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Gear News Archive: January 2001 January 31st, 2001 The Mega-Hurts Continue! Intel dropped prices on many of it's processors on Monday. This move was in part forced by rival chipmaker AMD. AMD processors running at the same speed have been substantially less expensive than Intel's offerings, and they outperform Intel products in most benchmarks as well. So Intel decided it was time for another Mega-Hurts and price war. Intel's new price cuts narrow the price gaps considerably, but AMD processors are still less expensive. However, Intel is not done! There will be several smaller price cuts between now and May 27th, when Intel will release the 1.7GHz P4 processor. So does this portend another price cut on AMD's end? Probably so, but right now AMD processors are selling at extremely attractive prices, and it's hard to imagine that AMD can make money if they drop much further. What does all this mean for Intel? For one thing, it means they realize that AMD is cutting into profits. Also, it suggests they are getting ready to position the P4 at lower prices to get the ball rolling on their new, not-very-popular processor. Finally, it probably means lower profits for Intel, because they are being forced by the competition to cut prices early on a product which is substantially more expensive to produce than the Pentium III. Opinions: Intel's Control Over Major Benchmarks. We have gotten several emails about the story on Intel's control over the way major benchmarks are coded. One astute reader pointed out that "All benchmarks are biased to the viewpoint of the people paying for their development.... [for example] Ziff-Davis benchmarks support ZD advertising revenue." He continues: "Code is carefully selected to run almost completely in cache and vendors are thus able to price using the MHz model.... AMD cleverly puts large L1 and L2 caches in their processors to ride on this performance benchmark distortion." So I have a question for everyone out there. Do you trust major benchmark results? Most good reviewers don't rely on a single test suite, and they also mention that real-world performance will differ in many cases. What do you think? January 30th, 2001 Does Intel Control Major Benchmarks? In a report certain to generate as much heat as light, The Register has stated that Intel has control over the way major benchmark programs are coded, thus favoring their processors in comparison tests. BAPCo is the organization that created SysMark2000, one of the most popular applications benchmark suites in the industry. According to Randall Kennedy, the director of research for Competitive Systems Analysis, also known as CSA Research, SYSmark 2000 is controlled by Intel and is designed to favor Intel processors. CSA Research has created an application benchmark suite that they feel reflects real world performance much more realistically than SYSmark 2000. They have called their new program Benchmark Studio. Currently Benchmark Studio only runs under Windows 2000, and there are no plans to develop versions for other Microsoft operating system's. Using Benchmark Studio, a 1.2 GHz Athlon easily outperforms a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 system. In addition, dual processor Pentium III systems with 733 MHz Pentium III processors also beat Intel's fastest Pentium 4 processor. If you are interested in Benchmark Studio, you can download the beta version here. Note that the suite comes in three parts, the core, a MAPI stress simulator, and an MQ stress simulator. Here is one of their
conclusions after using Benchmark Studio on various platforms. "Conclusion:
AMD's Athlon processor, running at 1.2GHz and paired with PC2100 DDR-SDRAM
on a prototype AMD 760 chipset platform, delivers the fastest OfficeBench
2.0 completion times of any single-processor system we've tested." :) January 27th, 2001 More Logo Mania! We have received many more logo submissions and have them posted on our "logos page" here. Please feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions that you may have. I hope to have an updated version of the new web site ready for viewing in the next few days. Thanks so much to all who have contributed and commented! January 24th, 2001 Tech Report P4 Review Scott "Damage" Wasson has done a very nice review of the Pentium 4 for those who are interested. It's a much better read than most P4 articles I've seen. Scott's conclusions are more positive than many reviews of the P4, but mainly because (as we have said), the P4 is a forward-looking design that won't hit it's stride for at least a year. Engineers and scientists need not rush out and get one, due to it's dismal floating point performance, but gamers just might find the P4 a pricey way to boost frame rates in Quake III Team Arena. Intel to Slash Prices Monday Intel will cut prices on it's line of microprocessors on Monday. The 1GHz PIII price cut will be very significant, over 40% off the current price. P4 prices will also drop by over 20%. So if you have a hankerin' for a P4 rig now, just give it a few more days, and you'll save hundreds of dollars. But don't forget that Intel is switching sockets on the P4 line in a few months, meaning any P4 motherboard you buy now will not take future P4 chips. Not to be upstaged, AMD is rumored to be preparing the release of a 1.3GHz Athlon CPU on Monday. Higher speed Athlons (up to 1.5GHz) should be out by mid to late Summer. Keep in mind that 1.2 GHz Athlons are still scarce, so the 1.3GHz models may not be plentiful for another month or two. January 23rd, 2001 Web Site Redesign The latest version of our new web site is posted for comments. You can find it here (be patient, the server is often busy). Several logo candidates have been submitted by our message board users, and there is a link to them at the top of the home page of the new website. If you have any comments, suggestions or submissions you would like considered, please email them to me. Thanks! January 22nd, 2001 Did the PS2 Kill PC Sales? The year 2000 was not the best year for computer makers. On top of sagging PC hardware sales, computer game sales were also down for the year. In fact, according to reports game sales were down 5% in 2000 relative to 1999. I had speculated a few weeks back that part of the PC slump had to do with competition from PS2 sales. While this may be partially true, Sony's sales have also been down for the year, mainly due to problems with PS2 production and distribution. On the production end, Sony had problems with their move to 0.18 micron fabrication for the PS2's Emotion Engine graphics chip. On the distribution end, Sony had to rush the delayed PS2s to market via Air Delivery, cutting into profits. So despite it's rocky start, the PS2 is very popular, and has probably done it's share to cut into PC hardware and game sales. January 19th, 2001 Duke Nukem Owner Frags Web Reviewers There is a story at The Register which is sure to get some attention from the legions of game reviewers on the Internet. Apparently, the makers of the ever-in-development game Duke Nukem Forever hate Internet game reviewers. Indeed, the folks at "3D Realms" seem to think that potential reviews of Duke Nukem Forever will hurt sales. According to 3D Realm's owner George Broussard, part of their concern is that Web based reviewers often take what they consider to be bad screenshots, and then post them in reviews. Here is a quote: "I don't like reviewers taking shitass ugly shots and using them in reviews," he explained. "Use the official ones. I don't think [reviewers] should have the power to cost me money by taking lame shots, or over-exposing the game, or giving away weapons, bosses etc to the point the users says 'Nah, I've seen enough'." As a result, 3-D Realms says they are taking measures to prevent web sites from using screenshots from Duke Nukem Forever for online strategy guides. Maybe I'm nuts, but don't software companies get vast amounts of free advertising when reviews and strategy guides for new games are posted on the Internet? All this aside, what I really want to know is, when will this game actually come out? 3-D Realms showed off Duke Nukem Forever at the E3 show in 1998. Now it just happens to be the year 2001. Perhaps the reason they called it Duke Nukem Forever is because that's how long we will have to wait for it to come out. Intel buys Xircom Intel and Xircom have reached an agreement in which Intel will acquire Xircom. Here is a quote from the statement: Intel Corporation and Xircom, Inc. announced, Monday, that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Intel, through a wholly owned subsidiary, would acquire Xircom for $25 per share in an all-cash tender offer valued at approximately $748 million. The acquisition complements Intel's existing desktop PC and server-based network access businesses by enabling Intel to provide new products for notebook and mobile computing uses. Intel purchased a large portion of Xircom back in 1997, and apparently they decided it was a good enough thing to buy the rest. The acquisition should be completed by the end of the first quarter of this year. Xircom is known for making networking products for notebook and laptop computers. AMD Samson Supercomputer The University of Delaware says they will announce the first supercomputer based on AMD's Athlon processor on January 22nd of this year. The supercomputer will be code-named Samson. It will be comprised of 132 1 GHz Athlon processors running in parallel. When it comes online, it will be ranked in the top 200 of the fastest computer arrays in the world. And did I mention how much less expensive it was compared with an Intel CPU array? January 18th, 2001 MS Just Whistling Dixie? If the story at The Register is true (oh come on, how often does that happen?), then the copy protection scheme on Microsoft's upcoming operating system, Whistler, may be easily circumvented. Apparently, if they do not change it from it's current form, you will just need to quit the registration wizard, and start up good 'ol regedit. A simple registry change will get you up and running. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\ change RegDone value to 1 In other words, it's just a one-key registry edit. If that's all there is to it, then it's just a major hassle for inexperienced computer users. But the question that has not been answered yet is, does Whistler check all other machines on the network for installations with the same serial number? If so, LAN owners will still need to buy a copy of Whistler for each machine, unless MS offers low-cost "client licenses" for the consumer version (which is highly doubtful). January 18th, 2001 Whistlers (a) Mother We have discussed the copy protection scheme in the next Generation of Windows (code-named Whistler) on our message board, but now details have leaked. Windows Supersite has a review of the current build here. What's the deal? Microsoft has been saying for years that they were going to integrate their consumer operating systems and their corporate operating systems. They had been saying this about Windows 2000 up until just a few months before its release. Apparently, they may finally pull it off with Whistler. There will be several versions, starting with a 32-bit personal edition. This one has so many features removed that it will really only be for low-end, stand-alone home machines. It will have no support for dual processors, no support for dual monitors, an inability to host web sites using Internet Information Services, and a host of other omissions. Most power users will opt for the professional version which does not have these limitations. Corporations that want to upgrade will go for the advanced server version. The most controversial feature in Whistler is the so-called "product activation" antipiracy measure. It's all but certain that this feature will be in the final consumer version. If so, Microsoft may find itself with sagging sales, and a further tarnished image. Why? Because they are adopting the most frustrating and irritating antipiracy measure known to man. When you install the operating system you must have a connection to the Internet. To me, that means you can't install the OS on a machine that does not have a modem! The OS cannot be used until the phone registration step is completed! To make matters far worse, the unique product ID code generated by the phone call will prevent the OS from functioning if you change any of your hardware! That means if you upgrade your motherboard and processor, your system will not boot! You will need to call Microsoft again in order to get another unique ID code for the new system configuration. This is not just a pain in the ass, and a major inconvenience for the user, it's a terrible business practice. My guess is they will sell fewer copies of Whistler with the antipiracy system than they would have without this crippling feature. So rather than making more money by reducing piracy, they will reduce sales due to customer irritation, frustration, and anger. In my mind, this will make Whistler a virtually unusable operating system for people like me. I change my hardware constantly, and I'm not going to spend every day on the phone with Microsoft. It's not just a waste of time, it's highly intrusive. I expect Microsoft is going to get a lot of bad mouthing on this one. They are basically ruining their new operating system. See what greed does for you? January 16th, 2001 Industry Watch Dean Kent over at a realworldtech.com has posted his industry watch report for January. It makes for some very interesting reading. He discusses upcoming chipsets and processors, as well as memory issues. Dean feels that Rambus DRAM may be in trouble. He cites a poll which indicates that DDR SDRAM has already surpassed Rambus DRAM in market penetration, despite the fact that DDR DRAM just became available. He also mentions a new DDR technology that is on the way. This new technology is known as quad-band memory, and like DDR memory, it uses a 100 MHz front side bus, while producing a 400 MHz effective speed by quad pumping the data on each clock cycle. "QBM is a technology that uses standard DDR memory along with Kentron's patented use of FET switches on a module (E-BUS) to double the bandwidth of DDR from 200MHz to 400MHz data rate. The subsystem exercises the QBM memory in a similar fashion to a Northbridge chipset in a system. The QBM technology will increase the bandwidth of the DDR module solution from 1.6GB/sec to 3.2GB/sec, which will be a dramatic improvement over the capabilities of other non-compatible, more expensive memory technologies. QBM operates at 100MHz clock achieving data transfer rates of 400Mbit/sec during reads/writes." Dean questions whether or not we will get to see the new AMD processors (Palomino and Morgan) until mid-year, which would be a disappointment. Even though the Pentium 4 is not doing very well in the marketplace, it does give Intel a leg up in the MHz war. AMD sales may begin to suffer if they can't crack the 1.2 GHz barrier in the next couple months. January 15th, 2001 Everyone Knows Ginger is a Castaway. The "secret" invention of Dean Kamen known as Ginger has created a disproportionate amount of babble on the Internet. No one will say what it is, but because the inventor's credentials are so lofty, everyone is assuming it's BIG. Some commentators who have seen "Ginger" have said cities could be built around the devices requirements. The general consensus among analysts who have looked at patent applications from the company Kamen works for, DEKA, seems to be that it is a single-person transportation device. Considering that Kamen's latest patented invention is a "stand-up" wheelchair that can climb stairs, this speculation is not wild. But what could make a personal transportation device so important? We have very nice bikes, scooters, and motorcycles right now, so what could make "Ginger" so special? If it's just a fancy scooter with a wireless phone and internet connection, it is not worth even commenting on. It's got to be much more than that, or it will end up just being so much hype. I don't want o add to the pointless speculation, but if "Ginger" is a transportation device, and it's going to wow me, it had better have many of these features: 1)Gyroscopic stabilization (and perhaps flywheel assisted propagation) Here is a quote from a filling with the World Intellectual Property Organization: "class of transportation vehicles for carrying an individual over ground ... that is unstable with respect to tipping when ... not powered." To me, that means it's "gyroscopic" 2) Voice controlled computer access (home computer and Internet) with a HUD (heads up display). 3) Hover capabilities or highly specialized off-road suspension system 4) GPS assisted navigation, and emergency assistance support 5) Specialized collision avoidance and personal protection equipment (that's going to be tough). 6) Protection from the elements 7) Long running time, short fueling or recharge times. No fossil fuels. (Solar, battery, fuel cell etc) 8) Extreme comfort 9) Affordable 10) FAST PS Ginger may not be a transportation device, in which case you can disregard everything I just said. I'm off to watch Gilligan's Island. January 14th, 2001 Win2K Not Ready for Corporate America? Delphi Forums is perhaps the largest collection of Forums on the Internet. According to The Register, Delphi has had so many problems with Win 2K Advanced Server, that they have been forced to revert their entire server network back to NT 4.0!!! (Ouch!) The problem is typical for Win2K installations, driver problems with certain hardware (high-end NICs in this case). As many Win 2K users know all too well, numerous pieces of hardware do not have good driver support in Win2K. Users have had fewer problems with Win2K Pro, but driver issues are still present. January 12th, 2001 GeForce 2 Hardware Problem Revisited The little blurb at The Register yesterday on GeForce2 problems got some people hopping mad! Like this post from Sci-FiGaming.com "The following just goes to show how much an unreliable source for news The Register really is." But anger aside, what's all the hubbub about bub? NVNews.com has a post from one of the authors of the test, and here it is: "The GeForce2 screenshot is correct. The Radeon 32 screenshot is only differentiated by the lack of fog." Go here
to look at the two pictures. Additional Note: Scott Wasson of The Tech Report has a review of the Radeon which shows that Texture Compression on the GeForce 2 does not work correctly at least in some circumstances. You can read about it here. January 11th, 2001 GeForce 2 Hardware Problem? A short report over at The Register suggests that the GeForce 2 graphics chip from NVidia has a hardware flaw that affects the rendering of DirectX compressed textures. We have heard tell of such a problem previously, but had not seen such clear indications of it in screenshots. By comparing the output of a GeForce 2 card and an ATI Radeon card, it could be clearly seen that the GeForce 2 has significant problems with texture compression in DirectX. But what I want to know is: Is The Register becoming a hardware review site? Everybody wants to get into the act! Xbox to Use DDR SDRAM? It is well known by most that the Sony PlayStation 2 uses memory designed by Rambus Inc. Nabbing the deal with Sony has been one of Rambus' biggest success stories. Now that Microsoft has revealed the details of its upcoming Xbox game console, it comes as some surprise that reports are indicating Microsoft will use DDR SDRAM. The thing that makes this so interesting is that the Xbox will use an Intel chip as the main processor. But Intel has an agreement with Rambus that states clearly that Intel is not allowed to make any other type of memory controller for their processors than Rambus controllers. Does that mean that Microsoft will be using a non-Intel memory controller in the Xbox? It would seem they have no other choice. Can't you just imagine that the Rambus legal team is getting lots of overtime right about now? No rest for the weary. January 9th, 2001 Where are DDR Motherboards? Over the past year and a half we have given Intel a whole bunch of lip for phony product releases, a severe lack of processor supply, and royally messing up chipsets left and right. To be fair, we need to call AMD on their DDR chipset/motherboard release last month. It didn't happen. To my knowledge, only one company has DDR memory modules for sale, and that company is Crucial. In addition, motherboard manufacturers have not delivered DDR-capable product to distributors yet. I can only draw one conclusion from this sad fact. AMD is pulling an Intel. They started to worry when Intel prepared to release the Pentium 4 with Rambus DRAM support. And in their panic and haste, they decided a "paper release" of upcoming DDR-capable systems was in order. As usual, the effect is confusion and irritation among customers. Based on the fact that reviews have already been posted all over the Web, and that AMD has announced the release of DDR-capable systems, customers are under the impression that they can get such a system anywhere. As far as I know, only Micron has DDR Athlon systems for sale. And since their memory subsidiary, Crucial, is one of the only companies selling DDR SDRAM now, that makes sense. I have no idea how long the wait is for a DDR system from Micron, but it is probably measured in weeks. While I expect several motherboard manufacturers to have AMD 760 DDR-capable motherboards for sale in the next few weeks, I really wish companies would resist the temptation to announce products that will actually just begin trickling onto the market in the near future. Intel did a much better job this time with the Pentium 4 release. They waited until the supply channel was relatively filled with new product before making the announcement. Speaking of the Pentium 4, I find it a little strange that Intel has decided against any form of advertising for their new processor at this time. Indeed, they have launched a new aggressive Pentium III ad campaign. The only ads I have seen for the Pentium 4 were taken out by system integrators rather than by Intel. Perhaps Intel feels that the Pentium 4 platform is not really ready for the average consumer yet. One significant bug has already been found in the Pentium 4 chipset, so maybe Intel is thinking of this as a shakedown cruise. But this leads me to wonder when they will consider the Pentium 4 to be a consumer-level processor? To get the old drool going, check out Kyle's DDR system review at Hard|OCP! California Power Probs Threaten Chip Industry Is it possible that chip manufacturers will now avoid California like the plague? Comments at The Register suggest that at least Intel will not be making any chips in California anytime soon. And my guess is no one else will either. Why? Because of California's current power problems. Chip manufacturing is a very sensitive and touchy process. One thing that is absolutely intolerable is a fluctuating power supply. Producing microchips requires a constant, steady power source which is something that California currently can not offer. A quote from Intel's CEO Craig Barrett indicates they would prefer a nuclear power source, despite the political implications. It would seem to me that locating near a large hydroelectric facility should provide excellent power stability, but maybe Craig knows something that I don't. January 7th, 2001 New Web Site Ready for Comments I have finally gotten the first draft of the new web site ready for everyone to look at. This is not a finalized design, anything can be changed at this point. This is just a starting point for customers to be able to make comments and suggestions in order to improve the site as much as possible. So have at it folks! The preliminary design can be found here. The design is entirely my fault, so you can blame me. Please email me with any comments or suggestions. Thanks! January 5th, 2001 True SonicBLUE Video Debut Remember the graphics card company called S3? They gave up the graphics card business last year, and renamed the company SonicBLUE. They changed their product focus from video cards to digital media and 'information appliances'. Now the details of a VIA/SonicBLUE joint venture have been approved, bringing SonicBLUE (S3) back into the video chip business. Apparently the goal is to integrate a new graphics core into upcoming VIA chipsets for the low-end PC market. Whether or not chips for AGP video cards are also in the works is an unanswered question. Based on their previous record in the graphics chip market, I'm not expecting much stuff that would interest PC enthusiasts coming from this joint venture. Bush-ism Bonanza! You all have probably heard George W. mis-speak occasionally, but you may not have seen the official Bushisms web page. There are just a ton of juicy quotes here, and they are actually quite amusing. January 2nd, 2001 Samsung Does the Rambus Rag. We used to sell Samsung memory exclusively. But we haven't been able to get Samsung SDRAM for at least a year. We have always known the reason for this, but have not revealed it to our loyal readers until now... Samsung is Rambus' whore. Samsung decided early on that it was going to be a major supplier of Rambus DRAM, come hell or high water. So if SDRAM production had to suffer, so be it. Samsung claims that they now have more than a 50 percent share of the world's Rambus DRAM market. It's a real shame, they used to make very good memory. January 1st, 2001 !!! We Made It! We made it to 2001! I was a little kid when 2001, A Space Odyssey came out. It would be almost 35 years before we actually arrived at the new millennium. By the way, the reason that the new millennium starts in the year 2001, rather than 2000, is because those wacky original calendar makers did not start our calendar at the year 0. As such, we're stuck with a calendar where each new millennia begins on year 1. I remember just a few years back thinking about how far off Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke actually were in their depiction of the world in 2001. Intelligent computers, orbiting space stations and casual trips to the moon. But it's funny how things can change fairly quickly. I am using voice recognition software to write this, and soon Microsoft operating systems will respond to human speech, as well as talk back to the operator. We finally have a permanently orbiting space station, and it is serviced by a reusable shuttle. There are really two major aspects of 2001 that are still some ways off. First are the casual lunar excursions. The lack of them is not due to technical reasons, but rather a lack of will and money. So indeed, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were not that far off, they were just a little optimistic on the funding end of things. The other place where they went astray from reality was in their depiction of how far we would get with artificial intelligence. I have said for over a decade that artificial intelligence in computers was going to be much more difficult than originally envisioned. In fact, I suspect that it will be several decades more before we even get close to Hal 9000 as depicted in 2001. There are many reasons for this, but suffice it to say that the human brain is a heck of a lot more complicated than computer scientists would like to admit. So don't hold your breath for your very own Hal 9000 anytime soon folks. Happy New Year! |