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Graphics State of the Union
Tom's Hardware has put out a nice recap of where computer graphics have been and where they are headed in the near future. While there are some definite shiny toys being displayed in new product releases and on the test beds, the overall problem of power consumption continues to rear its ugly head demanding attention. From the article: "while all of these things are interesting, exciting and new, the problem remains the same. Getting smaller and faster only makes sense if the design also is less demanding on the wall socket and cooling system. We all want different things when it comes to advancements, but first and foremost we need better power management. The bottom line is simple: graphics makers must take a step back from feature brainstorming until the power issue is resolved."
Ok let me post something relevant. Does the slashdot community think that the power problem is best solves through:
A) A new interface (like PCI Express version 2 now with MORE POWER(tm))
B)Onboard power management and the ability to take power straight from the power supply and bypass the motherboard.
I do agree that power is becoming quite an annoyance these days with the video cards. I would like to say that I believe that to move forward we need to take a step back. I am finding more and more games that are simply pleasing to the eye but lack the originality, functionality, and creativeness of older games. These video card makers focus too much on realism and tend to encourage game makers to focus on the like. Let's make cards that are functional, less power hungry, well-rounded (physics), and cooler.
Music, my drug; dance, my ecstasy.
C) Bigger PSU.
D) With ads on it, with revenue paying your Power Company Bill.
The bottom line is simple: graphics makers must take a step back from feature brainstorming until the power issue is resolved.
Today this is irrelevant. If consumers continue to purchase ever more power hungry graphics cards, what is to stop the companies from making them? When the market actually changes and people start considering the power requirements of their cards, then I'll believe this statement about the bottom line. Because right now the only thing I hear from people building or buying new computers about the power requirements is "make sure you get a PFC PSU and get lots of watts", not "make sure you get a low-power GPU". For one thing, some people actually enjoy saying they have a 600+ watt PSU. I can imagine that with current power costs today this trend will continue. Do the math, it's not actually costing a person much more per month to go from 600 to a 1000 watt PSU, especially since most people don't use their GPU to full power most of the time.
Power requirements take a back seat to overall performance, and will continue to do so until electricity costs are driven up further. It's simple economics. People are willing to pay for the power-hungry cards. And until they're not, power consumption will continue to be less important to the producers than performance. This is analogous to today's vehicles, still being built and shipped with huge fuel sucking engines. For many people, and I'd wager to say enough to sustain the market for years to come, the cost of energy (either liquid or electrical) is still low enough that they aren't going to give up their cherished powers, be they piston driven or transistor.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Thanks to the 30-40 seperate power-chomping ads on each page of Tom's Hardware stories, the lights in my office dim whenever I accidentally hover my cursor over the word "graphics," "Microsoft," or "processor." Thanks, Tom!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This makes all those "Green PC" claims a joke. I remember my first PC. It wasn't a "Green PC", but it had a 100W power supply, no heatsinks etc. My latest PC is a "Green PC" but has a 400W power supply. I'm not sure how a 400W-based system is greener than a 100W based system, but hey it says Green so it has got to be good right?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
the article mentions something about external graphics.
This seems like a good idea especially for notebooks.
They can be good to use for web use on your lap or at a coffee shop but when you put in on your docking station and hook it up to a 21 inch monitor you also plug in 4 video cards and have an awesome gaming machine from a laptop.
If you used less power then you would not need any fancy routing schemes. It does not matter how the power gets to the chips it still ends up being consumed and turned into heat.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
No kidding. I just had to get a new PSU for my higher end system, because the PSU that came with the case (supposedly 300w but apparently a cheap one) couldn't keep up. This isn't cutting edge hardware either...it's an Athlon XP 3200+, Radeon X850XT video card, SB Audigy 2 ZS. Basically all of the hardware is pretty much the cutting edge of the last generation, pre-Athlon64, pre-PCI Express. The system started experiencing problems when I swapped the old Duron 750 for the Athlon XP (I was still using a Radeon 9200 then). I had to swap the video card with a Radeon 8500 to get it to run somewhat stable again. At the time, I incorrectly attributed it to the video card, thinking it may have been bad (it was given to me when my roommate upgraded his system when he started having problems). It turns out that the 9200 was AGP 8x while the 8500 was AGP 4x and that was just enough to make a difference. The whole system died when I put the X850XT in, it wouldn't boot most of the time, spontaneous reboots constantly (Windows or Linux), Windows install would crash at the same point, etc. I swapped out the power supply with a 410W, all problems instantly vanished, and the system has been running fine since. I guess having to have a 410W isn't really that bad compared to some of the new stuff where they're starting to have 1000W PSU's though. I'm probably not going to upgrade any further from Athlon XP 3200+/Radeon X850XT for some time. I mainly just got that stuff to play WOW so I can turn the settings all the way up, I'm not really that much of a PC gamer otherwise.
I was thinking about this yesterday... I had downloaded a rom of Crono Trigger for the SNES, and I'm having a blast. When all the new games like Battlefield 2, Titan Quest, UT2004, and FEAR get old, I like to go back to the old games. So someone might say... why go back to the old games? They're old and pixellated. But they're FUN! The old classics like Crono Trigger, Secret of Mana, original Mario Bros., Zelda Link to the Past, Super Metroid... they don't make em like that anymore. And there's a generation of "gamers" coming up that have missed out on a lot because of that.
Nowadays it's all about the graphics, and the gameplay tends to (but not always) suffer. Even the best of the best new games have these problems. FEAR? A pathetic 8-9 hours of gameplay, though it was pretty fun while it lasted. Oblivion? Tons of hours of gameplay, but completely SHALLOW in terms of the overall experience. Even Morrowind had this game beat IMO. Battlefield 2? Awesome graphics, and fun gameplay... oh, but don't try running more than a few bots on your machine unless you want to run at 2fps, and forget about coop play, and don't expect single player with more than 16 player maps (mods notwithstanding).
It seems to me that the more games focus on graphics, the more they lose in other areas. They either have cut features, performance issues, lack of content, or something... this isn't always the case (think Half Life 2), but unfortunately we're paying for the 'shiny factor' more often and losing out on the content that made the old games fun. Maybe I'm getting too old, or maybe I'm just jaded, but I still miss the old style games.
I say we go back to 8bit systems. I mean with all them fancy ol' 32bit whipersnapers out there blasting their 16bit quality sounds. darn teenagers and their technology...
When the new equipment requires more and more power, I am forced to add more and more fans to my system.
I wouldn't care a bit about power consumption if it wasn't so closely connected to noise levels.
Uh, huh. Are you the same slashdotter that asks every time we have a graphics card story, "what do we need that for?"
Or C) Developing graphic cards that use less power
Perhaps it's just me, but I thought that folks started taking note if the power issue when faced with the need to plug their graphics adapters directly into their power supplies...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
I stopped reading the article after it started to suggest 1100 watt power supplies are necessary for this nonsense.
I'm sorry. No video game is worth that much power.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I also agree that the power required for video cards today are quite insane. To run a 7900GT alone requires a minimum of 21A on the 12v rail, and in SLI you'll need at least 28A on the 12v rail minimum (this is just to run the video card without having it auto clock down for lack of power). I currently run one 7900GT and had bought a monster PSU (pcpowercooling) to support the future power needs of these gfx cards. Just to back up the craziness of the matter, whenever I had turned my computer on it would overload my UPS backup unit and trip the circuit breaker in the outlet. So now I have to wire mine on the 1400 model because my old one couldn't handel the wattage. =/. I guess it's a good thing I don't pay the electric bill?
Just out of curiousity, lets look at the current CPU offerings.
:)
Intel came out with a truly Power-Hungry CPU.
AMD came out with a cooler and better CPU.
Intel came out with an even cooler CPU that out performed the AMD one. (Core Duo/Core 2 Duo)
The ball is now in AMDs court.
In other words, the presure on Intel was that they had to compete in that area in order to be competitive.
Perhaps AMD, coming from their battle with Intel can help focus the ATI division on less power consumption/heat generation, and perhaps that is that AMD can help bring to the table.
If they even BEGIN to make inroads in this, while maintaining a competitive stance against Nvidia, it will force Nvidia to compete on this point also, which should move GPUs in a cooler direction
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
With CPU manufacturers chasing higher performance per watt and less heat production, you would think GPU makers won't be far behind, but consider the consumers. Your average XJoexGamerX doesn't care how high his mom's electric bill goes, he needs his 400 fps in goddamnit.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
I want graphics cards to support things like nurbs more in the future. Instead of having to use polygons, and interpolating polygons from a spline before rendering, it would be nice to draw actual curves. Unfortunantly technology and algorithms havent made this feasable yet (AFAIK)
I wish it wasn't just workstation gpu's that got the good 2d and line drawing support (I guess it's not economic for consumer cards) I'm really interested in NPR (nonphotorealistic rendering) but all graphics cards are concerned with is producing more realistic scenes, not artistic.
For people who don't pay for their electricity directly (like most college students) this won't be as big a factor, but for the rest of us...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They still make SNES games. They call them GBA games, and the carts are smaller, but they're basically identical. I've been having a lot of fun with Advance Guardian Heroes this week - those Treasure guys rock!
And as for original Mario Bros. you might have heard of New Super Mario Bros?
I hate it when people complain about solved problems.
Imagine that electric power is nearly free, and 50kW PSUs are common. The problem is, these 50 kilowatts all turn into heat nearly instantly. And you have to do something to drive away all this heat from your house, or be boiled. Can you fancy a CS match seating near a furnace pipe that drives hot air away? %)
Currently a moderate cooling system that is capable of cooling a 600W gaming rig costs $150-200. With 50kW systems, it's going to be much more expensive, large, and cumbersome, ask people in the nearest datacenter.
So, low wattage per million triangles *can* be important for desktops, too.
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
I am no specialist in this area, but I believe much of the "green" part of green PCs is what is used to build the computer. There are a lot of metals in computer boards that aren't good for the environment. Green pcs replace these with other metals or with plastic etc.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
"Tom's Hardware has put out a nice recap of where computer graphics have been and where they are headed in the near future."
No. It's an article more-or-less solely devoted to discussing the issue of power consumption in new and upcoming graphics cards. It doesn't describe the state of the union or even have much to say about any shiny new toys beyond their likely impact on power consumption.
It's an interesting article, but not the article that goes with its title nor the Slashdot summary.
Not disputing anything in TFA, but there's another power-related annoyance that (IMHO) should be easier to address.
When rendering in double-buffered mode with vsync on, the graphics card driver needs to wait for the display's vertical retrace before it swaps (or blits) the back buffer to the front. Today, all Windows drivers that I know of accomplish this with a spinlock. This means that an animated app grabs ALL available CPU cycles, even if the CPU actually needed to redraw each frame is trivial, and thus runs much hotter than it ought to for the amount of work being done.
For a high-end game that stresses the system anyway, this isn't a big deal. For more modest games or non-game applets, it's embarrassing to have a single rotating triangle forcing the machine to run all-out, particularly on battery power.
Application-level 'fixes' for this problem are very unsatisfactory - mostly trying to guess how long you've got until the next flip, Sleep()ing a bit and hoping you get woken up in time. It's clumsy, imprecise and the wrong place to be solving this. Why can't the driver wait on the flip - the flip it controls, for crying out loud - in some more efficient manner? (Can the new MWAIT instruction in EMT64 help with situations like this?)
Developing power supplies that do not utilize such an inefficient transition from AC to DC.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Simply put, newer fancier faster bigger better prettier technology is sexy and sells both upgrades and new cards.
"Better power management" gets funny looks.
Funny look != profits
Step 2. is NEVER "generate funny looks"
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
It's called a gforce 5200 fx *. I have one in both my G5 tower and my secondary p.c. It's good enough to play Quake 3, and Need for Speed Porsche unleashed which are realistic enough for my taste, and the card has a tiny heat sink and no fan so I assume it's not drawing much power. If you want to play the latest games at 1800 x 1400 or whatever than yes you will need a giant heat producing card with a fan that sounds like a jet taking off. I'd comment though that I think recent games don't look THAT much better than the games I mentioned and game play and creativity seems to have stagnated entirely, YMMV.
* Or the equivalent ATI model
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Umm, no.
If someone is willing to drop 1300$ plus for a pair of ASUS GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB's, do you really think finding out they'll save 5$ a month per card by buying a lower power, lower performance card is going to make them switch? My magic 8-ball says 'Not bloody likely'. It's about performance above all else.
The lower power chipsets will start appearing in the non-gamer market first, probably in laptops and on motherboards that have integrated everything, and once the technologies have stabilized we'll start seeing them on standalone cards, but any power saved on the high end cards will be turned right back into computational speed instead of lowering overall card power requirements.
The throuble with the GBA (and DS) is that they really do make SNES games, the same old games you already played 10 or 15 years ago, often bit by bit, just with viewpoint shrinked a bit due to the smaller resolution. And those games that aren't remakes are often successors with little new stuff (Metroid features still pretty much the same weapons, Castlevania also doesn't really change a lot, NewSuperMarioBros also doesn't feature much new gameplay, etc.). The number of really new and good GBA games is actually quite small, AstroBoy Omega Factor was awesome, but beside that, not so much.
A typical VACUUM draws MUCH more power than PC, typically 1500 watts or more. Same for a toaster oven.
It's not an instantaneous process, as you point out. But operational costs are a *big* deal to a lot of people and companies.
And, out of curiousity, any idea of what the market share of these extremely high-powered cards are? I'm pretty sure it's relatively insignificant in terms of total power used.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
1. GPUs have higher transistor counts than modern CPUs.
2. The development cycle for GPUs is much shorter than CPUs
3. The shelf life of GPU designs is much shorter than CPU designs (the C2D is a direct descendant of the P5, (pentium 4 arch is a dead end evolutionarily).
Given the preceding, it is unlikely that a reduction of power consumption will be the focus of GPU companies in the future, it would be suicide in a market which demands performance above all else. nVidia has shown that there are significant gains to be made from G70>G71, but nothing to the order necessary, R580 (ATI) has proven to be a bloated SUV with respect to power consumption but performs quite well. Considering the difference in die size between R580 and G71 I think the mandate in this regard is profits, ATi's die is nearly twice the size of nVidia's and they are priced similarily (G71 actually pulls bigger money). Still, their power consumptions are not seperated by such a divide (a 60 watt differential would be generous). Honestly, to a great extent, this call for chip engineers to focus on poower consumption is equivalent to asking top fuel dragster engineers to focus on fuel consumption. It is not a priority, and modern graphic cards draw very little power when they aren't doing anything, which is most of the time. A situation will manifest itself if top end systems start to surpass 10 to 15A draws on the 120v line (1200-1800 watt peak), but that is a way off yet. Heat dissipation will become a problem long before we hit those kind of limits I would suspect.
My apologies, the C2D is a descendant of the P6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_Microarchi tecture
When I built my PC last year I didn't feel so good about having to do that for my 7800gt board. It is like having two PCs at once. If I have to start connecting it directly to the wall (or it's own PS) I'm calling it quits on power hungry upgrades.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Electricity costs are set to rise sharply in many parts of the world ... this is especially true if recent weather trends continue. For instance in the UK many power stations are coming up to retirement age and they are not being replaced fast enough. Also consider that natural gas peaking is perhaps only a decade or so away.
Why not just develop a component that wil ltransfer all the excess ehat back into electricity that charges a battery conencted to the pwoersupply so that the whole pc will use less electricity?
Who else interpreted this title to mean Bush's next speech to involve a U.S. map and red and green crayons?
So if the future holds for consistent increases in power consumption, how long until we a) have to build houses with 20A+ 120V circuits in our office/den/bedrooms or b) plug a dual powercord power supply into 2 separate outlets (thereby using 230V @ 15 A) or c) using a long extension cord and providing power to the PSU by two different outlets on two separate 15A 120V circuits?
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Innovative GBA games, just from my own experience:
Warioware
Warioware Twisted - motion sensor!
Drill Dozer
Kurukuru Kurunin
Zoocube
Mario Golf RPG (I think this was the first golf RPG, but it's not exactly my genre, I may be wrong)
Zelda 4 Swords
Boktai
Pinball of the Dead
Medal of Honour Infiltrator
Advance Wars
Fire Emblem (OK, closely related sequels of Japanese SNES games but these are the first English versions)
Chu Chu Rocket (DC port, but no one bought the dreamcast)
Sheep (PC port I think)
Polarium (DS port, sort of)
I this puts you in the pointless complaint category too.
Astro Boy was great, but it was a pretty standard beat 'em up, well executed but nothing new. The time-travel story is unusual. I don't get your complaint about sequels without new gameplay, either - if the original was good then more levels is better. You can't say Metroid Fusion isn't a good game.
For all the complaining that Tom's does about the escalation of video card power usage, you don't see them benchmarking peak power consumption on their video card comparisons. It's all framerates and synthetics.
Why would a PC builder take power usage into consideration if the major review sites don't?
You're right that there's a trade-off in resrouces that's involved with high quality graphics, but you're operating under a false premise when you think that an emphasis on graphics is in any way new.
.) and that those root similarities require a large expenditure to establish.
:)
Graphical output trumped text. VGA trumped CGA. Etc. Etc. The advance in graphical capabilites and the emphasis on graphics has always been with us. Why was Dragon Slayer wildly successful in 1984? Because it was the most extreme gameplay for graphics tradeoff ever.
What is new is that the vast majority of big publisher, popular games share root similarities (we're moving through a virtual world and . .
So the question is, why don't they build 'em like they used to? The answer is that they do - but most old style games are either small press, Internet published, or novel one offs, like New Super Mario Bros.
Could Nintendo sell a new version of Mario Bros every year if they wanted to? I bet they could get away with it. Could other developers start pushing out old school 2D games like it was 1989? If they want to sell them in stores to the home market, probably not. If they want to publish them on the Internet, yes.
Things change and we keep getting more power to play with, but there have always been trade-offs made in design and development. I don't think 3D or shaders or mocap or any particular technology is a tipping point that has ruined games forever.
Please replace "Dragon Slayer" with "Dragon's Lair", and 1984 with 1983.
Also, consider this an official request for a way to edit posts in the first minute after they're posted.
Heat is entirely an issue of process tech. The chip designers do not run the fab. They do not invent SOI, and they do not magic up new lithographic techniques. Should the chip designers sit around with with their collective thumb up their collective ass while the material scientists poke silicon around with a nanotube for 6 months?
Heat is the boundry of performance. The entire chip industry spends every day working out how to make things cooler per unit of performance so that they may increase total performance. BUT I GUESS THAT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.
It is true that games are more graphics-centered today, and there is a gameplay-for-graphics tradeoff, and that games are no longer indie-developments but rather multi-million dollar investments, but you are forgetting a very important point:
;-D
You are playing the classics from that era. When you think back, do you remember how many bad games came out of that time period? ET anyone? There were lots of bad games back then, just like there are today, but the human mind tends to remember positive experiences over negative ones. Just compare Lewis and Clark's memoirs to their journals... years after their experience they seemed to have "forgotten" all the bad things that happen on their journey. This is probably why you think only excellent games came out of that era (in other words, it's not because developers did not focus on graphics)
I think that this type of nostalgic and sentimental feeling is experienced by every generation of gamer. I can see myself in 20 years, saying "remember games were like Half Life 1 or Halo 1? Pure gameplay and no graphics! Now we have these virtual reality kits... developers focus on them too much. I just want gameplay!"
The truth is that it is much harder for a huge team of developers to create excellent gameplay than to create excellent graphics.
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
I'm a little wary everytime someone talks about how great video games were in the past, and how new games have it wrong because of "X", where "X" represents something like lack of creativity, too much complexity, or in this case, too much dependence on graphics.
Don't get me wrong, I loved most of those games as well. But we should realize that those of us who played them are under the aura of the "video game nostalgia", where those games can almost do no wrong. There have been times where I've tried to re-play older titles, and just realized that while they were great for their time, there ARE advances in current games which I do miss (whether it be better game mechanics, or graphics, or gameplay balance, etc.). For example, the original Mario Bros was great for its time, but there's no way I'd spend hours playing it anymore (although that's just me).
Yes, there are some classic games that I'll love to play now, no matter what. But it's not because they didn't do "X". It's because they were just good games. There are plenty of games today that I enjoy that do "X", that I'm sure we'll be talking about 10 years from now. And I'm sure there were plenty of folks 10 years ago, lamenting how those generation of games were not "getting it" by doing too much of "X", and bringing up nostalgia over even older games (Zork, etc.).
And finally, it goes without saying but sometimes it seems like it's not obvious enough to people: Game quality is subjective!. I happen to like Oblivion far more than Morrowind (which I never got close to finishing). It wasn't the graphics that I liked so much (if anything it was much too uncanny valley for me). I know a ton of people that happened to love the exact games you cited as being bad, so to each his own.
-- jchenx
1. boil poop
2. ???
3. Profit!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
What choice is there right now?
:/
I don't want 400fps at max settings, I just want something relatively new that can run 3 year old games decently without turning the room into a sauna. Unfortunately with the things I've heard about Matrox and S3 it doesn't look like I've got much of a choice
Amen to that. Not to mention that I don't want to run a space heater in the middle of summer! I would sacrifice speed for coolness and quiet, but if I didn't have to, that would be even better.
What constitutes "a lot of people and companies"? Care to back that up with facts?
The Japanese care and I'm sure Google cares but, as a percentage of the market, just how many care? Power consumption these days is about making things work at all.
There is another factor - noise. I'm looking to buy a new GPU soon, and top of my list is the 7600GS. The overriding factor in this choice is the availability of passively cooled cards (without warrantee-voiding aftermarket extra cost heatsinks.) It is the low power consumption which permits passive cooling. (My computer has only one fan, and I don't want to add a second for the GPU.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
The thing that really bothers me these days is game length, or the lack thereof. Sure, modern games look absolutely beautiful...but most of them are terribly short. Oblivion is an exception to this, with a good 40 - 100 hours of gameplay... But Most games these days clock in around 10 hours. Even RPG's, which used to be very long. Add to this the fact that games cost more now than ever before, and it just doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth anymore.
I've decided (a while back) that every new piece of equipment I buy should consume no more power than what it's replacing. (Granted, part of this is probably just me wanting lower electricity bills, but I'm also an efficiency geek.)
...).
... same thing), it should be pretty easy to build a system with much lower power and higher performance than just a couple years ago, that will do all of your non-cutting-edge-3d-gaming tasks just fine -- even fancy new Xorg compositing.
- I'm using an Athlon-900 (stop laughing! it still works!), which Wikipedia says snarfs down 60W. These days, 64-bit dual-core seems to be where things are going, and it looks like I'll be close with an Athlon64-X2 "Windsor" core: 65W for the "Energy Efficient" version, or 35W for the EE-SFF version (I wonder what kind of motherboard I can get for those). The Intel Core Duo 2 chips are the same: 65W for the desktop chips, and 35W for the mobile version. (I could go the VIA route, but that seems like a significant performance hit to get under 35W.)
- I initially had a Matrox graphics card, and then upgraded to an ATI card. I'm not a gamer, so maybe Intel built-in graphics will be good enough for me next time around -- that should save some power.
- My system originally had SCSI. These days, SCSI disks of reasonable size for all my stuff are too rich for my paycheck, and S-ATA is gaining many features that once set SCSI apart; no SCSI card = less power.
- An LCD is an easy way to save power: just about anything sucks less power than my 20" CRT. It'll cost more up-front, and may never pay for itself in power savings, but there are other benefits (more desk space, easier to move,
- A bunch of other features I've added (like a Firewire PCI card) are now built-in to motherboards. I suspect this will lower power, as well.
Unless you're a speed freak (or gamer
The old classics like Crono Trigger, Secret of Mana, original Mario Bros., Zelda Link to the Past, Super Metroid... they don't make em like that anymore.
Sure they do. Take a look at new games for the DS. Consider that the tiny handheld as the graphics power of the Nintendo 64, but runs for ten hours from a small rechargeable battery. There have definitely been improvements in processing power, but also in reducing power consumption.
I believe the "Greenness" is based on the efficiency of the device. How much heat is generated (waste) vs useful output in PSUs for example. Weather manufactures are labeling them justly or not that's another question. Can a PC be labeled "green" and not be Energy Star?
I want this account deleted.
Procedural Generation = Less Power?
In the playstation generation, nobody cares about power consumption.
No sig today...
Just because someone criticises something and you disagree with their assessment, does not mean they are engaging in FUD. and i'm sick to fucking death of "fud, notfud" being tagged at the top of any slashdot article involving someone's opinion of something.
Modern PCs consume a *horrible* amounts of power. I bet if power consumption were taxable that consumption could miraculously drop by a third without any loss in performance. Suddenly you would find that hardware & software makers flip on the power saving functionality by default rather than expecting people to find it. And the Nvidia & ATIs of this world producing desktop GPUs which have performance characteristics closer to their laptop versions. If Intel can produce CPUs that consume less power than the last generation then the GPU makers sure as hell can too. Who knows, it might even lead to cheaper graphics cards since they won't need so much circuitry including power connectors and massive fans to keep them cool.
### You can't say Metroid Fusion isn't a good game.
It was a good game, but just that 'good', nothing more nothing less. It was pretty much the same as SuperMetroid and MetroidZero was also very much the same, it just felt like 'been there, done that'. When I look at the SNES with StreetFighter2, StarFox, MarioWorld, YoshisIsland, Zelda3, MarioKart, PrinceOfPersia, AnotherWorld, FinalFantasy, CronoTrigger, SuperMetroid, PilotWings, Actraiser, Simcity and a heck of a lot other great and original games, the GBA just doesn't have much to offer to come close to that in terms of great games. Yes, it has a few great ones, but really far to few in comparism with the SNES.
Operational costs are a big deal to ALL companies. Period. As to what fraction of that comes from power usage of grahpics cards, that's a different question... But I'll tell you quite honestly that my company (revenues over 40 million) cares about individual monthly operating expenses less than a hundred dollars. Seriously.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Looks like when you resurrect Hitler he'll have a new target.
Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, and Taking Back Sunday.
He better hope those emo kids can't cut others the way they can cut themselves, or he'll have his work cut out for him.
Be aware that the power usage of the old Athlon 900 and current Athlons is stated differently.
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The old, hot chip may use 60W constantly. A new rating (TDP) of 65W is shared amongst a range of current Athlons of different speeds and represents the maximum heat dissipation possible for all of them so that manufacturers know how to design and size cooling solutions. A new Athlon processor will use much less power when idle or not fully busy and may never reach the rated number with a real workload, especially if it's at the lower end of the range.
Intel rates its chips yet another way, by measuring the power used when running a certain workload, not the maximum dissipation possible by any workload. This means that Intel's numbers are understated compared with AMD's. The article below shows how usage can be 10W or more higher than the "typical" rating. I think the desktop Core chips may also be able to reduce power usage when idle though.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page3.ht
The reason you had to toss your old powersupply is because it probably didn't have enough output on the 12v line. Since the introduction of the Athlon XP, motherboard makers have been moving from +5v to +12v to supply the processor with power. Video cards have also moved to depending more and more on the +12v line.
Go ahead, take a look at the specs. I'll bet your old 300w powersupply couldn't top more than 10A on the +12v line, but most 300w powersupplies sold today hit the 15A mark for +12v. You could easily run your current system on a modern 300w powersupply, but you can't use your old one because the DESIGN INTENT (+5v over +12v) is obsolete.
I guarantee if you put a watt-meter on your system it would be using less than 200w under full-load, even after conversion losses. You just THINK your system needs a mammoth 410w because your old powersupply was outdated.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.