Roundup: 6 scanners AMD+Intel motherboard at ECS CeBIT: OLED non announcement Athlon 64 dual core bench

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Roundup: 6 scanners   Posted on 14/03/2005 at 18:12 by Vincent

	We have tested 4 inkjet multifunction a couple of weeks ago. If we globally liked the print quality, the numerization was however less good. Our opinion is that if you are quite demanding, one solution is to buy a scanner and separate printer. We contacted the three main scanner manufacturers, Canon, Epson and HP, and offered to test two of their products, one basic model (100€) and one mid-range product (150€). Each was free to choose what they would send us and so up to them to choose the better products. This roundup reports the best results of each manufacturer according to your budget. Scanners tested are: Canon Lide 35, Canon CanoScan 4200F, Epson Perfection 2480 Photo, Epson Perfection 2580 Photo, HP Scanjet 3770, HP Scanjet 4600P/4670. > Click here to read the 1200 to 3200 dpi scanner roundup.

AMD+Intel motherboard at ECS   Posted on 14/03/2005 at 18:05 by Marc - source: Hexus

	ECS introduced during the CeBIT, the first motherboard able to welcome else a Pentium 4 or an Athlon 64. Initially, the ECS PF88 is intended for Socket 775 Pentium 4 and is based on the chipset SiS656+965. Between the two PCI Express x16 slots, one for AMD solution and one for Intel is a third connector able to welcome an extension card with a Northbridge SiS756, one Socket 939, two DIMM 184 pins and one 12V power connector. After the card installation and the modification of three jumpers’ position, the motherboard part dedicated to Intel is deactivated and finally become a solution dedicated to AMD. We have noticed that ASRock already offered a comparable product but wasn’t able to jump from Intel to AMD’s platform. The K7Upgrade-600 and -880 are Socket A motherboards able to welcome a Socket 754 daughter board and the K8Upgrade-1686 gives the possibility to change from Socket 754 to Socket 939. According to ECS, the motherboard price should be around $60-70 and you will need to send an extra $25 to $30 for the card to upgrade to Socket 939. This is the perfect solution for those unable to make a choice between Intel and AMD, but we find unfortunate that the Pentium 4 part uses 4 DIMM 240 pins for DDR2: the change to Athlon 64 will require a processor but also memory change. If ECS only used DDR1 for the P4, this problem wouldn’t have existed.

CeBIT: OLED non announcement   Posted on 14/03/2005 at 12:12 by Vincent

	Our CeBIT news are here to report new products and technologies unveiled during this event. For once we are going to deviate from this rule. The CeBIT 2005 wasn’t a good year for the OLED technology. During the last couple of years, the main OLED supporters Kodak and Toshiba unveiled systematically monitor prototypes and expected the release of this technology within a couple of years. This year: nothing. Not even the smallest prototype or announcement. At the manufacturers’ stands, it was as if this technology didn’t even exist. When we spoke about it with product managers, answers were always embarrassed. No more release date has been announced. If we think about this « non presence » and the last OLED announcements made by Samsung and Epson (in French), we will have to consider that the OLED technology might never be available for out computer monitors but only for TVs.

Athlon 64 dual core bench   Posted on 14/03/2005 at 12:05 by Marc

	The Italian website Hardware Upgrade has made the first benchmark on the dual core Athlon 64 Socket 939 clocked at 2.4 GHz. It is in fact a test with Cinebench 2003 which is based on the computer digitalized picture engine Cinema 4D. Results are rather encouraging because the performance gain from 1 to 2 threads is 87.2% with this benchmark. The performance improvement from 1 to 2 threads for a configuration based Opteron 250 (2.4 GHz) is 85.6 %. Gains are almost similar and in favor of the dual core Athlon 64. For other more bandwidth greedy benchmarks, the Opteron could provide slightly better performances as this type of configuration allows two memory controllers. The AMD dual core will be released mid-2005 for the Opteron and later for the Athlon 64. According to AMD, whether if it is for Socket 940 or 939, these solutions will be compatible with all existing motherboards with a simple bios update.