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NVIDIA Forceware 257 & Heterogeneous GPU PhysX: It's a Bug, Not a Featureby Ryan Smith on 5/28/2010 12:42 PM EST
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[-Stash-] - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkArg, why have a "Read More" button if there's no more to read!?
That aside, it's reassuring to know that a simple driver hack is still all that is required and that it is just a hurdle that Nvidia is introducing, not an outright incompatibility between Nvidia and AMD GPUs :) Reply
The0ne - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkyep, 3d guru for your needs :D Reply
cdillon - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkSo let me get this straight... NVidia is intentionally disabling a feature in their drivers simply because another brand of GPU is in your system, and apparently not for valid technical reasons because things work just fine when it is enabled. Isn't this exactly the kind of BS that should spawn anti-trust litigation? Reply
shin0bi272 - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkIts close but its only disabling the physx ability on the nvidia card or ageia ppu (since nvidia owns ageia now they can do that) not the actual "3rd party" gpu card. You can still run multiple desktops on multiple cards etc etc you just cant get physx if your system has a different gpu in it.
The issue I have with them doing this is its dumb. You want people to buy your hardware and yet your top gpu isnt as fast as the competition... So lets stop them from buying our hardware for use in physx games so we also f*ck over those people that make physx heavy games for all but Nvidia customers. At least if they allowed heterogeneous video cards and physx people would still buy their cards just to play a game with... thats MOAR PROFITS Nvidia! That will also push MOAR PHYSX GAMES into the market... then if there are enough games on the market with physx to make people give a damn .. people will buy your cards for their ability to do physx and not buy the competition even if the competition is a little faster for the same price. Reply
CU - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkSony is facing multiply class action law suits for removing linux support on the PS3. How can Nvidia remove a feature (ie. Ageia did work with any gpu, and now it doesn't) and not be sued? Reply
Slash3 - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkIt was never advertised as a supported feature, the way that the "Install Other OS" and Linux support was advertised with the PS3. Many people used that as a consideration when they purchased the PS3, and then effectively had the rug pulled out from under them. The PhysX issue is a bit less murky, in that they have always prevented you from using a mixed pair of cards with PhysX enabled (GPU, not the PPU add-on) - despite the fact that there are numerous advantages to be had. So it's less a case of removing a feature as it is a case of never having been smart enough to allow it to begin with.
Way to ruin the party, nvidia. Reply
CU - Monday, May 31, 2010 - linkI was specifically talking about the ppu's though. They worked with any gpu, but now they don't thanks to Nvidia. Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkits nvidia's property now they can pretty much do what ever they want with it. Same thing with their gpu's supporting physx while another brand of gpu is in the box. Its their decision and they (IMHO) made the wrong one.
God forbid someone goes out and buys a 200 dollar nvidia card after they already have a 500 dollar amd card the world might end right Nvidia? Reply
AdamK47 - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkYou say this as if it were some sort of new revelation. Reply
CU - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkIs it legal to block people from using a using the original PPU's with a non-Nvidia gpu? They were sold with the ability to be used with in gpu correct? Then Nvidia bought the company and dropped that support. Reply
psychoticdream - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linksmacks of monopoly or unethical business practices doesnt it?
i mean there's proof enough that it really works so it means they are intentionally disabling it
then again its nvidia, these guys arent known for being honest or upstanding. Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkyes its legal because its nvidia's property. Its like remember when amd cpu's used to fit in intel motherboards? When amd started making its own boards (or intel sued them to stop that I dont know which happened) they were no longer interchangeable... you cant sue amd for not making cpus that work on intel boards anymore.
For those of you who dont remember 1994... amd used to make a risc printer chip but got tired of making drivers for every OS so they added some x86 registers to it and reformed it into a cpu. It was an alternative to intel's cpu and it was touted as faster but I dont know if it was or not (I went with the cyrix chip... biiig mistake). Anyway, when intel started making these huge slot style processors amd started making their own motherboards and the two roads diverged.
You cant go sue amd for not making a slot style processor (even though there was a slocket adapter out there for 20 bucks) because amd chose to go another route. It was their decision and while it might have hacked off a lot of their customers its still legal. Same thing with nvidia choosing not to allow physx if theres an amd board in the system. Not a wise decision (shows that they are not a "cool" company) but its their call and they made it. Reply
greylica - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkThen you pay a full product to have 75% functionality because they are wanting a polarized market. (Do you remember the remarketed emu10k1 ?). Then, an analogy is when you buy a car but can´t use the gasoline as you wanted ( generally a better one) because your car manufacturer entered an agreement with a gasoline distributor flag, and you don't have any control over it because your car won't start when a sensor find other gasoline. Do you need more reasons than this to hate proprietary softwares ?
Is it a bug ?
Yeah, a bug that provides a great functionality that people are hacking to have, a Bug for Nvidia, not for the users. Nvidia, we pay for a full product, with decent and unlocked software, not a proprietary software blob full of defects (caped functions).
You deserve people sharing those drivers at any form, and at an incontrolable rate. Reply
descendency - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkIt's a bug alright. The symptoms for said bug is "declining GPU sales". Though, it's not due to heterogeneous PhysX processing. Reply
KIAman - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkI agree. I have a feeling they expect heterogeneous users to use the beta while nVidia only users to stick with WHQL.
This saves nVidia from losing face by reversing their hardcore PhysX policy while giving all the GPU mixing whiners a chance to be happy, unofficially. Reply
dalingrin - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkI just bought a new Radeon to replace my GTS 250. I thought about trying to use my GTS 250 for PhysX but, after turning on the PhysX indicator to see how many games actually use gpu physx I have decided not to bother. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Physx games are cpu only. Reply
Lonyo - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkI think you mean "fortunately". If most games were GPU PhysX then that would mean that NV and their unfriendly (to the consumer) tactics would be working. Reply
spiked_mistborn - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkI have been disappointed by Nvidia in the past with things similar to this, so while I am not an ATI fanboy, I prefer to avoid Nvidia products due to poor software support. First it was poor audio drivers and long times between updates with the Nforce2. Then the Nforce3 was advertised as supporting 64-bit operating systems of the future and never had drivers released for Vista or Windows 7. Also it did not support AGP cards from ATI in those OS when using a dual-core CPU, but Nvidia GPUs worked ok. The ATI AGP cards, such as Radeon 3850, worked fine in Windows 7 with VIA or SIS chipsets and had drivers.Very strange... I currently have a Radeon 5770 and have been considering picking up a used Ageia PPU on ebay to try out, but after hearing this I wish someone would flush the toilet on PhysX so the smell goes away. I haven't looked into it, but hopefully something like Havoc, or an open alternative will be released for OpenCL or even DirectCompute. If we don't send a message to these companies that we don't like artificial software limitations imposed on hardware that we have purchased they are just going to keep doing it. Reply
Qasar - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linki posted a question regarding windows 7 and nForce 4, here:
i then sent an e-mail to nVidia in refards to this and my last post contains nVidia's replies :
i have the 64 bit RC of Win 7 installed and running just fine, but according to nVidia when i e-mailed them about windows 7 drivers for the nforce 4 chipset, i recieved this :
in the 1st e-mail reply :
"The nForce4 chipsets are EOL and do not meet Microsoft's 7 System Requirements and this is the reason why we do not distribute any driver for the nForce4 chipsets. However, you can always use Windows 7 in-box driver with the nForce4 chipset. If the Windows Vista driver works fine for the nForce4 chipset, then, I suggest you to continue using the Vista driver for stable performance "
and the 2nd reply :
" However, the nForce4 series of chipsets are not compatible with the Windows 7 OS as these chipsets was manufactured by using the old technology which are now not capable of supporting the software and hardware required by Windows 7 operating system. So due to these drawbacks, the nForce4 series of motherboard cannot be used with Windows 7 OS "
now where does it say in the windows 7 hardware requirements specifically what hardware is and is not compatable with windows 7 ?? Ie Chipsets.......
i am currently using the 64 bit Vista drivers, which i have been using since probably July when i installed the RC to try out 7, and now would like official windows 7 drivers from nVidia for the OS, as i plan on getting the retail release of Win 7 for my main comp, as well as possibly 2-3 other nForce 4 based comps. i also have some friends which are running nforce 4 based motherboards as well..
would official win 7 drivers be any different the vista drivers ?? or is this a case of nVidia not making " offical " win 7 drivers just because the chipset has been moved to EOL for them, even though there are probably ALOT more people out there that are also running the Nforce 4, and there for it comes down to being a case of nVidia is just not interested is supporting its customers with something as simple as a driver ??
hows that for more BS from nVidia ??? Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkwow that sucks dude... im using an asus p4p800 deluxe running a 3ghz socket 478 p4 and it works just fine with the win 7 drivers. Granted its not 64bit but its older than your board and works just fine. Reply
0ldman - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkThis stunt of disabling physx, which I don't use simply due to the driver being disabled, has cost them a customer, as well as a tech that recommends hardware to hundreds if not thousands of users.
I was almost a 100% Nvidia shop until just recently, mostly due to being comfortable with their drivers, stability, compatibility, etc.
AMD has knocked it out of the park in the past few years and Nvidia has completely dropped the ball. Their ego got larger than their customer base and they forgot how they got there. Reply
0ldman - Friday, May 28, 2010 - linkThis stunt of disabling physx, which I don't use simply due to the driver being disabled, has cost them a customer, as well as a tech that recommends hardware to hundreds if not thousands of users.
I was almost a 100% Nvidia shop until just recently, mostly due to being comfortable with their drivers, stability, compatibility, etc.
AMD has knocked it out of the park in the past few years and Nvidia has completely dropped the ball. Their ego got larger than their customer base and they forgot how they got there. Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkhow do you figure? the nvidia cards last gen were faster and if you didnt put an amd card in the box you have physx. The cards this gen are faster (just not by much) and they are the same price this time.
Methinks you doth protest too much... or youre a liar. Reply
Patrick Wolf - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkNvidia truly sucks. Unfortunetly their product is pretty good. Reply
Jediron - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkYou think so ? I think GTX470/480 and Fermi suck.
Nvidia is on the wrong road, with theri overpriced SLI chips. They should be giving it away for free, so that
it open's up a bigger sale in videocards. Now this, with Physics. They are too greedy and if they continue on this path; i see a dead end at the horizon for them ! Reply
HaleStones - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkWell that seals it for me. A company that acts like this does not have my best interest as a priority. Thus, it will not get my hard eared dollars. I'm going ATI on the next build. Adios nVidia! Reply
gojirasan - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkHas anyone uploaded the older driver anywhere? This is a perfect case for "information wants to be free". Once you let the cat out of the bag you are not supposed to be able to put it back in again, especially if you are a big evil corporation. I'm disappointed in the intertubes. Someone should upload a torrent for the older version of 257.15 to the pirate bay or something. It's real tricky of them that they kept the version number the same even though what they claimed to be doing was fixing a bug. Normally you would give the fixed version a new number. But that would have made it so much easier for people to find the hybrid driver version. Nvidia is clever but so evil. Reply
dingetje - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkplain and simple, nvidia is screwing people over. Reply
BoFox - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkhttp://www.ngohq.com/news/17896-nvidia-forceware-2... Reply
Soubriquet - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkI cant see that working well in the community.
Their tendancy to contrive driver conflicts creates the situation where users cannot have the two main VGA manufacturers on the same machine.
Since physics is not a big issue in games today and ATI have cooler cards PC builders are not necessarily going to choose nVidia, in fact this may well work against them since you dont want that kind of driver conflict going on with a new machine. By the time physics is an issue all this hardware will be completely out of date anyway.
Like their expensive fat hot research oriented graphics cards nVidia are shooting at the wrong target again. It reminds me of the famous flopping folly of Sinclair.
What were they thinking?
Who is driving the bus?
What are they smoking?
Why are the shareholders letting them? Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkYoure not thinking about this from a business standpoint. what would you want people to do go buy your competitor's top card then buy a cheap 100 dollar card of yours or buy your top card to get physx and better fps?
the decision to stop the customer from using physx while theres a competitors board in the system is one to try to get more people who want to play physx games to buy nvidia. Physx is an nvidia product, physx games are best run on nvidia (depending on the level of physx objects), and why in their right mind would nvidia allow someone not using nvidia hardware exclusively, run a game that requires their hardware? You wouldnt complain when your vhs tape didnt fit in your dvd player would you? Because thats about the level of stupidity you seem to have when blaming nvidia for not allowing people buying the competitor's product to use their technology too. Reply
hackztor - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkYou have to remember that their decision is based entirely on business. While it sucks for consumer, its good for them. If you were them you would not want someone to be using an ati card as a physx or even to be using ati as your main and nvidia card as the second. That would degrade the nvidia brand. They spent money purchasing the technology and incorporating it into their cards for free to the consumer, the least a consumer can do is purchase nvidia only cards. A lot of businesses use this tactic and Nvidia is no different. The good side of all of this beta driver is that now if you want physx with ati card, it is possible as long as you stick with this driver set and ones downloaded from before the fixed date and your all set. Reply
Jediron - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkTheir businessplan sucks, and they better wake up before it's too late. You can make "business" for a while, screwing the comsumer. One day, the consumer will turn their back on you....an then what? Right!
They are wrong from the start, asking money for theri SLI feature. A feature, which enlarges their videocard sales. So why put a "lock" on it by making it expensive, even before you decide top buy theri videocard?
No, it's shortsided and that's why they are gonna loose customers, and money on the long term.
Good business ? No way! Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkthey are only screwing people who buy amd products not nvidia products... unless you count the power consumption and heat levels. Reply
Jalek99 - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkIn the market there's only one real way for consumers to indicate displeasure, and it's not complaining on message boards. They indirectly just sold another Radeon 5850. Reply
geok1ng - Sunday, May 30, 2010 - linkIt is stupid AND short-sighted : it screws Ageia PPU owners and open room for class action law suits from these owners.
it limits video cards sales: there are people who would happily spend money on a small NVIDIA GPU just for the bragging rights on their ATI systems.
And the worts consequence of all: it further limits the hardware install base for Physx: game developers do not bother with PhysX because the installed hardware base is small and keeps getting smaller everytime NVIDIA do stupid things like these. Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkive got an ageia ppu... its a paperweight compared to my gts250. seriously anyone using one of those cards for physx is out of their minds at this point. If you want physx that bad just buy an nvidia card and STFU about it. Reply
mgilbert - Saturday, May 29, 2010 - linkI thought Apple was the only company arrogant enough to do something like this. I do not now, or will I ever buy anything from Apple.
My current video card is an ATI. Guess what... I'll never buy anything from NVidia again. I don't know what to think about these companies that give their customers the middle finger... Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkwill you still be saying that in 5 years when the new nvidia card comes out and its 25% faster across the board than the amd card? Reply
hackztor - Sunday, May 30, 2010 - linkWell it works for Apple, and it works really well. They just suprassed Microsoft in market value. Nvidia is not talking about sli for their graphics they just want you to use an old nvidia card. Most of us probably have those around. In the end, I never really care because i just let the existing card do the work. Reply
thekimbobjones - Monday, May 31, 2010 - linkJust as well PhysX is a load of c#@p. Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkIm guessing you never played warmonger operation downtown destruction. The gameplay is simplistic but its on the U3 engine and you can destroy just about everything in that game. Wish they had taken it further though tbh. Physx just makes that game a blast to play. Reply
JimmiG - Monday, May 31, 2010 - linkI sure hope one of the open physics initiatives takes off.. Then no one will care about PhysX anyway. In general, proprietary standards tend to either get opened up or they die away (3dfx Glide). Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkI suspect that that bullet physx will be the next big thing. Maybe havok cloth for a while. But either way if what you say is true then havok would have been out of business a long time ago not sitting on their high horse charging 250k per title for their physics engine. Nvidia's physx sdk is free and its hardware accelerated... it just pisses off all the amd fanboys that they cant play physx games. Which also makes it a bad idea for nvidia to pull this move to block amd guys from playing physx games because at this point physx is not a huge reason to buy a game. If physx was the defacto standard for most games then nvidia could announce that they were stopping support for heterogeneous cards. But stopping it now is like going off to war without any ammo... yeah sure youve got a great weapon but it doesnt have any bullets. Reply
yannigr - Monday, May 31, 2010 - linkWhen PhysX starts to fade all the technical problems with heterogeneous GPU PhysX will go away and NVidia will start talking about a feature and not a bug. But it is going to be too little too late. Reply
Shining Arcanine - Monday, May 31, 2010 - linkBecause Nvidia published the same driver version both with and without the restriction, it should be fairly trivial to examine the drivers to determine what is enforcing the restriction, making it easy for people to remove it on their systems. Reply
dragunover - Monday, May 31, 2010 - linkMy next GPU will be an ATi graphics card, I've had enough with their driver's BS, I run another computer with ATI drivers and I have NONE of the issues that I have had over the past year with my GTX 260. Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkIve run nvidia cards for over a decade and have not ever had one problem with them ... well except for that one time i froze my tnt2 card to get the epoxied fan off because one of the blades broke off while I was screwing around inside my pc. But that wasnt nvidia's fault Reply
BoFox - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkNvidia is not the only one caught red-handed with their "lackluster" drivers.
For starters, ATI here is not giving us an option to disable severe trilinear optimizations with R800 (5xxx) cards. The optimizations, even when 16x AF is enabled, actually make the mipmaps look a tad bit more on the bilinear side than trilinear (hence the term brilinear). In many scenarios, the harsh line of mipmap transistion becomes rather annoying when the camera is in motion (as opposed to still screenshots). Disabling Catalyst A.I. does not resolve this issue on 5xxx GPU's--disabling it would not be a good idea for compatibility issues with some games anyways--especially crossfire.
For more, see: http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=12648&page=2 Reply
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, June 01, 2010 - linkew wow that does look like graphics from an old dx7 video game ... you can just watch the models snap from one mip to another. Reply
Zorro3740 - Sunday, June 06, 2010 - linkhttp://blogs.nvidia.com/ntersect/2010/05/update-on...
They left the restriction out of the beta drivers 257.15 and man Batman AA looks great rendered with a 4850 X2 and 9800 GT as a PPU. I've used them and they work. So I don't know how this slipped by everybody but it still works and if you happen to have an ATI GPU or GPUs a simple Nvidia GT 220 for $50 or $60 can do the PhysX job quite well. PhysX actually loads the 3D graphics renderer quite a bit so you will need a strong GPU performer for higher res and max detail for the added effects. I hope they will continue to leave support enabled for Hybrid PhysX in the future in all unsupported beta drivers. Reply
fingerbob69 - Tuesday, June 08, 2010 - linkhttp://blogs.nvidia.com/ntersect/2010/05/update-on...
It appears that is their intention, for the time being atleast. Reply
Zorro3740 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - linkI am satisfied with their current policy if it happens to continue. But 3 PCs later I have gone headlong into PhysX and am not looking back. Reply

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ARM Cortex A17: An Evolved Cortex A12 for the Mainstream in 2015by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/11/2014 1:00 AM EST
- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Tablets
- SoC
- Cortex A17
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ddriver - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkBay trail will slip into the lower midrange by the time it gains significant market presence. Intel better step up and make something significantly faster in the GPU department and at least tangible in the CPU to even hope for a profit margin on atoms. Needless to say, OpenCL support to leverage the full aggregate platform performance is a must. And I mean full GPU support, not running OpenCL on the CPU SIMD. Reply
zeo - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkIntel is focusing on improving GPU performance with their next ATOM update, the upcoming 14nm Airmont based Cherry Trail T platform will have a GMA based on Broadwell's Gen8 GMA and only scaled down to 16EUs... This compares to just 4EU's on the Ivy Bridge based Gen7 GMA that Bay Trail uses...
They're also substantially increasing memory bandwidth and increasing the max supported RAM from 4GB to 8GB for the Tablet SoCs...
CPU performance will see a much smaller improvement because of the focus on graphics, only a few hundred MHz faster overall, but it should be a better balanced performer than Bay Trail...
Though, it remains to be seen if the graphical performance does more than just catch up with the competition, as everyone else will be improving too, but we'll see by the end of this year how they really compare... Reply
lwatcdr - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkI really wish that Intel would produce a new family that is only X64 compatible and drop all the old kruft going back to the 8086 and for the love of all that is holy remove every vestige of 286 compatibility from the chip. Probably not going to happen because of backward compatibility but I would really like to see it. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkJust dropping the ancient never any more used instructions/features would only have a very tiny return; a 286 only had 134k transistors after all. The total savings in a current generation CPU would be somewhat more due to converting the legacy CISC instructions into a stream of opcodes; but still peanuts overall. To really get any major gains they'd need to reassign machine codes to all the instructions that were kept (in a much simpler pattern than x86 accreted to); but that would break binary compatibility of every modern piece of software on the market and while unlike a completely new architecture, converting it over would require little beyond a simple recompile, most of it would never end up being recompiled to the rationalized architecture leading to chicken and egg failure. Reply
Krysto - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkBay Trail is NOT smartphone chip. Why is this so hard for people to understand. Reply
BMNify - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - link"Krystosaid Bay Trail is NOT smartphone chip"
neither ddriver, or zeo said it was , only you seem to read that...
mobile chip does not = only mobile smartphone.
you could for instance make a perfectly fine home video phone with internet connectivity with ether SOC for instance.
for sure the world's cheapskate cable, smart TV, sat box/card providers will cut their costs to the bone and provide slower STB's etc if they get the lower rated ARM SOC for less and sod the end user functionality as usual, not forgetting the world is far bigger than the USA and many of these emerging world markets need lower power devices far more than you do oc. Reply
darkich - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkNice, but seems inferior to Snapdragon 410. Reply
darkich - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkYeah , that was a stupid comment..I forgot that Snapdragon 410 uses ARM A53 cores. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkI'm not surprised about A12 having a really short lifespan. It was widely seen as being a stopgap to fill the void in the power range between the A9 and A15 when first announced. Reply
edi_opteron - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkYet A17 isn't a new design. Implementing better memory subsystems and higher IPCs in smaller die should logically give some performance boost. Maybe some subtle tweaks here and there but no real advantages over S4plus in real world . I'll be alot more interested to see Kaveri-thingy in Mobile world. Reply
Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkFrom the details it seems A17 is similar in IPC and frequency as A15 and yet is more power efficient, so will beat S4plus by a good margin. It'll challenge the Snapdragon 800 as well. Reply
extide - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkSo, I will say it... Really, another ARMv7 core?! With Qualcomm bringing out the SD410, and whatnot, this seems like an odd choice. Obviously these cores (A12/A17) have been in development for a while (since way before Apple released the 64-bit A7) and so ARM was caught off-guard like everyone else, and instead of just ditching these cores, they finished them out. I would only hope they have a plan to migrate one of these designs into a ~A55 mid-range 64-bit ARMv8 chip. Reply
name99 - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkARM is interested in selling to more than just high end cell manufacturers. Why is this so hard to understand? They weren't competing on performance back in 2005, before Apple made them a company geeks actually follow, and they aren't competing on performance today.
If you want a kickass mobile CPU (and are willing to pay for it) well Apple make their own, Qualcomm and nVidia would like your business, and Samsung may one day play that game. But if you want a functional CPU, low power, low price, and plan to ship a million, ARM are happy to work with you.
32 bits is over? Hmm.
Is 32 bit necessary for low-end network appliances (WiFi base stations, SoHo routers, VoIP phones)? How about for low-end smart TVs? How about for wearables?
You will NEVER understand how and what ARM do if you insist on imagining that they go to bed every night thinking about how they can make a chip as fast as a Haswell. They ARE NOT INTERESTED IN THAT BUSINESS. That, as much as anything else, explains, for example, why Apple felt it made sense to go down the expensive and risky path of making their own CPU., and why Qualcomm have a great little niche of their own in the ARM ecosystem. Reply
Wolfpup - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkConsidering even the most expensive ARM SOCs are effectively free, I don't understand why every phone or tablet doesn't just use the best available. They could charge $50 more and be making a big profit!
Oh well...
Once again I have to wonder about this as I did with A12...isn't it coming really late? Shouldn't everything be 64-bit by next year? Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkthe core market of lower end chips is the developing world phones where a $1 is a few hours of income not a few minutes; so your $50 is days or even weeks of disposable income and low cost embedded devices where profit margins are very narrow and a few dollars more on the BOM means your competition crushes you on price. Reply
sonicmerlin - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkExcept that phones with low end chips are also sold In developed countries, so your argument doesn't hold water. The difference between top of the line SoC and lowest tier is at most $10. The real reason they're not used is because the OEMs want to artificially stratify the market to increase consumer incentive buy their ultra high margin $600 devices. Reply
BMNify - Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - linkso what , you,assuming your not living in a developing world and are one of the many lowest income family's there YOU can get your water far cheaper than they are paying for their pre payed metered water (probably running another ARM soc there), so by your argument that means it's ok to charge them a higher % of their total income for products and services ,assuming they actually have an income to buy these things OC, a mobile/tablet with internet connection to help educate their whole family and neighbors in their village for instance.... Reply
Novacius - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkI'm wondering why ARM doesn't bring a Cortex A55 which could virtually be an A17 with ARMv8 and 64 bit support. You can buy 64 bit parts (A53&A57) this year, but why is the mainstream so far behind? Of course one can argue that ARMv8 makes the whole thing bigger and more expensive, but (1) the difference wouldn't be very huge in terms of die area (unlike the royalties, which are higher), (2) they already have 64 bit in the low end with A53 and (3) companies who want a 32 bit part could use the A12 instead of the A55, like they can do with A7/A53.
I just don't get it. The mainstream market is very important for 64 bit in smart devices (OSes, Apps). In ARM's place I would push 64 bit as much as I can. They have to make sure their processors are the choice of the future, and ARMv8 is a crucial part of doing so. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkBecause 64 bit isn't needed anywhere but at the top yet. A53 is only a 64bit part because making big.LITTLE work requires both cores to use the same ISA. Reply
Krysto - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkMe, too. But it's too late for A55 now. A55 should've been A12, or A17 at most, so they arrive roughly at the same time. Now they'll have to wait for the successors of A53 and A57 to come out, let's call them A73 and A77. When they announce those two, they should also be announcing a mid-range ARMv8 A75.
But since A53 were announced for 2014 basically, these next 3 chips will be announced for 2016, at the end of 2015. That's why I'm saying in my other comment that ARM has basically artificially prolonged the ARMv7 lifetime by another 2 years, and it really pisses me off.
Because if it meant that from 2016 all apps and Android versions supported would be 64-bit, it would be one thing. But since these A17 chips will be effectively sold into NEW devices even in early 2016, and probably longer than that, and that means developers will have to support these 32-bit devices for at least another 3 years, until those people get rid of them.
So we're looking at ARMv7 being supported into 2019, possibly 2020, when it could've been 2018 at most, and at that point all apps and Android versions would be 64-bit-ONLY, and drop 32-bit legacy support. All because of ARM's dumb move. Thanks ARM... Reply
Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkAn A55 variant of A17 wouldn't make much sense as it is not that much slower than A57 (based on Anand's comparison above and published frequency of A12 of 2.3GHz).
You need to remember is there is no 64-bit mainstream yet for ARM (A53 as a standalone core will serve low-end as it is basically a faster A7). Whether ARM will add a mid-range 64-bit core depends a bit on the gap between any the future 64-bit big core and its little variant. If that gap narrows then there may not be any use for it. Reply
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - linkThey want to continue to push out chips where 64-bit support is a premium advantage over the lower cost CPU's.
They're going to up-sell based on that very desired feature. Watch. In no time, they'll have a 64-bit compatible version of the A17 and it'll cost a premium. Then you'll have your answer.
It's the same reason Intel insists on selling a single CPU that doesn't have their best (non-Iris) integrated GPU despite it taking up the same space no matter what. It's because Intel wants to charge you a premium for that feature a lot of people might want.
ARM's just learned their lessons from the big boys. Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - linkThat's not true. Intel is using different dies for the GT3 (non-iris) and GT2 variants of Haswell. GT1 chips (Pentium/Celeron) might use the same die as dual core GT2 parts instead of a GT1 version (haven't seen anything about this either way). However historically the Celeron has been a dumping ground for dies with bad regions that can't be sold as higher end models, and I've no reason to believe they've magically improved yields to the point they don't need to bin semi-faulty dies to avoid throwing them out.
http://anandtech.com/show/7744/intel-reveals-new-h... Reply
Krysto - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkVery disappointing move from ARM, I have to say. They missed yet another chance to move completely to 64-bit ARMv8 from low-end to high-end.
They say "platforms take 3-4 years to transitions", in this case it's because THEY are making it so. They're not prolonging the life of ARMv7 by at least 2 more years, when we could've moved to ARMv8 completely 2 years faster. That's a lot of time. I don't care what's their excuse for this move. Don't tell me it's to lower price and system requirements, because then they wouldn't have made A53 on ARMv8. It's a big strategic f-up on their part. I'd rather buy a phone with a quad-core A53 than A12 or A17 going forward.
Maintaining the 28nm process for these chips for another year (2 would be a mistake) is reasonable. Maintaining everyone on 32-bit for 2 more years definitely isn't. This was a strategic call, and they made a bad one. Reply
Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkYou have to remember ARM only makes cores that it can sell - A17 wouldn't exist if there wasn't at least one lead partner keen to buy it. Clearly the Mediatek's of this world are more interested in an efficient and cheap 32-bit core than a 64-bit core that most likely never will run any 64-bit code (just like my old Athlon64 never ran any x64 code it its entire life - where is 64-bit Android?), and thus paying an area, cost and possibly power penalty for no benefit.
I think ARMv7 will pretty much exist forever (like ARM7tdmi!) as I don't think everybody will jump on the 64-bit bandwagon. Especially the low and mid-end won't need it, and even in the high-end I really don't see an advantage today (as ARMv7 has PAE). I certainly expect ARMv7 to be quite popular 5 years from now, even if most mobiles have switched to 64-bit by then. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkEven when the mid range phone/tablet arm core is 64bit, they'll still have a large number of cores designed for far lower power budgets that will likely remain 32bit for a number of years because there's precisely zero benefit to 64bit in the systems they're being used for. Reply
Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkCorrect, and that includes lots of markets outside of mobiles. Small routers, printers, GPS or car infotainment do not need 64-bit. Reply
Morawka - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linki dont understand why the A57 isnt shipping till 2015, that's crazy. Its slower than Apple's A7 yet is taking longer and longer to fab. Reply
darkich - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkNot to mention the Denver cores from Nvidia.
Those seem to be far more advanced and powerful even than the Cyclone CPU(even if only for the clock speed advantage)..and they are coming in Q3/Q4 Reply
Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkThat's a mistake, that should be 2014. And A57 is much faster than Apple's A7 as it runs at a much higher frequency. Reply
Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkI honestly expect an ARMV8 architecture from Qualcomm to come up and beat this in every category by early next year, probably with a dual core higher ipc/clockspeed design if recent trends are anything to go by.
But, well, ARM wins either way. Their licensing model is ace, even if both Qualcomm and Apple can beat them in actual processor design they still get their money. Then again, with them primarily vendoring to Android, which is highly ISA agnostic, if another instruction set comes along with a much better deal it's conceivable that Qualcomm could switch, given enough willpower.
And considering Apple is first party everything I wouldn't rule out them being able to switch either. It would do better for ARM to get its first party stuff in order. Not that I'm saying the entry level market isn't big. Just that its low profit margin and runs on Android anyway. Reply
Krysto - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkWe'll see. From rumors I've heard about Qualcomm's fall 2014 chips, they're are moving in the "8-core" direction instead, falling into the same trap they did with the S4 Pro, when they decided they needed to release a quad-core as quickly as possible "because everyone has one", even though they were far from ready to do it, with S4 Pro being either an overheating monster, or being heavily throttled in consumer products. But hey, it was quad-core!
I was disappointed to see them do that then, even though their dual-core S4 was kicking ass and taking names that year. I would be even more disappointed to see them fall again for the multi-core marketing, especially since the 8-core thing has been an obvious marketing ploy from day one. Reply
rish95 - Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - linkI thought Qualcomm explicitly came out and said that they have no interest in 8 core designs? Reply
BMNify - Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - link"Krysto said:even though their dual-core S4 was kicking ass and taking names that year"
sure about that, good luck trying to "software" decode http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp... with any dual cor eanything , many quad cant do it, so bring on the Octacore and run that birds.mkv test Reply
hero4hire - Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - linkCouldn't someone run a quad +1 ala tegra3 and still have a high performance quad with the low power "idle" core? I really liked the idea of big .little but the solutions have been underwhelming at best. I do not see how 4 low power cores are truly better than 1 for a smartphone. Once you need performance just wake a big and race to sleep. Is there a technical reason a 5 core soc doesn't exist? Reply
Wilco1 - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - linkWe haven't yet seen big/little solutions that worked as intended. The software is now finally ready and Samsung fixed their broken hardware, so we'll have to wait for devices using big/little the proper way.
The reason for big/little is that a little core is far more power efficient than a 5th big core. Since big cores are typically several times larger than a little core, it is reasonable to have several little cores. This also improves the range of performance for the little cores and thus power efficiency.
Also to correct this common misconception: race to sleep is a very bad idea for power consumption. Every CPU is more power efficient at its lowest frequency than at its highest. So you only want to run at the maximum frequency when you absolutely have to. Since a little core is more efficient than a big core at any frequency, it is far better to run tasks on the little cores at low frequencies than run them on a single big core at a high frequency. Reply
darkich - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkWhy no mention yet of the today announced MediaTek SoC with these cores? (4 A17+4 A7).
I hope it gets some attention here on AT Reply
Krysto - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkSince Anandtech didn't mention it, here's a bit from SemiAccurate:
> The new companion to the A17 is called the Mali-DP500 DPU or Display Processing Unit, yay new acronyms. ARM describes this one as "Processing pixels to the screen. Securing content up to the glass." so you know it has DRM top to bottom. Yay again?
Great. ARM is bringing DRM to the masses! Effing great. Thanks again, ARM...now I really can't wait to not touch any device with a ten-foot pole using this chip. Reply
iwod - Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - linkIs that an option? Or Comes with A17 by default. Reply
eric appla - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkHi, I'm not sure how to contact you guys directly so i try here. I am very interested in comparison of chipsets when it comes to codec HW support. for example support for VP8. With WebRTC picking up so quickly this is becoming very relevant. I'll be very interesting to read more about which products support it and which not Reply
OreoCookie - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkI'm surprised how everybody is up in arms about the A17 not being 64 bit. First of all, ARM works with its licensees to see what they want ARM to build, and until Apple released the A7, nobody in the mobile ecosystem was seriously thinking of 64 bit as being a pressing need. On the other hand, they saw the A15 as an unpopular part compared to its competition, so they acted on it and designed a better, more energy efficient alternative. The A12 and A17 are significantly more powerful than the A53 -- performance is not determined by the 64 vs. 32 bit but IPC and clocks. Also, the A12 (and thus, also the A17 I presume) has PAE which means it can address more than 4 GB of RAM.
Right now, iOS is the only mobile OS which runs 64 bit natively and Google has yet to make an announcement when they will be able to make the transition. And even if they make the transition, since Android apps run on top of a VM, it's not clear to me whether and how big the obstacles are here. Reply


text:
ASUS G73SW + SNB: Third Time's the Charm?by Jarred Walton on 3/4/2011 12:00 AM EST
56 Comments
Back to Article
ImSpartacus - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkOk, I haven't finished the review yet, but I'm wondering about the extent of the recall that was mentioned at the very beginning of the piece.
Didn't it just affect the SATAII ports? I thought the two SATA3 portswere unaffected, so most laptops could simply use those ports. I don't know of any laptop that uses more than two hard drives anyway.
So why would there be any trouble with SNB laptops? Have I misinterpreted the recall? Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkThis particular laptop has two HDDs, an optical drive, and an eSATA port, so they need at least four "good" SATA ports in an ideal world. Laptops without eSATA and with only a single HDD could still ship and only use the two 6.0Gbps ports, but I'm not sure if anyone has done that. B3 chipset should be available from some places now, with more vendors coming online as the month progresses. Reply
ImSpartacus - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkOhhh, I forgot disk drives use SATA, but I didn't even know eSATA used SATA ports. Can you tell I'm not majoring in IT? Lol. Thanks for the answer. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkOops... correction: no eSATA port on this notebook, so it's just the optical drive and two HDDs. Reply
SyndromeOCZ - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkYeah, this laptop is amazingly under-ported. No express card either. Reply
Kaboose - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkAm i the only one who thinks ASUS dropped the ball on this one? The only real difference i can see from the older G73 is the Sandy bridge CPU, now this isn't a bad thing, however i don't think that warrants the price increase. I got my G73JH-RBBX05 for about $900, I7-720QM, HD 5870m. My laptop for $900 could trade blows in most games with this laptop. I really dont think ASUS has marked this laptop in the right price range. I couldn't see spending more then $1,500 for this.
Maybe i'm the only one. Reply
Hrel - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkno, if you got urs for 900 then I'd say this worth an extra 200 for the newer components and USB 3.0 and all. I'm guessing that was on sale though. Still, it's obviously marked up too much. And no Optimus? WTF Asus, WTF! Reply
ph00ny - Sunday, March 06, 2011 - linkI dumped my g73jh-a1 after having to deal with all the little quirks with ATI drivers
I've been waiting for the sandybridge version to pop up and this certainly is a disappointment for missing out on few key features that are essential for a laptop. Also what's wrong with asus for not upgrading the graphics card???
I'm torn between g73sw, m17x r3 and clevo based units but i'm not sure i can go with non-g73 laptops after enjoying the lack of noise/heat from my g73jh Reply
ph00ny - Sunday, March 06, 2011 - linkG73JH-RBBX05 is the water down version with less ram, lower res screen, one less harddrive, no bluray drive etc right? I don't know how comparing your g73 to this g73 unit is a fair comparison Reply
Kaboose - Monday, March 07, 2011 - linkI have 12GB of RAM at 1333mhz for $120, and then a 64GB SAMSUNG 470 series SSD for $90 so i spent $920 on the laptop and $210 on upgrades so $1,130 total the only thing mine would do worse in is CPU intensive duties. Mine does better in everything else. (the 5870m and 460m are close enough to be equal) Reply
ph00ny - Tuesday, March 08, 2011 - linkWhat about the higher res screen? laptop bluray drive?
you're really starting reach with aftermarket this and aftermarket that Reply
Kaboose - Saturday, March 12, 2011 - linkBlu ray is pointless, i download everything including 1080p movies. the screen isnt a big deal as long as it is bigger then 1336x768 at this size it is fine. Reply
Penti - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkIt's really a mistake not to build a consumer gaming laptop on a hybrid solution. What good is it if it can not work as a portable DTR? We have seen where all the other high-end offerings have gone. People do like a laptop that can say play Starcraft 2 but also likes to actually have the ability to use it unplugged. You shouldn't have to chose any more, you can have portable gaming without making sticking a battery in the unit pointless. It's fine that you have to plug in to play, but not for surfing on a wireless network. Units with high-end quadcores and GTX 485M might as well not have a battery in them. This unit would have done fine just by sticking a HM65 chipset in there though. If your gaming unit isn't working as a portable and you have to use another notebook then you might as well build a stationary machine for gaming. Reply
Hrel - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkExactly! Anandtech needs youtube style comments, I want to like this. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkSorry about the error, but the G73SW actually uses the HM65 chipset. I did a copy/paste/edit of the G73JW table and missed a few items. That said, the system doesn't use the IGP so there's still no Optimus. As I comment below, I think it's because some OEMs don't like dealing with the dual GPUs and the occasional glitch. I can understand the sentiment, and with 17.3" notebooks I think the majority of buyers will rarely use them on DC for more than an hour at a time. Reply
jigglywiggly - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkMAKE IT 15in and I will buy it.
17in is just unreasonable for moi. Reply
Hrel - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkBut is there a reason this laptop doesn't have Optimus? Nvidia's website says the GPU supports it, so why doesn't this laptop use it? Seriously, it's 2011, ALL laptops should have switheable graphics at this point.
Also, I'd like to see these specs in a 15.6" shell; and don't crap out of the LCD this time Asus! For 1200 or less.
I'd also really like to see a 1080p laptop with the GT540M in a 14" class laptop. Reply
Hrel - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkoh and a note and that price I suggested; I don't need blue ray. I wouldn't ever even use it. I t hold absolutely no value for me at all. Really it doesn't even NEED a dvd drive. I can plug in an external one if for some reason I need to load something off a disc. I just use hard drives and thumb drives for everything now a days. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkRegarding Optimus, because it's a driver solution based on profiles, there are still occasional glitches. I've discussed this in previous articles (i.e. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4139/cougar-point-xp... However, the occasional Optimus issue is overshadowed by the much better battery life and QuickSync support, so I'm with you guys. Reply
Hrel - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkThere a few notebooks I'd REALLY love to see reviewed.
Clevo: P151HM1, W150HN. Both with 1080p screen. The first has the GTX460M and the second has the GT540M. I already have a solid idea of performance with the given parts, but I'm very interested in speaker quality, chassis quality, keyboard quality. Things Jarred, you tend to hit on well. Unfortunately these still aren't available in actual stores so the only way I can find this stuff out is a really good review; or buy it and take that risk.
Compal: I don't know the model number cause I can't find it anywhere anymore but a 15.6" 1080p Compal with the GT540M and Sandy Bridge.
What are the chances of getting these in house for a review? And what kind of time frame would we be looking at? Thanks! Reply
Frallan - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkI bought an old ASUS gaming lappy with turbo and the 6800GT in it it has served for a long time now and has been demoted to girlfriend computer now. So Im in the market for a new gaming lappy. BUT when spending that much money I want to have decent performance.
Therefore I will wait until there is a good sandy brige / GPU combo is out there. Id like it to come from ASUS bc of the good experience Ive had with the old Lappy but if this is what they will have then they\re out of the game.
/F Reply
jcandle - Friday, March 04, 2011 - link"Contenders like the MSI GT680R (going for $1475 online) offer nearly identical specs"
Hey Jarred, how is that a contender? The MSI is a 15 and the Asus is a 17. I have no idea why but bigger in gaming notebooks generally translates to more expensive. Perhaps manufacturers are betting gamers place value on tonnage. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkIt's a gaming notebook, therefore it's a contender. The ASUS G53SW is also in the rink, along with Clevo P150HM and P170HM. I'm also a bit surprised that there are essentially equivalent spec notebooks that are smaller and cost less; that's usually not the case. Perhaps the high contrast HannStar LCD is adding more to the total than I think? Reply
jcandle - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkThat's exactly my point. Its not an apples to apples comparison because Asus does have the G53SW that essentially the same machine with 1 less HDD with a much lower price point resolving the pricing issue you were so lamenting. You can't compare a 17" machine and says its more expensive than a 15" when similar offering from companies like Dell with Alienware are doing exactly the same thing. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkThe MSI still supports two HDDs, though, which means the only difference is the overall design elements and the LCD size. The LCD should be a wash, really (both are 1080p, so maybe $25-$50 difference at most). ASUS has the keyboard backlighting and better thermals. Do those three items add up to a nearly $300 price difference? I don't think so.
If you go with the ASUS G53SW-XR1 and compare that to the MSI, you still have to factor in the single HDD. I'm also a bit concerned that ASUS might be selling some B2 stepping chipsets with a single HDD, but I don't know for sure if that's the case. Will the Cougar Point bug affect the DVDR or eSATA down the line, or if you add a second HDD/SSD will that be a problem? Hopefully I'm wrong and they're not selling any B2 chipsets in the G53/73 chassis.
Anyway, I've edited the text slightly to clarify that I'm looking at all similar performance gaming notebooks, not necessarily just "all 17.3-inch heavyweight contenders". :-) Reply
jcandle - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkDon't get me wrong I'm backing you up on the point that "essentially equivalent spec notebooks that are smaller and cost less" Maybe there should be some investigating to find out why manufacturers are simply bumping up the form factor and asking for a non-proportional $300 price difference. Reply
mattwco - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkWhen stock levels come back, there's an -XR1 variant that has one HDD and a DVD-RW for $1400. It may have a lesser warranty as well.
If you're comparing the G73SW to other laptops, please note that there's more than one G73SW. BTW, the 3D version is also coming back in stock at ~$1900. Reply
mattwco - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkJarred mentioned the XR1 version above. Several other variants are available at different price points. The -B3 has a better warranty than the -A1.
Example, not company recommendation:
Also, the laptops with the fixed chipset are explicitly labeled so on the laptop and on the box.
http://www.asus.com/News.aspx?N_ID=Bdmf9rXuqU29SRs... Reply
piroroadkill - Friday, March 04, 2011 - link8GB is thoroughly pointless, as is a quad core.
I'd much rather have a higher clocked dual core for gaming... 4GB RAM is just fine..
... and mechanical disks? One SSD, one Mechanical disk is the correct way. Reply
piroroadkill - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkI should note, on my dual/quad comment, I meant that a higher clocked dual core would be a better tradeoff for performance/power use in the vast majority of games. Obviously a high clocked quad is the best of all worlds. Reply
7Enigma - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkTurbo negates much of your comment. Reply
bennyg - Monday, March 07, 2011 - linkGood thing designers don't just ask you for your opinion and consider what others use.
8Gb is not pointless, I run up against the limits of 4Gb all the time.
Granted, some dualcore arrandales were better than clarksfields were better than the quadcores, but:
1) this is comparing highest-end dual core vs lowest-end quad (i7 620M approx i7 720qm). Higher clocked quads esp. the XMs were still faster than the arrandales.
2) clarksfield was not a native mobile chip, it was a downclocked undervolted lynnfield released many months before
3) the total *work* which the quad cores can do is higher, the issue is optimisation of workloads, in particular games are pretty bad at using a 3rd and 4th core, and especially so when Turbo means that 3rd and 4th core use come at a clockspeed disadvantage if you want to think of it that way. I.E. the quad is slower because software doesn't use it well enough
4) the usage patterns and power of the i7 quads could be much better utilised but Intel locked all the Turbo logic away on-die except for the XMs. Meaning overclocking a QM can actually *decrease* performance due to preset limits causing less Turbo-ing. Hell, the BIOS in my laptop has absolutely nothing, I can't even disable hyperthreading - to reallocate more of the supposedly "unified" L3 to each core...
There is *so* much more the quads could have offered but tweakability was hugely reduced compared with the C2D/Qs. Reply
bennyg - Monday, March 07, 2011 - linkbleh no edit feature
Of course the point I missed (along with all the typos) was that we are now in the era of Sandy Bridge and "Turboboost 2.0", Nehalem and Turboboost is old news, and so are the opinions based off it. Reply
DanNeely - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkDepends how hard you use your system. My work laptop with MSSQL and VIsual Studio 2010 running in addition to the normal set of office apps regularly uses 5-6GB of memory. My heavily used destop (I7-930) is currently sitting at 12GB used (~10GB excluding BOINC). Reply
DooDoo22 - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkPlease include comparisons to the new MBPs in your next laptop review. It is easier to judge the relative merits of these dime-store versions when we have a reference model like the MBP. Reply
laytoncy - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkHow does the GT 555M 3GB that is in the new XPS 17" from Dell stack up to the 460M or GTX485M? Reply
Kaboose - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkTo my knowledge the GT 555m is the GT 445m clocked higher, here is a quote from notebookcheck
"We tested the gaming performance of the GeForce GT 555M with DDR3 graphics memory in a pre sample of the Dell XPS 17. The synthetic benchmarks show a performance slightly above the old GeForce 9800M GT. GDDR5 versions should be slightly faster. Therefore, nearly all current demanding games should run fluently in 1366x768 and high detail settings. Only extremely demanding games like Metro 2033 will only run in medium detail settings. Older and low demanding games like Fifa 11 should run in high detail settings and Full HD resolution"
This is what they had to say about the GTX 460m
"We ran a set of benchmarks on an early pre-sample of a Qosmio X500 with a 740QM CPU. In the synthetic benchmarks, the GTX 460M was on par with the DDR3 based Mobility Radeon HD 5850. In actual game benchmarks and tests, the performance was better than a HD 5850 with GDDR5 on average. In some cases (e.g., Unigine Heaven 2.1 and Dirt 2 Demo), the card even beat a Mobility Radeon HD 5870. On average, the GF100 based GTX 480M was about 8-18% faster. The detailled benchmark and gaming results (including charts) can be found below"
So they arent really very close in performance the GT 540m is the low end gaming the GT 555m is a step in the right direction but not into the "gaming" area yet. Reply
rscoot - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkPlaying a little bit of guitar before you wrote this article Jarred? :P Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkWhoops... Freudian slip or something. ;) Reply
Pessimism - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkchord != cord Reply
parthgh - Friday, March 04, 2011 - link" So far, no one has been willing to try NVIDIA's Optimus Technology with any mobile GPU faster than the GT 435M, although we hear there's a GT 555M Optimus notebook coming some time in 1H'11."
I guess XPS 17 has already launched and has Optimus enabled (apart from the 3D version).
Also the XPS 17 before SB revision had GT 445M with optimus enabled. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkStill not faster than 460M... I didn't realize Dell upped the XPS 17 to the GT 555M, though. Interesting, and something I'll try to get them to send me now. Thank goodness they're now doing Optimus on all GPUs!
Someone above asked about how they compare in performance, though. 460M has 192 cores at 675MHz with 2500MHz (effective) RAM. 555M has 144 cores at 590MHz with 1800MHz (effective) RAM. Note that 460M uses GDDR5 by default where the 555M goes with DDR3 by default. So the net result is 460M has 52.5% more computational power and 38.9% more memory bandwidth. I'd say GT 555M will be good for medium detail at 1080p, or high detail at 900p (give or take). Reply
Drooosh - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkFYI - They won't allow you to get the good 1080P screen with Optimus. For some reason if you get the 1080P screen they force you to have it configured for 3D/120Hz which requires the 555M be enabled full time and thus no Optimus.
I would bet that most customers are like me and would prefer Optimus over 3D. If they gave me FHD, 555M, and Optimus, I would by now.
Jarred, do you know of anyone that will have 555M or better switchable graphics, 1080P, and a backlit keyboard in a 15 or 17"? Lenovo or MSI may have thiese soon it appears? Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkRight now, I'm not aware of anything like that. I don't know why Dell insists on doing weird things like killing Optimus support with certain upgrades. Perhaps Optimus doesn't work quite right with 3D at present? Heck, I'd just as soon skip all the 3D notebooks--the 120Hz panel is fine, but 3D just doesn't do anything for me.
I've asked my NVIDIA contacts if there are any current/upcoming laptops with your above feature list. I've also asked them why no one appears to be willing to use Optimus with 460M or better. We'll see if they respond with any useful information. :-) Reply
bennyg - Monday, March 07, 2011 - linkI heard rumours it's the way Optimus works sending the data from GPU to onboard gfx, the sheer amount of data pushed from high-end GPU to iGPU saturates that link, so midrange is OK but high-end suffers bigtime performance issues
It does seem ridiculous that every SB laptop has the hardware to run ridiculous battery life (sans GPU of course) but not the drivers to allow it.
I don't care about Optimus and profiles. Give me a switch or a combo box and that will be better since I'll be in control not some numbskill algorithm. Just give me switching already!!! Reply
strikeback03 - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkIn the Futuremark 3DMark Vantage Performance Score table on page 2 you have the wrong MSI laptop highlighted red.
In the previous reviews I somehow missed how massive this laptop is, this time I noticed what a small portion of the chassis the 75WHr battery takes. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkThanks - the 3DMark Vantage chart is now correct. Also, I've added two more pictures to the gallery, this time with a tape measure in place. You can see the diagonal of the G73 chassis is about 20 inches (in a 17.3"-screen chassis...), and the Compal SNB unit we looked at in December also has a 17.3" LCD but the chassis is almost an inch smaller on the diagonal (and it's still got a lot of extra room for the large hinge). I'd like to see a 17.3" LCD in a chassis that's no more than 18.5", but I doubt that will happen. Reply
NaterGator - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkAs a G73SW owner I can absolutely 100% promise you this thing does not have an eSATA port anywhere to be found.
Look over the unit they sent you again, but in the production unit I got from Amazon over a month ago there is most assuredly no eSATA. It is the only thing that frustrates me about this laptop, but the USB3.0 port makes up for it. Reply
NaterGator - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkAlso, the screen flickering issue is a known bug with the nVidia drivers.
Downgrade them to a 265 version and the flickering will stop. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkI don't have that flickering problem on any other NVIDIA based laptops, though. Maybe it's localized to the G73SW for some reason? Anyway, you're correct about eSATA. Sorry for the error. Reply
NaterGator - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkYou are correct, for some reason it is a G73SW problem. nVidia suggested they were aware of the problem and implementing a fix, but the most recent driver release (March 2011) still has the flickering problem.
There is a thread in the nVidia forums about it here:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=19101... Reply
Wolfpup - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkMy understanding is the jw (and now sw) models that ship with the Geforce GTX 460 didn't have this problem.
The G73jh that shipped with the Radeon 5870 had a gray screen of death caused by the GPU. Supposedly that was eventually (4+ months? last year) fixed with a video BIOS update, although I'm unclear as to whether it was posted on Asus' site, or just available from resellers as kind of a "if it crashes, install this" thing. Supposedly it was a problem with the 5870.
Anyway, still a nice level of performance, though yeah, I'd love a GTX 470 or something. I'm not sure though...did the review explain the recall situation? I mean if you buy one now (or when they show up again), that means it's shipping with a fixed chipset (err...chip...southbridge...whatever it's called now), I assume, since the system uses what, 3-4 SATA ports? I guess HP's Envy 17 and Dell's M17x-R3 must be fixed now too... Reply
Bolas - Friday, March 04, 2011 - linkYou can get this computer cheaper than $1745 from www.xoticpc.com if you pay cash instead of credit.
http://www.xoticpc.com/advanced_search_result.php?... Reply
mattwco - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkThe pricing investigation was fairly cursory for this article. Though stock levels remain low due to the recall, you can get a variant of this for ~$1400. Google is your friend. "G73SW-XR1" Reply
jas71 - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linkDoes anyone know when asus will start using the gtx 485m. I would like to get an asus but the the I will just get a clevo if asus doesn't use the 485 soon Reply
jas71 - Saturday, March 05, 2011 - linklol "the the" it's too late at night for me Reply


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Linux Desktop CPU Roundup: Cutting Edge Penguin Performanceby Kristopher Kubicki on 9/19/2004 8:00 PM EST
- Posted in
- Linux
33 Comments
Back to Article
- Saturday, October 24, 2009 - linksell:nike shoes$32,ed hardy(items),jean$30,handbag$35,polo shirt$13,shox$34 Reply
Hugh R - Thursday, September 23, 2004 - linkThanks for this article. It has been needed for about a year. Every previous benchmark of AMD 64 seemed to be 32-bit mode which is rather missing the point.
Firefox 1.0PR on LINUX did not show the 64-bit results until I went to edit:preferences:web features:enable java advanced... and turned on lots of crap (I don't know which item made the difference).
The information was fascinating but the presentation was very awkward.
When you see a surprising benchmark result, it is a good idea to analyze why you were surprised. For example, I would guess that the poor showing for 64-bit code on John the Ripper might be due to hand-coded x86 assembly code. Note: just a guess.
The fact that Wine is only 32-bit seems pretty uninteresting/unsurprising: Win32 binaries are also only 32-bit.
Few things in the LINUX world are binary-only, so almost anything for which CPU performance matters can and should be run in 64-bit mode on a 64-bit processor. Reply
bobbozzo - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - linkYou should be running all the compilation test with -j2 or higher, as otherwise the CPU is waiting for the disk more often.
uyu - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - linkConsider re-evaluating the test with the icc compiler:
I do not think it will only favor the result of intel processors.. Reply
Zebo - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - linkWhy separate the graphs? Afriad of people easily visualizing major A64 ownage? Gawd that's hard to compare that way... I had to get out pen and paper. Reply
Shalmanese - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - link"throw an alternative opterating system"
I like the attempt at subliminal advertising :D. Reply
TrogdorJW - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkOn the LAME encoding benchmark, isn't the actual value really "Play time divided by encoding time"? Or perhaps "Relative encoding rate"? Anyway, the text explains the graph better (in 1 second the 64-bit FX-53 encoded 25 seconds of audio). Otherwise, good stuff. Reply
injinj - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkCrafty does have a bit of hand tuned asm for both x86 and x86_64. Most of the operations are done with boards packed into bit representations. For example, like this:
while (moves) {
The FirstOne() function utilizes the bitscan ops of x86 (bsr = bit scan reverse), but notice the cmpl at the top:
cmpl $1, 8(%esp)
sbbl %eax, %eax
movl 8(%esp,%eax,4), %edx
bsr %edx, %ecx
jz l4
andl $32, %eax
subl $31, %ecx
subl %ecx, %eax
l4: movl $64, %eax
The cmpl splits a 64 bit word into a 32 bit hi and lo words, so crafty will naturally exploit 64 bit instructions.
This same function on x86_64 can be done much fewer instructions:
asm (
" bsrq %0, %1" "\n\t"
" jnz 1f" "\n\t"
" movq $-1, %1" "\n\t"
"1: movq $63, %0" "\n\t"
" subq %1, %0" "\n\t"
: "=r&" (dummy), "=r&" (dummy2)
: "0" ((long) (word))
: "cc");
These are critical functions in crafty and if you see benchmarks comparing 64 bit crafty to 32 bit crafty, this is primarily why 64 bits is faster. Reply
mczak - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkwhat's up with the encryption benchmarks? "OpenSSL's crypt libraries are probably heavily optimized for 32-bit operation; we see the difference in the two architectures very clearly."
But the results show that 64bit mode is more than two times as fast as 32bit mode in one case (RSA), and 50% faster in the other case (AES)?
(and btw I haven't looked at johntheripper, but it might contain hand-optimized assembly for x86, but only generic c code for other architectures such as x86_64.) Reply
PrinceGaz - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkThe mouseover images work fine for me (Firefox 0.9.3) Reply
Cheval - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkUsing Firefox 1.0PR and those graphs don't work either. Reply
jensend - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkWere any of the 32-bit binaries (incl kernel) conducted with -mregparm=x where x!=0? See e.g. http://lwn.net/Articles/66965/ - improvements in the use of registers are generally the main source of performance improvements for x86-64, and using this parameter can significantly improve gcc's register usage on regular x86. Generally, mregparm=3 is recommended for the kernel and =1 for C++ code. Reply
RyanHirst - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linko, i c.
ryan Reply
LittleKing - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkThe article is good, but the Rollover images don't work in FireFox 9.2.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkI had trouble compiling crafty. The numbers were more to show the impact of compiler options rather than actual chess numbers themselves.
Kristopher Reply
RyanHirst - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkHello,
Liked the article! I was disappointed to see you stuck with the only chess engine on the planet that is faster on a 3.6GHz P4 than a 2.4GHz A64. The Crafty benches looked odd, but they were more realistic. Even with HT optimized engines like Frtiz8 (which has competed internationally for as much as $1 million on Xeon machines, including one 4-way Xeon "donation" from Intel) pull almost identical numbers between the top a64 and the top p4.
If, as I assume, you left HT off [which you should for benchmarks. there are some odd issues with HT and chess], there just isn't a chess program around (except apparently TSCP) that pulls these numbers.
I know there is a risk of sounding fanboyish. That is not my intent. I play in the computer engine room on playchess.com, and I know the numbers I get from other machines. The benchmark you are using is simply not representative of chess engines. Please take a look at Frtiz benchmarks at: www.beepworld.de/members39/computerschach2/chessmarks.htm [disregard the top dual xeon score; "Deep Fritz 8" calculates many more nodes/s than regular "Fritz8", even on a single processor]. Again, this is an engine that is optimized for the Pentium architecture.
Less dedicated engines like Crafty show the results that, unfortunately, you found questionable in the previous article. Bob Hyatt has been programming chess for decades and Crafty is available on every major desktop OS. It's part of the SPEC2000 benchmark [where it performs identically on a lowly XP3200 and a Xeon 3.4]. It is also the first engine out the door with a 64-bit clean code! In one of the few fields where 64-bit computing can offer a near perfect doubling of calculations/s, why leave out the 64-bit bench? If you're concerend Crafty is Athlon optimized, check out Hyatt's homepage: www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/hyatt/hyatt.html ...his ICC account pet machine is a dual Xeon.
Ryan Reply
KristopherKubicki - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkjohnsonx: sorry about that- i put in the 530 score for the 3500+. The correct score is 175.
Kristopher Reply
johnsonx - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkGood article Kris.
I think you've got a graph error on the 32-bit MEncoder graph. You show the P4 530 and the A64 3500+ tied at 146fps, but then show the A64 3800+ at 193fps; that's a 32% higher score for a CPU that is only 9% higher-clocked and otherwise identical. Methinks the 146fps for the A64 3500+ is an error; it should be somewhere between 165 & 175, right around the P4EE.
WooDaddy - Monday, September 20, 2004 - link"whenever I get cornered by a processor on campus or guest speak at a Linux Users Group"
Kris.. I think you meant professors ;)
I'd still lock your doors and grab weapons of minimal destruction. Professors are scary. Especially the fat ones with suspenders who talk about overclocking their PDP-11s. Reply
Illissius - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkNice review, and you actually compared 32- and 64-bit for once ;). Would've been more interesting to do it back when you had some 64-bit Intel processors in the mix as well, though...
Why no 64-bit results on the kernel compile? :/ That's probably the single benchmark out of all of them I'd be most interested in (Gentoo :D).
Also, UT2004 has both 32- and 64-bit Linux versions, and nVidia has both 32- and 64-bit Linux drivers. Seeing as this was a desktop review, that would've been nice to see.
I'd personally have been more interested in s754 processors, but they're the same architecture anyways so I can mostly extrapolate their performance from the ones tested, so it isn't a big deal either way. Reply
Aquila76 - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkIt's happened again: the cheapest AMD64 939 processor is the better choice of the processors reviewed here for price/performance. Granted the Linux market isn't a huge chunk of the market for either company, but among those who do use Linux there is no reason to use anything but AMD. Reply
fitten - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkIt would be interesting to see these tests run on several S754 boxes as well. I know this one was entitled "cutting edge performance" but with the cost difference between the S939 solutions and the S754 solutions, many will opt (as I have) to go with the S754 parts. I run SuSE 9.1 Professional AMD64 on an Athlon 64 3000+ and have been pleased with it. Reply
Aquila76 - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkThis may be a little off-topic, but shows yet another reason California hates MS. This is what happens when you move to Windows...
Love the caption: Someone forgot to reboot Reply
fitten - Monday, September 20, 2004 - link"Our processor test bed is completely caseless, and if we have issuse with our 3.6GHz processor out of a normal case, we can't imagine what issues might exist in a full enclosure. "
Todays processors ("today" meaning back to the days of the original Pentium) typically run hotter with the case open than with it closed. With the case closed, cooler air is forced through the case and across the right places to help lower component temperatures, assuming that the fans are placed appropriately, are venting in the right direction, and cables/components are arranged to allow the air to flow properly.
Newer form factors, such as Intel's BTX, are designed in a large part to cope with cooling the thing down.
You should be running your test bed in a case with appropriate cooling. Reply
Araemo - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkA note about the compilation benchmark:
Make and gcc themselves are not multi-threaded, but make does understand a -j option to specify the # of concurrent make jobs to run. The general rule-of-thumb I have heard, is to specify a -j equal to n+1, where n is the number of processors in the system(One compile job per processor, and one control job.) So, to test if hyperthreading lowers the compile time, specifiy `time make -j 3`.
I would personally like to see this, in addition to the single-threaded results. I read some quick-and-dirty benchmark results suggesting hyperthreading does help the compile time, but those results were published by curious people when hyperthreading was new.. I haven't seen any results on recent processors. Reply
garfield - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkIsn't it normal procedure for a P4 that's getting too hot that it throttles the clock speed down? Maybe that would explain the extremely bad results, though it seems a bit unrealistic that the results has been reproducible, unless each iteration of the benchmark has been run for a long time. Reply
ceefka - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkFirst of all : good article. It really shows the early benefits of well written 64-bit software. The 3500+ is definately on my wishlist ;-)
"This does not bode well for the processor. Our processor test bed is completely caseless, and if we have issues with our 3.6GHz processor out of a normal case, we can't imagine what issues might exist in a full enclosure."
Rather confusing this bit, Kristopher. Anyway, I read that a good case will offer convection which apparently a caseless testbed does not. How were the tempratures of the other CPU's? Were they also a tad above average or typical peak? Reply
balzi - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkSome thoughts --
can we please have Graphs where the order of the legend is the same as the order of the bars in the bar-graph. Surely that's possible.
also, the strange "Thermal issue" error. It seems that you thought it was weird but immediately assumed that it was correct; that the Intel CPU(s) were getting too hot.
Did you verify this somehow?? It seems strange to call it "An unusual problem" and then trust that it's correct without question or explanation.
Thanks Reply
Shinei - Monday, September 20, 2004 - link"This does not bode well for the processor. Our processor test bed is completely caseless, and if we have issuse with our 3.6GHz processor out of a normal case, we can't imagine what issues might exist in a full enclosure."
That quote made me laugh, and I'm not entirely sure why. :D
Anyway, I see that going to 64-bit is definitely worth the price of admission, considering the huge gains the processors get in the jump. One thing I had a question on, though: Why does the result from the SSL benchmark halve between 32-bit and 64-bit? Is it that the keys are longer in 64-bit? Reply
gherald - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkI too would prefer longer images that include both 32 and 64-bit results. Mouseover comparisons are cumbersome.
Is sample.wav 800mb or 700mb? I'm guessing the 7 was probably just a typo.
Nice analysis of DDR1 vs 2.
My only gripe is I wish a full complement of "lower end" processors were included in all these benchmarks (754s, slower prescotts, and heck even northwoods)... but I guess that'd be too much work. Reply
ravedave - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkWhat klah is trying to say in too many and too big of words : Make the scale the same for the mouseover pics.
Also make the picture height the same as well if possible.
Otherwise a very good article.
Has anyone thought of making an open office benchmark for linux?
klah - Monday, September 20, 2004 - linkGood article, but I have a comment on the mouse-over graphs. They work well in other articles such as the recent DVR-108D article where the scale and axes remain constant. In this case however the layout and in some cases even the scale are different between the two graphs. It would be easier to compare the two if the scale was the same and processors were in the same layout(spacing/location), with the inapplicable processors still listed to maintain the same appearance between the two.
If that explanation is nonsensical I can create a few images to try to elucidate my point.
Decoder - Monday, September 20, 2004 - link"Hold your mouse over for the 64-bit graph."
I like to see the 32 and 64 bits on the same graph. Why not use Athlon FX-53 (32) and Athlon FX-53 (64) for labels?


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Norwegian X-Photographer Daniel Tengs tells his impression on the new GFX camera system.
Impression on X-T20
Spanish X-Photographer Felipe García-Segovia shares his impression on the X-T20
A Dream Come True
Swedish X-Photographer Serkan Günes shares his idea of a dream camera as a landscape photographer.
Explore inspiring photos, connect with other enthusiasts and learn more about photography.
Zack Arias talks about his discovery on the X Series.
An interview with Zack Arias
Part 4 of Zack Arias in Mumbai, India
Part 3 of Zack Arias in Mumbai, India
Part 2 of Zack Arias in Mumbai, India
Part 1 of Zack Arias in Mumbai, India


text:
Perspectives on Law
List Price:$26.00
List Price:$34.00
RentList Price:$180.00
List Price:$53.50
Since launching the first textbook rental site in 2006, BookRenter has never wavered from our mission to make education more affordable for all students. Every day, we focus on delivering students the best prices, the most flexible options, and the best service on earth. On March 13, 2012 BookRenter.com, Inc. formally changed its name to Rafter, Inc. We are still the same company and the same people, only our corporate name has changed.


text: Fourth time is the charm for Charlie Sheen. At least when it comes to marriages. Not content with destroying three marriages with his antics and abuse, Charlie has decided he wants to part with more of money when the inevitable divorce comes around again. I think his girlfriend and soon to be wife might be pregnant which gives me the same type feeling as another Jenelle Evans pregnancy. I can't believe the guy is idiotic enough to marry again. You might be saying to yourself that his girlfriend is the one who is an idiot but how is she an idiot other than having sex with Charlie Sheen? She has sex with strangers for money as it is and really had no future other than strip clubs and finding an owner who might want to marry her. She is going to be an instant millionaire now and if she is pregnant will be a multi-millionaire. Plus, the guy probably passes out most nights. As long as she wears a bulletproof vest she should be ok.


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MSMU Campus Visit Calendar Share Tour and Discussion
Share Tour and Discussion
Tue. Oct 1, 2013 2:00pm - 4:00pm (Recurring)
Admissions Office
During the academic year, the Admissions Office will offer student-led campus tours MOST Mondays through Fridays at 2 p.m. Reservations are strongly encouraged, as space is limited. This tour lasts approximately 1.5 hours and showcases the main academic campus and our east campus athletic facilities. Each tour can be followed by an optional discussion with an Admissions Representative.


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