« Computer News from 2002 »

Oops! What can I say, I'm busy doing multiple IT courses at college. Lots of assignments...

I'll but any interesting news below this when I get a minute. I haven't totally ignored things, all the information has been going into different pages, largely in the Computers --> Hardware section. Anyway, of note is the upcoming release of NVidia's GeForce FX, scheduled for release in February, and loads of new motherboard chipsets this I've detailed elsewhere.

Of immediate interest is Microsoft's release of DirectX 9. Go get it

There's a brilliant preview of the GeForce FX over at NV News

Intel announces final AGP 3.0 spec
Interesting that Intel own the technology yet Via and SiS already have 8x AGP chipsets for motherboards on the the market, whereas Intels aren't due until spring.

Of course, there's no mention that motherboards will be moving to 16x AGP in mid-late 2004, hmmm!

*Shrugs*

• Intels PCI Express (3GIO) technology is on the horizon for 2004. This is intended to be a general-purpose, high-speed architecture, unifying a number of I/O connections.
• 5Ghz P4 / P5's
• Microsofts next killer OS
• Nvidia's NV40

** I've used Dabs because their prices are exceptionally competitive, often less than trade for many items. Remember that there is a world of difference between buying "a chip" and buying half a million dollars worth. Incidentally, that n/a 2.53Mhz can be a begger to get too!.

• Pentium 4 2.6 Ghz - $401
• Pentium 4 2.5 Ghz - $243
• Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz - $400 (Yes, it is $400, go figure!)
• Pentium 4 2.2 Ghz - $193
• Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz - $163
• Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz - $143
• Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz - $143
• Celeron - 1.8 Ghz - $83
• Celeron - 1.7 Ghz - $69

• Pentium 4-M 2.0 Ghz - $348
• Pentium 4-M 1.9 Ghz - $241
• Pentium 4-M 1.8 Ghz - $198
• Pentium 4-M 1.7 Ghz - $171
• Celeron - M 1.5 Ghz - $96

• Pentium Xeon 2.2 GHz - $224
• Pentium Xeon 1.8 GHz - $156
• Pentium III-S 1.4Ghz - $198

• AMD Athlon XP 2600+ - $297
• AMD Athlon XP 2400+ - $193
• AMD Athlon XP 2200+ - $183

*Rolls eyes melodramatically* "Oooooh"

While I have been particularly eager for this round of cuts (I want a 2.53Ghz) I have been contemplating why and decided it was the shiny factor. That and the fact programmers today are bone idle! The number of even small applications that utilize a staggering 100% of CPU resources and leak memory all over the place beggers belief, it's just shoddy programming. I blame Microsoft myself for it's Visual drag and drop nonsense. *mutter* Bloatware, the lot of it.

What started me going (this time) was a friend's uncle bought a copy of the Diehard game for his shiny new Packard Bell.

"It crashes, same point, every time"
"Hmmm? What's in it ... No, what's the spec of your machine...
I don't know, but the salesman at PC World (= Dixons) assured me it would do everything
"Ah!"
"..."
"Soooo, on the advice of some spotty herbert who likely knows diddly squat and is probably getting commission for pushing the machine that has the highest margin, you spend how much exactly?"

Irony is wasted on some folk. End analysis, he just spent £999 on some cost shaving system with just 256Mb of memory and a 40Mb drive, plus a now aging P4 1.8Ghz and a budget integrated board based on the SIS650 chipset. Needless to say he wasn't happy when I said I could have built him a better machine for £300 less. Adding insult to injury, is was the onboard graphics card that stuffed up his game. Game patch from Sierra didn't help so I've given him a driver update from SIS.

The point of all this drivell? I've been in computers long enough to be a dinosaur. I fondly remember doing assembly and dBase on 5Mhz IBM's, It's not so long ago that I was in awe of the Pentium 50Mhz DX's. In the blink of an eye I now sit here typing on my five year old daughters' 550Mhz while I wait for my 2,533Mhz - all the time knowing that in a few years I will be installing 10,000Ghz while giving the 2,533Mhz to a neighbour for a door stop...

... In the meantime there's similar folk all over the world too dumb to seek proper advice before laying out a four figure sum to some equally clueless salesperson* for something they barely understand. Oh look, it's shiny, I want one!

Tell me I'm wrong!

* "All our specialised staff are trained to the highest degree", bemoan the chain stores.
Oh yes, that's why they are on minimum wages of like £5 an hour instead of consultants on tenfold that. That why I can stand in awe as these specialists when asked "What's the dot pitch?" reply "It's SVGA" or the completely blank look if you ask a simple technical question like "it is SDRAM or DDR and what rate is it" Try it, really, it's a riot!


Incidentally, while my stats show memory prices steadily falling, they appear set to rise again over the coming months, thought the figures put out suggest only 5-10 percent. You can see far more that that between any number of distributers on a dfaily basis though. Personally, I half believe some of the reasons I've heard banded about, which largely relate to fab changes, particularly for DDR chips, but if I see any more nonesense like price doubling I will kick off.   *Mutters "cartel" under his breath*

BT digs in?

It's going round the press (yet again) that a lot of folk are ticked off over BT dragging it's heels over ADSL and pricing it high to protect it's (grossly overpriced) ISDN and leased lines.
No kidding!
Real-Time Communications want just $349 a month for a 1.54Mb/s T1 () - A tiny fraction of what BT are charging...

Always good for a laugh!
Anybody who knows anything about computers will know that trade margins are generally slimmer than pencil shavings. So when some clown advertises themselves as being:

... you just have to look, to see what the scam is!

Let's forget all the obsolete stuff like 64Mb SDRAM. At PC Trade Club they sell refurbished equipment (= second hand) and there is no way of telling if these are old stock items, "chip pulls", bankrupt supplies from auctions or what, so lets looks at some safe bets...

I looked at about a dozen parts and as can be seen above, I was not even vaguely impressed. The first three items I picked were up to £50 (20 percent) cheaper elsewhere - and that is retail!   Now I won't say they don't have items that are as cheap as they claim, but if they have, I suspect it will just be what the supermarkets call "loss leaders" a few items sold at a loss to get people in to buy the overpriced items.

As far as I am concerned, the work they have put into their website is lost to a dubious sales gimmick that makes them look like cowboys. It doesn't help that the "about us" link is a blank page yet the T&C, listing the company as "Instant Ecommerce Ltd", goes on for several pages of legal gobbledigook.

There are computer resellers locally that I can undercut by 30 percent without even trying and if I chose I can find wholesalers and undercut their prices by 30 percent too. Should I then open a website promising savings of 60% ? 100% even ?

Using a MS XP Home (from an authorised distie) what do you reckon for the following spec:

AMD Duron 900, 128Mb, 40Gb, 15" monitor and the usual extras

£589 inc vat ?
£489 inc vat ?
£389 inc vat ?
less... ?

Well, the top price is what one local dealer advertises as his "Summer Special", except only he was using a 20Gb drive and MS Windows 98se. The last one? I am not saying, but if I chose to start another company I could and likely would put every reseller in a 5 or 10 miles radius to the wall. So what's stopping me? Well, corporates aren't spending and retail customers get on my nerves!

You see where I am going...

Basically, my advice is take everything with a pinch of salt and shop around, whatever it is you are looking for. You know the worst folk for penny pinching? Those with money - and how do you reckon they got that way!? It was a wise man who first coined the phrase "Don't believe the hype."




THE LATEST INTEL ROADMAPS
Compliments of The Inquirer, here's a look at coming P4 533 prices.

As far as I can tell, here's the prices for September 1st - naturally these are for trays of 1,000

The 2.80GHz will cost $508 at launch
The 2.66GHz will cost $401
The 2.53GHz will cost $243
The 2.40GHz will cost $193
and 2.26Ghz will cost $193 also

In the fourth quarter of this year Intel will introduce the 3.06GHz - with hyperthreading. The 3.20GHz 90nm Prescott processor is to appear in the second half of 2003. I'll betting for early yields and March myself....

Computer gamers have under-developed brains
I found think wee link in my backlog traytray. Apparently computer games only stimulate activity in the bits of the brain associated with vision and movement. Maths exercises however stimulate the frontal lobe - an area of the brain associated with an individual's self control. A more stimulated and developed frontal lobe helps the individual to use self-control to stop violent or anti-social behaviour.

*Nods in understanding*

Oh yes, my son is getting more Maths and reading...

WD Kicks IDE Drives To 200 Gbytes

PC1066 Memory: Worth the Price? [article link dead]
ExtremeTech's have done an excellent set of tests to help you decide the worth of PC1066 Rambus vs other options. The basic result is that unless you're a hardcore gamer looking to upgrade to a 850e, don't bother.

Bear in mind also the dual-channel DDR-II memory is the next big thing and that's only a year or so away...

Radeon 10 000 (R300) to implement 128-bit colour [article link dead]

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Collector's Edition
Meanwhile, on the gaming from, I don't know whether is will reach the shores of England, but Warcraft III will also be available in a collectors edition - T-shirt anyone ?

On a sadder note...
In seems "off the page" UK dealers Dan Technology and Panrix have gone pear shaped and joined Tiny in the growing list of industry veterans who have gone to the wall or been swallowed by bigger fish for a pittance.

Samsung preps DDR II DRAM
Samsung has announced an industry first, a high-density 512Mb DDR-II memory chip. These are only the prototypes they are developing to the new JEDEC DDR-II standard. These should be available in volume for fall of next year (Autumn 2003).

PentiumŪ 4 with 533 MHz system bus and the IntelŪ 850E chipset.
[broken link]
Check out Intels product info on the latest go-faster chip and associated chipset.

IBM bows out of harddrive business
Apparently, IBM, the originator of hard-drives has had enough of losing money on the things and has sold the shop to Hitachi.
*Mutters* "Given the last IBM drive I sent back it's not a moment too soon"

Intel revs up the P4's
Here's a roadmap abbreviation from the above article...

1.8Ghz Willamette-128K Celerons will be available from June, the 1.9Ghz from Q3

Around June, July Intel will position the 2.26GHz, 2.40GHz and 2.53GHz Pentium 5s with 533MHz FSBs as offering the best price/performance and longevity. The 2.26GHz will be an entry point for the 533MHz front side bus machines.

April 14th the P4 prices (qty) should read:

2.2  at $423
2.0a at $284
2.0  at $262
1.9   at$225

At the introduction of the 533MHz front side bus chips, the P4P 2.40GHz will cost $562, the same as the 400MHz part costs now.

On the 26th of May the picture becomes:

2.4  at $400 - in both bus flavours
2.26 at $241
2.2   at $241
2.0a at $193
2.0   at $193
1.9 at $173
1.8 at $163
1.7 at $143.

At launch the Pentium 4 2.53GHz and 2.5Ghz will both cost $637
See also 14th April next Intel pricing landmark


Intels at 2.4Ghz and climbing
A few reports are filtering though that Intels 2.4Ghz chips are ready and shipping, quantity prices being set at $560 or £334. More likely to equate to £560 when it retails over here. At least it looks likely that Intel will drop there chip prices this coming quarter. The 2.2Ghz chip (one off trade) is still over £400 a pop.

Of far greater interest to me is the upcoming 850e chipset with its faster 533Mhz system bus. These are expected to start shipping on May 6th and should also include USB v2.0 as standard, though you are limited to onlt Rambus memory. The associated chip is the 845g which I know a number of manufacturers have planned for release.

Related links...
Faster Pentium 4 desktop chips on tap
Intel launches 2.4GHz P4
There's nothing about these evident from Intel yet, but here's there products page

Mar 12th - Just DO NOT get me started...

I've sat on the fence awhile now deciding on which video card I wanted for my next upgrade. Do I go with the GeForce 4600 or the ATI 8500?   What the beggery is it with the English ? I look and look and yet I can't see "mug" tattooed on the forehead of everyone.

*Throw hands up in the air in disgust and continues his rant*

The best (trade only) prices I've managed to get for the above cards are still vastly more expensive than the same unit from any computer shop Stateside. Reality check here. Video cards tend to be shipped in containers and I can assure you it does not cost £100,000 to sail a lorry load of video cards over. And you can't even get the GeForce4 when you try!

Mar 7th: Thanks for the memory...
It's already a given that, amazingly, Intel are not doing a price reduction this quarter.*   Now, according to gossip on the distribution grapevine and continuing what I said last month, memory could be in for a stiff hike in the new few days. (Expect some flimsy excuse).

Don't scream at me if I get it wrong, but my gut feeling is that memory will experience incremental raises from now through July, then level off before falling dramatically around October.

Elsa files for bankrupcy
Graphics veteran Elsa seems to have joined the long long list of casualties in the computer industry. I can remember when the number of graphics companies was into the numbers and even the top eschelons numbered close to 20. Now for all intents and purposes, it's a down to a two horse race with Nvidia and ATI. I wonder who will buy them up for their patents...

Memory prices to rise again...
There's a begger and no mistaking it. I should have bought a rack of memory when is was at an all time low last October and November. Since December memory prices have risen six times and a new rise is in the offing - another 20% increase coming on the back of the others. According to form, prices will remain at this level and even rises more and more until at least late summer. We shall see...

2Gb CDR anyone ?
TDK Corp says it will deliver a $199 36/24/40X drive which is backwards compatible with current CD-R and CD-RW media but added a 2GB "super-size mode."   The new 2Gb media ML-R (write-once) and ML-RW (rewritable) are expected to sell $2 and $3 apiece, respectively.

Toshiba up the ante with 30Gb media
Toshiba Corp. are to show off a 120-mm DVD-RAM disc and optical head capable of reading and writing 30 Gbytes on a single layer at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas.

Tiny Tim? Tiny Time more like!
The UK's second largest PC box shifter finally went pear shaped and was more or less rescued by Time Computers who bought them out of recievership. Same old, same old, eh. Are computer margins on a knife edge or what...

Memory - remind me again why it's on the increase...
Tier one PC makers snapping up DDR parts Nanya hikes prices by 25%

Here's my view, supported by years of experience, cynicism and a few recent comments from trade: Pha!!!
Sales are way way up, therefore cost per unit is proportionally less through economies of scale. Therefore they put the price up because they can. Gotta love scare mongering for the way it boosts profits, eh...

Big, bold n' bad. I want one!
Maxtor now make 160Gb ATA133 drives - internal and an external firewire version. Pity it's only running at 5,400 rpm, but nice for all that.

Decisions decision. Do I get the ATI 8500 or the GeForce Ti500 ?
Begger it, maybe I'll wait for the GeForce 4 being released this month... or the 128Mb Radeon...

BestBuy.com are offering VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600 128MB DDR at just $399. At current rates, that's just £238 ex vat (£279 inc).

ATI are refreshing their lineup of Radeon graphics cards.
From March, ATI will offer a retail graphics board featuring its Radeon 8500LE chip priced at $199, featuring a whopping 128-Mbytes of DDR memory. The Radeon 8500 will now also feature 128 MB of DDR memory, but will maintain its suggested retail price of $299.

Full low down on the NVidia's GF4 [Extremetech article link dead]
Check out Dr Tom's reviews too

GeForce4 Ti 4600. A core clock speed of 330MHz and memory clock speed of 660MHz, combined with 128MB DDR SDRAM provide the ultimate graphics experience with revolutionary technologies such as: nFiniteFX"! II engine for complex geometry and animation, Accuview Antialiasing"! for unbeatable visual quality and frame rate, as well as nView for multiple display flexibility and user control.

ASUS V8440 Series GeForce4 Ti 4400 Graphics Card has a core clock speed of 300MHz and memory clock speed of 550MHz, combined with 128MB DDR SDRAM provides exceptional performance in all the latest games and applications

Watford supposedly offered Gainward GeForce 4's at only £323 for the top end Ti-4600.

Geforce 4 pix won't go away

Nvidia: the leakiest barge on the canal? Nview screenshots

Asus jumps gun on Geforce 4   PR Watch Oops...

And for the future? McKinley, son of Merced...
McKinley, Intel's upcoming server processor is due out this summer. According to Intel "Applications will be about one and a half to two times faster than what you get on a (current) Itanium".
The stats:

• 3MB level three cache
• 256KB level two cache
• 32KB level one cache.
• 221 million transistors.
• 1GHz to start
• 180nm process giving a massive 464 square mm chip
• System bus will be 128 bits wide, offering 6.4GB/s and running at 400MHz.
  Merced is 2.1GB/s, 64 bits wide and running at 266MHz

2003
will see this replaced by Madison, (basically a smaller, faster McKinley made to 130nm), and Deerfield, a low-power, cheaper Itanium chip.

2004
Out with the old in with the new - Montecito replaces Madison

2005-2006
Same old, same old - smaller, faster, hotter - Chivano replaces Montecito's. Should be up around the 5Ghz mark about then...

See also The Register

According to Intels briefs, by 2007, the processor will be approaching the impossible, but needs must when the devil drives eh. Here's how and when they pass 1 Trillion instructions per second....   Fascinating if you like the techie stuff to chew over

AMD roadmap in graphics
Check out this low-down on the upcoming chips...

and a complimentary page on VIA motherboard chipsets - including the (Athlon based) K8 HTB (Hyper Transport Bridge) which supports AGP 8X and Vlink 533MB/s.

See also:

The Inquirer article   -  


Inside RAM: Which Kind is Right for You?

"Buying fast RAM can be like putting premium in a car that only needs regular--a waste of money. But choosing the right RAM can make a tangible difference in your system's performance. Within the limitations imposed by what your motherboard can handle, you need to choose the memory that suits your processor and your applications best. Our guide gives you the information you need."

[ Link to original full ExtremeTech story broken ]


Soundblasters Audigy rocks locks!
Apparently SB's Audigy soundcards are causing merry hell for a number of XP users. Folk are experiencing locks up when using Windows XP and NT. From the reports I've read, drivers are suspected as the cause of this glitch as it doe not effect Windows 98 users. Apparently this "squeak of death is a begger as there's no one cause. I'll keep you posted.

Extreme : Here's an in depth article on everything that rocks about the Audigy.

March 15th - problem sussed!
Extremetech have reported the problem as relating to PCI track errors on just or or two motherboards such as the one used in the Dell 8200. A bios patch is the answer, but check with Creative first...