Here are a few that I had :
- is triple-buffering on or vsync off? This will make a huge difference to real time versus sped up timedemos
- is sound on when playing back both types of timedemos?
- how does FRAPS affect your benchmark scores?
Finally, in relation to the Crysis real world gameplay versus the AT benchmark score, I thought it was common knowledge that the game would be slower when actually playing it because you likely have physics,AI,logic,sound calculations to do that you don't in timedemo mode. What is the big deal here?
OS X has also long had a "secure delete" option that not only deletes the file, but writes over it with random data multiple times, ala DoD requirements. I'd be willing to bet that also does the same on your time machine backups. This is just a wrapper around the shred utility in linux i would guess. Used with find shred is pretty cool.
Or when your sound card won't work because it's not supported by the version of ALSA shipped with Ubuntu, so you need to update it, then set it in OSS compatibility mode because it won't work in native mode for some reason, then try to figure out why Flash won't work, puzzle over why it cuts out when you pause music in Amarok, then tear some hair out as it stops working altogether for no apparent reason! I've had exactly these types of issues. USB sound card (the total bithead) works with music applications but it refuses to be selected as the default sound device ALSA/OSS/default doesnt work. On another, my crappy on-board sound doesn't work with any version i've tried (6.06 to 7.10). Yet another computer works perfectly fine...
http://www.tech-hounds.com/article29/ArticlesPage1.html shows that there are niggling I/O performance issues. As well as issues with sound cards and network transfer (reminds me of all the linux issues in 2.4 before some of the fair scheduler changes in 2.6.x)
I have used Symfony for several smallish intranet projects that are used for data entry forms and data export. It is flexible and customizable enough to be almost confusing, but you can gradually learn how to use all the little bits to your advantage.
It has far more features than Zend Framework (which you can use with Symfony if you wish) and is more hackable than CakePHP.
I started using Symfony after first using html_quickforms/smarty (pear modules) and then looking at Rails and CakePHP. Rails was a new language with a new framework so I decided against it at the time, and Cake seemed really rigid. Now that I am comfortable with a sophisticated framework like Symfony, I will check out Rails to see what the hoopla is all about.
For now though, I see little need to.
This is not really true. There are still widespread problems for laptop users especially for older laptops that had ACPI quirks. Linux and the laptop vendors never really got ACPI straight for a few years. Also, lets not forget about all the function keys that are not always well supported (though my toshiba portege is fantastic except for ACPI being rubbish which i suspect is the vendors fault). Oh and I have used 2.4 and subsequently 2.6 kernels on it starting around 2004.
Seriously though, google Terje Mathisen before mouthing off about who he works for or what he should do with his life. He is an extremely highly regarded authority on computer architecture and program optimization. Hell, his name was one of the first that John Carmack thought of when asked about the fdiv() function in Quake. Check comp.arch for more...
Unfortunately, the new NV80 is still not IEEE754 compliant for single precision (32 bit) floating point math. It is mostly compliant however, so may be usable by some people. Forget it if you want to do 64 bit double precision floats though.
For AMDroids picking up on that statement, I would like to remind you that the 965 EE has 2 cores + 2 hyperthreaded virtual cores. Despite HT being much maligned it is useful in exactly the kind of situations where the Presler handily beat Conroe.
Can someone please explain why I would want to use this over a mixture of debian stable/testing?
Is it the 5 years of bug fixes and security patches? I can see the advantage of that, but conversely debian stable with apt-pinning should be able to achieve keeping critical packages safe while upgrading the rest of the system for securtiy, speed, or features.
I also think it is important to point out that hydrogen is a pie in the sky type idea that the Bush administration is pursuing to give the impression that they are doing something long term to solve the current gas price problems. The obvious MPG and hybrid car development gets little traction.
Honestly 2.6 is an absolute disgrace. Not only is the kernel crap, but udev is crap as well. There are version conflicts and drivers that used to work before udev and later 2.6 revs came into the picture. I hope Morton kernels are picked up by debian.
There were a number of negative comments on the release of 2.6.16 as well. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/20/ 141259
Ian. These are often inductor coils on the MB power circuitry making this noise. Go to silentpcreview.com forums and search for coil whine. It happens in PSU coils or/and more frequently on MB power circuitry coils. It is a combination of components that causes it and unfortunately there is not much you can do other than change the PSU/video card etc which are not possible on a laptop. You can douse the coils in electronics grade silicone (which is acid free) but I am not suggesting this. Send it back for servicing if they take it.
I believe that AMD had this technology before Intel ever started in on it.
IBM's Power 4 was dual core. Heck there are already multi-core versions of Power4/5. They do this by having putting multiple dual core dies on the same package (Multi chip modules afaik).
AMD is no longer too concerned with dual core but has moved on to targeting multi core.
See above
I cannot say I've had the ability to try an Intel dual core but I'm just ever so happy with my AMD processor that I don't see why I should.
Have you even tried a multi-core or SMT processor? Linus (yes him) posts on RWT forums and he frequently fawns over the difference SMT/HT makes in user experience.
It's entirely possible that OOOE could beat out the execution scheme that AMD has going but I wouldn't know enough to comment on it. I remember that there used to be a lot of buzz about IA-64's OOOE processing used on Itanium. But I'm not sure that was too popular among programmers.
OOE has been available since the P5 or Pentium days. Every mainstream processor architecture bar IA-64 (and maybe some MIPS cores) uses it. IA-64 is VLIW and in-order relying on the compiler to schedule instructions. Ahh, the Cell and X360 cores are also in-order AFAIK. But in order execution is the recent trend so to speak not OOE. The late generation PPCs were great OOE processors as well.
Think about it, a lot of IA-64 code comes to a point where the instruction stalls as it waits for data to be computed (most cases, a branch). If there are enough cores to compute both branches from the conditional (and third core to evaluate the conditional) then where is the slowdown? This will only break down on a switch style statement or when several if-thens follow each other successively.
WTF is this? This is not how multicore works. Go read something. How does this shit get modded +3 insightful is beyond me.
In any case, it's going to be a while before I switch back to Intel. AMD has won me over for the time being.
Ahaha a fan-boy. That explains it. BTW, I've built 3 intel and 4 AMD systems in the last 3 years. I dont know what I will buy next. The dual-core 805 D is very attractive at $135 but a pain to silence.
Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr
on
Linux 2.6.16 released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Agreed. I had a hunch that I wasnt alone with these problems. People upthread and you have described exactly the problems I have with various versions of 2.6 breaking different things. 2.2 and 2.4 kernel releases didnt scare me but 2.6 ones do.
Re:Linus' new philosophy of development in main tr
on
Linux 2.6.16 released
·
· Score: 1
I was not aware of this. I simply assumed that 2.6 was the current stable release. Considering it spawned from 2.5 and it has been out for a couple of years now. *shrug*. I am getting conflicting information in this thread. Some people say 2.6.15-2 is stable.It has some hardware bugs for me that did not exist in 2.6.4 through 2.6.7. Since 2.6.8 various parts have gone between the working and non working states (usb, orinoco, framebuffer). As you see upthread I am not the only person to have experienced these.
Linus' new philosophy of development in main tree
on
Linux 2.6.16 released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I must say that I am not happy with the 2.6.x kernel development. It has given me problems on both my server/desktop (dual P3-866 VIA board) and my laptop (toshiba portege p3 750). There are too many new features being added that seem to break others on working hardware. I would prefer if only hardware compatibility and bug fixes stayed in the main kernel tree while development continued in the 2.7.x tree like it used to previously.
I would like to know other peoples experiences with upgrades on 2.6.x. BTW, I run the debian testing kernels and the hotplug to udev switch has given me problems as well.
So I could spend $230 on an AGP card that I won't be able to use if I ever want to upgrade my CPU/Mainboard, or I could spent $260 for a PCI-E version of that card and a PCI-E mainboard for my current CPU. Or a 7800GT for $295 and a PCI-E S754 mainboard for $65 comes out to roughly the price of the 7800GS. Those seem like no-brainers to me, but only because I have a CPU that could be re-used. If you have a socket A or socket 478 CPU, you wouldn't have those options.
Yeah you`re absolutely right, and a PCIe 754 MB is looking like the right choice for you. For me with a socket A, it doesnt make sense to upgrade with a card like this. Even running at XP 3200+ speeds the cpu is a pretty big bottleneck unless you insist on playing at the highest resolution + detail level. A64 is a great gaming CPU even though speeds(GHz) havent gone up too much since the socket A days. Socket 478 is out in the cold as you said.
I`m still waiting for the 7600 series cards to come out before making the plunge. The X1600 is far too slow.
Basically this is a ho-hum card at a high price. You can get a PCIe 7800GT + Motherboard bundle from vendors like EVGA for around $350. The 7800GT is a 20 pipeline / 16 ROP card, while the 7800 GS is a 16/8. Its no contest which is faster. You can use your old DDR and CPU with the new MB making it a no brainer to avoid the 7800GS.
Bitcomet is junk. They do not honour the DHT tracking flags that Azureus introduced. Therefore Bitcomet is banned at every non-anonymous (ie. registration required) site that I download from. I am not going to list lists because I dont know how that is perceived on slashdot.
uTorrent gives you 95% of Azureus features (including per torrent and global controls that a poster upthread mistakenly claimed it did not). Cant beat it for 5 MB. Java sucks, and as a result Azureus does too.
I read the paper and the nanofibres are not actually the effector but merely a carrier.
The paper shows two main things :
- the growth factor has a protectant effect (PDGF-BB is the growth factor) in the heart
- nanofibres allow for a longer term dosage (14 days)of the protein growth factor
Not sure why this paper is on slashdot, if something truly groundbreaking happens expect a Nature, Science, or PNAS publishing.
WRT those scores, I can only speak for FIFA 2006. The PC version is horrendously bad lacking depth of gameplay. The graphics are strange looking and the animations terribly jerky. The level of control and moves possible is poor compared to the competition.
Speaking of competition, Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (a WinningEleven game) is nearly flawless. The number of moves possible is HUGE considering how you can string them together. Of course, for novices, you can play at an easier difficulty and not have to be frustrated. The animation is smooth, the control crisp, and the graphics superb. Check out metacritic for the game scores, and you'll see how much soccer fans adore this game. Lucklily theres a highly addictive demo available for download, so you can see for yourself.
Its available on PC and PSP/PS2. Not sure about XBOX etc but I am sure if/when it comes out for 360 it will be critically acclaimed.
This should be rated informative but not insightful. You cannot patent the structure of a protein, because there are several experimental methods to determine structure such as XRAY and NMR crystallography. If you create your own protein which AFAIK noone has created a useful sizeable protein, then maybe you can patent it. Or you can patent special ligand molecules that bind to proteins of medical interest. Heres the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallography/
Slashdot Mirror
Here are a few that I had :
- is triple-buffering on or vsync off? This will make a huge difference to real time versus sped up timedemos
- is sound on when playing back both types of timedemos?
- how does FRAPS affect your benchmark scores?
Finally, in relation to the Crysis real world gameplay versus the AT benchmark score, I thought it was common knowledge that the game would be slower when actually playing it because you likely have physics,AI,logic,sound calculations to do that you don't in timedemo mode. What is the big deal here?
http://www.tech-hounds.com/article29/ArticlesPage1.html shows that there are niggling I/O performance issues. As well as issues with sound cards and network transfer (reminds me of all the linux issues in 2.4 before some of the fair scheduler changes in 2.6.x)
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/411-8/ATI+Radeon+HD+2900+XT+Vista+Performance/ shows that game performance in Vista isn't any worse.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3060&p=1 shows high memory usage with recent fixes to ameliorate the problem somewhat.
Enough to make me not bother to upgrade.I have used Symfony for several smallish intranet projects that are used for data entry forms and data export. It is flexible and customizable enough to be almost confusing, but you can gradually learn how to use all the little bits to your advantage.
It has far more features than Zend Framework (which you can use with Symfony if you wish) and is more hackable than CakePHP.
I started using Symfony after first using html_quickforms/smarty (pear modules) and then looking at Rails and CakePHP. Rails was a new language with a new framework so I decided against it at the time, and Cake seemed really rigid. Now that I am comfortable with a sophisticated framework like Symfony, I will check out Rails to see what the hoopla is all about.
For now though, I see little need to.
This is not really true. There are still widespread problems for laptop users especially for older laptops that had ACPI quirks. Linux and the laptop vendors never really got ACPI straight for a few years. Also, lets not forget about all the function keys that are not always well supported (though my toshiba portege is fantastic except for ACPI being rubbish which i suspect is the vendors fault). Oh and I have used 2.4 and subsequently 2.6 kernels on it starting around 2004.
Seriously though, google Terje Mathisen before mouthing off about who he works for or what he should do with his life. He is an extremely highly regarded authority on computer architecture and program optimization. Hell, his name was one of the first that John Carmack thought of when asked about the fdiv() function in Quake. Check comp.arch for more...
Unfortunately, the new NV80 is still not IEEE754 compliant for single precision (32 bit) floating point math. It is mostly compliant however, so may be usable by some people. Forget it if you want to do 64 bit double precision floats though.
For AMDroids picking up on that statement, I would like to remind you that the 965 EE has 2 cores + 2 hyperthreaded virtual cores. Despite HT being much maligned it is useful in exactly the kind of situations where the Presler handily beat Conroe.
The antipagination plugin does help somewhat https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1539/
Is it the 5 years of bug fixes and security patches? I can see the advantage of that, but conversely debian stable with apt-pinning should be able to achieve keeping critical packages safe while upgrading the rest of the system for securtiy, speed, or features.
I also think it is important to point out that hydrogen is a pie in the sky type idea that the Bush administration is pursuing to give the impression that they are doing something long term to solve the current gas price problems. The obvious MPG and hybrid car development gets little traction.
Honestly 2.6 is an absolute disgrace. Not only is the kernel crap, but udev is crap as well. There are version conflicts and drivers that used to work before udev and later 2.6 revs came into the picture. I hope Morton kernels are picked up by debian. There were a number of negative comments on the release of 2.6.16 as well. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/20/ 141259
Ian. These are often inductor coils on the MB power circuitry making this noise. Go to silentpcreview.com forums and search for coil whine. It happens in PSU coils or/and more frequently on MB power circuitry coils. It is a combination of components that causes it and unfortunately there is not much you can do other than change the PSU/video card etc which are not possible on a laptop. You can douse the coils in electronics grade silicone (which is acid free) but I am not suggesting this. Send it back for servicing if they take it.
Agreed. I had a hunch that I wasnt alone with these problems. People upthread and you have described exactly the problems I have with various versions of 2.6 breaking different things. 2.2 and 2.4 kernel releases didnt scare me but 2.6 ones do.
I was not aware of this. I simply assumed that 2.6 was the current stable release. Considering it spawned from 2.5 and it has been out for a couple of years now. *shrug*. I am getting conflicting information in this thread. Some people say 2.6.15-2 is stable.It has some hardware bugs for me that did not exist in 2.6.4 through 2.6.7. Since 2.6.8 various parts have gone between the working and non working states (usb, orinoco, framebuffer). As you see upthread I am not the only person to have experienced these.
I would like to know other peoples experiences with upgrades on 2.6.x. BTW, I run the debian testing kernels and the hotplug to udev switch has given me problems as well.
Basically this is a ho-hum card at a high price. You can get a PCIe 7800GT + Motherboard bundle from vendors like EVGA for around $350. The 7800GT is a 20 pipeline / 16 ROP card, while the 7800 GS is a 16/8. Its no contest which is faster. You can use your old DDR and CPU with the new MB making it a no brainer to avoid the 7800GS.
uTorrent gives you 95% of Azureus features (including per torrent and global controls that a poster upthread mistakenly claimed it did not). Cant beat it for 5 MB. Java sucks, and as a result Azureus does too.
Yeah good point. I read that book and forgot about that fact. Interesting character, Kary Mullis is .
I read the paper and the nanofibres are not actually the effector but merely a carrier. The paper shows two main things : - the growth factor has a protectant effect (PDGF-BB is the growth factor) in the heart - nanofibres allow for a longer term dosage (14 days)of the protein growth factor Not sure why this paper is on slashdot, if something truly groundbreaking happens expect a Nature, Science, or PNAS publishing.
WRT those scores, I can only speak for FIFA 2006. The PC version is horrendously bad lacking depth of gameplay. The graphics are strange looking and the animations terribly jerky. The level of control and moves possible is poor compared to the competition. Speaking of competition, Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (a WinningEleven game) is nearly flawless. The number of moves possible is HUGE considering how you can string them together. Of course, for novices, you can play at an easier difficulty and not have to be frustrated. The animation is smooth, the control crisp, and the graphics superb. Check out metacritic for the game scores, and you'll see how much soccer fans adore this game. Lucklily theres a highly addictive demo available for download, so you can see for yourself. Its available on PC and PSP/PS2. Not sure about XBOX etc but I am sure if/when it comes out for 360 it will be critically acclaimed.
This should be rated informative but not insightful. You cannot patent the structure of a protein, because there are several experimental methods to determine structure such as XRAY and NMR crystallography. If you create your own protein which AFAIK noone has created a useful sizeable protein, then maybe you can patent it. Or you can patent special ligand molecules that bind to proteins of medical interest. Heres the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallography/