I wonder how CM is going to run on 1Gigahertz systems

[Gregory Deych]

Compassion,

Do you work for Intel?

As far as I know from my MP Architecture class, the bus is the biggest bottleneck in current systems, followed closely by memory speeds and I/O. I shudder to think what happens to a bus utilization on a Wintel multiprocessor machine. Actually, AMD is even more deficient in this regard, since they hasn't come out with a 133 Mhz bus yet.

[Compassion]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gregory Deych:

Compassion,

Do you work for Intel?

As far as I know from my MP Architecture class, the bus is the biggest bottleneck in current systems, followed closely by memory speeds and I/O. I shudder to think what happens to a bus utilization on a Wintel multiprocessor machine. Actually, AMD is even more deficient in this regard, since they hasn't come out with a 133 Mhz bus yet.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yah, but don't hold that against me ... Both Intel and AMD have plans to expand bus bandwidth as higher speed procs are introduced. From what I remember, both have plans to implement 400mhz bus' by the end of next year. I'm pretty sure about that speed & timeframe, but don't quote me as I don't have a roadmap in fromt of me...

Oh, and LEE:

I saw some benchmarks on a PIII/500 oc'd to 575 with the new 5.08 drivers that feature FSAA & S3 Texture Compression support... and they are showing speeds of 65 fps in Q3 Demo 1. See more here for info on the wonders of the GeForce http://www.3dgpu.com/reviews/driver.cfm

Clay-

[This message has been edited by Compassion (edited 03-09-2000).]

[Lee]

That's impressive performance for a 575 mghz chip. Guess that

GeForce really can move without a whole lot of help. Can't wait

to see what the NV15 can do or the voodoo 5500 and 6000 for

that matter.

Work for Intel, eh? I guess a lot of the shop talk these days

is about whether Intel can deliver the fast chips to keep up

with AMD. They sorta came out of nowhere as a serious competitor

in the high-end market. I love the fact that we are getting such

fast chips so much more quickly than we would without all the speed

wars going on. It's a great time to be a serious 3D gamer.

[Guest MantaRay]

Yes I believe this is a golden time for 3D gaming, dare I say even the "golden age" of 3D gaming. With the DDR, Voodoo5 &6's, Playstation 2, and the X-Box comming from Microsoft. The compettion is heating up and it should make for some interesting gaming in a few years.

I remember when people were all OO and Ahhhing over DOOM and Wolfenstein. It seems like another lifetime ago to me now. Now if only other companies could get their acts together and put out a well thought out, and finished game, we would really be glued to the computer.

I think that by the time CM3 gets to us, we will be to see an even better depiction of what it is truly like to land on the beaches of Normandy. What I would love to see is Steve and Charles expand this game into the multiplayer world like WWII Online will soon, without toning down the realism factors that their customers like so much about them. Imagine taking a whole Army Group into battle where each and every CO post has to be filled, and actions actually have ramifications to all the people you play with. BTW, there are also 360 degree monitors, hehe. Oh well one can dream.

Ray

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SWAT 3 Page

[Compassion]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lee:

That's impressive performance for a 575 mghz chip. Guess that

GeForce really can move without a whole lot of help. Can't wait

to see what the NV15 can do or the voodoo 5500 and 6000 for

that matter. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The new drivers for the my GeForce have kicked it up a notch, that's for sure. Hope they get similar drivers out soon for Win2K so that I can retire that Win98 partition. as it is, I can only play about %70 of the games that I want to.

Fer instance, I get occasional "Black Screen" lockups in Win2k that I never had to contend with before when starting CM.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Work for Intel, eh? I guess a lot of the shop talk these days

is about whether Intel can deliver the fast chips to keep up

with AMD. They sorta came out of nowhere as a serious competitor

in the high-end market. I love the fact that we are getting such

fast chips so much more quickly than we would without all the speed

wars going on. It's a great time to be a serious 3D gamer. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

<shrug> We demo'ed a working 1.5 gig chip a month ago (at room temp and not melting!) at the IDF in Palm Springs. We have 1 gig units in the channel as of yesterday... We aer doing ok. The thing that people are paying attention to is proper attention to process. No one was very happy to drop the Coppermine chips into the marketplace with that 820 chipset not finished and RD Ram still costing a fortune when you could find it. The other challenge is capacity. intel was sold out for a few months last year. Retooling the old Digital fab in Mass. has started to help (I thikn they are just about toooled for .18).

The thing is that I think this is the absolute best time to be a consumer. Both Intel and AMD are playing at the bleeding edge (rather than milking technology for profits... well, not too much ) and cutting prices. I don't know how AMD works, but Intel has always done well underpressure and in competition. It's a time for focus and execution. For Intel it means being stronger, faster, cheaper, more agile, and for AMD to continue to compete, they will be doing the same thing. That means to us as the consumer that new shiny toys will always be coming sooner and cheaper than ever. The last thing anyone should want is a winner in the processor wars.

Now, from a purely greedy pov, I hope that we do just a wee bit better than AMD and that my bonus and options keep getting fatter .

[Lee]

I think the area where Intel is hurtng most right now is that

they are having a real hard time producing their fast chips in

sufficient volume. Like you said, Intel just announced their 1000

mghz chips but it's still almost impossible to get even an 800

mghz PIII, let alone a 1000 mghz one.

Yeah, the competition is great. It's a huge benefit to gamers who

need all the power they can get. Now we need faster 3D cards

to keep up with the chips. The fastest CPU's have already pushed

the GeForce DDR to it's absolute limits. We need more video card

power to see what a 1000 mghz can really do.

[Compassion]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lee:

I think the area where Intel is hurtng most right now is that

they are having a real hard time producing their fast chips in

sufficient volume. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The bitch of it is that the problem's not yeild... IT's raw production. Too many products... not enough fab floorspace. ABout 2 years ago, the company made a strategic decision to hold new fab and office production (I know this becasue I looked out my window at a ditch in the ground were the parking lot used to be until a 97... finally restarted work a few weeks ago). That was during the dark times of the great slump of 97 (ok, in computer terms that means that there were 3 flat quarters in a row ). I thikn that they held new building for a year or so too long and we are paying for that now.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Yeah, the competition is great. It's a huge benefit to gamers who

need all the power they can get. Now we need faster 3D cards

to keep up with the chips. The fastest CPU's have already pushed

the GeForce DDR to it's absolute limits. We need more video card

power to see what a 1000 mghz can really do. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

AARG! Don't say that! I was hopeing my GeForce DR was going to last me for a couple years!

[Lee]

Well, it will last you that long. It just won't be able to push

the fastest chips to their limits. But still very respectable

performance. Once you get your new system you should be all set.

You can just pop the DDR into the system and be off to the races.

[Wolfe]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Rune... full screen anti-aliasing... droooooool It will probably be a number of years before this becomes a standard reality<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If the V5 performance pans out, usable FSAA at 1024x768x32 may be available very soon. The card will supposedly have an April/May launch. Atleast, I hope so. Though I'm a bit worried about the power draw thru the AGP slot. My Soyo 5ema+ may or may not be able to handle it. I may have to upgrade to an Athlon (preferrably Thunderbird) sooner than I thought. :-P

- Chris

[Trooper]

On the thought of buying an adequate PC now and (proportionally per herz) saving money over buying a top-range machine, I had that policy originally. After continually playing catchup, upgrading and so on to run my games at an acceptable level, I realised it was just too much hassle and expense in the long run. My next PC was a 200MMX at the time when that was <the> best money could buy. I didn't have to upgrade so much as the RAM for the guts of two years, and that's the policy I've decided to stick with.

Incidentally, whilst originally I was looking at the 32MB Geforce card, in conversation with the sales tech (Note tech, not rep, I got the feeling this man would be building my PC himself) we decided that the 16MB Voodoo 3 would better suit the kind of games I play. (Strategy and sims) given the 3dfx support these days. He would have said GeForce had I played more things like Quake and Halflife. Which then begs the question of whether all these reviews that rate cards on Quake framerates are biased or not.

Take care all.

Manic Moran

[Hawk]

Planning to buy a new computer myslef. Is GeForce a good alround card if I want to play both strategy games and FPS (Quake, Unreal etc), or should I go for something else?

Hawk

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Our's is not to reason "why", our's is but to do and die!

[This message has been edited by Hawk (edited 03-10-2000).]

[Guest Seimerst]

LOL--- Now I know what I have been doing wrong!!!! I did not know I was to follow step 4.

[chaos]

Well, my PC just dropped to the entry level machine in PC Gamers chart! I guess as soon as the PIII 600 hits 200 bucks, I'm upgrading.

chaos

[Wolfe]

Answering my own question, the Voodoo 5 5000 and 5500 have their own internal power plug that connects to the system power supply. The 6000 has an external connector that plugs into a wall outlet. So hopefully that will eliminate any AGP power draw problems.

http://x42.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=549582168&CONTEXT=952661515.985333769&hitnum=0

Has NVidia announced the specs for the NV15 yet? I see they released some beta GeForce drivers that can do FSAA, albeit slowly.

- Chris

[Guest Mikeman]

Trooper or Lee,

Does Falcon Northwest have a website? I'd like to check out the Cadillac of PCs.

I've typed in several things, but none of the obvious ones work.

Thanks!

Mikeman out.

[CoolColJ]

You need faster bus speeds and on chip V-ram, like the PlayStation 2. These 1 gigahertz processors, are so crippled! man a they're running at 32 bits too - how primitive

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CCJ

aka BLITZ_Force

My Hompage ----> http://www.geocities.com/coolcolj

Double your immersion with my Tweaked Textures and Saving Private Ryan sound set mods for CM!! Check out my new Textures V2.0 photo Gallery and my music while your there, or grab a CM Wallpaper!

[Compassion]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wolfe:

Answering my own question, the Voodoo 5 5000 and 5500 have their own internal power plug that connects to the system power supply. The 6000 has an external connector that plugs into a wall outlet. So hopefully that will eliminate any AGP power draw problems.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

We'll see what that does to heat dissapation problems inside a closed case.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Has NVidia announced the specs for the NV15 yet? I see they released some beta GeForce drivers that can do FSAA, albeit slowly.

- Chris<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Define slow . With my GeForce and Celeron 500 I see speed increases with FSAA combined with S3TC and fairly minor dropoffs with FSAA only titles such as Half Life (but it looks so much better).

[Hakko Ichiu]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mikeman:

Does Falcon Northwest have a website? I'd like to check out the Cadillac of PCs.

I've typed in several things, but none of the obvious ones work.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

http://www.falcon-nw.com

They are very good, but pricey. I would have bought one of their systems, but I couldn't handle the 4 week lead time. My poor PC is on its last legs. Bits of it are falling off as we speak. Soon I'll have to put a slug through it's hard drive to put it out of its misery.

Ended up getting another Gateway. Sigh.

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Das also war des Pudels Kern! -- Goethe

[Lee]

You got a Gateway instead of a Falcon? Talk about trading down.

Falcons are expensive, that's for sure. But you won't find a

finer PC for sale. They have *never* lost a speed competition in

any review by any magazine.

[Wolfe]

Compassion wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>With my GeForce and Celeron 500 I see speed increases with FSAA combined with S3TC and fairly minor dropoffs with FSAA only titles such as Half Life.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Is it playable at 1024x768? How about 32-bit?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>(but it looks so much better).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Do you play flight sims? If you have one, give it a try w/ FSAA. After playing thru XWing Alliance, I've been drooling over the prospect of FSAA.

The stair-stepped edges of the capital ships and large installations actually 'shimmer' as you fly toward them. In some cases, it actually looks like the edge of a ship has a 'wave-front' rolling across it. Truly horrible. Much worse, I suspect, than 3D shooters since in flight sims you're not always horizontal to the 'ground' (and other objects) and the game is generally slower by nature.

- Chris

[spider]

Technology is moving way too fast now, with all the money id have spent if i bothered upgrading my pc all the time id have the first installment in my 00 reg harley paid off!

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This is my rifle,

this is my gun.

This ones for killing, this ones a tasty alternative to turkey at christmas.....

[Guest Mikeman]

Trooper,

What's the URL for Falcon Northwest?

I want to check out the Cadillac of computers. GamePC.com is a nice site too. You can specify every component you want and get a quote at the end. They'll build it and test it (burn in) for $170 I think, or you can put it together yourself.

Mikeman out.

[Trooper]

The cadillac of PCs? Decadently opulent and flashy? Thanks, but not thanks.

1-888-falcon1 or http://www.falcon-nw.com

Take care.. NTM