That’ll do nicely

PCI Express to be phased out in favour of new interface, reports Esmeralda Frontside-Bus

Just when we’d resigned ourselves to the inevitable phasing out of AGP, it looks like PCI Express is soon to go the same way. Both ATi and Nvidia will be releasing their next-generation products on the new PCI American Express bus. A development of PCI Express 16x, the new interface will have one extra lane for increased performance.

‘PCI Express was already starting to show its restrictions, particularly in SLI,’ Nvidia’s spokesperson Adamant Stoat told us. ‘The extra lane in the 17x PCI American Express bus will enable unparalleled levels of profit, sorry, I mean performance for the next generation of graphics cards.’

Despite its obvious benefits, PCI American Express has one major downside – it will not be backwards compatible with its predecessor. This will mean that end users will be forced to upgrade their motherboards to take advantage of graphics cards using the new interface. Support is due in the forthcoming Nvidia NForcedUpgrade 6 and ATi CopycatFire 2000 core logic, which will also incorporate the groundbreaking Pointless Peripheral Bus. This new interface has been specifically designed to remain unused for years to come, placing it in direct competition with PCI Express 1x.

‘Now that we’ve successfully moved everyone over to PCI Express, it makes a lot more financial sense to introduce a new bus and only launch our best graphics cards on it,’ explained ATi’s PR Mythologist Andreas Bulimia. ‘This maximises the user experience for optimum quality, or something. Does it matter?’

PCI American Express is due to hit the market in late 2006, or just when everyone has upgraded to PCI Express.

Retromark aims to eat the pie

Is Futuremark’s future in the past, as a new graphics benchmark gains popularity? Reports Polly Gunnell

For many years, Futuremark has dominated the graphics benchmarking world. But its leadership could soon be under threat. A new testing suite is gaining interest in the gaming world – a test with a difference. Canadian company Retromark’s latest 3DMerkin07 benchmark is based on the premise that existing benchmarks are unfair on older hardware.

Retromark 3DMerkin07 is an entirely synthetic benchmark based on a custom-coded ShaderModel 3 version of the Namco Pac-Man engine, to increase backwards compatibility with Atari 2600 systems. It downplays the importance of CPU and graphics power. Instead, a questionnaire tests the user’s knowledge of 1980s video games and the TV series Knight Rider.

‘Unlike competitive benchmarks we could mention, it’s not just the size of the score but the quality of the numbers involved,’ explained Retromark’s Vlad Onion. ‘With 3DMerkin07, you want to get as many “Lucky Sevens” as possible. Any system managing to get more than three sevens wins a prize of a slap-up pizza evening out with Jonathan Wendel. Two or more sevens and a pair of fives is also a great score. But anything under 50 and you win a Hexus.net thong.’

Retromark, formerly called CrazyChive, has worked hard to ensure any hardware configuration can get a good score, with a bit of luck. ‘Who cares about real game performance anyway?’ Onion told us. ‘It’s how you do in benchmarks that counts – and 3DMerkin07 gives everyone a fighting chance to win!’

3DMerkin07 Benchmarks

ATi Radeon X300 SE - 1
Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX 512 – 77432988899
ATi Radeon X1900XTX – 7789955885
Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX 512 SLI – 55
ATi Radeon X1900XT CrossFire - 777771

Headshot!

New gaming intelligence coprocessor promises smarter opponents, reports Django Stalin

Ever found yourself mocking the limited strategy of a gaming bot? Or laughing out loud when your computer opponent’s RTS army gets stuck behind a rock as you pick them off from a comfortable distance? Well, those days could be over with the new WendelBrain Gaming Intelligence processor from Israel’s Agaya Perspective International.

Agaya is breeding its own Fatal1ty strain of chimpanzees for the WendelBrain

‘We created the WendelBrain by culling cells from network gaming legend Jonathan Wendel’s neocortex and crossing them with a chimpanzee,’ Agaya’s Arthur Netenyahoo told us. ‘Most of the intelligence comes from the chimpanzee, but it means we can use Fatal1ty branding on the box!’

The WendelBrain incorporates a complex dual-core BioDSP chip architecture, which must be kept at a constant 37C via a reverse phase-change warming system, although a nearby Pentium 4 can perform this task as well. It also requires regular infusions of liquefied Pizza Hut Thin ‘N Crispy and Red Bull. ‘You need to keep the WendelBrain above minimum nutritional levels for optimal strategic processing,’ Netenyahoo told us. ‘It can forget to feed itself during particularly intensive gaming sessions, so you need to give it a constant supply of convenient junk food and caffeinated beverages.’ The WendelBrain is so focused on gaming that it has difficulty forming relationships with other components in a PC. Because of this, it currently has a bug where it will attempt to load a game whenever your PC is booted. Agaya is planning to combat this problem using a parental control system.

Agaya’s first WendelBrain, the Fatal1ty Headshot GXP, will be available at an RRP of £385 from http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ and most local pet shops.

Microsoft unleashes timebomb

Windows Vista will punish evil, reports Kernel Sanders

Microsoft was busy trying to shore up a PR disaster today as unofficial reports came in that the forthcoming Windows Vista ‘might make PCs explode’. According to Linux website http://www.bushybeards.org/, a new ‘morality engine’ will constantly monitor your computer usage. If it detects unencrypted media files, images with ‘too much flesh visible’ or Open Source code, it could set off a chain reaction between your graphics card and processor. A rapid increase in temperature will spontaneously enrich uranium and instigate a minor nuclear disaster inside your computer.

In tandem with a webcam, Windows Vista will also be able to search your room for pirated CDs, DVDs, pornography and versions of Linux. Bushybeards reports that the final shipping version of Vista will incorporate ‘X-ray Visualisation Technology’ (XVT), capable of even detecting morality infringements through solid objects. This will allow Microsoft to check up on your neighbours as well as, and increase the explosive yield accordingly. However, XVT won't arrive until the first Windows Vista service pack.

Commenting on the allegations, Microsoft Windows Platform Monopolist Pauline Brundle told us ‘Isn’t this just what you deserve if you’re illegally sharing copyright material or using Linux? You’re just a thief. All PC users are by nature evil, and what’s needed is an operating system which treats you like the freeloading scum you all are. Windows Vista is that operating system.’

An early example of the effect the morality engine can have on those not using a Microsoft Secure Web Browser can be found at http://www.absurd.org/((((((/coremelt/index.html (Mozilla Firefox required).

Intel spilled my pint

AMD files third lawsuit against Intel, reports Stanislav Blingstein

The computing world was reeling today after AMD announced yet another lawsuit against Intel. The third suit, filed in Latvia, is the most damning yet. In a 939-page document, written in an entertaining style by chat-show host Terry Wogan, AMD alleges numerous new unfair business practices. Most incendiary amongst these is the charge that Intel is getting unfair technological help from an alien master race, the Moorons. ‘Remember those guys in spacesuits in the Pentium 4 advertisements? They’re all Moorons,’ AMD’s chief stylist Mother Teresa Swimmer told us.

AMD alleges Intel has been getting an unfair business advantage from a partnership with extraterrestrials

AMD also alleges that Intel processors attract purchasers of new computers using ‘smoking SIMD extensions’ and a ‘20-stage crack pipeline’. ‘The high frequencies set up interference in Alpha brainwaves, causing customers of Dixons and other high-street shops to draw closer to sources of heat such as Prescott-core CPUs’, an AMD technical marketing specialist told us.

The lawsuit also contains a legion of lesser accusations: ‘High-ranking Intel executives regularly steal from our portions of chips in MacDonalds,’ said AMD’s Productive European Manager David Never-it. ‘I’ve even had my pint jogged down the pub and had aspersions cast on its manliness. And once or twice a week, I hear a knock on the door, and when I open it there’s nobody there. I just see mysterious blue-painted individuals running away down the street,’ he lamented.

The AMD case is expected to be presented to the Latvian Superb Court for trial by a trio of lamas two weeks on Tuesday.

Barbie does Washington

‘Sexually explicit’ children’s game sparks new US political pressure, reports Jenna Jameson

The entertainment industry was in turmoil again today, as yet another game franchise came under the scrutiny of the US legislature. Vivendi’s latest Barbie title Pony Girl for PC, Xbox and GBA ‘contains nekkid pictures’, alleges Senator Albert Bonehead of Alabama.

‘Ah chekked mah ‘puter after mah liddle gal had bin a-playin’ an’ it was full of pronography’, the senator complained, in a controversy now being called ‘Iced Frappuccino’. ‘It weren’t all mine, neither. Must have come from that dratted Barbie game. No doubt ‘bout it.’

Numerous gaming favourites are now facing the evil eye of right-thinking American politicians. Pac Man is being pulled from shelves for its ‘pill popping drugs connotations’ and ‘lewd cherry metaphors representing the deflowering of virgins’, a senatorial representative told us. Pong’s ‘association with the anus’ means it is also under threat, as is Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Even Scrabble 2003 will be recalled because of the ‘distinct possibility of producing rude words’.

However, in a more positive development, the US House of Representatives is currently considering a new bill to make violence in PC games mandatory. ‘It’s the American way,’ explained Senator Hillarie Gunclub. ‘Sex is the work of the devil. But shooting people and cutting them up with knives is a natural part of American life, and our computer games should reflect this.’

Parallel graphics mystery revealed

Nvidia SLI ‘based on ancient Egyptian technology’, reports Frodo Abramovich

The hardware enthusiast industry was in shock today as it learned that Nvidia’s SLI might not be as cutting edge as first claimed. Although Nvidia has clearly differentiated its SLI technology from the 3dfx version by using a lowercase ‘i’ in the logo, its true origin could be much older than originally thought. In fact, SLI could predate 3dfx by thousands of years, according to secret documents revealed today.

Ancient camel-dung tablets have been discovered which clearly show two Egyptian scribes writing hieroglyphics onto stone tablets in parallel, doubling the performance. Although this process of ‘Slave-Linked Inscription’ was commonplace in 2,000BC, the technology was thought to have been lost during the reign of the androgynous Pharoah Akhenaton. But it is now believed that the ‘Secret of SLI’ was jealously kept through the ages by an arcane holy order by the name of The Priory of Psion. Related to the Knights Tempura, a deep-fried vegetarian wing of the Japanese Cathode Church, The Priory eventually founded 3dfx to harness the power of the mystic technologies it possessed.

‘Nvidia’s SLI is grounded in very old, essentially primeval knowledge,’ argued Nvidia spokesperson Adrian Float. ‘Dualism has reigned supreme throughout history – good and evil, yin and yang, Cannon and Ball. Twin Nvidia graphics cards not only continue that tradition, but improve on it twofold!’

God chooses ATi

Canadian technology becomes official multi-GPU solution for the Catholic Church, reports Roberto Calvi

In a major snub to Nvidia, the Vatican announced today that it would be adopting ATi’s CrossFire rather than Nvidia’s SLI as its official multi-graphics technology. It is thought that a number of influential cardinals had purchased single GeForce 6800 Ultras and SLI motherboards, but were now angry that the discontinuation of the Ultra card would seriously restrict their upgrade options.

Splinter Sect Heresy Theory is a favourite 3D shooter amongst Catholic priests

‘The power of the Holy CrossFire is unparalleled,’ intoned Pope Benedict XVI in a special commemorative mass in the Sistine Chapel. ‘Only dual-Radeon X800 series can 3D graphically render unto God what is rightfully His,’ he added. It also believed that the ‘Shader Model Trinity’ is considered heresy amongst orthodox Christian zealots, and is secretly known as ‘The Satan Model’.

ATi’s historical link with divinity is a matter of public record. That anyone managed to purchase the original X800 XT PE was nothing short of a miracle, and getting a new release of Catalyst Control Center drivers to install correctly is very much a matter of faith. The All-in-Wonder range is also thought to have received its name from the holy awe the products allegedly inspire in their users, according to marketing literature.

‘With the Almighty fighting our corner, we cannot fail in our battle against the deadly sin of Nvidia’, argued ATi’s technical marketing specialist, Bishop Andrew Banana. ‘Only God can save us from Nvidia’s GeForce 7800 GTX. Fortunately, he’s now officially on our side!’

Splinter Sect Heresy Theory Benchmarks
1,600 x 1,200, 4x antidisestablishmentarianism, 8x blasphemy filtering

2 x ATi Radeon X850 XT Platitude Edition: 83.3
2 x Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra with Satan Model 3: 66.6

Core blimey

Three is the magic number with the latest in Serbian processor technology, reports Stanislav Blingstein

Every so often, the tit-for-tat war between Intel and AMD is broken by a courageous release from a little-known startup. But few newcomers have been as radical as the forthcoming triple-core processor from Serbian Laibach Technology. The Laibach Scaramanga™ CPU is an x86-compatible design based on the company’s Sell™ processor technology. The Sell™ was the surprise hit of 2004 amongst Latvian gamers. With a modular hyper-pipelined marketing strategy and 14 megabytes of Level 4 cash, the Sell™ found huge appeal for those hardware enthusiasts who had no interest in actual performance.

The Scaramanga™ integrates a trio of Laibach Sell™ processors into one ceramic package, each with its own five-way 69-bit encryption co-processing super-pipeline. Unlike AMD’s and Intel’s dual-core releases, the Scaramanga™ uses patented PartyWall™ technology to make three 1.02GHz processors or a single virtual 3.03GHz 64-bit CPU operating the PMS64™ instruction set. PMS64™ is a hybrid of AMD64, EM64T and Debian Linux and is backwards compatible with Windows 3.11. The user can choose single or triple-processing mode on the fly with a big red knob on the front of the PC.

Early benchmarks are encouraging, with the Laibach Scaramanga™ beating IDT’s Winchip in single-CPU mode, and exhibiting noticeably better performance than three Motorola DragonBalls put together in triple mode. Manufactured locally in Serbia at Laibach’s pottery fab in Belgrade, the Scaramanga™ will be available in Q7 2009 from selected Q8 petrol stations and from all Argos outlets.

piFast benchmarks

IDT WinChip 205MHz (Windows 3.11) – 1,047 seconds
Laibach Scaramanga™ 3.03GHz (Windows XP 64-bit) – 999 seconds

3 x Palm Vx with 20MHz Motorola DragonBall (PalmOS 3.1) – 5,543 seconds
Laibach Scaramanga™ 3 x 1.02GHz (Debutante Linux) – 4,837 seconds

Rover’s return

Inside report from the Slovenian hardware community by Modmeister Matteus

When Janez Drnovsek’s beloved dog Poochie died of canine syphilis, he was devastated. That was, until the Ljubljana-based hardware enthusiast came up with an idea: why not transform his faithful companion into a unique small form factor PC? That way Poochie could be by his side once more, as he indulged his favourite hobby of collecting bovine pornography via the Internet.

Many hours with the dremel later, he’d modded Poochie into an ergonomic Mini-ITX platform, into which he built an EPIA MII 12000 mainboard. But even the EPIA was too noisy for Drnovsek, so he added Zalmann’s excellent Reserator 1 water cooling. Using ClockGen, Drnovsek managed to overclock his Poochie EPIA system from 1.2GHz to 1.204GHz, which gave a 0.3 per cent performance improvement overall in 3D benchmarks.

‘Poochie was a good dog, and my only real friend’, Drnovsek told Tehwinquirer.net. ‘But now he’s a kick-arse gaming system, which is even better!’ After the success of his Poochie mod, Drnovsek is looking forward to when his pet goat Ethel meets her demise. ‘She’ll be perfect for my new Pentium M project’, he commented.

Poochie Mini-ITX System
3DMark03: 72 (72.2 overclocked)
3DMark05: 9 (9.03 overclocked)