Vijesti sa IDF2

Evo da vam malo olakšam sam napravio copy/paste članka pošto se nalazi u gužvi ostalih vijesti.

It’s Tuan again. There’s one more day of IDF tomorrow but that’s some boring stuff and no one will be there anyway. The main conference hall is closed tomorrow. So here’s what happened at the end of the day:

4GHz Processor: Intel has an unamed processor running at 4GHz using air cooling. I’m assuming the processor is using 0.13u process as well as running under some type of powerful air cooling solution. This really shows where 0.13u can take us.

Also on the topic of 0.13u, Infineon is developing super dense IC chips for memory, reducing size, increasing capacity, and redugin cost. Look for mainstream 512MB and possibly 1024MB DDR modules to become mainstream in the future.

Celeron 1.1GHz: Intel will soon be releasing a 1.1 and 1.0GHz Celeron processor. When asked about SMP capabilities, Intel didn’t say that Celeron and Tualatin “won’t” work but says that “we just won’t support it but it does work”. Get your dual Tualatin boards ready because 512KB Cache Tualatins and Celeron 1.1GHz will be the cream of the crop for cheap SMP action from Intel.

InfiniSwitch: Using InfiniBand technology, a few companies are developing highspeed networking products that can do over 10gigabit per second transfer speeds through optical wires. No chance yet on copper.

More HyperTransport: AMD wasn’t in the main hall for obvious reasons but it was in the near hotel doing press relations. It has a demo machine running dual 700MHz Alpha processors using a HyperTransport based motherboard just blazing along. Sorry, no Quake 3 benchmarks here.

The interesting thing about HyperTransport is that, it’s designed to replace PCI too AND developers don’t have to redo their PCI cards to work with HyperTransport!

If Intel can’t do at least the same with its 3GIO technology, AMD will definitely have the upper hand on this one.

Four-way Xeon Processing: The only company to show off a 4-way Xeon solution was Tyan. It has a gigantec ServerWorks based motherboard that can support up to 32GB of PC2100 Registered DDR RAM and four Foster Xeon processors. I overheard a couple of press guys dying to try out Quake 3 SMP on the board.

Supermicro and MSI had dual solutions, also using ServerWorks chipsets. ServerWorks is actually having a party right now near IDF with on the house drinks of every type of alcohol drink you can find, and some good deserts. Big name guys there. It’s definitely fun!

High Performance Heatsinks: Out on display from a few companies, there were tons of heatsinks, even water cooling from a few. Some of them had huge, ultra effecient heatsinks done with copper in circular formations. It looks like the circular formations from the likes of Agilent are becoming extremely well recognized.

ATI Radeon 8800: And just when you got all excited about the 8500, ATI has the 8800. Apparently the 8500 has serious compatibility issues, that’s why Anand and Tom both said that ATI should not have announced it. And this is true. This is pretty bad for ATI. They still have no clue about how its driver team needs to improve either. For all you ATI lovers out there, do serious research before jumping the bandwagon this fall or else you’ll get heavily burnt. Just some advice. Hopefully by then, ATI will fix all issues.

Pentium 4 nine times faster than Pentium 3: Yup! In video editing! Pinnacle (the DV editing leaders) had a Pentium 4 system vs. a P3 system and the Pentium 4 dimolished the P3 into the ground. For the video editor in you, the Pentium 4 is a great solution.

Intel Making Game Console: What? Maybe! Intel’s 3GIO (3rd Generation IO) interface that’s currently in design to replace PCI (and apparently now competing with InfiniBand) MIGHT be going into a console design. Is Intel trying to jump into the console market? Who knows, but its 3GIO design looks very modular and they had schematic diagrams that looked exactly like a console system. Will the Gran Tourismo 4 be on an Intel console?

Serial ATA: Poised to phase out current parallel ATA (the current IDE connectors you and I use), Serial ATA is thin (thinner than rounded IDE cables) and plugs into a port that almost resembles USB. So it’s basically everything good about UltraATA100/133 and or higher, with a USB like interface. The had some demo drives running which were hot swappable (a benifit of serial ATA). Did your hard drive die while in Windows 2000? Right click, press Eject, remove the drive, stick in a new one, keep on going.

You won’t see Serial ATA drives anytime soon though as the specs need to be smoothly ironed out.

Free Windows XP: If you had the right badge on you, you could pick up a free full copy of Windows XP professional. No charge. Except that to get into IDF, you’d have to be invited or pay $1000 for the press badges.

Other goodies: That’s pretty much all the major things that went on. There was a lot of exhibitors, people, press and a lot of free food, free beer and once in a while, some very beautiful models at a few booths (particularly ServerWorks who happened to host an all out alcohol party afterwards). There were a lot of companies there showing different technologies and it was an intense 3 day show.

That pretty much wraps it up for IDF. I’ll go into detail on HyperTransport, InfiniBand and 3GIO in an upcoming article but in the mean time, I have a bunch of reviews to share with you guys.

Sharky je testirao zanimljivu GeForce3 karticu koju se nikad neće moći nabaviti kod nas – OCZ Titan 3 GeForce3.
Titan 3 na sebi ima Blue Orb hladnjak, te veće hladnjake za memoriju pa ne čudi da dolazi standardno na 215/515 MHz, dok ostale GF3 kartice dolaze na 200/460MHz.

Digit-Life je usporedio tri IDE diska – Maxtora 541DX, Samsunga SP4004H i Seagatea Barracudu ATA IV.
Nova Seagate Barracuda se pokazala najboljom, te predstavlja idealan izbor, pogotovo kad se uzme u obzir da se IGM 60GXP i 75GXP diskovi kvare kao ludi. Puno prijatelja, a i čitatelja nam se žalilo na njih te možemo reći samo jedno – izbjegavajte ih!

Evo i Plextora na testu. Dobra stvar je što se možete već sada zaletiti i kupiti ga i kod nas. Istina cijena je oko 2300 Kn u zagrebačkim dučanima ali bar oko ovoga ne kasnimo 3 mjeseca za ostatkom svijeta.

Ovo je luda stvar. Vrlo mi se svidjela jer jedno računalo može koristiti više ljudi a i nema više otvaranja kučišta i zavirivanja kako bi se promjenio jedan jumper. Istina je da 35 DM je malo skupo za komad plastike ali ideja je više nego dobra.

Napokon je probijena i bariera od 2GHz. Prvi je to učinio Intel sa svojim Pentiumom
4. Recenzije novog Pentiuma 4 možete naći na:

• Anandtechu
• Hard OCP-u
• Tom’s Hardwareu
  i
• Icronticu.

P4 2.0GHz se i dalje bazira na "Willamette" jezgri iako je u Socket-478
formatu, dok se prvi procesori na "Northwood" jezgri očekuju početkom
sljedeće godine. Novi procesor u SAD košta $562, što je za Intel prilično agresivna
cijena. Performanse su dobre, tako da je u prosjeku P4 2GHz za dlaku brži od
Athlona na 1.4GHz. No, kad se uzme omjer performansi i cijene, Athlon je i dalje
#1.

Evo vrlo zanimljivoga testa pržilica. Nažalost test nije baš velik (čak 4 primjerka su na testu). Ali kako znam da mnogi razmišljaju o kupovini istih i da ne vide šumu od drveća (bez uvrede jer na tržištu ima pržilica ko šodra). Meni bi bilo draže da je koji Plextor ili Ricoh gore a čak možda i Teac ali nisam ja to radio.

Ako se sječate Intel proizvodi procesore a sada su se odlučili malo okušati i na tržištu matičnih ploča. Dečkima je ploča ispala vrlo stabilna ali loš je izbor za oveclockanje. Naime nema baš opcija za dizanje FSB-a ili mulitpliera. Za fanatike anti-overclockanja i urede sigurno jako dobar izbor. Dobro je što se Intel odlučio na ovaj korak jer konkurencije nikad dosta.

Anandtech je testirao Altec Lansing ADA890 THX zvučni sistem. Čini se da je stvar OK, iako npr. Quad modus ne funkcionira.

ATi je objavio neke specifikacije svog nadolazećeg A4 Athlon chipseta. Ovaj chipset sličan je jeftinijim varijantama NVIDIA nForce-a s tom razlikom da će od početka podržavati DDR333.