Top Spec

I was doing some research recently into graphics cards, the current top specification boards at what prices. I looked at ATI’s best offering the radeon 4870 x2 priced around 360+ mark. Then I thought about looking at my current but old graphics card the x800 xt pe. The x800 xt pe was basically the xt with some manufacturer overclocking, little did I know that after years of having the card they were known for over heating! After installing a third party heat sink I was good to go, but for how long? Well taking the current version of directx is around 10/ 10.1 It wasn’t a matter of overheating but the actual capabilities of the graphics card.

Anyway before I carry on going on about my hardware wish list I wanted to point out the current price of the x800 xt pe! I found the card for 350 GBP. Was this a mistake? I cant see this as value for money!

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A fellow over at Intel has been slating the ARM processor! The ARM processor is a British engineered processor, which I didn’t know untill shortly before this blog post. But why would Intel be against the mobile processor chip manufacturer? Well lets put it this way, its not where the processor is from.

Arm provide the chips that power the Apple’s iphone and million of mobile users across the world! Not to mention up-coming phones such as the G1 another big contender. But, the main reason behind Intels jealousy! is obviously because their mobile processors are only affecting half a dozen mobile units!

The Intel guy has also stated that the shortcoming of the iphone (what short comings) are not because of the Apple but because of the ARM processor, hmmm I would like to differ.

Intel for some reason state that if you want a fulfilled internet experience then a x86 processor is needed and as the enquirer states, “no matte r how many times an Intel member of staff says this, it just isn’t true!”. so true!

Some interesting additions you must read!

Intel actually mad3e ARM based chips and gave up this right in 2006. They sold the business on to Marvell and as you have guessed it, regretted it ever since.

Again, Intel are spitting out their dummy because the firm is now forced into the low cost, low margin markets.  With Intel usually taking 80, 80 % of the market share they are reluctant to go down the ARM route.

I feel Intel are having  a Deja Vu moment. What happened with AMD? Intell had alot of competition but now have secured the market place yet again with their enthusiast based systems.

Intel remind me of Microsoft, a cold blooded company that try to dominate the market, company’s like ARM and AMD should stay in the game because its these company’s that help give us enthusiast an alternative! But if you want scalability then Intel is the way, for mobile well ARM is your choice and stay with it!

Soon as Intel move into the mobile sector which they haven’t covered properly It looks like Windows vista mobile will be shortly waiting. BUT! at the same time the current mobile which use microsoft technology just don’t cut it!

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Microsoft has official called today ‘global anti-piracy day’. In other words Microsoft has enforcement actions in 49 countries in six continents. Microsoft is trying to create anti-piracy efforts across countries and continents through a sophisticated system of business intelligence forensics and education. Interesting.

Together Microsoft think that by working together to identify an international connection points between software pirates and counterfeiters will help stop them in their tracks in return protecting consumers and legitimate business, obviously microsoft’s consumer! hmm

To me yet another way of asking microsoft consumers to download or install microsoft based software at a fee and unfortunately all managed by microsoft.

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AMD has its monthly driver release, Octobers driver launch the v8.10 introduces a useful feature. Any one who downloads the driver will be able to control the speed of their Radeon HD 4000 series CPU fan. Any one remember using third party software to change fan speeds?

If XML isnt your thing then you can use the new software which will allow you to change the fan setting by a click of a button. The release brings radeon display drivers up to version 8.541 and unlike previous releases the driver also comes with a performance increase. Radeon users of the 3000 and 4000 series can expect a 15% increase in performance!

If you have crossfire configuration then you can expect a 5% increase, happy days!

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Speculation or not but the topic does get you thinking! Apparently by 2012 ISP’s will reduce Internet access to a tv like subscription model, offering access to a small amount of news, entertainment websites. To visit other based websites, say third party (your bookmarks) an extra fee will be introduced for the privilege. The result would mean the smaller websites would eventually shut down, creating the end of the internet? Hmm lets look into this!

Advantages (if any)

Content, limited channels
Content is restricted to official websites, content is then guaranteed to be 100% safe and 100% correct. The down side would be the need to pay for the services, squashing competition which in my opinion is completely the opposite of how the Internet should be. thats about it

Disadvantages

Hackz0rs
Hackers R’ Us! I’m sure it wont take long before someone or something breaks the model and allows users to have pirate access to these websites or website that are not even on the Internet.

A new breed
Whats stopping programmers creating their very own protocol and port which allows websites to be viewed differently to how ISP’s allow you to! Could there be multiple Internets running on different communication methods/ ports.

World Wide!
This would need to be a world wide affair, whats happens when the US decide to limit their population to certain websites, does that mean in another country I could visit the so called normal Internet? Would capping the internet to tens of sites be a breach of privacy or the United Kingdoms right of free speach?

An interesting topic but will all those webmasters out there be wasting their time optimising for the likes of google, yahoo etc. Will google even exist? If so how will their services and tools be used? Untill next time, goodbye

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I have recently found bargain laptops but I was quite surprised to see that manufacturer x was not selling Atom based processors for budget bases mobile computation. The company was advertising dual core Intel processors and Celeron budget type processors for mobile technology, ok ok so this is what they do but where are these Atom processors?

I’m not sure if its the fact that the processor is new and manufacturers are reluctant to snap up the chips but if I remember correctly the processor sold like hot cakes so they could be used for mobile computing in third world countries and households across the world.

I have seen these laptops with the Atom technology cropping up here and there but they still use linux based operating systems because it uses less resources than windows xp. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that these processors were in-fact high speed and capable of running windows xp flawlessly unlike the older Asus  EEE PC using a Pentium 1 processor. I must of been mistaken in thinking the Atom will be used for mobile computing like any other laptop but micro. There is always a catch!

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Rambus was showing the first tangible parts of a Terabyte bandwidth initiative. It was announced less than a year ago and they have already created a working version. With a working silicon version that’s not bad at all!

DRAM Emulator pushing Gbps

The idea was to get a single chip with 1Terabyte data transfer on and off the chip creative massive bandwidths. This was achieved by using optical interconnects. A single differential pin pair which carry 16Gbps and produces a 512b wide interface on the chip. Each one works at 32x signaling rate with their Flexlink C/A technology providing a routing solution.

The picture above does just that but will only run at one channel. There is little reasoning why you cannot creative the system using more channels thus creating massive bandwidths. The hard part is done, 32 channels woudln’t go a miss.

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Asus released a different machine, something small, something portable and something mobile. Other manufacturers followed suit where Intel even designed a processor specially for the mobile x86 market. Now all the main vendors such as msi, asus, dell etc are all at it!

There are talks about a dual core atom processor called ‘intels nettop-orientated atom 330′ ready for release next year.  Soon as any updates emerge I will send out the specifications to you all.

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There has been mentioning of nine cell laptop battery the people over at eeepc news have managed to get their hands on a picture of a MSI laptop with a battery larger than the current EEE PC battery pack.

MSI’s current laptop uses a 3 cell battery pack much smaller than the new implementation. I expect that MSI will continue to ship 3 cell battery packs to the consumer. Consumers will then be able to buy the nine cell battery packs separately allowing users to use their laptops during long journeys.

This is not however advanced technology far from it, the battery cell is basically 9 cells crammed together making your laptop bulkier and heavier than it was before. Its entirely up to you, the weight vs the added power? Who cares about looks when you have three times the power! I’m sure some users would disagree, notebook air? Nah!

Will there ever been a new technology that will reduce the size of the cell? Can we increase power and decrease size? Will solar panels on calculators be used for laptops to create a greener laptop? Well only time can tell.

Keep checking this space for updates!

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It turns out that asus may be dishing out various EEE Box PC’s models well before its intended release, alpha testing anyone? Asus confirmed today that the EEE Box PC shipped to japan may contain a software virus! ok then!

According to sources Asus has warned that the partition of the EEE Box hard disk contains a hidden file named recyclyed.exe. When the drive is addressed the virus activates itself and then delivers the payload infecting any other added storage.

The problem does not exist within other regions as yet but make sure these version are not bought on on-line auction websites, you may end up with a cheap but contaminated system!

I am however unable to tell the public what the virus actually does and how powerful this threat actually is but then again, a threat is a threat in my opnion.

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