3Ghz for $170! Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+ (socket AM2) Price Drops

In the beginning of 2007, AMD released the high heat, high frequency, dual core Athlon 64 X2 6000+ running at over 3Ghz. It was priced around $464 dollars at the time, and meant to compete with Intel's E6600 & E6700. On July 9, 2007, AMD decided to drop the price to $178!

I just checked Newegg - now you can get a 6000+ proc for $170!

In order to beat the Athlon 64 6000's performance on certain benchmarks you'd currrently have to upgrade to an Intel Core2Duo E6700 for $317. Intel, that's gonna leave a mark.

It is refreshing to see AMD still competing with Intel on combined price/performance.

Transformers Movie - More CGI Than Meets the Eye(or the Visual Cortex)

I went to see the Transformers Movie for the second time last night. This time I sat in the very back row of the theater. I was able to absorb more of the rendering work during the transforms and battle scenes. I previously mentioned the Linux Journal article detailing some of the infrastructure specifics used to render Shrek 3, but I'd like to know more about the Transformers Movie. The Transformers Movie has set a new precedent in terms of CGI excellence. I've not felt so impressed with the visual quality of computer rendering since movies Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within(it was amazing back in 2001), and the more recent Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The detail in Transformers seemed overwhelming at times. I wanted to be able to view a scene over and over again. My brain had difficulty believing that these scenes were being displayed at 29.97 24 frames per second - the animation seemed hyper-real. The first time I attended the movie my seat was much closer to the screen and I had difficulty processing the detail level of the animations. Get a seat close to the back of the theater when you go to the movie.

I would love to take my young children to Transformers, but can't recommend the movie for kids due to some of the sexual themes.

16GB USB Flashdrive - $9.37 per GB

Have you ever wanted to put a full-length DVD or two on your USB key and still have room for .ISO files of your favorite bootables?

At $9.37 per gigabyte, go ahead & shell out $149.98 and that 16GB could be on your keychain or lanyard.

Here's a review of the Corsair 16GB Flash Voyager from Maximum PC - looks like the drive needs memory that is better suited to large writes, but it's quite fast in read times.