I’ve been reading some of the reviews published over the last 24 hours for the new AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition chip and have been amazed by how average the chip is.
One would think that AMD would release something impressive now, but it seems like they’re just trying to add another chip to the X4 stable, which is looking pretty full at the moment.
The biggest surprise came when I read Anandtech’s review of the new X4 980 chip. Even when you overclock the X4 980 to 4.2GHz, the Intel i5 2400 beats it when doing x264 encoding and the Intel is only running at 3.1GHz. Sure, the numbers are almost the same, but if I were to ramp up the chip to 4GHz, I would be awfully disappointed to see it tied or slightly below the i5 2400.
AMD’s X4 980 just doesn’t seem to offer a whole lot of value.
I think one of Anandtech’s readers has it right when it comes to AMD:
Bulldozer needs to be OUT NOW. AMD makes great products, but they are late to the party.
I’m surprised that more data about Bulldozer hasn’t been leaked. Early numbers are often questionable due to their source, but I’ve found almost nothing regarding Bulldozer. It reminds me of how movie studios don’t usually give screenings of the worst of their movies to movie columnists. I’m certain AMD will come around eventually, as the release date approaches. However, I’m skeptical about AMD’s Bulldozer coming anywhere near to where Intel is with their Sandy Bridge line of processors.
I was busy working around the house, doing a few repairs which required the use of a hammer. I guess it’s been a while since I swung a hammer because it wasn’t long into the project that I smacked my thumb with the hammer. Ouch. Okay, that wasn’t the actual word that came out of my mouth, but I’m sure you can imagine what it was. I think we’ve all been there. LOL.
Instead of the usual redness and obvious pain, I actually got a blood blister, something I’ve never had before. It’s very strange and is has formed right where the hammer hit my thumb, to the left of the thumbnail (since I’m a right-handed person). You can see a photo of what a blood blister looks like on wikipedia. It’s not very attractive. It is tender to the touch, however.
All of this happened before the evening news when I was shocked to learn of the Osama Bin Laden mission in Pakistan. That was a nice piece of news to go to bed with. A lot of countries have sacrificed a lot of lives and money in the pursuit of this man and I’m glad he’s finally dead. I’m not one to wish bad things to people, but Bin Laden had it coming.
For the last few weeks, I’ve seen Heineken’s “Entrance” commercial dozens of times and can’t seem to get enough of it and yet whenever I’m on the computer, I can never remember to look up the artist responsible for the extremely catchy music that accompanies it.
To my amazement, I actually remembered today and it turns out a Danish alternative pop band called The Asteroids Galaxy Tour made the song. “The Golden Age” is a pretty hard song to get out of your head after seeing three or four Heineken commercials a day (or so it seems).
Not only does Heineken have the commercial on YouTube, but the band’s music video for the song is as well. Take a look at the two if you’re not familiar with them. The music video is a bit trippy. 🙂
Oh, how I hate April Fools Day. When I saw Google had a new feature for Gmail, I thought it would be mouse gestures, which have become an increasingly popular feature in some programs.
Then I began to watch their video for the “Gmail Motion” and within about two seconds learned this was just part of a hoax. It’s laughably stupid when you watch the video. I can’t believe these guys got paid to do this as part of their work day.
Over the last six months, Charter has rolled out I believe two free internet speed upgrades and they haven’t been shy about saying it. At times, Charter’s ads for patting themselves on the back outnumber any other single company. I don’t think even Geiko can compete in the number of ads I’m seeing now.
What bugs me the most about these upgrades isn’t the self-congratulatory advertisements. It’s the bandwidth cap. Charter apparently has plenty of bandwidth to go around so they offer minuscule speed bumps all the while keeping moderate to heavy users in line with their monthly bandwidth caps. 100GB a month doesn’t quite cut it in the 21st century if you want my honest opinion.
I don’t know about other people, but I hate shoe shopping. Local stores don’t have my size (15!) so I have to do everything online. Picking the right shoe size used to be difficult until I began buying New Balance shoes a few years ago.
When I was a kid, my mom would always have to take me and my brother to the sports stores (Dicks, Foot Locker) to get shoes because they sold so many basketball shoes. Those were the only types of shoes that seemed to come in our size. The problem I’ve had with basketball shoes from Nike (the only brand we liked) was they only cared about the length of the shoe. My problem was my feet were also pretty wide so the standard 15 shoe was always tight across my foot.
A few years ago I decided to give New Balance a try and have been a loyal customer ever since.
Here are my new shoes, the New Balance 654 Tennis Shoes:
I’m a pretty simple guy when it comes to style. Bold colors aren’t my thing. A simple white shoe with black, blue, red, etc is fine. I’m more interested in the shoe’s comfort than how it looks.
My first day in the shoes was excellent. There’s a certain “springiness” to a new pair of shoes. The shoe’s cushioning hasn’t been killed with the hundreds if not thousands of miles a person will put on a pair of shoes over the course of a shoe’s lifespan. New Balance’s “ABZORB” cushioning feels great.
I don’t intend to wear my old shoes ever again. There’s no going back now. 🙂
As a Gmail user, I found the recent story of Google mistakenly deleting millions of emails belonging to some 39,000 users to be frightening. It, along with the Flikr user who lost thousands of photos because of a mistake made by a Flikr staffer has me wondering how much we should be trusting these enormous companies with our information.
I would be furious to see everything of mine deleted after logging in. Thankfully most of my emails are stored on servers I can easily back up.
I hate being sick. Every winter like clockwork I seem to get sick. This time, I believe I have the flu and I blame my dad for it. He came down with it and passed it on to me like Typhoid Mary.
Coincidentally, my mom got her flu shot two weeks ago so her immune system is acting like a ninja, destroying every bit of the flu bug that comes near her. Timing is everything in life.
There’s nothing about being sick that feels good. I would say the constant temperature changes are the worst aspects about the flu. I can’t stand being freezing cold and then suddenly overheating like a menopausal woman. Cooling down is easy, but warming back up to a comfortable temp after shivering can take more than a half-hour.
