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Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by LIGC · 2006-08-25 11:43 · Score: 2, Informative · on Ars Evaluates Core 2 Duo in Latest System Guide

If you're an overclocker, the Asus P5B's new BIOS revision supports multiplier unlocking for non Extreme Core 2 processors, as http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2822 points out.

Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by busydoingnothing · 2006-08-25 11:02 · Score: 1 · on Ars Evaluates Core 2 Duo in Latest System Guide

Wait for the motherboards based on the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI chipset. According to this article, their release is only about a week or so away. As far as price goes, I would expect them to be somewhere between $200 and $250, like their AM2 counterparts. As soon as these boards hit the street, I'm gonna pick me up one and a E6600 and build my first Intel-based system since my Celeron 300 (overclocked to 450, remember those?).

Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by busydoingnothing · 2006-08-25 11:02 · Score: 1 · on Ars Evaluates Core 2 Duo in Latest System Guide

Wait for the motherboards based on the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI chipset. According to this article, their release is only about a week or so away. As far as price goes, I would expect them to be somewhere between $200 and $250, like their AM2 counterparts. As soon as these boards hit the street, I'm gonna pick me up one and a E6600 and build my first Intel-based system since my Celeron 300 (overclocked to 450, remember those?).

Re:Dontcha just love... by Gnavpot · 2006-08-23 06:17 · Score: 1 · on Linux Hardware Looks at Core 2

LOL, thanks for proving my point with numbers for me. Yes, NOW the chips are $99 and last month they were $200.

Yes, and before that they had probably dropping really, really slowly down to $200 for quite some time as processor prices has been stagnant for the last 1-2 years. People who bought these processors just when prices stagnated have had them almost "for free" until a few weeks ago. People who bought them a few weeks ago have already seen the price of their new processor cut to half.

Which of those two groups do you think are most satisfied with the timing of their purchase?

Please understand that when price reduction tend to follow a stepped curve rather than a linear curve, some times are better than other times for buying.

I just googled (ha, take that, Google) to find some evidence on the net to back up may claim that processor has been stagnant for 1-2 years before the recent price drop. I did not find any curves showing 2 years, but I did find one showing 6 months for one particular processor: http://anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2782&p= 4. That curve is completely flat - or perhaps even rising a bit - for 3½ months until prices recently dropped 50% in one day.

For those that missed it, and need speed by RootWind · 2006-08-18 10:53 · Score: 5, Informative · on Flash Drives Go To Work

Here is Anandtech's last year USB Flash Drive Roundup: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2549&p=3
It seems to be still relevant almost a year later. No faster models have come out from any of the major brands that I am aware of.

Re:HD is overrated by Jugalator · 2006-08-11 11:04 · Score: 1 · on First Blu-ray Drives Won't play Blu-ray Movies

I think it's one of those things you see quite a difference with when comparing DVD/HD movies on a store as you walk up close. But I have to wonder how much difference, even on a sizable screen, you see when sitting and watching it from a sofa. Here's a DVD/HD quality comparison at AnandTech by the way (click for larger pictures). I see a difference in color clarity and sharpness especially in the first one, and the photos are admittedly not really doing the displays justice. But I think they do give at least a hint of the quality difference.

Re:dust + settle by masklinn · 2006-08-11 08:07 · Score: 2, Informative · on Merom in MacBook and MacBook Pros in September?

How exactly will the new processor affect the performance of the machine again? Oh yea, that's right, except on paper, probably not at all.

While this may be paper for you, Anandech found Core 2 Duos to perform 10 to 15% better than Core Duos on average with exactly the same power draw (and therefore autonomy)

It is a performance increase too! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-08-11 07:17 · Score: 0 · on Merom in MacBook and MacBook Pros in September?

It's not just a 64 bit upgrade, it's a performance upgrade as well. This article was pretty good imo:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2808

Basically the final words of the article say if you already have a yonah core laptop, you won't be missing too much (that is assuming 64 bit computing doesn't take off soon, which it prolly won't). But if you're buying a new core duo laptop, you should get a merom core, as it does perform better than the yonah and has 64 bit functionality.

Personally I advised anyone who was interested in purchasing a yonah core laptop to wait for merom.

Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-08-08 12:02 · Score: 0 · on Network Card for Gamers - Uses Linux to Reduce Lag

The latency from your computer to your router is practically non-existent, but the router doesn't have unlimited memory. If your network card bombarded the router with packets, the router would have to drop any packets that didn't fit into it's buffer. To prevent lost packets, the network card throttles outgoing packets and keeps a buffer of it's own where it queues packets to be sent. Instead of a simple FIFO, this network card most likely prioritizes gaming packets over other non-gaming packets within it's own buffer.

I've seen demonstrations of a similar technology (NVIDIA's First Packet) and it does actually make a difference - but only if you have some other program (such as Bittorrent) saturating the link. Anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2764&p=3 ) saw ping times improve between 15% to 40% with NVIDIA's stuff.

It's really a decellerator by Jthon · 2006-08-08 11:17 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Network Card for Gamers - Uses Linux to Reduce Lag

Compared to existing NICs their card actually seems to slow down performance.

If you read their white paper http://www.killernic.com/KillerNic/PDFs/KillerNic_ LLR_White_Paper.pdf/ you can see that their card can generate 20.15 MegaBytes/s of throughput. From the results in their whitepaper they come out far on top, beating NVIDIA's nForce system by almost 3x the performance.

Anandtech has an interesting comparison of ethernet performance in one of their mainboard reviews http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2696&p=11/ . Anandtech's benchmark paints a totally different story. All the chipsets featured in the whitepaper are included in this review, and as you can see, they perform significantly better than Bigfoot leads you to believe. They are all able to sustain upwards of 118 MB/s of performance (divide the benchmark results by 8 for MegaBytes). While I know it's hard to directly compare benchmarks their results are so far off that I find them very suspect.

This new item is nothing more than Quantum Speaker Cables for PC Gamers.

Re:Only works as an administrator but... by Ruff_ilb · 2006-08-07 11:20 · Score: 2, Informative · on Vista Hacking Challenge Answered

Yes, it WILL change if microsoft stops assuming that everyone can act as a full administrator, which they're going to do based on the latest beta.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=27 80&p=7

The above article details a new "User Account Control" system. From TFA: "The basic premise behind UAC is that the previous way of running everything as an Administrator was wrong, and by doing so it not only allowed applications to make system-wide changes when they shouldn't, but it also meant that compromised applications could be used as a vector to attack the system. As a result, even an administrator isn't really an administrator under Vista."

Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · 2006-08-04 19:45 · Score: 3, Informative · on Combating Harassing Use of Mosquito Noise Device?

No, this is a real story. I actually wrote it based off of a forum post by someone else as a quasi-humorous way to see how the Slashdot readership would handle it.

amicold? by sm8000 · 2006-08-04 19:39 · Score: 1 · on Combating Harassing Use of Mosquito Noise Device?

Is that you? http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid =38&threadid=1904656&enterthread=y

Re:Bluetooth AND infrared by Suddenly_Dead · 2006-08-02 17:53 · Score: 1 · on Everybody Loves the Wii

So, concisely:

The infrared signal from the "Sensor Bar" is used by the Wiimote for locational purposes. All actual two-way communication with the console occurs via Bluetooth.

If the Bluetooth interface is not obfuscated and it is easy to reverse engineer the sucker, all that's needed are a couple of infrared LEDs seperated exactly the same distance as the bar's.

And I'm one of the ones who was toying around with getting that section just right. Anandtech reported it that way, though I don't know if it's properly cited in the article. (We had some semi-conflicting information from IGN who actually called the LEDs "sensors", without going into more depth. They also went to say that the Wiimote has an optical sensor and described the bit about it being confused by bright lights, which kind of contradicted the "sensor" thing. IGN just screws things up.)

without HyperTransport, AMD would be dead by tetromino · 2006-08-02 15:47 · Score: 3, Insightful · on IBM Opts for AMD

Intel dead? Have you people been living in a cave for the past few months?

Look at some benchmarks. The new 5100 series Xeons with the Woodcrest core have been out since June, and a dual Woodcrests crush dual Opterons in almost every test. AMD's only hope at the moment is HyperTransport, with which they rule the market for 4-socket servers (Intel's old-fashioned FSB doesn't really scale to 4 sockets). But thanks to Core2 (Conroe and Woodcrest), Intel has taken over the 1-socket and 2-socket market. Prepare to see AMD's market share take a nosedive.

I am generally an AMD fanboy, but my next system will use Intel chips. Now that Core2 is here, I am simply not interested in an antiquated AMD chip which can only complete an SSE2 operation once every two cycles. Until the K8L comes out, it's Intel Inside for me.

without HyperTransport, AMD would be dead by tetromino · 2006-08-02 15:47 · Score: 3, Insightful · on IBM Opts for AMD

Intel dead? Have you people been living in a cave for the past few months?

Look at some benchmarks. The new 5100 series Xeons with the Woodcrest core have been out since June, and a dual Woodcrests crush dual Opterons in almost every test. AMD's only hope at the moment is HyperTransport, with which they rule the market for 4-socket servers (Intel's old-fashioned FSB doesn't really scale to 4 sockets). But thanks to Core2 (Conroe and Woodcrest), Intel has taken over the 1-socket and 2-socket market. Prepare to see AMD's market share take a nosedive.

I am generally an AMD fanboy, but my next system will use Intel chips. Now that Core2 is here, I am simply not interested in an antiquated AMD chip which can only complete an SSE2 operation once every two cycles. Until the K8L comes out, it's Intel Inside for me.

Re:disc capacity and codecs by MojoStan · 2006-08-01 08:05 · Score: 1 · on HD DVD vs Blu-ray Direct Comparisons

AFAIK, the current HDDVD authoring software supports MPEG-2 and VC-1, and the initial discs have been using VC-1.

To add to your knowledge, the Japanese version of The Chronicles of Riddick HD DVD uses H.264 encoding.

I have already seen 50 GB BD-ROM blanks at Frys (albeit for $39) so I know the dual layer BluRay discs are already possible. I've also heard that many HDDVD movies are shipping on 30 GB (dual layer) discs.

When all movies are encoded in high-quality and high-efficiency H.264 format, will the extra capacity above 25/30 GB really matter? I can see Blu Ray (with its theoretical higher capacity) eventually being the better format for PC storage, but I think home video will probably decide who wins this format war.

We won't be able to see a true Apples to Apple comparison until we can compare two discs that used the exact same codec at the exact same bitrate, or even the exact same H.264 / VC-1 data.

Well, I think this is an Apples to Apples comparison of what is available now. Of course, 99% of people who are interested in these formats should not be buying these 1st generation players and movies.

Apple hardware does some of this by mabhatter654 · 2006-07-29 17:01 · Score: 1 · on Could Graphics Drivers be Included on the Card?

Apple hardware does some of this. Add in cards have to provide basic functions to the Apple OS that's one reason Apple's hardware works so well together, the boards have to match what the OS expects to see. That's the real reason Apple add-in cards cost more. They usually have 2x or more bios memory built into the hardware. A while ago there were write ups on the cross platform ATI9600 http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2502&p=9 (anandtech) that could handle the 30" displays. All the reviews were commenting on how cool it was to finally have cross platform cards so they commented on how ATI did it. Basically, the only reason more cards aren't like that is that it costs a dollar or two more for the extra ram and coding time, when they can make cards that work just fine in windows only and expect you to download resource hogging drivers later. All OSes would work better if the drivers were on hardware... for a matter of fact, that's actually part of the PCI spec to have object level card bios... for all the platforms EXECPT x86 where they allow and exception for binary only. The specs require a neutral language like Forth or something that's simple for any platform to quickly decode and run.

The Poster is correct, think of all the time and energy wasted, not to mention monopolies locked in, just because people cut corners. When modem manufactures stopped putting firmware and controllers onboard modems we had a great resource hogging fiasco on our hands. If graphics card vendors would put the open gl routines right on the card, we wouldn't need to skirt around the GPL to get drivers that were "legal". IF wireless cards put the firmware on the cards, then they wouldn't have to "hide" the code to maintaing FCC compliance.

Re:Since when does "need" matter? by DrMrLordX · 2006-07-27 07:13 · Score: 1 · on Intel - Market Doesn't Need Eight Cores

The problem here is that when you try and speed up your chip by adding more cores, there's no guarentee the system will fully utilize all of those cores. Code has to be parallelized to take advantage of multiple processors/cores. Either that, or you've got to launch a new application that will spawn its own threads and chew up processor time on the unused cores. Take this informal benchmark as an example of how utilizing multiple cores can be difficult, even when using multithreaded apps. Unless you're a massive multitasker type, running multiple CPU-intensive apps simultaneously, it's difficult to harness the power of even 4 cores, much less 8.

high-yield savings account by __aaitqo8496 · 2006-07-26 15:48 · Score: 1 · on Investing Tips for College Students?

why not take a look at some high yield savings accounts? they can earn as much interest as a CD, but you have the convenience of instant access to money

right now, HSBC direct is at 5.05% APY
another popular one is ING Direct at 4.35% APY
i believe even citibank offers one

my suggestion is to sign up with several and transfer money between them depending on who has the highest rate. right now, i've put some cash into hsbc. you even get an atm card for immediate access to cash (note: this is not a debit/check card). transferring money is easy, too. once all the requisite materials have arrived via snail mail, you can link you existing online banking accounts.

i can transfer from my local bank to hsbc in about 3 minutes. the funds take a few days to transfer, but it's "instant" enough for me. i usually find the better deals crop up in the anandtech hot deals forum, but a google search may work as well