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August 16, 2004 Logitech Z-2200 Speaker System Review - Josh Some time ago Logitech was kind enough to send me a set of Z-2200 speakers. If you remember, this model was released around Comdex of last year. Based on the Z-680 set of speakers, the Z-2200's were meant to provide the 2.1 crowd with a high powered, high quality set of speakers for less than $150. Logitech did a really great job with these speakers, and I have been very impressed with them every time I have turned them on. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire review here. Site News, Video Card News, and Reviews of Interest - Josh I am finishing up the final touches on my Logitech Z-2200 speaker review, so expect that up shortly (as long as no disasters strike this morning). I will be starting work on a X800 Pro review also, but of course with all the new game releases, I will have to redo quite a bit of my testing routines. Such is life! Still, the ability to benchmark Far Cry and Doom 3 is very nice, as these titles really lay down the foundation for future games. Source does look to be an amazing engine though, and its visuals look very realistic and gritty (while Doom 3 and Far Cry look a bit plasticy, but that is just my opinion). Still, all of them are a huge step above what has been out before! I guess the closest in overall quality before this generation was Call of Duty and its massively modified Quake III engine. In terms of video cards, it appears as though ATI is really manhandling the PCI-E OEM market, and NVIDIA has had very few wins with their PCI-E products. It also appears that ATI is kinda ignoring the retail market at the high end, as they are shipping the vast majority of the X800 XT PE's to OEMs for high end system integration. This has made quite a few users very angry, but at the same time catering to the OEMs is probably the smartest thing to do here. OEMs tend to remember things like this. Many think that it won't be until mid-September when the X800 XT's and PE's hit the retail sector. The only problem I have with this is that it is getting awfully close to video card refresh time (late fall, early winter). From all indications, there will be a refresh of current products introduced in late November or early December (since there is no Comdex in mid-November, these guys can cut it later than usual). The later they introduce these parts, the more they can sell the current lineup of parts. I am all for improving technology, but bankrupting your partners by making their current stock of expensive video cards obsolete with a single introduction is not healthy. NVIDIA appears to have a lot of chips coming off the lines, and I have spoken to a few companies and their supply of NV40 chips is now meeting their demands. NVIDIA is no longer providing entire boards for their partners (which is what they tend to do if chip supplies are limited), and each of the partners have taken the reference design and spec'd out all the parts/components and are making their own boards now. This should mean a much better availability of the 6800 GT and 6800 Ultra, and we should really start to see a lot of these in stock in both Retail and Online. I am not sure of the OEM usage of these products as of yet, but they should start to make an impact now that availability is much better (OEM's hate it when they can't get sufficient quantities of parts when they want them- nothing like telling your customer that there will be a months delay on their system due to video card availability). Some interesting reviews/articles: Geoff at Tech Report has done a roundup of older video cards on Doom 3. This pretty extensive review must have taken quite a while, as he tests out an amazing array of video cards. Even the old 5800 Ultra makes a fine showing in these tests! Very interesting reading, I would highly recommend you take a look at it. John "Moto" Chow has taken a look at the Logitech IO Personal Digital Pen. This little number could be quite handy for recording quick notes in digital fashion, without a tablet! The Cool Tech Zone takes a look at the new OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 DIMMS sporting the new Samsung memory that everyone is raving about. This stuff not only has tight timings at PC3200, but quite often it goes all the way to 250 MHz without nary a problem. OCZ has certainly come a long ways from its strip mall days! Finally Dave Baumann from Beyond 3D has done a very comprehensive review of the entire GeForce 6800 series of cards (the Ultra, GT, and the regular 6800). All three are very competent parts, but I still wonder why the 6800 only has 128 MB at that price point? Oh well, as always Dave does an excellent job explaining the technology, as well as the reasons for the performance these boards achieve. August 13, 2004 More on 6600 Launch and Other Links - Josh NVIDIA successfully introduced their 6600 series of products yesterday (you can see my mini-preview if you scroll down), and it has sparked quite a bit of debate. Many think that in most applications it will run faster than a 9800 Pro on a 256 bit memory bus, while others are scoffing at that idea. For myself, I believe it is a little of both. Having the extra memory bandwidth of a 256 bit bus will definitely help out when heavy AA/AF/high resolutions are used, but the 6600 GT's memory is already clocked at 500 MHz as compared to the 340 MHz of the 9800 Pro. So the 9800 Pro is sitting at 21.7 GB/sec while the 6600GT is hitting 16 GB/sec. Not a huge difference between the two, and in fact due to the core clock speed differences (500 MHz for the 6600GT vs 378 MHz for the 9800 Pro), combined with the reduced latency of the memory, there could be far more situations where the 6600 GT will outclass the 9800 Pro. One area that will probably be addressed by 3rd party manufacturers is the lack of a 256 MB card. Doom 3 is a pretty heavy case in point where a 256 MB card can run faster at the higher quality settings. With Half Life 2 coming out soon, that also appears to want a higher memory video card. Things will get worse once other developer's get a hold of these engines and decide to make something even more spectacular that will require even more memory. Hopefully within the first few months we will see these higher memory cards hit the market. Earlier on NVIDIA had promised to deliver a 512 MB card by the end of the summer, and while this product might not hit by the end of this month, I do believe it will be out by the end of September. A lot will depend on the folks producing the GDDR-3 chips, and what kind of densities they can deliver in volume. Other Links Dean from 3DXtreme let me know that they did a video card comparison of the eVGA 6800 GT and the Sapphire X800 Pro. These monsters are duking it out in the $399 range, and both look to be very solid cards. HotHardware takes a look at Shuttle's first LCD product, the XP-17A. This glass panel LCD sports some good contrast, as well as a 16 ms response time. This could be a great product for the LAN gamer that doesn't want to lug around a 19" monitor. It certainly looks like a winner. Finally, Shrout and the gang at PC Perspective have reviewed the Abit AV8 K8T800 Pro Socket 939 motherboard. Abit has made great strides with their products, and this looks to be no different. As always, these are pretty overclocking friendly and are packed with extras. That is all for now! I am doing some more testing this weekend, as well as putting some more thoughts together for another speculative article. I think the next review will be the Logitech Z-2200 speaker set, which really sound goooooood. Please join the action in the forums, as it is starting to get a lot more hits these days. I would certainly appreciate your opinion on the articles, the state of the industry, and general thoughts and impressions. August 12, 2004 NVIDIA Unveils the GeForce 6600 Series - Josh In my NVIDIA Q2 2004 article, I stated that the 6600 GT would be running at 420 MHz and have a 256 bit bus. Well, I was wrong. Today NVIDIA has announced the 6600 series of video cards based on the NV43 chip, which is aimed at the mainstream market. The two initial offerings include the GeForce 6600 GT and the GeForce 6600. The NV43 chip is essentially 1/2 of an NV40, running on a 128 bit memory bus. The NV43 is PCI-E native, so we will eventually see this card on the AGP market when NVIDIA gets it to work with their HSI Bridge (which should cause no real performance loss for this chip). The NV43 features 8 individual pixel pipelines, each capable of supporting SM 3.0 operations. It also is comprised of 3 vertex shaders (which is equivalent to the FX 5900 series if memory serves me right). This will of course be running on a 128 bit memory bus. With the current efficiency of the NVIDIA memory controller, as well as the compression methods that they employ, the 6600 series shouldn't be too bandwidth starved, but looking at the economics of the situation, having a 256 bit bus on a $200 part is a bit much (chip packaging costs as well as PCB costs are significantly higher with a 256 bit bus). Unlike the other recent products from NVIDIA, the NV43 is made on TSMC's 110 nm process, which is a cost optimized version of their 130 nm FSG process. These chips will come in smaller, and cheaper, than a standard 130 nm part.
Unlike older "value" level cards like the FX 5700 series, NVIDIA designed a very compact PCB for this chip. The GT version will also feature the SLI connection (at top) for double the speed. The GeForce 6600 GT will run at 500 MHz core along with 500 MHz GDDR-3 memory. This enables the card to run very, very fast! The 500 MHz GDDR-3 will give the card a whopping 16 GB/sec of bandwidth, which should more than adequately feed the 8 pipelines of the chip. NVIDIA is touting this as the premier Doom 3 card for the $200 market. This card should be able to give the current ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB cards a run for their money, and the chip and card should significantly cheaper to make. Add to this value the video encoder/decoder, as well as the SM 3.0 functionality, and it gives users a very good alternative in this price range. While this card has no external power connector on the PCI-E card, it will most likely feature one on the AGP version.
The regular GeForce 6600 features a very ancient fan design! I am sure many of you recognize this as the fan and heatsink on the old GF2 Ultra. There are probably several PCB designs around this chip, some of which utilize TSOP memory (as shown above) and another that will probably utilize the smaller BGA chips. I imagine several months after this hits the market, it will be hitting the $120 price point. The GeForce 6600 will run at 300 MHz core, and the memory speed is not decided as of yet (NVIDIA is leaving that up to their partners). This card will address the $149 and below market, and it should provide more than adequate competition to the X300/X600 series of cards from ATI. The lower power and lower heat of the design allows partners to use very simple heatsinks, and no external power connector (both on PCI-E and AGP). This will start to displace the GeForce FX 5700 series, and I imagine the FX 5700 will start to displace the GeForce FX 5200/5500 series. This downward movement of products will certainly help NVIDIA's performance in these areas. The partners also have the option to add more memory to these cards, so we will most likely see 256 MB versions of both products (though perhaps not right away). NVIDIA should capture some of the PCI-E market away from ATI and their X600/X300 parts with this series. However, ATI is readying their RV410 part, which should not be too far behind NVIDIA's NV43. So far I have heard very little about the RV410, but it should match up the specs of the NV43 pretty closely, and I imagine performance will be very close also. Throughout the rest of the year, NVIDIA should be rolling out new products that address not only the high end, but the value level also (and perhaps even the integrated graphics market as well...). Other Reviews of Interest - Josh The Tech Report was one of the first out of the gates with their GeForce 6600 Preview. It is unfortunate that NVIDIA was unable to send out boards for an actual review. PC Stats takes a look at some PC4200 DDR-2 533 modules from Samsung. Now that Intel is starting to ship their DDR-2 enabled products, we should start to see a greater amount of reviews based on this technology. If you haven't had enough GeForce 6600 action for today, Hot Hardware also previews the technology behind the new mainstream dynamo. They also review the EVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme for those of you with the necessary credit to buy one! For a change of pace, Designtechnica has reviewed the RCA Scenium DLP HDTV. For those looking for a high quality rear projection system for this upcoming football season (and experience it in HDTV), then take a quick look at what they have to say. August 11, 2004 Chaintech Apogee GeForce AA6800 - Josh While it may be rare to see Chaintech products on retail shelves in the US, it is a very well known brand to OEM's, SI's, and online stores. Chaintech has a history of providing good, solid products at a very inexpensive price, and they provide a lot of extra's for the money a user does spend. The past few weeks I have had the pleasure of taking the Chaintech Apogee GeForce AA6800 Turbo Edition out for a spin, and it proved to be a very impressive card. Here is a quote:
You can read the entire article here. August 10, 2004 Corsair and Other News - Josh Corsair wrote to inform us that they are now offering new 1GB modules that run at PC3200 speeds and 2:3:3:6 latencies. For those of you looking to stock out your systems with 2+ GB of memory, while using an Athlon 64 or i865/i875 Intel platform, might want to take a good look at these. I have been testing out the Corsair XMS3200 XL Pro DIMMS, and they work really, really nicely! I can imagine that these new DIMMS work pretty nicely also. Corsair has a very good reputation, and it is well deserved. They have excellent memory, and their prices are always competitive. You can read more about Corsair here. Corsair is also offering a $20 rebate when a set of 1 GB DIMMS are bought with a copy of Doom 3. So basically the TwinX 1024 series are supported with this rebate. To get more info, as well as the rebate form, go here. Abit has now opened up a new website called Abit Gamer. Here proud owners of Abit products can converge and share stories, tweaks, and read the latest happenings surrounding Abit. Nothing wrong with trying to build a community now and then! In fact, this could be very helpful in terms of support for Abit. [H]ardOCP threw up a review of the Abit KV8 Pro, a socket 754 motherboard based on the K8T800 Pro chipset from VIA. From all indications Abit has really come a long ways from the exploding board days, and they are one of those leading the way with 100% Japanese capacitors (the non-exploding ones). While the VIA chipset doesn't sport the features of the nForce 3 250 Gb and Ultra chipsets, it is a very cost effective and quick product for the Athlon 64 processor. That is all the news I really have time for, I am busy trying to finish up a review as well as fix some hardware around this joint! August 9, 2004 News of Interest - Josh Altec Lansing has announced a very interesting product, the AHS602 Gaming Headset, and it looks as though it might be good competition to the other headset manufacturers out there. This product features a closed ear design, a noise canceling microphone, and built in SRS 3D sound support. When coupled with a good sound card or receiver, this has the potential to give a very convincing environment. Of course, we will have to see how well these perform against other high quality cans. I have had the chance to listen to previous models from Altec, and I was not terribly impressed (but then again, these were $20 headsets and not really audiophile quality). Hopefully this will prove to be a solid product, and I will have the chance to listen to them very soon. Windows XP SP2 has been released to manufacturing, and this will definitely be an update worth getting. I have tried the RC2 version of this, and in many ways I was quite annoyed. It will constantly give you warnings about not having anti-virus installed, as well as when I disable the built in firewall (I have an external firewall, thank you). For a well versed user, hopefully there will be ways to disable these warnings. AMD is quite happy with this release, as it exposes their EVP functionality in Athlon 64 based processors. Tweaktown takes a look at the latest Gigabyte X800 Pro and X800 XT PE. These are two very high end cards from Gigabyte, and though the boards and coolers are based on ATI's reference design, they still should provide quite the punch. Gigabyte also provides a solid bundle for their products, and they are typically pretty good buys all around. Tech Report takes a good look at 5 different GeForce 6800 products from 5 different companies. These products stretch from the GeForce 6800 all the way to the Ultra. They take a good look at the overall value and performance of each offering, as well as bundles, warranties, and other qualities. Yet another solid review from Tech Report. In an ironic twist, HotHardware reviews the Asetech VapoChill Lightspeed. This standalone unit is compatible with a wide array of cases and does not pull any juice off of the computer's PSU, so it could be a very desirable product for those of you looking to super cool their overclocked processor. August 6, 2004 NVIDIA 2Q 2004 - Josh I put up a quick (4 pages) analysis on NVIDIA's recent quarter, and many of the reasons behind it. NVIDIA posted revenues of $451 million US, and a profit of $5.1 million US. These are significantly below what the Street had forecasted, and what NVIDIA had had predicted. While many considered 2Q to be weak for NVIDIA, the fact that the company still was able to show a profit is very impressive. As I have outlined in my article, things could have been much worse! Here is a direct quote:
You can read the entire article here. Reviews of Interest - Josh First off HotHardware takes the road less traveled (or reviewed) with the KT880 based Soyo Dragon 2. Even though the Athlon XP has taken a back seat to the Athlon 64, it is still a great value and strong performer for the desktop environment. For those not wishing to make the big jump (and stick with buying a $140 Athlon XP 3200), the VIA KT880 promises many next-generation features for the Athlon XP. Legit Reviews posted a case review on the Thermaltake Tsunami "Dream Tower", and it looks to be a very impressive case. This is a lightweight case which is quite different from previous Thermaltake models, and for a change is very subdued and aesthetically pleasing. The Tech Report has a new review on High End 3D Cards and Doom 3. They have taken many of today's current cards priced $299 and higher and pitted them against one another in a 8 card comparo. Looking for a new card to play that new copy of Doom 3 on? This might be the place to check first. Finally we have a steel mousepad review from Hardware Pacers. I have never heard of the Soft Trading Steelpad S&S, but it certainly looks to be a good gaming mat. I need to find something other than my aging Ratpadz. August 5, 2004 NVIDIA Speculation and Outside Articles - Josh Well, The Inquirer mentioned in passing that the NV43 was going to be released at the end of August, and while I don't have any confirmation on this, I believe they are probably spot on with this one. The NV4x architecture is very flexible, and NVIDIA had mentioned by the end of this year that they will have products stretching from the Budget to the High End that utilize this technology. TSMC had mentioned that their 110 nm process is at full speed now, and that ATI and NVIDIA had bought up space on that several months ago. So, we should be seeing very shortly the mid-range model of the NV4x architecture, the 8 pipe NV43. This will be a card that appears to be challenging the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, and in fact may prove to be a little faster in most situations. It will have a 256 bit bus, run at over 400 MHz, and contain 128 MB of memory (though we can expect to see 256 MB versions a little later on) running probably around 700 MHz DDR. This will of course support SM 3.0, as well as the improved AA and AF capabilities of the NV4x architecture. From all indications, the crossover point from the 150 nm to 110 nm process has passed us by, and it is cheaper to produce chips of this size and complexity on the 110 nm process. So ATI is left with what could be a slightly slower mid-range card (9800 Pro) that costs more to produce than NVIDIA's NV43 products. This is most definitely not confirmed, but it does look to be the case. If we look at NVIDIA in the past, they have usually followed up their high end products of any architecture with a lower end derivative generally within 3 to 4 months. They did it with the GeForce 2 (GeForce 2 MX), the GeForce 4 (GeForce 4 MX- though it was based on the GeForce 2 core), the GeForce FX 5800 (the FX 5200 and FX 5600 series), and finally the FX 5900 (the FX 5700). NVIDIA did catch a lot of flack for the GeForce 4 MX, and while I think that that card performed well, it was definitely misnamed! The NV43 does look to be a very solid product, and the performance should hold up to the competition. Of course, its Doom 3 performance will probably outclass the Radeon lineup for the most part also, but that is to be expected at this point in time. Here are a few reviews that I found interesting: Anandtech takes a look at the latest batch of PC3200 DDR running at 2:2:2 timings. With the introduction of the new Samsung chips, as well as the latest Micron chips, low latencies are back in vogue! The usual suspects are seen in this article: Corsair, Mushkin, Crucial, Kingston, and OCZ. HotHardware tests out a very colorful video card from Sapphire, the Toxic X800 Pro Vivo. This monster of a card has a very effective cooling solution, and it also features a pretty hefty bundle in terms of both software and hardware. The user is definitely getting their money's worth here! The HardOCP has taken a gander at the Koolance Exos AI, which is a pretty swanky looking water cooling kit. The only real difference between this model and the previous is the aluminum construction. And finally Lost Circuits has taken a look at Asus' WL330 wireless access point. This is a tiny product, but it appears to be able to do the job set out for it. Doom 3 Impressions - Josh Well, I finally got a hold of a copy of Doom 3, and it is pretty addicting. There is something behind this addiction though... First off the graphics are as good as everyone has said, and the realtime 5.1 sound engine plays great on a wide variety of sound cards. Something that does bother me though is its incredible likeness to a famous Warren Spector game called System Shock 2. Many of the ideas for Doom 3 appear to be taken directly from SS2 (the PDA, gathering PDA entries from dead crewmembers, the inability to find anyone else alive except bad guys, the character directing your actions through a radio, and countless ambience cues and scenarios). Of course Doom 3 does not feature any of the RPG elements (such as upgrading powers, abilities, skills, etc.), nor does it have the annoyance of degrading weapons (one of the truly weak points of SS2, but one that really made a user think about what they were doing). Now, if someone were to port System Shock 2 to the Doom 3 engine, then I think this would truly be a game for the ages. The advanced rendering, sound, and physics combined with the storyline and RPG elements (and level design) of System Shock 2 would make a killer game, and one that could be sold for pretty cheap (since the majority of work is already done). Having said that, I am still really enjoying Doom 3, and I think this is one of iD's best games yet. There is a lot of spit and polish to it, and some of the little features inside are really fun and help with the immersion. I am getting pretty far into it, and it still makes me jump quite a bit. Still, I can't get over how similar it is in may ways to System Shock 2!
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