Tech General Chat

[Ryan]

China claims supercomputer crown

[Pico]

Wow, that's crazy! China is definitely establishing itself as a big power in these current times, especially with an achievement like this.

 

Also, ATI fans might be butthurt that they went with Nvidia

[Girish]

Also, ATI fans might be butthurt that they went with Nvidia

Of course. If they had gone with ATI, the computer could have performed a few more trillion calculations per second.

[Tommy-Vercetti19]

Wonder how much that thing costs on the power bill.

[Pico]

Well, I can't seem to stop treating myself to new things. I just bought a TV... 40" LCD-LED HDTV at 1080p

It's damn crisp and clear, and even more vibrant with awesome light range compared to my roommates 42" 720p LCD I've been using. She bought a wall mount for her room so she took it back... after -I- installed the wall mount! She doesn't know how nice she has it, lol.

 

So it was either buy a desk and a desk chair and use my 22" and 19" monitor side-by-side like the old days... or spend a little bit more and get a TV and keep my computer set up the same. So I went with the latter. Sure, I could have bought a cheap desk for around $75 and same for a chair, but I would have treated myself there, so another hundred or two on top of the cost for a desk/chair is worth it for something more functional. Besides, I watch so many videos on my computer, it'd be a bitch to have to watch them on a friggin 22".

[Ronnyboy]

I finally went and bought a new ATi 5750 off of Newegg. I can't to try it out, but can any tell me how good the OC capabilities of the card are?

[Ryan]

GTX 580? WTF? Where? When? How? Why?

[The-King]

 

GTX 580? WTF? Where? When? How? Why?

Why indeed.

 

Talk about a massive number jump. Has there been any talk of any cards between the 480 and 580?

[yoječ]

 

Eh... I'm quite disappointed. I hoped for much bigger perf boost.

[jelly]

Who cares, no one's pushing hardware anyway.

[ptiko]

I wish I had a 5970

 

I saw a video of a guy running IV at 2560x1600 on high and getting 50-60fps. Mind blowing D:

[Stinky12]

THG and Zalman has teamed up for a giveaway contest.

The prize: A Zalman 128GB SSD!

 

How to

[Pico]

I don't need all of that graphical power... but it seems that the 4550 is not doing so well now that I've got a 1080p HDTV instead of the 720p I'd been using. I'm sure it'd be fine alone but I'm using a secondary, 1680x1050, monitor. It's just laggy when I'm scrolling through web pages and have a video playing, mainly... I'm sure a faster processor would help more, though.

[ptiko]

 

 

Doesn't this sh*t doesn't piss you off?

 

"OH CUZ LEIK MY OLD PC RAN AT 60FPS AND IT WUS LEIK SO CHOPPY I COULDNT EVEN SEE. UNTIL I BOUGHT ALIENWARE. MY LIFE IS SO MUCH BETTER. I sh*t FLOWERS"

 

I know its all advertisement and stuff but they don't half annoy me.

[The-King]

 

Alienware: PC gaming for impressionable half-wits.

 

[Ryan]

Kudo's to Alienware for creating this commercial. Pretty smart when you think about it. Take a bunch of idiots who won a lan-party and happen to have a 4 year PC that sucks balls and barely works. Give them a brand new modern PC as their prize and get them to do a commercial on their experience with it. Anyone who's going from a 4 year old PC, to a new modern PC is going to have a noticeable increase regardless of who built it. Just makes Alienware and their PC's look so great thanks to idiots like these.I'm not a fan of Alienware, but it's a pretty good idea, I gotta say.

[Stinky12]

I've seen a Alienware with these case fans that are powered via wireless. That was pretty cool...

According to VR-Zone,

 

Nvidia will be releasing their GTX570 around December

AMD has officially confirmed their upcoming high-end graphics HD6970 and HD6950 will arrive on December 13th

 

article

[XMike]

Why is the Firefox 4 beta so annoying and sluggish? I hope it's just because it's in beta stages right now. The new default font is annoying and hurts my eyes, having a separate window for each tab on the taskbar is extra annoying (I realize there's probably an option I can just uncheck to get rid of it, but why is it there in the first place?). It's been taking noticeably longer to start up then I remember Firefox 3 taking, and it's loads slower than Chrome which I've been using for a while now. Even opening new tabs has some noticeable lag. Why do I have to maneuver my mouse so much just to view my bookmarks? Found a button for bookmarks, forgive that. The menu toolbar looks like a joke so far. Step your game up Mozilla, you guys used to be my favorite. The only thing I can say is that Chrome doesn't format all websites completely correct, for example GTAForums and Facebook, but Firefox seems to format and run websites fine, probably because web designers started completely switching over to programming for Firefox, and now it seems like sh*t to me.

[Stinky12]

NDA has been lifted for the HD6970 and HD6950, reviews are also available through out the web.

 

Here's one of them...

review

 

[yoječ]

The performance of new Radeons isn't that mindblowing, but prices are quite nice.

[dog_day_sunrise]

NDA has been lifted for the HD6970 and HD6950, reviews are also available through out the web.

 

Here's one of them...

review

On this note.

Crossfire. Is it worth it? I've had good experiences with SLI and my new mobo is full-on 16x16 crossfire ready so tempted to pop my GTX460 up on the bay of theives and get 2xHD5770's. Y'know, just 'cos they're the same price.

 

Will I actually notice any performance difference, or will I spend all my time winging about the lack of PhysX support?

[leik oh em jeez!]

NDA has been lifted for the HD6970 and HD6950, reviews are also available through out the web.

 

Here's one of them...

review

On this note.

Crossfire. Is it worth it? I've had good experiences with SLI and my new mobo is full-on 16x16 crossfire ready so tempted to pop my GTX460 up on the bay of theives and get 2xHD5770's. Y'know, just 'cos they're the same price.

 

Will I actually notice any performance difference, or will I spend all my time winging about the lack of PhysX support?

Don't worry about the lack of PhysX, just stick an NVidia card between the ATI cards to use for PhysX.

[dog_day_sunrise]

 

NDA has been lifted for the HD6970 and HD6950, reviews are also available through out the web.

 

Here's one of them...

review

On this note.

Crossfire. Is it worth it? I've had good experiences with SLI and my new mobo is full-on 16x16 crossfire ready so tempted to pop my GTX460 up on the bay of theives and get 2xHD5770's. Y'know, just 'cos they're the same price.

 

Will I actually notice any performance difference, or will I spend all my time winging about the lack of PhysX support?

Don't worry about the lack of PhysX, just stick an NVidia card between the ATI cards to use for PhysX.

Forgive my lack of knoweldge but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work.

Still, I know there must be some reason reason I ordered a mobo with 4 PCI-E 16x sockets.

[leik oh em jeez!]

Sure it would, I always ran Nvidia gaming cards, sometimes in SLI, with an ATI card to drive extra monitors. No reason for it not to work the other way around. You can mix S3/VIA/ATI/NVidia graphics cards and drivers all you want. you just have to make sure that all the cards from the same vendor use the same driver package. For instance, you can mix an HD4850 and 9800GT, but not HD4850 and x1600Pro.

 

The problem comes when you mix graphics cards that both use different versions of the same files. So you can't mix an MX 4000 with a GTX580, but you could mix an 8800GT with a GTX580, because the drivers are both included in the same driver package. ATI and Nvidia's drivers don't use the same files, so there are no problems. The ATI and nvidia driver sets stay seperated on the operating system just like drivers for more than on network card would.

 

Check out this link:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=889237

Edited December 15, 2010 by leik oh em jeez!

[Stinky12]

2x GTX460 in SLI is equavalient to a GTX480 in terms of performance and to grab 2 HD5770 isn't worth the cost.

Another reason for that is depending on the type of GTX 460 you've got, its memory interface is much larger than the HD5770.

 

Speaking of using a ATi card and Nvidia for PhysX.

During Nvidia's previous drivers it was simple as all users need to do is install the PhysX driver and they can enjoy PhysX even if their primary card is ATi.

Now it's a different ballpark as the only way to make PhysX work is if you got a Nvidia as your primary, since the driver will detect if that is your config. If not, PhysX cannot be enabled.

There are hacked drivers which allows ATi users to enable PhysX on their Nvidia GPUs even they're not running their Nvidia as their primary card.

 

Windows 7 lets users install mix graphic drivers with ease as it was a hassle to do with previous OS. But it's strongly that you avoid this scenario as much as possible. Only do so if you really have to.

[leik oh em jeez!]

I'm just going to let it be known that installing nvidia and ati cards in the same system is as easy as installing any other expansion cards. I've never had any problems in windows 2000 pro or advanced server, xp x86 or x64, server 2003 enterprise, or 7 ultimate. I did experience problems in windows NT 4.0, and vista doesn't support it at all. only thing is, make sure you're using the right control panel when changing settings for a display. I think I'll make a guide to put up later this week.

 

[ptiko]

Considering buying a macbook pro for work. Doing graphics for work.

 

I dont believe in the whole, a Mac "just works" or "macs doing it better". I just think if Im buying a laptop, I want something thats stylish and durable. What should I look for?

[dog_day_sunrise]

 

Considering buying a macbook pro for work. Doing graphics for work.

 

I dont believe in the whole, a Mac "just works" or "macs doing it better". I just think if Im buying a laptop, I want something thats stylish and durable. What should I look for?

The old, blockier, ally-frame type Pros are brilliant. I've got one, have had for about 4 years and it's never had a single issue.

 

Newer Mac products seem to be disposable. The company I used to work for provided new-gen Pros to all it's employees besides freelancers/contractors and they had a turnover rate of a laptop every 2-3 months- mostly due to mainboard failures, but a few due to batteries failing to keep charge, screen and keyboard faults, GPU failures, wireless ariel failures and HDD problems. Not exactly built to last.

 

 

EDIT

 

Edited to add- another question? Am I risking infernal BSOD errors and boot failures if I don't bother reformatting/reinstalling windows when I swap my Mobo over? W7 Pro x64 and changing from a 790X socket to an 890FX.

[leik oh em jeez!]

Edited to add- another question? Am I risking infernal BSOD errors and boot failures if I don't bother reformatting/reinstalling windows when I swap my Mobo over? W7 Pro x64 and changing from a 790X socket to an 890FX.

Shouldn't cause too many problems. Just remove old drivers for chipset, nic, etc. before you do the swap, then install the new drivers the first time you boot it up with the new hardware. If possible, you may want to back up imortant data on the hard drive just in case, as it is a Windows operating system, and can develop errors whenever it really wants to.

[Stinky12]

Prelminary Voltage mods for the HD6900s.

 

Will void warranty!