AMD Athlon Quad FX Platform Review
Perfect for those with money to burn and a small nuclear generator looking for a use.

All I can say is if this isn't crazy enough, next year you will be able to buy Octo (8) core systems. When does this insanity stop? I have recently pointed out that dual core systems for the general public is more than enough. More importantly, there is still not full programming support of dual core systems, let alone quad core systems. We won't even broach Octo Core systems. The other problem is power consumption. That "beefy" 850 watt supply you just bought will just get you by with these systems. Consider this under load these consume over 500 watts of power. Remember that is just the cosumption of the 4 cpu's, nothing else. Bottom line, your wasting your money purchasing these systems.

f you take a look back at the microprocessor industry, and more specifically the battles between Intel and AMD over the last few years, you see that a see-saw pattern of enthusiast market dominance tends to emerge. We see either Intel or AMD on top for a while, then due to an ambitious product launch or manufacturing delay, the reigning king is usually dethroned and the cycle starts over. The enthusiast segment is the cream of the crop for both companies, and although there isn’t a lot of volume in $999 processors, bragging rights that your’s are the fastest in the world provides marketing leverage that cannot be purchased. AMD was the first to reach 1GHz (And [H] was the first to destroy one!) while Intel dominated the Athlon XP with the Pentium 4, but then the Athlon 64 emerged and single-handedly whipped Intel for three years running. Fast forward to present day and Intel’s Conroe chip remains dominant on the desktop front, with the company’s Kentsfield quad-core chip the dominant performance leader at the ultra high end.

Get the Lead Out AMD

So what’s been taking so long for AMD to get their quad-core CPU out on the market? It really boils down to manufacturing ability, which points out one of the most, if not the most, significant advantages Intel has over AMD. The fact of the matter is that Intel has many more fabrication facilities that feature more advanced manufacturing processes than AMD, allowing the company to make more next-generation processors at a cheaper cost while bringing the technology to market more quickly. Intel has been producing 65nm wafers in volume for months and is slated to start producing 45nm wafers in the second half of 2007 while AMD is barely producing 65nm wafers and 45nm product is off somewhere into 2008.

This in essence is why AMD isn’t launching a native quad-core CPU to go head-to-head against Intel’s Kentsfield based Core 2 QX6700. AMD needs a smaller package to bridle all the quad-core performance and keep it inside a manageable power envelope. Instead, the company is using what it has readily available and launching its Quad FX platform today (affectionately known as the “4X4”) with the AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 and accompanying NVIDIA nForce 680a chipset and ASUS motherboard.

Read all about it here courtesy of hardocp.com.

-Eric

Court sides with alleged "vacation" spammer
From the "Stranger than Fiction Files" comes this "genius" court ruling.

When antispam activist Mark Mumma received unsolicited e-mails advertising cruise vacations two years ago, he posted a report on his Web site and threatened to sue Omega World Travel.

But Mumma met with an unpleasant surprise: He was the one sued in federal court by Omega World Travel and its subsidiary Cruise.com, which demanded $3.8 million in damages for defamation. Mumma, who owns Oklahoma-based MummaGraphics and runs a one-man Web design and hosting shop at Webguy.com, filed counterclaims against the companies and CEO Gloria Bohan.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the alleged spammers. In a little-noticed opinion issued in mid-November, a three-judge panel acknowledged the e-mail messages in question may have included a false Internet address and a nonworking "From:" address, but concluded that they nevertheless were permitted under the federal antispam law known as the Can-Spam Act.

"The Can-Spam Act preempts MummaGraphics' claims under Oklahoma's statutes," Judge James Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in an opinion published November 17 (click here for PDF).

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET.com:

Eric

Vista adoption to outpace Windows XP, analyst say
If you believe this, then I have some wonderful ocean front property in Utah I would like to sell you...

(Don't believe the hype, this "adoption" is because of upgrade certificates.)

Adoption of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system will happen at a faster pace than any previous operating system release, a software analyst predicted last week.

Up to 15 percent of PC users will move to Vista within the first year that the operating system is available, said David Mitchell, the software practice leader at Ovum Ltd. "That would make it the fastest-moving operating system ever," he said.

By comparison, between 12 to 14 percent of users switched to Windows XP during the first year of its release, Mitchell said.

Vista gain traction in the market from quick adoption by both corporate and consumer users. For example, companies that participate in Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing program will automatically get upgrades to Vista, Mitchell said. "On the consumer side, there has been a bit of pent-up demand. Just look at the beta adoption in the consumer space -- it's very high," he said.

Vista will be available to business customers from November 30, with the operating system available to consumers from January. For users who buy a new computer before Vista is released to consumers, Microsoft is now shipping Vista upgrade coupons with computers that are sold with Windows XP.

Read all about it here courtesy of ITworld.com:

-Eric

Play iPods on in-flight entertainment systems
Coming soon to an iPod friendly airline near you!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Airline passengers will be able to connect their iPods to in-flight entertainment systems and watch their favorite videos without fear of running out of battery power while traveling on any of at least four major carriers, iPod maker Apple Computer Inc. said on Tuesday.

Continental Airlines , Delta Air Lines , Dubai's Emirates , and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines will begin offering their passengers iPod seat connections, which power and charge iPods during flight and allow the video content on the devices to be viewed on seat-back displays.

Apple has sought to expand the possible uses for its market-dominating iPod, including deals to build iPod ports into new-model cars. The announcement came as rival Microsoft Corp. launched its Zune digital music player on Tuesday in a bid to challenge the iPod.

Apple said in its statement that Air France and KLM were also part of the agreement. However, those two airlines said it was premature to be definitive.

"It's way too early to confirm any such details," said an Air France spokeswoman, referring to the iPod seat connectivity and a mid-2007 availability date.

Read all about it here, courtesy of washingtonpost.com.

-Eric

Window's Live OneCare flags Gmail as a Virus
Coincidence or another example of ineptness? Hmmm...

Gmail's popularity may be viral, but the e-mail software is not a virus--despite a Microsoft alert.

From late last week until Sunday night, the Windows Live OneCare security software incorrectly flagged the Google e-mail service as a threat. A warning popped up when OneCare users opened the Gmail Web site, telling them that their systems were infected with a virus called "BAT/BWG.A."
"This was a limited false positive issue with our antivirus protection," a Microsoft representative said Monday. "After we became aware of the issue, we released a new antivirus signature that resolved the issue for our customers on Sunday evening."
The problem started last week, when Google made some changes to its Gmail Web site, Microsoft said. The software maker is reviewing its procedures and processes in order to minimize the occurrence of further false positives, the Microsoft representative said.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.com.

-Eric

Vista vs. Leopard
The two OS heavywights step into the comparo ring to slug it out.

At its recent WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple sought to steal some of Microsoft's thunder by releasing just enough details of its next OS (operating system), Leopard, to make an early comparison to the forthcoming Windows Vista possible. Staying true to form, then.

It seems as though we've been talking about Vista for ages, and although RC1 (Release Candidate One) came out in September, it's likely to be February before most of us see the finished article. However, its features and general look and feel are fairly common knowledge -- and now we have something tangible to compare it to.

Implementation strategies Leopard is an upgrade to Mac OS X, whereas Vista replaces Windows XP almost entirely. Both Apple and Microsoft released OSes in the autumn of 2001 -- Apple's was OS X Puma; Microsoft's was Windows XP. The difference is that XP is still the current version of Windows, while Apple followed up Puma with Jaguar, Panther and Tiger – Apple has a lots-of-incremental-upgrades philosophy, compared with Microsoft's big-upgrade-once-in-a-blue-moon approach. The two major service packs for XP have been relatively feature-light.

Leopard looks to be idiosyncratic and entertaining in a way it's hard to imagine a Microsoft product being. The first major Leopard feature demoed at Steve Job's WWDC keynote was Time Machine, a backup utility that lets you step back to earlier versions of your system and files. This is not a revolutionary idea -- and Microsoft is planning a vaguely similar function for Vista -- but Time Machine's UI (user interface), which involves windows flying through space, is quirky and fun. By contrast, Vista has no strong sense of personality.

We're not saying it's always good for an OS to be playful -- we know people who gnash their teeth even at the way Mac OS X Dock icons bob up and down when it's alerting you to something -- but this contrast has become a defining difference between the two products.

Read all about it here, courtesy of ITworld.com:

-Eric

MacMall offers Windows XP pre-installed on Macs
I have no idea why, but you can have WinXP and your OSX on one machine.

Catalog reseller MacMall on Thursday announced that it’s now configuring bundles of new Apple MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, Mac Pros and Mac minis with Windows XP pre-installed, either using Apple’s Boot Camp beta software or Parallels Desktop for Mac to help run the alien operating system.

Up until now, Mac users buying new hardware from MacMall have had to do it themselves, and while Apple and Parallels have taken great pains to make the installation process as painless as possible, it’s still fraught with a few perils, and requires you to have your own licensed copy of Windows to install.

MacMall offers the bundles with either Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional pre-installed.

Read all about it here, courtesy of macworld.com

-Eric

GeForce 8800 series GPU technology code named “G80.”
NVIDIA Releases the first of DX10 video cards - the next big thing in video games?

Introduction

The day has finally arrived, the first DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0 graphics hardware is here and NVIDIA is the first out of the gate. And this happens to be another hard-launch as we have come to expect from NVIDIA and its partners! Not only is NVIDIA introducing new hardware but it is a totally new architecture that was built with completely new ideas for supporting the next DirectX version.

DirectX

This type of event does not happen often. Microsoft’s DirectX releases have always been a big turning point in the graphics industry and the impact on the industry has grown with each release. The last major Microsoft DirectX upgrade was in December of 2002 when DirectX 9.0 was released for Windows. We’ve been utilizing DirectX 9 as the 3D API for Windows for four years. DirectX 9.0c was released in the interim with Shader Model 3.0 that supported the ability to run longer shaders, but it more allowed faster “wet and bumpy-looking” shaders than anything else.

The next version of DirectX is DirectX 10 also referred to as D3D10. DirectX 10 will be released alongside Windows Vista early in 2007. DirectX 10 will be Windows Vista only; you will not find it coming to Windows XP. To learn more about DirectX 10 please read our article: DirectX 10 & the Future of Gaming. Pay close attention to the benefits of using a Unified Architecture system as the 8800 GPU reflects how the API and the hardware are literally made for each other.

Where We’ve Been

The introduction of NVIDIA’s new GeForce 8 series GPUs can be likened to the release of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro in the late summer-early fall of 2002. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro was the first GPU to sport DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0 capability before DirectX 9 was released. ATI stepped forward with this support while NVIDIA was spinning its wheels with DirectX 8 hardware. NVIDIA was late to the party with their first DirectX 9 GPU the GeForce FX series and for the DirectX 9 games of the time it turned out to be a flop, plain and simple. The GeForce FX series was loud, had shader image quality problems and was slow at DirectX 9 shader performance.

It was at this time that we had our revelation [HERE] [HERE] [HERE] that graphics were changing in a big way and the previous way of “benchmarking” was simply the wrong way to evaluate the current DirectX 9 video cards. It was time to stop looking at pure framerate and worrying about how many “pipelines” a video card has and start worrying about what the gameplay experience differences were between video cards. DirectX 9 ended up not only being an turning point for the graphics industry but also for us here at [H]ardOCP in the way we evaluated that hardware. “Reviews” were out and “evaluating the gaming experience” supplied by the hardware in question was in.

NVIDIA did redeem themselves a year later with the introduction of the GeForce 6 series GPUs. This new breed was a completely new architecture from the GeForce FX series and fixed all the problems with DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0 shader performance and also introduced Shader Model 3.0 support as well as a little feature we’ve all come to enjoy now called High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting. After the GeForce 6 series came the GeForce 7 series which further improved shader performance and added a few new features. NVIDIA has had a good run with the GeForce 6 and 7 series but now it is time for one GPU hardware vendor to step forward and take the reigns on DirectX 10, and NVIDIA is the one stepping up the plate and swinging hard.

Read all about it here, courtesy of hardocp.com:

-Eric

Revenge of the Spam
This is the sequel no one wants to see.

Everybody's seen it by now. Spam is up like gangbusters in the last few months. And not just in volume; a lot more of it is getting through filtering mechanisms that had previously been pretty reliable. It's an aggravating and depressing situation.

A number of factors have contributed to the situation, and what they all have in common, unfortunately, is that spammers are getting much more sophisticated.

Botnets have gotten so sophisticated that they're almost impossible to shut down. This surge of spam is, perhaps, a show of strength, as well as the botmasters exercising the fruits of their efforts developing an underground network.

How big is the surge? Postini, the largest hosted secure e-mail provider out there, handling over 1 billion messages a day, ought to know, and know in real time. The company says spam volume is up 120 percent over the last year, but 59 percent in the last two months. That's in line with numbers I've heard bandied about elsewhere, and it's a huge rate of increase.

Another factor is what security vendor Borderware calls "anti-anti-spam spam," meaning spam that attempts to defeat anti-spam measures. Spammers have learned all sorts of tricks.

Read all about it here, courtesy of eweek.com:

-Eric

Zune problems for MSN customers
Micro$oft does what it does best, shooting themselves in thier collective foot

People who have bought music from Microsoft's MSN Music store could face problems if they decide to buy the firm's new Zune portable player.

Microsoft has said it will stop selling music from MSN music from 14 November, when Zune goes on sale in the US.

But in a move that could alienate some customers, MSN-bought tracks will not be compatible with the new gadget.

The move could also spell problems for the makers of MP3 players which are built to work with the MSN store.

Slice of the action

The problem has arisen because tracks from the MSN Music site are compatible with the specifications of the Plays For Sure initiative.

This was intended to re-assure consumers as it guaranteed that music bought from services backing it would work with players that supported it. MSN Music, Napster, AOL Music Now and Urge all backed Plays For Sure as did many players from hardware makers such as Archos, Creative, Dell and Iriver.

In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: "Since Zune is a separate offering that is not part of the Plays For Sure ecosystem, Zune content is not supported on Plays For Sure devices."

The spokesperson continued: "We will not be performing compatibility testing for non-Zune devices, and we will not make changes to our software to ensure compatibility with non-Zune devices."

Read all about it here, courtesy of:

-Eric

What Intel’s flagship Core 2 Extreme Quad Core is good for?
That is the million or should I say billion dollar question...

It's kind of crazy already. There has not even been time to write or re-write code, or programs that take full advantage of dual core processors. Now we have quad core. Just as I said before, the benefit of these processors DO NOT outweigh the benefit of the technology at this point in time. Until there are programs that can take full advantage of this technology, these chips will be doing there best in the bragging rights departments. So do yourself a favor, especially if your a gamer or someone who doesn't multi-task and snap up some great deals on single or and "lower line" dual core chips.

While attending Intel’s Developer Forum in San Francisco this September, we were given one hour to do some rudimentary testing with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme Quad Core QX6700, their quad-core processor code named “Kentsfield.” Although we didn’t draw any hard conclusions after our brief testing, it was evident that there would be significant performance improvements depending on the applications being utilized. Now that we’ve had the CPU on our test bench for almost a month we think we have a good handle on just what Intel’s flagship Core 2 Extreme Quad Core is good for. We have been using it daily for our own applications, not just for benchmark purposes, and have gotten a very good feel for the hardware. For discussion purposes here, we will refer to this new processor as the "Core 2 Quad" in order to simply things a bit.

Thanks to Intel for actually giving [H] Enthusiast time enough to use the processor instead of just enough time to benchmark it.

Read all about it here, courtesy of hardocp.com:

-Eric

Cheap PC's for the holidays?
With the delay of Vista, means an abundance of cheap pc's ready for a good home.

To Move Soon-to-Be-Dated Models,
Makers Sell at Rock-Bottom Prices

By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON and ROBERT A. GUTH
November 2, 2006; Page B1

For personal-computer makers, the new year can't come soon enough. Until then, the normally healthy holiday season might look like a going-out-of-business sale.

That unpleasant prospect stems from Microsoft Corp.'s decision earlier this year to delay the broad introduction of its Windows Vista operating system until next January. The news struck a blow to Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., Gateway Inc. and the rest of the $200 billion U.S. industry, which for decades had enjoyed the tailwind of a new release of Microsoft software -- particularly when it coincided with the holiday selling season.

Now PC makers are scrambling to entice consumers to open their wallets and not wait until the end of January, when Vista is expected to be available to consumers. Some of the planned incentives are typical -- larger screens, bigger hard drives and new hardware colors -- but many industry observers say the most powerful sales tool will also be the most painful: rock-bottom prices.

Current Analysis, a research firm that tracks weekly PC sales, estimates that, thanks in part to Vista's delay, 70% of notebook PCs sold this holiday season will be priced at less than $1,000. That compares with just 38% of notebook PCs at less than $1,000 in 2004. "It's going to be a blowout sale," says Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis

At electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc., the price of 17-inch-wide notebooks is falling to less than $1,000 from about $1,300 a year ago, says Elliot Becker, vice president and merchandising manager of technology. In September, Sony Corp. started offering its N-series notebook at less than $1,000 for the first time.

"We expect to see the apex of price degradation to occur this holiday," says Mike Abary, vice president of marketing for Sony's Vaio PC brand.

The price slashing underlines how the PC industry continues to be dependent on new Microsoft software. Vista is the biggest overhaul of Microsoft's operating system in 10 years, when the Redmond, Wash., software maker cemented its PC-software monopoly with the hugely successful Windows 95. Its new operating system includes features such as better ways to search for information on a PC and what Microsoft says is vastly improved security. It will be available to big businesses at the end of this month and more broadly in late January.

Read all about it here, courtesy of online.wsj.com:

-Eric

BigFoot Networks Killer NIC: Killer Marketing or Killer Product?
Somthing tells me that there is some snake oil in that NIC...

Here we are today reviewing one of the more controversial personal computer products to be released in the last couple of years. If you thought the AGEIA PhysX product generated controversy about whether it was a viable product or not then you should read the comments around the Internet about the Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC. The phrase Snake Oil is one of the most commonly used online terms to describe the Killer NIC. While this did not surprise us given the aggressive marketing of the product, we think it is a bit unfair if the commenter has never actually used the product.

Hopefully our review today will prove or dispel this phrase. Of course our article commentary on the product just might inflame the masses into a further war of words on the subject. First, however, we need to revisit the first line of this paragraph. We really cannot call the article you are going to read today a review; it is more like an evaluation of a very controversial yet interesting product.

Yes, we will present data such as frame rates and ping times in several of the latest games available today. Along with this empirical data will also be NIC specific results, but our test results should only be used as part of an overall evaluation of the product. When it comes right down to it, the actual experience we will convey of using this product on a daily basis should be the crux of your purchasing decision.

At this time you might be thinking we drank some Snake Oil but let us explain our comments. Our test results cannot be accurately replicated by our readers, other review sites, or even ourselves in a very controlled environment. Our test results are accurate based upon the criteria we utilized at the time of testing but they cannot be consistently replicated. In some ways our testing was a grand experiment that provided more information about our network capability and broadband provider than the Killer NIC. Wow, maybe there was something in that glass besides water now that we think about it....

In actuality, figuring out how to properly test this beast of a card was somewhat perplexing at first, reached a frustrating crescendo, and even continues to be puzzling to some degree today. The problem lies in developing a set of benchmarks that will be consistent, repeatable, and fair. Those words consistent and repeatable sound so simple when using our standard benchmark suite on a daily basis, but they still haunt us to this day when testing this card.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Anandtech.com:

-Eric

U.S. Justice Dept probing Sony unit
There are sooo many inappropriate comments I could make about this headline, but I just won't... :)

OCT. 31 2:35 A.M. ET Sony Corp. said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Justice is probing its electronics unit.

The company received a subpoena from the Justice Department's antitrust division seeking information about Sony's static random access memory, or SRAM, business, company spokesman Atsuo Omagari said.

Sony intends to cooperate with the investigation, which it described as an industrywide probe without elaborating. Omagari declined to provide other details about the probe.

SRAM is a kind of computer memory that is faster and more reliable that DRAM, or dynamic random access memory. It does not need to be refreshed like DRAM, and it is also more expensive.

SRAM is found in relatively small quantities in personal computers. It's also used in disk drives, communications equipment and networking gear.

In 2005, Sony produced 3.3 billion yen ($27.7 million) worth of SRAM. The product is made by outside manufactures for Sony, which in turn sells the memory chips to other electronics makers, Omagari said.

He would not say who manufactures the chips for Sony or who Sony's customers were.

Earlier this month, U.S.-based chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor Corp. said its SRAM operations were also under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

A separate U.S. Justice investigation into price-fixing among DRAM companies has so far resulted in more than a dozen charges against individuals and more than $731 million in fines against Samsung Electronics Co., Elpida Memory Inc., Infineon Technologies AG and Hynix Semiconductor Inc.

Read all about it here, courtesy of buisnessweek.com:

-Eric