Consumer Advocate
Got a bone to pick with a vendor? Been spiked by
a fly-by-night operation? Sic The Dog on them by
writing [email protected]. The Dog
promises to get to as many letters as possible, but
only has four paws to work with.that Lexar carries. How pissed am I right now?
Is it faster or not? Did the Lexar guys even
know what I was asking? Was it just a brilliant
marketing scam or what? Help me find the
truth in all this madness.
— ROBERT J. STEWARTTHE DOG RESPONDS: The Dog spoke to a Lexar
representative who said that Robert was given incor-
rect information, or perhaps something was lost in
translation. Lexar says it uses an “x” rating similar
to the read- and write-speed ratings of CD-R drives,
where one “x” equals 150KB/s. An SD card rated for
32x would guarantee a write speed of 4.8MB/s. SD
cards without a rating offer speeds from 2.66MB/s to
4.8MB/s. On non-rated cards, Lexar doesn’t guarantee
any write speeds, thus one card may be a stellar
performer while another could be a dog. It’s similar
to the way Intel deals with its CPUs: It tests a certain
amount of silicon to operate at, say, 3.2GHz. The rest
of the chips are then tested to run at 3GHz or 2.8GHz.
The chips are then used to make 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz
chips. Because the chips are only tested to operate
at 2.4GHz or 2.6GHz and not higher, it’s quite possible
the chips are capable of running at the higher speeds.
Usually as the process technology in silicon improves,
the speeds also improve. Near the end of the run of the
Pentium III CPU, many of the chips coming off the line
likely operated at the highest speed but were sold at a
lower speed for marketing reasons.Drivers Kill Monitors?
DEAR DOG: I read in a web site forum that the
new ATI driver for the ATI Radeon 9800 cards
is killing monitors. I want to install the driver,
but I’m worried it’ll whack my screen. People
are also saying that the new drivers can cause
the videocards to overheat! Can you please
find out what the real story is here?
— JOHN WINGERTHE DOG RESPONDS: The Dog prodded ATI about
the alleged problem and received this response: “We
have spent a great deal of time trying to reproduce
this problem and analyzing our driver code. There isnothing in our driv-
er code that has
changed from CAT
3.7 to CAT 3.8 that
could possibly
cause this behav-
ior. We believe that
our drivers are not
causing these alleged problems.
“We do not currently believe
these stories are valid. We have
already confirmed that of the
nearly 100 OEM customer pro-
grams that have asked for and
received this driver,
we’ve received no
reports about any
such problem. We
have also run com-
prehensive QA tests
on the driver before
releasing it and have had no cases of failed monitors.
“Since we announced Catalyst 3.8 on October 8,
we have recorded hundreds of thousands of down-
loads, and thus far there have been absolutely no
reports whatsoever to ATI’s customer-support depart-
ment regarding failed monitors.”
ATI says one of the leading web theories is that
the driver, “instead of reading the refresh rates from
the primary display INF files, is
reading the secondary display
INF refresh rates.” This prob-
lem could cause the monitor
to blow out.
But ATI officials refute
the theory: “In XP and 2K, we
don’t have access to monitor
INF information in our driver
component that manages display
capability. We have never used this monitor informa-
tion for any purpose. We rely on EDID data or user
override information to determine monitor capability.
Even though the OS may use the monitor information
to expose high refresh rates based on monitor INF
content, the driver always restricts the actual refresh
rate going to the monitor based on EDID or the useroverride. In essence, the user may be able to select
a high refresh rate from an OS-controlled monitor
page (under Advanced Properties), but internally
the driver will restrict the refresh rate going to themonitor based on EDID information or user override
information. If a user sets the override information
incorrectly, an incompatible signal would be sent to
the monitor.
“In Windows 9X, we can access monitor INF
information, but due to issues with how the OS maps
the INF to a monitor, we have disabled reading the
monitor INF via Registry. Unless someone deliber-
ately changes the Registry setting for this in 9X, they
would not run into any monitor INF related issues.”
ATI also says that although there is a “slight
increase in temperature in certain cases” there’s
nothing even close to the 50º F increase that some
people claim the drivers create. ATI says it’s trying to
find out why there is a slight temperature increase,
but noted that the change is within the operating
spec of the card. nDECEMBER 2003 MAXIMUMPC
IBM >Microsoft >Lexar >ATI
causing these alleged problems.
“We do not currently believe
these stories are valid. We have
already confirmed that of the
nearly 100 OEM customer pro-
grams that have asked for andreleasing it and have had no cases of failed monitors.
“Since we announced Catalyst 3.8 on October 8,
we have recorded hundreds of thousands of down-”
WE HAVE RUN COMPREHEN-
SIVE QA TESTS ON THE DRIVER BEFORE
RELEASING IT AND HAVE HAD NO CASES
OF FAILED MONITORS.ATI says web
reports of its new
videocard drivers
frying monitors are
unfounded.Segway has voluntarily recalled some 6,000 Human Transporters, which may
lose power and cause the rider to fall from the vehicle. Segway says this can
happen if the rider speeds up abruptly, encounters an obstacle, or continues to
ride after receiving a low-battery alert. Three people were injured after falling
from Human Transporters; one required stitches. The recall applies to the i167,
e167, and p133 series of Segway Human Transporters.
Segway owners are asked to call Segway at 877.889.9020 between 8 a.m.
and 8 p.m. Monday through Friday to receive a software update for the HTs.
More information about the recall is available at http://www.segway.com/support/
recalls/recall_001.html or http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml03/03553.html.RECALL ALERT