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Domain: systemlogic.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to systemlogic.net.

Comments · 12

  1. It's been done... by ChiPHeaD23 · · Score: 1 · on Easy Access PC Cases?

    ...and if you really want to do this there's a nice guide here.

  2. Shim? by $carab · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Heat-Conducting Carbon Foam

    Not sure you know what the hell a shim is, dude.
    A shim refers to a piece of metal that is sandwiched between the heatsink and the proc to prevent crushing the proc core.

    Not sure why the hell you'd use this stuff for a shim. As documented here and here, shims are generally useless and can cause more damage to processors because of heat/electrical distribution. Thus, shims are generally used to insure that shipping of the core by an over-zealous heatsink install will not occur. There are problems, however, being that if the shim is not exactly perfect, it will be either useless will create a gap between the heatsink and the proc, causing fryage.

    Thus, most shims are made of light, nonconducting, cheap, oxidized aluminum. I could see abolutely no reason to make a shim out of this stuff.

    Unless you meant to talk about the cap on the Pentium 4 procs. In which case, the purpose of the cap is just to spread heat around, and it serves its purpose fine. Intel isn't gonna make their procs a hundred bucks more expensive to help overclockers, whom they don't support anyway.

  3. Re:What's the alternative? by edunbar93 · · Score: 1 · on Windows XP: Prices, And One Reaction
    The problem, as it always has been, is that people can't use Linux.

    Actually, since using Linux is now easier to use than Windows XP, I would agree with everyone else that's replied with "Well, that's because Joe User can't use Windows either." (besides the fact that I've worked in tech support... I know people don't know dick about using windows)

    Despite the fact the MS is a monopolistic megolith, ... they (WE!) will tolerate it because there isn't a better choice.

    There's LOTS of better choices. And cheaper choices. All the free unix-like operating sysetms are better for desktop use than Windows is for Joe User who never does anything with a computer besides e-mail, using the web, word processing, their budget and maybe even watching DVD's if they can manage that much. However, even I, a UNIX systems administrator use Windows at home. Why? There are exactly two applications that I use that I can't (or won't) do without. And they're games. (nuff said)

    I'm an economist(-in-training). I know that competition drives prices down, and forces product quality up. But if someone doesn't come along and design an alternative, all we'll ever get to do is sit here, bitch about it on Slashdot, and feel sorry for people that don't know the difference.

    Okay, that's great. What do your economics classes tell you about the economics of monopolies? Consider Microsoft's case.

    To compete with Microsoft on the desktop, you need four things: The shiny new operating system, support from computer manufacturers, (the only way you're going to get most people to use your new OS is by selling it with their computer - they'll likely never change it) support from developers (which you'll need, because without applications, your OS is useless) and mega advertising bucks. The first and last things are easy - they just require money. The two in the middle are far from it however.

    Manufacturers don't want to annoy Microsoft by offering a second choice to consumers because if they do, Microsoft will either increase the price of their OEM license or they'll revoke it completely. And to them, Windows is the proven choice as opposed to your upstart and uncertain OS (after all, they have *all* the applications right now).

    Getting the help of Developers is even harder. They're going to develop their applications for Windows anyway - It's what runs on 95% of the desktops, and it's where the profit is. Writing a different copy for your new operating system is an added expense, and again, one with uncertain returns. The vast majority of developers won't even bother porting to your OS until you have a suitably large portion of the desktop market, and without their support you probably won't get it, so it's a perfect catch 22. You could always do what Microsoft does though, and build your own killer apps that get bundled with the new computers you're hopefully selling.

    Add to these difficulties the fact that Microsoft will gladly put pressure on the hardware manufactuers and the software developers in the form of incentives to use theirs over yours, or in the form of disincentives for using yours. (an excellent example is how they got ISP's to use IE over Netscape... in some cases not only giving IE away, but giving ISP's special deals that made IE "better than free," or what happens to computer resellers that suddenly start paying more for Windows because they do things Microsoft Does Not Like). What does all this add up to? To me, it sounds like an enormous gamble of a business venture which has about a 90%+ chance in ending in bankruptcy and about a hundred million dollars (likely more than that) in hard cash down the drain. Most businessmen that have had experience dealing with Microsoft - especially in competition like Netscape has - will laugh themselves to tears at such an endeavour before telling you that your money is better spent at the craps tables in Reno than in competition with Microsoft.

    It's not about whether better technology exists to compete with Microsoft (it does) because it isn't a technology issue, it's a business issue. Microsoft is in a perfect business position to maintain a monopoly indefinitely. Not even big businesses like IBM can stop them. (see: OS/2)

  4. Windows XP for free? by joestar · · Score: 2 · on Windows XP: Prices, And One Reaction

    WindowsXP Vs. Linux Mandrake: Some Aesthetic Observations is the title of this excellent article that I recommand to read.

  5. Re:Misleading graphs by SystemLogicNet · · Score: 5, Informative · on Double-Whammy Look At The Pentium 4

    The graphs were a mistake that was made in Excel...I have fixed them and uploaded them where they start at 0 (I'm the writer of the review). You can see an explanation here:

    http://www.systemlogic.net/boards/showthread.php?t hreadid=1404

  6. Misleading graphs by hyrdra · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Double-Whammy Look At The Pentium 4

    I was shocked by this review site. Most all the graphs are misleading. Most magnify the area of differenc between the two processors to make the margin look larger. For example, in the benchmark "Content Creation Winstone" (http://www.systemlogic.net/reviews/hardware/proce ssors/intel/p41700/i/c7.gif), the difference is only 3.6 points, yet the scale is nearly 1/3. That's nearly 3x magnification.

    Some only differ by a few percent, the lowest about -4.5% of P4 score, yet the distance represented on the graph would suggest nearly a 60% difference or more.

    This review site needs to get a clue about statictics and start using proper graphing according to real differences, not magnified margins.

  7. Matrox G550, A choice of features over performance by martinbogo · · Score: 2 · on Talking with Matrox

    Two weeks ago I had a chance to work with a graphics workstation that was using two Cinema displays dual headed onto two G550 video boards at Pacific Data Images. PDI is probably best known for the work they did on Antz.

    If the emphasis isn't on 3D performance, I certainly couldn't tell. The 3D performace was very crisp, certainly much improved over the G450. The project underway had Far Too Many Objects(tm), but the animation engineer had no problem winding through the scene and performing the character animation with no visible delay at all.

    If you are into benchmarks, and /must/ get every erg out of your video card, the G550 may dissapoint. However, under just about any other circumstance this new MGA card is nothing short of blazing.

    For those who have not seen it yet :

    System Logic G550 Preview

  8. Related news by Tallier · · Score: 3 · on Talking with Matrox

    SystemLogic has their preview of the G550 posted at http://www.systemlogic.net/articles/01/6/g550previ ew

  9. Re:The answer is by andr0meda · · Score: 5 · on Can SSE-2 Save the Pentium 4?

    it's due to the fact that Pentium will flush the entire pipelines during branch-misprediction/pipelines stall. As a result Pentium III would out-perform Pentium 4 in some occasion, as the latter tends to lose more instructions when branch-misprediction rate is too high.

    Rumours have it that PentiumIV will have Simultaneous Multithreading(SMT) enabled, which let's the processoor run any instruction from any thread on any unit at any time. Supposedly this feature was allready included in current processor designs but not enabled because the P6-4 is not ready for SMP yet.

    AMD uses On-chip Multiprocessing(CMP) in Sledgehammer, which is basicly the sames as subdividing the resources of the cpu (registers & units) between the threads. The benefit of this technique is that the design can be kept simpeler and the clock can go faster than a similar monolithic chip with the same resources. On the other hand, a lot of resources are wasted if only one thread is operational in this setup.

    Needless to say, SMT has some problems too, for example, CMP lends it self much better for branch prediction through Slipstreaming than SMT does. You can find some good reading in this previous slashpost about how intel and amd deal with multithreading on their single/multiprocessor designs. To be taken with a bit of salt of course, but very sharp.

    My point is that if branch prediction in the form of Slipstreaming is implemented (and Jackson Technology seems to be that kind of SMT), the P6-4 problems with the excessive cache flushing are completely over, and SMT can take full advantage of the smaller RAMBUS latencies, easily outperforming a similar CMP setup like AMD has.

  10. My quiet case project : it's an answer ... sort of by Prozzaks · · Score: 1 · on Building Quieter Computers

    Well, it seem these days, most of the power user just care to get something like 200fps in Quake III. Why ? Beat's me ! I'm not on a quest to get the ultimate frame rate, I just want my box to be quiet as possibly can be.

    To help you understand my take on the subject, here is the background :
    My PC has the following components :

    • A OEM case
    • A 235W OEM power supply
    • ASUS P3B-F
    • Intel Pentium II rated 400Mhz @ 400Mhz
    • A cheap OEM SECC2 Heat-Sink made of aluminum
    • A 128MB CAS2 no-name DIMM
    • Two 32MB CAS3 Samsung DIMM slowing down my memory timing, but preventing the appearance of the all mighty evil SwaP
    • A ATI All-In-Wonder Rage128 16MB
    • A Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
    • A Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC
    • My beloved USR 56Kbps ISA Real Modem. Sorry but to me a component that uses CPU power to do it's processing instead of taking the load off is not worthy of being in my computer. Not to mention the M$ Win part...
    • A Creative 48x CD-ROM drive. It's the loudest damned thing in my computer when it's spinning
    • A Quantum Fireball AS PLUS 40GB (7200RPM) in a removable tray
    • A Quantum Fireball CX1 10GB (5400RPM) mounted inside the case
    • Of course the stupid old 1.44 MB floppy drive only used for booting Tomsbrt in case of emergency

    Soon to be :

    • A Adaptec 2940UW
    • A Diamond Monster 3D II for Glide games

    It turn out that the Quantum Fireball AS makes less noise than the Quantum Fireball CX1. I still have to figure it out ...

    I use my PC for :

    • Running Linux and learning as much as time allows me (Jez I had so much time when I was a student... Think of all the time I wasted in High-School running the evil W monster)
    • Doing some gaming i.e. : Diablo II, Unreal, UT, Undying (Although that thing is going to cost me a new box)
    • Spending numerous nights filling my brain @ Slashdot, Tomshardware, Anandtech, Arstechnica, StorageReview, Developper.Intel.com, and most importantly, hounding the web for all the case manufacturers and their take at a quiet box.

    As I'm writing this post, that is probably going to be the base documentation for my Silent Case Project, you're guessing that my sleepless night of browsing have not yielded the desired result.

    I've check out many options such as water cooling, moving the PC to the closet, returning to the forest where a PC is pretty far from your everyday quest for survival. None of them suits me.

    The objective of my project is to build a case that meets the following criteria :

    • A silent as possible
    • Accessible
    • Provides sufficient ventilation to maintain all the components running within thermal specs
    • Be light enough to be easily transportable (Let's not forget the Lan parties ;-)

    To attain those goals I have to :

    • Read all I can about noise, sound, aerodynamics, PC specs
    • Find suitable materials : A case is not just a protection against unwanted fingers and dust ; it must provide EMI shielding, proper grounding, resist to impacts, and fit into my conception of the king of object you want in your bedroom (If you were thinking about plywood and a box of rusted leftover nails, forget it)
    • Find the tools or the companies or individuals with the means to work the materials I choose to build the casing

    For the sound isolation I was thinking about some kind of foam. Mineral lint would be affective but that takes too much space and it's not the kind of thing I want beside my bed. Form the casing itself, metal is almost inevitable if you want EMI shielding and grounding. And as for you who wonder why I have not mentioned water cooling yet, the greatest source of noise is not my CPU cooler and your just moving the problem out of the case (Nice ; you have water heating up but unless your reservoir is like a bathtub or something you will have to transfer the heat for the water to the air).

    That about as far as I am. If you have any idea that might help me, please fell free to send me some bits forming ASCII characters at Prozzaks@operamail.com

    To finish up, here is a list of thing that might help people wanting to achieve similar goals :

  11. Sony Vaio PCG-X9 sounds perfect! by Benley · · Score: 1 · on NASA Gives Linux a Chance on Portables

    It looks like the Sony Vaio PCG-X9 that was the subject of an article earlier in the day fits NASA's bill quite nicely! I understand that Linux works quite nicely on newer Vaio laptops.

    Go NASA! Go Linux!

  12. Sony Vaio PCG-X9 sounds perfect! by Benley · · Score: 1 · on DVDead? The Future of Memory is in Fluorescence!

    It looks like the Sony Vaio PCG-X9 that was the subject of an article earlier in the day fits NASA's bill quite nicely! I understand that Linux works quite nicely on newer Vaio laptops.

    Go NASA! Go Linux!