Originally Posted by Tim S think about all of those machines churning away on Folding too... I stopped and my electricity bill was cut in half.
That's half the reason I never started.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nexxo ... I see computer progress going in the wrong direction. We visualise a future of slim, transparent devices that are light, wearable, integrateable, and solar-rechargable. We talk about smart paper and wallpaper TV. We talk about head-up displays in our glasses, credit-card shaped PIMs, and earrings that whisper information in our ears, straight from the internet.
The reality however is that our clever and powerful computing increasingly comes in huge hot cases that consume enough electricity to make Dr. Frankenstein feel envious. Regardless of Moore's law and staggering increases in computing power, we are working towards room-sized toasters again. We are going forward to the past....
I like the way you're thinking but how many of us are running CPUs from Via now? (Though I think they'd have more customers if the up front cost was in line with similar performing systems - not that you can buy new P2 & P3 chips anymore)
Firstly, I've been reading Bit-Tech for a while now and most of the articles have been up to a high standard.
This one however is not. Power consumption - you claim we will need 2kw power supplies yet the total consumption of nearly the most power hungry system you can build today only uses, according to the article, 437.5W
After all, no one needs a 185W GPU, if you're concerned about power buy a slower card that uses 50w. It's just like buying a V8 and then complaining about how much fuel it uses.
It's only the high end models that use that much. For example, the 8800GTX might use 185w but the next gen mid range card might only use 75w and will be just as fast. So why don't you just buy a mid-range card and play games at a low resolution or framerate if you don't notice the extra framerate anyway.
First off @ Dego, I think you're both right and wrong. The power consumption and ROI is totally out of whack, but I think You're underestimating the e-penis factor which is perhaps the MOST important element in high end hardware purchasing. People aren't buying these components because they need them but because they want the biggest e-penis and have the cash to burn to get it. Efficiency and cost are not significant issues.
I've been struggling with this issue for a while now, though from a slightly different angle. I switched to linux a while back and so thaty means that high end gaming is not really an option (and before Glider says it, yes I know it's possible, but I'm still too much of a noob). Sure I can dual boot to XP64 and game, but in practice I never do. What that means for me is that there is really no point in upgrading. New CPUs, GPUs and whatever else aren't going to make Bit load faster or make my email more readable, so why do I need them? I have to admit this is hard for me because I want two dual core CPUs and quad SLI. I don't need it, I have no real use for it, but I still want it. Basically, it's an e-penis issue. I want a unique, high performance computer that is, well, unique (recognizing this fact, the working name for my conceptual upgrade / mod is the e-[enis pump ).
Where I'm at now is trying to figure out a path forward. Since there is no point in upgrading the inside of my computer (except cooling), I might have to bite the bullet and try actually modding the outside of my computer.
A very good article! You've managed to put into words a lot of the things I've been thinking about for quite a while.
I'm coming at this from the perspective of a gamer. I play games. However, I've come to a rather simple conclusion: More performance does not make you a better gamer.
I'm running two generation old hardware, with an X800 and an Opty 165. At my 17" LCD's native 1280x1024, I get perfectly smooth framerates in everything from Half-Life 2 to Company of Heroes. Furthermore, I can, and have, thrashed people with 7900GTXOMGSLI! at 1600x1200, or whatever their monster 27" widescreen was pushing.
There is a point, of course, where your hardware slows you down. But, when your framerate is playable, and the settings are high enough that you can see people, there's really no point to upgrading further. To quote the old saying, enough is as good as a feast.
When the day comes that my computer can't do what I want it to (and with an upgrade to a mid-range DX10 card when the CoH DX10 patch comes out, it'll be a while), I'll upgrade to something that can. I'm looking at Merrom-based Mini-ITX boards, especially the ones that have PCI-Express 16x slots. I like the idea of having a computer that's as easy to move around as one of my TFTs.
Originally Posted by Sh0ckwave This one however is not. Power consumption - you claim we will need 2kw power supplies yet the total consumption of nearly the most power hungry system you can build today only uses, according to the article, 437.5W
First off, welcome to the forums.
With the way things are spiralling out of control, we will need 2kW PSU's soon. A pair of R600's or GeForce 8800's (plus a physics card or maybe four R600/GeForce 8800's since 680a has four PCI-E x16 slots) and a pair of AMD K8L quad-core chips in a 4x4 motherboard is going to use up a phenomenal amount of power. Of course, whether you need all of that horsepower is another question entirely.
As you are right to point out, there is certainly not a need for a 2kW power supply in the system listed, but it's not uncommon to see that kind of system requiring 600W or 700W for good measure. The minimum recommended for a 8800 GTX is 450W if my memory serves me correctly, but that doesn't take quad-core CPUs (or overclocked ones, for that matter), more than 2GB of memory or more than one hard drive into account. The last generation graphics cards required a minimum of 400W for one high-end card, and the generation before that was 350W if I recall. Minimum power recommended power requirements have gone up.
Also, while Core 2 reduced power consumption by X, increasing performance by Y over Netburst, a lot of the credits that Intel put in the kudos bank with Core 2 got lost when it raised the power envelope back up to 130W with Kentsfield.
I am not saying that Kentsfield is a bad product, but it was part of a space race between itself and AMD. Intel wanted to be first to "quad-core" (even though it's not a native part; not that it matters at the moment) and that's why the first quad-core chips increased power back up to where Intel's Netburst chips were before. It would have been nice to think that quad-core would have only increased power envelopes from 65W to somewhere in the region of 90W with quad-core, but that's unlikely to happen without a process shrink or a significant clock speed reduction (Core 2 Quad Q6600 has a 105W TDP). The 45nm process shrink on Core 2 won't see the light of day til later this year. That's after AMD is scheduled to launch K8L, meaning that Intel wouldn't be first with a quad-core chip.
Originally Posted by Sh0ckwave ...salient point quoted below...
Hi Sh0ckwave. I just wanted to say 2 things.
1) welcome to the forums.
2) You kind of proved the entire point of my article while telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sh0ckwave
After all, no one needs a 185W GPU, if you're concerned about power buy a slower card that uses 50w. It's just like buying a V8 and then complaining about how much fuel it uses.
It's only the high end models that use that much. For example, the 8800GTX might use 185w but the next gen mid range card might only use 75w and will be just as fast. So why don't you just buy a mid-range card and play games at a low resolution or framerate if you don't notice the extra framerate anyway.
This was the exact point of my article - the higher-end of the midrange systems does a great job, so rather than building these rigs for e-penis length (as mentioned above), why aren't we encouraging the companies to spend their R&D budgets to find new ways to increase real efficiency rather than OMG!!11R0X0RCLOCKSPEED++?
Originally Posted by Cthippo People aren't buying these components because they need them but because they want the biggest e-penis and have the cash to burn to get it. Efficiency and cost are not significant issues...
I have to admit this is hard for me because I want two dual core CPUs and quad SLI. I don't need it, I have no real use for it, but I still want it. Basically, it's an e-penis issue. I want a unique, high performance computer that is, well, unique (recognizing this fact, the working name for my conceptual upgrade / mod is the e-[enis pump ).
But what is wrong with an elegant, efficient system?
As I said before, when I think about performance cars, I think about the Lotus Exige, not a Hummer. "The master shows in keeping it simple" as the Germans say. It is a different philosophy of what constitutes an e-penis, but if we can brag about our mobile phone being smaller than someone else's... well, we can make the conceptual leap.
People generally really like my Metaversa. But what you have there, essentially, is a dual processor PC in a midi-tower box, cooled to a reasonable temperature by a small-ish radiator that is sufficient. The whole thing was a balance of compromise. It is not the fastest, biggest, coolest system around by a long shot; it has no fancy baybusses or controller software, no SLI, no RAID. It is just a fairly compact, well-balanced, well designed rig. People like it for the design, the detail and the engineering. Not for the size of the hardware.
It is all about what we consider sexy. Small can be sexy. Effectiveness rather than raw power can be sexy. Low power requirements rather than big cooling can be sexy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyinsar I like the way you're thinking but how many of us are running CPUs from Via now?
How many are running Pentium Ms? A really efficient yet powerful CPU, they created motherboards for them just so people could put them in their desktop PC. That is the direction in which we need to go. It is what allowed Intel to make dual core CPUs with a TDP of only 65 Watts.
It seems at this point we're almost all in agreement, I think, then. But a few things I'll point out.
We'll never probably have a 2kw system for a pretty simple reason: most home outlets can't reliably supply much over 1kw over an indefinite period of time. I sure as hell wouldn't want to try it, at least! I think in theory the max is 1800 watts, but still. At CES I'm sure we all saw the dual SLI high end rig running on Corsair's 500-or-so-watt PSU at load.
Second point. There's variety; we can get more performance with better battery life in smaller devices than ever before. Thats really what is important for the future, that combination. Actual power use almost doesn't matter as along as that holds. We can also get super-high end, and everything inbetween. Theres something for everybody!
And that leads to the final post. They make 8800GTX SLI Kentsfield death machines because they're profitable, they serve a good R&D purpose which is to force their R&D to see how far they can go (because to hit higher performance numbers and not bang up against a thermal wall efficiency has to improve, which filters down to the low end). Key part is though that they're profitable, and people want them. Their reasons for wanting them don't really matter. Companies that lose sight of the profit motive just don't fare too well. Besides, the enthusiast community would be something of a paradox if it railed against high-end low-volume flagship products and then included an overclocking part to every review. Lets be honest, too; overclocking destroys energy efficiency and as soon as we load up ATitool or tweak the BIOS voltage and FSB up up and up we've really stopped caring at least partly about the light bill. At the very least an overclocker is saying that energy efficiency hasn't got bad enough yet that he won't OC. And likely the only reason an OC'er doesn't have a high-end rig is because if insufficient income. Hell, why buy a low-end rig and struggle to OC it to high-end specs when you can get a high-end part and OC it to the stratosphere (assuming that money, again, is the discriminating factor there).
And as an aside.. writing this from a Turion64 that could be running at 1.8ghz but I have undervolted to 800mhz @ 0.8v. Excellent performance and battery life (Except for this darn flash ad that's maxing out my cpu), it does everything I want productivity wise. This sort of performance with this little power and this batterylife (4.5-5 hours) wasn't possible a few years ago. I'd call that energy efficiency progress?
Originally Posted by Tim S think about all of those machines churning away on Folding too... I stopped and my electricity bill was cut in half.
did you leave your machines on and fold before, and now their still on all the time but don't fold ? Or do you now turn them off completely, instead of leaving them folding
I mean, i leave my PC on 24/7 (its a MCE PC) so i leave it folding, because its going to be using power either way, I'm just wondering whether folding itself is the cause of the electricity bill, or if it was the fact you left your PCs on to fold
I used to fold 24/7 and obviously leave my PC on because of that. Now I'm a bit more conservative - it's not off every night, but it is off most nights. :)
Originally Posted by Nexxo ...
How many are running Pentium Ms? A really efficient yet powerful CPU, they created motherboards for them just so people could put them in their desktop PC. That is the direction in which we need to go. It is what allowed Intel to make dual core CPUs with a TDP of only 65 Watts.
At work (retail, lumber yard actually) several of our computers are old Pentium 1s & 2s because all they run is a dumb terminal program. When it's time to replace these someone in an office gets an upgrade and their old system (mostly P4s) becomes a terminal. Some, like myself, use design software and require more processing power but most other activity happens on the server and thus these new office computers are - with the exception of e-mail and the odd Word or Excel file - effectively dumb terminals. Can I convince the management to "go green" and buy Epias or such? No - I can't even get the office manager to turn off the CRT on the server - which she might only glance at a couple of times a week. :( The problem is that these energy efficient solutions are out of the mainstream distribution channels and not competitive as far as up front cost goes (which is all some -short sighted- people can see). :(
I think if Intel really cared about the environment they'd try to push these chips into the mainstream - They are available but you have to go out of your way to get one and then the whole system costs more. - Their recent comments about mini-ITX give me hope though. ;)
Quote:
Originally Posted by randosome ...
I mean, i leave my PC on 24/7 (its a MCE PC) so i leave it folding, because its going to be using power either way, ...
There's this wonderful little feature called "Hibernate" - it works great (wakes up when it needs to then goes back to sleep) for mine (an undervolted Athlon XP-M 2500+ running @1200).
Excellent article, though I am biased towards it because in a way this article said what I always thought, this stuff isnt needed for decent resolutions and fps but people feel they need it just to say they have it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nexxo If you look at the performance car industry, you don't see people building Hummers --you see them building the Lotus Exige. Light, elegant, compact, powerful. But it has no insanely big engine, no huge radiators --just really good, effective and efficient design and engineering. Lotus has even built an electrical version that does 0-60 in about four seconds. Its engine is the size of a water melon.
But it isnt just computers like nexxo points out with his analogy, I see people driving around in full size SUVs when all they need is little more than a Golf to do 99% of their driving. Most of the efficiency improvements just get wasted by someone being less efficient somewhere else in the overall design, more efficient engines then heavier larger vehicles, more efficient cpus and gpus and then they see more opportunity to produce heat.
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Originally Posted by Nexxo You make good points, and I don't think we should take the analogy with the space race too literally. However despite the undoubted benefits it has brought us, you have to sort of wonder why it takes wars (hot or cold) and international competition to get the very best out of us in terms of technological progress and achievement.
Which makes me ask, is that the only way that technology can really progress?
But it isnt just computers like nexxo points out with his analogy, I see people driving around in full size SUVs when all they need is little more than a Golf to do 99% of their driving. Most of the efficiency improvements just get wasted by someone being less efficient somewhere else in the overall design, more efficient engines then heavier larger vehicles, more efficient cpus and gpus and then they see more opportunity to produce heat.
lets say you have a system that can run all the games you ever need at 200fps. But your monitor can only give you a maximum of 80fps. Your eyes can only tell 30fps and nothing more. So all in all you have wasted 120-170 fps.. you have just wasted 60%...all lost in the air, FPS that you dont need at all. Wasted energy, wasted hardware components.. money is wasted... could have gone to someone who needs it more (i.e. charity). I.e. for a £2000 system, all you really needed was £800 and that set up would be more than enough to let you play the oh so nice beautiful games.
But hey, some people have more money than others... what better to spend it on. And from the poster above... progress right now is driven basically because of competition and not passion.. for the whole of humanity.. which is really very very sad.
Originally Posted by ikra ...Your eyes can only tell 30fps and nothing more...
Ok, I'm a little groggy at the moment so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
According to this a CRT with a refresh rate of 60Hz flashes a light 60 times per second. This means that no matter what the frame rate my eyes have 60 frames per second flashed into them. I don't know about you but 60Hz on a CRT makes my eyes feel like they've been rubbed in sand and I perceive it flickering. LED Christmas lights and some florescent lights also flicker in my vision (power here is 60Hz). At 70Hz a CRT is borderline for me but the flicker is gone at 75Hz. This tells me that my eyes perceive somewhere close to 70fps.
dunno let them explain... but thats the reason why films, tv, and all that crap are less than 30 frames per second and they look flawless... you gotta ask someone else to explain why we can notice the flickering
You are talking about the Flicker Fusion Threshold. This can vary according movement and lighting conditions. Although we effectively fuse images together in a continuous movement at about 30 Hz, when it comes to the bright, stroboscopic light of refreshing CRTs or mains AC driven fluorescent tubes, this threshold can lie considerably higher. People also differ in their individual perception, and from personal experience I suspect we accommodate as well. Since I have a 100 Hz plasma screen TV, I simply cannot tolerate watching ordinary CRT TV's anymore.
Originally Posted by Nexxo You are talking about the Flicker Fusion Threshold. This can vary according movement and lighting conditions. Although we effectively fuse images together in a continuous movement at about 30 Hz, when it comes to the bright, stroboscopic light of refreshing CRTs or mains AC driven fluorescent tubes, this threshold can lie considerably higher. People also differ in their individual perception, and from personal experience I suspect we accommodate as well. Since I have a 100 Hz plasma screen TV, I simply cannot tolerate watching ordinary CRT TV's anymore.
And Im sure that your plasma tv isnt at all in excess. :D
Originally Posted by Nexxo You are talking about the Flicker Fusion Threshold. This can vary according movement and lighting conditions. Although we effectively fuse images together in a continuous movement at about 30 Hz, when it comes to the bright, stroboscopic light of refreshing CRTs or mains AC driven fluorescent tubes, this threshold can lie considerably higher. People also differ in their individual perception, and from personal experience I suspect we accommodate as well. Since I have a 100 Hz plasma screen TV, I simply cannot tolerate watching ordinary CRT TV's anymore.
thank you for that
Quote:
And Im sure that your plasma tv isnt at all in excess.
Just kidding, Im a little jealous.
Tv never is in excess it is teh uber electronic equipment that every single house has.. well, it apply's to pc's.. but speaking about the whole world.. then TV is well...
Originally Posted by Nexxo You are talking about the Flicker Fusion Threshold. This can vary according movement and lighting conditions. Although we effectively fuse images together in a continuous movement at about 30 Hz, when it comes to the bright, stroboscopic light of refreshing CRTs or mains AC driven fluorescent tubes, this threshold can lie considerably higher. People also differ in their individual perception, and from personal experience I suspect we accommodate as well. Since I have a 100 Hz plasma screen TV, I simply cannot tolerate watching ordinary CRT TV's anymore.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about (I didn't link that article because it's already in the article I pointed at and, as Wikipedia itself notes, it's a mess)
Your experience with the 100Hz plasma screen is exactly what I'm talking about. I too think we have adapted to the frame rate of movies but if we got used to higher rates the old ones would look awful - kind of like we look at each new generation of computer graphics (and even movie special effects) and marvel at it's "realism" - then once we've adjusted we look at the old examples that once wowed us and instantly spot the "unrealness" we didn't notice before.
What I'm trying to say is that, yes, our brains can smooth out 30 fps but that's not the limit to how many we can see - as we get used to more it becomes harder for our brains to smooth out 30 fps because our brains start to look for, and even expect more.
now i so use to TFT moniter that whenever i use a crt i get headaches i agree with nexxo is all depent on the person but there is also i limit to when a teh refresh rates becomes higher than what soemone can see such as movies.
cuz scientists has long established that the brain is only capable of seeing a certain number of objects for a particular time... so that would eventually mean that the number of different frames that wee see are limited in a sense... there must be a breaking point
is that a samsung LCD TV? I might have the same sitting downstairs. (although mine is an older version and ghosting happens sometimes which gets a little annoying)
Originally Posted by ikra Tv never is in excess it is teh uber electronic equipment that every single house has.. well, it apply's to pc's.. but speaking about the whole world.. then TV is well...
Speak for yourself! My house is TV free and going to stay that way! ;)
Comments 26 to 50 of 53
This one however is not. Power consumption - you claim we will need 2kw power supplies yet the total consumption of nearly the most power hungry system you can build today only uses, according to the article, 437.5W
After all, no one needs a 185W GPU, if you're concerned about power buy a slower card that uses 50w. It's just like buying a V8 and then complaining about how much fuel it uses.
It's only the high end models that use that much. For example, the 8800GTX might use 185w but the next gen mid range card might only use 75w and will be just as fast. So why don't you just buy a mid-range card and play games at a low resolution or framerate if you don't notice the extra framerate anyway.
I've been struggling with this issue for a while now, though from a slightly different angle. I switched to linux a while back and so thaty means that high end gaming is not really an option (and before Glider says it, yes I know it's possible, but I'm still too much of a noob). Sure I can dual boot to XP64 and game, but in practice I never do. What that means for me is that there is really no point in upgrading. New CPUs, GPUs and whatever else aren't going to make Bit load faster or make my email more readable, so why do I need them? I have to admit this is hard for me because I want two dual core CPUs and quad SLI. I don't need it, I have no real use for it, but I still want it. Basically, it's an e-penis issue. I want a unique, high performance computer that is, well, unique (recognizing this fact, the working name for my conceptual upgrade / mod is the e-[enis pump ).
Where I'm at now is trying to figure out a path forward. Since there is no point in upgrading the inside of my computer (except cooling), I might have to bite the bullet and try actually modding the outside of my computer.
I'm coming at this from the perspective of a gamer. I play games. However, I've come to a rather simple conclusion: More performance does not make you a better gamer.
I'm running two generation old hardware, with an X800 and an Opty 165. At my 17" LCD's native 1280x1024, I get perfectly smooth framerates in everything from Half-Life 2 to Company of Heroes. Furthermore, I can, and have, thrashed people with 7900GTXOMGSLI! at 1600x1200, or whatever their monster 27" widescreen was pushing.
There is a point, of course, where your hardware slows you down. But, when your framerate is playable, and the settings are high enough that you can see people, there's really no point to upgrading further. To quote the old saying, enough is as good as a feast.
When the day comes that my computer can't do what I want it to (and with an upgrade to a mid-range DX10 card when the CoH DX10 patch comes out, it'll be a while), I'll upgrade to something that can. I'm looking at Merrom-based Mini-ITX boards, especially the ones that have PCI-Express 16x slots. I like the idea of having a computer that's as easy to move around as one of my TFTs.
With the way things are spiralling out of control, we will need 2kW PSU's soon. A pair of R600's or GeForce 8800's (plus a physics card or maybe four R600/GeForce 8800's since 680a has four PCI-E x16 slots) and a pair of AMD K8L quad-core chips in a 4x4 motherboard is going to use up a phenomenal amount of power. Of course, whether you need all of that horsepower is another question entirely.
As you are right to point out, there is certainly not a need for a 2kW power supply in the system listed, but it's not uncommon to see that kind of system requiring 600W or 700W for good measure. The minimum recommended for a 8800 GTX is 450W if my memory serves me correctly, but that doesn't take quad-core CPUs (or overclocked ones, for that matter), more than 2GB of memory or more than one hard drive into account. The last generation graphics cards required a minimum of 400W for one high-end card, and the generation before that was 350W if I recall. Minimum power recommended power requirements have gone up.
Also, while Core 2 reduced power consumption by X, increasing performance by Y over Netburst, a lot of the credits that Intel put in the kudos bank with Core 2 got lost when it raised the power envelope back up to 130W with Kentsfield.
I am not saying that Kentsfield is a bad product, but it was part of a space race between itself and AMD. Intel wanted to be first to "quad-core" (even though it's not a native part; not that it matters at the moment) and that's why the first quad-core chips increased power back up to where Intel's Netburst chips were before. It would have been nice to think that quad-core would have only increased power envelopes from 65W to somewhere in the region of 90W with quad-core, but that's unlikely to happen without a process shrink or a significant clock speed reduction (Core 2 Quad Q6600 has a 105W TDP). The 45nm process shrink on Core 2 won't see the light of day til later this year. That's after AMD is scheduled to launch K8L, meaning that Intel wouldn't be first with a quad-core chip.
1) welcome to the forums.
2) You kind of proved the entire point of my article while telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.
This was the exact point of my article - the higher-end of the midrange systems does a great job, so rather than building these rigs for e-penis length (as mentioned above), why aren't we encouraging the companies to spend their R&D budgets to find new ways to increase real efficiency rather than OMG!!11R0X0RCLOCKSPEED++?
As I said before, when I think about performance cars, I think about the Lotus Exige, not a Hummer. "The master shows in keeping it simple" as the Germans say. It is a different philosophy of what constitutes an e-penis, but if we can brag about our mobile phone being smaller than someone else's... well, we can make the conceptual leap.
People generally really like my Metaversa. But what you have there, essentially, is a dual processor PC in a midi-tower box, cooled to a reasonable temperature by a small-ish radiator that is sufficient. The whole thing was a balance of compromise. It is not the fastest, biggest, coolest system around by a long shot; it has no fancy baybusses or controller software, no SLI, no RAID. It is just a fairly compact, well-balanced, well designed rig. People like it for the design, the detail and the engineering. Not for the size of the hardware.
It is all about what we consider sexy. Small can be sexy. Effectiveness rather than raw power can be sexy. Low power requirements rather than big cooling can be sexy.
We'll never probably have a 2kw system for a pretty simple reason: most home outlets can't reliably supply much over 1kw over an indefinite period of time. I sure as hell wouldn't want to try it, at least! I think in theory the max is 1800 watts, but still. At CES I'm sure we all saw the dual SLI high end rig running on Corsair's 500-or-so-watt PSU at load.
Second point. There's variety; we can get more performance with better battery life in smaller devices than ever before. Thats really what is important for the future, that combination. Actual power use almost doesn't matter as along as that holds. We can also get super-high end, and everything inbetween. Theres something for everybody!
And that leads to the final post. They make 8800GTX SLI Kentsfield death machines because they're profitable, they serve a good R&D purpose which is to force their R&D to see how far they can go (because to hit higher performance numbers and not bang up against a thermal wall efficiency has to improve, which filters down to the low end). Key part is though that they're profitable, and people want them. Their reasons for wanting them don't really matter. Companies that lose sight of the profit motive just don't fare too well. Besides, the enthusiast community would be something of a paradox if it railed against high-end low-volume flagship products and then included an overclocking part to every review. Lets be honest, too; overclocking destroys energy efficiency and as soon as we load up ATitool or tweak the BIOS voltage and FSB up up and up we've really stopped caring at least partly about the light bill. At the very least an overclocker is saying that energy efficiency hasn't got bad enough yet that he won't OC. And likely the only reason an OC'er doesn't have a high-end rig is because if insufficient income. Hell, why buy a low-end rig and struggle to OC it to high-end specs when you can get a high-end part and OC it to the stratosphere (assuming that money, again, is the discriminating factor there).
And as an aside.. writing this from a Turion64 that could be running at 1.8ghz but I have undervolted to 800mhz @ 0.8v. Excellent performance and battery life (Except for this darn flash ad that's maxing out my cpu), it does everything I want productivity wise. This sort of performance with this little power and this batterylife (4.5-5 hours) wasn't possible a few years ago. I'd call that energy efficiency progress?
I mean, i leave my PC on 24/7 (its a MCE PC) so i leave it folding, because its going to be using power either way, I'm just wondering whether folding itself is the cause of the electricity bill, or if it was the fact you left your PCs on to fold
I think if Intel really cared about the environment they'd try to push these chips into the mainstream - They are available but you have to go out of your way to get one and then the whole system costs more. - Their recent comments about mini-ITX give me hope though. ;)
Edit: 750 posts = custom title :D
lets say you have a system that can run all the games you ever need at 200fps. But your monitor can only give you a maximum of 80fps. Your eyes can only tell 30fps and nothing more. So all in all you have wasted 120-170 fps.. you have just wasted 60%...all lost in the air, FPS that you dont need at all. Wasted energy, wasted hardware components.. money is wasted... could have gone to someone who needs it more (i.e. charity). I.e. for a £2000 system, all you really needed was £800 and that set up would be more than enough to let you play the oh so nice beautiful games.
But hey, some people have more money than others... what better to spend it on. And from the poster above... progress right now is driven basically because of competition and not passion.. for the whole of humanity.. which is really very very sad.
According to this a CRT with a refresh rate of 60Hz flashes a light 60 times per second. This means that no matter what the frame rate my eyes have 60 frames per second flashed into them. I don't know about you but 60Hz on a CRT makes my eyes feel like they've been rubbed in sand and I perceive it flickering. LED Christmas lights and some florescent lights also flicker in my vision (power here is 60Hz). At 70Hz a CRT is borderline for me but the flicker is gone at 75Hz. This tells me that my eyes perceive somewhere close to 70fps.
Just kidding, Im a little jealous.
thank you for that
Tv never is in excess it is teh uber electronic equipment that every single house has.. well, it apply's to pc's.. but speaking about the whole world.. then TV is well...
Your experience with the 100Hz plasma screen is exactly what I'm talking about. I too think we have adapted to the frame rate of movies but if we got used to higher rates the old ones would look awful - kind of like we look at each new generation of computer graphics (and even movie special effects) and marvel at it's "realism" - then once we've adjusted we look at the old examples that once wowed us and instantly spot the "unrealness" we didn't notice before.
What I'm trying to say is that, yes, our brains can smooth out 30 fps but that's not the limit to how many we can see - as we get used to more it becomes harder for our brains to smooth out 30 fps because our brains start to look for, and even expect more.
And the quality of the picture is awesome. :D
Speak for yourself! My house is TV free and going to stay that way! ;)