W.I.L. Hardware Tech-News Highlights for February 2005

How to find the best deals on tech and electronics gear – link.

The tech consumer as prawn – link.

Sony’s PlayStation Portable PSP-1000 redefines mobile gaming with the most important thing to happen in the video game industry since the launch of the original PlayStation: a product that has to be seen to be believed – review.

How the PCI bus won, what the effects of its dominance have been, and what might happen next – link.

Systems

Building the perfect budget PC – Part 1, Part 2.

5 simple steps to a quieter PC – link.

ArsTechnica specs out Home Theater PC boxes in two flavors, “Hot Rod” and “Budget Box” – link.

-- Laptops

eMachines’ M6810 AMD64-based notebook delivers a lot of value for the money, and is Linux-compatible – review. Gateway revamps retail notebook lineup – link.

Alienware Sentia Extreme 12” multimedia notebook glows in dark merits your consideration if you do not mind the price – review.

Regarding that hypothetical $99 laptop – link.

Bringing an old laptop back to life: the experiment – link.

Special screen filter on Fujitsu’s desktop replacement nets a better, brighter LCD – preview.

IBM’s ThinkPad T42p does not come cheap, but it is a quality product with a look and feel that most other notebooks can only aspire to – review.

Finding the right Linux laptop – link. Linare Corp., a manufacturer of software and hardware focused on the Linux platform, introduces AMD-based laptop for $498 – link.

-- Small Form Factor machines

SFF roundup, Part I: Socket 478 and 754 Systems – link.

8 Pentium 4-based SFF PCs ... small, but (some) not so quiet – roundup.

Biostar’s iDEQ 300G SFF PC has some interesting features and some room for improvement – review.

Shuttle’s nForce4-based SN25P may be a little too forward-looking, with no PCI slots – review 1, review 2.

-- Apple

Mac Mini: Revolution or flash in the pan? – link.

How does the Mac Mini perform as a Home Theater machine? It has potential, but it ain’t there now – link.

Apple on G5 PowerBook: not so fast – link. Apple updates G4 PowerBooks – link.

Apple 15” PowerBook G4 is cool, quiet, and fast ... and damage-prone with weak wireless functionality – review.

CPUs, motherboards, chipsets

AnandTech’s February motherboards price guide – link.

Intel discusses the future of chip process technology, Moore’s Law – link.

IBM, Sony, Toshiba unveil 9-core cell processor. “Supercomputer on a chip” expected to power Sony’s PlayStation 3 – link.

The Cell chip: what it is, and why you should care – Part 1, Part 2. Discussion here.

Future of computing may be at stake with proposed cell microprocessor – link.

IBM, Sony, and Toshiba formally unveil the multicore “cell” processor, a chip that will top 4GHz – link 1, link 2.

Cell chip story may be a window into future of IT – link.

Introducing the IBM/Sony/Toshiba cell processor – Part 1, Part 2.

Intel says it has perfected a technique to create single chip silicon laser devices – link 1, link 2, link 3.

Consumer electronics ASIC developers successfully ramp up production of their chips to 90nm process technology and even start working on 65nm products – link.

Is the single core CPU doomed? Not necessarily. The Intel Prescott failure only tells us that right now, the ultra deep pipelined CPU is not the best solution – link.

What you don’t know can cook you: How dust impacts a CPU’s temperature (conclusion is, “dust early and often”) – link.

Battle at 90nm: Power consumption and performance compared for Intel’s Pentium-M “Dothan” core architecture and AMD’s new “Winchester” architecture for the Athlon64. Intel wins, but at a pretty price – link.

Comparing Pentium4 and Athlon64 x64 performance – link. The 64-bit Linux desktop battle – link.

-- AMD

AMD’s Sempron is a classic dog’s dinner – link.

AMD ignores the Intel hyena at its peril – link. AMD loses dual core race – link.

MSI’s K8N Diamond SLI nForce 4-based mobo is great for the gaming enthusiast. Just make sure that you have enough cash left over for those graphics cards – review.

nVidia’s nForce 4 chipset brings together about half a dozen things that nVidia has been pushing quietly behind the scenes for a long time, and deserves to be on your short list as long as you need two or more CPUs – link.

AMD dual core gets major showing at Linux World – link. AMD enables software-fuelled virtualization in Windows, Linux for Opteron – link.

AMD preps new Opteron, ramps up 90nm SOI process – link 1, link 2.

AMD is giving us a little look into the future of their Athlon 64 line with the new x52 line of Opteron processors. A quick look at what SSE3 brings to the table for Opteron, and the future revision E Athlon 64 cores considered – link.

ATI ships “first” mobile AMD chipset – link. Via unveils Turion chipset, pitched as a Centrino competitor – link 1, link 2.

Via ships 100 millionth chipset for AMD Athlon platform – link.

Inside AMD’s Hammer: the 64-bit architecture behind the Opteron and Athlon 64 – link.

-- Intel

Via is challenging Intel head-on with its latest chipsets, and is expecting to sell them for much cheaper – link.

Intel Centrino brand weak, AMD thinks – link.

Intel’s upcoming Yonah chip looks to be a good one, with an accompanying chipset to match – link 1, link 2.

Is the Pentium M a good alternative on the desktop? Not really, and it is expensive to boot – link.

Pentium M for the desktop tested with AOpen i855GMEm-LFS and DFI 855GME-MGF board solutions. If money is no object to assemble the quietest PC possible, a Pentium M based system is the best place to start. But with a little tweaking, the AMD A64 platform can cover similar ground at lower cost – link. Silently cooling the Pentium M desktop platforms – link.

ABIT’s Fatal1ty AA8XE is a motherboard for high-end enthusiasts interested in taking expensive hardware and pushing it to the limit – review.

Intel has 65nm versions of its mobile, desktop and server-oriented dual-core processors up and running in the its labs – link.

Intel launches 2MB L2 cache 6XX desktop processors – link.

Intel drives Centrino components to cars, factories, as Pentium M, Celeron M go into “embedded” markets – link.

Graphics

AnandTech’s February graphics cards price guide – link.

Buying a graphics card on a budget – link.

The fastest graphics cards of 2004: Ultimate testing of 27 GPUs – Part I, Part II.

XGI’s Volari V8 AGP card features innovative multimedia features plus some muscle, but is a not a serious gaming solution. For those looking in the $100 price range, the card is an excellent alternative to anything from nVidia and ATI – review.

-- ATI and nVidia

TV on your PC: ATI’s All-in-Wonder X600 Pro is not a bad product, but fails to impress – review.

ATI’s 110nm process-based FireGL V5000 is its first OpenGL workstation product in a while. Is it worth the wait? – review 1, review 2. Discussion here.

GeForce Go 6800 vs. Mobility Radeon X800 slapdown generates a lot of heat – reviews. GeForce Go 6800 Ultra demonstrates unprecedented power in the mobile space – review.

The mainstream market gets GeForce 6 in the form of a 6600 GT on AGP 8x. An unqualified success, it will set you back about $200-250 – review.

Sapphire’s Radeon X800 is a pretty good buy, even at around $400 – review.

ATI’s development RADEON X850 graphics cards to acquire 512MB of GDDR3, potentially providing breakthrough performance for future games – link 1, link 2.

Club3D plans AGP flavors of ATI’s X850, X800 products (convenient ATI Radeon summary product lineup included in article) – link.

nForce4 SLI chipset (supports 2 graphics cards) roundup: is SLI worth the cost and the effort? Probably only if the absolute ultimate in gaming performance is important to you – link.

Memory, storage

Memory market overview for February – link.

DRAM’s near- to mid-term development remains firmly tied to Intel and AM’qs PC chipset roadmaps and Jedec development efforts – link.

New Rambus memory technology arrives: FlexIO bus runs at 8GHz data rate and gives the same performance as PCI-Express for far less power and latency; XDR RAM clocks in at a 3.2GHz data rate in its current implementation = 8 times faster than DDR2 – link.

Samsung says it is first with DDR3 DRAM, with operational speed of 2 x DDR2 and 4 x DDR, and uses 80nm process technology. Company claims DDR3 will become the standard for low power memory chips for PC – link.

Slow DDR-II adoption makes DRAM manufacturers fret – link.

Toshiba, Sandisk announce 8Gb flash chip built on a 70nm process, allowing 1GB memory sticks made out of one chip and, prospectively, 2Gb modules – link.

-- Hard drives

SATA to USB bridge chip released – link.

Seagate’s 5GB Pocket HDD compared with Iomega’s 20GB Mini HDD – test.

The Hitachi Travelstar 60GB HDD is the hard disk laptop equivalent of a Rolls – review.

Hitachi slashes microdrive prices, announces a new 6GB version of its miniature HDD – link.

Western Digital’s 320GB WD3200JB is very fast, nearly silent, and not a bad deal pricewise – review.

Dead disk drive? What would Fonzie do? – link.

The story of one man’s struggle to save his hard drive and reconciliation to his fate – link.

-- Optical drives

3 DVD-RW drives from Hitachi-LG and Sony contrasted – reviews.

BenQ’s DW1620A DVD±RW/R burner is tested with new firmware. An overall nice impression is somewhat spoiled by some flaws which hopefully will be corrected in further firmware updates – review.

Macrovision to announce that it has developed a way to eliminate the vast majority of DVD copying – link. Attempts to stamp out DVD copying are circumvented by the proliferation of DVD-duplication tools – link.

Format wars redux: Blu-ray Disc vs. HD-DVD – link.

Cases, power supplies, cooling

Value cases: you will be surprised at what we can acquire for a mere $20-$40 – roundup.

Arctic Cooling’s Silentium T2 mid-tower case with customized 350W Seasonic PSU is very interesting, but it is not that quiet (and is not easily made quieter) – review 1, review 2.

Antec’s Performance One, or P160, “super mid-tower” aluminum case has some great features, and is recommended – review.

Lian Li’s PC-60Plus all-aluminum case has great thermal performance, at the expense of some noise and expense – review.

Enermax’s Noisetaker EG701AX-VE SFMA 2.0 is surprisingly quiet for a 600W PSU – review.

Seasonic’s 400W SS-400HT APFC PSU wins the 1st “80 Plus” efficiency certification – link.

High-performance PSU testing marathon show all-around competence, but not every model delivered what was promised – roundup.

High-end CPU coolers battle in out on the silence and efficiency front. The CoolerMaster Hyper 48 KHC-L91 emerges as a favorite – roundup.

Asetek’s WaterChill Antarctica KT12A-L30 water cooling system impresses, at a cost and with some installation complexity – review.

An overview of Sunbeam’s case/cooling/machine interior-modding accessories – link.

Miscellaneous components and periferals

StreetFire Sound Labs is taking on traditional stereo equipment manufacturers in the “living room war” over home media equipment. Their first product is the fully open source RBX1600 personal music server – link.

Creative Labs’ Inspire Monitor M80 sound system is an excellent system at an unbelievably low price – review.

Dell’s UltraSharp 2405FPW 24” widescreen LCD delivers impressively for only $1,200 – review.

17” LCD display buyer’s guide may be helpful – link.

Logitech’s MX1000, the first Laser mouse, heralds a new breed of mouse: one with quick charging time, long wireless range, extreme accuracy, comfortable use, and much more. It may be the beginning of the end for optical mice (as long as prices go down) – review.

Linksys’s MIMO (multiple in, multiple out)-based wireless offering indicates that the face of home networking as we know it could be changing for the better – review. Oh the sheer hell of networking your home now – part 1, part 2. Building a home network from scratch – link.

Is 802.11g, by far the most widely-deployed WLAN standard, sufficient or should IT managers add 802.11a as well? – link.

HP’s DVD Writer 640i uses LightScribe technology to burn professional-looking disc labels – link.

Lexmark suffers setback in its bid to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to prevent other companies from making low-cost, refurbished toner cartridges for its printers – link.

The iPod Shuffle is Apple’s stab, a potentially deadly one for rivals, at the bottom end. It is going to sell no matter what an objective analysis says – review.

Pentax’s lates, the Optio X, is one of the coolest and thinnest digital cameras yet – review. Is the Canon PowerShot SD300 the Best Ultra-Compact in its Class? – review. PMA show showcases point-and-shoot cameras with high resolution at affordable prices – link. Nikon unveils six digital cameras – link.

AnandTech Guide to Better Photos: Night Photography – link.