September 10, 2003

Half Life 2, ATI, and NVIDIA - Josh

As many of you have read, Valve is starting to show off Half Life 2, and it works quite a bit better on ATI based products than NVIDIA.  In many instances, the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro is significantly faster than the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra.  This is obviously not a good situation for NVIDIA, and it is one they are actively working on.  The first line of defense that NVIDIA will set up is the Det. 50's that will be released (probably quite shortly after the Half Life 2 Benchmark comes out, which I am guessing will be around the 30th of this month).  The next line is to put new chips on the market, and I think that might be the best plan for them.

X-bit had a small blurb about the upcoming NV38 chip, and they made some rather hasty predictions about the performance of this part.  While it may in fact be called the FX 5950 Ultra, I think that it will be a much more significant upgrade than some think.  NVIDIA goes along the lines of a new part, then a refresh, then another new part.  If we go back to the original NV30 release, the NV35 is the refreshed part.  I think the NV38 is going to be a much more significant upgrade than many are thinking.  I am beginning to have suspicions that the NV38 will essentially be a new chip, much like the jump from the GeForce 3 Ti 500 to the GeForce 4 Ti 4600.  It is not the NV40, which appears to be a very different product, one that provides the PS 3.0 and VS 3.0 support.  No, I believe the NV38 is a highly redesigned part that very well could answer many of the problems that the two previous generations had (such as poor PS 2.0 performance).  With the NV3X line, NVIDIA made a fairly flexible architecture, but one not ideally suited for speed.  ATI on the other hand built a much more static part (less flexibility and programmability), but made it a hard and fast DX 9.0 part that has great speed.  ATI honestly won this round with their thinking.

Still, it appears that NVIDIA will be releasing the NV36 and NV38 during Computex, and I for one am very interested in what these parts will bring to the table.  If it is merely a refresh for both parts, then NVIDIA may be in some trouble this holiday season because titles like Half Life 2 will sell a lot of video cards, and if NVIDIA products are not up to snuff, then buyers will go to ATI.  Again, I could be wrong, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the NV38 at least will be a heavily redesigned part and will not be a simple refresh of the NV35.

September 4, 2003

Move Complete and Other Changes - Josh

I am finally out of my old house, and into the new.  Things are still piled high at the new place, but we are slowly getting it in order.  This has been a very odd summer to say the least.  I have also had very little urge to write anything, but I think I needed the break.  Things should really start to roll here soon though.  Keith has an article finished up, and I will be posting that later today.  I still have a couple of things somewhat unfinished, but hopefully that will change also.  Then big things start happening.  We will be moving to a new server on Friday evening, so DNS changes will ensue.  Then sometime after that, something a lot bigger will be going on.  We will be moving to a php based website, and from what it looks like, it will actually be more of a portal than anything else.  There will be a ton of new features for the site, and quite a bit to make it a lot more interesting, as well as feature a lot more feedback from readers.  I am very excited about the change, but it has been a long time in coming.  The only sad part is that before the hack, I was around 200,000+ page hits a month, and now I am down to about 11,000.  I guess that is what happens when you have no content to show.

Anyway, things will slowly get moving again around here, and I am very excited about the changes that are coming up.  It should help make this place a lot more readable!

August 14, 2003

ATI Announces X-Box Technology Win - Josh

In what appears to be a giant blow to NVIDIA, ATI stated that it will provide technology for upcoming X-Box products.  While the release is fairly vague, it appears as though NVIDIA has lost the graphics portion of the future X-Box product, possibly to be released in 2005.  This could be a giant blow to NVIDIA in the future, as current X-Box chips sold to Microsoft constitute upwards of 20% of NVIDIA's gross revenues.  This raises some very interesting questions though...

Compatibility between the original X-Box, and the upcoming X-Box, might be a bit tougher to accomplish.  Luckily the X-Box is based on DirectX software and technology, so any future ATI built IC will probably be able to handle it.  Since it is a closed system, quite a bit of tweaking and QA work will go on to ensure compatibility.  Still, it could be a bit of a hassle, especially if Microsoft wants to make sure that older X-Box games will work on the next generation X-Box.

Sound.  ATI doesn't have much expertise in this area.  NVIDIA not only designed the graphics portion of the X-Box, but also the system level IC's and the sound.  The X-Box sound controller is an excellent piece of technology, much of it based off of expertise brought in from the defunct Aureal group.  ATI does not have much experience when it comes to the sound portion.  This brings up a question... will NVIDIA continue to provide many of the system level components with ATI providing the graphics portion?  This is not likely, but it is a possibility.  I just don't see how ATI will be able to one-up the sound technology of the current X-Box in a two year period.  Sure, ATI does have some experience with sound design with their chipsets, but it is very basic at most.  No set hardware DSP functions, no Dolby Digital Encoding, just a basic AC 97 2.2 sound controller.  This might be an area that ATI could get into big trouble if they will in fact try to design all components for the next generation X-Box.  Users and Microsoft will demand a high performance, higher functioning part than what is currently provided in the X-Box.  ATI will be sorely strained to put something out in a two year period.

This does appear to be a huge blow to NVIDIA, but due to the fact that the wording of the agreement is so vague, many things could happen within two years.  Just ask Gigapixel and AMD!  In a last minute change, both Gigapixel and AMD lost out to NVIDIA and Intel to design the innards of the original X-Box.  Time will only tell, but this shouldn't affect NVIDIA much due to there being a full 2 more years (and possibly more) of producing X-Box chips for Microsoft.  In fact, their 3rd quarter should show a nice increase in revenue due to increased X-Box chip production and sales to Microsoft.  Additionally, there will most likely be an X-Box GPU redesign utilizing the bulk 0.13u process from TSMC, and that will in turn allow NVIDIA to charge Microsoft a smaller amount for each GPU.  Heat will also be decreased, so there is a good possibility that Microsoft will release a low profile/industrial look X-Box in the near future (much like what Sony did with the PS1).

NVIDIA Releases Improved Drivers - Josh

Yes, NVIDIA finally released some good drivers for the GeForce FX series of cards.  One of the problems that NVIDIA has been facing is criticism about how it is handling the features of the FX series.  Crazy little things like not rendering scenes correctly, optimizations that shouldn't be in there, and decreased precision in some applications to increase overall speed.  Well, the 45.23's seem to do away with much of the problems currently exhibited in NVIDIA based cards.  One thing that I have been curious about is floating point precision in the NV-31 class of GPU.  With the 44.03 drivers, it was essentially limited to partial precision (eg. 16 bit float) no matter what call was made.  With the new drivers, precision shouldn't be a concern anymore.  The NV-31 now has full functionality when it comes to 16 bit and 32 bit floating point values.  There are some performance and compatibility improvements, and this appears to be really the first solid driver release for the GeForce FX series of cards.

Performance looks to be slightly improved across the board, but nothing breathtaking.  I believe NVIDIA is waiting for the Det. 50's before we see some significant improvements.  In the meantime, I would suggest downloading these drivers for your FX card.  They are certainly an improvement (in both quality and honesty) from the 44.03's.

Please take a look at the Forum page, as I have posted a topic on the 45.23's.  I would be very interested in the experiences you all have had with them!  Next month I should be bringing out a PenStar version of the ever popular Ratpadz GS, and I will probably be giving at least 5 of them away to forum members, so start signing up!

Personal Life and Web Life - Josh

Just to update where we are.  Keith and Scott have been working on quite a few projects, and things are nearing completion on most of them.  The bottleneck is me.  I haven't had time to really edit their endeavors, nor post them, due to external circumstances.  I also have a pair of reviews that need finishing, but are essentially ready to go.  I just need time!  You see, for the past 5 months I have been working non-stop on 1) a fruitless remodel and addition to my current house, and 2) when the remodel proved fruitless we decided just to buy a new house.  Yes, tomorrow (Friday) we sign papers and come into possession of a new (to us) house.  It is three times the size of my current house, and it has a lovely area for my office and testing area (really big!).  Once I get everything set up, I should really be ready to pay more attention to the site.  It really is not dead!  Just taking a small break after 5 years of writing.

So honestly expect to see a lot more content this second half of August, and September should really be busy also!  I am tentatively planning on attending the launch event for the Athlon 64 in September, so it will be nice to get back into the swing of things!  Keep reading this space (all 12 of you or so)!

July 23, 2003

Big Happenings - Josh

There are some pretty significant changes coming down the road soon it seems.  First off, I am in the process of buying a new house and will hopefully be moving August 15th.  For anyone out there that has ever bought a house, you know how much fun it can be dealing with the bank, appraisers, and inspections.  This also explains why I have not been looking out for the site as of late!  In the meantime, I am trying to fix up our current house as best I can so we can sell it in a timely manner for a decent chunk of change.  That has been taking up the majority of my time.

Now for the website.  It appears that we will be going to a php based site in the near future.  I am in discussion with a fellow that does this for a living, and it could be a very nice thing for myself and the other writers (easier to post to, etc.).  I have not finalized plans for this yet, but hopefully we can get cracking on this soon.  In the meantime, I will be trying to find the time to actually post Keith's latest article, as well as finish testing on several products (and write them up too).

So don't stop dropping by!  We are not dead!  By late August we should have things really rolling!

July 10, 2003

Look Familiar? - Josh

Well, now you see what I have been doing as of late.  I have been trying to recreate the look of Penstarsys.com, and in so doing have discovered quite a bit about HTML.  The layout still isn't perfect, and there is a lot of work to do still, but we are getting there.  I have Keith's review of the Abit NF7-M pretty much complete, but we need to verify some of the numbers he is getting.  Once that is done, then we will post the review.  My next review is on the Netlux Wireless Router/Firewall, which is a solid, yet inexpensive, 802.11b product.  I should have that one up shortly (if I can finish some of the final touches to the design).

One thing that really annoys me is the Burst! Media code that drives the banners on this page.  They are just plain wacky sometimes, and this can take away from the look of the site.  Perhaps I should find a new advertiser!  One of the most noticeable problems is the line running down the left side of the page.  It looks to be interrupted, but in fact it is solid.  Once I remove the Burst ads, it looks really sharp.  I am really starting to consider dropping them like a bad habit (cause they certainly don't pay well).

June 30, 2003

Lack of News/Site Update - Josh

Hopefully July will be a better month, as it looks like I will have some time to work on articles and reviews.  I have a lot buzzing around my head, but usually I get home from work and the last thing I want to do is sit down in front of a computer and start testing and writing.  I hope I can get past this block soon!  I do have a good chunk of hardware stacked up and waiting for review, so that isn't a problem.  Keith has two articles waiting in the wings, and Scott is working on a couple of different projects.  Here's to hoping that I get my behind into gear!

June 11, 2003

TDK Velo CDRW Review - Josh

Scott has finished up his review of this rather fine CDRW drive.  It certainly appears to be the Cadillac of the CDRW world (or at least some believe).  It certainly does bring a bit of flair to the CDRW market.  Here is a direct quote:

     TDK is a name that I’m sure many of you have heard before.  They are a big name in the world of optical drives but also have their hands in basically every computer market outlet in the world.  They not only do optical drives of all kinds, but also handle semiconductors, speakers, portable CD-MP3 Players, inkjet paper, and many other accessories.  Whenever I see a list of top CD-burners though, I end up seeing TDK listed among them, and today I’m here to tell you if TDK’s “reputation” holds up.

You can read the entire review here.

BFG Claims First FX 5900 Shipment - Josh

John from BFG let me know that they are currently shipping the GeForce FX 5900 to high end system integrators for use in upcoming products.  Since the demise of the original VisionTek, BFG has become the premier North American partner for NVIDIA, and as such they usually have first dibs on chips coming from NVIDIA.  Systems featuring the FX 5900 Ultra will be available at the end of June, and BFG expects major retailers to have FX 5900 Ultra cards in stock around July 4.  Their package looks to be quite competitive, especially with the VIVO and editing software (as well as the NVDVD).