Legit Reviews

Hey all, I'm reading through my January 2004 issue of PCWorld and have become facinated with the article titled "What's in Store for 2004- and beyond". So I think I will share a few interesting tid-bits with you that I am learning about. So below you will see a random list of thoughts and ETA's that are found in that PCWorld Article. Hope you enjoy!

Monitors and Graphics:

• 15" LCD's have hit that supply vs. demand breaking point. Prices will be rising after Christmas sales, so if you want a 15" LCD monitor BUY NOW!

• OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diodes) monitors may soon be in production and compete with LCD monitors in price!

• Right now graphic developers are way ahead of graphic hardware and can write complex shaders that could cripple the performance of a 9800XT. So look for graphics cards with 16, 32, or 64 parallel graphic pipelines in the next 5-years.

Motherboards:

• Look for Intel to make its first BXT form factor motherboard in mid-2004. The new BXT form factor is designed to enhance the airflow throughout your case by using just 2 fans (one in front and rear of case) to push air across the CPU, chipsets, and memory.

Memory:

• We have all heard of DDR2... and you should expect it to be available for sale in the first half of 2004 and will feature a data rate of about 4.3 gigabits per second per module. But what about DDR3 which will feature a data rate of about 6.4 gigabits per second per module? Well DDR3 is already being tested by high-end graphics card manufacturers!

Processors:

• Today's processors use a 130nm fab process and can handle a max clock speed of about 3.2 GHz. Intel's next processor, the Prescott, will feature a 90nm fab process and should reach a max clock speed of about 4.0 GHz by the end of 2004 (at least that's the goal Intel has set before itself). Now where it gets even more interesting is when PCWorld said that the Prescott's successor, the Tejas, should reach a clock speed between 5 to 7 GHz and that either the the Tejas or Prescott will support 64-bit applications!

• To get things even more interesting, researchers are already building chips using a 65nm process, and IBM and AMD are already developing a 45nm process! Now once the 45nm process is reached, new manufacturing methods will need to be used. Currently chips are made by using ultraviolet lithography which focuses light to carve circuits in a silicon wafer. Around 2009, (I'm guessing this is when the 45nm fab process is supposed to be reached) chipmakers will have to switch to a new process called Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography which uses Xenon gas instead of light. This new method is estimated to shrink the size of circuits by a factor of 10! By 2013, analysts predict that chipmakers will reach the "max-shrink" point where they will not be able to use silicon to increase performance!... *sniff*... they will have to find another new method between now and 2013 in order to continuously increase CPU performance or 2013 will be the end of processor manufacturers!

PCI Express

• PCI Express will replace AGP 8X slots because it will double the data rate between the graphics card and the system memory. Intel believes PCI Express has the potential to reach data rates of 80GB/sec whereas AGP 8X has a max of 2GB/sec.

Hard Drives

• SATA hard drives are expected to consist of about 30% of hard drive sales in 2004 and about 70% of sales in 2005!

• Don't expect hard drives to increase in size in the immediate future, but Maxtor has recently found a new way data can be stored magnetically on its platters. Drives today store data in a longitude manner on the circular disks, but the new way, perpendicular to the circular pattern, allows a much higher density of data to be stored. Drives using this method are expect to reach capacities as high as 700GB!

• HOWEVER, Seagate has demonstrated HAMR technology that uses a laser to heat the spot on the disk being written in order to make it easier to orient magnetically. Seagate claims this new technology can be used to store as much as 50 terabytes of data per square inch! HS!

Well, that's all for now. The article goes on and on and on and on... etc. about the future of computers. If you want to read the full article, it can be found online HERE! Kudos to PCWorld for an excelent article!

Holy Cow...So much going on this year!

I think a "computer year" has been bumped down from 6 months to 3 months or less. New "gotta have" stuff coming out all the time!!!!

Bad thing is that with this much new technology approaching it's possible that you have to change a whole lot more hardware than you'd like to, just because the new component is incompatible - again.

I had this a few times, and I had enough. I hope that e.g. if I buy a new mobo with SATA support, it will last long enough, and I wouldn't dare to buy one w/o it.

cool so i get to spend a grand on my computer every year until i die!

or you can do what i do and buy last years best right befor the new stuff comes out. that way your only a year behind and you still have a decent system. I was using a amd750 up until about a mth ago

Yes, next year is going to bring al sorts of new stuff. It's a nice time for an upgrade next year, only bad for the wallet, I guess :o

I believe Intel is pushing the BTX standard, there processors are almost, or over 100w nowadays, and they have more need than AMD to get all the cooling they can get. It used to be the other way around!

the NEW GFX cards by both nVidia and ATI have both set new levels of increased performance compared to older models. We are seeing up to 100% performance boost in some tasks... this was previously unheard of...

Its an exciting time to be in the computer world.... but an expensive one too!

so not looking forward to the new BTX form factor. As if I dont have enough outdated cases laying around already.

All this new stuff makes my wallet cringe.

couple of ways to go.....

BTX should bring some interesting things to the table..but most notably should push pricing down on ATX items.....most notably - mobos, psus and cases.....from what i've seen, it's a completely differnet form factor....

good news is, odds are good you could score a wicked kewl ATX system when the prices go down complete with watercooling....for less money than a comparable BTX system would run you.....odds are also good you'd see performance with an O/C watercool unit that would rival the BTX systems that first hit the streets....O/C'd athlon 64 tha's watercooled with a 6800 ultra even running AGP i could only imagine would smoke some serious asses...intel has gotten to where they need to reconfigure the entire case and mobo architecture b/c their data pipeline is stretched so thin it's about to burn through the copper....interesting change of pace versus what AMD used to be like....and we couldn't get anything out of 64-bit at the consumer level according to intel....really?...hmmmm....

- bliSS

Just a thought, do you reckon they will skip DDR2 and jump straight into using DDR3?

always possible i guess....the GFX board manufacturers are already using it...

- bliSS

I think the most interesting thing in that story is what they say about Samsung' HAMR technology for combination laser/magnetic storage at a much higher data density. How is that different from the currently available magneto-optical storage? Toms Hardware has done a couple of articles about this in the last few months, but the stuff they are talking about (first) is removable storage and (second) doesn't have anywhere near the data density mentioned here....

In case you care, here is the link to the TomsHardware article I'm talking about:

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20040416/index.html

Ive grown to not trust THG, the reason being its all motivated by who pays the highest to him.... he is no longer in many peoples eyes, a respectable review source.

Yeah, I have heard similar complaints from other people, but I really haven't ever gotten any of the specifics. I know there was a "war" between him and another couple of sites last year about something.... And I was reading an article he wrote for some reason and he said that he "even" had respect for some site and some other site.... As in, there's some reason he shouldn't.

My point still stands, though -- I wonder how this magneto-optical technology differs from what was reviewed there.

news here:

Tejas is being cancelled, and intel is going with a different type of architecture.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4923373/

muahahaha.... I'll just be getting back from Iraq (leaving this october for up to a year) and will have stocked up on that green stuff (no, i mean cash u stoners) and will be putting together a monSta :twisted:

damn, i want the future NOW.

rekphiv wrote:damn, i want the future NOW.

Where's my damned hoverboard?