Intel Announces P4 for Gamers:
Extreme Edition puts AMD on notice, but could hint of trouble with Prescott.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Intel is going after PC gamers with a special processor called the Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading Technology, Extreme Edition, announced at the Intel Developer Forum here this week. Company executives say the new chip will begin shipping to PC vendors in 30 to 60 days, but didn’t announce pricing.
The CPU will include a 2MB Level 3 cache, which should help boost its performance in demanding applications such as graphics-heavy games. Today’s Pentium 4 processors include a 512KB L2 cache, but no L3 cache (in fact, none of Intel’s desktop processors include an L3 cache). At launch the processor will run at 3.2 GHz, the same speed as Intel’s current top-end Pentium 4.
If Intel is having problems and is unable to release their “Prescott” chip, could this mean smooth sailing for AMD’s new chip — the Athlon 64?
At the end of that news report the author, Mr. Mainelli, quotes Kevin Krewell, a manager at MDR whom specializes in technology forecasts, stating:
Intel continues to say that chip, code-named Prescott, will bring the company revenue in the fourth quarter of this year. But the company hasn’t actually announced a launch date, Krewell notes.
If Intel is having problems getting Prescott ready for launch, it would make sense to ship this product instead, so the company has a new processor for the holidays, Krewell says. While the company has rolled out numerous new technologies this year, including new bus speeds, it has launched only a single speed jump for the P4 in 2003.
One could only imagine that Chipzilla is having some sort of marketing failure — why else is the chip behind schedule? (That is the part where you snicker, snort and giggle like a little school girl).
Note: as a computing enthusiast and [former] gamer, I would not be interested in paying even the current price for a P4 3.2 ghz chip — too many bones, not enough chickens.
Google - the only archive we’ll ever need?:
However this brain drain, this emptying of the commons simply isn’t what we were promised ten years ago, when the Internet was first sold to the public as, amongst other things, an almost infinite source of information. Ten years on, the reality hasn’t lived up to the promise, and as Net Time co-founder Geert Lovink pointed out in a panel on Saturday, and as we’ve noted too, Internet usage in the West is stalling. The public is not stupid, and is now reaching for the off switch.
Sounds like the beginning of the second part to: Internet Collapses and Other Other InfoWorld Punditry. But alas, that soap opera will not materialize.
After reading this speech, I’ve come to consider myself a digital librarian — or better yet, a permanent student perpetually seeking information and answers. I’m not necessarily focused on one or two topics (as noted here), in fact, I view my own surfing habits as somewhat eccentric, which is not necessarily a bad thing — to wit:
Here’s another angle to consider: the library never makes predictions about my general future based on my past reading habits, nor does it hint that my days will be happier if I read Shakespeare rather than Barbara Cartland. The library tolerates eccentric reading habits because it realizes that free men and women are often very eccentric.
Mr. Orlowski quotes a librarian as if he is damning the whole system (Google among others):
“I’m a librarian, and I like Google,” said Steve Cisler from the floor. “But I appreciate the point being made that there are different information domains. There is a whole lot of information that’s not on the Internet and may possibly be offline.”
Very true, I suppose there is a misconception in terms of what is and is not available online – despite my hardest I still had to visit the library throughout college to get books and sources that have not been (in some fashion) uploaded. I’ve heard various numbers regarding how much of human knowledge is now available online, through the Internet, but none of them strike me as the “real” number – however, that is besides the point.
I’d like to take a moment and ask everyone to think back to pre-Google 1997. What was it like trying to find information on the internet? I remember having to use three and four search engines just to narrow down possible entries to information on something as simple as the ‘Y2K Crisis.’
Now think back to before the World Wide Web was created, how did you locate information? You went to a library and had to meticulously scan through the card catalogue or, if it existed, a digital database of the libraries resources.
Today, through endeavors like Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, knowledge is easily consumable at the tips of your fingers without much work at all.
Additionally, as Dr. Jenkins has pointed out, blogs organize the web. While it might not be the stated goal of each blogger, what does in fact happen is that through our own self-interest we catalogue, index and sort musings, opinions, commentary, lab reports, book reviews, photos, encyclopedias and just about everything we can get our hands on, online.
Google and other search engines (like Teoma and AllTheWeb) need bloggers just as bloggers need them, to collate and organize our own organized data in a way that other humans or programs can access the data easily.
I doubt I will truly ever understand complaints by individuals like Mr. Orlowski, because he himself is aiding in the process of organizing the web, by being the subject of a blog, which is then catalogued, indexed, saran-wrapped and placed on the table for immediate consumption — just wait a few days and both his “blog” post and mine will be eaten up by Google et al.
Greeks ‘borrowed Egyptian numbers’:
The astronomers, physicists and mathematicians of ancient Greece were true innovators.
But one thing it seems the ancient Greeks did not invent was the counting system on which many of their greatest thinkers based their pioneering calculations.
New research suggests the Greeks borrowed their system known as alphabetic numerals from the Egyptians, and did not develop it themselves as was long believed.
I’m not sure Gus Portokalos would be too thrilled to hear something like that, after all, the Greeks invented everything!
That reminds me of the third grader found guilty of stealing cursive, multiplication tables.
All Quiet on the Billy Mays Front Means No Economic Recovery:
Certain AM talk radio blowhards and Beltway think-tank geeks would have us believe the United States economy is finally climbing out of recession. They point to certain indicators and indices, plus a slightly rebounding stock market to make that conclusion. I, for one, don’t buy it for a minute—the economy is still in the doldrums, and I can prove it. You only need look to one guy to see how the US economy is really doing, and it’s not Alan Greenspan. No, that man is Billy Mays.
Ask yourself this: When was the last time you saw Billy Mays on TV pitching his latest innovation? If you answered December of 2002 you are correct. That was when he came out with the Rotomatic Rotary Tool Set. A couple of months before that it was the Fone Free. Since then…nothing. I only see him very rarely on TV now, and always for a previous product. Now, if everything was going so great wouldn’t it stand to reason that he would be on the air all the time shoving all kinds of crap down our throats? There’s something our leaders aren’t telling us. They don’t want us to know the unpleasant truth.
I also believe the tools we use to measure the economy are no longer valid. To address this I’ve devised a new formula that I believe more accurately reflects and forecasts the actual state of the United States economy. I call it the Billy Mays Index and below I provide a data set for the previous six years. It’s pretty straightforward: the more new Billy Mays products we see, the better the state of the economy. If he’s not on TV selling you a Gopher or a few cases of Orange Clean, the US economy is in the tank. It’s that simple. But don’t just take my word for it; see for yourselves:
I’d have to second the notion that the BMI is the true indicator of the health of an economy. Eat your heart out GDP.
This is an addition to the reported benefits of OxyClean and the oil spill off the coast of Spain.
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 and NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650: Taking on DX9:
Half-Life 2
Shockingly, only 3 out of 8 times was the GeForce FX Go5650 able to surpass the 10 fps barrier. Even at its best, the GeForce FX Go5650 was only able to close the gap between the Mobility Radeon 9600 to 234%. “Slow as a pregnant yak” was a phase that we often heard in reference to these scores. While we wouldn’t put it in this exact context, the Mobility Radeon 9600 beats the GeForce FX Go5650 “no questions asked” in all of these scenarios, with the highest difference of 415% (36.6fps vs. 7.1fps).
Ouch, or in gaming language: pwn3d.
That dance was followed shortly after by the concluding remarks:
Now, the only way for NVIDIA hardware to run reasonably well in full DX9 games such as Half-Life 2, AquaMark 3, among others, is to lower several image quality related settings: no fog, 32-bit dropped to 16-bit, low dynamic range, etc. The current selection of older DX8 games may suit the GeForce FX based systems (desktop and notebook) just fine, but we are on the heels of a software change to DX9, which is why we are in the process of revising our graphics benchmark suite.
I’d like to thank my mom and VoodooExtreme for this moment. Actually, I discussed this topic a bit a few days ago (scroll down). If you’re a computer gamer, or know someone that is (if you’re a parent looking to purchase your kid a video card), refer them to the reviews I link to and proceed to purchase a product from ATI.
Friends don’t let friends use nVidia.
