Toms Hardware has a interesting article on how older platforms with AGP graphics fare with a ATI HD 4650.   It is a interesting read, especially for those that really are in denial of the gaming limits of their older computer.   Time to upgrade folks, if you want to do any modern gaming anyway.   Ready about it here.

Toms Hardware has a follow up article on how applications are impacted in terms of performance with 1-4 CPU cores.   There is some decent information provided and it illustrates how having additional cores care greatly improve performance in certain applications.    Read about it here.

PC Pro did a little article on PC repair shop’s and their ability to honestly diagnose hardware and software problems.   The results were a little suprising with all but one engaging in dishonest business practices.  The magazine intentionally caused a hardware fault on their test computer and put on several invisable pieces of monitoring software in order to watch every action the PC repair shops performed.   What they saw was technicians sifting through personal files, pictures, passwords and charging for hardware replacement that was totally unneccessary.   Read the full article here.

Toms Hardware has a neat write up on how a CPU is made, from beginning to end.   The details were pulled straight from a Intel walk through that was recently released.   Pretty interesting read in you have ever been curious how the magic happens.   Read about it here.

If you are like me, you most likely have plenty of electronics.   My house is filled, so why would I need a HTPC when I already have 3 computers, DVR’s, DVD players and about every game system except for a PS3. Well about 6 months ago, out of curiosity,  I figured I’d build a HTPC and see how much I liked it.   My goals were to make it cheap, small, quiet yet powerful enough to do some gaming and do Blu-Ray playback with 7.1 surround sound via HDMI.

The build was simple.   I wanted to use cheaper parts so that meant no top shelf items, but still offer good performance.   I decided to pick start with a AMD Athlon X2 5050e which is a dual core and low voltage 2.6ghz part ($55).   For the motherboard I selected a Foxconn A7GM-S because of the then, up to date 780G chipset, decent features and Micro ATX design ($65).  For RAM, I went with 2GB of Gskill DDR800 ($29).   I am fond of Gskill and Mushkin as they have always delivered the best performance for my RAM dollar.  To hold everthigng together and fit in the spot I had selected, I chose the Silverstone SUGO cube case ($49).   It is black and nicely finished and accomodates full size graphics cards.   Since I did not need a ton of power, but wanted enough to power a more modern graphics card and stay within budget, I selected a Rosewill RD450 450W power supply ($35).  For my Blu-Ray and DVD playpack I went with a Lite-On 4x Blu-Ray player ($75).   For storage, I decided to try a Western Digital Green 500GB drive due to it’s lower power consumption and heat ($59).  Lastly I wanted a video card that could play most recent games with low power consumption and noise and could pass through LPCM via HDMI for true 7.1 theater sound.  I decided to pick use a ATI HD 4670 512MB part with HDMI out from Biostar ($49).  I already had a copy of Windows Vista, so I used it for it’s Media Center abilities necessary for a HTPC.  Last few needed odds and ends like a Xbox 360 wireless PC remote ($30), Wireless RF Keyboard ($30) and Media Center remote ($15) were later purchased.   So all in all, a complete investment of around $425.  This investment compares favorably to a PS3 or Xbox 360 elite and remember, at the time of the build, stand alone Blu-Ray players were still in the $300 range.

So now that it is all built, what can it do that my Xbox 360 cannot?  Well to be honest outside of Blu-Ray movie playback and internet surfing, they both get used to browse and play media off my home network, both steam Netflix, play games and offer a Media Center interface.   However all these things just perform much better on my HTPC.  But the biggest thing I have found for myself, is that many good games for the Xbox 360 and PS3 can also be purchased for the PC (Prototype, Grid, Ghostbusters, BioShock, Orange Box, etc) and are generally 25-50% cheaper and prices drop sooner.  So games are lots cheaper, look as good or better on a 46″ 1080p LCD like the one I use and the system is quiet.  So insane grinding noises from the Xbox 360 DVD drive, no red ring of death, plus cheap and easy storage and performance upgrades or proprietary equipment to worry about.   Really the only advantage I see to the consoles at the moment is the more compact preassembled build and exclusive game content that you just cannot get on a PC.

Now that 6 months have gone by are there some things I would change with my build?  Yes, due to cheaper costs of components lately, I would substitute the ATI HD4670 for a HD4850 or HD4770 for better gaming performance ($90 versus $49).  I’d also use a 1TB HD ($79 versus $49), 4GB Ram ($45 versus $29) and a triple core AMD Phenom II X3 720 ($85 versus $54).  So about $110 more investment for better performance and storage capacity.

Sony has responded to recent rumors stating that there will be no PS3 price cuts in the near future.   Sounds like a bad businesss decision to me.  With game developers threatening to pull support, Sony clearly in last place in the console race, how can they justify the huge price premium for their console?   The fact that it has a Blu Ray player does not fly any more since you can now pick one up for $100 from time to time.   Xbox 360 has the same games and better exclusives with pretty much the same image quality and costs much, much less.   Heck my HTPC with a ATI HD4850, 2GB ram, Vista,  dual core X2, 500GB HD and blu-ray player was put together for the same price as a PS3 and games for it cost 2o-50% less and play awesome with a wireless xbox 360 controller.

Karma

“Fisker Automotive is a green American premium sports car company with a mission to create a range of beautiful environmentally friendly cars that make environmental sense without compromise.”

What makes the Fisker special?  Materials, technology and style from what I gather.  Build materials are eco friendly and the technology is pretty forward thinking, at least for cars.  Basically the Fisker acts sort of like a diesel electric locomotive where the motor is essentially a generator powering the electric motors.  Major difference here though is that the Fisker mostly uses batteries and relies on being charged for maximum efficiency.  The goal is to have the vehicle run completely on battery power for the first 50 miles or so and when needed, the gasoline motor charges the battery back to full and once again, you are cruising under the stealthy whisper of electric power.  Why this is great is current electric cars have limited range and when drained, you have to recharge.   This method allows for extended road trips, however at the expense of adding less efficiency as the gas motor is engaged more often.

The neat thing though is that it does this all while giving 0-60 performance of 5.8 seconds, amazing luxury and style and supposedly up to 100mpg when used for commuting under 50 miles a day and charged properly prior to your commute.   Drawback is of course it’s $87,000 starting asking price.   Hardly affordable and even makes the way overpriced Chevy volt look cheap in comparison.   However, the Karma is in a different league in style and creature appointments, more in line with a BMW or other premium branded car so depending on how the production models actually perform, the price may not be to out of line with it’s normally aspirated competition over the course of lifetime ownership and you can have a lighter conscience knowing that your carbon footprint is much smaller than it would have been otherwise.

So everyone pay attention.   From today until July 11th, you will be able to preorder Windows 7 for a huge discount.   Pre orders will be available through participating vendors such as NewEgg, Amazon, Fry’s, etc.     The non discounted pricing structure is as follows:

For full retail versions:

Anandtech has a interesting write up on DDR3 memory and the Intel Core I7 , comparing how performance scales with memory latency and bandwidth.   Pretty good read for those of you that are interesting in moving to a DDR3 platform and would like to know what is the best bang for your $$.   Read about it here.

Basically the article goes through some exhaustive teting of DDR3 in various configuration at DDR3-1066 speeds up to DDR3-2000 and latency of CAS5 up to CAS 9.   In short, most programs are not that sensitive to the plethora of memory speeds tested, although a few are (synthetic tests do not count), but typically the performance gain rarely exceeds 5-6%.  What this means to you as the consumer is that you can feel safe buying a middle of the road  DD3-1333 C6 or DDR3-1600 C6 capable memory kit for a modest price ($75-80 for 4GB) and find solace in the fact that your performance will pretty much equal kits costing twice as much.

According to reghardware British researchers have created a hard rectanglular drive. The media is double sided and fits within the confines of  3.5 inch casings used by current HDD’s and SSD’s.   The read-write layer is made up of a grid of millions of read-write heads that are created using the same lithography process that is used to make silicon chips like your Intel CPU.  The read/write mechanics are controlled by sending a signal to the appropriate row and column of the grid.  Multiple heads can be doing their work in parrallel , but the current limit is 64 heads active at any one time.

Sounds great doesn’t it.   So what does that mean for performance?  Well for one, power consumption is just 4W, which is about 1/3 of a current SCSI drive.   Second, the supposed claimed data transfer rate is 500 MB/s which is screaming fast.  My current Hitachi 1TB peaks out at around 130 MB/s, so this would be a huge performance boost, even if only half of the claimed performance was realized.

Right now Dataslide is working on gathering additional funding and licensing.  It will be interesting to see if this technology can live up to the proposed claims and if so, how soon the market will act to introduce the new technology.