Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: anandtech.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to anandtech.com.

Comments · 3,318

  1. Not a slacker when it comes to Windows either... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative · on AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go
    It's worth noting that the 4850 is apparently quite the speed demon when it comes to Windows games too, and a very good choice at $199 (for reference, the GTX 260 and GTX 280 are the brand new $400/$649 nvidia cards).

    Anandtech
    Tech Report

  2. Re:Research before you spread FUD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Hands On With Nvidia's New GTX 280 Card

    If by "bad gaming experience" you mean running the game significantly faster under DirectX 10.1 on ATI cards - I'll live with the supposed bad gaming experience.

    See Anandtech - NVIDIA's Dirty Dealing with DX10.1 and How GT200 Doesn't Support it

    and TechReport's GTX 280 review showing a Radeon HD 3870 X2 with top score for the original DirectX 10.1 release of Assassin's Creed at 4X AA - 2560x1600.

  3. Re:Anandtech and TechReport reviews by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1 · on Hands On With Nvidia's New GTX 280 Card

    Looks like they are finally listening re power consumption: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=9

    Still some way to go to catch up with ATI though. Unfortunately all these benchmarks are largely academic until we have matching 4850/4870 ones.

  4. Anandtech and TechReport reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative · on Hands On With Nvidia's New GTX 280 Card

    http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334

    http://techreport.com/articles.x/14934

    Conclusion: 9800GX2 is faster and cheaper

  5. Atom benchmarks against Celeron-M and Pentium-M by IYagami · · Score: 4, Informative · on Intel's Atom — First Benchmarks and a Full PC Review

    More info and benchmarks at http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3321

  6. Re:Head Mouse by randyest · · Score: 1 · on OCZ's Brain Mouse Hits the Store

    Source? The retarded "Overclocker 3d" (rolleyes) site /. chooses to link to for every story about this thing is dead, but Anandtech says it reads both brain waves and facial movements. OCZ's website says it uses electro-myogram, electro-encephalogram, and electro-oculogram -- electrical patterns from the face, brain, and eyes.

  7. Inside the NIA by slifox · · Score: 4, Informative · on OCZ's Brain Mouse Hits the Store

    For those interested in whats inside the OCZ NIA, AnandTech has a product teardown available

    Anyone else have specific info on whats inside, etc? First thought that comes to me is, I want to make one myself!

    Teardown Article:
    http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=452

    Picture Gallery:
    http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery.aspx?id=123

  8. Inside the NIA by slifox · · Score: 4, Informative · on OCZ's Brain Mouse Hits the Store

    For those interested in whats inside the OCZ NIA, AnandTech has a product teardown available

    Anyone else have specific info on whats inside, etc? First thought that comes to me is, I want to make one myself!

    Teardown Article:
    http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=452

    Picture Gallery:
    http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery.aspx?id=123

  9. Case in point: by pizzach · · Score: 1 · on 66% Apple Market Share For Sales of High-End PCs

    http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3201 Custome Intel CPUs.

  10. Re:How about a DDR2 versus DDR3 chart? by isthisorigional · · Score: 1 · on DDR3 RAM Explained
    A bit of an older article but it should give you a good idea on how they compare: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2989

    I think their conclusion is still applicable: wait on DDR3 to come down in price before you jump. Although the price won't come down much if no one is buying it because they're waiting for the price to come down and well you see the problem.

  11. Not quite by sootman · · Score: 1 · on iMac Turns 10

    Apple dropped SCSI, their proprietary connectors, and the floppy drive.

    No, Apple wasn't quite done with proprietary connectors. After the iMac came out--years later--Apple came out with ADC for video (DVI-I plus power and USB) and that shitty "digital audio" system in the G4s--an audio jack that would accept nothing else, and speakers that won't work anywhere else. Happily, they have since dropped both--permanently this time, let's hope. My company has a good amount of dopey gear from that era--ADC Cinema Displays, several pairs of those otherwise-good (and pretty) clear round "nice pair of boobs" speakers--that will only work with a Mac from that era, or with an expensive adapter, or not at all.

    And as long as I'm ranting about waste: as much as I like Apple, and think they make good gear, I have to wonder how big their 'green' commitment really is. Every display I've ever had has had a lifespan at least 2x longer than any computer I've ever had. And Apple won't even let you repurpose them--at least LCDs from Dell (which, in some cases, use the exact same panel as similar Apple displays*) have composite, S-Video, and/or component inputs so you can use them for something else. How cool (and useful, and green) would it be if every iMac could be used with a common VCR, DVD player, or cable box? Even limited to standard-def inputs it would still kick ass. (As my 20" Dell LCD does at home.) The iMac made all-in-one, dispose-as-one computing popular again, and it sucks.

    * Yes, really. Anand even has pics of the internals.

  12. Re:It makes sense by MojoStan · · Score: 2, Interesting · on War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front

    I have a $500 full size laptop, and I don't find it hard to carry around by any means. It's has a 14.1 inch screen and is pretty light and pretty thin. I agree that $500 can buy a lot of value these days. For example, Dell's $500 base Vostro 1400 (with Core 2 based Celeron) can do a lot more than an Eee PC.

    but neither one can just be shoved in your pocket as you leave the house. Both of them require some kind of backpack or shoulder bag to bring with you. So as far as I see it, the ultraportables, don't really offer much in terms of portability, because you can' just put them in your pocket, and a standard laptop lets you get your work done much easier. This is where I disagree with your opinion. When carrying your laptop around, the size/weight difference between an Eee PC and a 5-lb 14" laptop is huge. At 8.9" x 6.5" x 1.4" and approximately 2 lbs, the Eee PC is comparable in "footprint" to a DVD box (just a little longer). I think many users can just carry an Eee PC around in one hand. Unlike a 14" laptop, the Eee PC easily fits in a purse or messenger bag. It will even fit in some large jacket pockets. If you don't mind looking like an uber-dork, I bet it can be comfortably carried in a large fanny pack.
  13. Re:What the reviewer did wrong. by Anonymous+Custard · · Score: 1 · on Performance Showdown - SSDs vs. HDDs
    He failed to recognize that improved application start-up time heavily contributes to "system snappiness" ( http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3287&p=6 )

    I've been alluding to the SSD MacBook Pro feeling significantly quicker in overall usage...

    Application launch time contributes significantly to the snappiness of a system, and that's one area where the Memoright SSD excels.

    Take how long it takes to launch an application with the stock hard drive and cut it in half, because that's what the Memoright MR25.2-128S gives you. Boot time is also similarly reduced, it takes nearly 40 seconds to boot the stock MacBook Pro while the move to SSD brings it down to 22.
  14. Re:Buzz by Kjella · · Score: 1 · on Performance Showdown - SSDs vs. HDDs

    It's nice to know all that buzz is worth ignoring since I just bought a fancy new 750gig sata hdd. Even 16mb caches beat them solidly, I wonder how 8 and 32 would compare. It's worth noting they didn't mention seek times, although I'm not sure how that would transfer into ssd terms.
    Reply to This In the places I've seen mentioning, it's on the order of nanoseconds. Anyway, all this shows is that you can pick the benchmarks you want to get the conclusion you want. Look at this from Anandtech. If you cherry pick your results, you can conclude with everything from HDDs being worse than SSDs to SSDs completley annihilating HDDs with a 7:1 advantage.

    The breakdown is pretty easy:
    Reading large, sequential media (photos, music, video): HDD
    Writing large, sequential media (capture, encoding, content creation): HDD
    OS/Application/Game loading (and other mostly read jobs): SSD

    It doesn't take a genius to understand that a SSD as system disk and HDD as media disk is the best deal. I just think the prices are still a little too extreme, but I'll be getting a small SSD with a few years. I'm not interested in the 128GB+ SSDs, I'm interested in a cheap... 8GB? SSD which should hold a decent enough install.
  15. Re:less heat? by Kjella · · Score: 2, Informative · on AMD's Triple-Core Phenom X3 Processor Launched

    The Phenoms are, sorry to say, power hogs compared to Intel. If you look at this:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3293&p=9

    You'll see that the X3 produces 20W more heat under load than a Q6600, which is a *much* higher performing part. Then you can look at this:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3272&p=5

    Which shows that the Q9300 (in stock right now) performs better and consumes a lot less than the Q6600 again, albeit at a higher price. In short, they're fighting against the last generation and losing.

    Right now, the only thing I see the reviews counting as positive is that Intel doesn't have a HD decoding integrated chipset. The pricing is too close to the quads, and the benchmarks... well, they sorta come out ok if you take an average.

    However, if you look at it more closely the dual-cores whup ass in non-multithreaded benchmarks like games and the quad-cores whup ass in properly multithreaded benchmarks like 3D and media encoding. Unless you're a very mixed user doing an even amount of both, the X3 falls between all chairs.I really fail to see the consumer group where this processor is the best buy.

  16. Re:less heat? by Kjella · · Score: 2, Informative · on AMD's Triple-Core Phenom X3 Processor Launched

    The Phenoms are, sorry to say, power hogs compared to Intel. If you look at this:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3293&p=9

    You'll see that the X3 produces 20W more heat under load than a Q6600, which is a *much* higher performing part. Then you can look at this:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3272&p=5

    Which shows that the Q9300 (in stock right now) performs better and consumes a lot less than the Q6600 again, albeit at a higher price. In short, they're fighting against the last generation and losing.

    Right now, the only thing I see the reviews counting as positive is that Intel doesn't have a HD decoding integrated chipset. The pricing is too close to the quads, and the benchmarks... well, they sorta come out ok if you take an average.

    However, if you look at it more closely the dual-cores whup ass in non-multithreaded benchmarks like games and the quad-cores whup ass in properly multithreaded benchmarks like 3D and media encoding. Unless you're a very mixed user doing an even amount of both, the X3 falls between all chairs.I really fail to see the consumer group where this processor is the best buy.

  17. Re:Solid State, Fast Disks... all for wimps by MP3Chuck · · Score: 2, Informative · on Western Digital's VelociRaptor 10K RPM SATA Drive

    I know you're trying to be funny, but there is such a thing. :)

  18. Re:Why AMD + ATI should win, plus why they won't by MojoStan · · Score: 1 · on Why AMD Could Win The Coming Visual Computing Battle

    Why AMD + ATI Should win: Hypertransport. Another possible reason AMD + ATI won't win: it's too late. Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) is coming later this year when Nehalem ("tock") is launched.

    Putting the GPU on the same bus as the CPU should theoretically eliminate whatever roablocks the PCI bus created. Plus, allowing for die-2-die communication and treating the GPU as a true co-processor instead of a peripheral should open up huge possibilities for performance boosts. Intel has said (and shown in their diagrams) that some versions of Nehalem will have integrated graphics. However, their big GPU statement isn't coming until 2009-2010 in the form of Larrabee. Even if Larrabee is delayed, it might be too late for AMD's Fusion. By the time Fusion launches, Intel should have their interconnect and GPU ready.

    What you need to know about Intel's Nehalem CPU: Page 1
    Nehalem Architecture: Improvements Detailed
    A Little on Larrabee

  19. Re:Why AMD + ATI should win, plus why they won't by MojoStan · · Score: 1 · on Why AMD Could Win The Coming Visual Computing Battle

    Why AMD + ATI Should win: Hypertransport. Another possible reason AMD + ATI won't win: it's too late. Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) is coming later this year when Nehalem ("tock") is launched.

    Putting the GPU on the same bus as the CPU should theoretically eliminate whatever roablocks the PCI bus created. Plus, allowing for die-2-die communication and treating the GPU as a true co-processor instead of a peripheral should open up huge possibilities for performance boosts. Intel has said (and shown in their diagrams) that some versions of Nehalem will have integrated graphics. However, their big GPU statement isn't coming until 2009-2010 in the form of Larrabee. Even if Larrabee is delayed, it might be too late for AMD's Fusion. By the time Fusion launches, Intel should have their interconnect and GPU ready.

    What you need to know about Intel's Nehalem CPU: Page 1
    Nehalem Architecture: Improvements Detailed
    A Little on Larrabee

  20. Re:If only... by CajunArson · · Score: 1 · on New 20" iMac Screens Show 98% Fewer Colors

    Your statement is not accurate. I have a Dell 2707 WFP (that uses a Samsung panel used in Samsung 27" models too). I can assure you after looking at a bunch of monitors, you can tell the difference. As seen in the Anandtech review the panel used is S-PVA. From use I can say that while the colors might not be good enough for a professional photographer who would spend $6,000 on a monitor, it IS great for my uses and the colors look excellent from all angles.

  21. Re:Let me know when I can buy by asliarun · · Score: 1 · on Is Parallelism the New New Thing?

    32G chips and put them in 4 slots on my 64 Bit PC before talking about 'massive memory' Can't you already do that with a server motherboard? Even if you're looking for a PC, Skulltrail supports gobs of RAM and 8 cores.
    On the server side, Intel is coming out (soon) with Dunnington, which will be a 6-core single-die CPU with a monster cache... AND you can put 4 of them on a motherboard, giving you a 24-core machine. Then, you can also get custom workstations (Tyan?) that support multiple motherboards in a single box with a high speed interconnect. This is only going to get better when CSI/QPI gets released later this year, and in a couple of years, Larrabee (large number of simple cores).

    In my opinion, the benefits of parallelism can be more easily extracted at the VM or OS level, rather than at the application level. If you see how programming is evolving, it is clear that low level implementation details are increasingly being made transparent to the programmer. Heck, they're even abstracting out your CPU and application processes and instead using platform virtual machines (JVM/CLR) and application domains. After all this, it just doesn't makes sense to have programmers start coding/optimizing for multiple cores. You might as well ask them to write in assembly (however studly it may be).
  22. Re:How about a new numbering schema? by nexeruza · · Score: 1 · on NVIDIA 790i Chipset and GeForce 9800 GX2 Launched

    http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3266&p=5/

  23. Re:Lied about the MSRP? by gaforces · · Score: 1 · on NVIDIA 790i Chipset and GeForce 9800 GX2 Launched

    Ask and ye shall receive; Particular note on the 2560x1600 benchmarks, the 8800 Ultra and the 8800 GT both beat the 9800 GX2. http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3266&p=5 Comon, lets see the excuses for a released product.

  24. Re:I'm not worried, because... by ichigo+2.0 · · Score: 1 · on Unreal Creator Proclaims PCs are Not For Gaming

    The problem is that it's starting to become increasingly expensive to make games that scale from DX10 all the way down to Intel's integrated graphics. Even improving their hardware to match NVIDIA's and AMD's integrated graphics would be a huge step up, and would reduce the difference in power between low-end and high-end machines. This would not noticeably affect computer prices, as motherboards with Intel's integrated graphics usually cost the same as the competitor's solutions.

    An enlightening example can be found at Anandtech, where the difference between AMD&NVIDIA vs Intel is the magical 10x, not to mention that the game doesn't even render correctly. With such a huge difference it just doesn't make sense to develop games with Intel's graphics in mind. If gamers wanted hollow shooters with 2005 graphics then they'd just play their old games.

  25. Re:Thank you for improving the signal-to-noise rat by MojoStan · · Score: 1 · on Little Demand Yet For Silverlight Developers

    VC1 is kind of like Silverlight--invented by MSFT becasue they wanted to be in control of something, even though H.264 was already there and some might say is superior to VC1 (IIRC H.264 can produce video of the same quality with a slightly lower bandwidth requirement). In any case, when it takes 10 to 20 MbPS (or more) to stream at HD quality Id have to say it is a stretch to say this HD support could be very useful to "low bandwidth servers". I'm not an expert on video codecs, but I'm pretty sure VC-1 has much lower CPU/GPU requirements than H.264. I'm not convinced VC-1 was necessary for Blu-ray and HD DVD (maybe the VC-1 encoding tools were more mature), but I think VC-1 will allow many more current computer users to enjoy high resolution video.

    An Anandtech article from a while back showed that a Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 GHz) was needed to play back X-Men III in H.264-encoded Blu-ray. Of course, internet video won't have such high bitrates or deal with AACS, but the processing requirements of high resolution H.264 still seems pretty hefty. The vast majority of CPUs in homes will be less powerful than the E6700 for some time. Integrated Intel GPUs, which don't assist H.264 acceleration yet, still dominate the market.

  26. Re:Air Sold Out by s_p_oneil · · Score: 1 · on Woz Dumps on MacBook Air, iPhone, AppleTV

    Point taken. I meant to put emphasis on "that" in "that many", but I was being lazy. I'm sure quite a few people will buy it for the cool factor if nothing else, but I'm also sure that quite a few people will pass it up due to certain features it's missing, like an optical drive.

    Even the Anandtech reviewer made a complaint about it:
    http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3220
    "Despite the lack of an internal optical drive (I've never been so tempted to use the f-bomb in a review before)..."

  27. Re:It's not the drive that's really the problem by default+luser · · Score: 1 · on Blu-ray In Laptops Could Be Hard On Batteries

    You may recall the same kind of thing happening back with DVDs. CPUs just weren't powerful enough to decode DVDs in realtime, at least most weren't. So you'd get an MPEG-2 decoder card in the system to do it. If you looked at the card, you discovered it had a pretty simple ASIC that did it all. No heat sink, low clock speed, etc. However because it was designed for that one specific task, it was able to do it at full speed, despite being over all much less powerful than the CPU.

    Further, the next step of the dedicated ASIC was to integrate it onto video chipsets. The ATI Rage Pro , Nvidia TNT2 and S3 Savage 3D included motion compensation, and the ATI Rage 128 was the first chipset with full on-chip decode. The full decode-accelerator chips used half the power of pure software decoding, because the video chip was much more efficient. Today, most video chips have a full MPEG2 hardware engine in-silicon.

    Today, we have already progressed to full on-chip decode assist. Nvidia 8600-series cards can do full h.264 decoding on-chip (the most demanding codec), and give an assist to VC-1. ATI's range of HD 2600 cards can also do BOTH h.264 and VC-1 decoding in hardware. The result is MUCH lower power consumption:

    See here, the power consumption difference between load and idle is reduced by half by using the video card to decode the movie. While 10w doesn't sound like much on a desktop, on a mobile platform it can mean the difference between 1.5 and 2 hours runtime, which is very important.

    So, the technology is already here, you just won't see it in low-end notebooks because people are unwilling to pay extra for more powerful GPUs. The good news is that eventually, ALL chipsets will provide good acceleration, and as processes improve, so will the power consumption required by these chips.

  28. Re:Mossberg has seen it... by 2ms · · Score: 1 · on The ThinkPad Takes On The MacBook Air

    What are you talking about? The battery life of the Macbook Air is amazingly good -- comparable to the current Macbook Pros and drastically better than the last version of Macbook Pro (Core Duo).

  29. People still read Tom's? by fineghal · · Score: 1 · on Intel Skulltrail Benchmark and Analysis

    Do people really wade through Tom's site anymore? Try Anandtech.

    And guess what? My psychiatrist said my misanthropic tendencies were counter-productive to my welfare. So I'm even giving you the single page version!

    http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3216

  30. Re:What process is the IBM CPU in the XB360? by homer_ca · · Score: 1 · on Cell Hits 45nm, PS3 Price Drop Likely to Follow

    The 360 just moved from 90nm to 65nm late last year.

    http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3152

  31. Re:Since when? by homer_ca · · Score: 1 · on Cell Hits 45nm, PS3 Price Drop Likely to Follow

    I doubt you'd want to leave it on. When the XBox360 went from 90nm to 65nm, power consumption dropped 50W, from 170W to 120W peak, but 120W is still a whole lot of watts. The PS3 is in the same ballpark for power consumption. The PS2 and Wii use much less. My PS2 slim uses 25-30W.

  32. Re:OH GOD by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Informative · on Microsoft Responds to 'Save XP' Petition

    DirectX 10 isn't all of what Vista offers, but speaking of that, I'm one of those who have played DX10 games on Vista and a Geforce 8800GTS w/ 640 MB RAM, and all I can say is that I agree with this. Yes, still. Even after new driver releases and even games. I thought that part would mature over time, but no. DirectX 10 games really do seem to cut about half the performance in bad cases.

  33. Re:Big and bulky by mcvos · · Score: 1 · on February 2008 Hardware Roundup

    Seconded. I knew very little about recent hardware until Silent PC Review taught me almost everything I know. Although AnandTech is also pretty good, and has some very helpful people on its forum.

  34. Re:Since we're all here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on February 2008 Hardware Roundup

    http://www.anandtech.com/

  35. Re:Vista XP is here! by sammyF70 · · Score: 0 · on Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones
    Performance benefit of DX10 over DX9? Care to name your source?
    HERE is one saying the contrary .. and it's just an example. Google for "dx10 dx9 performance comparison" and you should find plenty more.
    As far as I know, the benefit of DX10 are slightly different (not always better in my opinion) visuals, and I concur with the Anandtech guys that many of the DX10 improvements could have been done in DX9 too.

    [shudder] .. and here I am feeding the trolls again ...

  36. Re:Vista XP is here! by Volante3192 · · Score: 1 · on Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones

    http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034
    (although the first page with charts I see is here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3044&p=1 )

    If Vista has better memory management than XP, then explain how the same program uses 250 to 500MB MORE on Vista than XP.

  37. Re:Vista XP is here! by Volante3192 · · Score: 1 · on Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones

    http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034
    (although the first page with charts I see is here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3044&p=1 )

    If Vista has better memory management than XP, then explain how the same program uses 250 to 500MB MORE on Vista than XP.

  38. Re:This just in: New technology faster than old. by Chainsaw+Karate · · Score: 1 · on AMD's Dual GPU Monster, The Radeon HD 3870 X2

    http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209 Anandtech's article compares the 3870x2 against 8800 GT SLI (a good comparison since they cost almost exactly the same). 8800 GT SLI wins in almost every case. 3870x2 is still a damn good card for people with only one PCIe x16 slot though.

  39. Re:I bought a PS3, and only for HD movies -nt by ben+there... · · Score: 2, Interesting · on HD DVD Player Sales Grind To a Halt

    It only takes about an Athlon 2100+ to do either without dropping frames. Not according to Anandtech. Core 2 Duo E6600 will hit 100% CPU usage and start dropping frames with any GPU earlier than GeForce 8-series.

    An Athlon 2100+ wouldn't come close to handling it with an older video card. It probably couldn't even with an 8800 GTX GPU or one of the new G92 cards.

    You're looking at more like X2 4800+ (probably even higher) on the AMD side of things...
  40. Re:What about real performance by skaaman · · Score: 1 · on Top Solid State Disks and TB Drives Reviewed

    Here is a good quick rundown against a WD Raptor. Also note that testing reveals an issue with the Intel ICH9 and ICH8 chipsets that seems to cap sustained transfer rates at about 80MB/sec. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3167&p=1

  41. should last 140 years @50GB of writes/erasesperday by danwat1234 · · Score: 1 · on Top Solid State Disks and TB Drives Reviewed

    A SSD from the company, Mitron should last 140 years if you were to write/erase 50GB per day, every day. Seems like it should last 20+ years for a heavily used workstation/laptop. The main thing is to not run defrag at all, except to keep fragmentation levels OK, not that it really matters in an SSD. This information is from this link:: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064&p=2 (on the left side of the table at the top of the page)

  42. AMD making big mistakes under pressure! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Erratum Plagues Quad-Core Opterons, Phenoms

    Errata are very common but how company handles them is a big factor in deciding things. I certainly hope all review sites will rerun benchmarks.

    Anandtech I'm looking at you.

  43. Re:Clearly you're mistaken by QuailRider · · Score: 1 · on Leopard as the New Vista?

    "I recently spoiled myself with a OC'd 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, two 150GB Raptors in RAID 0..."

    Off-topic comment: ditch the RAID-0 config. You'll see better performance and double your capacity if you use separate partitions, and put your swap file on the second drive. Raptors in RAID-0 offers no real-world performance advantage over single drives. Not intuitive, but that's the reality of the situation. See here for details: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2101

    Scroll down for the relevant bit: "Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth."

  44. Re:The missed point... by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 1 · on Researchers Sour on Vista Service Pack 1 Performance

    This is right there in the summary:
    "The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut." As for what you say about 1Gb being a sweet spot; it is misleading. Vista is unbearably slow on 512Mb. 1Gb is not a "sweet spot" - it's just enough for it to actually run and not crawl. But it still feels slow.


    Ok, Vista on 512mb is not ideal, neither is XP on 128mb, but both can run. If you read enough performance reviews, you will find the difference between 512mb and 1GB on Vista is about the same difference as 512mb on XP and 1GB on XP. So Vista is not out of the ballpark in the jump 1GB gives.

    Vista can be made to run effectively in 512mb, you just have to know what you are doing. In theory you can disable many of the 'fluff' Vista features and even with 512mb of RAM get Vista to a XP performance level. One of our techs is working on some instructional articles for people that have been moved to Vista or want some of the features like DX10 but don't have a need for some of the non-XP features.

    As for the article, this is only 'one' point I mentioned and it was a blanket statement as there are a lot of tech impressions and performance reviews that did not use an upatch RTM version when doing the comparison.

    Besides, isn't this a OSS news site, why would people here care if Vista SP1 is faster or not? Why would they care if it is faster than XP?

    If it is to mock Vista for needing 1GB to best XP in performance, then why aren't we seeing articles that show Leopard is JUST AS MUCH of a RAM pig in comparison to Tiger, and unless you have 1GB of RAM, Leopard, like Vista will be slower than the previous version.

    PS Has anyone paid attention to Vista and performance past the January reviews when the Video drivers for Vista sucked?

    Here is a good article that lays out some of the Vista information and lays to rest some of the Vista Myths that everyone here seems to have memorized.

    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1999401&enterthread=y

  45. Re:Odd pricing by saldate · · Score: 1 · on THG Labs In Depth With AMD Spider

    Did you read the same reviews I did? As I understand AMD's pricing structure, it's more like you get 80 performance points for 100 bucks, which is obviously even more confusing. Phenom generally performs worse than Intel's lowest-end Q6600, but costs more. Have a look at the less-biased version: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153

  46. Re:Wooden knobs == PC case mods by Schnapple · · Score: 1 · on 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets

    In my haste I used the wrong link. here is one that gives hard numbers. The Killer NIC does make frame rates go up, but not by much. Whether or not it makes them go up enough to justify the pricetag is arguable (I don't think it does, others may disagree) but it does help.

  47. ATI's new desktop graphics cards do this by recoiledsnake · · Score: 2, Informative · on Killer Mobile Graphics — NVIDIA's GeForce 8800M
    From http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=2 :

    As for PowerPlay, which is usually found in mobile GPUs, AMD has opted to include broader power management support in their desktop GPUs as well. While they aren't to wholly turn off parts of the chip, clock gaiting is used, as well as dynamic adjustment of core and memory clock speed and voltages. The command buffer is monitored to determine when power saving features need to be applied. This means that when applications need the power of the GPU it will run at full speed, but when less is going on (or even when something is CPU limited) we should see power, noise, and heat characteristics improve. One of the cool side effects of PowerPlay is that clock speeds are no longer determined by application state. On previous hardware, 3d clock speeds were only enabled when a fullscreen 3D application started. This means that GPU computing software (like folding@home) was only run at 2D clock speeds. Since these programs will no doubt fill the command queue, they will get full performance from the GPU now. Hopefully, Nvidia will follow the lead.
  48. You're all missing the point... by legoman666 · · Score: 5, Interesting · on The Fastest Processor You Can't Run

    Anandtech had a good insight about this release. I'll just quote it directly instead of trying to paraphrase:
    "Almost as soon as we had Phenom samples, Intel made the decision to sample a CPU requiring a FSB that wasn't officially supported by any chipset at the time. No, 1600MHz FSB support won't come until next year with the X48 chipset, but it didn't matter to Intel; we were getting chips now.

    Take a moment to understand the gravity of what I just said; Intel, the company that would hardly acknowledge overclocking, was now sampling a CPU that required overclocking to run at stock speeds. Even more telling is that Intel got the approval of upper management to sample these unreleased processors, requiring an unreleased chipset, in a matter of weeks. This is Intel we're talking about here, the larger of the two companies, the Titanic, performing maneuvers with the urgency of a speed boat.

    It's scary enough for AMD that Intel has the faster processor, but these days Intel is also the more agile company."

    http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=2

  49. Re:Huh? by mabinogi · · Score: 5, Informative · on The Fastest Processor You Can't Run

    According to the Anandtech review they gave them a real (though pre-production) CPU, and only had them overclock an existing motherboard - merely overclocking an existing processor wouldn't account for the massive differences in power usage.

  50. Re:25% increase in clock speed is.... by DrMrLordX · · Score: 2, Informative · on THG Labs In Depth With AMD Spider

    Unfortunately the stability of B2 chips past 2.3 ghz has been called into question thanks to problems with the Transition Lookaside Buffer (TLB). Anandtech was unable to get their B2 chip stable past 2.6 ghz despite the fact that it would run at speeds as high as 3 ghz. It is telling that reviews on AMD's supplied system (like Tom's) did not include any real stability testing of the much-touted 3 ghz B2 stepping Phenom X4.