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The Fastest Video Card You Can Buy
Mack writes "OCAddiction takes a look at the fastest video currently on the market. Here's what they say."With the release of Doom III pending, both ATI and nVidia are scrambling to show their very best product on game day, this we can count on. But as it stands now, the OCSystem Enhanced Radeon 9700 Pro Level III SE is simply the best card your money can buy today.""
What is really amazing to me right now is that games are driving this huge industry of video card development. Both ATI and nVidia are scrambling to deliver faster frame rates pushing more and more triangles that appears to be developed for games. Now, I like a good game as much as the next guy, but I wonder if there is anyone out there that is using all of this triangle processing power for purposes other than games? Simulation of course was the original driving force for computer graphics with companies like Evans and Sutherland and more GPU power is great for moving around molecules and proteins as computers can model progressively larger structures, but I am wondering what novel uses out there are being implemented?
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I did research under a professor who specializes in bioinfomatics. One particular goal of his research group is in visualization. Specifically, how the f*** do you graphically represent gigabytes of genetic data in a meaningful way? And how do you do it so that you can get useful information from it, like repeated patterns and whatnot?
The answer to the above is to do it in 3-D. One of the (mad-skilled, overachieving, indian) grad students wrote a program which renders DNA base sequences into a 2D plane, and then looks for important sequences (such as functional groups). When it finds one, it raises it out of the plane. All of this could be shown on our ImmersaDesk, but not everyone has an SGI Onyx. For that project, having a lot of processing power on individual PCs was a life-saver.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
You may wish to check google for more information about OCsystems out, beofre even thinking about buying *anything* there. Look up some stories about OCZ Store and Geil, too. There are a *lot* of fishy things about these three companies (look at their street addresses and you'll get the picture).
Oh, and did i mention their reseller rating? Go people and check them out - and read fun (read that: horrifying) stories about their "quality" products and their great great customer service.
Just FYI.
That's why I'm still playing NetHack...well that and because it's still the best game out there.
Seriously though, can these super cards be used for anything other than the generation of display output? As they are doing so much 3D processing so much faster than any CPU can, I'd like to see the ability to use these GPU's as coprocessors for rendering images back to software/files rather than just to display output. Something like using it as a hardware accelerator for POV-Ray or Renderman. Does anybody have any insight into potential non-traditional uses of these super cards?
They had to pay the guy who named the thing by the word.
KFG
...the GeForce FX, which is the fastest card you CAN'T buy!
as long as I live, no freaking way. I went through
a living hell with them over some ram. They sell
this ram called "Expeditious Gamer". It looks like
something fabulous. I read a few very positive
reviews on hardware sites. Whether they are paying
a fortune for false positive reviews, or cherry
picking samples for reviewers, I have no idea. All
I know is memtest for the first stick of pc2700 I
got showed more errors than the early 90's era
dumpster printer ram that the assholes at computer
shows sold. And that was at pc2100 speed because
the ram refused to run at pc2700. I figured it
might be a fluke and tried a second stick and
it actually tested WORSE than the first stick.
It was more than a little interesting that the
ram comes with copper heat spreaders installed
with stickers over the links that say your
warantee will be voided if you remove those
stickers. It's obviously so you won't remove
the heat spreaders so you can see what kind of
ram it actually is. After a ton of phonecalls that
were never answered, and emails that were never
replied too, I ended up sending them a bunch of
faxes. I got my RMA numbers, but was still charged
a restocking fee. So in the end, I was out 20
bucks and had absolutely nothing to show for it.
If you don't believe me, try reading the reviews
for this "company" here:
OCSystem's 3.77 rating out of 10
These guys are consumate rip-off artists. Do not
trust them. Also, seriously doubt the quality and
ethics of ANY company that gives ANY product of
theirs a positive review. There is a lot of
money changing hands for positive reviews.
I hope this helps someone. Read some of those
reviews. Read how they have seriously fucked a
lot of people out of a lot of money. After you
get screwed, order from a REAL company like
newegg.com or mwave.com that actually cares about
their customers. In closing, let me state
emphatically that you are OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND
if you order anything from these bastards.
Thank you.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
I find it interesting that mack@ocaddiction.com
is the person that submitted this story. Makes you
wonder what ocaddiction gets out of it. I find it
interesting that ocaddiction appears to have a lot
of very positive gushing reviews of ocsystem
products, including claiming they are using
the "Expeditious Gamer" line of ram in some of
their test systems. I "personally" would take about
anything that ocaddiction has to say about hardware
with a grain of salt at this point. YMMV
The most important thing any republican needs to know.