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Remembering the Gotbyte incident
by Scott Wasson — 5:24 PM on November 11, 2009

During this celebration of our 10th anniversary, it seems only fitting to look back on a fun episode from our long-ago past. Back when the Pentium 4 was the new hotness, only not quite the hotness it became with Prescott at 90 nm, we featured a review of this processor against its natural competitor, AMD's original Athlon.

Around that time, an online retailer named Gotbyte was building a new website for itself, and its web developer apparently liked the idea of populating that site with some respectable-looking content. Like our review. Only that developer didn't like the idea of using his own bandwidth to serve the images in the review, so he simply embedded ours. Hey, free hosting. Only we noticed some anomalies when poking through our web logs and soon discovered they'd stolen our article. Our solution? We moved the original images for our article to another directory, changed the HTML in our review to include the new image location, and modified the original images—still embedded in the retailer's website—to send a rather different message. The article then appeared on Gotbyte's website more or less in the form you see below.

And yes, Gotbyte eventually apologized, took down the stolen review, and fired its web developer. But the fun we got out of it was almost worth the hassle. Be sure to keep scrolling to see that last image.

THERE'S NO LOVE LOST between the Intel and AMD camps these days. Both sides know they're in for the fight of their lives, and both are bringing spectacular advances to the desktop PC market with regularity. The latest salvos in the desktop wars are a whole new microarchitecture from Intel and a revamped Athlon platform from AMD. The P4 and Athlon DDR in a head-to-head, take-no-prisoners benchmark brawl.

We've rounded up a 1.5GHz P4 system from Intel and tossed it into the ring with a 1.2GHz DDR system from AMD. To test our contenders' mettle, we've run them through a grueling gauntlet of benchmarks, from the highly synthetic to in-the-mud, real-world application tests.

Before the opening bell sounds, let's review our contenders' qualifications.

The Pentium 4's advantages
The Pentium 4 has been endowed by Intel with a number of natural advantages, not least of which is its incredible ability to ramp clock frequencies and, hand-in-hand with it, a hair-raising 1.5GHz top clock speed. Impressive as the GHz numbers are, though, the real story with the P4 is its ability to move data around inside the system. From the front-side bus to its RDRAM memory interface to its north-south bridge link, the P4 has a considerable advantage over the Athlon platform, at least on paper.

Let me slow down and run some of the numbers by you. The P4 has a 100MHz, "quad-pumped" front-side bus between itself and the rest of the system. To confuse you, we will, as always, refer to this bus interchangeably as 100MHz and 400MHz?whatever suits our purposes. This 400MHz monster can pump through up to 3.2GB of data per second. Coupled nicely with that bus are the P4's dual channels of PC800 Rambus DRAM, which can also push through 3.2GB of data per second at peak. Further down, in the less-exotic bowels of the system, the Intel 850 chipset has a 266MHz "hub"-style link between its north and south bridge chips. (Though Intel doesn't use directional terminology, the chips' purposes are basically the same as in most other contemporary PCs.)

In every one of these cases, the P4 has a system bandwidth advantage over the Athlon. If nothing else, the Pentium 4 platform has plenty of room to grow. And it ought to deliver a serious whuppin' at memory-intensive tasks.

The Athlon's advantages
Meanwhile, the Athlon's great advantage over the Pentium 4 is, well, the Athlon chip itself. AMD has created a wondrous thing in this processor, a marvel of x86-compatible design. Athlons have already easily outpaced the PIII in the megahertz race, and they're at least as fast, clock for clock, as any PIII chip. The Pentium 4 may run at higher clock speeds, but it does so by virtue of a very long instruction pipeline. The length of that pipeline hampers the P4's clock-for-clock performance, so that a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 isn't necessarily any faster than, say, a 1GHz Pentium III.

But then many things aren't as they seem once the theoretical performance numbers start flying around. For instance, the Pentium 4 talks to its L2 cache over a 256-bit wide connection, while the Athlon's L2 cache interface is only 64-bits wide. However, the Athlon Thunderbird's dual-ported, on-chip cache is probably just as good as the P4's.

But I digress. The advantages for the Athlon here include excellent clock-for-clock performance, especially in floating-point math, where the P4 is relatively weak and the Athlon is quite strong.

To bolster the Athlon's already strong performance, AMD has introduced a pair of platform enhancements. There's a new front-side bus speed of 266MHz, up from 200MHz. And there's the 760 chipset's ability to address double date rate (DDR) SDRAM. Created to combat the high prices (and latencies) of RDRAM, the DDR vs. Rambus struggle is a running subtext of the AMD-Intel conflict. The 133MHz variety of DDR memory, dubbed PC2100, can push through 2.1GB/sec, at peak?not as much as the P4's dual RDRAM channels, but twice the speed of conventional PC133 SDRAM.

In short, even though the Athlon is running at a clock rate 300MHz lower than the P4's, we're expecting big things out of this 1.2GHz DDR test rig.

Our testing methods
Let's cover what we tested and how, so the rules are clear up front. We've included not only our two contenders for the crown, but a couple of older systems for reference: a 1.1GHz Athlon with PC133 SDRAM, and an 800MHz Pentium III. Just because we can.

We chose to test in Windows 2000 rather than in Win9x/ME for a simple reason: Win2K is much, much better than Win9x/ME, and anyone putting down a big enough chunk o' change to buy a P4 system ought to know it. Once the next rev of Win2K, named Windows XP, makes it out the door, Win9x/ME will finally be put out to pasture. Yes, even for gamers. Win2K is making big strides in this area, and we expect Windows XP to dominate the desktop market in six months to a year. Nobody buying a P4 today ought to use it for any length of time with WinME or the like. Our decision to test with Windows 2000 may make the P4 look relatively stronger than it would in Win9x/ME, based on the scores we've seen around the web. But we think that's fair, under the circumstances.

As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. All tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.

Our Pentium 4 test system contained these components:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 processor at 1.4 and 1.5GHz

Motherboard: Intel D850GB - Intel 850 chipset - 82850 memory controller hub (MCH), 82801BA I/O controller hub (ICH2)

Memory: 256MB PC800 DRDRAM memory in two 128MB RIMMs

Video: NVIDIA GeForce 2 Ultra 64MB (Detonator 3 version 6.31 drivers)

Audio: Creative SoundBlaster Live!

Storage: IBM 75GXP 30.5GB 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive

..while our comparison systems varied only with respect to the motherboard, memory, and CPU. The Athlon DDR box looked like this:

Processor: AMD Athlon 1.2GHz CPU on a 266MHz (DDR) bus

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA7-DX motherboard - AMD 761 North Bridge, Via VT82C686B South Bridge

Memory: 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM in two 128MB DIMMs

For the Athlon/KT133 system, we used:

Processor: AMD Athlon 1.1GHz CPU on a 200MHz (DDR) bus

Motherboard: Abit KT7-RAID motherboard - Via Apollo KT133 chipset - VT8363 North Bridge, VT82C686A South Bridge

Memory: 256MB PC133 SDRAM in two 128MB DIMMs

Similarly, we included a Pentium III test system?though only at 800MHz, we thought it would be a useful reference point?using these components:

Processor: Intel Pentium III 800EB (Coppermine) CPU at 800MHz on a 133MHz bus

Motherboard: Asus P3V4X motherboard - Via Apollo Pro 133 chipset - VT82C694X North Bridge, VT82C596B South Bridge

Memory: 256MB PC133 SDRAM in two 128MB DIMMs

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• SiSoft Sandra Standard 2000.3.6.4
• Compiled binary of C Linpack port
• ZD Content Creation Winstone 2000
• LAME 3.70
• SPECviewperf 6.1.2
• ps5bench 1.1 Intermediate
• Adobe Photoshop 5.5
• POV-Ray for Windows version 3.1g
• 3DMark 2000 Pro build 335
• Quake III Arena 1.17
• Quake III Team Arena Internet demo
• MDK2 Internet demo
• Expendable Internet demo

In the Quake III Arena timedemo tests, we used the game defaults for "Normal" and "High Quality" rendering, with a few exceptions. For the "High Quality" tests, texture detail was set to maximum and the "high" geometry settings were enabled, as well.

The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

The performance tests
Memory performance
Let's get this DDR versus Rambus thing out in the open right away. We'll start with Linpack, which measures memory bandwidth using matrices of large, floating-point numbers. Linpack tests a range of data matrices of different sizes, so it stresses everything from the L1 cache out to main system RAM. Look at the graphs to see what I mean:

Interesting, no? So you may be wondering, "Who won?" That depends. In terms of peak performance, the Athlon systems won, with much higher numbers on the tests involving smaller data sets. There are probably a couple of reasons for the Athlon's higher peaks here. First, the Athlon's L1 data cache is 64KB, and it's obviously very fast; by comparison, the P4 has a rather small 8KB L1 data cache. Once the Athlon moves out of its L1 cache, past 64KB matrix sizes, performance drops. Second, the Athlon's floating point math unit is excellent, which should help it process cached data very quickly.

But the shape of the graph tells a story, and those peaks are only part of it. Notice how all the scores start to drop sharply between the 256K and 320K matrix sizes. That's the Linpack test moving beyond the L1 and L2 caches and into main memory. Thanks to a smart cache design, the Athlon is able to hold on a little longer, to about 320K, before suffering a drop off.

So the Athlon looks pretty good until we hit main system memory. Then it turns ugly.

The P4's RDRAM channels allow it to keep a nice, steady pace as the data size rises toward 2MB. The SDRAM-based systems all suffer by comparison; even the DDR box drops to under half the speed of the P4 system. If the race goes to the steady, the P4 wins here easily.

Sandra's modified STREAM benchmark offers another perspective on the data, but it's basically the same dynamic. The Pentium 4's impressive theoretical advantages in memory throughput are even more remarkable in practice. DDR SDRAM does help the Athlon along a bit, but comparatively, DDR looks kind of weak here.

That's not the whole story, though. Memory bandwidth is important, but it's influenced by number of things?not least of which is a processor's ability to pull in data. There are solid reasons to believe the Athlon just isn't as geared toward maximizing memory bandwidth as is the P4. Beyond that, memory performance is also measured in terms of latency, and SDRAM systems have often shown real-world benefits over RDRAM thanks to lower access latencies.

So let's reserve judgment while we dive into some less synthetic tests, then see

Content Creation Winstone

Here's our first indication of how close a matchup this really is. Our 1.1GHz PC133 Athlon rig loses out to the P4, but the DDR box has enough extra oomph to pull out a win.

POV-Ray 3D rendering
This test serves as a correction of sorts to my initial Pentium 4 review. In that review, I tested the P4 in the POV-Ray 3D rendering program, and it lost badly to a 1.1GHz Athlon?especially in rendering "ntreal.pov". Further testing has confirmed that I messed up badly in reporting the results for "ntreal.pov," however, making the Athlon look much faster than it was.

The corrected results below paint a more accurate picture.

The Athlon's monster FPU rips through this one quite a bit faster, but the P4 isn't that far off the game. Still, that's two real-world apps down, and two victories for the Athlon DDR system.

LAME MP3 encoding
We've used a version of the LAME MP3 encoder that doesn't have any special optimizations for AMD's 3DNow or Intel's SSE/SSE2, so like POV-Ray, this one is all about x87 floating-point performance.

You were expecting something else? Another win for the Athlon system, with the P4 again performing fairly respectably in an FPU-intensive test.

In fact, the P4 downright whupped the PIII on this one. Makes me wonder if all the fuss about the P4's relatively weak FPU isn't a bit overblown.

SPECviewperf workstation graphics
SPEC's viewperf suite of graphics tests measures performance using a range of high-end, workstation-class 3D applications and tasks. Theoretically, these tests ought to stress a number of things: FPU processing power, memory performance, AGP implementation, etc.

 

 

The results are mixed, with the suite of tests exposing nicely the truth about these systems' performance: either system can be faster, depending on the task. I won't dare speculate about why a given system is faster on a given test?there are too many variables involved?but in light of the P4's defeats on most of our previous tests, it's safe to conclude the P4 is relatively strong in 3D graphics-related tasks.

Quake III Arena gaming performance
Now into the gaming action...

 

 

If there's one thing to know about Pentium 4 performance, it's that these puppies love Quake. The P4 finally wins a real-world test outright and impressively, showing the Athlon a thing or two.

Now in the past, I've attributed the P4's dominance in Quake to its bandwidth advantages in memory and on the front-side bus. Some have speculated that the P4 benefits from the way Quake III is written, essentially suggesting the game's instruction mix is close to optimal for the P4. While that may be very much true, note that the Athlon benefits greatly from a faster bus and memory, as well.

Of course, once we get to the higher resolutions, the pack bunches up as the video card's fill rate becomes the primary bottleneck.

 

Team Arena is much the same story as the original Quake III, but it's CPU-bound even at 1024x768. Again, the P4 rolls.

MDK2 gaming performance
Now for another OpenGL game. Will the P4 again dominate?

Not exactly. The Athlon DDR box cranks here, turning in as impressive a win in MDK2 as the Pentium 4 did in Quake III.

3DMark 2000
On to 3DMark, where Intel products have always performed relatively well. Suspiciously so, in fact. Has MadOnion, the company behind 3DMark, rigged this one in Intel's favor?

If they did, it didn't matter. The Athlon DDR system rips through 3DMark, stunning the P4. This is not the result we'd expected based on what we've seen in the past. Notice that the Atlon/PC133 system trails the P4 by over a thousand points. Obviously, the DDR rig's extra system bandwidth makes the difference.

3DMark also does a CPU rating, and oddly, the Athlon loses this one...

But once you get to the individual game tests, things turn around. Now for a real Direct3D game...

Expendable Direct3D performance
We've included both average and minimum frame-rate numbers here, because Expendable is smart enough to record both things. Averages do matter, but the minimum frame rates are the real performance killers in any game.

Additional considerations
So now we've seen how they stack up performance-wise. Before drawing our conclusions, let's take a second to weigh some other considerations. There are some hardware-related platform differences between these two setups worth noting. In particular, the AMD Socket A chips are fragile, subject to damaged or cracked cores during the course of what ought to be routine handling. Poorly made heat sinks can destroy an Athlon chip during mounting, and it happens. We've seen it. AMD needs to do something to improve this situation, because simple upgrades are now too often fraught with peril.

Also, Athlon chips run very hot, and without a heat sink attached, they can burn up inside of a few seconds. That's no big deal for the most part, since attaching a heat sink to one's CPU ought to be a matter of course. But for hardware tinkerers like us, it's an additional worry.

The Pentium 4 doesn't have these problems, but the improvements come at a price?while the Athlon will work in a standard ATX case, the P4 requires a new, ATX12V power connector (part of a revised ATX spec backed by Intel). If you're upgrading your PC in the same case, that means you're going to need a new power supply. Not only that, but the P4 avoids having its core crushed by requiring a new, four-screw heat sink mounting bracket around the processor. Many existing cases will require modification to host a P4 properly. However, I have heard that some manufacturers are now supplying add-in heat sink support trays with their P4 motherboards, which could eliminate the need for a case mod.

 

 

Overclockers should keep in mind that the Athlon offers them more options than the P4. Intel processors are set at a locked multiplier, so the only means of overclocking them is via bus speed increases. Socket A chips, on the other hand, can be modified with a pencil to allow multiplier adjustments, and many motherboards allow menu-driven overclocking in the system BIOS. Like the P4, Athlons allow bus speed overclocking, but any time bus speeds runs too far out of spec in any system, unpredictable (read: bad) things start happening.

Finally, there's the future to consider. The current P4 will be replaced in a few months by a newer revision CPU that sits in a 478-pin socket, so drop-in CPU upgrades are out of the question. AMD is preparing a new revision of the Athlon, code-named Palomino, that may or may not work properly in current Socket A motherboards. In both cases, a motherboard upgrade may be necessary to upgrade much past the CPU speeds we've seen here.

Summing it all up
The combo of a 1.2GHz Athlon, 266MHz bus, and DDR SDRAM make up the heart of the fastest PC you can buy at present. The Pentium 4 isn't far behind, but in a broad majority of our tests, the Athlon DDR system is fastest. If money is no object and you want the fastest PC on the block, buy or build yourself an Athlon DDR rig.

Factor price into the equation, and it's an even easier call to make. At 1.5GHz, Pentium 4 processors run about $600 from bargain-priced mail-order vendors. A 128MB RIMM of PC800 RDRAM currently costs about $160. By contrast, a 1.2GHz Athlon will set you back around $300, and DDR SDRAM costs about a dollar per megabyte?or about $130 for 128MB. For TR readers looking to build their own systems, the Athlon is simply a better deal. No question about it.

Those of you looking to buy OEM systems from Dell, Micron, et al, will have a harder decision to make. In the OEM market, the math is different. It's not necessarily the case that an Athlon-based system will always be a better deal than a P4 system, just because the component costs are lower on the open market. You'll have to shop carefully, scrutinize specs, and do your homework to figure out which OEM system is a better deal.

Next, we should note that DDR memory and motherboards like the one we've tested here are only just becoming available now, in early March, despite the fact we first reviewed an AMD 760-based system upon its unveiling last October. What's more, rumors are flying about motherboard manufacturers deep-sixing their 760 mobos?or seriously curtailing production?in anticipation of Via's DDR Athlon chipset. We expect the AMD 760 chipset to have a rather limited lifetime because of this. AMD has used its chipsets to seed the market and bolster the Athlon platform, but they have been willing to cede the market to Via's chipsets once the Via products have arrived. That doesn't mean 760-based motherboards are a bad choice, however. AMD has provided mostly adequate support for their chipset products in the past, and we expect them to do so going forward.

Delays have harmed the 760, but so have competing PC133 SDRAM products. The PC133 system we tested here wasn't far off the DDR rig in most tests, but motherboards based on Via's new KT133A chipset have shown even better performance. (The KT133A chipset supports PC133 SDRAM, but also supports a 266MHz front-side bus.) In fact, the scores we've seen around the web are hard to ignore. It's clear the Athlon gains quite a bit more from the faster front-side bus than it does from the addition of DDR SDRAM. Folks looking for optimum performance on a budget will want to look into KT133A-based Athlon solutions. We'll be reviewing a KT133A mobo from Abit soon.

Finally, I should say a few words for our loser. Though the Pentium 4 didn't come out on top in these tests, Intel can certainly keep its head held high. The soaring memory bandwidth and Quake III performances we've seen from the P4 bodes well for the future. With the 850 chipset and dual RDRAM channels, Intel has built a world-class infrastructure for the Pentium 4. Once Intel moves to a .13-micron fab process later this year, P4 clock speeds ought to climb rapidly?and when they do, the P4 is gonna be a screamer.

Here I will pause to note something about RDRAM: $160 for 128MB really isn't bad. I hate to say it, but in light of the amazing memory performance we've seen from the P4 in these tests, the price premium over DDR SDRAM is worth every penny.

Ugh. I feel dirty now.

Pentium 4-optimized code in newer applications is likely to help the P4 down the road, too. But then most apps could run faster on the Athlon with the right compiler tricks. We'll explore the depths of specially-optimized applications in our next article, so stay tuned. 

 

33 comments —
Last by AmishRakeFight at 6:02 PM on 11/18/09

Contemplating SpeedStep and Cool'n'Quiet in performance testing
by Scott Wasson — 11:07 AM on August 28, 2009

Howdy all.  I've been hard at work in Damage Labs setting up new test systems with Windows 7.  This is a particularly agonizing chore for me, because I want to be sure to set up everything properly and perfectly the same (as much as possible) between the different systems.  Also, generally what happens is I go into this process looking to incorporate as many new benchmarks as possible, but then for various reasons (time constraints, poor application performance scaling, lack of counters for timing operations, software licensing/DRM restrictions), I end up using many of the same tests as in the past generation of results.  That kind of looks to be repeating itself in this new round of CPU tests, although I do expect to add a few new games, 7-Zip, and Windows Live Movie Maker, at least—along with new versions of a great many applications.

The question of the day, however, has to do with power management features.  Typically, we've left features like SpeedStep and Cool'n'Quiet disabled for our general performance tests, only enabling them when we do power efficiency testing.  We've disabled them for multiple reasons, mainly because they can affect performance results in some tests.  The picCOLOR application benchmark we've used for a while, for instance, does many short, quick operations spaced a little bit apart.  As a result, the CPUs don't have time to ramp up their clock speeds for each operation, and the results come out lower than with power management disabled.

I also have a sense that, generally speaking, when cases like this occur, AMD processors are more likely to be negatively affected than Intel processors, in part because AMD chips tend to drop to lower clock speeds at idle and in part because of a history of real problems with AMD CPUs, CnQ, and performance.

The question is: Isn't that fair game, though?  "Balanced" is the default power profile in Vista and Win7, and the vast majority of folks are going to want to have these power-saving features enabled on their systems in order to cut down on the noise, heat, and power consumption of their systems.  In a case like the picCOLOR benchmark, I think we have a simple solution: use a workload more like a real user would, with higher-resolution images and longer operations.  We can work with the software's developer on that.  In other cases, well, most of our benchmarks already reflect real-world use pretty well and aren't so affected by SpeedStep and Cool'n'Quiet.  If they are, the odds are pretty good that a real user might experience the same drop-off in performance, and even if it's not perceptible, there's no reason not to include it in our performance measurements.

I'm of two minds on this question.  The one sticking point that keeps me from making to switch and leaving power management features enabled is the possibility that our test results will be rendered unreliable in some cases, either due to big differences in outcome from one run to the next or to the occasional outright incompatibility between these features and a piece of software (which we've seen in some games in days past).  And I'm on a deadline here, so that prospect frightens me more than you might expect.  Still, it's 2009, I've been using CnQ and SpeedStep on my own desktop and laptop systems for years, and I consider them integral features of a modern CPU.  Seems like it might be time to test 'em like we use 'em.

Hmm.  What do you all think?

32 comments —
Last by derFunkenstein at 8:08 PM on 09/14/09

Gearing up for Lynnfield and Win7
by Scott Wasson — 11:34 AM on August 24, 2009

59 comments —
Last by Clint Torres at 6:31 PM on 08/31/09

On fireworks
by Scott Wasson — 3:41 PM on July 6, 2009

In the past few years, my brother and I have arrived at a place where we have the resources and venue to purchase and use, well, real fireworks, of the sort that aren't legal in an urban or suburban setting.

These days, with Safety Nazis on the prowl with ever-increasing assertiveness, you might be thinking I'm talking about sparklers or snakes. Such a mistake could be forgiven.

But I am not, and I'm not talking about ladyfingers and bottle rockets, either. I'm talking about the sort of fireworks that, used improperly, could blow your foot off or set the house on fire. You know, the fun ones.

We've been able to buy and detonate an increasing number of such devices because, for the past couple of years, we've had access to a house in the country, where no one particularly cares what sort of fire-related things—fireworks, firearms, brush fires, fire whiskey, various combinations of the preceding elements—one does for amusement.

During this span of time, we've begun to develop an understanding of what sort of fireworks we tend to enjoy and, quite literally, how to get the most bang for your buck. After this year's multi-hour extravaganza of flame and smoke, once the kids were down to bed, my brother and I sat outside on his front porch, beer in hand, considering the good and the bad of our most recent efforts. Some of this knowledge is a culmination of a life-long trajectory of blowing stuff up in mid-summer for my brother and me, but keep in mind that we are still relative newcomers to the higher-budget, higher-payload adult versions of these things. Make of this info what you will; perhaps you'll find it useful should you find yourself in possession of some rural land and a few hundred bucks to spare around the Fourth of July.

Much of what we've learned simply involves types of fireworks—which ones are a sham, and which ones are good and worthy. Here's what I think of each:

Kiddie stuff — Sparklers, snakes, tanks, flowers, party poppers, snaps, and the like. A necessary evil, but handled with an economy of time and money by buying a "kiddie pack" at the country store. 12 bucks, five seconds, and you can move on to inspecting the more important things.

Oh, and I suppose I should have mentioned: If you are buying your fireworks at a suburban tent run by the local Boy Scout troop, you're doing it wrong. Find a semi-rural store in a real building that's open all year round. These places sell to the fund-raising crowd, pre-markup, and they will sell to you, as well. A bit of a drive will be worth it.

Fountains — Although technically not considered kiddie fireworks, these devices do not explode. I've looked into it, and this behavior is apparently by design. As a result, during this firework's moments of action, your mother may take the opportunity to turn to your wife and tell her a story of some sort, perhaps about when you were a baby. Fortunately, armed with this knowledge, you may avoid this class of firework entirely.

Rockets and parachutes — My two absolute favorite sorts of fireworks since childhood have fallen sharply out of favor with me in recent years. Fireworks parachutes have maybe a 30% chance of actually opening properly with current quality control standards, which is a heck of a buzzkill. Worse, the gunpowder used in fireworks turns out to be a lousy rocket propellant. You'll get a larger payload up to higher altitudes with an artillery-style mortar shell any time.

Instead, to get your rocket-and-parachute fix, go pick up a model rocket kit from the local hobby store, along with some extra motors. If you have the room to detonate real fireworks, you probably have the room to launch a model rocket. Even the cheap ones will reach ten times the altitude of a skyrocket, and if you fold it right, the parachute will deploy correctly over 90% of the time. Larger model rockets require FAA clearance for launch, which pretty much says it all. A vastly superior alternative.

Spinners — A large spinner, when nailed to a utility pole, can produce a spectacular display for a few minutes that will surely please a crowd. Yet even large spinners can be relatively cheap. What's more, the incredibly strong sense of grass-fire danger more than makes up for the fact that most spinners don't actually detonate.

Bees — Helicopter-style bees, when placed on a flat surface, spin around and lift off into the air, scattering showers of sparks wherever they fly, sometimes to considerable altitudes. Oftentimes, as they begin to burn out, a partially-powered bee will suddenly careen off in a random direction, say toward a toddler, a fireworks stash, or a propane tank. Thrilling for all involved.

And cheap thrills! We got a pack of six large bees for $3.75 this year. Given the chance, I'd take that deal over again several times next year.

"Homemade" — A key component of any country fireworks display is at least one firework not sanctioned by any government body, something large and menacing, about which grown men speak only in hushed tones. There are two keys here. One is finding a source for such a device, preferably through a friend of one's cousin's in-laws or some such, who can ensure quality and who probably has never heard the words "plausible deniability," yet understands the concept perfectly. The other key is escalation: each year's "special feature" must outdo the last, hopefully via a larger force, and most optimally in surprising fashion.

I'm not saying we had such a special feature in this year's display, but if we had, I suppose it would have created a breathtakingly powerful blast, coupled with a 3'x6' white flash, that penetrated the sheet of plywood on which it sat and created a crater underneath. Had that happened, I might have giggled uncontrollably for two minutes or more in the aftermath.

Cakes — A fireworks display in a box, or cardboard cylinder, or a little house made to look like a gazebo, cakes are typically not cheap. They are, however, often very good values. Even medium-sized ones can burn for a few minutes and incorporate a dazzling amount of variety. Each year, we buy a larger, heavier, and more expensive cake to use as our grand finale, and each year, we are pleased with the outcome. When presented with a choice between multiple cakes of the same basic size and price, we have taken to lifting them up to determine which is heaviest, since it likely includes the most powder.

In addition to a large cake finale, we had several medium-sized cakes and even a few small ones this year, and we enjoyed them all. One goal for future years is to incorporate more cakes by saving on rockets and small stuff. Cakes are to be preferred to fountains in all cases, regardless of size.

Mortars — Artillery-style mortar-shell fireworks have become the heart of our annual fireworks extravaganza. These are typically smaller versions of the sort of fireworks used in commercial or municipal displays. The payload is launched out of a tube, and it then detonates in the sky in some colorful, round pattern. The right kind will get you arrested in most suburban settings, but where there's room, these will let you pretty well replicate the experience of a professional display on your own terms.

Mortars generally fire a single shot skyward, which may then detonate one to three times. Large cakes are often multi-shot mortars launched in sequence, but they tend to cost more for each shot. We understand that mortars are the most cost-effective way to get the job done, but we are still learning which ones are best. This year, we took dual tracks: the low road and the high road.

The low road consisted of a six-shot box of Black Cat-brand fireworks for $3.50, special deal. We took this deal four times, giving us 24 medium-sized, single-shot shells. As expected, these shells weren't the largest, didn't travel the highest, and weren't the most spectacular of displays, but for the money, they were a fantastic supplement to our larger selections.

The high road consisted of a fairly pricey box of artillery-style mortars with one to three detonations per shell. Our selection was from the Shogun brand and had the words "Commercial grade" emblazoned on the box in large letters—certain proof that they were not, you know, really commercial grade. Still, they were large, menacing, and recommended by the folks at the fireworks shop.

And I have to say, for sheer power, they did not disappoint. Both the launch detonation and the subsequent explosions had a concussive power beyond anything we'd used before.

Unfortunately, for all of that, they didn't reach great heights before exploding, and those detonations didn't yield much that was particularly creative or memorable compared to, uh, whatever brand it was we used last year or, crucially, whatever brand the surrounding neighbors had chosen. We would have gladly traded some of the pop for more sizzle. Next year, we'll probably try a few different brands of mortars, if we have the means. We know this is the way to go, but the path holds perils we did not anticipate.

Of course, if you have suggestions for a brand we should try our a source we should investigate, feel free to let us know by posting the comments below. With your help, we'll have loads of fun, one blown-off finger at a time.

26 comments —
Last by eric93se at 12:50 PM on 07/12/09

A new addition in Damage Labs
by Scott Wasson — 3:05 PM on July 2, 2009

The results of my latest project are somewhat complicated to interpret at times but very positive overall.  Ladies and gents, please welcome Charles Jacob Wasson, born Sunday morning at 8:39AM.

"C.J." weighed nine pounds, two ounces at birth.  He and his mom are both happy and healthy, and we're all at home now.  This baby promises to be relatively easy as these things go, because, well....

Helpers!  His big brother and sister are often contending over who gets to hold him, and they've both been great help so far.  I've not yet instituted diaper-changing training, but that's on the agenda when the time is right.  For now, the whir of systems in Damage Labs has ground to a halt as I take care of C.J. and his mom.

On a related note, congrats to Marco at HotHardware on his new addition, too.  We are brothers in lack of sleep.

64 comments —
Last by PerfectCr at 7:37 AM on 07/09/09

A compact, fast, and quiet PC for the kitchen
by Scott Wasson — 12:54 PM on June 25, 2009

If you've read our summer system guide, you might enjoy hearing the story of how our very cool Pocket Swiss Army Knife config came to be.  Those of you who have been around here for a while will know that my affinity for small form-factor systems like Shuttle's XPC series goes way, way back.  Simple computers that are small and quiet can go a lot of places a bigger box cannot.  My favorite SFF build is an excellent example.  We've had a system in service continually on our kitchen counter, in one form or another, since the debut of the original Kitchen PC a shocking five years ago.  Since then, my enthusiasm for Shuttle XPCs has waned for a smattering of reasons, including their limited upgradeability, the fact that Shuttle no longer innovates or targets enthusiasts with bare-bones boxes in quite the same way, and some disturbing long-term quality and reliability problems with XPCs—which I got to witness first-hand through different incarnations of the Kitchen PC.

Recently, the last incarnation of the Kitchen PC was suffering from a painful collection of age-related problems.  The box whined and growled in a creative array of scary sounds indicating friction, it would occasionally reboot itself out of spite, and it gave off the faint odor of Ben Gay at all times.  The thing was not a good citizen on our kitchen counter any longer, and it threatened to croak at any time.  So I sat down and ordered a bunch of new parts to replace it, and darned if the thing didn't up and die before the packages could arrive from Newegg, as if it knew what was coming.  After a quick dissection, I determined that the power supply had given up the ghost, most likely because it was worn out from having to supply too much juice to the hard drive, which was making a horrid hissing noise (I thought it was just a bad fan!) and probably would only spin its platters with some effort.  Since the thing's XPC enclosure used a proprietary power supply, it had to operate in Borg mode, with a different PSU hanging out of the side, until the new bits came to us.

This is an attractive ornament for the ol' kitchen countertop, let me testify.  Great for entertaining.

Anyhow, when I ordered the parts, I was determined to make sure our next Kitchen PC would be darn near silent and at least as small as the last one, but what to do?  I considered a range of options, and was sorely tempted to fork over a few hundred bucks for an Eee Box and be done with it.  But my wife wanted something with a DVD drive it it—the Kitchen PC is her main computer—and I wanted something standards-based that I could build from existing parts and upgrade over time.  I'd been watching the development of Mini-ITX hardware for a while, but I was worried by the choice of enclosures.  Many of them seemed to be cheap, build wise, and yet some were pretty expensive at the same time.  The user reviews on Newegg were disconcertingly mixed for almost all of them, and I couldn't be sure that even the most attractive choices would be truly quiet.

Then I happened upon the Silverstone SG05.

The SG05 is about the size of an XPC enclosure, is sized to accept Mini-ITX motherboards, and comes from Silverstone, whom I've learned to trust for quiet PC enclosures and PSUs.  This case has a single, large (120mm) fan in the front that cools both the enclosed PC and the built-in 300W power supply unit.  The thing is affordable, too (only $99 right now).  Best of all, at the time, Newegg had a combo deal featuring the Zotac GeForce 9300 Mini-ITX mobo.  Using that board would deliver me from my extended flirtation with a dual-core Atom processor and allow me to use a faster off-the-shelf Core 2 processor with upgrade potential down the road, to boot.

Of course, the Zotac board wasn't my only option, because Mini-ITX mobos come in many flavors.  It was just the best option.  But the SG05 closed the deal.  At long last, it enables an SFF ecosystem that is standards-based, upgradeable, and has the footprint and quiet cooling potential of a Shuttle XPC.  I could build in this case and rebuild a few years down the road with a new mobo, no problem.

Thus was born the Kitchen PC Mk III:

The SG05 and Zotac 9300 board supply most of what you need to build a complete PC, including GeForce graphics and Wi-Fi.  I threw in a Core 2 Duo E7200 processor, a hard drive, and a couple of gigs of RAM.  My choice for the hard drive was a 320GB Caviar SE16, since it was the quietest drive I had on hand, according to Geoff's tests.  I was ready to order up an SSD if it was too loud, but that proved to be unnecessary.

The hardest part of the build, on which I spent the most time, was making sure the system was quiet.  The only real bone of contention in this case was the CPU cooler; a stock Intel model made more noise than I liked, and the Zotac board's fan speed control pretty much had a mind of its own, ignoring the choices I set in the BIOS.  I believe those problems have since been fixed with a BIOS update, but I found my own fix ahead of time, using a Zalman fan speed controller cranked to its lowest setting to limit the fan speed on an old LGA775 cooler that's pretty large.  I can't find that same cooler on sale at Newegg now, but I'm hopeful the Masscool unit we picked for the guide performs similarly.  Because, wow, that thing is blessedly quiet and yet cools the E7200 just fine with both cores cranking away on Prime95.  Sweet success—and near silence.

Here's how the new Kitchen PC looks in its native environment.

As I've done before, I was able to hide most of the wires behind the counter and refrigerator to keep the whole setup looking clean.  I'm very pleased to report that this system is literally inaudible over the gentle hum of the refrigerator next to it.  This box is much faster than an Atom-based system would be, and the prospect of upgrading it down the road at will, like any normal-sized PC, makes me feel like a longer term problem has been solved.

One more thing.  Do pay attention to the guide's inclusion of the special SATA power adapter for the slim-line optical drive if you decide to build a system in the SG05.  You will need it, and most of us don't have one of those handy.

56 comments —
Last by grantmeaname at 11:12 AM on 06/30/09

Laptoppery
by Scott Wasson — 11:36 AM on June 11, 2009

Time for some laptoppery. After spending the past month working on servers and desktop CPUs, I have the urge to get out of the office and go mobile. Since my own main laptop, the Sharp M4000 WideNote, is three-and-a-half years and aging, I have the upgrade itch pretty badly. The M4000 has been excellent in almost every way, but age has taken its toll: the touchpad lists to one side and periodically loses its scroll area, the Wi-Fi isn't up to today's standards for range and reliability, and it's on battery number three and counting. Meanwhile, Sharp has pulled out of the mobile market in the U.S. Feels like it's time to look elsewhere.

I did make one concession to the M4000's age last summer, when I bought an Eee PC 1000H. I really like the 1000H, and I use it with regularity for surfing on the couch and the like, but the 1024x600 display is just too small for extended work. I can write on it, but I can't edit or do anything involving page layout. Not without feeling cramped very quickly. I had hoped to learn from having the 1000H around how I would use such a device compared to the aging M4000, and the answer is clear: the 10" netbook simply can't replace my 13.3" ultraportable, mainly due to the screen resolution and perhaps partially due to the small keyboard. Those are the only two barriers, really, which is remarkable.

The question is what to do next.

One approach, which I really like, is to continue with my upgrade installment plan. I figure I could buy a new netbook (or something similar) every 6-8 months and wind up spending no more than I would on upgrading an expensive laptop (as the Sharp originally was) every three years. This approach has many merits, especially with the quick progress being made right now on things like fancy touchpads, displays, and battery life. One could step up to the latest and greatest thing at appropriate inflection points once or twice a year and never be outmoded, whereas even the most expensive ultraportable will seem a little tired in the back half of a three- to four-year lifespan.

This way of doing it also meshes with my sense that the right laptop for me may just be "as many as possible."

Continuing with this approach, to me, means moving into larger-than-1024x600 displays and affordable ultraportable systems that may not quite qualify as "netbooks" anymore. Only a few are on the market, but many more are coming. The ones selling now include the Nano-based Samsung NC20, the sleek Mac Air knockoff and CULV-based MSI X340, and the 11.6" version of the Acer Aspire One, which is apparently now available at Walmart but not online yet. The HP Pavilion dv2 isn't in the running because I need longer battery life and, well, I hate its keyboard. (Glossy key caps? Please.) Now is a troubling time to buy, though. These few systems are just the first fruits of a wave of promising ultraportables on the way, including Asus' 11.6" Eee PC and a number of systems based on the CULV processor.

A more traditional laptop would better handle HD video content, and there are options for well under the traditional two-grand mark now. I'm intrigued by the Samsung X360, with a 13.3" screen, 2.8 lbs weight, and a claimed 10-hour battery life for $1500. Other choices include the Portege A600 and, going more expensive and exotic, the Thinkpad X300 series and the MacBook Air. (No X200, thanks. Need touchpad.) Were it not for the fact that I could have three Samsung NC20s, with excellent build quality and similar dimensions, for that same price, I'd be more enthused about these options. One of these pricier systems would have to remove all doubt about its superiority in every way in order to justify itself. I don't see that happening.

Part of the problem is that my ideal system isn't out yet, but the potential is there. I basically want a larger version of the Eee PC 1000H, whose little 10" display is shockingly good in terms of color reproduction and off-angle viewing, and whose multi-touch touchpad is addictively satisfying to use. Give it the 1000HE's seven-hour battery life, of course. If they could add in the excellent keyboard of the Samsung NC20, that'd be nice. And let's keep the weight well under four pounds, thanks. That mix right there would do it for me.

Then again, I'd pay more for decent integrated graphics from Nvidia or AMD, along with a CULV or Athlon Neo processor. Second core is optional.

The thing is, one can dream up just about the perfect system built from components currently on the market. We're just waiting now for someone to put them all together into a nice design. Surely that can happen soon, right?

—

On another note, I should mention that Lenovo has almost too predictably heard a huge outcry over its discontinuation of ThinkVantage System Update service and has brought it back. (Thanks to TR reader Prototyped for the heads up.) Good for them, I suppose, but they finally admitted (for real) why they did it, and it's as lame as you might fear: the bandwidth and server costs were too much for them. Really, in this age of hosted services and incredibly cheap CPU power and bandwidth, I find that explanation incredibly weak.

Also, re-activating System Update now requires (as far as I can tell) finding out that it's back via some outside source (I got no Message Center notices about it) and manually downloading the new version from Lenovo's web site.  What do you think their attrition rate is on that? More than likely, just stepping through this process bought Lenovo an 80%-plus reduction in update traffic. Clever, perhaps, but at the continued expense of their reputation.

Still, the new System Update software seems to work well on the T60 I have here, and that's much better than nothing.

57 comments —
Last by rhema83 at 8:40 PM on 06/24/09