Loyd Case

About

Loyd Case came to computing by way of physical chemistry. He began modestly on a DEC PDP-11 by learning the intricacies of the TROFF text formatter while working on his master's thesis. After a brief, painful stint as an analytical chemist, he took over a laboratory network at Lockheed in the early 80's and never looked back. His first 'real' computer was an HP 1000 RTE-6/VM system.In 1988, he figured out that building his own PC was vastly more interesting than buying off-the-shelf systems ad he ditched his aging Compaq portable. The Sony 3.5-inch floppy drive from his first homebrew rig is still running today. Since then, he's done some programming, been a systems engineer for Hewlett-Packard, worked in technical marketing in the workstation biz, and even dabbled in 3-D modeling and Web design during the Web's early years.Loyd was also bitten by the writing bug at a very early age, and even has dim memories of reading his creative efforts to his third grade class. Later, he wrote for various user group magazines, culminating in a near-career ending incident at his employer when a humor-impaired senior manager took exception at one of his more flippant efforts. In 1994, Loyd took on the task of writing the first roundup of PC graphics cards for Computer Gaming World -- the first ever written specifically for computer gamers. A year later, Mike Weksler, then tech editor at Computer Gaming World, twisted his arm and forced him to start writing CGW's tech column. The gaming world -- and Loyd -- has never quite recovered despite repeated efforts to find a normal job. Now he's busy with the whole fatherhood thing, working hard to turn his two daughters into avid gamers. When he doesn't have his head buried inside a PC, he dabbles in downhill skiing, military history and home theater.

Intel Nehalem Microprocessor Details Come to Life

Intel revealed the architectural details Aug. 20 of its next-generation Intel “Nehalem,” now known as Intel Core i7, and with it some twists on the classic x86 architecture. One of the key goals of Nehalem was to make the architecture scalable, in two very different ways. The pieces of Nehalem are broken into two main […]

Is AMD Doomed?

I was as startled as anyone to see last Fridays news that Abu Dhabis Mubadala Development Company handed AMD $622 million in exchange for 8.1 percent of the company. That puts AMDs overall valuation at roughly $7.7 billion, slightly above what the current stock price would indicate. That $622 million infusion gives AMD some vital […]

Penryn Arrives: Moving to 45 Nanometers

The last time Intel moved an existing CPU line to a new manufacturing process was with the ill-fated Prescott CPU. Prescott was a derivative of the Pentium 4 architecture. Those were in the bad old days, where clock frequency was king and real men ran processors that generated blast furnace heat levels. Moving to 65nm […]

Intel Takes Wraps Off Santa Rosa Platform

“Santa Rosa” is the latest iteration of Intels Centrino platform, and consists of core logic, networking and updated Merom CPUs, which will start arriving in laptop PCs in late spring. The new chip set is the mobile version of Intels G965 core logic, with enhancements added for improved power management, particularly of the graphics core. […]

AMD Goes to 3GHz: The Athlon 64 X2 6000+

Its ironic, really. AMDs latest Athlon 64 X2 6000+ runs at 3.0GHz, while Intels fastest Core 2 Extreme Edition tops out at 2.93GHz. Talk about a turnabout. To be fair, Intel is still shipping higher-clocked Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors, but few people pay attention to those, nor do most users want one. The […]

Intel Takes Wraps Off 45-nm Penryn

Intel unveiled details of its next-generation Core 2 processors, code-named Penryn, to the technology press on Jan. 25. Just as AMD catches up with Intel by moving to a 65-nm process technology, Intel is poised to push ahead to 45 nm. According to Intel Vice President Steve Smith, Intels new 45-nm CPUs are slated to […]

AMD Pushes New Motherboard Format

LAS VEGAS—Small-form-factor PCs are becoming a mainstay for desktop PCs. Even high-end gamers have gravitated to smaller-form-factor PCs, which typically take up less room and consume less power. /zimages/4/28571.gifAMD is looking to gain market share in 2007. Click here to read more. However, theres no widely adopted format for SFF motherboards smaller than MicroATX in […]

Dell Launches 27-Inch Desktop Display

Dell is readying a 27-inch desktop PC display, the Ultrasharp 2707WFP. The new TFT LCD flat-panel display will offer a widescreen resolution of 1,920 by 1,200, the same as the smaller Dell 2407WFP. The new Dell display is priced at $1,399 and available direct from Dell at www.dell.com. /zimages/5/28571.gifAt CES, ViewSonic shows off its new […]

Intel Demos Eight-Core PC Motherboard

LAS VEGAS—Intel is showing private demos of an eight-core PC system at CES 2007 thats been dubbed “V8.” Consisting of two Xeon quad-core processors built onto an Intel workstation motherboard, the system offers eight cores inside a large, WATX chassis. Components for the configuration are orderable today from resellers like Newegg, while fully configured systems […]

PC Platforms: Looking Back at 2006 and Ahead to 2007

Consider the desktop personal computer. Form factors have changed, new CPUs have emerged, and more-advanced chip sets have arrived on the scene, but the fundamental PC platform remains little changed. You still have core logic, a CPU, separate memory, and an underlying system board. Its true that AMD moves the memory controller onto the CPU, […]