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September 15, 2005 News About Town - Josh Yes, it has been a while. I am about 3/4 of the way through my latest article, and for some reason this one has been really hard to write. Not sure what is going on, but I am finally starting to really squeeze it out. I am hoping that it is up within the next two days! Don't hold your breath though, I have said such things before. After that I have benchmarks done on two motherboards, so I will try to get those reviews out quickly. I have a new guy reviewing some headphones, and that should be pretty interesting. After that we have a GeForce 7800 GTX, AMD Athlon X2 3800+, and then some other miscellaneous things. The UW PC Gamers are having one of their big LANs here in Laramie on September 30. I will be giving a hardware workshop on Saturday (Oct. 1) sometime in the afternoon. Should be some decent prizes and giveaways, and the location they have set up is great for parking, accessibility, and power! It is a well organized event, and plenty of people show up. Last winter we had one, and the overall turnout was very good. Hopefully this one will be bigger and better. I would love to see some readers come to the event and game! The only real issue I can see for out of town people would be that of finding a place to stay (as in a hotel). UW football will be hosting UNLV that weekend, so the town is pretty packed. If you are really wanting to come, I am sure that between myself and the UW PC Gamers club, we can find a place for you to bunk down and have a shower/meal/bed. It should be a great time! Sun Also Gets It Sun has made a pretty impressive turnaround these days, and their huge adoption of AMD Opteron chips. Sun put up some really funny ads that were refused by quite a few publications, but they posted them on their website. Well worth a look. Sun's latest lineups of servers based on the Opteron are actually quite impressive. These appear to be very well designed, and for a Sun product are very inexpensive. Gone are the days when the possibility of buying a Sun server scared any CFO out of their socks. The low end servers are all based on the standard nForce 4 Ultra chipset, several versions of the AMD Opteron, and the ones with hard drives come loaded with Solaris 10. For around $2,200 US, a customer can get a pretty impressive 2U or 1U rackmount that is absolutely loaded. Basic setups without hard drives and with smaller amounts of RAM and a lower price Opteron can hit $795. By using the Opteron Sun is able to offer performance that is class leading, but consumes less power and has much better heat properties. I know many complain of the Dell and IBM servers running at around 60% all the time due to thermal throttling with the some of the fastest Xeon chips being used, and that won't be a problem for these Opterons. Sun is taking direct aim at Dell (if you couldn't tell by the ads), and they have even gone so far as hiring an airplane trailing a Sun banner to fly over the Dell campus that says "Watch out Dell!" I like what Sun is doing. They are showing a lot energy and initiative with this product release, and make no doubt about it, these products are very polished. Anandtech does take a look at the Sunfire X2100, and the results are very impressive. It really looks to be a great series of products for Sun, and they will gain some ground throughout the rest of this year with their aggressive tactics and solid hardware. Now is the time to move on this, as Intel will start to really push the Xeon launches this Winter with their first dual core products for this space. Not to mention the 65 nm variants that will surely come out, as well as the Conroe based Xeon's that will see the light of day sometime in 2H 06. AMD is likely ecstatic about Sun partnering up with them, and offering such high profile products as these. While AMD has had a lot of success with other manufacturers like Newisys and Boxx for workstations and rackmounts, adding Sun to the list with actual products engineered by Sun (their previous boxes were all designed by Newisys), I think AMD will get a big boost in marketshare for the server market in the next six months. The Newisys racks have been very popular with render farms due to performance, power consumption, and heat production, but the addition of Sun products will really give AMD a boost in the High Performance Computing market. AMD and 65 nm It seems that much of the testing phases for Fab 36 are essentially done, and AMD will hold a grand opening for the Fab in October. AMD will supposedly start volume production of parts around that time as well. Fab 36 is a 300 mm wafer facility, which is a big step up from the previous 200 mm wafers AMD has been using for years. AMD can expect to nearly double the amount of dies per wafer with 300 mm. Not only that, but the first 65 nm products will be ready around January of 2006. Just in time for the FX-59 release, as well as other unannounced cores. AMD really has been constrained with their production for the past several years. They have only been producing processors at Fab 30 since Fab 25 was transitioned to flash production. Since the launch of the Athlon 64, AMD has essentially sold every good Athlon 64 that came off the line. While inventory levels have been very good, there really hasn't been much room to land some big OEM's who demand a lot of inventory at once. One of the frequent complaints coming from guys like Dell is that AMD cannot guarantee a constant supply of processors when a really big order comes in. This is something that Intel can do, as they have four+ Fabs just producing Pentium 4's, as well as other derivative parts. With Fab 36 coming online, AMD will have solid 90 nm production going full tilt at Fab 30, while introducing new 65 nm parts at Fab 36. This will give AMD a lot more flexibility in managing inventory, and will also allow Fab 30 to be converted to 65 nm when the time is right. Intel expects to ship their first 65 nm parts by the end of this year, and at the recent IDF they showed off quite a few working 65 nm parts. Usually AMD lags behind Intel by about 6 months for releasing new products involving a smaller node, but this time AMD seems to be right up there with Intel. Certainly good news for the industry. I personally was expecting the first 65 nm parts from AMD to hit the channel in early Summer 2006, but if this information is correct we will see the first 65 nm AMD parts by January. August 24, 2005 Intel Gets it Together - Josh This year's IDF is turning out to be a goldmine on Intel's upcoming products. In about one year, Netburst will be laid into its grave, and that isn't a moment too soon. Throughout Intel's history their processors, from generation to generation have always shown a significant increase in IPC as well as clockspeed. Netburst set that back by a fair amount. The original Pentium 4, clocked at 1.5 GHz, was about as fast as a Pentium !!! at 1 GHz (and an Athlon at 950 MHz). Intel claimed that Netburst would take them to 10 GHz in the future, and it was the way things were going to be as far as they could see. Willamette was a solid yet unexciting processor, and AMD was able to keep up with it with their Athlon and Athlon XP products throughout the years. Northwood was a much better processor core. It did show better IPC than Willamette, and it certainly did allow Intel to clock it up to 3.4 GHz. Prescott was a different story altogether. This was a much larger product in terms of transistor count, and while it was made on the 90 nm process, it was such a complex part that it has stalled out at 3.8 GHz and is legendary for its power consumption and heat production. With the overwhelming success of the Pentium M, Intel has finally taken notice that Netburst is just not a sustainable architecture in the face of AMD's Athlon 64. The Pentium M has proven to be an amazing performer, and at its heart is essentially a turbo-charged Pentium !!!. The Pentium M can compete very well with the Athlon 64 in both mobile and desktop applications, even without the advantages that the Athlon 64 comes with (integrated memory controller, HyperTransport system link). Intel's new architecture that they will be debuting 2H 2006 will reflect the architecture of the Pentium M far more than anything coming from Netburst. The new architecture will be based around a 14 stage, 4 issue decode, Out of Order core. This is a totally new core that has its basis with the Pentium M. Intel promises that it will be a very cool running core with excellent power characteristics. This is a far cry from the monster that Prescott was/is. The first cores will be produced on 65 nm and they will be based on the Conroe design. Conroe is the desktop product, and will be the first to hit the market. Before Conroe hits though, we will have a few other offerings from Intel. Yonah will be the 65 nm version of the Pentium M, and will be hitting the streets in Q1 2006 (if not a little earlier according to some sources). This will give the Pentium M another major boost in clock speed and power savings. Also of interest is the Cedar Mills core, which will be the next release of the Pentium 4. This 65 nm Netburst core will supposedly improve the heat generation and power consumption situation, but there is some doubt that Intel will increase the clockspeeds that this core runs at over what the Prescott cores offer. We might see a 4 GHz Cedar Mills, but that is not confirmed in any way. The Pentium D's will get a boost from Pressler, which is in fact two Cedar Mills cores that are connected to each other via the "psuedo-FSB" on the substrate. Current Pentium D's are actually two cores on one piece of silicon, and they are huge. By connecting the two cores via the substrate, Intel can get better yields and bins, which will make the Pentium D's much easier to produce and sell for profit. Still, it is also unknown if clock speeds will get a boost from this migration, or if IPC will improve over Prescott. My own personal opinion is that these will be far better products than Prescott ever was, both in terms of IPC and heat/power characteristics. I don't think Intel will make the same mistake twice. Yonah and Conroe are both dual core processors, but once Conroe and its other derivatives hit, then the rest of Intel's products will move over to the new cores. Server, Desktop, and Notebook all will be based off the new architecture, and the only part that won't make the transition will be Itanium. Itanium's future is in shadow and doubt, and Intel isn't particularly interested in talking much about that architecture. Intel is offering up the Montecito core with a huge 24 MB of L3 cache on the die, but there is some doubt that Intel will keep up the Itanium architecture for much longer. Itanium has been a huge disappointment for Intel, and while it has found a niche, the billions spent developing the architecture are far from being paid back by sales of Itanium products. So, Intel is definitely on the right track with their latest architecture that will see the light of day next year. I am quite happy that they decided to do away with Netburst. I am sure many OEM's are also quite happy, because cooling the Prescott and providing power for it made creating and supporting a Pentium 4 product a costly endeavor vs. what OEM's could do with the AMD Athlon 64. I will be going over the current situation in more detail shortly with a general hardware article I am working on. August 18, 2005 Update on ATI Op/Ed- Josh Something I definitely should have mentioned in the little op/ed piece below this is that ATI appears to be in full production of the R5x0 and Crossfire parts as we speak. With a release in September for R520 and Crossfire, final silicon was probably decided on in the middle of June and full production given the go ahead. It takes between 10 and 12 weeks to produce silicon in mass quantities on TSMC's 90 nm process. So, the first batches of chips from their initial order should be ready by the end of this month, with the introduction scheduled around that time. I do not know if ATI will be able to launch to instant availability, as I am not privy to that information. It will also not be suicide for them to launch without availability though. NVIDIA has really set the standard this summer for launches, but they could swing back to paper launching products quite easily due to the way competition goes in this industry. NVIDIA had the luxury of sitting on these parts and not having to worry about ATI one upping them. While I doubt NVIDIA will paper launch another product this year, I wouldn't doubt that they may be forced to do that in the future depending on ATI's roadmap. ATI is in a pretty fragile state at the moment when it comes to shareholder confidence, and they really cannot afford to wait to launch a product to instant availability. I would expect them to launch R520 shortly after their 4th quarter, which ends on August 31st. This would give their share price a bit of momentum in what looks to be a disappointing quarter financially. That way, when they officially announce their results sometime in October for the 4th quarter, they can stress that Q1 will be a turnaround for them with volume shipments of R5x0 parts, the introduction of Crossfire, and the beginning of the royalty revenues from the Xenos GPU for the X-Box 360. So, in closing to this little addendum, the problems I talked about below really are about the past performance of ATI on these upcoming parts. If these products are in full production, then evidently ATI has solved their problems with both the R520 and the Crossfire chip. This essentially makes the R520 about 4 months late, and Crossfire around 2 months late. Being this late is not as bad as it used to be, as product refreshes and generational changes are starting to lengthen out in time. While ATI's share value will drop in the next few weeks, Q1 does look to be a turnaround for ATI. They will have a slew of new products that will compete very well with what NVIDIA has, and Microsoft will start paying them some very nice money. Down the road a bit ATI will also start receiving revenue from their chip which they are designing for the Nintendo Revolution, but they will not see that until 2006 at the earliest. This Fall will be an exciting time for ATI and their enthusiasts alike, as we will finally see their answer to NVIDIA's 7800 series of products. Of course NVIDIA will not be standing still either, as they have a full lineup based on the G7x series of chips that they will release by the end of this year. That leads to another bit of speculation for me... since the 7800 GTX has been out since June, and the G70 chip has been finished for quite some time, couldn't the C51 integrated chipset possibly utilize the technology from that generation of product? I think it is a good possibility that it might have more in common with the pixel pipeline technology of the 7800 than it does with the 6200 it is supposedly based off of. If that is the case, then the per clock performance of this part should be a step up from even the current standalone 6200 TC video cards. NVIDIA's first integrated chipset in three years could have some very exciting performance for its market. August 17, 2005 Back from QuakeCon and ATI R5x0 Information - Josh QuakeCon was quite an experience and I did get some gaming in, but for the first 2.5 days I did a lot of footwork, writing, and taking pictures. While there was not a huge attendance of hardware companies there, what I saw was pretty interesting. I will be putting all my thoughts into an article here shortly. As for ATI's next generation of products... both Anandtech and Digital Wanderer (scroll down a bit) have new information about the release schedule for the high end and midrange parts. Basically it looks like we will get our first tastes of new ATI products this September, with a few more midrange parts being released in October. One thing they all seem to agree on is that we won't see general availability until as far away as November for many of these parts. Some time ago I wrote about the possible issues that ATI was having with this generation of products, as well as the issues it is having with Crossfire. I have a bit more information, as well as a few insights into the situation. First off it appears as though the compositing chip that ATI is using for Crossfire is having issues of its own. Nothing is known about this chip other than it is the primary engine of getting Crossfire to work. It essentially is able to combine the digital frame buffer outputs of the individual cards, as well as enable the super antialiasing modes. We have no idea how many transistors it holds, what speed it runs at, or what process it is made on. All we know is that it was supposed to show up en-masse in July, but now it looks like a September timeframe for the first Crossfire cards to hit the market. Crossfire holds a lot of promise, but execution so far has been an issue. Now onto the R5x0 series. There are many around the industry pointing the finger at TSMC and their 90 nm process as being the culprit for ATI's inability to deliver the R520 in its expected June timeframe. I think in this case the finger pointing is wrong. Apparently TSMC's 90 nm Low-K process is very clean, and other products being fabbed on it are coming out fine. I think this is a matter of design vs. process. Just as NVIDIA tried to push clockspeed with the NV30 on TSMC's 130 nm process, ATI appears to be trying the same tactic with 90 nm. TSMC's 130 nm process at the time of the NV30 was also very clean, and there were other complex products being produced on it that did not show the issues that the NV30 chip did in terms of yields and speed bins. NVIDIA had a bad design with the NV30, and it was very hard to fab and get good quantities of chips out at the speeds needed. NVIDIA improved its situation with the NV35, but it was still a hard architecture to produce. ATI appeares to be aiming at very high clockspeeds for its top end part this generation, but after what looks to be 3 major revisions of the design, we are likely to see a lower clocked product than what ATI initially intended. This is simply a matter of yields and speed bins. It most likely isn't a matter of the design being "bad", but rather the design was too ambitious for the abilities of TSMC's 90 nm Low-K process in terms of heat, power, leakage, and clock speed. There are other pundits that are now simply saying that "NVIDIA is going to hit the same issues as ATI with their upcoming 90 nm designs." That may or may not be true, but the most likely answer to this scenario is that ATI's problems with the R520 are their problems alone. I highly doubt NVIDIA will try to push clockspeed as they have in the past, and will rather focus on slightly larger chips that can do more operations in parallel at a more moderate clockspeed. This gives them an edge with 90 nm because they are not trying to clock their products as high as possible. This will result in lower temperatures and power consumption, as well as a decreased likelihood of leakage problems. We can simply look at the NV4x and G70 generations of chips to see that clockspeed is not the biggest priority for NVIDIA. These architectures can do a lot of work per clock that ATI's current products can not match. Does this mean that NVIDIA's products are superior when we look at the competing generations? No, it merely means that they are different. For the R4x0 and NV4x generations, the X850 XT/PE was the fastest video card on the market. But does this give a manufacturing edge to NVIDIA? Most likely. Especially when considering the G70 chip. It is actually being produced on a "budget" process, but it has industry leading performance. Not to mention that the overall design of the G70 allows it to run cooler and faster than the previous generation of NV4x products, yet still be significantly larger (302 million transistors vs. 223 million for the G70 and the NV40 respectively). NVIDIA has left themselves in a very good position with their timing on releases. The situation now looks surprisingly a lot like what ATI did to NVIDIA in the R300/NV30 days. NVIDIA released their high end product on a mature and readily available process while ATI is struggling with a brand new design and a new process. NVIDIA basically said "die size be damned" and created the G70 to much acclaim. ATI is facing much the same situation as NVIDIA did with the NV30 with regards to the prospect of releasing the R520 for a very short period of time before releasing its next product, the R580 (which is rumored to be in much better shape than the R520, but still won't be available until a December/January timeframe). ATI feels they have to get something out, so it will be the R520... but many question how long will it be in the market? Again, NVIDIA is sitting in the catbird's seat in terms of product placement. They have a top of the line card that is starting to hit the $499 pricepoint, which leaves the $599 pricepoint open for a likely successor. They also just introduced the $399-$449 7800 GT, which is already starting to hit $390. NVIDIA has two options here, depending on how ATI's next release occurs. The G70 has been shown to reliably clock upwards of 500 MHz with stock cooling, so with a couple of judicious tweaks to TSMC's 110 nm process they could achieve sustainable yields and speed bins for an "Ultra" version based on the 110 nm G70. Most likely many of the currently produced chips that can clock at 500 MHz and pass muster at that speed have already been set aside in case ATI comes out with their high end product in short order. The 7800 Ultra could be released very quickly, and again to instant availability (though the design would likely require a dual slot cooler). There is a second scenario that we should consider as well. NVIDIA already has two 90 nm chips in production as we speak, but they of course have not released the specifications of said chips. Whispers in the industry point to these being very robust products, and they are not seeing the issues that ATI is. My guess as to the description of these chips would be one midrange chip to replace the aging 6600 GT, 6800, and 6800 GT. This product will span the $199 to $299 range, while leaving the 6200 and 6600 series to handle the $149 and below levels. The other product will be the next high end chip. This is where NVIDIA has a lot of flexibility. They can either release this as the 7800 Ultra, or take it up a step and brand it the 7900 Ultra or GTX. They also will have the option to take chips that don't make the high end cut and sell them as a 7800 GTX (and if it has 32 fragment pipelines as many suspect, it can have two quads disabled to mirror the current G70 design). Right now there is a huge amount of flexibility in NVIDIA's future lineup, and because they have shipping product while ATI doesn't, they are in a much more flexible situation. ATI is in desperate need to get out another high end product to compete with NVIDIA, because they have lost a significant amount of mindshare (and marketshare) to their rival. We can merely look at the Fall OEM offerings to see that nearly all high end computers will feature a 7800 GTX or 7800 GT. This is a huge win for NVIDIA with OEM's such as Dell, HP, and the other builders. I believe with the exception of one or two high end products, all of them will be featuring a 7800 card. ATI has many world class engineers working on their products, and they will come to market with these new products. But as with any competitor in the high tech field, ATI hit a speed bump and they have fallen behind their main competitor. This will not last forever, as ATI has a track record of being a solid company, and I believe they are as good as NVIDIA when it comes to their technologies and engineering abilities. Right now it is just a matter of execution. We will see this cycle again and again in the future, with each one stumbling now and then. August 10, 2005 Off to QuakeCon 2005 - Josh I must admit, I am quite excited to be able to finally attend an industry function, plus get some gaming in! I have appointments with NVIDIA, Creative, and a handful of other companies that will be attending QC as well. I will be there as a freelance writer for ExtremeTech, but I will be posting some tidbits here as well. I will be there from late Wednesday through Monday morning. While gaming I will most likely be at the [H]ardOCP tables. Look me up if you get the chance if you are attending. August 9, 2005 NVIDIA and the nForce 4 SLI 16X - Josh There is a new chipset in town, and it is the nForce 4 SLI 16X. Featuring two full 16X PEG slots, NVIDIA is hoping to redefine the enthusiast level of chipsets with this product that supports both Intel and AMD processors. This will of course be a two chip affair for both AMD and Intel. The southbridge for this part will essentially be the nForce Pro 2200 chip, which features its HT connection, 4 SATA 3 Gb/s ports, 10 USB ports, 2 IDE ports, and all of the other nForce hardware accelerated features. Both the Intel and AMD products will utilize this southbridge, and the only difference will be of course the northbridge. On the AMD side NVIDIA essentially produced a HT tunnel chip with the extra PCI-E lanes. This product could in fact be integrated into other products, such as server boards featuring the AMD series of Opteron based chipsets, but mainly it is going to be used for SLI 16X. On the Intel side it is essentially the same nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition northbridge, but connected by HT to the nForce Pro 2200 "southbridge". It seems by utilizing HyperTransport, NVIDIA has really maximized its earning potential per chip, because so many combinations can be enabled. If we really look at it, NVIDIA has only produced one new chip for this product (the AMD HT Tunnel chip with PCI-E). Dell is the first out of the gates with a nForce 4 SLI 16X supporting product, the XPS 600. It was in the early 90's that Dell used another chipset other than Intel based products, so this is quite the coup for NVIDIA. It also tells of the quality of NVIDIA chipsets that Dell would support this product in such a high profile manner. While the XPS 600 is still based on the Pentium 4, it does put out some respectable scores, especially once high resolution and AA/AF are used. AMD still has the best gaming CPU out there, but this latest series of products support the Pentium 4 certainly make it more competitive in the gaming arena. The other side of this is that all other nForce 4 chipsets will decrease in price. Current SLI chipsets will start to hit price points that are more mainstream as compared to its enthusiast only beginnings. nForce 4 Ultra will be seen as the sub $120 part, and the standard nForce 4 will be the budget offering (as well as the upcoming C51 with the integrated 6200 TC level graphics). The nForce 4 Intel Edition will also see a price cut that will help it move more into the mainstream. NVIDIA is really pushing SLI as an enabling technology for greater graphics flexibility, so they are really pushing the pricepoint down to where it is affordable to a large percentage of computer buyers. NVIDIA is being VERY aggressive with its SLI technology, especially in the face of ATI having some real issues getting Crossfire out in a timely manner. Freelancing for ET - Josh I am quite happy to say that my first article for ExtremeTech is up at their site. I had originally applied for the position left by Dave Salvator, but the stars and planets didn't line up for me to really take the position. Instead Loyd Case offered me the chance to do some freelance writing for them, and I gladly took him up on the offer. My first article for them covers the chipset industry and is a quick look at the past and current chipset market, as well as upcoming trends we can expect to see. Not my greatest writing, as I was a bit pressed for time at the end (though Loyd gave me plenty of time, life kept intervening here as it tends to do). So, not as polished as I really wanted it to be, but still passable. I will still be writing for PenStar, as ET is really only a freelance activity for me. I will be covering QuakeCon for them, so expect to see some new stuff on ET from me in this next week. I have finally finished testing on the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra, and it is now sitting happily in my main machine (cause I liked it so much). I hope to have that review up later today. I also am testing the Tyan S2865 (Tomcat K8E) as we speak, and so far I am very surprised by what this little number can do. There are a few limitations on the motherboard, but it is definitely a product to keep in mind. It has some very strong features and performance. August 1, 2005 AMD Releases the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - Josh There have been rumors of this one going around for quite some time, and now we finally get to see the processor in action. The X2 3800+ is based on the Manchester core, which features two Athlon 64 cores with 512 K L2 a piece (giving a total of 1 MB of L2). This little number runs at 2.0 GHz and draws only slightly more power than a single core 3800+ Venice. AMD says that it should have instant availability, but I am guessing that retailers are going to be sold out of this product for some time to come. This will be a highly sought after processor, especially considering price/performance/heat. The reviews I have seen so far show it clocking upwards of 2.5 GHz, and it gives the top end X2 4800+ a run for its money. Not bad for a processor that is 1/3 of the price of the top of the line. In many benchmarks that are dual core enabled, the 3800+ can usually keep up with, if not outperform, the mighty FX-57. Intel really put the pressure on AMD when they released their 2.8 GHz Pentium D at a sub-$300 price, and it is good to see AMD respond in kind. Initial prices will still be just below $400, depending on the actual demand, but in a month or so we can expect to see these drop to around $350 and hold steady until the next major processor release. The instant result of this though is that AMD will be dropping prices on the majority of single core processors. Expect to see products like the San Diego based 3700+ to hit $250 shortly, and pretty much all single core processors (non-FX) will be sub-$300. Gamers will have a hard time choosing between the low end X2 and the 3500/3700/3800/4000, as they each will have many strengths and weaknesses. I think the end result in many cases will be the pocketbook of the user. Getting a 3700+ for around $260 and clocking it up to 2.6 to 2.7 GHz will be a very tempting operation for some users. I am still waiting for an X2 to hit my doorstep, but I would imagine that it will be sometime this month. I must admit I am quite excited about the possibility, because after testing it will most likely be hitting my main machine. Not only do I do a bit of gaming, but it is the platform in which I write articles, edit photo's, and do web design (among other productivity related things). I am quite excited to experience the "buttery smooth" desktop experience that a dual core processor can give (or so they say). Here are a few reviews worth reading: Other News - Josh Well, it is August 1, and I am dedicated to getting out some good articles this month before the new school year. I am well past school age, but it seems that things in the hardware world start to speed up, and that is where I come in. I have a pair of very interesting Socket 939 motherboards that I am reviewing, as well as a processor, a 23" LCD, and a video card. Oh, I must also mention some speakers and headphones as well. Busy work, but fun. And the more articles I get out, the more fun stuff that comes in that I can play with. Funny how that works. I am also looking to do a bit of freelance work for Extreme Tech. I was offered a writing position there, but unfortunately the planets were not in alignment and things just didn't work out. I am a bit sad about this, as the opportunities that would have come down the pipe while working for ET would have been great. Loyd and Jason do an excellent job there, and I really would have loved working with the guys. Still, life goes on and I am quite happy to still be living in Laramie (as compared to moving to the EXTREMELY expensive Bay Area), as this will allow my wife to finish her education here. She also just got a new job in the Dean of Arts and Science's office, which gives a good chance of excellent career advances. So, freelancing on the side for ET is of course very exciting for me, and my first article for them should be finished very soon. That is all, continue your browsing.
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