Tech News

• Big Names Pay for Game Ads

  Published: Thursday, September 19, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "In a development that brings together the trends toward "advergaming" and product placement, Intel (Quote, Company Info, News) and McDonald's (Quote, Company Info, News) have signed on to have their products and brands integrated into the debut version of Electronic Arts' The Sims Online. "
  
  They say that in the game the faster Pentium 4 computer will increase their logic and fun points but I wonder what the McD's will do to your sim.

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• NV18 and NV28 Launch This Month

  Published: Thursday, September 19, 2002 | By: Dennis

  According to Digitimes Nvidia will be launching two new chips on September 25 thus entering the AGP 8x market.
  
  "The NV18 and NV28 in fact differ little from the former NV17 and NV25 chips in core structures, except that the two new products are able to support the latest AGP 8x graphics technology. According to sources, the NV18 and NV28 will be named the GeForce4 MX440 8x and GeForce4 Ti 4200 8x, respectively, following Nvidia’s two better-selling products, and will be priced only slightly higher than the current chips."
  
  I find myself asking the question, "Why?".

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• VIA and S3 Graphics to use Quad Band Memory (QBM) Technology

  Published: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "The QBM controller interface license provides VIA and S3 Graphics with the necessary IP coverage to incorporate QBM into their line of core logic chipsets. QBM technology doubles the speed of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory devices while maintaining the existing 64-bit bus structure common in today's general purpose computing systems and meeting market requirements for low cost memory modules.
  
  This license marks the first time that PC based systems will be able to interface to high speed DDR533 and DDR667 modules featuring QBM technology. New systems using QBM enabled chipsets from VIA and S3 Graphics will combine the fastest speed memory in the industry with the fastest processor bus speeds and maintain backward compatibility with today's DDR modules."

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• Anandtech on Quad Band Memory Technology

  Published: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | By: Dennis

  Anandtech has a write-up on the new technology and it looks to be quite promising for both the enthusiast and the motherboard maker. Basically a switching module is added to a regular DDR memory module.
  
  "The end result is that you get two DDR transfers per clock, or 4 bits of data are sampled per clock thus doubling the throughput of DDR (hence the name Quad Band Memory)."

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• Intel Dual Channel DDR

  Published: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "Much to the market’s surprise, Intel is reportedly to become the first company that will start mass-producing dual-channel-DDR-based Pentium 4 chipsets. Supporting motherboards are expected to enter volume production in early October."
  
  This new chipset from Intel, Granite Bay, will have dual memory channels for increased bandwidth but will only support DDR266.

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• SiS and VIA Back Away from DDR400 Chipsets

  Published: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 | By: Dennis

  "Seeing a recent cool-down in DDR400 fervor, Taiwanese chipset heavyweights Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and VIA Technologies have both quietly pulled out from plans to promote DDR400-supporting chipsets."
  
  It would also appear that if motherboard makers wish to release DDR400 enabled products they will need to do their own compatibility testing and support.
  

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• New Branding for AMD

  Published: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 | By: Dennis

  Some of you may have heard of this already dubbed the "AMD me" campaign, the news post doesn't cover that much info but I did find this.
  
  "Costing US$28 million, the “AMD me” campaign, targeting both the enterprise and consumer markets, kicked off on September 16 in the US and will be launched in the rest of the world on September 23. The campaign advertisements highlight AMD’s current K7-based desktop-use Athlon XP and forthcoming K8 Athlon and Opteron processors, hoping to strengthen AMD’s overall brand awareness and recognition."
  
  Do you think it will change anything??

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• SATA Review with the Seagate Barracuda @ Lost Circuits

  Published: Monday, September 16, 2002 | By: Dennis

  This is a really good and quite lengthy article on Serial ATA. The Lost Circuits guys go into just about every aspect of Serial ATA and why it is better than the Parallel ATA (what we have now).

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• AMD Processor Roadmap *updated*

  Published: Monday, September 16, 2002 | By: Dennis

  I'm thinking maybe by Christmas?

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• China Has Google Again

  Published: Friday, September 13, 2002 | By: Dennis

  " Users in Shanghai and Beijing reported on Thursday that they could once again view Google, widely used by China's 30 million-plus Net users because it has a powerful feature for finding Chinese-language material online. "
  
  According to the report AltaVista is still being rerouted despite the ban being lifted. On a side note check out the PC in the news photo, I sure hope people in China aren't still using IBM PS/2's

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