Weekly CPU Prices: We've been saying it week after week, so you shouldn't be surprised to hear, yet again, that prices remain fairly stagnent and that Intel is expected to drop prices in late October. The big news, this week, is the addition of the Athlon XP processor line, bringing with it AMD's re-introduction of the PR rating. Will this be enough to make Intel sweat... or is it a sign that AMD has begun to?
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(ZDNET) Several teams of researchers are already working to find a way to use organic polymers--plastics--as material for microelectronic production. They're neighbors on the periodic table of elements, but carbon and silicon are pretty much strangers in the worlds of physics and technology. Carbon is the main building block of life, while silicon is the foundation for semiconductors. But several promising research efforts are under way to combine the two realms, using organic polymers as material for the production of microelectronics, including transistors and displays.
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(SOYO Inc. has announced its SY-K7ADA motherboard became the first board to support ) SOYO Inc. has announced its SY-K7ADA motherboard became the first board to support the new UDMA 133 standard for high-speed data transfers at 133 MBs per second. SOYO's SY-K7ADA is designed for AMD's Socket A Duron/Thunderbird CPUs. It features Acer Laboratories Inc.'s (Ali) ALiMAGiK chipset. It supports 200MHz or 266MHz system bus and is compatible with faster performance and more economical double data rate (DDR) memory.

The integration of UDMA 133 elevates the SY-K7ADA to a higher level for systems and applications, which require transferring large amounts of data such as digital video or gaming. Since DV content is performance-drive and very dense, SOYO allows users to build systems with UDMA133-supported hard drive in order to store huge amounts of digital content, and transfer content more smoothly and with interrupted streams, according to Ming Chok SOYO VP of Engineering.

UDMA 133 surpasses the current UDMA 100MB/s standard without adding cost. SOYO maintains value and compatibility by utilizing the current technologies, interfaces and connectors. UDMA 133 is backward compatible with 33/66/100-based drives. List price of the SY-K7ADA with UDMA 133 support is $99 (U.S.) with discounts to volume buyers.

Other standard features on the SY-K7ADA include three DDR SDRAM memory sockets; expansion slots include five 32-bit PCI slots, one AGP 4x/2x/1x-supported slot, a pair of; 2 serial ports, 1 parallel port, Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) port, and IrDA (infra-red). The board also features USB version 1.1 with 6 ports, 2 rear and 4 front.

Advanced features include an optional Sigmatel AC97 CODEC, which provides host-based audio support. SOYO makes it easy to custom configure the board directly through the BIOS setup page without jumpers with the SOYO AI-BIOS and Combo Set-up feature. Users can select a combination of CPU FSB and PCI bus clock speeds. The CPU core voltage can also be adjusted through the BIOS directly without setting any jumpers.
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(Acer Laboratories Inc.) Acer Laboratories Inc. (ALi), has announced support for AMD Athlon and Duron microprocessors. Following months of successful mass production, ALi has unveiled the newest and most advanced system on the market, the new version ALiMAGiK 1 supporting AMD AthlonTM XP processor 1800+ with QuantiSpeed architecture. The ALiMAGiK 1 is one of a series of ALi DDR based chipsets supporting AMD solutions. From a production standpoint, ALiMAGiK 1 offers the most cost-effective and highest performing chipset available for a standalone system bringing system builders and OEMs a great deal of cost savings. From a memory standpoint, ALiMAGiK 1 has the ability to support all mainstream DDR/SDR memory configurations up to 3GB. It also supports AGP 1X/2X/4X. This remarkable chipset solution, which has received numerous positive reviews, has gained the support of a handful of major motherboard customers including Acorp, ASUS, ECS, Iwill, PCChips, Soyo, and Transcend.
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