12 posts tagged “ati”

More and more, I'm seeing that you might need 2 PSU's if your building a high end or even a mid-range gaming PC in the next year. The fact of the matter is that graphics cards keep on sucking more and more power and PSU's just can't keep up. The highest rated PSU that I've seen are 1000W. Considering that the new ATI card the 2900XT draws an appauling 215W at peak load. That's esssentially the load of my entire system onto one video card. and things can only good uphill from here. So now high end enthuiseits are proposing that 2 PSU's be put into a system. One for the main set of components, the CPU, the RAM, the Hard Drive and Optical Drive, but a second PSU for t

he GPU. I can see it happening I mean, for the amount of performance that your getting out a GPU core, the top end I think is somehere around 600 MHz (granted the memory is clocked much higher, mine's at 1.45 Ghz, the new nvidia cards go somewhere around 2 Ghz.) 215W is a lot to ask for a graphics card. So say hpyithetically that OEM's do decide to go ahead with the 2 PSU concept. Can you imagine if you wanted to run SLI or Crossfire? You might as well put another 500W power supply in they're. This could cause amajor shakeup in the hardware industry. Not only will Intel have to reexamine the ATX power standard (currently there is only one ATX power connector on most motherboard, server motherboards might have more.) If your going to put a second power connector on the motherboard, your probably going to need to revamp the entire architecture. Case makers will also have to do some redesign, unless they can manage to put the PSU into a 3.5" or a 5.25" bay, which is unlikely. Needless to say that both ATI and nvidia need to figure out what they're going to do with the graphics card business. With AMD/ATI trying to tie the GPU into the CPU, graphics may become a thing of the past very shorty. For know though, I'm sticking with my new 7600 GT.

    So I've been using Windows Vista for about a month now and i tried something that I had not tried: gaming. I had heard that many games that worked in XP would not work in Vista. First I tried one of my favorite games of all time: The Original Rise of Nations. It's an awesome game that I love playing. It installed fine but then it wouldn't run. Ah well, let's try again. I tried again with a more recent game Star Wars: Empire at War. This time it worked. They're a little backstory to this one. When you get most games these days, they come with a serial key that you must put in to activate the game. Well, I lost the manual that has the serial key on it. So I went out and got a key from Keygen.us. Is this wrong? I don't think so. I bought the game, I own it. I'm not uploading it to bittorrent. Anyway, the game works fine. I'm running the budget ATI card the X1300 Pro. I plan on upgrading to the X1650 Pro next month and that should boost game performance even more. I still want to try a few more of my games including Command & Conquer: Generals and C&C Generals: Zero Hour. So contrary to popular belief, gaming isn't that bad in Vista. At least on the games that are compatible.....  

This is a bit delayed, but yesterday was interesting. Two of my favorite companies, ATI and Apple released new/updated hardware. First was Apple. They came out and updated the processors in it's Macbook line, bumping the low end to 2 Ghz and the mid and high end lines to 2.16 Ghz, matching that of the low end Macbook Pro and the 20 and 24 inch iMacs. That's the good news. Bad news is that you still have the same old Intel GMA 950 inside, which put's a stop to any series gaming on the Macbook. I mean, come on Apple, we really didn't need the processor update, if you really want to make us happy, put a graphics card then there. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Maybe just an X1400 or something, I don't care, just let us use T&L and all those shiny effects.That's no. 1. No. 2 is that ATI/AMD rolled out there high end Direct 10 GPU's yesterday, much to the glee of ATI's fanboy's such as myself. I'm waiting for the midrange HD 2600 to come out to consider my options. I was looking around at the new nvidia 8600 GT that just came out a few weeks ago. All I can say is shiny...... And since nvidia seems to have it's act together better then ATI does, I'm tempted to jump ship and buy the 8600 GT along with a new PSU next month. Ah well, we'll see.  

 The last few days have been very interesting. I've been getting some things worked out in Vista. Yesterday, Joost 0.9.2 was released which doesn't studder as much. Only problem was, that when I went to open the client, it said it couldn't connect to the network. So after hunting around for a solution,  I reinstalled it and it worked fine. Better than before as a matter of fact. Then something strange happened. I was trying to buy a song off of the iTunes store when it wouldn't connect. Even Apple.com wasn't working right. I un-installed, restarted and then reinstalled iTunes and it worked fine, but it's just another example of how iTunes isn't exactly ready for Prime time on Vista. Democracy doesn't work right without turing off Aero, which is a minor pain, but I live with it. I've been looking at the price of some parts lately. Things have dropped dramatically. The cheapest AMD Processor (3600+, 1.9 Ghz, 2 x512 KM L2) is only $95. The 4200 + (2.2 Ghz 2x 512 KB L2) is only $133. The X1650, the ATI midrange GPU, is only $148. 2 GB of Kingston Valuram is only $156. Mind you all these prices come with 0.14% tax tacked onto them, so it's not as great a deal as it appears. But it's still a good deal. I think once I pay for education and my trip to Germany, I'll go get me some upgrades.
Off to Youth Exec. I'll post more in the next few days.

 I'm sad to say this but there are politics in technology. There are politics anywhere you go. Although people try and avoid them, I'm sure, they do exsist. Take for example the other day. I was on a message board and there was an argument over processors. The Core 2 Duo is the king right now, but I'm still an AMD fan, as was the guy who was asking the question. He wanted a recommendation on a certain AMD processor. One of the upstanding members of the community (he really is.) tried to talk him into buying a Core 2 Duo when he clearly wanted an AMD. It's like being a conservative or Liberal in the real world. Your either AMD or Intel and ATI and nvidia. I'm a clear cut AMD/ATI guy. I hate NVIDIA for many reason's that I won't get into in this post. If you want to really UGLY then your either a PC, Mac or Linux User. Again, it's all about politics. Then you have the extremists. That would be the uber-fanboys that basically are like (excuse the LEET speak please) ZOMG! dOOD! New Hardware *falls over drooling* Or the political extremists such as Richard Stallman who want Linux to be called GNU/Linux for his own benefit. It goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's sad to see, but it's the truth.
I hope everyone is having a great Easter! Hope you guys get lots of chocolate!
*Pray's that weather will not disrupt celebrations*

 

    So today a f

ew more details of ATI's DX 10 graphics solution codenamed R600 where leaked on Engadget. Nvidia relea sed it's DX 10 graphics solution last year with the launch of the 8800 GTX and the 8800 GTS. Nvidia claims to have a leg up over ATI with the G93 GPU with a 384-bit interface, 768 or 640 of GDDR3 and a 90nm process. Well it looks like ATI is going to up the ante with it's R600. The XTX version of R600 will have 1 GB of GDDR4 a 512-bit memory bus and an 80nm process. So all of the nvidia fans saying that ATI is sucks, I've got news for you: They don't suck. They managed to get the 80nm GPU process is pretty cool. Considering that the least that Intel and AMD are getting down to 65nm right now so it's not that far away.
    Another piece of news in the tech world was that Intel demoed it's 80 core processor. I mean where just getting into quad core right now but 80 cores?!? Who needs that many? I imagine that if Intel does release this thing it's going to mean a complete redesign of computer architechture. Will they need to design whole new chipsets and socket? Probably. And how much L2 will be on this thing? If Quad Core is extreme I don't know what to call an 80 core processor. To say the least, I think that within the next few years, technology is about to make leaps and bounds beyond what anyone has ever seen before. I can see it now.....A Supercomputer in Every living room. Can we imagine what the world will be like in a year, 5 years, 10 years? If you asked me last July who to base your system around I would have said AMD. As Jerry Pournelle said famously "Intel had boxes you could bake Pizza in" which was true because the Pentium D was hog in terms of power consumption. And then there was the fact that you could use your box as a space heater as well as your computer. If you would have told me 9 months ago that Intel would be top dog again I wouldn't have believed you. I would have said that AMD  is still king and that Intel is a sinking ship.  But AMD is going to counter  in the next few months and this time next year AMD could be king once again. That's the thing about tech: It never stands still   

    So I got the results back from that rewrite that I did yesterday. 53. Not bad considering my other marks in the course. Teacher called all of us over to his desk during class today so he could chat with us about our marks. I'm marching into exam with a 52ish. Which means I have to come out of this exam with a 50 at least in order to pass this course. That shouldn't be to bad. Got the revised results of my C. History test back as well. 92%. My top mark in that class was a 97% on the economics test. I have a test on sovereignty which I'm going to study for in a few minutes. when Mom get's home we have to finish icing that cake and such. I finished my Powerpoint for one of my last Soc. assignments for the semester. Made some models that I placed under CC to share with people. I've decided to put all of my paper's and such under CC for people to use and to give me some recognition. I'll put some of them up on a site somewhere.
    Just saw an article on Ars (Technica) about Windows Home Server. One of the first lines in the article is "remember when you had XP home for home, XP Pro for work and Windows 2003 Server for Server?" He then goes on about the fact that Microsoft has muddied the water with numerous versions of Vista. I think that they did this  reason. No more one size fits all  Microsoft has given up on all the "one size fits all" model. They're targeting specific groups of consumers with specific versions of Vista. Home Basic for the granny that only does word processing and email. Home

Premium for the  people who enjoy lots of  multi-media. Business for well,  business. Enterprise for small  business and Ultimate for the power user/enthusiest/I want everything-all-the-shiny-stuff group. I think they learned over the past few years that people use computers for different things and they need specific programs and features for a specific user groups. It may be frustrating for me and you, but it makes sense-well kinda.
    I don't like all of the DRM in Vista. I don't like the fact that Microsoft bent over backwards for the RIAA and the MPAA again. These are all reason to not get Vista. Will I get Vista? Maybe. Maybe not. Right now I'm thinking not. Why? Well first of all money. I have much better things to spend my money on. Second of all you never never ever by the product the first six months that it's out. It took them 2 service packs to get XP somewhat secure. I don't even want to know how long it's going to take them to get Vista secure and working properly. Finally, the only reason I would consider Vista is if I can get a recently priced DirectX10 graphics card. I'm waiting for the midrange nvidea cards as well as ATI's initial offerings to come out this march. I'm heading down the Florida in march, so I might pick up one on the cheap. We'll see. Anyway back to the books.

So last night I decided to see what this rig can really do. So I dug out my copy of Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour to see how it would run. Wow. By default the resolution was 1024x768 with detail on high. See back when I had the old Dell, when we first got it was running a GeForce 2. Translation: Ancient Graphics Card. The game ran fine with  Medium Detail. But now that I have a mid-range custom box, I can run all the of the fancy effects I couldn't run before like shadows, particle effects, and uber high detail. It's nice now, however the lighting is something that I need to fix. During the day, some the shadows strain my eyes. I remember when my aunt got me a flight combat simulator that came on 3 floppy disks. We never did get it to work, but that was probably the first game I ever had for the PC. When we went from the Stone Age to modern computing back in '02 probably the game that I played the most was Star Trek Armada II. Me being the zomg-star-trek-is-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me stage, I played the game religiously . The second game that I played religiously was probably Command & Conquer Generals. Back when I was about 8 years old, my uncle had the original command and conquer. It was the game of it's time. However he sold it, much to my dismay. However in the Christmas of 2004, I got the original game. I loved it so much that I can right home after a New Years Party I didn't go to bed, I went straight for the computer. Then in March I got the expansion pack, Zero Hour, and I've been playing it ever since. I'm not the uber-hardcore gamer, but I do get a fair share of my time in. Not as much now as most of the stuff I do on this computer is internet based, but I would still like to upgrade my x1300 to something that can run a few other games that require newer and more advanced graphics technology. But that's in the future. For now I'm happy with my soon-to-be-4-year old game.
If anyone is reading this, what video game did you play or do you play currently that you love?  

Went in to see a teacher in my school yesterday, and I told him what system I'm getting. I outlined the specs to him and he said it looked like a nice computer. However, he was a bit concerned, because, apperently custom computers have a higher rate of component failure. Custom computers are 1 in 10 while the brand name computers 1 in 100. But, he said that it's highly unlikely, and if it does happen, it's covered by warranty. According to the teacher, most of the compon

ent failures take place within the first year, so it should be covered by warranty. When you think about it, it makes sense. Companies like Dell, HP and Apple put the systems there making throw hundreds if not thousands of hours of testing and they iron out most of the bugs before they put the system on the market. With customs systems they don't know if the hardware will go together. They might turn the system on to see if it works and to install the OS through the BIOS, but they don't do any extensive testing on the hardware. But another thing that I have a problem with the brand name companies is this put so.much.bloatware. on.the.machines. They offer you all these trails of things like McAfee antivirus, corel stuff and yadda yadda yadda. I. don't.all.this.crap.on.my.computer. I don't need a 30 day trial of McAfee Annoyance or Corel Photo Album 6. I can get all of that free from other companies like Google, and avast. I don't need to be told that I should use the crappiest software on the market. The way I see it, when you buy a branded computer like an HP or a Dell or something like that they always give you 1 bad part. Sure they'll give you the 250 GB HD, the DVD burner. But to throw in a few sour apples, they'll give you 512 RAM or an Intargrated GPU which will subtract from the main system memory to feed the graphics. That's what I love about custom systems. You and you alone get to dictate what goes inside the case. Now mind you, you have to stay within the constraints of your budget, but if your willing to spend a few extra bucks, you'll see the difference in the amount of performance you can get out of your processor and processor. For example, I wasn't content to just have a 1.6 Ghz Sempron (I've been running at 1.6 Ghz for the past 5 years on the Dell.) I put in an Athlon 3200+ and instead of being content with 512 RAM I put in 1 GB. As for the GPU, I'm not a big fan of Nvidea, so I swapped out the 7300 GT that came by default for an X1300 Pro with 512 DDR onboard. That should be able to handle what I can throw at it. I also put in a 250 GB HD because I want to put Linx on my Box as well as a backup partition. The case is fine, but there is one component  I would like to upgrade in the near future. The display I'm getting is one from a friend of mine who's giving it to me for free. According to my cousin I can get a 17" CRT at Value Village for $15. I think I'lll hold off for Christmas though, when I get some more money.

It's Done. I just ordered the system I've been trying to save up for the past 2 years. I ordered it from a computer shop in Halifax called Mysterybyte. A friend of mine joked "Don't you want to know what the byte is?" har har. But seriously I started saving up for this system back in grade 8. I worked for my grandfather and earned almost $400. But at the time I really didn't know ho

w to manage money and a slowly widdled away the money, and I was still stuck on a 1.6 Ghz , 512 RAM, Dell AGP based system. Now I'm moving up in the world. I'm getting a PCI-E based system with a AMD Athlon 3200+ 2 Ghz processor, 1 GB of RAM. The graphics card is a pretty nice one as well. It's an ATI x1300. It has both a VGA and a DVI input if I ever get a decent LCD display. It also has a DVD burner and 6 USB ports which is nice. Sooner or later I'm going to get a Firewire card so that I can put a past external HD for backup and possibly a video camera. But that's way in the future. My system will be the best in the house. Currently the best in the house is the laptop that I'm typing on it now, a 1.8 Ghz Pentium, with 1 GB or RAM and a decent GPU. This system will last me a long time and it'll be upradable if the shop doesn't soder the processor into the socket. The motherboard supports up to 4 GB of RAM and has 3 PCI slots for easy expansion. I hope that it's ready for Friday as I have that day off and I can spend the getting things set up.
    This evening I also went and auditioned for the musical, Oliver! which my church is putting on this winter. I auditioned for a speaking part as the last time I played a part in a musical it was a extra with no speaking part. I really hope that I get in as musical's are a lot of fun, exhasting, but fun. I have to getting to bed in a few minutes. I have my free period's on Wednesday and Thursday so I'll post then.