Intel Developer Forum Just a few hours before a gaggle of British hacks headed out of overheated Palm Springs, we overheard a conversation that stopped us in our tracks. We were sitting by the poolside bravely quaffing some Michelobs and Banquet Coors, when a group of Inteleers and customers came out on the veranda for a sly cigarette or two. One customer was asking why it was that the i820 with Direct Rambus memory is outperformed by a BX mobo using SDRAM (synchronous DRAM). He had been to an Intel presentation where a graph demonstrated that anomaly and had asked the speaker to explain it to him. The Intel speaker couldn't, but said: "If it says it on the slide, it must be true." Ahem. Regular readers will be well aware that there is currently a massive shortage of BX parts. Without being conspiratorial about it, there couldn't be a connection between the two, could there? At IDF, we also picked up a copy of a Platform bandwidth test for the i820 which we hope to take a shrewd look at in the near future. Note, this is not a benchmark. As Pat "Kicking" Gelsinger said in a press conference earlier in the week: "There are lies, lies and benchmarks". ®