GAMER PC PC : DISCUSSION

Replacing Aging PCs on a Budget
Posted in Gamer PC | May 4, 2009 12pm

One thing I enjoy tremendously about the tech industry is that the big chip companies (AMD, Intel, NVIDIA) are in a unique position where they don't have to worry about commoditization.  Since the demand for more processing power doesn't taper off Moore's Law is used to drive performance up at the high end and cost down at the low end, without upsetting anyone's business model.  Sure the big three would love to ship only high-end product, but thanks to the economics of semiconductor manufacturing there's a real benefit to shipping $40 CPUs as well as $1000 CPUs.
Lately the market has been inundated with talk about netbooks and other machines based on Intel's Atom processor.  Admittedly, we're seeing a regular stream of products at price points that were not usually catered to thanks to the netbook.  But the netbook and Intel's Atom really only exploit one aspect of Moore's Law - enabling very low cost, and correspondingly low performance PCs. Intel sells its desktop Atom processor for $29.  It delivers the performance of a mainstream notebook CPU from about 5 years ago.  At $999 Intel will sell you a Core i7-965, a processor that's an order of magnitude faster than that.  But at $74, there's another very interesting option: the Pentium E5300. The E5300 is interesting because it's similar in specs to the first Core 2 Duo processors that Intel launched in the second half of 2006. And if you were following the CPU market at all back then, you'll know that the slowest Core 2 Duos were often just as fast as the fastest CPUs on the market.In other words - for $74, you can buy a CPU today that's faster than anything from around 3 years ago - even systems using the top end $999 CPUs available at the time.  This sort of performance at such a reasonable price point comes at an important time when many are looking to replace aging PCs, many of them with Pentium 4s and Athlon 64s.  I don't think many realize the sort of performance you can get for less than $100 these days. It's time to share your upgrade stories - what systems do you have now and what are you looking to upgrade them to?

NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Where is this Netbook Stuff Going?
Posted in Notebook PC | April 20, 2009 9am

Apple was excited about shipping 10M iPhones.  Interestingly enough, in the same year that Apple broke 10M, netbooks broke that same number.  I’ve seen predictions for 2009 showing netbook sales in the   20 - 30M range and by 2010 we’re looking at numbers as high as 50M.  The platform is clearly viable, which means that it’s time to start talking about roadmaps.
Netbooks, like any other PC platform, are at the mercy of Moore’s law.  Thankfully.  The other thing to keep in mind is that since netbook performance is as low as it is today, the performance ramp should be pretty steep over the next 5 years.
Since netbooks have to be cost and power optimized, I don’t expect to see the usual gains in performance on a given manufacturing process.  It’s each new manufacturing process that will reduce power and die size enough to accommodate new performance features.
Intel’s Atom debuted on a 45nm process and throughout 2009 that’s where it will remain.  I’d expect a 32nm version of it towards the end of 2010, which will almost definitely be all dual-core by that point.
AMD’s approach to the netbook race has been to take an existing K8 core and simply reduce clock speed and voltage enough to make it viable from a power standpoint.  The die isn’t quite as tiny as what Intel has with Atom, but performance should be much better.  Intel could theoretically address the netbook market with a similar approach, leave Atom to smartphones and deliver a special Core 2 based chip for netbooks in the future.  That approach would guarantee much higher performance.
In the next 2 years I’d expect SSD costs to drop significantly as well, which would help to really improve the usage experience of the netbook - currently plagued by very slow hard drives or poor performing SSDs.
The line between netbook and notebook could get blurry before it gets more well defined.  I’d expect that the way many of us use netbooks today, as simply web terminals, could eventually be replaced by a properly designed, lightweight, tablet.  I’ve often referred to such a device as the Star Trek tablet, but what I’m envisioning is something 2 - 3x larger than an iPhone but with the performance characteristics of a netbook.
If that’s how things end up working out then we’d have smartphones, tablets, cheap notebooks and expensive notebooks as our portable computing devices going forward.
Do you see the future panning out differently?  I’m not a fortune teller, so I’d like to hear how you think it’d all work out.

GAMER PC PC : DISCUSSION

Must We Dock?
Posted in Gamer PC | March 25, 2009 5pm

As notebooks have grown more in popularity so has the concept of using a notebook as your only PC.  Obviously when you’re at your desk you don’t need the portability as much so there’s this motivation to be able to connect a larger display, keyboard and external mouse to your notebook.   Notebook docking stations have been around much longer than any of the notebooks we use today - they offer additional expansion ports to deliver more of the desktop experience but all while using your notebook. With the advent of services that keep all of your data in the cloud (e.g. Gmail), I’m wondering what the benefit is of using a single machine in multiple locations.  Naturally there are cost advantages but the major benefit to docking your notebook somewhere is that you add additional functionality to the same computer - presumably because this one has all of your information on it and is configured the way you like it. My thought is that we shouldn’t force flexibility upon hardware, but rather demand that our content, programs and information exist regardless of what device we access them on.  Isn’t that the goal after all?  Ubiquitous computing always meant that we can compute on anything, anywhere, not that we take one computer and try to use it in every situation.   I think notebooks make sense in places where you have no computers, where there’s no real reason for there to be a computer - but if you’re at your desk or at the office, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a good desktop (cost permitting) that leverages the added benefits only a desktop can bring (e.g. faster processors, more memory, better GPUs, etc...).  In the long run, if we can make our information and our content exist everywhere regardless of location (and this would depend on good internet infrastructure) I believe that the benefits of notebook docking stations start to fade.  The future I’m talking about however is a potentially distant one; at least on the order of 5 years given the requirements on ubiquitous truly high-speed internet access.  But what about today - do you make your notebook morph into more of a desktop when you’re at your desk?  External displays, keyboards, mice, more expansion?  I’ve told you what my ideal scenario is - just have my content follow me regardless of my computing device, but what about yours?  Do you have an ideal docking solution? 

GAMER PC PC : DISCUSSION

What Should Come Standard?
Posted in Gamer PC | March 11, 2009 9am

These days we have the luxury of memory prices being what they are.  Because of that, many notebooks now come with 3GB of memory and desktops come with 4GB (unless you’re buying from Apple of course).  Hard drive sizes are also more than reasonable for most users.  Even the cheapest desktops now ship with 320GB of hard drive space, andnotebooks with at least half that.  You can never have too much processing power or a better GPU, but the consumables, memory, storage, those things tend to come pretty cheaply these days.I remember a time when they didn’t.  When you always had to upgrade your system memory and you always needed more storage in whatever you bought.  Moore’s law and a demand for more storage have given us quite a bit for not much money now.Things like an optical drive or a sound card were once upgrades, but now they’re all integrated on-board.  The same goes for wireless. You’d never buy a laptop these days without wireless networking support standard.All of this begs the question: what do we long for these days?  In your stock PC configuration, what do you not get enough of when you go to order it?  Is it memory?  Is it hard drive space?  Do you want faster processors, bigger displays (for notebooks)?  Or are you perfectly content with everything you get from a stock PC order from whatever OEM you’re used to shopping with?For me, I think most PC OEMs do it right.  You do end up getting a good amount of hardware for your buck.  They always skimp on the CPU and GPU, so maybe that’s where my desires would reside.  The complaints are far more vocal when I’m talking about Apple hardware. Apple is still stuck in the previous decade of not delivering enough memory or disk space with their base configurations.What about you all - are you as easy to please as me?