[H]ardNews 4th Edition

Notes on AMD:

CNet pulls together much of the AMD rumor mill into one healthy article.

AMD's plans for the Thorton chip, an upcoming member of the Athlon XP family, suggest it will be the same size as the Barton chip, but half of the cache on the processor will be disabled. (It will also be paired with a slower bus, which connects the processor to the memory.) That way it can be made on the same wafer as Barton, meaning AMD could streamline its manufacturing processes.

64-bit Intel:

On the other side of the fence, Intel shines attention on Itanium 3.

The chip will be sold under the Itanium 2 name and come out Monday along with new versions of the Xeon processor for midrange servers. Madison offers roughly 50 percent better performance over its most recent predecessor, according to Intel, and is already rated highly against the best chips in the world in audited benchmark tests.

More Springdale Performance:

The guys over in the IntelForums.net site have posted their review of the ABIT IS7 based on the i865PE chipset. Yes, it really performs very well for very cheap. Our review is here for comparison. Thanks Yutz.

From our tests, you can see that the IS7 is truly an excellent mainboard. It has shown itself to combine great performance, a full compliment of features, and a really nice price tag.

Dallas IGDA:

We are proud to announce that HardOCP.com is now a sponsor of our local International Game Developers Association chapter here in Dallas, Texas.