Slashdot Mirror

I was just looking into motherboards this afternoon, and most of the newest P4 motherboards only support 4 gig -- and the older ones only support 3 or 2 gig.

Go check out Tom's Hardware if you don't believe me.

So maybe the chip does support 64GB (I don't have a link for that)... the limit could be the chipset, the motherboard makers, or perhaps its just the max size of RAM available?

Check page 18 for Linux memory benchmarks using Stream. Unfortunately, memory performance still sucked. Arguably, this is made up for in FPU and MySQL performance. Depends what your purposes are, I guess.

Thats OK. I have been trying to read the article for about 2 hours now but the server has been offline. It must have been too much for them so their worries about S.A.S. were probably correct. It just came back online BTW.
Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Duel of the Titans: Opteron vs. Xeon

Thats OK. I have been trying to read the article for about 2 hours now but the server has been offline. It must have been too much for them so their worries about S.A.S. were probably correct. It just came back online BTW.
Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Duel of the Titans: Opteron vs. Xeon

The German version of the review seems to be quite a lot faster now than the English one: http://www.de.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030422/index. html

I just found it odd that they wouldn't compare a dual Opteron system with dual MP system?
Comparison here.

If you use the EPIA-M you might want to consider the ALSA sound drivers. Oh, that's the other problem. If you want to use 5.1 sound, you lose your line-in and mic inputs.

Because the nForce2 chipset also has a Dual Channel memory bus like the chipset mentioned in the article.

It's one of the reasons why the nForce2 chipset is the fastest chipset for Athlon based motherboards at the present time.

Dave

It depends on the job.

I was under the impression that LCDs sucked for fast motion video like an FPS (Quake). Is this not the case anymore?

When it came time for me to get an LCD, I refered to these two excellent Tom's Hardware articles with good variety and comparisons. Note many of the displays didn't show noticable ghosting with video, and a few of them they actually RECOMMEND for gaming. Indeed LCDs have come a long way.

I was under the impression that LCDs sucked for fast motion video like an FPS (Quake). Is this not the case anymore?

When it came time for me to get an LCD, I refered to these two excellent Tom's Hardware articles with good variety and comparisons. Note many of the displays didn't show noticable ghosting with video, and a few of them they actually RECOMMEND for gaming. Indeed LCDs have come a long way.

Benchmarks:
Via C3 vs Transmeta CPU
Via C3 vs Celeon 1300 Mhz and 667 Mhz

Given that the current market C3 has a slow FPU it holds up pretty well for the amount of power it uses, the cost, and the form factor it allows. It is nowhere near as slow as a PII 300 Mhz in any of the benchmarks I glanced at. Feel free to point out some ultra-FPU bound benchmark that I missed and you're using to backup your comment.

The C3 is in no way a powerhouse but given that it can be easily used in small form factors like mITX and it is cheap ($50-$120 for motherboard and CPU) it deserves a little respect. I don't even own one but I can't wait for the next C3 that is coming out with full speed FPU and other benefits.

a) You were lucky as hell;
b) Your 386's didn't do this.

But hey, if you want to burn your house down, then be my guest. Just make sure there aren't any innocent women or children around when you do.

shit, broken link, my bad. The Tom's Hardware Guide link should be here.

Tom's Hardware ran a Microsoft Buys Linux story, which I think was a repeat, and if not was an old and not very funny joke. Does that count?

Tom's Hardware ran a Microsoft Buys Linux story, which I think was a repeat, and if not was an old and not very funny joke. Does that count?

The only thing worse is www.tomshardware.com

• Huh. I had heard of DVI but was mislead into believing it was just for digital video from cameras and stuff, and not for general purpose graphics.

The article attributes poor DVD playback to the lack of hardware decoding, but adds that the vendor promised:

The new "M series" would be coming out soon that did include the decoder and took care of the poor playback.

"M Series" refers to the naming convention of the motherboards. The tested model is a VIA EPIA. The "M Series" are the lastest EPIA motherboards, which add several improvements, including DDR RAM and hardware MPEG-2 decoding.

I've been looking at an EPIA M6000, which, with it's low-power VIA Eden processor, requires no CPU cooling fan. I figured it would be an idea mobo to build a fanless home PC around.

It turns out that the hardware MPEG-2 decoder in the onboard graphics adapter does allow it to play DVDs smoothly at 30 fps. It also makes an excellent platform for an MP3 jukebox. However VIA has not provided Linux drivers for the MPEG-2 decoder.

With a little more driver support from VIA, the EPIA-M series of motherboards could have a lot of virtues -- especially in silent and low-power computing applications.

Tom's Hardware has an informative review of three VIA EPIA mobos -- including one of the "M Series" models.

These forums are an excellent starting point to find out more:

VIA Arena Linux Area
LinITX.com Forum

The 933 they are listing isnt anywhere up to the task of DVD playback.
They should of gone with the 933mhz M9000 or the 1Ghz M10000.

Not only do they use faster PC2100 ram, they also have USB2.0.

They really should of either A. Waited a month or two before releasing this or B. Used something other then the Mini-ITX formfactor.

Tom's has an article comparing these diffrent boards right here.

Yes, this article minus the "We're releasing it now" was posted on /. a while ago.

After the chip containing this protection is released and these guys manage to get 'round it.

Toms Hardware also has posted a review of this Serial ATA drive.

Summary: "Extremely High Performance, Excessively Short Warranty Period"

Nick...

They either give you faster CPUs or cooler CPUs.

They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Look at the chart here: Heat Down! Intel, AMD And VIA In Detail
A P4-2.53GHz generates less heat than a 1.7GHz Celeron.

Cooling it is NOT a waste of power and it will NOT shorten the life of your cpu.

The cooler you run your cpu, the longer it will last. Yes, between -1 and -30 (celcius)you WILL be able to overclock more.

The reason you can overclock more is this: To get a higher clock speed out of your cpu, you need to increase the voltage its running at. The problem comes from the fact that when you raise the voltage, you substantially raise the temp your cpu is putting out, and if you dont dissipate this heat, you will get lockups and instability.

This way, if you have your cpu running at a crazy high voltage, you can get crazy high clockspeeds out of it.

Here is an example of a cpu that was clocked at around 2.2 ghz and got to over 3 ghz with a vapochill system.

You will never see that with watercooling (room temp) or aircooling.

So obviously there is reason to cool the cpu down past 0 degrees C.

Now it just comes to the question, do you want to spend that much money on cpu cooling.

For that price you could buy several new cpu's. On the other hand, you can use the vapochill system on any new cpu you buy, so i guess its up to you to decide :D

and here is the tomshardware review http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/20030224/index. html

I play my q 10 oggs over a coax digital transport to my amp and have a pretty rocking integrated sound system.

Tom's Hardware Review I own one and the problem I have with it is its ASIO access (for low latency with midi devices) isn't very fast, which makes it worthless as a synth.

From the interview with Creative's worldwide marketing manager..

Q: The digital outputs are disabled during DVD Audio playback, are there any plans to add more Digital Right Management and copy limitations to the Audigy 2 or any future product?

A: At Creative we don't look at it as adding "limitations" to our technology. We wanted to add DVD-Audio, which we feel (and I am sure all your readers will agree) adds a massive benefit to our product line. However, DVD-Audio incorporates certain copy-protection features that MUST be in place before support of the format is allowed. This is not unique to our card. Even standard DVD-Audio players are not allowed any form of "bit-for-bit" digital output while playing DVD-Audio. Some solutions use proprietary digital connections to deliver the digital content to their amp, etc., which means that you can't plug the digital output into a digital recording device.

Therefore as an "Enabler," we evaluate the benefit of a format against the limitations to the user. For instance, we also support WMA. This has requirements to support their DRM implementation, which we do. Remember that all these technologies do NOT stop you from making personal copies of unprotected media. They simply protect that content using the protection methods of the format.

In short, will we ever add generic "Copy-Protection" technologies to our products that stop users doing what they want with their music/ audio? No.

Will we ever add more formats that may incorporate stringent copy-protection technologies to protect itself? Most definitely, if the format is desirable to our users.

Finally, although there may be very stringent copy-protection formats, it is normally in the field of protecting "exact" digital copies. There is normally flexibility where analog/ low quality copies wish to be made. For instance, the DVD-Audio format does give some flexibility in the areas of 16-bit/ 44.1kHz Digital outputs, or for making analog copies. It was not possible to enable this from day one, but we will work to expose this and provide as much flexibility to our users as we move forward.

more coverage, from Tom's Hardware Guide (and here), to some site i've never even heard of...

more coverage, from Tom's Hardware Guide (and here), to some site i've never even heard of...

A new chipset... supports a 400MHz front-side bus ... which appears to clear up questions about whether AMD would include that feature in the forthcoming Athlon XP 3200+ processor.

Also, every time AMD adds more cache or increases the FSB speed, the processor gets a lower clock rate to product number ratio. The 2700+ with 256Kb of L2 Cache is clocked the same as the 3000+ with 512Kb. So, even if they shipped 3200+'s with a 400 MHz FSB, it would probably be clocked about the same as a 3000+ (at like 2166 MHz). All in all this isn't a bad thing, but you wouldn't be getting an extra 200+'s AND the increase in speed from the faster FSB, the FSB performance bump is figured in to the model number.

I have a Mitsubishi DP 900U as well. I liked it, and wanted a 21" monitor (it's actually a 22", but has the same viewable as a normal 21, it just looks better), so I bought the Mitsubishi DP 2060U. It also has dual inputs with a button on the front, but this one has two VGA inputs. I'm not sure how the USB hub switching works though. I haven't used it to switch USB peripherals. Tom's Hardware mentioned it in a monitor review. BTW, the prices from Pricegrabber are for the wrong monitor. The 2060U is closer to $750. They may have moved up to the 2070 by now, too.

>The 1GHz C3 is actualy slower than a 667MHz Celeron.

I call extreme bullshit. Mod the parent down.

I have had a 666 Mhz C3 that plays DVD video and lets me do web surfing at the same time.

Scaling Tom's numbers I would have a slower than 444 Mhz celeron. That's barely enough to play DVDs, never mind do that and surf the web.

So, tell me Tom, how is it to bias your benchmarks so purposely? Did your "I want to have PC Chips lovechild" article end your quality reporting? Or did it all end when you became so pathetic at identifying a processors strengths and weaknesses that you didn't even bother to check the history of the Cyrix line? The processor runs word fast as fuck. It isn't for playing quake. That's why it's so cheap it's almost free.

Tom, you make a mockery of the entire review industry. Please, close up shop, or at least start using those PC Chips parts you love so much for everything. How's them plastic-blobs-for-cache doing, anyways?

BTW, Tom, since you obviously have no problems whatsoever with ECS slapping your seal of approval on your box, do you have any problems with me pirating your entire site? Because that's what PC Chips does with the only code on their boards, eh? Yup, that's right, I have a PC Chips board and the only reason there's no updates is because they're pirates.

Neither ECS nor Chaintech is known as a top motherboard company. This is certainly not because of their inability to make good products, but because they lack consistency in their product lines and usually concentrate on the OEM market as well.

No, Tom, it's because ECS's supplier company (PC Chips) pirates their software, and their defrauds customers. A 10 second search of usenet and google would have turned this up.

God, I hate Tom's Hardware. Sucks so badly. Worse reporting daily. Blech.

Huh? The Barton 3000+ (at 2.5ghz) is running pretty close to the speed of a P4 2.8ghz, even if it isn't running very close to the 3.0ghz. Athlon's still have an edge as far as performance per mhz.

The power consumption of AMD's mobile processor is still much much higher than Intel's. Tom's Hardware says here that the power-saving features of the Pentium M are supposed to ensure that Pentium-M has an "average power consumption" of less than 1 W, while still delivering satisfying performance. PCWorld corroborates that here stating that the 1.3-GHz, 1.4GHz, 1.5-GHz, and 1.6-GHz Pentium M chips draw an average of less than 1 watt of power.

Compare that to the advertized draw of AMD's low-voltage chips including the 1800+, 1700+, 1600+, 1500+, and 1400+ models which dissipate 25 watts when operating at maximum power. If that's the maximum draw, the average is not likely to be less than 10..

The caveat is that the other laptop conponents, most notably the backlit display, consume the lion's share of the battery life anyway. Lord knows I support the underdog (I even bought a Cyrix instead of an original Pentium), but this Centrino chip is good.. damn good.

Heh, it surprised me to see the claim that the C|Net review is the first out of the gate: That was posted on 2003/03/11, while Toms Hardware Guide have had this review out since 2003/02/05 !

Admittedly it is a pre-launch review, but I don't see that anything signifigant has changed since - it was a final chip after all.

Later!
-Trav

Heh, it surprised me to see the claim that the C|Net review is the first out of the gate: That was posted on 2003/03/11, while Toms Hardware Guide have had this review out since 2003/02/05 !

Admittedly it is a pre-launch review, but I don't see that anything signifigant has changed since - it was a final chip after all.

Later!
-Trav

an astounding 77 million transistors

Well it might have been astounding, except that ATI stuffed 107 million into the mighty Radeon 9500 chip, and NVidia crammed 125 million into the phenomenal GeForceFX!

an astounding 77 million transistors

Well it might have been astounding, except that ATI stuffed 107 million into the mighty Radeon 9500 chip, and NVidia crammed 125 million into the phenomenal GeForceFX!

The safest thing would be to somehow add one of these to ensure that you don't go away for a weekend and find your system has pulled an Athlon ;)

Now AMD's chips are better than Intel's.

Thats a pretty bold statement, and its just not supported by any facts. Have you even looked at the benchmark results? AMD's latest and greatest beat the 3 GHZ P4 in 1 test out of 23. Not very impressive. Especially considering the AMD chip costs about $20 more than the Intel chip.

How many do you want??

By the way check out this article (IDE-RAID With Notebook Drives: Quick And Quiet).

earlier this week=year, of course.
and that's not 80.. that's 29

I wish hardware sites would talk about more interesting things: serial ATA, 10Gbps ethernet (yes you heard me right... that's what's next...), giant LCD screens (or plasma), 7.1 channel sound, not a graphics card that gives me a 3% edge on directX 9.0 games of which there AREN'T ANY. Okay, rant over :)

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

seriously though - was it like last week 9700PRO became available? what's up with this break-neck card-releasing? I didn't think it was christmas yet...

I dislike benchmarks like these. It encourages video card manufacturers to design video cards that do well in benchmarks, rather than do well in actual applications.

There are tons of people who do comparisons with applications rather than benchmarking utility. Whether you're a fan Tom's Hardware (or not, I know he's had somewhat of a sorted past), there a lot of sites where people like him do testing with end user applications. Do research, find one of those sites you trust, and go with numbers based on software you use, rather than some number a benchmarking application you'll never actually run gives you.

Here are some other good games I found, Plus an interview with the creator of MOO3. Pretty interesting reading. Link Here