"What I care about is not having to worry about the latest VIA drivers wrecking my system or hoping the bargain motehrboard I purchased for my AMD CPU won't gie me problems in 6 months."
Well, duh, if you don't VIA problems?, DON'T BUY A VIA BASED BOARD
If you don't want problems with a cheapass motherboard, don't BUY a cheapass motherboard.
might I suggest the Tyan Tiger K7 MPX
How come I never see people saying they are going to avoid intel because the VIA Apollo Pro / P4X266 chipsets suck?, we can play 'Worst. Case. Scenario.' too you know.
the Nforce chipset is (thus far) showing itself to be solid, I'm using an SiS 735, and it's nice and solid, VIA make lousy but fast chipsets, ALI make stable but slow chipsets.
Right now, I'm using an SiS 735 board with a 1700+ on it, and once I got rid of the useless Coolermaster heatsink that wasn't cooling the processor a damn, it's been nice and stable:)
>Anybody who deals with "mission-critical" >machines will tell you that Intel puts out >better chips."
Right now, I sorta agree, the Tualatin P3 is a fantastic chip for rackmount servers.
AMD are RAPIDLY catching up in that department though, if they incorporated the PowerNOW! clockthrottling in the desktop cores, and tied it to the onboard thermal diode (muchlike the P4 will clock itself down if it overheats) they'd be doing even better.
And, TBH, right now I'd go with AMD for a workstation. (Tualatin on serverworks still gets the nod for rackmounts though.)
It's entirely possible that the MP data prefetch unit is the exact same unit XP's have..
possibly with slightly different microcode, but I'd be VERY surprised if AMD were fabbing two chips based on the exact same core with slight differences throughout.
"IRQ's memory addresses, jumper switches, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, SYSTEM.INI, or WIN.INI."
IRQ's and memory addresses are no longer an issue (Plug and Play is very mature, and ACPI is about there.), jumpers are pretty much a thing of the past (a lot of boards have ONE jumper, and that's to clear the cmos memory)
config.sys and autoexec.bat don't exist on NT based OS's (Win2k/XP)
and I think that in the 8 years I've been using x86 hardware (before that I was an Amiga user) I've editied a windows INI file about 3-4 times.. tops..
I like Apple, I like Macs, but your information is WAAAAAAAAY out of date, might as well bitch at apple for not having premptive multitasking. (eg, they didn't have it, but now they do..)
You don't think there would be ANY possible use for that?
I'm not specifically talking about games you know, there's plenty of scientific types who'd like to be able to perform experiments in a totally controllable environment.
(the validity of experiments based on variables they had entered would be a bit suspect however)
It's fairly self explanatory, once you can simulate a scene down to the molecular level, and then accelerate it to simulate the passage of time.
AND calculate all the physics involved (so everything is the right colour, sounds are generated dynamically etc) then, well, I for one can't see much point having anything faster.
g{I don't know of a single instance of a human being able to distinguish 48Khz frequency tones. I can't explain it -- but then again the audio industry has never been ruled by logic.}g
96Khz is used for the same reason certain people (John Carmack) are pushing for 64bit colour on graphics cards, to prevent rounding errors when mixing the audio down. Start with the highest quality source and all that.:)
the motion in first person games does NOT seem fluid below around about 50FPS, hell, to me, mouse controlled rotation seems to lag slightly below around about 60.
Put two identical machines side by side, let one continue running Quake 3 at 330 fps, cap the other one at 35 and look around a map, there IS a difference.
according to diagnostic software in WinUAE (amiga emulator, uses the same 68k JIT core as Basilisk II), this 1.47Ghz athlon performs like a 600Mhz 68040.
At the very least, if you MUST include per application skinning, also include a fallback mode where the applications gui is displayed in a normal manner.
(NOT using a skin that looks like the default OS, but actually using the stock OS routines to draw the window)
if they want to be so skinning-friendly, don't screw up the guys using Windowblinds:)
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"What I care about is not having to worry about the latest VIA drivers wrecking my system or hoping the bargain motehrboard I purchased for my AMD CPU won't gie me problems in 6 months." Well, duh, if you don't VIA problems?, DON'T BUY A VIA BASED BOARD If you don't want problems with a cheapass motherboard, don't BUY a cheapass motherboard. might I suggest the Tyan Tiger K7 MPX How come I never see people saying they are going to avoid intel because the VIA Apollo Pro / P4X266 chipsets suck?, we can play 'Worst. Case. Scenario.' too you know.
the K7S5A is twitchy with regards to the ram you put on it, I'd look there for a solution.
(oh, and make sure you have something more substantial than a Coolermaster HCC-001 cooling the damn thing.)
the Nforce chipset is (thus far) showing itself to be solid, I'm using an SiS 735, and it's nice and solid, VIA make lousy but fast chipsets, ALI make stable but slow chipsets.
:)
Right now, I'm using an SiS 735 board with a 1700+ on it, and once I got rid of the useless Coolermaster heatsink that wasn't cooling the processor a damn, it's been nice and stable
>Anybody who deals with "mission-critical" >machines will tell you that Intel puts out >better chips."
Right now, I sorta agree, the Tualatin P3 is a fantastic chip for rackmount servers.
AMD are RAPIDLY catching up in that department though, if they incorporated the PowerNOW! clockthrottling in the desktop cores, and tied it to the onboard thermal diode (muchlike the P4 will clock itself down if it overheats) they'd be doing even better.
And, TBH, right now I'd go with AMD for a workstation. (Tualatin on serverworks still gets the nod for rackmounts though.)
It's entirely possible that the MP data prefetch unit is the exact same unit XP's have..
possibly with slightly different microcode, but I'd be VERY surprised if AMD were fabbing two chips based on the exact same core with slight differences throughout.
I know this, this is a UNIX system, they tell you everything!!
gee, who'd have thought...
:)
Now, where's the PowerPC chips made on IBM's new process and running at 40Ghz?...
I guess that would depending on your definition of emulator.
(what does.. say.. VMWare classify as?)
I think he was also referring to the OS9 > OSX changeover
Switching architectures and including an emulator and all that.
Very well, but
"IRQ's memory addresses, jumper switches, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, SYSTEM.INI, or WIN.INI."
IRQ's and memory addresses are no longer an issue (Plug and Play is very mature, and ACPI is about there.), jumpers are pretty much a thing of the past (a lot of boards have ONE jumper, and that's to clear the cmos memory)
config.sys and autoexec.bat don't exist on NT based OS's (Win2k/XP)
and I think that in the 8 years I've been using x86 hardware (before that I was an Amiga user) I've editied a windows INI file about 3-4 times.. tops..
I like Apple, I like Macs, but your information is WAAAAAAAAY out of date, might as well bitch at apple for not having premptive multitasking. (eg, they didn't have it, but now they do..)
they have the GF4 Ti (4600?) as an option across the powermac range now, with it as standard in the 'big beefy' top end rig.
"Our policemen don't even carry guns!" they say."
Quite a few of them do actually..
airport police have taken to carrying MP5's around in recent months!
"It's capable of turning off unused portions of the chip to save power."
Intel chips have have had HALT since the P54C (90/100Mhz Pentium) ?
except that the 533Mhz RDRam supporting chipset is just a speed bumped i850, even down to the name of i850E
After that, there is NO rdram supporting chipset on Intel's roadmap.
So yes, Intel Have/is/are dumping Rambus.
Mods: how is this offtopic?, he's commenting on the flag design they are doing..
flamebait/troll.. maybe
offtopic?.. HUH?
You don't think there would be ANY possible use for that?
I'm not specifically talking about games you know, there's plenty of scientific types who'd like to be able to perform experiments in a totally controllable environment.
(the validity of experiments based on variables they had entered would be a bit suspect however)
It's fairly self explanatory, once you can simulate a scene down to the molecular level, and then accelerate it to simulate the passage of time.
AND calculate all the physics involved (so everything is the right colour, sounds are generated dynamically etc) then, well, I for one can't see much point having anything faster.
Agreed, I hear a lot of people say "I don't want an Althon, they are unstable!"
:)
I reply with "No, they aren't"
then THEY reply with "Yes they are, VIA chipsets are unstable"
/cue me beating them to death with a clue stick
(I'm sat at an SiS 735/AlthonXP 1700+ rig, no stability problems here
g{I don't know of a single instance of a human being able to distinguish 48Khz frequency tones. I can't explain it -- but then again the audio industry has never been ruled by logic.}g
:)
96Khz is used for the same reason certain people (John Carmack) are pushing for 64bit colour on graphics cards, to prevent rounding errors when mixing the audio down. Start with the highest quality source and all that.
the motion in first person games does NOT seem fluid below around about 50FPS, hell, to me, mouse controlled rotation seems to lag slightly below around about 60.
Put two identical machines side by side, let one continue running Quake 3 at 330 fps, cap the other one at 35 and look around a map, there IS a difference.
"I'd hesitate to put any upper limit on CPU speed where I could say "they're fast enough"."
How about the point where it can simulate reality in greater-than-realtime ?
:p
Hibernation (that worked) was introduced with Windows 98 SE
it was in 98 revision 1, but was a bit... choosy about working.
actually, he was exaggerating quite a bit...
:)
according to diagnostic software in WinUAE (amiga emulator, uses the same 68k JIT core as Basilisk II), this 1.47Ghz athlon performs like a 600Mhz 68040.
That's pretty speedy really
"Macs have instant wake-up from sleep, unlike Windows"
/presses the power button
/sees "Writing hibernation file to disk"
/machine powers down
/powers machine up again
/waits 15 seconds
/is back at the desktop
oh look, we can do that too....
At the very least, if you MUST include per application skinning, also include a fallback mode where the applications gui is displayed in a normal manner.
:)
(NOT using a skin that looks like the default OS, but actually using the stock OS routines to draw the window)
if they want to be so skinning-friendly, don't screw up the guys using Windowblinds