JamesThorburn

The original Golf GTI was an incredible car, here was something that was inconspicuous, sensible, perfect for dropping the kids off at school or nipping down the shops, but if you were feeling playful could punch well above its weight, taking on performance vehicles many times its price.

But the little catagories bit at the bottom seems to think I’m in a computer mood right now so what relevance is this?

Well I want to see the same thing applied to the CPU world.

Anyone interested in computers can see the Extreme Edition’s or the FX’s of this world and want one but few can afford, or perhaps justify, actually spending £600 on a processor.

Of course there have always been enthusiasts favourites such as the Celeron 300A or Athlon 1GHz AXIA which with overclocking could offer incredible bangs per buck but I want to see some of the top end features pulled down to a mid-range hero product aimed at the enthusiast, a warranty which allows for slight increases in clock speed and voltage over stock and multipliers which if not completely unlocked allow an increase of 2 or 3x over standard to give it a little more headroom for those who can’t afford a motherboard capable of big FSB’s and memory to match.

A prime candidate for this would be the Core 2 Duo E4300. Right now it’s too close in price to the E6300, and with a 800MHz FSB speed rather than the 1066MHz of the E6300, to make it a sensible purchase. Whats more the reduced L2 cache means it’ll never, even overclocked, outpace a lightly overclocked Core 2 Extreme on outright performance.
But open up the multipliers and give it an Extreme Edition style warranty and suddenly you’d make it more attractive to the casual overclocker and help instill a feeling that Intel ‘cared’ for them offering enthusiast orientated products at a price point they could afford.
It may seem like a small trivial idea but in a market place ruled by ‘fanbois’ and with forum based flame wars it would probably tip a few people to choose Core 2 over Athlon 64 purely on this perceived kinship between producer and consumer.

This would help Intel too as it would drive adoption of the cheaper to produce Allendale core over the larger cache crippled version of the Conroe used by the E6300 and E6400. Give it a small price premium over the standard E4300 too.
OEM’s and business users would still buy the more expensive products if they wanted more performance as in those environment overclocking isn’t an option, enthusiasts have a nice new product catered towards them that makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside, its win/win surely?

Or maybe I should just get some sleep, but if you see a Core 2 Enthusiast Edition remember who’s idea it was….

Introducing Dylan.

Provisional results in for the Neural Networks module and I’ve got the top mark in the class, this is unusual….

Oh, and Hot Fuzz is excellent, saw it yesterday and wasn’t quite what I was expecting but brilliantly funny, can’t remember the last time I’ve been in a film thats made everybody laugh.

And I think they just might have gone ok.

Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms I was pretty confident at and think I pretty much nailed it, will be disappointed if I haven’t.
Wireless Networks went well except for one question which I didn’t have a clue and later turned out to have a mis-print, even so couldn’t do it but nevermind.
Theoretical Computer Science B I was really dreading up until the day I did it when I was feeling pretty good, think I did well so will just have to wait for the results.

Shame the new semester starts on Monday, and I’ve got a final year project demonstration next Friday, no rest for the wicked!