The Rocket Drive itself looks wonderfully impressive... thought the price may be a bit extreme. I noted two things from this article, however:
1)The Rocket Drive only attaches through a regular 32-bit/33mhz PCI slot. You would expect at least a 64-bit/33mhz card... if not faster than that. The drive itself may not be able to transfer faster than 100 MB/s, but you must also consider the other devices attached through that PCI bus. This device can easily hog nearly all the bandwidth available. Not exactly an ideal situation.
2)The drive that is compared against the Rocket Drive is claimed to be a Ultra160 15,000rpm drive. This would not be a bad choice for comparison, since it is the fastest single type of drive available... and the Rocket Drives direct competition. However, how many 15,000rpm drives have you seen that average out with a 13.1ms latency, and cannot achieve an average throughput higher than 38 Mb/s? None that I know of. I happen to own a 36gig U160 10,000rpm Cheatah. My Cheatah, using the same synthetic benchmarks, can pull under 6 ms latency with an average throughput of 49 Mb/s.
No, I'm not trying to tout my drive's speed. I'm simply pointing out that the implementation of this device is a little strange for a device designed for extreme workstations and mid-range servers. And that the benchmark numbers of the comparison drive are at best waaaay skewed. They simply cannot be correct. A 15k rpm drive IS MUCH FASTER THAN THAT!
That being said... who wouldn't like a 4 gig ram-drive?!:)
Relatively insecure? Forgive my ignorance, but didn't it take over 10,000 computers blasting away to defeat this thing?
Personally, I feel that if the CIA or NSA wishes to spend that kind of processing power just to break in my research paper notes, let them. Hell, I'll even donate my computers to the project to help them.;)
I'm just curious how many super-computers out their have fancy 3D grafix cards, and only run on IDE drives...?
I think may-haps I'll wait for version 2..
just my two cents.. your mileage may vary
Ok.. so for those of you unfortunate enough to not have nationwide roam-free contracts, this will be extremely expensive.. But we've come to expect that from the airline industry these days. They cut corners and screw over customers every chance they get.
But what of us with no-roam deals? My contract states that I can use my phone anywhere in the continental United States without paying roaming fees. It makes no stipulations on what elevation I'm at.. be it 100' or 10,000'. Yaay for Cingular... right? I mean, last I knew Cingular customers could use Verizon towers... so, since Verizon is in on this deal, I can use my cellphone at 30,000' w/o paying roaming fees? Right?
For starters, the PCI spec isn't limited to 133 MB/s. PCI 2.1 specs allow for 66 MHz 64-bit transfers, which equals 528 MB/s. PCI 2.2 specs allow for PCI-X mode, which adds 133 MHz 64-bit transfers: 1056 MB/s.
That being said, it is entirely possible to reach throughputs in excess of 133 MB/s using a PCI bus... though currently most desktop motherboards do not support anything faster than 133 MB/s. In time this will change as NICs, hard disks, and other gear requires it.
And your hard disk performance is barely par by today's standards. IDE drives are currently topping 50MB/s, while SCSI gear is hittin > 70MB/s. Though I am a SCSI man, i can see the future need for SATA. Right now it may be mainly a marketing ploy... But in a couple years it will be a necessity. Parallel cabling is nearing the end of the road.. all those wires in a cable allow for too much signal interference. Serial is the answer. Though it has less wires, the dramatic increase in signal strength allows for insane transfer rates.
Anyhoo.. personally I don't see any reason to go out and buy a new system just to have SATA. At the current it offers few advantages.. but in the not so distant future it will be a necessity for desktop systems. As for me, i plan on going Fibre-Channel SCSI:)
...on my win2k boxen. I've used mozilla on both my win2k and freebsd boxen off and on for the past couple of years. Until now, I'd never seen one that could launch or render pages as speedily as IE. It still seems a bit slower on javascript, but its static page rendering is insanely improved over the last I'd tried (Mozilla 1.0 pre-release) any Mozilla derivative.
My first complaint mirrors that of others on this phorum: its look and feel. OSS gui's are slowly starting to mod the included apps to a more unified look and feel... but in general, they are expectantly more eclectic looking/feeling than most commercial efforts. Now... windows may not be the work of art that OSX is, but in general you can expect a certain look & feel inside windows programs. Mozilla still, after the past couple years, cannot seem to get their windows binaries to actually look like a standard windows app. Very aggrevating. Especially since I have better things to do with my time than fetch the source and figure out how to change the look & hot-keys.
My second complaint is one that time will fix, almost certainly. Integration & 3rd party apps. Sure, you can get most of the features that IE has and Pheonix-Mozilla lacks by *upgrading* to Netscape... But Netscape is butt-ugly and slow as hell. Plus, I'm only going from one evil empire's browser to another evil empire's browser. Why would I want to do that, considering IE works wonderfully? So... in the mean time, Mozilla doesn't have anywhere near the list of apps that integrate with it. I like having the ability to add all those spiffy toolbar buttons! I like being able to right click and see a host of commands that I've added to my browser! Until these two issues are resolved... I'll stick with IE6 on my win2k boxen. It's fast, stable, and renders darn near everything.
On the other hand, my freebsd box is going to have a copy of Phenoix-Mozilla on it tonight. And that is a happy prospect. (Assuming the linux binary will run properly on freebsd.
Ok, so I'm no fan of Microsoft... but this test doesn't really do much for Linux's cause. This benchmark shows a system that will not be available March of 2003, while a comparable system with Windows 2000 is already available for little more money. So, while Microsoft is raking in cash from their sales and (theoretically) will have more advanced systems out by 2003, a comparable Linux server to today's offerings will not be available for months to come.
And, as an added misfortune, you've got the Microsoft entrenchment to deal with. Perhaps if the Linux solution was significantly cheaper companies would invest in it. However, what you've got here is a solution that is barely cheaper and only a couple percent faster. Given the (understandable) reputation that Unix systems have for a learning curve, and the lack of available IQ points most system administrators display.... Does anyone really expect this offering to be enough to even dent Microsoft's sales?
Though I know of few (ok, none) pieces of software that are GPL'd that a closed source vendor would want to reverse engineer at this point, I can see the importance of being able to do so.
BSD and MIT licenses are another matter altogether. Who in their right mind would spend the man hours to reverse engineer a product, when the source code is _completely_ free with (almost) no restrictions? At most, a closed source firm would have to give credit in their code or binaries to the borrowed BSD/MIT code.
It's available via KaZaA and dal.net (and proabably other services). It is broken up in to three seperate DiVX parts, each one ~180meg. I've already received the first two of three... and am watching even as i write this.
And, yes, they filmed them all at the same time... though they didn't do the production work (touch-ups, choose which scenes, special-effects, etc.) on all three at once. It appears that they have just recently either finished production on TTT, or have come near enough to have a darn good movie available to us leechers!
I've never seen good prices from Tiger Direct. The only way they come out looking good is against local computer shops. If you really want rock bottom prices, I suggest http://www.pricewatch.com, http://www.pricescan.com and http://www.newegg.com... Tiger Direct can't even begin to compare with the prices found on those three sites...
As to Tiger Direct's customer service/support... I've had them charge my account for parts that I never ordered and never received. And to top that, they weren't willing to refund my credit card. I had to call Visa, explain the situation to them and have them put a stop on the payment to Tiger Direct. I've also had friends have similar problems... as with any OEM/vendor, your mileage will vary from customer to customer.
If there is any one site that I would attempt to purchase all my parts from, it would probably be http://www.mwave.com.
Good luck with your computer build!
I actually have a RAID-0 strip (2x 7200 RPM IDE), and much prefer my single 7200 RPM SCSI drive. The reasoning is simple. Latency. It takes much, MUCH longer for two disk heads to seek to the proper position than it does for one to seek there. Every disk you add to a RAID-0 array adds a couple milliseconds to the latency.
Now if your working in an environment where pure transfer rates is important (i.e. audio/video editing), then a RAID-0 strip is great. But for most of us, where our hard drive heads have to constantly jump all over the place, the added latency will actually result in a slower over-all experience, despite the high available transfer rate.
If your really enough of an über-geek to be playing with RAID arrays, why not just spend the extra money and go for a 10,000+ RPM SCSI drive? With these drives you get the best of both worlds: high transfer rates & low latency.
Slashdot Mirror
can you imagine your fps in counter-strike!? i could finally break the 1024x768 barrier!!!
what?.. like you wouldn't be using it for the ultimate gamez boxen too
The Rocket Drive itself looks wonderfully impressive... thought the price may be a bit extreme. I noted two things from this article, however:
:)
1)The Rocket Drive only attaches through a regular 32-bit/33mhz PCI slot. You would expect at least a 64-bit/33mhz card... if not faster than that. The drive itself may not be able to transfer faster than 100 MB/s, but you must also consider the other devices attached through that PCI bus. This device can easily hog nearly all the bandwidth available. Not exactly an ideal situation.
2)The drive that is compared against the Rocket Drive is claimed to be a Ultra160 15,000rpm drive. This would not be a bad choice for comparison, since it is the fastest single type of drive available... and the Rocket Drives direct competition. However, how many 15,000rpm drives have you seen that average out with a 13.1ms latency, and cannot achieve an average throughput higher than 38 Mb/s? None that I know of. I happen to own a 36gig U160 10,000rpm Cheatah. My Cheatah, using the same synthetic benchmarks, can pull under 6 ms latency with an average throughput of 49 Mb/s.
No, I'm not trying to tout my drive's speed. I'm simply pointing out that the implementation of this device is a little strange for a device designed for extreme workstations and mid-range servers. And that the benchmark numbers of the comparison drive are at best waaaay skewed. They simply cannot be correct. A 15k rpm drive IS MUCH FASTER THAN THAT!
That being said... who wouldn't like a 4 gig ram-drive?!
Relatively insecure? Forgive my ignorance, but didn't it take over 10,000 computers blasting away to defeat this thing?
;)
Personally, I feel that if the CIA or NSA wishes to spend that kind of processing power just to break in my research paper notes, let them. Hell, I'll even donate my computers to the project to help them.
I'm just curious how many super-computers out their have fancy 3D grafix cards, and only run on IDE drives...? I think may-haps I'll wait for version 2.. just my two cents.. your mileage may vary
Ok.. so for those of you unfortunate enough to not have nationwide roam-free contracts, this will be extremely expensive.. But we've come to expect that from the airline industry these days. They cut corners and screw over customers every chance they get.
But what of us with no-roam deals? My contract states that I can use my phone anywhere in the continental United States without paying roaming fees. It makes no stipulations on what elevation I'm at.. be it 100' or 10,000'. Yaay for Cingular... right? I mean, last I knew Cingular customers could use Verizon towers... so, since Verizon is in on this deal, I can use my cellphone at 30,000' w/o paying roaming fees? Right?
For starters, the PCI spec isn't limited to 133 MB/s. PCI 2.1 specs allow for 66 MHz 64-bit transfers, which equals 528 MB/s. PCI 2.2 specs allow for PCI-X mode, which adds 133 MHz 64-bit transfers: 1056 MB/s.
:)
That being said, it is entirely possible to reach throughputs in excess of 133 MB/s using a PCI bus... though currently most desktop motherboards do not support anything faster than 133 MB/s. In time this will change as NICs, hard disks, and other gear requires it.
And your hard disk performance is barely par by today's standards. IDE drives are currently topping 50MB/s, while SCSI gear is hittin > 70MB/s. Though I am a SCSI man, i can see the future need for SATA. Right now it may be mainly a marketing ploy... But in a couple years it will be a necessity. Parallel cabling is nearing the end of the road.. all those wires in a cable allow for too much signal interference. Serial is the answer. Though it has less wires, the dramatic increase in signal strength allows for insane transfer rates.
Anyhoo.. personally I don't see any reason to go out and buy a new system just to have SATA. At the current it offers few advantages.. but in the not so distant future it will be a necessity for desktop systems. As for me, i plan on going Fibre-Channel SCSI
...on my win2k boxen. I've used mozilla on both my win2k and freebsd boxen off and on for the past couple of years. Until now, I'd never seen one that could launch or render pages as speedily as IE. It still seems a bit slower on javascript, but its static page rendering is insanely improved over the last I'd tried (Mozilla 1.0 pre-release) any Mozilla derivative.
My first complaint mirrors that of others on this phorum: its look and feel. OSS gui's are slowly starting to mod the included apps to a more unified look and feel... but in general, they are expectantly more eclectic looking/feeling than most commercial efforts. Now... windows may not be the work of art that OSX is, but in general you can expect a certain look & feel inside windows programs. Mozilla still, after the past couple years, cannot seem to get their windows binaries to actually look like a standard windows app. Very aggrevating. Especially since I have better things to do with my time than fetch the source and figure out how to change the look & hot-keys.
My second complaint is one that time will fix, almost certainly. Integration & 3rd party apps. Sure, you can get most of the features that IE has and Pheonix-Mozilla lacks by *upgrading* to Netscape... But Netscape is butt-ugly and slow as hell. Plus, I'm only going from one evil empire's browser to another evil empire's browser. Why would I want to do that, considering IE works wonderfully? So... in the mean time, Mozilla doesn't have anywhere near the list of apps that integrate with it. I like having the ability to add all those spiffy toolbar buttons! I like being able to right click and see a host of commands that I've added to my browser! Until these two issues are resolved... I'll stick with IE6 on my win2k boxen. It's fast, stable, and renders darn near everything.
On the other hand, my freebsd box is going to have a copy of Phenoix-Mozilla on it tonight. And that is a happy prospect. (Assuming the linux binary will run properly on freebsd.
Ok, so I'm no fan of Microsoft... but this test doesn't really do much for Linux's cause. This benchmark shows a system that will not be available March of 2003, while a comparable system with Windows 2000 is already available for little more money. So, while Microsoft is raking in cash from their sales and (theoretically) will have more advanced systems out by 2003, a comparable Linux server to today's offerings will not be available for months to come. And, as an added misfortune, you've got the Microsoft entrenchment to deal with. Perhaps if the Linux solution was significantly cheaper companies would invest in it. However, what you've got here is a solution that is barely cheaper and only a couple percent faster. Given the (understandable) reputation that Unix systems have for a learning curve, and the lack of available IQ points most system administrators display.... Does anyone really expect this offering to be enough to even dent Microsoft's sales?
This does not help my paranoia. I KNEW they were watching me.. tracking me. And now I have proof!! THEY ARE AFTER ME!
Though I know of few (ok, none) pieces of software that are GPL'd that a closed source vendor would want to reverse engineer at this point, I can see the importance of being able to do so.
BSD and MIT licenses are another matter altogether. Who in their right mind would spend the man hours to reverse engineer a product, when the source code is _completely_ free with (almost) no restrictions? At most, a closed source firm would have to give credit in their code or binaries to the borrowed BSD/MIT code.
just my two cents worth.
It's available via KaZaA and dal.net (and proabably other services). It is broken up in to three seperate DiVX parts, each one ~180meg. I've already received the first two of three... and am watching even as i write this.
And, yes, they filmed them all at the same time... though they didn't do the production work (touch-ups, choose which scenes, special-effects, etc.) on all three at once. It appears that they have just recently either finished production on TTT, or have come near enough to have a darn good movie available to us leechers!
I've never seen good prices from Tiger Direct. The only way they come out looking good is against local computer shops. If you really want rock bottom prices, I suggest http://www.pricewatch.com, http://www.pricescan.com and http://www.newegg.com ... Tiger Direct can't even begin to compare with the prices found on those three sites...
As to Tiger Direct's customer service/support... I've had them charge my account for parts that I never ordered and never received. And to top that, they weren't willing to refund my credit card. I had to call Visa, explain the situation to them and have them put a stop on the payment to Tiger Direct. I've also had friends have similar problems... as with any OEM/vendor, your mileage will vary from customer to customer.
If there is any one site that I would attempt to purchase all my parts from, it would probably be http://www.mwave.com.
Good luck with your computer build!
I actually have a RAID-0 strip (2x 7200 RPM IDE), and much prefer my single 7200 RPM SCSI drive. The reasoning is simple. Latency. It takes much, MUCH longer for two disk heads to seek to the proper position than it does for one to seek there. Every disk you add to a RAID-0 array adds a couple milliseconds to the latency. Now if your working in an environment where pure transfer rates is important (i.e. audio/video editing), then a RAID-0 strip is great. But for most of us, where our hard drive heads have to constantly jump all over the place, the added latency will actually result in a slower over-all experience, despite the high available transfer rate. If your really enough of an über-geek to be playing with RAID arrays, why not just spend the extra money and go for a 10,000+ RPM SCSI drive? With these drives you get the best of both worlds: high transfer rates & low latency.