Slashdot Mirror

Not necessarily.

Not sure about NVidia's card's, but right now two of AMD's 4850s are cheaper than and just as fast as a single 4890. It's the best deal around the $220 price point.

Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-price,2323-4.html

You need power and bandwidth to make one of those babies work. You don't get to power and supply enough bandwidth to work multiple cards from a single PCI slot.

This simply isn't true. Single-slot sli/xfire solutions perform equally as well as dual-slot solutions across the board.

As an example, check out the benchmarks for the ATI HD 4870 X2 vs. 2 4870's in SLI as tested by tomshardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/compare,794.html?prod%5B2113%5D=on&prod%5B2253%5D=on

This benchmark shows Intel's X25-E SSD beating a 15k Seagate Cheetah SAS drive by over 50MB/s read and 10MB/s write speeds. I'd hardly call this "a little more speed." The SSD seems even better when you figure in the noise and heat generated by the 15k RPM Cheetah.

I have a duel core atom, and it sucks for flash

Probably cuz it's tired from fighting in one-on-one combat with the GPU all the time. I recommend getting an Atom that works with its GPU.

Your link says nothing about the GPU in the Ion chipset (GeForce 9300) helping Flash video in any way (it doesn't). Yes, we all know Ion's GPU accelerates the codecs used in Blu-ray (H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2), but the Atom has to do all the work when it comes to Flash (and it sucks).

Here's a much better link that explains how the Atom (single and dual core) does with Flash on the Ion platform at different resolutions: Zotac's Ion: The Follow Up - Watching Flash Video on the Ion

Summary: single-core Atom on Ion is insufficient for playing Hulu video at 480p in its default window (not full-screen). At full screen, even a dual-core Atom-on-Ion is insufficient for playing 480p Hulu video.

OTOH, Atom-on-Ion works surprisingly well with Blu-ray. Pretty impressive full such a low-power, fanless system. It would seem like the perfect HTPC platform if Flash playback didn't suck.

I have a duel core atom, and it sucks for flash

Probably cuz it's tired from fighting in one-on-one combat with the GPU all the time. I recommend getting an Atom that works with its GPU.

Most people just like to bash on Tom's or Anandtech or both. That was actually informative (for people like me that build a computer once in a blue moon). As opposed to me guessing which chart on Tom's he was even referring to. This one maybe?

I know that some people hate to hear the "yea, but if you overclock part X" argument, but here goes...

You can pick up a core 2 duo E8400 wolfdale ($168@newegg) and an arctic freezer 7 pro hsf ($37), and perform a very, very modest overclock from 3.0 to 3.33ghz for a total of $205. Hell, you could probably perform this overclock with the stock cooler with no issues and save a further $37.

Now, you have the equivalent of the $270 E8600 c2d which also rates high in their gaming benchmarks (beating the phenom ii 955, i7 920, and even the i7 940 in their hl2 and crysis warhead benches, and only slightly losing to the 955 and i7 940 in farcry 2).

What's the point of all this? If I'm building a gaming PC on any kind of budget, I'm still looking at the easily overclockable and basement bargain c2d, leaving even more money for a faster gpu. I have yet to see a compelling argument for 3-4 cores for gaming. For example, look at this price/performance data:

Unreal Tournament 3 - 1680x1050
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Unreal-Tournament-3-1680x1050,819.html
Q9650 - $325 @ newegg - 149.7 fps
E8500 - $190 @ newegg - 133.7 fps

71% increase in cost for an 11% increase in performance.

Crysis - 1680x1050
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Crysis-1680x1050,818.html
Q9650 - $325 @ newegg - 132.4 fps
E8500 - $190 @ newegg - 134.8 fps

71% increase in cost vs. a 2% decrease in performance.

Sure, you could make the argument that future games will likely utilize 4 cores more effectively. But when? I'd wager a guess that we aren't really going to see a significant advantage to quad-core gaming for a few years yet. Just about enough time to plan the next pc upgrade!

I know that some people hate to hear the "yea, but if you overclock part X" argument, but here goes...

You can pick up a core 2 duo E8400 wolfdale ($168@newegg) and an arctic freezer 7 pro hsf ($37), and perform a very, very modest overclock from 3.0 to 3.33ghz for a total of $205. Hell, you could probably perform this overclock with the stock cooler with no issues and save a further $37.

Now, you have the equivalent of the $270 E8600 c2d which also rates high in their gaming benchmarks (beating the phenom ii 955, i7 920, and even the i7 940 in their hl2 and crysis warhead benches, and only slightly losing to the 955 and i7 940 in farcry 2).

What's the point of all this? If I'm building a gaming PC on any kind of budget, I'm still looking at the easily overclockable and basement bargain c2d, leaving even more money for a faster gpu. I have yet to see a compelling argument for 3-4 cores for gaming. For example, look at this price/performance data:

Unreal Tournament 3 - 1680x1050
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Unreal-Tournament-3-1680x1050,819.html
Q9650 - $325 @ newegg - 149.7 fps
E8500 - $190 @ newegg - 133.7 fps

71% increase in cost for an 11% increase in performance.

Crysis - 1680x1050
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Crysis-1680x1050,818.html
Q9650 - $325 @ newegg - 132.4 fps
E8500 - $190 @ newegg - 134.8 fps

71% increase in cost vs. a 2% decrease in performance.

Sure, you could make the argument that future games will likely utilize 4 cores more effectively. But when? I'd wager a guess that we aren't really going to see a significant advantage to quad-core gaming for a few years yet. Just about enough time to plan the next pc upgrade!

I hope these notebooks come with three or four spare motherboards. Judging by their previous track record, that is what it takes to keep their notebooks running beyond the warranty.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=243038&start=0
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-71394-Acer-5101-keyboard-usb-and-touchpad-are-dead.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/51337-35-keyboard-mouse-work-vista-login-screen
Google it, tons more...

Seems Acer preferred playing their customers along until the warranty ran out, then charged them for a new motherboard (that didn't fix the problem in most cases) rather then admit they had a pattern failure.

I don't care WHAT kind of product they have, from a purely moralistic point of view, I'll take my business elsewhere.

I was curious about one of the prototypes listed, so I searched for it. One of the pictures, for example, shows what seems an okay sized keyboard displayed on a touch-sensitive screen, but one wonders how it would feel to actually have to type very much on it. One of the reasons I've been waiting for prices to drop on the Asus EEE PC 1000HE Netbook is that I wanted a small-form laptop with quite long battery life which also offered a keyboard large enough to allow a decent amount of typing before my fingers would suddenly thrash around and reach for my throat.

I do like the idea behind these "smartbooks", especially with Linux distributions, but just how small is it possible to make keyboards (virtual or real) on what looks like a small laptop before people will simply balk at them (sometimes without quite knowing why)?

How has this worked for other common ultra-portable devices with semi-full keysets that haven't been explicitly marketed as "smartbooks/netbooks/notebooks"?

There are also computers with coffee makers: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/extreme-modding,1911.html

Exactly, it's not like technology advances or anything.

Tomshardware just recently did an article where they measure performance of games in PCs with different numbers of cores (link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280.html).

Their conclusion is that at the moment, for the current crop of games the ideal number of cores is 3.

Or Apple could take advantage of the TPM chip that's been present in Macs since almost immediately after they moved to the x86 platform.

As I understand it they stopped including a TPM chip after a short time citing cost and lack of interest from developers. A quick Google search finds this: Tom's Hardware Article provide a source for such a claim (end of the first paragraph). Another response to your post claims Apple uses TPM to lock down OS X, but I've never heard any knowledgeable source make such a claim. Here's a detailed article explaining about Apple's use of TPM as a tool for cryptography and how it has never been used as DRM on OS X.

Since when did Atom have the highest power/performance per watt? People buy them because they are CHEAP and use only 3watts. That doesn't mean they score high on the P:W scale. The Core2 doesn't have that much higher of a TDP than that of the Atom, yet has the option of increasing its draw if required. While some tasks will pin the Atom to 100% CPU, the Core2 can do it with much less CPU utilization and get the job done way faster (and resume to idle).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-efficiency,2069-12.html

Yeah! Most instructions per clock, better branch prediction, a shorter pipeline, and fewer cache misses are for suckers!

Seriously, I take it you haven't actually looked at Task Manager on a dual core (quad-core is, admittedly not that useful for games) system playing anything Source based/etc. Just check anything on this. It's a little outdated, but so is your CPU.

Nothing wrong with a P4 for a lot of tasks, but you're deluding yourself if you think it performs better than new CPUs.

Tom's hardware does a best graphics card for the money every month with a breakdown for various pricing tiers. It also has a hierarchy chart that groups cards by performance levels, which helps to compare different models other than the "best" for each category.

Here's the one for May. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-graphics,2296.html

"Radeon 4770 as the best for its price for cards under $150? It's discontinued and you can't buy it from Newegg"

New here? Radeon 4770 just came out last month. It was even covered on /. 3 weeks ago.

"For $200 I can get a card that will play Crysis, STALKER Clear Sky, etc at a reasonable resolution. Try doing that with a budget card."

RTFA Crysis, high settings, 1680x1050... 32.7 fps from the $100 Radeon 4770. Anyone want to argue that 1680x1050 isn't a "reasonable resolution"? And remember this was a benchmark, so no doubt there were 100 guys on the screen moving and shouting and explosions and all that stuff that never really happens when you're playing normally, crouching behind a tree trying not to be sniped.

If that's not enough, spend another $100 and run 1900x1200 at 43fps

And we haven't even touched the 20% fps gains from overclocking: "At 1680x1050, with 4xAA, you're looking at a greater-than 20% boost - nothing short of incredible."

Yes, I bought one and it's amazing for $100. Wonder what I'll be buying in 2-3 yrs? A $70 card?

"For $200 I can get a card that will play Crysis, STALKER Clear Sky, etc at a reasonable resolution. Try doing that with a budget card."

RTFA Crysis, high settings, 1680x1050... 32.7 fps from the $100 Radeon 4770. Anyone want to argue that 1680x1050 isn't a "reasonable resolution"? And remember this was a benchmark, so no doubt there were 100 guys on the screen moving and shouting and explosions and all that stuff that never really happens when you're playing normally, crouching behind a tree trying not to be sniped.

If that's not enough, spend another $100 and run 1900x1200 at 43fps

And we haven't even touched the 20% fps gains from overclocking: "At 1680x1050, with 4xAA, you're looking at a greater-than 20% boost - nothing short of incredible."

Yes, I bought one and it's amazing for $100. Wonder what I'll be buying in 2-3 yrs? A $70 card?

No problem, take two Radeon 4770 cards ($100 each) on a crossfire motherboard and they will run circles around cards in the $200 range. Together they will use less power than the $200-$300 cards, too. See this for more info.

What the summary is referring to is the lack of kernel level protections such as address space layout randomization and the like. AFAIK those are coming in 10.6, but it is still catching up in that regard. Windows, having been (and still is) plagued by viruses, has implemented protections such as ASLR to make it much more difficult for run of the mill buffer overflows to actually turn into an exploit.

It may not be quite "public knowledge" but it is out there (page 4 for the talk about ASLR).

Does the nVidia 9400M require more than 5W?

Google is your friend

The GeForce 9400M claims a TDP of only 12 W.

I don't know but I know for sure that every freaking website and magazine wrote up stuff when George published that they had only 71 tasks on list left to do.

Just an example:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Duke-Nukem-Forever-3DRelams,7593.html

Last reported number was only 24 things are left to do. And that was on April 13th!!!

I'm pretty sure that Duke Nukem Forever has gone to GOLD!!! :)

And during the next few days I think we will hear more about the matter. But I am not going to buy this story until actual press release is sent out.

We should make a bet here. You will offer me free drinks, free women and free meals during the next weekend if I am correct.

If I'm wrong... well... I can always buy two bottles of Finnish Koskenkorva Viina or some cheap Russian Vodka if you like and then we can both have a blast off party for 3DRealms while sitting on cold bench at park and crying together...

According to the message boards build 7077 is actually faster. Apparently build 7100 is the RC branch and 7077 was a different branch for the RTM.

Sorry, wish it were true, but its not, which is why I'm going XP on the PC I'm building in a week. You see you have to buy an OEM installed Vista PC, which means those that buy retail or system builders and actually gave MSFT more money would be screwed if they bought Vista. Nice huh? Way to make sure all the little shops that buy your product don't touch Vista MSFT!

If they wouldn't have pulled this little "fuck you" I would have actually bought Vista Home premium 64bit to enjoy more than 4Gb of RAM and then switched when 7 came. Since i would actually like to have an OS next month instead of some time limited deal it looks like I'll be using this XP Pro retail that I have had since XP SP2. But since guys like me don't qualify for the free 7 upgrade when Vista gets dumped in the WinME bin, I guess MSFT doesn't want my money! Oh well, more money for hardware. There are tons of little mom & pop shops that build PCs and support your product MSFT. Not too smart to screw us all over when you need as many folks as possible pushing your new OS after your Vista fuck up.

Has to do with crap like this - the theory goes that you may WANT to have an autorun from them for legit reasons (movie on a "read only" flash disk, or a "plug this hard drive in and automatically launch Program X" setup).

Hell, without this, those "U3 Enabled" flash drives (yeah I know, gag puke awful crap software) are even harder to use too. They use a single partition with the U3 software, autoboot it, check for you entering your "password", and only they will it decrypt the OTHER partition on the drive for you.

See where this is going?

I think this might be exactly what you're looking for: Tom's Hardware does a monthly comparison of GPU's in various price ranges, among them $60-$100.

I think this might be exactly what you're looking for: Tom's Hardware does a monthly comparison of GPU's in various price ranges, among them $60-$100.

Without a doubt, the CPU-only upgrade is the best deal (I'm going to do the same to my Barcelona Opteron server systems once the BIOS upgrade to support Shanghai comes out), but a Core i7 upgrade (X58 motherboard, Core i7 CPU, DDR3 RAM) isn't as much as you think:

• $239 for an ASUS P6T motherboard
• $279 for a Core i7 920, which is trivial to overclock to 3.2GHz, even with the stock heatsink
• $180 for 12GB (6x2GB) DDR3-1600

That's all you need to replace, as your existing power supply, video card, hard drives, etc., will all work just fine. So that's $698 for a system that will absolutely crush the Phenom-based system. Even at the stock 2.66GHz, the i7 920 is a beast compared to the socket AM2+ Phenoms.

The socket AM3 Phenom 955 is a good budget choice for a completely new computer compared to the i7 920, but it still requires a new motherboard and RAM for an upgrade, and then it loses on price/performance.

MS have said this is for netbooks in developed markets.

Brad Brooks, corporate VP for Windows Consumer Product Marketing said "These engineering investments allow small notebook PCs to run any version of Windows 7, and allow customers complete flexibility to purchase a system which meets their needs. For OEMs that build lower-cost small notebook PCs, Windows 7 Starter will now be available in developed markets," he added. Windows 7 Starter is a light-weight version of the OS without the fancy interface, and is also limited to having three applications open at once (perhaps in an effort to prevent the system from getting bogged down).

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-7-netbooks-xp-vista,6974.html

Yes, and there's a reason for that: the Linux community apparently doesn't want them and doesn't find them useful. If enough people wanted them, they'd be on by default in the major distributions.

This is a true assessment, but it doesn't say anything on who's more secure in the end. If Linux community doesn't want proper working ASLR, it doesn't hold that ASLR doesn't serve a useful purpose, and greatly complicates certain kinds of attacks. Just remember Pwn2Own...

This interview seems to indicate Linux is currently on an equal footing with OS X Leopard, though they could have got the Linux bit wrong.

In any case Snow Leopard is due this year which will also resolve that issue. And in either case it still does not really address the biggest issue which is trojan attacks, it mainly helps prevent web based attack vectors.

Sorry first two links should be:
http://www.crn.com/software/207402009
and
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-Vista-XP-downgrade,6187.html

and the last link should be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_internet_usage

Lesson: Use the preview button.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pwn2own-mac-hack,2254-4.html

'The NX bit is very powerful.When used properly, it ensures that user-supplied code cannot be executed in the process during exploitation. Researchers (and hackers) have struggled with ways around this protection. ASLR is also very tough to defeat. This is the way the process randomizes the location of code in a process. Between these two hurdles, no one knows how to execute arbitrary code in Firefox or IE 8 in Vista right now. For the record, Leopard has neither of these features, at least implemented effectively. In the exploit I won Pwn2Own with, I knew right where my shellcode was located and I knew it would execute on the heap for me.'

And this was with Vista SP1. No one knows how to exploit Firefox or IE on Vista due to NX and ASLR.

This seems to be a pretty powerful statement, from someone who would stand a chance of knowing.

My only question is, where is Vista SP2? Last I checked, it was not yet released.

I've heard this argument before.

If I had a dime for every post saying "Vista is swiss cheese", I'd be richer than Bill Gates. If I only had a dime for every such post that got modded "Insightful", I'd probably still make the Forbes top 50 list of richest people in the world. For a site intended for nerds we've got an awful lot of sheep here.

If there are 25 million each on Mac and Linux (I don't know the real numbers), then that is enough to be targeted....

Let me just point you in the direction of somebody who knows better than both of us, and is an authority on the subject:
Charlie Miller Interview

It's a short interview (10 minute read), but if you just want the part of it that's relevant to this thread, see Miller's third reply on page 6. If you want a seed of original thought so you can be free from slashdot's effing groupthink, read the whole interview.

Note: I am not claiming Vista is unhackable or anything stupid like that. I am not claiming Macs/linux are swiss cheese or anythiing stupid like that. I'm telling you, the notion that Windows is swiss cheese and Macs/Linux are vaults is a complete fallacy. It's repeated ad nauseum on slashdot, and like anything else, if it's repeated (and left unchallenged) often enough, people will just assume its true. Again - read the interview, and understand that there's a whole world of grey between the black and white this site presents.

This claim that nobody wants to write a virus for Mac and Linux is becoming laughable.

Sadly, that simply isn't true. The script-kiddies writing viruses for fun are probably just using something they picked up on metaspoilt. No self-respecting AV will fail to catch that. So how will this fictitious mac/linux virus even propagate with all these windows boxes/webmail AV scanners to pass through? These days, you actually have to write something really effing sophisticated for it to actually propagate (probably like conficker). And the penalty of getting tracked down for something like that is guaranteed jail time. The motivation for taking on these risks, is purely financial gain. Once you establish that as your motive, the choice of OS to exploit is a foregone conclusion.

Interesting timing for this report to come out right as Obama is asking for draconian emergency powers to be able to shut off the internet and other private networks at will without regard for any law. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/obama-shut-down-internet-legislation,7478.html

Actually the question was if it could be taken down by hackers, not if the mainlines in the ocean being cut would take down the internet.

from article:
"Alan: That's a great tip. One last question: in 1998, the members of L0pht testified in front of the US Congress that a committed team of hackers could take down the entire Internet in 30 minutes...Do you think that statement still holds today?"

"Dino: Yes, and I probably shouldn't say much more about it than that. "

Honestly, I think the guy's full of it.

> I have an uptime of about 6 months on Ubuntu since the last time I rebooted to put an extra hard drive in. I don't have to reboot for updates.

You need to reboot for some linux kernel updates to take effect.

See: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-715-1

Quote: "After a standard system upgrade you need to reboot your computer to effect the necessary changes"

2009-01-29 is less than 6 months ago.

Both my XP and Ubuntu machines have been pretty stable.

Believe me, from a technical POV, Linux isn't really better than Vista or XP in security (in practice only a few write "conficker" worms for Linux, but just imagine what a malware author could do with bash, perl and relatives).

BTW Macs are technically worse in security according to at least one expert ( http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pwn2own-mac-hack,2254-6.html ). And I have reasons to agree ;).

I think I got marked redundant because some people are so overzealous in their damnation of anything MS that somebody with a more open mind who gives them a fair chance is dangerous/annoying in their eyes.

I got the karma to spare though, don't really care about it.

Anyway, I have 2 licenses for Vista Ultimate. 32 and 64 bit for my 2 pc's. I did read a while back that people who had Vista Ultimate or Vista (Enterprise I think, I'm not sure) could upgrade to Win7 $Corresponding_edition for free.

I looked up the link, here's the skinny
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-7-vista-free-upgrade,7018.html

Too bad I won't be eligible then, but I get the license for next to nothing anyway, so it's all good :)

P.S. For the mods, if you disagree with me, don't mod me down, mod me sideways :P

usb will be slow to boot

Actually it depends. USB 2.0 itself has a maximum throughput of 420Mbit/sec. To put that in perspective, it's nearly identical to most 7200 RPM hard drives on the market right now and about half as fast as a Western Digital Velociraptor VR150 which is one of the fastest consumer hard drives on the market.

(60MB/s == 480Mb/s) I do admit this solution breaks down in two situations:
1) you cheap out on the flash drive - in order to do this with reasonable speed you'll need to get a high-speed USB stick, but honestly a 2GB or 4GB high-speed stick is not that expensive
2) The computer is not USB 2.0 compliant. - This is only a problem for older hardware, but if their normal home computer was made in the last 8 years, they should be safe.

It also has vastly increased memory bandwidth (3600 vs 2000), a much improved CPU cache, support for faster RAM, uses less power (95 vs 125W), has a 65nm die instead of a 90nm one, works in AM2+ motherboards, and contains the latest set of SIMD extensions. The 6400+ maybe slightly faster (as this shows), however it is twice the price of the 7750 for not a lot of benefit. (and the 7750 overclocks better than the 6400)

With that in mind, I'd imagine the 7750 would have been solidly beaten the 6400+ CPU in all of the performance/$ graphs in the original article...

The Fusion-io ioDrive supports trim/discard. It wasn't reviewed by AnandTech because it would make the other SSDs look like tape drives. It plugs directly into a PCIe slot and is therefore closer to the CPU and memory with more bandwidth.

Not that much faster.

Instead of what does it look like to build a $16,000 PC, how about the final product. $16,000 PC

And yet again we have another trying to take the discussion ANYWHERE except on the actual subject at hand, because their argument doesn't hold water there. This is NOT about, in no particular order: Game Consoles, Cell Phones, Netbooks?Nettops, or FLOSS vs proprietary code. Okay? this entire discussion is over HPC with regards to workstations and other avenues where HPC is actually relevant. While I know there are a few that are using a bunch of linked together PS3s as a "poor mans supercomputer" I really don't see fortune 500 companies buying their "supercomputers" from Gamestop, do you?

This discussion is NOT FLOSS vs proprietary, but specific languages for programming applications for a specific market, in this case HPC. And I have yet to hear anyone give a reason why they would use OpenGL except for CAD. Even the OpenGL group says they are writing their new specs with CAD in mind, so why would you try to shoehorn it into something else? Really hate MSFT THAT bad? And as far as OpenCL, they are taking meetings. The competition is getting a HUGE head start, they are already the dominant platform in workstations, which is one of the core markets we are speaking of, and their Tesla seems as "plug and go" as a solution in such a demanding field can be. Is anything I have just said in ANY way incorrect? Then why do the mods keep trying to bury me? Afraid your emperor has no clothes?

Look I WANT there to be competition, I really do. While everyone else looked at me like I was nuts I went out of my way to buy the more expensive cards that had better OpenGL support in the hopes that putting my money where my beliefs were would help grow the market. Instead OpenGL has rotted on the vine while Dx has come out with more and more features. Sorry, but it is true. Read any 3d related forum and you will find post after post complaining about how a simple to code in Dx function is a royal PITA in OpenGL. Are all these coders around the world incompetent? Or maybe, just maybe, the writers of Dx went out of their way to make Dx easy to code for while OpenGL took meetings.

And I have a sinking feeling that is what is going to happen to OpenCL. The CUDA writers are going to get feedback, take notes, and make usability Job #1 while the OpenCL guys take meetings. By the time they get out version 0.01(which will pretty much be a POC and not actually usable for anything) CUDA will be at version 4 or 5 and will have most of the bugs already worked out. But this isn't about whose philosophy is better or worse. This is about providing a solution to a specific problem, in this case GPGPUs and HPC applications. Right now Nvidia is the ONLY way to get anything done. Do you think companies are going to sit around a few years waiting on OpenCL because it is "free as in freedom"? Nope, they will just write CUDA apps.

And we BOTH know the reason Sony and Nintendo went OpenGL is NOT because of the merits of OpenGL over Dx. It is because they didn't want to cut a check to MSFT with every console they make, not with said MSFT being their competitor. That is just good business sense, but doesn't really say anything about OpenGL. If anything it gives MSFT even MORE of an advantage, because of the ease of porting between PC and 360. Again, that is just reality, and doesn't make one better than the other. But OpenGL is pretty much dead except for a few niches. More code is being written for Dx every day and sites have proclaimed the war is over and Dx has won. Because THAT is the reality of the market. But if you want to be like OpenGL and cling to a tiny percentage of the market as the world passes you by, enjoy. Play to win or don't play. MSFT knew that, Nvidia knows that, OpenGL and OpenCL are taking meetings. Good luck with that.

For those that labeled me troll, sorry to hurt you little feelings, but try reading the post again without the blinders. We are talking about CODE, and NOT about a specific niche like CAD,okay. We all do know what code is, correct? And in LOCs do you HONESTLY believe that OpenGL is anywhere near DirectX? Really? Because if so I have some really nice swampland in AR to sell you.

This is what I was talking about in a nutshell, without trying to flame, just pointing out some facts. FACT: in LOC DirectX is WAY more popular than OpenGL. FACT: There are a HELL of a lot more programmers that are familiar with DirectX and how to write efficient code in it than OpenGL. FACT: This makes it a LOT easier for business who need 3D acceleration for some product to hire a DirectX coder over an OpenGL one. And finally FACT: There is a LOT more support sites and places out there to learn quality DirectX coding than there is OpenGL.

NOW do you see why OpenCL is already at a disadvantage and why I said OpenGL is kinda pointless? You can say CAD all you want. That niche is what? 0.01% of the computer users of the world? Now compare that with ALL 3d accelerated apps. You will see that DirectX OWNS the market. You can be sure that when new 3d hardware is released it supports the latest DX out of the box. The entire ecostructure of 3D is built around it. Do I wish it weren't so? Hell yes! Then there would be competition and MSFT wouldn't be able to bone Windows gamers by keeping the latest DX only on whatever platform they want you to use.

But right now CUDA is out there. Programmers are learning it, sites are being built around giving you support for it, and more importantly CODE, which is what this post was about, not some FLOSS vs MSFT post, is being written. Having some "open" vaporware is doing NOBODY any good. Just as having OpenGL supported by a niche that is less than 0.01% of the worlds users and programmers don't really help much. If you want to WIN, if you want your code to be run by more than 0.01% of the population, then you have to aim high. Maybe that is why OpenGL programmers were were threatening to go to DX and sites were proclaiming the war is over and OpenGL is as good as dead?

But if you want OpenCL to be a microscopic niche just like OpenGL, please just try to drown out anyone who points out the emperor has no clothes under an avalanche of negative mods. You can sit at home and enjoy your 0.01% while the rest of the planet passes you by. Play to win, or don't play at all.

Short stroking will help speed up development, and without the write cycle issues of flash. It's also much cheaper.

One thing about flash in general is that in order to rewrite a small amount of data, you need to (at the low level) erase and rewrite a relatively large amount of data.

The technical term for small write requests actually causing large writes is "Write Amplification". This is one reason the Intel SSD drives are so fast. They have a Write Amplification (WA) factor of 1.1 (done by combining small writes) while many other drives have a WA as high as 20. They also use an "intelligent" wear-leveling algorithm that can reduce spurious writing by nearly a factor of 3.

Here you go. Seems SSD isn't so fast when compared to DDR ramdrives. Of course, the limited capacity means that it's mostly useful for pshop and redo logs on your DB server.