Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Crono on Sun Mar 14th at 10:05am 2004


VMM stands for Virtual Memory Management, or Manager, I can't remember at the moment.

Basically it just means that a chunk of hard drive space is used as if it were ram. So your processor can assume it has at least 4 gigs of physical ram at any moment. And you don't need 4 gig free obviously. It uses a paging system to swap out pages of VMM when they're full, kind of a VMM for VMM, but the second one are temporary files.

However, with VMM you have to clean it up, because it's on the hard disk. That's the really nice thing about ram, and a bad thing as well, if it loses power all the information held inside is gone. Oh well. Now you know.
As for the video card, I'm rather partial to MSI's Line. However, they're a bit pricey at the moment. I don't suggest ASUS, I've had way too many problems with them, they're just.....annoying in most respects. But, if you're going for more bang for your buck, the MSIs generally last for a very long time, if taken care of. I don't really know how well the current ASUS line performs, I don't own one. I'm sure they run fine. Just check to see if there's a warranty, on everything you buy obviously. I remember that nVidia used to have a 3-year warrenty for all their cards, straight from them, so even if you bought it from johnny-s**ts-ville company 5003, you were insured for three years, as long as you didn't damage the card yourself. [addsig]




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by scary_jeff on Sun Mar 14th at 11:12am 2004


I read all your posts, it just seemed like you were overstating things. Look at this. and see how with the same graphics card (it uses an ATI and an nvidia, but they are equivelant), the CPU makes a huge amount of difference. If we go from the duron 900 (the 800 isnt in the comparison), to the 2400+ (2500 isn't in comparison either), the performance is at least doubled in virtually every situation! The Duron is not using DDR333 memory in this case, but WildCard has this better memory just waiting for it's extra capacity to be used anyway (duron he has doesn't use DDR333) - as soon as he puts in a CPU with a higher FSB, his memory performance will improve by making full use of his DDR333-capable memory, without adding any extra. 256MB is fine, you can buy plenty of new PCs that have 256MB, and that run significantly better than a duron 800 system. OK, it's a bit weird to have a 2500+ with only 256MB of memory, but come on, it's hardly a catastrophy. I'm not saying your knowledge of how all the memory works is wrong, I just think you should move from then theory into some real world figures.



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 2:50pm 2004


Yea the 800 runs the ram at 200, but its PC2700 meanning 333. I can get the 2500+ with a 333FSB and a generic heatsink for 114$

The ram I will be getting, another stick of the same thing I have.

by the way: on the mobo, the slots are arranged as follows:

slot 1 - slot 2 ------ slot 3

It says to start adding sticks from 3 down to 1. But if I wanted to make my ram dual channel, should I put it in slot 1 and 2?

Crono, my friend has an MSI video card, yes they are nice, they are expensive too. lol. What can you tell me about this one?:

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?product_subtypes_id=80&product_types_id=26&product_id=1063

As well, my brother used to have an ASUS card, and it worked fine (using pass tense because it was a 32mb GF2TI and has since upgraded to a 128mb card)

[addsig]




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by scary_jeff on Sun Mar 14th at 6:22pm 2004


If your board supports dual channel, then you will want to use slots 1 and 2 for this.

The graphics cards on that site seem expensive or weirdly distributed to me. Even as a budget card, I wouldn't buy an MX anything these days, I don't know what to suggest. If you want to play new releases and care about how well your PC runs games, you want at least a midrange card like a ATI 9600 or nvidia 5700. Hold on, it says you already have a GF4MX? Why buy another one of the same type of card? If you already have a GF4MX, it doesn't seem worth buying anything worse than a 9600 or 5700 to me.




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Crono on Sun Mar 14th at 6:55pm 2004


The card he linked to has more ram then the one he has. But I don't suggest an MX, maybe if you were still running a GeForce 2 or something and you were upgrading. The MX (if they have a fan) generally have their fans stop working at some point, it's rather odd. If you can't really afford a good video card at this point, I don't suggest buying an okay one to compensate at this point in time.

Jeff, I'm not theorizing as much as you're implying, I know there will be a performance increase, but it wont matter if some of his other hardware can't handle it, and that is what I was saying. Those specs on that page are of the instruction speed to memory, yeah obviously that will speed up because at this point in time, like I said, his memory is waiting on his CPU, basically.
That chart doesn't surprise me, I don't if you thought it would or something. All that's happening there is that the processor is able to write to memory faster . . . . thus the video runs faster. Why is this out of what I had said? Because I implied this. Secondly these are frames per second, I'd rather see poly count or something like that along with it. I mean, this chart is showing almost exactly what I was saying. Yes, I said most of the performance depends on the video card, and it does. But, I never said the processor didn't have a part.

Also, the way the processor works isn't theory, that's how it works in the real world. Obviously people have written stuff to try to get around it and such, but nonetheless, that's what it boils down to.

And on another note, I said that he should upgrade his CPU, I just think a 2500 is a bit of overkill. However, would a jump from 210 fps to 398fps or whatever number that chart has, really make such a noticable difference?

Half the games I play, including quake III at times, don't go above 90fps or so, and I that chart says that my processor should allow somewhere around 219fps. (Also taking that my video card isn't really lowend at the moment.) I don't care about the fps, honestly, maybe if I was developing something.

I know the stuff I was talking about before looks like a crash course in computer architecture, but believe me it isn't, I said that to explain just why it wouldn't be as huge of an increase as everyone was implying. And it wouldn't. FPS.....nice....... too bad you wont really notice a huge difference between 200fps and 400pfs. So, obviously you all completly missed the point of everything I said. I appologize if it seemed arrogent or something. But believe me I am well aware of real-world scenarios envolving this arch.

Also, I think anything over $100 (US) is way too much to be paying for a processor, heat-synk, and fan.

I guess, we're actually mostly agreeing on what WC should get though. Ram and a new CPU.

Technically you can even make that desicion by look at the life of the products. How long would it be before you'd have to upgrade either, because they're just not cutting it? Well, a lot longer then a video card. So, that's another way of looking at it. [addsig]




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 7:34pm 2004


Yea, video cards tend to change like 5 times a year. The only time CPU's outdated each other faster was like in 2001 after AMD hit the 1Ghz mark, lol, I guess Intel didnt like that, at the time, I was getting a magasine called Ottawa Computers published every month and everytime the processors jumped: 1Ghz, next month, 1.2Ghz, next month, 1.4Ghz, etc etc etc until Intel finally reached the 3Ghz and then stoped.

My current video card is an MX and does have a fan, but thus far I havent had any problems with it, but I've only had it since September.

[addsig]



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Crono on Sun Mar 14th at 7:49pm 2004


I'd say stick with it, and wait for HL2 and Doom 3 to come out to get a new one (you'll know then what will be best as those games will probably become benchmark tests).

I've had my card for over a year. It's great, however it was rather expensive (nothing near 300 bucks or something though), good thing it was a gift

Secondly, they can't really make processors go faster then 3ghz...Like, they're getting way to hot and requiring way too much cooling. So they tried forming (as most companies have done) an alternative. Intel's answer was the Itanium (it's a son of a bitch to program). They went with HP, I don't know how they got HP to stop producing their rather succesful 64-bit processor to help work on theirs, but they did. An Itanium generally runs at 1ghz. However, it has the overall performance-instructions speed as a 3ghz P4. It uses pipelining and 64-bit memory units to get it all done. The bad part is 32-bit stuff doesn't exactly work most times, and if it does, it will either run as slow or SLOWER then it did on the 32-bit machine. You have to specifically write stuff for it, and it doesn't help you out....I'm not sure of the specifics, as I don't own one, and they're expensive. But if you're curious look at this.

Those are only workstations they offer. Itanium is mostly used for UNIX servers and such. It's very fast if used properly, but expensive (the cheapest desktop is 3k, and you can't exactly build the systems yourself, because Intel hasn't released the individual parts, and there is no demand for them at the moment, at least not in the general market).

I think AMD has a pretty good 64-bit solution as well, and theres is backwards compatable. (Not to mention you buy the chips.) [addsig]




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 7:55pm 2004


Yea I read about the AMD 64's.

So then, ram and CPU, video card later?

[addsig]




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Crono on Sun Mar 14th at 8:37pm 2004


That would be the best bang for your buck, so to speak. [addsig]



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 8:40pm 2004


can get both for 200$ [addsig]



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by scary_jeff on Sun Mar 14th at 9:00pm 2004


I'm sorry but that post is idiotic. Did you think that perhaps if it goes from 200 to 400 in an old game like quake 3, then it may go from not playable to playable in a newer game? Jeez, Quake3 is well known as scaling well with new hardware and being a good indicator of harware performance, that's why they still use it! If the number for your CPU isn't as high as the one given there then you should take a leaf out of your own book and 'bother to read the whole thing': you will notice that they use non standard settings - I can't imagine you run quake3 at 640*480*16?

? quote:
they can't really make processors go faster then 3ghz


The expected limit to current CPU technologies is around 10GHz. 3GHz isn't even a limit of current architechtures, with prescott expecting to go to 4GHz in Q4 (I think, maybe Q1 05).

*looks down* Sorry WildCard, my post doesn't have anything to do with you question any more..




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 9:01pm 2004


*scrathes forhead* lol [addsig]



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Forceflow on Sun Mar 14th at 9:13pm 2004


a 'lil bit off topic, but I wanted to share this with you guys:

TomsHardware.com overclocked a processor to 5 Ghz, by cooling with liquid nitrogen: http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20031230/index.html

check out the video.





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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 9:14pm 2004


Yea I saw that, it was really cool. [addsig]



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by scary_jeff on Sun Mar 14th at 9:16pm 2004


pun intended?



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Wild Card on Sun Mar 14th at 9:19pm 2004


? posted by Wild Card
*scrathes forhead* lol

Yea... what the hell...

*scrathes forhead some more*

[addsig]




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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by scary_jeff on Sun Mar 14th at 9:21pm 2004


Nevermind, I was thinking maybe because it is talking about liquid nitrogen and stuff that you were saying 'really cool' as some kind of joke... guess only I think of jokes that lame



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Leperous on Sun Mar 14th at 9:23pm 2004


? posted by scary_jeff
3GHz isn't even a limit of current architechtures, with prescott expecting to go to 4GHz in Q4 (I think, maybe Q1 05).

I read somewhere today they're thinking upto 5ghz for the Prescott?





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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by scary_jeff on Sun Mar 14th at 9:25pm 2004


Oh probably, those clever Intel monkeys The point is that 3GHz is no kind of limit.



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Re: Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this
Posted by Crono on Sun Mar 14th at 10:54pm 2004


? quote:

I'm sorry but that post is idiotic. Did you think that perhaps if it goes from 200 to 400 in an old game like quake 3, then it may go from not playable to playable in a newer game? Jeez, Quake3 is well known as scaling well with new hardware and being a good indicator of harware performance, that's why they still use it! If the number for your CPU isn't as high as the one given there then you should take a leaf out of your own book and 'bother to read the whole thing': you will notice that they use non standard settings - I can't imagine you run quake3 at 640*480*16?

? quote:
they can't really make processors go faster then 3ghz


The expected limit to current CPU technologies is around 10GHz. 3GHz isn't even a limit of current architechtures, with prescott expecting to go to 4GHz in Q4 (I think, maybe Q1 05).

*looks down* Sorry WildCard, my post doesn't have anything to do with you question any more..



First off, having it be an indicator for performance increase in other games is fine, I just said that in that specific game you wouldn't notice a difference, and yes I noticed the non-standard setting the used, I'm not blind.

Also, the thought going into processors not being higher then 3ghz is that it's not solving the problem by increasing clock speed. I wasn't aware of the further limits, most companies are clocking out at 3ghz and moving on to other, better, architectures.

Thirdly, f**k you for attacking me. I don't see the reason for your attack on my post, I don't care if you don't agree or if you're getting pissed off because I'm not 100% agreeing with you, there's no need to be a dick every time I say something. [addsig]





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