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While I applaud AMD for their initiative there have been tests that show a drop in quality of GPU encoded H264 vs a CPU/software solution.
For details check out: http://www.behardware.com/articles/828-27/h-264-encoding-cpu-vs-gpu-nvidia-cuda-amd-stream-intel-mediasdk-and-x264.html and http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/video-transcoding-amd-app-nvidia-cuda-intel-quicksync,2839-13.html

The study you are talking about was based on returns from between six months and one year after purchase. It does not cover DOA parts. Your theory is mistaken.

So this is a lie then?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

When I saw this: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
I decided I would never buy any OCZ product.

Seriously? A 40% return rate on some products?

It gets even worse:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-7/ssd.html

There are other reports from this guy before and after those times and it's ugly numbers for OCZ till maybe this far back: http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
But that might have been early stages for the SSDs so the stuff hadn't started failing yet, or they hadn't got them to their usual "quality".
Go look at OCZ's track record for RAM back then compared to the rest: http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-4/components-returns-rates.html

Maybe OCZ stands for Often Crap, Zero quality... ;)

I don't see the point of keeping the brand.

It gets even worse:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-7/ssd.html

There are other reports from this guy before and after those times and it's ugly numbers for OCZ till maybe this far back: http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
But that might have been early stages for the SSDs so the stuff hadn't started failing yet, or they hadn't got them to their usual "quality".
Go look at OCZ's track record for RAM back then compared to the rest: http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-4/components-returns-rates.html

Maybe OCZ stands for Often Crap, Zero quality... ;)

I don't see the point of keeping the brand.

It gets even worse:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-7/ssd.html

There are other reports from this guy before and after those times and it's ugly numbers for OCZ till maybe this far back: http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
But that might have been early stages for the SSDs so the stuff hadn't started failing yet, or they hadn't got them to their usual "quality".
Go look at OCZ's track record for RAM back then compared to the rest: http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-4/components-returns-rates.html

Maybe OCZ stands for Often Crap, Zero quality... ;)

I don't see the point of keeping the brand.

For those looking for data, try here: http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html Now, I work in this industry, and so I'm not trying to disparage any particular vendor, but this is the only external datapoint that I know of at this point, and explains some of the frustrations being expressed.

. Note that return rates are returns to the store of purchase - they reflect product dissatisfaction within a few days/weeks of purchase, not due to a failure months down the road (which was the common complaint in forums about OCZ drives).

No that's not true. The rates in the link come a specific large online retailer and are defective returns after six months to a year.

2011: http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.html
Early 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html
Late 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

Sorry, I have no 2013 figures.

2011: http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.html
Early 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html
Late 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

Sorry, I have no 2013 figures.

2011: http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.html
Early 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html
Late 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

Sorry, I have no 2013 figures.

Don't put so much weight on warranty lengths.

You might want to factor in that OCZ's stuff are often even crappier than HDDs:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-7/ssd.html

Either OCZ sell defective hardware or OCZ users are many times more likely to return stuff for no good reason. I'm more inclined to believe the former.

Just don't buy OCZ crap?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-6/components-returns-rates-7.html

It's not a study but it's good enough for me.

Just don't buy OCZ crap?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-6/components-returns-rates-7.html

It's not a study but it's good enough for me.

The enterprise class SSDs are not the same as the "consumer" ones: http://www.anandtech.com/print/6433/intel-ssd-dc-s3700-200gb-review

Don't be surprised if you stick a "consumer" grade one to a heavily loaded DB server and it dies a few months later.

Fine for random read-only loads.

And some consumer grade SSDs aren't even consumer grade (I'm looking at you OCZ: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html ).

OCZs are very crap. A significant percentage might not even last a year: http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

Here are the hard numbers for anyone who's curious:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

- Intel 0.45% (against 1.73%)

- Samsung 0.48% (N/A)

- Corsair 1.05% (against 2.93%)

- Crucial 1.11% (against 0.82%)

- OCZ 5.02% (against 7.03%)

Return rates specifically for OCZ models:

- 40.00% for the OCZ Petrol 64 GB

- 39.42% for the OCZ Petrol 128 GB

- 30.85% for the OCZ Octane 128 GB SATA II

- 29.46% for the OCZ Octane 64 GB SATA II

- 9.73% for the OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB 3.5"

- 9.59% for the OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB

- 6.73% for the OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB

- 5.43% for the OCZ Agility 3 240 GB

- 5.12% for the OCZ Vertex Plus 128 GB

Also if you have a Crucial M4 make sure you have the correct firmware as Crucial keeps releasing/shipping units with buggy firmware updates that can brick your drive.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

A new Components returns rates report just came out and the failure rate of some of OCZ's models is shockingly bad, they have indeed been selling duds.

BeHardware Return Rates report

Differences among models in a motherboard line are larger than variation among manufacturers. Check out the BeHardware Components returns rates survey for example. The average quality from MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte is very evenly matched. But both Asus and Gigabyte have models that are just plain junk.

As for "more important than ever", in the last 10 years the period when motherboards were most critical to select carefully was the peak of the capacitor plague era.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html

Personally, I'm glad my SSDs aren't OCZ.

No, Crucial's are currently by far the most reliable, Intel's are a distant second, see:
Components returns rates (6)

Although if you'd have said that last year then you'd have been correct (things change quickly).

I find this page handy:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-1/components-returns-rates.html

The site gets these statistics from time to time.

That's a myth. Maybe it was true for some old SSDs. But it hasn't even been that true for normal usb drives.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?83778-Time-warp-drive-vanishing-after-3-days-data-gone-on-reboot-I-need-3-to-5-users-with-this-issue-to-help
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?78706-OCZ-Vertex2-180GB-lost-all-Data-after-3-Days
http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-intel-confirms-8mb-bug-in-320-series-ssds-fix-available.html

You may say those failures are due to bugs, but when there are so many bugs, they are effectively the main failure cause of SSDs, not "wear and tear": http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/09/01/ssd-users-report-widespread-data-loss/1

And when the SSD return rates are often even higher than "spinning disk" drives you should be very careful which SSDs you use (so far I think Samsung is OK).

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html

That's a myth. Maybe it was true for some old SSDs. But it hasn't even been that true for normal usb drives.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?83778-Time-warp-drive-vanishing-after-3-days-data-gone-on-reboot-I-need-3-to-5-users-with-this-issue-to-help
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?78706-OCZ-Vertex2-180GB-lost-all-Data-after-3-Days
http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-intel-confirms-8mb-bug-in-320-series-ssds-fix-available.html

You may say those failures are due to bugs, but when there are so many bugs, they are effectively the main failure cause of SSDs, not "wear and tear": http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/09/01/ssd-users-report-widespread-data-loss/1

And when the SSD return rates are often even higher than "spinning disk" drives you should be very careful which SSDs you use (so far I think Samsung is OK).

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-7/components-returns-rates-5.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html

See these (their usages might match slashdotters more):
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

These rates are probably for "normal users" (as in normal users who buy SSDs ;) ):
http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

Note the common failure modes are not very graceful, they're usually brutal and/or weird:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25491097-Dell-Laptop-and-SSD-Time-warp-issue
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?83778-Time-warp-drive-vanishing-after-3-days-data-gone-on-reboot...I-need-3-to-5-users-with-this-issue-to-help

http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-intel-confirms-8mb-bug-in-320-series-ssds-fix-available.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X25-M#Past_bugs

In contrast with most (not all of course) of the HDD failures I've seen you still can get a lot of data out.

See these (their usages might match slashdotters more):
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

These rates are probably for "normal users" (as in normal users who buy SSDs ;) ):
http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

Note the common failure modes are not very graceful, they're usually brutal and/or weird:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25491097-Dell-Laptop-and-SSD-Time-warp-issue
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?83778-Time-warp-drive-vanishing-after-3-days-data-gone-on-reboot...I-need-3-to-5-users-with-this-issue-to-help

http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-intel-confirms-8mb-bug-in-320-series-ssds-fix-available.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X25-M#Past_bugs

In contrast with most (not all of course) of the HDD failures I've seen you still can get a lot of data out.

SSD failure is predictable.

That's bullshit. You call the following predictable?
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25491097-Dell-Laptop-and-SSD-Time-warp-issue
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?83778-Time-warp-drive-vanishing-after-3-days-data-gone-on-reboot...I-need-3-to-5-users-with-this-issue-to-help

http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-intel-confirms-8mb-bug-in-320-series-ssds-fix-available.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X25-M#Past_bugs

I might buy a Samsung SSD. The rest (except for Intel) don't have such a great track record even when compared to hard drive failure rates (and Intel's failures haven't been very confidence inspiring).

http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

For some people the failure is predictable in that they can almost bet the drives will fail within a year! http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

But I don't regard that sort of predictability of failure as acceptable, unless the manufacturer is paying me to use their products and gives me plenty of spares.

SSD failure is predictable.

That's bullshit. You call the following predictable?
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25491097-Dell-Laptop-and-SSD-Time-warp-issue
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?83778-Time-warp-drive-vanishing-after-3-days-data-gone-on-reboot...I-need-3-to-5-users-with-this-issue-to-help

http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-intel-confirms-8mb-bug-in-320-series-ssds-fix-available.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X25-M#Past_bugs

I might buy a Samsung SSD. The rest (except for Intel) don't have such a great track record even when compared to hard drive failure rates (and Intel's failures haven't been very confidence inspiring).

http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

For some people the failure is predictable in that they can almost bet the drives will fail within a year! http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

But I don't regard that sort of predictability of failure as acceptable, unless the manufacturer is paying me to use their products and gives me plenty of spares.

IMO whoever wrote that article is a shill, full of shit or an idiot. The article is not analysis, it's far closer to "anal-related" stuff...

Example: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923-3.html

Ultimately, the French-English language barrier was responsible for how hyped-up this information became. Sites like Mac Observer and ZDNet incorrectly reported these figures as "failure rates" based on a Google Translation.

A drive failure implies the device is no longer functioning. However, returns can occur for a multitude of reasons. This presents a challenge because we donâ(TM)t have any additional information on the returned drivesâ"were they dead-on-arrival, did they stop working over time, or was there simply an incompatibility that prevented the customer from using the SSD

But from the french retailer's stats:
Released in April 2011
http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/French-Website-Publishes-HDD-SSD-and-Motherboard-RMA-Statistics-4.png/
Released in December 2010
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

You will see that Intel has 0.3% and 0.59% return rates respectively.

So the difference in the return rates should tell anyone with brains that the non-intel SSDs (particularly OCZ SSDs) are crap, the Intel ones are decent. Saying bullshit like "returns can occur for a multitude of reasons. This presents a challenge" seems to be more spin than a 15krpm drive.

As for the stupid graph in http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923-9.html

Larger version: http://media.bestofmicro.com/4/A/302122/original/ssdfailurerates_1024.png

It's also shit. For most of the known period, SSDs are worse than HDDs. It's mainly his estimates/projections that show SSDs as better.

Go figure how stupid that is, it's like saying:
"Oh look, most SSDs are worse than most HDDs for the actual data we have, this means that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs"

And one wonders how many data points he actually has on the graph for SSDs, if it's just from the french retailer, I think it's two points for each drive brand/model.

I haven't been to tomshardware for a while till today. And it seems to have got even worse from the time when I stopped reading their articles because they were too crap.

You want something that's not so crap, go to Anandtech. They're not perfect, but this Tom's Hardware article makes Anandtech look like the Richard Feynman of IT reviewers.

Apparently Intel's SSDs are more reliable than HDDs.

April 2011
http://news.softpedia.com/news/French-Website-Publishes-HDD-SSD-and-Motherboard-RMA-Statistics-196538.shtml

http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/French-Website-Publishes-HDD-SSD-and-Motherboard-RMA-Statistics-4.png/

December 2010
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

Yes I know these are return rates and not failure rates. But "spinning disk drives" should in theory more vulnerable to "shipping and mishandling" and "oops user dropped it" than SSDs.

And if Intel can get 0.3- 0.59% and OCZ 2.9 - 3.5% I don't think we can blame shipping and the users for the difference ;).

So the non-intel SSDs seem pretty bad.

It's when I see posts like this I'd wish we had "-1, Just Plain damn wrong" mod.

I agree with your first two sentences, but the two paragraphs under are just .. well.. how shall I say it? It's like listening to a crack-smoking environmentalist talking about cars.

Return rates: HDD & SSD

And prefetch is nowhere near the same feeling as an SSD. I know. I have 6gb ram, and ran Win7 on a raptor before switching to SSD. The difference really was huge. I have bought a total of 3 SSD's (2 el cheapo's and one proper), and all three still works perfectly.

I've also convinced 2 work colleagues and a friend to try out SSD. All three had Win7 and plenty of RAM. All three was astonished over how much better responsiveness the PC had after the upgrade. One even said it fundamentally changed how he used the PC, from keeping it on all the time, to just turn it on when needed.

With current data write rate and wear leveling the SSD in my gaming rig is expected to have a lifetime of minimum 10 years before the flash bricks will start to wear out.

It will draw "additional" current, but you're also assuming a 1-3 year old single-core CPU would draw as much power as a brand new multi-core CPU.

You do realize that as things are made with smaller fabrication processes (90nm -> 65nm -> 45nm, or whatever progression you want to compare), their power requirements drop SIGNIFICANTLY. For example, check out this older comparison. Looking at an Athlon X2 5000+, the difference in power requirements are huge. 90 watts for the 90nm with the CPU pegged at 100%, while the 65nm drops to 72 watts at 100%. Keep in mind these are A) old CPUs, and B) aren't tweaked for use in a mobile setting...yet there is an 18 watt difference based on die size ALONE, much less comparing one generation of chips to another (and their relative power consumption and computing power.)

tl;dr: you can't compare an old single-core model to a new dual-core model, especially when they use completely different architectures and die sizes.

One of the problems with LCDs is that even if you find one that has truly good parameters and shines in reviews, you have no guarantee that the monitor you buy will perform at any similar level, due to manufacturers selling different revisions with different panels under the same name. Like the infamous Samsung 226BW.

And my hardware-enabled H.264 decoding video card does better and I don't have to buy any extra codecs. And the hardware decoding works on Linux with ffmpeg/mplayer as well through the VPDAU framework.

You're lucky then. Often times, CoreAVC is faster than hardware acceleration.

None of the online review sites ever mention input lag and on some monitors, it's a huge problem.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/632-1/lcds-images-delayed-compared-to-crts-yes.html

http://www.behardware.com/articles/689-2/22-inch-lcd-monitors-the-3rd-wave.html

None of the online review sites ever mention input lag and on some monitors, it's a huge problem.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/632-1/lcds-images-delayed-compared-to-crts-yes.html

http://www.behardware.com/articles/689-2/22-inch-lcd-monitors-the-3rd-wave.html

I know that CoreAVC claims to be super optimised, but is it really that much better? I have always assumed that they were just milking those Windows users that didn't know of ffdshow.

Yes. In fact, in many cases, we're faster than the hardware acceleration built into the video cards.

I have a demo I like to do where I take a Clevo D900k laptop, downclock it to 1GHZ, and do realtime decoding of 1080p H.264. For high-definition video on older hardware, it really makes a difference. Or, for laptop users, more efficient decoder translates directly to longer battery life.

As for ffmpeg, we're quite aware of it. We used it in the open-source version of our mobile player. It's not that one is "better" than the other - it mainly depends on your needs. If you want "free" (libre) software, ffmpeg is better. If you want every last bit of performance, CoreAVC is the way to go.

We pay a lot of money for patents, and developers have to eat. Our standard version is $8, despite the dollar dropping a lot in value over the past 2 years. That hardly counts as "milking".

FWIW, we did the "donation" game for some time, and had all of our software open-source. It takes developers to make a great product, and hiring people requires money. Given how many people in the SlashDot crowd are paid programmers, it always surprises me how opposed people get to selling software.

Although you are an anonymous coward, I am still going to respond. Perhaps I'm feeding a troll here, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

For the record, my name is Carlos Averett. I'm not particularly hard to find - I used to go by "cyt0plas" here and on other sites. I have anti-EULA posts going back several years.

Nuff said on "CEO" claim. And it's about as Inc. as my toosh.
The CEO, "betaboy", as you put it, is Dan Marlin. I'm sorry if his handle isn't "manly" enough for you. As for the ",Inc." part, we are incorporated. It is part of the legal name, and serves to identify that this is a legal entity, and that it is a corporation (as opposed to, for example, an LLC.)

This is a fly-by-night outfight that lies, cheats, steals, and covers it up as best he (betaboy) can.
This is a strange claim to make - our customers come by the web site, and buy our products. Our products do what they claim to do, and Do them very well. We have never refused to give a refund. If selling software is "theft", I guess we stand guilty.

As for the "fly-by-night" aspect, we have multimedia software (written by us) for PalmOS, Symbian, Linux, OS X, Windows CE/Mobile, and Windows NT2+. We run on ARM, MIPS, x86, x64. This is the result of years and years of in-house development.

Only thing is, he's an idiot that lies so much he can't keep it straight himself.
We're a company, and made up of a number of different people. Sometimes, this leads to differences of opinion and/or policy. It happens. Since I am not, for example, Dan Marlin, you shouldn't really be surprised if he says different things than me. If you really don't believe it, our "Contact US" page is at http://www.corecodec.com/contact-us.html . Heck, we can set up a conference call.

Those that uncover this are banned and forum threads deleted.
Disjointed, irrelevant, factually incorrect threads (such as this one) get deleted in our forums. A couple of Google searches show your post to be utterly false. So, don't be surprised when we delete threads like this from our forums. It's hardly some "mass censorship" on our part when we delete posts by trolls.

Webpage cites registered trademark status but nowhere is such a trademark registered.
Well, this one is bogus. Check Tess if you don't believe me. Do an advanced search for "CoreCodec". We currently hold trademarks on Matroska, CoreAVC, CoreCodec, BetaPlayer, CorePlayer, CorePhone, CoreOS, and the CoreCodec logo.

It's all a sham based on previously-done but modified open source projects.
We wrote players. The (mobile) players originally used open-source decoders, and were released as open-source. The decoders were slow.

We have some phenomenal developers, and developers (unsurprisingly) want to be paid. Good developers want to be paid well. It happens, and that's a good thing. So, we re-did the decoders, removed all the open-source code, paid all the patent fees, and put out a legal player that can be used by companies, and in products. It's more efficient than any other software product, and often faster than hardware solutions on the same device (Google "CoreAVC Benchmarks") if you don't believe me.

Some of our projects are still open-source (Matroska, for example), and we are in the process of reworking and releasing several of our internal projects (Enterprise-grade Certificate Authority) as open-source. I make no apologies for wanting to pay the developers well - they certainly earn it. This does take money, and selling software is a reasonable way to earn it.

Typically, 24" screens and greater are not TN. This article claims that the first 24" TN panel came out in mid 2007.

I can't imagine that there are many larger LCD TVs with TN panels, even among the cheap ones; the viewing angles would be unacceptable.

A 6 bit chip can only produce 190 colors per pixel.

Right. But then it rapidly switches between two of those colors to simulate interim colors. This is called temporal dithering; see more here. To most people (even graphic designers, of which I am one) this dithering is virtually undetectable, and still achieves millions of colors. (Some sensitive people can see the difference -- the same people who can detect the flicker in old flourescent lighting.) You cannot discuss 6-bit pixels separately from temporal dithering, because the latter makes the former commercially possible.

Apple may still be doing it badly, of course, but there are still millions of percieved colors.

Dithering won't help; it puts noise into a nice, smooth gradient.

*This in-betweening process is what knocks down the available number of colors on 6-bit displays to 16.2 million instead of 16.7 million.

Happened across these guys a few days ago while hunting for a clue on what LCD to get in the 22-24" range. I was very impressed by their deep analysis of different monitors; actual measurements of color gamut, response times (ghosting), etc. Good shit. Yes, you'll have to 'suffer' their english. Big deal.

The first thing I learned was that it's like that old saying of "Fast, Good, Cheap -- Pick two", only with "colors, response, ergonomics". Secondly: It's hell to actually be able to know what the hell monitor you're getting since producers swap in different quality panels under the exact same model. Typically the good panels go out in the first batch (which reviewers will get), and then if there's high demand, or in other territories, they'll put in the cheaper panels instead. Their flippant attitude about it makes me not want to buy a monitor at all. Maybe with Dell this isn't a problem, but on the other hand, they're not cheap, as measured globally.

Apparently my Core 2 Duo can, in ideal circumstances, run 2 + 8 (two 128-bit SSE floating point ops equal 8 single precision 32-bit ops) = 10 instructions per clock (I think). 2 Cores at 1.6 GHz would then process 32000 MIPS and use up about 10 watts (in a Lenovo X61t with some power-saving settings (e.g. no Bluetooth or WiFi, low display brightness) fully usable. If I didn't mess up something, that'd be 3200 MIPS/W.
During actual processor load and WiFi, usage of the chipset's 3D capabilities and high display brightness power use typically rises to some 17 watts, can't recall it reaching 20. Either this is pretty damn awesome or I got the numbers wrong.

(Yeah, a notebook with a power-efficient processor might not really be what most people call a typical home PC, but differently from a C7 or the SC648, it's something (some) end-users can and actually do have.)

That's not entirely accurate - a lot of it depends on the codecs you use.

I have a demo I like to do where I decode and play back 1080p HD using CoreAVC, on a 1GHz laptop (downclocked - it's hard to find a PC with a native resolution of 1920x1200 and a clock speed of 1GHz). Yes, it drops some frames, but it's quite watchable.

I also do 320x[240-320] H.264 (full screen) playback on a Treo 650. It's got a 312MHz ARM processor, and 32MB of RAM (~24 available).

None of this is hardware accelerated.

BenchMarks here. This is an older benchmark; CoreAVC is better now.

I never heard of this LCD dithering before. A little bit of Googling found a simple explanation of what it is, a simple test to look for it, and a detailed explanation and test.

This seems to be a very common practice on LCD screens, not just a trick used by Apple. I'm still not clear whether most LCDs use spatial or temporal dithering. It seems like temporal dithering would work very well with an LCD. They're known for their sluggish response times, so sending "80-84-80-84" at 60 Hz should result in a nice smearing into "82-82-82-82" over time.

I didn't see any dithering artifacts on my MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo). Either it doesn't dither (unlikely) or the dithering is better than my eyes can see.

We all know that screens are actually made of red, green, and blue (RGB) dots that combine to make the apparent color of each pixel. An 8-bit screen would have 256 levels of brighness for each of those subpixels, yielding 256 x 256 x 256 = 16.8 million mixed colors. But if you wanted to be really technical you could say that the screen can actually show only 256 + 256 + 256 = 768 colors; the mixed colors are an illusion. Likewise a 6-bit screen can generate only 262 thousand colors in a given pixel at a given instant, but it can simulate many more colors over time or space.

The argument depends on how many pixels the manufacturer claims to have. If they say their screen is 1024 x 768 with 16.8 million colors then we would expect to have 786,000 independently addressable pixels, each of which comprises three RGB subpixels. If in fact it takes four RGB subpixels (1-1/3 of each 6-bit subpixel to get 8 bits) to yield 16.8 million colors then they should really only claim a resolution of 768 x 576. If, however, they do the dithering temporally and the pulsation is unnoticeable then I think continuing to call the resolution 1024 x 768 is fair.

AlpineR

Fatal1ty seem to disagree

- Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel only plays with CRTs. The problems for him are afterglow and the lower frequency of images. The main fault of LCDs is the restriction in frequency and consequently fps. The possibility of having a 120 Hz LCD like Samsung, CMO and LG-Philips particularly interested him. If LCD really displayed 120 Hz, yes he will probably change to LCDs. We will have to verify if the first monitors of this type will truly display 120 different images per second or if they will display twice the same image with a black one between the two.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/613-8/the-last- crt-survey.html

I've never seen a game competitive event with LCDs, and there seems to be a lot of CRT at The Gathering too
http://jooh.no/web/CRT_at_TG07.jpg

Just trying to show people there might still be a market for CRT :)

Personally I've tried quake3 @ 60fps+hz on my CRT and it's awful.
(I used com_maxfps 60 and r_displayfresh 60)
Also, when the entire scene changes, for instacne look around with the mouse, I can clearly see difference between 100hz/fps and 120hz/fps

The best would be to fix the monitor refresh to the games max FPS, or a multiple.
UT 2004 - 85hz
Battlefield 2 - 100hz

BTW What poll rate is your mouse at?

Mostly I'm just kind of disappointed that we weren't able to release KDE 4.0 or a stable version of Debian etch before this day.

Otherwise, I can't see how the consumers who have bought into Vista so far will have much to cheer about. It'll be a lot slower than XP, since the recommended hardware requirements are so much higher than for XP. Aside from the new interface, its supposedly improved stability and security, Vista is really all about DRM: preventing people from playing protected content, including in cases of fair use. What they get back in return for these heinous constraints is the possibility of playing high definition content on their PCs.

However, that last part isn't going to happen any time soon, at least not legally. To play high definition content on Vista, your graphics card and your monitor both have to be HDCP compliant, but according to this article, which is less than a month old, only two monitors tested last year were HDCP compliant and not a single graphics card. When will HDCP compatibile hardware start to appear? According to the article, many monitor manufacturers haven't even heard of it and can't say anything about it, while the graphics card manufacturers (nVidia, ATI) could do it, but haven't seemed to have found the incentive yet to do so. For the latter it seems to a be a chicken and egg story: no content? no support. And even if the manufacturers do decide to start making their products HDCP compliant, remember what Peter Gutmann had to say about the ridiculous guidelines M$ gives them: they're "fundamentally impossible" to comply with.

The future is also looking increasingly bleak for DRM. Even if Vista does well, it's content protection will not make much difference to the content industry if people can buy super-cheap Chinese media players that play every known file format without any restrictions whatsoever. Hell, only last week we heard that the music companies seem to be thinking about ditching DRM. If so, then Vista will become rather uncool in this respect and M$ will start to play down the protected content issue as DRM begins to disappear from music and movies.

Of course, for M$, the MPAA and the RIAA were never what the DRM was about: they really only added it to Vista for their own benefit. M$ is always looking for ways to milk more money out of its stagnant share of the market. For years now they've had only two options: raising prices and fighting piracy. Of course, with Vista they're doing both. Now all they need is for it to catch on. However, I'm not so sure it'll be that easy. Their plan may backfire on them. Why? I know a lot of people who have remained satisfied with Windows over the years only because they've been able to run so much software on their PCs -- pirated software. If they're no longer able to do that, I'm not so sure they're just going to roll over and start paying for everything they'd like to continue to use. I figure we're about to see the arrival of a new wave of Linux newbies as a result. Perhaps not a flood, but I figure it'll be enough to offset any financial gains M$ planned on making. Most important of all for consumers, M$ will lose market share.

Check out this glowing review: http://gear.ign.com/articles/679/679235p1.html