No, Fatal1ty didn't throw the death match, Abit

Conspiracy!

Fatality (can't be bothered working out the numbers/letters thing), 'loses' a match, to an up and coming Chinese gamer, in Abit's big push into China, and holy smoke, they hire him on the spot.

My call - Fatality threw the game, Abit has a new gaming posterboy in China, everyone goes home happy, and Mr. Wendell (sounds like that old Arrested Development song), calls for a rematch, which he'd most likely win, if he was actually trying!

Always skeptical.

Thanks for the site guys, always entertaining and informative. Keep it up.

John (aka DeeMan, seeing as we're all using cool nicknames).

[We asked Abit. And we got this response. No...we're sad that Fatal1ty lost in this event..he is a good friend and he has been a great humble gamer (he congratulated Rocket Boy with the most sincere smile, although he is actually sad)..but the most important is to have the fair competition...I was personally very shocked during the match...after all USD 125K is not small money...but that helps not only the development of gaming in China but also ABIT reputation in gaming community..so at the end, we still take it with smile... Ed.]

Mobile phone throwing record broken

65.80 might be national record at Germany but world record it wasn't. Current record is 82.55 meters thrown at the 5th international Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships on Saturday the 28th of August in Savonlinna Finland.

Here.

Regards,
Markus Björklund

Intel and Nanoseconds
I just found a choice bit of Intel PR (or "lying", I suppose) in the form of the following quote:

"In one nanosecond, an Intel® processor can process millions of instructions." from here.

I mean I should probably go easy on them seeing as that's a public-relations page not a technical one and all, but if you correct that statement to:

"In one nanosecond, an Intel® processor can process about three-and-a-half instructions."

It just doesn't have the same ring to it. :)

Stephen

Microsoft and Knowledge Base

I'm not an aficionado of all things Microsoft, but may I assume that the KB stands for Knowledge Base in the fixes we've been inundated with lately? If so, or not, may I suggest an appropriate alternative - Kill Bill Volume xxxxx.

Steve Dodd

Intel dual desktop core chips to be called x20, x30, x40

Well that's a nice new naming convention. I'm sure this will help in clearing up the muddied waters. :P

Joachim S

There is a 4GHz Pentium 4!

I am a reader in the inquirer that goes and reads articles whenever I can, but In one of your articles stating that there won't be a 4Ghz version of the P4 released there is one tiny mistake. There is one already. In a recent intel event (chips and tips is what they called it) they raffled away novelty intel products as well as Intel mobos and CPUs. To my surprise and the envy of mostly everybody in the room they gave away a 4Ghz Pentium 4 with 1MB of L2 cache 800Mhz FSB, and an intel mobo with the 915 chipset (I don't remember the exact model number) Just thought you would like to know this.

Luis Encinosa

Millions of pieces of data blasted

Just throwing you a bone in case y'all get bored there and need a chew >;{> Amusing article on the BBC site: Dated 15th Oct 04, but you won't find it by searching. Try.

Here.

Apparently "Every e-mail, every TV picture, every phone conversation, is blasted into millions of tiny pieces of data and beamed through the air." :-O

Wow! So:

* laying all those transatlantic etc. fibres, developing Raman amps etc was all a waste of effort.

* UnrealTournament does not work transatlanticaly due to the satellite latency, and all those of us wot play must have done too many drugs and are having a mass hallucination. Someone should tell the geeks at http://www.chumpykillerz.co.uk, put them out of their misery.

* When the BOFH says "the internet is slow because the fat pipe is congested", he's lying through his teeth (oh.. yes... as usual..).

OR:

For /some reason/, SMTP traffic is separated out and fed via the expensive, slow and possibly insecure satellite link, rather than being fed through those nasty efficient fibres.

*Or of course, the BBC are talking bollox* (my favorite theory), But the reporter credited with the story. "Spencer Kelly", apparently did 3 years C.S. at Cambridge, so should be a Reliable Person no?

It seems the beeb have /to some extent/ retracted the article. (it can still be googled, but not searched for on the BBC.) This could be for a number of reasons, two spring to mind.

1) that the article was patently bollox, and so many people yelled that the beeb got sick of the noise, embarrased, and delinked it.

2) That all emails /really are/ fed via Goonhilly (i.e. to the NSA, CIA, Doris Day, the planet of the lesbian vampires, illuminati, whatever...)

Seems to me this is a job for Superman.. oops , I mean "The Inquirer", of course.

It could (should?) be amusing.

Lxx! And thanks for stopping me from going insane(r) at work every day.

Fragz.

System Building and Intel

Hey Mike,

I'm a PC manufacturer and I've recently been a bit miffed by what the blokes from Santa Clara have been up to lately. In talking with my collegues, I've discovered that I'm not alone. Here are my issues:

Why is Intel using model numbers?

The real answer is obviously that Intel has hit a wall in their roadmap. Intel tried for years to brainwash everyone and their mother that the biggest GHz wins. AMD countered with the true performance push with their model numbers and was moderately successful. Now Intel can barely squeeze a 3.4GHz out and have decided to abandon Netburst architecture and have announced that the 4Ghz will be cancelled. Meanwhile AMD has a 4000+.

What's Intel's strategy?

Intel model numbers must stick in order for Intel to be successful. Since Intel cannot yield frequency or performance they must ‘try' to sell something to its customers. Intel will tell you that they now sell ‘features'. The underlying problem is that some of these features have no ‘benefits'. So at the end of the day the boys in blue are selling a feature with little to no benefit. Let's take a look at what Intel is driving:

PCI express
While it's a long term need it's evident that market acceptance has been minimal from and end user perspective since it has added platform cost which apparently few to no consumers are willing to pay for.

DDR2
Again… cost added with no benefit. DDR2 is a technology where you see no benefit until you hit higher speeds so why not just wait until DDR3?

FSB, and cache
As AMD has proven, there are many ways to get performance, and with Intel, model numbers do not mean performance, however there are no inherent “rules” to show what a Intel model number really means?!

What are Intel model numbers?

Well, basically if you go to http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ even Intel will tell you that “A higher number does not necessarily mean higher performance for any given usage model or any given system configuration.”

So if the number doesn't represent performance, what does it represent? Well, again per the Intel site ““However, the digits themselves have no inherent meaning,”. Great.

Cache for Cash?

When looking at the latest “blue man goop” I see that Intel is charging me more for cache with the 6XX series. As an example, the only difference between a 530 and a 630 is the cache. Please raise your hand if you think my mother will be willing to pay cash for cache that in many applications may not even show much of a performance boost. AMD model numbers allow you to pay for performance.

So how do you beat the Intel Marketing machine?

Simple. If I were AMD I'd expose the truth. Intel model numbers are basically the same thing that Intel just got bashed for by the European commission. Two words: “Monopolistic practice”. All over Europe right now people are re-writing commercial tenders because the tenders specified processors with Intel specific feature sets. What is an Intel model number? It represents a feature set. Intel is being Intel, and trying to monopolize the consumer market by putting a model number next to its product that represents the processor feature set. Government bodies should step in discourage retailers in advertising this rubbish number.

Name, email supplied