Intel to Cut Pentium M Prices

Subject: Processors | March 15, 2005 - 12:36 PM | Ryan Shrout
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It looks like Intel is going to dropping prices on the current Pentium M processors, but not until July 24th.  The price drop comes with the launch of a new processor, the 780, but the 765 price will drop by 50% to $423!  This is good news, but I wish the price drop would occur sooner as I am actually working on a P-M desktop article.

Intel plans to cut the prices of its 700-series Pentium M processors on July 24, to take on Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) newly launched Turion 64 mobile CPUs, according

VIA C7 Processor Coming this Summer

Subject: Processors | March 15, 2005 - 12:34 PM | Ryan Shrout
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According to the French folks at X86-secret.com, VIA is going to be launching a new processor at this summer's Computex show in Taipei.  The new C7 processor is going to be based on the current 478-pin package.  You'll need to take the Babelfish with you to read it though, heh.

C'est étrangement au CeBIT que nous avons obtenu confirmation du lancement des CPUs VIA C7 et C7-M lors du Computex de Taiwan.

Motherboard Basics

Subject: Motherboards | March 15, 2005 - 12:30 PM | Ryan Shrout
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Ever wonder what some of the basic components on a motherboard actually are?  Ever looked at a board layout and been confused?  Then you should check out the motherboard basics article at Big Bruin today.

Many motherboards now include features onboard that were once only available as expansion cards to be purchased separately. A typical motherboard will now include stereo sound capabilities, a 10/100 LAN connection, and a few USB 2.0 ports on the back panel connection.

Multi-core and multi-threaded Gaming Editorial

Subject: Processors | March 15, 2005 - 01:12 AM | Ryan Shrout
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Anandtech has posted an editorial on the theories and ideas behind multi-threaded gaming, and the difficulties associated with it.  This is worth the read, especially with the interview with Tim Sweeney of Epic Games on support for multiple threads in the Unreal Engine 3.

Tim Sweeney: Yes! These are hard problems, certainly not the kind of problems every game industry programmer is going to want to tackle.

VisionTek XTASY X850 XT Review

Subject: Graphics Cards | March 15, 2005 - 01:10 AM | Ryan Shrout
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HardOCP has reviewed the VisionTek branded X850 XT GPU today and though they seem to like the card, availability is STILL an issue.

The MSRP on the VisionTek XTASY X850 XT is $499. Searching various online stores we did find the VisionTek XTASY X850 XT at one retailer on sale for $488 but it was out of stock. At other online retailers we did find it in stock and found the price to be anywhere from $499 all the way to $614 at one retailer.

A Look at the VIA EPIA-SP Mainboard

Subject: Motherboards | March 15, 2005 - 12:43 AM | Ryan Shrout
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VIA Arena has just sent out news of an article they have on the new VIA EPIA-SP mini-ITX motherboard. 

Take a reasonably large hard drive, a stick of DDR400 memory, a tiny ITX case along with a wireless keyboard and mouse and there you have it, the ultimate home theater system. Of course you will need to back this flashy little computer up with some impressive audio and a killer television, but I will leave that part of the buying process up to you.

Welcome to PC Perspective v2.0!

Subject: Editorial | March 15, 2005 - 12:27 AM | Ryan Shrout
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Well, if you are here already you no doubt have seen the changes we made tonight to the entire PC Perspective website.  The forums have had a preview of this new design for some time, but it has taken us quite a long time to work out all the bugs and kinks with the site formatting to get it where we were ready to present it to you all.  Before I get into the new features and what has changed in the new PC Perspective v2.0, I'd like to take this chance to publicly and completely thank Joe White (The Wise One

Intel First-Quarter Business At High End Of Expectations

Subject: General Tech | March 14, 2005 - 09:30 PM | Joe White
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SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 10, 2005 -- Intel Corporation expects revenue for the first quarter to be between $9.2 billion and $9.4 billion, as compared to the previous range of $8.8 billion to $9.4 billion.

The first-quarter gross margin percentage is expected to be approximately 57 percent, plus or minus a point, as compared to the previous expectation of 55 percent, plus or minus a couple of points, primarily due to lower than expected 65nm start-up costs and microprocessor unit costs. All other expectations are unchanged.

Enhanced Intel® Wireless MMX2(TM) Technology

Subject: General Tech | March 14, 2005 - 09:28 PM | Joe White
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CTIA, New Orleans, March 15, 2005 - Intel Corporation today announced enhanced technology to provide mobile handset users with a better multimedia experience, including clearer graphics, faster video, and improved power efficiency.

Intel® Wireless MMX2™ technology offers advanced features to simplify the development of feature-rich audio, video, graphics and voice applications, providing users with innovative, reliable communications solutions that can run the latest multimedia content.

Asus Z80K Notebook Review

Subject: Mobile | March 14, 2005 - 02:29 PM | Ryan Shrout
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Andrew Ku of Hot Hardware has published a review of the Asus Z80K notebook based on the Athlon 64 processor.  Coming in at over 8 pounds, they think it may not be a great system for every day travel.

So what's the bottom line?  Why buy this notebook over Dell's or HP's desktop replacements? Well, given that our sample was priced at $1,744.99, Asus is offering a quality notebook at a very competitive price point.

Soltek SL-K890PRO Motherboard Reviewed

Subject: Motherboards | March 14, 2005 - 02:26 PM | Ryan Shrout
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Geoff of The Tech Report has a review up on the new VIA K8T890-based Soltek motherboard.  This board is the first retail K8T890 board I have ever seen, and the gang at TR concurr.  What do they have to say about the board?

Unfortunately, the SL-K890PRO-939 doesn't have the luxury of living in a vacuum. Its world is populated with nForce4 motherboards that serve up faster chipset-level Gigabit Ethernet and more robust RAID capabilities than VIA's dated VT8237 chipset provides.

New case makers, old stand-bys & More

Subject: Cases and Cooling | March 14, 2005 - 11:38 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Thermalrock has a new case in the market, the Oceandome, and it is one that is worth checking out if you want good ventilation, while keeping the noise under control.  R&B Mods takes you on a tour through the case, so make sure to pay them a visit today.  They also noiticed that there is plenty of room for watercooling, if the 80mm fans aren't your style.

"We have heard about Thermaltake before, but today we will look at a case from Thermalrock which is a fairly new company on the market.

CeBit News and More

Subject: Editorial | March 13, 2005 - 06:53 PM | Ryan Shrout
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ATI Multi-GPU Technology and More from CeBit

Subject: Graphics Cards | March 13, 2005 - 03:10 AM | Ryan Shrout
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With still more CeBit coverage, Hexus has visited the Asus booth and found more than a few interesting tid bits for you all to read about.  The most note worthy is a spotting of the ATI MVP technology for dual GPUs in a single system.  They also have the dual 6800 Ultra and 6600 GT cards pictured, the Intel 955 motherboard and a Pentium M board on display as well.

MVP supports split frame rendering using supertiling, where the screen is split up into tiled areas with each tile processed

VIA Grease Monkey Review

Subject: General Tech | March 13, 2005 - 03:00 AM | Ryan Shrout
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Have you checked out the VIA Grease Monkey service yet?  It offers users a way to easily find out what patches they are missing on their games and keeps them constantly updated with the lastest mods, downloads and drivers related to their installed hardware and software.  The gang at PCStats has reviewed the service, so check it out.

We're of two minds about the VIA Grease Monkey software.

More Dual 6800 Ultra Pics!

Subject: Graphics Cards | March 13, 2005 - 02:57 AM | Ryan Shrout
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You need to stop by HardOCP to see the updated, hi resolution photos they have coming in from CeBIT of the Asus dual 6800 Ultra card -- two 6800U GPUs on a single card???  Outrageous.

Notes on this are that the card uses 512MB of DDR3 (256 per GPU) and will require a special motherboard. Of course we saw Gigabytes dual 6600 require a special motherboard, but it did run on our ASUS SLI board just fine. So time will tell.

Intel and AMD Processors on a Single Motherboard?

Subject: Motherboards | March 13, 2005 - 02:55 AM | Ryan Shrout
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It looks like ECS is going to try to bridge the gap between Intel and AMD motherboards by allowing a user of their PF88 board to use...BOTH.  I have a couple of Asrock boards here sporting both 754-pin and 939-pin Athlon 64 sockets, and the results have been somewhat lacking, but we'll see what ECS has to offer.

The mainboard has 4 slots for DDR2 667, a 1066FSB, SATA2, GigaLAN and 1394a Firewire.

Dual Core Athlon 64 Benchmarked

Subject: Processors | March 13, 2005 - 02:52 AM | Ryan Shrout
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An Italian site called HWUpgrade.it has apparently benchmarked a 2.4 GHz Athlon 64 dual core processor in the Cinebench test, with some interesting results.  The site is in Italian, but the images are universal, so give it a look.