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The Nvidia TNT is completely left out, which is a shock considering the TNT is the card that lead to the downfall of 3dfx. It was the first card that beat the Voodoo2's 3D performance and offered 2D in one card:
Pentium 2 400mhz - Quake 2 @ 800x600
TNT2 = 40fps
Voodoo2 = 37fps

And the TNT was priced lower than a single Voodoo2, easily making it the best bang for the buck. How good was it really? Tom said it best: "This article shall answer the question if NVIDIA's RIVA TNT will be able to replace Voodoo2 and if it's indeed better than Banshee.... To already answer this question for my part, yes, I am using TNT and there are no 3Dfx cards in my own system anymore, the first time after more than 2 years."

After the TNT everything changed for Nvidia: the TNT2 followed in early '99, with the Geforce late '99 and Geforce2 in 2000. 3dfx never really caught up after the TNT, releasing the Voodoo3 in '99 but it wasn't quite up to par with the TNT2 (despite FastSilicon claiming "The Voodoo3 barely beat the TNT2 in pure FPS") and it clearly didn't compete with the TNT2 Ultra or Geforce. The rest is history.

For more video card history I suggest reading Tom's Hardware. He's still got the reviews from 1996-1997 and 1998. A much more complete history and no cards have been left out.

The Nvidia TNT is completely left out, which is a shock considering the TNT is the card that lead to the downfall of 3dfx. It was the first card that beat the Voodoo2's 3D performance and offered 2D in one card:
Pentium 2 400mhz - Quake 2 @ 800x600
TNT2 = 40fps
Voodoo2 = 37fps

And the TNT was priced lower than a single Voodoo2, easily making it the best bang for the buck. How good was it really? Tom said it best: "This article shall answer the question if NVIDIA's RIVA TNT will be able to replace Voodoo2 and if it's indeed better than Banshee.... To already answer this question for my part, yes, I am using TNT and there are no 3Dfx cards in my own system anymore, the first time after more than 2 years."

After the TNT everything changed for Nvidia: the TNT2 followed in early '99, with the Geforce late '99 and Geforce2 in 2000. 3dfx never really caught up after the TNT, releasing the Voodoo3 in '99 but it wasn't quite up to par with the TNT2 (despite FastSilicon claiming "The Voodoo3 barely beat the TNT2 in pure FPS") and it clearly didn't compete with the TNT2 Ultra or Geforce. The rest is history.

For more video card history I suggest reading Tom's Hardware. He's still got the reviews from 1996-1997 and 1998. A much more complete history and no cards have been left out.

Yeah I'll sure do that next time I'm about to fire up AquaMark 3 for some, immersive, pulse-pounding 3D action... although I have to admit I still think the gameplay in AquaMark 2 was a lot better and more balanced, in spite of the older engine. And who who could forget venerable AquaMark I: WaterSpot, which set the standard for 2D sidescrollers back in the early 90s.

Ahh, good old AquaMark. Definitely the most apropos benchmark, and, seeing your point, certainly the one we should all be looking at.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta get back to playing UT 2003, where this chunk of turd is still dominated by ATI's and Nvidia's top-of-the-line, ca. 2001.

Check out Tom's Hardware Guide

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1997.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1998.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1999.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2000.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2001.html

Check out Tom's Hardware Guide

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1997.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1998.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1999.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2000.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2001.html

Check out Tom's Hardware Guide

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1997.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1998.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1999.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2000.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2001.html

Check out Tom's Hardware Guide

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1997.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1998.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1999.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2000.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2001.html

Check out Tom's Hardware Guide

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1997.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1998.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1999.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2000.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2001.html

Check out Tom's Hardware Guide

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1997.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1998.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/1999.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2000.html

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2001.html

You could have referenced this set of graphs instead, just to provide a different point of view. Your post didn't save me that much time because I had to go back and look at all the graphs to find out that you referenced one of the worst. Too bad you didn't take the time to read about the beta part, and glad you are so loyal to ATI & nVidia because after all they are good cards. Ever since everybody woke up this morning, nothing has changed with bad /. posts.

Of course, they are shooting pretty high for their first release. Look at where they claim they'll be positioning their products in the market. They claim their high-end cards will be able to perform on the same level as ATI's (current) highest level card, the Radeon 9800.

I really have to wonder if they'll be able to properly pull this off. Look at nVidia and ATI's entries into the high-end graphics market; it took them a few product cycles to achieve equality and then a few more to get dominance.

Of course, if they can even reach parity with the middle high-end chips (which may be low high-end chips by the time XGI finally ships) and price things at or below the competion, we could have something interesting on our hands.

The good news: a new, cheaper GFX company bursts on to the scene to challenge Ati and Nvidia dominance.

The bad news: the cards suck ass.

So basically, nothing has changed since you woke up this morning.

Yeah. Check out the Halo: Combat Evolved scores for a good look at the "downside" of this card.
Where the Radeon 9800 Pro's and XT's score 55-60 frames a second, the Duo V8 comes in at 16 fps. Not so good.
"With the current driver, the game is practically unplayable..." Ouch.

Ah, Tom's Hardware. Not trying to be negative, but IMHO, they are a terrible source for tech information, and the bulk of their reviews contain startling errors, conclusions that defy reason, glaring omissions, and sensationalized reporting.
The majority of those writing the reviews clearly have no idea what they are talking about, at least regarding the subject they are reporting on. Overall, I would rate them slightly above HotHardware.com.
Tom himself, as far as I can tell, is on the ball and knows his stuff VERY well, but he doesn't write articles much anymore, and obviously doesn't read them either.
It is a common practice among hardware enthusiasts to quote Tom's for the humor value, trying to see if the author of the latest article is even more clueless than he was in his (or her) last article.
To be fair, they do have some excellent articles occasionally, and were the first ones to dare publish information on Intel's unstable Pentium III 1.13GHz processor, but unfortunately these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

Also, as has already been stated, XGI is hardly a new company. Of course, these bits of SiS and Trident are in completely new territory if they are trying to compete in the high-end gamer's market. Considering that this is their first real foray into that market, I think they have done an amazing job. I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Remember, even the (once) most respected companies in the field can faulter, and that XGI has something that is even in the same ballpark as the most seasoned of players is an impressive feat.

OpenGL performance in Quake 3 and Enemy Territory on these boards roughly matches that of a comparably priced GeForce FX 5600.

Drivers haven't been tested, but LinuxHardware reports that Linux drivres will be available in Within the first quarter of next year. Let's just hope it doesn't suck suck and that there are some real perks of running an XGi over a GFFX5600.

OpenGL performance in Quake 3 and Enemy Territory on these boards roughly matches that of a comparably priced GeForce FX 5600.

Drivers haven't been tested, but LinuxHardware reports that Linux drivres will be available in Within the first quarter of next year. Let's just hope it doesn't suck suck and that there are some real perks of running an XGi over a GFFX5600.

Not according to their corporate strategy! corporate strategy!

It is good to see the graphics chip market is not too much of a closed shop for any new companies to enter. I would like to know how they plan on getting around the many recent patented methods nVIDA and ATI share with each other, will the SiS aspect get around this? I am not anexpert, please enlighten me!

These are NVIDIAs optimization guidelines for driver developers:

• An optimization must produce the correct image
  • Compare against refrast, competitor and unoptimized versions
  • DVS automatically verifies image quality
• An optimization must accelerate more than just a benchmark
  • Is it general enough to help more than a single app? If so, can you point one out?
  • Algorithm must not be reducible to
  • Benchmark = true
  • If (benchmark) do_one_thing(); else do_something_else();

An optimization must not contain pre-computed state

• Like pre-computed geometry, cached textures, movie playback, etc.
• Must not relay on particular order of state that is particular to a single application.

So far, this kind of self-imposed discipline in the form of rules and mechanisms are unique within the industry.

When ATI first cheated way back when, it hit the /. headlines. Then even more front-page attention (2 stories) was garnered by Nvidia's dubious benchmark optimizations earlier this year. Here we have some pretty compelling evidence that ATI is still cheating at the numbers game, while Nvidia seems to have had enough. Wonder why this wasn't mentioned in the summary? It's a lot more interesting than benchmarks showing ATI and Nvidia neck-and-neck throughout.

These are NVIDIAs optimization guidelines for driver developers:

• An optimization must produce the correct image
  • Compare against refrast, competitor and unoptimized versions
  • DVS automatically verifies image quality
• An optimization must accelerate more than just a benchmark
  • Is it general enough to help more than a single app? If so, can you point one out?
  • Algorithm must not be reducible to
  • Benchmark = true
  • If (benchmark) do_one_thing(); else do_something_else();

An optimization must not contain pre-computed state

• Like pre-computed geometry, cached textures, movie playback, etc.
• Must not relay on particular order of state that is particular to a single application.

So far, this kind of self-imposed discipline in the form of rules and mechanisms are unique within the industry.

When ATI first cheated way back when, it hit the /. headlines. Then even more front-page attention (2 stories) was garnered by Nvidia's dubious benchmark optimizations earlier this year. Here we have some pretty compelling evidence that ATI is still cheating at the numbers game, while Nvidia seems to have had enough. Wonder why this wasn't mentioned in the summary? It's a lot more interesting than benchmarks showing ATI and Nvidia neck-and-neck throughout.

While the nvidia article is a little old, there is an interesting article about a new company called 'XGI', which was formed when SiS spun off its graphics division Xabre. According to THG cards based on XGI chips could arrive within one or two months and their top model could retail for a good $100-200 less than the flagship models of NVIDIA or ATi. The article includes a review of the prototype card called 'Volari Duo V8 Ultra' based on the XGI chip.

Look at some of the benchmarks in the article. Eratic isn't the word for it. While ATI has a clear gain with image quality settings, the FX 59x0 has a clear gain in OpenGL-based games. The Doom 3 benchmarks will be interesting.

To be fair, it was their turn I guess. Next year it will be NVidia's turn no doubt. The person that busted them this time was Tom at Tom's Hardware Guide.

The accusations leveled against ATi at NVIDIA's Editors' Day two days ago thus become that much more serious. Epic's Mark Rein confirmed that in some cases, high-res detail textures were not displayed in some areas by ATis drivers and that standard, lower-res textures are used instead. Randy Pitchford of the Halo development team also mentioned that there were optimizations present in ATi's drivers which are detrimental to Halo's image quality.

The relevant link is here.

Now that NVidia seems to be the image quality kings and owning the mid-range card market again with the FX5700 Ultra, It makes me wonder how the ATI performance would measure up if they didn't cheat.

Tom's Harware loves doing stunts like this. They've run processors without coolers just to see what happens, and they investigated problems with the early AMD thermal diodes. Check it out

Somehow you only seem to read negative comments about web pads. I don't get it. A friend of mine got a TC 1000 and it's just great.

The device is robust and elegant with it's light metal case and the glass plate. You can attach a keyboard and use it as a (sub-) notebook. You can detach it and snuggle up on a couch and read e-books. In summer, he also brought it to the park for use as a mobile mp3 and video player. (The display is not transreflexive. Works ok in the shadow, but not in the full sun).

My friend uses it as his main machine for development (no, really). The transmeta processor is a bit slow for a workhorse. But apart from that, the machine is pretty much perfect. It has no disadvantages to a notebook and is more flexible. Also the new TC 1100 comes with a faster processor.

Sadly, Windows Tablet Edition hardly makes use of the advantages of a tablet. It's a good device. But with software as carefully designed as the one for the Newton, it could be astonishing.

Personally, I already got a laptop. But I'm thinking about getting a TC1100 nonetheless.

Well, I realise that I wasn't specific enough in the original post, but have you bothered checking the facts before speaking?

According to Tom's Hardware various reviews, HP consumables cost sometimes 2 or 3 times more PER PAGE, than the competitors' products.

Cost. Most review sites, especially in the PC industry, don't have much cash to purchase the products themselves. Instead they rely on vendors sending their hardware to them for free.

It definitely isn't an objective model, but one that allows multiple people to review the same product. Ultimately, you have to make two really shaky assumptions in such a model.

1. The vendor is sending the reviewer a consumer level product (or nearly so).
2. The reviewer is objective and honest enough to verify the capabilities match that of the consumer available product and disclose where the product came from.

For the most part the model works. Point 1 is completely out of the consumer's control and cannot even be known to the consumer without point 2. As a result, there is only one thing that consumers can do, and that is learn to spot the honest reviewers from the frauds, fanboys, and sponsored reviewers. For example, Anandtech and Tom's Hardware Guide do a pretty good job. They clearly indicate where the hardware comes from, identify any differences between it and the shipping hardware, and do their homework as best they can to prevent getting duped. Contrast this with many reviewers who seem to be simply paying lip service to the vendors so they can get quoted in an advert and continue to get free hardware to play with. Researching the product also means researching the reviewer if you don't wanna get burned. It's like taking advice from the Gartner Group without seeing who paid for their latest study. :)

Not to dispute your choice of printer, but are you aware of the fact that HP in fact does have the most expensive consumables?
You can check a few reviews at Tom's Hardware site.

Right Here

now, some say THG is bias towards nvida. Others will probably say that this is just a 'special preview' and therefore blah blah blah

either way, unless Doom III finds itself faster than this skimmed down release, most of the current cards can't acheive 60FPS anyway

The G5's memory controller is built into the U3 IC, which is essentially the "north bridge"- it is NOT built into the CPU.

It connects to the CPU via the "Apple Processor Interface" NOT via hypertransport. It connects to it's memory controller at 1/2 the CPU speed, unlike Opteron and Athlon 64 which connect to the memory controller at FULL CPU SPEED.

Documentation:
developer.apple.com
apple.com (thanks for the link)

From the U3 Northbridge, G5 uses hypertransport to connect to the other peripherials at 3.2GB/s.
Opteron supports a hypertransport rate of 6.4 GB/s directly from the CPU.

The Opteron 4xx and 8xx models also happen to have THREE of these hypertransport channels connected in a cross-bar configuration for SMP systems, giving EACH CPU a dedicated 6.4GB/s connection, rather than the G5 architecture which much share that connection (since there is only one U3 chip in a dually G5).

Support for PCI-X in the G5 by standard is a great thing. I wish more AMD systems contained it... I appreciate their native support of firewire and gigabit eithernet. But seriously... do you really want to argue architecture against a workstation class CPU? I'm a bit dissapointed by the Athlon 64, but the Athlon 64 FX (desktop version of Opteron) and Opteron lives up to most of my expectations and I expect to see more speeds out in the near future.

Stewey

Well... I had given up on ever getting a G4 laptop... but now, I am torn. Okay, so here's the deal. I will be starting the computer science program next semester (January) and I would enjoy having a laptop (or is it unnecessary for a poor college student?). I have never owned a laptop, but, like most of you I would like to get the most of my $1100-1300... I have also never owned a Macintosh nor used Mac OS X, but the idea of having something unix(ish) on a laptop is very appealing. Now I just don't know what to do... i could get the 14" 933 MHz ibook or get a asus m2n 1.4 GHz for the same price. I was hoping someone had the experience to point me in the right direction.

The Zalman power supplies are also very good. I've got two of them - in my P4, it's undetectable compared to my heatsink fan (gotta get around to replacing that), though in my VIA C3, while it's just a soft "whoosh", it is the only constant source of noise.

And?? Model number? Western Digital has been making 40+ gig drives since Summer 2000, so for all we know this drive is almost 4 years old.

I don't have to remind everyone 4 years is a few generations in computer years. Next time you do a review how about telling us the drive number, or do a review using modern drives.

Anyone want to read my review of my p3 600mhz?

This 'benchmark' doesn't really qualify as a benchmark. It's more of an observation.

My previous comment was a little tounge in cheek. I know it's not 350, but it's a single drive not a full on ATA RAID implementation.

The real upshot of this discussion is that SCSI rocks and IDE sucks, of course!

Boy, looking at some complex article like

http://www20.tomshardware.com/storage/20020305/i nd ex.html

I was easily fooled into believing that modern IDE drives were actually faster than SCSI in some cases.
But unlike those hacks at Tom's hardware, here we have the real scoop.

has a similar artical, but with the Tom's Hardware you have this quote: 'He indicated that there are also plans to include Win FS in the Windows Server 2003 generation.'
This certainly interested me, because if it's any good, this could completley change the Server market, providing much need competition.

The question is - will the drive perform despite having only 2mb of cache, and running at 5400 rpm?

Well, you could always try reading page 4 of the article where they give the benchmark results. Actually, that's pretty much the meat of the article. Or, if you're too lazy to read page 4 and look at the pretty charts, you could just read the conclusion:

Even if the DiamondMax Plus 300 GB isn't nimble enough to take on the faster-spinning flagships from Western Digital and Maxtor, its overall performance is respectable for a 5,400 rpm drive. Above all, the excellent data transfer rates are certainly welcome.

Here's a working URL, maybe because it's load balanced.

Here's the conclusion: Large, fast, quiet-if only the guarantee were longer Even if the DiamondMax Plus 300 GB isn't nimble enough to take on the faster-spinning flagships from Western Digital and Maxtor, its overall performance is respectable for a 5,400 rpm drive. Above all, the excellent data transfer rates are certainly welcome. Only the longer seek times resulting from the low turn rate and the lower I/O performance mean this disk makes little sense for demanding users running it under permanent load or as a system drive. That said, the hard drive is not designed to do this. After all, anyone able to cough up the princely sum of around $411 will no doubt have their own operating system hard drive that also spins quicker. A 7,200 rpm 80 GB hard drive with 8 MB of cache will currently set you back little more than $106. In view of its large storage capacity, the guarantee of just one year is dubious, since even in two years, 300 GB should still be big enough to save it from the scrap heap. Even if guarantees of several years are reserved for the top 7,200 rpm models, a two-year warranty would at least reduce the vendor's risk of having to honor a guarantee of two years. Ultimately, equipment purchases should not only be a question of numbers, but should involve a fair degree of trust, too. However, it is curretly part of a promotion, which means that if you go for the kit now, the card will be included.

The following link seems to work better ... http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031008/index .html

You imply they check the links! Next you'll say they read the articles they link to.

Linking to the main dns load balancer might be more productive.


yarn@blue:~$ host www.tomshardware.com
www.tomshardware.com A 209.197.121.1
www.tomshardware.com A 209.197.121.2
www.tomshardware.com A 216.92.211.178
www.tomshardware.com A 66.39.107.248

There were a couple of funny details in the article -- like how it reads like Engrish in some places, and how task manager was displayed on a PC to make it look important.

I was facinated with the manufacturing process but I wouldn't want to spend more than a few hours in the place. It is hard to imagine those employees to spending the majority of their time in such an ugly factory "being extremely proud of their work". But it just means that the security of such jobs is far better for them than their alternatives. So if you have a better job, be grateful!

It's just that for some reason the editors decided to link to www6. Just try other numbers, for example, I read it on www4. Links:

www4

www5

It's just that for some reason the editors decided to link to www6. Just try other numbers, for example, I read it on www4. Links:

www4

www5

= 9J =

Now, if you were to plug in a USB 2.0 hub into your USB 2.0 port, then dangle a USB 1.1 device off of it, it will, without a doubt, slow that USB 2.0 bus down to 1.1 speeds.

Period.

The above is totally incorrect. USB 2.0 hubs are considerably more intelligent than USB 1.0 hubs, and can insert the slower USB 1.0 signals into the USB 2.0 data.

For more on this, see the Tom's Hardware review of USB 2.0 hubs.

Here.

Generally it's implied when an external hard drive posts the "Hi-Speed" USB logo that the hard drive will perform to something over 11 mbps. Granted, with a mouse it's not too critical, but for hard drives and high resolution cameras it can be a pretty large issue.

But is that the fault of the manufacturer, or the standard setter? This logo is the generic USB 2.0 logo. They've chosen to use that logo, despite the fact that high-speed is only a part of the standard.

A good review of USB 2.0 can be seen here , btw.

Check this out.

It shows you how to build a pc for niggers.

If you look at media benchmarks, encoding requires a lot of processing power. So, while ripping your DVD may not take any more time on your P3-1GHz versus your P4-2.4GHz, converting it to DivX MPEG-4 for your media jukebox will take significantly longer on the P3 than the P4. In fact, decoding H.264 video and WMP9 High Definition supposedly requires 3GHz (or the equivalent in AMD doublespeak) processors. Add to that the fact that you may want to do more than one thing at once (i.e. encode video in the background and play back another), and you will quickly run into a hard wall. Check out this link for a very nice roundup of how older processors fare against newer processors. A simple DV-to-MPEG2 conversion takes approximately twice as long on a P3-1GHz than it does on a P4-2.4GHz. That's a lot of time when you have a couple of hours of video to encode. Audio and image manipulation applications, video editing and the like will also benefit in similar ways.

Games, it goes without saying, scale in a similar way and a similar doubling of performance.

The caveat: for many business applications, you will hardly notice a difference. A faster I/O subsystem and more RAM, as you mention, will pay much larger dividends for these users than any processor upgrade will. In fact, this post is being written up on my trusty P2-400MHz all-SCSI box and it's still going strong, though it's getting a bit long in the tooth.

If you look at media benchmarks, encoding requires a lot of processing power. So, while ripping your DVD may not take any more time on your P3-1GHz versus your P4-2.4GHz, converting it to DivX MPEG-4 for your media jukebox will take significantly longer on the P3 than the P4. In fact, decoding H.264 video and WMP9 High Definition supposedly requires 3GHz (or the equivalent in AMD doublespeak) processors. Add to that the fact that you may want to do more than one thing at once (i.e. encode video in the background and play back another), and you will quickly run into a hard wall. Check out this link for a very nice roundup of how older processors fare against newer processors. A simple DV-to-MPEG2 conversion takes approximately twice as long on a P3-1GHz than it does on a P4-2.4GHz. That's a lot of time when you have a couple of hours of video to encode. Audio and image manipulation applications, video editing and the like will also benefit in similar ways.

Games, it goes without saying, scale in a similar way and a similar doubling of performance.

The caveat: for many business applications, you will hardly notice a difference. A faster I/O subsystem and more RAM, as you mention, will pay much larger dividends for these users than any processor upgrade will. In fact, this post is being written up on my trusty P2-400MHz all-SCSI box and it's still going strong, though it's getting a bit long in the tooth.