MaximumPC 2005 05

 6

C

ontinuing its trend of pushing

into new markets dominated

by Intel, AMD has announced

an all-new processor line designed

to clash head-on with Intel’s popular

Centrino platform. Dubbed Turion 64,

the new processor appears tantalizing

on paper, and should be able to give

Intel a serious run for its money.

The Turion bears many similari-

ties to the desktop Athlon 64 line. It’s

a 64-bit processor and includes an

integrated memory controller. This

enables the front-side bus to run at

the same speed as the processor core,

between 1.6GHz and 2GHz in the case

of the Turion 64. This spanks the puny

533MHz front-side bus used by Intel’s

Pentium M processors.

Another area where Turion 64 kicks

sand in Intel’s face is security. The

Turion features NX (or No Execute)

technology, which prevents trojans

and other types of malicious code

from executing commands from

within main system memory. NX is

found only on Intel’s high-end desk-

top processors.

As a mobile processor, the Turion

uses the obligatory PowerNow! tech-

nology to reduce core speed and volt-

age according to workload demands.

Turion 64 also integrates support for

every type of Wi-Fi available, and

Bluetooth to boot.

Now for the bad news: AMD has

chosen a bizarre alphanumeric naming

scheme that is certain to cause confu-

sion in the marketplace. For example,

its high-end processor is named ML-

37, and its low-end chip is named

MT-30. The M stands for “mobile,” but

the letter after that indicates its level

of portability (the higher the letter, the

better the proc’s battery life). Because

the T designator is further down the

alphabet than L, the latter should be

more portable. The two-digit num-

ber at the end of the name indicates

relative performance; because 37 is a

higher number than 30, we know it’s a

faster processor.

Cool-running processor puts

the heat on Intel

AMD Takes Aim

at Centrino

AMD’s Turion 64 processor family

will be paired with chipsets from ATI

and VIA at launch, with an nVidia

chipset reportedly in the pipeline.

Beat on the

Brat (with a

Baseball Bat?)

+GAME THEORY BY^ THOMAS L. McDONALD

P

ersonal and parental responsibility is a semi-

ongoing theme of this column, and I’ve read so

many attacks on games by half-assed politicians

looking to score cheap political points that I’ve

spent all my outrage. Well, almost all of it.

The latest idiocy to pop across my screen was

an article from Seattle headlined “Bill Would Hold

Game Makers Accountable for Players’ Actions.” I

saw this only minutes after a Drudge headline that

read “Microsoft Robots to Watch Kids,” leading me

to wonder if Bill Gates was deploying his killbots

to monitor groups of game-playing kids and weed

out the campers and spawn killers. If only.

The article was about a Washington state House

bill that would “hold the makers and sellers of vio-

lent video games liable if someone under 17 years

old commits a crime, due in any part , to playing the

game.” (KOMO 1000 News, 3/1/05, emphasis added)

Bill Hanson of the Washington Police and

Sheriff’s Association thinks this is a swell idea:

“If you sit up and watch this and play these

games over and over again... it seems that this is

alright to walk up and hit a police officer over the

head with a bat.”

Seems all right to whom? This has never, and

will never, happen. Ever. And the person who

claims it did happen is looking for a cheap excuse

and a free pass from the core requirement of being

a human being: personal responsibility. Games are

pretty flimsy things to bear the weight of responsi-

bility for civilization’s collapse.

Look, conservatives will continue to flog the

issue to score points with their base, but they

know the bottom line is decided by the market-

place. Liberals will hitch up their First Amendment

diapers and continue to oppose these half-hearted

gestures, thus scoring points with their base.

Editorial writers will continue to weigh in on both

sides of the issue, thus maintaining job security.

I’ve already spent my time fretting about

the latest cryptofascist boogeyman of the lib-

eral imagination, whether his current name is

Ed Meese or Pat Robertson or Joe Lieberman.

Political poseurs come and go, but porn and M-

rated games endure, with a shocking paucity of

baseball-bat attacks to their credit. To be honest,

the notion that games induce crime is much less

important to me than the far more immediate

concern I have about spawn campers, so let’s

hope the MSKillbots are deployed sooner rather

Tom McDonald has been covering games for countless magazines and

newspapers for 11 years. He lives in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

 6 MA XIMUMPC MAY 2005

Quick Start

T

he classic QWERTY keyboard

layout was invented in the

late 1800s and designed to

prevent people from typing too fast

and damaging their typewriters. It’s

no wonder then that hours spent

playing a fast-paced game with a

QWERTY keyboard can be a hand-

numbing experience. Instead of

playing Twister with your fingers to

crouch-jump and rain ordnance on

your enemies, why not put the keys

where you think they should be?

That’s the alternative Ergodex is

offering with its DX1 Input System.

The kit comes with a USB-connected

9x11-inch tablet and 25 numbered

keys that can be arranged in virtu-

ally any configuration with reusable

adhesive. You can bind keys to any

function, just like a regular keyboard,

but you can also record and assign

a macro to each key. Macros can

include multiple functions and tim-

ing delays, so you can, for example,

cast a Magic Missile spell, wait for

your magic powers to restore them-

selves, and then follow that up with

a devastating Shatter invocation—all

from a single keypress. OK, you

could also use the DX1 Input System

for audio, video, or productivity

apps—but we’ll see you in death-

match, sucka.

Ergodex unveils DIY keyboard

The Un-Keyboard

Got seven fingers on one hand and

three on the other? The DX1 is all

the keyboard you’ll ever need.