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Frontside6 What’s Happening12 Digital Economy13 The Saint

Eye Strain

August 2006 • Vol 6 Issue 08®

The Experts

Rob “CmdrTaco”MaldaThe DepartmentOf Stuffpage 85

Pete LoshinOpen Saucepage 80

Alex “Sharky” RossThe Shark Tankpage 30

Barry BrenesalThe Cutting Edgepage 93

Rahul SoodWagging The Dogpage 99

Alex St. JohnThe Saintpage 13

Mike MageeShavings From The Rumour Millpage 98

Spotlight

53

AMD AM2Evolutionary, But Not Revolutionary

All Aboard!The AM2-Based Motherboard Express Has Arrived

DDR2 On AM2AMD’s Memory Isn’t What It Used To Be

CPU’s Ultimate AM2 RigTweaked, Overclocked & Ready To Rock

Copyright 2006 by Sandhills Publishing Company. Computer Power User is a trademark of Sandhills PublishingCompany. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material appearing in Computer Power User is strictly prohibitedwithout written permission. Printed in the U.S.A. GST # 123482788RT0001 (ISSN 1536-7568) CPU ComputerPower User USPS 020-801 is published monthly for $29 per year by Sandhills Publishing Company, 131 WestGrand Drive, P.O. Box 82667, Lincoln, NE 68501. Subscriber Services: (800) 424-7900. Periodicals postage paid atLincoln, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Computer Power User, P.O. Box 82667, Lincoln, NE 68501.

Did you find the hidden CPU logo on our cover? Turn the page for the answer.

Chris PirilloDialogue Boxpage 79

6268

48

Anand Lal ShimpiAnand’s Cornerpage 29

Page 26

Hard Hat AreaPC Modder31 Tips & Tutorials32 The GeForce 7900 GT Unleashed

Volt-Mods For Hardcore Overclocking36 Mad Reader Mod

Tribal Eclipse—Color Us Impressed

38 Advanced Q&A Corner42 X-Ray Vision: Zfone

Eliminate The Man In The Middle44 White Paper: 802.11n

A Work In Progress

Loading Zone70 The Bleeding Edge Of Software

Inside The World Of Betas71 Up To Speed

Upgrades That’ll Keep You Humming Along

72 How The Torrents FlowA Roundup Of BitTorrent Clients

77 Siber Systems GoodSyncWorld Market Watch VisitorVille

78 Altiris Software Virtualization Solution 2.0GPSoftware Directory Opus 8

79 Dialogue BoxMy Dinner With Jim Allchin

80 Open SauceSecrets & Secrecy

Caught In The Web81 Digital Diplomacy

Whose Internet Is It, Anyway?85 The Department Of Stuff

vodhell.txt

Digital Living86 Road Warrior

Seagate’s Hybrid Notebook Drive, International BlackBerry, Kensington Expansion Dock & More

88 At Your LeisureGames, Gear, Movies & Music

93 The Cutting EdgeWhat Was The First Computer Hard Drive & When Did It Show Up?

Tips & Tricks94 Software Tips & Projects

Slipstreaming With All The Fixins (Part 2)96 Warm Up To Penguins

Working With Flash In Linux

16 Dream Hardware

17 DVD Burners With Everything But The BluesRage Against The Dying Of The Red Laser Light

24 HP LP2465Sapphire X1900 XTX Toxic

25 ATI Theater 650 ProCooler Master iGreen Power 600W

26 BFG GeForce 7950 GX2

27 Gigabyte G1-Turbo GA-G1975XLogitech G5 Laser Gaming Mouse

28 HIS X1900 XT IceQ 3Cerise Mini PC

29 Anand’s CornerThe Big Four Update

30 The Shark TankNvidia Serves Up A 3D Graphics Sandwich

Heavy Gear

Heroes of Might & Magic V:Page 89

Infinite LoopsStrange stats and other oddball items from computing's periphery

83. 95. 97

What’s Cooking98 Shavings From The Rumour Mill

Old Dog Learns New Windows Tricks99 Wagging The Dog

Distant Rumblings: ATI + AMD Marriage100 Hot Seat

Data Loss: Don’t Make It Personal102 Technically Speaking

An Interview With Vivek Wadhwa, Founder Of Relativity Technologies, Duke University Adjunct Professor & Bollywood Exec

106 Under DevelopmentA Peek At What’s Brewing In The Laboratory

Back Door108 Q&A With John Carmack

Photorealism In Games, Console Hype & More

E D I T O R ’ S N O T E

Gotcha.Here it is.

W ow. The year is more than half over already, and among the thingsI thought I’d have done by now but don’t are a few nagginghousehold chores and the fulfillment of my New Year’s resolution

in the form of a new PC. Of course, as I’ve mentioned in the past in this space,the hardware folks who make the innards of our systems haven’t exactly helpedto make this process easy. Sure, there are plenty of decent options for everycomponent I still need, but some decisions have been harder than others. Newplatforms, upcoming OSes that require more particular specs, and various otherimpediments have kept me sitting on the fence in an area or two.

Speaking of major upgrades, AMD’s new AM2 platform has arrived and wehave several pages packed with coverage, starting on page 48. We looked at thetechnology up close to see what makes it different, reviewed and compared anumber of AM2-compatible motherboards so you know which ones work bestwith FX-62, and put together a roundup ofsome of the DDR2 kits out there now,as well. Plus our buddy Marco builtus a super-fast AM2 PC (thus the“Fastest AMD PC Ever” headline onthe cover this month) to see just howmuch go this new pony has in it, andit turns out AM2 goes just fine, thankyou. (See page 68.)

When you’re done feasting on all theAM2 coverage you can stand (or before ifyou like, we’re flexible), makesure you stop by “Wagging TheDog,” the new monthly columnby Rahul Sood. The man just hastoo much to say to limit him to apage every other month. Thismonth he weighs in on the ATIacquisition rumors that have beenswirling around industry nooks andcrannies lately.

You’ll find plenty more in thesepages, as well, so dive in and enjoy.We’ll see you again next month, andthanks for reading.

Chris Trumble, Publication Editor, CPU

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TThhee GGaannggEEddiittoorriiaall SSttaaffff:: Ronald D. Kobler / Christopher Trumble / Blaine

Flamig / Trista Kunce / Corey Russman / Rod Scher / CalvinClinchard / Katie Sommer / Kimberly Fitzke / Katie Dolan /

Raejean Brooks / Sally Curran / Michael Sweet / Nate Hoppe /Sheila Allen / Joy Martin / Linne Ourada / Ashley Finter / Holly

Zach / Tara Simmons / Barbara Ball / Leah Houchin / SarahGabelman / Marty Sems / Chad Denton / Nathan Chandler /Kylee Dickey / Josh Gulick / Andrew Leibman / Vince Cogley /Sam Evans / Jennifer Johnson / Nathan Lake WWeebb SSttaaffff:: Dorene

Krausnick / Laura Curry / Kristen Miller CCuussttoommeerr SSeerrvviiccee::Lindsay Albers SSuubbssccrriippttiioonn RReenneewwaallss:: Connie Beatty / MattBolling / Patrick Kean / Charmaine Vondra / Miden Ebert /

Kathy DeCoito / Stephanie Contreras / Nicole Buckendahl AArrtt&& DDeessiiggnn:: Lesa Call / Aaron D. Clark / Fred Schneider / AaronWeston / Carrie Benes / Ginger Falldorf / Sonja Warner / LoriGarris / Jason Codr / Andria Schultz / Erin Rodriguez / Lindsay

Anker NNeewwssssttaanndd:: Jeff Schnittker AAddvveerrttiissiinngg SSaalleess:: GrantOssenkop / Liz Kohout / Eric Cobb / Ryan Donohue / Bob

Chester MMaarrkkeettiinngg:: Mark Peery / Marcy Gunn / KellyRichardson / Travis Brock / Jen Clausen / Scot Banks /

Ashley Hannant / Lana Matic / Jeff Ashelford / Brynn Burtwistle

Compiled by Steve Smith

W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g • H a r d w a r e

Live! From AMD, It’s . . . Another Entertainment PCChallenging the Intel Viiv initiative for home entertainment PCs with a less cryp-tic name, the long-promised AMD Live! PC and Live! Entertainment Suite rolledout recently for multiple vendors, including Alienware, HP, and Gateway.The media center PCs run AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core CPUs but canhave any range of media and entertainment hardware and software thatcentralize digital media on the PC for redistribution to home and devices.But now AMD is emphasizing its Entertainment Suite of media servicesmore than the hardware. For instance, an on-demand service run by OrbNetworks can stream live or recorded media assets to a variety of devicesthat access the Web. A LogMeIn service accesses a home PC from anyInternet connection, and a Media Vault backs up your media to an onlineserver. Look for Live! PCs to start at $799. ▲

Not for performance geeks anymore. AMD’s Live! initiativeaims for media-minded entertainment consumers.

ThinkPad-Less: Lenovo On Its OwnSince acquiring IBM’s PC businesslast year, Chinese manufacturerLenovo has gone out of its way toassure brand loyalists that the ven-erable ThinkPad notebook legacywas in good hands. With that mis-sion accomplished, Lenovo haslaunched its own brand of portablenotebooks with the impressive-looking 3000 V100. At 4.4lbs, adual-core CPU, and 12-inch screen,this modestly priced unit packs alot into a $1,689 package. TheCPU runs at 2GHz, the hard driveis 100GB, and the burner is a full-bore DVD+R DL drive. You evenget fingerprint security, the usualThinkPad keyboard yumminess,and a built-in Web cam. You couldspend another $1,000 for the samefeatures in the ThinkPad line. IsLenovo competing with itself? ▲

The new, well-packed, reasonably priced3000 V100 gives Lenovo’s ownThinkPads a run for their money.

The nForce Of FiveWhile everyone gushed over the newNvidia dual-GPU cards at Computex inTaipei, Taiwan, another Nvidia power-house slipped out the door. The next-generation nForce motherboards should be hitting the streets as your read this,promising to stretch just about every imag-inable PC choke point. We expected thenForce 500 series to support dual-coreIntel CPUs and quad-GPU SLI arrays, butmany versions also boast MediaShieldtechnology, which supports up to sixSATA drives in various arrays. A networkaccelerator claims to free the CPU frommany download tasks and dramaticallyimprove performance in LAN parties. Anda FirstPacket feature prioritizes networkgaming packets. Maybe now we can playWoW while we download those torrentsof old sci-fi TV episodes. ▲

Nvidia’s fifth-generation motherboard seems topromise enhancements out of every I/O pore.

6 August 2006 / www.computerpoweruser.com

W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g • H a r d w a r e

Drivucus Maximus Cornet Technology’s new 1TB external hard drive is no bigger or heavierthan some AC adapters (Xbox 360 team, you hearing us?). The MaximusPlatinum is a modest 4.5 pounds and comes with its own low-noise coolingfan. Two 7,200rpm IDE/ATAPI drives supply the storage, and you canhave your pick of connectors: FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0, or an IDE con-nector. With high-speed FireWire, Cornet says you could hit 100MBpstransfer rates. This plug-and-play unit doesn’t require any drivers, but it willset you back $1,230. Yeah, but now at least you’ll have something that canchallenge that inexcusably large Xbox power block to a smackdown. ▲

The appropriately named Maximus external hard drive slams a full terabyte ofdata into portable—maybe luggable—4.5-pound brick.

FANG Bites Into “Top Gun” Fantasy

Just in case rudder pedals, headsets, and flight yokes weren’t enough to feed yourTom “Maverick” Cruise fantasy, Ideazon has one more flight-sim peripheral foryour desktop, er, cockpit. Ideazon developed the FANG ($34.99) gamepad fromreal-world combat sim training devices for training military personnel. You mayneed formal training to manage the 41 keys (11 dedicated to weapons) and keycombos that can recognize up to seven simultaneous key presses. ▲

Xbox-To-Go?

Rumors continue to swirl around a handheld game or multimedia unit fromMicrosoft, and Bill Gates is doing nothing to quell them. In Dean Takahashi’s(Full disclosure: Dean Takahashi is a regular contributor to CPU) new book about the developmentof the Xbox 360, “The Xbox 360 Uncloaked: The Real Story Behind Microsoft’s Next-GenerationVideo Game Console,” he says there’s a Microsoft handheld game strategy, and it’s also aimed atattacking the iPod’s market dominance. Gates won’t comment directly on unreleased products, butdid say recently that the company was exploring the handheld space, where “there is a lot yet thathasn’t been done.” Namely, Microsoft hasn’t monopolized it yet. ▲

Home Theater Gets Its Screamer

Home-theater fanatics who spend $10,000 on peerless tower speakers and moviehouse seating probably won’t even blink at the Okoro’s $4,595 OMS-GX300 Home Theater PC. The Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core CPU,Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2, and 1TB of storage will push any contem-porary game or record and play tons of TV, run the Web directly ontoyour big screen TV, and it has full surround sound and HD output.But all we want to do is play with that little 7-inch touchscreen thatlets you access all of its functions without turning on your TV. ▲

Even the mostjaded jet-simjockey should beimpressed byFANG’s 41 keys.

That’s SomeHot CameraYou GotThere, Bud

After all of these yearsof powering deviceswith rechargeable bat-teries, we still get inci-dents of dangerousoverheating. This timeit’s HP, which has torecall over 600,000units sold during thepast two years in itsPhotosmart R707 line,and nearly a quarter ofa million of those arein the United States.Luckily this fix onlyrequires you to down-load firmware that willtell the camera not tocharge a nonrecharge-able battery. By thispoint, isn’t that some-thing even the dumb-est device should knownot to do? ▲

HH aa rr dd ww aa rr ee MM oo ll ee

CPU / August 2006 7

W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g • C h i p W a t c hCompiled by DeanTakahashi

Spansion Seeks To Meld Security With Flash Memory Chips

If mobile phones are truly going to become electronic commerce tools, they have tobecome more secure for the likes of credit card companies and banks. Flash memorychipmaker Spansion is proposing to embed security within the hardware of the mem-ory chips themselves. With secure hardware, mobile phones will be able to recoverfrom virus attacks that disable the phone’s operating system and be trustworthy enoughfor making electronic payments without contacting the company. Next year Spansion hopes tofield a product that has a custom security chip and flash memory in the same module. Overtime Spansion wants to graft the security silicon to the flash chip itself. ▲

Chipmaker Shows Off UWB To Transfer HD Video

Silicon Valley startup Tzero Technologies has unveiled a chipsetthat promises to enable the wireless transfer of the highest-qualityvideos around the home. Using UWB technology, the Tzero TZ7000 chipset can transfer data at speeds of about 107Mbps anddistances up to almost 100 feet. At that speed the company saysit can transfer video without any obvious glitches and elimi-nate wires in the living room between TVs and devices such

as set-top boxes, game consoles, or other connecteddevices. In a two-hour, high-definition movie, thecompany says that, on average, it can transmit thevideo with less than one packet error. ▲

Nintendo Taps MicroMachine Sensors ForIts Wii Controller

Nintendo’s new Wii game console isbeing praised thanks to its innova-tive game controller with built-inmotion sensors. The Wii controllerenables new kinds of gameplay inwhich the controller is like an exten-sion of the body. (For instance, in afishing game you could cast out aline by holding the controller andswinging your arm.) The controllersenses motion with a built-in micro-machined accelerometer. That is, ithas a sensor chip that can detectdirection and acceleration by mea-suring changes in the electronswithin it. The electrons movearound dependingupon the positionand motion ofthe con-troller. Bymeasuringthe capaci-tance, the sen-sor captures movement data. BothSTMicroelectronics and AnalogDevices make the accelerometers,and Broadcom makes the wirelessBluetooth radio chip that transmitsthe positional data to the console inreal time. “This started in 1999 withcar air bags, but we’ve been waitingto get into the low-cost consumerelectronics devices for some time,”says Benedetto Vigna, director ofthe micromachined sensor businessunit at STMicroelectronics. ▲

Watching The Chips FallHere is pricing information for AMD and Intel CPUs.

*Retail price** Manufacturer's price per 1,000 units

Other current prices, if indicated, are lowest OEM prices available through Pricegrabber.com

CPU Released Original Last month’s Currentprice price price

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 1/10/2006 $999** $934 $901

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 5/23/2006 $1,031** N/A $1,031**

AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 3800+ 8/1/2005 $354** $291 $287

AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 4200+ energy efficient 5/16/2006 $417** $417** $417**






AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 4800+ 5/31/2005 $1,001** $619 $620

AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 5000+ 5/23/2006 $696** N/A $696**

Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 965 3.73GHz dual core 3/22/2006 $999** N/A $999**

Intel Pentium 4 641 3.2GHz 2MB cache 800MHz FSB 65nm 12/27/2005 $218** $207* $207*



Intel Pentium D 820 2.8GHz dual-core 2MB cache 800MHz FSB 90nm 5/26/2005 $241** $171* $171*

Intel Pentium D 830 3GHz dual-core 2MB cache 800MHz FSB 90nm 5/26/2005 $316** $260* $214*

Intel Pentium D 840 3.2GHz dual-core 2MB cache 800MHz FSB 90nm 5/26/2005 $530** $345* $335*

Intel Pentium D 920 2.8GHz dual-core 2MB 800MHz FSB 65nm 12/27/2005 $241** $203* $177

Intel Pentium D 930 3GHz dual-core 2MB 800MHz FSB 65nm 12/27/2005 $316** $200* $176



Intel Pentium D 960 3.6GHz dual-core 2MB 800MHz FSB 65nm 5/1/2006 $530** N/A $530**


E-Newspapers To Arrive In 2007: Read All About It!

The idea of an e-newspaper reader has been around for a while, butso far users haven’t actually been able to get their hands on this

technology. Don’t confuse e-newspapers with online versionsof print newspapers; an e-newspaper is a paper-like version

of your favorite print newspaper in a flexible, handheldreader that you can carry anywhere. When you’re not

reading your e-paper, you simply roll it up andstick it in your pocket. Companies such as Sony

and iRex have developed versions of e-newspaper readers, which may

become available sometimein 2007. Although these

readers are expected to be easi-er on the eyes than aPDA, notebook screen,or monitor, they’ll be a

little tougher on the wallet:Sony’s reader, for example,

will cost $300 to $400. With thecost to subscribe to a variety of

print newspapers less expensive thanbuying an e-newspaper reader and the

demand for on-the-go digital newspaper readers unknown, print newspa-pers may not be on their way out as soon as we think. ▲

Even More From GoogleIt’s hard to keep up-to-date with Google’s latest technology releases becausethe company seems to announce new programs every day—at least that’swhat it felt like before we went to print this month. Google recently an-nounced that it’s testing a system to help speed up online purchases, and itintroduced two new specialized Web sites. Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt,says its online payment service isn’t “like PayPal at all.” The system isexpected to be free and should be available as you read this.

Google’s new Web site,usgov.google.com, isdesigned to make searchingfor local, state, and federalgovernment informationeasier for employees andcontactors. The companyalso introduced a site forShakespeare lovers (www.google.com/shakespeare). Users in the United States can look throughShakespeare’s plays and related research, watch videos of stage perfor-mances, or find Shakespeare-related groups online. ▲

W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g • I n t e r n e t

SS ii tt eeSS ee ee ii nn gg

Compiled by Trista Kunce

Music Video MashupsEyespot.com has a cool, new, legal way for musiclovers like us to mix up and edit video from up-and-coming bands. The participating bands decidewhat audioand/or videothey want tomake availableand then youget to remixtheir contentand publish theresults on yourblog or justsend them to your friends’ cell phones. ▲

Stumbling Around The InternetWe’re a bit clumsy, so we know all about stum-bling around. But we didn’t know that “stum-bling” on the ’Net could be so much fun. Bydownloading StumbleUpon.com’s toolbar, we“stumbled upon” several random, unique Websites related to our interests we might not havefound using an ordinary search engine. Clickingthe StumbleUpon icon is sort of like channelsurfing, except that you actually find stuff youwant to look at. ▲

Dude, You’re Gettin’ Some StuffAre you a guy and do you love stuff? Thenyou’re in luck because you can find the “bestgadgets, clothes, cars, and more” on uncrate.com. Find the latest gear (Sony E-Series dis-plays), cars (Bugatti Veyron), fashions (“StarWars”-themed T-shirt called the Boo BooWalker), discs (“V For Vendetta Special Edition”DVD), and furnishings (trampoline coffee table)all available for your perusal on this site. ▲

CPU / August 2006 9


W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g • S o f t w a r e

Go Undercover With ZoneAlarm’s Identity ProtectionProgramNow that virus and spy-ware detection are derigeur, identity theft is thenew battleground for secu-rity software. ZoneAlarm’sSecurity Suite 6.5 upgradeclaims to protect your per-sonal info from hackers inall the usual ways: via fire-walls and an alert when your bank or credit card information gets sent or pulled fromyour PC. But ZoneAlarm is also offering a free year of Identity Guard Card Theft

Protection, which monitors the Web andblack-market lists for evidence that some-one has lifted your credit card info. On alighter note, the new ZoneAlarm suitealso has a Game Mode that suppressesfirewall alerts and virus scans duringgameplay—because getting a firewall alertwhile two-shooting a Gnomish mage sortof breaks the mood. ▲

As Easy As Making Apple (Game) Pie?Gamers know that the weak spot in the Mac OS has always been its slim games library,with many PC titles never making it to the plat-form and others coming out months and yearsafter their PC release. Now that Mac sales areup, Apple is making a grassroots appeal for indi-viduals and small groups to design their owntitles using several user-friendly game-makingengines. An article at the Apple DeveloperConnection site (developer.apple.com) says thattools such as Torque, Unity, and PTK are soeasy, “You don’t need a large budget, big teams,or awe-inspiring artistic and programming skills.All you need is a Mac . . . ” Oh yeah, and agame concept that hasn’t been done 5,000 timesbefore, an IV of Red Bull, and no life to speakof while you code it for the next two years. ▲

The new ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite willnotify you when your credit card appears onthe black market.

Google Browser Synch promises to synchronize bookmarks, passwords, and even histories across your Firefox browsers.

Google SynchsUs Up—MaybeSure we love the toolbar, Picasa,Desktop Search, and the wholegaggle of Google goodies, butwith all of the PCs and laptopswe juggle, we’ve been hoping tomake the search engine’s newBrowser Synch for Firefox ournext best friend. This extensionto the Mozilla browser loadsonto any or all of your PCs, andthe Web-based service is sup-posed to synchronize the book-marks, cookies, passwords, andeven history, tabs, and windowsacross all of your Desktops.Browser Synch requires a personal PIN to add a newmachine and encryption main-tains privacy. This sounds greatto us, but as of now we’re stilltrying to get this little trick towork. One PC went online fine,but server timeouts plagued ourattempts to get a second PC insynch, and at one point theextension nuked our wholeFirefox installation. Enough ofyour “betas” already, Google. ▲

Apple claims that user-friendly game-makingengines for the platform can turn just about any

of us into polished game designers.


W h a t ’ s H a p p e n i n g • S o f t w a r e

BIOS Upgrades Available OnlineBefore you send another motherboard to the landfill, consider upgrading the BIOS and giving your PC a new lease on life. Here are a few recently released upgrades. Readers can check out www.cpumag.com/cpuaug06/bios to see our entire upgrade list.

Motherboard Date Available URL

AOpen EY855-II 5/30/2006 download.aopen.com.tw/Download.aspx?RecNo=10835&Product=XC%20Cube&Model=EY855-II&Type=

BIOS&DownSize=428.9&fileURL=pub%2fxccube%2fez855%2fbios%2fwz85105.zip&Section=8&DL=yes

ASRock 939SLI-eSATA2 5/30/2006 download.asrock.com/bios/939/939SLI-eSATA2(1.40)Win.zip

Asus P5VDC-X 5/24/2006 ftp://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/P5VDC-X/vdcx0303.zip

MSI K9N Platinum/SLI 5/23/2006 download.msi.com.tw/support/bos_exe/mbd_bios/7250v11.zip

Shuttle SK21G 5/29/2006 ftp://ftp.shuttle.com/BIOS/sk21g/sk21s10d.bin


Spreadsheets Go Wiki

The co-inventor of VisiCalc, Dan Bricklin, is wiki-fying the genrewith wikiCalc, an open-source, Web-based collaborative tool thatuses the spreadsheet metaphor. WikiCalc lets groups of usersinsert data into what could be a massive, collaborative spread-sheet, but it also records the revision history of every edit in everycell to maintain accountability. Like Bricklin’s original invention,wikiCalc is the kind of blank page waiting for us to fill it in wayshe and we have not yet imagined. ▲

Vista Goes Public

In mid-June Microsoft released a public beta of its upcoming Vista OS, which wasavailable to a limited number of users via DVD or a burnable ISO file at www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/default.mspx. This “Customer Preview Program”uses the most resource-hungry version of Windows Vista, Ultimate. Participants inthe program will get the Beta 2 release now and later this year the prelaunch ReleaseCandidate 1 version. Wisely, Microsoft erects a high wall of warnings about Vista’sdecidedly beta state and the hefty hardware it requires. It’s nice to see Microsoft make this available, but it’s not the thing you want to install on any mission-criticalPC just yet. ▲

A Little Joy ‘a Goya

Longtime music software provider Magix broadens the multimedia-editing genre to include both video and audio. Magix hopes its newlyreleased Goya Multimedia ($49.99) suite will be a one-stop shop forall digital entertainment management. Goya has the usual edit andburn capabilities of most video suites, but folds in scheduled TVrecording, an audio editor and format conversion tool, plus a range ofonline media storage services. The race is on to find user-friendly, all-in-one management software for the gigabytes of media we are pour-ing onto our hard drives. ▲

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Spreadsheet co-inventor Dan Bricklin recently introduced a beta version of wikiCalc.

Magix tries to embrace every imaginabletype of media in its Goya suite.

CPU / August 2006 11

ComputingWithout A NetWe Americans are awfully lax about the digital datawe say we value. Nearly a third of us (32%) say thatpersonal photos are our most treasured files, whileonly 14% say our financial and business data ismore important, according to a Harris Interactive sur-vey for Maxtor. The real stunner is that mostAmericans say their personal data is worth at least $1,000 and nearly half ofthem don’t perform any backups to protect it. And why don’t we back up?Most of us just don’t know how.

Why Americans Don’t Back Up Their Data


Eye StrainTT his month I’m going to talk about how

frame rate, resolution, and display typecombine to create the illusion of great graph-ics. First, though, it’s important to understandsomething about the human eye. It has a hugeblind hole smack in the middle of it. Theimages you think you see directly ahead of youare actually obscured by an optic nerve bundlein the back of your eye. You don’t “see” a holebecause your brain fills in the blank space withdata to create the illusion that you’re not blindas a bat looking straight ahead. Your eyejumps around rapidly and subconsciously tosample data around that blind spot to generatethe illusion of continuous vision. If you everjust sit and stare blankly at an object withouttrying to focus, you may get a glimpse of yourblind spot as your brain slowly forgets what tosee in the center of your visionand the object you’re staringat appears to vanish.

Why is this important toenjoying your games andvideo? Because the colorsyou think you see are notthe colors that were dis-played by your screen.The colors you see are“averages” of the colors that reachyour retina in a given short intervalof time. Motion blur is a clear example of thiseffect, when the brain mixes a fast movingobject’s colors with background colors to pro-duce a color that is a combination of the two,creating the illusion of motion blur. Yourbrain’s image sample rate caps out around60Hz, or 60 frames per second.

If 60Hz is the fastest frame rate the humaneye can actually “see,” why do traditionalmonitors run at higher frequencies, and whydo gamers have an obsession with gettinghigher frame rates in games? There are severalinteresting answers to this. The human eye isextremely sensitive to patterns. Any simple pat-tern in an image or video stands out stronglyagainst the moving content. Unlike televisionsets, traditional computer displays weredesigned to display static text extremely clear-ly, while televisions are designed to playvideos. The difference is that a traditional

computer monitor has a matrix of clearlydefined and separated pixels that the comput-er has precise color control over. For viewingtext clearly this is critical, however for videoit’s a problem. Your eye sees the pixel matrixfirst and the video second. Your old TV wasdesigned to show fluid, moving images andtherefore has no sharply defined pixels; insteadit shows a blurred continuum of 512 lines ofcolor. Even though your old TV onlyrefreshed at 30Hz, video looked good on itbecause your eye wasn’t distracted by pixelsand your brain was able to focus on the illu-sionary motion.

Raising the resolution of a display canactually make the problem worse because thebrain recognizes dense pixel matrices as spi-raling moiré patterns on a screen or in print.

To compensate for this prob-lem, PC games and videoneeded to be run at higherframe rates than the same con-tent on an old TV in order togenerate more illusionarymotion-blurred colors for thebrain to see. Here’s the rub:New flat-panel TVs and PCmonitors are based on essentially

the same display technology. Thusyour new TV now has to run at

higher resolutions and frame rates just tolook as good as your old CRT and to hidethe compression artifacts that result fromcompressing digital video. The good news isstatic text now looks great on your TV! Onmodern displays there is no value in runninga game at a higher frame rate than 60Hzbecause the screen can’t display it and yourbrain can’t see it.

There are some important hidden benefitsto flat-panel displays. Florescent lights conve-niently flicker at twice the rate of a monitor orflat panel display, often producing invisiblestrobe like harmonics that can cause a whop-ping headache. Flat panels have a less pro-nounced flicker and can therefore be easier onthe eyes under florescent lighting. It’s also eas-iest on the eyes when the light emitted fromyour display is about as bright as the ambientlight in the room. ▲

. . . it’s important

to understand

something

about the

human eye. It

has a huge blind

hole smack in

the middle of it.

Send your feedback to [email protected]

Alex St. John was one of thefounding creators of Microsoft’s

DirectX technology. He is thesubject of the book “Renegades

Of The Empire” about the creation of DirectX and

Chromeffects, an early effort by Microsoft to create a multimedia browser. Today

Alex is President and CEO ofWildTangent Inc., a technology

company devoted to deliveringCD-ROM quality entertain-

ment content over the Web.

The Saint


Next time you feel like cuffing your computer monitor infrustration, don’t. Your car can detect your pulse. Yourlawnmower can decide where to whirl its shiny blade. Andthat large, olive drab army truck that just pulled up outsidedoesn’t have a driver. Perhaps you’d best do obeisance toour new metal masters, meatbag.

by Marty Sems

VVoollvvoo SS8800

Automakers just keep getting craftier. We’re not talkingabout irritating developments such as adaptive cruise controlthat promise to fuel road rage by letting the old codger whodoesn’t realize his brights are on stay exactly three secondsbehind you. We’re talking about headlights that turn in thedirections of curves in the road so you can avoid that haplessarmadillo around the bend before he graces your undercar-riage. The Volvo S80’s Bi-Xenon (www.volvocars.com) head-lamps swivel in a 30-degree arc side to side and even tilt up ordown when you’re braking stiffly or carrying your mother-in-law in the back seat. Current models start at about $37,500.Another oddity: The S80’s Personal Car Communicator fobblinks when the car’s heartbeat sensor detects that there maybe a cutpurse lying in wait inside. No word on whether theinterior fabric is resistant to pepper spray.

CCrruusshheerr

More than one observer has exclaimed, “Hey! MoonPatrol!” at the sight of this six-wheel military vehicle, so let’stake the validation of your hours of MAME as read. ADARPA project at Carnegie Mellon University’s NationalRobotics Engineering Center (www.rec.ri.cmu.edu), this is a6.5-ton cargo carrier that runs on wheel-mounted UQMmotors and a hybrid generator/diesel powerplant. However,it’s the brains behind the brawn that matter. The vehicleuses a sophisticated navigation, terrain-sensing, learning sys-tem to carry supplies and materiel into harm’s way com-pletely unpiloted. It reportedly can still move even if flippedover, and it can tell other smart UVs in the area how best to traverse obstacles it has encountered. The project’s fullname is Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle PerceptORIntegrated, but we prefer its nickname: Crusher.

UUnniivveerrssiittyy OOff WWaarrwwiicckk GGrraassss--CCuuttttiinngg RRoobboott

Yes, this is a real dream of anyone charged with the care ofa lawn. The Ransomes Spider is an unmanned lawnmowercontrollable by remote. What the Warwick boffins did was add AI to it, so the mower can virtually run itself(www2.warwick.ac.uk). The idea is for a single shepherdwith a terminal to mind a herd of mowbots, all munchingaway at a golf course or pasture. “They are probably a cou-ple of years away from commercial availability yet,” saysuniversity spokesman Peter Dunn. Indeed, the projectdoesn’t even have a name yet. RoboMow? Grasszilla?MegaLawn? Keep ’em coming.

These GizmosDon’t Sing It,They Bring It


If it isn’t a new Blu-ray or HD DVDblue-laser optical drive these days, it’s acommodity. Who imagined that full-

featured, red-laser DVD burners wouldever go for so cheap? For as laughably lit-tle as $34, you can get DVD-R DL,LightScribe, and even old-school DVD-RAM. Pick up a drive for the kids. Handthem out as stocking stuffers.

At these prices, a bang-for-the-buckcomparison is almost a joke. After all, ifa new DVD drive still annoys you aftera couple of firmware updates, you candump it on a family member and buy adifferent one without much pocketbookpain. Still, any money you waste on abum burner is cash that could’ve gonetoward another 100-pack of discs, so Iset up a bargain basement brawl amongwhat could be the last hurrah of red-laser technology.

Here at CPU, we’re planning to take ahard look at the first blue-laser devicesand media as soon as we can make direct,side-by-side comparisons. In the mean-time, in this month’s issue, I’ll focus onthe newest triple DVDs, also called DVDMulti recorders. That means support forDVD-RAM as well as DVD+R/RW andDVD-R/RW, plus double-layer 8.5GBversions of DVD+R and DVD-R. WhyDVD-RAM, and why now? Becausethese days, it doesn’t cost any more toadd the format, says Sony spokespersonKim Fleischman.

In addition, most current burnersnow support LightScribe direct disclabeling, as did about 20% of the drivessold in the United States last yearaccording to NPD and HP and Ver-batim spokesperson Andy Marken.

Speaking of HP, thanks to that com-pany I had an opportunity to test the newer, faster LightScribe mediaagainst the original technology. See the“LightScribe Tries For Light-Speed”sidebar for the scoop, as well as the“LabelFlash” sidebar for info on Light-Scribe’s competition.

Finally, all the drives came with variantsof Nero 6 except for the Plextor, whichshipped with Roxio 7 Basic DVD Edition.Some drives required 80-wire IDE cables,so I used one across the board.

How I TestedIn choosing my tests, I aimed for a

balance of geek detail and general rele-vance. Most power users want to knowhow fast a drive can rip a movie or burn an audio CD, for example, but afew wil l be interested in esoterica such as bitsetting (the ability to burn aDVD+R/RW/DL disc with its booktype set to DVD-ROM for better DVDplayer compatibility).

Starting on reading tests, I ripped adouble-layer, 8.2GB DVD-Video intoISO and MDS files using DVD De-crypter 3.5.4.0 and then extracted a 58-minute CD-Audio using Windows MediaPlayer 10. For performance figures suchas read and access speeds, I turned toNero CD-DVD Speed 4.11 with a4.35GB, single-layer DVD-ROM testdisc. This sadly scratched-up specimengave me a look at how each drive handledabused media.

Write tests included timed folder trans-fers in Nero Burning ROM 7.0.8.2. It’sworth mentioning here that Nero, Roxio,and other disc-burning software may soon

become less essential, at least for datatransfers of the non-authoring stripe.“Premium versions of Windows Vista willnatively support drag-and-drop writing offiles to DVD±R/RW,” says Microsoftspokesperson Jessica Crozier. Anotherspokesperson added, “Windows Vistacontains the infrastructure necessary toenable writing to an HD DVD opticaldisc” via drag and drop, although “wehave no current plans to develop nativeWindows Vista components for the BDformat” at press time.

I shuttled a 4GB test folder toDVD+R and DVD-R, respectively, thenfollowed up with 8GB to DVD+R DLand DVD-R DL. Next, I burned myripped audio tracks to CD-R usingWMP10 and Nero’s burning plug-in. Ifinished up with a 4GB drag-and-dropfolder transfer to DVD-RAM usingNero 7’s InCD 5 packet-writing soft-ware and Windows Explorer.

Speed is wonderful, but the quality ofburned discs is really of greater concern.You’d rather have a seven-minute discthat works than a five-minute coaster,after all. I checked the number of PI, orparity, errors on two discs made by eachdrive using Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.11and PlexTools Professional 2.32a. Somedrives don’t support disc quality scans,so I turned to the more agreeable Lite-On SHM-165H6S to examine the sin-gle- layer DVD+Rs with CD-DVDSpeed. To assess double-layer DVD-RDL discs, I used the Plextor PX-760Aand PlexTools. Media defects and in-compatibilities will increase the numberof errors a drive will make during a datawrite, so I wanted opinions from two

r e v i e w s | h a r d w a r e

DVD Burners With Everything

But The BluesRage Against The Dying Of The Red Laser Light


different scanning utilities, two types ofdiscs, and two brands of drives.

To test each drive’s bitsetting ability,I wrote a DVD+RW in Nero BurningROM with the Book Type set to DVD-ROM in the Choose Recorder settings.(If this drop-down menu doesn’t appearin the Options section, the drive inquestion probably doesn’t do bitsettingwithout tweaking.) Note that some drives that initially don’t support bitset-ting can be made to do so through first- or third-party utilities, as well asthrough firmware hacks. If Nero CD-DVD Speed’s Disc Info reported theresulting disc’s Book Type as DVD-ROM without the need to resort to anyadditional utilities, I considered thedrive to bitset out of the box.

To minimize the risk of incompatibil-i ty, I tested with blank discs fromVerbatim, which are routinely suppliedto drive manufacturers as standards-compliant optical fodder. Once again,the company came through for me with

a very generous supply of media. Thislet me have stable, reliable results with aconsistent brand across all formats. HPjoined the party with a couple of packsof 52X CD-Rs for my speed tests of thenew version 1.2 of LightScribe.

My test platform featured a 2.6GHzAthlon FX-55, an nForce4 SLI plat-form, 1GB of OCZ Gold EL PC4400DDR, Windows XP SP2, and a Rap-tor WD740GD SATA hard drive. Drive prices are as tested, meaning re-tail boxed or OEM, from online price comparison engines.

HP dvd840This internal drive is sometimes called

the dvd840i, yet its label reads dvd840-03. It’s really a rebadged LG GSA-4166B, like the dvd740 before it. The840 adds DVD-RAM burning and discquality scanning to the 740’s specs. It’srelatively compact at 6.6 inches deep,something of note to SFF and mediaplayer builders. Speed-wise the HP fell

on the faster side of average except for itsslow DL burns.

Actually, using the LG GSA-4166Bdrive’s flash updater utility for firmwareversion 1.00, you may be able to convertthe dvd840 to a GSA-4166B as I didwith a dvd740i. This risky step adds bit-setting support, but undoubtedly voidsHP’s one-year warranty. (Special thanksto Bradforj on the CDfreaks.com forumfor the tip.) Of course, it’s less expensiveto just buy an LG GSA-4166B in thefirst place—up to $20 cheaper online atthis writing—but in my case, cross-flash-ing fixed a media compatibility problemmy dvd740i had developed with firm-ware version HJ24.

LG GSA-H10LHere’s my surprise favorite. The

GSA-H10L from Hitachi-LG DataStorage is a LightScribe version of the RoHS-compliant (lead-free) GSA-H10N. Its f irmware is updatablethrough a utility on the enclosed soft-ware CD. Front-to-back, this LG mea-sures 6.75 inches.

The GSA-H10L was very speedythroughout most of my tests, notablywriting to all + and -R media and CDripping. On the other hand, its DVD-Video rip took nearly twice as long assome competitors’. Also, my test uniteither didn’t care for my Verbatim 3XDVD-RAM media, or it just wasn’thandy with the DVD-RAM format withits current firmware.

Still, error rates were spookily low. Infact, the Plextor rated the LG’s DVD-RDL almost as well as its own. It was thefastest LightScribe burner with bothoriginal and version 1.2 media, and itwas ready to bitset book types. Theonly trouble is that this particular model wasn’t yet easy to find at press time.

Lite-On Super AllWrite SHM-165H6SThis Lite-On is relatively feature-rich,

meaning that it was the only drive herethat hit the trifecta of as-is bitsetting,disc scanning, and printing LightScribe1.2 labels. Looking at write and errorrates, however, the SHM-165H6S seemsmuch more average.


dvd840$74.99HPwww.hp.com● ● ●

GSA-H10L$35 (GSA-H10AK; white box withsoftware)LGus.lge.com● ● ● ●

CPU RANKING ●● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT



LightScribe Tries For Light-Speed

I f you don’t like LightScribe, chances are it’s becauseyou find it too slow, too hard to read, and/or too

ugly in that grey-on-gold color scheme. But all that’sabout to change, thanks to new media from HP,Memorex, and others.

“Version 1.2 (media) has a new coating that canmake the label write speed up to 30% faster than earli-er LightScribe media, depending on the drive modeland firmware version,” says Verbatim spokespersonAndy Marken. “Current LightScribe drive owners cantake advantage of the new media by updating theirLightScribe system software.”

LightScribe Burn Speeds

We timed some label burns using universal LightScribe System Software 1.4.74.1 and Nero7.0.8.2's CoverDesigner 2.4.6.0. Our label consisted of simple but large text at Normal quality.Verbatim supplied 8X DVD+Rs for our original LightScribe test, and HP sent faster-burning, higher-contrast 52X CD-R LightScribe 1.2 media. Note that some drives may burn labels evenfaster using the optimized software in their bundles.

Drive LightScribe LightScribe ver. 1.2 1.2 speed gain(minutes:seconds)

HP dvd840 13:30 9:10 32%

LG GSA-H10L 12:45 8:40 32%

Lite-On SHM-165H6S 15:20 9:14 40%

Samsung SH-S162L 13:02 9:31 27%

Look for the LightScribe 1.2 logo on thecases of the new blank media, bottom left.

At Normal quality, original LightScribe(top) is noticeably harder to read thanLightScribe 1.2 (bottom).

You’d have to burn an original LightScribedisc (left) at least twice as long to approachthe Normal-quality label contrast of thenew 1.2 media (right).

In my tests with recent software,LightScribe 1.2 discs burned 27 to 40%faster with no other changes. LG’s GSA-H10L proved the fastest labeler witheither version of media. The mostimproved award went to the Lite-OnSHM-165H6S, whose 40% speed increasetook it from dead last with an originalLightScribe disc to third place and neck-and-neck with the HP dvd840.

So what about some color? Later on,LightScribe 1.2 discs will come in “jewel-toned background colors such as yellow,green, and orange,” Marken says,although users will still be limited tomonochrome images with one of threecontrast levels.

Better still from a practical standpoint,my LightScribe 1.2 label on an HP CD-Rwas visibly sharper than on an originalLightScribe Verbatim DVD+R, with fewer

horizontal lines of background colornoticeable across the text. Speaking ofthe background, it seemed brighter onthe 1.2 disc. Reflections of overheadlights were sharper, and I could clearlysee radial rainbow patterns reminiscentof the data sides of discs.

Version 1.2 doesn’t imply that previousLightScribe discs were version 1.0 or 1.1,however. “There wasn’t a version numberto the original media. It’s just referred to(as) the original media,” says HPspokesman Doug Heckman.

If you’ve ever burned a LightScribelabel only to find it too faint (and assum-ing you saved the file), you can reburn itat a higher quality setting because thedrive indexes off the pattern around thedisc hub. Unfortunately, accuracy wasn’tquite good enough in my two trials ofthis capability using the Lite-On and

Samsung drives. The new labels, thoughdarker, misregistered a little, making for an eye-fatiguing drop shadow ef-fect. Of course, if you’ve accidentallymade a label using Nero CoverDesign-er’s odd Artistic Text Tool, which seemsto print only faint outlines of characters,trying this trick is better than leaving thediscs that way.

And if you’d like to wring better con-trast out of the rest of your originalLightScribe media while you’re waitingfor 1.2 media, try the Extended LabelContrast Utility (free; www.lightscribe.com/support/index.aspx?id=306). TheELCU makes burn times take longer,however, because it changes the Normalquality setting to the contrast level theBest setting used to provide. Best qualityafter installing the ELCU means a brand-new, top tier of contrast. ▲


Where this Super AllWrite shines,ironically, is in read tests. It won theDVD-ROM reading and DVD-Videoripping competitions, at least until I

enabled SpeedRead on the Plextor tosnatch away the latter crown. When youconsider that the majority of users neverinstall any of the utilities that come witha drive, out-of-the-box performance likethis starts to matter.

The 6.7-inch-deep SHM-165H6Scomes with black and beige bezels. On

a side note, Lite-On is absorbingBenq’s optical drive business, so wemay see SolidBurn adaptive write

quality technology and other Benq fea-tures integrated into Lite-On drives inthe future.

Plextor PX-760ALike Han Solo through closing blast

doors, this Plextor came over the tran-som just before deadline. The only drivehere to claim 18X DVD±R (29.4MBps)burn speeds, the PX-760A neverthelessskips LightScribe and DVD-RAM sup-port. Predictably for a Plextor, it costthe most, too, although its PlexToolsProfessional software and tweakabilitymore than justify the price.

The PX-760A is an IDE, or PATAdrive, although Plextor has led the way in


Red-Laser DVD Performance

All media was provided by Verbatim. DVD-R DL media rated for 6X or higher speeds were scarce, but some drives were able to write our 2 to 4X discs at 6X. There were no PO errors. Lower times and figures are better except as noted with an asterisk (*).

Drive (firmware version) HP dvd840 (HJ86) LG GSA-H10L (LL10) Lite-On SHM-165H6S (HS07) Plextor PX-760A (1.02)

Write/Rewrite/Read speeds 8X DVD+R DL, 10X DVD+R DL, 8X DVD+R DL, 10X DVD+R DL, (DVD 1X=1.35MBps; 4X DVD-R DL, 6X DVD-R DL, 4X DVD-R DL, 6X DVD-R DL,

16X/8X/16X DVD+RW, 16X/8X/16X DVD+RW, 16X/8X/16X DVD+RW, 18X/8X/16X DVD+RW, CD 1X=0.15MBps) 16X/6X/16X DVD-RW, 16X/6X/16X DVD-RW, 16X/6X/16X DVD-RW, 18X/6X/16X DVD-RW,

5X DVD-RAM, 12X DVD-RAM, 5X DVD-RAM, 48X/24X/48X CD-RW48X/32X/40X CD-RW 48X/32X/48X CD-RW 48X/24X/48X CD-RW

LightScribe Yes Yes Yes No

Bitsets + media to No Yes Yes YesDVD-ROM out of the box

Supports disc quality scans Yes No Yes Yes

Folder Burns, Nero 7.0.8.2 (minutes:seconds)

DVD+R, 4GB 5:46 5:26 5:49 5:31 (Verbatim 16X @ 18X)

DVD-R, 4GB 5:33 5:31 6:11 7:35 (Verbatim 16X)

DL DVD+R, 8GB 19:32 14:07 (Verbatim 8X @ 10X) 17:27 14:52 (Verbatim 8X @ 10X)

DL DVD-R, 8GB 29:46 (Verbatim 4X) 19:12 (Verbatim 4X @ 6X) 27:50 (Verbatim 4X) 18:44 (Verbatim 4X @ 6X)

DVD-RAM, 4GB 46:12 1:45:48 (Verbatim 3X) 49:00 (Verbatim 3X) N/A(InCD 5 drag/drop)

DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0 18:12 28:51 17:22 50:26 (11:54 with SpeedRead)ISO Rip (8.2GB movie)

CD Audio (min:sec)

WMP10 128Kbps WMA 3:16 2:46 3:30 7:36Rip (58-min. CD)

WMP10/Nero CD-Audio Burn 2:53 2:55 2:52 2:47

Read Tests Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.11

DVD Read, avg/max* 7.25X/10X 6.30X/9.2X 8.53X/16X 5.88X/11.8X (briefly)

DVD Access, 164/255 154/247 153/217 489/1,109random/full (in ms)

Read curve notes Moderately spiky after Smooth, speed drop after Moderately spiky after Alternately sawtoothed (scratched DVD) 2.8GB (P-CAV) 3GB (P-CAV) 1.5GB (P-CAV) and spiky (Z-CLV)

Error Counts

Single-layer parity errors, Quality Score* 90 Quality Score* 95 Quality Score* 93 Quality Score* 70 DVD+R, CD-DVD Speed PI Errors 40,637 PI Errors 10,716 PI Errors 19,678 PI Errors 23,442Disc Quality, per Lite-On PIE Avg 4.15 PIE Avg 1.44 PIE Avg 2.32 PIE Avg 2.61

PIE Max 33 PIE Max 10 PIE Max 15 PIE Max 22PI Failures 2,541 PI Failures 817 PI Failures 1,187 PI Failures 1,417

Double-layer parity errors, PI Errors 402,156 PI Errors 300,575 PI Errors 488,599 PI Errors 281,465 DVD-R DL, PlexTools PIE Avg 12.34 PIE Avg 9.22 PIE Avg 14.99 PIE Avg 8.64Q-Check, per Plextor PIE Max 84 PIE Max 55 PIE Max 161 PIE Max 57

Super AllWrite SHM-165H6S $45Lite-Onwww.liteonamericas.com● ● ● ●



bringing SATA to the optical drive world(followed by Samsung). The RoHS-com-pliant SATA PX-755SA has the samespecs, by the way, except for 16X DVD±Rratings instead of 18X. The 6.6-inch-deepPX-760A is lead-free and comes with blackand beige bezels.

Plextor’s AutoStrategy feature exam-ines unfamiliar discs before it writesanything to them and comes up with aplan of action to burn a disc when itdoesn’t have a write strategy already infirmware. There are many more specialPlextor features on tap, such as GigaRecand SecuRec, but these have been well-covered elsewhere.

This Plextor rewards the tweaker.Out of the box, it can be much too loudor too slow, so PlexTools is essential.For example, the drive was whisper-quiet during its DVD-Video rip at 2XCLV speed, but then the transfer tookthrice as long as the top drives. To getfaster reads of DVD-Videos with CSS, Ihad to enable the SpeedRead feature inPlexTools Pro, which tightened up thePX-760’s ripping time considerably. Infact, with SpeedRead, the drive beat itsnearest competitor by five minutes and30 seconds. SpeedRead didn’t make myCD-Audio rip any faster, though.

Finally, the Plextor gave itself highmarks in its DVD-R DL error count testin PlexTools. However, the Lite-On andCD-DVD Speed panned its DVD+Rwith an abysmal Quality Score in repeat-ed runs, probably due to a handful ofhefty PI failures. Keep in mind that indi-vidual discs vary. Disc access times wereoddly slow, too, although this doesn’tmean much.

In sum, the Plextor’s test results werepretty polarized. Either the PX-760A was

the best at something or the worst. Takethe time to adjust its jillions of settings,however, and you’ll probably find this driveon top more than not.

Samsung SH-S162LThis LightScribe-capable model, desig-

nated by the L in its name, is a lead-freeunit from Toshiba Samsung StorageTechnology. It’s an IDE/ATAPI unit that’s6.6 inches deep. Samsung’s SE-W163 hassimilar specs with a SATA interface.

Generally speaking, this drive fell intothe bottom third of my test results exceptfor top honors in DVD-RAM writing andgood grades in some reading tests. Oddlyenough, my drive took a few seconds longerto rip my CD with Samsung’s MagicSpeed utility (www.samsungodd.com/eng/LiveUpdate/MSpeed/MSpeed.asp)

PlexTools either didn’t like the SH-S162L’s DVD-R DL disc or the Samsung’shandling of it, logging an exorbitantamount of parity errors found on it. Still,the Samsung’s DVD+R didn’t look anyworse than most other drives in CD-DVDSpeed’s Disc Quality scan.


Samsung SH-S162L (TS04) Sony DRU-820A (1.0b)

8X DVD+R DL, 8X DVD+R DL, 6X DVD-R DL, 6X DVD-R DL, 16X/8X/16X DVD+RW, 16X/8X/16X DVD+RW, 16X/6X/16X DVD-RW, 16X/6X/16X DVD-RW, 5X DVD-RAM, 5X DVD-RAM, 48X/32X/48X CD-RW 48X/32X/48X CD-RW

Yes No

Yes Yes

No No

5:54 6:03

6:13 6:01

19:17 21:14

27:18 (Verbatim 4X) 21:49 (Verbatim 4X @ 6X)

45:09 (Verbatim 3X) Failed

22:08 17:53

5:43 (5:49 with 3:12Magic Speed)

3:13 2:59

8.33X/11.2X 7.41X/10.6X

103/195 471/630

Smoothly sawtoothed Very spiky between (P-CAV) 1.5 and 2GB (P-CAV)

Quality Score* 90 Quality Score* 95 PI Errors 29,403 PI Errors 28,327PIE Avg 3.14 PIE Avg 3.11 PIE Max 22 PIE Max 94PI Failures 1,015 PI Failures 874

PI Errors 4,560,048 PI Errors 652,485 PIE Avg 139.94 PIE Avg 20.02PIE Max 299 PIE Max 82

PX-760A$99.99Plextorwww.plextor.com● ● ● ●

SH-S162L$37 (bulk with software)Samsungwww.samsung.com● ● ●



Sony DRU-820AMy first DRU-820A evaluation unit

had problems, but a replacement fromSony was more functional. Both drivesonly worked well with the CS (cableselect) jumper setting. They also sharedthe Plextor’s preference for an 80-wire IDE cable. Drive #2 didn’t like my DVD-ROM test disc in CD-DVD Speed, however, and still held agrudge against InCD 5 or variousVerbatim 3X DVD-RAM discs. Evenwhen I formatted my DVD-RAMs asFAT32, bypassing InCD, my file trans-fer tests bombed partway through witha CRC error.

CD-DVD Speed varied in its assess-ment of the Sony’s DVD+R, assigning itQuality Scores between 84 and 95 inrepeated tests. I settled on results from arepresentative run. PlexTools didn’t muchcare for its DVD-R DL, either, althoughthe Sony looked much better than theSamsung in double-layer burn accuracy.

Relatively high error rates, DVD-RAMtrouble, long access times, scratched mediareading dyslexia, and ATAPI jumperfinickiness all conspire against the case forbuying this drive, at least with this firm-ware version. Forget LightScribe and discscanning, too. The DRU-820A is alsoabout half an inch longer than the rest of

this crowd at 7.1 inches, so SFF enthusiastsshouldn’t waste their time with it.

Red Exit Sign The speed and accuracy king of this

group is the LG GSA-H10L. It takes a longtime to rip DVD-Video and burn DVD-RAM, but those seem to be its only sub-stantial flaws. Both could conceivably befixed by new firmware, too—but then youcould say the same about any drive here.

So much for red-laser DVD burners;consider my appetite whetted for HDDVD and Blu-ray. Bring on the blues! ▲

by Marty Sems



LabelFlash

I f you remember the short-lived 44X CRW-F1ZE drive fromYamaha, you remember its space-cadet selling point:

DiscT@2. The first laser labeling technology for CD media,DiscT@2 was far from perfect. You could only label discs onunused sections of the data side of a disc, and on most mediayou had to tilt the disc into the light to see the label. Still,DiscT@2 foreshadowed the Sharpie-less, printerless, adhesive-less labeling paradigm to come a couple of years later, namelyHP’s LightScribe.

And yet DiscT@2 has returned from the grave, thanks to FujiPhoto Film and Yamaha. This time, it’s printing on the right side ofthe disc. Called LabelFlash, the technology is thus far only availablein Europe in a handful of NEC drives, including the ND-4551A, ND-3551A, and some notebook models. Its main advantage overLightScribe appears to be the ability to vary the brightness of indi-vidual picture elements by 256 levels. Its other selling points,namely faster burning times and more colorful discs (starting withblue), are being answered in order by LightScribe 1.2. I look for-ward to a comparison of LabelFlash and colored 1.2 media whensamples of both become available. ▲

Initially sold in Europewith a blue background,LabelFlash’s claim tofame is 256 potentialbrightness levels in thesame label, compared toLightScribe’s one ofthree contrast choices.

DRU-820A$59.99Sonywww.sonyburners.com● ●


R emember when Apple’s 23-inchCinema HD arrived on the scene for

a cool two grand (and its 30-inch siblingwas over three large)? As LCD prices havethankfully declined, owning a giantwidescreen display is becoming a realityfor more users. HP’s LP2465 is one suchdisplay that gives you 24 inches ofwidescreen goodness for under $1,000.

The LP2465 makes some improve-ments over last year’s model, the L2335.The extra inch in viewable area theLP2465 offers is negligible, but the newmonitor has double the luminance (500nits) and contrast ratio (1000:1) of itspredecessor. Dual DVI-I inputs are nice,but I was sad to see HP kick the compo-nent video inputs to the curb.

Although HP pitches the LP2465 as abusiness display, I launched a volley of teststhat consisted of more than examining

Times New Roman text in Word and Excelworksheets. DisplayMate MultimediaEdition served as the centerpiece of mytests, and I also viewed a 1080p Quick-Time trailer for “Superman Returns” andran through a few levels of F.E.A.R. at1,920 x 1,200.

In DisplayMate Multimedia Edition,the LP2465 showed itself as a capablemonitor in most tests. Its Video Band-width test result of 99.6 was among thebest I’ve seen. Fonts were clear and readable as small as 6.8 points, and the

LP2465 had great grayscale contrast.Red seemed to be a little glaring, and Iwould have preferred slightly bettercolor contrast.

My real-world tests with F.E.A.R.and “Superman Returns” show theLP2465 as a capable gaming and enter-tainment display. With no ghosting andgood contrast in F.E.A.R., I was pleasedwith the display’s gaming performance.The artifacts that cropped up in“Superman Returns” didn’t detract toomuch from the overall experience. Redpush was apparent in both.

Currently priced at $869, HP’sLP2465 matches up nicely against Dell’s2407FPW. It’s also ready for Vista, so itshould satisfy most users until more 30-inch displays hit the market. ▲

by Vince Cogley

Specs: 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, 1000:1 contrast ratio, HP Quick Release, 6msresponse time (grey to grey)

slightly better than the stock RadeonX1900 XTX. These results didn’t surpriseme because the Toxic X1900 XTX’s coreand memory clocks are only 4% and 3%faster than stock speeds, respectively. I usedATI’s Catalyst Control Center to push thecard to 690MHz core/806MHz memory,but the Toxic X1900 XTX turned feistyand refused to work well with third-partyoverclocking tools. I worked with a prepro-duction unit, so Sapphire may have ironedout these kinks in the retail version.

This card is undeniably fast, and thefactory-installed watercooling is greatpiece of mind. But for my dollar, a stan-dard Radeon X1900 XTX performsnearly as well. (NOTE: For benchmarknumbers, go to www.cpumag.com/cpu

aug06/sapphire.) ▲

by Vince CogleySpecs: R580 GPU at 675MHz; 512MB GDDR3 memory at 800MHz; copperwaterblock and radiator

I couldn’t help but feel a little dirty test-ing Sapphire’s high-end Toxic X1900

XTX. The R580-based card arrives to theshow already decked out with customwatercooling (courtesy of Thermaltake),so it felt a lot like buying Vin Diesel’sDodge Charger in “The Fast and theFurious” without putting in a minute oflabor customizing it myself.

Although hardcore modders mightgive the Toxic X1900 XTX the coldshoulder, Sapphire’s offering is an invit-ing option for anyone who doesn’t wantto risk spilling coolant or toasting a$500 graphics card after botching awatercooling kit installation. By ditch-ing the two-slot heatsink in favor of awaterblock, Sapphire adds watercoolingwithout adding size.

Sapphire touts the Toxic X1900 XTXas ultra-silent, and I’ll concede it’s a little

quieter than a standard Radeon X1900XTX. But any graphics card with a fanwill stir up a little ruckus, and the ToxicX1900 XTX is no exception. The cardfunctions perfectly on the low fan settingif you don’t tweak the clock speeds.

I tested the Toxic X1900 XTX at itsdefault speeds, and it turned in scores only

LP2465$869HPwww.hp.com● ● ● ●

Toxic X1900 XTX$599Sapphirewww.sapphiretech.com● ● ●


HP LP2465

Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX



A TI recently announced the Theater650 Pro chip with Avivo-supported

hardware TV and DTV video encoding,noise reduction, and PVR functionality.The Theater 650 Pro is an improvementover its predecessor, the Theater 550, in anumber of areas. Nearly everything aboutthe 650 has been beefed up and enhancedover previous generations, and theseboards will certainly give Nvidia’sDualTV MCE a run for its money.

I looked at an ATI-supplied card thatcame equipped with a single mini-cantuner, which actually is a custom ATIdesign built by Samsung. The half-heightPCI card also includes an FM radio tunerin its arsenal. In terms of nitty-gritty tech-nical details, the new Theater 650 chipnow has a full motion-adaptive 3D combfilter onboard, along with multistaged/multispeed gain control and automatic

color control. The 650 chip also takesATI’s Theater products into the world ofDTV, along with hardware assist for sig-nal detection for faster tuning. Via acombo FM/DTV coax port, you canattach a decent quality antenna and pulldown local broadcast DTV programmingfree of charge.

Speaking of which, you have to see dig-ital TV programming on the Theater 650to believe it. Probably the best features ofthis new TV tuner product are its hard-ware motion compensation and noise

reduction capabilities. The card easilyproduced the most impressive image qual-ity I’ve seen on a TV tuner to date, espe-cially when viewing a DTV source. Colorsaturation, tone, and brightness were con-siderably better with this card comparedto previous Theater 550 boards I’ve test-ed, with much less distortion and noisefrom either a standard cable or air broad-cast DTV source.

ATI board partners Gigabyte, Sapp-hire, HIS, MSI, and others will offer vari-ations of the card, along with differentsoftware and supporting hardware bun-dles. I tested the card using ATI’s CatalystMedia Center software, which is sleek,intuitive, and a breeze to use with anaccompanying USB Remote Wonder RFremote control. ▲

by Dave Altavilla

Specs: 125 channel TV tuner; 3D comb filter; MPEG-2 720 x 480 compression; FMradio reception; NTSC, PAL, SECAM support

site as being SLI Ready, save for only thehighest-end configuration of a pair ofGeForce 7900 GTX or GeForce 7800GTX 512MB cards. Regardless, I put theiGreen Power 600 up against a pair of7900 GTXs in my own personal stress testand found it held up with nary a hitchunder extreme loads. Though the unit isnot a modular cable type, its single, large120mm fan is very easy on the ears at17dBA. It also comes equipped with bothan 8-pin, +12V CPU power connector; a4-pin, +12V CPU power connector; and apair of 6-pin PCI Express power connec-tors. Appointed with a cut-off switch and ared power indicator light on its backplate,the iGreen Power 600 has a lot going for itand will keep a lot going for your favoritegaming rig, as well. ▲

by Dave AltavillaSpecs: Active PFC: 0.99; ATX form factor 12V V2.2; Fan: dual ball bearing 120mm;MTBF: greater than 400,000 hours

W hen it comes topower supplies,

you can almost neverhave too much of a goodthing. With dual-coreCPUs and multi-GPUgraphics more common-place, power supply man-ufacturers have found new marketpotential and an opportunity to differ-entiate their products.

We took a look at severalPSUs in recent issues ofCPU but haven’t had achance to work with a PSUfrom Cooler Master sinceSeptember 2005 (page 16).

Cool Master’s iGreenPower 600W supply is a

beefy unit to be sure, with 465W availableacross its three dedicated 12V rails alone.Nvidia also lists this PSU on its SLIZone

Theater 650 Pro$109ATIwww.ati.com● ● ● ● ●

iGreen Power 600W$129Cooler Masterwww.coolermaster.com ● ● ● ●


Cooler Master iGreen Power 600W


ATI Theater 650 Pro

Model RS-600-ASAAPFC Active PFC (0.99)Type ATX Form Factor 12V V2.2/SSI standard EPS 12V V2.91Input voltage 90 ~ 264V (Auto Range)Input current 10A at 115Vac/5A at 230VacFan Dual ball bearing 120mm fanPower good signal 100 ~ 500 msHold up time > 17 msEfficiency (load) 82% (120W); 85% (300W); 82% (600W)MTBF >400,000 hrsOutput capacity 600W continuousMax. DC output +3.3V (25A), +5V (25A), +12V1 (19.5A),+12V2 (19.5A), +12V3 (19A), -12V (0.8A), +5Vsb (3.5A) Max. DC continuous +3.3V (20A), +5V (20A), +12V1 (16A),+12V2 (14A), +12V3 (8A), -12V (0.5A), +5Vsb (3A)


GPU generates. By comparison, theheatsink and fans cooling each GeForce7950 GPU are noticeably smaller, soI’m not surprised Nvidia couldn’t rampthe core and memory clocks up to GeForce 7900 GTX speeds. The 512-bit memory bus and 1GB GDD3 aretwo noteworthy improvements.

Although single-card SLI productsaren’t new (see “Gigabyte 3D1 GeForce6600 GT SLI” on page 25 in the March2005 issue of CPU), this massive effortfrom Nvidia could pay dividends. Oneof the most alluring features is that thiscard is theoretically compatible with any chipset that supports the PCI Ex-press bus. That’s right: All of you stub-born folk who refused to turn in yourIntel 915-based mobo when the nForce4 SLI MCP debuted will be able to


GeForce 7950 GX2$649 to $699BFG Technologieswww.bfgtech.com● ● ● ●

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2W hen Nvidia marched its Quad SLI to

the front lines of the GPU war earli-er this year, we noticed it crammed fourboards in the same footprint as two Ge-Force 7900 GTXs. This was obviouslygreat news for high-end system buildersand their patrons, but the move left DIYersin the cold. With the introduction of theGeForce 7950 GX2, Nvidia has at leastthrown DIYers a heavy parka. For those ofyou that saw the writing on the wall, giveyourself a pat on the back.

Before you run through the streets cele-brating the arrival of two of Nvidia’sfastest GPUs yoked together on a card halfthe size, take note: Nvidia has stressed thatthe GeForce 7950 GX2s should be seen asa single card. Don’t expect it to dethronetwo GeForce 7900 GTX cards in SLI. TheGeForce 7950 GX2 is the fastest singlecard money can currently buy.

The BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 representsa step toward building your own Quad SLI rig. Even though a single 7950 GPU’s core and memory clock speeds are slightly more sluggish than a 7900 GTX’s (500 to650MHz and 600 to 800MHz, respective-ly), its GPU is a step up from the GeForce7900 GPU that graced first-generationQuad SLI systems.

A quick glance at any GeForce 7900GTX’s monstrous heatsink and fanreveals the immense amount of heat its

experience dual graphics goodness with-out a motherboard upgrade.

This is promising news, but it comeswith a caveat: Most motherboards (andalmost certainly all older motherboards)require a BIOS update for the GeForce7950 GX2 to work properly. Nvidia’s listof motherboards with a compatible BIOSupdate was pretty lean at launch, but ifTeam Green’s fervent work ethic is a signof things to come, I expect the list to growexponentially sooner rather than later.

Aside from a few anomalies I attribute toCPU bottlenecking in Quake 4 and the1,024 x 768 test in Far Cry, the GeForce7950 GX2 rolled over the competition. Ithink 3DMark06 (7841, 6054, and 5978for the GeForce 7950 GX2, Gigabyte’sGeForce 7900 GTX, and 5978 for ATIRadeon X1900 XTX, respectively) was themost accurate representation of the perfor-mance differences, but F.E.A.R. and FarCry were also instructive.

I mentioned that Nvidia has thrown itsDIY enthusiasts a heavy parka becauseeven though two GeForce 7950 GX2smakes Quad SLI a no-brainer, Nvidia isreserving the necessary driver for systembuilders. Nvidia claims system buildershave the expertise to properly build aQuad SLI rig, but I highly doubt a com-pany such as Falcon Northwest or Voo-doo has some sort of mystic tome lockedaway in a vault that contains secret QuadSLI information the general public isn’tready to handle. But I suspect power userswill have their own Quad SLI systemsrunning before the end of the year.

BFG’s GeForce 7950 GX2 is wicked-ly fast, but see it for what it is—the nextevolutionary step. If you’re expectingcheaper route to a dual-7900 GTX con-figuration, you’re in for a sour surprise.But for those who are willing to digdeep into their pockets when a QuadSLI driver is available to the public, twoof these cards will be scary good. ▲

by Vince Cogley

BFG GeForce Gigabyte GeForce ATI Radeon 7950 GX2 7900 GTX X1900 XTX

Clock Speed 500MHz core; 650MHz core; 650MHz core; 600MHz memory 800MHz memory 775MHz memory

3DMark06 v1.0.2 1,280 x 1,024 7841 6054 5978

SM2.0 3565 2577 2339

HDR/SM3.0 3464 2493 2627

Far Cry 1.33 patch

1,600 x 1,200 4XAA/8XAF 153.34 106.65 113.1

1,024 x 768 no AA/AF 170.47 178 180.42

Quake 4 Custom Demo

1,600 x 1,200 4XAA/8XAF 111.4 112.7 83.7

1,024 x 768 no AA/AF 124 124 125.3

F.E.A.R.

1,600 x 1,200 4XAA/8XAF maximum CPU settings 68 49 52

1,024 x 768 no AA/4XAF medium CPU settings 98 85 83



I t appears that Gigabyte has decided tostray from the current trend of noise-

reducing cooling methods with its line ofG1-Turbo products. I examined the GA-G1975X: a motherboard based on Intel’si975 Express chipset fused with large tur-bine channels placed around the CPUsocket. As the naming scheme might imply,the Turbojets on the G1975X muffle theCPU cooler and PSU.

The i975X chipset supports ATI’sCrossFire using the two PCI Express x16slots. Curiously, though, Gigabyte alsoincludes a graphics bridge in the package,

which Nvidia’s SLI configuration wouldnormally use. Currently there isn’t supportfor such a setup with the i975X, but futureBIOS and driver updates might add it.

The SoundBlaster Live! onboard con-troller supports up to 7.1 audio channelsand requires fewer CPU cycles than typical

audio codecs. Although I wasn’t overlykeen on the lack of backplane options dueto the customized layout, the quality of theaudio output makes a suitable replacementfor third-party solutions.

The G1975X ruled the benchmarks, butthis was probably due to Gigabyte aggres-sively tweaking the board rather than any-thing specific in the chipset. As the i975Xisn’t more than an update of the i955x witha tweaked memory controller and supportfor additional CPUs and dual GPU config-urations, I wasn’t expecting any big increas-es in performance—but I got some anyway.

Unfortunately the overly loud Turbojetsmay be a design that Gigabyte will repeatthroughout the G1-Turbo line. However, a board revision called the G1975X-C ap-peared that looked essentially the same asthe original sans the Turbojets. This addi-tion by subtraction is music to my ears. ▲

by Robert Maloney


any surface. It also sends and receives 500reports per second at full-speed USB,which means instant response times.

On-the-fly dpi changing can make allthe difference when gaming—especiallyin shooters. Being able to change the sen-sitivity, focus in on a sniper shot, andthen return to a more playable speed isreason alone to get a G5.

Perhaps the most telling argument forLogitech is something that happened whilereviewing the G5. My wife, unaware that Iwas testing a new mouse, used my PC todo some typical everyday chores and thenasked me what had changed with themouse. What had changed indeed. ▲

by Robert Maloney

W e’ve all seen thosehot-rod PCs that

seem destined more for a showroom floor than running business applica-tions. Typically, theyfeature custom paintjobs, grills, and chassis,but rarely do power usersconsider the everyday peripher-als that let us use those systems: thekeyboard and mouse.

Undaunted by this realization, one ofLogitech’s latest offerings, the G5 LaserGaming Mouse, isn’t just an evolutionarystep in mice but perhaps revolutionary.

The G5 is completely customizable,allowing switching resolutions on the fly

(from a plodding 400dpi to a speedy2,000dpi), as well changing the heft of

the device itself. Logitech accom-plishes the latter using a set of

tiny weights that fit into anorange tray with holes in it.

Only a single thumbbutton exists on the

G5, which could be abane or boon for users.

I’m content with this deci-sion, however, as on a gaming mouse,

two buttons can get confusing in theheat of battle. One large button lets meknow that I am clicking the correct but-ton all of the time.

The high-resolution engine can processup to 6.4MPps and will read on just about

G1-Turbo GA-G1975X$249.99Gigabytewww.giga-byte.com● ● ●

G5 Laser Gaming Mouse$69.99Logitechwww.logitech.com● ● ● ●

Benchmarks Numbers

Gigabyte Asus MSI P4N Gigabyte G1975X P5WD2 Diamond GA-8N-SLI

PCMark05 (CPU) 4346 4255 4204 4261PCMark05 (MEM) 4410 4334 4329 43533DMark05 (CPU) 5188 5062 4951 4902Cinebench 2003 85.4 87.7 87.7 87.3(seconds)Doom 3 (LQ) (640 x 480) 174.2fps 170.3fps 171.2fps 173.3fps

Specs: Max Resolution: 2,000dpi; Image Processing: 6.4MPps; Max Acceleration: 20g; Maximum Speed: 45 to 65 inches per second; USB Report Rate: 500 reports per second; IBM or compatible PC; Win98, 2000, Me, or XP; USB port


Logitech G5 Laser Gaming Mouse

Specs: Intel 975X Express, Intel ICH7R southbridge, LGA775, 4 DDR2-533/667/800/888slots, ATI CrossFire support, onboard Creative SB Live!, 2 PCI-E x16, 2 PCI-E x4, 2 PCI

Gigabyte G1-Turbo GA-G1975X


A s much as we’d all love to own a top-of-the-line video card, it’s not feasi-

ble for everyone. Fortunately, though,there are sometimes better deals at themid- to high-end. For instance the HISRadeon X1900 XT IceQ 3. It would beeasy to disregard an X1900 XT, but bydoing so you’d be missing out on a goodvalue. I use the word “value” here withsome trepidation because the HIS RadeonX1900 XT IceQ 3 costs $400-plus. Itscurrent price tag, however, is 20% lowerthan the average XTX. And there’s virtu-ally no need to spend extra funds thanksto HIS’ bundle and innovation.

To cool its GPU and memory, HIS didaway with ATI’s reference cooler and uses aquieter, all-copper design with heatpipesinstead. HIS parts the card’s cooling appa-ratus to separate the GPU and memory

heatsinks, preventing the heat from oneheatsink transferring into the other. A large,quiet fan at the rear of the card circulatesair over both heatsinks, where an open ventin the card’s dual-slot case bracket expels it.

I found the IceQ 3 cooler to be verycapable, and it handled a significant over-clock with ease. Out of the box the X1900XT IceQ 3’s GPU runs at 625MHz, and

its 512MB of onboard memory is set at1.45GHz (725MHz DDR). At these clockspeeds the card put up a respectable scoreof 5706 in 3DMark06 and a frame rate of49fps in F.E.A.R. at 1,600 x 1,200 with4XAA and 16XAF enabled. By enablingoverdrive, I overclocked the card to667MHz/1.56GHz, and the scoresjumped to 6016 and 51fps, respectively.

With a price about 20% lower than atypical Radeon X1900 XTX, a quietcooler, and a bundle that includes fullversions of PowerDVD, FlatOut, severalvideo cables, and the ability to easilyoverclock to XTX levels, the HISRadeon X1900 XT IceQ 3 is winner. ▲

by Marco Chiappetta


Specs: GPU: Radeon X1900 XT; GPU Clock: 625MHz; Memory: 512MB GDDR3;Memory Clock: 1.45GHz; Outputs/Inputs: Dual-DVI x 2; Vivo; Form Factor: Dual Slot;Interface: PCI-E x16

X1900 XT IceQ 3$409HISwww.hisdigital.com● ● ● ●

HIS X1900 XT IceQ 3

500MB folder in 5:45 (minutes:sec-onds) in the WinRAR test and scored2730 in PC-Mark05, thanks in part toweak graphics performance.

The system lacks expandability, but youcan upgrade certain components, such asthe processor and memory. Cerise upgradescomponents in its Mini PC line at cost pluslabor. It also offers a noteworthy one-yearwarranty that includes onsite tech supportand 24/7 toll-free tech support. I wouldn’tput the Mini PC in my living room (noTV tuner), but I could see it in the kitchenor at a small desk. It’s more than capable ofhandling day-to-day tasks and ’Net surfingand it’s quiet enough for any room. ▲

by Joshua GulickSpecs: 1.6GHz Intel T2300; AOpen MP945-VX; 512MB DDR2-667; 80GB SamsungHM080JI; Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics; 6-Channel Audio; Matsushita DVD-RAMUJ-845S; Atheros AR5005G 802.11g; WinXP Home

L aunched in 2003, Cerise Computersis a fairly new kid on the block. The

Maryland-based system builder offersthe Mini PC as a space-saver that canhandle tight fits and even travel withprojector-toting presenters.

At 1.96 x 6.49 x 6.49 inches (HxWxD),the Mini PC is tiny, but it offers all theports you’ll need in most situations, in-cluding a SPDIF port that plugs into theline-in port. An S-Video port, a DVI port,and an antenna connector also sit at theback of the system, while a front-loadDVD-RW sits at the top.

Cerise builds its Mini PC from AOpen’sMP945-VX, which includes the case andmost of the components. The socket M479 motherboard sports Intel’s 945GMchipset and has a single memory slot thatsupports up to 1GB of DDR2 memory.My review unit included 512MB of

DDR2-667 memory and a 1.66GHz IntelCore Duo T2300 dual-core processor, butthat’s hardly the fastest the system can han-dle; Cerise offers dual-core CPUs up to the2.16GHz T2600. Users can also opt forsingle-core setups. An 80GB hard drivewraps up the system’s guts.

You won’t find the Mini PC on agamer’s desk, thanks to the integratedgraphics, but it’s not a bad performer in other applications. It crunched a

Cerise Mini PC


PCMark05 2730CPU 3882MEM 2628GFX 871HDD 3066Dr. DivX 12:01(minutes:seconds)WinRAR 5:45

Mini PC$1,032Cerise www.cerise.com ● ● ● ●


The Big Four UpdateII just spent four days in Taiwan and honestly,

I can’t remember the last time so much wason the verge of changing all at once. We’vegot ATI’s struggles, Nvidia’s Intel threat,Intel’s brand new micro-architecture andAMD’s quiet period.

The issue with ATI is that it is great atmaking graphics, but these days you can’tget by just being good at one thing—it’s allabout the platform. While ATI may havecompetitive GPUs, its platform strategy iswhat needs the most work. Luckily for ATI,that’s something the folks over there under-stand and are focusing on. We all saw it withATI’s RD580 chipset (CrossFire 3200),which was by far the best effort I’d seenfrom ATI but still wasn’t polished enough(mainly on the CrossFire side) to competewith Nvidia. After the RD580 release I toldmyself that ATI was a good 12 months awayfrom having a truly competitive platform,and based on my discussions with ATI itlooks like that may end up being true. Themajor task for 2007 will be to turn CrossFireinto the force it should have been from thebeginning. ATI knows what it has to do;now it’s all about execution. But if ATIdoesn’t have a competitive answer for nForceby the end of 2007, the boys in Canada arein trouble.

Nvidia has much grander things to worryabout right now, such as its run at Intel. Theconcept is simple: At some point in thefuture, many developers expect there to be aconvergence between CPUs and GPUs. Yousee, CPUs are great at general purpose tasksbut terrible at highly specific tasks, such asthe 3D rendering used in games. GPUs,however, have historically been not well suit-ed for general purpose tasks but great at 3Drendering. Over the past several years, bothATI and Nvidia have been working hard tomake their GPUs more capable of perform-ing general purpose tasks, while AMD andIntel have been working to improve special-ized performance of their CPUs. As thistrend continues, there may be very little sep-arating a good GPU design from a goodCPU design, and this is where AMD, ATI,Intel, and Nvidia start to worry. There may

come a time where GPU architectures aregeneral-purpose enough that a company likeAMD or Intel can do a better job producinga GPU than ATI or Nvidia. ATI and Nvidiabelieve the opposite is true, which is one rea-son Nvidia doesn’t want to play nice withIntel right now.

Of course, Intel’s focus is currentlylocked in on its new Core micro-architec-ture and the impending release of its Core 2Duo processors. From what I’ve seen, per-formance continues to look extremely goodfor Intel. I’ve got a stack of PentiumExtreme Edition chips that will be utterlyuseless after Core 2 Duo launches becausethe new processor is significantly faster andconsumes much less power than Intel’s pre-vious flagship. Even compared to theAthlon 64 X2 and FX series, the Core 2Duo holds its own very well. In gaming,encoding, and general-usage benchmarksI’ve run, the new Core 2 Duo ends up beingfaster than the best AMD has out today. I’mhoping to be able to deliver a final verdicton the CPU shortly, but for now thingslook very good for Intel. The only issue atthis point appears to be availability; by theend of 2006 only 25% of Intel’s perfor-mance desktop CPU shipments will be Core2 Duo, and the remainder will be Pentium4 or Pentium D. This unfortunately meansthat while some of the Core 2 Duo partscarry very attractive MSRPs, the street pricemay end up being as much as double thosefigures. As I write this, I can get a Core 2Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2MB) for $500,more than twice its $224 MSRP. While I’mhoping this will die down by the time theCPU officially launches, I’m not holdingmy breath.

Finally we come to AMD. If the pricingand availability of Core 2 Duo is as bleak asit’s looking right now, then honestly AMDhas less to worry about than I originallythought. Intel’s significant price cuts on itsPentium 4 and Pentium D lines will hurt, butthe Athlon 64 X2 may end up looking a lotmore competitive if Core 2 Duo ends upcosting twice as much. ▲

Nvidia has

much grander

things to

worry about

right now,

such as its run

at Intel.Talk back to [email protected].

Anand Lal Shimpi has turned a fledgling personal page on

GeoCities.com into one of theworld’s most visited and trusted

PC hardware sites. Anand startedhis site in 1997 at just 14 years

old and has since been featured inUSA Today, CBS’ 48 Hours

and Fortune. His site—www.anandtech.com—receives

more than 55 million page viewsand is read by more than 2 mil-

lion readers per month.

Anand’s Corner


Nvidia Serves Up A 3DGraphics SandwichHH ands up those of you that remember the

Obsidian X24 graphics card. Not sincethe early days of 3dfx and Quantum 3D haveusers been able to snag Big Mac-like graphicscards that look like Nvidia’s latest GeForce7950 GX2. The board itself is a double-decker(in green and not red like those Londonbuses), sporting a pair of G71 GPUs, two512MB stacks of memory (1GB overall), anda pair of low-profile coolers. The eCore clockspeed for both is 500MHz, whilst the memoryis set at 600MHz (slightly lower than on a sin-gle 7900 GTX). It’s actually not much longerthan your usual high-end 3D card these daysand certainly not like the Obsidian’s back inthe day along with its wacky tails. The 7950GX2 also has Dual DVI and eventually evenHDCP/HDMI support. In terms of rawhorsepower, this single board is very powerful,and on paper it is able to perform 2 billionvertices per second (compared to 1.4 billionfor a single 7900 GTX). The pixel fill rate is16 billion per second (previously 10.4 billion),and the texture fill rate is up to 24 billion persecond (up from 15.6 billion).

Using Nvidia’s new Forceware 90 drivers,the performance is pretty mind-boggling andfar better than with any “single” (using thatterm loosely) PCI Express graphics card.Even with slightly slower clock speeds whencompared to a 7900 GTX SLI system, the7950 GX2 was still able to put in a solidshowing only being behind by about 10%.In Monolith’s F.E.A.R. (a pretty taxing firstperson shooter by today’s standards), the7950 GX2 was able to get 66fps comparedto a single 7900 GTX and X1900 XTX,which got 46fps and 50fps, respectively.Finally the drivers, which Nvidia obviouslydesigned with Windows Vista in mind, havehad an extreme makeover.

Other than the obvious pixel and vertexshaders advantages, there are benefits to run-ning with a single board as opposed to pair-ing up two Geforce 7900s. First, you do notneed to own, buy, or use an SLI-capable

motherboard anymore (not that they are badto begin with). Second, you only have oneboard populating those PCI-E slots insteadof two and a SLI connector giving you moreroom/options and generally less heat/powerconsumption and clutter. Last, you could, say if you wanted to, hook up a secondGeForce 7950 GX2 board and have QuadSLI. You don’t have to—and certainlyNvidia currently doesn’t “endorse/support”that feature—but you could.

It is not all plain sailing, though. Despitethe obvious ability to hook up a pair of theseboards in a single system just like FalconNorthwest and Alienware have been doing intheir systems, you, the DIYer, will not have itthat good. At least not for now. Clearly thereis a bit of politicking going on here becausethat’s the official line from Nvidia; however,what’s to stop someone with a higher wattagepower supply, a motherboard BIOS update,and a single SLI bridge connector from goingto town? There are also no drivers available todownload to support Quad SLI, but obviouslythey do exist somewhere. With a bit of hack-ing here and there Quad SLI should be do-able, but it’s a shame that DIYers can’t have itout of the box. Another niggly issue is whenusing multimonitor mode: You have to disableone of the GPUs in the drivers in order to usemultimonitor mode in Windows XP.

Looking at it from a “single” card stand-point, the 7950 GX2 is considerably fasterthan any other board out there from ATI orNvidia. The 7950 GX2 boards should beavailable by the time you read this for $599to $649, which isn’t cheap but certainlycheaper and less hassle than pairing a coupleof other $500 boards together. However, forthose of you that need every single inch ofperformance, the 7900 GTX running inpairs still comes out top—only just. Thenagain, 7950 GX2 owners will obviously be able to one up you with the option of a second board sometime soon. ▲

Not since the early

days of 3dfx and

Quantum 3D have

consumers been able

to snag Big Mac-like

graphics cards that

look like Nvidia’s

GeForce 7950 GX2.

Email me at [email protected]

Disrupting Reuters’ newswire witha cheery Christmas greeting at agesix, Alex “Sharky” Ross became an

avid computer user/abuser, eventu-ally founding popular hardware

testing/review Web siteSharkyExtreme.com. Exposing

shoddy manufacturing practices andrubbish-spouting marketing weasels

while championing innovativeproducts, illuminating new technol-ogy, and pioneering real-world test-

ing methods was just a front forplaying with the best toys. The site

acquired, he left in 2001. ALondon native and London School

of Economics graduate, Alex cur-rently overclocks/tunes Porsche 996Turbos with www.sharkwerks.com

when he’s not tweaking PCs.

The Shark Tank


Modding does the body good. A PC’s body anyway, inside and out. Here you’ll findhardware, firmware, tools, tips, and tutorials for modding your rig’s performance andappearance. Send us your own mod-related tips and ideas at [email protected].

Modding enthusiasts have apenchant for the latest toys.Fast processors, powerful vi-

deo cards, silent SFF enclosures, and radically lit motherboards are all fair game when it comes to a modder’s creativemind. Recognizing the appeal of uncon-ventional customization, an entire industryhas emerged to support the community.

Mods & Ends

Thermaltake AquaBay M4 HDD Waterblock

Watercooling fanatics wanting to keepmore than their CPU, GPU, and chipsetchilly have a new weapon to add to theirarsenals. The AquaBay 4 hard drive water-block ($40) is designed to keep even thehottest-running hard drive cool. The Aqua-Bay 4’s solid copper base and copper tubingquickly and efficiently wicks heat awayfrom a drive, transferring it to the coolantcirculating through the watercooling loopwhere it’s expelled from the system alto-gether. Perhaps best of all, the waterblockdoes so without adding noise to the system.

Additionally, the AquaBay 4’s aluminumouter shell acts as a passive heatsink, whichshould bring temperatures down lower than competing hard drive waterblocks that don’t completely encase a drive. TheAquaBay 4 is compatible with all 3.5-inch

hard drives and 1/4-inch and 3/8-inchwatercooling systems, and you can mount itin any standard 5.25-inch drive bay.

Ultra 20-/24-Pin Power Supply Tester

Few things are more frustrating thanfully assembling a new rig only to find outthe power supply is dead and you have toreplace it. Thankfully, PSU testers can pre-vent you from having to do some of thatextra work. As the name implies, Ultra’s

new 20-/24-pin PSU tester ($20) workswith both 20-pin and 24-pin ATX connec-tors. However, the unit can also test powerat individual connectors, such as 4-pin or8-pin CPU power connectors, floppy con-nectors, Molex connectors, and even SATAand 6-pin PCI Express graphics connectors.If your PSU powers up, an audible beepwill let you know, and for each live rail ofthe PSU a green LED will display.

Cooler Master Mystique 631 ATX MidTower Case

As a follow-up to its very successfulWave Master case, Cooler Master hasreleased a stylish new aluminum midtowerit has dubbed the Mystique 631 ($110).The case has dual 120mm intake and

exhaust fans, a mostly aluminum construc-tion, and a reversible drive bay cover thatswings open from the left or right. TheMystique 631 also has some features thatmake building and maintaining a systemeasier, such as a completely screwlessdesign, predrilled holes to accommodatehoses for liquid cooling kits, and a washablefilter for the front-mounted intake fan.

Fashionably Fresh Firmware

BenQ DW1655 (vBCDB)

New firmware for the BenQ DW1655improves disc writing and LightScribeprinting quality and fixes an issue thatcaused a system hang when using QScan.

support.benq.com

Canon PowerShot SD430 (v1.1.0.0)

This recently released firmware for thePowerShot SD430 (or IXUS DigitalWireless Camera) allows still image trans-fers between two digital wireless camerasand between the camera and a Macintoshrunning Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

www.canon.co.jp

TEAC DW-552GA (vR4K6)

This update for the TEAC DW-552GAdrive adds support for DVD-R DL mediaplayback and improves overall write quali-ty with formats already supported.

ftp.teac.co.jp

Netcell Revolution SR3xxx/SR5xxx (v1.7.6.1)

A recent update for Netcell RevolutionSR3xxx/SR5xxx-based RAID controllersremoves the Transfer Block size option fromthe advanced setup menu and improvescompatibility with various hard drives.

www.netcell.com

by Marco Chiappetta

PC ModderTips & Tutorials

h a r d h a t a r e a | p c m o d d e r

Thermaltake’s new AquaBay 4 is compatiblewith most popular watercooling kits.

Don’t let a dead PSU get you down. Test it with Ultra’s new 20-/24-pin PSU tester before putting it in your new rig.

Cooler Master’s newMystique 631 isavailable in black orsilver and has areversible drive baycover that opensfrom the left or right.


what flagship cards were commanding. Ofcourse, it didn’t take long to realize theGeForce 7900 GT had an abundance ofuntapped power lurking beneath itsheatsinks. The GeForce 7900 GTX has theexact same GPU, yet it’s clocked significantlyhigher than the GT’s GPU. Simple over-clocking made up for much of the disparity,but where the GTX was commonly hittingGPU clock speeds approaching 700MHz,the GT sometimes struggled to hit 600MHz.Something was holding the GT back.

It turns out that lower voltages supply the7900 GT’s GPU (even its onboard memory)than the 7900 GTX’s. By increasing thevoltages to these key components, you cancrank up the clock speeds much higher toenhance the card’s performance. We volt-modded one of our own GeForce 7900 GTsto see how high it would go. We ended upunleashing a sub-$300 beast that can hold itsown with some of today’s most powerfuland expensive cards. Here’s how we did it.

Tools & Disclaimers Although it may sound difficult or even

downright scary, volt-modding a GeForce7900 GT is relatively easy. Additionally, ifyou change your mind midway through theprocess, it’s reversible. To do the job right,you’ll need a voltage meter, a sharp No. 2pencil, and a conductive ink pen (about$13). Some masking tape, cotton swabs,and isopropyl alcohol are also necessities.You’ll use the masking tape to map out thetrace that you’ll need to draw to volt-modthe GPU, and the cotton swabs and alcoholwill help clean up any mishaps.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty,know that volt-modding any component is arisky endeavor that could permanently dam-age the component. Also, you’ll immediately

Enthusiasts and modders seem toalways be looking for inexpensiveways to increase their rigs’ perfor-

mance. Whether it’s through an actualupgrade or key tweak, the method usuallydoesn’t matter. If their systems will run fasterwithout breaking the bank, they’ll do it.

It’s this mindset that made the GeForce7900 GT such an immediate success upon itsrelease. For roughly $300, the 7900 GToffered performance on par with the 256MBGeForce 7800 GTX, which was much moreexpensive at the time. Still, $300 isn’t exactlycheap, but it was much more reasonable than

The GeForce 7900GT Unleashed

Volt-Mods For Hardcore Overclocking


With a little volt-modding, courage, and a complete disregard for product warranties, you can tweak a GeForce 7900 GT to perform comparably to a much more expensive card.

To volt-mod the 7900 GT’s GPU and memory, you will focus your attention primarily on two distinct sections you will find on the back of the card.


graphite from a No. 2 pencil to the surfaceof a single resistor. The resistor should belabeled 01B; it’s located just to the left of theC535 contact. Remove the card from yoursystem, find this resistor, and draw linesback and forth over its surface. The moregraphite you leave behind, the lower theresistance of the resistor will be. Lower resis-tance in this circuit will increase the voltageto the memory. After penciling the resistor,blow away any graphite dust left behind andreinstall the card. Power up the system andimmediately check the memory voltageusing the meter. For maximum overclockingthe goal is about 2.25V. If you hit 2.3V orhigher, power down your system right away,remove some of the graphite, and try again.

Make The ConnectionModding the 7900 GT’s GPU voltage

requires a bit more effort. At the card’s topthere are a handful of contacts you can con-nect in numerous configurations, dependingon the desired voltage. You can connect twoof the four contacts at the card’s top (probablylabeled D508 and D511) to an unlabeled padabout a half-inch to the left to alter the GPUvoltage. To push voltages a bit higher, you canalso connect a third unlabeled contact.

minimize the inevitable dirt and oils you’llleave behind after handling the card.

When the card is clean, reinstall it andmeasure the stock voltages being supplied tothe GPU and memory. To do this, connectthe voltmeter’s black (common ground) leadto any metal part of your case and set themeter to check for DC voltages lower than10V (some meters will automatically detectthe correct range). Then take the positive leadand probe two empty contacts on the 7900GT’s PCB. To check the memory voltage,look for a circular contact labeled C535 to theright of a column of seven resistors near thecard’s corner and touch it with the meter’slead with the system powered on. You shouldget a reading of approximately 2V. To checkthe GPU’s voltage, look for a similar circularcontact about 2.5 inches above the onelabeled C535 near the card’s top labeledQ511. Probe that contact; you should get areading of about 1.2V. If your card has differ-ent labels, we’ve highlighted several photoshere that pinpoint the proper contacts.

The “Pencil” ModTo increase the voltage to the 7900 GT’s

onboard memory, you need to apply a bit of


void any warranty covering the product. Usecaution through every step of the process anddon’t install your card if you think you’vedone any part of this mod incorrectly.

Before you volt-mod the card, there are acouple steps to take to help ensure success.First, thoroughly clean the PCB to removeany dust and fingerprints. There have beensome reports of users experiencing blankscreens and intermittent instability aftervolt-modding a 7900 GT, which cleaningthe card before and after modding resolved.The most important areas to clean are theupper and lower portions of the PCBtoward the rear of the card. Also, clean yourhands before performing these mods to

By penciling a singleresistor, you can lowerits resistance, which in turn increases the voltage that’s suppliedto the card’s onboard memory. Lower theresistance too much,though, and theincreased voltage could damage the card.

After penciling the resistor, power up the systemand immediately check the memory voltage. If it’stoo high, shut the system down and wipe a bit ofthe graphite away from the resistor right away.

Connecting a few contacts on the back of the7900 GT’s PCB will alter the amount of voltageto the GPU. Stock cards supply 1.2V to theGPU, but you can easily increase that to about1.55V to enable higher frequencies.


450MHz (GPU)/660MHz (memory) to awhopping 700MHz/800MHz, maxing outthe memory slider. Before the mod, the samecard could only reach 580MHz/780MHz viaoverclocking. We could have potentially gonehigher had we used a third-party overclockingapplication and enhanced our card’s cooling.

Volt-modding and overclocking our7900 GT netted us 250MHz and 140MHzgains in GPU and memory clock speeds,respectively. Those are some serious increas-es, which resulted in some impressiveimprovements in performance. ▲

by Marco Chiappetta

We’ve illustrated the contacts to use andwhat the trace should look like for GPU volt-ages ranging from 1.3 to 1.55V. As we weren’tplanning to change our card’s cooler, weopted for an aggressive but not-over-the-top1.5V and to use case fans to circulate plenty ofair over the card. Note that increasing voltagesalso increases heat output, so you must dissi-pate that heat to ensure reliable operation.

Use the masking tape to outline a pathfor your desired GPU voltage and draw thetrace with the conductive ink pen betweenthe necessary contacts and pad. Keep thetrace neat and don’t glob the ink on, as youdon’t want conductive ink bleeding onto

traces or other contacts. If you make a mis-take, you can clean the ink with some cottonswabs and a bit of alcohol. After drawing thetrace, install the card and immediately checkthe GPU voltage. If it’s too high, shut down,clean the trace, and try again.

The OverclockOnce we hit our desired voltages, we used

the Coolbits Registry hack to unlock the over-clocking tools incorporated into Nvidia’sForceWare drivers and cranked up our 7900GT’s GPU and memory clock speeds untilwe saw artifacts on-screen. In the end, we took the card from its stock speeds of


GeForce 7900 GT GeForce 7900 GT GeForce 7900 GTStock Stock and overclocked Post-mod overclocked450MHz/660MHz 580MHz/780MHz 700MHz/800MHz

F.E.A.R. v1.04 34 42 471,600 x 1,200 (4XAA/16XAF)Quake 4 v1.0.5.2 40.4 49.6 53.91,600 x 1,200 (4XAA/16XAF)FarCry v1.33 57.04 69.27 74.771,600 x 1,200 (4XAA/16XAF)3DMark06 Overall Score 4553 5528 61831,280 x 1,024 (no AA or AF)

Performance: Before & After The Mod

T o test the performance of our volt-modded GeForce 7900 GT, we ran a handful of popularbenchmarks at a relatively high resolution with 4X antialiasing and 16X anisotropic filtering

enabled concurrently. By cranking up the resolution and turning on image quality-enhancingfeatures, our test system’s performance was almost completely limited by the video card.Testing our modified card in a GPU-limited environment such as this clearly demonstrates theperformance benefits the volt-mod offers and the ultra-high clock speeds it helped us achieve.

We’ve also included several reference points to show where our modified 7900 GT’sperformance stands compared to its stock counterpart and more powerful cousin, theGeForce 7900 GTX. When perusing this performance data, remember that the GeForce7900 GTX has a 512MB frame buffer as opposed to the GT’s 256MB. The GTX’s largerframe buffer gives it a clock-for-clock performance advantage in some situations that themoderate increases in frequency won’t overcome.

Our volt-modded and overclocked GeForce 7900 GT was able to match the performance ofa much more expensive GeForce 7900 GTX. Considering that we performed this mod with aminimal investment, we couldn’t be more pleased with the results. To ensure the long-termstability and life of the card, we’ll probably invest in a better GPU cooler and some RAMsinks inthe future, but for now, perfectly stable 55.5%/21% GPU/memory overclocks will do just fine.

Our test system included an AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHz x 2),1GB of Corsair XMSPC3200 RAM (2 x 512MB), an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 4 SLIx16 chipset), and aWestern Digital 74GB 10,000rpm Raptor. The system ran on Windows XP Pro SP2 withDirectX 9.0c and ForceWare 84.17 drivers (VSync off). ▲

You can supply the GPU with a range of voltagesfrom 1.3 to 1.55V, depending on how the contactson the back of the card are connected.


W e’ve seen mod submissions that run the gamut of PC modding. Some modders add little more than fancy cable management to their computers, while others design rigs that don’t even resemblePCs. Many submissions favor form over function and make upgrading difficult. Ton “SuAsDu”

Khowdee, an IT manager from Southern California, took a different tack in creating Tribal Eclipse, a func-tional but attractive rig that features some great gaming guts: It’s also his main home-use computer.

Believe it or not, Khowdee has only been modding for two years. “Working with computers for so long, Ihave a gained a good deal of experience with building and fixing PCs,” says Khowdee. “What makes case mod-

ding so exciting for me is that I have no practical or professional experience in this area, other thanwith the actual computer parts. So most everything I learned about case modding is from

reading online and learning from other modders.”Khowdee employed some standard modding equipment to turn a

Cooler Master Centurion 5 PC case into the Tribal Eclipse. He cutthe flowing tribal designs with a Dremel and applied the system’sheat-sensitive paint with a pressure gun. Despite the PC’s detailedmods—which include doors that swing upward and an extendablefront-panel display—SuAsDu says he spent only three monthsworking on the system at nights and on weekends in his garage.

Of the Tribal Eclipse’s many cool features, the paint job reallystands out. “Since the candy apple red is a clear-red paint, whenyou look at the case when it is cold, the case looks like a deepblood-red color,” Khowdee says. “As the case warms up, the blackmiddle coat will start changing to white. As the Eclipse [paintadditive] changes to white, the case starts changing color to alight candy apple red.” Now that’s an attention getter. ▲

by Joshua Gulick


Tribal Eclipse—Color Us Impressed

Rivets hold the nameplatesto either side panel. “Thenameplate was designed onthe computer and cut usinga flatbed 2D CNC machine,”says Khowdee.


Masking tape covers the entire top panel, which is awaiting Dremel surgery. “Since thetop panel is made of steel, I had to score theentire design a couple of times before theDremel cut completely through,” says Khowdee.

The rig has a transparent red ceilingthat provides all the colored lightthe case needs. The case doesn’thave any cold-cathode lights.

A Sony PlayStation One LCD lives on in the Tribal Eclipse’s front panel. It displays visualizations for music, as well as computer health-related statistics.

Khowdee used four paint layers to create theTribal Eclipse’s unique coloring. He started withgray primer and then applied a white base coat.Next, he used Alsa Corp.’s Eclipse heat-sensitiveadditive and followed it with a coat of red paint.

Khowdee snapped this shot of the mobotray’s cutout before installing the system’scomponents, otherwise the light shiningthrough wouldn’t be visible.

Although the TribalEclipse has its fair shareof vanity mods, it alsoboasts some functionalcustomizations, such asside panels that tilt openand a front-panel display.

Have a computer mod that will bring tears to oureyes? Email photos and a description to [email protected]. If we include yoursystem in our “Mad Reader Mod” section, we’llsend you a $1,500 Newegg.com gift certificate and a one-year subscription to CPU.

Give UsYour Mod▲


Get informed answers to your advanced technical

questions from CPU. Send your questions along with a

phone and/or fax number, so we can call you if

necessary, to qq&&aa@@ccppuummaagg..ccoomm. Please include all

pertinent system information.

The first thing

you’ll want to

consider is frame

buffer size if you’re

going to crank

resolutions beyond

1,600 x 1,200

“

“

Each month we dig deep into the mailbag here at CPU in an effortto answer your most pressing technical questions. Want some adviceon your next purchase or upgrade? Have a ghost in your machine?Are BSODs making your life miserable? CPU’s “Advanced Q&ACorner” is here for you.

C.F. asked: I recently switched to what was supposed to be asuper-fast fiber optic-to-home service that has 15Mbps upstream and2Mbps downstream speeds. I used to have a basic DSL connectionthat had 3Mbps upstream and 768Kbps downstream speeds. When Italked to the ISP, the salesperson said the fiber optic connectionwould be up to five times faster than DSL, but it would only costabout $20 more a month. I thought this was a good deal and madethe switch; however, now I think I’m just wasting my money. The newfiber optic service doesn’t seem any faster, so I’m wondering if there’ssomething I need to do to my PC to speed things up? I called the ISP’stechnical support line and didn’t get any pointers. The company alsosaid my connection was functioning perfectly. What’s the deal here? Ionly use the Internet to get news and do research for investments.Should I have stuck with DSL and saved my money?

A: We understand why you feel like you’re wasting money, butit’s very likely that your connection is actually much “faster”than it used to be. We’ve had some experience with DSL andfiber optic-to-home services ourselves and can say with someconviction that the direct fiber connection was vastly superiorfor our needs. Your problem is probably the result of the wayyou use the Internet. If you spend the majority of your timeonline browsing from site to site, and you’re not downloadingor uploading files on a regular basis, the increased bandwidththe direct fiber connection offers is probably not playing muchof a role in your online experience. A Web site’s connection tothe Internet, and not your pipe, potentially limits the speed atwhich you can download data from it. If you go to a heavilytrafficked site and its server can only feed your system with afraction of the data it’s capable of receiving because the site’sservers and connection are being taxed, the fastest broadbandconnection in the world still isn’t going to help you.

If you want to see how fast your connection actually is, trysome of the speed tests available at BroadbandReports.com. Thesite has tools that let you test the speed of your connection, andit also maintains a database of speeds reported by others. If thespeed tests don’t convince you that your connection is faster, trydownloading and uploading files while simultaneously browsingyour favorite list of sites. The more you tax the connection, themore likely you’ll perceive the bandwidth benefits it offers.


Jimmy B asked: I’m going to set up a new workstation that willalso serve as a gaming rig. I’m a CAE professional and I need a fairamount of rendering horsepower, as well as fast, reliable fault-tolerantstorage. I know what my graphics setup will look like, but I’m torn a biton storage. I’m thinking of going with a RAID 5 setup with maybe threeWestern Digital WD1500 Raptor 150GB drives. These drives are SATA150, support NCQ, and have large 16MB cache buffers. The otheroption is a set of 500GB Hitachi drives at 7,200rpm with 16MB of cacheonboard, but they’re 3Gbps SATA drives. I don’t really need that muchstorage. The 300GB or so that the WD drives will give me in the arraywill be fine. I have another server where I store my projects. Also, theHitachi drives are slightly more expensive. I just want the fastest drives Ican get that are also the most reliable. What do you recommend?

A: As the saying goes, Jim, trust your instincts. Those WD1500drives are what we’d recommend, as well. First, they are easilythe fastest standard SATA drives you could go with at themoment. Although there are other options in SCSI drives with15,000rpm spindle speeds, the 10,000rpm WD Raptors have along legacy of blistering transfer rates regardless of what SATAinterface you’re running. The new 3Gbps SATA standardallows for two times SATA 150’s peak burst throughput over itsinterface; however, no hard drive on the planet is capable of sat-urating even the SATA 150 interface currently. What youseemed to be concerned most with, and what you’ll benefitmore from is “sustained” bandwidth. Those Hitachi drives areno slouches with their 16MB cache buffer, but the WD1500Raptor spins at 10,000rpm compared to the Hitachi spinningat 7,200rpm. The faster your spindle speed, in general, thefaster your sustained transfer rate will be. Western Digitalessentially takes the base hard drive design from its line of10,000rpm SCSI drives and repurposes it for SATA with theRaptor line. Because WD designs SCSI drives with enterprisestorage class installations in mind, where RAID is the mainstay,the Raptors also make for excellent SATA-based RAID setups.In fact, WD incorporates technologies such as RAFF (rotaryacceleration feed forward), which optimizes operation and per-formance when you use the drives in vibration-prone, multi-drive systems such as rackmounted servers or network storage.RAFF is a method of sensing RV (rotational vibration) of otherdrives in a multidrive installation and then compensating for it,controlling drive head position and keeping within a safe toler-ance during read and write operations. This supposedly canincrease performance significantly, avoiding costly retry effortswhere the drive head is ever so slightly bumped off a track,resulting in performance degradation.

Because your overall goals are performance and reliability,we’d say splurge a bit on the Raptor drives; although, admit-tedly their Gigs per dollar ratio aren’t nearly as good as those500GB Hitachi drives’ ratios. In a RAID 5 setup, though,you’re going to want that extra throughput, especially onwrites where parity checks are going to eat up IOPs a bit.

Nick C. asked: A friend of mine sent me a link to download a hugeZIP file containing BIN and CUE image files for a disc that I wanted to

burn. When I extracted the files, they were a combined total of about950MB. I tried to use Nero to burn the images to a DVD, but the pro-gram gave me an error message that said the files were created in aformat that I needed to burn onto a CD. When I put a CD in the drive,however, I got another error message that said the disc didn’t haveenough free space. I tried looking online for information on how to dothis, but every time I searched for BIN and CUE files, half of the sitesthat came up were BitTorrent or Warez sites. What can I do with thesefiles? Is there a special setting in Nero that I have to change?

A: There are actually a couple of different ways to workaround this problem. The person who made the original imagefiles that you downloaded probably created them from filesand folders that were on his hard drive. If he didn’t pay atten-tion to the size of the files and created the image with a CD’sattributes, Nero and many other CD/DVD burning applica-tions will generate an error message such as the one youdescribe. And if the image file contains more data than you canfit on a CD (even with over-burning), that’s obviously going tocause another error, as well.

If you don’t need an actual hard copy of the disc, one of theeasiest things you can do to access the data is use a virtualCD/DVD-ROM drive emulator to mount the image file.There are a number of utilities available online that will do thejob nicely. DAEMON Tools (www.daemon-tools.cc), forexample, can mount the CUE and BIN files in a virtualCD/DVD-ROM drive that appears as if it was an actual driveto the OS. With the disc image mounted you’ll be able toaccess all of the files in the image just like you had burned adisc and inserted it into an actual optical drive.

Another useful utility that would solve your problem isUltraISO from EZBSystems.com (free trial available for down-load; $29.95 full version). UltraISO is an ISO CD/DVDimage file creation, editing, conversion tool that can directlyedit the image file you download and extract files and folders

Utilities such as EZB Systems’ UltraISO can edit and extract files from anumber of standard disc image formats.


from it. With UltraISO you could convert the existing file to aformat that Nero can burn to a DVD, or you could drag all ofthe files out of the images into a folder on your hard drive andburn the files from there.

Dante asked: I bought a new Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW 24-inchLCD monitor, and the thing is gorgeous. Its native resolution is 1,920 x1,200, but it does scale fairly well at some lower resolutions withouttoo much blurring. I currently own an ATI Radeon X800 XL card, butI’m going to upgrade my graphics soon, moving to something that canhandle high-resolution gaming. Money is no object to a certain extent;I just want the best bang for my buck. I’m running a Pentium EE 965on an Asus P5WD2-E motherboard. It’s a great setup, but Nvidia SLIisn’t an option for me. What’s the best, single graphics card for myneeds? I’ve been playing a lot of Oblivion lately, and I’d love to turnon at least 2XAA and run it at 1,920 x 1,200.

A: You certainly need to pair that new Dell display up withthe latest generation graphics card and play Oblivion, and withthe usage model you describe, we’d say that card should be anATI Radeon X1900 XTX. Beyond the fact that you’re a cur-rent ATI user, here’s why we recommend it.

The first thing you’ll want to consider is frame buffer size ifyou’re going to crank resolutions beyond 1,600 x 1,200 andalso run AA in a gaming environment. At 1,920 x 1,200 resolu-tion with 2XAA or 4XAA enabled frame rates are going to scalemuch better for you if you have a 512MB graphics card. In thepast 256MB was more than enough memory for the averageuser, even at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4XAA. However, now thatwidescreen LCDs have become more prevalent, desktop andgaming resolutions are pushing higher and higher. Running atthe 2405FPW’s native res of 1,920 x 1,200 with 4XAAenabled you’ll consume a lot of your onboard framebuffer memory just for AA. That also doesn’ttake into account the high-resolution tex-tures games such as Oblivion that loadup on your graphics subsystem. Athigh res with AA enabled, youneed plenty of framebuffer memory tokeep that GPU wellfed and running asfast as it can.

Another reason to opt for the Radeon X1900 XTX is themore common use of HDR lighting in next-generation gameengines today. ATI currently is the only graphics vendor thathas hardware support for HDR and AA running simultaneous-ly. There aren’t that many games available yet that support thismode, but ATI recently released a beta driver with an integrat-ed patch, called The Chuck Patch, that allows HDR and AA torun together. (ATI’s SuperAA modes don’t support HDR,instead they support standard 2X, 4X, and 6XAA.) Word has itthat ATI carried the patch over to recent ATI Catalyst driverreleases, as well. Finally, if you’re interested in getting extreme-ly smooth frame rates, along with 4XAA and HDR at 1,920 x1,200, you might consider adding another X1900 XTX in ATICrossFire mode because Intel chipsets now support CrossFire.Another option is Nvidia’s recently launched GeForce 7950GX2, which allows two GeForce 7900 GPUs to run in SLImode on a single card and in a single PCI Express graphicsslot. Just check Nvidia’s motherboard compatibility list to seeif it supports your model. (NOTE: This new multi-GPU Nvidiacard runs on Intel chipset-based boards, as well.) ▲

by Dave Altavilla and Marco Chiappetta, the experts over at HotHardware.com

ATI’s Radeon X1900 XTX has 512MB of frame buffer memory onboard that lets you play at high resolutions such as 1,920 x 1,200 and still enable AA for excellent image quality.


your discussion. What if the eavesdrop-per isn’t in the room, but rather listeningon the line?

With the recent growth of VoIP calls,the potential problem of eavesdroppersintercepting the packets as they travel acrossthe Internet is growing. Fortunately, youcan protect digital data traveling across theInternet by using encryption. You can dojust that with the help of Phil Zimmer-mann’s new software that handles theencryption for VoIP calls: Zfone. Zimmer-mann introduced his idea of Zfone in July2005 at Defcon 13, and a Windows betaversion recently became available.

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Zfone’s primary task is to eliminateMITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks.(See the “Man-In-The-Middle Attack”sidebar for more information.) ButZfone also simplifies the process ofencrypting VoIP calls. Zfone doesn’tinvolve setting up a central CA (certifi-cate authority), which makes the overallprocess easier because using a third-partyCA would limit the process to those thatcould afford it (primarily businesses).Zimmermann says making a phone call,even an encrypted VoIP call, should beas straightforward as possible.

When you make a telephonecall, you might take some pre-cautions to prevent eavesdrop-

ping, such as looking around the room tomake sure no one else is listening to

ZfoneEliminate The Man In The Middle

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1. The sender usesthe recipient’spublic key (blue)to encrypt themessage.

2. As the encrypted message travelsacross theInternet, no onecan read it.

3. When the recipientreceives the message, heuses his private key (red)to decrypt the message.Only the recipient’s private key can decryptthe encoded message.

PKIPKI uses a public key and a private key to encrypt and decrypt data. Thetwo keys are mathematically related. However, PKI needs a third party toverify the authenticity of the public keys, which would introduce anundesirable and complex layer to the process of making a VoIP call. ▲

Zfone doesn’t run as part of the VoIP client and doesn't encryptthe SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) channel that starts andends the call. Instead, Zfone runs by encrypting the RTP stream

(Real-time Transport Protocol) using a protocol called ZRTP. ZRTP uses a 256-bit AES cipher, similar to what SRTP (Secure

RTP) uses, in which to generate the call. Furthermore, it doesn't usea PKI (public key infrastructure) that many security components,including PGP, use. Because it doesn’t rely on PKI, ZRTP should beeasier to implement than PGP. ZRTP uses a Diffie-Hellman keyexchange to create a SAS (Short Authentication String), sometimescalled a shared secret or a verification code. Using a peer-to-peermodel, ZRTP performs the key agreement.

In the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, each person's private key(1) generates a public key (2) that they can share with the otherperson (3). The Diffie-Hellman protocol then uses a mathematicalformula along with the two keys to generate the unique sharedsecret for each person (4). As long as a third party doesn’t inter-cept or alter the data, the shared secret results will be identical.

Diffie-Hellman lets the shared hash take place between two par-ties that haven't necessarily had previous communications orknowledge of each other. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange alsocan take place without the need to set up a secure channel first.ZRTP makes use of a 3,000-bit key exchange.

Once the parties complete the call, ZRTP destroys any keys thatwere used to establish the channel and the call. ▲

Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

Inside Zfone

Bob’sPrivate

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Bob’sPublic

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Alice’sPublic

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Alice’sPrivate

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SharedSecret

DHMath

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AreIdentical

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Bob’sPublic

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Alice’sPrivate

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Zfone is a completely self-containedsoftware package. There’s no need forthe hardware or network vendorsinvolved in VoIP calls to change theirconfigurations to work with Zfone.Another benefit of Zfone: If one user in the call isn’t set up to use Zfone,

the Zfone software won’t becomeinvolved in the call; it steers clear, let-ting the call take place with no encryp-tion and no interference.

There are beta versions of Zfoneavailable on Zimmermann’s Web site(www.philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone).

The recently released Windows XP ver-sion of the software has joined previous-ly available versions for Mac OS X andLinux. Zfone works with VoIP clientsthat use the SIP protocol. ▲

by Kyle Schurman

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1. When you make a VoIP call, Zfone encrypts the datausing basic encryption algorithms. As part of the encryp-tion, Zfone displays the same two three-character SASesfor both the recipient and the sender. If the SASes match,the data is secure. You must manually read the SASes tothe person on the other end of the call.

2. If the SASes don’t match, someone has altered thedata en route, which potentially means a hacker hasintercepted the data.

If you forget to check the SASes one time, you cancheck them the next time. As long as they still match,each call you've made since the last time you checkedthe SASes wasn't compromised.

One final note about Zfone: It isn't designed to authenticatethe identity of the person on the other end. You must per-form this authentication using the same techniques you'duse with any telephone call. For example, when you call abusiness and you don't reach the owner immediately, youuse your authentication techniques to determine that hersecretary answered the phone. You then take steps toattempt to ensure the business owner takes the phone.

When using Zfone with a VoIP call, you should use commonsense to make sure your phone conversation is with the cor-rect person; just as you would with any telephone call. AsZimmermann says when describing why Zfone doesn't needindividual authentication, “that’s just how phones work.”

You take care of ensuring the second party on the line is thecorrect person. Zfone takes care of ensuring there's no thirdparty on the line. ▲

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During an MITM attack, a hacker sits in the middle of a legitimatecommunication between two people. The hacker doesn't revealhis position, instead intercepting portions of the communicationfrom both people. Eventually, the hacker could use the stoleninformation to trick both people into believing they're dealing

with the legitimate individual, thereby potentiallygaining even more sensitive information. However,

most MITM attacks usuallyinvolve manipulating the

messages.

Protecting against MITM attacks can involve implementingstronger mutual authentication between the two rightful people(which essentially means each person can trust the identity of theother). Or it can involve encrypting the data involved in the commu-nications, letting each person involved verify that the data hasn’tbeen intercepted. The latter type of protection, which Zfone uses,doesn’t protect the data itself, but it lets the people involved knowwhether their communication potentially has been compromised.

An MITM attack can involve anything from simple eaves-dropping on a call to actually changing the communications.

During eavesdropping the recipient of the message can hearthe message at the same time as the hacker. In another typeof MITM attack, the hacker intercepts the message and thendecides whether to pass the message as is, alter the mes-sage, or block the message. The recipient has no knowledgeof the original message; he only receives what the hackerdecides to send him. ▲

Man-In-The-Middle Attack

Using Zfone

Server

ClientAttacker


802.11nA Work In Progress

hope that the hardware will still work withthe final standard.

It’s your standard risk-reward question:Is the risk of whether the new technologywill work as expected in the future worththe reward of spending money on it now?

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The 802.11n standard should providebetter reliability and range along with larger

bandwidths, thanks to the use of MIMOtechnology. MIMO (Multiple Input/Mul-tiple Output) is a vital part of the improve-ments that will be available through802.11n. (See the “How MIMO Works”sidebar.) Implementation of MIMO tech-nology should alleviate some of the prob-lems often found with wireless networking,including signal fade, interference, and lim-itations with the available spectrum. It will

h a r d h a t a r e a | w h i t e p a p e r

The promise of improved perfor-mance and speed from the nextgeneration of Wi-Fi, 802.11n,

eventually should be an incredible benefitto home and business wireless networkusers. The speed of 802.11n will makecurrent wireless networking standardsseem as though they’re working througha strong headwind. 802.11n will be keyin developing home networks, such asallowing for the sharing of high-def filesamong components on the network.

There’s much to like about 802.11n,other than one problem: the IEEE (Insti-tute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)may not ratify the final specification untilthe second half of 2007. Until then, thosewanting 802.11n have two choices: 1) Wait2) Purchase “prestandard” equipment, gainsome of the benefits of 802.11n now, and

History Of 802.11 Wireless Network SpecificationsSpecification Approval date Max data rate Channel width Number of streams

802.11a July 1999 54Mbps 20MHz 1

802.11b July 1999 11Mbps 20MHz 1

802.11g June 2003 54Mbps 20MHz 1

802.11n N/A 100 to 600Mbps 0 to 40MHz 1 to 4

Source: Broadcom

How MIMO WorksWireless networking systems that use MIMO (Multiple Input/Multiple Output) deliver two or more times the data rate perchannel than wireless systems that don’t use MIMO. 1. MIMO divides the data stream from the DSP (digital signal

processor) into multiple, unique streams (signified by yel-low and red here).

2. The unique data streams (two, in this example) then trans-mit at the same time using the same frequency throughtheir own radio antenna.

3. At the receiver each radio antenna receives a combination ofthe data streams. MIMO algorithms determine how thestreams should be sorted among each radio antenna.

4. Finally, the DSP combines all of the signals, re-creating theoriginal data stream.

By having the radio antenna work in combination, MIMOsystems can greatly increase the data throughput sent acrossthe wireless network. ▲

12 3

4Source: Airgo Networks


help prevent “dead spots” within home orbusiness environments that often occurwith today’s wireless standards.

MIMO technology also will allow a 40MHz bandwidth for 802.11n vs. the 20MHz bandwidth 802.11g and802.11b use. However 802.11n willdraw on the same technology, calledOFDM (orthogonal frequency divisionmultiplexing), that 802.11g uses toimprove performance and will be back-ward compatible with previous 802.11wireless technologies.

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Many of the industry’s top companiessupported several groups that began theoriginal work on the 802.11n standard.The groups, along with a few individualcompanies, offered numerous propos-als regarding the specifics of 802.11n. TGn Sync and WWiSE, however, soonemerged as the leading contenders todevelop the final 802.11n standard.

TGn Sync’s initial supporters listincluded Intel, Atheros, Agere, Cisco,Infineon, Mitsubishi, Nortel, Panasonic,

Philips, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sanyo,Sony, and Toshiba.

WWiSE received the backing of TexasInstruments, Airgo Networks, Bermai,Broadcom, Conexant, and STMicroelec-tronics. Motorola also joined the WWiSEcamp after its own 802.11n proposalfailed to garner enough support, andNokia later switched from supportingTGn Sync to WWiSE.

The proposals from both groups weresimilar: Use MIMO as the base technology.Both proposals also supported backward


802.11n & Aggregation

MIMO vs. Smart Antennas

Sources: Airgo Networks, Datacomm Research

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Smart antenna schemes attempt to use multiple antennas on the transmitter or receiver to improve reliability andrange. However, those designs don't split the signal likeMIMO does, meaning the throughput doesn’t increase.

Beamforming. Two transmitter antennas send the samesignal, letting the receiver capture the best signal.

Diversity. Two receiver antennas pick up the same signal, letting the receiver capture the best signal.

MIMO. By using multiple transmitter antennas and multi-ple receiver antennas, MIMO technology can send multi-ple, unique signals (red and blue) over the same channel,which improves efficiency and throughput.

Aggregation lets the 802.11n standard reduce overhead and improve overalltransmission speeds. In wireless networking each data frame must includeinformation about the frame, often called overhead. Regardless of the sizeof the data, the data frame requires a certain amount of it for the overhead.You could have some data frames going across your network that requiremore time to send the overhead data than the actual desired data.

Within the 802.11n specification, the network can combine severaldata frames, making them appear as one, which requires only one over-head. This feature lets the 802.11n wireless network improve the data-to-overhead ratio and send information more efficiently than previouswireless networking standards. ▲


compatibility with older wireless network-ing standards. However, neither group’sproposal individually received enough sup-port in the IEEE voting in early 2005 tofind a clear-cut leader.

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After more than a year of jockeying forposition and adding various companies ineach camp, TGn Sync and WWiSE even-tually chose to work together. The twogroups formed the JP (Joint Proposal)team and submitted a combined plan inthe second half 2005 to the IEEE.

But that proposal hit a slight bump inthe road when Intel, Atheros, Broad-com, and Marvell chose to form a break-away group called EWC (EnhancedWireless Consortium), which plannedto bypass the IEEE to form a standardmore quickly. Leading Wi-Fi equip-ment makers and consumer electronicsleaders, including 3Com, Apple, Buf-falo, Cisco, D-Link, Lenovo, Linksys,

Netgear, Sony, Symbol, Toshiba, andUS Robotics, also joined EWC. EWCannounced plans to boost Wi-Fi trans-mission speeds to 600Mbps in shortorder, which was even more than the100 to 150Mbps intended with the802.11n standard.

After meetings late in 2005, though,those companies in the EWC decided

to work with the JP team within theIEEE 802.11n framework toward a sin-gle proposal. The JP team decided to adopt the majority of the EWC specifi-cation for submission to the IEEE in January 2006.

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Within a few weeks of the decision tosend the EWC specification to the IEEE,companies were already testing 802.11nproducts. These types of prestandard prod-uct releases have become more common inrecent years for several technologies. Suchproducts are built to the specification as it is submitted to the governing body (inthis case the IEEE). However it sometimesmeans the prestandard product appears ayear or more before the governing body ratifies the standard.

Many prestandard 802.11n productsbegan to appear on the market in thefirst quarter of 2006. (MIMO-basedproducts actually have been around for acouple of years but only focus on usingMIMO technology and don’t necessarilyinvolve other aspects of 802.11n.) Ob-viously such products give users the ben-efits of the new standard immediately,and most work with all existing 802.11wireless standards.

Prestandard 802.11n products maycarry some risk to the user, though.Without a ratified standard to workfrom, hardware from one manufacturermight not work at top efficiency or withanother manufacturer’s hardware. It’sa lso possible that some hardwaredesigned for use with the 802.11n draft


Speed Up The Network With 802.11n

Make Wireless Work Better

Sources: Airgo Networks, Datacomm Research

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Three components—range, reliability, and speed—help determine the quality of a wire-less network link. Although today's wireless standards call for a maximum throughputspeed of 54Mbps, actual network configurations rarely reach that speed. In traditionalnetworks (that don’t use MIMO), each of the three components strongly affects the oth-ers; for example, manufacturers have to reduce range and reliability to increase a net-work’s speed, reduce speed and range to increase reliability, and so forth.

With MIMO, though, all three components can increase at the same time. MIMO takesadvantage of the multiple paths a wireless signal natu-rally takes. A traditional radio signal (especially insidethe home) bounces off objects and takes multiplepaths, some of which arrive at different times at thereceiver. This process causes interference problemsfor a traditional radio system; the system often seesthe multiple paths as “blurred” or “weakened” becausethey’re carrying the same data (as shown below) andinterfering with one another. This problem also shrinksthe coverage area of the network.

However, a MIMO system splits its signal to takeadvantage of this natural effect. With each multiple path carrying a unique signal,which helps overcome interference, the overall signal carries more data. Also, theantennas using MIMO technology work together to find the clearest data path.

MIMO delivers greater spectral efficiency than a traditional radio signal, whichincreases range, reliability, and speed, all simultaneously. ▲

Spectral efficiency=

units of information per unit of time per unit

of bandwidth=

bits of data per second per Hertz

As wireless home net-works evolve to incorpo-rate more video and otherlarge multimedia files,such as transferring arecorded TV show to aPMP, more bandwidth is a must. The 802.11n stan-dard will be able to deliverthe needed bandwidth forthese processes.

The amount of time different802.11 standards need to transfera 30-minute, high-def video file(under ideal network conditions).


standard will interfere with any hard-ware using the 2.4GHz wireless band.

If the standard undergoes any kind ofchanges before ratification, it’s possible theprestandard equipment won’t work withthe hardware that’s certified to use thestandard. In some cases, the users can laterupgrade the prestandard hardware withfirmware, but the reworked hardware stillmight not have all of the top-end benefitsand features that the post-standard equip-ment will have. In other cases, users maynot be able to upgrade the prestandardequipment with firmware at all.

The other potential problem involvedwith 802.11n prestandard product

concerns the standard itself. When thestandard was up for vote from the IEEEin April/May 2006, it reportedly receivedan extremely large number of commentsfrom IEEE members–about six times asmany comments as standards typicallyreceive—meaning there were plenty ofIEEE members questioning some aspectsof the initial standard. Less than 50% ofthe membership voted to adopt the stan-dard in its initial form. Any specificationsubmitted to the IEEE engineers eventu-ally must receive a 75% supermajority offavorable votes for adoption.

What the large number of commentsprobably meant is that the final standard

may not appear for at least another 12 to18 months, as it may need to undergosome significant changes before ratification.

Ultimately each user will need todecide whether the potential benefits ofprestandard 802.11n products are worththe potential risk down the road. Theimproved wireless networking speed andreliability of these products are definitelytempting, and with big-name companiesoffering the prestandard hardware, thetemptation may be too difficult to ignorefor many people. ▲

by Kyle Schurman


Prestandard ProductsHere are some examples of recently released prestandard 802.11n products.

BelkinWireless Pre-N Router (F5D8230-4); $99.99Wireless Pre-N Desktop Network Card (F5D8000); $89.99Wireless Pre-N Notebook Network Card (F5D8010); $89.99

D-LinkRangeBooster N 650 Router (DIR-635); $159.99

RangeBooster N 650 Desktop Adapter (DWA-547); $119.99RangeBooster N 650 Notebook Adapter (DWA-645); $99.99

LinksysWireless-N Broadband Router (WRT300N); $149.99Wireless-N Notebook Adapter (WPC300N); $119.99

NetgearRangeMax Next Wireless Router (WNR834B); $169.99

RangeMax Next Wireless Notebook Adapter (WN511B); $129.99RangeMax Next Wireless Router Gigabit Edition (WNR854T); $214.99

RangeMax Next Wireless Notebook Adapter Gigabit Edition (WN511T); $59.99


istorian HowardZinn once wrote,

“You can’t stand stillon a moving train”—

meaning you can’t expectthe progress of things to

wait around on you. Thatseems to go double for keeping up with the way PC technologygrows and evolves.

AMD is one company that has not only done a lot of keepingup but also a lot of pushing the envelope, too. Among otherthings, it brought affordable 64-bit processing power to thedesktop with its AMD64 line back when Intel was still over-charging for the luxury of using the 64-bit Itanium in servers.Now AMD is taking another step forward with the newest itera-tion of its processor line, the Socket AM2 series. Admittedly, theAM2 is more evolutionary than revolutionary, but it’s a solidincremental move for a company that’s proven to be both acompetitor and an innovator.

Socket To UsAMD has traditionally distinguished its different processor

lines by referring to the socket type, and each socket is built toaddress different needs in the marketplace. For example, AMDcreated the Socket 940, which accepts the Opteron processor,for server motherboards, and it only works with registered ECCmemory, sacrificing some speed for the sake of accuracy.Compare this to AMD’s Socket 939, which uses the Athlon 64processor, works with DDR SDRAM and is optimized forspeed, so it’s best suited for gaming and other high-end desktopapplications. (The lowest end of AMD’s current socket lineup isSocket 754, which runs the Athlon 64 and Sempron CPUs.)

The projected lifetime for each socket also figures into itsapplication. Socket 940 should be supported up to five yearsfrom now, as servers and high-end workstations tend to not becycled out that quickly. Socket 939, however, is a consumer-level item with a correspondingly shorter lifespan. That means,you guessed it, AM2 is about to replace the 939s.

The first difference between the AM2 and its 939/940cousins is the way it looks. The die package, or the processoritself, and the pinout, or the pins that connect to the socket it

plugs into, are almost exactly the same as the die and pinout onthe 940. That said, the socket isn’t backward-compatible; thesocket is for AM2-type processors only. Consequently, the pinconfiguration is slightly different; it’s keyed to not accept any-thing other than an AM2-compatible processor. (Even thoughAMD now has a 65nm-manufacturing process in its plants, theAM2s are built using the existing 90nm system.)

As of now, many of AMD’s processors are available forAM2—28 as of this writing, including the low-end Sempronline. That doesn’t even include the AM2 Opteron for serversand workstations and the mobile edition of the AM2. (See the“All In The Family” sidebar for a breakdown of all the proces-sors in the AM2 line.)

s p o t l i g h t

Socket AM2 (below)strongly resembles itsimmediate predecessor,Socket 940 (left), in that it has the same number of pins and is the samesize. However, SocketAM2 isn’t keyed to accept anything exceptAM2 processors.


s p o t l i g h t

Double Your Data RateOne of the biggest reasons for intro-

ducing AM2 was to allow AMD’s proces-sor lines to make use of DDR2 memory,the immediate successor to conventionalDDR memory. Intel has been usingDDR2 with its processors for over twoyears, including the 925X and 915-serieschipsets. One possible reason for AMDwaiting this long is price and availability.Until recently, DDR2 was costly and notreadily available, so it made sense forAMD to hold out until product was avail-able before supporting it.

DDR2’s big advantages over DDR arelower power consumption and speed.DDR2 runs at a base clock speed of100MHz, and thanks to the way data istransferred in the DDR2 spec, this allowsa maximum theoretical bandwidth of1.6GBps. Most of the CPU’s time is wast-ed waiting on system memory, so any-thing that can speed up memory transfersis worth it. Putting a cache on the CPUdie itself is typically how this is done, buton-die cache memory drives up the per-unit price for a processor, which is whyAMD’s server-class processors, such as

Opteron, cost hundreds of dollars and itsdesktop Semprons are a fraction of that.

One downside is that while DDR2 hasa higher transfer speed, it also has higherlatency, meaning it takes longer for a givenresponse to come back, even if the responseitself comes through more quickly.Imagine a newly built freeway (DDR2)with a much higher speed limit (fasterdata-transfer rate) but that is also muchharder for traffic to merge and exit (higherlatency) on. In the future, though, it maybe possible to make other changes to offsetthe latency issue. Sticking with the high-way analogy, if DDR2 was a highway,we’d add such things as extended mergingand exit lanes. (As a side note, DDR2 orig-inally appeared in a slightly modified formin some video cards—such as Nvidia’sGeForce FX 5800—where speed is cruciallong before it appeared in the PC itself.)

That said, the first generation of AM2hardware’s memory speeds aren’t all thatimpressive—yet. If you swap an existing939 or 940 with its AM2 equivalent now,you won’t notice much of a speed improve-ment. (See our DDR2 memory roundupon the AM2 platform on page 62.)

So, why is AMD making the switch toAM2 and DDR2 then? It’s called futureproofing. Moving to AM2 kicks open thedoor toward using faster memory in thefuture and demolishing one of the biggestroadblocks that has prevented AMD fromreally moving forward with its processorline. The capacity of the socket itself, andnot just the processors being provided forit now, will be what moves AMD ahead;it’s a platform on which AMD can buildfuture processors that exploit the powerwithin. Additionally, with processorspeeds now topping out at 3GHz or so,any other changes AMD can make tospeed things up may be worth it. AMDplans to support DDR2 speeds of up to667MHz with AM2 and up to 800MHzwith the dual-core AM2 Athlon 64 FX-62, so it’s clear the current generation ofAM2 is just a warm-up.

Juiced Down, Not UpThere are other benefits to the AM2

besides speed, including reduced proces-sor power consumption, which is actuallyone of the biggest benefits. Electricityisn’t going to get any cheaper, and with

The Athlon 64 FX pinout design for AM2 platforms.


cores, and not every program can be writ-ten to do so. This is why having DDR2in the AM2 spec is also important: Thespeed gain that DDR2 provides can oftenexceed the speed that having multiplecores for most everyday tasks provides.

AM2 also allows for a multiprocessorsystem that has multiple cores in eachprocessor, a setup AMD refers to as 4x4.Systems with 4x4 use many existing AMDtechnologies, such as the Direct Connectarchitecture, to give each processor a dedi-cated system memory channel. And as youcan imagine, 4x4 is aimed mainly at thosealready interested in dual- or multiproces-sor setups, including gamers, content creators, and others who live on the bleed-ing edge of speed.

Eminently EmulatableThe single most striking new feature in

AM2 is something that has existed up untilnow only as something accomplished insoftware: virtualization. Programs such asVMware and Microsoft Virtual PC let yourun a PC inside a PC, or a virtual comput-er with its own memory, hard drive, OS,and applications that run at most of the

everyone from big hosting companies todesktop users feeling the pinch, less is def-initely more in this department. (Youmight already have seen AMD’s ad cam-paign in this regard, with lines like, “Youcould light up all of Broadway with thepower saved by running AMD servers.”)

AMD has been pushing reduced powerconsumption as a selling point of its hard-ware, and the AM2 processors all use lesspower than their matching predecessors.Most of the single-core Athlons that ran at89W now run at around 67W in theirAM2 editions. The existing low-wattageprocessors will also use less; the Sempron,which ran at 65W, will run at 35W thanksto AM2. Even better is that these wattageratings are maximum, or worst-case loads,not idle measurements. In other wordsthis is the most electricity they will use.

Two Cores Are (Almost Always) Better Than One

Among the snazziest features of theAM2 is something that’s actually beenavailable on the Socket 939 and 940:dual-core CPUs. Having more than oneprocessor may sound like overkill to the

uninitiated, but let’s go back to our high-way analogy. A two-lane highway canobviously handle more cars than a single-lane highway. So, a dual-CPU machine—or dual-core chip—can run twice the loadof a single CPU and crank through thatmany more calculations a second.

Anyone who runs more than one pro-gram at a time or runs a program thatuses more than one processor thread willbenefit from dual cores. This could besomething as simple as ripping a CDwhile writing a document in another win-dow or as elaborate as running World OfWarcraft. It’s also significantly less expen-sive to put multiple cores on one CPU asopposed to multiple CPUs on the sameboard (each of which requires its ownsocket, wiring, voltage control, etc.), soeven people without Franklin Mint-sizedbudgets can enjoy the benefits of a multi-core system—if they have applicationsthat work well with them.

This last “if” is crucial. Multiple coreswill only show their true performance col-ors when they’re matched with programsthat make use of them. Not every pro-gram can take advantage of multiple

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The Athlon 64 FX up close, front and back.


moment. If you have a late-model AMDCPU (or, again, Intel), the performanceincreases you’ll get from switching to anequivalent AM2 processor probably won’tregister as more than a blip on the radar.If you’re upgrading from something vastlyinferior, such as a 1GHz processor or less,then you’ll definitely see a performancegain. But existing Pentium 4, Athlon 64,or Opteron users won’t need to botherjust yet.

The real gains possible with AM2 willprobably be unlocked in about a year’stime, when faster DDR2 memory andprocessors (especially the multi-core vari-ety) will be broadly available. Then it’ll behigh time to plug into Socket AM2. ▲

by Serdar Yegulalp

speed of its host computer. Because this isa trick of software, the emulated machinetakes a bit of a performance hit.

What AMD has done is build a set ofprocessor extensions called AMD-v (for-merly “Pacifica”) that, with the directhelp of the processor, allows this kind ofwork to be done. The end result is anemulated machine that runs at almost thefull speed of its host. No processors thatuse AMD-v are available yet, and there’sno software that supports it at themoment, but Microsoft Virtual PC andVMware (the two major virtual-comput-ing packages out there) will supportAMD-v once processors with the technol-ogy are broadly available. (The open-source virtual-computing program Xendoes this already with a similar set of

extensions for Intel’s processors calledVanderpool or VT.)

To the general user, this probablysounds like something too geeky to everuse. For power users, though, trying aprogram out nondestructively by instal-ling it in a virtual computer has becomealmost standard procedure. Like multiplecores or 64-bit processors, virtualizationlooks like it’ll eventually become a stan-dard feature that’s part of the way every-one uses a computer.

To Buy Or Not To Buy?If you have the cash to spend now but

you’re already using an existing AMD (oreven Intel) system, is making the leap toan AM2-socket processor worth it? Thatdepends on what you’re running at the

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All In The Family

The breadth of AMD’s offerings for Socket AM2 is heartening. Thisisn’t just a release of high-end processors such as the FX-62; itcovers the low-end Sempron series and energy-efficient versions

of many of these chips, as well. Right now you can find an AM2processor for just about every wallet size and requirement need,and the list will likely grow enormously over the next few years. ▲

AMD Athlon AM2 Series CPUs

Model Clock # of L1 Cache L2 Cache Memory Speed Transistors MSRP Energy-efficient Speed Cores (millions) model price

FX-62 2.8GHz 2 256KB 1MB DDR2-800 227.4 $1,031 N/A

X2 5000+ 2.6GHz 2 256KB 512KB DDR2-733 153.8 $696 N/A

X2 4800+ 2.4GHz 2 256KB 1MB DDR2-800 227.4 $645 $671

X2 4600+ 2.4GHz 2 256KB 512KB DDR2-800 153.8 $558 $601

X2 4400+ 2.2GHz 2 256KB 1MB DDR2-733 227.4 $470 $514

X2 4200+ 2.2GHz 2 256KB 512KB DDR2-733 153.8 $365 $417

X2 4000+ 2GHz 2 256KB 1MB DDR2-800 227.4 $328 $353

X2 3800+ 2GHz 2 256KB 512KB DDR2-800 153.8 $303 $323

3800+ 2.4GHz 1 128KB 512KB DDR2-800 153.8 $290 N/A

3500+ 2.2GHz 1 128KB 512KB DDR2-733 153.8 $189 N/A

AMD Sempron AM2 Series CPUs (All have single cores)

Model Clock L1 Cache L2 Cache Memory Speed Transistors MSRP Energy-efficient Speed (millions) model price

3600+ 2GHz 128KB 256KB DDR2-667 81.1 $123 N/A

3500+ 2GHz 128KB 128KB DDR2-667 81.1 $109 N/A

3400+ 1.8GHz 128KB 256KB DDR2-667 81.1 $97 $145

3200+ 1.8GHz 128KB 128KB DDR2-667 81.1 $87 $119

3000+ 1.6GHz 128KB 256KB DDR2-667 81.1 $77 $101


n the very day thatAMD officially re-

leased its new SocketAM2-based Athlon 64

and Sempron processors, afew motherboard manufac-

tures were ready with a handfulof boards to support the CPUs. A majority of the motherboardsreleased at the launch were based on pre-existing chipsets,reworking the boards for compatibility with the new 940-pinAM2 socket and DDR2 memory. Other motherboards werebased on a new family of chipsets designed by AMD’s premierechipset partner, Nvidia.

For this roundup review, we pulled together a diverse quin-tet of motherboards that span almost the entire family ofnForce 500 chipsets. The nForce 550, 570 SLI, and 590 SLIchipsets are all represented here. (We’ll have to save the nForce570 Ultra for another day, however.) Practically speaking,though, the nForce 570 Ultra and 570 SLI are the samechipset, differing only in their PEG slots and PCI Express laneconfigurations. Performance between the two chipsets, howev-er, should be nearly identical.

For a detailed look at how we tested our motherboards and thebenchmark tests we used, see the “Battle Royale: Socket AM2Motherboard Performance Comparisons” sidebar in this article.

The MotherboardsWe looked at five Socket AM2-based motherboards for this

roundup. The boards come from familiar names, and their per-formances in our benchmark tests were quite similar. There aresome notable differences, however, especially in terms of the tan-gibles the boards offer. The reviews are ordered based on thechipset the boards use.

Biostar TForce 550Biostar isn’t quite as well-known as some of the other manu-

facturers in this roundup, but the company has been makingmotherboards for almost two decades and has plenty of experi-ence. As the name implies, the TForce 550 is based on the sin-gle-chip Nvidia nForce 550 chipset, which is very similar to theolder nForce 4 but has support for high-definition audio and, ofcourse, Socket AM2 AMD processors.

The TForce 550 is targeted at power users who are on a bud-get. As such, the board isn’t overloaded with features and doesn’t

“For this roundup review, we pulled together a

diverse quintet of motherboards that span almost

the entire family of nForce 500 chipsets.”


include an extravagant accessory bundle.Aside from the motherboard itself, Biostarincludes only a users manual, a driver andutility CD, and a custom I/O shield,along with one SATA cable, an 80-wireIDE cable, and a floppy cable all enclosedin a cushioned black pouch. The relative-ly sparse bundle is in contrast to some ofthe other bundles here, but all the necessi-ties to get a basic system up and runningare included.

Like the board’s bundle, the mother-board is also somewhat streamlined andsubdued. The color scheme is certainlybright with an assortment of yellows,greens, and blues, but because theTForce 550 doesn’t have quite as manyfeatures as say, the Asus M2N32-SLIDeluxe, its PCB isn’t nearly as crowded.In general, the TForce 550 was designedwell, suffering only from a few minorissues. The DIMM slots, IDE and floppyconnectors, and four SATA ports all linethe front edge of the board. The TForce550’s extra USB headers, handy integrat-ed power and reset micro switches,front-panel header, and audio connectorsline the bottom. There is ample room

around the CPU socket for oversizedcoolers, and the DIMM slots don’t inter-fere with the PCI-E x16 graphics slot, soinstalling or removing RAM doesn’trequire removing the video card.

Where the TForce 550 falters some-what is in its placement of the 24-pinATX power connector and its minisculevideo card retention clip. The ATX powerconnector is situated between the I/Obackplane and CPU socket, practicallysitting in the middle of the board. Thispositioning will force you to drape a heftyPSU cable almost directly over the CPUsocket, which could hinder airflow.Additionally, the video card retention clipis tiny and difficult to disengage when acard is installed.

A small aluminum heatsink and fancombo actively cool the nForce 550chipset, but the VRM doesn’t sport anysort of heatsinks or specialized cooling.The TForce 550’s I/O backplane housessix USB ports, a single 9-pin serial port,PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, a GbELAN jack, and six assorted audio inputsand outputs. Four additional USB portsare available with optional case brackets.

Enthusiasts should find the TForce550’s BIOS relatively complete, but it’snot quite as well-organized as Abit orAsus’ offerings. Overall, though, theTForce 550’s BIOS is good and has mostof the features necessary to tweak perfor-mance and enable or disable the board’scompliment of integrated peripherals.

The TForce 550 is the least expensivemotherboard in this roundup, but itsrelatively complete feature-set shouldplease most users. Those looking for SLIsupport, however, will obviously have tolook elsewhere.

MSI K9N SLI PlatinumMSI is a well-known player in the

enthusiast motherboard market. The com-pany has been producing high-qualitymotherboards for years, but it has sinceventured into other markets and is nowmanufacturing everything from videocards and power supplies to barebones sys-tems and wireless communication devices.

The K9N SLI Platinum is builtaround the nForce 570 SLI chipset,which is roughly equivalent to the nForce4 SLI for Socket 939 but with support

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Biostar TForce 550 Specifications:

Chipset: Nvidia nForce 550

Audio: Realtek ALC861 (8-channel)

Ethernet: Marvel 88E1116

PCI-E x16 slots: 1

PCI-E x1 slots: 2

PCI slots: 4

SATA ports: 4

IDE channels: 1

RAID support: 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD

Chipset/VRM cooling: active/none

TForce 550$85Biostarwww.biostar.com.tw● ● ● ●



for high-def audio and an additional pairof SATA channels. While the board doessport a pair of PEG slots for dual-cardSLI configurations, be aware that eachslot has only an x8 electrical connectionwhen two graphics cards are installed,unlike the two-chip nForce 590 SLIchipset, which supports x16 PCI-E lanesto each PEG slot. When a single card isinstalled, however, the PCI-E lanes con-necting the PEG slots to the chipsetrevert to an x16/x1 configuration.

MSI ships the K9N SLI Platinum witha nice assortment of accessories. Alongwith the motherboard, we received a verycomplete users manual, quick start guide,driver CD, custom I/O shield, SLI bridgeconnector, and case bracket to secure theSLI bridge in place. In addition, theboard also comes with four SATA cables,two Molex-to-SATA power adapters, androunded floppy and IDE cables. A casebracket with a pair of FireWire ports alsoships with the board, in addition to acustom case bracket that MSI calls a D-Bracket. The custom D-Bracket housestwo USB connectors, along with four

LEDs. The “D” in D-Bracket stands for“Diagnostic.” In short, LEDs blink incertain combinations if there is a problemwith the motherboard. Just reference theLED combination in the manual, andthe underlying problem becomes mucheasier to diagnose.

The MSI K9N SLI Platinum has agood, general layout, with only a fewminor issues to speak of. The DIMMslots, floppy and IDE connectors, 24-pinATX power connector, and six SATAports all sit along the front edge of theboard, with the spare USB and FireWireheaders and clear CMOS micro switchbeneath. Unfortunately, the DIMM slotsare very close to the first PEG slot, soinstalling and removing RAM may requireremoving the graphics card first. The areaaround the CPU socket is also a bit tightthanks to a row of 1-inch-high capacitorsalong one edge. The K9N SLI Platinumwill work with most aftermarket heatsinksthat don’t extend past either side of theplastic retention bracket, however.

Every inch of the MSI K9N SLI Plat-inum’s I/O backplane is filled with some

sort of port or connector. The board hasPS/2 mouse and keyboard ports; serial andparallel ports; one FireWire connector;four USB 2.0 ports; two GbE LAN jacks;and seven audio related inputs and out-puts, including SPDIF digital connec-tions. And mentioned, you can use additional USB and FireWire ports byinstalling the included case brackets.

One area where the K9N SLI Platinum shines is in regard to the mother-board’s system BIOS. MSI did an excel-lent job of outfitting the K9N SLIPlatinum’s BIOS with myriad optionsfor tweaking performance and over-clocking. A number of CPU, memory,and chipset voltages are available, andyou can also alter clock frequencies withfine granularity using the Cell Menu.We suspect the BIOS options that theK9N SLI Platinum offers will pleasemost overclockers.

We’d consider the modestly pricedMSI K9N SLI Platinum a good mid- tohigh-end enthusiast-class motherboard. Itincorporates all the features the nForce570 SLI chipset offers, and its stability

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K9N SLI Platinum$135MSIwww.msicomputer.com● ● ●

MSI K9N SLI Platinum Specifications:

Chipset: Nvidia nForce 570 SLI


Ethernet: Vitesse VSC8601 x2

PCI-E x16 slots: 2

PCI-E x1 slots: 2

PCI slots: 3

SATA ports: 6

IDE channels: 1

RAID support: 0, 1, 0+1, 5, JBOD

Chipset/VRM cooling: passive/passive


and performance were excellent through-out all our testing.

Abit KN9 SLIAbit is a revered name in the PC-

enthusiast community. The companywas one of the first to offer an extensiveset of overclocking tools for its mother-boards, and the company is the maker ofsuch legendary products as the BX6 2.0 and the dual-Socket 370 BP6. Abithas endured some rough times as of late,however, reportedly due to a combina-tion of internal f inancial problems and corporate investigations. The com-pany’s woes seem to be behind it ,though, thanks to a strategic merger with Universal Scientific Industrial, alarge OEM that manufactures desktopmachines, notebooks, and servers for anumber of large resellers. The mergerwith USI was a financial boon for Abit,which now has access to USI’s extensivemanufacturing facilities.

Abit’s entrant in this roundup is theKN9 SLI. Like MSI’s K9N SLI Platinum,Nvidia’s nForce 570 SLI chipset powers

the Abit KN9 board. As such, the boardhas a pair of PCI-E graphics slots toaccommodate a dual-card SLI setup. Themotherboard also has a couple of PCI-Ex1 and standard PCI slots. The KN9 SLIincludes a relatively complete assortmentof accessories, shipping with a user’s man-ual, quick installation guide, driver CD,and pair of floppy discs that contain 32-bit and 64-bit RAID drivers. A customI/O shield; SLI bridge connector andretention bracket; case bracket with dualUSB and dual FireWire ports; and IDE,floppy, and SATA cables round out theKN9 SLI’s bundle. We should also pointout that the SATA cables the boardincludes have metal retention clips thatlock into place and prevent accidental orunwanted disconnections.

A visual inspection of the KN9 SLIindicates that Abit’s engineers put a lot ofthought into the design and layout of thismotherboard. The board has one of thecleanest and less cluttered layouts we have come across in some time. All thecomponents on the PCB are lined up inclearly defined rows or columns, and every

connector is color-coded and well-labeled.The KN9’s DIMM slots, ATX power con-nector, IDE port, and six SATA ports allreside along the front edge of the board.The floppy connector, front-panel header,and additional headers for spare USB andFireWire ports span the bottom edge. The12V ATX power connector resides at theboard’s top edge, out of the way of anymajor components, as well. Some usersdislike positioning the floppy connector atthe bottom edge, but on the KN9, it isessentially in the board’s corner and notbeneath the expansion slots, which makesrouting the cable nice and easy.

To keep the nForce 570 SLI chipsetand VRM cool, the KN9 SLI is adornedwith a pair of aluminum heatsinks thatare linked together via an S-shaped heat-pipe. Abit dubs this cooling apparatusSilent OTES (Outside Thermal ExhaustSystem) because heat from the upper-VRM heatsink is silently radiated out ofthe system through vents in the customI/O shield the board supplies.

Another strong point for the KN9 SLIis its BIOS. In typical Abit fashion, it

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KN9 SLI$129Abitwww.abit-usa.com● ● ● ●

Abit KN9 SLI Specifications:



Ethernet: Marvell 88E1116 x2

PCI-E x16 slots: 2

PCI-E x1slots: 2

PCI slots: 2

SATA ports: 6

IDE channels: 1


Chipset/VRM cooling: passive/passive



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has incorporated all the tools necessaryto tweak performance and overclock asystem, along with some additional fea-tures that make it extremely easy tomonitor numerous aspects of the hard-ware. The standard BIOS menus houseall the common tools necessary toenable, disable, or tweak all the KN9’sonboard peripherals. In the Softmenusection of the BIOS, however, you canalter memory timings and heavily over-clock a system. The KN9 SLI also letsyou change a number of key voltages andfine-tune various clock frequencies in1MHz increments. You can also monitorfan speeds and voltages in the BIOS.

The KN9 SLI’s I/O backplane houses apair of PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports;four USB 2.0 ports; two GbE LAN jacks;and seven audio related ports and connec-tors, including an optical output.

With its relatively complete bundle,excellent layout, overclocker-friendlyBIOS, strong performance, and competi-tive price, the Abit KN9 SLI is a solidvalue. Welcome back, Abit.

Foxconn C51XEM2AA At a recent briefing at Nvidia head-

quarters in Santa Clara, Calif., companyrepresentatives told us that, “To buildgreat core logic, you need to build agreat motherboard.” With that in mind,Nvidia engineers designed an nForce590 SLI-based motherboard that incor-porated all the hardware and softwarefeatures that Nvidia’s new flagshipAM2-compatible chipset offers, as wellas all the BIOS hooks necessary to fullyutilize all the features integrated intonTune 5.0. Foxconn then took that ref-erence motherboard that Nvidia de-signed internally and spun it into thefeature-rich C51XEM2AA. This maynot sound like a big deal to everyone,but the fact that two experienced andtalented engineering teams have had asay in the development of this mother-board is a significant benefit.

Foxconn probably isn’t as well-knownin some circles right now as other boardmakers, but the company has been amajor behind-the-scenes player in the

PC arena for quite a while. For thoseunfamiliar with Foxconn, give the com-pany a little time. If it continues to pro-duce boards such as the C51XEM2AAmoving forward, power users will gobbleup Foxconn’s products just as they haveDFI’s products during the past few years.

The C51XEM2AA supports all AMDSocket AM2-based processors and therequisite DDR2 memory. The board hassix SATA 3Gbps SATA ports, a pair ofPCI-E x16 PEG slots, one PCI-E x1slot, one PCI-E x4 slot, and a pair ofstandard PCI slots. The slots are config-ured in such a way that if two double-wide graphics cards are installed, thePCI-E x4 slot and one standard PCI slotare still available. The nForce 590 SLISPP (the chip located in the traditionalnorthbridge position) is adorned with asimple aluminum-finned heatsink. TheMCP, or southbridge, has an Nvidia-designed, low-profile active cooler,which is constructed of copper with analuminum shroud and lighted fan thatglows green when running. The VRM,

C51XEM2AA$210Foxconnwww.foxconnchannel.com● ● ● ●

Foxconn C51XEM2AA Specifications:


Audio: Realtek ALC882D (8-channel)

Ethernet: Marvell 88E1121 (dual GbE)

PCI-E x16 slots: 2

PCI-E x1 slots: 1

PCI-E x4 slots: 1

PCI slots: 2

SATA ports: 6

IDE channels: 1


Chipset/VRM cooling: northbridge passive,southbridge active/none



however, doesn’t have any type of addi-tional cooling, but the eight-phasedesign ran relatively cool regardless inour testing.

Other features in the C51XEM2AAinclude handy onboard power and resetswitches and a Xilinx POST code errorreporter. Complimenting the nForce590 SLI’s dual-GbE MACs are a Mar-vell PHY; HD audio support by way of a Realtec audio code; and a TexasInstruments chip that incorporates sup-port for IEEE1394a and IEEE1394bFireWire connectivity. In general, theboard’s layout is good, except for theplacement of the floppy connector andthe supplementary 8-pin power connec-tor. Unlike the Abit KN9 SLI, which

has its floppy connector at the lowercorner of the motherboard, Foxconnmoved the connector a couple of inchesinward, which makes neatly routing thecable a bit more difficult. Additionally,the supplemental power connector is sit-uated between the SPP and I/O back-plane, which will force users to drape acable over the area surrounding theCPU socket.

Foxconn includes a healthy supply ofaccessories with the C51XEM2AA to getyou up and running. Along with theboard, we received six SATA cables,rounded floppy and IDE cables, andthree Molex-to-SATA power adapters.Foxconn also included three case brack-ets for additional USB, FireWire, and

serial connectivity, in addition to an SLIbridge connector, a custom I/O shield,quick installation and users manuals, anda driver CD.

The C51XEM2AA’s BIOS exposes allthe features that the nForce 590 SLIoffers, including LinkBoost and EPP (En-hanced Performance Profiles). The BIOSalso gives you fine control over voltagesand clock speeds. With LinkBoost, keyinterfaces between the SPP, MCP, andPCI-E graphics cards are clocked higherthan normal, which in turn increases thebandwidth between these components.EPP is a feature designed to maximize system performance by automaticallytweaking memory and CPU frequencies,multipliers, and voltages.

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Although all the motherboards we looked at for this roundup arebased on chipsets from the nForce 500 family, there’s actually avariety of core logic chipsets coming to the AM2 platform—somenew, and some you are probably already familiar with. As of thiswriting, Socket AM2 motherboards based on Nvidia’s nForce 4 andGeForce 6100/6150 and ATI’s Radeon Xpress 1100 chipsets wereavailable. Boards based on VIA’s K8T890 and existing SiS chipsetswere on the way, as well. Other than the nForce 500, though, theone other new chipset that’s likely to pique your interest as powerusers is ATI’s CrossFire Xpress 3200 for AM2.

The CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 uses the same RD580 north-bridge as its Socket 939 counterpart. We’ve tested a referenceSocket AM2 motherboard based on the CrossFire Xpress 3200 forAM2 chipset, but retail motherboards had yet to arrive for thisroundup. The reason for the delay is that ATI has developed a newsouthbridge, the SB600, and production of the new chip is justnow ramping up. We’re told that partners Asus, Abit, DFI, ECS,MSI, PC Partner, and Sapphire will all release motherboards basedon the CrossFire Xpress 3200 for AM2; they just hadn’t material-ized in time for us to look at them here.

The reference board we saw had a pair of PEG slots with all thePCI Express lanes linked to the RD580 northbridge, unlike thenForce 590 SLI, which splits its PCI-E lanes for graphics acrossthe MCP and SPP. The CrossFire Xpress 3200 for AM2 supports

DDR2-800 memory, which the Athlon 64’s on-chip memory con-troller drives. The new SB600 southbridge handles I/O.

ATI’s aged SB450 southbridge has had to contend with itsshare of issues. USB and PCI performance, which driver or moth-erboard BIOS updates couldn’t fix, plagued the SB450. The chipalso lacked any support for SATA 3Gbps transfers. Instead ofusing the SB450 on its motherboards, some of ATI’s partnersopted for ULi’s 1575 chip, but because Nvidia recently acquiredULi, the ULi 1575 will no longer be coupled to an ATI north-bridge. Fortunately, ATI had been developing a new southbridgefor quite some time, the SB600.

The new SB600 southbridge provides up to 10 USB 2.0 ports,has SATA II support with various RAID modes, and has full com-pliance with the PCI and LPC bus standards to support all legacydevices. Like the SB450 and ULi11575, the SB600 has high-defini-tion audio. Aside from just having SATA II support, the new diskcontroller in the SB600 is superior to the SB450’s in a couple ofother ways. The SB600’s disk controller supports AHCI and NCQ,and it also supports the native Windows Vista storage driver.Native Vista storage support means the SB600 won’t require anyadditional drivers to perform well with the upcoming Vista OS.

Look for more coverage as more Socket AM2 motherboardsarrive based on the CrossFire Xpress 3200 northbridge/SB600southbridge combination. ▲

CCoommiinngg AAttttrraaccttiioonnss:: More Core Logic For AM2


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The C51XEM2AA’s I/O backplanehas PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, sixUSB 2.0 ports, two FireWire ports, twoGbE LAN jacks, and six assorted audio-related inputs and outputs. Overall, theFoxconn C51XEM2AA impressed us; themotherboard has a lot going for it and is astrong foundation for a high-end SocketAM2-based system.

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition

Over the years, we’ve tested scores ofproducts from Asus, and in a vast majori-ty of circumstances, those products havebeen among the best in their respectiveclasses. Asus has built a solid reputationfor manufacturing high-performance, fea-ture-rich, and stable products, and withthe M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition,the company continues that tradition.

Like the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, thisAsus M2N32-SLI Deluxe board is based

on Nvidia’s flagship nForce 590 SLIchipset. Also like the C51XEM2AA, thisboard has an interesting history. WhenAMD launches a new processor, it gener-ally ships a kit to the press and other ana-lysts that is meant to showcase its newproduct in the best light. When the firstSocket AM2 processors arrived for testing,a prerelease version of the M2N32-SLIDeluxe accompanied them. It makes senseto assume that for AMD to choose thisboard to showcase its new processors, itmust have really liked something about it.

The M2N32-SLI Deluxe WirelessEdition is a member of Asus’ AiLifestylefamily of products, which is targetedsquarely at mainstream enthusiasts. Thismotherboard’s feature-set and bundleclearly demonstrate the M2N32-SLIDeluxe’s pedigree. To put it simply, themotherboard’s accessory bundle is overthe top. Included is a detailed users man-ual, custom I/O shield, soft-SLI bridge

connector, and obligatory driver CD.Along with these items, we also receivedanother CD containing an assortment ofInterVideo software, six SATA cables,three Molex-to-SATA power adapters,and IDE and floppy data cables. On top of the software and cables, Asus also throws in a pair of case brackets for additional USB and FireWire ports,plus something the company calls Q-Connectors. These are simple headersthat you connect to your case wiring(power, reset, activity LEDs, front-panelaudio, etc.) and then plug right into theappropriate headers on the motherboard.The motherboard also ships with amicrophone, an optional fan, and anantenna that connects to the board’s inte-grated 802.11b/g wireless NIC.

Considering the M2N32-SLI Deluxe’swealth of integrated features, the board’slayout is surprisingly good. Unlike theother motherboards we looked at, the

M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition$220Asuswww.asus.com● ● ● ●

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Specifications:


Audio: SoundMax ADI AD1988B (8-channel)

Ethernet: Marvell 88E1116 x2

PCI-E x16 slots: 2

PCI-E x1 slots: 1

PCI-E x4 slots: 1

PCI slots: 2

SATA ports: 7, 1 eSATA

IDE channels: 1


Chipset/VRM cooling: passive/passive(optional fan)



M2N32-SLI’s DIMM slots run along thetop edge of the PCB above the CPUsocket. Along the right side are theM2N32-SLI’s 24-pin ATX power, IDE,and floppy connectors, plus six of theboard’s eight SATA ports. The Nvidiachipset powers the six SATA portsgrouped here, and a Silicon Image con-troller handles the other two. Along theboard’s bottom edge are its additionalfront-panel, USB, and FireWire headers.One problem we have with the M2N32-SLI Deluxe’s layout is the location of thesupplemental 12V ATX power connec-tor, which resides just above the firstPEG slot beneath the wireless NIC.

One of the board’s standout features isits enormous chipset- and VRM-coolingapparatus. The components in this board’sVRM flank two sides of the CPU socket,and the two chips that make up thenForce 590 SLI chipset are situatedbehind the expansion slots. Both chipsand the entire VRM are equipped withrelatively large copper heatsinks that are alllinked together with an assortment ofheatpipes. The entire collection cools all

these components passively, thus generat-ing no noise. Additionally, this coolingmethod is easily the largest of its type thatwe’ve encountered to date. We’ll alsomention that the M2N32-SLI Deluxe fea-tures no less than seven fan headers. Theother motherboards in this roundup allhave three or four at the most.

As with all motherboards in Asus’ cur-rent AI-Life, the M2N32-SLI Deluxe’s sys-tem BIOS menu options are abundant andhighly configurable. The board’s BIOSuses a host of options to enable or disableall its integrated peripherals, tools for over-clocking and tweaking memory timings,and overclocking the CPU. You can altervarious voltages for the processor, memory,and chipset from within the BIOS, andsupport for features such as LinkBoost andEPP is also available. The options aren’talways clearly labeled, but with a little dig-ging, all the overclocking-friendly BIOSoptions that power users typically crave arethere. We had no trouble taking an Athlon64 FX-62 to over 3.1GHz with theM2N32-SLI Deluxe, which shows thismotherboard’s overclocking prowess.

As you’d expect, the M2N32-SLIDeluxe’s I/O backplane is loaded withvarious connectors and ports. Starting atthe top is a pair of PS/2 mouse and key-board ports, SPDIF inputs and outputs,one serial port, a FireWire port, and aneSATA connector. With the correct cable,you can use the eSATA port to externallyconnect a high-speed drive to theM2N32-SLI Deluxe. Continuing downthe backplane, you’ll find four USB 2.0ports, a pair of GbE ports, six assortedaudio inputs and outputs, and the thread-ed connector for the board’s integratedwireless NIC’s antenna. Whew.

Asus’ M2N32-SLI Deluxe WirelessEdition is undeniably one of the most fea-ture-rich enthusiast-class motherboardsever created. The host of integrated fea-tures comes at a price, however. At $220,the board is the most expensive board wetested for this roundup. If the wirelessNIC doesn’t appeal to you, Asus alsooffers the M2N32-SLI Deluxe for a mar-ginally lower price without the feature. ▲

by Marco Chiappetta

s p o t l i g h t

“As with all motherboards in Asus’ current

AI-Life, the M2N32-SLI Deluxe’s system BIOS menu

options are abundant and highly configurable. The

board’s BIOS uses a host of options to enable or disable

all its integrated peripherals, tools for overclocking

and tweaking memory timings, and

overclocking the CPU.”


s p o t l i g h t

Due to the Athlon 64’s memory controller residing on the processor’s die,most benchmarks that CPU and memory performance solely influence don’tshow much of a variation when testing motherboards built with identicalsupporting components. In addition to using the same parts to test eachmotherboard for this roundup, we also went the extra mile and configuredeach board’s respective system BIOS with the same settings when possible.Some manufacturers are notorious for aggressively timing their mother-boards, which gives them an edge in benchmarks. For our tests, though, weconfigured each board with the same HyperTransport reference frequencyand set the memory timings manually to CAS 4-4-4-12 at DDR2-800.

The remaining configuration process for our test system consisted ofinstalling Windows XP Pro on a newly formatted hard drive. When theWindows installation was complete, we installed the drivers necessary forour components and disabled auto updating and System Restore. Next,we set up a 1,024MB permanent page file on the same partition as theWindows installation. We then set WinXP’s Visual Effects to Best Per-formance, installed all our benchmarking software, defragged the hard

drives, and ran the tests. We also used the same chipset, sound, andgraphics drivers on all the motherboards except the Asus M2N32-SLI,which required different sound drivers because the board didn’t have aRealtek audio codec.

We built our test systems using an AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz), aCorsair TWIN2X1024-8500 (DDR2-800) memory kit, Western DigitalRaptor 74GB hard drive, a GeForce 7900 GTX video card, and onboardsound and Ethernet. We ran WinXP Pro SP2 with DirectX 9.0c (June redis-tribution) and ForceWare v91.27 and nForce chipset drivers v9.34.

All the motherboards posted similar performance across our entiresuite of benchmarks. Boards with single-chip nForce 550 and 570 SLIchipsets (Biostar, MSI, and Abit) seemed to have a slight advantage inthe Photoshop, Office XP SP2, and LAME MT MP3 encoding tests. Thedual-chip nForce 590 SLI-based Foxconn and Asus motherboards had anedge in the synthetic, 3D-rendering, and gaming tests. Overall, there islittle to differentiate these motherboards in terms of performance. Theydo greatly differ in their respective feature-sets and prices, however. ▲

BBaattttllee RRooyyaallee:: Socket AM2 Motherboard Performance Comparisons

Biostar T MSI K9N SLI Abit Foxconn Asus M2N32-SLI SiSoftware Sandra 2007 Pro Force 550 Platinum KN9 SLI C51XEM2AA Deluxe Wireless Edition

Processor Arithmetic

Dhrystone ALU 20,412Mips 20,405Mips 20,422Mips 20,397Mips 20,416Mips

Whetstone iSSE3 17,219Mflops 17,212Mflops 17,229Mflops 17,239Mflops 17,226Mflops

Processor Multimedia

Integer x4 aEMMX/aSSE 52,988itps 52,964itps 52,938itps 52,874itps 52,943itps

Floating-Point x4 iSSE2 57,627itps 57,620itps 57,641itps 57,622itps 57,638itps

Memory Bandwidth

Integer Buffered iSSE2 8,504MBps 8,494MBps 8,489MBps 8,514MBps 8,508MBps

Floating-Point Buffered iSSE2 8,456MBps 8,453MBps 8,448MBps 8,468MBps 8,462MBps

PCMark05

CPU 5719 5721 5720 5721 5724

Memory 5094 5099 5104 5096 5106

LAME MT MP3 Encoding (minutes:seconds)

Single-threaded 1:10 1:10 1:11 1:11 1:11

Multithreaded 0:46 0:47 0:47 0:48 0:47

Cinebench 2003 (Seconds)

Single-threaded 66.3 66.4 66.3 66.2 66.4

Multithreaded 35.6 35.4 35.5 35.4 35.5

Kribibench v1.1

Sponge Explode Model 5.11fps 5.13fps 5.13fps 5.14fps 5.13fps

Ultra Model 1.45fps 1.46fps 1.46fps 1.47fps 1.47fps

Office XP SP2 493 492 492 498 496(Seconds)

Photoshop 7 271 269 272 278 275(Seconds)

F.E.A.R. v1.05

640 x 480, Low Quality 219fps 221fps 222fps 231fps 226fps

Quake 4 v1.2 (SMP Enabled)

640 x 480, Low Quality 164.2fps 166.3fps 166.8fps 169.4fps 168.1fps


ou can attribute many factorsto the success of AMD’s K7 fam-

ily in comparison to Intel’s Net-Burst family. You could say AMD has had a more

efficient core in terms of instructions per clock, oryou could note how AMD’s choice to use Hyper-

Transport helped it scale better in multiprocessor configurations.AMD has also had lower-latency caches, x64 (64-bit) processingcompatibility from the start, and lower power consumption andheat-production levels. It hasn’t really been one feature that hasgiven AMD the desktop leadership it currently enjoys, but ratherit’s been roughly a half-dozen major features, which Intel hasslowly been catching up with over time. However, Intel still hasn’tbeen able to compete against AMD’s most important addition tothe K7 core—the integrated memory controller.

AMD’s move to integrate the system’s memory controller fromthe chipset-level to sit next to the processor core has proven thelargest single catalyst for performance change in comparison toAMD’s prior processor cores. With the memory controller soclose, Athlon64 processors delivered exceptionally fast memoryperformance via a combination of low-latency memory access anda high-bandwidth, dual-channel DDR interface. While Intel’stop-of-the-line CPUs only utilized roughly 50% of the memorybandwidth available due to inefficiencies in controller design,AMD’s processors often hit 75 to 80% of the peak module band-width while cutting access times in half. Because every applicationfrom the OS up to high-speed games use memory, improving this

system-level component helped overall system performancetremendously. Gamers have benefited the most, as modern gamesare extremely memory-intensive, and AMD’s improvements herehelped it dominate the benchmark charts. The irony is that Intelwas the first to develop a processor with an integrated memorycontroller under the codename Timna using an integratedRambus RDRAM controller, but it scrapped this before release.

The downside of an integrated memory controller is less flexibil-ity when it comes to memory standard changes. Because Intelhouses memory controllers on the chipset level, it has the option touse the same processor with various motherboards, all using differ-ent memory types. The processor doesn’t care, as the chipset han-dles all the memory traffic. Thus, Intel moved to DDR2 muchquicker than AMD. For AMD to move to DDR2, it had to designthe processor’s memory controller nearly from scratch—not aneasy task. AMD always said it was holding off on moving toDDR2 until the time was right, its architecture could take advan-tage of the speed, and there wouldn’t be a significant price premi-um over DDR. As it turns out, this was probably a smart move.

Intel’s first Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors using DDR2memory didn’t burn up the benchmark charts. Although DDR2originally offered higher clock speeds (533MHz compared to400MHz DDR), DDR2 also has significantly higher latencies(average CAS 5 latency DDR2 vs. CAS 3 DDR). Thus, whilebandwidth increased, overall memory speeds didn’t benefit great-ly, and in some cases performance even decreased with DDR2.While Intel’s architecture requires large amounts of memory


DDR2) while running at high clockspeeds (800MHz to 1,066MHz) at thesame time. Turning memory latencies lowand clock speeds high, however, is stress-ful on memory, which is why manufac-turers typically promote one aspect of thememory over the other. We wanted tofind out which is more important for theAM2 platform. Does cranking up clockspeed net better overall performance orare low-latency modules at a lower clockspeed a better option?

Using our test platform, we ran variousbenchmark tests with a single set of mem-ory modules at the same clock speed(800MHz) while set at various timings.We timed our absolute low-end modulesat CAS 6-6-6-2T latencies. We thenmoved to CAS 5-5-5-2T, CAS 4-4-4-2T,CAS 4-4-4-1T, and a fastest timing ofCAS 3-4-4-2T, which is particularlystressful for a DDR2 module running at800MHz. Conversely, we ran the samemodules at various clock speeds. Keepingthe same CAS 5-5-5-2T timings, we ranthe modules at 400MHz, 533MHz,667MHz, 800MHz, and 1,066MHz tosee how bandwidth influences overall performance. On paper moving from 400to 1,066MHz is a large change, as peakmemory bandwidth is only 6.4GBps withdual-channel DDR2-400, whereas band-width numbers skyrocket to 17GBps withdual-channel DDR2-1,066 memory. Wekept other aspects of the system identical,including CPU clock speeds, so as not toinfluence the results.

Our tests show that clock speed makesa much larger overall difference in syn-thetic and real-world benchmarks com-pared to latencies (see the “What DoesDDR2 Prefer With AM2: Higher ClocksOr Lower Latency?” charts in this arti-cle). However, we still saw fairly largeperformance differences between thehigh-latency and low-latency DDR2modules. On most platforms, going toofar (over 800MHz clock speed or underCAS 4-4-2-2T latencies) can cause insta-bility issues if you haven’t planned yourconfiguration to handle it. CAS 4-4-4-1Tat 800MHz is probably the best spot forthose wanting excellent performancewithout too much risk.

bandwidth, AMD’s architecture happilytrucked along with standard dual-channelDDR400. Even at lower clock speeds, thememory wasn’t bottlenecking processorspeed boosts.

As DDR2 technology has ramped up,things have become brighter for Intel.Memory manufacturers have significantlyboosted DDR2 clock speeds (now up to1,066MHz) while also decreasing laten-cies at lower clock speeds. Pricing forDDR2 modules has also decreased steadi-ly and it is now available at nearly identi-cal prices as DDR400. With the DDR2market heating up, AMD has now madethe switch. Although DDR has been afaithful companion to system builders inrecent years, the era of DDR2’s domi-nance is at hand.

The Move To DDR2AMD’s move to DDR2 is a positive

for several reasons, including:• Standardization—With Intel and

AMD now using DDR2, manufactur-ers can focus their efforts on a singleproduct lineup. This should lead tomore competition, decreased prices,and more innovative products.

• Perception—Enthusiasts have knownthat DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 mem-ory might not be any faster than DDR-400 in real-world benchmarks, butmany average buyers may still believethat using DDR2 will make their systems faster. In moving to DDR2technology, AMD can now use thehighest-clocked DDR2 memory mod-ules on the market.

• Performance—Boasting speeds of 800to 1,066MHz, DDR2 memory is nowfaster in comparison to DDR400memory for the most part. Even withhigher latencies, DDR2 memory atthese clock speeds can deliver fasteroverall performance compared toDDR400. Considering clock speedsare twice as fast or more, you’d expecta notable difference in performance,but there’s actually little performancedifference thus far. Overall, however,DDR2-equipped Athlon64 systems areoutpacing their previous-generationDDR-based brethren.

So, here we are: the age of DDR2.With high-bandwidth DDR2 memorynow on AMD and Intel platforms, makersare pushing forward with some amazing,high-performance DDR2 products to woothe enthusiast’s dollar. Manufacturers aretrying to one-up each other by deliveringthe highest raw clock speeds or the lowestlatencies at standard clock speeds, such as800MHz. So, if you want a pair of mod-ules that will overclock to high levels,you’re covered. If you don’t want to over-clock but want great performance at stockclock speeds, you’re covered, too.

We looked at five high-performance,enthusiast-targeted DDR2 kits fromCorsair, Kingston, and OCZ, three man-ufacturers leading the charge toward high-clock, low-latency DDR2. Additionally,each now has an impressive roster ofproducts to choose from. We pluggedeach kit into our Socket AM2 testingplatform in a dual-channel configuration.To compare the kits, we ran each at itsadvertised clock speed and latency timingon an Asus nForce 590 SLI board with a2.8GHz AMD Athlon64 FX-62 CPU.Using this processor we could adjust ourmemory speeds to support 1,066MHzclock rates without affecting scores, as wecould lower the CPU’s multiplier to haveit run at the proper 2.8GHz frequencyacross the board. Our system also had adual-GPU Nvidia GeForce 7950 GTX1GB card and two 74GB Western DigitalRaptor 10K SATA hard drives.

Because Socket AM2 processors featureintegrated dual-channel DDR2 memorycontrollers (for twice the memory band-width if combinations of modules areinstalled), dual-memory module kits arethe way to go to get the best overall per-formance. Each kit we tested had a 2GBcapacity (1GB modules x2). It appears2GB will be the sweet spot for enthusiaststhis year, which is plenty of memory forWindows XP systems, although whenVista rolls around, 4GB configurationswill probably be more the norm.

Before getting to the reviews, weshould note some basic information con-cerning clock speed vs. latency. To get thebest performance, you’ll want memorywith low latency (CAS 3 or CAS 4 for

s p o t l i g h t


Corsair’s recommended 2.2Vlevel, heat spreaders are anabsolute necessity. As you’dexpect, these modules gotquite hot under a heavy load.

The modules, along withthe other Corsair TwinX pairwe tested, are the first mod-ules on the market supportingthe new EPP (Enhanced Per-formance Profile) standardthat Corsair and Nvidiadeveloped together. EPPsolves a long-standing prob-lem with enthusiast-brandedmemory modules, in that theuser has to manually set(faster) memory timings ofthis new, super-fast memorymodule because the long-standing SPD (Serial PresenceDetect) standard for memorymodule timing auto-detectioncan only detect a single set ofdefault timings. For a moduleto be safe, you typically wantthe default SPD timings setfairly low. However, manuallysetting memory timings canbe dangerous, especially if youdon’t know what you aredoing or the memory settingshave been labeled poorly onthe motherboard.

EPP adds a second set ofmemory timings programmedinto the module that themotherboard can read andimmediately set the module toits predetermined high-perfor-

mance timings automatically. For EPP towork, the motherboard and memory mustsupport the technology. Our Asus M2N32-SLI nForce 590 SLI test board is one of thefew motherboards that do out of the box.The board detected the modules as “SLIReady,” at which point we were able to setthe modules to High-Performance (CAS 4-4-4-12 at 800MHz) or High-Frequency(CAS 5-5-5-15 at 933MHz) mode, upfrom the default SPD clock speed and tim-ings of 800MHz at CAS 5-5-5-15.

The concept of EPP works great in thereal world, and Corsair and Nvidia are

The ModulesWe looked at five 2GB DDR2 kits

from three manufacturers and tested themon an AM2 platform. Here’s what wefound out.

Corsair 2GB XMS2 8500C5 TwinX Pack & 2GB XMS2 6400C4

Also known as Twin2X2048-8500C5,Corsair’s 2GB XMS2 8500C5 kit con-tains two 1GB DDR2 modules certifiedto run at 1,066MHz. To operate at thisspeed, however, Corsair tones its latencytimings down, as the modules are rated to

run at CAS 5-5-5-15 latencies. WhileCAS 5-5-5 isn’t entirely impressive initself (as our tests show), memory perfor-mance is exceptional when running atover 1,000MHz, even when running atthese relatively low timings.

As with the rest of Corsair’s XMS2lineup, Corsair’s sleek and reflective alu-minum-alloy heat spreaders shield theactual memory chips. The modules werenoticeably heavier than the others in thisroundup, possibly indicating a heaviergauge of aluminum alloy for these mod-ules. When running at 1,066MHz at

s p o t l i g h t

CAS CAS CAS CAS CAS 6-6-6-2T 5-5-5-2T 4-4-4-2T 4-4-4-1T 3-4-4-2T

SiSoft Sandra 2007 Memory 8,397MBps 8,715MBps 9,004MBps 9,413MBps 9,581MBpsBandwidth

SiSoft Sandra 2007 Memory 88ns 85ns 82ns 81ns 77nsLatency

Sciencemark 2.0 Memory 7,126MBps 7,772MBps 8,168MBps 8,645MBps 8,861MBpsBandwidth

Sciencemark 2.0 Memory 48.7ns 45.5ns 43ns 42.3ns 39.8nsLatency

Half-Life 2: 114.9fps 117.5fps 121.3fps 122.7fps 124.2fpsEpisode One

F.E.A.R. 163fps 168fps 170fps 171fps 174fps

DDR2-400 DDR2-533 DDR2-667 DDR2-800 DDR2-1066




Sciencemark 2.0 Memory 80.3ns 66.84ns 55.1ns 45.5ns 38.5nsLatency



What Does DDR2 Prefer With AM2: Higher Clocks Or Lower Latency? We wanted to find out which method would result in better DDR2 performance on the AM2 platform: crankingup clock speeds or running low-latency modules at lower-clock speeds. These charts show the benchmarkscores we recorded for a single set of modules. Based on our tests, it appears as if clock speeds make a bigger difference than lower latencies. The sweet spot would seem to CAS 4-4-4-1T at 800MHz. ▲

DDR2 At Various CAS Settings & A 800MHz Clock Speed

DDR2 At Various Clock Speeds & A CAS 6-6-6-2T Setting


s p o t l i g h t

2GB XMS2 6400C4 TwinX Pack$270Corsairwww.corsair.com● ● ● ● ●

2GB XMS2 8500C5 TwinX Pack$450Corsairwww.corsair.com● ● ●

timings a bit. We got these 800MHz stockmodules up to 1,066MHz by upping thevoltage to 2.2V and easing the memorytimings to 4-4-4-15.

Corsair has also recently introduced aneven lower-latency DDR2 memory mod-ule, the XMS 6400C3, which runs at anamazingly low CAS 3-4-3-9, the firstDDR2-800 module we’ve seen dippingbelow CAS-4 for a shipping product.

Kingston HyperX KHX6400D2LLK2/2GIndustry veteran Kingston is taking a

less dramatic approach with the high-per-formance DDR2 modules it sells underthe HyperX name. Kingston’s modulesare less flashy with their Dodger-blue alu-minum alloy heat spreaders, but they getthe job done. Kingston is selling otherHyperX modules at clock speeds up to1,000MHz with 5-5-5 timings (similar to

the OCZ Platinum kit), but the moduleswe tested are rated for 800MHz operationat CAS 4-4-4-12 at 1T timings.

The KHX6400D2LLK2/2G modulesare the fastest-rated modules we tested atstock 800MHz speeds, and they also runat the lowest voltage levels (2V). Themodules don’t support EPP technology,but as of this writing, Kingston hadrecently introduced modules with EPPsupport, so if you have an EPP-supportedplatform, keep an eye out for those.

Although the Kingston modules pro-duced excellent performance at stock800MHz frequencies (the best in thisshootout), they weren’t as terrific of over-clockers as the Corsair and OCZ modules.We were only able to clock our Kingstonmodules up to 933MHz at fairly low CAS5-5-5-2T timings. Even to get to thisspeed, we needed to kick up the voltage

propositioning it as an open standard, sohopefully other manufacturers will jumponboard and implement EPP in theirupcoming modules. Even with EPP in themix, however, you still can manuallyoverclock these modules. We overclockedthe Corsair XMS2 8500C5 modules to1,150MHz at the module’s base 2.2Vwith CAS 5-5-5-2T, a bit faster than themodule is rated to handle.

Our other Corsair review kit, theTwin2X2048-6400C4, is based on verysimilar (perhaps identical) technologyunderneath. These modules, however,aren’t designed for overclocking to insane-ly high frequencies. The XMS2 6400C4modules are designed to run at stock800MHz clock rates at low CAS 4-4-4-12timings. Thus, the modules may appealmore to the high-performance workstationcustomer who wants the best performancebut doesn’t want to throw in the possibleinstability of running a system at higher-than-stock memory frequencies.

Like their higher-frequency brethren,the XMS2 6400C4 modules are equippedwith reflective black heat spreaders, whichare needed even though the modules runat a slightly lower 2.1V. The XMS26400C4 modules also use EPP technolo-gy, which set our memory-timing para-meters to the same frequencies and timings we saw from the XMS2 8500C5.In manual mode the modules overclockedquite high as long as we eased the memory


HyperX KHX6400D2LLK2/2G


peratures by letting module-created heatescape and/or allowing system-created airto flow in a more direct path to the mem-ory chips. With additional holes it seemslikely that OCZ’s modules have less sur-face area and use less heatsink material(the modules are slightly lighter thanCorsair’s), so it’s a tough call whichmethod is more effective. We can say wehad no issues with heat during our testing.

OCZ pretests each 1GB module andcertifies it to run at 1,000MHz clockspeeds at CAS 5-5-5-15 latencies at2.1V—a bit slower than Corsair’s high-end product rated for up to 1,066MHz atthese same timings (but also requiring

levels to 2.1V. We couldn’t get the mod-ules to work stably at clock speeds over950MHz. In any case, Kingston is lessadamant about marketing its modules tooverclockers, and these modules do deliverexcellent stock performance.

OCZ DDR2-8000 Platinum EnhancedLatency XTC Dual Channel & PC2-8000 Gold GX XTC Dual Channel

OCZ is likely Corsair’s most resilientcompetitor in the high-performancememory market, and the company alreadyhas nearly a dozen DDR2 products allfocused at high-end enthusiasts and over-clockers. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., just

blocks from One AMD Place, it’s not sur-prising OCZ and AMD have workedtogether on a number of high-performanceprojects. Like many of its competitors,OCZ is also pushing dual-channel DDR2packs as the perfect solution for AM2 sys-tems. We tested two such kits.

The higher-performance kit of the twois the OCZ DDR2-8000 Platinum En-hanced Latency XTC Dual Channel kit.Fitting of its name, the modules are outfit-ted with ultra-reflective silver heat spread-ers (sadly not platinum, though). The heatspreaders use a unique open-airflow honeycomb design (dubbed XtremeThermal Convection) that decreases tem-

s p o t l i g h t

HyperX KHX6400D2LLK2/2G$349Kingstonwww.kingston.com● ● ● ●

DDR2-8000 Platinum EnhancedLatency XTC Dual Channel$499OCZwww.ocztechnology.com● ● ● ●

PC2-8000 Gold GX XTC Dual Channel$479OCZwww.ocztechnology.com● ● ●



5-6-6-15 timings at 1,000MHz. Therewas a slight performance drop due to thelower timings, although these modulesoverclocked to 1,066MHz at CAS 5-5-5timings, reaching Platinum Edition levelswith a small voltage boost (2.1 to 2.2V).These modules run about $20 to $30cheaper than the Platinum Edition mod-ules, so consider going all out for thePlatinum modules if you’re planning onpurchasing OCZ modules. ▲

by Chris Connolly

more voltage). These modules also workgreat at DDR2-800 speeds with the tim-ings at slightly higher CAS 5-4-4-12 set-tings. Additionally, the OCZ Platinummodules were good overclockers; we over-clocked the modules to 1,120MHz whilemaintaining the module’s stock CAS 5-5-5-15 timings. We also successfully over-clocked the modules by running at CAS4-4-4 timings at DDR2-800 speeds.

Unfortunately, as of this writing, theOCZ Platinum XTC 8000 DDR2 mod-ules we tested don’t support EPP. How-ever, OCZ has just started adopting EPP,

and it has already moved the technologyinto several of its high-end modules. It’slikely we will see EPP support across theboard on OCZ memory modules in thenear future.

We also tested OCZ’s 2GB pack ofPC2-8000 Gold GX XTC Dual Channelproduct, which also has two 1GB mod-ules pre-tested to 1,000MHz DDR2clock speeds. The only differencesbetween the Gold and Platinum editionsappear to be the timings and color. TheGold Edition modules have gold-tingedheat spreaders and are rated for CAS

s p o t l i g h t

The Makeup Of Our DDR2 Memory ModulesDespite the differences in clock speeds and timings, there wassurprisingly little variance in our real-world gaming benchmarksamong these memory kits. The DDR2-1,000 and 1,066MHzmodules provided the greatest amount of bandwidth, althoughthe modules with tight memory timings and lower clock speedsperformed just as well as, if not better than, the higher-clocked,higher-latency modules.

At the time of this writing, DDR2-1,000 and DDR2-1,066 mod-ules held substantial price premiums over DDR2-800 modules,even high-end 800MHz modules with low-latency timings. Giventhe small amount of difference between the two speed grades,we’d highly recommend purchasing high-quality DDR2-800 modules with low latencies as of now. Not only will performancelevels be nearly identical to those with DDR2-1,066, but youwon’t have to risk instability by running at overclocked speeds.

Our Kingston modules provided the best stock 800MHz per-formance and also have the lowest price. Thus, these kits are ourrecommendation for most people. However, Corsair’s XMS26400C4 modules are also a good buy; they have a lower pricecompared to the 1,000MHz-plus modules but can also overclockto higher levels if you’re willing to live with a bit of latency. OCZ’smodules are excellent performers and overclockers, but they’reextravagantly priced, so they’re difficult to recommend com-pared to the other kits here. Hopefully by year’s end, we’ll seelarge-scale companies such as Samsung and Infineon bringOEM-style DDR2-800 modules to market to drive prices down.

In any case, DDR2-800 and AMD’s Socket AM2 processorsare a terrific match. We’re looking forward to seeing how theplatform evolves the next several years before DDR3 hits, hopefully in 2009. ▲

Corsair XMS2 Corsair XMS2 Kingston HyperX OCZ PC2-8000 OCZ PC2-8000 8500C5 6400C4 KHX 6400 Platinum EL Gold GX XTC1,066MHZ 800MHz 800MHz 1,000MHz 1,000MHz5-5-5-18-2T 4-4-4-12-2T 4-4-4-12-1T 5-5-5-15-2T 5-6-6-15-2T




Sciencemark 2.0 Memory 40.2ns 43ns 41.1ns 40.6ns 41.4nsLatency




ith AMD SocketAM2-based CPUs

hitting the streets, itwas time for us to put

together a killer machineto see exactly what the plat-

form could do. We all knowthat AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-62 is super fast in its own right, butwhat could it do when overclocked well beyond its default speedand coupled with some of today’s best components? That’s whatwe intended to find out.

Keep CoolThe FX-62 ($1,031), AMD’s current flagship AM2-based

CPU, was the obvious choice for our rig’s cornerstone. We rarelysettle for “bone stock” components, so we did away with the PIBcooler that AMD supplies with retail FX-62s and instead pickedup a new Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 cooler ($65). The oversized

CNPS9500, constructed almostentirely of nickel-plated copper, hasthree curved heatpipes that wick

heat away from the heat plate, transferring it to thecooler’s ultra-slim 0.2mm heatsink fins.

If the FX-62 is our system’s cornerstone, then ourmotherboard is the foundation. We wanted a solid base

to build upon, so we chose Foxconn’s nForce 590 SLI-based C51XEM2AA ($210). This choice may confound

some power users unfamiliar with Foxconn’s recent prod-ucts, but the C51XEM2AA is about as good as AM2 mother-boards get in terms of features and performance. While Nvidiareps were briefing us recently on the nForce 590 SLI chipset,they told us, “To build great core logic, you need to build agreat motherboard.” To showcase the chipset, Nvidia designedan nForce 590 SLI-based board that incorporates all the hard-ware and software features the chipset offers, plus all the BIOShooks necessary to fully utilize nTune 5.0. Foxconn took thatreference board, re-qualified it, and brought it to market as theC51XEM2AA. With support for LinkBoost and EPP (EnhancedPerformance Profiles) and an overclocking-friendly BIOS, theC51XEM2AA fit our needs perfectly.

How Low Can You Go?You can’t have a high-performance rig without overclockable,

low-latency memory. To that end we enlisted Corsair memory forour build. The increased bandwidth that the new DDR2 memorycontroller in the Athlon 64 FX-62 only does so much to boost theAM2 platform’s performance. However, the FX-62’s on-die mem-ory controller does benefit significantly when coupled with low-latency RAM. To date, the lowest-latency, dual-channel DDR2memory kit with the highest capacity available is Corsair’sTWIN2X2048-6400C3. Our kit ($453) included a matched pairof 1GB DIMMs (2GB total) able to operate at CAS 3-4-3-9 set-tings. The kit also uses EPP for automatic overclocking wheninstalled in a compatible motherboard, which ours is.

Push The PixelsTo power our graphics subsystem, we went to the top of

Nvidia’s line-up and installed two 512MB GeForce 7900 GTXcards ($499 x2) in an SLI configuration. Why not a pair ofGeForce 7950 GX2s? As of this writing, Nvidia isn’t supporting

s p o t l i g h t

The CPU at the heart of our AM2 rig is AMD’s flagship Athlon 64 FX-62—overclocked way beyond its specifications, of course.

Corsair’s TWIN2X2048-6400C3 2GB DDR2 memory kit operates at low latencies of CAS 3-4-3-9and incorporates EPP (Enhanced PerformanceProfiles) for automatic overclocking when it isinstalled in the right motherboard.


s p o t l i g h t

quad-SLI with two 7950 GX2s in the DIYmarket. To somewhat make up for the dis-parity, we overclocked the hell out of theGTXs, boosting their performance wellabove stock. In fact, we ran the cards with GPU and memory clock speeds of700MHz and 875MHz (1.75GHz DDR),respectively. The 7900 GTX is also theonly card that currently works with Link-Boost enabled on the nForce 590 SLI.Check out how our rig tore through FEAR,and we promise you won’t be disappointed.

Last month, we focused on RAID (page54), including setting up and benching various RAID arrays using 10,000rpmWestern Digital Raptor X WD1500 harddrives. The WD1500 has consistently putup the best performance numbers of any

desktop hard drive currently available, sowe slapped a pair ($289 x2) into our AM2rig running in a RAID 0 config. Although300GB of storage isn’t much, our setup’sperformance is hard to beat. Additionally,the nForce 590 SLI is specifically optimizedfor this drive, so it was a perfect choice.

Power & The RestOur remaining components include an

OCZ GameXStream 700W SLI-certifiedPSU ($160), a Sound Blaster X-Fi card

($115), and a Plextor PX-716A ($145)drive, all installed in a sleek SilverstoneTJ-03 case ($275). The amalgamation ofour supporting components, along withZalman’s cooler, the FX-62, CorsairRAM, and Foxconn board let us overclockour CPU to over 3GHz with the RAMrunning at over 1GHz. Needless to say,with these specs, our ultimate AM2 rigturned out to be a hell of a performer. ▲

by Marco Chiappetta

Until something faster comes along, WesternDigital’s 10,000rpm Raptor X WD1500 is theundisputed champion of high-performance desktop hard drives. We linked two together in a RAID 0 configuration.

We stuffed the components that make up ourAM2 rig into a Silverstone TJ-03 case.

Stock Clock Speeds Overclocked SpeedsAthlon 64 FX-62 Athlon 64 FX-62

SiSoftware Sandra 2007 Pro at 2.8GHz at 3.1GHz

Processor Arithmetic

Dhrystone ALU 20,411Mips 22,662Mips

Whetstone iSSE3 17,230Mflops 19,128Mflops

Processor Multimedia

Integer x4 aEMMX/aSSE 52,936itps 58,754itps

Floating-point x4 iSSE2 57,642itps 63,966itps

Memory Bandwidth

Integer Buffered iSSE2 8,501MBps 10,164MBps

Floating-point Buffered iSSE2 8,462MBps 10,104MBps

LAME MT MP3 Encoding (minutes:seconds)

Single-threaded 1:12 1:05

Multithreaded 0:48 0:42

Cinebench 2003 (seconds)

Single-threaded 66.3 59.7

Multithreaded 35.4 31.9

F.E.A.R. v1.05

Low-resolution CPU Test 221fps 242fps

Ultimate AM2’s Performance ProfileAfter we built our AM2 system, we had to see how it could perform. Not content with stockperformance, though, we overclocked the CPU, memory, and graphics cards. The system runson Windows XP Pro SP2, with DirectX 9.0C (June 2006 update), ForceWare v91.31, andnForce drivers v9.34. In its overclocked config, we clocked the FX-62 at a healthy 3.1GHz andthe RAM at 1,042MHz. To achieve these speeds, we dropped the CPU multiplier to 12X, raisedthe HyperTransport frequency to over 260MHz, and bumped the voltages to the CPU and mem-ory up by 0.1V. To keep the system stable, we had to relax the memory timings to CAS 4. Wealso took the GeForce 7900 GTX cards from stock GPU/memory speeds of 650MHz/800MHz to700MHz/875MHz.

The overclocked system put up some serious benchmark scores. Perhaps the most impres-sive results were in the Sandra Memory Bandwidth test, where the rig easily broke the 10GBpsbarrier, and the high-res F.E.A.R. benchmark, where the system ran at greater than 100fps,even with the resolution cranked up to 1,600 x 1,200 with 4XAA and 16XAF enabled. What thescores can’t convey is the system’s overall responsiveness. The rig is easily the fastest DIYsystem we’ve built and had the pleasure to use. Until Intel’s Core 2 Duo arrives, there doesn’tappear anything on the immediate horizon that can touch this rig. This one is a screamer. ▲


The BleedingEdge Of SoftwareInside The World Of Betas

I t was only a matter of time before the900-pound gorilla of the Web browser

market got in on the alternative browserscene, with Internet Explorer 7 beingExhibit A. While perhaps not as innovativeas Firefox or Opera, IE7 is a strong showingwith many new features that power usershave clamored for for years. And becauseIE7 will be part of Vista (and probably anyfuture WinXP service packs), even if youdon’t care for the changes, you might as wellget used to them.

IE7 looks much different than otherbrowsers and most other programs. Bydefault there’s no traditional menu bar. TheBack and Forward buttons are the only onesvisible on the toolbar. Other commands andmenus appear as pop-up menus from small-er buttons. The result is much more of aWeb page is visible at one time.

Tabs are an obvious addition to IE7,along with an RSS reader and integratedsearch toolbar (MSN Search by default).These features make IE feel a bit likeFirefox. Also similar to Firefox is the abilityto print Web pages without cutting offmaterial on the left. Better is a Print Previewscreen where you can drag and drop mar-gins and easily remove headers and footers.

Security improvements are welcome. Allwindows display “unspoofable” URLs toprevent phishing, and IE7 runs in a protect-ed mode to prevent spyware or viruses fromgetting into the base OS. There are also sup-posedly internal changes to keep IE7 frombeing the open door that IE6 has been.

Web pages appear in IE7 pretty much asin IE6, and with stability and speed being ashigh as they are, there’s little reason not togive IE7 a whirl. ▲

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

T here’s no shortage of Internet radioplayers for Windows, and most let you

listen to at least a slice of the radio spectrum.Perhaps for this reason, the smaller musicplayers are often free. But there’s room forinnovation, as Screamer Radio proves.

Many media players are horribly bloated.If loading a 10MB app to listen to a soundstream is offensive, Screamer will be musicto your ears; it’s just a 750KB download.The UI is simple with just some drop-downmenus, a VU-meter, volume slider, and afew playback controls. Data about the cur-rent radio stream displays in the middle.Screamer comes with about 100 presets tovarious stations, but copying and pastingnew radio links is a snap.

Screamer’s best features may be its record-ing abilities. Using the LAME encoder and abuilt-in buffer, it can record radio streamsdirectly to MP3s, even if you start recordinga few minutes into a song, and optionallystop when the song finishes. Screamer doesthis with OGG, AAC, and Windows Mediastreams, although not Real streams.

Screamer isn’t perfect, though. Presets livein the menu structure only, so you can pro-gram, say, your top 10 stations to a row ofpreset buttons, such as with most car stereos.Some recordings require touching up, asScreamer detects song breaks via the station’stransmission of artist and title information,which can lag behind the audio stream sub-stantially. An alarm function and ability to

Screamer Radio 0.3.9 Beta

Official product name: Internet Explorer 7Version # previewed: 7 Beta 2Publisher: MicrosoftDeveloper and URL: Microsoft;www.microsoft.comETA: Q4 2006Why you should you care: The future de-facto Web browser is here.

Official product name: Screamer RadioVersion # previewed: 0.3.9 Beta (20060524)Publisher: David ZidarDeveloper and URL: David Zidar;www.screamer-radio.comETA: Q4 2006Why you should care: Perhaps the best freeInternet radio client for Windows.

by Warren Ernst

l o a d i n g z o n e

record programs at a preset time would alsobe nice. Still, the app is free, stable, light-weight, and a welcome addition for Internetradio junkies. ▲


UUppggrraaddeessAdobe Reader Speed-up 1.35Tweaks for this invaluable one-trick toolnow only work with Adobe Reader version 7.

Get it at: www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk

Aurora Beta 9.0This graphics app gets a new UI anddocking panels for Preview, Project,Logical Tree, Resources and Propertiestabs. You can also search for objects andmake limited 3D animations.

Get it at: www.mobiform.com

BitComet 0.68 BitComet gets an improved core, includ-ing a better select-file algorithm, plus bugfixes for some crashes that nonstandardHTTP protocol and encryption protocolpackets caused.

Get it at: www.bitcomet.com

CCleaner 1.30.310The free system cleaner and optimizationtool now detects and cleans Opera, addsWindows Defender Cleaning, andupdates Nero Burning ROM cleaning.

Get it at: www.ccleaner.com

Filezilla 2.2.24aThe FTP client gets a fix for compatibilitywith non-standard desktop locations.

Get it at: filezilla.sourceforge.net

Firefox 1.5.0.4A minor upgrade makes the browser morestable and secure than previous versions.

Get it at: www.mozilla.org

iView MediaPro 3.1This personal media manager gets newUniversal Binary compatibility for the Mac. New features appear for toolbarsearch, import\export operations, andthumbnail views.

Get it at: www.i-view-multimedia.com

Mp3tag 2.36New features for the media file utilityinclude UNSYNCEDLYRICS for MP4tags, an “export cover to file” option,and an auto-complete feature for drop-down menus.

Get it at: www.mp3tag.de/en

MySQL 5.0.22This version plugs a security hole discov-ered in multibyte-encoding processing.

Get it at: www.mysql.com

Opera 9.0 Build 8460Recent builds of Opera 9.0 now exportbookmarks to Netscape-compatible for-mats. A horizontal toolbar also appears as needed.

Get it at: www.opera.com

Picasa for LinuxGoogle now has a Linux version of thefree image manager that’s designed towork on any Linux OS running on a 386-compatible Intel CPU. Functionality issimilar to the Windows version.

Get it at: picasa.google.com/linux

Thunderbird 1.5.0.4Mozilla’s email client adds Universal Binarysupport for Mac OS X to provide nativesupport for Macs with Intel Core CPUs.

Security upgrades are on display this month, including a new

ZoneAlarm’s suite version and the official release of Windows Live

OneCare. Linux users get their own Picasa version and BitComet and

uTorrent see refreshes for BitTorrent junkies.

This version also gets security fixes and stability improvements.

Get it at: www.mozilla.org

uTorrent 1.5.1 Beta Build 462 BetaThe BitTorrent client gets a fix for an occa-sional run-time error when opening a con-taining folder. Changes include a newComplete On column, better UPnP code,and graphic progress bars on by default.

Get it at: www.utorrent.com

Windows Live OneCareMS officially releases its security and systemmaintenance suite, which includes anti-virus, antispyware, tune-up, and monitor-ing elements, all available as a Web service.

Get it at: www.windowsonecare.com

ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 6.5The suite gets a new Identity ProtectionCenter to help avoid identity theft. AGame Mode also throttles back some secu-rity alerts and warnings that can interruptonline play.

Get it at: www.zonealarm.com

DDrriivveerr BBaayyATI Catalyst 6.5The Radeon drivers add a Standard DualMode to the Overlay Theater Mode forX1x00 cards that hardware-acceleratesvideo on dual displays in clone mode. Theyalso extend adaptive antialiasing support tothe Radeon 9500 and above families.

Get it at: www.ati.com

Sony PSP Firmware 2.71This firmware lets the Web browser down-load game demos directly to the MemoryStick, and the demo for LocoRoco is avail-able. Other updates improve PSP interac-tion with Sony LocationFree devices.

Get it at: www.us.playstation.com/psp

Sound Blaster X-Fi BetaThese drivers expire in September andaren’t supported, but they give the soundcard OpenAL 1.1 and improve the overallaudio experience.

Get it at: www.creative.com

by Steve Smith

s o f t w a r e | u p g r a d e s


file to a specific directory. In the program’smain download window, you can shapethe upload/download parameters, but onlyafter drilling into a right-click menu underthe cryptically labeled Local Settings. Andso it goes with this decent, but cumber-some, program. Options for shaping theupload/download rate of individual filesare available as five priority settings in theright-click context menu. Simple Up andDown arrows on the interface move filesup and down the list to set relative priority.

In fact, “simplicity” really is the watch-word for ABC, and that may be good formany users. The program doesn’t offeranything like the granular monitoringdetail of the other clients in this roundup,but most novices will hardly understand,let alone need, them. The app’s operation

is relatively unobtrusive, and I foundits default settings gobbled a bit lessbandwidth from my other networkand browsing tasks than some of thegorilla-sized alternatives.

A three-man team produces ABC,and there is little in the way ofdetailed help besides an open forum

and a push-over to BitTornado’sFAQ, which is itself pretty limited. Fornewbies, this program has its simplecharms, and like all of these clients, it gets the basic jobs done. Most users will quickly yearn for the flexibility of morerobust clients, however.

Azureus 2.4.0.2If there is a Cadillac of BT clients,

Azureus is surely it. For those who reallywant total control of all aspects of their file-sharing experience and who like poppingthe hood on a program and playing with allof its parts, Azureus, which is built on Java,is the one for you. For newbies and midlevelsystem owners, however, there are easier andless resource-hungry programs available.

router with UPnP support and ZoneAlarmInternet Security Suite installed. With eachprogram I tried to maintain up to threesimultaneous downloads from well-seededsources and used any available integratedtools to create a torrent from a file. Usingeach client’s default download settings inthe background, I also browsed, used email

clients, and operated various elements ofMicrosoft Office in the foreground to testfor obtrusiveness.

ABC [Yet Another BitTorrent Client] 3.1 The glibly named ABC is bit more

cursory than some of the other BT clientsaround. The app is based on the Bit-Tornado core, but most of its operationsare a bit less polished than Azureus,BitComet, and uTorrent. Nevertheless,like a lot of smaller BT projects, this onegets the job done in a simple style that’snot complicated or obtrusive.

Unlike most other leading BT clientsaround, ABC greets a new torrent down-load with only an invitation to point the

r e v i e w s | s o f t w a r e

H ow many BitTorrent clients canthere possibly be? Several yearsinto the life of Bram Cohen’s

revolutionary file-distribution system, literally scores of variants riff on the BTtheme, from major players such as Azur-eus and BitTornado to offbeat apps likePDA-oriented WinMobile Torrent.

Veteran torrent surfers are probablyalready bolted to one or another of themany programs out there, but anyonelearning to swim in this torrent of choiceshas to wonder how BitTorrent might bebetter than BitTornado or BitComet orBitWhatever? Most of the top BT spin-offs are quite good, but each caters to adifferent type of user with different needs.

I rounded up a baker’s half dozen ofthe most popular programs and checkedtheir appropriateness for the many stylesof file-sharing usage. The BT category isstill new, and much of the developmentcomes from small teams that swap in and out beta features frequently. Thesereviews are based on the latest officialprogram versions as of mid-June, so all will likely have updates as you readthis. For a comprehensive view of what’savailable and new in BT, try Slyck.comfor file-sharing news and its Guide ToBitTorrent, which has links to mostmajor programs and online guides for asector that, alas, still suffers from poordocumentation overall.

How We TestedI tested these apps on a 3GHz Pentium 4

machine with 1GB of RAM running onWindows XP Pro. I ran the torrents across acable broadband connection that, accordingto Speakeasy.net’s online test, provided6,198Kbps download and 359Kbps uploadbandwidth. My connection went through a

How The Torrents FlowA Roundup Of BitTorrent Clients

ABC [Yet Another BitTorrentClient] 3.1FreeVarious developerspingpong-abc.sourceforge.net ● ● ● ●



Azureus’ interface is quite simple andclean. From a My Torrents list, you candrag your downloading files into a differ-ent priority order. Very helpful coloredicons indicate the health of the connec-tion for each downloading torrent. Right-click any file and a cascade of advancedoperations spews forth, including every-thing from adding new trackers to settingdownload speed limits on specific files.

There’s a tremendous level of controlof every imaginable aspect of the protocolhere. You can launch files directly fromthe Seed area once a download is com-plete. But that is just the surface stuff.Azureus has piles of tabs that show youboth the individual pieces of a torrent andthe actual files in a package. Additionally,when individual files are complete,Azureus lets you open them, even as therest of the package is downloading. Alsovery handy is the ability to downloadselectively from a package of files by justunchecking boxes in the file list. Thisdoesn’t always make the download faster,but it can save you a lot of drive space.Azureus even has a cool graphical view ofthe swarm itself.

Expandability maybe Azureus’ strongestsuit. The app acceptsplug-ins that can applyIP filters, scan anddownload files fromRSS feeds, and even addthe game Sudoku. Theprogram is also amongthe few top BT clientsto use protocol encryp-tion, which claims todefend against the “traf-fic shaping” that somestingy ISPs are using tolimit bandwidth use by heavy downloaders.How well the schemeworks is anyone’s guessright now though.

A built-in wizard walks you through theprocess of making and planting a torrent,although when things went wrong, Azureusdelivered some inexplicable error messages.And while the program does support UPnPport forwarding, that feature kept de-livering errors I couldn’t track to a source.Overall, however, the developers providesome of the best general documentation ofany client, including an extensive FAQ thatanticipates most problems very well.

Azureus is a true Cadillac, in that it’snot only fully chromed out but also heavyand a road hog. It stole resources andmemory easily in my tests, and it sloweddown other operations more frequent-ly than most clients. You can do sometweaking to tame it a bit, but it is amongthe slowest loading and more obtrusiveprograms. Such is the price of power.

BitComet 0.68BitComet is a lot like uTorrent, in that

it offers users an incredible level of controlwithin an efficient interface. It’s arguablythe flattest of the BT interfaces, and it’scertainly more cluttered and confusingthan most. For instance, some of the over-sized icons along the top control the stateof the main window (whether displayingthe built-in Web browser, downloadingtorrents, etc.), but other buttons on thesame row control such operations as Pauseand Delete. Generally, a program should

distinguish more clearly between naviga-tion and function buttons. The left navi-gation area has tabs for rifling through thebrowser window, search services, and ahierarchy tree that seems to include directlinks to all your torrent activity, as well asRSS feeds and torrent sites. There’s yetanother pane that calls up file and down-loading details (Peers, Stats, Trackers, etc.)in an additional secondary window. Thetotal effect is flat but overdone.

BitComet claims to have wizened someof the common BitTorrent operation withIntelligent download/upload rate controls,disk caching, file allocation, and even hash scanning, all of which are designed to optimize performance. I can’t subjectively say I noticed much of a difference betweenBitComet and uTorrent or Azureus in over-all speed and efficiency, however. BitCometdoes seem to have a larger memory foot-print than the diminutive uTorrent, andlike most other clients, I had to dial back itsdefault settings to make simultaneous Webbrowsing bearable during downloads. I dolike the drag-and-drop ease of creating a tor-rent, which only requires dragging a file intothe transfer window and confirming thedefault settings.

Despite the clutter there are unique fea-tures here. I found an RSS reader, but Icouldn’t find clear directions for addingnew feeds to the default collection of torrent locations. There’s a built-in Webbrowser, but every new window or pop-upadded a new tab, and things got crowd-ed and chaotic quickly. There’s a chat function, but I got a message that it was Disabled For This Task, even though I enabled it in the Preferences menu. Overall, BitComet has cool ideas that are still implemented imperfectly.

Two things that did work quite welland stand out among the other clients areintegrated search and video previews.Unlike the search boxes in BitTorrent and uTorrent, BitComet’s lets the built-in browser call up the results immediately.You navigate to the torrent and pick it upin the client seamlessly and without jug-gling multiple programs. Any heavy videodownloaders should try BitComet, if onlyfor its unique video previewing feature.Additionally, in a very cool trick, the client


Azureus 2.4.0.2FreeThe Azureus Team azureus.sourceforge.net● ● ● ●



will reach out to assemble the pieces of thetorrent you need to sample the clip. Thisrequires a nice, fat bandwidth chunk andpatience, though. The final result can bechoppy and loaded with pauses, but it canalso save you from downloading the wrongor poor versions of the clip you want.

A mixed bag to be sure, BitComet feelsless finished than some of the competi-tion, but the search integration and videopreviewing may be exactly what someusers want.

BitTornado 0.3.15Popular with many torrentians, Bit-

Tornado bills itself as an “ExperimentalBitTorrent Client,” although I’m a bithard-pressed to say precisely what exactly isbeing tested out here. Surely the app isn’tan experiment in good looks because it ishands-down the ugliest client among thetop-tier options. The app has a purely text-driven interface with none of the cuteicons and tabbed screens you’ll find else-where. But that’s part of its charm. This is

a straight-ahead, simple torrent down-loader that gets the job done.

When you load a torrent, BitTornadojust asks to point the file to a directory.The interface handles only one downloadat a time. Unlike other clients every tor-rent requires a new instance of Bit-Tornado and a new window. The onlyway to prioritize files is to tweak the set-tings in each open window. This makesfor a messy process if you download mul-tiple files simultaneously, and it also addsup to a lot of memory usage. When Ichecked the Task Manager during a mul-tiple-download session, each instance ofBitTornado was listed as a separate serviceusing between 30 and 40KB each.

Additionally, resuming a failed or inter-rupted download can be a pain in the neckbecause you can’t just reload the client andhave it resume the download. You need torestart the app and point it to the torrent ordownload the torrent again from the origi-nal tracker site to have Tornado pick it backup. At least I think that’s how it works. This

thoroughly undocumented program has thesimple interface of an introductory programbut without any of the help files a newbieneeds. BitTornado also has a Super SeedMode for more efficient uploading of poor-ly seeded, larger torrents, but once you turnit on, it doesn’t turn off. The standard Bit-Tornado program doesn’t have a built-intorrent maker, but the developers say thedownload for the source code includes abasic tool for assembling a torrent.

For all of its limitations, Tornado has anupside, especially if you’re just grabbing a single torrent at a time: The downloadspeeds are good and relatively unobtrusiveto other network activity and running pro-grams. The simple display uses a slider anddrop-down menus to set upload limits,pause the download, or use presets for dif-ferent connection types. You can monitorpeer activity from a pop-up box, anddespite the app’s rough looks, there actual-ly are good, deep controls hiding in otherpop-up windows that let you do suchthings as flush data from memory to a hard


BitComet 0.68FreeBitCometwww.bitcomet.com● ● ● ●

BitTornado 0.3.15FreeBitTornadobittornado.com● ● ●



drive every five seconds and set one oftwo UPnP port-forwarding speeds.

For a quick and clean download,BitTornado is a nice tool to have, as it loads very fast, has an unclutteredinterface, and seems quite stable and polite with other aspects of your system. For running multiple tor-rents, however, it gets cumbersome. You might try the ABC client, whichtames this Tornado with a nicer inter-face and multiple-file handling.

BitTorrent 4.4.1Bram Cohen’s original interface for

his own protocol remains one of thebest entry-level clients around, and it’sa good choice even for advanced userswho have relatively light download needs.

BitTorrent presents a deceptively sim-ple, iPod-like interface. A Pause buttonlets you halt activity, and a slider controlsthe amount of upload bandwidth youwant to dedicate to your exchanges. Thelimited interface is remarkably smart inthat it anticipates what most basic andintermediate users really need and leavesthe bells and whistles to more sophis-ticated and complicated clients such asAzureus and uTorrent to serve the afi-cionados. BitTorrent has a small footprintof only about 33KB in active memory, itnever slows down other programs, and itsdownloading is relatively unobtrusive.

You can get more detail in BitTorrent byright-clicking a downloading file to view allits torrent parts, the peers used, etc. Youcan’t do such things as select pieces of amultiple-file torrent to download or ignore,however. Additionally, you can’t get thekind of granular control you’ll see in mostother top clients, such as regulating speedsfor specific downloads or previewing thepieces you’ve already downloaded. I alsowish there was a bit more direct controlover the bandwidth that BitTorrent uses.Other clients are easier to tame in thatrespect, although BitTorrent does give yougood seeding options to place limits ontime ratios for sharing files. The Settingswindow, which controls most functions,also lets you open multiple downloads,enable UPnP port forwarding, and adjustthe port that the program uses. Setting up a

there was more overall control overbandwidth usage, and it seems somefeatures, such as selective file down-loading, would be easy enough toimplement without cluttering theinterface. Power leechers and seedersmay find BitTorrent constraining inshort order, but it remains a solidstarting point for most of us.

Rufus 0.6.9This lesser-known client actually

has a very nice mixture of the betterfeatures and attributes from some ofthe more familiar clients, including theinterface of uTorrent, the visual track-ing of Azureus, and some of the ease ofBitTorrent. Additionally, Rufus has a

fairly low memory profile, and its defaultsettings didn’t hog all my bandwidth.

Much of what applies to uTorrentapplies to this program. The tabbed inter-face lets you view the details about the file,downloading, and peer status. This inter-face also has an integrated RSS reader forpulling torrents from feeds easily. It also hasa search box, but it’s poorly implemented,requiring that you manually insert theengine address and any necessary searchparameters. This seems awfully kludgy foran otherwise polished affair. The simple,icon-driven interface allows for easy priori-tization of downloads, and the comprehen-sive right-click menu accesses most of thesetting options for individual files.

What sets Rufus apart are some of itsunique management and settings options.For instance, when starting a torrent withmultiple files, the Multi-file Manager pops up to let you select which items to download and also change the download

order. The app has some cool settings that seasoned torrent seeders will appreciate, such as a Custom Condition that lets you get granular in dictating how a file is shared after it completes

torrent is easy using a window that sets thepiece size and enables “trackerless” tracking,which doesn’t require planting the torrentinformation on a specific tracker site.

One newer, standout feature (also nowin uTorrent) is an integrated search box.You can run a query for torrents againstthe BitTorrent search engine the companylaunched last year. While convenient, thesearch function isn’t seamlessly integratedbecause it really just calls up a window inyour default browser to get the results.You still need to navigate and finger a fileas you would normally. BitComet has amore seamless integration.

Regardless, what you do get in BitTor-rent is a solid and very usable client. I wish


BitTorrent 4.4.1 FreeBitTorrentwww.bittorrent.com● ● ● ●

Rufus 0.6.9FreeVarious developersrufus.sourceforge.net/index.php● ● ● ●



downloading and “choker options” for lim-iting uploads to peers that don’t share toyour liking. There’s also a Web Interfacethat accesses and controls aspects of yourtorrent downloads from a remote locationvia password-protected access.

For advanced users looking for somenew ideas in torrenting, Rufus is amongthe most imaginative turns on the genre.

uTorrent 1.5uTorrent has become a much-loved

client among torrent surfers in recentmonths, and I can see why. The programfeels like it has the best of both BitTorrentand Azureus. The clean, icon-driven inter-face is easy to manage, and the app installsitself conscientiously, asking to check yourbandwidth and preset upload and down-load parameters accordingly.

The interface has the functionality ofAzureus but packs the information onto asingle screen much more efficiently. A left-hand navigation box ratchets through listsof your current and completed downloadsand active and inactive torrents. Highlightany file in the main list window and thetabbed interface in the bottom half of thescreen can call up file info, members ofyour swarm, files in the package, and areal-time chart of downloading/uploadingspeeds. Unlike some other clients, all thisappears in a single window that’s very effi-cient and clean. Clear icons positionedalong the top line that resemble familiarVCR playback controls complement thewindow’s look. Among all the clients I

tested, uTorrent has the nicest combina-tion of simplicity and depth.

The program also has an integratedsearch box that is more powerful thanBitTorrent’s because it can query multi-ple torrent search engines, includingTorrentSpy, Mininova, and BitTorrentitself. Unlike the more seamless integra-tion of BitComet’s search box, uTor-rent’s calls up your browser to find anddownload a torrent.

For all its simplicity and depth, you doneed to tame uTorrent a bit. Its defaultsettings can eat up bandwidth with ease,and before I tweaked it, the programmade all other Internet operations crawl.Otherwise, the app’s strongest appeal maybe its miniature footprint—about 15KBof memory overhead, according to TaskManager. Not surprisingly, users witholder machines running pre-Windows XP

are especially fond of uTorrent; it’s veryunobtrusive and caused no discernibleslowdown in other programs.

The integrated RSS feed is one ofuTorrent’s standout features; it lets youmonitor feeds for new torrents and down-load them directly from the RSS window.Over the long haul, however, advancedtorrent surfers will appreciate uTorrent’slevel of control. When a torrent startsdownloading, uTorrent offers a greatrange of options, from selective file down-loading to electing to run the programupon completion. You can label a filebefore it starts downloading, keep it fromseeding, and more. Just as with the installation routines, uTorrent is very good at asking you upfront to declareyour options. I like that in a program. ▲

by Steve Smith


uTorrent 1.5FreeLudvig Strigeuswww.utorrent.com● ● ● ● ●

BitTorrent Clients Everywhere, But Which One Will Make You Care?

We tested seven of the more well-known BitTorrent clients floating around out there, but there are scads more to explore. For now, here’s a comparison of the applications we checked out. Keep in mind that BitTorrent clients are always in motion, so if a feature

you want seems to be missing in this chart, it may be in the app by the time you read this.

OSes UPnP Port Disk Super Prioritization Selective Protocol Media RSS Forwarding Cache Seeding Downloading Encryption Previewing Integration

ABC Windows Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No NoAzureus Windows/Mac/Linux Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No With Plug-inBitComet Windows Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes YesBitTorrent Windows/Mac/Linux Yes No No Yes No No No NoBitTornado Windows/Mac/Linux Yes Yes Yes No No No No NoRufus Windows/Linux No No No Yes Yes No No YesuTorrent Windows Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes



Siber Systems GoodSync

T he biggest problem with dataseems to be losing it, which can

happen by deleting the wrong file or(more frustrating) storing it someplaceand not knowing how to find it again.Fortunately, if you use GoodSync, youcan avoid both problems.

GoodSync synchronizes files that arestored in two locations, such as an inter-nal or external hard drive, USB device,

rewriteable CD/DVD, laptop, PC on a LAN, oreven another computer on the Internet. At itssimplest level, you can use GoodSync to back upimportant files at fixed time intervals, such asevery 30 minutes, every hour, or every day. Formore flexibility in scheduling backups, Good-Sync can work with Windows Task Scheduler.

Rather than have GoodSync run at certainintervals, you can also configure it to run whencertain events occur, such as when you plug in a USB device, log in (or log out), or change files. Unlike an ordinary backup program that

mindlessly copies files from one location toanother, GoodSync tracks file changes in bothlocations and performs two-way synchronization.This can be especially handy for keeping files on a desktop and a laptop synchronized so youalways have the most current files on each com-puter. To make synchronization even easier,GoodSync can create a synchronization folder soyou’ll always know where to find the latest files.

To broaden its worldwide appeal, GoodSyncalso lets you choose from over two dozen differ-ent languages, including Arabic, Chinese,Russian, and Norwegian. As soon as you switchto a different language, all of GoodSync’s menusand dialog boxes appear in your chosen language.

GoodSync is close to perfect: It’s easy to use;performs a single task flawlessly and reliably;and best of all, it’s free for personal use. If youneed to use it in a commercial environment,it’s still a bargain at $19.95. Whether you useone computer or a handful, GoodSync is a pro-gram every user should at least give a try. ▲

A business needs to know howmany people are visiting its

Web site, how many customers arebuying something, and how theyfound the site in the first place.Unfortunately acquiring all thisinformation can involve examiningWeb site logs and making sense outof the raw data. Rather than do thisyourself, VisitorVille offers a Sims-like alternative.

While some Web site analyzers create color-ful bar or pie charts to help decipher Web sitevisitor numbers, VisitorVille goes a step fur-ther by displaying your Web site as an animat-ed city. A building represents each page onyour site, and visitors appear as cartoon char-acters that stroll or ride in taxis from onebuilding to another.

The more people who visit a particular Webpage, the taller the animated building willappear. Thus, in just a glance you can see bythe tallest buildings which pages are the mostpopular on the site. If you watch your Web site

(or village) in real time, VisitorVille can displaylights inside buildings to represent that peopleare currently visiting a particular Web page.Characters with coins over their heads repre-sent visitors who bought something from thesite. VisitorVille even lets you follow particularvisitors so you can see which pages they visit,how long they stay on each page, and whetherthey buy something.

To help track how visitors are finding yoursite, VisitorVille displays buses labeled with thenames of popular search engines. If you see acharacter step out of a bus marked Google, youknow he found your site using Google’s searchengine. Linking your Web site to VisitorVillerequires a small chunk of HTML code, whichthe VisitorVille software can add to your Webpages automatically.

Depending on how many people visit yourWeb site, the cost of the software ranges from$14.95 to $169.95 a month. VisitorVillemakes analyzing a site’s traffic as easy as watch-ing a cartoon and helps you understand quicklyhow people use your Web site. ▲

World Market Watch VisitorVille

GoodSyncFree; $19.95 (commercial)Siber Systemswww.goodsync.com● ● ● ● ●

VisitorVille$14.95 to $169.95 a monthWorld Market Watchwww.visitorville.com● ● ● ●



by Wallace Wang


Altiris Software Virtualization Solution 2.0

Y ou’re familiar with the concept of virtualmachines, or entire computers (and OSes)

emulated within another OS. VMware andMicrosoft offer the two most popular virtual sys-tem apps for Windows, but both solutions workon a whole-system level, emulating an entire PC.Software Virtualization Solution works on amuch smaller level, encapsulating software pack-ages in such a way that you can turn on and offinstallations of Windows applications, restorethem to unaltered states, and even transportthem to different computers. All with virtuallyno performance loss. For free. Really.

Virtual spaces for apps can be a little hard towrap your head around, so here’s a concreteexample: With SVS you can install an app suchas OpenOffice and SVS automatically keepstrack of all the files and Registry changes theinstaller makes. The OpenOffice installer creates Start menu icons, adds a quick launcherto the System Tray, and associates all DOC files to OpenOffice Writer. When you activate

OpenOffice, all seems normal. When SVS deac-tivates OpenOffice, almost instantly OpenOfficedisappears from the system, including Startmenu items, background tasks, and file associa-tions. Even files that OpenOffice saved in MyDocuments disappear. When you enableOpenOffice again, everything reappears.

SVS lets you install virtually limitless amountsof apps, with each installed within its own set ofvirtual layers. One layer is write only, representingthe original installation. A second layer is read/write, representing saved files and changed set-tings within the app. Each app’s layers remainseparate, and SVS let’s you revert layers back totheir original states if an app becomes corrupt.

You might expect such a virtualization systemto be cumbersome, slow, and unreliable, yetAltiris’ system is extremely fast, elegantly simple,and amazingly reliable. Additionally, it’s freeprice for personal use makes it practically the perfect tool to try new software, even on youreveryday system. ▲

G PSoftware defines a file manageras “a utility program which pre-

sents lists of files and allows the user toperform actions of some kind on thosefiles,” such as copying, deleting, andopening files. That sounds a lot likeWindows File Explorer, which is freebut can’t do a tenth of the amazingthings Directory Opus 8 can, thus sav-ing you the cost of many other utilities.

DO8 follows in the path of otherfamous alternative file managers, includingNorton Commander, PowerDesk, NortonDesktop, and XTree. DO8 makes every effort tobehave like those products (and others) via Stylestabs. Clicking a tab in the DO8 toolbar gives youaccess to such modes as Dual Horizontal, DualVertical, Flat, Explorer style, Filmstrip, andmore. There are also dozens of keyboard short-cuts, with many shortcut sets matching thosebeloved utilities of yesteryear.

A ton of thought clearly went into DO8, andyou may not realize how brain-dead FileExplorer is until you use DO8 a while. For

example, when renaming files, the file extensionis never selected, so you aren’t forced to type .zipwhen renaming a Zip file. DO8 figures out whatfile types you’re working with in a directory andmodifies the listing accordingly. Image foldersappear as thumbnails, document folders displaydocument attributes, media folders display audioor video attributes, and so on. Overall, there aredozens of small functionality improvements.

DO8 also includes such major functions as anFTP client, Zip archive manager, folder synchro-nizer, duplicate file finder, DIFF and merge tool-set, thumbnail and image viewer, and foldersizer. Most of these modules reflect great thoughton the part of developers, and they work well.

If there’s a downside, it’s that DO8 intro-duces a lot of complexity. Practically every ele-ment of the program is highly configurable, sothings may not work as you’d expect at first.Fortunately, there’s detailed help, third-partyonline tutorials, and Internet discussion groupsavailable. Obviously, not everyone needs a pro-gram such as Directory Opus, but most powerusers probably could. ▲

GPSoftware Directory Opus 8

Software Virtualization SolutionFree; licenses $29 per nodeAltiriswww.altiris.com● ● ● ●

Directory Opus 8$65GPSoftwarewww.gpsoft.com.au● ● ● ● ●



by Warren Ernst


My Dinner With Jim AllchinMM icrosoft Windows is everywhere, and just

about everyone uses it. Even Linux fanat-ics boot into Windows once in awhile, as do OSX zealots. For years, we’ve been strapped withWinXP, an OS that’s been riddled with securi-ty flaws and user interface shortcomings. For sixyears, we’ve lived with XP—six long years withthe same OS. Did I mention XP has been onour Desktops six years now?

Microsoft has long been working on Vista,the much-ballyhooed WinXP successor. Vistaboasts a completely new line of utilities and astring of general usability improvements. Whenearly Vista builds were shared with developers,the OS was known as Longhorn. We were toexpect an entirely new file system (WinFS) withthis new version, amongst other rather loftyupgrades. We were to expect nothing less than“awesome” with an OS six years in the making.But as Vista started to shape up, that impressivefeature list started to winnow down.

At WinHEC 2006 I had the opportunity tointerview Jim Allchin, Microsoft co-president,Platforms & Services Division, for “The ChrisPirillo Show” podcast. It’s not every day you getto meet an influential leader of the world’s mostpopular OS. We asked our questions carefully,knowing he couldn’t answer our “real ques-tions” on the record. The interview went offwithout a hitch, and we had it posted to our sitewithin the hour. That evening a handful ofWindows community leaders were invited tohave dinner with Jim and discuss Windows’future. Again, a chance of a lifetime.

I was relentless. Immediately, Jim knew I wasa serious power user as I fired question afterquestion at him about why something was (orwasn’t) happening. He took it all in stride,explaining why certain things went down theway they did. My passion for Windows wasnever stronger than that night. I want Windowsto do more; I want Vista to be better; and Icared enough to tell Jim how, when, why, andwhere. He asked us to submit bug reportsdirectly to him, which I did immediately afterreturning home and loading Windows VistaBeta 2 on my laptop.

I blasted a list of countless UI oversights toemail, truly hoping he’d nail them down beforefinal Vista builds slipped out the door. After

sending that message, I posted the same list tomy personal blog, and that link went aroundthe ’Net like wildfire, including a subsequentpost on deeper oversights sitting inside of Vista.I didn’t hear back from Jim for almost a week,although his ultimate response was grateful intone (but somewhat troubled in subtext). Ibelieve he wanted to know why I was only both-ering to point out Vista’s flaws instead of shar-ing what makes it shine. The answer was simple:Vista doesn’t shine yet.

I’m a hard-ass when it comes to UIs. Myarguments with the Lotus Notes folks are leg-endary, with me claiming the front-end is aboutas beautiful as ox snot and Lotus supportersclaiming the backend is amazing. “Yes, but Ishould not have to look at something that looksworse than your own body’s backend.” I’m notsaying that Vista is unsightly, but it certainly hasmiles to go before it’s beautiful.

Let me ask you this: Would you rather makeout with [random hot chick] or [random uglygirl]? No human being in his right mind wouldpick anything but [random hot chick].

Microsoft is famous for putting the fit andfinish on its products in the 11th hour, which isthe primary reason these pimples and pock-marks never get cleaned up in time for every-body’s first date with their software. I’m toldtime and again to save my UI feedback untilthis part of the development cycle, but by thetime they’d be ready for it, it’s next to impossi-ble to incorporate the changes (and I’m told towait until the next product cycle). It’s a viciousMicrosoft circle, and it must be stopped for MS’own sake. Need I remind everyone that OS Xnow runs on Intel hardware? If that’s not a wakeup call to Windows developers, nothing is.

Until the right people at MS start payingattention, my Windows software UI jihad willcontinue. It’s my hope that RC Vista builds willshow marked improvements in consistency andflow. The ball is in MS’ court, and its OS willsoon be on your PC. How good will Vista look?If MS implements my feedback, it’ll shine.

I walked away from that dinner with a newrespect for Allchin. I don't envy his position. Heunderstands power users, though, perhaps morethan anybody else at MS. My only wish is thatI could help more than I already have. ▲

At WinHEC 2006 I

had the opportunity

to interview Jim

Allchin, Microsoft co-

president, Platforms

& Services Division,

in person for “The

Chris Pirillo Show”

podcast.You can dialogue with Chris at [email protected].

Chris Pirillo realizes that not every-body reads his byline, so they’re alsonot likely to discover that he’s got a

personal blog (chris.pirillo.com), a tech-content network (locker

gnome.com), an annual conference(gnomedex.com), a metasearch

engine (gada.be), and a wildly pop-ular interview podcast (thechrispir

illoshow.com). And to further provenobody bothers to read this part ofthe page, even though he painstak-

ingly writes something differenthere every month, he’ll PayPal

$100 to the first person who subscribes to his online content and

emails him with a short greeting.Will you be the first?

Dialogue Box


Secrets & SecrecyAA side from corporate shuffling over the

past decade, the Pretty Good Privacy(pgp.com) encryption program has been prettystable, as has its open-source doppelganger, GnuPrivacy Guard (gnupg.org). PGP is commercial,GPG is free, and both are mature applicationsimplementing the Internet standards trackOpenPGP specification published as RFC 2440“OpenPGP Message Format” in 1998(rfc.net/rfc2440.html). Books written aboutPGP over a decade ago are still useful, even iftheir treatments of PGP applications are woeful-ly outdated. Old stuff, right? Maybe not.

There’s the publication of a new book aboutPGP, the first in years, “PGP & GPG: Emailfor the Practical Paranoid,” by Michael W.Lucas. Lucas introduces basic cryptographicconcepts like symmetric and asymmetric cryp-tography, authentication, non-repudiation,public key encryption, and digital signatures;explains how they form the basis of OpenPGPimplementations PGP and GPG; and showshow to authenticate and encrypt your email.

Philip Zimmermann first released PGP in1991 with source code under a free-for-non-commercial-use license. It was the first trans-parent and strong encryption software for the masses, and with access to source codeyou didn’t have to trust vendors’ claims about how secure their software was. And you could confirm that there were no back-doors through which third parties could gainaccess to sensitive data.

In 1991, encryption software was considereda munition with limits on export, and Zimmer-mann faced serious federal charges for a while.But he has always maintained that true freedomof speech requires that you be able to conversewithout fear that some third party is listening.That’s why you can download the core sourcecode of the otherwise proprietary PGP, andthat’s why Zimmermann modified the PGPspecification so it could go on the Internet stan-dards track as RFC 2440.

Opponents to strong encryption ask: Whathave you got to hide? If you can use it, so candrug dealers, pedophiles, terrorists, and other evil-doers. How do we catch them if we can’t listen inon their communications? Very briefly, that’s justthe price we pay to insure honest citizens have the

right to maintain their privacy. Those evildoersuse a lot of other technologies, like automobilesand cameras and even box cutters, to do theirevil, but we still permit their free use.

Why not put in backdoors so the authoritiescan listen in? Can all authorities be trusted notto abuse their access? Anyone with access to abackdoor becomes a target for bribery or extor-tion; we always seem to have a few bad apples ingovernment service. Even if we trust our gov-ernment not to monitor political opponents,there are many repressive regimes that do notrespect human rights. Dissenters risk their livesto express opinions, and encryption with a back-door isn’t good enough for them. Even here,witnesses who’ve been threatened by criminals,women and children escaping from abusivefamily members, whistleblowers, and othersfind that strong encryption protects them—andbenefits society by keeping them safe.

Here’s the real news: Zimmermann has justreleased a public beta of Zfone, which securesVoIP conversations using an open specificationcalled ZRTP. Although phone companies andISPs may or may not be listening, your conversa-tions are private if you use Zfone with an Inter-net calling service. Not yet clear is whetherZfone use will be permitted under CALEA(Communications Assistance for Law Enforce-ment Act), which requires telecommunicationscompanies to provide backdoors to simplifymonitoring conversations.

Zfone encrypts data before it enters the network and decrypts it after it arrives at its destination. (ED: See this month’s “X-Ray Vision”on page 42 for more info.) Technically, one couldargue that Zfone-protected conversations canstill be monitored; they would just be gibberish.Also, Zfone protects only data streams, so conversations can still be monitored the old-fashioned way with bugs planted in suspects’telephones. Zfone conversations just can’t bemonitored automatically through backdoors atcommunication service providers’ facilities.

Is Zfone legal? Absolutely—for now. Will thegovernment eventually move to restrict it? Ihope not. I don’t have anything to hide, either.For a comprehensive discussion of the merits ofstrong and transparent encryption, see Zimmer-mann’s Web site at philzimmermann.com. ▲

Here’s the

real news:

Zimmermann has

just released a

public beta of

Zfone, which

secures VoIP

conversations

using an open

specification

called ZRTP.You can get saucy with Pete at [email protected].

Pete Loshin, former technicaleditor of software reviews for

Byte Magazine (print version),consults and writes about com-

puting and the Internet. Healso runs www.linuxcook

book.com. He owns shares ofboth Microsoft and Red Hat

and believes that Windows isn't for everyone, but

neither is Linux.

Open Sauce


T he Internet seems so simple for ushere in the United States: Typein an English URL and the site

pops up. But what if you speak and writean obscure language? Will typing a URLin your character set bring you to theright place? And shouldn’t your region’sgovernment, business, and people beable to use this tremendous resource justas easily as Americans? Now that somuch of the world economy occursacross the Internet, issues such as whomanages a nation’s discrete domaincountry code can become an issue withmomentous geopolitical consequence.For example, what if a major insurgencyin Iraq divided the nation between twofactions and governments? Which onewould claim legitimate authority overthe all-important .iq domain, wheremost of the nation’s governmental andcommercial traffic runs? And who wouldthe competing factions go to for a reso-lution? They would, of course, have torely on a U.S. organization to resolve thematter, a situation that one or bothmight find less than ideal.

Born In The USABecause the Internet as

we know it today grew outof a Department of Defensenetwork, the key element inthis worldwide communica-tions juggernaut remainstechnically under the con-trol and oversight of theU.S. government. At theheart of controlling the sys-tem are managing the DNS,which reconciles a domainname typed into a browser’saddress box with an actualIP address in the network,and the assignment of newgTLDs (generic top-leveldomains), such as .biz and.tv. The Department of

Commerce essentially outsources the day-to-day management of the Internet toICANN (Internet Corporation for As-signed Names and Numbers), whichapproves new domain suffixes and awardsprivate companies the right to sell domainnames. ICANN has always attracted bothdomestic and international critics. Somehere in the United States believe thatICANN conducts its business too secretly,and despite claims of its impartiality,remains influenced by theU.S. government.

But does the UnitedStates somehow “control”the Internet? “It’s reallyultimate authority ratherthan control,” explainsMichael Geist, Universityof Ottawa law professorwho holds the CanadaResearch Chair in Internetand E-Commerce Law.The United States couldnot, for instance, shutdown Internet access foran entire country or even

to monitor all Internet activity, as someclaim. For much of the international com-munity, the real issue involves managingtheir own country codes. ICANN, based inAmerica, controls the root server for theInternet; the small, indispensable databasethat directs all other servers in the world tothe authoritative directories of Web sites inother countries. When a country wants tomove the holder of its country code infor-mation (a process called redelegation) fromone entity to another, it needs ICANN tomake that change in the root server in orderfor it to be visible on the Internet. Usingthe Iraqi example, the U.S. governmentcould theoretically decide to mandate that aspecific entity in Iraq has authority over thenation’s .iq country code and direct all ofthe world’s traffic there. Thus, a simplechange of a few code lines in the root servercould legitimate an insurgent faction byhanding them an entire communicationsand economic infrastructure.

In May, the Commerce Departmentindicated it was ready to renew its contractwith ICANN, which signaled to the worldthat America had no intentions of handingInternet governance over to anyone elseanytime soon. And the relationship be-tween the U.S. government and ICANN isan ongoing source of controversy. Forinstance, ICANN recently rejected anapplication to create a new TLD (.xxx)devoted to adult content. In a series ofmemos the Commerce Department urgedICANN to delay the decision until furtherdiscussion and input, and many in theICANN community see that as improper

c a u g h t i n t h e w e b

ICANN, the nonprofit company that sets domain name policy,continues to attract criticism and scrutiny from groups such as ICANNWatch.org.

Digital Diplomacy Whose Internet Is This Anyway?


assured the other delegates, “While it’s noteven clear that we could turn a country ‘off’the ’Net, we have no incentive to do it. Itwould destroy the stability and reliability ofthe system.” In June 2005, the NTIA (Na-tional Telecommunications and Informa-tion Administration) declared its officialpolicy that, “The United States is commit-ted to taking no action that would have thepotential to adversely impact the effectiveand efficient operation of the DNS and willtherefore maintain its historic role in autho-rizing changes or modifications to theauthoritative root zone file.”

Some U.S. lawmakers have argued forretaining American control of the DNS sys-tem. In House and Senate resolution pro-posals last year, legislators reaffirmed U.S.commitment to the free flow of informa-tion and freedom of speech on the Internet.The Senate resolution (S.RES.273) gotblunt about the possible consequences ofnon-U.S. control: “Whereas the EuropeanUnion has also proposed transferring

intervention. For some it raised the ongo-ing issue of whether ICANN can ever beimpartial so long as the U.S. governmentgrants it its oversight powers.

Nations with shaky relationships withAmerica fear that geopolitics might intrude

on Internet policy decisions. For instance,could an American administration take anentire country off the Internet grid if itliked? David Gross, U.S. ambassador to lastyear’s WSIS (World Summit on theInformation Society) in Tunis, Tunisia,


At the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society)in late 2005, world leaders ranging from U.N.Secretary-General Kofi Annan (above) and NavajoNation President Joe Shirley Jr. (right) gave their inputon the internationalization of the Internet.

CPU: If there’s little evidence of the United States abusing its trust as a custodian of theInternet, then what’s the fuss about changing the status quo?

Geist: For the many people living outside of the United States, that simplyisn’t a good enough answer. They would argue the Internet is for them animportant national resource, and so to have a national resource be subject tothe ultimate authority of another single national government is problematic. CPU: U.S. legislators fear that internationalizing Internet governance invites abuse andundue influence from some regimes.

Geist: This isn’t handing the Internet over to the United Nations or to SaudiArabia. It’s a gross exaggeration. What it might entail, for example, could betaking just the country code aspect [redelegation] and putting that into a multi-national forum, so that there’s a great sense of security for individual countriesthat it isn’t just one country that has ultimate control.CPU: Is there any real alternative to ICANN that could take on the responsibility of man-aging these tasks?

Geist: I guess there are, but none is seen as palatable. ICANN itself is anexperiment and still working through the kinks, so to switch from ICANN tosomething else would be in the realm of possibility. The impediment to findingthe middle ground is finding the middle ground. We can’t agree on what theentity should look like.CPU: Is discussion of internationalization just going to go on and on for years withoutresolution?

Geist: I think it’s important to recognize that there has been some pretty sig-nificant progress made. A couple of years ago ICANN was really the only gamein town, and this wasn’t an issue that was even on anyone’s radar. [ICANN]was either ignoring it or observing it from afar. The dialogue that will happen inAthens this fall has far greater ICANN participation than in the past. That is apretty significant shift.

Although MichaelGeist, OttawaUniversity law professor, says that the interna-tionalization of the Internet will likely be a slowprocess, it will beinsistent. In just thepast few years, mostnations have come torecognize the stakethey have in the fu-ture of the network.

ProfessorMichael Geist:An Internet Of Inclusion

Q&A


United Nations created the IGF (InternetGovernance Forum), which will hold itsfirst official meeting in Athens in the fall.The mission of the IGF is to foster a“multi-stakeholder policy dialogue” whereall nations can voice their concerns andopinions on policy changes. And the issueof internationalization isn’t as contentiousas it seems because both the U.S. govern-ment and ICANN have recognized theneed to broaden international input on pol-icy decisions about a technology that in justa decade has become one of the planet’smost important geopolitical and economicforces. Don’t expect anything to happenquickly; after all, it took a separate meetingof an IGF advisory committee in May justto agree on the agenda for the Athens meet-ing. “We are accustomed to the Internetwhere things happen very quickly,” saysGeist. “I guess that is not the way policieschange on a global level.”

by Steve Smith

control of the Internet to the United Na-tions, and such a transfer of control of theInternet would confer significant leverageto the governments of Iran, Cuba, andChina, and would impose an undesirablelayer of politicized bureaucracy on theoperations of the Internet that would resultin an inadequate response to the rapid paceof technological change.” For some Sen-ators this isn’t just a matter of Americamaintaining nationalistic control over theInternet but of preventing some of themore repressive governments worldwidefrom muzzling the medium. Repressiveregimes could more easily influence aninternational body such as the UnitedNations to endorse policies that block orcensor Internet information in or out of acountry. The status quo has worked, theHouse resolution argues. “Existing struc-tures have worked effectively to make theInternet the highly robust medium that it is today.”

It’s important to note that evenICANN skeptics and much of the interna-tional community recognize the impor-tance of some centralized manager ofDNS policies and disputes. Frequent criticof ICANN and spokesman for CDT(Center for Democracy and Technology),David McGuire, admits that having theDNS and TLD systems under centralizedcontrol is necessary, if still problematic.“We would like to see ICANN get better;we would like to see ICANN becomemore transparent and more representative. . . but we tend to agree that ICANN isthe only reasonable option at this pointfor managing the Internet’s domain namesystem,” he told The Washington Post. Andsome critics of current U.S. policy andICANN such as Geist, who is often criti-cal of current Internet governance policies,does concede that America’s strongestargument for retaining Internet control isthat, “the U.S. hasn’t done much to abuseits position to date. The U.S. governmenthas rarely stepped in. Frankly, there hasbeen more abuse from ICANN than fromthe U.S. government.”

The World Rushes InAlthough there seems to be general sup-

port for keeping the overall management

of the DNS system with ICANN, manynations, including the United States, arepressing for substantial changes in thedecision-making process for determininghow the Internet works. In Tunis a Bra-zilian delegate, José Marcos Viana, toldthe meeting, “A private California compa-ny simply shouldn’t be running this sys-tem we all depend on.” Sovereign nationsdon’t believe that they should have to goeither to the U.S. government or its desig-nated manager, ICANN, to registerchanges that affect their country codes.

Some argue that unless America andICANN internationalize authority over theInternet, there will be the risk of nationssuch as China, Brazil, and Russia creatingand assigning domain names on their own,a move all three countries are considering.Elements in Iran are actually threatening tocreate their own alternate Internet thatmirrors many of the existing worldwideURLs, a situation that could confuse theworld’s digital traffic. In May, the ICC(International Chamber of Commerce)warned that such policies would threatenthe stability of the Internet and that someform of central global registry would bemore flexible in opening the Internet to awider range of languages. Currently theDNS system recognizes IDNs (interna-tionalized domain names) that use globallyuniform Unicode scripts. This Unicodestandard ensures that typing a .com URLin Russian or Arabic character sets will berecognized accurately and matched to thecorrect IP address. But more and more lan-guages, dialects, and character sets needaccess to the Internet, and many in theinternational community criticize the paceof ICANN’s response to these needs.“There has been a huge amount of pressureon ICANN to come up with somethingthat works on a more global basis,” saysGeist. “The current system excludes themajority of the planet from using theirown local languages and characters.”

The stakes in this game are very high;national economies and the rate at whichdeveloping nations progress are now inti-mately linked to Internet access. Manynations have declared the Internet itself as anational resource, which like oil or coal isessential to their economies. As a result, the


Sour

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cup.

org

RoboCup

Could robots, one day, outmaneuverand outsmart the world’s top ath-

letes? That’s certainly RoboCup’sdream. This international society hasan unusual and lofty goal: “by the year2050, develop a team of fully auton-omous humanoid robots that can winagainst the human world soccer cham-pion team.” The goal of the project(besides winning the World Cup) is todraw attention to research that wouldadvance life-saving technology, such asaiding in search and rescue efforts.


vodhell.txtLL et’s be honest: Most blogs are just emo kids

talking about how sad they are and geekstalking about technology for the sake of it. TheInternet makes it possible to share this informa-tion anonymously with strangers. “Because youcan” seems to overshadow obvious questionssuch as “should you?” and “why?”

But some blogs do something more: Theyprovide a level platform where you can shareyour thoughts in most ways; just as efficient-ly as the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world.You may not have access to your own syndi-cated broadcast network, but it takes onlyminutes to get your words in front of theworld on the Internet.

Now lately the declining costs of digitalvideo cameras, inexpensive audio- and video-editing software, and laptops have given riseto new trends in “because you can” media.Chief among them is podcasting and vod-casting: in many cases no different thanblogs, but instead translated to audio andvideo, respectively.

Unfortunately, with each step in technolo-gy, the skills required to produce something ofquality increase. Simply writing words is hard.But getting good audio quality and speakingthose words clearly and entertainingly is muchharder. Furthermore, to properly use lighting,hold a camera still, and know how to editvideo sequences together in a way that makesthem feel cohesive is still harder.

But there is a bigger problem with thesenew layers of technology that show us wherewe might be going with all of this. Theproblem is that the Internet has historicallybeen on computers. I have a screen coveredwith little pictures and words. I read as fastas I want. “Pausing” can mean as little asswitching to a different application or get-ting up to refill my cup of coffee. Readingwords on a page means I control the tempo;I control the start and the stop. I can open10 tabs. I can skip around from one blog toanother. I can seek opposing viewpoints.

You can certainly do podcasting on thecomputer. In fact, I would guess that despitethe iPod root of the term, most podcasting isdone on the computer. If you are in front of acomputer, posting podcasts would be just as

easily and perhaps even more efficiently con-sumed as transcripts. There are exceptions ofcourse: They Might Be Giants podcasts inmusical form. It is wonderful; it is like dial-a-song but longer. If only it came out more reli-ably. This podcast clearly demonstrates whatthe technology is for.

But most podcasts are just a few peopletalking. And not surprisingly, very few of ushave much of anything to say. Just becausethe Internet makes it easy for everyone to beheard, doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of usneed to bother listening. The only real bene-fit is that you can at least take these pro-grams with you: in your car; to the gym; toplaces where a screen isn’t exactly conve-nient, but likewise where your user interfaceoptions are limited. You’re trapped so youcan’t skip out to another program, furtherresearch on an insightful point, or fact checka comment by typing a few quick words intothe search engine of your choice.

Worst of all is the vodcast. The primarybenefit of most podcasts is that you canaccess them when you aren’t in front of ascreen. But in video form, you not only facea product that is technically more complicat-ed to produce, and therefore less likely to beof a reasonable quality, but now you lose theability to take it with you on a jog or at thegym or while driving your car. You’ve trans-formed your TV into public broadcasting.And there isn’t a lot of “Wayne’s World” onpublic broadcasting.

I think there is another step in there; anintegration between the Web and video.CNN has shown us the hell of the ticker.Each channel is in a race to cram more uselessinformation on the screen. As the anchor getssmaller, we see more clearly what vodcastingwill eventually give us: the ability to turn offtickers and watch programming worth watch-ing and go get information as we see fit—notglued over the top of talking heads. Ironicallyenough we will have to wait for that mythicalconvergence, and at that point “vodcasting”will just be TV controlled by the same megacorporations in charge now.

Except that we’ll have the same tools asthey do. ▲

Reading

words on a

page means

I control the

tempo;

I control the

start and the

stop.Contact me through old fashioned email at [email protected].

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda is thecreator and director of the pop-ular News for Nerds Web site

Slashdot.org. He spends histime fiddling with electronicgizmos, wandering the ’Net,

watching anime, and trying tothink of clever lies to put in hisbio so that he seems cooler than

he actually is.

The Department Of Stuff


by Jen Edwards

D I G I T A L L I V I N G

N ew hard drives in Seagate’sMomentus family, including

two using perpendicular recordingtechnology, will offer several mobile-oriented features, including a full-disk encryption scheme for betterprotection from hackers and thieves.Additionally, each new drive is builtto withstand 900Gs of nonoperatingand 350Gs of operating shock andvibration. The drives also use Soft-Sonic fluid-dynamic bearings fornear-silent operation.

The Momentus 5400 PSD(Power-Saving Drive) hybridmodel uses a traditional 5,400rpmspinning drive along with 256MBof built-in nonvolatile flash mem-ory that lets the notebook bootmuch faster. While entering sleepmode, the drive writes frequentlyaccessed data to the flash memory,letting the system reportedly wakeup 20% faster than a standardhard drive and with significantpower savings.

The Momentus 5400.2 FDEincludes a hardware-based encryp-tion scheme and preboot authenti-cation process that aims to prevent

others from accessing any datastored on the notebook. You canalso use third-party software (fin-gerprint and smart card options) toenhance drive setup and password/encryption key automation. Thedrive includes 128-bit AES encryp-tion, with encryption speedsreportedly matching throughputspeeds. Additionally, a quick-eraseoption will clear the drive if youwant to sell the notebook later. Forthose with higher-capacity needs,the Momentus 7200.2 is a 2.5-inchdrive with 8MB of cache and up toa 160GB capacity. The drive isdesigned for laptops, but Seagatesays it’s also suitable for RAIDenclosures and small-footprintdesktop PCs.

Pricing for the new drives hadn’tbeen set at press time, but capaci-ties are expected to range from 40to 160GB and be available in thefirst half of 2007.

Samsung has previously an-nounced that it is also testinghybrid drives, including drives withflash caches up to 256MB for prob-able release in early 2007. Samsungestimates the drives will take about30 seconds off standard boot times,add a half hour of battery life, and

be more reliable than traditionalspinning platter hard drives

without flash memory. ▲

R IM recently announced several deals that willbring the BlackBerry to China, Japan, and the

United Arab Emirates. RIM is partnering in Chinawith China Mobile Communications to first offer service to multinational corpora-tions in the country and then toindividual subscribers on ChinaMobile’s GPRS network.

In Japan, RIM will team withDoCoMo to offer BlackBerrysto corporate customers this fall. The devices will be com-patible with W-CDMA andGSM/GPRS networks for voice and data uses. RIM alsoannounced new partnershipswith KT Powertel in SouthKorea, StarHub in Singapore,and Etisalat in the UAE. RIMdevices and services are expected tobe available from as many as 200 carriers worldwide by year’s end.

In other Blackberry news, Cingular won the exclu-sive U.S. launch of the new BlackBerry 7130c. Thedevice is expected to run $200 with a two-year con-tract and voice plan. Aimed at individual users, thedevice is narrower than traditional BlackBerry units,offering a more phone-like design that includes anintegrated, hybrid QWERTY keyboard/phone numberpad and RIM’s SureType technology. The 7130c usesthe BlackBerry Internet Service with select ISPs forpush email and supports multiple accounts. Other features include a speakerphone, Bluetooth, conferencecalling, and support for polyphonic and MP3 ringtones. The 7130c uses Cingular’s EDGE data networkfor email and Web browsing, with data plans startingat $29.99 per month up to $49.99 a month for unlim-ited EDGE data.

In related news, Rick Ueno, general manager ofChicago’s Sheraton hotel, is willing to help break youof your BlackBerry addiction when staying at thehotel by locking your BlackBerry or other portabledevice in his office. A self-confessed former Black-Berry addict, Ueno will stow away the device freeuntil you ask for it back. ▲

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D I G I T A L L I V I N G

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A ccessories for iPods and other portable devices just keep on coming. First up isBeachgard’s Yelpie ($99.50), a portable safe complete with 90dB alarm and

motion sensor. When you’re at the beach, just store your iPod, PDA, music player,wallet, keys, and more in the Yelpie; turn the alarm on; and head for the water. Ifsomeone tries to steal the Yelpie, the motion detector trips the alarm for up to 30minutes or until the Yelpie no longer detects motion. The PIN-based alarmincludes a keypad and strap that attaches to any bag. The alarm isn’t submersiblebut is water resistant.

Belkin’s latest accessories include the TuneTalk Stereo ($69.99) and TuneStage($179.99). The TuneTalk Stereo—for video iPods and available in white or black—has two omnidirectional microphones for stereo recording, plus an input jack forrecording with an external microphone. The TuneStage ($179.99) uses Bluetooth tostream music up to 33 feet from an iPod nano to any home stereo. A transmitter mod-ule plugs into the nano’s bottom and a receiver plugs into an RCA or 3.5mm jack onany stereo via an included cable. No software is required, and the device offers up to sixhours of streaming with a fully charged iPod nano.

BoxWave’s FlexiSkin with Earphone Organizer protects nanos while also making iteasier to store your earbuds. The soft-silicone case completely covers a nano, leavingonly the screen and charge/sync port uncovered. On the back the earphone organizerholds each earbud, headphone jack, and cord, which wraps around the back. The case isavailable in seven colors for $19.95 each.

Proporta’s latest offerings are a bit more light-hearted. The Colour Change SiliconeCase for nanos ($19.95) is available in charcoal, blue, or pink, but the case graduallychanges to white based on ambient temperatures. Proporta’s Mobile Device Socks($17.95) expand to fit any iPod, PDA, mobile phone, or other music player and areavailable in sets of three (pink, blue, and green). ▲

KKeennssiinnggttoonn IInnttrroodduucceess EExxppaannssiioonn DDoocckk && MMoorree FFoorr NNootteebbooookkss

K ensington’s new NotebookExpansion Dock With Video

($179.99) uses NIVO technology to letyou connect a notebook to the dock viaone USB port. The dock’s big feature isproviding support for flat-screen moni-tors up to 17 or 19 inches with a nativeresolution of 1,280 x 1,024 and 32-bitcolor. PnP technology will automaticallyset the best monitor settings available.The dock also provides ports for fourUSB peripherals,

connections for speakers, and an Ethernetconnection. Additionally, the dock’swedge shape slightly lifts the back of alaptop for additional cooling.

Kensington also recently introduced aMicroSaver DS ($54.99) notebook lockthat uses a disc-style mechanism, making the lock more tamper-proof than

before. Other enhancements includestronger cable attachment, a temperedsteel cable, and a flat key with a plethoraof possible variations. ▲

Kensington's new Notebook Expansion Dock withVideo requires only one USB hookup but supports

external flat-screen monitors up to 19 inches.


TThhee WWoorrlldd’’ss FFaasstteesstt IInnddiiaannSir Anthony Hopkins proves yet again why he’s the dean of Hollywood actors; his perfor-mance as Kiwi Burt Munro (1899-1978) is seamless and captivating. In case you’re unfa-miliar with the story, Munro set a land speed record for streamlined sub-1,000cc motor-cycles at an age when most folks are discovering they have a favorite booth at Denny’s.But that’s not all: He traveled from New Zealand to the United States by working off hispassage on a freighter crossing the Pacific and then made his way to the Bonneville Salt

Flats with his custom 1920 Indian Scout in tow on a shoestring budget. “Indian” isthe rare feel-good flick that doesn’t stoop to smarmy platitudes to get the job done,and the bonus content includes excellent interviews with/footage of Burt himself.

UUnnddeerrwwoorrlldd EEvvoolluuttiioonn WWiiddeessccrreeeenn SSppeecciiaall EEddiittiioonnIn the closing 20 or so minutes of the first “Underworld,” we were treated to a look atthe history of an age-old conflict between the vampires and werewolves, and we sawhimbo Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman) turn into a sort of vampire-lycan hybrid. Inthe sequel, we find out more about Corvin’s bloodlines and get to delve once moreinto the history of the underworld, with somewhat varying results. The actionsequences are explosive and well-done, and Kate Beckinsale is fantastic once again as

the franchise’s leading lady. Like its predecessor, though, “Evolution” leavesone or two story developments woefully unexplored, and I walked awaywanting more. But then again, there have been rumors of a third film. . . .

TThhee OOlldd 9977’’ss——““HHiitt BByy AA TTrraaiinn:: TThhee BBeesstt OOff TThhee OOlldd 9977’’ss”” Staying on the “best of” theme, Old 97’s followers—who admittedly form more of acult following than a mass audience—know the chore in pinning down songs for abest-of record isn’t that there’s a lack of material to work with; it’s that nearly all ofthe group’s work is excellent across the board. Since the mid-1990s, this foursomefrom Dallas has steadily moved away from its alt-country roots to more adult pop-rock terrain without ever completely abandoning its musical heritage. That twist hasconsistently made The Old 97’s excellent—live and on record.

At Your

Leisure The entertainment world, at least where it pertains to technology, morphs,twists, turns, and fires so fast it’s hard to keep up. But that’s exactly why welove it. For the lowdown on the latest and most interesting releases in PCentertainment, consoles, DVDs, CDs, and just leisure and lifestyle stuff we (forthe most part) love and recommend, read on.

AA uu dd ii oo VV ii dd ee oo CC oo rr nn ee rr DVDByte

July 4The Matador

Doctor Who: The CompleteFirst Season

The Libertine

July 11Basic Instinct 2

Dennis Miller: All In

Reno 911! TheComplete ThirdSeason

July 18The Adventures OfBrisco County, Jr.:The CompleteSeries

Carnivale: The CompleteSecond Season

Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes

July 25Chappelle’sShow: The LostEpisodesUncensored

FinalDestination 3

La Femme Nikita: The Complete Fourth Season

See the full reviews from A/V Corner at www.cpumag.com/cpuaug06/AYL

DVDs by Chris Trumble, CDs by Blaine A. Flamig

$22.99Magnolia Pictureswww.worldsfastestindian.com

D i g i t a l L i v i n gGames

Gear

Movies

Music

$19.95Sony Pictures Home Entertainmentwww.sonypictures.com

TThhee RReeppllaacceemmeennttss——““DDoonn’’tt YYoouu KKnnooww WWhhoo II TThhiinnkk II WWaass??——TThhee BBeesstt OOff TThhee RReeppllaacceemmeennttss””For long-timers who probably own every ’Mats record released, “Don’t You Know . . .” isessential for two reasons: It has the first new songs cut by surviving members Paul West-erberg, Tommy Stinson, and Chris Mars since 1991, and unlike 1997’s best-of thatReprise released, “All For Nothing/Nothing For All,” this disc includes songs from thegroup’s earlier, rawer, and arguably better years on Twin/Tone. For the uninitiated, allhyperbole aside: The Replacements may be the best and most important American rockband in the past 30 years. “Don’t You Know . . .” is one hell of a fun way to find out why.

$18Rhino/Sire/Reprisewww.rhino.com

$15Rhinowww.old97s.com


CPU Game Of The Month

An Addictive Turn-Based Fantasy Comeback -by Dr. Malaprop$49.99 (PC; $59.99 Limited Edition PC-DVD) • ESRB: (T)een • Ubisoft • www.mightandmagic.com/HeroesV

TT he PC gaming community looks fondly uponNew World Computing’s 1994 Heroes Of

Might And Magic as a predecessor to an incrediblypopular fantasy turn-based series. The series sur-vived a tumultuous ride with3DO before getting to its fifthiteration, which comes cour-tesy of publisher Ubisoft anddeveloper Nival Interactive (itpreviously gave us 2003’sSilent Storm).

Heroes 5 doesn’t stray farfrom its roots. The developershave brought back the classicjoys of exploration, loot,monsters, and (most importantly) frantic turn-based combat with increasingly more powerfulheroes. For anyone who has played a previous titlein the series, the simplemechanics of gameplay won’tbe a stretch. Heroes 5 is veryfaithful to the 6-year-oldHeroes 3 (which now comesbundled with the LimitedEdition package) with somelight evolutionary designtweaks, such as the ghostsyou can control while the AImakes its turn. That’s not aknock on the title because Heroes 5 is a hell of a lotof fun and features an absolutely addictive single-player game. Through the six big, interconnectedcampaigns, you’ll feel com-pelled to go for “just onemore turn,” and before youknow it, the sun will be upand you’ll be wondering whyon Earth Starbucks doesn’toffer home delivery. In addi-tion to the campaigns, youget the opportunity to playsix very different factions.Each faction features enough

creature diversity to keep even the most sensitiveHR specialist happy.

Visually Heroes 5 jumps off the screen insplendid, eye-candy-dripping 3D.

Everything, thetowns, characters,enemies, look fantas-tic. The artwork bringsthe game to life, and arotating camera lets youadmire the new 3D environ-ment. The camera anglescould have used some tweak-ing because you’ll some-times find yourself look-

ing at less than optimal views. Say goodbyeto the 2D gameplay of yore—you won’t even lookback. The graphics delight the senses, and the

soundtrack music is superb. Heroes 5 does have some

flaws, though. The manualscreams for more detail, andthe in-game help and docu-mentation leave plenty ofroom for improvement.Ubisoft released the game withsome pretty hefty bugs, but weinstalled the 1.1 patch as wewent to press. The patch fixed

several problems, introduced some new ones, anddidn’t fix the multiplayer problems. Still, we recom-mend you install the patch before embarking on

the game’s missions. Heroes 5 is an addictive,

single-player turn-basedfantasy that reachesdizzying heights but istethered by an unfinishedmultiplayer mode and bugs.We recommend it, but takeyour time shopping becausethere’s an inevitable patch inthe works. ▲


Agent 47 Has Never Been So Pretty-by Chris Trumble$59.99 (Xbox 360); $39.99 (PC, Xbox, PS2) • ESRB: (M)ature

Eidos Interactive • www.eidosinteractive.com

Ride The Rails With Friends & Family -by Dr. Malaprop$30 (PC-CD); $40 (Tabletop Board Game) • ESRB: N/A (Ages 7+) • Days Of Wonder • www.ticket2ridegame.com

HH as it been years since you’ve touched a board game?Same here, but Ticket To Ride changed that. Ticket To

Ride is similar in simplicity to Monopoly but features realstrategic depth and typically plays through in less than anhour. In fact, so enamored were we with the PC version thatwe ended up buying the board game.

The premise of the game is to use your limited number oftrain pieces to build routes around the country based oncards you draw and keep. Other players can block your way,thus forcing you to build around the country to completeyour route. The longer your train routes, the more pointsyou earn, but you’ve only got a limited number of routes toclaim. Deceptively simple and imminently more playable

than it sounds, you can try Ticket To Ride for free by goingto the Play tab on the Web site (www.ticket2ridegame.com),creating a free account, and using the Java app to play.However, the CD has better art, a nicer map, and bettersound; plus, you can create your own games.

Ticket To Ride isn’t perfect. It would have benefit-ed from a windowed Desktop mode, hot seatfeature, and LAN play, but these flaws don’tkeep the game from being an enjoyable socialgameplay experience. It’s board game fun for thewhole family. (NOTE: Ticket To Ride does not fea-

ture an ESRB rating but is rated for ages 7+ by

Days Of Wonder.)

The PC game offers a superb translation ofthe board game (probably the best board-to-PC translation around) and includes abeautiful board featuring a map of NorthAmerican train routes, 225 colored traincars, 144 illustrated cards, five wooden

scoring markers, one rules booklet, and a DaysOf Wonder Online access number. All you needto learn the game is a dry run with the bookletopen. so grab one or more friends or familymembers, sit down at the table, and spend a fewhours riding the rails. ▲

E idos’ Hitman: Blood Money is a third-person action game that once againputs you in control of Agent 47, that shiny-pated, Armani-wearing, globe-

trotting dealer of death. Only this time there’s a rival agency look-ing not only to horn in on some of your jobs, but also totake you out of the equation.

Some gamers might be a little put off at first by Blood Money,because once the initial tutorial ends, the game pretty much pushes you out of the nest,and there are so many ways to approach every mission that it can be a little intimidating.Right away in the second mission, for example, Blood Money lets you choose yourweapons and then drops you off at the front gate of your target’s estate. You have to workout for yourself what the ideal formula for success will be, mixing in stealth, disguises, envi-ronmental strategies, and (of course) firepower. Good luck. But this freedom to craft one’sown style of play is a large part of Hitman’s charm, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Each of the first three Hitman games looked pretty good, but this fourth installmentin the series takes its look to new heights, especially on the Xbox 360. The game’s other

technical aspects are very polished, as well, especially its sound effectsand music. Hitman: Blood Money is a must-have for fans of the fran-chise and is a great jumping-on point if 47 is still a stranger. ▲


Adventure Gaming Is Not Dead-by Dr. Malaprop

$39.99 (PC-DVD; Xbox) • ESRB: (M)ature

Aspyr Media • www.dreamfall.com

Let’s Go For A Ride -by Chris Trumble$19.99 (PS2) • ESRB: (M)ature • Rockstar Games

www.rockstargames.com/libertycitystories

Grand Theft Ping Pong -by Dr. Malaprop

$39.99 (360)

ESRB: (E)veryone • Rockstar Games

www.rockstargames.com/tabletennis

TThe GTA series probablyrequires very little introduc-

tion, so let us just say that LibertyCity Stories is a PS2 port of a gamethat originally shipped as a PSPexclusive. It takes players back toLiberty City, only this time youplay as Toni Cipriani, a mobenforcer who returns to the cityand active duty after lying low forsome time elsewhere.

If you played GTA III, you’ll rec-ognize some of the city’s inhabi-tants, including Salvatore Leone,Donald Love, and so on. In fact,much of this game is familiar tothose who’ve spent time in the

world of GTA, almost to the pointwhere it seems a bit formulaic. Onemight even argue it’s a step back, asits graphics are a little rough andthe game leaves out some gameplayelements that appeared in Vice Cityand San Andreas. But LCS’ new mis-sions and new radio content (fakemusic again, but it’s very good)including the usual excellent talkradio and commercials are worththe price of admission alone. (Thegame costs just $20, by the way.)And let’s face it, it’s more GTA; see-ing as how GTA IV is still more thana year off, we’ll take it any way wecan get it. ▲

HH ere’s a game that’s very leanon features. You can’t cre-

ate your own player, there’s nocareer mode, and you can’t playdoubles. On paper this gamewould rate quite low with limitedgameplay options. However, itshines in action; the gameplayexperience is greater than thelimited sum of its features.

We enjoyed Top Spin 2, but itwas Rockstar’s Table Tennis gamethat stole Top Spin 2’s glory.Table Tennis appeals to gamersthat aren’t fans of the sport bymaking it easy to pick up,addictive to play, and fiendishlydifficult to put back down.Gameplay quickly raises thetension level during thelengthy, taut volleys in a waywe’ve not experienced in any

other sports gameto date;although, the

original Top Spin and VirtuaTennis both came close.

Rockstar’s Table Tennis is leanand very simple to pick and play,but it’s tough as nails to master. Aslimited as the gameplay featuresare, this harmonious game of pingpong is a bona fide hit. Also,rumor has it that the graphicsengine seen here may very wellshow up in the Grand Theft AutoIV next year. ▲

old-school point-and-click adventure, by the way.Controlling a 3D Zoë comes naturally on Xbox, but lessso with mouse and keyboard on the PC. The puzzles youcome across are plausible, entertaining, and challenging.This sequel does justice to the original, but some facetsare incredibly frustrating. Inan effort to broaden thegame’s popularity by mod-ern standards, the designerincludes action sequences,which fortunately make upa very small portion of thegame. The subpar actionsequences are Dreamfall’s Achilles’ heel.

It’s a testament to the story that you can overlook thisflaw. By the end of the game, you’ll actually care for yourcharacters and be fully caught up in the mind-blowingplot, but the game ends with a cliffhanger. Here’s hopingwe don’t have to wait six more years for some closure. ▲

Dreamfall is the second game in a trilogy thatstarted with The Longest Journey. The original

game, released in 2000, stands up with the bestadventure games ever released and instantly

established itself as a classic. TLJ isn’t a prerequisite toenjoying Dreamfall, but we highly recommend it so youcan experience details in the storyline, which picks up 10years later in 2219. Even to discuss the plot is giving awaytoo much, so we’ll say very little other than it blendstechnology, magic, politics, and religion in a way you’veyet to see in any adventure game. Oh, and this isn’t an


-by Dr. MalapropPlantronics GameCom X30Covert Headset Talk

L et’s face it, the bundled headset with the Xbox 360 Premium was pretty closeto bottom of the line. It works but falls well short in audio quality, which is

why the Plantronics GameCom X30 headset exists. Although Plantronics marketsit for the 360, the X30 also works with the standard Xbox.

Doing away with the traditional over-the-head or hanging-on-your-ear design,the X30 mounts under your ear, which initially takes a little getting used to becauseyou constantly expect it to fall, although somehow it doesn’t. The added benefit ofthe hanging-under-your ear design is less ear fatigue for those multiday gaming ses-

sions. And come on, it looks coolerthan the bundled hairband head-set. The midline mute toggle doesnot slot into the controller as itdoes with the bundled unit, whichmakes it slightly less convenient toaccess in gameplay, but this is likelyto maintain compatibility with theoriginal Xbox.

Plantronics’ noise-canceling tech-nology helps minimize the back-ground noise of your games whileyou chat on Xbox Live! In side-by-side listening tests, the audio qualityof the X30 was obvious, but it wasalso somewhat quieter than the bun-

dled headphones. Overall, this is an effective product that does exactly what it’s sup-posed to and is better than what comes bundled with your 360. ▲

$39.99 (360, Xbox) • ESRB: N/A • Plantronics • CPU Rating: ● ● ● ●

www.plantronics.com/north_america/en_US/gaming/products/x30_360

Doing What It Does Well -by Dr. Malaprop$39.99 (360) • ESRB: (E)veryone • Take Two Interactive • www.topspin2.com

IIn 2003 we reviewed the originalTop Spin (from Microsoft’s first-

party XSN Sports label). It faredsuperbly, and we rated it on par withSega’s legendary Virtua Tennis. Overtime it became a bit of an Xbox cultfavorite, and 2K Sports stepped up tothe net and bought the rights whenMicrosoft exited first-party sports.

Top Spin 2 comes from the samedevelopers and incrementally

improves all aspects of the original.The visuals are enhanced and func-tional. The developers tightened andimproved Top Spin 2’s gameplay,but the game won’t win you over totennis if you aren’t already interest-ed. Anna Kournikova, featured inTop Spin, exits and Maria Sharapovasteps in along with some otheradjustments to the roster, includingAndy Roddick and Roger Federer.

Top Spin 2 is for everyone. If youliked the original (or tennis games ingeneral) and own a 360 and HDTV,you’ll find plenty to enjoy. Top Spin2’s tight controls and enjoyablegameplay will serve up many hoursof fun but could have featureda more robust Xbox Liveexperience to elevate itselfto legendary onlinegaming. ▲

Nyko Intercooler 360One of the issues that plagued Microsoft’s launch of the

Xbox 360 last November was heat. It seems a numberof new 360 owners had their consoles shut down due tooverheating, and as a result a number of solutions poppedup here and there, including exotic watercooling projectsand devices to cool the console’s gargantuan power supply.

The furor over the heat issue seems to have died down inthe intervening months, but for folks who are still con-cerned about the buildup of heat in their 360s, Nyko has a

gizmo that might just be the answer.The Intercooler 360 is a cooling modulethat contains three fans and pops rightonto the back of the Xbox with no tools

required. It plugs into the console’spower port, so there’s no need foran extra cord, either.

The Intercooler does its job andkeeps things measurably cooler, theonly side effect being some extranoise that, while considerable (itabout doubles that of the 360 alone),will only be a problem when youturn game volume pretty darned low

or during movie playback. And for times when you need itquiet, though, the unit has its own On/Off switch. TheIntercooler sells for a mere $20, and if you’re having troublewith heat-related lockups, it’s a bargain at twice that price. ▲

$19.99 (X360) • Nyko • www.nyko.com • CPU Rating: ● ● ● ●


What Was The First ComputerHard Drive & When Did It Show Up?

BB y a hard drive, we of course mean a non-volatile data storage device composed of

disk platters possessing magnetic surfaces. AsMel Brooks would say at this point, turning tothe audience and scowling, “Everybody gotthat?” Because we’re not considering volatiledevices running on permanent current or non-magnetic solutions. By hard drive, we meansome form of the hard drive we all know, love,and dote upon to this day.

Given this framework, the first hard drive isgenerally credited to an IBM team led byReynold Johnson. (He’s also been awardedsome 90 patents, and after retirement devel-oped the technology Fisher-Price successfullyused in its Talk-To-Me Books.) The team’s1956 invention was given the sexy name of theIBM 350 Disk File and became part of theIBM RAMAC 305. It had a roughly 5MBstorage capacity in the form of 50 double-sided, 24-inch diameter disks. The data trans-fer rate was an arthritic 8,800 characters persecond, in large part because there was onlyone arm and head for all those platters. Thismeant the IBM 350 accessed different plattersby sliding around not unlike contemporaryjukeboxes, except that you didn’t put in a nick-el and expect to hear Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” Information retrieval was measured ingeological eras, and to top it off, the thinglooked like a voting booth on steroids (68 x 60x 29 inches). Because IBM wouldn’t sell it, theentire system leased for a mere $35,000/year.

It wasn’t until 1961 that matters improvedwith the appearance of the IBM 1301 DiskStorage Unit, featuring a separate arm exten-der and read/write head for each platter sur-face. This was a great improvement over itspredecessors, with a very low head placement

that helped get its maximum access time downto 180 milliseconds per data request. TheIBM 1301 had a 28MB capacity and 20 hugedisks that spun at 1,800rpm, providing atransfer speed at a respectable 90KBps. Itleased for $2,100 per month and sold for$115,500 in a demand-driven market.

More improvements followed. The IBM1311 of 1962 was targeted at the researchindustry and medium-sized businesses, with10 read/write heads on a common arm. Itwent through seven models and offered someinteresting optional features that included seekoverlap, the ability to find data while otherdata seeks (and one data writes) were inprogress. If the original IBM 350 was an over-sized voting booth, the popular 1311 has beenrepeatedly likened to a top-loading washingmachine. It may have looked like somethingout of a Sears catalog, but it did boast remov-able hard drive media: The IBM 1316 diskpack could store up to roughly 2MB.

The following year, IBM issued its 1302Model 1 with four times the storage capacityof the 1301 and a transfer speed of 180,000characters per second. It leased for $5,600 permonth and sold for $252,000. Still a yearlater, in 1964, the IBM 2311 for the System/360 Series of computers appeared. (Neverheard of the System/360? It was an entire lineof computers running the same OS and wasincredibly expensive to develop. Put it thisway: The Apollo space program, which put aman on the moon, was the most expensiveproject of the decade. The System/360 wasthe second most expensive.) It could store7.25MB on an IBM 2314 disk pack, with adata transfer rate of 156KBps.

Error correction, miniaturization, and thesealed hard disk assembly were still more thana decade away, but we’ve hit the high pointsof early hard drive development. Sure, it wascostly, cumbersome, and ugly, not unlike rais-ing a kid in his teens. But unlike some kids,the hard drive finally grew up. We owe ourcheap modern drives with their small foot-prints, incredibly fast seek rates, and hugecapacity to these voting machines and washingmachines of yesteryear. ▲

Sure, it

was costly,

cumbersome,

and ugly,

not unlike

raising a kid in

his teens.

Barry Brenesal has writtenmore than 1,000 published

articles and reviews on electronic technology since

1987. His first personal computer was a Radio Shack

TRS-80 model 100. It was last seen functioning

as a boat anchor.

The Cutting Edge

Wax nostalgic with Barry at [email protected]


Slipstreaming With All The Fixins (Part 2)

Prep For SpaceIf you followed last month’s instruc-

tions, you should have a slipstreamed ver-sion of WinXP in your \xpcd folder and aMicrosoft Corporation.img file.

If you haven’t already done so, reinsertthe original WinXP installation disc in adrive and write down its volumename. Generally the volume nameshows up in My Computer next tothe drive letter containing the disc. If not, right-click the drive and se-lect Properties from the drop-downmenu. You’ll see the volume name inthe top field in the General tab. Also,write down the 25-character key codeWindows requires to install itself andkeep it with the new disc.

Burn It Up With NeroPut a blank DVD±R disc in

your burner and start the NeroBurning ROM program.

In the left corner of the New Compila-tion window, switch from CD to DVD. Next highlight DVD-ROM (Boot) in the left column. In the Source Of Boot Image Data area to the right, click the Image File button and then the Browse button to locate the Microsoft Corporation.img file.

In the Advanced area, check the EnableExpert Settings (For Advanced UsersOnly!) box. From the Kind Of Emulationdrop-down menu choose No Emulation.Leave the next two items alone. Youshould see 07CD in the Load Segment OfSectors (Hex!) field. In the Number OfLoaded Sectors field type 4.

Now click the Label tab and then theManual radio button. If Nero doesn’t grabthe correct volume label, enter the originalinstallation disc’s volume label. Finally,click New.

The next window shows your emptyDVD-ROM project. The empty windowto the right is the DVD you need to fill.

In order to make a Windows XP rein-stallation as painless as theoreticallypossible, you want to keep all of thenecessary tools in one spot. Last month

we showed you how to use slipstreamingand a third-party tool to create a WinXPreinstallation package that included the lat-est service pack and fixes and patches.

This month we’ll show you how toburn a slipstreamed WinXP install discusing the most recent version of Nero’sBurning ROM utility with a DVD twist.Now that DVD-ROM capability is stan-dard on most every PC and laptop, andDVD burners are nearly ubiquitous, it’stime to take advantage of the extra 4GBof space the format allows. A bootableDVD version of WinXP will give tons ofroom to pile on all the motherboard andperipheral drivers you need and a fullbackup of recent or essential data files.

Of course, you should only make aDVD install disc if you’re certain that thetarget PC will have a DVD-ROM drive.

T I P S & T R I C K S

If you have an Xbox 360 and a PC on a home network,then you have a home media server. Once the 360 is onyour network, it can reach out to your home PC andstream digital photos and MP3 files straight from yourdesktop’s hard drive. To do this, however, you needMicrosoft’s WMC (Windows Media Connect; www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect). WMC runs on your desktop PC and lets youdesignate which devices on the network can accesswhich folders on the hard drive. The 360 then can findyour PC and access the shared media folders.

The Task Manager is a great tool for techies who need to identifywhat is running on a Windows PC and disable any conflicting programsor services. It’s also the place where a family member or office workercan disable processes you want left alone. Use this tweak to gray out anddisable the Task Manager option from the Windows Security window(CTRL-ALT-DEL). First click Start, Run, type regedit in the Open field, andclick OK. Go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\POLICIES\SYSTEM key and double-clickDisableTaskMgr. (NOTE: If the value doesn’t exist, make a New DWORDvalue and name it DisableTaskMgr.) Change the Value Data from 0 to 1.The effect is immediate.

Creating a bootable DVD-ROM requires the bootrecord from your original WinXP installation disc.


Internet Explorer Favorites. Drag and dropthat folder into your Extras folder you created earlier. After the reinstallation, youcan use it to overwrite the empty Favoritesthe WinXP reinstall creates.

You can also find My Music and MyDocuments in this folder. To see if one ofthese folders will fit on your DVD, right-click the folder and select Properties to seeits size. One caveat to keep in mind is thatthe DVD writer will balk at folders thatgrow too big because of limitations in writ-ing such large folders to a bootable disc.

Furthermore, a Windows reinstallation,even one that doesn’t reformat or partitionthe hard drive, will erase your Outlookemail and all of your iTunes. To save themyou may want to burn a separate, non-bootable DVD.

Once you’ve filled your DVD, click the Burn button. The resulting DVD installation disc should boot to theWinXP installation programs at startup, so long as you adjust your Boot priority in the BIOS and tell the PC to look up boot from the relevant drive first.

by Steve Smith


Everything But The Kitchen SinkYou should create a separate

folder off of the root directory ofyour DVD in which you’ll creatediscrete folders for each type ofmaterial you want to have at hand.This keeps the drivers, data back-ups, and programs in self-identify-ing subfolders but also keeps themfrom cluttering the root drive. Theapproach also helps if somethinggoes wrong with the installationand for some reason you need toaccess any of the material from acommand line interface.

To create folders in the DVDdirectory window, select Create Folderand name it Extras. Next right-click theExtras folder and again select Create Fold-er to start creating folders for some of theabsolutely mission critical things you willneed right after a reinstall; for example,we created files named RAID Drivers,Network Drivers, Video, Audio, and soon. Download the latest versions of thesedrivers and drag and drop the installationprograms into their respective folders onthe install disc.

You also can get creative with this DVDspace. For instance, on the root drive ofyour PC go into the Documents AndSettings folder and click into your currentWinXP username. Here you’ll find your

Click View in the menu bar and thenBrowsers (this will open new panes fartherto the right that include your hard drive).Open the /xpcd folder that contains yourslipstreamed WinXP installation files.Highlight the entire tree of folders andfiles in the /xpcd folder and drag theminto your empty DVD directory window.If all you want on this disc is the boot-able and updated WinXP installation, then click Burn. The whole point of making a bootable DVD, however, is the extra space it allows for all of the drivers,backed-up data, and even programs youordinarily would have had to scramble toreinstall from multiple sources wheneveryou did a Windows reinstall.

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Ahhh, That’s Better!Sitting at a computer for hours cancause aches and pains of all sorts.And while everyone knows that amassage is a nice way to melt thestress away, who has the time? TheUSB Vibe will help ease those soremuscles, and you don’t even have toget out of your chair. The handheldmassage head is covered with bumpsto maximize your massage experi-ence, and the 6.5-foot cord plugs intothe USB port on any system. Nowthat’s what we call maximizing thework experience. ▲

You can drag and drop the slipstreamed copy of theWinXP installation directly onto your DVD project.

A bootable DVD installation disc leaves you almost 4GB of space to store drivers and data backups.


of Mozilla/Firefox you’re using, you’re navi-gated to a download page, which includesinstructions on how to install the plug-inmanually. When it comes to unpackagingthe file, the download will be in a tarball.You can open it at a command promptusing the tar xzvf filename command or byusing your GUI archive-management tools(double-click the tarball in your GUI filemanager). Additional support informationis available at www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_15397.

Cool Flash ContentFlash is a more flexible tool than many

people realize. Many people think of it in terms of movies and animations, and if that’s your scene, there are dozens ofsites to check out, including DeviantArt(browse.deviantart.com/flash/). You willfind all sorts of Flash content here, withsome of it being more polished than oth-ers. The fun is trying to find the nextgreat Flash artists. You can click theSubcategory drop-down menu to look atonly particular types of Flash content.After making your selection, click theApply Browse Settings button.

If you’re only interested in games, agreat place to start is the Flash Arcade(flasharcade.com). The site is broken intovarious game types, but not all Flashgames work on the first try. If you runinto problems, load the game again and it may work correctly. Also check outShockwave.com for more games.


Some technologies can cause end-less frustration when you try toshare content with a cross-plat-form audience. Others offer rela-

tively blissful freedom. Macromedia’s Flashis one such technology, offering a frame-work that works on Windows, Mac OS X,Linux, and other modern operating sys-tems (www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates). Although Macromediawasn’t officially supporting the Flash 6player for Linux as of this writing, Flash 7is supported. According to a previous state-ment from Emmy Huang, product manag-er for Flash Player, on his blog, “Instead ofreleasing an 8.0 version, we will directlymove to 8.5 on Linux. This will avoid evenmore delay after we ship Flash Player 8.5for Windows and Mac.”

Actually, Flash Player 8.5 has beenrenamed Flash Player 9. Huang has statedthat, “We expect to make a prerelease ver-sion available on Adobe Labs for early feed-back and testing before the end of the year,with the full release expected in early2007,” with the caveat, of course, that theseare estimated release dates. Performanceissues have been targeted for focus in thisrelease. In mid-June the first beta for theWindows version of Flash 9 was released.

It appears there are plans for a 64-bitFlash version for Linux, as well. So far no64-bit Flash player exists for any OS. As ofthis writing, however, no firm date was setfor a release. Huang has explained thatbuilding a 64-bit player isn’t just a matter ofrecompiling the code for a 64-bit platform.

There’s code infrastructure that needs to beadded and tested. When that process iscomplete, a 64-bit Flash version shouldbecome available. To stay in the loop, checkout http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf.

Install FlashIn some commercial Flash distributions,

it’s already installed or available by default.Those using Fedora Core, Red Hat Enter-prise Linux, Mandriva (Mandrake),Conectiva, Debian, or Gentoo can addFlash through their package-managementsystems by accessing external softwarerepositories. See your distribution’s docu-mentation or help forums for details. Forexample, the Fedora FAQ at www.fedorafaq.org explains which repository to add forFlash, how to easily do it, and how toinstall Flash. Using a distribu-tion’s package-managementsystem means that when a newversion of Flash Player forLinux becomes available, theupdate routine automaticallydownloads and installs it.

If you’re using a distributionnot mentioned, you can stillinstall Flash. You just have todo it manually by downloadingit from Adobe at the aforemen-tioned www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates site.After selecting the Flash versionthat matches your operatingsystem, the version numberthat you want, and the version

Working With Flash In Linux

Gold Strike is just one of the many Flash games that are available at FlashArcade.com for Linux users.


There is far more than movies andgames available in Flash if you take thetime to search for content. An increasinglypopular use of the framework is Pandora(www.pandora.com), which offers a Flash-based streaming music client you can trainto play the music you like. Reading the rea-sons the player chose a song for you can bejust as interesting as discovering new bands.On the educational front, there’s FlashAnimations for Physics (www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash),which offers almost 90 animations, includ-ing some interactive ones that illustratephysics concepts ranging from chaos theoryto classical mechanics.

You’ll find a combination of educa-tional tools and toys at ZeFrank.com inthe Interactive Toys section. For example,you can create your own kaleidoscopewith the Build Yer Own tool or alter howa figure dances with the Puppets option.Additionally, check out 8Legged.com,which hosts an animated cooking showand makes excellent use of Flash by givingyou interactive elements you can use to

learn more as the show progresses. Let thesite use pop-ups, as you’ll need them.

If you want to keep up-to-date withwhat is going on in the Flash world,whether it relates to contests, tutorials,releases of new objects such a Commodore64 emulated within Flash, or other coolstuff, check out Flash Magazine (www.flashmagazine.com). The site tracks newsfrom Adobe (which purchased Macromedialast year), along with offering articles, bookreviews, and a monthly newsletter called

OSFUN (Open Source FlashUpdate & News) from theOSFlash (www.osflash.org)user community.

If you want to add Flashcontent to your site, exploresuch sites as Flash-Menu NET(www.flash-menu.net), whichoffers a collection of menus youcan download, configure usingan XML text file, and load intoyour page using a particularHTML code. Previous Flashknowledge isn’t necessary. Ofcourse, only use componentsfrom trustworthy sites.

Create Flash Content In LinuxIf you want to use Linux to

create Flash content, you havenumerous choices. You canpurchase CrossOver Officefrom CodeWeavers, whichsupports DreamWeaver MX

and other Windows-based Flash-creationtools. If you prefer native Linux software,the UIRA (UIRA Isn’t a Recursive Acro-nym) project at www.uira.org might bewhat you want. The project aims at morethan just being able to create Flash content;its goal is to grow up into an open-sourcevector-animation-authoring environmentfor both SWF and SVG content. The pro-ject is young, however, with the most recentrelease as of this writing being just .0.0.1.UIRA will be a multiplatform programworking under Linux, Windows, and MacOS X. You can also create Flash content bymaking a presentation in OpenOffice.orgImpress and exporting it to MacromediaFlash (SWF). Another good resource is theFlash Developer Center (www.adobe.com/devnet/flash), which offers such tutorials asusing the Yahoo! Maps AS-Flash API.

by Dee-Ann LeBlanc


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Pandora, which uses a Flash framework, is a streaming musicclient you can train to play the type of music you want.

ZeFrank.com has plenty of interesting Flash content, includingthis Kaleidoscope creation tool.

You can view a Flash simulation of a nuclearscattering experiment at the University ofToronto’s Web site.

A KeyboardTreasure Chest

A re you one of those users whocan’t find enough space on your

desktop for all your office and desk sup-plies, no matter how hard you try? If so,myKeyO’s new Keyboard Organizer($50; available in PS2 and USB models)could be just what you need. This fullyfunctioning keyboard makes use of thathollow space in a keyboard to storeyour odds and ends. The top of the key-board opens in a clamshell manner toreveal compartments for pens, CDs,pencils, keys, and more. The kicker isthat the Keyboard Organizer is only atenth of an inch thicker than most

other keyboards on the market, and it comes in different mod-

els and styles. All that said,we can’t think of a reason not to have a KeyboardOrganizer. You can find it at www.keyboardorganizer.com. ▲


Old Dog Learns NewWindows TricksII am ancient, as the picture next to this col-

umn shows, but I’ve never subscribed tothe notion that age always brings wisdom,just lots of experience. Seventeen years back,I edited a weekly PC paper and rememberone of my reporters asking me whether it washardware that leads software, or software thatleads hardware.

That’s still a difficult question to answer.The CPU guys would have us believe that amicroprocessor is the brain of a computer,while we all know that without software thetransistors would just sit there doing very littleapart from consuming electricity and generat-ing heat. CPUs have their own software in theshape of instruction sets and software is usedto design microprocessors.

Yeah, but the software we see is applicationsoftware and of course the operating system, andpretty soon now that will be Microsoft Vista.When it arrives it may be pretty wonderful, butwe already know it comes with a bundle ofrequirements which means a different sort ofPC than the one we’ve been used to before.

Hardware has led software for three yearsnow, as Vista has been pushed further and fur-ther behind. The CPUs, the system design,the hard drives, and the graphics cards were allin place for a launch two years back. Sincethen, the hardware has continued to evolve,but Microsoft has dragged its feet. I chat tothe hardware vendors very often, and many ofthem are fuming at the repeated delays, butbecause of Microsoft’s prime position theydon’t have much choice but to accept it.

Microsoft is the leader of the pack in termsof logo certification, which all the hardwarevendors need to buy into. But many of the ven-dors I’ve talked to have been grinding theirteeth off the record because while prices of theirproducts and their margins have consistentlyfallen in line with Moore’s Law, the operatingsystem continues to resist the pressures of themarket and carries a high price tag.

This time next year, if you’re buying aWindows PC, it will have to be a Vista

machine but Microsoft remains vague on thespecifications. What’s worrying me is whetherthat vagueness means Microsoft itself isn’t surewhat’s going to be required. We know that torun Aero you’ll need the right kind of graphicscard, that you’re probably going to need 2GBof memory, and that at least for notebooksyou’ll need a “hybrid” hard drive. We alsoknow that Vista will be able to take advantageof the “64-bitness” that 90% of CPUs, whetherfrom AMD or Intel, will support by this timenext year. I’m still not sure whether other con-tentious topics, such as digital rights manage-ment (DRM), will be settled next year and sus-pect no one in the industry knows, either.

Don’t get me wrong: Microsoft is anadmirable company in very many ways andhas done more to make the benefits of highlycoloured and relatively easy-to-use computingavailable to more people than any other ven-dor. Like I said, I’m ancient, and using thecommand line interface in dinosaur DOS heldback accessibility to computers for anyone butthe geek or the persistent would-be geek.

Yet if we’re forced into an operating sys-tem lack of choice which demands highspecced and highly expensive systems andVista doesn’t deliver the benefits Microsoftpromises, it will be very disappointing—notonly to the hardware and peripheral manu-facturers but to everyone, in terms of usabili-ty, price, and performance.

The hardware is certainly in place to sup-port an operating system of increased sophisti-cation, but if history teaches us anything, it isthat Windows expands to fill the capacity andfit the performance of the leading-edge PCplatform of the time.

In practical terms, it may not be worthupgrading current PCs to support whateverrequirements are needed to run Windows Vistasatisfactorily. That, I suspect, means many folkwill continue to take advantage of the superiorhardware specs of machines while hanging onto Windows XP for as long as they can. I mean,it’s only an operating system, isn’t it? ▲

It may not be

worth upgrading

current PCs to

support whatever

requirements are

needed to run

Windows Vista.Send rumours to “Mad Mike” Magee at [email protected].

Mike Magee is an industry veteran.He cut his teeth on ancient products

like the Dragon and the JapanesePC platforms long before the IBM-

PC won. He worked for a corporatereseller in the mid-’80s and saw the

Compaq 386 sandwich box andevery GUI known to humankind.

Mike decided that the way to go wasthe Interweb around 1994 after

editing PC mags in the late ’80s and’90s. A co-founder of The Register,

Mike started the chip-drivenINQUIRER (www.theinquirer.net)

in 2001. He has contacts from topto bottom in the business, spanning

the entire chain, who help him root out interesting rumours

and speculation.

Shavings From The Rumour Mill


Distant Rumblings:ATI + AMD MarriageII f you aren’t living under a rock, you have

probably heard the rumors about ATI beingacquired by either Intel or AMD. The latestrumors are heavily focused around AMDmerging with ATI, and they don’t seem to beletting up. I won’t speculate this month onthe accuracy of these rumors, I’m simplygoing to throw down my opinion on why Ibelieve it would make sense for AMD tomerge with ATI. I have studied this potentialmerger closely, and surprisingly enough Ithink it would be an amazing move for every-one involved, including Nvidia.

I believe that ATI is ripe for takeover; witha little bit of guidance and some key resources(such as support from AMD’s fabs) it couldbecome a much more efficient entity. For thefirst time ever, the company has released amotherboard chipset worthy of beinginstalled in a serious enthusiast’s machine.ATI has hidden strengths and incredible engi-neering that need to be leveraged, and such amerger would go a long way toward makingthat happen.

Put another way, ATI is a jewel that is inneed of some serious polishing, and if anyoneknows how to polish a jewel it’s the currentmanagement team at AMD. In the last fiveyears, these folks have done the impossible inperforming the most unprecedented corporateturnaround that our industry has ever seen.

One has to realize that ATI is a decentral-ized company with incredible technologies invarious business units. ATI is larger thanNvidia in many markets, yet few peoplewould know this because of Nvidia’s incredi-ble marketing prowess. No one can deny thatNvidia’s centralized rule and its tight relation-ship with Wall Street make it the success thatit is today. With all due respect to ATI’s cur-rent management, it seems the companywould benefit from a strong managementteam who can help build value by exploitingits key technologies.

From its vantage point ahead of the curve,AMD probably recognizes that CPUs andGPUs are starting to converge and that all PC

computations may eventually end up on onepiece of silicon. AMD likely also recognizesATI’s strengths in creating effective, efficientplatform chipsets, and therefore it seems likea good idea to bring those capabilities in-house in order to optimize them even further.AMD also has the capability to produce90nm capacity for ATI which would elimi-nate the latter’s dependency on TSMC—justthink of the possibilities!

Would a merger between AMD and ATIalienate Nvidia? Hardly. In fact, I think quitethe opposite would be true. ATI and Nvidiaare currently at each others’ throats in analmost unhealthy manner; a little coopera-tion between these two giants could be a fan-tastic thing for our industry. AMD andNvidia have a very strong relationship, andthere’s absolutely no way that either compa-ny would put that at risk.

Most people familiar with Nvidia alsoknow that the company is not a likely candi-date for a merger or acquisition unless Jen-Hsun Huang, one of the most aggressive andrevered CEOs in the PC industry, remainsCEO of the entire entity.

Nvidia would simply become a strongercompany as a result of an AMD-ATI mergerand if it happens should probably work closerwith AMD in order to leverage some of thecool graphics technologies AMD would holdinternally. In fact, Nvidia may end up wield-ing the most power as a result of this move.

So it’s obvious where I stand on therumored merger/acquisition: I believe ATIwould be a completely different company, awell-oiled machine, as it were. The movewould make AMD a much more powerfulcompany with the tools to realize its futurevision. I also think ATI and Nvidia wouldbenefit from less direct competition andmore cooperation.

The possibilities are truly endless in thisscenario, but the bottom line is AMD wouldnot risk its relationship with Nvidia andNvidia would have more to gain by workingmore closely with AMD than ever before. ▲

Would a

merger

between

AMD and ATI

alienate

Nvidia?

Hardly.

Send your opinions to this opinionated guy at [email protected].

Rahul Sood's love for computersstarted at the young age of 11.

Much to the shock and dismay ofhis parents, he ripped apart his

brand-new Apple //c and paintedit red before turning it on. His

parent’s dreams of having a doctorfor a son were shattered when

college drop-out Rahul foundedwhat is now one of the mostrespected high-end computer

companies in the world, Voodoo Computers.

Wagging The Dog


Data Loss: Don’t Make It PersonalAA s we all know, computers have taken over

the main stage in our digital lifestyles.We use computers for so many tasks, frombusiness to finance to storing family memo-ries, that the amount of data we are storing isgrowing exponentially. This trend will contin-ue to grow, as PC shipments are up 12 to13% over last year, according to research firmsIDC and Gartner. This is a clear indicationthat people are using computers to performmore tasks, creating a greater need to storetheir increasingly important data.

As a matter of fact, according to a recent sur-vey conducted by Harris Interactive and spon-sored by storage company Maxtor, nearly one-third of computer users characterized their con-tent as “priceless.” At the same time, nearly halfof all adult computer users in the United Statesare at risk of losing their data because they fail tomake backup copies; approximately 46% of thesurvey respondents do not back up their data.

As such, more data storage means increasedchances for data loss. This wouldn’t be a prob-lem if people backed up their important data asthe technology experts recommend, but asshown above, most people leave out this crucialstep. So why is this important to the home com-puter user? Bottom line, technology over timewill fail and information may be lost. Most peo-ple, however, are not aware of their recoveryoptions should a disaster occur, whether itresults from a natural disaster, human error, orhardware or software failure.

It is important to remember that “deleted”doesn’t mean gone and that data recovery com-panies like Ontrack Data Recovery have manyyears of experience recovering data from seem-ingly impossible situations. Even if you don’twant to use the services of a professional compa-ny, do-it-yourself options exist for under $90.

When disasters occur, it is crucial to under-stand your options. The following steps canhelp you ensure the best chance for successfulrecovery after a data disaster. These tips are alsouseful to determine whether a do-it-yourselfrecovery is possible or if the recovery should behandled by an expert service provider:• Never assume that data is unrecoverable, no

matter what it has been through• Do not attempt to power up visibly dam-

aged devices

• Do not shake or disassemble any hard drivethat has been damaged; improper handlingcan make recovery operations more difficultwhich can lead to valuable informationbeing permanently lost

• Do not use utility programs on physicallydamaged devices or if the drive is makingunusual noises (clicking or grinding)

• For mission-critical situations, contact aprofessional data recovery company beforeany attempts are made to reconfigure, rein-stall, or reformat

• In situations where the hardware is stillworking and you are a do-it-yourselfer,consider using data recovery software, butonly programs that work in a read-onlymode and never make changes to the origi-nal data (many data recovery software pro-grams have free versions that will show youwhat they can recover before you buy)

If it does come to the point where a datarecovery provider is the best course of action,these tips will help in choosing the best provider:• Only work with a provider that can tell

you exactly what they can recover after aninitial evaluation and before you make afinancial commitment

• After the evaluation, verify that there are noundisclosed charges for viewing or accessingthat listing of recoverable files, and makesure that any clean room work or additionalparts necessary during the evaluationprocess will not incur additional charges

• Research a provider’s history; how long hasit been involved with data recovery?

• Determine whether a provider can provide avariety of recovery solutions, such as recoverysoftware, in-lab service, and remote recovery,and which is best for a particular scenario

• Make sure you are dealing with a responsiveand professional staff that provides regularupdates and is up-font with all interactions

• Select a provider that has authorization towork with sensitive and confidential material,including classified government information

It is clear that in 2006, we cherish our datalike never before. A better understanding of datarecovery possibilities will keep you in controland avoid making data loss a personal issue. ▲

. . . nearly

one-third of

computer

users

characterized

their content

as “priceless.”

Send your feedback to [email protected].

As Senior Director of Software and Services for Ontrack DataRecovery, Jim Reinert handles

the technology and business development and product line

management of the recovery services and software business lines.With Ontrack since 1987, Reinerthas held a variety of positions withthe Company, including software

engineer, engineering manager and Director of Technology.

Reinert holds a B.S. in ElectricalEngineering and Computer Science

from St. Could State University.

Hot Seat


Dimensions in incheswidth – 6.958 in.height – 4.8 in.

CPU: BusinessWeek recently published thearticle, “A Red Flag in the Brain Game,”The subhead read, ‘America’s dismal show-ing in a contest of college programmershighlights how China, India, and EasternEurope are closing the tech talent gap.’Very poor results from U.S. participants inthe ACM International Collegiate Pro-gramming Contest in San Antonio in Aprilinspired the article in large part.

Wadhwa: That article is all out of con-text, out of perspective. India, China,Russia—the underdeveloped nations, andI’m counting Russia in that, even thoughthey are very strong in certain aspects—the fact is that their computer engineeringcolleges teach their students one subject.That’s all they learn. They don’t learn artsand sciences. They don’t learn biology.Ours do. And therefore, our engineers aremore worldly, and they have a perspectiveof field that goes far beyond engineering.What’s more, it’s the individuals thatapplied to and were accepted to be on the

teams whose skills were showcased.Nothing more. It doesn’t reflect on thecountry; it doesn’t reflect on anyoneexcept a bunch of geeks and nerds whobasically decided to enter the contest.

CPU: But you’d expect at least someU.S. members would have done well.MIT was the only American team to fin-ish in the top 12 of 83 teams, and DukeUniversity solved only one of six complexpuzzles in a five-hour contest.

Wadhwa: But our best and brightestaren’t concerned about taking part inthese stupid contests. They end up join-ing the Microsofts and the Googles.

CPU: Are you saying there’s a differentfocus here toward real-world concernsamong university-level computer program-mers that explains the poor contest showing?

Wadhwa: In Novosibirsk, Siberia, whichis where I had one of my development

teams for Relativity Technologies, or inSt. Petersburg, where I had another, myprogrammers had nothing to do except sitaround and write code. They’re not work-ing for big business. They don’t have thetraining to do what Americans can do.They can’t job hop. They don’t have theability to get involved with different fieldsof study. They sit in their labs, and theywrite code. That is their entire life, basical-ly. And our students in the U.S. couldn’tcare less about that. I don’t know what theprize of this contest was, but it was sure tobe insignificant because programmers overhere can make a lot more money by join-ing Google or becoming entrepreneurs ontheir own developing their own commer-cial software and building companiesaround it.

CPU: Speaking of Russia, a team fromSaratov State University won the contest.You told us previously that you had someof the previous years’ contest winnersworking for you.

Vivek Wadhwa’s resume is full of impressive business creden-tials, including being the founder and former CEO ofRelativity Technologies and the former vice president ofInformation Services for Credit Suisse First Boston in NewYork. Recently, he’s become an executive in residence andadjunct professor to the Masters of Engineering Program atDuke University’s Pratt School of Engineering. If that weren’tenough, he’s a regular BusinessWeek Online columnist and wasan executive producer of the 2006 film “My Bollywood Bride.”We spoke to him about the quality of U.S. engineering stu-dents and professionals in relation to those in other countries.

bbyy BBaarrrryy BBrreenneessaall

TechnicallySpeaking

An Interview With Vivek Wadhwa, FounderOf Relativity Technologies, Duke University

Adjunct Professor & Bollywood Exec

WWhhaatt’’ss Cooking . . .


countries. Even though China has a fewcities that are technologically advanced,the vast majority of the country is notdeveloped yet. They need lots of engi-neers with computer backgrounds—civilengineers, electrical engineers, mechani-cal engineers—all to build the infrastruc-ture. We’re living in an industrializedsociety. Our infrastructure is developed.We don’t need the types of engineersthey do. So you can account for it percapita. You can account for it by state ofdevelopment, and you can look at itfrom almost any angle. The fact is, justbecause they need more people to devel-op their economies doesn’t mean that weshould expect to compete with them onthat level.

CPU: Instead of asking why theUnited States is behind India and Chinain turning out computer engineers,should we ask why the U.S. is that farahead? Your stats show that of every 1million citizens, we produce roughly750 of who you refer to as technologyspecialists, while China numbers 500and India 200.

Wadhwa: We’re not simply ahead,we’re miles ahead. It is not a close

competition, even with China. Yes, theygraduate a lot of engineers, but theirquality is nowhere near what we havehere. The kinds of people we graduatefrom our schools are taught to thinkmuch more broadly.

CPU: By broadly, are you referring to aEuro-American liberal arts tradition?

Wadhwa: I’m talking about that andmore. For example, one of the hot,upcoming fields right now is biomedical

Wadhwa: Yes, my company was one ofthe first to outsource to Russia. Somemembers of those same teams I’ve justmentioned actually won that contest afew years ago.

CPU: You explained what they do intheir lives, but how did they differ per-sonally in training from the averageAmerican computer engineer you hired?

Wadhwa: Much stronger in terms ofmathematics and much stronger in termsof scientific programming. And that’swhy it made sense for me to do my devel-opment overseas, as they had the set ofskills we needed. But these are not thepeople who would start companies.They’re not the people who wouldbecome chief technology officers of topAmerican firms. They’re the people whowould sit in the cubes. They lack thebreadth to go beyond programming.

CPU: No thinking outside the box?

Wadhwa: Absolutely. Some of themare very bright, and there are alwaysexceptions to the rule. But in general, theprogrammers we in the USA are compet-ing with are confined to the labs and

cannot think beyond what they are doing.They can’t put the spin in the globaleconomy like our people can.

CPU: You were a group leader for aDuke paper, “Framing the EngineeringOutsourcing Debate: Placing the UnitedStates on a Level Playing Field withChina and India,” which began with this,‘Varying, inconsistent reporting of prob-lematic engineering graduation data hasbeen used to fuel fears that America islosing its technological edge.’ Is the paper

in part an answer to the doom-and-gloom news on the United States we’vetalked about?

Wadhwa: Yes, that’s accurate. Youknow, I kept reading how they weregraduating a million of them vs. a muchlower number for us, and I knew it wasn’t true because China and India bothhave their own shortages of skilled com-puter engineers. The problem with thesenumbers from underdeveloped nations isthat they combine a range of one- tofour-year degrees from decent institu-tions, and rinky-dink technical collegesopened up basically on the streets overthere vs. four-year programs only ataccredited universities in the USA. Howdo you compare such things? Youabsolutely can’t.

CPU: Is there a vast difference between a two- or three-year sub-baccalaureateprogram and a four-year computer engineering degree?

Wadhwa: Yes, because the quality of theinstitutions that hand out those two- andthree-year sub-baccalaureate degrees arenot nearly the level of what we are talkingabout from a four-year school in the USA.

CPU: Your statistical findings are prettyimpressive. They make allowances forpopulation, which naturally inflatesChina’s number, which is roughly fourtimes the U.S. population, and India,about three times the population. Makingallowances for population, the number ofU.S. computer engineering grads frombachelor programs in accredited schoolslooks good, right?

Wadhwa: And more than that becauseIndia and China are underdeveloped

WWhhaatt’’ss Cooking . . . Technically Speaking

In India, culturally, the children are taught that science and engineering are ‘good’

and that they need to get into them.

—Vivek Wadhwa


WWhhaatt’’ss Cooking . . . Technically Speaking

engineering—combining medicine andengineering. The biomedical engineer hasto have an understanding and apprecia-tion of both science and engineering.Well, if you study only engineering, youaren’t going to learn the other things nec-essary to enter the field.

CPU: Why don’t schools overseas offerthat kind of breadth?

Wadhwa: Right now it’s a numbersgame over there. You know, we keepworrying about the fact that they’re grad-uating so many hundreds of thousands ofengineers, but they really need those peo-ple. They need them to build irrigationsystems, cities, providing water, electrici-ty, decent sanitation to remote parts oftheir countryside. We’re talking about

two very poor nations that have to pro-vide basic services to their people. Thevast majority of people in India andChina live below the poverty line.

CPU: Your stats were based on under-graduate programs. Are we still unsurewhere the United States stands in relationto Indian and Chinese graduate students?

Wadhwa: We’re still far ahead of them.We have a much bigger lead in terms ofPh.D. degrees.

CPU: What about qualities dependentupon individual cultures, which don’tshow up in numbers? One nation’s work-force might put in much longer days forlower wages or have a student populationwith more drive to succeed in a given fieldof employment or even recreation. We’rereminded of the Soviet’s hegemonythrough much of the 20th century ofworld grandmasters in chess. Can this

factor into the equation, so that a smallernumber of students in a given nationmight possess a higher drive to succeed inthis field?

Wadhwa: The problem with that isthat if you’re an engineer in India, whatare you going to be worried about most?Improving the lot of the poor. Develop-ing new, stronger varieties of grains andseeds, and so on. To be innovative andmake an impact, they’re going to startworking at home. They’re not going toworry about the problems of Americanswhen they have their own problems to solve.

CPU: One doesn’t worry about how ahouse’s second story looks when you’veyet to lay the foundation.

Wadhwa: Exactly. It’s not even a weakfoundation at this point in India; they’veyet to put one in. You will find some peo-ple participating in the U.S. economy andgetting involved in outsourcing anddevelopment over here, but that’s a smallminority of them.

CPU: You wrote in BusinessWeek that,‘We can debate whether an engineeringgap between the U.S. and India andChina exists, but among U.S. engineersthere is an indisputable gender gap—fewer than 20% of engineering graduatesare women, according to the NationalScience Foundation. Perhaps a simplesolution to maintaining American com-petitiveness is to encourage more womento enter engineering.’ The figures aresound. For example, the NSF found in2002 that undergraduate enrollmentnationwide in engineering programs wasover 343,000 for men but slightly under77,000 for women.

Wadhwa: It looks like the problemstems from childhood, the fact that weteach our children that boys do this kindof thing and girls do this kind of thing.We don’t encourage our girls to get intoengineering, so it basically comes fromupbringing, and it’s not the same in Indiaor China and in Russia. It’s a lot moreequal in that respect than it is over here.

CPU: Really, in India? We would haveexpected to see a significant gender gapthere, as well.

Wadhwa: In India, culturally, thechildren are taught that science andengineering are ‘good’ and that theyneed to get into them. Generally speak-ing, there is a gender gap, and womenare at a disadvantage in Indian society.

But I think you’ll find that if you look atschools, the educational system is moreconsistent at crossing gender lines thanthe USA. Or look at Russia, for example.These geeks and nerds we’re talkingabout who used to work for me, we actu-ally had a 50/50 breakdown betweenmales and females in our groups. Therewas absolutely no problem recruitingwomen to join us. That’s because therewere as many women engineers overthere as there were men.

CPU: Is that a legacy from Soviet days,when the regime mobilized women intothe workforce at all levels?

Wadhwa: Even in Europe you’ll findthat it’s less of a problem, as well. AboutRussia, I don’t know whether the balanceis because of communism or somethingcultural. It needs to be dealt with by edu-cation. You want more engineers? Here’sthe place to start.

The problem with that is that if you’re an engineer in India, what areyou going to be worried about most? Improving the lot of the poor.Developing new, stronger varieties of grains and seeds, and so on.

—Vivek Wadhwa


by Kristina Spencer

WWhhaatt’’ss Cooking . . .

RR emember the first time you spunGoogle Earth’s globe and zoomed in to

get a bird’s-eye view of your house? Imaginethe additional wow factor if you could zoomin even closer to see a 3D view of your neigh-borhood, including video of small figureswalking up the street or a bus pulling up tothe stop a few blocks away.

Researchers at the University of SouthernCalifornia’s Integrated Media SystemsCenter are developing software that couldone day make access to that level of real-time data a reality. The GeoDec (GeospatialDecision Making) system integrates multi-ple sources of online data, including satelliteimagery and video streams, to create a highly detailed 3D model. The system is

designed to aid in decision making, allow-ing for complex queries that only takinginto account multiple levels of layered datacan answer.

“I would like to think of GeoDec as a setof tools that one can use to rapidly and

Under DDeevveellooppmmeennttA Peek At What's Brewing In The Laboratory

A World Of Data At Your FingertipsII n the race to develop alternatives that will

extend the shelf life of Moore’s Law, car-bon nanotechnology is holding its own.Recently, IBM researchers created the firstcircuit built entirely on a single-walled car-bon nanotube; it measures just 18 microm-eters long, one-fifth the width of a humanhair. While individual carbon nanotubetransistors aren’t new, IBM’s circuit inte-grates 12 transistors made of palladium andaluminum into a ring oscillator designed toswitch between two voltage levels.

The circuit reached a speed of 52MHz,significantly slower than today’s processorsbut 100,000 times faster than previousdevices made with carbon nanotubes.Researchers predict that with further devel-opment, carbon nanotube transistors couldone day achieve terahertz switching speed,making them a promising replacement fortoday’s silicon-based circuits.

“In general, one has to find the right cir-cuit layout that avoids parasitic contribu-tions since those are currently limiting thecircuit performance,” says Zhihong Chen,researcher at IBM’s TJ Watson ResearchCenter in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. “On thedevice level that can be done by reducingthe overlap between the gate and thesource/drain contacts. This will involve animprovement of lithographical techniques.”

Another important aspect of the circuit’sdesign is that it uses a CMOS-type archi-tecture, making it potentially compatiblewith existing silicon circuit design. Thisprovides an avenue for introducing newmaterials into current chip-making technol-ogy without throwing out the silicon babywith the bathwater.

Chen says, “Our successful integrationdemonstrates the compatibility of carbonnanotubes with conventional circuit archi-tectures and emphasizes that the use of nanomaterials does not automatically imply thatwell-established circuit concepts have to beabandoned.” He adds that it, “is very hardat this point to predict the timeframe forcommercializing nanotube electronics.” ▲

Big Blue Makes Big Leap

accurately build a virtual geographiclocation (for example, a city) linkedwith all its related information,” saysCyrus Shahabi, the lead researcher onthe project.

First, GeoDec rapidly constructs a 3Dmodel from two aerial or satellite images.Then geospatial data that’s gatheredfrom both public and private databasesenhances the model, integrating roadvector data and maps, as well as dataassociated with indexed geographicpoints. Finally, the system maps texturesto the buildings and landscape and inte-grates available video streams to com-plete the picture.

A haptic glove interface, a la “MinorityReport,” can then manip-ulate the resulting model.The gloves lets a userselect and display differ-ent piec-es of informa-tion, which are integratedin the display, and thenwith gesture-based com-mands zoom, rotate, andmove them from one partof the screen to another.

According to Shahabi,the GeoDec system hasmany potential applica-tions in the areas of emer-gency response, militaryintelligence, real estate,tourism, simulation/train-ing, and video gaming.Shahabi says, “With theright amount of invest-ment, a preliminary ver-sion of GeoDec can beready to use in a one-year

timeframe.”Shahabi and Craig Knoblock, another

member of the USC research team,founded a company called GeosembleTechnologies in order to commercializesome of GeoDec’s capabilities. ▲

Integrating multiple sources of data, including satellite photos andlive video, GeoDec creates a data-rich 3D model that can helpresearchers find answers to complex queries.


While the paint-on laserholds a great deal of promisefor the future of the computerchip industry, there are stillseveral open research ques-tions to solve before the tech-nology can be used to produceworking chips.

“We are working on electri-cal pumping of these lasers,

which is a necessity for success-ful implementation for opticalinterconnects . . . [and] we areaiming to operate the laser wellabove room temperature,” saysHoogland. “Once electricalpumping and room tempera-ture operation is established,the laser will be ready for massproduction.” ▲

Paint-On Laser Makes Faster Chips Possible

BB y 2010 experts predictthat smaller, faster com-

puter chips will exceed thecapacity of the electrical inter-connects that the chips cur-rently use to transfer data, a problem known as “inter-connect bottleneck.” In an at-tempt to overcome this speedbarrier and extend the life of silicon-based circuits, re-searchers at the University ofToronto have created a laserthat can be painted directlyon a chip’s surface, introduc-ing the potential that muchfaster fiber optic connectionscould one day replace electri-cal interconnects.

“The current interconnectarchitecture uses copper totransfer data. With data-trans-fer rates reaching 10GHz, thisarchitecture is subject to largeelectrical losses,” says SjoerdHoogland, one of the re-searchers on the project. “Datatransfer by light does notimpose such a speed limit.”

The laser, developed byDepartment of Electrical and

Computer Engineering profes-sor Ted Sargent, is composedof nanometer-sized semicon-ductor particles suspended in a paint-like solvent. Sargentand his team created the parti-cles to be just the right sizeand color to generate light at the infrared wavelengthrequired for optical data trans-fer when exposed toelectrical current.

In their tests, thescientists dipped a glasstube in the laser solu-tion and dried it with ahairdryer, a processthat took only aboutfive minutes to com-plete. When pulsedwith ordinary light, the tube emitted laserlight. Eventually, theresearchers hope to use electronics already

found on microchipsto power the laser,enabling higher pro-cessing speeds, poten-tially reaching the tensof gigahertz.

MM any of us take forgranted that sense or-

gans are specialized: You seewith your eyes, smell with yournose, and taste with yourtongue. But that’s not actuallyaccurate: Our sense organs areimportant collectors of data, butit’s our brain that interpretsthat data and does the work ofsensing. Researchers have dis-covered that it’s possible to

reroute sensory informationthrough a substitute sensorychannel, and they’ve created adevice that could one day helphumans gather sensory infor-mation the way snakes, fish,and other animals do—withthe tongue.

It may sound like sciencefiction, but BrainPort is adevice that encodes visualdata as electric impulses andtransmits them to the tonguethrough a narrow plastic stripthat’s topped off with 144microelectrodes. The brainlearns to interpret the signalsappropriately and uses theinformation to function as itwould if it was receiving the

signals through the naturalsense organ.

Interest ingly, the ideaisn’t exactly new. Dr. PaulBach-y-Rita at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin pio-neered the device over 30years ago. Initially, his teamtransmitted the impulsesthrough the skin on a user’sback, but they quickly dis-covered that the tongue wasmuch better suited for thetask due to the density andsensitivity of nerve fibersand the ability to sustainelectrical contact.

What is new are the ways in which the technology isbeing applied. Wicab, the com-

pany Bach-y-Rita founded, isresearching the therapeutic useof BrainPort in the treatmentof difficulties with vision andbalance, Parkinson’s disease,and autism. Additionally, ateam at the Florida Institute forHuman and Machine Cog-nition led by Dr. Anil Raj isdeveloping sensory augmenta-tion applications of the tech-nology for the U.S. Depart-ment of Defense, includingworking on a sonar system thatwill allow Navy and MarineCorps divers to navigate under-water with their hands free.Raj’s team is also working onan infrared night-vision systemfor Army Rangers. ▲

WWhhaatt’’ss Cooking . . . Under Development

Taste The Future


JJohn Carmack is the brainbehind some of the best 3Dgraphics that the video gameindustry has produced. He isthe co-founder and technical

director at id Software in Mesquite, Texas.A self-taught graphics wizard, Carmackcreated the engines behind a wide varietyof games from id Software and its develop-ment partners: from Wolfenstein 3D andDoom to Quake and Return To CastleWolfenstein. He’s a technology puristwho pushes the limits of hardware andsoftware to the bleeding edge, havingworked nearly four years on Doom 3.

QQ Can you bring us up-to-date onhow good games are becoming at

graphically reproducing reality?

JJCC I do think we’re already to thepoint where you can walk by an

office and not tell if someone is watchinga basketball game on TV or if they’replaying a video game. Graphics is movingalong a continuum toward realism andit’s building up a little more at a time.You’ll be photorealistic in more and morecases. It’s still difficult to do it whensomeone is right up close in a scene.

QQWhen do we actually get to photorealism?

JJCC Even 20 years from now, thereare tasks you can’t do that show

that you’re going to fall short of beingable to do realism. You need to keep onimproving the technology. It’s gettingmore subtle. There are nuances to thingswith slightly better lighting, shadowing,and more effects; doing more movingthings on the screen at the same time. It’sa lot better than it used to be.

QQWhat is the most fake in gamesthese days?

JJCC The physics is neat. I’m not abig proponent of sophisticated

artificial intelligence. Youcan see that going all theway back to Doom; the mon-ster in the game was formulatinga plan. But the only thing youreally need is that the artificialintelligence shouldn’t dosomething stupid infront of the player. Ifthey can do that, thenthat is a good step.

QQWhat do youthink of the

trend toward openworlds in video gamesin which the environ-ment gives people much morefreedom to roam around ratherthan follow a predefined path? Is this theway to get closer to realism?

JJCC It’s always easier to have a tightdesign. The more you open it

up, the more work you have to do inorder to fill out the world and make it allseem real. It’s great to see this stuff with anewfound sense of freedom. I’m not100% convinced it’s the most interestingway to make games. If you look at moviesand the emotional aspect to them, it hap-pens because the camera is up close andfollowing the characters closely.

QQWhat do you think about graphicsquality on today’s game consoles?

JJCC The PlayStation 3 hype blowsthese things way out of propor-

tion. You can buy a PC that now is twotimes as powerful. It will cost you more,but the resolution will be better on the PC.

QQ How good are developers getting atcreating humans in video games?

JJCC Facial expressions and lip synch-ing are getting better. I’ve histor-

ically avoided doing humans in the game.We do demons and aliens. People don’t

Q&A With John Carmack

b a c k d o o r | q & a

have a frame of reference for those, so it’sharder to tell if they look fake. Withhumans, everyone notices it.

QQWhat do you think about the healthof the PC gaming market particu-

larly as the new consoles hit the market?

JJCC The PC gaming market hasevolved. Everyone does moan and

complain about the titles and the declineof the platform; sales at stores were down.But you can see World Of Warcraft as thebiggest hit on any platform based on theamount of income they brought in.

QQ As a small company, how is idSoftware coping with the rising

costs of games?

JJCC We are a small company. We arestruggling with content creation.

We have 27 people, and it’s not enoughto make all the models that we need togenerate on a new internal project. We’reexperimenting with getting artificial intel-ligence and art assets from the outside.

Subscribers can go to wwwwww..ccppuummaagg..ccoomm//ccppuuaauugg0066//ccaarrmmaacckk for bonus content.
