The QX6700 marks the way forward to more mainstream ‘Quad’ CPUs in Q1-Q2 2007 and true Quad CPUs (one silicon slice, shared cache etc) in Q3-Q4 2007 from both Intel and AMD. If we believe everything we read we can expect up to 32 cores per processor in only a few years, which brings me to my problem…….

The software market is far from ready for multiple core CPUs on the desktop.

The crux of the problem is that the vast majority of applications are not designed to work with multiple cores. Additionally the programmers who write software are also not ‘designed to work with multiple cores’. Writing an application to use multiple CPU cores is no easy task, and based on personal experience I’d not be suprised if the vast majority of programmers today will never be able to write such an application.

There are some applications today that can take good advantage of multiple cores but these are, in the main, high-end graphics packages or specialist server software. Other applications tend to be written for a single core, with only occassional use of a second core and no more.

The popularity of dual-core is however justified, simply because it effectively allows the application you are working on to have a core to itself, whilst all those other things, such as virus-checkers can trundle along on the other core. But this doesn’t scale, you certainly don’t need a ‘whole core’ for each application, for the vast majority of people, dual-core is more than enough.

So what’s the answer? That’s the worrying thing, there is no easy answer, if there is a shortage of people capable of writing applications for multiple cores, it will be a very slow road for software….. whilst hardware races ahead.

So by all means enjoy the artificial benchmarking scores a new quad-core processor will bring you, but unless you use scare and specialised software regularly the benefits of quad and beyond will be minimal.

One thing I was suprised with after my recent PC purchase, was that SpeedStep wasn’t enabled by default. SpeedStep is a technology by Intel that enables their CPUs to run at slower speeds when they aren’t so busy, laptop users may well be familiar with the technology as it’s fairly essential for long battery life. However this doesn’t seem to apply to desktop PCs, or at least it doesn’t in their default configurations as supplied by manufacturers. It should be noted that AMD support a similar technology “cool and quiet” for their CPUs.

The nice thing about SpeedStep is that the CPU changing speeds is transparent, when the power is needed i.e. by a game or other intensive processing task – the CPU automatically ramps up to a higher speed. There is no detectable performance hit whatsoever.

After a little research I found that the following Intel CPUs support SpeedStep,

• Pentium 4 (3Ghz +)
• All Pentium D
• All Core

You can verify your processor supports SpeedStep using the Intel Processor Spec Finder, which allows you to find your CPU and then ‘filter’ on SpeedStep technology.

There are other parts to the equation too, namely your motherboard must also support SpeedStep, as well as your Operating System. Those that are happy to look in their PCs BIOS settings should hunt around for “EIST” or “SpeedStep” (EIST = Enhanced Intel SpeedStep) and make sure it’s enabled. Even if you aren’t happy to delve into your BIOS you can try altering your Windows settings anyway, it may well be it’s already enabled elsewhere.

To enable SpeedStep in your OS, you simply need to change your “Power Scheme” in Control Panel – Power Options. Intel themselves explain this best and have some screenshots to show how you can verify SpeedStep is enabled, available here.

For my Intel Core 2 E6700 CPU, the speed changes from the default 2667Mhz down to 1600Mhz at the slowest speed and also 2133Mhz inbetween, depending on how much power is required. It’s completely unnoticeable in day to day use, but I’m happy in the knowledge my PC is comsuming less power and producing less heat.

Then, while trawling the net, I stumbled across Shuttle’s plans to release the SD37P2.

I suppose the compromise, if any, is it’s size. It’s not as small as some modern designs, however it is substantially smaller than my pair of Coolermaster ATC-201’s that it is replacing.

The real attraction with the SD37P2 is the Intel 975X chipset, which can take anything from a Celeron to a top end X8600 “Conroe” Core 2 Duo. This had a huge bearing on my choice, as when I upgrade, I tend to look for a substantial performance increase, otherwise what is the point?

My primary use of this machine is software development, followed by “office” type tasks and finally some gaming. Being the least important factor, gaming didn’t steer me into the scary world of ultra-high end graphics cards, however reasonable performance and a modern GPU was required.

The first decision however, was the CPU, I really had to have a new Intel “Conroe”, by all accounts the fastest CPU available by some margin and at a reasonable price. A fast CPU makes a world of difference in software development, especially with larger projects. The sensible man would have bought the E6600 flavour of Conroe, I however got the E6700 at a substantial premium. At least I didn’t go mad and get the X6800, which only really has an attraction for the ‘overclocker’, something I don’t intend to be doing.

Once the CPU decision was made, the choice of memory was an easy one. The SD37P2 supports only 533Mhz and 667Mhz variants of DDR2 RAM, unlike some of the Intel motherboards that also support 800Mhz. However, unless overclocking 533Mhz DDR2 is the obvious choice as it runs 1:1 with the CPU (CPU FSB is quad 266Mhz = 1066Mhz, DDR2 in dual configuration is 2 x 533Mhz = 1066Mhz). Even though Intel have addressed latency to some extent with pre-fetching, I choose to purchase some decent low latency RAM manufactured by OCZ. I’ve used OCZ RAM before, quite simply put, it’s faultless and fast.

The decision on graphics card took more time, I was determined to purchase the fastest possible passive card. One of the aims of this build was for the PC to be as quiet as possible, without resorting to specialist components and soundproofing. A card that caught my eye early on was the nVidia 7600GS, primarily because it’s latest generation and designed to be passive in it’s reference design. I had a nagging doubt that it might just not be fast enough to play some of the latest titles at decent settings. It is so difficult to determine from review benchmarks, many only compare to synthetic tests, which are meaningless. Other benchmarks enable daft levels of detail, thereby making cards look slower than they actually are.

I took a gamble and plumped for a XFX 7600GS, the ‘pre-overclocked’ XFX 7600GS Extreme missing out by a very small margin – I figured heat might pose a problem in such a small case. Elder Scrolls IV – Oblivion (with patch 1.1) selects “High” by default, only one notch down from the top “Ultra High” presets available – a result if ever I saw one; Oblivion has to be about the most intensive graphical games available currently, it looks fantastic and plays very smoothly.

Other choices of components were two Samsung 320GB SATA hard drives (chosen for quietness) that run in RAID 0 configuration for speed. And and LG DVD/CD -R/+R/RAM writer for optical disc duties.

The full rundown was as follows:-

• Shuttle SD37P2
• Intel “Conroe” Core 2 Duo E6700
• 2GB (2×1GB) OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 Gold GX XTC
• 2 x Samsung 320GB SATA Hard drives
• XFX GeForce 7600GS 256MB DDR2 DUAL DVI TV
• LG GSA-H10NBAL 16x DVDRW/RAM Black Dual Layer/12x RAM/DVDRW

The whole thing was built in under an hour, OS installation (Windows XP MCE), application installation and restoration/transfer of existing data took another 4 or 5 evenings! The end result was certainly worth the expense and effort, it is lightyears ahead of my old Intel “Northwood” Pentium 4 2.53Ghz based machine.

I’ll not be posting benchmarks I think they are misleading, but Oblivion running in “High” mode and Visual Studio 2005 starting being ready to compile projects in under 3 seconds should give a rough idea. All this and very quiet with it, yes there is a “hum” from the CPU and HDD case fans, but it’s minimal.

Keeping all my Visual Studio ISOs together on a DVD struck me as a good idea, and thought it would be nice to give it a neat Lightscribe label at the same time.

Somehow between initially installing Nero 7 and now, Nero has forgotten that my drive is a LightScribe drive. It *did* work, and as far as I know, I’ve changed nothing. I do wonder whether because my LightScribe drive isn’t always connected (it’s external USB2) that Nero has ‘flagged’ it in some other fashion. I’ve even gone as far as completely reinstalling Nero to attempt to solve the issue, but to no avail.

The resolution to the problem was to visit the LightScribe site and download SureThing 4SE, which despite it’s horrible name is a very good little dedicated labelling application. I’d even go so far as to say better than Nero for labelling, with a decent selection of standard labels included. Remind me, why did I buy Nero 7?

However with the advent of the Mac Mini, Shuttles are starting to look rather large.

The market is full of ‘Media Centre PCs’, but most that have become available recently resemble cheap plastic hifi units, or Shuttles.

Two units have stood out from the crowd, the Kapsel Multimedia and the Hoojum Nanode.

Of course, as my luck would have it, neither seems to be available as yet. Let’s hope when they are released they don’t have a ‘Media Centre PC price tag’, which seems to add anywhere between £200 and £400 to the cost of a normal PC. The jewel in the crown would be a good flexibility on configuration/customisation. I know I’m asking a lot, but trust me the first to market with a unique product like these two and flexibility is going to rake it in.

The dimensions of these units are truely remarkable:-

• Average ATX PC – 540×198x458mm
• Shuttle – 325×220x210mm
• Kapsel – 270×230x100mm
• Mac Mini – 165×165x51mm
• Nanode – 95×150x150mm

Make me a Nanode with an Intel Core Duo CPU, a passively cooled graphics solution of nVidia FX5200 power or greater, 160GB+ HDD, WiFi/Bluetooth and plenty of USB2 connections and you’ll have a customer tomorrow.

The writing speed boost for DVDs is bliss, 4x to 16x is a sizable leap. That’s not to say the drive hasn’t been without problems, this is the second unit I’ve had, the first simply didn’t like CD-Rs.

LightScribe is fantastic for a professional touch for DVD/CDs containing software destined for clients. The price of the media is a bit expensive for everyday personal use at the moment, but can be easily justified for delivery of paid work. I recommend the use of the Extended Label Contrast Utility from the Lightscribe site, if you have the extra time for labelling DVDs. Why the utility doesn’t apply to CD media is a mystery, however you can ‘burn’ the label twice and achieve pretty much the same results.

I’m still sitting on the fence with the Nero upgrade, I was happy enough with Nero 6.6, it was more of an impulse buy when getting my new shiny burner. Overall the interface improvements are great, especially where I spend most of my time – Nero Express. However in a desire to simplify the interface, I think they have maybe gone a step too far, they have moved disc burn speed onto a side ‘tab’ that is hidden by default. I rarely burn at full rated speed to media, so more often than not I need to adjust this speed. I did pose the question to Nero ‘technical support’ (I use the term very loosely), as to whether there was anywhere to setup a default maximum burn speed.

I quote an extract from my email to Nero technical support,

“Overall the interface improvements are great, especially Nero Express (were I spend most of my time). However I have noticed that the disc burn speed has moved onto a tab that is hidden to the left by default. I rarely burn at full drive/media speed as I suspect many others don’t, is there a global ‘maximum burn speed’ setting on a per drive basis? I don’t disagree with the moving of this setting to the tab, I much prefer the cleaner interface, however I really do need to be able to set burn speed quickly. If this setting doesn’t exist, may I suggest it as a future enhancement?”

Their reply was somewhat disappointing,

“Thank you for your email and your interest in our software.

Please have a look at the screenshot in the attachment.
There you can see how to select the speed.
I hope that helped you.
Have a nice day.”

Indeed the attachment did show a screenshot, with a big red circle round the burn speed, yes the same one I’d referred to in my email to them! I understand these technical support departments must be busy, but did they read my mail at all? Maybe they have a system that picks out keywords, and offers the operators stock replies, who knows?

I took a look at Issue 132 (October ‘05) of PC Pro magazine, which had a review of USB flash drives. I’m always a little sceptical of magazine reviews, however by and large PC Pro are fairly spot on.

The drive that caught my eye was the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium. It was reviewed favourably – albeit about the most expensive model there, which counted against it.

If you can get past the ‘flash’ (excuse the pun) exterior, this drive a one real gem of a feature – there is no separate ‘cap’ to loose. The USB connector is extended by lightly pressing the centre portion down and pushing forward. Of course the bright blue LED lit centre section and metal casing will attract those who like a little style with their PCs.

I was pleasantly suprised when I found it a lot cheaper than ‘advertised’ in PC Pro, without much difficulty as the magazine’s October edition is published in early September (why do they do that?).

I went ahead and bought the 1GB variety (no doubt I’ll regret not purchasing the 2GB variant before too long), which has proved extremely fast and reliable.

I’d heartly recommend it to anyone looking for a USB flash drive, or is that flash USB drive? Solid design, few features, but it looks the business and performs excellently.