Slashdot Mirror

I don't know if you made it as far as page 14, performance x battery runtime index:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955-13.html

Does that address your "miserable failure" conclusion, or am I missing something?

I don't know if you made it as far as page 14, performance x battery runtime index:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955-13.html

The real issue appears to be that SSDs don't use their "idle" rating as often as spindle drives... yet.

Uhhh... wouldn't that defeat the purpose of using wear leveling algorithms?

No not if you activate only those chips that you need to execute that read-write-write operation. But then again I'm sure if it really was as simple as switching some thing on and off then we would have good results by now..

btw, look at the IO ops per second graph, it's interesting to note that not all SSDs are better than the disk. Though the best SSD beats disks with three orders of magnitude in webserver load..

Might also find this interesting-- AMD/ATI sure has been having a lot of fun lately.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Larrabee-Ray-Tracing,5769.html

This latest round of cards from Nvidia and ATI seems to have been won by ATI as well. For $300 you can get the AMD 4870, on the performance of the $400 Nvidia 260, and sometimes as good (depending on the game) as the $600 280.

Check this out
http://rapidshare.com/files/125137073/Rapidshare_accounts_-_June-2008.rar

and this
http://rapidshare.com/files/125154637/Rapid.Share.Happy.Hour.Checker.rar

Might also find this interesting-- AMD/ATI sure has been having a lot of fun lately.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Larrabee-Ray-Tracing,5769.html

This latest round of cards from Nvidia and ATI seems to have been won by ATI as well. For $300 you can get the AMD 4870, on the performance of the $400 Nvidia 260, and sometimes as good (depending on the game) as the $600 280.

Really? Because I have an Intel processor, an nVidia chipset, and an nVidia graphics card. The reason for this anti-trust case isn't entirely because of a monopoly. It's because of a monopoly + noncompetitive practices made to artificially keep AMD's market share low. Intel fan boy, AMD fanboy, it doesn't matter. There is 0 debate in the fact that AMD's Athlon core was a much superior product to Intel's Netburst. However, their market share has not reflected that. AMD alleges that that's because Intel has been offering $37 million worth of discounts to OEMs, but only if they keep AMD at or below 20% of their products sold. Intel says that these are not unfair or anticompetitive at all. That's where the anti-trust stuff comes in. Abusing dominant position in the market place to keep others off your turf.

2007 CPU Charts

You're right on.

So here's my question, is this encryption going to start the old "license for one PC" deal we are familiar with? Because how many gamers create new rigs, modify or change parts, then want to reinstall the old game they played on their former PC? How about when the gamer (me) has a couple PCs with the same game on it and although he only uses one at a time, is he still infringing?
This is rediculous, I pray PC games do not become like OEM licensed Windows where you're allowed one install on one PC. They've already pulled some pretty rediculous DRM thanks to Sony's SecuROM software on games like BioShock (which i never bought due to that) and other games Spore and Mass Effect. When will the pain end?

The motherboards are industry standard SSI form factors, so although IBM only offers Intel quad-core CPUs today, if demand for AMD chips like Barcelona returns, then IBM can off them

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/servers-hp-ibm,1937.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/servers-hp-ibm,1937.html

Sorry, printy links require membership.

HP and IBM's Take on Web 2.0 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/servers-hp-ibm,1937.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/servers-hp-ibm,1937.html

Haven't heard of electromigration, but have seen this video back in 2001: http://www.tomshardware.com/pentium-athalon-test,video-272.html (same vid) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrEaAMt9SnA I also have seen some modern Intel systems run without any cooling on a daily basis for months. Point is if it can manage the first 2 minutes, it most likely will manage 2, 4, or 50 weeks. That has been my practical experience.

How can anybody think this is going to play 3D games with only 62,208 logic elements (equivalent to about 30,000 transistors)?

Not going to happen. Not even close.

It'll do some "rotating cube" demos, sure. At a stretch it might even accelerate a 3D desktop.

A full OpenGL or Direct3D pipeline though? Not a chance. The original GeForce was about as minimal as you can get to be considered a full pipeline for fixed-function 3D APIs (no shaders) and it had 125,000,000 transistors.

ObCite: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GT200-geforce,5441.html

Gigabyte has had this feature for a while on their boards

It's even easier if you have a backup BIOS.
DualBIOS

He's a Good Bloke(tm).

Linky

This is a tomshardware guide where they built a fairly decent PC that ran somewhere around the 60 watt range. It's not 5 or 9 watts, but it's lower than 80. :)

The article doesn't say that "computers are wasteful" but that "computers are not being used most efficiently." If a computer is on and sitting idle, that's "wasted" power. I imagine data centers consume a lot of power "idling" just so they can meet the demands at peak times.

CPUs that sleep or go into low power mode under light loads do a lot to minimize power consumption. Also, CPUs have been getting more work done per watt of power consumed. 2005 Tom's Hardware article that mentions this idea.

It is an interesting notion that given current trends we will consume more power storing data than flying. I'd rather be flying. ;)

Please, stop the FUD. The Geforce 8600 is not only easily 2x faster than an integrated Intel X3100, it's easily 20x faster. Have a look at a few benchmarks and judge yourselves. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-X3100.2176.0.html http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards/3dmark06-v1-0-2-hdr-sm3-0-score,538.html Note that Intel tends to optimize it's chips for these kinds of benchmarks, realworld performance their chips tend to perform even worse than Nvidia or Ati's chips.

clearly, no one would mind if web page design and implementation had improved, however, as far as I can tell, things are now very pretty, and mostly disfunctional. The new http://www.tomshardware.com/index.html is a perfect example of a once great site that has been rendered almost completely useless thanks to a corporate 'redesign".

Can anyone please explain why is that upper management must produce so much evil crap?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914-6.html Take a look at the pictures. It's a 2.5inch drive on a 3.5 inch bay cooler.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914-6.html If you look at this page, Toms ripped it out of the IcePack Sync and it looks no bigger than a current 2.5inch drive. There is no extra things sticking out...

Actually, you can remove the 3.5" container (I believe running it like this voids your warranty) but it still won't fit in a laptop because apparently although 2.5" form factor, it is several mm too high for a laptop. Not that you should attempt to run a 10K drive inside a laptop in the first place, especially without that heatsink thingy. The performance seems to be equal or better than SSD's. source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914.html

Try Tom's VGA Charts.

And even a passing understanding of how their model numbers work should make it obvious that an 8600 isn't necessarily even as good as a 7900; yes, it's a newer generation (7 -> 8), but it's a much cheaper part (900 -> 600).

Well, maybe you should've thought about it for a few extra second before buying the card. The 7900 is indeed one generation older (the 7<8 part), but it's higher up in Nvidia's model range (900>600). Knowing this, I think it's unreasonable to expect the newer, but much cheaper card to be significantly/any (depending on exact configuratio) faster than the older one.

And not to be a complete dick, here's a handy chart for comparing graphics cards across several games.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/

It means if you're trying to do a little processing to a lot of data (i.e. watch a movie, manage a database, etc) the AMD will vastly outperform the Intel.

Tom's Hardware doesn't agree. Comparing, as you put it, the best versus the best (I chose the Intel QX9775 vs Phenom 9700, but I don't think it matters):

The best AMD cpu uses almost 3 times as much CPU time to play a Blu-Ray disk

This CloneDVD test is mostly disk I/O bound -- but the Intel is one-third faster

This WinRAR test is probably disk/data transfer bound as well -- Intel is one-third faster

The same holds true for the other 32 benchmarks...

It means if you're trying to do a little processing to a lot of data (i.e. watch a movie, manage a database, etc) the AMD will vastly outperform the Intel.

Tom's Hardware doesn't agree. Comparing, as you put it, the best versus the best (I chose the Intel QX9775 vs Phenom 9700, but I don't think it matters):

The best AMD cpu uses almost 3 times as much CPU time to play a Blu-Ray disk

This CloneDVD test is mostly disk I/O bound -- but the Intel is one-third faster

This WinRAR test is probably disk/data transfer bound as well -- Intel is one-third faster

The same holds true for the other 32 benchmarks...

It means if you're trying to do a little processing to a lot of data (i.e. watch a movie, manage a database, etc) the AMD will vastly outperform the Intel.

Tom's Hardware doesn't agree. Comparing, as you put it, the best versus the best (I chose the Intel QX9775 vs Phenom 9700, but I don't think it matters):

The best AMD cpu uses almost 3 times as much CPU time to play a Blu-Ray disk

This CloneDVD test is mostly disk I/O bound -- but the Intel is one-third faster

This WinRAR test is probably disk/data transfer bound as well -- Intel is one-third faster

The same holds true for the other 32 benchmarks...

This MAY BE what "turns AMD around" in the PC market (largely gaming/home use besides office/server work), & especially in a HUGE market (gaming) segment, home usage:

For example, w/ some GOOD reliable numbers from a reputable tech website below?

Give AMD this technology being put into their CPU's & it appears that AMD really has a legit handle on using it from IBM, per this article here??

That SHOULD give AMD a 30% "pop"/"boost" in performance CPU-wise in gaming!

E.G. -> FROM TOM's HARDWARE PAGES CPU PERFORMANCE CHARTS:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=1106&model2=1072&chart=424

& on a game like Quake 4, for instance, where above you can see AMD's 'best' currently (Athlon64 x 6400) vs. vs. Intel's current 'best' (Core Extreme QX9770)??? They'll be in a fight again, this is certain, by 2009 or so... they're only around 30% apart as is, now.

This COULD be AMD's trump card for winning the hand.

All in all, which for consumers is good - we as the 'end-user's' get "kick butt" gains in performance again, which is FINE by me, speaking as a user. Especially @ gaming, & this game (ID Software's Quake4 SMP's huge, no doubt about it & has tons of buyers as well as ID Software's doing so well in PC Gaming over the past 15 yrs. now), Quake 4, is just 1 example!

Heck - I know this kind of boost would help in a game like Crysis (heaviest one I have actually seen lately, I still play Doom III quite a lot in fact (I don't cheat while gaming, takes the fun out imo, plus, & I don't have a lot of time due to work, so I finish games MEGA-SLOWLY, lol)), even though graphics boards (Go NVidia 8800GTX/9800GTX) mean more today in gaming...

NO DOUBT - this can help AMD a lot, & just based on the numbers above as a single example of why/how!

Performance, to gamers (again, HUGE part of PC market)? It's EVERYTHING - if you're a gamer reading this, you know what I mean (I am one too just not "hugely avid" anymore like 10 yrs. back is all, but I still am). I mean, look @ the numbers from the URL above, & if you give AMD that 30% performance jump, no doubt, they'll be even again w/ INTEL (for starters) really!

Hey - those chart's from Tom's Hardware pages show you that INTEL's best, right now, IS ONLY ABOUT 30% faster than AMD is, now/currently. The alleged performance punch this may yield for AMD will make it interesting... for gaming, AND investing in the future, imo!

APK

P.S.=> That's IF the numbers mean anything, & usually, they're helpful (for performance seekers AND investors in tech stocks too)... from an investment perspective, AMD stockholders will do well imo @ least, since AMD typically charges less "pound-for-pound/dollar-for-dollar" than INTEL typically has over time, which imo means AMD will get ontop again FINANCIALLY, due to volume sales (just as powerful/good a product, for less... a sure WINNING solution for sales, which of course = $)... apk

[...] even though overclocking is always done through software (bios).

No. A 1TB Samsung drive has an average read speed of 91MB/sec, according to Tom's Hardware. Firewire 400 has a maximum transfer rate of 49.152MB/sec (a bit less than 400mbps due to some overhead). Firewire 800 has a maximum transfer rate of 98.3MB/sec (a bit less than 800mbps). USB 2.0 is about 35MB/sec (about 2/3 the theoretical speed) because it has a lot of overhead. Another benefit of Firewire is that it does not use the CPU (although that shouldn't be an issue these days).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire

I recently put together a new PC with the Q6600. I had to RMA the motherboard so when I removed the stock heatsink, just as you say, the thermal compound wasn't covering the whole area. I reaplied some of my own, and put everything back together. This got rid of the large variation of core temperatures (used to be up to 6-7 degrees) and also lowered the overall temp. Now after a long run of 100% utilization it gets up to around 67-69C. Not exatly super cool, but safe.

Anyway... if anyone is looking for a replacement, I'd suggest doing some research first as some impressive looking solutions end up being barely, if at all, better than the stock cooler or are more trouble than it's worth. There's a two part review at tomshardware, for instance.

Right now I'm using a laptop with 2 hard drives. Last summer, 2-3 months after buying it, I upgraded one of the drives to a 160GB Seagate Momentus 7200.2. At the time it was the fastest drive on the market. It's since been surpassed by the 200GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K200. With a transfer rate min 40-71.5MB/s max http://www.storagereview.com/HTS722020K9A00.sr?page=0%2C1 it's as fast or faster than these fancy new "oh so awesome" SSD drives. The only benefit would be power savings. Flash sucks. The Adobe driven ads and the RAM. It's too slow to be considered in the average device. Even the latest model 32 and 64GB flavors only come in at about 55MB/s http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/17/solid_state_drives/page5.html, but it is a steady transfer rate media wide. My C drive currently has 40.8GB used on it. That could be trimmed (and 12GB of it is system restore garbage), but I'd still probably want a 32GB SSD drive to run Vista (XP doesn't like my hardware at all, too lazy to force it). I might even be able to get by with a 16GB drive if I uninstalled some large programs. But still let's go with your 8GB OS drive solution. The cheapest SATA SSD drive on NewEgg is an 8GB 2.5" .1 watt $240 drive. Or I can get the fastest magnetic drive on the market, 200GB 2.5" 1.5watt idle/5watt load 7200rpm Hitachi 7K200 for $165. Seeing as my laptop has been plugged up 99% of its life and 2.5" drives are virtually inaudible, I know which I'd choose. Which would you choose? The cheapest 16 and 32GB SATA SSD drives that I'd HAVE to have to run my laptop are $350 and $700 respectively. For either of those single drive prices I can buy one of the fastest AND one of the largest magnetic drives out right now, the $165 Hitachi 7K200 AND any of the 3 $140-$170 320GB drives (the largest out is not 500GB). Cost is the reason we can't/shouldn't have both. Flash drives are still niche tech. And that's why you can add one if you have to have it. But why would any retailer push anything they'd have to sell so hard? Dell: "Here, this $500 option will give you 30 minute more battery life per charge." Customer: "But isn't it less space? Why would I want that? Why does that cost more?" Dell: "Yes. Because it's good for the environment? It's fancy technology!" Customer: "I think I'll just get the $150 extended battery option." Straight off Dell's website while customizing a laptop. "Reliability: 64GB Solid State Drive and Speed:200GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RP [add $1,000 or $30/month1]" The only reason I can think they wouldn't offer a smaller drive is it's really just too small. And it probably would cut into their profits.

M$

Building a laptop is now, and has been for some time, possible. While your options are quite limited compared to building a desktop, these options have been increasing steadily.

Here's a nice article about DIY laptops:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/04/building_your_dream_notebook/

Already been done: Tom's Hardware

Have you seen this? Looks like you can beat 175MB/s in a raid5 config, depending on file access patterns, of course.

Too late. Tom's Hardware Guide has been doing that sort of suck since the mid-1990s.

Comparison of three motherboards? Why, that can be done in just 27 pages!

Too late. Tom's Hardware Guide has been doing that sort of suck since the mid-1990s.

Comparison of three motherboards? Why, that can be done in just 27 pages!

Tom's Hardware has a great web page just for cpu doubters. It allows you to choose the two cpus to compare, the task you are wondering about and then you get an exhaustive list of how fast several dozen processors would be, with your chosen two in red.

I have been using the charts to compare various CPUs that PCClub.com offers across their various families of computers. The Q6600 looks to be, as they themselves said when I visited the store, the sweet spot as of March, 2008.

I think you should realize that quad+ cores are not going to offer as visible a performance increase as you are used to. In other words, unless you dig out three or four stopwatches and run your test tasks on both single and multi-cpu setups, you aren't going to see the differences.

For what it is worth, I think your mistake is when you say you are looking for "*major*" differences. These are not at all necessary for the user experience to be improved. Try typing on a 110cps teletype into a mainframe to see what I mean -- plenty of raw power goes wanting because the PBKAMainframe. Multiple cores reverse the situation -- average core speed is often lower, but the average task no longer pulls down the whole system.

Consider the following trivial test I did at the store. Open a cmd.exe window, change to root directory, type "DIR /S" and press enter. On my 3.2gHz HT Pentium, I get 100% cpu on at least one of the cores (I can't test my own system at the moment, sorry). So, my fan kicks in, my ears get deafened and I don't like it. On the Q6600, two of the cpus get zero load change, and two get a 35-50% increase. So, thermally, there is little to no change (.LT. 25% increase in overall cpu usage) -- half or less of my system -- and so the fan may not even kick in (I didn't hear it in the store, anyway), I don't get my ears blasted, and I am noticeably happier (because I am a simpleton who only types DIR /S all day long).

Here's the thing, if I buy a PC to play DVD's, browse the Internet, etc, I can get something for $400-600 that does the job adequately. However, that system will not play games. If I want to play games I'm looking at a $1000-1500 box at a minimum. That premium is entirely about playing games and that extra horsepower goes almost entirely unused when playing a movie, etc.

I'm not a big PC game player, but $1000-$1500 to play games at a minimum? You must be talking about bleeding edge games. A Geforce 8600GT 256MB DDR3 costs about CDN$120. Add that on to a $400 dollar computer (2GB DDR2, AMD X2 5000+) and you're playing games. Maybe not the newest games or games at 8x antialiasing. But you're playing games and having fun for much less than $1500.

Heck my brother and his girlfriend get some good mileage out of their 3 year old computer for playing older games like Elder Scrolls and Wolfenstien ET. A modern $600 computer that includes a decent graphics card and a non Semperon/Celeron proccess seems like it will go a long way. But then again, I'm somewhat out of the loop where modern gaming is concerned.

The motherboard's BIOS lets you borrow 128, 256 or 512 MB of RAM from the system's RAM, to allocate it as video memory to the integrated GPU. For the first time ever, AMD is also equipping its integrated graphics chip with a separate memory interface. This allows motherboard makers and OEMs to provide dedicated graphics memory for the integrated chip directly on the board, if they find the GPU's performance unsatisfactory, or don't wish to use a shared-memory solution. In effect, this transforms the integrated on-chip graphics solution into a dedicated graphics card that just happens to reside in the northbridge

Nvidia measures performance with the second digit in the card's model. 5600 is 5th generation, 8400 is 8th generation, however since the "600" is higher than the "400", the 5600 is the faster card.

Benchmarks? Just because it's true that the 8600 was similar to the 7600 doesn't mean it's true that all x600 are the same, or that a card with a second higher digit will always outperfom a later generation card with lower digit. Are you seriously suggesting that in all the years since the first NVIDIA chipsets, they haven't improved in performance? That a 4600 will outperform an 8500? Sorry, that's ludicrous.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page4.html#3d_mark_2005 shows how even a 6600 demolishes the FX 5700, let alone a 5600. Then check out http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=716&model2=722&chart=308 to see the jump from a 6600 to a 7600 (about another factor of 2).

The GMA 950 may not have hardware T&L, but it does support pixel shader 2.0, which should be all Morrowind needs. In any case, I can't imagine that you get very good performance out of that IGP since the Geforce 6150 IGPs in one of my laptops can't even run Morrowind at an acceptable speed. What's your average, 10-15fps tops? Have fun with that...

It gets 100FPS indoors. On large outdoor scenes it drops to about 20-30FPS, but as others have said, that's more than adequate for a roleplaying game, not a fast shooter. So yes, I do have fun with that. And as I said, I know what it's like on a faster card anyway.

I've no idea why the lack of reflections - if it isn't shader model, it may be some other missing feature (unfortunately the Intel chipsets lack a lot - another reason to prefer the NVIDIA laptops).

Not everyone is a gamer interested in the latest games, games where high frame rates are needed and so on - but we still might play an occasional old game.

But not something as old as the GeForce FX 5600.

I don't know if you had a bad experience on that card or what, but seriously - the graphics industry has moved on light years since then.