February 28th

Does the Pentium 4 Suck or Swing?

Dell Computer sells thousands of Pentium 4 systems to unsuspecting customers every day (or at least they try to).  Are those customers getting state-of-the-art computers, or overpriced hype-ware?  If you take  Derak Mihocka's word for it, they are getting very overpriced hypeware that under-performs the Celeron in some cases.

It may not be easy reading, but Derak clearly has Intel's number.  He goes over what he considers the 8 major design mistakes Intel made with the Pentium 4 processor.  In most or all cases, Intel cut corners and removed critical components to get the CPU to market ASAP.  The result is a CPU that can be clocked faster, but that performs far worse than older processors on a clock for clock basis.

Here is a quote from his summary: "If it isn't clear already, the Pentium 4 is a terrible choice for PC users. It is a severely crippled processor that does not live up to its original design specifications. Its makes inefficient use of available transistors and chip space. It places a higher burden on software developers to optimize code, contrary to the trends being set by AMD and Transmeta processors. It reverts to 10 year old techniques which Intel abandoned and apparently forgot why. And it just plain runs slower than existing Pentium III, Celeron, and AMD Athlon chips".

I couldn't have said it better. P4 Anyone?

Read the full article here.

                               Dr. John

February 27th

Rambus Accused of Submarine Patent Tactics

After a recent U.S. Navy 'civilian submarine joyride' ended in tragedy, the news media treated us to many video clips of submarines surfacing. Keep that image in mind, as it will help you relate to the twists and turns of the ongoing Rambus court case. Indeed, the latest accusation leveled against Rambus by SDRAM makers Micron, Hyundai and Infineon in court are that Rambus Inc. used so-called "submarine tactics" to inappropriately acquire patents to SDRAM technology that it had not invented.

Submarine tactics refers to the practice of keeping patents secret until competitors come out with a similar product. At that point the submarine patent holder can "surface" quickly and demand royalties and fees for the product in question. Patents derived by submarine tactics may or may not be enforceable depending upon the situation. In the case of Rambus Inc.'s SDRAM patents, a strong argument can be made that the patents will be rendered invalid by the current court case. 

Read the Full Story here.

                               Dr. John

February 24th

Is Windows 2000 a Good Gaming OS... Yet?

Anand has a great article on the pros and cons of using Windows 2000 as an operating system for computer gaming with either GeForce 2 or Radeon video cards.  The results are very enlightening, but not surprising.  First, the GeForce 2 beat the Radeon in all but one game benchmark.  Second, the NVidia drivers delivered similar benchmarks for 6 out of 8 games under Win 98 and Win 2K.  That's a major improvement for NVidia's Win 2K driver set.  

In contrast, ATI's drivers for Win 2K performed miserably.  Five of 8 games performed significantly slower under Win 2K than Win 98 (as much as 46% slower!), and one failed to run at all.  You can see the comparison here.  

What conclusions can we draw from this?  That gamers who want to use Windows 2000 as a gaming platform can succeed with a GeForce 2 card, but not with an ATI Radeon at this point in time.  However, if you are serious about gaming performance, Windows 98SE can't be beat.  And finally, if you already own a Radeon card, stick with Win98SE.

                               Dr. John

February 22nd

Intel and AMD to Cut Prices in March.

The Intel/AMD price war has been raging for over a year now, and there are no signs that it will let up anytime soon.  Both Intel and AMD have announced price cuts on their processor lines in early March.  AMD is being more cautious and saying that they are not committed to a price reduction at that time, but they will wait and see what Intel does.

Prices on processors are so low now compared with historical values that it seems difficult to imagine that there is much wiggle room left in pricing.  But we'll see what happens in March!

                               Dr. John

February 17th

Rambus Caught With Smoking Bazookas

Electronic News Online has done some digging, and managed to get its hands on Rambus documents from the 1990s which clearly indicate an intent to improperly acquire memory patents, and withhold information about their existing patent applications from the memory standards committee, JEDEC.  The documents were acquired from the U.S. District Court in San Jose where the upcoming Rambus trial is to be held.

Here is a quote from a Rambus business plan dated June 12, 1992: “Finally, we believe that Sync DRAMs infringe on some claims in our filed patents; and that there are additional claims we can file for our patents that cover features of Sync DRAMs. Then we will be in a position to request patent licensing (fees and royalties) from any manufacturer of Sync DRAMs. Our action plan is to determine the exact claims and file the additional claims by the end of Q3/92. Then to advise Sync DRAM manufacturers in Q4/92.”

It is obvious that one of their intentions is to rework existing patent applications to include technology in other companies SDRAM designs.  It's going to be tough to deny this smoking bazooka.  

Rambus was part of JEDEC in 1995, and did not reveal their patent applications to the standards body.  They were clearly not participating in good faith. They did not inform DRAM makers of their revised patents until 1997, at which time they began trying to collect royalties from all SDRAM makers.  This is exactly what their 1992 business plan said they wanted to achieve. And what kind of sleazy company would have a "business plan" like that anyway? OK... maybe Microsoft, but who else? Actually, according to the Electronic News story, plenty of other companies, like Sun Microsystems.

This is another damning quote from a 1995 Rambus document: “I think it makes sense to review our current issued patents and see what we have that may work against them. If it is something really key, then we may want to mention it to Hyundai in our attempts to get the negotiation under way again. If it is not a really key issue, such as the initialization issue, then I think it makes no sense to alert them to a potential problem they can easily work around."

What this shows is a clear attempt to control the SDRAM market through creative patenting, and selective withholding of information.  This is what Rambus has been charged with by Micron, Infineon and Hyundai in the upcoming trial.  Looks like another smoking bazooka to me.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the article is the reaction from Wall Street.  Financial analysts seem to have made the assumption that Rambus has been telling everyone the truth all along, and that they will therefore triumph in court.  The excellent rating which Rambus enjoys on Wall Street is an entirely predicated on this assumption.  With the release of these documents, I have to wonder if the financial analysts might begin to question their assumptions.

If I were in charge of this trial, I would consider putting an immediate injunction on Rambus to stop collecting royalties from SDRAM makers until the court case has been concluded.

                               Dr. John

February 16th

Intel Overclocks Pentium 4

According to JC's Pages, Intel is increasing the core voltage in the Pentium 4 processor.  As you all know well, this is the same thing overclockers do to run their chips faster.  JC speculates that Intel may have overestimated the top clock speed that the P4 could deliver in the 0.18 micron format. That speculation is based on the fact that Intel never raises core voltages until they start to hit a brick wall with higher speed chip yields.

It is possible that they still have some room to wiggle.  Nine hundred megahertz AMD Athlons can be overclocked to between 1.1 and 1.2 GHz by raising the core voltage to 1.8v or 1.85v, whereas the P4 is still at a reasonable 1.75v.  The change from 1.7v to 1.75v on the P4 core will probably permit more chips to run at 1.7GHz, the next model to be released.

At least now, the next time you boost the Vcore and up the MHz, you can smile with the assurance that you and Intel's engineers are working from the same book.

                               Dr. John

February 15th

Is the Xbox Distracting NVidia?

Yesterday NVidia reported record earnings for the last quarter, and announced that the new chips for Microsoft's Xbox game console were ready for production.  The press releases from NVidia clearly indicate that they are concentrating heavily on Xbox production.  We can be fairly certain that Microsoft is in a big hurry to get the Xbox to market well before Christmas 2001. 

NVidia is also pressing ahead with new offerings for Macs, mobiles, and workstations, meaning they are trying to manage many more projects at once than they are used to. With all of this going on, and the GeForce 3 chip hanging in limbo, I have to wonder if Xbox et al. are distracting NVidia from the product line that got them where they are today.  

I hope that NVidia does not get lax with the evolution of the GeForce line of graphics cards.  We had gotten used to a very fast product development schedule for the GeForce, and I hope that this continues at full pace.  But with 3dfx out of the picture, and the Xbox debut fast approaching, I wonder...

                               Dr. John

February 13th, Late Edition

Bill Gates at Nuclear Sub's Helm During Collision

Washington, DC, Feb 13th, 9:35pm. Reliable sources in Washington have revealed that the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates was one of the 16 civilians aboard the USS Greenville when it rammed and sank the Japanese research vessel Ehime Maru last Friday.  Shortly after it was revealed that a civilian was at the helm of the USS Greenville when it struck the research vessel during an emergency surfacing maneuver, Navy spokesman Cmdr Greg Smith was quoted as saying civilians were often permitted aboard US nuclear submarines, and that it was not uncommon for one to be at the helm during emergency surfacing maneuvers.

Spokespersons at Microsoft declined comment on the rumor that Bill Gates was the "business leader" at the helm of the Greenville during it's ill-fated voyage, but sources at the Naval Medical Clinic at Pearl Harbor Hawaii admitted that Microsoft's Chairman was in fact treated for whiplash and released late Friday.

No other information was immediately available, but House and Senate Subcommittees were said to be looking into whether it would be possible to impeach ex-President Clinton for the incident.

                               Dr. John

February 13th, 2001

Intel's P4 Push

Intel is FINALLY getting ready to advertise and promote the Pentium 4 processor to the general public, many months after it's debut.  The logic of the very low key approach that Intel has taken with the P4 so far is puzzling, but it may have to do with worries about potential bugs, and getting burned by new chipset releases in the past.  It will be interesting to see if they dump the "blue guys" PIII ad campaign in favor of something more intelligent, or at least more humorous.

The relatively low cost of the P4 1.3 GHz model and (ultra-slow) PC600 Rambus DRAM makes these systems affordable, but what do you get?  You get a system that is slower than a 1GHz PIII or Athlon system, and that will not accept the next round of P4 chips from Intel (they are changing the socket soon).  In addition, it appears that many companies are selling the low end P4 systems with TNT-2 graphics cards, which are two years old!  Considering the price of GeForce MX cards, these companies are really shafting their customers. Obviously, Intel is not targeting the PC enthusiast market.

One of our message board users pointed out that the major electronics store he works for, which will remain un-named (I DID NOT say Circuit City!), is selling P4 systems with TNT-2 graphics cards as well (Thanks Ed!).  I expect 3D Mark 2000 scores for Direct 3D performance would be in the 2200 range, as opposed to the 7000 or 8000 that you should expect.  That's like paying top dollar for a Lamborghini with an old VW bug engine in it.

                               Dr. John

February 12th, 2001

AMD 760 Chipset Fixed?

Everyone has been wondering what's up with the delayed AMD 760 chipset with DDR memory support for Athlon processors.  It was announced at the same time as the Pentium 4, but we have still yet to see any DDR-capable AMD motherboards on the market.  Micron had been the first computer maker to announce a line of computers based on the new design, but had to pull them when instability was observed with the 266MHz version of the chipset.  Micron is expected to announce the resumption of 266MHz DDR Athlon shipments today.  

Between AMD and Intel, there have been several troubled chipset roll-outs in the last year and a half. This suggests that the competition is pushing chip makers ahead faster than the engineers would probably like.  So the remaining questions are, did they completely fix the "noise" problem with the new 266MHz bus design, and will motherboard makers be getting the new chipsets in quantity immediately?  If so, then 266MHz DDR Athlon motherboards should begin to hit the shelves in March.

It is interesting to watch as Intel readies Brookdale chipsets for the Pentium 4 processor.  There are rumors of two flavors in development, a PC-133 SDRAM version slated for late this year, and a DDR-capable version scheduled for early next year.  The latest scuttlebutt is that Intel may cancel the SDRAM version, and push the DDR version's release up to this coming October.

                               Dr. John

Web Site Redesign Ready for Another Look-See.

We have the new redesign of our web site ready for comments.  The changes are mostly cosmetic, and the design is still not finalized.  The logos with the most votes so far have been included.  You can find the new design here.  The logos which have been submitted can be found here.  If you have any preferences or comments, please email me with them,  Thanks!

                                Dr. John

ICANN... Really I Can!

Officials from ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) were grilled by US House members last week.  ICANN is the organization that administers Internet names, and is in charge of approving new domain name suffixes.  They recently approved 7 new suffixes, which is far fewer than the House members and their constituents wanted.  The approved suffixes are: .biz, .name, .museum, .info, .pro, .coop, and .aero.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's telecommunications and Internet subcommittee hinted that more congressional oversight of the body may be in order. Consumer groups warned against government intervention.  ICANN officials say they can handle the situation themselves.

The new suffixes will show up on the net in a few more months.  Looks like it won't be a mostly dot com world much longer! 

                                Dr. John

February 9th, 2001

Direct X 8.0a Released

Microsoft has released updated versions of Direct X 8 for Win 9x and Win2K.  It appears that these releases contain a few minor bug fixes and updates. They include improved installation routines and better USB game device support. But if you are not having problems with DX 8.0, you probably don't need the update.

February 8th, 2001

Sony's Big Thing

Rumors are spreading like jelly on peanut butter about Sony's new "Graphics Synthesizer", which was announced recently at an industry conference in San Francisco.  Posts at EETimes and The Reg suggest that the new graphics chip is the successor to the current Graphics Synthesizer in the Playstation2.

The new chip is huge by current standards, which means that it will be expensive to produce, and yields may be low.  It will outperform the GeForce 2 Ultra chip from NVidia, and may be ready for full production this year.  

The question of whether this new chip is going to be the heart of the Playstation3 has not been answered.  We can assume that this chip will probably not make it's way into the PC graphics card market, but if it did, NVidia would have a real run for their money.

                                Dr. John

February 7th, 2001

The Rambus Zone

Rambus Inc.'s PR machine was running like a Texas Chainsaw Monday, as the companies President and President of marketing hacked their way through reality, until they finally reached... The Rambus Zone.  

It is a place where world domination, greed and hubris combine to form a new reality, not based on fact, but on spin.  The usual casualties were in evidence...  Truth and Integrity.

Mooring (President) : "The reason this industry, I refer to it as the RDRAM industry, has been able to do it is because of the business model that Rambus has taken. We went through early on and worked out the total solution. There are a lot of technical details, but a lot of it is just the aspect of facilitating and catalyzing cooperation between industry leaders."

Got that everyone?  The memory industry is now called the RDRAM industry (and what does R stand for?), and the only reason  it's gotten where it is today is because Rambus Inc. has been facilitating cooperation between industry leaders.

Mooring (President) : "My view is that in any industry's transition there are leaders and followers, and winners and losers, and those who are leading like it because they are the ones who reap the benefits through extra profits and extra market share with their customers. Those who are behind resist significantly, and it doesn't matter whether it's memory or some other thing, it always divides into those who have an advantage and those who don't. I think you are seeing that very clearly right now. Until those who are behind catch up, this controversy from that segment of the population will continue. And it's a comparatively small percentage of the population, but it's a very loud percentage.

So Hyundai, Infineon and Micron are a small percentage of the memory makers?  They probably produce 30% or more of existing computer memory.  

ENews : A lot of people feel it's unfair of you to use SDRAM and DDR patents as a bargaining chip — charging higher royalties for SDRAM and DDR to try to encourage people to make RDRAM. They say that is not the way you should go about trying to promote your own technology.

Mooring : "We're not doing that. We are just trying to get paid for what we invented. It's pretty simple. If you take the device that we announced in March of 1992 and you look at the features on it ... they ended up in the DDR devices. We can send you a datasheet from our 1992 RDRAM that was made available by Toshiba Corp. and these features are sitting there in the device."

Oh! Did we forget to tell JEDEC we had patented all this stuff years ago when we joined their standards committee? Gee, that was careless of us.  Oh! And we ARE charging higher royalties on SDRAM and DDR to help foist Scambus on everyone?  Gosh, I really didn't know!

ENews : Did JEDEC copy your invention in writing the DDR specs?

Mooring : "That's our claim, right? That there are pieces of the RDRAM that ended up in some of these vendors' DDR devices."

Have you got that everyone?  Those bastards at JEDEC stole all Rambus' good ideas, and gave them away to a bunch of laggards. 

Look!  That signpost up ahead... Next Stop... The Rambus Zone.

                                Dr. John

February 6th, 2001

Software Bloat 2001

I have often marveled at the massive size of modern Windows-based software.  Considering the fact that programmers no longer write in machine code, this is quite understandable.  In the year 2001, most programming for Windows is accomplished by using pre-made plug-ins which are bulky but functional.  The results are applications that weigh in at several hundred MBs, and games that approach or exceed 1 GB.

Did you ever wonder what could be done if programmers were still writing programs in machine code and trying to conserve space? Well wonder no longer. Download this 64 KB demo called ".fr. 08: .the .product" and run it (it requires Direct X 8.0).  Don't worry, I have already scanned it for viruses.

What does it feature?  Fifteen minutes of cool 3-D animation with typical German Techno-pop music.  And keep in mind that all of it comes in a 64 kB executable file.  The ending trailer is particularly amusing as the author tries to fill up the last KB or two of space with rambling notes about how much room is still left.  So next time you start to install a game and it says you need 900 MB of free disk space, you can laugh knowingly, and be glad you bought that 30GB drive last month.

                                Dr. John 

Thanks to Michael Stamps for passing this on.

Borg ('er.. Mac) Cubes Not Being Assimilated

A post at The Reg states that Mac (aka Borg) G4 Cubes are not being assimilated by the masses.  Apparently they have been disconnected from the collective, and are wasting away in warehouses. I can't imagine why drones would not want to absorb a 500MHz system for only $2000, especially when we consider that they are not upgradeable.  What more could you (not) ask for? An AGP card? (sorry), a GHz processor? (sorry), no cracks? (please) or maybe a real computer?  Resistance is futile... get one before the price drops again!

                                Dr. John 

February 3rd, 2001

Rambus Does the FTC Tango

EBN reports that Rambus Inc., the Intellectual Property company that tries to pass as a memory manufacturer, is finally in hot water with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).  I don't know why it took the FTC so long to get involved, but I can't wait for the outcome.

I haven't written about the company we love to hate for a long time, so a quick summary is in order.  Rambus is a company composed of several engineers, and an army of lawyers.  Back in the mid-1990s they joined a memory standards committee called JEDEC which was working out the standards for SDRAM architecture.  It was an open standards meeting, which means that no member was allowed to try to patent anything that was discussed in the meetings.

It became clear to other members by 1996 that Rambus was not being entirely forthright about their participation in JEDEC.  When asked to disclose if they were working on patents for SDRAM, they declined to answer and quit JEDEC.  It was not until 1999 that Rambus was granted patents to SDRAM, DDR DRAM, and the memory controllers for them.  Sound a tad fishy?

Well that's what the other members of JEDEC said, and now the FTC is finally looking into it, over a year after the allegations first surfaced.  Currently, most memory manufacturers are paying Rambus royalties for SDRAM and DDR DRAM, despite the fact that Rambus did not invent or manufacture them.  Several memory makers have been fighting Rambus, including Infineon (formerly Siemans) and Micron, and it was their complaints that eventually led to the FTC probe.

The question is, will the FTC rule against Rambus, and if so, what kind of remedies can be implemented?  I would hope that at the very least, Rambus would be ordered to repay all ill-gotten royalties, and that their questionable patents would be revoked....  I can dream can't I?

                                Dr. John

February 2nd, 2001

Abit KT7A-RAID Review

I have posted my mini-review of the Abit KT7A-RAID motherboard, the latest upgrade to Abit's popular KT7 motherboard.  You can check it out here.  This board has some truly KickAss overclocking features.  Hope you find it interesting.

                                Dr. John

February 1st, 2001

When Cometh GeForce3?

Rumors are starting to circulate that the new NV20 chip from NVidia may be nearing release. One rumor at HotHardware suggests that the NV 20 is headed for actual chip production runs in early March.  That could mean that video board companies could have GeForce 3 boards to market by sometime in April, or May at the latest!  I'm not holding my breath though, these things almost always get delayed.  It may be early Summer before the GeForce3 is available in quantity.

If web reviews of pre-production GF3 models start to show up on the Internet in March, then you'll know that the chip is on schedule.  

                                Dr. John

Copyright 2001, KickAss Gear