Just how much influence does the bus speed have on the system as a whole?
With the Athlon's architecture, not a whole lot. It wasn't designed with high speed memory in mind. Hell, they started with 100mhz SDRAM. Pentium 4 is better at taking advantage of higher memory bandwidth, but it does help Athlon. If you're building a new system, go for PC2700. If you've already got PC2100, the upgrade might be a waste.
AMD better forget these little incremental speed bumps and switch to a whole new architecture this year if they want to remain competetive. The current architecture is like milking a deadhorse and they are already running waay too hot. They need to make something big enough to give it a new name.
The sad truth is that we're in a field where salary is about the only way to go, because the time we're needed to work are so dynamic.
I'm an Air Force programmer, which I suppose is most like salary, though most salary jobs tend to pay a lot more. I've got benefits and job security, but I've also got a contract that I'm not gonna get out of for the next few years.
While I've spent my share of weekends and late nights here, I've also gotten out early and have a lot more days off than I'd expect. That's just the way it goes. I'd prefer an hourly job, 8 hours a day, maybe some extra time if someone can't make it to work, but that's not going to happen.
And, being salaried, i don't get paid to work late nights and such (which doesn't stop me, but doesn't motivate me either).
Being salaried, you are paid to work whenever you are needed. Being salaried, you've accepted this and while no, it isn't going to motivate you to stay late, its your job, but it is what you're paid for.
As if research institutions have the money to pay people for all those clock cycles. Hell, people do it for SETI for free and SETI *still* has money problems.
But, ahem.. they aren't giving money away. They are selling your processing time. Which means they are getting money, not paying it. SETI is using your processing time to do something with no pay. This thing would act as a reseller of your processing time and using the money to pay for your songs.
Of course, it's hard to imagine your processor time is worth enough to pay for those songs.
but if Intel has taught us anything it is be the first with the worst
I've said for years that this is why Sega can't afford to make consoles anymore. The software developers definately do their job better than the old market analysts did.
If you want to be reasonable about it, get the cheapest PDA you can find because it does everything a PDA is supposed to be used for. Buying a PDA for games doesn't make you a geek, it makes you a loser.
I think thats kind of backwards. These companies realize that all the money is in the mainstream market (which ATi used to have something like 75% market share in, pre nvidia). I think the idea behind having the very fastest card has more to do with being the company thats better, ie, that makes the casual gamer think that very card in their line is better than the respective price point card from the other company.
More than anything, I just feel the argument that "that card is good enough FOR NOW, but what about Doom 3" is moot because the people that buy the fastest video cards tend to upgrade even more than the people who buy cheaper ones.
They're not really "behind" anyway (exception: Daikatana) because not everyone has the very latest hardware. These companies are just as worried about making sure their game will work on old hardware as making it look incredible on the latest.
Eventually someone is going to be burned by this cycle, and it most likely will be the "$400 every six month" video card manufacturers.
Perhaps they should take a look at 1) the cpu, 2) the memory, 3) the storage, 4) the broadband and any number of other markets and realize making something ridiculously fast and even more ridiculously expensive isn't a very good idea. If you go out and buy their cheap cards twice as often as you'd upgrade to their top of the line cards, you'll spend half as much money and always have a latest generation card capable of playing all the latest games with all the greatest detail levels with a framerate fast enough that you won't know the difference.
The frequency we know as "blue" is much more prone to error since the wavelength and subsequent oscillating value is smaller than "red" lasers found in traditional CD players.
By "prone to error," you mean precise, right? As in "an x-acto knife is much more prone to error than a cleaver, because the blade and subsequent sharp edge is smaller."
Very true, then again, though, if the database is that small anyway, you're probably not taking much of a performance hit unless you never should have been using a database to begin with.
Offtopic though, I'd love to see a solid state revolution. With the amounts of RAM and flash memory available these days, I don't see why we couldn't run an OS off one. I'm not generally one to be anxious to jump in to new technologies (I used to hate games that used polygons instead of sprites), I think moving to solid state in an intelligent manner would be the biggest thing that could happen in the industry in the near future. ie, along with serial ata, introduce fast, ~2gb bootdrives that run your OS and favorite programs and store everything else on a conventional magnetic hard drive.
At first, I had a problem understanding object oriented methodology because I kept thinking of objects in terms of a database -- they seemed so much alike. But...
Who uses a database small enough to fit in RAM?
Re:At the time it happened
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Whoa buddy, I didn't say they should happen. I can just imagine how many others seriously considered it and how hard it would be to prevent, and I'm surprised more didn't happen.
Re:At the time it happened
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Frankly, I'm amazed school shootings have stopped for as long as they have. I think if they start again, there should be an anti-school shooting tv commercial with the catch phrase, "School shootings are so 20th century.
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With the Athlon's architecture, not a whole lot. It wasn't designed with high speed memory in mind. Hell, they started with 100mhz SDRAM. Pentium 4 is better at taking advantage of higher memory bandwidth, but it does help Athlon. If you're building a new system, go for PC2700. If you've already got PC2100, the upgrade might be a waste.
I'm not the brightest pencil in the box.
AMD better forget these little incremental speed bumps and switch to a whole new architecture this year if they want to remain competetive. The current architecture is like milking a deadhorse and they are already running waay too hot. They need to make something big enough to give it a new name.
I'm an Air Force programmer, which I suppose is most like salary, though most salary jobs tend to pay a lot more. I've got benefits and job security, but I've also got a contract that I'm not gonna get out of for the next few years.
While I've spent my share of weekends and late nights here, I've also gotten out early and have a lot more days off than I'd expect. That's just the way it goes. I'd prefer an hourly job, 8 hours a day, maybe some extra time if someone can't make it to work, but that's not going to happen.
Being salaried, you are paid to work whenever you are needed. Being salaried, you've accepted this and while no, it isn't going to motivate you to stay late, its your job, but it is what you're paid for.
Is this really true peer to peer? Peer to peer is fine, but I'd be hesitant to have give up my bandwidth while downloading music I paid for.
But, ahem.. they aren't giving money away. They are selling your processing time. Which means they are getting money, not paying it. SETI is using your processing time to do something with no pay. This thing would act as a reseller of your processing time and using the money to pay for your songs.
Of course, it's hard to imagine your processor time is worth enough to pay for those songs.
I've said for years that this is why Sega can't afford to make consoles anymore. The software developers definately do their job better than the old market analysts did.
If you want to be reasonable about it, get the cheapest PDA you can find because it does everything a PDA is supposed to be used for. Buying a PDA for games doesn't make you a geek, it makes you a loser.
If you get hit with nimda, you're the next guy who's launching the attack on other people. That doesn't work.
I think thats kind of backwards. These companies realize that all the money is in the mainstream market (which ATi used to have something like 75% market share in, pre nvidia). I think the idea behind having the very fastest card has more to do with being the company thats better, ie, that makes the casual gamer think that very card in their line is better than the respective price point card from the other company.
More than anything, I just feel the argument that "that card is good enough FOR NOW, but what about Doom 3" is moot because the people that buy the fastest video cards tend to upgrade even more than the people who buy cheaper ones.
They're not really "behind" anyway (exception: Daikatana) because not everyone has the very latest hardware. These companies are just as worried about making sure their game will work on old hardware as making it look incredible on the latest.
are there any?
Perhaps they should take a look at 1) the cpu, 2) the memory, 3) the storage, 4) the broadband and any number of other markets and realize making something ridiculously fast and even more ridiculously expensive isn't a very good idea. If you go out and buy their cheap cards twice as often as you'd upgrade to their top of the line cards, you'll spend half as much money and always have a latest generation card capable of playing all the latest games with all the greatest detail levels with a framerate fast enough that you won't know the difference.
Bloggers "selling out" ? Isn't that the point for most of them?
Er, the same thing people have been doing with discman since they first came out...
That's 300gb of memory in the server. Not 300mb of extra memory. Triple that and we're in business.
I prefer paying 25 cents a disc.
By "prone to error," you mean precise, right? As in "an x-acto knife is much more prone to error than a cleaver, because the blade and subsequent sharp edge is smaller."
Offtopic though, I'd love to see a solid state revolution. With the amounts of RAM and flash memory available these days, I don't see why we couldn't run an OS off one. I'm not generally one to be anxious to jump in to new technologies (I used to hate games that used polygons instead of sprites), I think moving to solid state in an intelligent manner would be the biggest thing that could happen in the industry in the near future. ie, along with serial ata, introduce fast, ~2gb bootdrives that run your OS and favorite programs and store everything else on a conventional magnetic hard drive.
Who uses a database small enough to fit in RAM?
Whoa buddy, I didn't say they should happen. I can just imagine how many others seriously considered it and how hard it would be to prevent, and I'm surprised more didn't happen.
Frankly, I'm amazed school shootings have stopped for as long as they have. I think if they start again, there should be an anti-school shooting tv commercial with the catch phrase, "School shootings are so 20th century.
Remember all the headlines about gas and electric bills the last few years? Carefull what you wish for..
It could make for some interesting conservation commercials during saturday morning cartons (btw, do saturday morning cartoons still exist?)