Slashdot Mirror

"An SSD would just be amazing for apps like this" - by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Monday November 24, @06:47PM (#25879275)

AND, they're AMAZING for:

1.) Database Servers

2.) WebServers

3.) FileServers

ALL - Per this review/test (for your reference):

----

Gigabyte's i-RAM storage device - RAM disk without the fuss:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312/7

----

That's PRACTICALLY applicable uses for them, on an INDUSTRIAL scale, no less... HUGE orders of magnitude of diff.!

In fact? This was their conclusion, verbatim, from that test:

"Wow. Seriously. The i-RAM is in another league in IOMeter, offering transaction rates that are an order of magnitude higher than its closest competition. It doesn't take long for the i-RAM to get revved up, either. The card hits its peak transaction rate with just two simultaneous I/O requests."

& they're right... I used the SAME techniques (albeit via a software based mirroring back to HDD ramdrive by EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com) back in 1996 to good review in Windows NT magazine (now Windows IT Pro), & later, @ MS-Tech-Ed 2000-2002 placing as a FINALIST there, 2 yrs. straight, in the HARDEST CATEGORY:

SQLServer Performance Enhancement

By using SSD's &/or Ramdisks in Software for perf. gains & it worked...

APK

P.S.=> I use one, @ home no less (older, slightly SLOWER model, same idea though (PC-133 SDRAM + PCI 2.2 bus @ 133mb/sec., in the CENATEK "RocketDrive") vs. (DDR-RAM + SATA I bus @ 150mb/sec. in the GIGABYTE IRAM - both of which maintain nearly even/level read-write speeds, due to NOT being FLASH RAM based mind you), albeit for things like:

A.) Pagefile.sys placement (partition #1 here, @ 1gb)

B.) WebBrowser caches (partition #2, 1gb)

C.) %Temp% ops (partition #2, 1gb)

D.) Logging from the OS (like eventlogs), & apps too

The ideas I note have been "modded up" here on this website before, here (recently too):

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1014349&cid=25591403

They're ideas "normal folks" can use, to gain extra performance @ home even, via SSD use... apk

You be the judge. I would consider a factor of 80x improvement in IO/s over the best HDD, and 2x your best competitor (yourself) "wicked-fast door blowing screams" if you're looking at transaction processing for a database or other IOPS bound application. This is not the review that's overzealous about a 4% processor speed improvement. Stripe that across 5 or 10 of these bad boys and the upside potential is, um, noticable? If we can't get a little enthusiastic about that what does merit it? A flame paint job and racing stripes? A Ferrari logo? The next step up from here is RAMdisk. Yeah, it's not going to make Vista boot in 4 seconds. Is that the metric that's driving you?

Capacity is still lacking at 32GB, but obviously they could expand it now and 64GB will be available next year. Naturally if they wanted to make a 3.5" form factor they could saturate the bandwidth of the interface and stuff 320GB into a drive with no problem if they wanted to court the folks who can (and most definitely would) pay $10,000 for that premium product (HINT HINT). Obviously the price bites, but they can get it for this, so why not? Naturally for challenging environments (vibration, rotation, dropping under use, space applications, heat) it's a big win all the way around. Isn't SATA 3.0 (6Gbps) due soon?

I think I foresaw some of these improvements here some years ago. I'm glad to see them in use. If I were to look forward again I would say that it might be time to abandon the euphemism of a hard disk drive for flash storage, at least for high end devices. You can already reconfigure these chips in the above mentioned 320GB drive to saturate a PCIe 2.0 x4 link (20Gigatransfers/sec), which makes a nice attach for Infiniband DDR x4. The SATA interface allows a synthetic abstraction that is useful, but the useful part is that it's an abstraction -- you don't need to continue the cylinder/block/sector metaphor once you accept the utility of the abstraction.

SethJ, please:

Do NOTE the performance gains here:

----

GIGABYTE IRAM REVIEW @ TECHREPORT.COM:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312/7

----

Especially for FileServers, DB Servers, + WebServers ( & even workstations use patterns)!

(See the charts, most of all... as pictures really DO say, more than 1,000 words!)

APK

P.S.=> I've noted this technique here before, & it was even rated well here recently for it...

(albeit, via variations of the above applications of SSD's (but, I did so years before in Windows IT Pro mag, & also @ MS TechEd for their SQLServer Performance category 2001 & 2002 consecutively placing a a finalist then), thereof... albeit, in this URL below moreso though, for end-user/workstation rigs here below though):

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1014349&cid=25591403

apk

For FileServers, DB Servers, WebServers, & even workstations:

[b]GIGABYTE IRAM REVIEW @ TECHREPORT.COM:[/b]

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312/7

See the charts...

APK

From http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15863

The official statement is slightly misleading...

1. When the problem occurs all hard drive operations stop until the OS times out the ATA command - typically 30 seconds. This results in the computer freezing for 30 seconds.
2. The problem can result in data loss if using a RAID system. Depending on the OS/RAID configuration the problem may cause a RAID system to think the drive has died. The RAID system automatically removes the drive and continues to run degraded (as designed). 20 minutes later when another drive exhibits the problem the RAID system drops the second drive and dies.
3. The problem may be a systematic problem rather than a small number of drives - all drives have I tested running the SD17 firmware have exhibited the problem.

I like the phrase 'ancient graphics cards' - I had a Hercules Graphics Station Card, a full-size graphics card with the innards of a GPU splattered all over the circuit board. The VRAM chips were a problem - they stuck out so much that they would make contact with the adjacent cards.

I guess, if RAM chips were installed in sockets, they would have be slid in between the heatsink and the circuit board like a memory stick.

From this article, GPU memory clock speeds are coming close to 990 Megahertz, while regular CPU memory is running at 1333 Megahertz, but that GDDR3 memory is optimised for longer length block read and writes.

Indeed. Here's a version that pits OSX against Win 2000. That said, that Vista's network stack shipped in such a state as to make that seem plausable is damning in itself. (I find it much, much nippier since SP1 thankfully.)

No, Intel's own X58 IOH doesn't support SLI due to a licensing disagreement. Whatever. And here's another review using a 64-bit OS.

No, Intel's own X58 IOH doesn't support SLI due to a licensing disagreement. Whatever. And here's another review using a 64-bit OS.

Shameless plug for another hardware site's review of the same product, with more benchmarks, a 64-bit OS, and wit.

>You can now pick up the baseline 360 for $200. You'd probably spend twice that on just your graphics card to run Gears PC at 720p.

Welcome to two years ago. There's a $130 card that runs Crysis at 1680x1050 at 40 fps. And really, if you'd be content with playing the games on consoles, why don't you save those $200 too and just continue playing on low detail? This way you'd get the same experience you get on the consoles, without spending anything extra!

The biggest problem with DRM isn't that people hate it while they're using it. It's that they REALLY hate it when the company they bought their music/movies/games from turns their entire collection of "owned" content to dust because the company got tired of running their DRM servers.

I think the reason the jokes persist is less innocent.

The $1500 HP 64 Bit Vista HDTV/Blu-Ray Pavilion Desktop at Walmart.com is quad core with 8 GB RAM.

1 TB of hard disk storage, and a muscular NVIDIA DX10 card with 1 GB RAM.

You can look at lower price points - much lower price points - and still see specs that ridiculously out class the big box retailer's lone OEM Linux PC.

Aero is not going to be a problem even at entry level.

The netbook is no longer safely Linux. XP is there in the middle and Vista at the high end. Atom-powered 'netbook' runs Vista, Call of Duty 4 [Sept 29]

It's not out yet, but Lucid's GPU-agnostic load balancer should work wonderfully with a couple of 8800GT cards, better than SLI in many cases since it extracts much more parallelism.

Some old slashdot story: Are SSDs Really More Power Efficient? . But that's actually old news now even the 80GB SATA SSDs will be power efficient something like 1.5W while seeking, and being able to push 125MB/s sustained.

Pardon me, but it is "blowing down the doors" (and the house too) in some tests, like this one.

If you're an enterprise that can turn IOPS into profits, you can do much better than these Intel SSD's.

IODrive for example:
100.000 IOPS, 700MB/s read, 600MB/s write: http://www.fusionio.com/Products.aspx - you get a 80GB disk for about $4.500.

- another option is to run your database/whatever entirely in ram.

If anyone's seen the results, it's in first place in speed but not in a "door blowing manner". It's just slightly faster than the next guy.

Pardon me, but it is "blowing down the doors" (and the house too) in some tests, like this one. More than 3x the number of transactions of the second fastest flash drive? 7x faster than the slowest SSD drive? And the traditional HDDs are so crushed at the bottom I can't make out a ratio, but 30x or more? That is just ownage of the highest level. Yes, the write speeds aren't exactly compelling but for IO and read-heavy uses it's completely mindblowing.

I think you're referring to the Assassin's Creed DirectX 10.1 controversy in which a software maker reverted from DX10.1 to DX10 when ATI video cards were found to render the game faster.

I think you're referring to the Assassin's Creed DirectX 10.1 controversy in which a software maker reverted from DX10.1 to DX10 when ATI video cards were found to render the game faster.

[nV spokesman Tom] Petersen also told us Intel wasn't a party to Nvidia's decision to allow SLI on the X58, so there's no apparent quid pro quo here.

Nvidia does not plan to abandon its chipset business entirely and will continue to make core-logic products for other Intel platforms, like the current Core 2 one.

So "we'll keep making chipsets, but only for old technology which soon won't be manufactured any more." Sounds like the death knell for 3rd party chipsets- a huge loss for consumers.

Their latest guide (which includes AMD/ATI's HD 4000 series):

• TR's Summer 2008 system guide - Recommendations for building the right enthusiast's PCs

SLI is not worth it, its broken on many games and it makes a minor performance increase when it does. Going for a 9800 isn't worth it, the extra price is far more than the extra performance. $130

Not true. As Tech Report's review shows, an SLI 9600GT consistently gets roughly 75% more FPS than a single in COD4, Quake Wars, Half Life episode 2, and UT3. The only game they tested that didnt have a significant increase was Crysis at 1280x800, but at 1680x1050 it had almost a 50% increase.

An SLI 9600GT is amazing performance for the price.

Why is this news? Tech Report has been doing this for years and it never made the slashdot front page.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15009

Good guide by the way, I got the Grand Experiment a few weeks ago and it's been great.

That site is a slow as shit...here's a summary:
Under $1000AU
CPU: Intel E8500 - $200
RAM: DDR2 4GB 800MHz RAM - $100v
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 - $130
GPU: ATI 4870 - $300
PSU: Silverstone Strider ST50F 500W - $80
Case: Antec NSK4000 - $65
Optical: Pioneer 215BK SATA - $30
HDD: Western Digital 640GB - $93
Total Price: $998

Midrange
CPU: Intel E8600 - $300
RAM: DDR2 4GB 1066MHz - $150
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 - $240
GPU: ATI 4870x2 - $655
PSU: Corsair HX620 - $160
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos S RC-1100 - $285
Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-215D SATA 20x - $30
Storage: Western Digital 640GB - $93
Cooling: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme & Scythe Slipstream - $85
Total: $1,998

High end (aka completely retarded)
CPU: Intel QX9770 - $1,600 (eXXXXXXtreeeeeeeeme!!!!)
RAM: 2 x 2GB Mushkin DDR3 XP3-14400 - $550 (A +$10,000 system with only 4GB of RAM, hah)
Motherboard: Foxconn Blackops X48 - $450 (what)
GPU: 2 x 4870x2 - $1320
PSU: Corsair HX1000 - $320
Case: Lian-Li PC-X2000 - $580
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDR-202BK - $390
Storage: 2 x 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor - $700 (no, just no)
Cooling: Frozen SS Vapour Phase Change - $1,100 (hahahaha)
OS: Vista Home Premium 64bit OEM - $130
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30" - $2,000
Mouse: Razer Lachesis - $63
Keyboard: Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard or Optimus Maximus - $95 or $1,900 (also hahahahaha)
Sound Card : Auzentech X-Fi Prelude - $230
Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 - $320
Total: $9,848 or $11,653 (with Optimus Maximus)

Only the high-end configuration includes the operating system! Kind of a stupid article, their budget system should be capable of just about any game you throw at it, unless you want to play shit at native resolution on a 30" LCD. When it comes to picking out hardware for a custom build, I've always preferred The Tech Report's system guide. Very detailed, and they have alternate setups for various budgets. http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15009

That's what they do. See picture.

Any good guides out there?

Good HTPC guides usually aren't updated as often as the "general" system guides (bugdet, midrange, high end) and they usually aren't "cheap," but they can have useful info about what hardware to consider.

• Tech Report's April 2008 system guide: The Couch Potato Mk. 2 and The Couch Potato Mk. 2 Alternatives
• Ars System Guide: HTPC edition (April 2008)
• ExtremeTech:Build a Windows Vista Home Theater PC (September 2007)

Since the HTPC guides aren't very cheap or up-to-date, I also recommend Tech Report's and Ars Technica's "general" system guides. Tech Report has an "Econobox" section and Ars Techinica has a "Budget Box" section.

• Tech Report's Summer 2008 system guide
• Ars Technica System Guide: May 2008 Edition

I'd like to put together a small format PC for this sort of thing. Alas, I can't use a cheap tower, it needs to be one of those small form factors that can fit in an entertainment center. I'd like to spend as little as possible

I don't know if the In Win BK Series (Mt. Jade) is small enough, but it's pretty small, cheap, quiet (if you use Intel), and flexible. I'm only checking Newegg, but Newegg has the BK623 for $59.99 + $17.50 shipping and the BK636 for $59.99 + $9.99 shipping, both with 300W power supplies (Fortron Source, according to some reviews).

For your entertainment center, note that the footprint of a BK6xx case (323mm x 276mm) is "equal" to the footprint of a Sony PS3 (325mm x 274mm), but the BK6xx is about 1.7 inches taller and is not "wedge-shaped" like the PS3.

So it's not "tiny," but it's compatible with all those cheap HTPC microATX motherboards (integrated graphics, HDMI, FireWire, digital audio out, etc) and it accepts a standard 5.25" desktop optical drive, 3.5" desktop hard drive, and 4 full-height expansion slots (for HDTV tuners).

Also note that the case's unique cooling system, which uses no case fans other than the CPU's fan (intake) and the power supply's fan (exhaust), only works efficiently with motherboards using Intel chipsets and an Intel retail CPU with its stock heatsink/fan. So that eliminates good, cheap HTPC chipsets like the AMD/ATI 780G and the NVIDIA 3200. Boards based on Intel's new G45 chipset are starting to arrive at Newegg, though.

There are several reviews of the BK Series on the Googleweb and In Win's BK Series product page has a "Reviews" tab (favorable only, I'd guess).

Any good guides out there?

Good HTPC guides usually aren't updated as often as the "general" system guides (bugdet, midrange, high end) and they usually aren't "cheap," but they can have useful info about what hardware to consider.

• Tech Report's April 2008 system guide: The Couch Potato Mk. 2 and The Couch Potato Mk. 2 Alternatives
• Ars System Guide: HTPC edition (April 2008)
• ExtremeTech:Build a Windows Vista Home Theater PC (September 2007)

Since the HTPC guides aren't very cheap or up-to-date, I also recommend Tech Report's and Ars Technica's "general" system guides. Tech Report has an "Econobox" section and Ars Techinica has a "Budget Box" section.

• Tech Report's Summer 2008 system guide
• Ars Technica System Guide: May 2008 Edition

I'd like to put together a small format PC for this sort of thing. Alas, I can't use a cheap tower, it needs to be one of those small form factors that can fit in an entertainment center. I'd like to spend as little as possible

I don't know if the In Win BK Series (Mt. Jade) is small enough, but it's pretty small, cheap, quiet (if you use Intel), and flexible. I'm only checking Newegg, but Newegg has the BK623 for $59.99 + $17.50 shipping and the BK636 for $59.99 + $9.99 shipping, both with 300W power supplies (Fortron Source, according to some reviews).

For your entertainment center, note that the footprint of a BK6xx case (323mm x 276mm) is "equal" to the footprint of a Sony PS3 (325mm x 274mm), but the BK6xx is about 1.7 inches taller and is not "wedge-shaped" like the PS3.

So it's not "tiny," but it's compatible with all those cheap HTPC microATX motherboards (integrated graphics, HDMI, FireWire, digital audio out, etc) and it accepts a standard 5.25" desktop optical drive, 3.5" desktop hard drive, and 4 full-height expansion slots (for HDTV tuners).

Also note that the case's unique cooling system, which uses no case fans other than the CPU's fan (intake) and the power supply's fan (exhaust), only works efficiently with motherboards using Intel chipsets and an Intel retail CPU with its stock heatsink/fan. So that eliminates good, cheap HTPC chipsets like the AMD/ATI 780G and the NVIDIA 3200. Boards based on Intel's new G45 chipset are starting to arrive at Newegg, though.

There are several reviews of the BK Series on the Googleweb and In Win's BK Series product page has a "Reviews" tab (favorable only, I'd guess).

Any good guides out there?

Good HTPC guides usually aren't updated as often as the "general" system guides (bugdet, midrange, high end) and they usually aren't "cheap," but they can have useful info about what hardware to consider.

• Tech Report's April 2008 system guide: The Couch Potato Mk. 2 and The Couch Potato Mk. 2 Alternatives
• Ars System Guide: HTPC edition (April 2008)
• ExtremeTech:Build a Windows Vista Home Theater PC (September 2007)

Since the HTPC guides aren't very cheap or up-to-date, I also recommend Tech Report's and Ars Technica's "general" system guides. Tech Report has an "Econobox" section and Ars Techinica has a "Budget Box" section.

• Tech Report's Summer 2008 system guide
• Ars Technica System Guide: May 2008 Edition

I'd like to put together a small format PC for this sort of thing. Alas, I can't use a cheap tower, it needs to be one of those small form factors that can fit in an entertainment center. I'd like to spend as little as possible

I don't know if the In Win BK Series (Mt. Jade) is small enough, but it's pretty small, cheap, quiet (if you use Intel), and flexible. I'm only checking Newegg, but Newegg has the BK623 for $59.99 + $17.50 shipping and the BK636 for $59.99 + $9.99 shipping, both with 300W power supplies (Fortron Source, according to some reviews).

For your entertainment center, note that the footprint of a BK6xx case (323mm x 276mm) is "equal" to the footprint of a Sony PS3 (325mm x 274mm), but the BK6xx is about 1.7 inches taller and is not "wedge-shaped" like the PS3.

So it's not "tiny," but it's compatible with all those cheap HTPC microATX motherboards (integrated graphics, HDMI, FireWire, digital audio out, etc) and it accepts a standard 5.25" desktop optical drive, 3.5" desktop hard drive, and 4 full-height expansion slots (for HDTV tuners).

Also note that the case's unique cooling system, which uses no case fans other than the CPU's fan (intake) and the power supply's fan (exhaust), only works efficiently with motherboards using Intel chipsets and an Intel retail CPU with its stock heatsink/fan. So that eliminates good, cheap HTPC chipsets like the AMD/ATI 780G and the NVIDIA 3200. Boards based on Intel's new G45 chipset are starting to arrive at Newegg, though.

There are several reviews of the BK Series on the Googleweb and In Win's BK Series product page has a "Reviews" tab (favorable only, I'd guess).

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's

I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips...

I don't have personal anecdotal experience with recent NVIDIA and AMD/ATI chipsets, but I enjoy reading chipset reviews at sites like Tech Report, Ars Technica, and Anandtech. From the reviews, I've noticed that AMD/ATI might have significantly inferior "south bridge" performance (hard disk, USB, ethernet, etc) compared to NVIDIA.

AMD's most glaring problem might be flakey AHCI (SATA, NCQ, hot-swap) support. The Tech Report thinks it's so bad, AMD chipset SATA ports should be run in legacy IDE mode. They recently made this recommendation in a July 21 review:

• "We've had numerous problems getting the 790FX chipset's SB600 south bridge component working correctly in AHCI mode. Not only do you need an auxiliary storage controller (or a slipstreamed SP1 disc) to install Vista, but we've found that you also have to choose between drivers that offer strong performance with poor CPU utilization or those that exhibit low CPU utilization with weak performance. Given these issues, you're better off running the SB600 in native IDE mode, which we did for our testing. The nForce chipsets have no problem running in AHCI mode, which is what we used for those platforms."

That same review showed AMD's 790FX chipset being significantly outperformed by NVIDIA's nForce 780a and 750a in multiple read/write performance and general write performance due to the lack of NCQ support when running in IDE mode.

Unrelated to the AHCI issue, AMD's 790FX is also significantly outperformed by nForce 780a/750a in USB performance according to that review.

Note that AMD's 790FX has used the older SB600 south bridge, but AMD's newer SB700 south bridge (used in AMD's newer 780G chipset with integrated graphics) also has similar problems with AHCI reliability, the resulting SATA performance, and USB performance.

Also, AMD is supposed to launch a new south bridge, the SB750, this week. It looks like it's initially going to be paired with the 790FX north bridge. Maybe the AHCI and USB issues will be solved with this new chipset.

I would hope that this AHCI problem can be fixed with a BIOS update, but the 790FX/SB600 chipset combo was released in November, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

"The story on Digitimes is completely groundless. We have no intention of getting out of the chipset business."

The rest is here http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15240

At least the article isn't a dupe, but Slashdot found a way of making this news for nerds since we geeks have to fix ze mistakes :X

You have to still be pretty careful when looking at game benchmark scores. ATI has cheated before with popular games. I wouldn't put it past a lot of companies.

By what percentage does the HD4780 "spank" the GTX280 exactly? Are we talking twice as fast? Maybe 10 times as fast? Just curious.

It depends on the game. HL2: EP2 shows a massive 30% gain. ET:QW? A few percent. Crysis? The GTX 280 wins (not by a whole lot). Oh, and the GTX 280 will cost you a couple hundred dollars more too. It has the price and performance over Nivida. I just hope they aren't losing money on these cards like they have with their processors. When was the last time an ATI card was king of the hill in the GPU segment?

AMD's acquisition of ATI has really improved driver support for ATI cards. It shows. No longer does one have to fear that their game won't run correctly with an ATI card.

And the ATI purchase was a bad move because they simply didn't have the money. It is the reason why AMD may be closing up shop by 2009.

And they simply couldn't have afforded not to either. AMD needs to stay competitive. The only way they're going to do that is by constantly reinventing the wheel like they've done in the past. The new idea of a GPU processor put into your CPU will probably be the next generation.

AMD closing its doors next year is all speculation anyway. Hopefully their new CEO will turn things around.

It doesn't matter how badass their cards are when they are gone. But I guess you can email all the out of work AMD employees and congratulate them on what a fabulous decision it was to buy ATI. I'm sure they will appreciate it. And which part about losing over a billion dollars last quarter did you miss exactly?

Wow, there's a lot of irrelevant flamebait there. Them buying ATI a couple years ago has nothing to do with the money they lost this year. Or were you too busy trying to bait me to notice that?

The SSD vs HDD benchmark discussed yesterday estimated the life of the Samsung FlashSSD and OCZ SATA II at "over 350 years with 50GB of write-erase ops per day."

Is therer a major difference between these drives and the Nand Flash (aside from the 10 nm cells)?

That's because the /. editor left it out when they moved this post from the Firehose to the front page. Quality, eh? Go figure. But here it is.

I think someone forgot a critical link... try this for the Tech Report article:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079

Useless.

As the Tech Report benchmarked some time ago, more than 512MB on any non-workstation graphics card at this point in time (and probably for some time too) is nothing more than useless.

This is just made to hunt those that don't know any better... "OMG 2GB RAM TEH IS FASTUR!!!!"

In fact, the article addresses this issue, see this page

All of the Radeon HD 4800-series cards we've tested have produced some relatively high GPU temperatures, and this early X2 card is no exception. When we asked AMD about this issue in relation to the 4850 and 4870 cards now shipping, they told us the products are qualified at even higher temperatures (over 100 [degrees] C) and tuned for low noise levels. In other words, these temperatures are more or less by design and not necessarily a problem.

I think the 1000 is a bit too big and the hdd is a backwards step. if you need more storage plug in an external drive mostly its not needed.

i wouldnt get a 1000 but the 900 series is tempting

As noted in the summary, the Eee PC 1000 has a "big" keyboard. For some users, the keyboard on the 900 series is just unusably small. The 1000's larger keyboard mostly solves this problem.

Also, not mentioned in the summary, the 1000 series does have and SSD option at 2.9 lbs.

I think Tech Report has a much better article describing the new Eee PCs:

• Atom-based Eee PCs arrive in North America

Prime example here: Call of Duty 4. Its in my and the vast majority of reviewers and players opinion an absolutely great game. I really don't think they're crying wolf when you look at the huge amount of torrents going even now, over a year after release. How can people say it doesn't hurt sales? Sure, a percentage of people downloading wouldn't buy it anyway, but MANY of them would were it not available freely.

While we wrangle over what (if any) type of protection should be used, you can bet that the suits at Activision (owners of Infinity Ward) are taking a good long look at the profitability of releasing these sorts of games only on consoles. PC gaming isn't going to die, but it WILL drive developers (especially smaller unproven ones) away from the platform when they look at all the lost potential revenue.

Yes, I did misread your comment. Nevertheless, most of my comment still stands. A 4870 in Crossfire performs significantly better than the X280 and the 9800 GX2 every benchmark I've seen except Crysis, and these cards also have the capability to be run in a quad Crossfire mode. Oh, and two of them sell for less than one of NVidia's top dogs.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1301
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=581&type=expert
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990

How often a day do you suppose Aero's DX9 effects are invoked in Vista? I am betting the load on the GPU is trivial when compared to 10 seconds of the gamer-geek's first person shooter.

Power consumption and Vista's Aero interface [October 2006]

"When the UI isn't doing anything, it isn't doing anything. So it's not going to use significantly more more power."

This was reported in February, shortly after Nvidia purchased PhysX. Of course, the GF9 series had not been released yet, so it was not mentioned in the news posting -- but future support sort of goes without saying. I'm fairly certain that it was reported on /. with a nearly identical headline in February as well.

Anandtech
Tech Report

Uh, ...he's gonna need to get a bigger Boat.., er. I mean Case and PSU...(maybe)
Plus the Doc will likely need to remove the other side of his current case as well (which it appears he cannot)... Better yet, Doc could juet get a bigger and better case.

I suggest this one from NZXT: http://www.techreport.com/gallery/index.x?id=14909&image=28934 True, it does have excessive blue LEDs (Why?) but it is still a nice case.
It also has room for DUAL PSUs so he can run 2 of those big 1500W PSUs (Most PSUs have better efficiencies at less than rated loads and a longer MTBF.)