Archive for September, 2006

Core 2 Extreme Quad Processor Performance

Earlier in the week, Intel announced a single-socket processor built with two Core 2 CPU dies, the Core 2 Extreme Quad processor (code-named Kentsfield). The two dies connect via a 1066MHz (effective) front-side-bus (FSB). Intel claims that the FSB will have more than enough bandwidth to feed both cores, even if it is in heavy operation. Well, extremetech has got a hold of one and is comparing it to a Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor, both of which are in identical machines, with the same motherboard, memory, video card and storage running Windows XP Prefessional Edition with service pack 2, running these performance tests, POV-Ray 3.70 beta 15, 3ds Max 8, DivX 6.25, and the 3DMark06 and PCMark05.

The full product name, as we noted earlier, is the Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6700. This is in line with Intel’s current naming scheme for CPUs, although they never called the previous Core 2 Extreme a “Duo.”

The CPU will clock at 2.66GHz with a 1066MHz effective FSB and may require a new motherboard. Intel noted that their new motherboard is an updated version of the D975XBX, which has been re-engineered to support the quad-core processor as well as DDR2/800 support. (Previous versions of the board would only support DDR2/667). It’s likely that some Intel 965P-based boards will also support the QX6700, but we haven’t received confirmation of that yet.

It’s likely that motherboards using the Intel 975X chipset and currently advertised as “Quad Core Ready” will work fine with the QX6700.

The QX6700 is rated for at 125 TDP (thermal design power), which is slightly less than the old Pentium Extreme Edition 965 CPU. However, unless you’re running four copies of Prime 95, it’s unlikely that all four cores will be running full-out all the time. Some of the boutique PC vendors have clocked the CPU up to 3.2GHz on air and 3.73GHz with liquid cooling. Source: ExtremeTech

Unfortunately, most of today’s PC games still tend to be single-threaded, so you won’t see much of a benefit initailly, maybe it it is a newer game, but that is changing rapidly, especially among game developers who are creating titles for pcs and the newer gaming consoles. Today’s game consoles require multi-threaded games, which mean PC games will be headed in this direction as well. But, while a gamer might not see as much improvement right now, 3d animation artists and video creators need to put back some money for it now, they will want one when they are available. Windows Vista will definately work well with a system containing one of these processors, a fast graphics card and high bandwidth memory, I can’t wait. Click here for the full detailed review with some great comparisons.

Zune Will be Released Nov 14 for $249.99

According to a press release from Microsoft.com, the Zune digital media player will be released on November 14, just in time for Christmas, at a price of $249.99 for the 30gb player. For that price, users will get all kinds of great stuff, including,

30GB digital media player will come equipped with wireless functionality for Zune-to-Zune sharing of music, pictures and home recordings; a bright, three-inch LCD video screen that works in portrait or landscape mode to view pictures and videos; and a built-in FM tuner. The device will be available in three colors: black, brown and white.

A selection of preloaded content including songs, music videos and film shorts are installed on the device’s hard drive to help consumers discover new artists and entertainment.

The preloaded content is as follows:

1. Audio Tracks
   • Band of Horses, Wicked Gil (Sub Pop Records)
   • Bitter:Sweet, The Mating Game (Quango Music Group)
   • CSS, Alala (Microsoft edit) (Sub Pop Records)
   • Darkel, At The End of The Sky (Astralwerks)
   • Every Move a Picture, Signs of Life (V2)
   • Small Sins, Stay (Astralwerks)
   • The Adored, Tell Me Tell Me (V2)
   • The Rakes, Open Book (V2)
   • The Thermals, A Pillar of Salt (Sub Pop Records)
2. Music Video
   • 30 Seconds to Mars, The Kill (Virgin Records)
   • BT, 1.618 (DTS Entertainment)
   • Chad VanGaalen, Red Hot Drops (Sub Pop Records)
   • Coldcut featuring Roots Manuva, True Skool (Ninja Tune)
   • CSS, Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above (Sub Pop Records)
   • Fruit Bats, Live: The Wind That Blew My Heart Away (Sub Pop Records)
   • Grandaddy, Elevate Myself (V2)
   • Hot Chip, Over and Over (Astralwerks Records)
   • Kraak & Smaak featuring Dez., Keep Me Home (Quango Music Group)
   • Kinski, Live: The Snowy Parts of Scandinavia (Sub Pop Records)
   • Paul Oakenfold, Faster Kill Pussycat (Featuring Brittany Murphy) (Maverick Records)
   • Serena-Maneesh, Drain Cosmetics (Playlouderecordings)
3. Film Shorts
   • 5 Boro: A New York Skateboarding Minute (Skateboarding)
   • Radical Films: Kranked Progression (Mountain Biking)
   • TGRTV The North Face (Skiing/Snowboarding)
4. Images
   • A variety of images to personalize a Zune device, including 12 classic rock posters from Art of Modern Rock

Looks interesting, wonder if the artists paid to have their stuff listed or if someone at Microsoft just went looking for some cool free stuff. Users will be able to buy songs for 99 cents or they can but them using Microsoft points, a stored value system that can be redeemed at more and more online stores, including the Xbox Live marketplace. A Zune pass subscription is available for $14.99 a month and gives users access to millions of songs.

DOOM comes to Xbox Live Arcade

Yes you read that right, DOOM comes to Xbox Live Arcade! I can’t wait to try this out, I remember when Doom first came out, the only network we had at the time was the one at work, so a bunch of us would meet up there to try to kill each other. Time would just fly, and it would feel like we had only been there an hour when we had been there all day. The game will support the deathmatch, hooty hooo, and two to four player co-op.

Xbox Live Arcade made a surprise unveiling of one of the greatest games of the 3-D era: DOOM (id Software) is now available for download for 800 Microsoft points from Marketplace.

The game brings legendary DOOM mayhem to the next generation. For the first time ever, relive the classic demon-blasting fragfest in both single-player and two-to-four player co-operative and deathmatch modes over Xbox Live. Also a new, multititle relationship with Codemasters was announced, with the first title being the classic, fast-action soccer game, Sensible World of Soccer.

This title is only available to Xbox 360 owners with an Xbox Live Silver or Gold membership, through download from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Intel Core Processor Challenge

Intel is looking for smaller and stylish multimedia computers, and here’s your chance to show them what you can do, and a shot at the grand prize, $300,000 to enable mass production and $400,000 to co-market the design with Intel. Sounds like this will be won by someone who already has the abilities to design a system pretty fast and looking to get some extra marketing.

Intel is offering $1m in prizes to designers and manufacturers who can come up with sexier alternatives to the “big, beige box”.

The only condition is that entries must be powered by Intel Viiv technology, using the chip giant’s Core 2 Duo processors.

Beyond that, Intel urges potential applicants to “think outside the box”. Source: BBC

The panel of judges will include Intel president Paul Otellini and Kevin Sintumuang, associate editor of GQ, they will judge it on some of the following criteria: style, functionality and features. The winners will be announced at the Intel Developer Forum being held in March 2007, so you only have less than six months to make it. I would like to see some pics, so if anyone is entering, please send me some pics at webmaster at tipsdr.com and I will post them on this site with links to your site, etc.

Windows Live Messenger for Mac 6.0

[tag]Messenger[/tag] 6.0 is now available for the Mac, download it here. It still does not support A/V, but they say it is coming in a future release.

By now, some of you have heard the news. Today we launched Messenger for Mac 6.0, our first Universal application! It includes some exciting things, like federation with Yahoo, the ability to show what I’m listening to on my iTunes and a spell checker (yea!) as well as features that have been long standing requests like support for animated and custom emoticons. However, I know a number of you are bound to ask: Where is A/V in Messenger for Mac!?!?

I said in my first blog entry that I’d try to shed light on how feature decisions get made, give you some examples, and address why A/V isn’t in this release. Source: Messenger: haves and hA/Ve nots

Messenger 6.0 allows you to interact with Yahoo! Messenger, it can display the “What I’m Listening To” from iTunes, has a spell checker and support for animated and custom icons. They said WLM and LCS, Live Communication Services, are not in sync, so instead of trying to A/V using two different sets of code, they are waiting until they sync up and move to a shared protocol in upcoming releases.

And so the blog entry of theirs announcing the release actually goes into detail on why audio/video isn’t there yet; they’ll be moving to a new protocol for both Windows Live Messenger and Live Communications Server, and they’d rather nto waste time implementing both the old any the new one. Now, that explanation makes sense now, but it didn’t for, oh, the past several years, when this very same request kept coming up. Perhaps they didn’t have the resources to do it, and now they finally do; that’s great. But still: if Yahoo! and Skype can pull it off, why can’t Microsoft, who are certainly five orders of a magnitude bigger than Skype? Source: MacBU stuff today.

The Best Gaming Video Cards for Your Money

Toms Hardware Guide has a quick little video card review, if you don’t have time to go through all of the stats, the comparisons, what have you, here are the best gaming video cards for your money. Note: the items link to the page with the review, for several, you may have to scroll down to see the video.

Best PCIe Card For Under $100
Radeon X800 GTO 128MB
Runner Up Geforce 7300 GT GDDR3

Best PCIe Card For ~$140
Geforce 7600 GT

Best PCIe Card For ~$200
Radeon X1900 GT

Best PCIe Card For ~$250
Radeon X1900 XT 256MB

Best PCIe Card For ~$340
Geforce 7900 GTX
Runner-up Radeon X1900 XTX

Best PCIe Card For ~$500
Geforce 7950 GX2

Best AGP Card For Under $100
Radeon X700
Runner-up Geforce 6600

Best AGP Card For ~$125: 3 Way Tie
Radeon X1600
Geforce 6600 GT
Radeon X800 GTO 128MB

Best AGP Card For ~$130
Geforce 7600 GS
Radeon X1650 PRO

Best AGP Card For ~$175
Geforce 7600 GT

Best AGP Card For +$200: None

Honorable Mention:
Gainward Geforce 7800 GS+ silent 512 at $240

• This list is for gamers who want to get the most for their money. If you don’t play games but surf the Internet and edit video, the cards in this list are probably too expensive. On the other hand, if you’re a professional full-time 3D designer, you should look at Quadros and FireGLs, not gaming cards:
• Prices change and deals come and go on a daily basis. We can’t offer up-to-the-minute pricing information, but what we can do is list some solid cards that you probably won’t regret buying – if you can find them at the price ranges we suggest;
• The list is based on some of the best U.S. prices from online retailers. In other countries, or in retail stores, your mileage is most certainly going to vary;
• These are new card prices. No used or open box cards are in the list; they might be a good deal but it’s out of the scope of what we’re trying to do.

Nice, and you know they did the behind the scenes work to go with it, I haven’t even read past the first page, and there are 7 pages total, if you are looking for the info to go with the list.

How to Change the Windows Vista Fonts

It’s really a peace of cake. Dowload this registry patch, and BAM instant consistent fonts. And don’t forget to thank Chris Pirillo.

I’m not happy that Microsoft has added yet another shell font to the mix with Windows Vista: Segoe UI. On its own, Segoe UI is an awesome font – but when it’s slapped up against Tahoma, MS Sans Serif, Microsoft Sans Serif, and/or Arial – it’s no longer a clean user experience. In fact, Vista is downright messy when it comes to shell fonts – with some aliased faces reaching back to the days of Windows 3.11! Source: Chris Pirillo

Chris Pirillo says he did it because people have complained he’s a whiner, so he said he would complain and fix it at the same time. He had a couple friends test it, Robert McLaws and Brandon LeBlanc, and says he will have other Microsofties check it out as well.

He has some before and after pictures here, check em out and read his blog entry while you are there.

Intel: a Teraflop on a Single Chip

Intel has built a prototype processor that has 80 cores that can perform a teraflop! They hope to have these chips in production and ready for commercial use in five years. Sounds good to me, hooty hooo!

System power consumption is only one part of the equation. During the next few years, Intel wants to improve the performance per watt of power consumption of its transistors by 300 percent through new manufacturing technologies and designs, Otellini said. The next step on that road, Intel’s 45-nanometer manufacturing technology, will enable the company to build chips that deliver a 20 percent improvement in performance with five times less current leakage, he said.

But the ultimate goal, as envisioned by Intel’s terascale research prototype, is to enable a trillion floating-point operations per second–a teraflop–on a single chip. Ten years ago, the ASCI Red supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratories became the first supercomputer to deliver 1 teraflop using 4,510 computing nodes.

Intel’s prototype uses 80 floating-point cores, each running at 3.16GHz, Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer, said in a speech following Otellini’s address. In order to move data in between individual cores and into memory, the company plans to use an on-chip interconnect fabric and stacked SRAM (static RAM) chips attached directly to the bottom of the chip, he said. Source: News.com

They first mentioned this in 2001, when Intel began to warn about the dangers of heat dissipation in processors, they said at the time one of the solutions was to use multiple cores. Can’t wait to get hold of one of these puppies.

And, the new Quad core processors have 70 percent faster integer performance than the Core 2 Duos, so they once again regain the lead in performance over AMD.

If we get a processor this fast, it will have to be very expensive, unless Microsoft and future developers push the envelope in software, and we get hard drives that don’t slow us down, such as some huge hybrid drives, one would think these pc’s would be powerful enough to last a long time, and we wouldn’t need new computers as often.

Nah!

VML Exploit Patched by Microsoft

Microsoft noted on their blog that they might release the patch to fix the VML exploit early, if it met all the tests and requirments, so apparently, it already has. Thanks Sunbeltblog.

A security issue has been identified in the way Vector Markup Language (VML) is handled that could allow an attacker to compromise a computer running Microsoft Windows and gain control over it. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Check Windows Update to get it.

Added: Just saw this post from a technet blog, “OUT OF BAND” Security Bulletin has been released – Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-055,

On Tuesday September 26th 2006, the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) released one (1) new Security Bulletin. This Security Bulletin Release is in addition to our regularly scheduled monthly security bulletin release for September 2006. A release of this type is often referred to as ?Out of Band?.

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the Vector Markup Language (VML) implementation in Microsoft Windows. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by constructing a specially crafted Web page or HTML e-mail that could potentially allow remote code execution if a user visited the Web page or viewed the message. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system.

And this post from the Microsoft Security Response Center Blog,

Hey everyone, Craig Gehre here. We’re in the process of releasing out of band update MS06-055 to address the VML issue. At the moment, Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and Autoupdate are live. We’re in the process of publishing the bulletin, associated packages, and updated content for WSUS, MBSA1.2.1, EST, and MBSA 2.0 to the Microsoft download center and normal locations and those should be up shortly. Until that time the links might not work in the bulletin until the packages appear on the download center. The WSUSscan.cab for SMS and MBSA 2.0 users is also in process and will be published soon. We?ll provide a follow-on blog post shortly once we get everything up.

We’re also re-releasing MS06-049 for Windows 2000 users and will have that information up shortly as well.

Anyway, finally, I know they want to test this stuff thoroughly, but sometimes you just gotta rush stuff, especially when you have unsuspecting users on the line.

Windows Genuine Advantage False Positives

Windows Genuine Advantage has been a big problem from Windows users, and I’m sure, it’s been a big pain in Microsoft’s behind. Looking in Microsoft’s WGA Validation Problems forum you’ll see well over 2,200 posts on the subject, and lots of unhappy people. Ed Bott of Microsoft Report has posted many items concerning WGA, and one of the most recent ones can give you an idea of how many people are getting fasle positives.

Even a casual reading of the posts at the WGA Validation Problems forum makes it clear that WGA has serious problems. But Microsoft refuses to share any hard data about WGA installations, making it impossible for independent observers to quantify the extent of the problems. Until now, that is.

With the help of a researcher, I went through a sample of 137 recent problem reports from actual Windows users, posted publicly on the WGA Validation Problems forum. Our research was the online equivalent of listening in to two weeks worth of calls to Microsoft’s support lines. The results we found directly contradict Microsoft’s insistence that “only a handful of actual false positives have been seen.”

According to our analysis, 42% of the people who experienced problems with WGA and reported those problems to Microsoft’s public forums during that period were actually running Genuine Microsoft Windows. That’s not just our opinion, either. Those statistics were reported by the Redmond-approved Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostic utility.

42% is a lot of false positives. I’ve never had any trouble with WGA myself, and we haven’t at any of our client computers either, but that doesn’t mean it won’t or it hasn’t. He points out problems with Mcafee’s QuickClean registry cleaner, and people who were getting cryptographic errors, which has been solved, even if it is a little tedious for most users to do.

The only word from Microsoft to him was an email sent after he had already left the office that day, he posted it in a follow up message, here,

The Windows XP Validation tools are very accurate at determining if a copy of Windows is genuine or not. We have found that many customers who originally felt their copy of Windows XP had been inaccurately labeled as non-genuine were surprised to learn that they were indeed running non-genuine software, often at no fault of their own. Microsoft works closely with these unknowing victims to remedy the situation. The false positive rate for WGA Validation failure is a fraction of one percent, and in these cases a bug was at fault and repaired shortly after. We are constantly evaluating the criteria for validation and are confident that validation results are accurate.

Another one of those “nothing to see here”, nothing wrong messages we usually get from big corporations. Microsoft has definitely failed it’s users when it comes to WGA.