Tech News and Gossip thread...

[urluckyday]

There's nothing wrong w/ my gaming rig...a laptop. Works faster than my gaming desktop...w/ XP. Vista is the equal to XP when it comes to gaming...perhaps your machine just sucked if you had problems w/ Vista gaming...sure, if you wanted to look at it technically, there is a slight increase in usage of system resources over XP, but the difference isn't there (noticeable) when it comes to gaming...

People put all their crap on their machines, and when something slows it down...it's the OS! Just remember...whatever you put on your machine can cause just as many problems...

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

i don't know how many times i have to tell people this, but Vista uses more memory than XP because of Superfetch.

Yeah, it's not that the OS itself is buggy and it has a UI that uses way too much in terms of memory/CPU usage.

 

um, nope. any opportunity to be inane, jmac is there.... \o/

G****** right I am. Also take a look at this.

 

People put all their crap on their machines, and when something slows it down...it's the OS!

Indeed. I purposely loaded my laptop with viruses and spyware and dicked around with my registry so that I could say XP is way better.

[stingerhs]

Yeah, it's not that the OS itself is buggy and it has a UI that uses way too much in terms of memory/CPU usage.

buggy?? not from what i've seen. i've had problems with drivers, but that has to do with the companies that write the drivers, not the OS. and last time i checked, Aero uses the GPU to render the GUI which frees the CPU for other tasks, and if you have a discreet card, Aero uses the memory on the card instead of the main memory.

Goddamn right I am. Also take a look at this.

and what does that prove?? yeah, people had problems with the computers that were labeled "Vista Capable" that, in the end, couldn't run Vista. that doesn't cover systems like mine nor other systems out there that currently don't have any problems with the OS. what you've posted is just too much of a generalization about something that is related to a pre-launch marketing campaign. does it affect computers that already have Vista installed and running?? absolutely not, and as such, i fail to see the relevance of posting it.

 

and i'm fine with you debating this, but i'm warning you not to curse like that again. you have been warned.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

yeah, people had problems with the computers that were labeled "Vista Capable" that, in the end, couldn't run Vista. that doesn't cover systems like mine nor other systems out there that currently don't have any problems with the OS.

Indeed sir, you are clearly a perfect example of the average end-user. And sorry for insinuating that computers labeled as "Vista Capable" should, in the end, be able to run Vista if those who are pro-Vista want others to give Vista more of a chance.

 

what you've posted is just too much of a generalization about something that is related to a pre-launch marketing campaign. does it affect computers that already have Vista installed and running?? absolutely not, and as such, i fail to see the relevance of posting it.

What I've posted is a counter to Astro's statement that people who go out and buy Vista or purchase a computer that is marketed as "Vista Capable" and have it run horribly are lazy and/or dumb. It shows that they could also have been deceived by Microsoft lowering the minimum system requirements for Vista well below what they should have been.

 

and i'm fine with you debating this, but i'm warning you not to curse like that again. you have been warned.

You quoted me before you edited my post

[Negative Sun]

I agree that Microsoft buggered up monumentally with the whole "Vista Capable" thing, because it doesn't reflect the OS as such (by that I mean Vista Home Premium or Ultimate), but it's certainly put a dent in people's trust.

 

I haven't used it myself so I can't judge how it compares against XP, but I think Astro hit the nail by saying XP is the OS that exploded the whole internet computing generation and not to mention the exponential growth of laptops. For us geeks who've been online since Netscape was pwning IE or before, XP was just another OS from Microsoft, we had Win98 and 95 before that, and I personally had a love/hate relationship with those as well, just like I didn't warm up to XP from the start.

Point is, most people have only ever know XP, and most of the time they've known it as a mature, stable OS which is practically the standard for any drivers and peripherals you might need.

 

Another good point is (can't remember who said it) the horrible mistake Microsoft made by thinking the hardware side of computing would evolve as quickly as software, that people would upgrade components just to get a spanking new OS...Which makes you think the Vista Basic has been thrown in to keep the low-end market up to date with Vista as well, barely giving you any upgrade at all.

If you've got a decent rig, then I'm sure Vista a a very capable OS, but for most people who just want to use a PC for email and internet etc... (which I believe is a huge majority of people who own PCs), buying a system which can run Vista Home Premium is a bit overkill, hence the upcoming trend of Linux in the EEE for example, or the need to hang on to XP, as they both do all these things and more flawlessly, without costing as much and without needing up to date hardware...In the end, most people just don't need Vista, and it's Microsoft's fault for trying to make us all believe that they do, and I'm glad it blew up in their faces, it's just a shame it doesn't represent what a good OS Vista can be, but in the end there's only one way the finger can point at...

 

[/rant] *phew*

[urluckyday]

Indeed. I purposely loaded my laptop with viruses and spyware and dicked around with my registry so that I could say XP is way better.

 

Yeah, that's exactly what I said (sarcasm)...most people don't put crap on their computer intentionally, so that's why they think it's the OS's fault...no need to get defensive...

[Astrotoy7]

What I've posted is a counter to Astro's statement that people who go out and buy Vista or purchase a computer that is marketed as "Vista Capable" ...

 

*reads back his own posts*

 

aw cmon, I never mentioned people who went out and bought a 'vista capable' pc!!

 

I was talking about those jackasses who ran out and bought the disc and tried to force it on the P3 their dad bough them when they still had a mullet

 

Those who bought a vista capable computer and are having some troubles have some legal meandering to do... Dell, Acer, Compaq etc are equally to blame for slapping those stickers on. Who the heck knows what is constituent in the licensing agreement between MS and those manufacturers, which is what any legal action will eventually fall on.

 

At the end of the day, the average user is squeezed out of the bigger picture, they often are

 

>>>negsun, can you post some juicy hardware news...this stuff is boring! Class actions, stickers, meh... I want FPS, TDP and GPU Model names with numerous XXXs in them >>also, w regard to the EEE, due to the overwhelming demand for XP on the EEE, asus will be shipping most subsequent EEEs with XP on it, further driving up the price of what was meant to be a budget pc alternative They did themselves no favours with that Xandros interface. You have to do some terminal window tweaking just to get into desktop mode. They should have slapped plain ole ubuntu or mint (etc) on it, to give it that windows familiarity that most people, especially kids would be used to.

 

mtfbwya

[urluckyday]

I think that you guys need to listen to Paul Thurrott a little better idea of how this crap gets told by one person, and it turns into fact...Vista isn't as bad as everyone (almost everyone) makes it out to be...

[Astrotoy7]

I think that you guys need to listen to Paul Thurrott a little better idea of how this crap gets told by one person, and it turns into fact...Vista isn't as bad as everyone (almost everyone) makes it out to be...

 

oh, I definitely wouldn't recommend Paul T amd his "windows supersite" as a font of unbiased facts !! He got run out of 'The Green Button' (the worlds largest independent HTPC site) because of his ''repeated inaccuracies'', shall we say. He does do an OK job of spelling some things out in a way that average users can comprehend... which is great...as long as its content is accurate!!

 

All I recommend is people be sensible, and check for themselves Listening to another persons experience can be helpful(as far as dos and don'ts) but wading through the rants is a tricky thing, and likely to colour ones objectivity about whether a product is appropriate for them...

 

For those wanting to try vista, you are legally entitled to install a copy of the OS without a product key, giving you a free 30 day trial. Make a partition on your HD and bobs your uncle

 

<<please do not ask here how to acquire a copy of the OS if you don't know someone who has one!!>>

 

Before you do this though, there are numerous places(online and in the real world) you can get 'compatibility checks' done but these are the golden rules, in priority order:

 

1) does your mainbaord/chipset have vista drivers

2) does the rest of your hardware(gfx card, sound card etc) have vista drivers

3) Do you heavily rely on certain apps? Check if they are vista compatible

4) do you have >1.5Ghz CPU

5) do you have 1GB RAM (you can scrape by with 512, but its simply not worth the hassle)

5) do you have at least 20GB free on a HD/partition

 

If the answer to ANY of these is NO, please save yourself the hassle and stick to XP/whatever you are using....

 

* * *

 

where's our roving reporter...?? I think we may have to review his contract given his recent absences

 

The Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition Review

 

Here's a snippet for you lazy buggers:

 

"Fact remains however that AMD's flagship product still needs to be sought in the mainstream market. And fair enough, AMD adopted the pricing strategy to that as the Phenom X4 9850 can be purchased at the $235 price point. And that's just not bad. Once we started overclocking the processor, we noticed that instantly we had a processor that could keep up with Intel's offering much better....

 

It is likely the cheapest quad-core processor you can find on the market, that's a lot of value & with this new B3 revision, a perfectly safe & stable product."

 

Competitive Pricing and decent performance - WIN, in my book

 

Speaking of WIN, here's a review of the amusing, but appropriately titled

EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW "For The Win" mainboard.... clickity

 

again, a snippet:

 

"But this 750i SLI FTW is just an exceptionally good mainboard if your mission is to tweak and overclock. It has everything we as enthusiast PC users want. It looks cool, even comes with multi-channel sound, including TOSLINK optical output, fantastic performance, the sexy diagnostic LED, and it has micro switches for power on/off, reset and now also CMOS

 

...Final thought: Yeah the 750i SLI FTW went 'for the win' .. and it struck gold. It wins our 'best hardware award' it deserves nothing less."

 

lolz...they're such proud hardware geeks at G3D Such a recommendation is nothing to be sneezed at... also worth bearing in mind is that EVGA products carry a lifetime warranty.... you cant beat that!

 

mtfbwya

[stingerhs]

Specs for Radeon HD4800 series leaked

 

these R770-based cards actually aren't a really huge leap forward, but if these cards live up to this kind of hype, AMD/ATI will be able to definitively take the crown of Best Video Card away from Nvidia for a while. they're addressing a lot of issues that came with the 2900/3800 series of cards and giving it some insane memory bandwidth to boot. there's also lots of extra stream processors in this one, so it should prove to be a tour de force for those of us that have DX10.

 

the launch is supposed to be a within the next 2-3 weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.

[Q]

I don't think it's going to be much of a tour de force because Nvidia's upcoming GT200 will probably spank it, but as long as it keeps DAAMIT competitive with Nvidia, it's still good news.

[Char Ell]

I'm getting to the point where I want to upgrade my graphics card but I'll wait for the debut of NVIDIA's GT200 to see how it stacks up to AMD's latest and greatest. For the record, of late I've found NVIDIA quite annoying with their nonsensical product lineup. Is it G92, D9P, GT200? 9800 GTX uses the same chip as the 8800 GT. IMO it's all highly irritating that their product naming schemes no longer correlate with the GPU generation.

[Negative Sun]

Well we're talking about AMD and nVidia, but Intel's looking into this market as well now, here's a bit more info on Larrabee.

Looks like they're going for a completely different structure for 3D rendering, but will they pull it off? Give it a read it's quite interesting.

 

Speaking of Intel, looks like they're not giving up on the pummeling they're giving AMD just now, they've just announce an up to 50% price cut on Core 2 Quads.

More ouch time for DAAMIT? I thinks so...Especially when you see that the X3 Phenom release isn't too exciting at all...

 

Sorry if I've been MIA, lots of stuff going on

[Astrotoy7]

Larabee and X3 as for the low-mid end/multimedia peeps

 

Price drops are good news, no matter who is delivering them.

 

Lets hope R&D of Intel/AMD, nvidia/ATI are doing bananas because software/games devs are churning out are starting to outpace hardware capability....

 

Considering that BR drives will be standard within a cpl of years, and with SSD entering the mainstream, CPU and GPUs really need to step up a notch... Intel cant ride the breakthroughs of C2D forever, and AMD really need to live up to the promises their roadmap is making to have a whiff of a chance

 

Im quite happy though, until anyone makes a card that can absolutely murder crysis at 1600p, im not upgrading I've been pouring my cash into other crap(satellite integration for my htpc, DLP projectors etc)

 

mtfbwya

[stingerhs]

Im quite happy though, until anyone makes a card that can absolutely murder crysis at 1600p, im not upgrading I've been pouring my cash into other crap(satellite integration for my htpc, DLP projectors etc)

 

mtfbwya

so, you'll be using a Radeon 6850X2 in the year of our Lord, 2012???

 

XD

[Astrotoy7]

so, you'll be using a Radeon 6850X2 in the year of our Lord, 2012???

 

XD

 

despite my AMD leanings in the CPU game, Ive never been able to shake my nvidia bias for GPUs. It had alot to do with the the CCC frazzling me in htpc builds, with artefacting, custom rez timing sisues

 

So, in 2012 CE(not really into the Lord), it will moreso be the XFX 109950GTX XXX OC ULTRA edition I'll be keeping an eye out for

 

It will probably cost as much as a small car, and require a similar power supply as one too

 

* * *

 

Some News>

 

9800GX2 in Quad and Tri-Sli, Crysis Still Pwnz and here clickity

 

single figure fps in 1600p...boo!

 

and MS Yanks SP3 for XP, Right before release! Huh?!

 

mtfbwya

[Q]

Well, I've been hearing bits and pieces about Nvidia's upcoming GT200. I'm not going to quote any sources because it's all unsubstantiated crap like Fudzilla and the Inquirer, both of which are about as reliable as a $2.00 watch.

 

The buzz that's going around indicates a 512-bit memory bus, which addresses a serious bottleneck with the G92, but at the same time makes for an expensive chip. I haven't read anything about how many stream processors it will have, but the general rule of thumb is that a single GT200 card will perform about as well as the dual-G92 9800GX2, and that the new GPU will be about the same size as the G80, indicating a huge jump in the number of transistors.

 

That's about all I've heard so far.

[Char Ell]

I'm guessing we'll get official info about NVIDIA's GT200 within the next month or two. I'm looking forward/hoping for something more substantial than bumped clocks so as one might guess I've not been impressed with the 9800 GTX. If I had to get an NVIDIA card now I think I'd go with the 8800 GTS 512.

[Astrotoy7]

The buzz that's going around indicates a 512-bit memory bus...

 

Im hearing the same from my old nv beta testing cronies. I didn't include it here as hearsay is not a reliable source of information, and we aim for higher standards here!!

 

Might as well say "my brothers friend like really likes star wars, and like, said they are going to make episode 7-9, y'know,like...yeah"

 

still, whilst 512-bit is ok, Crysis at Max/1600p isnt going to get pwnt until someone spawns a 1024-bit bus, we all know that

 

mtfbwya

[Char Ell]

NVIDIA has revealed plans to simplify its gaming product range in order to appeal to a wider audience.

 

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Roy Taylor, VP of Content Business Development, admitted that NVIDIA's current range of products is overcomplicated and too confusing for many customers. Taylor went on to say the company faced a "challenge" but needed to make its products more consumer friendly.

 

"It is a challenge that we're looking at right now. There is a need to simplify it for consumers, there's no question," Taylor explained.

 

"We think that the people who understand and know GeForce today, they're okay with it - they understand it. But if we're going to widen our appeal, there's no doubt that we have to solve that problem," he added.

Source: gamesindustry.biz

 

Hey Mr. Taylor. I consider myself one of the people who "understand and know GeForce" but fyi I'm not understanding a lot of what NVIDIA is doing nowadays. So yeah, go ahead and widen NVIDIA's appeal in the marketplace but don't go off thinking that your existing customers are all well and good.

[Astrotoy7]

I wouldn't worry too much Char Ell... all that stuff means is a naming convention revamp After 9950... 10xxx just doesn't look right. I personally like animal names:

 

256-bit>Hare

512-bit>Leopard

1024-bit>Cheetah

 

They should minimise the variation is framebuffer sizes... or abbreviate with

 

256MB > 2

512MB > 5

1024MB > X

 

and finally, and add on for those with specialised outputs > eg. HDMI

 

so, a 512-bit, 512MB card with HDMI out >

 

Nvidia Leopard5-HDMI

 

lolz

 

mtfbwya

[Negative Sun]

New Radeon with 480 stream processors?

^ Interesting, we shall see what's true or not, and most importantly for Astro: can it pwn Crysis at 1600p???

 

 

Is this the nVidia 9900?

^ Again, looks quite intriguing...we might find out more soon enough hopefully

 

 

Corsair breaks memory speed record!

^ Another good bit of info...here's an interesting snippet though:

 

"This could change when Intel moves to its Nehalem architecture CPUs; these bring the memory controller (which currently resides in the Northbridge) on-board, giving the potentially for dramatically cutting latency and improving bandwidth. Triple-channel memory is also expected for Nehalem, which will further enhance memory performance."

 

This could spell even more ouch-time for AMD who have been using this technology for a while now but are still playing catch-up with Intel's Quads...

[Char Ell]

According to Daily Tech the new graphics card from NVIDIA will start a new naming convention.

- GeForce GTX 280 (D10U-30) is supposed to have 240 unified stream processors and a 512-bit bus.

- GeForce GTX 260 (D10U-20) is supposed to have less than 240 unified stream processors and a 448-bit bus.

- The shaders on these new GPU's are supposed to perform 50% better than the D9 GPU's

- still only supports DirectX 10.0

- PhysX engine is now part of the D10U shader engine

 

I guess I'll just wait until June 18 to see if this all turns out to be true but it looks like I won't be buying a GeForce 9900 GTS after all.

[Astrotoy7]

According to Daily Tech the new graphics card from NVIDIA will start a new naming convention.

 

I wouldn't worry too much Char Ell... all that stuff means is a naming convention revamp

 

lolz...now > this weeks lotto numbers will be :

 

 

made ya look

 

 

mtfbwya

[Char Ell]

Heh. Yeah, you called it. As long as NVIDIA sticks to a sensible naming convention then I'm good. IMHO the 8800 GT should really have been called the 9800 GT.

 

I'm eagerly anticipating the comparison reviews for the new AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards next month. I've pretty much stuck with NVIDIA for the past few years but I'm going to give AMD serious consideration this time around.