Some other great links: The Ars Technica Food Court - It's an overview of most of the Ars Technica Distributed Computing (DC) teams. The Distributed Computing Sushi Bar - The site still needs a lot of info, but it gives a nice introduction to various DC projects that exists and the site also have a comparison of the different teams and their total size (number of total 1 Ghz AMD machines). It's amazing an amazing amount of computing power! Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects - the title explains itself. A very nice page with links and info about a lot of DC projects.
AFAIK that is not the first project - GIMPS (The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) started before D.net.
If you want to know more or have questions about GIMPS, I would highly recommend you to visit (and maybe even join) Ars Technica Team Prime Rib, it's a very active team and they have great stats:)
I'm pretty sure I'm correct since the Nvidia Geforce3 TI200 reference card came with passive cooling only;)
A lot of cards only come with a fan because it "looks cool" - not because they need it. It's the same thing with motherboards and the chipset. A lot of motherboards makers put a small heatsink and a fan on it, even though a larger heatsink would be enough. Take the latest boards with the Via KT333 chipset - a lot of the boards have a fan on the chipset - the Asus boards doesn't.
As with almost all graphic card reviews, the only tests/benchmarks this review has is games. I don't know about the rest of you, but I actually don't play games the majority of the time I'm using my PC and therefore this review is sadly almost useless to me.
I would like to see a review that actually had a serious focus on 2D performance and quality.
No matter what, I'll not buy a Geforce4 card - AFAIK they have and need active cooling and I don't need that - I want a card with passive cooling! A Geforce3 TI200 should actually be able to run with only a nice large heatsink and that is what I believe I'll be buying soon. It is much cheaper too and it's 3D performance is still excellent.
I bet the energy consumption of this is much lower than a harddisk which means it will mean it will be less expensive
Besides that, yes, having computers turned on 24/7 (which my box is - I want it to be available *now* not 5 minutes after I need to lookup some info!) - just ask people with computerfarms. I'm personally involved in the Ars Technica Distributed Computing Community and there are a lot of people with pretty large home farms. There is a lot of things to consider if you want to build a farm - the critical part of it is how you get the best performance for the smallest amount of money. This includes the the energy bill - removing as much hardware as possible.
As can be read in the KDE3 beta2 announcement, Konqueror in KDE3 should be a lot better than the KDE2 version. Here is the quote:
"One of the major improvements brought by KDE 3.0 over KDE 2.2 is the Javascript/DHTML support in Konqueror," stated David Faure, a Konqueror and KOffice developer. "The DOM 2 model, used to render an HTML page, is now mostly implemented, and changes to the DOM tree are handled much better. The Javascript bindings and support is almost complete, faster and more stable than in KDE 2. These changes result in a much-improved rendering of dynamic websites and is something users will immediately appreciate."
IIRC, the tabbed browsing feature is planned for KDE 3.1.
Quote:
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that SuSE Linux AG, one of the world's leading providers of the Linux operating system, has submitted enhancements to the official Linux kernel.
Companies will like this - it adds credibility. If they are giving away this for free - how do they earn money on this? Can we be sure that they will continue to develop on this? (this is what companies are thinking!).
As a student or normal user, you can just download Open Office and use that instead or maybe Staroffice will still be free for personal use - I could easily imagine that.
No matter what, it would be cool to have Staroffice to replace MS Office. I'm not talking about the fact that it is open source, although that is great too, but it is *not* the most important thing IMHO. The greatest thing would be the open document format! It removes the possibility of lock-in and that is what currently binds people to MS Office and makes it difficult for companies to drop it.
Then run the new distributed computing, called The Distributed Folding Project (http://www.distributedfolding.org). It just started last month and there are clients for Linux, Mac, *nix and Windows (in other words: most platforms in use today). I believe this is the first distributed computing project that has a Beowulf cluster install guide:)
If you have questions, visit the forum here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/distributedfolding/
Yes, I know it should be avoided, but I'll ask anyway since sometimes you have no other choice:(
I'm currently using MySQL on a Win2k server and it actually runs pretty okay and is very easy to install. What about PostgreSQL? Last I looked at it - it was a lot more difficult to get running on Windows. Has that changed or are PostgreSQL still more or less *nix only?
And I can't help but feel lik ewhen $ goes to RedHat its almost a donation where money sent to M$ feels like gettin grobbed - can't explain why though:)
Because they release everything (or most) as open source?
* It is easier. Computer with a CD-burner and a fast connection is everything that is needed and it is faster too. Burning a CD is a 10 minute job. Copying VHS movies takes time. Same thing with music - not so anymore (combine that with the last point).
* It is cheaper. CD-R's are dirt cheap.
* The quality is mostly better or at least good enough.
* No quality loss when copying.
The last point is important - earlier, the copying was limited because the copy was not as good as the original - not so any longer. Makes spreading stuff much easier.
I'm not defending RIAA or MPAA, but I understand why they are worried.
First - I think that was a lousy article:(
The more fans there are, the more noise are you going to get - they could have choosen the MSI board which doesn't have any fan and they could have choosen a different video card that doesn't require a fan either, but they didn't.
My current system is an old celeron 300@450 (yes I'm overclocking currently, but it runs without problems) which I intend to upgrade to an Athlon XP soon.
My current case (which I'll be keeping, but upgrading with new and better noise dampening material - more about that later) is this one:
http://www.noisecontrol.de/info/big/inf.htm (in German)
If you look at the "innen_vorne.jpg" picture, you can see it has 2 "air holes" (what do you call them? - English isn't my primary language) on the back, besides the one for the PSU.
I'm thinking about putting a 80mm Papst fan (I'll use a similar one for the Alpha PAL 8045, those fans are *really* low noise) at the lowest hole, to suck air into the case. Together with that I'll add a "NoiseControl Magic WhisperBox" to the back of my case:
http://asp.webconsult.dk/vareinfo.asp?VareID=112 (in Danish)
Bigger pictures can be found in this (also in Danish, but the illustrations should mostly be pretty easy to understand) pdf manual:
http://asp.webconsult.dk/Box-Manual.pdf
That box should eliminate the noise (which is currently not much) from the fans on the back, which is also why I would rather not put a fan on the front of the case.
AFAIK, the best heatsink right now, is the Alpha PAL 8045, which I mentioned earlier too.
As said earlier, I'll upgrade my case with some new noise dampening material - you can read a bit about it here:
http://www.chillblast.co.uk/
(look under "Accessories/Magic Fleece noise killer")
The last thing I should mention is that the harddisk is usually also an noise issue which is why I use a "NoiseControl Hard Drive cage" - it effectively removes vibrations. I have also tried the Silentdrive , but in my experience, it doesn't make the harddisk become les noisy and since it encloses the harddrive completely, it's not good for high performance harddisks (they are simply getting to hot).
Actually, the only thing I can practically hear from my current box, is the harddisk (an older IBM Deskstar, 7200RPM). That will be changed with a new Seagate Barracuda IV, which should be much more quiet.
The main issue I have here is how little cooling is enough to cool an Athlon XP.
Another issue is the video card - that is actually a big problem, but I think I'll buy a Gainward Geforce3 Ti200 card which should be able to run only with passive cooling (if you buy a good heatsink). It should have pretty good 2D image quality also.
What I care about is: Passive cooling (no noise), good 2D image quality (that is what you will be using most of the time) and good drivers of course (both for Windows and Linux).
3d Performance is last - I don't play games very much.
To me, a Palm without synching capabilities isn't worth much. Most importantly, I need to able to sync my contacts, calendar, notes, etc., with my desktop. If I should be a bit demanding, I would say that I need to sync with Outlook at work and with KDE at home.
From the FAQ: The syncronization software for the PDA doesn't support Linux?
This is correct. Both QT Center (currently) and IntelliSync only run under Windows.
Haavard Noord, CEO of Troll Tech has stated that there will be a Linux version of the Palmtop Center software, but are currently working out various technical issues, so it might not ship with the consumer release of the Zaurus.
Anybody knows more about this? I mean, syncing with ex. KDE.
Generally, I don't play games much, which is why I also don't care much about 3D performance (it doesn't hurt to have it though:p ). I care a lot more about 2D quality and the Nvidia based cards isn't exactly known to be the best there...
Besides that, I care about driver quality - AFAIK the NVIDIA drivers are generally great, both for windows and Linux (although they are closed source). I also care a lot about noise. I don't want a card that need a huge noisy fan. No active cooling, thanks!
AFAIK, the Geforce3 Ti200 doesn't *need* a fan (the NVIDIA reference card doesn't have one), but most cards comes with a fan anyway - if the heatsink is good enough, it should be safe to disable the fan.
I've heard Leadtek cards is some of the only NVIDIA cards that actually have good 2D quality.
I bet it doesn't support Ogg Vorbis (unless Bruce Perens something to do with this...) which basically means that this is another useles product for me.
I build myself a quiet PC about 18 months ago. It has been upgraded a bit since (only the fans - they do get lounder as they get older and a new fan is not that expensive). The only thing that I can hear right now is the IBM Deskstar 7200RPM harddrive. I seriously consider switching those out with one of the new Seagate ultra quiet Barracuda IV disks which is mentioned somewhere in this thread also. Here is what I have:
Case: I bought a Noisecontrol case. They aren't cheap, but they are pretty okay and have a "door" in front of the your CD-drive which takes away a lot of the noise. I'm pretty happy with the board
Fans: I'm using fans from Papst (they are mentioned somewhere here also. They are great and I highly recommend them!) As said before, I can only hear my harddisk now, if I pull the plug in the harddisk, I can't hear my PC, even with the case open it's practically quiet.
You could also watercool your PC, Koolance is looking pretty okay and their latest version have gotten pretty good reviews.
Some people says that noise is not a problem and they don't think the noise from the computer is a problem. I think they haven't tried to use a quiet PC. You get used to the noise that comes from you PC, which makes you more or less ignore it, but when you first try a quiet PC - you don't want to go back!
Besides that, I plan on upgrading my current Celeron with one of the new Athlon XP processors. I haven't upgraded yet, because boards with the new VIA KT266A chipset has just arrived and furthermore boards with the new Nvidia Nforce chipset is finally starting to arrive. The Nforce is currently looking pretty good imho. Take a look at this review.
Question: What is the most quiet CPU fan for an Athlon XP?
Slashdot Mirror
The science results from the F@H project is being released to the public - no company has the rights to the results.
Some other great links:
The Ars Technica Food Court - It's an overview of most of the Ars Technica Distributed Computing (DC) teams.
The Distributed Computing Sushi Bar - The site still needs a lot of info, but it gives a nice introduction to various DC projects that exists and the site also have a comparison of the different teams and their total size (number of total 1 Ghz AMD machines). It's amazing an amazing amount of computing power!
Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects - the title explains itself. A very nice page with links and info about a lot of DC projects.
AFAIK that is not the first project - GIMPS (The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) started before D.net.
If you want to know more or have questions about GIMPS, I would highly recommend you to visit (and maybe even join) Ars Technica Team Prime Rib, it's a very active team and they have great stats :)
I'm pretty sure I'm correct since the Nvidia Geforce3 TI200 reference card came with passive cooling only ;)
A lot of cards only come with a fan because it "looks cool" - not because they need it. It's the same thing with motherboards and the chipset. A lot of motherboards makers put a small heatsink and a fan on it, even though a larger heatsink would be enough. Take the latest boards with the Via KT333 chipset - a lot of the boards have a fan on the chipset - the Asus boards doesn't.
As with almost all graphic card reviews, the only tests/benchmarks this review has is games. I don't know about the rest of you, but I actually don't play games the majority of the time I'm using my PC and therefore this review is sadly almost useless to me.
I would like to see a review that actually had a serious focus on 2D performance and quality.
No matter what, I'll not buy a Geforce4 card - AFAIK they have and need active cooling and I don't need that - I want a card with passive cooling! A Geforce3 TI200 should actually be able to run with only a nice large heatsink and that is what I believe I'll be buying soon. It is much cheaper too and it's 3D performance is still excellent.
I bet the energy consumption of this is much lower than a harddisk which means it will mean it will be less expensive
Besides that, yes, having computers turned on 24/7 (which my box is - I want it to be available *now* not 5 minutes after I need to lookup some info!) - just ask people with computerfarms. I'm personally involved in the Ars Technica Distributed Computing Community and there are a lot of people with pretty large home farms. There is a lot of things to consider if you want to build a farm - the critical part of it is how you get the best performance for the smallest amount of money. This includes the the energy bill - removing as much hardware as possible.
That is not something you just do - that takes a lot of work I believe. However, here is a pretty good overview of the browsers support for the W3C recommendations: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/index.html?/~ppk/js/b rowsers.html.
As can be read in the KDE3 beta2 announcement, Konqueror in KDE3 should be a lot better than the KDE2 version. Here is the quote:
"One of the major improvements brought by KDE 3.0 over KDE 2.2 is the Javascript/DHTML support in Konqueror," stated David Faure, a Konqueror and KOffice developer. "The DOM 2 model, used to render an HTML page, is now mostly implemented, and changes to the DOM tree are handled much better. The Javascript bindings and support is almost complete, faster and more stable than in KDE 2. These changes result in a much-improved rendering of dynamic websites and is something users will immediately appreciate."
IIRC, the tabbed browsing feature is planned for KDE 3.1.
Quote:
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that SuSE Linux AG, one of the world's leading providers of the Linux operating system, has submitted enhancements to the official Linux kernel.
Read the rest here: http://www.amdzone.com/releaseview.cfm?ReleaseID=8 10
I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I live (Denmark), the prices for DDR-RAM and RD-RAM are nearly the same.
Anandtech has posted an article with lots of information and pictures Right here.
Companies will like this - it adds credibility. If they are giving away this for free - how do they earn money on this? Can we be sure that they will continue to develop on this? (this is what companies are thinking!).
As a student or normal user, you can just download Open Office and use that instead or maybe Staroffice will still be free for personal use - I could easily imagine that.
No matter what, it would be cool to have Staroffice to replace MS Office. I'm not talking about the fact that it is open source, although that is great too, but it is *not* the most important thing IMHO. The greatest thing would be the open document format! It removes the possibility of lock-in and that is what currently binds people to MS Office and makes it difficult for companies to drop it.
Then run the new distributed computing, called The Distributed Folding Project (http://www.distributedfolding.org). It just started last month and there are clients for Linux, Mac, *nix and Windows (in other words: most platforms in use today). I believe this is the first distributed computing project that has a Beowulf cluster install guide :)
If you have questions, visit the forum here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/distributedfolding/
Yes, I know it should be avoided, but I'll ask anyway since sometimes you have no other choice :(
I'm currently using MySQL on a Win2k server and it actually runs pretty okay and is very easy to install. What about PostgreSQL? Last I looked at it - it was a lot more difficult to get running on Windows. Has that changed or are PostgreSQL still more or less *nix only?
Took a quick look at the website, but I couldn't find any information about what software the new version includes?
Does it include the latest Xfree - what version of KDE? Gnome? Whatever?
Is it KDE or GNOME centric?
I *nearly* going to open a Paypal account, when I found this website: http://www.paypalwarning.com/.
I know this is seriously OT for this thread, but I would recommend anyone using Paypal to read that website.
And I can't help but feel lik ewhen $ goes to RedHat its almost a donation where money sent to M$ feels like gettin grobbed - can't explain why though :)
Because they release everything (or most) as open source?
* It is easier. Computer with a CD-burner and a fast connection is everything that is needed and it is faster too. Burning a CD is a 10 minute job. Copying VHS movies takes time. Same thing with music - not so anymore (combine that with the last point).
* It is cheaper. CD-R's are dirt cheap.
* The quality is mostly better or at least good enough.
* No quality loss when copying.
The last point is important - earlier, the copying was limited because the copy was not as good as the original - not so any longer. Makes spreading stuff much easier.
I'm not defending RIAA or MPAA, but I understand why they are worried.
First - I think that was a lousy article :(
The more fans there are, the more noise are you going to get - they could have choosen the MSI board which doesn't have any fan and they could have choosen a different video card that doesn't require a fan either, but they didn't.
My current system is an old celeron 300@450 (yes I'm overclocking currently, but it runs without problems) which I intend to upgrade to an Athlon XP soon.
My current case (which I'll be keeping, but upgrading with new and better noise dampening material - more about that later) is this one:
http://www.noisecontrol.de/info/big/inf.htm
(in German)
If you look at the "innen_vorne.jpg" picture, you can see it has 2 "air holes" (what do you call them? - English isn't my primary language) on the back, besides the one for the PSU.
I'm thinking about putting a 80mm Papst fan (I'll use a similar one for the Alpha PAL 8045, those fans are *really* low noise) at the lowest hole, to suck air into the case. Together with that I'll add a "NoiseControl Magic WhisperBox" to the back of my case:
http://asp.webconsult.dk/vareinfo.asp?VareID=112
(in Danish)
Bigger pictures can be found in this (also in Danish, but the illustrations should mostly be pretty easy to understand) pdf manual:
http://asp.webconsult.dk/Box-Manual.pdf
That box should eliminate the noise (which is currently not much) from the fans on the back, which is also why I would rather not put a fan on the front of the case.
AFAIK, the best heatsink right now, is the Alpha PAL 8045, which I mentioned earlier too.
As said earlier, I'll upgrade my case with some new noise dampening material - you can read a bit about it here:
http://www.chillblast.co.uk/
(look under "Accessories/Magic Fleece noise killer")
The last thing I should mention is that the harddisk is usually also an noise issue which is why I use a "NoiseControl Hard Drive cage" - it effectively removes vibrations. I have also tried the Silentdrive , but in my experience, it doesn't make the harddisk become les noisy and since it encloses the harddrive completely, it's not good for high performance harddisks (they are simply getting to hot).
Actually, the only thing I can practically hear from my current box, is the harddisk (an older IBM Deskstar, 7200RPM). That will be changed with a new Seagate Barracuda IV, which should be much more quiet.
The main issue I have here is how little cooling is enough to cool an Athlon XP.
Another issue is the video card - that is actually a big problem, but I think I'll buy a Gainward Geforce3 Ti200 card which should be able to run only with passive cooling (if you buy a good heatsink). It should have pretty good 2D image quality also.
You are NOT the only one that cares about that!
What I care about is: Passive cooling (no noise), good 2D image quality (that is what you will be using most of the time) and good drivers of course (both for Windows and Linux).
3d Performance is last - I don't play games very much.
To me, a Palm without synching capabilities isn't worth much. Most importantly, I need to able to sync my contacts, calendar, notes, etc., with my desktop. If I should be a bit demanding, I would say that I need to sync with Outlook at work and with KDE at home.
From the FAQ:
The syncronization software for the PDA doesn't support Linux?
This is correct. Both QT Center (currently) and IntelliSync only run under Windows.
Haavard Noord, CEO of Troll Tech has stated that there will be a Linux version of the Palmtop Center software, but are currently working out various technical issues, so it might not ship with the consumer release of the Zaurus.
Anybody knows more about this? I mean, syncing with ex. KDE.
Generally, I don't play games much, which is why I also don't care much about 3D performance (it doesn't hurt to have it though :p ). I care a lot more about 2D quality and the Nvidia based cards isn't exactly known to be the best there...
Besides that, I care about driver quality - AFAIK the NVIDIA drivers are generally great, both for windows and Linux (although they are closed source). I also care a lot about noise. I don't want a card that need a huge noisy fan. No active cooling, thanks!
AFAIK, the Geforce3 Ti200 doesn't *need* a fan (the NVIDIA reference card doesn't have one), but most cards comes with a fan anyway - if the heatsink is good enough, it should be safe to disable the fan.
I've heard Leadtek cards is some of the only NVIDIA cards that actually have good 2D quality.
I bet it doesn't support Ogg Vorbis (unless Bruce Perens something to do with this...) which basically means that this is another useles product for me.
I build myself a quiet PC about 18 months ago. It has been upgraded a bit since (only the fans - they do get lounder as they get older and a new fan is not that expensive). The only thing that I can hear right now is the IBM Deskstar 7200RPM harddrive. I seriously consider switching those out with one of the new Seagate ultra quiet Barracuda IV disks which is mentioned somewhere in this thread also. Here is what I have:
Case: I bought a Noisecontrol case. They aren't cheap, but they are pretty okay and have a "door" in front of the your CD-drive which takes away a lot of the noise. I'm pretty happy with the board
Fans: I'm using fans from Papst (they are mentioned somewhere here also. They are great and I highly recommend them!) As said before, I can only hear my harddisk now, if I pull the plug in the harddisk, I can't hear my PC, even with the case open it's practically quiet.
You could also watercool your PC, Koolance is looking pretty okay and their latest version have gotten pretty good reviews.
Some people says that noise is not a problem and they don't think the noise from the computer is a problem. I think they haven't tried to use a quiet PC. You get used to the noise that comes from you PC, which makes you more or less ignore it, but when you first try a quiet PC - you don't want to go back!
Besides that, I plan on upgrading my current Celeron with one of the new Athlon XP processors. I haven't upgraded yet, because boards with the new VIA KT266A chipset has just arrived and furthermore boards with the new Nvidia Nforce chipset is finally starting to arrive. The Nforce is currently looking pretty good imho. Take a look at this review.
Question: What is the most quiet CPU fan for an Athlon XP?
it's not like everybody else... hmmm, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, oh what the hell let's call the next 2.0. (ahem cough cough KDE)
KDE 3 will break binary compatibility - don't say that isn't a good reason for a new major number!