Slashdot Mirror

If you manually install a couple updates before running windows update, it'll fix that issue
https://hardforum.com/threads/...

I know you are being funny but if you don't want to buy a new card every other year? You are better off buying AMD as they age a LOT better than Nvidia cards, and that isn't even counting how more often Nvidia cards seem to cook than AMD from what I've seen at the shop. Gamers have even come up with a name for AMD aging better, they call it AMD Fine Wine Technology and having gone through countless cards at the shop? I can see the difference, the AMD cards seem to be able to play mainstream games for longer than Nvidia cards.

The reason for the update block could be this:
https://hardforum.com/threads/...

Windows 10 has a buggy scheduler which means games run faster on Windows 7. This update block is to prevent gamers from migrating to Windows 7.

Corsair makes nice mechanical ones (stay away from Razer), but if you want that Logitech LCD screen...

https://hardforum.com/threads/...

http://hardforum.com/showthrea...

Lots of good tips for chopping out the crap.

One of the many good tips is: disabling the "Windows Search Indexing" service, I've always done that whatever the version of windows, (it started with Win95 and it's 100% CPU usage) using Agent Ransack instead https://www.mythicsoft.com/age... (it's only fault is no cache).

http://hardforum.com/showthrea...

Lots of good tips for chopping out the crap.

The newly launched Nvidia GTX 980 and 970 support HDMI 2.0 and DP, so these can run 4k@60hz with TV and monitors that support it, I think some Samsung and LG TVs advertise HDMI 2.0 and DP.

Ok, so it's a somewhat reasonable idea to get 60Hz on a TV without spending the cash for a 4k monitor.

here are a couple threads where I found most of the information before I bought it: http://www.overclock.net/t/144... http://hardforum.com/showthrea...

Thanks, I'll have a look at these.

From what I can gather both comcast and verizon bullied netflix into paid peering by refusing to expand peering with any carrier netflix used or tried to use as an upstream.

When netfllix paid up to comcast they got massive improvments in connectivity to comcast customers, when they paid up to verizon they didn't.

http://hardforum.com/showthrea...

Use VMWare Player on either Windows / Linux, install VMWare tools in guest OS and enjoy retro gaming. Plenty of forums discuss how to do it at length.

I hope their RMA department has stopped intentionally bending pins in the CPU socket to avoid having to replace the boards for their customers. I'll never buy from them again.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1694667

Not being able to see 60 Hz on an LCD is a myth, if the LCD can pull it off (many can!). I can easily tell whether a game with fast motion e.g. a First Person Shooter like BF3 or Counter Strike is running at 60 Hz or 75 Hz, particular when panning, and probably wouldn't be satisfied completely until the refresh rate gets to 85 Hz (that's when I stop noticing flicker on CRTs like many other people).

The myth arises because LCDs don't flicker, and because studies that showed people can't tell the difference are based on watching movies on celluloid where there is motion blur. Where there is no motion blur (or good motion blur) like in most games, an object such as a cursor moving acrross the screen appears to the eye as teleporting at discrete locations accross the screen based on the amount the cursor can move in between frames at a given speed - not a continuous motion.

I have managed to get 75 Hz out of my pretty ordinary Samsung BX2440 1080p monitor using this:Custom Resolution Utility

The reason 60 Hz is usually given as the top refresh rate for LCD monitors is more to do with the DVI standard than capability, so by sacrificing a few margin pixels many monitors will be able to handle a higher frequency within the bandwidth specifications of DVI.

VT-d is not only for servers. I found it's use because of my countless cycles of attempts to dual-boot windows and linux (as in I eventually ended using just windows...repeat afte 6 months).
Now I boot linux, do the web browsing and stuff, but when I want to play, I just start my VM and play.
Linux: i5-2500 IGP
Windows: Radeon 7950 (started with 5850)
My over 80 hours of Skyrim are Xen exclusive. DeusEx HR was maybe 20-30h native, followed by more than 50h in VM.
This is my original post (closed since then): http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/336186-33-full-gaming-virtual-machine
This is another thread that I joined and posted some benchmarks: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1039531303&postcount=27

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1039789445&postcount=4 ;)

The way you act in public represents not only yourself but your company....

You have all the freedom of speech in the world in America but that doesn't stop you from others judging you as an idiot....

Unsurprisingly, you appear to think that Ms. Richards should be excempt from these principles since "she's bringing your outdated industry's chauvenistic attitudes to the 21st century."

Wrong. The ends do no justify the means. She needs to bring her self-aggrandizing militancy into the 21st century as well (e.g., "Black people CANNOT be racist against White people.").

She's equally elibigle for adjuged idiocy. Sorry to rain on your "troublemaker" victimhood pity party.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1731919#10

"This trait spans multiple games, cards, and operating systems, "
First of all the article only tests 2 cards accross Win7 and Win8. Considering that Win8 is basically just Win7 SP2, it's hardly fair to make that statement. Micro-stuttering an issue that mainly affects multi-GPU cards. Both Nvidia and ATI have had issues with this in their SLI and Crossfire cards. You can read more about it here:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1317582

But if you avoid SLI then nvidia cards are fine, only ATI really suffers from this issue badly. See the link I posted above.

"This trait spans multiple games, cards, and operating systems, "
First of all the article only tests 2 cards accross Win7 and Win8. Considering that Win8 is basically just Win7 SP2, it's hardly fair to make that statement. Micro-stuttering an issue that mainly affects multi-GPU cards. Both Nvidia and ATI have had issues with this in their SLI and Crossfire cards. You can read more about it here:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1317582

Mountain Lion no longer has Spaces. The replacement for Expose/Spaces is supposed to be Mission Control, but in reality it lacks Spaces functionality.
For example, say your Mac is feeding your monitor and also your projector. If your projector is in another room or turned off (and e.g. connected through KVM) you essentially can't see part of your desktop. That is no problem for Mac OS X 10.5-10.7. Say Firefox launches on the projector-part of your desktop and you want to move it where you can see it, hit F9 and drag it. On Mountain Lion you are SOL. And missing functionality is just the tip of the iceberg for Mountain Lion's broken multi-monitor support. Try having one monitor in portrait and start moving windows around or do whatever else you normally do. No, I dare you, try it. Since the first release portrait-mode users have been complaining on severe stuttering and many have reverted to Lion. Still not fixed. example posts.

Alright now I'm afraid I can't help with your verify problem but I do have one piece of solid advice: get rid of Paragon HFS immediately!

It is a truly shoddy piece of software that as of version 9.0 has a terrible bug that will cause it to destroy HFS+ filesystems. Google "paragon hfs corruption" and you will see many many horror stories from people who just plugged a Mac OS X disk into a Windows machine w/ Paragon HFS and then discovered the entire filesystem was hosed. In my dual-boot win/mac setup I replaced my copy of MacDrive with a trial version of Paragon HFS 9.0 from their website and every single one of the six HFS+ disks I had connected internally were damaged. Disk Utility couldn't do a thing and I had to buy a program called Diskwarrior to even begin to recover data. I ended up losing two disks worth of files anyway.
http://www.mac-help.com/t12137-opened-hfs-drive-win7-paragon-hfs-now-wont-boot.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=299306
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1677099
http://www.avforums.com/forums/apple-mac/1509344-hfs-super-block-not-found.html

whew! Anyway the pain I went through after that software very nearly ruined my life was so great, I don't want it to happen to anyone else. According to their own website 9.0 has this awful bug but they fixed it in 9.0.1. Evidently the trial download on the main page is still for version 9.0 and still has the disk destroying bug! Any software company that releases a filesystem driver with this terrible a bug (not to mention the numerous reports of BSODs and other relatively minor problems) clearly has terrible quality assurance and simply can't be trusted.

This might be enlightening: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037482638&postcount=88

What did happen is that management decided there SHOULD BE such cross-engineering ,which meant we had to stop hand-crafting our CPU designs and switch to an SoC design style. This results in giving up a lot of performance, chip area, and efficiency. The reason DEC Alphas were always much faster than anything else is they designed each transistor by hand. Intel and AMD had always done so at least for the critical parts of the chip. That changed before I left - they started to rely on synthesis tools, automatic place and route tools, etc. I had been in charge of our design flow in the years before I left, and I had tested these tools by asking the companies who sold them to design blocks (adders, multipliers, etc.) using their tools. I let them take as long as they wanted. They always came back to me with designs that were 20% bigger, and 20% slower than our hand-crafted designs, and which suffered from electromigration and other problems.

That is now how AMD designs chips. I'm sure it will turn out well for them [/sarcasm]

And that comment was back in 2010. No surprise now Bulldozer is slower and uses more power, and the only advantage is it has more cores (meh, any idiot can add more cores, at worst case you just add another computer[1]).

[1] The same embarrassingly parallel tasks that do well on multiple cores will do well on multiple computers.

If Newegg's shipping department can't learn that shipping hard drives and other components in bubble mailers is a bad idea, then no, they likely won't survive. After receiving 3 hard drives in a two week period earlier this year from Newegg shipped in bubble mailers, I've shifted what were previously regular Newegg purchases to TigerDirect and Amazon. Newegg has a long history of recurring problems with improper or inadequate packaging and it makes me wonder just how many of the negative reviews of "This drive/[insert part here] died after two days" were cases where parts had been improperly packaged for shipping.

ZFS has very good per-block checksumming and many other features, and now has encryption support, which should be in OpenIndiana (the non-Oracle fork of OpenSolaris): http://milek.blogspot.com/2010/10/zfs-encryption.html. ZFS is a combination of volume manager (like LVM), software RAID and filesystem. Here's a useful HOWTO on setup: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1573272

Unfortunately ZFS support in Linux is userland only due to licensing issues. It may not have encryption yet either - however you could run TrueCrypt on top of a ZFS volume (like an LVM logical volume), bypassing the ZFS filesystem part.

check out the comments in the thread

Sandforce has already announced its new sata3 controller. On paper it looks like it will have much faster sequential writes than Intel, but it sounds like it will also have a shorter lifetime and shorter data retention times due to the use of 25nm NAND. Intel is wisely sticking with 34nm. It may be more expensive to manufacture, but is superior tech. I can only hope that OCZ changes their mind and decides to at least offer a more expensive 34nm version. OCZ won't be shipping their Vertex 3 drives until Q2 so Intel will have a big head start in the market.

The NAND industry seems to be doing its best to encourage ignorance on the disadvantages of smaller process sizes from the consumer POV and the ignorance seems to be widespread. Getting the facts on this issue can be a bit difficult. Here is a good thread on the topic.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2142742

The following post sums it up better than I could. Note his point about data retention times as well. That is a point that is often ignored when the focus is solely on write cycles.

As flash cells are shrunk, they become less good. This is a fundamental feature of the technology. The overall volume of the cell becomes smaller, so less electrons can be stored in the cell (so the signal picked up by the electronics is weaker and less clear, so you get a higher error rate) and the insulating barriers around the cell must be made thinner, in order to save space - allowing the electrons to leak out of the cell more easily (reducing power off data retention time). The thinner insulation also wears out more quickly (reducing life cycles)

It's difficult to define a 'fundamantal' limit for flash, because it may be possible to work around poor performance, and as yet unknown new manufacturing techniques and semiconductor materials may be developed. However, it has been suggested in the scientific literature that 18-22 nm, is the realistic limit. Beyond that, the performance/reliability/lifespan of the flash would be too poor, no matter how much wear levelling, and how sophisticated the ECC codes were.

Enterprise grade SSD flash, will need higher specifications than flash for toy cameras. Enterprise applications are unlikely to tolerate 18 nm flash with 100 write cycles and one lost sector per 100 GB of data stored. However, this probably would be acceptable for toys or throwaway devices.

Some more coverage of the topic:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/HONSHI/20090528/170920/

NAND Flash memory quality is also beginning to drop. Chips manufactured using 90nm-generation technology in 2004-05, for example, were assured for about 100,000 rewrites and data retention of about a decade. As multi-level architecture and smaller geometry are introduced, quality is showing a sharp decline. The 30nm 2-bit/cell chips expected to enter volume production in 2009-10 may well end up with a rewrite assurance of no more than 3,000 cycles, and a data retention time of about a year. The first 3-bit/cell chips are hitting the market now, with only a few hundred rewrites.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1502663

Flash memory works by trapping electrons. Over time these electrons leak away, until the charge is too small for the data to be read any more. With smaller feature sizes (34 nm instead of 45 or 65 nm) this leakage is more significant and fewer electrons can be stored per bit, thus the time during which the stored value can be maintained is decreased.

http://www.corsair.com/blog/force25nm/

Their "apples to apples" comparisons alone make their reviews worth reading...not to mention their amazing forums. In case anyone else is on there, I can be found posting under the name "Pojut". I usually post in the Computer Audio, Video Card, Case Mod, and General Gaming sections, but I lurk everywhere else.

The smaller the NAND flash process size the shorter the write endurance and data retention times. A 25nm NAND flash SSD will have a much shorter lifespan and hold data for a much shorter period of time than current 34nm tech. Does this mean that 2010 NAND flash SSDs will be better than 2011 ones? Well I guess that depends on how much you value reliability and longevity in your storage devices. Lower cost and shorter life is a win/win for the manufacturers. This limit on NAND flash technology has been known since the start. I don't see the big deal. Just stop at 34nm and work at other technologies that are faster or scale in size better. We usually think of larger process size as being better, but in this case it's not.

http://features.techworld.com/storage/3212075/is-nand-flash-about-to-hit-a-dead-end/?intcmp=ft-hm-m

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1492711

Here is an interesting thread from HardForum:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=ad39475190e27b7270fad7c8f5202588&t=1539921

It has an image of the letter, gives a plausible reason why BFG is going down (Best Buy wouldn't carry some of their products).

Exactly. Agree. That's the story here for anyone confused; hardware can be killed through software through no real fault of the user. See for instance Furmark which ATI tries to throttle by checking for its name! No, you don't have to overclock, no, it's not because your cooling is subpar or because of dust or anything else, it's because HWVs don't want to spend the ten cents or whatever to take away the 'can run over peak for a few seconds' capability.

They're knowingly releasing hardware that can't survive 'full throttle', and it's bullshit.

PS. Here's a 8800GT fried during SC2.

Be sure to take a look at the [H]ard|Forum worklogs, there are a lot of active, small form factor projects going on right now. One guy has a SUPER awesome mITX rig in the process of being built, complete with custom case and watercooling solution.

Also, for kicks, my (non-impressive) [H]ard|Forum sig:

Display: Asus VH236H | Dell 2005FPW
Foundation: Cooler Master Storm Scout | OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w
System: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM | AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ @ 3.2 GHz | Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 800 | ATI 4850
Internal Storage: Diamondmax 21 system | WD15EADS archives
External Storage: 1.25TB in a KINGWIN DK-32U-S | WDMER1600TN
Input: Kensington 64325 Expert Mouse | Saitek Eclipse II | M-Audio Axiom 25
Headphones: non-amped Audio Technica ATH-AD700

Be sure to take a look at the [H]ard|Forum worklogs, there are a lot of active, small form factor projects going on right now. One guy has a SUPER awesome mITX rig in the process of being built, complete with custom case and watercooling solution.

Also, for kicks, my (non-impressive) [H]ard|Forum sig:

Display: Asus VH236H | Dell 2005FPW
Foundation: Cooler Master Storm Scout | OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w
System: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM | AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ @ 3.2 GHz | Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 800 | ATI 4850
Internal Storage: Diamondmax 21 system | WD15EADS archives
External Storage: 1.25TB in a KINGWIN DK-32U-S | WDMER1600TN
Input: Kensington 64325 Expert Mouse | Saitek Eclipse II | M-Audio Axiom 25
Headphones: non-amped Audio Technica ATH-AD700

Taking an extra second to click an "OK" box is not my idea of intrusive. If you do think that's intrusive, you are likely the kind of person too lazy to get off the couch because you left the remote next to the TV.

(note: "you" means the general you, not "you, sarkeizen")

With that in mind, There are definitely things that still need to be worked out with Windows 7...but overall, it runs smoothly and has been rock solid on my hardware (copied and pasted from my [H]ard|Forum account:

Display: Asus VH236H | Dell 2005FPW
Foundation: Cooler Master Storm Scout | OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w
System: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM | AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ @ 3.2 GHz | Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 800 | ATI 4850
Internal Storage: Diamondmax 21 system | WD15EADS archives
External Storage: 1.25TB in a KINGWIN DK-32U-S | WDMER1600TN
Input: Kensington 64325 Expert Mouse | Saitek Eclipse II | M-Audio Axiom 25
Headphones: non-amped Audio Technica ATH-AD700

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?s=d01ac05d09e4f3d3bfb4364cdbc5d2af&p=1035432866&postcount=927

From [H] Forums:

I just want to clear up something Paul keeps bringing up in this thread: Ipex is a division of ASI. Ipex isn't ASI.

Full disclosure: I worked for ASI for some time back in the 90's (God, I feel old).

ASI is a legit Intel distributor (one of only a small handful) and is one of Newegg's biggest sources for Intel CPU's. Ipex, on the other hand, is the division that deals in gray market CPU's, RAM, etc.

WHAT? so ASI has a division specializing in counterfeited goods?

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?s=d01ac05d09e4f3d3bfb4364cdbc5d2af&p=1035432866&postcount=927

From [H] Forums:

I just want to clear up something Paul keeps bringing up in this thread: Ipex is a division of ASI. Ipex isn't ASI.

Full disclosure: I worked for ASI for some time back in the 90's (God, I feel old).

ASI is a legit Intel distributor (one of only a small handful) and is one of Newegg's biggest sources for Intel CPU's. Ipex, on the other hand, is the division that deals in gray market CPU's, RAM, etc.

It is not profitable to go through this much trouble and expense for one or even a dozen units. There must be hundreds out there.

This post claims NewEgg got 300 fakes in a shipment of 2000 from a distributor.

Here's an explanation of the phenomenom: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593

Suspect the Power Supply Unit

Seeing as people have already mentioned Power Supply Unit as a likely cause of flaky computer problems and random reboots I want to expand on why this is the case and how to diagnose these problems on the cheap. Since some PSU problems are quick and easy to diagnose by checking for dead, low, or high +3.3, +5, or +12 Volt rails others are more problematic such as transient voltage drops that occur randomly or under load or due to thermal overload. These PSU problems usually happens due to old and aged capacitors that have weakened, leaked, have blown, or just plain failed.

If you have a power supply that is easy to open you can do a quick cursory check by opening it and looking for any bulged, blown, or discolored tops on capacitors (those tall cylinders). Be careful not to touch any of the power leads inside the power supply since the capacitors hold charges even when disconnected from power and some of the discharges might be dangerous or deadly.

Digital MultiMeter Voltage Readings and Load Generation Programs

First, you'll need a Digital MultiMeter (DMM) that gives you a simple DC Voltage output and then connect the black write to the ground and the red write to the "hot" red or yellow wires on the Molex connectors to test for voltage. Then you should get yourself a load generating application, such as Prime95 for Processor and Memory loading and a Graphics Card loading application like 3DMark benchmark. Leave your DMM leads inside the molex power connectors for one of the voltage rails (+5 or +12) and start the application. Watch the DMM for any voltage drops or droops and let the application run for a few minutes, 5-10 should be enough, to generate enough load over time to create build up a thermal load on the PSU and the computer subsystems you are testing. If your voltage drops more than 5% of the original you should suspect a problem with the voltage regulation for that rail under load. Make sure to test the other rail also, so if you tested +5 then do the +12 rail to check.

My Own Case of Failing Power Supply

I had to use this procedures to diagnose failing and faulty power supplies in many computers, including my very own system that had a 4-year power supply that suddenly started drooping in voltage on the +5 rail going down from +5.05 to +4.78 under load causing my hard drives to drop out of my RAID arrays. You can read my own issues with PSU problems in the thread below, including detailed diagnostic steps I took and pictures of my issues.

HardForum.com - 0.30 V drop only on +5V rail during Prime95 - Is this normal?

You'd be lucky to get that amount of detail out of the film; grain size is going to be an issue, but the optics of the scanner as well.

Ce depend, er that depends. Different films have different grain sizes even discounting film speed or ISO. Fuji Velvia for instance has bigger grain than some film but finer than others. As for my scanner, as I said it can optically scan 6400 dpi, interpolated resolution is 12,800. Still scanning at 4800 dpi still generates a good sized file, especially at 32 never mind 48 bit colour depths. And yes Photoshop can work with those depths, unlike GIMP which only works at 8 bit depths.

But then we're back to the "do you really need to store an image at that size?". See the quality concerns up above and in my previous post. Assume you would, some day, actually print this..

And I dealt with both of these in previous posts. If you want as high a quality as possible you want large files and for print it matters.

Note that this is typically a combined value. E.g. 16bits for red, green, and blue (16+16+16 = 48). 16bits isn't bad, by the way.. 16bits is good.. 16 bits is great! 32bits is even better but not even the film (movie) industry deals with 32bit very often.

I don't know what colour depths movie studios use a lot but CinePaint is used by studios a lot and it works with 32 bit colour depths. Of course the problem that neither of us has mentioned yet is that software and storage isn't the limiting factor when talking about high bit colour channels, the limiting factor are monitors and graphics cards that drive them. A monitor I was thinking I'd like to get, when I could afford it, was the HP DreamColor LP2480zx, however some comments aren't good.

Well that's the thing though, isn't it... if you're going to be using it in the very near future, then you'd have to find a way to get a bigger drive to begin with..

Oh, that's my plan. I want to start working as a photographer and as finances allow I'll upgrade my hardware. And maybe software, but I want to try FOSS programs first. Because buying Photoshop CS3 never mind CS4 would put a strain on my finances, I'm on disability and unemployed, I've been thinking about installing Ubuntu Studio which includes the afore mentioned CinePaint to edit photos. That's what I like about microstock websites, I can start with what I have now then if, with as many others using them a big if, and when I start to make money I can roll the income into better equipment.

if your tool of choice is Photoshop, then setting the quality to highest/100 will do. If you use The GIMP, there's several options there you can use to specify the exact JPEG encoding to have as little loss as possible.

If Film GIMP, CinePaint, doesn't do what I'll want then I'll try to get Photoshop.

Shooting (near-)IR with an 87 filter can be fun, yes, and it's certainly a lot easier and cheaper to do with a point-and-shoot.

I shot 35mm IR film before, but that was a long tyme ago. Having a digicam that has the ability would be easier. The "Make" article I said I read mentioned some cameras that were good for IR photography. I wonder what the photos would look like shooting astrophotography, one of the areas I want to shoot, in IR. I have, though haven't tried it yet, the Meade ETX80 telescope and camera mount for my camera.

Good luck with the developing - E6 shouldn't be an issue but I'd certainly pay attention to people there who have done it before as it -can- be finnicky.. and requires way more patience than I was ever will

I already had to do this when I recently bought Assassins Creed off Steam (nearly a year after its release!). The game communicated with Ubisoft servers for *every* significant event in the game (picking up a flag, killing an enemeny etc., every couple of minutes basically) and whenever that happened the game froze for 30s to make some transaction with an overloaded server. The fix? Edit my Windows /etc/hosts file - sigh. I'm not sure whether it was anti-piracy, or just stats tracking or what. How do they have the same people create such a technically brilliant game and then put such boneheaded code in there, I don't know.

About 15 or 16 years ago, there was a debate in Microsoft (and other places) as to whether 24-bit framebuffers would ever be used by game developers or whether everyone would stick to use 8-bit color palettes.
The Future of Gaming in OS/2

Then there was the Talisman project which aimed to optimise 3D rendering using image based techniques Talisman.

Now the current battlefield seem to be wide-gamut displays.

I had a very bad experience with my old nVidia nForce4 Chipset motherboard RAID chip while using it and just recently found that none of the old or new drivers work correctly when the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD is plugged into the motherboard causing my Windows OS to freeze during boot-up when the driver is initialized or the RAID capability just doesn't work at all. I even wrote up an entire account of this problem in a few threads, one on nVidia's forum and another on HardOCP Forum to warn users about trying to use Intel SSDs with their older nForce4 hardware that I linked to below.

The Silicon Image 3114 PCI to SATA 1 controller chip has serious issues also that caused it to drop my RAID-5 and destroy the 2 TB array. It has issues with PCI bus contention and also is incompatible with the Creative Labs X-Fi PCI sound card on the same bus causing audio stuttering and pops. A few people mentioned that the issue might be IRQ sharing but I tried the sound card in all different PCI slots with different IRQs and the problem was still there. Jet another bad experience with off-brand storage chips.

My current Asus P6T motherboard for Intel Core i7 with the JMicron JMB363 PCIe to SATA chip and JMicron JMB322 SATA 1 to 2 Port Multiplier chip are also having issues with the internal SATA ports where one of them is port-multiplied and if a hard drive and an LG Blu-Ray optical drive is connected at the same time to the internal ports the optical drive will randomly disappear and re-appear in the operating system.

So Marvell is not the one and only manufacturer of storage interconnect chips to have these problems. My experience is that pretty much all of them have issues to varying degrees driving users mad when they realize after purchasing the motherboard and trying to use these chips.

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Data Storage Systems - The Hidden Cost of an SSD Upgrade (Intel SSD + nForce4 Chipset = No RAID! -> Upgrade)

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Motherboards - nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!

NVIDIA Forums > nZone > Hardware > nForce Mobos > nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!, MediaShield installer does not install services, GUI, or files

OverclockersClub Forums Hardware Processors, Motherboards and Memory - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi and Silicon Image 3114 on DFI SLI-DR

I had a very bad experience with my old nVidia nForce4 Chipset motherboard RAID chip while using it and just recently found that none of the old or new drivers work correctly when the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD is plugged into the motherboard causing my Windows OS to freeze during boot-up when the driver is initialized or the RAID capability just doesn't work at all. I even wrote up an entire account of this problem in a few threads, one on nVidia's forum and another on HardOCP Forum to warn users about trying to use Intel SSDs with their older nForce4 hardware that I linked to below.

The Silicon Image 3114 PCI to SATA 1 controller chip has serious issues also that caused it to drop my RAID-5 and destroy the 2 TB array. It has issues with PCI bus contention and also is incompatible with the Creative Labs X-Fi PCI sound card on the same bus causing audio stuttering and pops. A few people mentioned that the issue might be IRQ sharing but I tried the sound card in all different PCI slots with different IRQs and the problem was still there. Jet another bad experience with off-brand storage chips.

My current Asus P6T motherboard for Intel Core i7 with the JMicron JMB363 PCIe to SATA chip and JMicron JMB322 SATA 1 to 2 Port Multiplier chip are also having issues with the internal SATA ports where one of them is port-multiplied and if a hard drive and an LG Blu-Ray optical drive is connected at the same time to the internal ports the optical drive will randomly disappear and re-appear in the operating system.

So Marvell is not the one and only manufacturer of storage interconnect chips to have these problems. My experience is that pretty much all of them have issues to varying degrees driving users mad when they realize after purchasing the motherboard and trying to use these chips.

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Data Storage Systems - The Hidden Cost of an SSD Upgrade (Intel SSD + nForce4 Chipset = No RAID! -> Upgrade)

[H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Motherboards - nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!

NVIDIA Forums > nZone > Hardware > nForce Mobos > nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!, MediaShield installer does not install services, GUI, or files

OverclockersClub Forums Hardware Processors, Motherboards and Memory - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi and Silicon Image 3114 on DFI SLI-DR

That does look like a nice screen. My Westinghouse is nice, has an MVA panel, but is now only being sold with a TN (at first I felt ripped off, when I saw it go from $700 to $399... but then I checked out forums, so at least I know why).

It does seem like a lottery in getting a monitor with an IPS panel. This happens with Dells, HPs, and Samsung along with other companies, even Viewsonic. Hardly any brick and mortar stores sell these monitors so they have to be ordered online. Yet companies like Newegg that do sell them don't guaranty a monitor will have an IPS panel. What's worse is that they have bad exchange policies for monitors with dead or stuck pixels. I think Newegg requires 7 before they will exchange a monitor and they wait to test a returned monitor before shipping a replacement.

After searching and driving to different stores I found an employee at a Best Buy that found the HP online, at Best Buy for Business website. So if and when I get one, I'm hoping to in a month or two, I may be able to take it to Best Buy for an exchange. Normally for a purchase like that I'd also buy a buyer protection plan but in this case I won't have to, HP's warranty on it is a 3 year on site plan. If I have a problem I can call HP and they'll send a tech to me. Because of this instead of ordering it from Best Buy I may get it from B&H Photo and Video. Because of the panel lottery and dead, stuck, pixel issue I'll have to check their return policy first though.

Falcon

bah, AMD have nothing on my friend here:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1351232

One thing about this research paper is that they used only one model MemoRight GT MR25.2 in 8/16/32 GB capacities to do their testing before 2008-11-11 publication of the paper in the United Kingdom.

I'm concerned that the research test and results are largely skewed against SSDs because they used only that one model to do all their testing with based on only one price point for the SSDs.

There is a very large difference in performance between many various SSD drives based on the original flawed JMicron JMF602 chipset (stuttering/freezing on write), newer JMF602B (smaller stuttering), Samsung's chipset, Intel's chipset (fastest random writes by 4x), and the newest Indilnix Barefoot chipset (balanced sequential/random read/write). Additionally the huge drops in prices in the last 6-12 months ($1,500->$400) is a big change in the SSD arena. These price, capacity, and performance changes are going to continue fluctuating for the next few years yielding much better drives for the consumers.

I believe that the research in the paper will be shortly obsolete, if it isn't already, given the latest products on the market and price points and the Q3/Q4 new upcoming products from Intel and others.

I'm helping a friend of mine build an all-in-one HTPC / Desktop / Gaming system and I've been doing research into SSDs for the past few weeks based on reviews and benchmarks so I wanted to share my info.

Basically there are only two drives to consider and I list them below. A good alternative at this time is to purchase smaller SSDs and create RAID-0 (stripping) sets to effectively double their performance instead of buying a single large SSD. The RAID-0 article below shows great benchmark results to this effect.

Intel X25-M

The Intel X25-M series of drives is the top performance leader right now, and the 80GB drive is barely affordable for a desktop system build if you consider the increased performance of the drive.

Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $383.00 USD ($ 4.7875 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex

The new OCZ Vertex series of drives with the newer 1275 firmware is the price/performance leader and they are much more affordable than the Intel drives. When you combine two of these smaller 30/60 GB drives into RAID-0 (stripping) you get double the performance at still acceptable prices.

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $129.00 USD ($ 4.3 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $209.00 USD ( $ 3.483 / per GB)

Reviews

Required Reading:
AnandTech - The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

AnandTech - Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

AnandTech - The SSD Update: Vertex Gets Faster, New Indilinx Drives and Intel/MacBook Problems Resolved

RAID-0 Performance:
ExtremeTech - Intel X25 80GB Solid-State Drive Review - PCMark Vantage Disk Tests

BenchmarkReviews - OCZ Vertex SSD RAID-0 Performance
(Be Warned about BenchmarkReviews! Synthetic benchmark results only, no real-life benchmarks such as PCMark Vantage.)

Just to second what the parent is saying. HardOCP monitor forum is a the place to get good reviews. There's a sticky on top that explains what each technology is good at. I'm just going to add that PVA/MVA are the only ones that lag, are expensive and also have bad viewing angles so stay away. SIPS is what you want, if you can afford it (that's what I ended up with based on recommendations from the forum and I'm not sorry 1 bit). TN is cheap, good for gaming or general home use but not for professional colour reproduction.

Consider a mutual surprise situation where both players react with identical 180ms reaction times. One has hardware with total latency of 30ms, while the other's hardware chain has total latency of 40ms. The latter player probably thought that extra 10ms latency wasn't worth worrying about, but here it is responsible for his loss.

As for motion quality, 60fps is clearly inadequate, but in my experience there are greatly diminishing returns beyond about 100fps. Note that this is on a CRT with an impulse response characteristic, on sample and hold displays a higher frame rate will be needed to compensate for the temporal smearing. In the opinion of some experienced FPS gamers, a true 120Hz LCD comes very close to a CRT:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1387713

Overdrive is commonly used on all types of panels - TN, *VA, *IPS.

It isn't related to input lag as much as the summary would like you to believe. Somewhat, yes, but not that much; also, PVA panels are generally the ones with biggest input lag.

Some *VA panels have an input lag of 3-4 frames, some have only 1; some TN panels have a lag of 1 frame, some have 3. Some panels have overdrive that you cannot even notice, some - like the Dell 2407WHP-HC - will make you want to poke your eyes out.

What's much worse than input lag and ghosting are the eternal marketing races for MOAR BRIGHTNESS!!!11 and MOAR GAMUT!!1ONE, eventually leaving you with a monitor with a *minimum* brightness of 250 cd/m2, happily roasting your eyes out in anything but daylight, and with a gamut so large that skin tones heavily shift towards red, wildly inaccurate colours, and easily-visible fringing when you turn ClearType on (surprisingly, Windows Se7en will have proper low-level wide gamut management and will tone it down to sRGB on request, eliminating all issues; probably one of the few things that are actually good enough in that OS).

When it comes to monitors, HardForum is generally the place you want to thoroughly check out: http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78

None of the online review sites ever mention input lag and on some monitors, it's a huge problem. Three years ago I bought a Dell 2405FPW based on excellent reviews from a number of sites. The monitor lagged badly and as I was using it, more issues became apparent (incendiary backlight, bad viewing angles), none of which were mentioned by any of the review sites.

So beware online reviews of monitors. Better look for user reviews.

I'm not sure where the memory req's were mentioned either, but I am certain SC2 will at least prefer 4GB. SC was one of the first games to hit the 2GB memory limit on 32bit systems. Apparently SC would crash on very large maps when it hit the limit, even on 64 bit systes (bc the game is 32bit and still limited to 2GB mem).

Here is an article citing Chris Taylor that even 4GB is not enough for all the factions they wanted to add to SC2: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=185765

And here is a link citing the original problem: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1161686

Chunghwa makes panels for Vizio, Syntax, and even Samsung and many others you would expect to have their own panels inside. Even Sony and Sharp have shipped products with Chunghwa panels inside, simply because they're cheaper.