Technically Speaking

For North Americans, this will be the first total lunar eclipse in more than three years. Find out more at Space.com

In about a month, Intel will be introducing it’s new chipsets, 865 and 875. With the new chipsets Intel will be debuting the 800MHz FSB and then 800MHz processors. Improving overall system performance is a game of removing bottlenecks and making paths that aren’t already bottlenecked as fast as possible. When dealing with increasing the frequency of a FSB, there are two major factors that influence whether or not the faster FSB will actually improve performance. After reading this, I believe that Intel has seen the merits in what AMD has been saying about optimizing chip design for performance/speed enhancements will work better than increasing the chip core speed. In fact they decided to optimize there design and increase core speed. AnandTech takes a look at the approach Intel is taking. Read all about it, here.

I should be used to this by now, being wakened by a sudden shake in the early morning. The shake was a “small” earthquake, estimated at 4.9 on the Reichter Scale, center 15 miles ENE of Fort Payne, Alabama. After living in California for 20 years, this sort of thing become a part of you. Nothing to worry about, til the aftershock comes. While trying to find some new on today’s quake I found that there was another quake in east Georgia a little over a month ago(3/19/2003).

Today, on SharkyExtreme.com, I read an article on building a High-end Gaming System for under $2500. They built two systems, one using Intel and the other using AMD. Of course, I am a fan of AMD, I like underdogs and a bargain. AMD’s system turned out being about $50 cheaper. Some of the components they used I question. A slot load CD/DVD player, why? Memory, Corsair is well known and reliable but isn’t Crucial even better and less expensive? Hard drives, Western Digital is also a well known brand but I happen to like Maxtor, faster transfer and less expensive. Somebody needs to give me $2500 to build a killer system.

Intel Pentium 4 System 

Case: Lian Li PC-65 PC Case w/ 430W or higher name brand PSU - $234

Processor: Pentium 4-3.06 GHz (533 MHz) - $395

Cooling: Alpha PAL8942, Panaflo fan - $38

Motherboard: ABIT BH7 - $87

Memory: 512-MB Corsair XMS PC3200 - $160

Hard Drive: Western Digital 200 GB SE - $215

Video Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro- $309

Monitor: Samsung 900NF or LG 915FT Plus - $322

Sound Card: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Platinum Retail - $163

Speakers: Creative Inspire 6.1 - $96

CD/DVD-ROM: Pioneer 16X DVD-120S Slot Load DVD-ROM - $47

CDRW: Lite-On 52×24x52 CD-RW - $47

Communications: Intel Pro/1000 T or US Robotics External v.92 - $32

Mouse: Logitech MX700 Cordless Mouse - $59

Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $46

Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $129

Floppy: Generic - $8
Total: $2,387 
AMD Athlon XP System 
Case: Lian Li PC-65 PC Case w/ 430W or higher name brand PSU - $234

Processor: Athlon XP 3000+ (333 MHz) - $325

Cooling: Thermalright SLK-800, Panaflo fan - $43

Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X - $100

Memory: Two 256MB Corsair XMS PC3200 - $160

Hard Drive: Western Digital 200 GB SE - $215

Video Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro- $309

Monitor: Samsung 900NF or LG 915FT Plus - $322

Sound Card: SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum 2 Retail - $163

Speakers: Creative Inspire 6.1 - $96

CD/DVD-ROM: Pioneer 16X DVD-120S Slot Load DVD-ROM - $47

CDRW: Lite-On 52×24x52 CD-RW - $47

Communications: Intel Pro/1000 T or US Robotics External v.92 - $32

Mouse: Logitech MX700 Cordless Mouse - $59

Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard - $46

Operating System: Windows XP Pro - $129

Floppy: Generic - $8
Total: $2,335

Madonna’s site was hacked today. This is in retaliation for Madonna lending her voice to Warner Music Group in an effort to fight piracy, reported by CNN/Tech.

I guess you would have never thought it but I am a photography geek too! I use a Canon G3, newly upgraded from a Canon G1. I’m not really into all of the special feature that the camera offers but I like the way it shoots. At 4 megapixels you can make an awesome picture out of any shot. Before I even shot a digital camera I shot a Canon. Canon is the brand of choice for me. In my queries to find something better, I found a blog site I feel is worth a bit of notice, PhotographyBlog.com. This site has been keeping up with the new cameras and digital photography products. Also providing new products and equipment for the average users. Please look and enjoy.

Today I was wondering what is going on with BlueTooth. BlueTooth, a standard that allows electronic devices that are within 30 feet of each other to communicate, was developed in 1998 and is backed by a Who’s Who of tech giants including Intel and Ericsson. The technology is just now showing up as an add-on for laptop computers and in a few high-end cell phones. After doing a few searches, I found that BlueTooth has made it way into a few areas of electronics. As a matter of fact, BlueTooth is touching nearly all areas of electronics, such as,

• access point

• audio and visual
• automotive
• component
• handheld
• headset
• home environment
• keyboard and mouse
• mobile phone
• office equipment
• personal printer
• service and tools
• and other unique products

If you would like to read more about BlueTooth, I found a “blogSite” that can give you plenty of info, called The Bluetooth Weblog.

One product has become quite interesting to me and that is the JABRA FreeSpeak Wireless Headset and Multi-adapter for Non-Bluetooth Phones. I have been trying to get into the habit of using my earbud connector while driving. I feel it is a lot safer driving and talking on the phone with the earbud, but the wire finds its way everywhere I don’t want it to be. For this reason, the earbud is only used in the car. Now, if I had a wireless setup for my phone, I would be sure to use it as often as possible. In comes JABRA’s FreeSpeak Wireless Headset. The Headset gives you the benefit of BlueTooth technology for the cellphones that are not BlueTooth ready. Frankly, this looks like an excellent solution. Check out it’s specs.

SnapStream is getting closer to the release of their latest version of their PVR software. I have been waiting for this for many months. PVR software for PCs has been several steps behind the software of Tivo. With this release the gap will be narrowing. This could be a crucial piece to anybodies Media PC. See what SnapStream’s Personal Video Station 3 has to offer.

Yesterday AMD rolled out Opteron, its brand-new 64-bit CPU architecture. Opteron offers the first real bridge from the 32-bit to the 64-bit world. Even better, this sucker is fast! AMD is putting Opteron up against Intel’s Xeon. Natively,Opteron CPUs carry out conventional 32-bit x86 code eventhough they are 64-bit CPUs. Because of this, Opteron is able to run the existing 32-bit software as well as the 64-bit code. AMD’s HyperTransport Channels are also debuting. AMD’s dream for accessing data through an ultrafast conduit have come to life in HyperTransport. “The serial interface with a variable bitrate allows the SledgeHammer to attain a data transfer rate of 3.2 GB/s - in both directions simultaneously. This results in a total bandwidth of 6.4 GB/s per HyperTransport port. By comparison, the Pentium 4 with 533 MHz FSB allows a maximum data throughput of 3.97 GB/s - but not in both directions simultaneously.”(Tom’s Hardware Guide) If you would notice, the trend in technological advances are all moving towards the serial bus. A 2GHz Opteron was slated to be released, but the company has not committed to releasing the chip at that speed. It is believed that a chip running between 2GHz and 2.4GHz would be marketed with a 3400+ performance number and have a core speed of roughly 1.7GHz. This would be a lower core speed and higher equivalency speed than their Barton chip. I’m expecting big things to come.

Some points on HyperTransport

• HyperTransport? technology is a new high speed, high performance point-to-point link for interconnecting integrated circuits on a motherboard. It can be significantly faster than a PCI bus for an equivalent number of pins.
  
• This technology is primarily targeted for the IT and Telecom industries, but any application where high speed, low latency and scalability is necessary can potentially take advantage of HyperTransport technology.
  
• HyperTransport is planned to bring the computation experience to a new level.
  
• Helps reduce the number of buses while providing a high-performance link for PCs, workstation and servers, as well as numerous embedded applications and highly scalable multiprocessing systems.
  

Sources

Duel of the Titans: Opteron vs. Xeon

AMD Opteron? Processor for Servers and Workstations

CNet News

What is the new Firewire, you ask?

“FireWire 800, based on IEEE 1394b, is the newest version of the industry’s multimedia bus, with significant bandwidth, speed, distance and overall performance improvements,” said James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association.”FireWire 800 is the ideal choice for home networking applications, and for a new generation of computer peripherals. It will supplement the original 1394-1995 and 1394a specifications, and lead to expanded adoption of the multimedia standard in many new applications.”

Through my research, I have found read rates and sustained read rates are equal to and better than, respectively, ATA 133. Write times are barely better than Firewire 400. Based on overall stats, Firewire 800 isn’t worth the money. This would explain why manufacturers are not incorporating the technology into their products. I believe that if the write times and other performance issues are addressed, this would be a great solution for home networking. Firewire components are typically external devices that need highspeed interface to your computer. Many existing products can benefit from this technology if it matures in a timely manner. Here are some
stats.

Maximum PC suggested that you do a burn-in test on your system to insure that it is working properly. I am a firm believer of this and my standard burn-in test is to run DocMem on my machine for at least 12 hours. Usually I run it for 24 hours, both time intervals should give you a good indication of pending issues, mainly overheating. Maximum PC made note of a software utility by SiSoft by the name of Sandra 2003. I downloaded a copy and installed it. Gave it run and was amazed at all of the information it provides. There is so much that it may take me a couple weeks to interpret it all. The software appears to be very thorough in it’s testing. It provides a wizard for burn-in testing that test many more things other than just the memory. The burn-in test can be run continously based on the number of iterations you enter. It also gives suggestions on how you may configure your system for optimal performance. Needless to say, this will be used in my burn-in testing along with memory testing.

I was reading my Maximum PC magazine today and noticed a few tips for keeping your computer running in tip top shape. Maximum has a list of 30 things we should do, most of them the normal stuff I usually hear about but there are a few items that I haven’t heard before and I would like to mention a few of them this week.

The best one, in my eyes, is to “Image Your Drive”. I feel that this a great tip for it can save you a lot of time when you would like to reinstall everything on your drive. Power-users that are always tweaking their machines and/or installing and removing software will benefit from this greatly. When making so many changes to your machine, things tend to become a litlle unstable. Mainly due to the changes in drivers and things that don’t uninstall completely.

I have come into this situation several times and have spent many hours trying to get the system back to a working state. From now on, this will be my safety net. Maximum PC has listed a few software packages that are able to accomplish this feat. PowerQuest’s Drive Image 2002, Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image are all able to make an exact copy of your drive.

I will also use this for the machines I build. It seems that I could make a basic image and use that to install some of the common software I always install on a system. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

DaimlerChrysler is raving about their new product, a 500 horsepower V10 Viper engine mounted on a motorcycle frame. What is this thing you say? Well, they are trying to bill it as a motorcycle eventhough it has 4 wheels. The four wheels are close enough together that they act as 2 wheels. The new design enhances stability and dismisses the need for a kick-stand. The innovative suspension design keeps all four wheels of this beast on the ground even when cornering. The topper is that this revolutionary cycle carries a price tag of $200,000 USD. I for one, will take 2!!!!

Here are some stats…. Thanks to PopSci.com

BODY STYLE: Single-seat Viper-powered motorcycle
BODY CONSTRUCTION: Billet aluminum overall
LENGTH: 102 in.
WHEELBASE: 76 in.
CURB WEIGHT: 1,500 lbs.
ENGINE: 8.3-liter ohv 20-valve V10
TRANSMISSION: Manual, foot-shifted 2-speed
WHEELS: 20×4 (front), 20×5 (rear) billet aluminum disks
TRUE TOP SPEED: To be determined

A new motherboard technology, code-named “3GIO” (for “3rd generation I/O”) is readying for release. When it debuts it will be called PCI Express. The main benifit of PCI Express is it’s increased bandwidth. Where AGP 8x leaves off PCI Express will pickup, with throughputs, respectively, 2.1GB/s and 8GB/s. PCI Express architecture is based on a serial bus which can be scaled to higher speeds with fewer wires. Existing parallel bus architecture are more complex in engineering and are therefore more expensive. They also are at their limits with speed. It looks as if the motherboards of the future will be moving to this serial bus ideaology in order to keep up with our needs for faster systems. We should see the first of this technology towards the end of this year (2003). Intel and Microsoft have looked at PCI Express and have a fews plans for it, read on.

Nokia has put their hands into another area of electronics. They have created an Observation Camera. This a combination between a cellphone and a webcam. The idea behind it is for the user to, basically call the camera and order a view of the area. I think this would be awesome for a home security system. Using some of the existing technology available to us and a few custom pieces (Homemade from RadioShack), we can put together a pretty slick setup. Let’s say…. Rig the doorbell to send your phone a page. Use your phone to call the camera to see who is there. Send a message to your computer to open the door. I can see this happening really soon. The cost shouldn’t be all that much either. Get details of the technology, here.

A good friend pointed out another article on the subject of building a Home Theatre PC on ExtremeTech


· Building a Home Theater PC, Part I

· Building a Home Theater PC, Part II

I have been thinking about a new project for my home. I would like to create a Media PC. Basically a computer that will work along side (or replace) most of my electronics. It should be able to handle MP3s, DVDs, Audio/Video Streaming, TV tuner, TV recording and playback, gaming and WebSurfing. I would like to get all of this and more into a box and then connect it to a nice sized plasma screen. In doing this, controlling all aspects of the Media system will become centralized. Instead of using a remote control, you can use a wireless mouse control. If the Media PC is built correctly, we can also eliminate the need for a multitude of wires connecting various components to the TV and Receiver. I found an article on T3’s website that can be a helpful guide for completing the project.
Enjoy!

ATI has been working hard the last few months on their latest video card; the Radeon 9800 Pro. There is not much difference in architecture with the 9700 but it is a good bit faster. Nothing new was added to the design but improvements have provided great efficientcy to the card. The clockspeed was increased, support for Microsoft’s DirectX 9.0 was enhanced, data compression and other algorithms were improved all making for a more efficient use of the memory bandwidth, thus increasing performance. The Radeon 9700 Pro didn’t provide a convincing victory over GeForce FX but the Radeon 9800 Pro does. Let’s see whether ATI is able to keep the performance lead throughout this quarter though, as Nvidia is working hard on getting their NV35 part out of the door. As of right now, Radeon 9800 Pro is the fastest video card available.


The new line:

A special 256-MB version of the Radeon 9800 Pro will debut in April.



The Radeon 9800 Pro ($399) and the Radeon 9800 (lower clock speed - $349) 128-MB boards.

Began shipping in March.



The Radeon 9600 Pro ($169-$199) and Radeon 9600 ($149-$169) cards.

Begins shipping in April.



The Radeon 9200($79-$149) - depending on the memory (64-MB/128-MB) and Radeon 9200 Pro/Radeon 9200 configurations.

Can Warner Bros. do it again? It isn’t often that a sequel is as good as the original or better. Warner Bros is trying to push the envelop with this trilogy, releasing The Matrix Reloaded in May and Matrix Revolutions in November. There is a video game, Enter the Matrix and an anime series, Animatrix also in the mix. The thought of trying this leaves me feeling a bit skeptical on the standard of quality. After reading the article in Wired, I am convinced that this will be a superb film. I recall seeing The Matrix, after leaving the theatre I believed that there couldn’t be a better movie. (I loved it!) The Matrix Reloaded will show the new powers of Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and Agent Smith. That’s right, Agent Smith is back and he is pissed. According to the article, he now is a computer virus able to replicate himself at will. This new ability will set the stage for a scene that will surpass Bullet Time. The scene to watch for is dubbed The Burly Brawl. The scene is so spectacular that in order to shoot it, action director, John Gaeta, had to reinvent cinematography. The best of the best martial arts choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping, was brought back to orchestrate the ultimate fight scene. Other characters, such as, the Evil Twins, Keymaker, and Niobe (played by Jada Pinkett-Smith) will provide other dimensions to the film that are sure to make this movie great. The Matrix was nominated for four Academy Awards, I am betting that The Matrix Reloaded will do better. I’m also willing to bet that it will win this year’s MTV best fight scene for a movie. To checkout the trailer click here. I suggest you download the Ultra 1000 x 540 trailer to your machine, if it can handle it.