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Gear News Archive: February 2003
February 27th, 2003 Avast Ye Buckos, Ashcroft Will Have Your Heads! In one of the ongoing anti-pirate raids from Attorney General John Ashcroft's Department of Justice (DoJ), a 22 year old man has had his computer confiscated, and will be prosecuted for software piracy. David Rocci was selling XBox mod chips on the Internet, including instructions on how to use the modified chips with pirated software. He could face 5 years in jail, and $500,000 in fines. What has many worried now is the comment made by the DoJ that "...he thought that there were no risks associated with his actions. He was wrong and everyone engaged in the warez scene should take note." Warez is a very large community of computer users that trade in software, much of which is obviously pirated. The Bush Administration is and always has been very biased towards large corporations like Microsoft, over consumers and users, and this is just one manifestation of that bias. Software piracy is predominantly perpetrated in places like mainland China, and the kind of pirating that goes on amongst kids in the US pales by comparison. But it's lots easier to arrest kids in the US for pirating a Microsoft game than it is to go after the real pirates in another country. So you can expect to see lots more of these kinds of actions from the Bush Administration over the next 2 years (or, if most of you vote for them again in 2004, 6 more years). February 25th Linux Inventor Trashes Intel Itanium Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux operating system, says that Intel's design decisions for the 64-bit Itanium processor were very poor, repeating mistakes that others made years ago. Indeed it would seem that the Itanium does not have the kind of processing prowess that it's price would imply. The major complaint that Linus levels at the Itanium is that Intel removed the good aspects of x86 technology, and replaced them with RISC functions that don't work as well in the real world. This would imply that AMD's 64-bit processor, the Opteron, which is based squarely on x86 technology, would meet with Mr. Torvalds' approval. The Opteron is scheduled for release within the next two months, but there are still questions as to what operating systems will support it at release. February 24th WIntel Lives! Without blinking a corporate eye, Microsoft has announced that Server 2003 is ready to roll, but the 64-bit version will only support the Intel Itanium processor. This seems extremely odd, considering that the Itanium processor is as popular as Herpes, whereas the upcoming 64-bit processor from AMD, the Opteron, is getting very positive attention. This move by Microsoft means that MS does not take the Opteron seriously as a true multi-CPU, server-level processor, which is indeed a blow to AMD's plans for the chip. However, MS is working on a 64-bit version of Windows, which will work with the Opteron. In many ways, MS is just driving more folks to Linux by not covering all the hardware bases. So in the long run, this move could hurt MS more than it helps Intel. February 21st Microsoft Loses Big Court Case A recent court case that Microsoft lost will not affect the average Windows user at all, but it may affect SQL server and Office 2000 developers extensively. Microsoft has been in litigation for three and a half years with a company called Timeline. MS had signed and agreement with Timeline that basically beholdened anyone who worked on SQL Server or Office 2000 to pay royalties to Timeline, because Timeline owned the patents on specific portions of the underlying code. Microsoft has been assuring SQL Server and Office 2000 developers that there was nothing to the litigation, and that they were not bound by the agreement. The court disagreed wholeheartedly. The remaining questions are, what is Timeline going to do about it?, and who are they going to go after? Theoretically, any person or company caught in the middle could turn around and sue Microsoft for providing false assurances that this would not happen. February 20th Wacky Rambus Rumor Either we've entered the Twilight Zone, or Infineon has learned from the Microsoft play book how to deal with pesky little companies that stand in your way. Buy them. There is a very rumorish tidbit over at the Inquirer that says that Infineon may be offering to buy Rambus Inc, the company that they are currently in litigation with. It sure would be a simple way to solve the problem, but somehow it seems like a bizarre form of IP blackmail to me: "Pay me unfair royalties for years, or just buy me now for more than I'm worth... your choice." February 19th NVidia Not Selling Video Cards A quick check of the inventory of NVidia based video cards at major distributors in the US, such as Tech Data, quickly shows that NVidia is effectively out of the video card business now. Only TNT2 and GeForce MX cards are available, and only from what I would call second tier manufacturers. That's right, no GeForce4 cards are listed, and of course, no GeForceFX cards are listed. This, in essence, puts NVidia out of the video card market for the time being. But how long will the time being be? At least months. The end result is that ATI cards are in very short supply, and are increasing in price. The much sought after Radeon 9000 Pro, which can often be converted into a 9500 Pro, has risen in price from $170 to $200. Further, it appears that ATI may have delayed the release of the 9900 Pro because there isn't any need to yet. NVidia is so far behind that ATI can just sit back and relax. This isn't good news for gamers, who were hoping to see a Battle Royal between ATI and NVidia over the upcoming game, Doom III. Now your only choice will be from ATI, and they can continue to raise prices as long as NVidia remains dormant. NVidia has let a lot of people down, not the least of which are their investors. February 17th Benchmarks on the Mark? Jack Russell has an article over at the Inquirer in which he discusses the controversy over synthetic benchmarks like 3D Mark 2003. He goes over the higher latency of the Pentium4, and the lower clock speed of the AthlonXP, and how difficult it is to compare apples to oranges. Lots of folks are complaining about 3D Mark 2003, in part because they just bought new systems that they thought were invincible. Funny how a few (thousand) extra polygons can ruin your day. Indeed, my Athlon 2400+ with a GeForce4 Ti4400 overclocked gives me 3D Mark 2003 scores around 1550. Ouch. Not to worry folks... games won't be coming out that need that much power for about a year. That is unless DoomIII turns out to be one of those games, because it's going to be out this Spring. I am assuming that turning off the highest detail settings in DoomIII will have it running at 30 to 40 fps with a Radeon 9700 on a good machine, which is acceptable. For people with a GeForce 3 or 4 card, you may be running at around 20fps with medium detail settings. Low detail should boost that to above 30fps. So how much faster will the Radeon 9900 Pro be? And what about the fabled NV35 (GeForce X?)? They had better be at least 30% faster than the 9700 Pro if game makers expect to churn out games the likes of 3D Mark 2003. I estimate that it would take a 5GHz P4, or 4GHz Athlon, along with a video card that is 3 times faster than a Radeon 9700 Pro in order to run 3D Mark 2003 at decent frame rates. I wonder how long we have to wait? February 14th 3D Mark 2003 Woes It has become a perennial, or perhaps biperennial tradition for the 3D Mark Folks to release a new benchmark that renders all your hardware so much silicon slag. When 3D Mark 2001 was released, it made 500MHz systems with the NVidia TNT2 cards scream for mercy, with frame rates in the teens. Now, a little over 2 years later, 2+GHz Athlon systems with Radeon 9700 cards run the 2001 benchmarks with frame rates between 100 and 300 fps. Enter 3D Mark 2003. On those same 2+GHz systems with Radeon cards, frame rates in some of the benchmarks range between 3 and 12 frames per second. Does this mean we need to wait for systems to be 5 times faster before games can have that much detail? I think not. Optimization is an amazing thing, and as new 3D technologies get implemented, DX 8.1 and DX9 games will have substantially more detail than existing games, and will run well on today's high-end systems. DoomIII will be a big test of current high end systems. Will it be possible to run it with all the video details and effects enabled on current systems? We'll find out in a couple months. Less Than 5000 GeForceFX Cards Will be Made The talk now is that NVidia and their chip foundry were only able to produce 4,500 GeForceFX chips for production video cards before deciding to kibosh the "dust buster of video cards". Apparently, NVidia is going for some kind of perverse "collector's item" status with the FX. My biggest question is, how much did this fiasco cost NVidia? My next question is, how far behind is the NV35 chip?? My third question is, how much faster and quieter are the NV35 cards going to be??? If NVidia is going to compete with the ATI 9900 Pro, the next batch of cards had better be ready soon, and better be substantially faster (and cooler) than the extinct GeForceFX. February 12th Unreal Engine Bugs Allow DoS Attacks A fascinating article by Auriemma Luigi at PivX Solutions details the bugs he has found in the Unreal Engine. According to Luigi, the network protocol for the current Unreal engine is unchanged from the original version released in 1998. The bugs include a lack of network handshake, and the inability to handle negative data values. The end results of these oversights include the ability to use an Unreal server for denial of service attacks on other servers, as well as the ability to crash Unreal servers or add non-existent players to a game. Folks running Zone Alarm, Personal Firewall, or other firewall software may have noticed that they get unusual port probing activity while playing UT2003. I have to wonder if some hackers have known about these exploits for some time now. Obviously, now that all this in the news, Epic has a big, big job on their hands to get a patch out that not only fixes problems they have ignored for 5 years, but any patch also must not adversely affect gameplay or network speed. Should keep the coders at Epic busy for awhile. Anyone up for a quick UT2003 match?! Duct Tape... Going, Going... Gone This one is truly destined for the FUD archives. Here in the Washington DC area (Ground ZERO if there ever was one), all of the stores are out of duct tape, after the administration told everyone to go out and buy the stuff to stop dirty-bomb, anthrax spewing terrorists from ruining everyone's day. And while the stock market has been down recently, stock prices for companies like 3M are intriguingly on the rise. Now I expect that CEOs from other companies are on the hotline to the Whitehouse, asking if GW will please put in a good word about their anti-terrorist products... like ear plugs. February 10th 3D Mark 2003 Tomorrow According to the countdown timer at Futuremark.com, their latest DX9 benchmark suite is due to be released to the public late today or tomorrow. 3D Mark 2003 will have at least a few benchmarks that will require a DX9 compliant video card, which right now means only Radeon 9500 and 9900 owners will get to see all the goodies. Believe it or not, even though DX9 games will not be out until Fall at the earliest, some people will go out and buy a Radeon just for 3D Mark 2003. Hmmmm, now that you mention it..... Bart is Here! The AMD Barton will be available this week, and the reviews are posted! What's the poop? As expected, they beat the P4 3.06GHz in some tests, and lose in others. But in some benchmarks, the Barton wins are very impressive for a lower cost CPU. Indeed, the 3000+ Barton is around $100 less expensive than the top P4, and the 2800+ (which beat the P4 in some tests) is almost $300 less expensive. That's more than just pocket change. This update to the Athlon line keeps AMD neck and neck with Intel on performance, while remaining the lower cost, higher value alternative. February 7th The 3dfx Touch of Death NVidia has admitted that they are discontinuing the GeForceFX card before it is even released. I have to wonder if this isn't some kind of weird Twilight Zone thing where long-dead victims arise to avenge their deaths. The GeForceFX card is the first card that NVidia has tried to make with the aid of the very engineers from the company NVidia crushed (3dfx). NVidia is set to push hard to get their next generation chip to market ASAP, in the hopes of surpassing ATI's Radeon 9900 Pro series. Barton May Turn Heads Despite all the bad news surrounding AMD recently, including the delay of the Clawhammer processor, the scuttlebutt is that the reviews of the Athlon Barton series processors, set to be posted Monday, will show some very impressive benchmark numbers. The relatively high prices I have seen posted for the 3000+ Barton processor suggest that AMD is very confident with their product's performance. The low-end Barton CPU (2500+), however, is very competitively priced, and I expect it will be the CPU of choice for folks on a budget who want the extra oomph they will get from 512KB of L2 cache. February 6th Barton Arrives.... Soon Distributors have finally listed the Barton processor on their web sites. The delivery date is posted as February 13th, but supplies look very limited. Prices are rather high as well. Prices and speeds are listed below (boxed versions at wholesale distributors). ATHLON XP 3000+ 512K 333FSB BARTON BOXED $590.82 OEM CPUs purchased in lots of 1000 will be somewhat less expensive. Rambus Ruling Rocks RAM-makers As I mentioned a week ago, a Federal Court has thrown out the lower court ruling against Rambus Inc, and the result is shock and dismay among standards bodies everywhere. Jack Robertson at EBN has a good article on the proceedings, and the angst that the ruling has fostered among standards bodies that try to make various manufacturers play nice while working out an electronic standard. Among the 3 judge panel, 2 judges ruled that JEDEC, the standards body that works out computer memory standards, was too vague in formulating it's rules for them to be enforceable. The dissenting judge begged to differ, stating "JEDEC was free to formulate whatever duty it desired and it is not this court's job to rewrite or reinterpret the duty." My guess is that the two judges in the majority were strong pro-IP types who would rather see a US IP company get a break, than to enforce fraud and anti-trust laws. February 5th GeForceFX Rumors Escalate The anti-NVidia rumor mill is working at full throttle. It has now reached the point where the scuttlebutt is that NVidia will produce only a small batch of FX cards, and market them as specialty items. They then are supposedly going to drop the FX card in favor of their upcoming chips (NV31, 34 and 35). I have no idea if there is even a grain of truth in these rumors, but they sound so similar to the rumors that turned out to be true about 3dfx's 5500 cards that it makes you wonder (expensive, underpowered and in the end, the cause of their demise). NVidia isn't in any trouble of folding, but if the FX is as loud, expensive and slow as the rumors suggest, it's high time that NVidia got back to the drawing board. February 4th GeForceFX Will Compete Against Radeon 9900 Delays with NVidia's monster video card, dubbed the 'FX', have put the company squarely in competition with ATI's updated video card, the Radeon 9900 Pro. The GeForceFX was supposed to be out in December, but now the date has been pushed back to late February, or even March. ATI is set to release the 9900 Pro in March, meaning that many folks may want to wait to see how the benchmarks pan out on both cards. If the GeForceFX isn't significantly faster than the 9700, then it may not even be able to keep up with the 9900. We'll have to wait and see. February 3rd Your Chance to Change the DMCA! Due to popular demand, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is back up for reconsideration in Congress. That means that you can write your Rep and ask that changes be made. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the oil folks. Don't forget to ask that "warning labels" be put on any copy protected CDs or DVDs, and that "fair-use" laws be strengthened to ensure you can make backup copies of your disks. February 1st NVidia Shafts Win98 and Linux Users Again I have spoken on several occasions about the unusual, if not now predictable, behavior of NVidia when releasing new drivers for their hardware. Despite the fact that writing drivers for Windows 98 and Linux is far easier than writing them for Windows 2000 or XP, nonetheless, NVidia has a bad habit of releasing new drivers for Windows 2000 and XP only. Indeed, NVidia has released new NForce unified drivers for Windows XP and Windows 2000, but not for Windows98 or Linux. This raises the question once again as to whether Microsoft pressures companies into delaying support for Windows98 and Linux as long as possible. We know that MS would love to be able to force people to use their new operating system, XP, but they can't hold a gun to everyone's head and threaten mayhem. So the next best thing is to pressure companies to provide support for XP well before support for Win98 or Linux is provided. And if users are still up for it, I expect plenty of irritated email to arrive at NVidia's inbox this week. Copyright 2003, KickAss Gear |