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Hardware Round-up Sites awash with AMD-Intel samples
We take a decko at some sites about
Both AMD and Intel are now beginning to seed the hardware sites with processors, and here you'll see Anandtech's review of the Pentium III 800MHz part...And mysteriously there is a whole raft of similar articles all over the Wibbly Wobbly Web. CPU Review has posted some benchmarks of scientific code running on AMD's Athlon processor. At Got Apex, there's a review of the Creative Annihilator Pro GeForce 256 DDR, a name that stumbles, rather than trips, off the tongue. Kyle Bennett at Hard OCP had to go to bed before he could finish his review of the Slocket 2. But he's managed to get some pix up...and he points to... ...this piece at Ars Technica, which explores the mysteries of that arcane acronym SCSI. ® 20 December 1999 Just when you thought you were entertained enough by the different industry wars that have broken out, a little side skirmish breaks out that helps you see everything in perspective. Sort of. According to 3D Hardware, a firm called Everglide is going ballistic because a number of sites have not yet reviewed its Ratpadz mousepad. And it seems Hard OCP has been caught up in this battle of the titans. (Err, titans were big and rats and mice are small, Ed). Away from this intriguing rat and mouse war for a while. Over at 3D Game Force, there's a review of a Quantum Atlas 18.2 GB hard drive. It costs $799 at the moment, but that price won't stay that high for that long. Who needs extra storage when Win2000 is on the way, we ask ourselves, pointlessly. Despite rumours to the contrary, AMD Zone is still up, running and thriving. So much so, that there's a re-design underway. You can have a look at the preview site here. ®
17 December 1999
There's an interesting review of Micron's Samurai technology over at
Tom's Hardware Page. While Intel fumbled away with the Camino i820 chipset and its now fabled little problem with Rambus technology, other mem manufacturers have been busy experimenting with double date rate (DDR) synchronous memory. And, according to these pages at least, DDR outperforms anything that Rambust can throw at the x.86 market thus far. Over at the
Super 7 Hardware Guidethere's a review of Iwill's Slocket II. This little gizmo is a Slot 1 to S370 convertor, for those who are interested in messing around with the messy PC platform. Athlon Power's mobos are generating quite a little bit of traffic at Bill Henning's
CPU Review site. Iwill, for example, mentioned above, has confirmed it will produce an Athlon Power mobo based on Via's KX-133 chipset in the first quartet of next year. If you're not a German speaker, get your Babelfish or Lernhowtospell software out of the cupboard and click over to
to our friends at c't, who have posted some Gigahertz Athlon info for your delectation. ®
16 December 1999 The 840 chipset
gets the thumbs up from Tom's Hardware Pages. The people who designed the chipset, which uses two channels for Rambus memory, are different from the nincompoops working on the 820 chipset -- and who presumably and by now have been fired. When we met the marchitect in mid-October, we asked why his team could make Rambus work when the other team couldn't. He refused to be drawn on this one. But the sad fact is that the 840 chipset despite its clear benefits, is going nowhere in Intel's future workstation and server roadmap… Over at
CDR Info, there is a review of Shinco's DVD player, which seems to do an awful lot for the price, including reading MP3 diskos. The lads over at
AMD Zoneare getting terribly excited about something but we can't for the life of us figure out what it is that's making their blood pump faster -- something to do with getting angry at machines as far as we old geezers can make out…. At
Sharky Extremethere's a hardware guide for Yule as well as this software (games) guide. Bill at
CPU Reviewhas posted a piece about the Cicero Hitatchi DVD kit what the company is flogging… ®
15 December 1999 3D Wars
has posted a review of an USB radio device from D Link. Unlike a crystal set which uses a cat's whisker, this device will link to the USB port on your machine, so much beloved by Intel's Pat "Kicking" Gelsinger. Remember the Intel i840 chipset and the famous Outrigger mobo, now re-named the OR840? This site
herehas obviously got hold of some Rambus RIMMs and has reviewed the mysterious mobo... One of our favourite overclocking sites is the amazing
Hard OCP. And, once more, the crazy Texan lad has come up trumps -- he is selling the Rat Pad for maniac mice. Young
JCis pointing to this rather intriguing page where you can apparently get some money for using an
ID Chip. ®
14 December 1999 JC
points to
Ninja Micro, which has information about FreeSpeed Pro. That uses the so-called Gold Fingers on the AMD Athlon for some serious overclocking stuff. And on the severe overclocking front,
Hard OCPmentions it has its mitts on a product called AfterBurner, which doesn't seem to need Gold Fingers at all. Intel doesn't seem to want people to overclock its processors, but AMD seems to positively encourage it...
Lost Circuitshas posted a review of the AMD Athlon 750, in which it concludes that Intel has finally been pipped to the post on price and performance measures. The
CPU Reviewhas posted a piece about Rambus and its future in the PC business. ®
10 December 1999There's a rather intriguing piece over at
Natural 3D Techand it's called the Intel IF project. It
couldbe an Athlon killer if Intel manages to get it out in time. It seems to relate to a secret project cooking in the Intel labs....
JCpoints to a box called the Perpetua, which uses a total of eight K6-III 450MHz processors and eight hard drives, and also has two so-called Athlon 750MHz compartments. What's it all about, Alphie? Check it out on his site. At
Sharky Extreme, there's a review of the Asus AGP-V6600 GeForce 256 Deluxe. You won't be able to stick this one in your i810e Intel mobo, but when Chipzilla gets out the 815 Solano, it will be a different kettle of fish.... And on the subject of the Athlon, which we weren't, go over to
Tom's Hardware Guidefor a review of the BCM QS750 motherboard, ignoring the "you are not authorised to read this" sign. ®
9 December 1999 Slot A
has now posted a list of 41 Athlon mobos on its site.
Sharky Extremehas posted a review of the 750MHz Athlon. The site concludes that it's blisteringly blistering. And continuing on this theme,
CPU Reviewhas completed its look at Via's KX-133 chipset.
Super Sevenhas reviewed Gigabyte's GA71-X mobo. The board again supports the Athlon and gets the thumbs up from the site. And your very clean glasses please. Our last item in the Athlon medley is a review of the Asus K7M mobo -- still well hidden on the Asus site -- which you can find
here... ®
8 December 1999
Ever wondered why mice must have tails? According to CL Chung, the inventor of so-called tailless mice, they don't need to. His web site which can be found
herehas details of what he describes as the shape of things to come... Bill Henning from
CPU Reviewhas forwarded a total of 16,306 names and email addresses to an Intel executive, after he organised a petition asking Chipzilla to allow SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) on Celeron processors....We await an answer, too. Here's one who haven't visited before. It's
3D Rage, a site that focuses on anything and everything that will get that extra megahertz of performance out of your system. Nicely designed, and well worth a visit. And here's another hardware site we hadn't visited before.
Splat 3Dlooks at the graphics market in quite a bit of detail. ®
7 December 1999
We're moving away from the usual suspects today, after we found a nice long list of hardware sites we hadn't seen before at
CPU Review. First we go to an Irish site, run by a 13 year old boy, hence giving Anand Shimpi severe competition on the age front. At
BK Computing, the prodigy posts news and seems to be following Windows 2000 particularly closely... Have a look, too, at
Fast Graphics, which we haven't visited before. The site has just posted an overclocking piece on GeForce.
Tech Reviewis a Malaysian site, which has recently looked at Motorola's SM56 Winmodem.
Mad Onionhas posted a 3D mark on its site. It's a benchmark, and goodness knows, we all need more of those... And tomorrow, we'll look at a few other sites we haven't visited, as well as checking out the usual suspects... ®
6 December 1999
Sharky Extreme reviews the AOpen AX63Pro, which uses a Via chipset and only costs around $80, and according to the
review, in many ways the mobo beats Intel chipset offerings hands down. And at
Game PC, there's a review of one of those hard-to-find-items, a 650MHz Intel Coppermine chip. At
Gamewire, there's a whole load of overclocking going on. This article discusses getting a GeForce256 to 160MHz/195MHz on an Athlon 700 overclocked to 750MHz. Interested in Quake III? There's a review of the recently released game
here. ®
3 December 1999 Tom's Hardware
takes a look at the Cape Cod i820 motherboard and takes a long hard look at the MTH and how it effects overall performance. He reckons the performance sucketh big time, and points out that when people finally get round to the Rambus version, the RIMMs are very, very expensive. Looks like Rambus, in the short term at least, is gonna be a fashion accessory... At
Hardware Onethere is a review of the TNC VR Viewcam, a USB camera for Internet videoconferencing and the like. There's some information on a KX133 AMD chipset over at
JC's pages, while he also points to some older chipset information as background. And
Sharky Extremehas a review of Raven Software's Soldier of Fortune, if you're a gaming sort of a geezer or geezerette. ®
2 December 1999 3D Now
has posted an interview about future AMD Athlon and 3DNow directions with some new material.
Sharkycontrasts and compares the two Caminogate boxed mobos Intel is selling (
are they for sale yet?, Ed). There's a review of a Freeway Super Seven mobo over
here. At
Hardware Onethere is a review of the Asus Athlon K7M motherboard. Asus now has a page devoted to the K7M, but it is as hard to find as a 733 Pentium III. The boys at Hardware One say: "Technically, I have no qualms recommending this motherboard to anybody. It's probably the most configurable Athlon edition in the market today and it performs well with good compatibility results (excluding GeForces' in general). Furthermore, I should add that the GeForce compatibility problem is inherent in all Athlon / Nvidia GeForce designs, so ASUS has nothing to do with its existence." ®
1 December 1999
The list of mobos for the Athlon keeps rising, rising. Check out
Slot A, for the list of 36 boards the site has garnered so far. There is a review of 3Dlabs' Oxygen GVX1 at Anandtech, which you can find
here. Young Kyle Bennett at
HardOCPhas posted a review of the V3 3000 PCI. And over at the good Doktor
Tom Pabst's site, there is a piece called Battle of the Titans, which compares the Creative Labs Annihilator with Leadtek's WinFast GeForce 256. ®
30 November 1999
At
Ars Technica, there is an illuminating piece about what you find inside a processor once you get rid of all that tacky plastic and ceramic on the outside. You may or may not be surprised to hear that Intel's Satan Clara office, when we visited it some years back, seems to have the same layout as a microprocessor. Loads of little cells and five layers in those days, and plenty of cash (sp?)...
Hardware Onehas posted a review of Creative's DDR based GeForce Pro. We don't normally refer to
the august pages of ZD Neton
The Reg, but would like just as a matter of record to say that once more the boys and girls have failed to get an Athlon machine to complete their set of benchmarketing tests. This says something, but we're not quite sure exactly what.... And so, finally, but not in the slightest leastly, over to
Game PC, which has reviewed the incredibly fishy-smelling CC820, otherwise known as Caminogate Cod. Chris Connolly (
too many letter 'c's here, ed), bunged in some PC-133 memory which seemed to work OK. The Caminogate Cod doesn't get a ringing endorsement.... ®
29 November 1999
Here we have a review of AMD's new 750MHz Athlon and at
Anandtech. And the 533 Celeron released in January gets a review too. We were only just writing about the Intel 533MHz Celeron due for release next year, and before you can say Jack Frost, there's a review up on the Web. This site is new to us. Go to
Natural 3D Techfor all the details. The lengths some people will go to cool down their CPUs and clockem up a bit have to be seen to be believed. And so, over at
this site, you will learn about a retail water/ice cooling system, a sort of a fridge on a chip. Back to some kind of reality at
Sharky Extreme, which reviews the RCA Lyra MP3 player. Whew.
RB Computinghas posted details of AMD's Easynow spex. Remember Intel's Concept PC stuff without legacy support? This is the Great Satan of Taperecorders answer. ®
25 November 1999Want to become an overclocking wiz?
Target PChas some advice for you... And
Sharky Extremehas updated its weekly microprocessor pricing chart... The boys at
Slot Ahave posted a review of the Gigabyte GA-71X mobo. And word reaches us that these boys, who also have
AMD Zonehave also got their mitts on the not-yet-up-and-running www.socketa.com too... Haven't been to
Ugeekfor a while, but this site is posting and hosting some rants and raves from readers.... ...and talking about rants and raves, check out this
Rant and Rave, which is classic of its time.... ®
24 November 1999 JC
has some info on his site claiming to give dates for future Coppermine processors from the Great Satan of Chips. He refers to a French site, which says that Intel will produce 866MHz and 933MHz parts in Q2 next year. He also says that Intel will speed up the Celeron to 633MHz by the end of Q4. Ah, you can't keep a good overclocker down. And at
this site, called Overclockin, there's a long hard look at some hard copper heatsinks which will let those crazy overclockers push their chips to the edge of the Abyss. More of that overclocking stuff
hereat the Overclockers Workbench. There's some software you can use to tweak that bus of yours. The good doctor
Tomwandered the halls of Comdex/Fall and checked out the mobos. There's a lengthy and informative piece here... ®
23 November 1999
The boys over at
RB Computingwho flog AMD kit have emailed me to say that the Athlon 750 will cost $783. This seems vastly unfair. Shouldn't it be a buck per MHz? This is more like the Anand Lal Shimpi we know and love. Because he went to Las Vegas last week, and presumably couldn't gamble, he's having to spend most of this week catching up on his homework. He went to see the new James Bond film while he was in Vegas. Check out the
storyhere. Cool and overclocked Kyle Bennett at
Hard OCPhas been on the wireless (radio). So you can finally listen to his dulcets... Vampires are out and about at
Sharky Extreme, which takes time out from mobos to check out a spooky game called Nocturne... ®
22 November 1999
We're sorry we missed this one until now, but
Virtual Zonereported at the end of last week that a Japanese engineer has over clocked one of the rare 733MHz Coppermine Pentium IIIs to 1239MHz, with a front side bus speed of 181MHz. If Mr Funo can do it, why not Intel's Mr Barrett, we ask ourselves....
Tom's Hardware Guidetakes a long look at Intel's utility which checks whether your CPU runs at the speed it oughta. This, of course, is quite different from the internal Intel utility
NEWSPEEDwhich allows you to mess about with clock speeds on engineering boards. Those long in the toothie-pegs may remember that pressure primarily from
c't, but aided and abetted by Dr Tom and your
Registerprobably persuaded Chipzilla into creating something like this.... There's a review of Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator over at
Sharky Extreme. This $250 board uses NVIDIA chip technology. After a tad of embarrassment a tad of weeks back, Asus seems to have got its act together and has finally posted a proper page about its AMD Athlon
K7Mboard. ®
19 November 1999 Tom's Hardware Guide
looks at graphics boards which offer more than just snazzy displays, but also feature video and recording functions. Anand Lal Shimpi has now posted his review of the S3 Savage 2000 (Diamond Viper II) over at the
Anandtechsite. It's a pretty thorough look at all of its features, tested with a number of CPUs. JC points to a post here on
Deja Newswhich will add fuel to the "is Intel bullying Taiwanese manufacturers or are they just frit all by themselves debate". The post purports to be from Epox.
BX Boardslooks at an Elite mobo that uses a Via chipset and comes with both a Slot 1 and a Socket 370 onboard. ®
18 November 1999
The hardware sites and friends of the hardware sites have been walking many a long mile through the spacious halls at Comdex/Fall attempting to find instances of Athlon motherboards. If you go
here, for instance, you will find one chap's report of the lack of presence of Athlon mobos. But the Abit guy he talked to seemed to be spitting blood at AMD rather than Intel, which is an unusual take on the story. This is echoed by the boys at
AMD Zone. Again, the lad tramped the halls of Comdex in search of positive support for the Athlon mobo from Taiwanese vendors. Some interesting information here. We'll let that sleeping dog lie for a while, but sticking with Comdex, it's well worth looking at the round up that
Sharky Extremehas posted. The site says that attendance at Comdex was well down, and the party budget was also reduced. There's also info about Microsoft's X Box, Abit's 820 motherboard, and other titbits. Japanese reader Battlax points us to
PC Watch, which also has considerable Comdex coverage. Here is some information about Gigabyte's Dual Socket 370 Slot 1 converter, which also offers flip chip 370 support. These pages are in Japanese, but thanks to Lernhowtospell software, we've got the gist of what Price Watch is saying. Many third party manufacturers were able to perform a miracle and produce mobos with more than two RIMMs... ®
17 November 1999 JC's Page
has some interesting details on the processors Via is showing at the Comdex trade show. The company has decided to stick to a biblical theme and is naming one of its next processors Samuel... And
AMD Zonehas also visited Comdex, and appears to have more verification of Gateway deciding to go with the Athlon in some of its machines. Paul de Mone at
Realworldtechhas posted some information on how he expects the up-and-coming Intel Itanium processor to compete against RISCy chips like the Alpha. There's a review at
The Singapore Hardware Zoneof the Asus P3B-F ATX motherboard by someone who calls himself CPU Zilla... ®
16 November 1999 Tom's Hardware Guide
has posted a review of the SuperG 1GHz Athlon using cryogenic technology we wrote up a while back. As we hinted a scoop or two ago, this is the result of a long collaboration between Kryotech and Advanced Micro Devices. Young
JC (24)has dug up some Intel dirt on CuMine performance, which shows that in some respects, CuMine does beat Athlon 700 technology. And in some respects, it doesn't... Mr Kyle Bennett at
Hard OCPhas been a digging on the possibility of tweaking the Flip Chip 370 so it works on older mobos too. We visited that one a while back, now Kyle explores it in all of its gruesome, techy detail. Mr Anand at
Anand Techis in Las Vegas but is possibly too young to gamble. Instead, he is exploring a new Gigabyte Slot A board for the Athlon... ®
15 November 1999
At
Ars Technica, there's a review of one of those phantom K7 mobos -- the Asus K7M. It comes in a plain white box, adding to its spooky look-and-feel, with no sign on it anywhere that it's made by Asus. You might remember that our reporter in Taipei, Simon Burns, got some interesting quotes out of the company when he asked them about this K7 board. Most of the hardware sites rate the K7M the best of the Athlon bunch so it's all a little more mystifying than it should be. While we're heading down that route, the petition to Taiwanese mobo makers now stands at around 17,000 individuals. That's a lorra mobos...
Sharky Extremehas done what the boys describe as a quick take of the S3 Savage 2000 Diamond Viper 16Mb board. While promising, it's not a GeForce 256 killer, the site reports. At
Overclockin, there's a review of two cooling products from 3DCool. Interestingly enough, we're now hearing euphemisms such as thermally accelerated from cooling vendors. Go to Overclockin to see what they have to say about the kit they're caboodling. ®
12 November 1999
News that AMD looks set for recovery because of strong sales of its Athlon and other processors, dominates many of the hardware sites.
AMD Zonereports that Gateway may well announce an Athlon machine towards the end of this month. The company was toying with the idea of producing high end desktops using the processor earlier on this year, but withdrew after Intel employed a cunning charm initiative with lots of $$$ in the crooning. The site also points out that AMD is claiming every Athlon it now makes uses a .18 micron process. JC, at
JC's Hardware Pages, has some very good coverage of the analyst meeting, together with links to Silicon Investor, AMD's slide and a heap of other stuff. He notes that one of the slides shows that a K6-III+ is in the offing. More Athlon news. Anand, at
Anand Tech, has revised part two of his Athlon buyer's guide to take account of level two cache settings that can be made. ®
10 November 1999
Abit will not produce a motherboard for the Athlon processor, according to the boys at
AMD Zone. They cite the reason as being that the CPU is primarily an OEM product. Fervid overclocker Kyle Bennett at
Hard OCPsays he has got his mitts on a couple of "Intel Confidential" Pentium IIIs which overclock very nicely indeed. He also takes a peek at the Soyo 6BA+IV. (Why can't these IT companies call their products something a little more memorable?) And again, on the overclocking front,
Anandtechhas posted a piece about how to rack up the speed of your Athlon machine. Afore we forget, keep
Kenneth's Tech Pagebookmarked. He keeps his eyes peeled for practically every story on the Wibbly Wobbly Web about PC hardware and CPUs. A good starting point if you're hunting for news. ®
9 November 1999
Paul DeMone at
Realworldhas posted a piece about Rambus memory which seems to confirm what the world+dog suspects: it's not as fast as it's painted to be. Quite a few of the hardware sites point to this
press releasefrom ALi, the Acer subsidiary. The new Aladdin chipset claims to give up to a threefold performance boost for the K6-2 and other Socket Seven processors. Over at Mr Anand's site, there is a
Buyer's Guideto Athlon motherboards from third party manufacturers.
Tom's Hardware Guidebrings information about ATI's Rage Fury Maxx, two Rage Pros on a single board. ®
8 November 1999
Here,
there is an interesting comparisonbetween Microstar's Athlon Irongate-based motherboard and the much acclaimed Asus K7M. It's made more interesting by claims, on other sites, over the weekend that the latter is withdrawing its Athlon mobo because of headaches caused by Chipzilla stomping on its head... And more which is somehow related to the same subject. At
Anandtechthere's a further instalment of the site's look at the Via Apollo Pro PC-133, which is used in an Aopen board. It will support stacks of synchronous memory. Aopen is an Acer subsidiary. Gamerz are more interested than most in getting the most out of their PC boxes. Over at
Power Gamerz, there's a review of the catchily named Yamaha CRW6416SZ CD-RW 6x4x16x. CD-RW is a good way to store data, but if you wander into a large PC outlet, you'd be forgiven for getting confused about the selection that's available. How do you set up a local area network (LAN)? At
24 Hour Gamerthere's a step by step guide. If you're only connecting two high speed Intel NICs (network interface card) together, don't forget to get yourself a crossover patch cable. This important fact is not mentioned in the Intel documentation...as Vulture Eyrie Harrow found out to its cost a while back. People who continually tinker around with PCs often consider themselves superior to the hoi polloi who don't -- forgetting that said tinkering is probably a fevered disease of PC priesthood.... ®
6 November 1999
Overclocking site
Hard OCPsaid yesterday evening that Taiwanese firm Asus is to back out of selling its Athlon K7M motherboard very shortly. The site claimed that was as a direct result of pressure from chip giant Intel. And
AMD Zonehas reported details of Intel's lawsuit against First International Corporation (FIC), which show that a motherboard the firm makes, the SD11, is specifically named in the action. According to AMD Zone, this board is a popular Athlon board. Certainly, Taiwanese mobo manufacturers are anxious about Intel. Earlier this week, in an interview we posted
here, an Aopen executive went on the record as saying that its promotion of its Via products was "low key" because of Intel's concerns. Meanwhile, AMD Zone is also reporting that AMD K6-2+s will become available early next year, a .18 micron, level three cache optional part which is a potential Celeron buster. ®
5 November 1999HardOCP has gone out on an overclocking spree and ramped an Athlon up to 800MHz. Go
herefor Kyle Bennett's thoughts about the CPU. And more good news for the Great Satan of Taperecorders. This
site reports that AMD has scored a design win with Compaq, which will use two of its mobile CPUs in notebooks it is launching. FPS 3Dhas posted a review of Abit's BF6 motherboard. According to the review, the Taiwanese firm almost completely dominates the retail Pentium marketplace because of its skill in using the popular Intel BX chipset. And talking of
BX Boards, there's a review here of another BX-chipset based board from Tyan. ®
4 November 1999A benchmark for the Intel i820 mobo formerly known as Cape Cod but now given the very witty moniker CC820 has popped up at
Maximum Hardware. The CC820 is the version of Intel's i820 "Camino" chipset that uses synchronous memory rather than Rambus memory. Intel has been delaying the SDRAM board while its engineers sharpened their screwdrivers to produce a Rambus mobo that worked. A guy has deveeloped what he claims is a programmable version of the Athlon. Look at the enclosed photo. He says that he's selling it for $400, and it replaces resistors on the processor with special resistors wired to a bank of 20 DIP switches on the outside of the CPU. You can contact him by email
here. Alex's mob at
Sharky Extremehave posted some useful information about the infamous Microsoft X box. If you haven't already done so, check out
X86.org. Robert Collins, who runs the site, used to operate Intel Secrets, and like Dr Tom Pabst and a certain Register staffer, got in trouble with Intel. As well as aggregating a story or two of ours, Robert has a heap of very useful x.86 information, clearly and authoritatively presented. Let's see what JC is up to today. Ah. He points us to
Electronic Business, which has an interesting profile of Via. The Taiwanese company which makes Intel feel paranoid. In the piece, the CEO of Via metaphorically shakes his fist at Intel, which has been engaged in an aggressive litigation against its would-be rival.
3 November 1999 AMDzonehas posted AMD's latest price moves from 1 November on K6-2 and K6-3 product. An AMD representative told us the prices were "roughly correct, depending on where they are bought and in what quantities". Ah, the pointing device, the mouse. Which of us would be without it?
Quantum 9has a review of the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer -- a cunning Redmond plan to somehow convince the masses that if you surf the Web (as you must do if you're reading this), you'll need a special new design of mouse to do it with... There's a preview of the
S3 Savage 2000over at Tom's Hardware pages which is well worth looking at. Storage. Who can do without it when Windows software pumps and pours strange DLLs onto your machine? Over here, at
Game Forces, the cyberstaff review the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 6800 -- a hard drive with fast burst transfer. Caminogate may be all over bar the shouting and like it or love it, Intel wants to wave goodbye to the BX chipset as it leaves the platform. Here
3DGNtakes a gander at the i820 chipset, wreathed as it is with vainglorious claims... ®
2 November 1999It's a little while since we visited Fullon3D but it has a review of the
Celeron 433which is well worth a look. Intel might be cutting its own throat, although it might prefer to cut others, but these Celeron chips are extraordinarily good value. Anandtech has a comparison of
budget video boards. Strapped for cash... Anand guides you through the course. Forget Intel's style PCs. At
Hard OCPthere's a picture of a PC case which reminds us of chopper bikes in the early 70s... At
Sharky Extreme, there's a review of Freespace. It's that final frontier time again... ®
1 November 1999The open letter from Warren Steiner exhorting the Federal Trade Commission to move against the Great Satan of Chips, and which we mentioned yesterday, has been published in full at
CPU Review. A very interesting post here at
Extreme Overclockinwhich looks in some depth at how to crank the Intel PIIIs to the limit... XBT Hardware, which you can find
here, has a piece about the i820 which estimates that Caminogate may have lost the industry as much as $150 million. Caminogate's got everything, hasn't it, apart from sex. Unless you know better. Our friends over at
AMD Zonepoint out that there is an AMD meeting with analysts on the 11th of November, and say their own site has just breached two million hits... Anand Shimpi, the subject of a spoof which reckoned an overclocked Itanic-Merced blew him up (not true), has posted a review of
the 3dfx Velocity 100Finally, a reader wants to know if Intel's famous WebFitters site, designed for Pentium IIIs, works if such processors are overclocked... ®
29 October 1999 Sharky Extremehas a preview of Diamond's Savage 2000-based Viper 2. It claims the whole scoop. How does it pan out? Ruiner at the eponymous
AMD Zone, is adding to his collection of mobos which support the AMD Athlon. He has some information on the FIC mobo which the Taiwanese firm told us about at Computex. The boys over at
3D Hardwaretake a look at a Soyo board and have some very interesting things to note about how much life there still is in the BX chipset -- if you can get one, that is. And over to another site that's new to us:
3D Surgelooks at the Aureal Vertex SQ2500, a sound card at $99 with a pretty groovy spec. We always check out
JC's pages. Here he notes Intel's disappointing and vague reaction to Willamette in the conference call they held yesterday. As he pointed out some days back, Willamette is not even late, it's very very late (late 1998).
28 October 1999
Some people reckon you've got to be a sleuth to find motherboards that support the Athlon processor. If so, then hats off to Ruiner at
Slot A, who has managed to track down 27 so far... And some other people think storage is boring. Not so. Our new garden shed is already full of junk. Here at specialist site
Storage Review, they don't think storage is boring, either and have posted a review of the Western Digital Caviar WD307AA. This 10GB a platter unit is a belter, the site thinks. At
Ars Technica, there's a piece saying that Intel believes it can differentiate itself from its opposition by its infamous Internet WebOutfitter service, which only works with Pentium IIIs. This is a bit like saying people with Pentium IIIs are members of a Masonic Lodge, while AMD owners wear Lincoln Green... The site also suggests from Intel's own literature that flip chip socket 370 Coppermines won't be able to do symmetric multiprocessing. JC at
JC's pageshas collated prices of AMD chips. AMD sent us its official 1000 price list yesterday, this compares unfavourably with the prices we published Monday, which are OEM prices...
27 October 1999 RB Computing
, which specialises in AMD and associated markets, has had a makeover and says it will now offer regular updates on the sector. At
Hard OCPthere's a report of a 72X speed CD-ROM from Kenwood Technologies.
JCis suggesting we might see a Coppermine 128 on a 100MHz bus at Comdex/Fall. At
Overclocker's Workbench, there's a review of a new Chaintech mobo that uses the Apollo Pro chipset from Via. And
Anandtechhas posted a review of the flip chip Socket 370 processor, that's the one with the fan that doesn't work. It also only fits into the i810e-based mobo so far.
26 October 1999
Bill Henning at
CPU Reviewhas highlighted a problem with absurd memory pricing. Even though Canada and the US are in juxtaposition, he says that disties up north are ripping people off. This common problem is not just confined to Canada and the US. Has the World Trade Organisation got any teeth, or is it going to suck away at this problem with its gums? We missed this one a couple of days back because some of us were in Deutschland, but Anand, at this
place, has concluded his look at the Via Apollo Pro 133A, and focuses on performance. He points out that while theoretically the chipset should be a goer, there are one or two flies in this particular ointment. However, while Chipzilla grinds on with Caminogate, some manufacturers may have no alternative but to take the Via route. Young Kyle Bennett at
Hard OCPis always entertaining. He has boldly gone and dabbled in the murky SMP pond, where two and two fish don't always add up to four. We hadn't visited
The Meterbefore, but it has just posted its own review of the Intel Copperbottom processor. It's good. The boys draw a Caminogate analogy and wonder if anyone would find it acceptable if Chrysler released a car without an engine. But we've got news for you. Way back when, before the PC was born, the British government poured loads of money into someone's pocket in Northern Ireland to produce a shiny new car -- the DeLorean. Back to the Future... except DeLorean was a crook. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
