Category: Computers

  • DRAM price trends: Up or down?

    This is quite surprising. After about a month of DRAM memory prices going up (this was quite surprising), the market analyst DRAMexchange tells us that this is now the end and the prices will fall again. Apparently, despite the vows of manufacturers like Nanya whose CEO is confirming that he would not try to limit…

  • My Clié is dead, long live Palm T|X

    After a few years of good faithful service, my Sony Clié PDA suicided by jumping from the corner of a table flat on the carpeted floor. It survived but is seriously maimed (the screen is partly blackened and operates only very partly). Disappointed by the lack of faithfulness from my grey little friend, I went…

  • Maximum temperature acceptable by a CPU

    Even if you don’t go the the extremes of CPU overclocking, you may sometimes wonder whether your CPU is too hot or not. For example, my own Athlon XP 2600+ currently displays 62°C. Is it too much? Chris Hare comes to our help with his table of CPU characteristics. You will find there (among other…

  • Visit a motherboard factory

    If you never entered a electronics plant, seeing how one of the biggest PC motherboard manufacturer builds them may be interesting. ECS Factory Tour – How A Motherboard Is Made

  • Best utility for your graphics card

    Anandtech has a nice post about the best utility software programs for the owner of a recent graphics card (be it an nVidia or and AMD-ATI). They compare: ATI Catalyst Control Center ATI Tray Tools ATITool nVIDIA Control Panel & nTune RivaTuner nHancer BIOS Flashing options and programs

  • Graphics cards, product lines

    Graphics cards, product lines

    Today, the market for independent graphics cards on PCIexpress is split between two product lines only: nVidia has setup a long list of boards around the 8×00 moniker (the 8 series). The high-end, 8800 GTS and 8800 GTX, are providing a lot of gaming power. The lower end, 8600 GTS and 8400 are much more…

  • Intel’s E6420 vs. AMD’s 5600+

    Intel’s E6420 vs. AMD’s 5600+

    Competition is tough at this level (sub-$200 dual-core processors). That is the reason why TechWareLabs decided to compare both CPUs: Intel’s E6420 vs. AMD’s 5600+. This is a confirmation that prices are set to make CPUs quite comparable. There is a slight performance advantage to Intel but for a slightly higher price.

  • Prices falling for CPUs

    Now, we had announced them: Summer sales. AMD started with nearly all its CPU products, Intel followed immediately, AMD announced that they would not go further for now. Today, Intel does it again for quad-core processors (but prices are already so high that you need breathing assistance to observe them in the rarefied air of…

  • AMD, wins and losses

    AMD just announced two things nearly simultaneously : loosing $600 millions in operations in the last quarter (the financial balance is not good, but the message in there is: “it’s gonna be better soon”) and receiving a €262 millions from the German government (approved by the European Commission) to support the investments in their Dresden…