How likely is it that Visual Studio.NET 2 or whatever is P4 optimized? How likely is it that Adobe and other big players start optimizing their code for the P4?
Well, considering how long SSE/SSE2 has existed it would be about time. Still, Hammer will also include SSE2 instructions - which is also about time.
Historically it has taken developers an extremely long time to optimize their code for later platforms. Most software today, I believe, it still optimized for the P6 core (and it took them FOREVER to get to that point.)
I've read one review where they were able to OC an Athlon to use the 333 FSB and changed the multiplier to hit stock speed - the speed difference was barely noticeable.
Hah too true! but theresw no need for AMD to yank our collective chains either. I prefer running games over running benchmarks on my machines and according to Tom's this "2600" cant even run with the P4 2.2 in the Quake 3 department. Keep up the good work AMD, but quit trying to tell us We're getting laid when its actually just a handjob!
Quake 3 has always favored an Intel CPU, but higher Quake 3 scores do not mean that they will perform better than the Athlon in all games. Look at a few of the other reviews which benchmark UT 2003 (anandtech) and other games to see the bigger picture.
Well, there's your problem. At the time of the processor you speak of, the Thermaltake Orb series of CPU fans were notorious for being a POS all around.
Actually the reason they got this reputation was (primarily) because they had a problem with the Socket 462 which would often result in a cracked Athlon core. I don't think this reputation was earned because of poor cooling though it certainly wasn't the BEST solution available at the time.
I wouldn't have purchased an orb in any case. They look cool, but there are definitely better HSF manufacturers out there.
I don't see the problem with what Microsoft is doing either (i'm not necessarily saying that they AREN'T doing something shady here, however)
However, I do see a problem with what the city is doing since this will probably end up costing them more in the long run. If this happened in my country I wouldn't be too impressed and would definitely make my feelings known to my MPP.
Nutrition is HUGELY important if you work out. A couple things you can do:
a) Mini-meals. Instead of eating 3 times a day, divide your food up into smaller portions and eat about 6 times per day.
b) Drink lots of water. If you are not drinking enough water, the body will store water in reserve which will stay on your body like fat. Some may notice that you can lose about 5-10 pounds of weight just by drinking lots of water. The reason for this is that once the body notices that you are getting enough water intake, it no longer keeps the water in reserve.
c) eat lots of protein-rich foods, especially after a workout. When you work out hard enough, you are actually damaging muscle fibers (this is why you feel sore after a workout.) Once this occurrs, the body starts a rebuilding stage and protein is needed to efficiently carry out this process. Once the tissue is rebuilt, it is stronger that it was before. For convenience (if you can afford it), whey protein (you can buy some at a health food store in large containers) is a good, convenient way to take protein after a workout (in the long run it's cheaper than the off-the-shelf shakes too, I think)
If you get nothing else out of this discussion, remember this: exercise alone usually isn't enough. To build muscle and lose weight most efficiently, eating right and exercising (weight training is by far the best way to do this) go hand in hand. Doing one without doing the other will most likely result in disappointment.
Nice response. No wonder you were modded down...
Exactly what the fucking hell do you think "market" means? "the market" is people buying software. The people DO decide. The market decides because the people decide (I cannot believe I am educating 3rd grade economics to a/. moron)
Actually I never took economics in 3rd grade... not sure what you mean by that. Maybe it's one of those American post-elementary grading systems (I'm Canadian)
Anyway, the point i'm trying to make is that maybe the general public (which is what I meant by 'the people') should have more control over what software buying habits and policies the government should implement in regards to licensing software. In short, i'm a believer in the government sincerely listening to public opinion (and not just at election time) THAT was the spirit of that remark.
I would hate to live in a world where Linux (A clearly user hostle and inferior desktop system in every way) were forced on me by the government.
So would I. I would also hate to live in a world where Windows were forced on me (or anyone else)because the government carelessly licensed an Operating System which was based on proprietary standards which would result in me having to use a Windows-based OS to interact with it. I am not suggesting that Linux be the only solution that the government should consider.) However, other non-market factors should be considered, such as 'Will our citizens be forced into one solution to participate in electronic government systems'?
Anyway, thanks for the interesting response. It provided me with some very entertaining reading!
Because you run Linux, you could not have even participated in the act of obtaining or using DRM music AT ALL. And as soon as you CAN do it on Linux you will have the SAME problems.
True enough, however I believe you've missed the point I was trying to make. The bottom line is that Linux will probably never include any DRM functionality in its core (or at least not willingly) On that point we agree on.
I use Windows and have thousands of mp3s and avis and have no such problem because I have not participated in any DRM contracts.
You mention that you have not participated in any DRM contracts so you don't have the problem of using other non-DRM formats. Well that's great, but what happens when DRM formats are all the current Microsoft OS will allow because of hardware tie-ins. What happens if future versions of Media Player refuse to work with your older hardware because it can't detect any DRM watermark detection scheme integrated into your processor/chipset/whatever and won't play any format that is not protected by DRM? What happens if older versions of Media Player will not run on newer hardware with this functionality because it is not a "trusted" application?
If you consider these possibilities the Windows vs. Linux issue and DRM becomes relevant, at least in my opinion.
By the looks of the graphics it won't even be that much of a leap.
It isn't really. Back just before the Geforce 3 was released it looked GREAT (at low-res, mind you)... now it's maybe slightly better than Morrowinds engine. Morrowind was somewhat of a leap, I thought, and Doom 3 seems to have a similar polygon count with better Transforming and Lighting effects.
Sure am glad that I run Linux now... this whole DRM thing is going to get out of hand within the next 2-5 years.
Of course, when TCPA/Palladium hits it'll be integrated into hardware and will probably kill off any solution that ISN'T Microsoft-based. I sure hope some other hardware manufacturer will make non-TCPA-compliant hardware during the fallout.
3) Security
How does a government know that the black box software it just bought doesn't have a backdoor alloing the CIA to read every file they store on it? They don't.
Maybe that explains why the US Ambassador to Peru lobbied against this bill...
I say screw the market and let the people ultimately decide.
In any case, I think a law which prohibits certain ELEMENTS of software, open-source or not, should be implemented. Mainly, open standards should definitely be given priority in government if it would allow the public to interact with government computer systems in a different (ie. independent from MS) manner. I would hate to have the government sponsor a system which forced its citizens to use Windows to interact with it at all. This is just one example of how making government use open systems could be beneficial to its citizens.
This is something like what Novell seems to be doing with Netware 6: a web-based interface to a networked environment. Although their focus seems to be more broad than that, the premise seems to be the same: access to computing resources from any platform, anywhere using a web-based standard interface.
To me, stuff like this is the most significant innovation in networking technology that i've seen in years.
The problem is that Microsoft already spent $300 to make an xbox. They lose that money no matter what. If you buy an xbox they will get $200 and partially recover their losses.
In short, Microsoft loses $100 on an xbox if you buy it. They lose $300 if you don't buy it.
It could be argued, however, that if everyone did buy an Xbox it would force MS to make MORE X-boxes to cover the demand, therefore possibly costing them more in the long run.
Of course, the whole premise is silly -- who wants to buy a Microsoft product and spend their hard-earned money on something they don't want just to spite M$? But I guess that goes without saying.:)
I could forsee MS announcing Nvidia is out in the contract renewel period. MS would then just say: "okay, we will pay BLAH for a chip that behaves precisely as the NVIDIA chip did. Same package, same pins, everything. "
Uh... wouldn't that infringe on nVidia's intellectual property? Also, to make it work EXACTLY like nVidia's chip you'd have to practically DUPLICATE nVidia's chip which would mean quite a bit of reverse engineering... hardly something that could be done right away.
How is it determined that one of these rocks is from Mars and not from somewhere else? If it is from Mars, how did it get here? It would seem to me that hard evidence of this would be required BEFORE coming to any conclusions as to whether this proves that there is life on mars or not.
So... does that mean that "Dosemu" isn't an emulator either?
I'm not saying I disagree with you about Wine not being an emulator, but your definition of what an emulator is doesn't really make sense from where i'm standing (keep in mind that i'm not a programmer)
And why the rudeness? Seriously, if most 'emulators' were referred to as 'hardware emulators' there might not be a problem, but i'm sure most people don't make the distinction between 'emulating' hardware and software when someone refers to something as an 'emulator' -- they just assume that it means they are duplicating the functions of another platform.
However, here were some benchmarks from Toms Hardware a while back (with the 2.0 release)
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/02q2/020531/in de x.html
Not as much as i'd like, but hopefully it has improved... or will improve more in the future. WineX looks like a really exciting project with some promise... it's a shame that they can't (or won't, i'm not sure what other elements of the story i've been missing) just use these enhancements in the main Wine code or offer it as freeware (not necessarily complaining about the price, which is reasonable IMO)
Here's hoping that it gets better and that we all can play our games without a Windows partition in the future.
they have almost all of the market share. they are almost a monopoly. i don't see what's so hard about this point. ati is making a valiant effort, but they aren't shipping the kind of units/chips that nvidia is. sis, matrox, 3dlabs and trident do not have a 3d architecture even comparable to the latest nvidia offerings.
They have 68% of the video card market. Not quite the "almost all", is it? Sure it's a high percentage but this is not due to them being a monopoly. The fact that some of those abovementioned companies haven't come out with a comparable product (which is garbage in ATI's case considering the 8500 was comparable to a Geforce 3 Ti500 at a lower price point up until the Geforce 4's release... not to mention how the R300 is, by all accounts, up to 50% faster than a Ti4600 in some games) is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, competition DOES exist, it's alive and well and it's going to be heating up even more in the next few months (I don't know if you know this or not, but 3dlabs is on the verge of releasing an architecture that will be found in workstation-class sytems and consumer-level systems and Trident will be releasing their own line of GPU's as well)
if tomorrow nvidia released detonator drivers with a special feature or program, it would become a standard. big companies make games for nvidia chips. people speak about games in nvidia terms (that game's a geforce2 featureset game).
Features that nVidia has implemented in their drivers and hardware were conceived by other standards bodies. Support for Hardware Transforming and Lighting was implemented in OpenGL long before the Geforce line of cards was released. The Vertex/Pixel shader standards were NOT conceived by nVidia, they were simply the first consumer-level video card manufacturer to implement them in hardware.
And yes, I do not dispute that the Geforce line of cards are THE benchmark for todays games. It's the most popular video hardware, how could it not be?
face it kiddo, nvidia is *the* video card maker right now when it comes to consumer desktop 3d.
It is not *the* only viable 3D solution, as any user with an ATI Radeon 8500 can attest (and there are a lot of those... browse the forums on an enthusiast site like www.hardocp.com and see some of the flame wars which result over this point)
In summary, nVidia has made a superior product and that has paid off for them. I don't believe that they are a monopoly until there is no serious competition and I do not believe that to be the case.
Like many of you, i'm concerned about nVidia's intentions with this language. However, calling nVidia a 'almost-monopoly' because they have the most market share is ridiculous. nVidia has gained this market share despite the competition in the marketplace, and that is an inarguable point in my opinion. Ask any gamer who knows their history and they'll tell you: nVidia is at the top of this game due to technical merit.
ATI has been seriously competing with nVidia since the TNT2, which intensified with their introduction of the Radeon. Now they are in a game of leapfrog and many other vendors have entered the race (SiS, Matrox, 3Dlabs, even Trident.)
That's damn right. As a matter of fact, doing without television and radio in general would probably do wonders for our mental and physical health. My god, have you watched television or listened to the radio lately? Ugh.:)
A general boycott on media would be tough to swallow for most people. We are so used to spending our spare time in front of the tube that getting out of that routine would be a shock to most of us. What the hell would we DO? Go outside!?
The reality is that we need to find more ways to entice companies to develop commercial, closed source software for Linux if we want it to succeed on the desktop, for the masses. Don't say it's already there, we all know it's not. And we need to remember that the solutions to business problems are usually not found by technical means.
I say screw the commercial software developers. Does the future of Linux depend on commercial interests? I don't believe so. I'm going to switch to an almost totally linux-based system (small Windoze partition for games) so i'm ready to put my money where my mouth is (I believe I can replicate any non-gaming function that I need on Linux)
In my opinion, people should keep working together on projects so that we don't HAVE to depend on commercial software development. This included games (the main thing that Linux is lacking) and anything that you currently need Windows for.
Who gives a rats ass? It's coming to the X-box first (or will it STAY on the X-box... Re: Halo) Nobody with more than 2 brain cells to rub together owns an X-box...
And while we're on the subject of Star Wars, I only have one thing to say: Star Wars has been watered down. First we endure the crapfest that was Episode 1, then the borefest that was Episode 2, all the crappy Episode 1 (and forthcoming Episode 2 and 3) games... and now Bioware springs an "Only on X-box" FPS to rake in the bribe money that Lucasarts and Microsoft handed them to cover their development costs. Is this supposed to excite me?
Why does Slashdot only cover the CRAPPY games anyway? Oh, because they are Star Wars. Yeah i'm waiting in REAL anticipation for Star Wars Galaxies... It's EQ with Lightsabres! And it takes you 3 days to reach level 2 (without dying)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, considering how long SSE/SSE2 has existed it would be about time. Still, Hammer will also include SSE2 instructions - which is also about time.
Historically it has taken developers an extremely long time to optimize their code for later platforms. Most software today, I believe, it still optimized for the P6 core (and it took them FOREVER to get to that point.)
I've read one review where they were able to OC an Athlon to use the 333 FSB and changed the multiplier to hit stock speed - the speed difference was barely noticeable.
Why was your post modded to "funny"? :)
Quake 3 has always favored an Intel CPU, but higher Quake 3 scores do not mean that they will perform better than the Athlon in all games. Look at a few of the other reviews which benchmark UT 2003 (anandtech) and other games to see the bigger picture.
Actually the reason they got this reputation was (primarily) because they had a problem with the Socket 462 which would often result in a cracked Athlon core. I don't think this reputation was earned because of poor cooling though it certainly wasn't the BEST solution available at the time.
I wouldn't have purchased an orb in any case. They look cool, but there are definitely better HSF manufacturers out there.
I don't see the problem with what Microsoft is doing either (i'm not necessarily saying that they AREN'T doing something shady here, however)
However, I do see a problem with what the city is doing since this will probably end up costing them more in the long run. If this happened in my country I wouldn't be too impressed and would definitely make my feelings known to my MPP.
Jim
Nutrition is HUGELY important if you work out. A couple things you can do:
a) Mini-meals. Instead of eating 3 times a day, divide your food up into smaller portions and eat about 6 times per day.
b) Drink lots of water. If you are not drinking enough water, the body will store water in reserve which will stay on your body like fat. Some may notice that you can lose about 5-10 pounds of weight just by drinking lots of water. The reason for this is that once the body notices that you are getting enough water intake, it no longer keeps the water in reserve.
c) eat lots of protein-rich foods, especially after a workout. When you work out hard enough, you are actually damaging muscle fibers (this is why you feel sore after a workout.) Once this occurrs, the body starts a rebuilding stage and protein is needed to efficiently carry out this process. Once the tissue is rebuilt, it is stronger that it was before. For convenience (if you can afford it), whey protein (you can buy some at a health food store in large containers) is a good, convenient way to take protein after a workout (in the long run it's cheaper than the off-the-shelf shakes too, I think)
If you get nothing else out of this discussion, remember this: exercise alone usually isn't enough. To build muscle and lose weight most efficiently, eating right and exercising (weight training is by far the best way to do this) go hand in hand. Doing one without doing the other will most likely result in disappointment.
Actually I never took economics in 3rd grade... not sure what you mean by that. Maybe it's one of those American post-elementary grading systems (I'm Canadian)
Anyway, the point i'm trying to make is that maybe the general public (which is what I meant by 'the people') should have more control over what software buying habits and policies the government should implement in regards to licensing software. In short, i'm a believer in the government sincerely listening to public opinion (and not just at election time) THAT was the spirit of that remark.
I would hate to live in a world where Linux (A clearly user hostle and inferior desktop system in every way) were forced on me by the government.
So would I. I would also hate to live in a world where Windows were forced on me (or anyone else)because the government carelessly licensed an Operating System which was based on proprietary standards which would result in me having to use a Windows-based OS to interact with it. I am not suggesting that Linux be the only solution that the government should consider.) However, other non-market factors should be considered, such as 'Will our citizens be forced into one solution to participate in electronic government systems'?
Anyway, thanks for the interesting response. It provided me with some very entertaining reading!
True enough, however I believe you've missed the point I was trying to make. The bottom line is that Linux will probably never include any DRM functionality in its core (or at least not willingly) On that point we agree on.
I use Windows and have thousands of mp3s and avis and have no such problem because I have not participated in any DRM contracts.
You mention that you have not participated in any DRM contracts so you don't have the problem of using other non-DRM formats. Well that's great, but what happens when DRM formats are all the current Microsoft OS will allow because of hardware tie-ins. What happens if future versions of Media Player refuse to work with your older hardware because it can't detect any DRM watermark detection scheme integrated into your processor/chipset/whatever and won't play any format that is not protected by DRM? What happens if older versions of Media Player will not run on newer hardware with this functionality because it is not a "trusted" application?
If you consider these possibilities the Windows vs. Linux issue and DRM becomes relevant, at least in my opinion.
It isn't really. Back just before the Geforce 3 was released it looked GREAT (at low-res, mind you) ... now it's maybe slightly better than Morrowinds engine. Morrowind was somewhat of a leap, I thought, and Doom 3 seems to have a similar polygon count with better Transforming and Lighting effects.
Sure am glad that I run Linux now... this whole DRM thing is going to get out of hand within the next 2-5 years.
:)
Of course, when TCPA/Palladium hits it'll be integrated into hardware and will probably kill off any solution that ISN'T Microsoft-based. I sure hope some other hardware manufacturer will make non-TCPA-compliant hardware during the fallout.
Welcome to hell. Here's your copy of Windows.
How does a government know that the black box software it just bought doesn't have a backdoor alloing the CIA to read every file they store on it? They don't.
Maybe that explains why the US Ambassador to Peru lobbied against this bill...
I say screw the market and let the people ultimately decide.
In any case, I think a law which prohibits certain ELEMENTS of software, open-source or not, should be implemented. Mainly, open standards should definitely be given priority in government if it would allow the public to interact with government computer systems in a different (ie. independent from MS) manner. I would hate to have the government sponsor a system which forced its citizens to use Windows to interact with it at all. This is just one example of how making government use open systems could be beneficial to its citizens.
This is something like what Novell seems to be doing with Netware 6: a web-based interface to a networked environment. Although their focus seems to be more broad than that, the premise seems to be the same: access to computing resources from any platform, anywhere using a web-based standard interface.
To me, stuff like this is the most significant innovation in networking technology that i've seen in years.
The problem is that Microsoft already spent $300 to make an xbox. They lose that money no matter what. If you buy an xbox they will get $200 and partially recover their losses.
:)
In short, Microsoft loses $100 on an xbox if you buy it. They lose $300 if you don't buy it.
It could be argued, however, that if everyone did buy an Xbox it would force MS to make MORE X-boxes to cover the demand, therefore possibly costing them more in the long run.
Of course, the whole premise is silly -- who wants to buy a Microsoft product and spend their hard-earned money on something they don't want just to spite M$? But I guess that goes without saying.
I could forsee MS announcing Nvidia is out in the contract renewel period. MS would then just say: "okay, we will pay BLAH for a chip that behaves precisely as the NVIDIA chip did. Same package, same pins, everything. "
Uh... wouldn't that infringe on nVidia's intellectual property? Also, to make it work EXACTLY like nVidia's chip you'd have to practically DUPLICATE nVidia's chip which would mean quite a bit of reverse engineering... hardly something that could be done right away.
How is it determined that one of these rocks is from Mars and not from somewhere else? If it is from Mars, how did it get here? It would seem to me that hard evidence of this would be required BEFORE coming to any conclusions as to whether this proves that there is life on mars or not.
Yeah, they finally support my chipset (VT8233A)... now I can finally enable DMA mode on my drives instead of the CPU-sucking PIO 4! Whoo-hoo!
Jim
So ... does that mean that "Dosemu" isn't an emulator either?
I'm not saying I disagree with you about Wine not being an emulator, but your definition of what an emulator is doesn't really make sense from where i'm standing (keep in mind that i'm not a programmer)
And why the rudeness? Seriously, if most 'emulators' were referred to as 'hardware emulators' there might not be a problem, but i'm sure most people don't make the distinction between 'emulating' hardware and software when someone refers to something as an 'emulator' -- they just assume that it means they are duplicating the functions of another platform.
Not sure how it is NOW...
n de x.html
... or will improve more in the future. WineX looks like a really exciting project with some promise... it's a shame that they can't (or won't, i'm not sure what other elements of the story i've been missing) just use these enhancements in the main Wine code or offer it as freeware (not necessarily complaining about the price, which is reasonable IMO)
However, here were some benchmarks from Toms Hardware a while back (with the 2.0 release)
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/02q2/020531/i
Not as much as i'd like, but hopefully it has improved
Here's hoping that it gets better and that we all can play our games without a Windows partition in the future.
They have 68% of the video card market. Not quite the "almost all", is it? Sure it's a high percentage but this is not due to them being a monopoly. The fact that some of those abovementioned companies haven't come out with a comparable product (which is garbage in ATI's case considering the 8500 was comparable to a Geforce 3 Ti500 at a lower price point up until the Geforce 4's release ... not to mention how the R300 is, by all accounts, up to 50% faster than a Ti4600 in some games) is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, competition DOES exist, it's alive and well and it's going to be heating up even more in the next few months (I don't know if you know this or not, but 3dlabs is on the verge of releasing an architecture that will be found in workstation-class sytems and consumer-level systems and Trident will be releasing their own line of GPU's as well)
if tomorrow nvidia released detonator drivers with a special feature or program, it would become a standard. big companies make games for nvidia chips. people speak about games in nvidia terms (that game's a geforce2 featureset game).
Features that nVidia has implemented in their drivers and hardware were conceived by other standards bodies. Support for Hardware Transforming and Lighting was implemented in OpenGL long before the Geforce line of cards was released. The Vertex/Pixel shader standards were NOT conceived by nVidia, they were simply the first consumer-level video card manufacturer to implement them in hardware.
And yes, I do not dispute that the Geforce line of cards are THE benchmark for todays games. It's the most popular video hardware, how could it not be?
face it kiddo, nvidia is *the* video card maker right now when it comes to consumer desktop 3d.
It is not *the* only viable 3D solution, as any user with an ATI Radeon 8500 can attest (and there are a lot of those ... browse the forums on an enthusiast site like www.hardocp.com and see some of the flame wars which result over this point)
In summary, nVidia has made a superior product and that has paid off for them. I don't believe that they are a monopoly until there is no serious competition and I do not believe that to be the case.
ATI has been seriously competing with nVidia since the TNT2, which intensified with their introduction of the Radeon. Now they are in a game of leapfrog and many other vendors have entered the race (SiS, Matrox, 3Dlabs, even Trident.)
That's damn right. As a matter of fact, doing without television and radio in general would probably do wonders for our mental and physical health. My god, have you watched television or listened to the radio lately? Ugh. :)
A general boycott on media would be tough to swallow for most people. We are so used to spending our spare time in front of the tube that getting out of that routine would be a shock to most of us. What the hell would we DO? Go outside!?
I say screw the commercial software developers. Does the future of Linux depend on commercial interests? I don't believe so. I'm going to switch to an almost totally linux-based system (small Windoze partition for games) so i'm ready to put my money where my mouth is (I believe I can replicate any non-gaming function that I need on Linux)
In my opinion, people should keep working together on projects so that we don't HAVE to depend on commercial software development. This included games (the main thing that Linux is lacking) and anything that you currently need Windows for.
Who gives a rats ass? It's coming to the X-box first (or will it STAY on the X-box ... Re: Halo) Nobody with more than 2 brain cells to rub together owns an X-box...
... and now Bioware springs an "Only on X-box" FPS to rake in the bribe money that Lucasarts and Microsoft handed them to cover their development costs. Is this supposed to excite me?
... It's EQ with Lightsabres! And it takes you 3 days to reach level 2 (without dying)
And while we're on the subject of Star Wars, I only have one thing to say: Star Wars has been watered down. First we endure the crapfest that was Episode 1, then the borefest that was Episode 2, all the crappy Episode 1 (and forthcoming Episode 2 and 3) games
Why does Slashdot only cover the CRAPPY games anyway? Oh, because they are Star Wars. Yeah i'm waiting in REAL anticipation for Star Wars Galaxies