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Tom's Hardware Investigates Michael's Computers

cojsl writes "Tom's Hardware has an extensive article raising questions about Michael's Computers and their claims of a laptop with a "3DMark03 Average Score - 15,417"." It gets funnier as you go along.

4 of 609 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My benchmark by Tweaker_Phreaker · · Score: 5, Informative

    You seem to be confusing 3DMark03 with 3DMark01. The system you described would be lucky to get '5000' in 3DMark03.

  2. 3DMark2001 and 2003 by Pidder · · Score: 5, Informative

    15,000 is a very reasonable score for a decent system in the 2001 version where the world record is a few points over 30,000. It's very likely that the marketing guy just made a simple mistake.

    3dMark2003 is a whole different ball game however, and a score of 15,000 is clearly impossible. The world record is just over 10,000 points (trivia: made by finnish overclocker 'Macci' with a p4 3.2 EE clocked to 4.5 ghz and a Radeon 9800XT clocked extremely high).

    Extreme overclocking has gone a long way. Macci cools both his cpu and gpu with a cascade system which is two phase change coolers (like the Vapochill) connected together in some cool way I don't have the technical know-how to describe. It cools both his cpu and gpu to -100C.

  3. I Have One by O_D_Evans · · Score: 5, Informative

    The notebooks featured on Michael's site are actually Clevo (http://www.clevo.com.tw/) notebooks. They are sold in the US under the brand name Sager, available from (among others) pctorque.com. I have the 17" model (tricked out w/ P4 3.2, 1gig RAM, ATI 9600 128MB, DVD burner etc etc) and it *is* bloody quick, but not that quick (about 20 sec to boot XP to usable state). I got it to run 3D CAD/CAM, which it does, like a dream. The only downside of this is it also runs Q3A amazingly well too, so I never actually get any work done ;).

  4. Re:That's what I call a fan! by black_widow · · Score: 5, Informative

    194 decibels, A-weighted, is equivalent to the saturn 5 rocket or 50lbs of TNT detonated 10 feet away.

    194 decibels (RMS) sound-pressure-level approaches the atmospheric pressure level.

    With an RMS value of 194 decibels, the peak SPL would modulate the atmospheric value entirely. That would make it the loudest possible...

    194 Maximum possible (from atmospheric 14.7psi down to 0psi)
    177 Record for car audio!
    170 Shotgun blast up close
    160 Perforation of eardrum
    140 Jet Aircraft Taking Off
    120 Human Threshold of Pain - 1 watt/sq. meter
    120 Loud Rock Concert
    110 Moderate rock concert, dance club
    100 Motorcycle
    -- extended listening above 85-90dB leads to hearing loss --
    90 Lawnmower, loud home stereo
    85 Jackhammer at 15 meters (50 feet)
    80 Moderate home stereo, ringing telephone
    75 Average City Street
    70 Freeway traffic, TV audio
    60 Normal Conversation
    50 Large office background noise
    40 Quiet office or residential area
    30 Whisper at 3 meters (10 feet), Very soft music
    20 "Silent" TV Studio, Whisper at 1 meter, Quiet living room
    10 Soft rustling of leaves
    0 Human threshold of hearing (youths)
    (table from http://www.geocities.com/rf-man/db.html )