Some of these products do actually make a performance difference, usually by altering the way the system does memory management. However, the performance difference is usually usage dependent so you may or may not see the difference based on what you do with your system.
Having said that, in my experience these programs virtually all cause some instability or other that makes them just not worth it. I wouldn't run one of these for the same reason I don't overclock my systems -- the couple of percentage points of increased performance just isn't worth the increased risk that my system might die at some critical moment, causing me to lose hours or more of work.
You just spent a lot of words being wrong. 32 bits are NOT enough for GPUs and gaming. 32 bit is plenty fine when you're talking about a single texture, but when you're doing 10-20 passes to do textures, normal maps, lighting, etc, you start seeing rounding errors that accumulate giving you banding artifacts similar to those that were common when 16 bit color was king.
In any case, the Nvidia 6800 does 64bit color NOW and 64bit is going to be pretty much standard equipement across the board within the next year.
You're going to get two answers. You'll get the "always used stored procedures" answer from people who actually do real database work and the "never use stored procedures" from the people who hack small websites in PHP.
If I were a bit more of a tinfoil hat wearing man, I'd be Slashdot makes some of these "Ask Slashdot" topics up because the ensuing flamewar will cause more page hits than usual.
Bad license choice.
on
J2ME Polish 1.0
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There is a good reason why most projects of this type choose the LGPL as their license. Using the GPL will pretty much ensure that this project won't get used by any serious third parties.
And before anyone flames me, yeah, I realize the guy is free to license his code under whatever license he chooses and I can choose to not use it. In either case, it doesn't really matter to me since I don't program in Java. I'm just noting that he made a somewhat odd choice.
As others have pointed out, the Nvidia cards used in this benchmark do NOT have their own codepath.
The reason Nvidia kicks ATI's ass in Doom3 is because Doom3 is HEAVY on the stencil buffer shadows. Nvidia's newer FX cards can render two-sided stencil buffer volumes in one pass, which is a huge speed win for stencil shadows. It also supports stencil shadow volume clipping, which speeds things up even further.
The long and short of it is, any game that uses a unified lighting model like Doom3's, using stencil-buffer based shadows, will run noticably faster on Nvidia hardware. There is no driver trickery or coder bias.
Oh yeah? Try playing Quake3 on a minimally configured machine and see what the gameplay is like. 320x200 with software rendering can be get good framerates, but you can't see a blooming thing!
Quake3 doesn't even support software rendering. You don't know what you're talking about, do you?
Well, he was a Star Trek fan, so I'm guessing a rip in the space/time continuum played a part here... probably due to an inversion of the plasmatronic pulse drive system.
The point is that the DX shader assembly code has *lost meaning* in the translation from whatever high level language it came from. There are many possible optimizations that could have been made with a cheap analysis of the high level language that would be very difficult to make from looking at the low level language.
Actually, no meaning is lost. Have you ever actually done shader programming? Even with PS3.0, which adds support for looping and branching logic, the higher level language is really just syntax sugar on top of the assembly code. I can't think of one single instance where meaning would be lost going from GLSL or HLSL to shader assembly... care to share one?
Except in the area of the existance of real implementations.
True enough, and the forthcoming DX9 Summer Update 2004 nudges DX9 a bit further yet. While there are certainly some benefits to having a committee like the OpenGL ARB, there are some drawbacks (like slower forward movement) too.
Re:What are people's opinion of comparisions
on
OpenGL Shading Language
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· Score: 3, Informative
In a way, I'd say it's more advanced thatn DirectX 9.0. At least in terms of shaders. GLSL allows you to design things to be more modular. You can write multiple shaders (multiple vertex shaders, multiple fragment shaders) and then link them together into a single program object.
You can do that with DX9 too, using HLSL and the 'FX' effects file system.
This is a very good step in the right direction, I think. Also, HLSL specifically compiles its code into a DirectX-specified shading assembly. Microsoft is controlling those, of course, so there's less room for innovation of compiler optimizations on the part of the hardware vendors.
There is no reason why the vendors can't take the DX shader assembly code and reorder/optimize it for their card's strengths at the driver level. (NVidia and ATI both already do this).
Re:What are people's opinion of comparisions
on
OpenGL Shading Language
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Finally getting a standardized shading language in there is a great start.
It will take a while for drivers supporting OpenGL's SL to be widely distributed, and existing artist-centric shader design tools to be updated for the new standard, but things seem to be moving very quickly.
There are still a few areas where I wish the OpenGL ARB would follow DirectX's lead -- a library like D3DX and a generic mesh format similar to DirectX X files would be really nice (there are various Open Source projects that fit this bill, but AFAIK, none of them are official or have any sort of critical mass).
Of course, a developer can easily create his/her own code that does similar things to D3DX using OpenGL, but having such a functional officially-supported utility library really helps when you're prototyping and just want to get things up and running quickly and also helps if you're just beginning with 3D programming, so you aren't completely overwhemled by everything.
Anyone who thinks Microsoft doesn't spend a lot of time trying to make it easy to do things people want to commonly do is completely out of touch and hasn't heard of "Activity-Based Design". This stuff is hammered into people who work for Microsoft.
Why does Excel have such easy to use list-making functionality when it is supposed to be a spreadsheet? Microsoft did a lot of user testing and found that an awful lot of customers just used it to make lists. So they made it really easy to do so. That's just one example.
In short, the view that you should make the common tasks easy is completely on target. The idea that Microsoft is unaware of this and doesn't follow these ideas themselves is completely wrong and has no basis in reality.
"The recent activity in Linux kernel development caused by the introduction of a new scheduler by Ingo Molnar has emphasized for ordinary Linux users the importance of schedulers in modern operating systems"
I know some people will take this as flamebait, but I honestly don't mean it to be. However, as long as Linux is in a state where developers think that "ordinary Linux users" have to even care what a scheduler is, Linux will be a failure for mainstream desktop usage.
Users don't care about OS internals. Don't send them to a page explaining OS scheduling, just tell them "All new Linux makes your applications more responsive!". That's all they want to hear.
The cartoon style rendering in "Wind Waker" was the best that's ever been done, so I'm not sure what you mean by not minding it if its "done right". The game wasn't perfect -- lord knows the player had to spend a bit too much out in the boring sea, sailing that boat, but the graphics were amazingly well done.
the also make the ALL the console games with the most amazing story lines....
Uh, most amazing story lines? I absolutely love Nintendo's games, but they are all about gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. The story lines of their games aren't particularly deep in many cases don't even make much sense if you give them too much thought.
Everything I've heard thus far is that Microsoft dropped Intel and is using IBM chips in the Xbox2. So that would limit this "hybrid" to running applications compiled especially for this device, which drastically reduces the usefulness of it, IMO.
Maybe if they saved some money by switching to Windows Server 2003 (lower TOC! Just see banner ads running all over this site for proof!), they could afford a better admin.
Slashdot Mirror
Having said that, in my experience these programs virtually all cause some instability or other that makes them just not worth it. I wouldn't run one of these for the same reason I don't overclock my systems -- the couple of percentage points of increased performance just isn't worth the increased risk that my system might die at some critical moment, causing me to lose hours or more of work.
YMMV.
In any case, the Nvidia 6800 does 64bit color NOW and 64bit is going to be pretty much standard equipement across the board within the next year.
If I were a bit more of a tinfoil hat wearing man, I'd be Slashdot makes some of these "Ask Slashdot" topics up because the ensuing flamewar will cause more page hits than usual.
I'm rubber, you're glue. BITCH!
And before anyone flames me, yeah, I realize the guy is free to license his code under whatever license he chooses and I can choose to not use it. In either case, it doesn't really matter to me since I don't program in Java. I'm just noting that he made a somewhat odd choice.
I always kinda assumed they were using a cheek swab to get the samples. Guess I was wrong.
In either case, its pretty funny that the parent is marked Informative when its either a troll (more likely) or just plain wrong.
I've actually read it from 700m below the earth, in a salt/potash mine in Germany. Susumu, the king is not in Germany.
The reason Nvidia kicks ATI's ass in Doom3 is because Doom3 is HEAVY on the stencil buffer shadows. Nvidia's newer FX cards can render two-sided stencil buffer volumes in one pass, which is a huge speed win for stencil shadows. It also supports stencil shadow volume clipping, which speeds things up even further.
The long and short of it is, any game that uses a unified lighting model like Doom3's, using stencil-buffer based shadows, will run noticably faster on Nvidia hardware. There is no driver trickery or coder bias.
Oh yeah? Try playing Quake3 on a minimally configured machine and see what the gameplay is like. 320x200 with software rendering can be get good framerates, but you can't see a blooming thing!
Quake3 doesn't even support software rendering. You don't know what you're talking about, do you?
Well, he was a Star Trek fan, so I'm guessing a rip in the space/time continuum played a part here... probably due to an inversion of the plasmatronic pulse drive system.
Actually, no meaning is lost. Have you ever actually done shader programming? Even with PS3.0, which adds support for looping and branching logic, the higher level language is really just syntax sugar on top of the assembly code. I can't think of one single instance where meaning would be lost going from GLSL or HLSL to shader assembly... care to share one?
True enough, and the forthcoming DX9 Summer Update 2004 nudges DX9 a bit further yet. While there are certainly some benefits to having a committee like the OpenGL ARB, there are some drawbacks (like slower forward movement) too.
You can do that with DX9 too, using HLSL and the 'FX' effects file system.
This is a very good step in the right direction, I think. Also, HLSL specifically compiles its code into a DirectX-specified shading assembly. Microsoft is controlling those, of course, so there's less room for innovation of compiler optimizations on the part of the hardware vendors.
There is no reason why the vendors can't take the DX shader assembly code and reorder/optimize it for their card's strengths at the driver level. (NVidia and ATI both already do this).
It will take a while for drivers supporting OpenGL's SL to be widely distributed, and existing artist-centric shader design tools to be updated for the new standard, but things seem to be moving very quickly.
There are still a few areas where I wish the OpenGL ARB would follow DirectX's lead -- a library like D3DX and a generic mesh format similar to DirectX X files would be really nice (there are various Open Source projects that fit this bill, but AFAIK, none of them are official or have any sort of critical mass).
Of course, a developer can easily create his/her own code that does similar things to D3DX using OpenGL, but having such a functional officially-supported utility library really helps when you're prototyping and just want to get things up and running quickly and also helps if you're just beginning with 3D programming, so you aren't completely overwhemled by everything.
Why does Excel have such easy to use list-making functionality when it is supposed to be a spreadsheet? Microsoft did a lot of user testing and found that an awful lot of customers just used it to make lists. So they made it really easy to do so. That's just one example.
In short, the view that you should make the common tasks easy is completely on target. The idea that Microsoft is unaware of this and doesn't follow these ideas themselves is completely wrong and has no basis in reality.
Maybe I don't "get it" as you say, but I still got modded up with some shiny new karma points, and that is what really matters here.
I know some people will take this as flamebait, but I honestly don't mean it to be. However, as long as Linux is in a state where developers think that "ordinary Linux users" have to even care what a scheduler is, Linux will be a failure for mainstream desktop usage.
Users don't care about OS internals. Don't send them to a page explaining OS scheduling, just tell them "All new Linux makes your applications more responsive!". That's all they want to hear.
Seriously.
Because, you see, they are very fat.
The cartoon style rendering in "Wind Waker" was the best that's ever been done, so I'm not sure what you mean by not minding it if its "done right". The game wasn't perfect -- lord knows the player had to spend a bit too much out in the boring sea, sailing that boat, but the graphics were amazingly well done.
the also make the ALL the console games with the most amazing story lines....
Uh, most amazing story lines? I absolutely love Nintendo's games, but they are all about gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. The story lines of their games aren't particularly deep in many cases don't even make much sense if you give them too much thought.
Which explains why Microsoft went to such great lengths to speed up the boot process (significantly, I might add) in Windows XP?
Pardon me. I'm going to go use my computer to educate myself on the finer points of pornography.
Everything I've heard thus far is that Microsoft dropped Intel and is using IBM chips in the Xbox2. So that would limit this "hybrid" to running applications compiled especially for this device, which drastically reduces the usefulness of it, IMO.
Maybe if they saved some money by switching to Windows Server 2003 (lower TOC! Just see banner ads running all over this site for proof!), they could afford a better admin.
I hope this sends a message to all Buffalo out there that I'm gonna eat you!! Buffalo Burgers are so tasty!!