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I've been planning to upgrade my computer at the end of this month, and have been keeping a pretty close eye on the 865/875 motherboard and chip performance reviews. This article didn't really enlighten me as much as the following Tom's Hardware reviews:

here

and

here

I've been planning to upgrade my computer at the end of this month, and have been keeping a pretty close eye on the 865/875 motherboard and chip performance reviews. This article didn't really enlighten me as much as the following Tom's Hardware reviews:

here

and

here

Read all about it here

___________________________________
The spiders are coming

I read the original Extremetech article which details them using the beta version of 3dmark2k3 to "stop" the demo and move the camera outside of the normal rendered path which revealed that nvidia played with their drivers to take a load off the card by not fully renedering everything seen "outside" of the normal view. I would no consider this a cheat, but an optimization. who cares what is not seen by the camera? I give nvidia a pat on the back for this.

On the other hand when you enable the 8x aniso filtering and the driver deliberately reduces image quality to gain a few more marks, I would consider this unfair cheating. If I ask for 8x aniso you better damn well give it to me.

Lastly I think it's stupid for anyone to rely on any single benchmarking program to gauge the performance of a card, that's why I always read THG articles when I want to know how hardware performs, Tom uses 3dmark as one of many applications that he benchmarks new hardware with. and frankly I don't really care about 3dmark scores, I always look at the scores for real games.. I wanna see how my gaming is going to be affected, not how sum st00pid benchmark runs.

Not a single mention of any of this has appeared on Tom's Hardware. I guess NVIDIA is optimized *cough payoffs* for good benchmark reviews there too.

The NEC 1760V (Tom's Hardware Guide here)is a 17" display with the same resolution and a 16 ms pixel response. It can be had over at newegg for 430 bucks. Granted, the contrast ratio isn't as good at 450:1, but it should be good for everyday use. Lastly, the dpi is a hell of a lot higher, and a good resolution for viewing it at, instead of 1280 x 1024 on a 29" display. The Samsung would be good for watching TV on, but a larger plasma display can probably be had for around the same price.

Please read these :

Tom's Review of GF FX5900

Anand's Review of the same card

As you can see from the games figures, the FX5900 is faster than ATI's...

And, in the end, is the performance with applications that matters, not some stupid benchmark.

I DJ on both vinyl and CD, but prefer spinning CDs. The problem is that all the "good tracks" can still only be purchased on vinyl.

After reading the Tom's Hardware guide on the TerraTec DMX 6 Fire I knew that would be the next sound card to purchase. It has a phono-in as two RCA jacks, and comes with decent* software to clean up scratchy vinyl (*- Yet doesn't clean up RIAA filter artifacts. See below.)

Ripping vinyl is not intuitive though. I made a few rips via Sound Forge and wondered why all my bass wasn't coming through. The card had on-board RIAA filtering, which caused other problems. The solution: Download the RIAA Direct-X plug-in and run the filter on the WAV after it has been captured.

The RIAA filter itself works most of the time, but about one in every 6 records I rip, the filter creates very loud, 1 to 2 sample, "popping" artifacts, that need to be manually removed. I don't know if it's the filter itself or the implementation...either way I just wish it wasn't it didn't have that effect.

Once that is done, normalize to a good level and you're done. The process takes about 20-45 minutes per record. It's a pain, but spinning the end result on CDJ-1000 makes it all worth it.
--

I just received a Tablet PC for a graduation present, and it's probably the most useful and neatest gift anyone's ever given to me.

The Viewsonic version is what was given to me by my grandparents (image here), and I'm extremely pleased with it so far. How can others not be enjoying such an innovative work of technology/art?

Every Tablet PC comes with a digital pen you can use to control the computer and input information in your own handwriting. Using the Windows Journal to handwrite notes or create drawings and save them as documents is simple.

You can easily convert your handwriting into text for use in Windows Journal or in other Windows XP-compatible applications, such as Word version 2002, Excel version 2002, and Outlook version 2002. Tablet PC has tools to help convert your handwritten text into typed text by identifying words that may have been recognized incorrectly and by giving you a list of alternative words.

I've found all this really exciting and interesting. I never thought I'd need one, and didn't buy one myself -- but now that I have one, I can't imagine living without it. All I wish now is that I had spent less time messing around with Linux (I used to submit code for X and various Mandrake utilities) so that I could have a real paying job and buy more Tablet PCs!

9800pro is far superior to the FX5900 ultra. Want an unbiased proof? Why not the "very nVidia" Danw demo? Check this: http://www.tomshardware.com/technews/20030522_1400 57.html

IIRC, the Radeon 7000 doesn't support shaders and the GeForce4MX only supports vertex shaders to a limited extent. Neither card supports pixel shaders. Games that take advantage of these (admittedly esoteric) features won't look as nice, or will run more slowly on these cards.

The GeForceFX and Radeon 9700 support the latest incarnations of DirectX 9, and therefore appeal to rich Windoze gamers.

BTW, If you want an example of why the Radeon 7000 and GeForce4MX are considered obsolete by some, check out this table of results from Tom's Hardware.

Personally, I still use a Rage128 chipset (I have an iBook). T&L would be nice for Data Explorer, though.

After reading the article, I did a quick search for 802.11g throughput tests and 802.11a/b tests. I came up with two links:

Tom's Hardware 802.11g throughput tests

ExtremeTech's 802.11a and 802.11b throughput tests

There's going to be overhead with any protocol, but I would expect that wireless would have a higher overhead than wired protocols. There's certainly a lot of things you have to take into consideration for wireless throughput - obstructions, distance, error correction.

Lest I remind you all of the importance of research.
DOOMIII IS an upcoming game. drivers, drivers, drivers eheh.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/gefo rce_fx_5900-10.html#doom_iii_special_preview

that's where this article gets interesting. I do believe reviewers were onto something with

"The DOOM III engine offers a selection of rendering modes to choose from. NVIDIA's FX and NV2x cards are explicitly supported with their own codepath and optimizations."

and

"At first, we see the ATi cards lead the pack. The FX 5900 Ultra only overtakes the competition at 1600 x 1200. According to NVIDIA, this may be a driver problem. The NVIDIA-optimized anisotropic filtering may have trouble with the anisotropic levels Doom III uses."

"When 4xFSAA is enabled, not a single card can hold a candle to the FX 5900 Ultra. The FX 5800 Ultra is roughly on a level with the ATI cards."

This particular mode 4xFSAA never did stack up against ATIs quality settings in the same mode ... but don't you think it kind of odd that the same thing is happening with this card?

I can't wait for www.omegacorner.com release of the 'omega detonator FX' and the MIRACULOUS graphical improvement it brings. ... OF COURSE, this depends upon nvidia releasing the source code as well... oh dear... that'll be a while.

the 1.9% in 3dmark03 game4 has some debatability but it still falls within the 3% error margin !!!

$0.02 worth

ATI released these drivers promising a free %40 improvement in performance. Well, you got it, if all you like to play is 3D Winbench 98.

Tom's Hardware uncovered the discrepancy

But certainly note that Intel's 740 drivers were also blatantly cheating. Everyone cheats. IF you get caught, deal with it, and don't get caught again. Hopefully, ATI got this concept right the 3rd time. I must say I'm shocked at the miniscule amount of easily detectable cheats ATI is using, they're almost playing the game straight-up!

Let's not jump on nVidia too harshly for this. Sure, this spectacle seems to have gained a lot more publicity than ATi's own cheating ( link link link ). At least when nVidia cheated in 3DMark, they publically denounced synthetic benchmarks.

Let's not jump on nVidia too harshly for this. Sure, this spectacle seems to have gained a lot more publicity than ATi's own cheating ( link link link ). At least when nVidia cheated in 3DMark, they publically denounced synthetic benchmarks.

read this way back from 8/25/02 on tomshardware then read about the current dealings.

It's amazing how quick the 'good guys' get sleazy. Maybe when NVIDIA bought out 3Dfx they got some bad apples....

-malakai

From what I understand, the FX5800 is a crap card. A review at tom's hardware, however, shows the FX5900 pretty much beats the crap out of anything ATI has right now. I'm sure this will change with the next iteration of hardware, but hey - it always does.

Either way, we should stop talking smack about nVidia when the best card on the market pretty much depends on when you're looking for it ;-)

I learned this the other day from an article at Tom's Hardware. In retrospect it makes logical sense but I don't think it would have occured to me. We're sorta trained to think faster == more performance.
Anyways, what the article discovers is that you'll get BEST performance when memory speed == FSB speed. In benchmarks they find that a Athlon 3000+ (333Mhz FSB) with DDR333 is faster than the 3000+ with DDR400 (or DDR444). So, mental note, when shopping for a system, don't bother paying extra for that faster RAM, just get whatever matches your FSB.

He only measured memory bandwidth...which does not exactly translate to real-world performance. He says there is no performance benefit from CAS2 as opposed to CAS2.5 or CAS3, but if you read Tom's Hardware you'd know that CAS does have a drastic impact on overall performance. The benefit is just not in badwidth, it is in the time the processor has to wait from when it calls on the memory, to when it recieves the answer. The longer it is waiting for an answer, the longer it is sitting around doing nothing. The longer it is waiting for a response from memory, the slower it will be able to render the scene, compress the file, or compile the kernel.

I hope that helps some people out there who were about to buy slow memory to save $10.

IIRC a lot of "next-gen" DVD players will be using these mainboards, and they've started putting things like hardware mpeg decoding/etc. into them. They're ideal for digital jukebox/emulator/dvd player/pvr combo systems.

I don't know that these little boxes are quite powerful enough at this point to be ready for PVR applications. This is especially true if you're talking about encoding (recording a show) and decoding (watching a show) at the same time. Tom's
had a nice little VIA ITX test a little while ago and the Via processors got drilled when trying to display MPEG-* and DivX movies even in medium resolutions. Obviously the hardware decoders and other improvements VIA has made should help out a good bit on the scores. Perhaps it will be possible now to run MythTV and view recorded shows on this box and offload recording duties to another box on the network. It will be really interesting to see what these new little boards can do. I'll pick one up once they're able encode and decode at the same time at high resolutions. I'll probably be waiting a while but that's ok. :)

Xbox's NV2X runs at 250 MHz. Highly-overclocked GF3Ti200s run at about 240MHz, but normally run at 175MHz. This is supposed to be more powerful (slightly) than a GF3, clock for clock. Hence, this should beat up on a GF4MX pretty nicely.

Other than that, you're right about the system. It should really have a DVD, however, which is cheaper than CDRW anyway. If it has a network card, you can burn more satisfactorily on your PC anyway. The Athlon XP 1700+ beats the P3 up pretty soundly, and can probably be overclocked to a 2000+ anyway. Mine can, with just a normal fan :D

The hack in question was with 3D Winbench. ATI released a "Turbo" driver that promised a %40 increase in performance.

Tom's take on the issue

It delivered. With 3D Winbench. All other benchmarks were the same or worse, unfortunately.

But please note that ATI was hardly the only culprit even inj that particular lineup. Witness the i740 having the ability to perform as well as a Voodoo 2 in Winbench 3D, yet perform so poorly even in DirectX 5 single-textured games like Incoming and Forsaken.

Fact is people have been and will continue to fudge benchmark results.

256

And while AMD was focusing purely on ramping clockspeed, they were beating Intel in that field. Who was first to 1 GHz? Here's a hint - not Intel. What's happened in the last year or two with AMD is actually twofold:

1. AMD realized that they couldn't continue to ramp up clockspeed indefinitely. They shifted from working on increasing pure speed to increasing efficiency per clock cycle. If you want an analogy - what good would a 300hp car be if you only had 100lb-ft of tourque. (I realize that it'd be damn near impossible to get a disparity that far fetched out of a car, but it's just an example)
2. It's also worth keeping in mind that AthlonXP development has lagged for the past year because AMD has, from what I understand, had the majority of their engineers assigned to work on Hammer - the home version of which is 6 months behind schedule at the moment. In short, AMD was planning on the Athlon64's being available much sooner than the reality will be. If I'm wrong with this information, please correct me, but as gung-ho as AMD has been about Hammer, the reports I read saying as such just made sense.

I think AMD's approach is proving to be successful so far. It's easier to get discouraged when a 3000+ doesn't really match up point for point with Intel's 3.06 GHz offering... until you realize that the true clock speed of the Intel is 36% (!!) higher than the AMD. Now, I'm taking a cursory glance through a few benchmarks here, comparing Intel's 2.2 GHz chip with their 3.06 GHz chip - it generally lags behind by about 20% in the benchmarks I'm looking at. When you take that into account, suddenly AMD's little 2.2 GHz "3200+" being able to perform within +- 10% most of the time seems far more impressive - and validates AMD's claims that efficiency is just as important as pure clock speed. Remember, Moore's law says computing power will double every 18 months - not raw computing "speed."

Thanks for the info. I didn't think any motherboards 'officially' supported it, but then I don't read Tom's Hardware as often as I should.

Tom's Hardware isn't so positive in their review. Quote from the conclusion:

"XP 2800+ would have been a more realistic label for the processor, which wouldn't have been a problem for anyone, if AMD still wants to go toe-to-toe with Intel's P4."

Here

In the extremetech review, the version of the drivers used were not specified.
What kind of review is that?
ohh, wait, is this some of those comercial /. posts?
ahh, now I understand why anandtech.com or tomshardware.com links were not in the original post. ;-)

Click and learn:
Tomshardware review
Anandtech Review
Nvnews review/news
Review links

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have much better hardware reviews than that ZD reviews specified. They also have Doom 3 bench marks, which put the new NVidia card significantly ahead of the ATI counterpart.

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have much better hardware reviews than that ZD reviews specified. They also have Doom 3 bench marks, which put the new NVidia card significantly ahead of the ATI counterpart.

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware are more reputable sites than the story poster mentioned. They also perform more comprehensive benchmarks, including Doom 3 and Unreal 2, at multiple resolutions, with and without anisotropic filtering. The other reviews just seem shallow by comparison.

Here a Tom's Hardware Guide to Music Across Your Home Network

DesignTechnica gives it a 9/10.

Answer me this, where did this whole notion that P4s are somehow faster than AMD chips come from?

You might want to check this out. Find me a single benchmark that AMD took the crown in. You will soon discover that the closest AMD got to winning a benchmark was 2nd place on the Sysmark Office 2000 test. The rest of the tests placed AMD in 4th, 5th, and sometimes even 6th place (behind the slowest P4 in the test, the 2.53GHz).

This can all be explained if you consider Intel isn't so interested in making a great processor as it is making great fabrication processes

So basically, even though Intel isn't interested in making a great processor, they still make one that is superior to what you are promoting?

The only fair comparison would be a dollar amount comparison (a $200 AMD processor vs a $200 Intel processor), and Intel still takes the crown with that. An XP 2800+ is about the same price as a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, and the benchmarks still show Intel ahead on majority of the tests. The only thing we have to thank AMD for is the fact that we don't pay $5,000 for a superior Pentium 4 now.

I recently checked into the VIA boards... I'm setting up a home media server and wouldn't mind it using less power and making less noise (not as much of an issue since it'll be relegated to a closet eventually). But the Via chips don't cut it - they may be fine at office tasks, but their MP3 encoding times are abysmal (as is anything else requiring floating point).

Q3 may play on it just fine (for you... looking at the benchmarks I sure wouldn't call it acceptable), but Q3 is 3.5 years old now. The Via processors are not going to be up to running Doom3 - as stated they're really not up to running Q3.

No doubt, Via is great for playback only HTPCs, office workstations, and a lot of other tasks... but if you need to do audio or video processing (as in creation or editing) or play games, forget it. I'm not saying you need the top of the line Athlon or P4 either, but there is a happy (and inexpensive) medium.

Tom's Hardware has an article on the Gainward version of the card. It is water cooled.

Tom's Hardware is currently recommending the geForce ti4200 for those looking for mid-range card w/ good performance.

The new chipset from intel (Canterwood) does this.

Have a look at this

I'd be more interested to know what your take on the article over at Tom's Hardware Guide Windows Gaming In Linux With WineX 2.0 is and how WineX 2.1 and 3.0 compared with the results Mr. Reese reported. I'd been seriously considering subscribing to WineX so I could play a few of the games I miss, but after reading this article I've decided to hold onto my $5 (USD, meaning something like $83,000 CDN) a month until I hear of someone having comparable Linux/Windows performance.

woops, heres the link.

Look here for CPU info Mine is a 1400 MHz Thunderbird, 133 MHz FSB so I'd expect it to be hot, but your 1600 MHz takes about teh same amount of power, so my heatsinking isn't as efficient. (I don't have the flower cooler, but the cheaper ducted quiet fan thingy - maybe it isn't a Zlaman after all, but I recall it came from QuietPC) OTOH, I do have a 20C to 25C margin of error remaining, so AMD expect this puppy to cook!

Quite frankly, any fan that has to cope with AMD's or Intel's high range ix86 CPUs is bound to be too loud. Even the huge 80 mm fan in this heatsink/fan combo make too much noise to keep the computer on at night.

I very much welcome the promotion of Linux-preinstalled hardware by Linux Distros. This is vital, since most users don't want to install an OS (even when it has gotten incredibly easy to install Linux). They actually prefer a simpler solution: open the box, power on, surf the net. In particular, there is a great niche for affordable, Linux Laptops with no MS tax. Your Mobile PC looks promising, but it received some criticism for the use of a VIA processor, a low-power processor that is therefore considerably slower than an Intel/AMD processor of comparable clock speed. This is a valid option for people interested in long battery life. Nonetheless, there is a market for people who need more computing power. Are you working on a deal to sell a similar solution but with a more powerfull CPU ? Any other news in the hardware related arena that you could share with us ?

there are like 10 voltages that go into the motherboard, I don't know for sure but I think on macs they're different.

taking the voltage down is easy, you can use a diode or something like that, stepping it up when needed is a different story (we're talkin an adapter half the size of a whole power supply)

computer power supplies have to be really spot on, otherwise everything blows up.. anyways, you really should compare apple power supplies to GOOD ones in the PC world, because to do otherwise is playing down the fact that cheap power supplies suck

What Apple is really up to is combining this this this and this so that when Photoshop 8 comes out, we will actually be able to use it.

Tom's Hardware has tested a bunch of processors from 100 MHz to 3 GHz (and it's not just game benchmarks). Almost makes other processor articles redundant.

First and foremost, I have to say that I'm very much opposed to small copycat hardware sites getting free hits and advertising bucks because their submission slips through the slashdot nets. Note that the submitter is affiliated with the site :-/ Second, the comparison of a p4 with an older cpu is not a new thing, and has in fact been done very poorly here via choice of benchmarks. If you want to see a real old-->new cpu comparison, check out the all encompassing 100MHz-3.06GHz roundup at tomshardware. They've tested 65 cpus in a RANGE of systems, not just one system with an inadequate video card and two widely separated CPUs. Just because this junior reviewer finally saved up enough allowance to upgrade to a 2.2GHz celeron from a p3 700 doesn't mean we should then finance that switch for him in ad revenue.

There was a more recent review on Tom's Hardware. Your link from last July. The new M series boards play DVD and MPEG4 smoothly. I think this M-100 box is using an older model.

The Mini-ITX boards were reviewed on Tom's Hardware not long ago here

This overview by Tom's Hardware of HLSLs says that Nvidia is pushing for Cg to be hardware independant and used by all video card vendors (see the "Which HLSL?" page). The article also explains exactly what HLSLs are and why ATI and Nvidia have created the respective languages Rendermonkey and Cg.