undeniable fact that none of the new Pentium III chips will run on most motherboards. So the PIII 600 CPU is the top end for motherboards based upon the BX chipset, and the PIII 500 is the low end. Not much wiggle-room in there.

Why does this matter? The BX is a dinosaur isn't it? While that is true in theory, in practice, the BX chipset outperforms i820 "Cape Cod" motherboards that support PC-100 SDRAM. This is because memory access is hobbled on the i820 when used in conjunction with PC-100 SDRAM. There is no "native" support for PC-100 SDRAM in the i820 chipset, so a memory translation hub is required. Systems take a 30% to 40% memory access performance hit when using the memory translation hub. Therefore, the BX chipset, which can be overclocked to above 133MHz with PC-133 SDRAM, outperforms the i820 with SDRAM.

What about Rambus on the i820? It will give you a few percent better memory performance than PC-133 SDRAM, but a 128MB stick of 800MHz Rambus DRAM costs approximately $1000. That's not an option. The bottom line is, if you want to get a new "Coppermine" Pentium III now, you will have to get a motherboard that either reduces performance, or one who's cost-of-ownership makes private aviation sound like a poor-man's hobby.

December 2nd

Didn't you know this was coming? We have been thinking for some time that the "errata" (nice techy-talk for "errors") in the new Coppermine chips were going to eventually grow in number, and end up including an actual noticeable "bug" that created problems for end users under some circumstances. The count of known "errata" in the Coppermine CPUs is up to something like 49 now, but software and hardware work-arounds can usually be devised to limit their effect on system operation.

But now that Coppermine systems are trickling out, it appears that some percentage of them have a bug that can't be fixed with work-arounds. It does not affect all Coppermines, but that means buying a Coppermine system now is a little like gambling. The bug is not a serious system-crashing problem, but it is certain to be irritating to anyone who gets an afflicted Coppermine system. The bug causes the computer to fail to turn on the first time the power button is pushed. A second button press should bring the system on-line.

This can't be good news to Intel engineers, who failed miserably with the i820 motherboard, and who have had problems with the next-generation IA-64 "Merced" CPU as well. Intel is perhaps growing too large to integrate it's various parts into a well-oiled machine for developing new hardware.

November 30th, 1999

The fact that a good number of folks have bought one version of Linux or another is one thing. But the additional fact that Red Hat's and Corel's stock prices have risen dramatically in the last few weeks means that corporate America is taking this operating system more seriously. This is great news. The two major problems that Linux faces are lack of available applications written to run on it, and some installation and drivers issues.

Yet now that Microsoft has been ruled a monopoly in court, and Linux is becoming more popular, it looks as if money may start pouring into Linux distributor's coffers. This will allow them to develop the operating system into a mainstream product, and viable alternative for some consumers. The increased ease of use that should result from increased development funding will help bring more applications developers on board, and Linux ports of existing Windows applications should become more plentiful.

Rumors have started around that Red Hat feels spunky enough to purchase Corel, the makers of Word Perfect, and a new, easier to install version of Linux named Corel Linux OS. It's starting to look like a Linux feeding frenzy is in the offing. We think the Corel version, which comes with Word Perfect, may help stimulate further interest in this open source operating system.

There is a whole lot of confusion out there about motherboard availability for Coppermine and Athlon CPUs. Athlon motherboards are available, but the quality is low. Wait for better quality motherboards before getting an Athlon system. Also, wait for motherboards with the VIA KX-133 chipset on them, they are better than boards with the AMD750 chipset.

Virtually no "Flip-Chip Coppermine" motherboards are available yet. The Flip-Chips don't work on existing Socket 370 motherboards. Even if you find a new motherboard with Coppermine support, don't get an i810E or i820 motherboard from Intel, they won't allow overclocking. Wait for companies like Asus, AOpen, and Abit to come out with their new motherboards with Coppermine support.

Very few good motherboards are available for Slot-1 Coppermine CPU's either. There is no reason to get an Intel Cape Cod motherboard, they also won't overclock the CPU. In addition, the motherboards with the i820 chipset that have SDRAM sockets use a memory translation hub that slows down memory access. This is not a good option. And Rambus is too expensive for anyone to consider seriously, so forget i820 boards with Rambus sockets. We are hoping that the i815 chipset makes it to market soon (don't hold your breath), with support for PC-133 SDRAM and Coppermine CPUs.

In general, we recommend that folks wait to get Athlon or Coppermine systems. You can find them out there, but you will not be happy with the quality or features on existing motherboards. So if you want a top-notch system, rather than just the first Coppermine or Athlon on your block, then wait. You will be glad you did. How long? It's hard to say. We estimate it may be one or two months more before good quality motherboards are readily available for either CPU.

Apparently, the European Union is going to take a look at the privacy implications of Intel's Pentium III "Personal Serial Number" (PSN). We thought this stuff had gone the way of Travelgate, Whitewater, and Filegate, but it looks like the European Union is worried that the FBI and National Security Agency of the United States may be making unlawful use of the PIII PSN to track the activities of US citizens on the net. Perhaps, the reasoning must go, this is just a short step away from the Feds deciding to go rifling through the dirty web laundry of Euro-surfers!

Is it just me, or do you have the feeling that spies and Feds have better ways to figure out who's doing what than sifting through terabytes of CyberSpace traffic for PSNs? How about a simple phone tap? And what if the bad guys are using Cyrix or AMD chips? And what if they switch between different Pentium III processors depending on whether they are doing legitimate or illegitimate activities? I'm still a little befuddled as to what exactly these minions of Uncle Sam are supposed to be doing with PSNs that they could not do more easily other ways. But then again, we are so dumb here, we are all planning on flying back and fourth across the International dateline in a 737 at Midnight on December 31st just to see what happens to the computers on board. Should be fun.

Intel is dropping prices on Pentium III CPUs. We can't say yet if the drops will be small or large, but if you are planning on getting one of the more expensive chips, you might do well to wait.

November 24th

Ever wonder what kind of stuff goes on behind closed doors in the computer industry? The details of Intel's secret deal with Gateway computers was reveled, sort of. They are not commenting on it, of course, but here's the scoop. Apparently, Intel offered Gateway as much as 100 million dollars to NOT use AMD parts. They offered Gateway a rebate in the neighborhood of $50 per Intel CPU purchased, as long as Gateway did not offer an AMD Athlon system for sale.

Does this sound familiar folks? As we have mentioned before, playing hard-ball is second nature to companies like Micro$oft and Intel. They would rather rely on shady business practices to do what their engineers and programmers can't: get people to prefer their product.

As computer manufacturers ourselves, we really have a bone to pick with these types of deals. Large computer makers already get special deals from companies like Intel and Micro$oft, in part to keep them beholden to these industry giants. And when the purpose of the "price break" is to coerce them into using Intel or Micro$oft products exclusively, consumers do not benefit.

Now Gateway has decided that the AMD Athlon is too good a processor to ignore, so they are going ahead with plans to produce an Athlon-based system by the end of the month. Intel has pulled the sweetheart deal, and now has little or no control over Gateway's product line. Let's hope that all the major computer makers decide that making products their customers want is more important than doing Intel's bidding. We are really sick and tired of hearing how the big players try to unfairly manipulate other companies at the consumers expense.

November 22nd

Unless you are a-hankerin' to put your shiny new 500E or 550E Coppermine CPU into a lowly i810E motherboard, you may have to wait to use that Flip-Chip. We are not saying the Flip is a Flop, just that it was released without any motherboard support. Asus has announced that the next version of several of it's Socket 370 motherboards will support the Flip Chip CPUs (like the MEW, rev 1.08) . But when will they be released? No word on that. A special socket 370 adapter card will allow Flip Chip CPUs to fit on new Slot-1 boards with the i820 chipset, but that will negate some of the benefits of the new Flip Chip design.

So for the most part, if you are interested in one of the new Flip Chips, your best bet is to wait for an i820-based Socket 370 board to be released. How long this will be is not certain, but companies are certainly working on it now.

Now that Comdex is over, you might be wondering what new hardware we can expect for the New Year? Well, unfortunately, the iMac has created such a feeding frenzy among computer makers, that about half the new stuff is just a bunch of ugly iMac clones, and attempts at making PCs look "better". I expect eventually, computers will look like an Art Deco paper weight.

Blue Tooth: No more wires (if we can believe them) piled up on the floor. Except for power cords, all the cables to peripheral devices will be eliminated if this technology actually works well. How much more you will have to pay for a Blue Tooth keyboard is unclear.

Voodoo VSA-100: The GeForce 256 is an impressive bit of technology, but what 3dfx has known for a long time is, a single chip can do only so much. The new VSA-100 chip by 3dfx has all the major features you could want in a new video card, like 32bit color, full-scene anti-aliasing, large texture support, etc, so speed becomes the main issue. However, rather than having to make a new video chip every year or two, 3dfx was smart enough to make a good basic chip that can be run in a multiprocessor configuration. Up to 32 VSA-100 chips can theoretically be integrated into a single system, with up to 2GBs of dedicated video memory. Now that's scalability! As memory prices drop next year, expect to see the 4-chip Voodoo5 6000 card with 128MB of RAM drop below $500. It will be substantially faster than the GeForce 256.

No More Oldies: Legacy devices are going for good, no more floppies, ISA slots or even CD drives. DVD and CD-R drives will probably replace standard CDs now that the price is so low.

Firewire: The standard that spun off USB, known as Firewire, will make it's debut in mainstream PCs in the year 2000. It's much faster than USB, and will first show up as an input jack for digital cameras and camcorders.

Ultra-3 SCSI is coming out. If you thought Ultra-2 SCSI was fast, how about doubling it? Sustained transfer rates will be 4 times that seen with ATA66 drives.

Games with new 3D technologies: Expect new games to have support for new 3D technologies that will greatly improve game speed and appearance. From "Level of Detail" (LoD) polygon count reduction which allows more detail in close objects, to "weighted vertex" programming, which allows materials like skin and cloth to behave more realistically, you can expect upcoming games to be much much cooler looking!

Athlons and Coppermines above a Gigahertz: Both of these CPUs should be scalable to at least a Gigahertz. Reports on overclocking of the new Coppermines have shown they will be overclockable to approximately 1.2GH in their present form.

Intel is pushing ahead with the lawsuit against VIA, the little chipmaker, and FIC and Everex, which are motherboard manufacturers that use VIA chipsets. Intel claims that VIA has violated patent agreements with Intel, but Intel will not provide any details. Of course, many larger companies use VIA chipsets on their motherboards, such as Compaq and IBM, but Intel did not name them in the suit.

Obviously, Intel is trying to intimidate motherboard manufacturers in the hopes of getting them to steer clear of VIA products, and stick with Intel chipsets instead. Of course, Intel can not make enough chipsets to meet the worlds demands, but apparently, that's not their concern. They just want to beat up on small companies in the hopes of putting the fear of litigation into larger companies.

Once again, Intel is not making the best product possible, and getting it to market before the competition. Rather, they are relying on their lawyers to do what their engineers can't: make sure everyone uses Intel chipsets.

Corel is releasing their new version of the Linux operating system (Corel Linux OS). The deluxe version will have Word Perfect Office bundled with it. They are planning on releasing Linux versions of Quattro Pro and Corel Draw soon as well. This is very good news, because it means that more software will be available for this operating system soon. The biggest shortcomings of Linux are buggy installations, and lack of software. Corel is helping change both of these problems with their new release.

November 15th

3dfx has produced a new graphics chip they are calling the VSA-100. The new chip has 32bit color support, full-scene anti-aliasing, T-buffer digital effects, large texture support, texture compression, and multiprocessor support for up to 32 VSA-100 chips on the same board! These boards will come in several flavors, starting with a 32MB Voodoo4 4000 card. Perhaps the most exciting card will be the Voodoo5 6000 card, with 128MB of onboard RAM, and 4 VSA-100 chips running in SLI mode. It will be able to deliver nearly 1.5 Gigapixels per second! That's some real pixel pushing power! Don't expect to see these cards available until sometime in the Spring.

It's the week we have been waiting for. All those non-disclosure agreements that manufacturers had to sign are history, and we get to hear what they have been working on.

Abit announced two new motherboards based upon the i820 chipset (can you say "only two RIMM sockets?"). They are the Abit CX6 and the CH6. The CX6 is only for the rich, since it has two (yup, only two) Rambus memory sockets (RIMMs). Currently, Rambus is 4 to 5 times the price of SDRAM, and does not offer a significant performance boost. The CH6 is more interesting since it has PC-100 SDRAM support, and Softmenu II, which will allow overclocking of the front side bus. The question is, why did Abit stick with Softmenu II for it's i820 mainboards, when softmenu III is already available on their BE6-2 and BF6 motherboards?

Abit is also releasing a GeForce 256-based graphics card called the "SiluroT GT2".

Intel is announcing a bunch of motherboards that only Dell will buy. If you want an i820 motherboard with all sorts of junk integrated on it, Dell is the place to go. Intel has announced the following:

1) "Lockport" (D820LP), socket 370 with the i820 chipset, and integrated audio and networking,

4) "Templeton" socket 370 with the i810e chipset, with integrated video, network and audio!

5) "S820PN-2" Dual slot 1 with the i820 chipset, and integrated network and Ultra-2 SCSI controller.

None of these will be good for overclockers, but at least it shows how much Intel is pushing the new Flip-Chip design. All but one of these motherboards is for the new Flip-Chip Pentium III. You can read a Preview of the Flip-Chips here:

November 12th

We finally got our hands on a single, lonely 500E Pentium III. These CPU's come in the new "Flip-Chip" Pin Grid Array format (FC-PGA). They are not compatible with the pin configuration of S370 (Celeron) motherboards, and they use a different Voltage regulator module version. Therefore they won't work with current S370 motherboards. We will post a Preview of this chip tonight or tomorrow, with more details. Currently, only i810E motherboards will run the new Flip Chips.

Reports have been coming in with benchmarks that support what we suspected all along, that Double Data Rate SDRAM will beat the far more expensive and proprietary Rambus DRAM in performance. Just another nail in Rambus' coffin.

November 11th

Unlike any other debut of Intel processors we can remember, the roll-out of the Coppermine Pentium III's offers slim pickings for customers and computer makers alike. In a typical roll-out of a well-hyped product, Intel would have the distribution channels pre-charged with hundreds of thousands of pieces. This time, there were zero E-version Pentium III's for one week after the debut. Then on the next Monday, Tech Data, one of Intel's largest distributors, had only a few hundred 500E processors listed at one of their eight warehouses! The other E-version Pentium IIIs were still not available. Other Intel distributors did not seem to even know about the new processors. A few hundred of the 550E's showed up at Tech Data a couple days later.

This is certainly not your typical Intel processor debut. The interesting thing is that the only two processors which are being dribbled onto the market are the 500E and 550E, both of them in the new Flip-Chip Pin Grid Array (FC-PGA) package. These are bare chips, without the circuit board or the plastic housing. They will look similar to the current Celerons, and are pin-compatible with the socket 370 format. They are much quicker and easier to produce, so that may explain why they made it to market first. Therefore, if you are planning on getting a new 500E or 550E, remember, they go onto new i810E-based S370 motherboards, not Slot-1 motherboards. Expect 370 motherboards based on other chipsets that will take the new Coppermine CPUs soon.

To us, this trickle-debut is Intel's attempt to dampen enthusiasm for the Athlon 700 processor from their competitor, AMD, which actually is available.

November 8th

Perhaps Intel has been learning from Microsoft how not to run a company. We learned after Microsoft's defeat in court on Friday that Microsoft would often announce new products that were not ready, in order to blunt the release of products from competitors that were ready for market. Now Intel seems to be doing the same thing. Apparently Intel thinks their customers are not too bright, since the newly "released" "Coppermine" CPUs are still hype-ware, rather than hardware. They are nowhere to be found.

Is it a coincidence that Intel announced these unavailable parts just as AMD is about to release their Athlon 750MHz CPU? Most AMD Athlon parts are quite plentiful, but Intel has been using it's market muscle to make sure that motherboard makers don't produce Athlon motherboards. Asus recently admitted it would stop making Athlon Slot A motherboards after receiving pressure from Intel. They then retracted that statement, saying they will continue to support the Athlon CPU line, but we could not find a single mention of any Slot A motherboard on their web site today. An Asus official who did not want to be named was quoted as saying "Nobody can talk about the K7. It's a very sensitive topic, we don't want any employee to release any K7-related information to anybody." Sensitive topic? That's a polite way of saying "psst... there's a guy from Intel in the next room with a gun pointed at my head!"
ASUS MOBOs

Fortunately, a petition to motherboard makers that has been floating the web has received quite a bit of support, and may put pressure on Mobo makers to stop caving in to Intel's pressure. PETITION

Coppermine CPUs are supposed to start trickling in to distributors this week and next. But they are on so-called "allocation", which is reseller jargon for "very limited supply". Expect shortages of them until sometime in January. We also expect that the hype-ware release of the new Coppermine CPUs will have the desired effect of getting many customers to wait for these currently non-existent processors.

We will be announcing new systems based upon the AMD Athlon processor, and Intel's soon-to-be Coppermine processors, in the next few weeks.

Comdex, the computer trade show, is just a week away, and it looks like it's going to be a doozy. AMD will be showing off Athlons ranging in speed from 800MHz to 1 GHz. Who would have thought a year ago that AMD would beat Intel to the Gigahertz realm?

Abit wiil be releasing new motherboards, presumably based upon Intel's chipsets (i820 and i840). Abit also announced it would be entering the graphics card market! This is great news in our opinion, because with all the mergers among hardware makers and chip makers, there isn't much competition out there. We hope that Abit will make high-end video cards like GeForce cards with extra overclocking features. I'm psyched!

Expect lots of new input devices, and new generations of video cards, such as the Voodoo4 by 3dfx. We are also hoping that motherboard makers diversify, and offer new motherboards based upon VIA's Apollo Pro 133 chipset, and VIA's new KX133 Athlon chipset.

As Intel franticly cobbles together an i815 chipset with PC-133 support, and AGP 4x support, it seems like too little too late. No doubt, they will be able to use their market muscle to threaten Mobo makers into using it, instead of the competition's chipsets, which are already available.

But Rambus memory is getting trashed by all the reviews, as an expensive, non-scalable, less stable alternative to existing SDRAM. It clearly is not a technological breakthrough, nor is it a viable alternative due to it's high price. PC prices are still going down, and any attempt to make a key component much more expensive is doomed to failure.

The worst part about the whole thing is that Intel is going to have to recoup their HUGE losses, and you all know whom is going to get stuck with that bill! Is is a coincidence that Intel just decided to delay their next price drop? NO!

November 5th

Microsoft got plastered in court today. But the loss of the antitrust case brought by the Justice Department against the maker of Windows was not nearly as interesting as the sordid details we got to hear after the decision was handed down by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.

We had heard rumors for years that Microsoft "did things" to their software to make it incompatible with the software produced by competitors. While many folks had more or less dismissed these allegations as unfounded rumors, it turns out that many allegations were indeed true, and then some! As one example, Microsoft programmers intentionally put phony error messages into Windows 3.1 installation, which would come up if the competition's version of DOS was detected, rather than Microsoft's own version. Hmmm. It's a real reassurance to know what the programmers at Microsoft are concentrating on.

This immediately brings into question some of Windows legendary instability. How much is bad programming, and how much is intentional sabotage of the competition's software packages? This is not just an idle question. Microsoft has obviously spent too much time worrying about how to get and maintain market share, and too little time thinking about how to make a rock solid and secure operating system. Microsoft got themselves into this situation by a fairly callous disregard for fair play. If they really felt their software was superior, they would not have been compelled to insert false error messages into Window's installation program.

This is not the end of the case, it's just the beginning of a long, and probably futile, appeals process. Based upon the information released today, Microsoft hasn't got a leg to stand on. But the incidents outlined in the legal actions against Microsoft are several years old. I want to know what the friendly folks at Microsoft are doing right now to Windows 2000 to make sure it doesn't work right with Netscape, or with Novell or with any other non-Microsoft product.

November 3rd

The price of Intel's CPUs, and the price of SDRAM have gone down in the last week, which is very good news. Intel released a bunch of new processors, and dropped prices on existing Pentium IIIs. SDRAM prices have fallen significantly, but we expect them to continue to drop. The rumors about memory chip shortages are still floating around, but we think they are just rumors.

Expect "E" version Coppermine Pentium IIIs to be slow to market. They are just coming out of warehouses, and supplies are very limited. Don't be fooled by the "B" version Pentium IIIs. They are not based upon the Coppermine core, even though they have a 133MHz front side bus. All "Coppermine" core CPUs have 256Kb of L2 cache, so if a Pentium III has 512Kb, it's based on the older, 0.25 micron core, not the new 0.18 micron core.

November 1st

Just for fun, we went over to Rambus.com to see what they had to say about "Caminogate", as the i820 disaster has come to be known. Rather than being down in the dumps, they seem to be having a jolly good time over there!

Not ones to be put off by a tumble in their stock price, nor the fact that memory manufacturers are jumping ship faster than rats on the Titanic, Rambus has shown it can have some fun in the face of impending disaster. Here's a sample of their humor.

Isn't that a gas? Platform stability! Ask Intel's engineers about Direct Rambus DRAMs legendary stability. And what is the "fun" they refer to? It's got to be that you'll pay 5 times as much money for Rambus as you would pay for PC-133 SDRAM. That's pretty funny.

"Rambus memory modules provide three times the memory performance as PC100 SDRAM-based modules."

That's fascinating, since it has been well documented on the web that Rambus offers only a few percent performance improvement over PC-100 SDRAM, especially when the PC-100 SDRAM is overclocked.

A quick look at their Quarterly statement revealed they only made 12 million last quarter, suggesting that Rambus DRAM is selling significantly worse than hot cakes.

"Rambus technology is an open standard, accessible to all semiconductor companies. Rambus provides licensees a full range of design, documentation and system-engineering services. In exchange, IC companies pay an up-front license fee and royalties"

An open standard? Oh sure, you just have to pay license fees and royalties! I liked the old kind of "open standard" better, you know, the ones without the license fees and royalties ;).

Alas, we had to bid Rambus.com a fond farewell, without finding so much as a mention of the delay in the i820 chipset from Intel. Why dwell on such minor inconveniences when you're having fun?

As the prognosis for the i820 chipset and Direct Rambus DRAM (DR DRAM) worsens, it is interesting to take a stroll down memory lane (is there a pun in there?) and look at how Intel and motherboard makers got themselves into such a fix in the first place. Check out this lengthy article on the Intel/Rambus saga here: Article (and excuse the imperfect grammar, they are Russian, yet their English is better than some Americans!).

We can only hope that the end result of this whole fiasco is that we get a good selection of PC-133 SDRAM-based, as well as Double-Data-Rate DRAM-based motherboards in the near future. We have no intention of paying Intel and Rambus 4 times as much money as Rambus is worth to put it in our new systems. If they want to drop the price to compete with other types of memory, DR DRAM has a slim chance of survival. If they keep up their arrogant, greedy ways, we expect DR DRAM to go extinct faster than the dinosaurs!

October 31st

Intel's Reaction to Mobo Makers using VIA's PC-133 chipset? Sue the Hell Out of 'Em!

Having had little success in getting their own PC-133 chipset to market, Intel has turned its attention to competitor VIA's PC133 chipset, and motherboard manufacturers that dare to use it. Previously Intel filed suit against VIA for patent infringement in the form of their new Apollo Pro 133 chipset. Now Intel has the audacity to file suit against motherboard makers that integrate the Apollo Pro 133 onto their motherboards.

FIC, known for making some of the first Athlon motherboards, is named in Intel's lawsuit, along with others.

More rumors are circulating that Intel has been directly and indirectly intimidating motherboard makers into supporting the i820 chipset, and into shunning the Apollo Pro 133. The direct method is to threaten litigation (or actually file suit), and the indirect method is to remind the motherboard makers where they get their BX chipsets from. Continued sham-shortages of the BX chipset, a proprietary Intel asset, will help make sure at least some motherboard makers continue to tow the Intel line.

All of this has hurt computer makers, and they are getting a little tired of Intel's bullying. The end result is more and more motherboard makers tossing caution to the wind, and getting on the Apollo Pro 133 bandwagon. Even our own personal favorite, Abit, appears to be working on a VIA-based motherboard. We can only feel a sense of Karma coming back to haunt Intel on this Halloween, as their strong-arm tactics begin to fall flat, and as VIA and AMD continue to keep the pressure on.

October 30th

Reports have circulated on the web that people are experiencing significant drops in frame rates in Direct 3D games after upgrading to Microsoft's Direct X 7. We have been testing Direct X 7 versus Direct X 6.1, and so far have found no reduction in frame rates. We finished testing a Voodoo3 3000 card with Direct X 6.1 and Direct X 7, and found benchmarks to be virtually identical. We will be testing TNT-2 cards next to see if there is a problem specific to them. We will post a full article with the benchmark results soon.

October 29th

Halloween marks the two year anniversary for KickAss Gear. In November we will be starting our third year of operation here in the Washington DC area. Thanks everyone, we look forward to many more years of providing you with high-end gaming systems and upgrades!

There has been a lot of talk on the web about Direct X 7 causing between 20% and 40% reduction in frame rates in Direct 3D games, after upgrading from version 6.1. We have noticed some slow down, and will be running some tests vs. Direct X 6.1 to see what the changes are. We will also test various ways to try to remove Direct X 7.0, and let you know if any of them work safely.

For Voodoo3 owners, 3dfx has released both Direct X 6.1 AND Direct X 7.0 compatible Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 drivers! This suggests that there are enough differences between these API's to require distinct drivers. We will also check out if these new drivers bring the frame rates back up to where they should be under Direct X 7. We will let you know what we find out. Get the new Voodoo3 drivers here:

3COM announced it will introduce a 56Kbps V.90 modem with tweaked firmware to reduce ping times for online gaming. 3COM will release the "Internet Gaming Modem" in late October, with an estimated street price of around $119. Ping times were 43% better with the Internet Gaming modem than with competitor's modems. So if ADSL or two-way cable is not in your foreseeable future, this may be the way to go!

The Pentium III now comes in a number of new flavors. The parts are listed below. Those with a 133MHz bus are "B" chips, those with the Coppermine core have an "E" designation. In some cases, like with the 533, 667 and 733 CPU's, Intel left off the letter designation since these Coppermine CPU's don't have a non-Coppermine counterpart. All CPU's with 256Kb's of L2 cache are Coppermine chips. This is the easiest way to tell if a CPU has the improved Coppermine core. The L2 cache speed is twice as fast in Coppermine CPUs than in Katmai chips.

	FSB	L2 Cache Size	L2 Cache Frequency
Pentium III 733	133	256	733
Pentium III 667	133	256	667
Pentium III 650	100	256	650
Pentium III 600EB	133	256	600
Pentium III 600E	100	256	600
Pentium III 600B	133	512	300
Pentium III 550E	100	256	550
Pentium III 550	100	512	275
Pentium III 533	133	512	267
Pentium III 500E	100	256	500
Pentium III 500	100	512	250
Pentium III 450	100	512	225

Names in RED are based on the 0.18-micron Coppermine core
Names in black denote CPUs with the old Katmai core
E - Denotes 0.18-micron Coppermine core
B - Denotes 133MHz FSB CPU
modified from AnandTech.com

The new 733 PIII, running on an i820 motherboard with 800 MHz Rambus DRAM equals or beats a similar Athlon in many benchmarks. The Athlon still wins in FPU intensive programs, due to it's better Floating Point math unit. But now we can say for certain that Intel and AMD are just about on par in a MHz for MHz slugout, and Intel's CPU's are overclockable, while the Athlon still needs major modification to overclock it.

As always, the lower speed Intel CPU's will overclock more than their higher speed counterparts. This is because the higher speed CPUs are already running closer to their maximum speed. Listen to the Daily Rumor for more.

The GeForce-based "Annihilator" video cards from Creative Labs have begun to ship, but since there are very large numbers of backorders, don't expect to see them available at stores anytime real soon. The Annihilator Pro, with faster memory, will not ship for at least a month.

The GeForce 256 does not offer significantly higher frame rates, but does give you more polygons per second if the game you are playing can take advantage of the hardware. Don't expect to see lots of games with this ability for months to come. The smart money is on waiting for the Pro version, and for prices to drop.

Memory prices have begun their long, inevitable drop. Prices are down significantly since the high point, about 3 to 4 weeks ago. Word from our distributor is that there is still a shortage of chips, but that it's not as bad as it was. Expect prices to continue to drop for the next few months, unless something goes wrong.

In a related story, it was reported in the Register today that technology analysts still say Rambus DRAM will become the predominant memory technology sometime next year. They must know something we don't. Not only is Rambus much more expensive, and less stable than PC-133 SDRAM, it's not significantly faster in any of it's current forms.

PC-133 SDRAM could be cheap enough soon to be able to put 1GB in your machine, whereas for the same money, you could have 128MB's of 800MHz Rambus DRAM, which worked a little bit faster. Considering the fact that for gamers, how fast your CPU and video card are, has much more effect on frame rates than the speed of your memory , Rambus is not destined to take the gaming computer market by storm.

October 25th

More details are emerging on the design problems with the i820 chipset, and they make Intel seem even more negligent in their pre-release testing. Apparently, the chipset itself is working properly, but the way it is wired to the other components on the motherboard is flawed. This means that the problem is on the motherboards made by Intel, but some third party motherboards are apparently designed differently, and may work properly.

Yet the root of the problem seems to boil down to resonance effects between traces on the motherboards. Resonance in electronic circuits is similar to what you get with resonant sounds with musical instruments. If you strike one string on a guitar, you will set up resonant vibrations in the other strings. Similarly, the pulses that travel through the circuit lines in the motherboard set up resonant currents in neighboring lines, which make their signals unreliable. To us, this sounds like an inherent problem with Rambus, since it is the high frequency range that it operates in that is causing all these resonance effects.

This resonance problem seems inherent to the three-Rambus-socket designed boards, but may even show up under some extreme circumstances in two Rambus socket boards, including the i840 with two pairs of interleaved Rambus sockets. Back to the drawing board!!

This engineering goof by Intel was found so late, that we have noticed that a number of computer companies actually have advertisements for new systems with the i820 in the October issues of several PC magazines! That was a bit optimistic, considering those companies could not have run all the reliability testing that should precede the release of new products. We recommend not buying a computer from a company that announces products before they have tested them.

This whole thing hurts the relationship between Intel and third-party motherboard makers, because the push toward Rambus has been Intel's pet project, and has not been popular with the other manufacturers from the beginning. If the motherboards already produced do not ever make it to market, the companies that made them on Intel's assurances will not only loose lots of money, but they will also loose confidence in Intel's recommendations.

It is clear to us that PC-100 and PC-133 SDRAM will be the primary memory types in most Desktops in early 2000, with high-end computers packing Double Data Rate DRAM, rather than Rambus DRAM. If Rambus offered significantly better performance, it would slowly catch on, but it does not, despite the fact that it costs over 5 times as much as PC-133 SDRAM. Double Data Rate DRAM will almost certainly outperform Rambus DRAM, at a much better price.

The funny thing is, we have no idea how many i820 motherboards are already produced, and how much Rambus DRAM is sitting on shelves somewhere, waiting on Intel's "validation" process. We sure can't find any for sale! Based upon our brief communications with Abit, they are spending most of their time right now trying to get i820 motherboards ready for market, whenever that may be.

October 24th

Monday the 25th is the day folks. We should be seeing the new Coppermine (0.18 micron) Pentium III CPU's, and maybe, just maybe, some form of i820 motherboards. Not that we are excited about any of this, but it's a big deal for Intel.

Will they release the Cape Cod i820 motherboard with SDRAM support (and no Direct Rambus support)? Well, the big problem with these mobos is that they are marred by a memory architecture problem. They were designed for Rambus DRAM, and can not directly work with SDRAM. They need a Memory Translator Hub, which converts Rambus signals to SDRAM signals, slowing the system down. This is not a good option for power users.

Will they release Vancouver motherboards with only two usable Rambus sockets? Will Direct Rambus DRAM go on sale at memory distributors? It's kind of doubtful, but you never know with Intel.

The scuttlebutt surrounding this shaky debut is that neither i820 chipset motherboards, nor VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset motherboards, can beat overclocked BX motherboards by any more than a few percent in most benchmarks. And AGP 4x is looking more and more unimportant as faster graphics cards come out with 64MB's of onboard RAM. For the full scoop, check out today's Daily Rumor.

October 22nd

Graphics chipset maker Real3D has died, and Intel is feeding on the corpse. Real3D was the company that gave us the under-whelming Intel i740 graphics chip, and the "Starfighter" graphics card, so it's no wonder they didn't do so well. Intel has purchased their patents, and hired some of the staff. Let's hope that they can do a better job on their next graphics chip for Intel.

Well, it's not too surprising, but it looks like companies are actually going to start selling Camino-chipset-based motherboards (including Intel's "Cape Cod", and "Vancouver" models). As we had mentioned earlier, warehouses were actually stocked full of the defective things for over a month now, and everyone is itching to unload them ASAP. If Intel rolls it's collective eyes toward the heavens, and gives the go-ahead, expect them to hit the market shortly.

These will be unmodified boards, and therefore, the ones with Direct Rambus sockets will only be able to accommodate two memory modules, while the third socket will only accept a "terminator".

But the i820 comes in two, equally unappealing flavors. The ones with the third, defective Rambus socket, and those with support only for PC-100 SDRAM (no PC-133 SDRAM support to go along with the 133MHz front side bus and new 133MHz Pentium III CPU's). So one flavor is defective, and the other is intentionally underpowered to tempt you to buy the defective one.

Maybe it's a good thing that the third "RIMM" socket for Rambus DRAM does not work. If it did, the poor souls that ante up for a Vancouver mobo might be tempted to fill up all the sockets, which for 128MB Direct Rambus DRAM modules would set our poor customer back in the neighborhood of $2400!!! And the memory would not be significantly faster than PC-133 SDRAM! Maybe Intel is just trying to protect us from our unbridled buying habits. :)

October 21st

AMD has been talking quite a bit recently about it's new, state-of-the-art 0.18 micron fabrication plant in Dresden Germany (Fab 30). This facility will not only produce Athlons using the 0.18 micron etching process, but will also be using the so-called "copper interconnect" technology that was pioneered by IBM. This first introduction of the initial stages of the changeover to copper-based CPU technology in a production CPU has already allowed AMD to boost the speed of the Athlon to 900MHz.

AMD says that they will have a working 1 GHz (1000 MHz) system up and running soon! Expect the newer, faster "copper" Athlons to be available early next year. Hey Intel, are you paying attention???

Intel is showing signs of being such a giant, unwieldy organization that the right hand has no idea that the left hand is about to chop it off. The problems with the i820 chipset are not present in the i840 chipset. Why? Because two different groups of engineers made the two chipsets! And there was so little communication between groups that one of them practically boned the entire project, while the other seems to have done a good job.

Well, the signs of corporate bloat are showing up in Intel's processor line as well. They are about to confuse the CPU situation so completely, that customers will have a hard time figuring out what CPU they just got in their new system. There will be 100 MHz and 133 MHz front side bus CPU's, there will be CPU's with 256Kb of on-die cache, and others with 512Kb of cache, and there will be "Coppermine" 0.18 micron chips selling along side older 0.25 micron chips, with little to tip off the customer which is which.

We posted the "codes" for these different CPU's a few weeks back, but it probably merits reiteration.

=> The Processors marked "E" will refer to Coppermine core CPU's, while those with an "EB" designation will be 133MHz Coppermine chips. Chips without such letter designations will be standard 100MHz 0.25 micron Pentium III's. We expect Intel will make it clear how much cache is on each CPU. So a designation like 600EB/512 would mean that it is a 600MHz Coppermine CPU with a front side bus of 133MHz and a 512Kb L2 cache, and if you do the division, the multiplier factor is set at 4.5X.

October 20th

Abit is working on several new motherboards. The interesting part is that they are putting out new BX motherboards, despite the chipset's advanced age. These may be a result of the problems with the i820 chipset, but they may also have been in the works from several months back. The BF6 and BE6-2 will be available in November.

Abit is also working on a VIA chipset motherboard, based upon the VIA KX133 chipset, to be called the VA6. This will probably not be available for a few months, but will offer advanced features not available with BX-based boards.

Abit is also one of the motherboard manufacturers that worked closely with Intel to get i820 chipset motherboards to market earlier this month. As such, they are still working on a way to ship the product that has already been produced, despite the memory slot problems. The interesting thing is that they are not currently working on an i840 (Carmel) based motherboard. This may change, since the i840 appears to be much nearer it's debut than the ill-fated i820. But again, the chipset is partly hobbled by the lack of support for PC-133 and double data rate DRAM.

Intel's so-called "Coppermine" Processors are coming out now, made with the 0.18 micron etching process, and based upon the original P6 core with added SSE instructions. They are rated to run at 133MHz on the front side bus, but Intel did not adopt the PC-133 memory standard, so there is no support for the faster SDRAM on motherboards produced by Intel. (They want you to buy overpriced Direct Rambus DRAM). Yet other motherboard manufacturers make mainboards with overclock settings for the front side bus, which will allow end users to run the new Coppermine chips at 133MHz or higher with standard PC-133 SDRAM. These Intel systems will not outperform Athlon-based systems.

Intel is also pushing the release date for their next generation 32 bit processor, code named Willamette, up to January or February 2000. Despite the fact that it is still a 32 bit processor, this one should be substantially faster than the Coppermine-based CPU's. Willamette seems on track for it's accelerated release in early 2000. If this CPU can be coupled with Double Data Rate DRAM, it has a chance of beating AMD Athlon systems.

Still looking hazy, and just beyond the horizon, is the IA-64 processor, code-named "Merced", now called "Itanium", which seems to be going the way of the i820 chipset. Several delays have put this CPU into the "will it ever be ready?" category. This is Intel's first foray into 64 bit architechture, and represents a big step forward. Aimed at the server market, this chip still could provide an awesome gaming platform if the price is right, and if they will run an Operating System that you can play games on (Win 2K Pro?).

October 19th

To go along with their new Coppermine based CPU's, Intel is getting ready to release i840-based motherboards with AGP Pro 50, ATA/66, and Rambus support. The first motherboard from Intel based upon this new chipset will be called the OutRigger 840 (OR840). These motherboards will have 4 Rambus sockets, for a total memory capacity 2GB of Rambus DRAM. Based upon the current cost of Rambus, only Bill Gates will be able to afford one with 2GB's of Direct Rambus DRAM.

This is at the heart of the problem with Intel as a company, and their new product, the i840 chipset. Intel is banking (litterally) on the hopes that corporations and power-users with money to burn, will go out and buy i840/Coppermine/Rambus systems, despite the high cost and marginal performance increase.

AGP Pro 50 runs at data transfer rates of 266MHz, and Intel claims it will achieve data throughput rates of 1Gbps. AGP Pro 50 sockets are backwards compatible to AGP 4x. The 50 refers to 50 watts maximum power consumption, and it has the same data transfer rate as AGP4x.

The main drawback to the i840 is it does not support PC-133 SDRAM. That means you will have to be wealthy to get one of these rigs populated with Rambus DRAM. We know we can't afford one! The big question is whether Abit and other board makers will ignore Intel's specs, and add overclocking goodness to their i840 boards. If we can get an i840 board from Abit with Softmenu III technology, we should be sitting pretty. We just don't know yet if it can be done.

Rumors are spreading that Intel plans on winning the chips wars. Word is that they are preparing to release their new Willamette-core CPU's as much as nine months ahead of schedule. These are next-generation chips, and the first Intel has produced that are not based upon the original P6 die architecture that debuted with the Pentium Pro. The Willamette will be Intel's first truly new 32 bit processor in 6 years.

The thinking behind the accelerated release of the Willamette is that Intel knows the Coppermine core (basically, the Pentium Pro core with SSE in a 0.18 micron format) will not beat the Athlon. See what competition does for us folks? We would have had to wait a year for the Willamette if it were not for AMD's Athlon. But what this also means is that folks who go out and buy Coppermine-based systems now will be kicking themselves in January, because the newer faster systems will be on the way.

The shortage of good-quality motherboards for the new Athlon processor from AMD is causing problems for system integrators and customers alike. Not only are Athlon (Slot A) motherboards hard to find, but the ones available are giving folks trouble. We expect this to change as more and more motherboard manufacturers turn out Athlon boards, but for the time being, Athlon systems will be hard to get. You can go here to sign a petition to motherboard makers to get on the AMD bandwagon.

October 17th

After a number of embarrassing goofs, Intel is getting ready to roll out the big guns on October 25th: the i840 (Carmel) chipset, and new "Coppermine" CPU's based upon the new (code-named "Cascades") Pentium III core. According to Intel insiders, who could never be biased on this subject, the higher-end Cascades CPU's running with Direct Rambus DRAM on an i840-based motherboard will beat the highest speed Athlon processor. This we have got to see to believe!

The i840 chipset was apparently designed and tested by a different group of Intel engineers than the folks working on the embarrassing i820 Camino chipset. Let's hope the i840 guys were at least smart enough to fill up all the Rambus sockets during testing!!

Intel is being cautiously tight-lipped about details, but we may actually see Cascades CPU's on i840 motherboards sometime in November. Intel may also release "Coppermine" core Celerons on November 7th as well (with a 100MHz front side bus??), but this is not a certain date.

The first round of Cascades-bases CPU's will be Xeon's (which translates to "way overpriced" in Intel jargon). These CPU's are based upon the new 0.18 micron fabrication process, and fit the new Slot2 socket on i840 motherboards. Pentium III and Xeon chips based upon the Coppermine core will have 256Kb of on-die cache, with an additional 512MB to 1MB of L2 cache.

Intel is targeting the Server market primarily, but also expects high-end gamers to go for the powerful new chips and motherboards.

So if you are in the market for a new computer, you might want to wait and see what Intel has up it's sleeve for November. As with all new technology, the first product may have unforeseen bugs, will be very hard to find initially, and will be priced very high.

October 16th

Not waiting anymore for the Intel i820 chipset, Abit is continuing to push the capabilities of the BX chipset beyond it's specs. Abit will be releasing the BE6-2 and BF6 mainboards in the month of November, with ATA/66 support, and the new Softmenu III BIOS setup utility. Softmenu III offers overclocking bus speed options in 1 MHz increments from 66MHz to 200MHz! This is what overclockers have been requesting for years, because it will allow the end user to overclock their systems to the absolute maximum speed they are capable of. You'll be able to squeeze that last couple of MHz out of your rig. The major difference between the BE6-2 and the BF6 is that the BF6 will have 6 PCI slots, and one ISA slot.

Abit has also said they are working on a VIA chipset motherboard, called the VA6 (you heard it here first folks!), which should be quite awesome. We have no word on the exact specs yet, but expect it to have official PC-133 SDRAM support, AGP 4X, and built-in ATA/66 controllers, all with Softmenu III technology. They probably will not be ready until early next year.

Say it ain't so Intel! The word is that Intel and motherboard makers are actually going to just cap off one of the Direct Rambus sockets (RIMM sockets), on new i820 "Camino" chipset motherboards, and sell the defective parts anyway!

If this rumor turns into reality, just so that Intel can get Camino boards to market for the holiday shopping season, it will tarnish their reputation irreparably. The Camino chipset was intended to fill the huge void between the bargain-basement i810 and i810E integrated chipsets, and the high-end, server-oriented i840 chipset. In other words, it was for power-users. Now Intel will be releasing a defective motherboard design with a maximum memory capacity of 512MB of Direct Rambus DRAM, not enough for RAM-demanding video editing. And beyond the Rambus defect, the chipset is hobbled because there is no support for PC-133 SDRAM, only PC-100 SDRAM.

If Intel still had any market savvy, they would strip out Rambus support from the i820 chipset, and add solid PC-133 and Double Data Rate DRAM support. They could call it the i820E, or whatever, but at least then they would have a product that could compete with VIA's new Apollo 133 Pro chipset. But because Intel has virtually forced the entire PC manufacturing industry down the Rambus hole, there's no chance of this happening. That's what makes the VIA Apollo Pro chipset so appealing.

According the their ad campaign, the new Mac G4 is so advanced, it's a military asset to be protected (Pentium PC's, they say, are harmless). But what's not a secret is that Apple actually has the gall to cancel their customers G4 orders, and then tell their customers to please order the next slower version for the same price! Now, the fastest G4 will be running at only 450MHz. (Holy Overclocked Celeron 300A Batman!)

Can you imagine waiting for a month or more on a PC you ordered, just to be told your order was canceled, but, if you like, you could get back on line for a slower machine at the same high price? Only Mac fanatics would put up with this kind of stunt. And only Apple could rely so heavily on brand loyalty that they feel they could get away with it. Who knows, maybe they did some kind of survey and found that 90% of Mac-lovers were masochists?

Hey folks, if you want to wait months for an overpriced status symbol, go ahead. I personally, would never support a company with such disregard for it's customers.

October 14th

Mike Magee of the Register reported today that there is a bug in the "Northbridge" of one of VIA's chipsets which will require "stepping" the product to new silicon. Magee did not mention which VIA chipset was involved, so we will have to wait to find out if this problem affects the new Apollo Pro 133 chipset. Expect delays of some VIA chipsets to motherboard manufacturers.

It looks like Intel and AMD are set to have at it with a processor price war. Intel plans on cutting Celeron prices on November 7th, and PIII prices on December 12th. There may also be small price changes on the PIII when Intel roles out the new Coppermine-based CPU's on the 24th of October. AMD is trying to distract from Intel's Coppermine debut date by cutting prices on their Athlon processors by as much as 20% the day before Intel's launch.

According to the major memory supplier, Dane Elec, memory modules are still available. However, the memory chips that go on them are currently unavailable, in part due to the Taiwan earthquake. While there was little damage to many memory chip fabrication plants, the re-alignment process required after such a shaking is taking longer than originally expected.

October 13th

After a short dip downwards, it looks like memory prices are on the rise again. Since most plants have recovered from the earthquake, and since so many manufacturers have switched fab capacity from Rambus to SDRAM, this shortage is most likely due to a conscious effort to restrict supply, in order to keep prices artificially high.

We can only recommend strongly that customers delay their purchases for a month or so. But panic buying appears to be part of the shortage problem. What little supply is being made available, is being purchased as fast as it is put up for sale. As long as some customers are willing to pay the big bucks for memory, expect prices to remain elevated. According to Dane Elec, a major memory supplier, the shortages may continue through the holiday season.

VIA makes computer chipsets that compete with Intel and AMD chipsets. Intel botched their latest attempt at a new chipset, the i820 Camino, so they are still selling the old BX chipset. This chipset lacks ATA/66 hard drive support, AGP 4x support, and PC-133 SDRAM support. AMD has been shipping the "Irongate" chipset for Athlon Slot-A motherboards, but it too lacks support for PC-133 SDRAM and AGP 4X.

VIA has released chipsets to compete with both the BX and the Irongate. The Apollo Pro 133 chipset for Pentium III CPU's has PC-133 SDRAM, ATA/66 drive, and AGP 4x video support. The KX133 chipset for Athlon processors also has support for these three newer, faster standards. Expect motherboards based upon these superior chipsets to be available soon.

October 9th

Now we are beginning to hear murmurings from Intel that i820 (Camino) chipset motherboards, populated with Direct Rambus DRAM and Coppermine-based CPU's won't be available until sometime in the first quarter of next year (the next millennium)! That could mean March folks, which is almost 5 months away! Holly slugs Batman! That's well over 6 months after the release of the Athlon, and preliminary benchmarking suggests that these improvements still won't get Intel CPU's up into the performance range of AMD systems.

And as IA-64 (formerly Merced, now Itanium) starts to sound more like hype-ware than hardware, it makes one wonder if Intel will soon become known as the cheapo-chipmaker with the Celeron as their best seller, rather than "Chipzilla", getting rich on overpriced Xeon chips. We predict big price cuts on Intel CPU's the next time around, especially if AMD gets past their supply shortages. Intel's only ace in the hole is that businesses don't trust AMD processors for servers. But considering how poorly the Xeon 550 worked in 8-way SMP servers (NOT!), it's a wonder that Intel still has the confidence of the business world.

October 7th

NEC announced that it too has halted production of Rambus DRAM. With more memory makers converting Rambus fab lines back to SDRAM production, we should see memory prices fall within a few weeks. Let's hope they don't hold back on supply to keep prices up.

October 2nd

The combined effects of i820-based motherboards failing to ship, and the loss of motherboard production following the Taiwan earthquake, has been to drive up BX motherboard prices. Prices have already risen by $10 at the distribution level, and may continue to rise for several weeks. We expect memory prices to start dropping again soon, but the drop may occur slowly at first.

Samsung, probably feeling thoroughly burned by Intel, has stopped production of Rambus DRAM, and is converting one production line back to SDRAM manufacturing. Samsung has been one of Intel's and Rambus' best supporters in the ongoing Rambus debacle, but they are finally jumping ship. Samsung apparently has warehouses full of Rambus DRAM modules, with nowhere to put them, now that Intel has indefinitely delayed the i820 chipset, the only chipset on Earth with Rambus support.

While this is terrible news for Rambus, it's good news for consumers who just want some nice, fast SDRAM at a good price. Now that the artificial memory shortage is unraveling, as large suppliers switch back to SDRAM production, expect memory prices to slowly return to normal. This could have happened faster, were it not for the terrible earthquake in Taiwan.

The other piece of good news for consumers is that you won't be tempted any time soon by the Siren Song of Rambus' dubious performance boost. We can virtually guarantee that overclocked systems with the new PC-133 rated Pentium III (for example, the 533B), and PC-133 SDRAM, will equal, or outperform i820 systems with 800MHz Rambus DRAM, for hundreds of dollars less. New systems with the 533B should be overclockable to at least 140MHz, and perhaps as high as 150MHz on the front side bus.

Would anyone like PC-133 SDRAM support added to the i820 chipset? Raise your hands!

Micron, in a move destined to put them ahead of the pack, has canceled plans for i820-based systems, and has opted for VIA's new chipset for their upcoming line of computers. VIA's chipset provides support for PC-133 SDRAM, AGP 4x video cards, and ATA/66 hard drives. While this has certainly lowered the sphincter-factor over at Micron, it has undoubtedly raised the anxiety level over at Intel. Expect faster, better computers from Micron than other mainstream manufacturers over then next few months. We predict that other manufacturers will follow Micron's lead shortly.

The image that this disaster is conjuring up for me is motherboard warehouses packed to the gills with useless i820 motherboards, stacked on pallets, waiting, uncertainly, for their trip either to the loading docks, or the trash dumpsters. I can see the warehouse workers, passing the time playing street-rule soccer with an i820 motherboard that fell off a stack somewhere. "Score!" one of them yells as the motherboard smashes to bits against the warehouse wall. The warehouse manager can only manage a pained smile, as he sobs uncontrollably into his hanky.

Rumors are surfacing that MGM is working on a computer-generated Bob Hope and Bing Crosby film based on the i820 disaster, tentatively called "The Road to Camino". It should be fun.

September 28th

We have been razzing on Intel and Rambus for months here for one, simple reason. Making computers much more expensive, while barely increasing their speed, is a recipe for disaster in the ever-cheaper computer industry. Why have they pursued this strategy in the face of an industry headed for the "cheap, household appliance" arena? Simple, they invested hundreds of millions of dollars on Camino, and have huge inter-corporate deals riding on Rambus' success. This is not a good reason to stiff their loyal customers.

Two days before it's release, the i820 chipset is pulled by Intel, even though motherboard manufacturers have piles of new motherboards ready to go out the door. Now we are going to get the i810E chipset instead, the only thing Intel makes that will run their new 133MHz bus processors. But the i810 has crummy integrated graphics, and no support for AGP 4X. So why would folks who want a high end system opt for it? They won't. This all boils down to Intel not respecting their customers. They have been sitting on their fat haunches for over a year now, milking their senescent processors for all their worth.

All of a sudden, VIA Technologies, the worlds second largest chipset manufacturer, has many new admirers. VIA is actually respecting their customers, and giving them what they asked for, rather than trying to ram Rambus down everyone's throats. They have released a new chipset, the VT82C694X (hey guys, give it a name! I vote for Valkyrie**) which has PC133 SDRAM support, and AGP 4X support! Thank You VIA!

It's time for Intel to get back to basics: making the fastest desktop systems they can, for a good price. There is no excuse for Intel going with Rambus, other than the big, cozy stock trade, and pure arrogance (with a large dash of greed). They could have given full support to PC-133 SDRAM, followed by Double Data Rate DRAM. It is a logical, and easily achievable set of goals. And we would have the new systems on our desks now. Intel should concentrate on quickly stripping the integrated graphics from the i810E, adding AGP 4X support, and getting it to market as the i810+ (how about resurrecting the i815?). It wont be as robust as the i820, but that puppy is dead. Sure, Intel will eventually release it, just to save face. But if the motherboards that the Camino chipsets are on only have two RIMM sockets, Intel will be the laughing stock of the industry. Has anyone checked the price on a 256MB 800MHz Rambus RIMM? It's not pretty.

Let's put out the call to Intel that we are not pleased. We want PC-133 support, no integrated kiddy graphics, and we want AGP 4X support now! As it is, AMD is the King of Processors, and Intel is looking mighty silly.

**Valkyrie: Norse myth, any of the maidens of Odin who conduct the souls of heroes slain in battle to Valhalla, and wait on them there. Webster.

September 25th

Intel has indefinitely delayed the release of the i820 Camino chipset, which had been scheduled to debut on Monday. Intel stock was down 10% for the week on Wall Street, and that's just the beginning of their worries.

Apparently, at this absurdly late date in the rollout process, it was finally discovered that there was instability in the Rambus to CPU bus, which became very apparent when all three "RIMM" slots (Rambus memory sockets) were populated. Memory errors occurred too frequently, and heat production from the Rambus DRAM was also found to be higher than it should be (up to 120 degrees F), adding to the instability.

Motherboard manufacturers are in a hole, waiting for Intel to help them out. Production had already begun on Camino boards, so unless a workaround is found, manufacturers may have to trash boards already produced, or in production. This adds to the problems motherboard manufacturers have experienced due to the Taiwan earthquake. They are talking about locking out the third RIMM socket, but rumor has it that the systems are still unstable, even with only two RIMMs installed.

While all this should be good news for AMD and their new, superior Athlon processor, it hasn't worked out that way. AMD opted to stick with PC-100 and PC-133 SDRAM, which in hindsight, was a master stroke of genius, compared with Intel's current memory debacle. But AMD Athlon motherboards were almost non-existent before the earthquake, and now are even harder to find. Word is that Athlon motherboard production has been halted temporarily, so expect continuing shortages. Motorola has also been unable to keep up with demand for the G4 chip, so it looks like no one is in a position to exploit this hardware shortage. Bummer.

Memory prices are continuing to climb at an accelerating rate. We recommend strongly that everyone STOP buying computers and memory for the time being. The only control that consumers have over this process is to vote with your dollars. Do not spend them on over-priced systems or parts! If demand drops along with supply, the prices will not continue to rise. If consumers panic-buy as prices go up, the prices will continue to climb! So please, relax, sit back with a cold one, and watch the insanity unfold. It's better than a soap opera!

September 24th

In a continuing upward spiral, memory prices have now more than tripled in just over eight weeks, with the greatest rise in just the last several days. The earthquake in Taiwan added to an already bad situation, with supply rapidly dwindling. Expect prices to continue to rise in the short run. Indeed, we expect prices to continue to rise for some time, perhaps until the holiday season winds down.

Also expect shortages to crop up for BX-based motherboards, and other components, due to the Taiwanese earthquake.

We recommend holding off on purchasing a new system or upgrade kit until prices drop, if possible. If you can't wait, you may want to buy quickly, and lock in a price, before memory gets any more expensive, and some parts get even scarcer.

September 23rd

It's finally here folks, and it looks like a functional DX 7 is in release candidate 2 of Win2K Pro as well! To pick up your copy of Direct X 7, go here: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/.

While structural damage was light at most computer component manufacturing facilities in Taiwan, power outages and other problems will hurt production of key components in the short term. AMD motherboard fabrication is one of the victims of the power outages in Taiwan. AMD K7 motherboards were already in very short supply, so expect continued shortages. Prices on some components, including motherboards, may rise, due to the loss of production, and the shortage of BX chipsets, just before the start of the holiday sales season.

September 21st

Is it just a coincidence that as Intel readies the i820 Camino chipset for it's debut (which works best with Rambus DRAM), that the older BX chips and SDRAM suddenly become scarce, and prices rise? Think about it for a second. Intel has multimillion dollar deals pending with memory manufacturers like Samsung, and these deals are riding on the success of the i820 chipset and Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM). The only hitch is that i820 motherboards, and DRDRAM, do not outperform overclocked BX chipset-based systems running at 124 to 133MHz. And on top of this, i820 motherboards and DRDRAM are hundreds of dollars more expensive than BX boards and fast SDRAM.

All of a sudden, just a 6 weeks or so before the i820 and DRDRAM are released for sale, Intel slows production and sales of the BX chipset, and manufacturers like Samsung stop shipping PC-100 and PC-133 SDRAM. Is this just a coincidence? Samsung representatives say they can produce SDRAM and DRDRAM concurrently, so why are there no Samsung PC-133 DIMMs available? We have been unable to get Samsung SDRAM, our standard memory, for over a month.

Despite all the denials from Intel and memory manufacturers, it is apparent to us that these key component makers are limiting supply of Chipsets and SDRAM in order to produce a market that is ripe for new, higher-priced components. As prices were 8 weeks ago, DRDRAM would have debuted at 8 times the price of PC-100 SDRAM. As it stands now, the difference is only 3 times the price. And if memory prices keep rising, then the difference will continue to decrease.

Intel is fully in charge of BX chipset production and distribution, and we, as consumers, are now paying for helping such a monopoly develop in such a crucial area. Micron just announced they will not be making computers with the new i820 chipset, but instead will be using VIA's alternative, the VT82C694X chipset. Thank goodness there is at least some competition. Micron says there will be no performance difference, substantiating what we and others have been saying about the i820.

Intel can also use it's market muscle to "encourage" memory makers to fall in line. It's obvious that if memory prices had continued to fall, then consumers would not have paid 8 to 10 times as much for DRDRAM, unless it were a much faster alternative to SDRAM. Now the price gap is closing quickly, and PC memory of all types is just plain scarce. We are hoping that some memory manufacturers will ramp up production of PC-133 SDRAM, since we expect it to be the most popular type of memory for months to come, after which time it will be slowly replaced by Double Data Rate DRAM, not Direct Rambus DRAM.

Speaking of competition, it's a darn good thing AMD is out there working hard at making newer faster systems, or Intel would be able to just sit back, relax, and collect their money. The Daily Rumor has more on this topic.

Post Script: The earthquake in Taiwan yesterday caused a great deal of destruction and loss of life. We don't know yet if memory production will be affected further by this tragedy.

September 17th

Intel is gearing up for the release of the new Pentium III processors based upon the "Coppermine" core. There is a new designation system that will go with these CPU's so we thought we'd post it here so you can know which chip is which when they come out. The Processors marked "E" will refer to Coppermine core CPU's, while those with an "EB" designation will be 133MHz Coppermine chips.

While slot-1 versions will be coming out, Intel will also introduce "Flip Chip" socket 370 Pentium III's as well. The slot-1 socket has caused lots of problems for Intel, and it looks like they are going to slowly switch back to a socket form-factor for their CPU's. It looks like the slot-1 PIII is dead. Hmmm, what are all those slot-1 motherboard makers going to do?

September 14th

The Worldwide SDRAM shortage, intended to drive prices up by the manufacturers, is having the desired effect in spades. Our cost for PC 100 and PC 133 SDRAM has more than doubled in just one month. And many manufacturers that have been ramping up Direct Rambus DRAM and double data rate DRAM, such as Samsung, have virtually no PC-133 SDRAM for sale. We recommend holding off on buying memory, or a new system, until prices stabilze, and begin to fall again. Buying memory now just rewards the manufacturers for pulling this obnoxious stunt in the first place.

Not wanting to let AMD get all the attention, Intel has finally gotten around to releasing Pentium III's with an official 133MHz front side bus. While it may be better late than never, Intel may be kicking itself for not pushing this incremental speed boost earlier in the year. Their Pentium III CPU's have been capable of this front side bus setting for some time now, and if you have PC-133 SDRAM and a BX motherboard with a 133 setting, you may have witnessed this first hand. We have been waiting a long time for the official 133MHz bus, but the waiting is almost over (Almost). It makes you wonder how long Intel would have waited to make this move if it weren't for AMD and the new Athlon processor.

If it were not for Intel's exceptionally cozy deal with Rambus to make the most expensive memory on the Planet the new standard, we would have probably already been getting i820 (Camino) chipset motherboards, and the 133MHz CPU's in new computers. In any case, over the next few weeks, expect to see the new 550MHz and 600MHz Pentium III's based upon the new Coppermine core (0.18 micron process), along with new i820 chipset motherboards. Only time will tell if the first i820 motherboards to come off the fabrication lines (in October?) will have dual Rambus/PC-133 SDRAM support. Intel has some catch up to do, so let's all sit back and watch the prices fall, and the MHz rise!

September 13th

Just a few weeks after their last big price cut, Intel dropped prices on certain CPU's again. This time, the only significant cuts occurred on the PIII 550 and 600MHz processors, which dropped between $50 and $70. Celeron prices dropped between $5 and $15. Intel is also introducing their first processor with an official 133MHz front side bus, the 600H. To support the official 133MHz bus, you will need a motherboard based upon the new Camino (i820) chipset from Intel. We are still waiting on word of when i820 chipset motherboards will be available, but it shouldn't be long now. The 600H will start out around $759 for the retail version.

For several weeks now, SDRAM prices have been rising, and supply has been dwindling. A quick check of memory distributors shows backorders on PC-100 and PC-133 DIMMs. Whether the supply shortage has to do with ramping up Rambus DRAM production, or an artificial scarcity intended to drive up prices, is not clear. This is good news for memory manufacturers, who's profits have fallen along with prices. But it means that computer manufacturers are having trouble finding these parts.

September 9th

The Cyberathlete Professional League's Fragfest, coincidentally known as "Ground Zero", will kicking off today in the Puck building in Manhattan (295 Lafayette St.). They are hosting several fragging tournaments, including the Female Frag Fest. KickAss Gear will be there, showing off new systems in the Act Labs booth. Act Labs is demonstrating their new Light Gun controllers, and their RS Force Feedback Steering wheel and new RS 8-position stick shifter. You can check out the details of the events here:

September 6th

Just a few weeks after their last big price cut, Intel plans on cutting Pentium III and Celeron prices again on September 12th! This is most likely a continuing response to the excellent reviews that the K7 processor from AMD received across the Internet. So if you are planning on sticking with Intel in your next rig, wait a week and see how the prices adjust on the Pentium III and Celeron lines.

August 27th

Microsoft Windows: Sloppy code makes a poorly written operating system dangerous.

The folks who brought you the Windows Operating System (OS) went out of their way to put every conceivable add-on into it. They did this in an attempt to take over key software markets, not to give you a better OS. The result? Sloppy code that doesn't just crash all the time, but which also creates security flaw after security flaw, with patches coming fast and furiously.

The latest piece of sloppy coding was discovered by a group trying to find dangerous security flaws in the Windows OS. They did not have to look too hard, they found a doozey pretty quickly. A serious coding flaw in the Java Virtual Machine will allow hackers to put a piece of code into an email, or simply post it on their web site. All you need to do is go to the web site, or receive the email, and a Trojan horse, written to take advantage of the flaw, could perform any action on your machine whatsoever. And you would not need to open the email, or click on a link on the web site, just receiving the mail, or going to the web site, with Java emulation turned on in Windows, will allow the malicious code to run on your machine.

There are two solutions. First, you can turn off Java emulation in Windows Internet Explorer. Or, you can download one of the many patches Microsoft has had to create for Windows here:

Don't forget to read the instructions, after you download and run the program, you are not done. You need to use the "Run" command from the start menu to execute the clspack tool. We ran the patch, and fortunately, it did not cause any problems.

All this further proves what we have known all along. That Microsoft's attempts to get a stranglehold on every major software market with one piece of software means that the "kitchen sink" syndrome will haunt Windows users for years to come. Microsoft has made no serious attempt to simplify and tighten up the code for Windows, leaving it full of security holes which have not even been discovered yet (or have they?). Plus, as Windows users know all too well, they are using the least stable, most crash-prone software on the planet today. Remember Windows 98 crashing on Bill Gates during the debut? So why do so many people still use Windows? Because if you want to play most current games, or run most popular programs, you need Windows. Hmmm...... Anyone out there working on a Direct X emulator for Linux!???

August 24th

The Pentium III Processor line from Intel just underwent another regular round of much needed price cuts. The largest drop occurred with the PIII 500 CPU, which was reduced by over 40% for the retail boxed processor. The smallest drop occurred with the newest CPU, the PIII 600MHz processor. The best price/performance ratio can be had with the PIII450, which is now being sold at clearance prices. Expect this CPU, which can usually be overclocked to 558MHz, to be out of production, and out of stock, fairly shortly.

August 24th

The Celeron Processor line from Intel is due for an upgrade, and Intel has hinted that both an official 100MHz front side bus and SSE instructions are in the works for the next version of the Celeron. In addition, the new Celerons will be based upon Intel's 0.18 micron fabrication process, codenamed "Coppermine". This will allow for lower power consumption and lower heat production from these chips.

August 18th

Intel Celeron delivers 2.3 times the bang-for-the-buck as same speed Pentium III.

The Register introduced it's new CPU benchmark, which now takes into consideration the price of a new processor, as well as it's raw processing power. The Celeron compares very well to the PIII in benchmarks that don't make use of SSE instructions, so when the price difference is figured into the equation, you get over twice the horsepower per dollar with the Celeron.

August 14th

As reported by us on the Daily Rumor last weekend, it looks like Intel is quickly eliminating the PIII 450 CPU from it's line of processors. This is the shortest life-cycle we can recall for an Intel product, suggesting that Intel has been selling too many of these cheaper chips, and not enough of the expensive ones with higher multiplier locks.

All Pentium III's cost Intel the same amount of money to produce, so customers are merely paying for the higher multiplier lock that Intel applies to the more expensive CPUs they make. Selling too many low-cost PIII's hurts Intel's bottom line, so they have decided to rid themselves of this pesky profit-buster.

The question becomes, will there still be any left when Intel cuts prices on August 22nd? The PIII 450 was hard to get last week, and may be impossible to find in two more weeks. Since the PIII 450 is the most overclockable Intel chip in their current lineup, overclockers looking to upgrade their systems may want to consider getting one of these soon-to-be-extinct processors before it's too late.

It is our feeling that the PIII450's overclockability has come to the attention of Intel, and they don't want to keep selling CPU's that run great at 558MHz for hundreds of dollars less than their PIII 500 CPU. Another great Intel product bites the dust... prematurely.

August 11th

The AMD K7 Athlon CPU has just been released, (although they are nowhere to be found). But as the hype circulates around the web, unpleasant details and rumors follow close behind. It has been reported that early K7 motherboards from Gigabyte and Microstar will debute at 3 times the cost of comparable BX based boards for the PIII. This completely offsets any price advantage that AMD had garnered.

Expect growing pains with this CPU. Not only will they be hard to get for awhile, but driver support may be lacking initially. As with all new hardware, early releases may have hidden bugs that customers will have to find for the AMD and chipset engineers. Fianally, for overclockers who want this chip, you will need third party add-on cards that can reprogram the flashable area of the K7 to change the clock settings. In the K7, these are built into the chip, not the motherboard BIOS. It should be possible in the future for motherboard manufacturers to incorporate the Flash technology into the motherboards themselves, so that an add-on card is not necessary.

As expected after the release of the AMD K7 Athlon, Intel has announced that it will be dropping prices on it's CPU's on August 22nd. So wait to buy your new PIII rig!

nVidia and SGI have teamed up to produce the next generation of TNT graphics cards. This move is great news for folks who love nVidia's line of graphics cards. Expect awesome capabilities in the upcoming graphics chipsets from these two leaders in 3D technology. Watch out 3dfx and Matrox, you've got a real race on your hands now!

In a completely unsurprising move, Intel has raised it's head out of the hole in the sand it had been hiding in, and realized that the lack of support for PC-133 SDRAM in it's new Camino chipset was a disaster waiting to happen. This perhaps explains some of the delay this chipset has experienced. Intel insiders now report that a jumper will be available on i820 Camino chipset motherboards that will toggle the system between Direct Rambus DRAM and PC-133 SDRAM.

Expect by the end of October, that Intel will again be the speed king in CPU's. They have the muscle to pull it off. Currently, K7's are about 14% faster than similar speed PIII's. By the time that Intel adds PC-133 SDRAM support, and boosts their final clock speed to 650MHz, they will again have regained the King-of-the-Hill status. This type of fight is terrible for the folks at Intel and AMD that have ulcers, but it is good for consumers, because neither company can afford to price gouge it's customer base.

August 8th

The AMD K7 Athlon CPU is scheduled to be released today, so expect to see many reviews of it on the web. It will be released in several speeds ranging from 500MHz to 650MHz.

The K7 uses a 200MHz CPU bus, so the multiplier settings on these CPU's will be quite low, 2.5 x in the case of the K7 500 chip. This leaves lots of room for speed increases in the future, as the chip goes to the 0.18 micron die.

The burning questions are: 1) Will folks be able to find any K7's available for sale? 2) when will good quality motherboards be available that support this new CPU? and 3) when will 3rd party hardware be available that allows end users to overclock their Athlon CPU's? Until the requisite hardware is readily available, and various types of software support are out there, the K7 may be talked about more than it will be purchased.

We got our hands on a PIII 600MHz Pentium III from Intel last week, and got some preliminary testing done on it. The results were very poor in the overclock department, suggesting that Intel may be reaching the speed limits on their 0.25 micron fabrication process.

We were only able to get this CPU to be stable on the Abit BE6 at 110MHz on the front side bus. This is at least 10MHz less than other PIII's can be overclocked. Considering the exorbitant price of this chip, and the current release of the AMD K7, it's likely that sales of the PIII 600 CPU will be slow until Intel drops the price significantly.

The CPU wars are on folks, and we, the consumers, will be the eventual winners with lower prices on faster processors. Check out our PIII 600 review here.

August 2nd

Thanks to Dominic Orlando for these test results with current Intel Celeron processors running on the Abit BP6 dual-370 motherboard. He was able to easily overclock the two 433MHz Celerons to 75MHz, for a theoretical system speed rating of 975MHz.

Clearly, Celerons are still working perfectly in SMP configurations, and giving very impressive numbers. The scuttlebutt from Intel insiders is that it is too expensive to re-tool the chip to disable the pin needed for SMP. So it looks like the warning on the box really is an idle threat by Intel. Did they actually think everyone would just take their word for it? Silly Intel.

July 29th

This is a new addition to the retail box for the Celeron, and we have not received any with this Surgeon General-like warning on the pack yet. We also have not heard any reports yet of people failing to get dual Celeron systems to work under NT 4.0. But it's starting to look bad for dual-Celeron SMP systems in the future, unless this is just an idle threat by Intel.

July 27th

AMD is about to release the new K7 Athlon processor, with a 200MHz CPU bus and an improved floating point unit. Intel's response? Raise the price on it's aging motherboard chipsets (BX and ZX) by 20%, because they can't keep up with demand. This is not surprising, since they are putting most of their efforts (and fab capacity) into getting the new i810, i810e, and i820 (Camino) chipsets ready for market.

Since Intel has threatened all other chipset makers with big lawsuits if they try to produce and market PC-133 rated chipsets, and since they can't get the bugs worked out of their newer chipsets, motherboard manufacturers are being forced to press the BX chipset to tasks it was not designed for.

In the end though, if Intel does not give in, they may loose significant market share to AMD, who is pushing the envelope on new hardware in ways that Intel only talks about. If you want a new system before Christmas, and you don't want to be stuck with the old 100MHz front side bus, your only choice may be the new Athlon running with PC-133 SDRAM. This will give you a hybrid system with a 200MHz CPU bus running alongside a 133MHz memory bus. The big questions now become, "Will VIA and other chipset makers market their new chipsets to motherboard manufacturers, and will the motherboard makers include overclocking options on the new boards based upon them?" Good questions! Only time will tell. Listen to the Daily Rumor for more.

July 22nd

AMD is gearing up for full scale release of the new Athlon CPU, with a 200MHz CPU bus. The memory bus will permit both PC-100 and PC-133 SDRAM to be used. This means that cost-conscious gamers who want high speed memory in their systems will almost certainly opt for the K7 with PC-133 SDRAM over a Pentium III with either PC-100 SDRAM, or Direct Rambus DRAM.

While PC-133 SDRAM is in very short supply now, expect it to become readily available in August. Also expect the K7 to be in short supply until early September.

Speaking of short supply, the Intel PIII 450MHz part is currently in very short supply. This is because it is the only processor in this line which is reasonably priced. Expect PIII price drops when the K7 is released in several weeks.

July 20th

After being swamped with complaints from motherboard manufacturers, Intel has finally acknowledged that it will eventually add support for PC-133 SDRAM to it's i820 Camino chipset. Initial versions of the delayed chipset will probably only support current PC-100 SDRAM, and new, lower speed Direct Rambus DRAM, the much more expensive memory standard that Intel has been promoting.

This embarrassing retreat comes in amidst a flurry of other less-than-good news for Intel. But clearly, the delays and problems in moving to their new i820 chipset are the biggest woes Intel has to worry about. The upcoming release of AMD's K7 processor, the Athlon, just adds to Intel's distress.

Motherboards based upon the i820 chipset are still scheduled to ship in September, but if the final silicon from Intel is not in production yet, it's not immediately apparent how they can stick to that timetable. Don't expect the first i820 motherboards to have support for PC-133 SDRAM.

In the first review of a pre-release AMD K7 600MHz CPU running on an AMD reference motherboard, it was found to beat the Pentium III 560 significantly in 3D Mark 99 benchmarks and the Quake II crusher demo. In fact, the K7 broke the elusive 6000 3DMark barrier with a TNT-2 Ultra video card.

Perhaps the most important, and impressive, numbers came from the floating point benchmarks. The AMD K-6's Achilles Heel was it's floating point unit (FPU), required for high-performance 3D rendering. The 600MHz K7 is only 7% faster than the PIII 560 in raw MHz, but it gets 12% better FPU benchmarks. Thanks to it's three fully pipelined floating point units, it clearly outperforms the Pentium III in this set of operations so critical for 3D gaming.

Expect even better numbers from final release CPU's and motherboards. If the price is right, these will most certainly turn out to be the gamers chip-of-choice for high-end 3D gaming. The K7 should be available sometime in August. Expect large Pentium III price drops the week of it's release.

July 16th

Abit has just released their new dual socket 370 motherboard with Softmenu II and oodles of overclock settings. This puppy will let you set up SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) systems with two Celeron processors. Currently, SMP is only possible with Operating Systems like NT 4.0, but we are eagerly awaiting Release Candidate 1 of Windows 2000 Professional and Server, which will support SMP. Hopefully, the release candidates will have a functional Direct X 7.0 built-in, which would let us test out a Dual Celeron system with games and 3D Mark 99 Pro!

The board is expected to retail between $139 and $149, and should be available now.

July 13th

Abit has just released their new ATA/66 IDE controller card, the "Hot Rod 66". This add-on PCI card gives current motherboards the ability to support ATA/66 IDE hard drives at their maximum speed. Several hard drive manufacturers have had ATA/66 hard drives on the market for over a month, but motherboards and controller cards that support this new feature are just becoming available now.

Abit has also released their new BE6 Slot-1 BX chipset motherboard, which has built-in support for ATA/66 hard drives. In fact the BE6 has four IDE connectors! Two are standard ATA/33 controllers, the other two are Ultra DMA66 controllers. We will be incorporating the BE6 in our slot 1 systems that have ATA/66 hard drives.

We have been waiting for months now to get our hands on the Matrox G400 Max Dual Head video cards, which were supposed to be released by the end of June. Now, according to our distributors, they will not be available until the end of July at the earliest. So for those of you still sitting on the fence with regard to getting a new TNT-2, or Voodoo3, or maybe a G400, you'll have to wait for the Voodoo3 3500 model or the G400 card for at least a couple more weeks.

What's so good about the G400? Listen to today's Daily Rumor for all the dirt! Daily Rumor

July 11th

Intel has been very edgy about the release of the new AMD K7 CPU, with clock speeds up to 600MHz (and supposedly overclockable to 700MHz!). Reports have surfaced that Intel is even putting some pressure on large computer makers not to use the K7, or they will risk loosing their CPU rebates from Intel (which can be hefty if you play by their rules). If true, this will put some pressure on system builders to stick to Intel inside, unless there is a great public demand for K7 systems.

The release date for the K7 looks like it's been pushed back to August some time, so this gives Intel a tiny amount of breathing room. But expect Pentium III and Celeron price cuts as soon as the official K7 release date is announced.

Then we wait for word on when and if Intel is going to release a 100MHz Celeron line.

July 1st

If you're planning on getting a new Pentium III system or upgrade kit soon, you might want to wait a little while, since Intel is going to drop prices on their newest CPU's as soon as AMD announces the release of the K7 processor. This should be sometime this month, but we can not say for sure when.

We can't wait to get our hands on the new K7, it may just have more power for the dollar than the PIII, unless Intel drops the price tag on their overpriced CPU's substantially. What we are really interested in taking a look at is AMD's new math unit, which is supposed to rival that in Intel's P6 series of CPU's.

July 1st

Word is out that chipset maker VIA is snatching up Cyrix at bargain-basement prices, and that S3 has purchased Diamond Multimedia. This means Celeron-clones may be available soon, and that Diamond is likely to stop producing boards based upon any other graphics chip than the Savage3D and it's descendants. This is rather depressing news, because Diamond makes some nice cards, including the V770, a top-notch TNT-2 card. But if this deal is finalized, expect to only see S3 chips on Diamond cards in the future. This leaves nVidia as the last mainstream, independent graphics chipset maker. Expect to see nVidia-based boards only from companies like Guillemont, Hercules and Creative.

June 30th

We have been hearing stories from the web that Intel is planning on disabling a pin on new Celerons thus preventing them from being used in SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) rigs. The rumors have grown so rampantly, that some web sites have even set up on-line petitions to Intel asking them not to make this move. Check out this one: http://www.cpureview.com/smp_petition.html. I don't suppose it can hurt to try, but if this is something Intel has decided on, I doubt a petition will stop them.

Here are reasons I suspect they may not do this to future Celerons. 1) Motherboard manufacturers who are in close contact with Intel, such as Abit, are producing dual-Celeron motherboards, 2) Intel did not put frequency locks on Celerons to prevent overclocking like the rumors reported over and over several months ago, and 3) Corporations are unlikely to trust dual-Celeron systems for their mission-critical work. Also, large servers require much more L2 cache than regular computers, which is why companies that go for dual or 4-way CPU servers will want at least Pentium III's, and perhaps even the overpriced Xeon's in their corporate rigs.

Intel probably assumes that the nutty OverClocked Gaming Crowd will be the only ones making dual Celeron rigs, and the ability to make them just adds to the Intel mystique. So while we love a good rumor as much as the next guy or gal, we don't think this one has legs. But of course, only Intel knows for sure!

June 26th

Intel has been beaten about the head and shoulders for months now on the growing debacle surrounding the i820 Camino chipset and the new Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM) standard they have been promoting. Now things are getting worse.

An initial review of an early Camino chipset motherboard and DRDRAM by Thomas Pabst indicates numerous problems with the new silicon from Intel. The biggest problem is that it's not any faster than an overclocked BX chipset motherboard running the same CPU. In fact, it's slower.

The most frightening part about the review was the price comparison between PC-100 SDRAM and Direct Rambus DRAM. According to Pabst, the price differential is approximately 10:1, meaning that you can get 64MB's of PC-100 SDRAM for around $75, and 64MB's of DRDRAM for around $750!!! Oooh, I want some!

Perhaps the most disappointing finding was that newer video cards that can have 4X AGP enabled, like TNT-2-based cards, would not work with the pre-release Camino board, so no benchmarking could be performed between AGP 2X and 4X implementations.

All-in-all, it's apparent that Intel should have kept Camino all to themselves for another month or two, because this initial review is far worse than the rumor mongering that we and others have been spouting for weeks. If this is the best Intel can do with new technology, we all may be playing games on BX motherboards for a long time to come.

June 21st

Intel is reported to be back-peddling on their insistence that they would not support PC-133MHz SDRAM with their new chipsets. Numerous reports have popped up on the web suggesting that Intel may have been backed into a corner by poor yields and poor performance on Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM), the competing memory architecture standard that Intel has been backing for well over a year.

PC-133 SDRAM is the next step in Synchronous DRAM evolution, and is already in high production by several memory manufacturers. But if Intel doesn't get off it's high horse soon, and put some support for PC-133MHz into their new chipsets, then only AMD K7 systems, working with chipsets like those from VIA, will be able to use the new 133MHz SDRAM.

It's our guess that Intel may already be adding PC-133 SDRAM support to the Camino (i820) chipset, and this may be one of the factors delyaing it's release.

June 17th

Intel is the focus of nearly the entire PC hardware industry. Memory manufacturers are scrambling to figure out if they are going to be manufacturing PC-133 SDRAM or Direct Rambus DRAM. Motherboard manufacturers are trying to figure out which of the ever-increasing number of Intel chipsets should go on what motherboards, and chipset makers are in litigation with Intel over PC-133 chipsets.

Video card manufacturers are trying to decide when new motherboards will support AGP 4X, and hard drive manufacturers are wondering when support for ATA/66 IDE devices will be prevalent. Some motherboard manufacturers like Abit are already supporting ATA/66 drives with their new motherboards, and with a nifty add-on card (the Hot Rod 66) for folks with ATA/33 motherboards.

The Camino chipset from Intel, and Direct Rambus DRAM from memory manufacturers who have been coaxed into making it by Intel, are the two things holding up the 133MHz Front Side Bus. Both have been repeatedly delayed, and look now to remain absent from stores until at least September. Our guess is they will debut in very limited quantities, and at very unaffordable prices, 4 to 6 weeks before Christmas '99. Since PC-133 SDRAM is already available, we could all be running new systems at that speed right now if Intel had designed the Camino chipset for this type of memory.

June 15th

Intel is fast becoming the laughing stock of the PC industry. This may sound a bit harsh, but take a look at their batting record with recent attempts at technology advances. The i810 Whitney chipset was delayed substantially, and when it came out there were bugs, and it turned out it won't work with the Pentium III. It was only intended for Celeron systems, but Intel is still getting bloodied over the situation.

Next comes the much awaited, and even more delayed, i820 Camino chipset. Everything seems to be going wrong on this one, and they must be cursing Murphy's Law up a storm over there in Intel land. So far, reports are, it doesn't work, and they are having big yield problems to boot. Add to this the fact that the entire memory manufacturing industry is having severe problems with producing the new Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM), and they don't think it will ever become poplular. DRDRAM was Intel's expensive choice for the PC-133-rated SDRAM that would go with motherboards based upon it's Camino chipset. But if it is too expensive, and not any faster, who would buy it??

And to make matters even worse, regular ol' PC-133 SDRAM, based on the same design as PC-100 SDRAM, actually beats DRDRAM in every benchmark, as is much cheaper and easier to produce. So the question is, how hard wired is support for DRDRAM in the Camino chipset, and is it possible to add robust support for PC-133 SDRAM at this late date? Our guess is probably yes, but will Intel swallow their pride and do it. The almighty dollar suggests, again, YES!

June 9th

We finally got our hands on the Professional and Server Editions of Windows 2000, so with hand on experience we can begin to shed some light on Microsoft's next operating system. First off, we tried Windows 2000 Professional since it is supposed to have Direct X 7 built-in. Here are some of the things we found out.

Windows 2000 Professional IS Windows NT 5.0 Workstation. No surprises here. The name was changed, but the OS is the same as it would have been. It looks and feels just like I would have expected from NT 5.0. Under the general section in the system information utility, the OS is described as "Windows 2000 Workstation"

It's got bugs! No surprises here either. Bugs ranged from Explorer Windows not refreshing, and showing up blank until you manually hit the refresh button, to scroll bars not working sometimes, then working other times. We also had trouble entering data into dialog boxes. Hitting keys would not put down any characters, even though the blinking cursor was at the beginning of the dialog entry line.

It's got Direct X 7.0 built-in!!! Yes siree, it's got a fully non-functional Direct X 7 integrated into the OS. Why isn't it functional? Because video card drivers don't recognize it. Installed games insisted that we needed to install DX 6 or higher to run the games in anything but software rendering mode. Even though the DX 7 diagnostic tests ran fine in the system information utility, no games would run because the video drivers were not DX 7 compatible.

Windows 2000 Pro works perfectly on an Overclocked Celeron rig. We haven't had a chance to test it yet, but the Pro version IS supposed to support SMP (symmetric multiprocessing. In this case, two processors). This means that Dual-Celeron rigs will be possible with this version of the OS!!! That's great news! There were no hardware incompatibilities on our test rig with a Sound Blaster AWE64 and a Viper v550 TNT card. Windows 2000 installed a generic TNT driver, but this driver did not work with DX 7 in games.

It's going to be awhile before DX7 video drivers are available, so we won't be able to say much about DX7 until then. There's lots more to talk about, so check out the Daily Rumor for more information.

June 4th

Despite what we and others have been saying about Windows 2000 and the possibility of dual-processor gaming machines, Microsoft may have thrown a big fat monkey wrench into the works. It now appears that Microsoft is turning out at least 4 flavors of it's new operating system, Windows 2000, and is aiming each at distinct markets.

The four versions are the "Consumer Edition" the "Professional Edition", the "Server Edition", and the "Advanced Server Edition". The Consumer Edition will be based upon Win98 code, and will have no multiprocessor support. It will integrate Direct X 7.0, but will only offer several gaming enhancements over Win98. Right now it looks like a simple upgrade, just like Win98 was a baby-step upgrade from Win95 (bug fixes, more hardware support, and several enhancements).

At this point, it appears that the Professional version will be based on NT code, and will support only single CPU systems (maybe 2 CPU's since it's NT based). This is basically NT 5.0 Workstation, and will be for home and small business use. It should have Direct X code built-in, but it may not have multiprocessor support! The Server version will be equivalent to NT 5.0 Server, will support 2 CPU's, and is directed at small businesses. The Advanced Server version will support some serious multiprocessing with multiple CPU's, and is intended for major business applications.

The Server versions also may not allow gamers to use two or more CPU's to boost gaming performance, because Direct X technology might not be incorporated into the Server versions. If so, this relegates dual-Celeron systems to the same old Dual Boot status that we have been suffering with for years. You can boot into Win2000 Consumer, and you'll have one Celeron running games under Direct X 7.0. Or you can boot into Win2000 Server, and have two Celerons running your NT-like applications. Listen to the Daily Rumor for more details.

Questions have arisen about the system requirements for the Server version, in particular, will the Celeron processor have enough L2 cache to run Win2000 Server with 2 CPU's? Microsoft has not released the system requirements for the different versions yet, probably because they are not finalized. However, we expect that Win2000 Server will have multiprocessor support for the Celeron CPU, permitting users to create high performance servers at a bargain-basement price. But you will have to pay Microsoft for your Consumer Edition, so you can play games, and pay hundreds more for the Server Version, to run the two CPU's. In our minds, it just won't be worth it for the average gamer. Bummer! We will be able to clarify the situation when we get our hands on the Beta-3 Windows 2000 Preview.

May 29th

Abit announced this week it would be unveiling it's newest motherboard for the Celeron family of Intel processors. The BP6 is a dual socket 370 motherboard, which also has built-in support for Ultra ATA/66 hard drives. In order to take advantage of this low cost-dual CPU configuration for 3D gaming, you will need a dual-CPU capable operating system that supports Direct X. This leaves you with only one choice (can you say, Monopoly?), you got it, Microsoft's Windows 2000 Professional version with multiprocessor support and Direct X technology. Listen to the "Daily Rumor" for more information, and check back for updates as we test out an Abit BP6 with 2 Celerons running under Windows 2000 Beta-3!

Many of you may have heard that Metabyte, makers of the Wicked 3D line of Voodoo2 cards, had announced early in May that they would be getting out of the hardware business. They will no longer manufacture video cards, but instead, will concentrate on software development for 3D gaming. The two new software technologies announced look ready to take the 3D gaming market by storm.

Their first new technology, scheduled to be released shortly, it called "Parallel Graphics Configuration", or PGC. It is a new software layer, in addition to the graphics drivers, which allows the user to connect two different 3D video cards. But unlike Voodoo2 SLI technology, which is a hardware implementation that directs the two video cards to scan alternating lines on the screen, PGC directs each card to scan half of the complete image.

Frame rates at higher resolutions can be nearly doubled, and contrary to initial reports, PGC will even work with 2 Voodoo3 cards (either two PCI models, or one AGP and one PCI model). This is a piece of very good news for 3Dfx, who could have been left in the dust if PGC worked with every 3D card but theirs.

The second new software development from Metabyte is called "Resolution Override". This software technology permits the user to override the built-in graphics modes in games, and run the games at higher resolutions than they were intended to run at. According to Metabyte, this is accomplished without image distortion, and increases image clarity and detail. While this may not be an issue for many newer games which support very high graphics resolutions, it will certainly make playing some current and older games more visually pleasing.

Rumors are spreading all over the web that memory manufacturers attempting to ramp up volume of the new 133MHz Direct Rambus DRAM have been getting poor yields of usable chips. Analysts expect further delays on these parts reaching market, increasing speculation that Intel will have to adopt PC-133 SDRAM as a stop gap measure to boost CPU performance to 600MHz and beyond. But since Intel does not want to ever support PC-133 SDRAM, there is another temporary solution for them.

Please notice that motherboard manufacturers have been putting multipliers to 8 and beyond in all their boards!! Do the math folks! Is the Pentium III 600 going to be a 6 X 100MHz CPU? Who knows, but because Intel's memory cohorts can't seem to get good yields on Direct Rambus DRAM, it's release will be delayed again, forcing Intel to delay faster CPU's or push the multiplier locks ever higher. The higher multiplier settings may also allow Intel to retain the 66MHz bus Celerons. A 500MHz Celeron could be made with a 66.6MHz Front Side Bus and a 7.5 X multiplier! Hmmm.

May 23rd

For those of you itching to get your hands on Windows 2000 (you know, the multiple processor capable, Direct X gaming platform?) can do so now at Microsoft's web site. Head over here and make up a log-on ID and password, and you're on your way. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/preview/order.asp

But have your credit card ready folks, this one's going to cost you $60 plus. And yet, you get lots of extras, including:

-Beta 3 versions of Windows 2000 Professional (comes with 5 licenses) and Windows 2000 Server (comes with 2 licenses)
(Note: Licenses expire after 240 days.)

-Windows 2000 Evaluation and Deployment Kit—a two-CD set with planning and technical deployment guides.

-Windows 2000 Corporate Preview Guide—a manual with step-by-step installation and how-to instructions.

This one looks like it's almost ready for prime-time folks, so if you have a dual-Celeron system and want to boost 3D-gaming performance, Windows 2000 beta-3 may be the way to go!

Say, does the 240day expiration date suggest it may take that long to get the final release version onto store shelves? Hmmm.

May 18th

AMD sources say 3 varieties of the new AMD K7 will actually be available in June. This is good news for consumers, and dread news for Intel, who had been hoping for delays in the K7's release. Intel has been having it's own problems with release dates lately, and has been aggressive in it's price scheduling due to the K6-2/3 and immanent release of the K7.

Expect many head to head comparisons between the K7 and PIII in the next month. But until the 3D Now! and SSE extensions become fully implemented in software code, it will be anyone's guess as to how fast these two processors are actually capable of performing 3D tasks.

The big question I have is how good is the new floating point unit in the K7? 3D Now will never save the AMD alternative from second place if they don't implement a fully functional math unit in their processor. Intel has had an integral, full-blown math coprocessor in their CPU's since the original P5 Pentium. AMD has never had a robust floating point math unit in any of their processors. It should be a grand battle. So I say, let the games begin!

May 15th

Based upon availability data and promotional offers for Pentium II processors at our distributors, we are declaring this processor DOA, with the exception of mobile computers which will retain them for months to come. Expect great deals on Pentium II processors in the next month or so. The price drop on Monday is going to be big, so don't buy a Pentium II or III system until next week! Celerons are not scheduled to drop in price on Monday.

So say so-long to the ol' Pentium II, and if you're in the market for bargains, keep your eyes peeled over the next month.

May 14th

I've been avoiding jumping on the soapbox since the shootings in Littleton CO, mainly because too many people have already commented, and one more opinion just doesn't make much of a difference. But as I read more and more articles pointing the finger at "Violent and Bloody Video games", not to mention the constant drum beat on TV stations like CNN, I felt it was my civic duty to step in here. Here is an excerpt from an article in the on-line magazine "Salon Magazine"

"It's been a while since I last played Quake or Doom. But when the news came out that Littleton killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were devotees of those games, and that their appalling revenge on the world was perhaps shaped in part by playing them, I had to reflect on my own experience with first-person shooters -- and acknowledge that, yes, they very likely did have something to do with it."

Now maybe it's just me, but I have a feeling that the boys obsession with guns and bombs, and their pro-Nazi leanings, and their hate of their fellow classmates, and several other facts about their lives, had more to do with going on a shooting spree than did playing DOOM. Computer games look like cartoons, and anytime you blast a little cartoon figure, it is quite a different thing than aiming a real loaded gun at a real person and pulling the trigger. And I have heard very few stories that bring up the fact that one of the two boys was on a Prozac-like medication for emotional problems. Has everyone already forgotten all those stories about a small percentage of people on Prozac going berserk and killing someone? I haven't forgotten those stories, and this sounds like another example of it to me. These were violent, emotionally disturbed kids, and that has no relationship to computer games. Mental illness and hate were the root causes.

I have been playing Doom and QuakeGL and Quake and Quake II and it's mission paks, and Shogo and Sin and Half-Life and a whole bunch of army games for years, and I still don't even squash bugs, let alone shoot people. There are angry people in the world, and it's not the computer games that make them that way. It may make for great news stories, but the arguement does not hold water. This country had better pay more attention to the mental health of young people, rather than pointing the finger at video games and saying "There's the problem!". Because getting rid of all computer games in the world won't have any affect on the mental well being of disturbed kids. But it's easier to criticize new technologies than it is to deal with mental illness.

May 10th

On top of their problems delivering the new i820 Camino chipset, Intel is apparently having difficulties with it's upcomming IA-64 processor, the Merced. Industry watchers say that Intel is going to be pumping 200 Million dollars into boosting the Merced project. And that ain't chicken feed!

May 6th

We will show off our all-new KickAss Gear Systems next Monday. Everything from Bare-bones upgrades, to Full-Blown, butt stomping Killer Machines. Check back for specs and pricing!

Intel Price drops scheduled for May 16th

Intel has announced that they will be lowering prices again on May 16th, continuing to counter AMD's low-cost CPU's. The chart below is Intel's self-described price-cutting time-table for their processors over the last few months. You can use these figures to guestimate Intel's upcoming price cuts.

May 2nd

Preliminary face-offs between AMD's K7 and Intel's Pentium IIIb have begun to surface, and while initial results put the PIII slightly ahead, things look good for the K7.

Test systems for the K7 have bus frequencies as high as 200MHz already, with lower multiplier factors (3X). The PIIIb has a rated bus frequency of 133MHz.

The floating point unit on the PIII is still superior to the much improved math core on the K7, so the PIIIb will provide more assist to the video processor in geometry setup for 3D games. In addition, the SSE extensions of the PIIIb are more substantial than AMD's 3D Now! instructions, providing a further speed boost for 3D gaming.

AMD's primary concerns now are ramping their production volume, and providing good yields of CPU's that will operate at these speeds. If they can overcome those perennial problems, they have a good chance at giving Intel a run for their money. The faster the K7 comes to market, the faster Intel will have to hustle with the Camino chipset.

April 26th

Today Intel debuts the 466MHz Celeron (with a 66MHz bus, and a 7X multiplier), and the long awaited i810 Whitney chipset. The i810 chipset is Intel's new low-end chipset for pin-type Celeron Processors. It will support both 66MHz and 100MHz Front Side Bus Speeds, but for now, Intel is continuing it's practice of increasing the multiplier speed locks to increase Celeron speed, rather than upping the Bus Frequency to 100MHz. It looks like we will have to wait awhile before Intel releases an "official" 100MHz Front Side Bus Celeron.

April 25th

We have been working hard in conjunction with Jeremy Alford at AGN3D to develop our new Gaming Systems, and they are just about ready to debute. All new systems, with all new components. Guaranteed to KickAss! Stop by next week and check out our new KickAss Gear Gaming Systems at great new prices.

April 23rd

Several major memory manufacturers have finally released PC-133 SDRAM, including Micron and Samsung. And while Intel is talking Direct Rambus DRAM up a storm, it's debut is still nowhere in sight. So the PC industry, not wanting to drag it's heels along with Intel, has instead developed a new evolutionary step of PC-100 Synchronous DRAM, PC-133 SDRAM. This memory has timing compatible with a Front Side Bus frequency of 133MHz. But Intel has not delivered any of it's promised new chipsets, forcing consumers to continue to press the dusty old BX chipset to higher Front Side Bus frequencies.

It will be interesting to see how far Intel's current processors can be overclocked with PC-133 SDRAM on BX chipset motherboards. Why is this an issue? Because motherboards using the current BX chipset, and even the next Intel chipset to be released, the i810, will only support official Memory Bus Frequencies up to 100MHz. Intel is not supporting PC-133MHz SDRAM. So if you want to run your new PC-133 SDRAM at 133MHz, you are going to have to try to do it with current Intel CPU's and an overclockable BX chipset motherboard. Chances are, 0.25micron Pentium II's and III's will not manage to hit the 133MHz mark with the locked-in multiplier factors they have set at the factory. However, they will run at 124MHz, and possibly even 129MHz.

For the time being, Intel will be clocking their Pentium III CPU's to higher levels by increasing the Multiplier Lock, and leaving the Front Side Bus at 100MHz. This does not deliver the same performance boost as increasing the Front Side Bus frequency would. So gamers and overclockers will prefer the route of boosting the Front Side Bus on a PIII 450 to 124MHz or higher, rather than buying the newest most expensive Pentium III with a higher multiplier lock engaged. But for you folks who have been waiting for the new Camino (i820) chipset, and a Full Front Side Bus of 133MHz with Direct Rambus DRAM, you will probably have to wait until Christmas of this year or longer before they are readily available. Indeed, Intel now says that the BX chipset will be pushed to 700MHz with the PIII by increasing the CPU multiplier, rather than the bus frequency.

PS, Samsung also just announced that its 72-megabit and 144-Mbit Direct Rambus DRAMs have been tested and proven to be compliant with Intel's specifications. They will be ramping volume throughout the year. Now if Intel can just get the dang Camino chipset ready......

Plans by Intel to prevent overclocking of its processors are nearly complete, according to sources close to the company.

At the end of last year, we reported that Intel would introduce locks on microprocessor speeds which would prevent end users from increasing the clock rate on chips.

But now, its manufacturing methods mean that Intel chips cannot be overclocked, the source said.

"The general rule is if the thing is marked 'Intel confidential' it's an early sample and may not have multiplier locking enabled. If so, there is a utility for Intel mobos that blows a new clock speed into the flash,overrriding the chip's setting. If the chip isn't marked confidential, you're scuppered," the source said.

April 19th

As we approach May of 1999, it is probably worth mentioning that Intel expected by this time to be able to release the much awaited Camino i820 chipset, supporting Direct Rambus DRAM and a 133MHz front side bus. But alas, the i820 release has been pushed back to at least September.

We are now wondering how long we will have to wait for the i810 Whitney chipset, and it's bigger brother, the i810e. These lower-end chipsets will support a processor bus speed of 133MHz, but as of now, it looks the memory bus will be standard PC-100 fare.

This odd sounding hybrid design is Intel's way of trying to kill Direct Rambus DRAM's main competitor, PC-133 SDRAM. But delays in ramping up production of Direct Rambus DRAM from memory manufacturers have made Intel's job of pushing Rambus technology tougher. This begs the question as to whether the Camino delays are due to problems with the chipset, or due to the fact that memory makers aren't producing the required memory in quantity.

As it looks now, the first round of 133MHz motherboards from Intel will not support 133MHz memory. Therefore, when 133MHz Pentium III computers first become available this summer (we hope), they will be hampered by limitations in the memory bus frequency. Folks who have been waiting for a full Front Side Bus at 133MHz will have to wait at least until September. If history provides any pertinent lessons, the 133MHz FSB motherboards, and systems based upon them, will show up just in time for the 1999 Christmas buying rush.

April 14th

It doesn't look good for the little chip maker, AMD. Plagued all along by poor yeilds on their newer processors, AMD may be getting ready to throw in the towel. This is VERY bad news for Intel fans, albeit good news for Intel stock holders.

Of course you won't hear any nay-saying from AMD themselves, they are trying to keep stock holders in their company from bailing. The end result of AMD's yeild problems, in conjuction with their constant attempt to beat Intel on price, may be that we end up with one less chip maker, and much less competition in the PC CPU market. The only pressure brought to bear on Intel in the last two years, and the only reason we are not paying $1000 for the Pentium III 500, is AMD. Pure and simple. If they fold, Intel will almost certainly slow their price drop schedual, which has been quite fast paced of late.

The remedy? Make your next gaming rig an AMD K6-2 machine! Yes, that may be a bit of a drastic recommendation, but for cryin' out loud, somebody has to buy them!!!!

April 10th

Intel has announced the release of the 550MHz Pentium III Xeon Processor, with the 550MHz Pentium III not far behind. What happened to the 533MHz Pentium III? The delay of the Camino (i820) chipset which supports a front side bus of 133MHz, as well as Direct Rambus DRAM, has forced Intel to up the multiplier lock on its high end processors from 5X to 5.5X to achieve the higher speed.

Originally Intel had expected to release a new Pentium III in May, rated for 133MHz operation, with a 4X multiplier lock. Now that Camino is delayed at least until September, we are waiting to see if Intel can deliver the i810 and i810e chipsets with support for a processor bus speed of 133MHz. The hitch is that Intel does not want to support PC-133MHz SDRAM, the rival to it's Direct Rambus technology. Therefore, until Rambus DRAM is ready for prime time, motherboards based upon the intermediate i810 and 810e chipsets will probably only have support for PC-100 SDRAM. This would mean Intel will be splitting the front side bus into a 133MHz CPU bus, and a 100MHz memory bus. Let's hope that the less expensive PC-133 SDRAM catches on enough to force Intel to provide support for it.

April 7th

We will be selling our final round of 450MHz upgrade kits, with the Slot-1 Celeron 300A processors, starting this evening. We are also clearing out inventory at or below cost. So check back this evening for some really great prices, and your last chance to get a 450MHz upgrade kit based on our favorite Intel chip, the retail SEPP Celeron 300A!

April 4th

Intel has changed their minds again about upcoming chipsets to support their growing line of processors. Originally, the "Camino" Chipset, also called the i820 chipset, was to be the new chipset to replace the BX chipset for Pentium III and Pentium II systems. Then they announced a chipset for lower cost systems with the Celeron, and this was to be called Whitney, or the i810 chipset. Intel then announced a beefed-up version of the Whitney, which they were calling the i815 chipset. Now, due to delays in perfecting the i820 core, Intel is saying they have dropped the i815 chipset name in favor of 810E. The E presumably stands for enhanced. This chipset is still said to support the new 133MHz front side bus speed. If things don't change again, we will be looking at 3 new chipsets, i820 for high-end systems, the i810E for midrange systems, and the i810 for low-end systems. When will new motherboards be available with these chipsets? For that matter, when will a 133MHz-rated CPU be released by Intel? It's starting to look like Fall of this year. If so, expect shortages and long backorders of products with these chipsets up through Christmas 99, and into the next millenium! As such, expect the BX and ZX chipsets to remain on the store shelves for awhile.

The 2-packs of Intel Pentium II processors that showed up at a number of distributors last month, priced at just about the same price as single boxed PII's, disappeared as quietly as they appeared. They were scheduled for release on Monday, April 5th to distributors, theoretically as part of Intel's April price-cut plan. But the 2-packs that we ordered in early March magically turned into 1-packs, and our distributors now say they know nothing of 2-packs of Pentium II processors. Uh huh. So while there will be price cuts on April 11th, it looks like they won't be the 50% cuts we had hoped for on the PII. AMD K7.... where are you????

April 1st

Intel announced today the release of the 533MHz Celeron with a 133MHz FSB. Unfortunately, they failed to release the much awaited Camino (Intel 820) chipset which is required for the New Celeron Pro to work. A spokesperson at Intel was quoted as saying "So what?" when asked about the mix-up.

After many trials and tribulations, our Real Server is finally functioning at 100% again. If you get any error messages, please forward them to me. Thanks.

March 22nd

We finally got the Real Audio Server running again, so our Real Player programs will work.

We will have one more round of 450MHz upgrade kits available in the next week or so. We are holding out to see if we can get the Abit BX6-2 motherboard in stock again, but so far they are still backordered. If we can't get them in the next week, we will sell the kits with the BH6 motherboard instead. Check back later this week for more info.

March 17th

We finally have the Celeron overclocking results ready for you to check out. We tested both Slot-1 and Pin-type Celeron processors for overclockability and stability, and you can check out our results here!

March 16th

We apologize to anyone having problems with our web site in the last week. After a major server crash last week, we have been working hard at restoring all the functions to the web site. As of today, everything is running properly except for our Real Audio server. Hopefully we will have that up and running again in the next few days. Thanks for your patience.

March 13th

We got this little note from an Abit Distributor recently concerning the shortage of BX6-2 motherboards:

Bad News!
It looks like Abit is having problems in their production of the BX6 motherboards. I have been told last week that we should see some in today, but I just got off the phone with Abit and they are telling me that we may not even see one board this week.
Abit and I apologize for the inconvenience to all of you and your customers. I will inform you of when we can expect these boards in ASAP. Mean while, please sell the BH6. We have plenty in stock and there has been a price drop on these. CALL ME! I will cut some very aggressive deals!!!

Thank you all for your patience on this matter.
I will have the latest motherboard Real Deal soon.

Jack Chen
Associate Product Manager
510-668-3617

We have heard rumors about people having problems with the BX6-2 recently, but so far we have not observed any consistent faults with them. We will post anything we find out about the BX6-2 and Abit's production problems as soon as we get word.

March 10th

I have been working hard on finishing up a comprehensive Pin vs. Slot-1 Celeron overclocking and benchmarking survey. The purpose is to determine which Celerons overclock the best. I am comparing the pin-type or PPGA Celerons to the SEPP or Slot-1 Celerons in their ability to be overclocked, their benchmark results at each speed, and their stability at each overclocked speed. The results so far are quite interesting, and in some cases unexpected. We will be posting the full details on the web site in the next few days, so check back for our Super Celeron Survey Results!

We have been trying for weeks now to locate a source of retail Celeron 300A's. The good news is, we have gotten our hands on approximately 50 more retail Slot-1 Celerons, and will have kits for sale again sometime next week. We are still experiencing extreme shortages of the BX6-2 motherboard from Abit. We hope that the supply of this motherboard will improve over the next week.

March 9th

Our server went down on Monday, and required reinstallation of the Operating System. But we are back up and running now! It may be a day or two before we get everything working again, so please be patient.

March 6th

It's been a week now since Intel Distributors listed 2-packs of the Intel Pentium II 400 and 450 MHz CPU's at dramatically low prices.

These 2-packs are scheduled to arrive at distributors in early to mid April. But so far, there has been no confirmation from Intel that they will be slashing prices on the PII 400 to levels only seen for Celerons up to now. Additionally, the prices on individual boxed Pentium II processors are listed with only modest price cuts at the same distributors. Only time, and Intel, will be able to sort this one out folks, but we will let you know as soon as we have any more information on Pentium II pricing in April.

March 5th

You heard it here first folks, but the buzz is starting to travel the net. Intel announced a 10% price cut on Pentium II processors in April, but distributors have 2-packs of the PII 400 and PII 450 listed at near half price (Scheduled for an April 4th delivery)! Now why would Intel drop the price on it's individually boxed PII's by only 10%, if they were selling two-packs for just about the same price? Something ain't Kosher in PII land!

There seem to be only two reasonable possibilities. 1) A big snafu at Intel!, or 2) Intel is not announcing the true severity of the upcoming price cuts for fear of hurting PII sales over the next 3 weeks.

March 2nd

Intel now has 4 Processors in the production line; the Celeron (two formats, PPGA and SEPP), the Pentium II, the Xeon, and the Pentium III. It's getting a little crowded and it looks like Intel is about to do some Spring cleaning. It will probably be announced all over the web in the next few days, but it looks like the Pentium II is headed for Clearance City by the beginning of April. Expect massive price drops approaching 50% on the PII 400 and 450! That's nothing to sneeze at.

Our distributors are listing the Intel Pentium II with an arrival date of April 4th at just about half the price they are selling for right now. This is great news, because it puts the retail Pentium II 400 at the price range of the Celeron 400 right now! Oooooh. So for those of you considering upgrading to a PII 400 or 450, we suggest you wait just one more month, and you'll save a couple hundred bucks! We expect to offer BX6-2 upgrade kits based upon this processor, overclocked to 448, starting in early April for around $330! Stay tuned for more info. Kits made with the 450 overclocked to 504 would cost about $100 more.

February 26th

Our favorite Intel Processor, the Celeron 300A, is out of stock. We have enough of them to cover existing orders, and we are retaining some for warranty purposes. Intel has not announced that they have discontinued this processor. But our last several batches were the SL2WM OEM version, refitted with Intel's heat sink and fan, and packaged in the retail box like the SL32A had been. This makes us wonder if production has stopped, and they were trying to clear inventory of the less popular OEM processors.

We are working hard on finding the 300A in quantity, and it's possible that we may get lucky, but right now all distributors say they are unavailable. We will also continue to work on other possible upgrade kits, and will let you know what we find out when our testing is complete.

February 25th

We are rapidly running out of Celeron 300A processors, and we can not find any suppliers that currently have them available. We don't know if this is a temporary shortage, or if Intel intends on dropping the bottom-most processor in the Celeron line as the Pentium III debuts.

We have been working on other possible low-cost high-speed upgrade kits, and we will announce our findings when we get the testing done. The PPGA version of the 300A is not easy to find now either, but we have gotten a few, and are testing them on BM6 motherboards from Abit. Stay tuned for the results.

February 12th,

Samsung Electronics has announced the availability of Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM modules in 128MB DIMMs. This is good news for gamers, because the prices on DDR-SDRAM are expected to be much lower than on Direct Rambus DRAM. And the Double Data Rate DIMMs will be more versatile, because they will work at both 100MHz and 133MHz front side bus settings. The usefulness of both new types of RAM will be somewhat limited until Intel makes the Camino chipset available.

February 6th,

Abit's newest motherboard has arrived, and we have put several of them through their paces. They are very stable at a FSB of 103MHz with the Celeron 300A, and they have some very nice features for overclockers. These include the ability to drop the PCI bus speed to 1/4 of the FSB, so when attempting a processor bus speed of 124Mhz, you PCI slots will be down at a nice cool 31MHz. At 133MHz, your PCI slots will be running at 33MHz. Also, Abit has provided individual control over the PCI slots, so there is lots of room to play around with this bad boy.

Thanks for the Memory!

What's going on with memory? Prices are rising and new standards are on the horizon. And in the middle of it all, there is a strike at the LG memory Fabrication plant, and an ongoing war for a new memory standard raging in the background. What's a memory buyer to do? Listen to the Daily Rumor, of course!

January 30th

We have just received another batch of 50 Celeron 300 A's, and they are the first bunch we have gotten that were packaged in 1999. The first thing we noticed was that Intel's product code number for this CPU has changed! We were worried at first that Intel might have changed the "anti-remarking" scheme to inhibit overclocking. But we have thoroughly tested almost 2 dozen of these cpu's in the last 2 days, and all of them have overclocked to 464MHz without difficulty. For more info, listen to the Daily Rumor.

January 24th

Despite the shortage of Celeron 300 A's in the Slot 1 format, we continue to get them at a slow steady pace from one distributor only. Supplies at our other distributors are exhausted, and they are listed as discontinued. This is an odd situation, and one that only time will tell how it's going to turn out. The Celeron 300A is now arriving in new 10 packs, suggesting that Intel has decided to keep them around for awhile longer. Only your Intel Rep knows for sure! We will let you know what we find out during the week.

January 19th

Multiplier Creep: Intel's sneaky way of stopping overclocking without frequency locks.

We have been talking for awhile about the end of overclocking, as pronounced by Intel last year. However, the dreaded "frequency locks" have not appeared on any Intel products to date. That means that while the multiplier has been locked on all Intel CPU's for many months now, Intel is still permitting it's loyal customers to play around with the bus speed on their computers. This was especially kind of them with the Celeron 300A which runs flawlessly with a Front Side bus setting of 100MHz. However, since pulling the SEPP version of the Celeron 300A, Intel is starting to implement a new kind of overclock prevention. We like to call it "Multiplier Creep", and you can quote us on that.

What is multiplier creep and how does it affect overclocking? Simple, 450MHz is not outside the operating range of the Celeron A, so the chip with a 4.5X multiplier lock is really just perfect for overclocking. As most of you know, the percentage of Celerons that will run above 450MHz reliably drops off quickly. Therefore, as Intel sets the locked-in multiplier at higher and higher values, it robs the chips of the ability to be run at higher bus speeds. Some folks have had limited success at running the 366MHz Celeron A at 550MHz, but this is not going to be possible with most of these CPU's.

Multiplier Creep is Intel's way of avoiding adding Frequency (Bus Speed) Locks to their processors. The Multiplier lock circuitry is already in place, and all they need to do is plug in higher values for this variable, and it increasingly limits the variable of bus speed. The funny part is, these are the same damn processors as the 300A, Intel has just changed the multiplier locks on the circuit board, and then they charge you more money for the privilege of owning one!

There have been lots of stories about the Slot 1 Celerons being discontinued, and as far as most of our distributors are concerned, the 300A in the SEPP format has been discontinued by Intel. And yet, Intel claimed earlier this month it would be retaining the Slot 1 Celerons until the end of 1999! Read about it Here One of our distributors has said that Intel has given them an ETA for the next shipment of 300A SEPP Celerons sometime in mid January (that's right now!). So cross your fingers folks!

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Intel Price drops scheduled for May 16th

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