AMD Opteron 800 and Opteron 100 officially announced
Today AMD officially extended its AMD Opteron server processors family with new AMD Opteron 800 for 4-/8-processor systems and AMD Opteron 100 for single-processor servers and workstations. The novelties are based on the same AMD64 architecture familiar from AMD Opteron 200: 64-bit core, 64Kb of associative duplex instruction cache + 64Kb of associative duplex data cache (L1), 1Mb of 16-ch. L2 cache, integrated DDR controller, HyperTransport module. As there are no official changes to scheduled clock rates, they should be 1.4GHz, 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz for each line.
According to the press release, AMD Opteron 840, 842, 844 and AMD Opteron 140, 142, 144 are already being shipped. Initially North American market will see AMD Opteron 840, 842, 844-based systems from APPRO, Aspen Systems and RackSaver. Single-processor motherboards for AMD Opteron 140, 142, 144, being exclusive ASUS SK8N (P8NBX) products on NVIDIA nForce3 Pro (Crush K8), should arrive in July 2003. First systems should be offered in Q3 by Angstrom MicroSystems and Boxx Technologies.
In over 1,000-unit quantities AMD Opteron 840 will cost $749, AMD Opteron 842 — $1299, AMD Opteron 844 — $2149; AMD Opteron 140 — $229, AMD Opteron 142 – $438, AMD Opteron 144 — $669.

Digit-Life News: Intel officially announces Itanium 2 (Madison)
"Today Intel officially announced its new Itanium 2 processors formerly codenamed Madison having higher 1.5GHz clock speeds and larger 6Mb L2 cache. In over 1,000-unit quantities Madison CPUs will cost $4226. The leading Intel-based server builders, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, have already declared their intentions to release systems on the new processors."

Overclocking the Athlon XP3200+
Squeezing out the last bit of oomph
LIKE ITS PENTIUM 44 3.2 GHz competitor, the 2.2 GHz AthlonXP 3200+ "Barton" is supposed to be the last in its line, to be followed by a brand new replacement (in this case, Athlon 64 of course). This CPU is the peak of the three-year old 32-bit Athlon platform, the first serious competition to threaten (and often take away) the Intel performance lead - at least until the maddening "Northwood" Pentium 4 ultraquick frequency ramp-up over the past year.

G5 Benchmarks Under Attack
Just one day after Steven Jobs debuted Apple's latest line of computers, the G5, many are already questioning the honesty of benchmarks performed on the G5. The benchmarks, performed on a G5 with two 2Ghz Power 970 processors, a Dell system with two 3.06GHz Intel Xeon processors, and a Dell system with one 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, showed the G5 performing at least as fast, and in some cases faster, than its x86 counterparts. Now stories of the G5 being tweaked and the Dells being crippled have lead many to accuse Apple of cheating on the benchmarks.

EPoX EP-4PCA3+ (Intel 875P)
Thinking of adding as many as 14 hard disk drives into a single system? How about setting up a huge eight ATA-133 drive RAID 5 array? All that is possible with the new EPoX EP-4PCA3+.

ASUS P4P800 vs ABIT IC7 with PAT
While I continue to work on benchmarks for the ASUS P4P800 Review, I thought we might as well begin at the HEART of what you want to know. Does it beat PAT on the 875P Canterwood boards. To answer that I decided to compare first benches on the P4P800 to the latest from the ABIT IC7(-G), which just got quite a performance boost with Bios 1.3, and is now producing some of the highest performance numbers of the Canterwoods.

Gainward FX Powerpack Ultra/1200 Golden Sample
"We received the top-end FX Powerpack Ultra/1200 Golden Sample from Gainward for testing. The card bases on GeForce FX 5900 GPU, has 128Mb of DDR memory and 400/850MHz clock speeds. It differs from other similar solutions mainly by the original backlit cooling system."

Performance and Scalability of the new Opteron
In the interest of fairness, I've been monitoring Microsoft's Exchange Server benchmark page. As you may recall, when the Opteron was launched, scores for 2-way and 4-way servers based on the chip were posted to this page. Microsoft is oomphing around about the Opteron. One of the processor's strengths is apparently n-way performance in heavy server situations.

MSI's MEGA651 barebones system
Real innovation comes to SFF systems
SINCE SHUTTLE brought an AGP slot to its infectious little barebones systems back in July of last year, the XPC line hasn't seen much in the way of innovation. Shuttle has updated its cubes to support newer chipsets as they have become available. nForce2 and Springdale-based XPCs are the most current as far as chipset support goes.
The success of Shuttle's XPC line has spawned a number of knockoffs from manufacturers like IWill, Jetway, ECS, and even Creative. These cubes have closely followed Shuttle's lead, but they haven't managed to innovate much.
Fortunately, MSI has renewed my interest in the small form factor world with the MEGA651, a barebones system that may be a little late to the party, but makes up for it with innovative new features and functionality. Why has the MEGA651 had me practically giggling with glee since it arrived at my door? Read on to find out.

VIA KT600 - Look who's back !
Being cast out into the wilderness by a relative upstart must hurt. VIA Technologies could do little wrong in general consumers and AMD's eyes back in '01 and '02. The performance-busting KT266A chipset, launched in September 2001, gave the then KT266, AMD760, and SiS735 a performance slap in the face. Improved memory controller efficiency, amongst other hidden enhancements, gave the KT266A a definitive and sustainable advantage that lasted for some considerable length of time.

Opteron overclocking from AMD Zone:
"Since details about AMD's K8 architecture was revealed overclockers have wondered how the CPU would be overclocked, and how well it can be overclocked. With the memory controller on the CPU and the new HyperTransport data connect technology there were many questions. Would Opteron and Athlon 64 even be able to be overclocked without the memory controller in the Northbridge? Would AMD put an end to all overclocking with their new CPU architecture? We can now answer many of those questions for the first time."

Interview with Epox
Epox's Chris van den Dool answers some questions. "We see a slight shift in the balance between Intel & AMD boards; in retail we do sell about 35 percent Intel platform boards and 65 percent for AMD. But my personal forecast is that this will move more and more to 50/50 in this year as we see a great success and demand in springdale boards "

Nvidia nForce 3 Pro: Asus SK8N First Look
We take our first look at the nForce 3 Professional 150 based Asus SK8N Opteron workstation motherboard.

Apple Unleashes the "World’s Fastest Personal Computer" the Power Mac G5
First 64-bit Desktop Processor; First 1 GHz Front-Side Bus
San Francisco June 23, 2003 Apple® today unleashed the world’s fastest* personal computer the Power Mac® G5 featuring the world’s first 64-bit desktop processor and the industry’s first 1 GHz front-side bus. Powered by the revolutionary PowerPC G5 processor designed by IBM and Apple, the Power Mac G5 is the first personal computer to utilize 64-bit processing technology for unprecedented memory expansion (up to 8GB) and advanced 64-bit computation, while running existing 32-bit applications natively.

Bidding Adieu: P4 3.2 vs. Athlon XP 3200+
Intel launches the last P4, with 3.2 GHz for FSB800 and Dual DDR400. Its rival AMD fights back with the Athlon XP 3200+ and Dual DDR400. With the Pentium 5 and Athlon 64 waiting in the wings, it's a historic duel.

Intel Pentium 4 3.20s all over the place
AND SO IT came to pass that La Intella did the dance of the seven veils and removed her NDA protecting the 3.20GHz Pentium 4 chip it will announce today
And verily the hardware sites started miraculously coming out with reviews of the latest piece of silicon, and in truth they are to be found all over the place.
In no order of merit or demerit, we've found reviews at Lostcircuits, and at Hexus, as also at Sudhian and at hardwareluxx.de. And another German review can be found here, and again at tec channel. And X-bit Labs got a realy nice article aswell here

Geil 512MB PC3200 Dual Channel DDR Kit
With the available speed of system memory increasing more often than the average user can afford to keep up with, it has become important to identify high quality modules from reputable manufacturers, and hope you can get a relatively long life out of them. Determining who is a reputable manufacturer may be the tricky part, as new brands of memory spring up almost as often as the new speeds of memory.

Corsair TWINX XMS PC3200 Low Latency memory
With the recent release of the 400MHz bus Athlon XP 3200+ , and the introduction of the Canterwood (i875P) and Springdale (i865PE) board for Intel 800MHz processors, DDR400 memory and especially Dual Channel memory has become the memory of choice for the performance minded. Among the most recommended memory is Corsair. Corsair needs very little introduction, as they are leaders in the field of high performance memory, and have been for quite some time.

ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 PRO 128MB
The All-In-Wonder range remains as one of ATI's strongest suits, with an excellent marriage of Multimedia features and ATI's PC display capacity. When ATI take one of their high end 3D chips, certainly from the past year, and combine it with all the All-In-Wonder functionality you often end up with a highly desirable board. Now, ATI have taken their highly capable Radeon 9800 PRO chip and melded it with the All-In-Wonder functionality taking the All-In-Wonder series to the most prestige level of 3D performance and Multimedia functionality.

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB (7200RPM SATA)
There are now more Serial ATA drives in the market today, with Seagate leading the way with their Barracuda series and Western Digital entering the enterprise segment with the Raptor. Let's check out how the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 fare in this relatively new Serial ATA segment.
Quotes: Overall, if you intend to use the DiamondMax Plus 9 as a desktop storage drive, it should not disappoint. Since the drive is mainly targeted at desktops and workstations, the DiamondMax Plus 9 should have no problems delivering the performance that's needed to satisfy most applications.

ipKonfig.com writes about the bad odor from the corporate world, or in easier terms; the smell test.
Here's an interesting story from Brian Hall about big companies gone or going bad.
Probably the heightened sensitivity to bad smells has had something to do with the response to the nVidia / FutureMark controversy, too. When the bias in press, public, and expert opinion is that corporate goals include obtaining maximum return for minimum real value to the consumer, nobody is going to take much on trust. It gets treated as "more blood in the water", and no one gets a free pass.

Portable, Plug & Play, High-Performance Water Cooling: The Corsair Hydrocool200
Worry-Free Water-Cooling To Go: Hydrocool200
Some readers will no doubt do a double take: Corsair makes water coolers? I always thought they were responsible for fast memory modules, they'll say. That's right, in principle, but it's no reason for Corsair not to develop a product that is the first of its kind. We're talking about their powerful CPU water-cooling system that can be mounted by a layman in a matter of minutes.

Xbox to use ATI engine after Nvidia rejection
Breaking up is so, so hard to do!
"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus! --
Why look'st thou so?" -- With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross. - Coleridge Rime of the Antient Mariner

PowerColor RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB
If you are on the lookout for more affordable RADEON 9800 Pro graphics cards that also offer good software bundle and accessories, the PowerColor RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB might just fit your bill. From synthetic benchmarks to real game tests, the PowerColor RADEON 9800 Pro’s performance was exactly on the dot with what the Gigabyte RADEON 9800 Pro achieved. This was to be expected since most, if not all, of the latest graphics cards are mostly manufactured by the same source.

Bulk News
Lots of news to post, so here it is:

Articles:

All Time Top 20 Best Selling Video Games
E3 2003 Booth Babe Roundup
Dear Dan...
Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB w/ Cat 3.4 Vs. GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
MSN 6 Custom Emoticons
CRT vs LCD Letters to Dan
3GHz-plus on the cheap!
Howto : Make a 7/12V fan switch
PowerLine Networking
Chaintech Reloaded Event
Which video card?
Sophos says: "We won't hire virus writing students"

Reviews:

Antec Sonata Case
Asus P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Video Card
Epox 4PDA2+ i865PE Motherboard
Gigabyte Radeon 9200 Video Card
Corsair PC3500 XMS Memory
Koolance PC2-601BLW Tower Liquid Case
AOpen AX4SG Max i865G Motherboard
TDK VeloCD 5200B 52x2448x CD Writer
Intel D865GBF Motherboard
Asetek Waterchill Cooling
GeforceFX 5900Ultra Video Card
Albatron FX5800 Ultra Video Card
Corsair Hydrocool 200 Cooling
VIA EPIA M9000 Motherboard
ABIT IS7 Motherboard
Shuttle SB61G2 Springdale XPC System
Epox 4PDA2+ i865PE Motherboard MSI K7N2 Nforce2 Motherboard
AMD AthlonXP 3200+ CPU
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Video Card
ATi AIW Radeon 9000 Pro Video Card
Swiftech H20-8500 Water Cooling Kit
Soltek SL-86SPE-L Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9700 AIW Video Card
Zalman ZM80A-HP Silent VGA Cooler
Albatron KM18G Pro Version 2.0 MotherboardExternal
TDK VeloCD 48x16x48x USB 2.0 CD Re-Writer
MSI FX5600-VTR128 Video Card
Bitspower Cold Cathode Lighting Kit
ATi Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 vs. nVidia GeForceFX 5200/5600/5800
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 ATC-PFC Power Supply