The Inquirer discusses Intel's apparent problems getting 800MHz bus Xeons out as promised, and what that means for AMD.

And guess what. Because Intel is in such a state of deshabillé, AMD isn't in any great hurry to get new Opterons out of the door. Why should it, when it takes Intel four speed bumps to AMD Opteron's three?

Ok, I have to admit that I'm tempted by the availability of the Athlon 64 3400+ mobile to give my eMachines laptop a 400MHz boost in speed to 2.2GHz. Yeah, it sounds crazy I know.

Also of note is that FX53 and Athlon 64 2800+ availability is on the up, and the Athlon 64 3400+ availability is tremendous with nearly 40 vendors offering the boxed version for sale.

Mad Shrimps has explored nForce 3 memory timings.

Now that memory prices are going up again everybody wants to buy his memory now and as cheap as possible. What memory to get? Some normal TwinMos or maybe that nice Mushkin, which costs you an arm and a leg. I hope this review can help you make a decision to choose wisely.

Whining Dog has reviewed the Shuttle SN85G4. It is the same box I use for my gaming, and you can now pick it up for under $300!

WOW ? that pretty much summarizes my experience with the Shuttle XPC SN85G4. It was sheer pleasure putting together this system and the resulting performance blew my mind away. When the project initially began, I envisioned the SN85G4 as a potential game / multimedia box for my home. After a few weeks of testing, benchmarking, and game playing, I can certifiably say that this box will be the center for all of my multimedia work. The Athlon 64 processor is the processor to beat ? period. Couple the processor with the Shuttle SN85G4 barebones system, and you nearly have the ultimate in small form factor PC's. If you've been considering building a Shuttle box and using an Athlon 64, then the Shuttle SN85G4 is a great place to start.

Overclockers has deduced that Hammers are still not selling. By Hammer of course they mean AMD64 CPUs. Now I'm thinking the fact that the eMachines Athlon 64 laptop can not be kept in stock at Best Buy sort of mucks up that theory. I've confirmed this at multiple Best Buys, through eMachines, and from many of you writing in.

For what reason(s), AMD doesn't seem to want to make a lot of Hammers until they get to 90nm (which seems to be doing OK, AMD had no problem being specific when talking about that.

This ought to make you think twice about wanting to buy one, and it ought to make you laugh when you read accounts about these chips taking over the world.

I mean come on. This is no reason to make anyone, overclockers included, to think about buying one. That conclusion is not a solid on. I can think of no valid reason based on ultimate performance to buy an Athlon XP over an Athlon 64. I just can't.

Mandrake has just released version 10 beta 2 for their AMD64 version of Linux.

- New bootsplash and backgrounds. Please report any problem, especially cases where they look bad at first but get refined afterwards. Likewise for any over-exceeding progress bars from lilo you may notice. Valuable information when reporting such problems can be type of video card, depth and resolution, etc.
- Kernel: update AMD64 subsystem to selected bits from 2.6.5rc2-1 patchkit, minus ia32 fixlets. Update K8 PowerNow! driver. Add workaround for VIA IOMMU problems. Add support for ITE IT8212 RAID chipsets. Enable Matrox DRM and 32-bit thunks.
- Update packages state to 10.0 Official. New additions include: Audacity 1.2.0, Cdrdao 1.1.8, Evolution 1.4.6, Nmap 3.50.
- Fix audio related problems from beta 1 with KDE. Also add 64-bit fixes to SDL_mixer & mikmod for correct sound support in e.g. Tuxracer, Frozen-Bubble, MozPlugger add-ons.
- Make pango biarch capable. i.e. move pango modules to an extra package alongside with appropriate pango-querymodules-{32,64}. Eclipse/x86 now works with a 32-bit JVM.

Well it is time to sell my eMachines 5310 laptop. My 6805 is taking over laptop duties full time. If you have any interest let me know. It is currently stock, but if you want I can modify it with a better drive, CPU, or memory, or put whatever OS you want on it. I'm also going to take it apart and get any sort of dust out, and give it some good Artic Silver paste where applicable. I may Ebay, but I'll see how this goes. Remember when you buy I'll give you lifetime support, and I can do upgrades for you if you want. Now were it me I'd get a 7200 RPM drive for it, and maybe a faster mobile CPU. It includes a 40GB drive, Athlon XP-M 2400+, 512MB of memory, a combo drive, and 8012.11g integrated Broadcom wireless. I paid just over $1,200 for it back in August. Today refurbished it is $969.

Tbreak has reviewed the MSI K8N Neo Platinum Edition nForce 3 250GB motherboard.

Performance-wise, the nForce3-250Gb in its current form doesn?t really bring anything to the table. We?ll have to wait for the dual channel version of the chipset to probably see some notable improvement in that area. With that said, the nForce3-250Gb does brings a lot more otherwise. The MSI K8T Neo based on this chipset is loaded with features like Gigabit LAN and SATA/RAID supported by the chipset. Overclocking is also pretty good although we feel MSI could?ve added some more options in that department. Lastly, Stability was not an issue at all with the K8N Neo Platinum- we didn?t meet a single crash or reboot.

Tech Report has an excellent review of the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra. They test with the Athlon 64 3400+.

But as of today, that's all ancient history. NVIDIA is back with a new chip, the NV40, produced by a new, crystal-clear set of design principles. The first NV40-based product is the GeForce 6800 Ultra. I've been playing with one for the past few days here in Damage Labs, and I'm pleased to report that it's really, really good. For a better understanding of how and why, let's look at some of the basic design principles that guided NV40 development.

Anandtech also have a review on the Athlon 64 3400+, but I prefer Scott's. Brandon at Firing Squad also reviews on the 3400+. I see a trend here. :)

Infoworld has an article on Intel trying to keep its cool. So what is the ultimate answer? Scrapping the P4 it appears.

"I think we're going to have to look at architectural solutions in order to try to minimize the heat as much as possible," he said.