Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Fake Apple iPod Players Discovered. Counterfeit iPod Players Found

3:45 pm | Anton Shilov

The success of Apple Computer with its iPod digital music players is indisputable, but having shipped over 50 million of its players, the company has discovered that there are not only Creative Labs or Sony Corp. trying to steal its profits, but also makers of counterfeit “iPod” gadgets that look similar to iPod nano and iPod shuffle.

AppleInsider reported based on information that Apple supplied to its server partners that two of the most commonly counterfeited iPods appear to be the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle.

The fake iPod nano players, reportedly often sport non-standard headphone jacks and lack a dock connector, counterfeit iPod nanos also ship without a standard USB cable and pack a screen that is slightly longer than the nano’s. The fake iPod nano players run dissimilar operating system software and have also been known to include a Play/Pause symbol on the center select button, which the original iPod nano does not.

Forged iPod shuffle devices a reported to include an on/off switch that lacks a repeat option. The players, which look similar to the iPod shuffle, also fail to include a battery or status indicator light. Counterfeiters have been packaging the players in fake iPod shuffle retail boxes that include the words “Digital Music Player” on the top.

• AppleInsider: Apple Warns of Phony iPods.

OCZ’s 2GB PC2-8000 Memory Kit Reviewed. Does 1GHz Memory Improve Performance?

3:43 pm | Anton Shilov

The competition in the market of high-performance memory is exceptionally intense these days as customers who want to have the fastest computers possible are eager to pay not only for the fastest processors or top-of-the-range graphics cards, but also for the highest-speed memory modules.

Recently a number of memory stick producers, including such well-known as Corsair and OCZ Technology, unveiled their 1GHz memory module kits with 2GB capacities. While the 1000MHz speed-bin has been available for DDR2 memory for more than a year already, it was achievable only by 512MB memory modules, whereas 1GB sticks surpassed the milestone only about a month and half ago.

Hexus.net web-site has reviewed OCZ’s DDR2 PC2-8000 Platinum XTC Extreme Edition modules – a 2GB kit running at 1GHz speed. The author compared the 1000MHz modules with CL4 5-4-15 latency settings against 667MHz modules with CL3 2-2-8 timings to reveal whether extreme clock-speeds actually matter.

It turned out that while in synthetic benchmarks the 1000MHz modules were noticeably faster compared to their 667MHz brethren, in games like Doom III or Far Cry the performance delta was negligible on a system equipped with Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processor overclocked to 3504MHz and ATI Radeon X1800 XL graphics card.

“…It’s aimed at enthusiasts who want to clock the absolute living daylights out of their systems and still have lots bandwidth on tap. We've said this before but it bears reiterating: OCZ's PC2-8000 Platinum XTC Extreme Edition is a very niche product for a niche market that make up a small proportion of users. […] Summing it up in a word is easy enough. That word is extreme,” Hexus.net concluded.

• Hexus.net: OCZ Technology DDR2 PC2-8000 Platinum XTC Extreme Edition.

Overclockers Hit 7.2GHz Frequency. New Pentium XE 965 Overclocking Record Set

3:27 pm | Aleksey Razin

The path towards successful extreme overclocking experiments with Presler C1 core stepping was pretty thorny but some lucky ones managed to get through. At least those guys who had some liquid nitrogen at their disposal didn’t have any problems with their CPUs showing really impressive results. So, these were the hope and pride of the overclocking community at this point.

The 7.0GHz bar was conquered by the Pentium XE 955 processor with B1 core stepping, so everybody would expect Pentium XE 965 processor with C1 core stepping to show at least some small but convincing frequency boost. Luckily, the hopes came true: one Turkish hardware enthusiast reported about his overclocking success in XtremeSystems.org forum. He managed to bring his dual-core Pentium XE 965 (3.73GHz) processor to work at 7.2GHz with the help of liquid nitrogen cooling system.

Note that the system would run stably only at 6852MHz, and the SuperPI test results in this case made 19.562s.

As you already know from our news, the mobile Celeron M based on a 0.065micron Yonah core has recently demonstrated similar performance result. Well, looks like high clock speed is not always the answer :)

Although Presler core with C1 core stepping has set a new absolute overclocking record, the relative frequency increase is less than 100%, because the nominal speed of this processor model is 3.73GHz. To hit the 100% mark the CPU should have reached 7.46GHz frequency. I believe some extreme overclockers out there will manage that also.

I would like to point out that Pentium XE 965 processor works at 1.2-1.3375V Vcore, while its predecessor, Pentium XE 955, worked with 1.25-1.4V Vcore. C1 core stepping of the Presler core has evidently brought in lower nominal voltages. It is usually an important factor for more efficient overclocking, which seems to be partially true for the Pentium XE 965 processor we are talking about. All it needs now is just more efficient cooling to really show off its overclocking potential.

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