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cutterjohn

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Everything posted by cutterjohn

  1. I have a question that one of you may be able to give me some guidance on: I usually see software/game requirements give CPU speed requirements in what appear to be an Intel proented(pre-Conroe) fashion, e.g. 3.2GHz recomended. Now my question is: Obviously the speed is Intel centric as AMD doesn't have a 3.2GHz processor, now on this matter are AMD speed "ratings" meant(or considered) to be the direct equivalent of Intel clock speed? e.g. would an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ meet the "requirement" for the 3.2GHz Intel equivalent? (I've been assuming that the AMD speed rating # to be equivalent to actual Intel CPU core speeds, but it makes me feel kind of queasy doing so as it is not entirely accurate. So far I've had good lucking going with that, but... I've done some checking around online and haven't really seen anything that gives me any more real guidance on this other than some vague CYA statements iwth plenty of fallback room... Even hearing that other users applying this "logic" and not having any horsepower problems with be nice to know...)
  2. Heh, welll for one thing it IS good to see Intel come up with an arch that is both competitive in the performance arena AND competitive in power dissipation.  This coupled with the not quite top-of-the-line(as compared to other core 2 duo versions) is a VERY nice thing to see, as AMD pricing had been getting out of hand. I recently found my old bills for what I just replaced the other month: ABIT KT-7 RAID Pro    $185 AMD 1G Thunderbird  $300 256M PC133 SDRAM   $130 (compare this to: $220 for an A64 3200+(venice), Biostar TForce4U, 2G mushkin 1m ago... I was very lucky to get this deal though...) I had forgotten how much that I had spent on that old system, as I was thinking that it had cost me around $250-$300 altogether.  IIRC that was the most that I've ever spent on a motherboard and CPU, and I had been able to make it work good enough for 5y, that is until I picked up a higher specced GPU and tried to make it work with a craptacular VIA chipset(their PCI bus & AGP implementation left alot to be desired(as in I'm surprised that they worked, but I guess that peripheral mfgs design their products to be extrememly tolerant) as I see from research that other people did a few years after the K* chipset release...) My new nForce4 board hasnt given me any problems, although I'm not running a single item through the PCI slots other than what's already on the board and directly tied to the boards PCI bus, but so far, so good. I'd like to see some non-Intel mb's now, although I read on one of the reviews that they could push core 2 duo over 4G stable w/IIRC c. 7% increase in power utilization(that's damned good translates into little extra thermal dissipation). All of that being said, I think that I'll have to chicken out and go low to mid range, but even that is still as good or better than current AMD offerings, and SHOULD last me for quite some time.  (I've decided that the bragging premiums aren't worth it, and the $$$ would be better spent elsewhere.)
  3. Yeah, I picked up on that after reading a few more reviews and subconciously kicking around their "review".  Of course the biggest tipoff was that they were the ONLY review in which AMD was not totally skunked by even the low end Core 2s... Conroe here I come.  (I'm thinking that I may even do something incredibly stupid and splurge for all highend stuff for the first time ever...  I still thinks it's a bad idea(valuewise) though, so I might go with less(E6700 or less)... I'm really glad that I found such a good deal on what I bought the other month now... too bad I won't likely to be able to repeat it with one of these puppiesa...)
  4. AMD is so intimidated by core 2 duo that they are literally trying a pathetic stopgap measure in the form of 4x4 theoretically to remain competitive with Core 2 Duo. (Basically they're talking about going back to the old multi-CPU socket designs, and are calling it 4x4 as they expect people to be raped(er I mean given a "good" value) for 2 pokey dual cores. This is to be followed by an even better plan raping(er whoops, I meant giving the customer a "good" value) the vustomer for 2 quad core CPUs, called imaginatively enough, 8x8 next yearish. Guess someone forgot to tell them that last I heard Intel was looking for quad cores by, possibly, this fall, whoops...) (On a totally non-related weird note, Safari failed to provide me with new topic, and new poll buttons... hmmm... Apple/AMD collusion?)
  5. Bah! Found some more reviews! Man there needs to be a slightly longer editing timeout on posts, anyways: (more AMD misery...) ExtremeTech and Overclockers.com.au BTW: the hardocp review is the ONLY one to show the FX-62 even being remotely competitive and is suspect wrt the settings used to testing, along with their overall testing methodology or lack thereof. Whew! Made the edit cutoff, anyways, here take this its a list of every known core 2 duo benchmark/review online at the moment. Supposedly it will be kept up-to-date, and I officially give up.
  6. Yeah, yeah, replying to myself, anyways, I dug up yet another set of benchmarks from hardocp which attempt to show the FX-62 in a slightly better light. (It's almost able to keep up with the E6700 & X6800 at the settings/config they've used...) Still waiting for something from Tom's Hardware or Anand....
  7. Well, Intel has successfully unleashed a can of whoop ass on AMD: HotHardware Hexus low end core 2 matching FX-62, X6800 kicking it in the nuts... current pricing on the low end E6400 is $180, and it's matching high end AM2 4600, FX-62 which are several times more expensive. AMD is going to have to go to $150 max price to have any sort of hope of being competitive, and that will only be pricewise as nothing they currently have even makes an impression. Hope that K8L actually turns out better than it looking or... AMD R.I.P. 1968 - 2007
  8. I meant to add in commentary regarding the insightful commentary by the voice "acting": e.g. All that he needs to do to win is "to keep the puck out of the back of the net..." "...put the puck into the net..." etc. (courtesy of the "insightful" ESPN commentators...)
  9. ah... and? You'd think that it was a game about a fun game like hockey or something...
  10. Heh! I absolutely love how that "theoretical" chinese comments that China actually has intellectual property laws... snort... chortle... I bet that they're almostt as stringent as Russian(or Mexican) laws(heres a few shekels...)...
  11. Jim Baen passed away last week, the obituary. Also an entry on Jerry Pournelle's site, Chaos Manor. (Thursday's entry.)
  12. Simple, the Congress is working for major corporations and big government. I sincerely hope that you don't believe that the "new" Republican party is conservative any longer. After all Georgy Porgy has created the largest(IIRC) government bureaucracy(the inept Department of Homeland "Security") since FDR, and the Democrats are perfectly happy to go along with it as it lines their pocketsses. Along with the creeping towards a police state. Don't forget they also get welfare now too... ...and what about the restaurant that was admonished for only accepting transactions in English? ...and then we have all the billions spent on the war in Iraq... The national guard at the border who in realtity are just going to sit on their thumbs while there for their whole 2w... The elections this fall should be interesting, and the next presidential elections should be even more interesting...
  13. How about this as I don't see much here on it ATM. Are you guys ready for metered access again? Remember the good ol' days of paying $5-$15/h, or worse by the minute? Talk about trying un-commoditize a commodity via legislation...
  14. AMD is going to have to do better than 50% price cuts if the Conroe, et. al. benchmarks and power utilization number hold up when machines with these CPUs get into end user hands and are benced... (AMD needs to be able to do 60-70% price reductions to stay competitive until K8L is out.) (It's looking like the low end Conroe will be a little over $100, and I suspect that single core Intel CPUs will be going away in short order excepting, possibly, for some Celerons for low end systems.)
  15. Good point. I, erm, actually have a friend who's been stuck working on desig of Intel GPUs ATM. (He seems to think that they're going to pull off something halfway decent sometime soonish, that or he's just pulling the company line. I never understood why he hasn't left Intel... Maybe Intel WILL be buying nVidia...) Prior to that he was on the good ship Itanic, and appearance ARE correct wrt Itanic is was FUBARred by a design-by-committee process where everyone got to promote their stupid idea and sink the good ones. Conroe IS looking to be a HOT core though, and I truly suspect K8Ls potential performance gains...
  16. Well, this was pretty much a no brainer as recent articles have already stated that Intel is likely to significantly lower prices on core 2 dua when they are relased from their already fairly low prices. Couple this with the significant performance and power dissipation advantage that core 2 duo(I wish they had named it core duo 2) will have over AM2 when they are released AMD HAD to at least try to compete on pricing even if they couldn't compete on aything else at this time. I just hope that this doesn't drive AMD out of [the CPU] business or implies that K8L may be earlier than expected and with better performance than I think it will be able to put up from what I've seen of the design direction. AMD is in for a world of hurt.
  17. From the speculation department: According to this article on Ars Technica, Intel employees have been telling people that AMD may be in the process of acquiring ATI. If this is true, this would be quite interesting, especially since ATI began to produce their own chipsets primarily for AMD based boards(and batardized Intel versions) along with nVidia which has been doing the same for quite some time. I wonder if that is why nVidia purchased ULI earlier. But I guess if it DOES happen AMD will definitely be an ATI world.
  18. BTW: There is an open source physics API, Open Dynamics Engine which was apparently used in the Russian Hard Truck: Apocalypse game, and Bloodrayne.
  19. I ended up doing a temporary upgrade myself: Biostar TForce4 U AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2G Mushking DRAM (Got a pretty good deal all for c. $200) Replaces my old 1G T-Bird w/256M DRAM(PC133 ) And I can say a few things, runs much faster, MUCH cooler(max temp I've seen from hw monitors are 35C which is around what the T-Bird IDLED at! Usual idle temp is around 27C which is also a few degrees above the ambient room temp so far this summer.) I've also got to figure out what to do about a GPU & PSU as I'm back to using my cheezy Geforce 6200 AGP in the XGP slot for now, and my old Antec 350W PSU. The good thing about these 2 items is that they will end up in a new machine, so I was to go at least mid-range on the GPU and 550-650W on the PSU, in case I end up going SLI. (I really wish that they'd do dual cores on the GPUs, although the 7950X2 might work, but too expensive ATM, and I am leaning towards ATI cards as well...) But, all good things aren't meant to last as I am thinking about buying an Intel 975 board and a Conroe, and memory again(grr!) but I'll probably hold off and see how things shake out with the K8L and Intel prices stabilize, plus hopefully some non-Intel mbs. ULI: I'm not sure why nVidia bought them either, unlless they not only wanted to trouble ATI, but also make sure that AGP is dead. (ULI was the only chipset used for the only board that I know of that supported both AGP & PCIe completely, the Asrock board mentioned in this thread.) The new Radeon chipset that support the AM2 socket seem to be holding pretty close the new nForce 500 series chipset based boards though. They also, obviously, perform much better than their two earlier(AMD) attempts.
  20. IIRC Shanks played Daniel Jackson in the movie too(have it on DVD, but haven't watched it in a while). Overall though, SG-1 just isn't the same without Richard Dean Anderson. It's sort of like having Macgyver without Macgyver...
  21. Actually I've found out from RPGdot that Oblivion "helped out" Take 2 to the tune of $106m !
  22. Damnit every time that you guys make some comments wrt atrocious formatting, spelling, and grammar he responds with an even longer and more eye abusive post. At this rate I'll be blind in a couple more of those!
  23. You know, the engine can render really pretty/realistic pictures, but I really don't care if the gameplay sucks, e.g. Quake 3, Doom 3, New Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament Any, etc. as compare with Halflife 1 OR 2, and DoD and DoD:S, and TFC... Man, I REALLY need to find a copy of Operation Flashpoint to try out... Aren't they supposed to be releasing a new game soon too?
  24. Teamfortress 2 (this is getting to be as bad a DNF!) Star Trek Legacy: Better be as good as Starfleet Command 1(mostly based off of Starfleet Battles "board" game by Taskforce Games, dunno who owns it now...)
  25. Apparently an incentive has been offered by Take 2 to finally have Duke Nuke'em Forever(literally?) sees a commercial release by 12/31/06! (How can Take 2 lose $50m when they were, apparently, involved in Oblivion's release some how? I'd bet that bethesda has grossed around $200m from that already...)
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