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You can find some really good advice and watercooling guides, like this one: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=99891.

The bottom line on your waterloop, in my own experience, you'll find that the order in which the water is flowing results in negligible water temperature increase/decrease.

I have two machines WC'ed, a P4 (pre-prescott) and a Dual Xeon. The order of the loop for the P4, pump/res> radiator > CPU Waterblock > GPU Waterblock > Flow Indicator > Pump.

The P4 only gets to about 90F during heavy gaming sessions (ATI X800XL). Then again, I have a triple 80MM fan radiator. Your results may and will vary.

However, we have some worries about its multi-tasking performance, which doesn't appear to be quite as good as the chip that Conroe will be replacing later this year.

We found that it was faster than the current flagship Pentium Extreme Edition 965 processor in nearly every single-threaded scenario, but there were times where Conroe fell behind in multi-tasking scenarios.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/06/04/intel_ conroe_performance_preview/7.html

Conroe is still being benchmarked in Intel prepeared setups, independent reviews are still awaited, even then some r already noticing performance lags http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/06/04/intel_ conroe_performance_preview/7.html

AMD was said to have extracted 30% to 40% performance jump when moving from 130nm to 90nm, how much will they be able to extract when they move to 65nm? Hector was also specific that they are contended with the market share they have in consumer space now and are going after buissness desktops next. Looks like AMD is not going to rest till they have cut Intel to 50% in every market category

>>Perhaps all you'll need pretty soon to be productive is a machine with Linux installed & merely a good web browser?

>Only if you don't mind having no privacy and always need a working Internet connection to do any work.

I hear what you are saying. But I think its just a matter of time before someone just up and solves the problem. What if all of your data stored online were encrypted with a private key--one which your service provider does not hold in escrow? As long as your connection is encrypted, and the "static" store is encrypted--that's fairly private, wouldn't you say?

"All benchmark settings were controlled by us - I made sure that the Catalyst driver settings were at the default setting (High Quality), and I used included timedemos/stress tests in games.

FEAR has it's own benchmark, as does Lost Coast and the three Far Cry demos used are from Ubisoft.

I think that Intel has too much to lose to 'lie' or 'fix' these benchmarks. They configured an Athlon 64 FX-60 at 2.8GHz for us, but I declined the opportunity to run comparison numbers on it. This is because I wanted to include some of our own independently-run benchmarks, rather than running benchmarks on an Intel-configured Athlon 64 FX machine."

HavokFX will use a 2nd graphics card. Afaik, it will use the whole card, i.e. no SLI / Crossfire.

Framerate is reduced partly because of the offload performance hit (send data / read data from pci bus) and the fact that the number of objects rendered tends to increase hugely. Look for the CellFactor demo somewhere (Google Video -> CellFactor).

Apparently this card can calculate enough physics objects to bring a current top of the range system to its knees... (i.e. Athlon FX60 with dual 7900 GTX512's)

And Ghost Recon:AW only uses the card for graphical sparkle, I wouldn't recommend judging the PhysX capability on it, wait for Unreal3 engined games (Gods of War / Unreal Tournament 2007) for a better indicator.

A good review I read from BitTech.

But that's probably related to the similiarities to the 360 and its subsequent optimizations.

Benchmarks:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/03/31/elder_sc rolls_oblivion/4.html

They indicate that even the GeForce 7900 has framerate difficulties when set to highest image-quality settings.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/03/30/20_inc h_widescreen_monitors/7.html

If any of you have read this group test and came away disappointed that we compared every monitor except the one you're seriously considering ie Dell, then please do make your voices heard. Show the execs at Dell that you want to see bit-tech given the chance to review their displays. Head over to our Article Discussion forum and make some noise!

No... THIS is a Winnebago!

19" widescreen, Dual 7800 in SLI, "laptop"

Yeah, I hear that. When I first heard about Gigabyte's I-RAM peripheral I was really excited, until I found out that it used the SATA bus which is a huge bottleneck for such a device. A company called Cenatek makes something known as the RocketDrive which is actually a PCI card which interfaces via the PCI bus for 0.6 microsecond access times. It is, however, $3,000 for one with 4GB of RAM on it. They're just regular DIMMs, too (PC133 IIRC) so I can't see why it's so damn expensive. They used to sell just the bare card, but they stopped doing so a year or two ago (probably because everybody bought the bare card and put their own DIMMs in it, and their profit margin on the bare cards was not high enough). When I first heard about the I-RAM, I thought it was going to be extra-spiffy like the RocketDrive.

Chest reductions? HAH! Check out who's filling in Angelina Jolie's shoes... a previously unknown actress from Wales named Karima Adebibe. Yeah, big chest reduction there.... pardon me while i wipe the drool off my keyboard. More here.

You make it sound like it won't shrink the cache when it needs the ram for something else. Which is absurd.

So just because something's new it's bloated? Even when they say the new stack has better performance you say it will be worse? You should tell me where you got your crystal ball because I need a new one.

Yeah, I can see where it seems like we're just making this stuff up...

Again, you're assuming that these caching and (extremely useful) version control systems will work in the foreground and make the user keep track of available space. Don't be so blinkered. If OSX put this in their next version you'd be singing it's praises.

The same as linux noobs who run as root (Linspire?) - is that Microsoft's fault too?

The amount of misinformed FUD in your post equals anything to ever come out of Microsoft's PR department.

While the smallest chunk of silicon we could lay down would be one atom of it, there are things far smaller. In fact you can go something like 26 more levels of magnitude smaller before you start reaching the feasable limit of measurable existance. And yes, subatomic particles could theoretically be used in processors.

The process designation refers to the the distance between the source and drain in the FETs (transistors) on a processor. Keep in mind that this distance is by no means the smallest thing in the processor - the actual gate oxide layer is tiny by comparison, with Intel's 65nm process having only 1.2nm of the stuff. That's less than 11 atoms thick.

Found this on a thread at bit-tech.net forums.

HDR Monitor ($50k)

Review of HDR Monitor and an introduction to HDR

For years I worked on a viable PC-for-the-car. This is before Microsoft had their operating system (failure) for car stereos, and before the CarPC was even a thought by the designer. My biggest problem was finding a cheap, small and capable 12DC-DC power supply. Even a few years ago they were basically impossible to find.

I'm glad to see there is now a market for these power supplies (although I'm sure this isn't for car applications). I wonder how efficient it is -- and how much heat it gives off. The article was a bit...sparse.

I miss my old car PC -- 8 years ago it could do so much more than anything else I've seen. Considering how much time I wasted, I wish I kept all the software and code.

A couple more links to the picoPSU:

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.A /id.417/.f

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/01/07/pico_psu/

http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&fi le=article&sid=718

http://www.realtechnews.com/page/2/

And, of course: http://www.digg.com/hardware/World_s_smallest_powe r_supply_-_the_picoPSU

Guess I don't need to buy the 1kW power supply for this system, or...?

Now, if they also would come up with a laptop cold fusion unit...

1. Intel is losing against AMD in both performance and OEM, even Dell is considering AMD. Intel will need something to keep OEM with Intel. Being able to offer OEM the Mac OS X would be a possible way to maintain OEM royalty.
2. Microsoft is losing the ground of driving the demand of more computing power. On the lower end, Linux is eating into the Microsoft market. Vista has a tough requirement; however, when Vista is shipped in 2007, that would be a mid-level configuration and Microsoft Office can't eat up any more CPUs. Hey, Mac version runs just fine in Rosetta on Intel Mac. On the other hand, iLife (photo, video and music) are going to drive the demand of raw CPU power; thus keep the demand for CPU to be progress at the speed of Moore's Law.
3. Steve Jobs. In the CES, Intel is clearly targeting at home entertainment as its future market of growth. However, Intel can't rally Hollywood studio behind it's proposal. Intel needs a Hollywood insider and Steve Jobs is a heavy weight Hollywood executive!
4. Intel needs a charismatic leaders. Few in Silicon Valley can fill Andy Grove's shoe. Come on, Paul Otellini? Jobs is up for the, well, job!

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=197&type=expe rt
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2668
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=767&cid=1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlo n64-fx60.html
http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/amd_fx60/
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/01/10/amd_at hlon_64_fx-60/1.html

Three words: High Dynamic Range

No, I don't mean the lame simulated HDR in newer games. I mean the real thing.
IF this tech becomes big it'll a bigger jump in quality than standard def -> high def is.

For further reading see:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/04/bright side_hdr_edr/1.html
This is a review of the only HDR capable monitor in production.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~heidrich/Projects/HDRDisplay /
This discusses two methods for creating a HDR capable display and why you would want to. The display in the earlier link uses one of these methods.

Elder Scrolls Oblivion will take advantage of a dual core processor.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/11/09/elder_sc rolls_4_int/2.html

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2005/10/19/wmd_g-g nome/5.html

the fabricator notices that he keeps dulling his drill bits. There are two reasons for that.

First, drill bit rpm is TOO HIGH. Stainless steel has poor thermal conductivity, and will not draw heat away from the drill bit very well. The drill bit cutting edge will go over temperature and soften and dull over.

This nice PDF chart should be printed out and put next to your drill press:

http://www.etec.wwu.edu/faculty/McKell/rpm%20ipm%2 0charts.pdf

It shows an allowable speed (surface feet per minute) of 30 for stainless steel. Note this is the same as for titanium.

Convert to rpm

http://www.maintenanceresources.com/ReferenceLibra ry/CNC/scratching.htm#sfm-rpm

or here:

http://www.drillmasters.com/speedfeed.shtml

using the formula RPM=SFM ÷ 0.262 ÷ DRILL DIA

and you end up with for a 1/4 inch hole 30 ÷ 0.262 ÷ .25 = 458 RPM

Thats about 7 revolutions per second.. pretty slow.

These reccomended RPMs/SFM are for factory production where time is money. I usually run at a lower RPM than (half as fast or less) because I am not in a hurry. The drill will last much longer the slower you go.

The second problem is the work hardening of stainless steel. If the drill bit is allowed to rub the surface without making a chip for even one revolution, the surface of the stainless will harden and dull the bit. You must press hard so that chips start forming immediately. If you must stop to raise the drill to clear chips for deep holes then raise the bit very quickly. Don't let the bit rub in the hole without cutting at any time.

Finally, the cutting lubricant: I use rubbing-alcohol+water mixture. It boils away in the drill hole to cool the bit, and does not leave an oily mess on the work.

Just a little thought, early today I read this article at bit-tech as I wanted to see how was the Xbox 360 relase going in the UK. I find the review quite interesting. Specifically this snipet:

We hooked up via composite to a standard definition 20" LCD TV, a standard definition 30" CRT and a high definition 26" widescreen LCD panel. Frankly, the 360 looked atrocious with the composite. Colours bled everywhere, games were upscaled horrendously... the whole visual experience was frankly no better than the first Xbox. We'd go so far as to say that if you are limited to hooking up your 360 via SCART or composite in standard definition (eg with a 'normal' TV), don't even bother buying it. It looks bad.

Now, I am from Mexico and as far as I know, our buying power does not let the HDTV's be in the mainstream now (the Joe Average TV is a standard CRT 22''). I know that here in the UK people are wealthier but I was wondering in the USA how was it? does everybody have HDTV these days?

If that is not the case, some other parts of this same review state about the Project Gotham Racing were interesting as well:

The Gotham gameplay is still there and, to be honest, little has changed in that department. There's still the same races, the same Kudos Challenges, cone runs and the like - all the things we've come to know and love from Gotham. It's a little sad that there's no new gameplay mechanics, but then, I suppose we can't have everything.


So, no mayor changes in these games besides of the graphics uh? that means there is no REAL reason to buy the X360 if you do not have HDTV.

As for the Xbox, yep I think I may get one from Ebay after returning from vacations (2 weeks to Cancun and my country!! weeee). I was thinking it getting a GameBoy Advance from Ebay, as I will travel like 10 hours =oS, and they are very cheap these days (£15!!).

Personally I am waiting for the Revolution. I am no Nintendo fan, in fact my last console was a Xbox that I had to sell before coming to UK. But as I have no £££££ to spare in the 3 consoles, I guess I have to wait and see what will they do. And I am certainly waiting for the Revolution new controller, if not to play Nintendo's game, to plug it into my computer and make my game programmer imagination fly =o)

The in-game 'benchmark' is misleading - it's just a fly-by, with no A.I. load on your CPU at all. Given how much amazing A.I. there is in F.E.A.R, the numbers you get from the in-game fly-by are not at all representative of real gameplay performance. In fact, they are artificially inflated. If you want to see the difference between non-playable fly-by runs and *real* human gameplay experience, I suggest you read bit-tech's review of F.E.A.R. They proved this benchmark was bollocks three weeks ago, so used FRAPS to measure someone physically playing the game. The results are way different. Unfortunately, the Anandtech benchmark review failed to spot this, so those figures are all wrong too

build a classy HTPC in the case of your choice (mine is smaller than anything else (ooh am i going to slashdot them?) in my stack and powerful enough to run N64 emus and possibly later systems), say screw the new games, and play anything from about 1970 to 2000. I'm half serious.

Bit-tech.net has an Article on Half Life-Lost Cost which has screenshots showing effect of HDR and link to a video.

I hate to be "one of those people" but this article sucks - four really short pages and not a single screenshot - WTF?!? If you want to *see* Valve's HDR, you'll do no better than bit-tech's series of articles:
Half Life 2: Lost Coast HDR overview
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Benchmarks
Day of Defeat: Source review

I hate to be "one of those people" but this article sucks - four really short pages and not a single screenshot - WTF?!? If you want to *see* Valve's HDR, you'll do no better than bit-tech's series of articles:
Half Life 2: Lost Coast HDR overview
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Benchmarks
Day of Defeat: Source review

I hate to be "one of those people" but this article sucks - four really short pages and not a single screenshot - WTF?!? If you want to *see* Valve's HDR, you'll do no better than bit-tech's series of articles:
Half Life 2: Lost Coast HDR overview
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Benchmarks
Day of Defeat: Source review

I hate to be "one of those people" but this article sucks - four really short pages and not a single screenshot - WTF?!? If you want to *see* Valve's HDR, you'll do no better than bit-tech's series of articles:
Half Life 2: Lost Coast HDR overview
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Benchmarks
Day of Defeat: Source review

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/crossfire/
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/09/26/ati_cr ossfire_detail/1.html
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/crossfireatire viewxxx/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODE1
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article id=730&cid=2
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=168
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=404
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/ati-crossfire /index.x?pg=1
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050926/ index.html

How about a spiffy shiny titanium one? Or even an armor-plated iPod?

I've read the article so I've read that bit about 4 different tries and approaches, but I'd still be interested in a definite answer.

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/07/11/nvidia_rsx _interview/3.html was what I was referring to. I made mistake though: It's not an engine coder talking there, but David Kirk, Chief Scientist of nVidia. I'm very intrigued who's right now.

I mean, isn't the point of HDR to make lightning more realistic? Check this out... seems like they make granite walls out of polished chrome in the HL2 world.

Personally I would rig up something like this if I actually had a free millimeter in my case: http://bit-tech.net/article/136/1 The example isn't in a bay, but bay mounting is fully possible.

Beauty of paypal? It is high time to stop singing the praises of a bunch of bloodsuckers who fucked up many generous people's attempts to help hurricane victims. Paypal can go to hell and die!

I haven't seen any games yet that run appreciably better on multiple CPUs than on one. Have you? Just because those extra CPUs are in a box, it doesn't mean that the game developers will actually be able to take good advantage of them. Until we see that games deriving a real benefit from them released, it seems like it might be a valid criticism.

This particiular 'interview' was particularly short. Even some other ones I've seen don't give much room to talk about PC game future. The 'console-centric' aspect is that these new consoles will be out very soon with multiple CPUs and he thinks it may be a few years before game writers actually become proficient at writing games that can actually take advantage of the CPUs (/sony cores). By that time your console is now a relic, however you've probably got other uses for those multiple CPUs in your desktop computer.

That's not what makes his life worse. It's the multi-CPU aspect. Same as with the new Sony Cell chips making things diffucult.

Check out his other interview on the same topic

Oh, in case you think he's still just upset about your company 'rendering Steam somewhat irrelevent', check out what John Carmack of Id (DOOM 3) and Tim Sweeney of Epic Games (Unreal Tournament) have to say about the topic. Those two don't have any Steam to worry about, but agree with Gabe.

A Sony employee dismissing criticism of Sony. Who'd believe it...

Check out Gabe Newell's comments (One of the key developers of Half-Life 2). He also thinks multi-core/cpu machines aren't going to be bringing a lot extra to the table for game machines for some time.

When Newell and Carmack, the lead developers of the two hottest game engines out there, agree on this point, you realize we might not be taking that leap forward in gaming that we all thought we were going to.

Fake?

This: http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/news_images /mtv_sagaris2.jpg doesn't look realistic enough to convince me that they faked it.

Who the hell cares what it looks like. Is it fun to play? Is it $350 (Xbox 360 + overpriced game disc) more fun than the racing game I have from 7 years ago? Too bad nobody has announced a console with next-generation improved gameplay yet. Somehow we're supposed to get all excited because Microsoft is giving us a box that can play what our PC from 2003 is capable of. Woo-hoo.

To top it off, I have to go out and buy a $1000+ TV if I want it to look that good, because it's going to look just like all the PS2 racing games that are out there on my old NTSC screen...

Anyway... What I was working up to is that I bet they started the "fake" rumor to get publicity. I doubt anybody in their right mind would see the shitty reflections and lighting in that screenshot I linked to and think "that's a real photo".

I was astonished when I saw the pictures. The pictures do look real, until you realize the repetition. Check out this image to get an idea of repetition. It looks real, but only if you look at half the image. Pretty nice still!

Actually, they already are considering it. The 7800GTX has 50% more transistors than the 6800 Ultra, but runs cooler.

Basically they're shutting off portions of the chip when not in use to cut down on power consumption.

This is mentioned briefly at http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/07/g70_clock_ speed/
and also at http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0LDI=

They also had an interview with Richard Huddy from ATI a little back

You can check out some of this other work here: ProjectRedwood 3.0. I've been following it for a while and he says he has to finish by August so expect big updates.

bit-tech.net took a look at corsair's memory factory in shanghai last year, a similar type article, i think they had videos of a machine putting motherboards together too

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2004/09/20/corsair_fa ctory_tour/1.html

bit-tech.net took a look at corsair's memory factory in shanghai last year, a similar type article, i think they had videos of a machine putting motherboards together too

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2004/09/20/corsair_fa ctory_tour/1.html

Here's one for you.

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/06/10/richard_hu ddy_ati/1.html

Interview with Richard Huddy of ATI. In a nutshell he basically says that CPU power of the PS3 will face a bottle neck with it's GPU. Pretty interesting

This time around, they don't have the architecture and we do, so they have to knock it and say it isn't worthwhile. But in the future, they'll market themselves out of this corner, claiming that they've cracked how to do it best. But RSX isn't unified, and this is why I think PS3 will almost certainly be slower and less powerful.

yay!

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=24 10 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/05/09/amd_a6 4x2_4800/1.html

two more reviews.

Oops. Pasted the wrong link for Trusted Reviews; the correct direct link is here, and here's a link to Bit tech's review with a photo of the chip in question with its cover off, for those who get excited by such things... :)

G-Gnome's Weapon of Mass Destruction anyone?