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Exclusive: ASUS Debuts AGEIA PhysX Hardwareby Derek Wilson on 5/5/2006 3:00 AM EST
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Clauzii - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - linkASUS PhysX P1:
Processor Type: AGEIA PhysX
Bus Techonology: 32-bit PCI 3.0 Interface
Memory Interface: 128-bit GDDR3 memory architecture
Memory Capacity: 128 MByte
Memory Bandwidth: 12 GBytes/sec.
Effective Memory Data Rate: 733 MHz
Peak Instruction Bandwidth: 20 Billion Instructions/sec
Sphere-Sphere collision/sec: 530 Million max
Convex-Convex(Complex) collisions/sec.: 533,000 max Reply
jkay6969 - Monday, May 08, 2006 - linkI have read all your posts with great interest, I feel that some very good points are being made, so here's my 2 cents worth ;-)
I believe the 'IDEA' of having a dedicated PPU in your increasingly expensive monster rig is highly appealing, even intoxicating and I believe this 'IDEA' coupled with some clever marketing will ensure a good number of highly overpriced, or at least expensive, sales of this mystical technology in it's current (ineficient) form.
For some, the fact that it's expensive and also holds such high promises will ensure it's place as a 'Must have' component for the legions of early adopters. The brilliant idea of launching them through Alienware, Falcon Northwest and the top of the line Dell XPS600 systems was a stroke of marketing genius as this adds to the allure of owning one when they finally launch to the retail market...If it's good enough for a system most of us can never afford but covet none the less it's damn well good enough for my 'monster RIG'. This arrangement will allow the almost guaranteed sales of the first wave of cards on the market. I have noticed that some UK online retailers have already started taking pre-launch orders for the £218 OEM 128MB version I just have to woner how many of these pre-orders have actually been sold?
The concept of a dedicated PPU is quite simply phenominal, We spend plenty of money upgrading our GPU's, CPU's and quite recently Creative have brought us the first true APU (X-Fi series) that it makes sense for there to be a dedicated PPU and berhaps even an AiPU to follow.
The question is, will these products actually benefit us to the value of their cost?
I would say that a GPU, or in fact up to 4 GPU's running over PCIe x32 (2xPCIe x16 channels) become increasingly less value for money the more GPU's added to the equation. i.e. a 7900GTX 512MB at £440 is great bang for the buck compared to Quad SLI 7900GTX 512MB at over £1000. The framerates in the Quad machine are not 4x the single GPU. Perhaps this is where GPU's could trully be considered worthy of nVidia or ATI's Physics SLI load balancing concept. SLI GPU's are not working flat out 100% of the time...Due to the extremely high bandwidth of Dual PCIe x16 ports there should be a reasonable amount of bandwidth to spare on Physics calculations, perhaps more if Dual PCIe x32 (or even quad x16) Motherboards inevitably turn up. I am not saying that GPU's are more efficient than a DEDICATED and designed for PPU, just that if ATI and nVidia decided the market showed enough potential, they could simply 'design in' or add PPU functionality to their GPU cores or GFX cards. This would allow them to tap into the extra bandwidth PCIe x16 affords.
The Ageis PhysX PPU in it's current form runs over the PCI bus, a comparitively Narrow bandwicth bus, and MUST communicate with the GPU in order for it to render the extra particles and objects in any scene. This in my mind would create a Bottleneck as it would only be able to communicate at the bandwidth and speed afforded by the Narrow bandwidth and slower PCI bus. The slowest path governs the speed of even the fastest...This would mean that adding a dedicated PPU, even a very fast and efficient one, would be severely limited by the bus it was running over. This phenomenon is displayed in all the real world benchmarks I have seen of the Ageis PhysX PPU to date, The framerates actually DROP when the PPU is enabled.
To counter this, I believe, Ageis through ASUS, BFG and any other manufacturing partner they sign up with will have to release products designed for the PCIe bus. I believe this is what Ageis knows as the early manufacturing samples were able to be installed in the PCI bus as well as the PCIe bus (although not at the same time ;-) ). I believe the PCI bus was chosen for launch due to the very high installed user base of PCI motherboards, every standard PC I know of that would want a PPU in their system. I belive this is a mistake, as the users most likely to purchase this part in the 'Premium price' period would likely have PCIe in their system, or at least would be willing to shell out an extra £50-£140 for the privelage. Although I could be completely wrong in this as it may allow for some 'Double Selling' as when they release the new and improved PCIe version, the early adopters will be forced to buy into it again at a premium price.
This leads me neatly onto the price. I understand that Ageis, quite rightly, are handing out the PhysX SDK freely, this is to allow maximum compatibilty and support in the shortest period of time. This does however mean that the end user, who purchases the card in the beginning will have to pay the full price for the card...£218 for the 128MB OEM version. As time goes by and more units are sold, the installed userbase of the PPU will grow and the balance will shift, Ageis will be able to start charging the developers to use their 'must have' Hardware Physics support in their games/software and this will subsidise the cost of the card to the end user, therefore making them even more affordable to the masses and therefore making it a much more 'Must Have' for the developers. This will take several generations of the PPU before we feel the full impact of this I believe.
If ATI and nVidia are smart, they can capitalise on their high installed initial userbase and properly market the idea of Hardware physics for free with their SLI physics, they may be able to throw a spanner in the works for Agies while they attempt to attain market share. This may benefit the consumer, although it may also knock Agies out of the running depending on how effective ATI and nVidias driver based solution first appears. It could also prompt a swift buy out from either ATI or nVidia like nvidia did with 3DFX.
Using the CPU for Physics, even on a multicore CPU, in my opinion is not the way forward. The CPU is not designed for physics calculations, and from what I hear they are not (comparitively) very efficient at performing these calculations. A dedicated solution will always be better in the long run. This will free up the CPU to run the OS and also for Ai calculations and well as antivirus, firewall, background applications and generally keeping the entire system secure and stable. Multicore will be a blessing for PC's and consoles, but not for such a specific and difficult (for a CPU) task.
"Deep breath" ;-)
So there you have it, My thoughts on the PPU situation as it stands now and into the future. Right now I will not be buying into the dream, but simply keeping the dream alive by closely watching how it develops until such a time as I believe the 'Right Time' comes. £218 for an unproven, generally unsupported, and possibly seriously flawed incarnation of the PPU dream is not in my opinion The Right Time, Yet ;-)
JKay6969 Reply
DeathBooger - Monday, May 08, 2006 - linkThe Cellfactor demo is available on Ageia's website now. If you try to play it with out a PhysX card you get an error message. However, the demo includes a game editor. If you open the editor, you can open up the demo level and it allows you to play the game with out the PhysX card. You can't play with bots in the editor, nor can you see cloth or fluid dynamics. Everything else is present, it's like playing the game normally otherwise. I was able to play the game inside the editor with no performance problems. I have a dual core AMD with a single X1900XT and 2GB of RAM. CPU usage does go up to 80% when playing the game and blowing up things and whatnot, but it's a smooth experience with no noticable slow down. Graphics-wise, everything is present inside the editor, including dynamic lighting and normal mapping.
If Ageia wanted to show people how well the PPU works and is needed in a game like Cellfactor, they should have allowed you to play the game normally with out a PhysX card. Since they didn't do that, it makes me think it's not actually needed. Reply
AnnihilatorX - Sunday, May 07, 2006 - linkPeople don't want another separate card mainly becuase of slot problem. But if the card uses PCIX1, which I bet most people with new motherboard doesn't have anything at that slot, it doesn't make it unfavourable.
Since as mentioned, heat and noise of the card is low Reply
hellcats - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkIf Aegia really want to spur additional support for their PPU card then they should develop a lower-level API than Novodex. Something similar to OpenGL or DirectX for graphics cards. This would encourage other middleware developers to support the PPU for the "heavy lifting". Then Havok and other physics middleware developers would be working with Ageia and not against them. The current situation is as if Nvidia were to provide a proprietary game engine as the only way to access the power of the GPU. Then only the game companies that would agree to support this engine would get graphics accleration. Reply
Walter Williams - Sunday, May 07, 2006 - linkMicrosoft is currently working on a physics API that will be like their DirectX but for physics. Reply
DerekWilson - Sunday, May 07, 2006 - linkadditionally, AGEIA is working with Havok to try to get them to include support for the PhysX hardware in their product.
when we spoke with AGEIA about it, we learned that its more important to them to get software support than to create an SDK business. they want PhysX acceleration in Havok very much. but Havok is doing pretty well on its own at the moment and are being a little more cautious about getting involved.
as is generally the case, small companies don't like to have their success tied up in the success of other small companies. Havok needs to decided if the ROI is worth it for them at this point, while there wouldn't really be a downside for AGEIA to let them include support. Reply
Celestion - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkIf the 360 doesn't have the the PhysX chip in it, what can PhsyX SDK be used for? Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkA software SDK (Software Development Kit) is a set of libraries that people can use. So rather than write their own physics routines, they can use PhysX. Just like they can use Havok. The way we understand it, if done properly the PhysX libraries can run on either the CPU or the PPU, though the CPU should be slower. Right now, we don't have any 100% identical comparison other than AGEIA's test app, which doesn't really appear complex enough to be truly indicative of maximum performance potential. Reply
Celestion - Sunday, May 07, 2006 - linkThanks Reply
Ickus - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkHmmm - seems like the modern equivelant of the old-school maths co-processors.
Yes these are a good idea and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that $250 (Aus $) CPU I forked out for supposedly quite good at doing these sorts of calculations what with it's massive FPU capabilities and all? I KNOW that current CPU's have more than enough ability to perform the calculations for the physics engines used in todays video games. I can see why companies are interested in pushings physics add-on cards though...
"Are your games running crap due to inefficient programming and resource hungry operating systems? Then buy a physics processing unit add-in card! Guaranteed to give you an unimpressive performance benefit for about 2 months!" If these PPU's are to become mainstream and we take another backwards step in programming, please oh please let it be NVidia who takes the reigns... They've done more for the multimedia industry in the last 7 years than any other company... Reply
DerekWilson - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkCPUs are quite well suited for handling physics calculations for a single object, or even a handful of objects ... physics (especially game physics) calculations are quite simple.
when you have a few hundred thousand objects all bumping into eachother every scene, there is no way on earth a current CPU will be able to keep up with PhysX. There are just too many data dependancies and too much of a bandwidth and parallel processing advantage on AGEIA's side.
As for where we will end up if another add-in card business takes off ... well that's a little too much to speculate on for the moment :-) Reply
thestain - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkJust my opinion, but this product is too slow.
Maybe there needs to be minimum ratio's to cpu and gpu speeds that Ageia and others can use to make sure they hit the upper performance market.
Software looks ok, looks like i might be going with software PhysX if available along with software Raid, even though i would prefer to go with the hardware... if bridged pci bus did not screw up my sound card with noise and wasn't so slow... maybe.. but my thinking is this product needs to be faster and wider... pci-e X4 or something like it, like I read in earlier articles it was supposed to be.
pci... forget it... 773 mhz... forget it... for me... 1.2 GHZ and pci-e X4 would have this product rocking.
any way to short this company?
They really screwed the pouch on speed for the upper end... should rename their product a graphics decelerator for faster cpus,.. and a poor man's accelerator.. but what person who owns a cpu worth $50 and a video card worth $50 will be willing to spend the $200 or more Ageia wants for this...
Great idea, but like the blockhead who give us RAID hardware... not fast enough.
DerekWilson - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkafaik, raid hardware becomes useful for heavy error checking configurations like raid 5. with raid 0 and raid 1 (or 10 or 0+1) there is no error correction processing overhead. in the days of slow CPUs, this overhead could suck the life out of a system with raid 5. Today it's not as big an impact in most situations (espeically consumer level).
raid hardware was quite a good thing, but only in situations where it is necessary. Reply
Cybercat - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkI was reading the article on FiringSquad (http://www.firingsquad.com/features/ageia_physx_re...">exact page here) where Ageia responded to Havok's claims about where the credit is due, performance hits, etc, and on performance hits they said:
We appreciate feedback from the gamer community and based partly on comments like the one above, we have identified an area in our driver where fine tuning positively impacts frame rate.
So they essentially responded immediately with a driver update that supposedly improves performance.
Driver support is certainly a concern with any new hardware, but if Ageia keeps up this kind of timely response to issues and performance with frequent driver updates, in my mind they'll have taken care of one of the major factors in determining their success, and swinging their number of advantages to outweigh their obstacles for making it in the market. Reply
toyota - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linki dont get it. Ghost Recon videos WITHOUT PhysX looks much more natural. the videos i have seen with it look pretty stupid. everything that blows up or gets shot has the same little black pieces flying around. i have shot up quite a few things in my life and seen plenty of videos of real explosions and thats not what it looks like. Reply
DeathBooger - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThe PC version of the new Ghost Recon game was supposed to be released along side the Xbox360 version but was delayed at the last minute for a couple of months. My guess is that PhysX implementation was a second thought while developing the game and the delay came from the developers trying to figure out what to do with it. Reply
shecknoscopy - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThink you're part of a niche market?
I gotta' tell you, as a scientist, this whole topic of putting 'physics' into games makes for an intensely amusing read. Of course I understand what's meant here, but when I first look at people's text in these articles/discussion, I'm always taken aback: "Wait? We need to add physics to stuff? Man, THAT's why my experiments have been failing!"
I wonder if the types of computations employed by our controversial little PhysX accelerator could be harvested *outside* of the gaming environment. As someone who both loves to game, but also would love to telecommute to my lab, I'd ideally like to be able to handle both tasks using one machine (I'm talking about in-house molecular modeling, crystallographic analysis, etc... ). Right now I have to rely on a more appropriate 'gaming' GPU at home, but hustle on in to work to use an essentially indentical computer which has been outfitted with a Quadro graphics card do to my crazy experiments. I guess I'm curious if it's plasuable to make, say, a 7900GT + PhysX perform comparable calculations to a Quado/Fire-style workstation graphics setup. 'Cause seriosuly, trying to play BF2 on your $1500 Quadro card is seriously disappointing. But then, so is trying to perform realtime molecular electron density rendering on your $320 7900GT.
SO - anybody got any ideas? Some intimate knowledge of the difference between these types of calculations? Or some intimate knowledge of where I can get free pizza and beer? Ah, Grad School.
Walter Williams - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
I wonder if the types of computations employed by our controversial little PhysX accelerator could be harvested *outside* of the gaming environment.
It will be great for military use as well as the automobile industry. Reply
escapedturkey - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkWhy don't developers use the second core of many dual core systems to do a lot of physics calculations? Is there a drawback to this? Reply
DrZoidberg - Sunday, May 07, 2006 - linkYes dual core CPU's aren't being properly utilised by games. Only handful of games like COD2, Quake4 etc.. have big improvements with the dual core CPU patches. I would rather game companies spend time trying to utilise dual core so the 2nd core gets to do alot of physics work, rather then sitting mostly idle. Plus the cost of AGEIA card is too high. Already I'm having trouble justifying buying a 7900gt or x1900 when i have a decent graphics card, cant upgrade graphics every year. $300 for physics card that only handful of games support is too much. And the AT benchies dont show alot of improvement. Reply
Walter Williams - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkWe are starting to see multithreaded games that basically do this.
However, it is very difficult and time consuming to make a game multi-threaded, hence why not many games are this way. Reply
Hypernova - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkPhysx API claims to be multy core compatiable, what will happen is probably is the the API and engine will load balance the calculation between any available resources which is either the PPU, CPU or better yet both. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkIsn't it difficult to reprogram a game to make use of the hardware accelerated physics as well? If the GRAW tests perform poorly because the support is "tacked on", wouldn't that suggest that doing PhysX properly is at least somewhat difficult? Given that PhysX has a software and hardware solution, I really want to be able to flip a switch and watch the performance of the same calculations running off the CPU. Also, if their PhysX API can be programmed to take advantage of multiple threads on the PhysX card (we don't have low level details, so who knows?), it ought to be able to multithred calculations on SMP systems as well.
I'd like to see the CellFactor people add the option of *trying* to run everything without the PhysX card. Give us an apples-to-aplles comparison. Until we can see that sort of comparison, we're basically in the dark, and things can be hidden quite easily in the dark.... Reply
Walter Williams - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkPPU support is simply achieved by using the Novadex physics engine or any game engine that uses the Novadex engine (ex/ Unreal Engine 3.0). The developers of GRAW decided to take a non-basic approach to adding PPU support, adding additional graphical effects for users of the PPU - this is similar to how Far Cry 64 advertises better graphics b/c it is 64bits as an advertising gimmick. GRAW seems to have issues in general and is not a very reliable test.
At quakecon '05, I had the opportunity to listen to the CEO of Ageia speakd and then meet with Ageia representatives. They had a test system that was an Athlon64 X2, a top of the line video card, and a PPU. The demo that I was able to play was what looked to be an early version of the Unreal Engine 3.0 (maybe Huxley?) and during the demo they could turn on and off PPU support. Everytime we switched between the two, we would take notice of the CPU usage meter and of the FPS and there was a huge difference.
It will be really interesting to see what happens when Microsoft releases their physics API (think DirectX but for physics) - this should make everyones lives better. Reply
johnsonx - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkHaving downloaded and viewed the videos, my reaction is "so what?". I guess the physx sequence has a bit more crap flying around, but it's also quite alot slower (slower probably than just letting the CPU process the extra crap). It seems obvious that this game doesn't make proper use of the physx card, as I can't otherwise imagine that Aegia would have wasted so much time and money on it.
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
(slower probably than just letting the CPU process the extra crap)
We'd really love to test that, but it is quite impossible to verify right now. Reply
Walter Williams - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkHave you seen the CellFactor videos yet? Reply
Spoonbender - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkWell, looking at the videos, I know what I prefer. The framerate hit with physx is definitely too noticeable. I'm curious to see how this turns out in other games, and with driver revisions and newer versions of the hardware (and probably pci-e would be a good idea as well)
In any case, I read somewhere they weren't expecting these cards to evolve as fast as GPU's. Rather, it'd have a life cycle about the same as for soundcards. That seemed a bit encouraging to me. Having to fork out $300+ for yet another card every year or two didn't sound too attractive. But if I just have to buy it once, I guess it might catch on. Reply
tk109 - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkWith quad cores around the corner this really isn't looking to promising. Reply
Walter Williams - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkToo bad not even quadcores will be able to outperfrom the PPU when it comes to physics calculations.
You all need to wait for another game that uses the PPU to be reviewed before jumping to any conclusions.
The developers of GRAW did a very poor job compared to the developers of CellFactor. This will come to light soon. Reply
saratoga - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
Too bad not even quadcores will be able to outperfrom the PPU when it comes to physics calculations.
jumping to any conclusions.
Haha. Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkjust because something is true about the hardware doesn't mean it will every come to fruition in the software. it isn't jumping to a conclusion to say that the PPU is *capable* of outperforming a quadcore cpu when it comes to physics calculations -- that is a fact, not an opinion due to the architecture.
had the first quote said something about games that use physics performing better on one rather than the other, that would have been jumping to conclusions.
the key here is the developers and how the problem of video game physics maps to hardware that is good at doing physics calculations. there are a lot of factors. Reply
saratoga - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - link
it isn't jumping to a conclusion to say that the PPU is *capable* of outperforming a quadcore cpu when it comes to physics calculations -- that is a fact, not an opinion due to the architecture.
Its clearly an opinion. For it to be a fact, it would have to be verifiable. However, no one has made a quad core x86 processor, and no game engine has been written to use one.
The poster simply stated his opinion and then blasted other people for having their own opinions, all without realizing how stupid it sounded which is why it was such a funny post.
Walter Williams - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkI did not blast anybody...
It is a simple fact that a dedicated processor for X will always outperfrom a general purpose processor when doing X from a hardware perspective.
Whether or not the software yields the same results is another question. Assuming that the PCI bus is not holding back performance of the PPU, it is incredibly unlikely that quad core CPUs will be able to outperform the PPU. Reply
saratoga - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - link
It is a simple fact that a dedicated processor for X will always outperfrom a general purpose processor when doing X from a hardware perspective.
Clearly false. General purpose processors sometimes beat specialized units. It depends on resources available to each device, and the specifics of the problem. Specialization is a trade off. If your calculation has some very specific and predictable quality, you might design a custom processor that exploits some property of your problem effectively enough to overcome the billions Intel and AMD poured into developing a general purpose core. But you may also end up with an expensive processor thats left behind by off the shelf components :)
Furthermore, this statement is hopelessly general. What if X is running Linux? Or any other application that x86 CPUs are already specialized for. Can you really concieve of an even specialized processor for this task that didn't resemble a general purpose CPU? Doubtful.
Assuming that the PCI bus is not holding back performance of the PPU, it is incredibly unlikely that quad core CPUs will be able to outperform the PPU.
You're backpeddleing. You said:
"Too bad not even quadcores will be able to outperfrom the PPU when it comes to physics calculations."
Now you're saying they might be able to do it. So much for jumping to conclusions? Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkPeople keep mentioning Cell Factor. Well and good that it uses more physics calculations as well as the PhysX card. Unfortunately, right now it requires the PhysX card and it's looking like 18 MONTHS (!) before the game ships - if it ever gets done. We might as well discuss how much better Havok FX is going to be in The Elder Scrolls V. :p
For the first generation, we're far more likely to see a lot of the "tacked on" approach as companies add rudimentary support to existing designs. We also don't have a way to even compare Cell Factor with and without PhysX. Are they hiding something? I mean, 15% faster under the AGEIA test demo using a high-end CPU isn't looking like much. If they allow CellFactor to run on software (CPU) PhysX calculations, get that to support SMP systems for the calculations, and we get 2 FPS in Cell Factor, that's great. It shows the PhysX card does soemthing. If they allow all that and the dual core chips end up coming very close to the same performance, we've got a problem.
Basically, right now we're missing real world (i.e. gaming) apples-to-apples comparisons. It's like comparing X800 to 6800 cards under games that only supported SM3.0 or SM1.1 - better shaders or faster performance, but X800 could have come *much* closer with proper SM2.0 support. Reply
NastyPope - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkAMD & Intel could license the PhysX technology and include a dedicated PhysX (or generic multi-API) core on their processors and market them as game processors. Although some science and technology applications could make use of it as well. Being on-die would reduce latency and provide a huge amount of bandwidth between cores. Accessing system memory could slow things down but still be much faster than data transfers across a PCI bus. Reply
Woodchuck2000 - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThe reason that framerates drop with the PhysX card installed is simply that the graphics card is given more complex effects to render.
At some point in the future, games will be coded with a physics API in mind. Interactions between the player and the game environment will be through this API, regardless of whether there is dedicated hardware available.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that graphics are better left to the graphics card - I don't hear anyone suggesting that the second core in a duallie system should perform all the graphics calculations. I think that in time, this will be true of physics too.
Once the first generation of games built from the ground up with a physics API in mind come out, this will sell like hot cakes. Reply
Calin - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThe reasons frame rates drop is the fact that with the physics engine, the video card have more to render - in the grenade explosion images, the "with physics" image has tens of dumpster bits flying, while in the "non physics" there are hardly a couple.
If there would have been the same complexity of scenes, I wonder how much faster the ageia would be Reply
Magnadoodle - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkActually, if you look at this statement by Havok: http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?se..."> (Already linked)
They also arrive at the conclusion that it is not a GPU bottleneck.
Furthermore, the only thing the PPU seems to do in GRAW is render a couple of particles, while not improving or accelerating *at all* the processing of physics. This particle effect could have been processed very well by a GPU.
I guess Anandtech didn't notice that the physics were exactly the same, thus pointing out the somewhat elicit nature of better physics. Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThe havok guys did miss a few things pointed out earlier in the comments. Some destructable objects do break off into real persistant objects under PhysX -- like the dumpster lid and car doors. Also, the debris in the explosions is physically simulated rather than scripted. While I certainly agree that the end effect in these cases has no impact on "goodness", it is actually doing something.
I'll certainly agree that "better physics" is kind of strange to think about. But it is really similar to how older games used to do 3D with canned animations. More realtime simulation opened up opportunities to do so many amazing things that just couldn't be done otherwise. This should extend well to physics.
Also, regardless of how (or how efficiently) the developers did it, there's no denying that the game feels better with the hardware accelerated aspects. Whether they could have done the same thing on the CPU or GPU, they didn't.
I'd still love to find a way to test the performance of this thing running the hardware physics on the CPU. Reply
JumpyBL - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - link
Some destructable objects do break off into real persistant objects under PhysX -- like the dumpster lid and car doors.
I see these same effects without PhysX. Reply
DerekWilson - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkWhen I play it without the PhysX hardware, doors just seem to pop open -- not fly off ... though I haven't exhaustively blown up every object -- there could be some cases where these types of things happen in software as well. Reply
JumpyBL - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkShoot up the tires, car doors, etc enough and they come off. Same with the garbage can lid, throw a nade, it'll blow right off the container, all without a PPU. Reply
Fenixgoon - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkhow is the game going to "feel better" with a PPU when it slams your framerate down from buttery smooth to choppy? sorry, i'll take the FPS over any degree of better simulated physics, ESPECIALLY on a budget PC. i mean, look at the numbers! opteron minimum fps at 8x6 was 46, and with the PPU hardware it dropped to 12 - over a 75% decrease!! Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkNote that the min framerate is much lower than the average -- with the majority of frames rolling along at average framerates, one or two frames that drop to an instantaneous 12-17fps isn't going to make the game feel choppy. The benchmark was fairly short, so even outliers have an impact on the average -- futher going to show that these minimum fps are not anything to worry about. At the same time, they aren't desierable either.
Also, I would certainly not recommend this part to anyone but the hardcore enthusiast right now. People with slow graphics cards and processors would benefit much more by upgrading one or the other. In these early stages with little software support, the PPU will really only look attractive to people who already have very powerful systems and want something else to expand the capabilities.
if you watch the videos, there's no noticable choppiness in the motion of the explosion. and I can say from gameplay experience that there's no noticeable mouse lag when things are exploding either. thus, with the added visual effects, it feels better. certainly a subjective analysis, but I hope that explains how I could get that impression. Reply
mongo lloyd - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkYou must be joking. Watching the videos, the PhysX one is WAY choppier compared to the software one. The PhysX video even halts for a split second, in a way that's more than noticeable; it's downright terrible.
And the graphics/effect of the extra debris? Negligible. I've seen more videos from this game (for example: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=245">http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=245 ) and the extra stuff with PhysX in this game is just not impressive or a big deal, and in some cases it's actually worse (like the URINATING walls and ground when shooting them). It's not realistic, it's not fun, not particularly cool, and it's slow. Reply
Clauzii - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI also think thats why we see such a massive FPS drop. We are trying to render, say, 100 times as many objects now? Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI was hoping we made this clear in the article ...
While there is certainly more for the GPU to do, the numbers under a CPU limited configuration (800x600 with lower quality settings) we see a very low minimum framerate and a much lower average when compared to software physics.
The drop in performance is much much less signficant when we look at a GPU limited configuration -- if all those object were bottlenecking on the graphics card, then giving them high quality textures and rendering them at a much higher resolution would show a bigger impact on performance.
Tie that in with the fact that both the CPU and GPU limited configurations turn out the same minimum framerate and we really can conclude that the bottleneck is somewhere other than the GPU.
It becomes more difficult to determin whether the bottleneck is at the CPU (game/driver/api overhead) or the PPU (pci bus/object generation/actual physics). Reply
Clauzii - Monday, May 08, 2006 - linkYoure right.. have to wait and see what happens whith drivers/PCIe then... Reply
Hypernova - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThey should have waited for cellfactor's release as a launch line up for aegia. First impression is important and the glued on approach of GRAW is nothing but negative publicity for aegia. Not everyone knows that physx was nothing more of a patched addon to havok in GRAW and will think that this is how the cards will turn out.
If you can't do it right then don't do it at all. GRAW's implementation was a complete failure, even for a first generation product. Reply
segagenesis - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkAs much as I would want to give them the benefit of the doubt... With what you say its that simple really. Most gamers (at least ones I know?) want worry free performance, and if spending extra money on hardware results in worse performance then this product will be short lived.
I watched the non-game PhysX demos and they looked really damn cool, but they really should have worked on making a PCI-E version from the start... boards with PCI slots are already becoming dated, and those that have 16x slots for graphics have at least the small 1x slot! Reply
nullpointerus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI wouldn't say it was a complete failure. IMO the benchmarks were quite disappointing, and this was compounded by the lack of effects configurability in the game, but the videos were quite compelling. If you look at the dumpster (?), you can see that not only does the lid blow off but it bends and crumples. If we see more than just canned animations in better games (Cell Factor?), then this $300 should be worth its cost to high-end gamers. I'd say Aegia is off to a rough start, not an implosion. Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThere are quite a few other things PhysX does in the game as well -- though they all are kinda "tacked on" as well. You noticed the lid of the dumpster which only pops open undersoftware. In hardware it is a seperate object that can go flying around depending on the explosion. The same is true of car doors and other similar parts -- under software they'll just pop open, but with hardware they go flying if hit right.
It is also interesting to add that the explosions and such are scripted under software, but much of it becomes physically simulated under hardware. While this fact is kinda interesting, it really doesn't matter to the gamer in this title. But for other games that make more extensive use of the hardware, it could be quite useful. Reply
nullpointerus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThat should be very cool. I was playing F.E.A.R. recently and decided to rake my SMG over a bunch of glass panes in an "office" level. Initially, it looked and sounded good because I have the settings cranked up reasonably high, but then I noticed all the glass panes were breaking in exactly the same way. Rather disappointing... Reply
DigitalFreak - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link... may use the Gamebryo engine, but it uses Havok for physics. Reply
Bull Dog - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkYou are correct and I noticed that the first time I read the article. Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkSorry if what I said wasn't clear enough -- I'll add that Oblivion uses Havok. Reply
peternelson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
In your introduction you might have mentioned there are TWO partners for bringing this technology to market: Asus and BFG Tech.
Both have shipping boards. I wonder if they perform identically or if there is some difference.
I agree that PCI could be a bottleneck, but I'm more concerned that putting a lot of traffic on the pci bus will impair my OTHER pci devices.
PCIE x1 would have been much more sensible. I hope that they won't need a respin to add pcie functionality but fear this may be the case.
I agree Cellfactor looks more heavy use of physics so may make the difference with/without PPU more noticeable/measurable.
I also wonder how much the memory size on the Physx board matters? Maybe a second gen board could double that to 256. I'm also interested in whether PPU could be given some abstraction layer and programmed to do non-physics useful calculations as is being done on graphics cards now. This might speed its adoption.
I agree with the post that in volume, this kind of chip could find its way onto 3d graphics cards for gaming. As BFG make GPU cards, they might move that direction. Reply
iNsuRRecTiON - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkHey,
the ASUS PhysX card does already have 256 MB RAM instead of 128 MB RAM, compared to BFG Tech. card..
best regards,
iNsuRRecTiON Reply
fishbits - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI want the physics card to be equivalent to a sound card in terms of standardization and how often I feel compelled to upgrade it. In other words, it would be upgraded far less often than graphics cards are. Putting the physics hardware on a graphics card means you would throw away (or sell at a loss) perfectly good physics capability just to get a faster GPU, or get a second card to go to SLI/Crossfire. This is a bad idea for all the same reasons you'd say putting sound card functionality on a graphics card is a bad idea.
Calin - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkYes, you could do all kind of nice calculations on the physics boards. However, moving geometry data from the video card to the physics board to be calculated and moving them back to the video card would be shooting yourself in all feets.
I think this could run well as an accelerator for rendering images or for 3D applications... how soon until 3DStudio, PhotoShop and so on take advantage? Reply
tonjohn - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
I hope that they won't need a respin to add pcie functionality but fear this may be the case.
The pre-production cards had both PCI and PCIe support at the same time. You simply flipped the card depending on which interface you wanted to use. So I believe that the PPU offers native PCIe support and that BFG and ASUS could produce PCIe boards today if Ageia would give them permission to.
I agree with the post that in volume, this kind of chip could find its way onto 3d graphics cards for gaming.
Bad idea. Putting the PPU onboard with a GPU means higher costs all around (longer PCBs, possibly more layers, more ram). Also, the two chips will be fighting for banwidth which is never a good thing.
Higher costs and lower performance = a bad idea.
FYI: I have a BFG PhysX card. Reply
saratoga - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkActually, putting this on the GPU core would be much cheaper. You'd save by getting rid of all the duplicated hardware: DRAMs, memory controller, power circuitry, PCI bridge, cooling, PCB, etc.
Not to mention you'd likely gain a lot of performance by having a PCI-E 16x slot and an ondie link to the GPU. Reply
Calin - Monday, May 08, 2006 - linkI wonder how much of the 2TB/s internal bandwidth will be used on the Ageia card... if enough of it, then the video card will have very little bandwidth remaining for its operations (graphic rendering). However, if the cooling really needs that heat sink/fan combo, and the card really needs that power connector, you won't be able to put one on the highest end video cards (for power and heat reasons). Reply
kilkennycat - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link"I have a BFG PhysX card"
Use it as a door-stop ?
Pray tell me where you plug one of these if you have the following:-
Dual 7900GTX512 (or dual 1900XTX)
Creative X-Fi
already in your system. Reply
Walter Williams - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
Use it as a door-stop ?
Actually, I use it to play CellFactor. Your missing out.
Pray tell me where you plug one of these if you have the following:
SLi and CrossFire are the biggest waste of money unless you are doing intense rendering work.
I hope people with that setup enjoy their little fps improvement per dollar while I'm playing CellFactor, which requires the PPU to run. Reply
kilkennycat - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkCellfactor MP tech demo....
Cellfactor to be released in Q4 2007.. maybe... Your PhysX is going to be a little old by the time the full game is released...Should be up to quad-core CPUs and lots of cycles available for physics calculations by that time.
I have recently been playing Oblivion a lot, like several million others. The Havok software physics are just great --- and you NEED the highest-end graphics for optimum visual experience in that game --- see the current Anandtech article. Sorry, I care little about (er) "better particle effects" or "more realistic explosions", even when I play Far Cry. In fact, from my experiences with BF2 and BF1942 I find them more than adequately immersive with their great scenery graphics and their CURRENT physics effects -- even the old and noble BF1942.
On single-player games, I would far prefer seeing additional hardware, or compute-cycles, being directed at advanced-AI than physics. What point fancy physics-effects if the AI enemy has about as much built-in intelligence as a lump of Swiss cheese? Sure does not help the game's immersive experience at all. And tightly-scripted AI just does not work in open-area scenarios (c.f: Unreal 2 and the dumb enemies easily sneaked from behind -- somebody forgot to script that eventuality amongst many others that can occur in an open play-area). The successful tightly-scripted single-play shooters like Doom3, HL2, FEAR etc all have overt or disguised "corridors". So, the developers of open-area games like Far Cry or Oblivion chose an algorithmic *intelligent-agent AI* approach, with a simple overlay of scripting to set some broad behavioral and/or location boundaries. A distinct move in the right direction but there are some problems with the AI implementation in both games. More sophisticated AI algorithms will require more compute-power, which, if performed on the CPU, will need to be traded off with cycles available for graphics. Dual-core will help, but a general-purpose DSP might help even more... they are not expensive and easily integrated into a motherboard.
Back to the immediate subject of the Ageia PPU and physics effects:-
I am far more intrigued by Havok's exercises with Havok FX harnessing both dual-core CPU power and GPU power in the service of physics emulation. Would be great to have action games with a physics-adjustable slider so that one can trade off graphics with physics effects in a seamless manner, just as one can trade-off advanced-graphics elements in games today.... which is exactly where Havok is heading. No need to support marginal added hardware like the PhysX. Now, if the PhysX engine was an option on every high-end motherboard, for say not more than $50 extra, or as an optional motherboard plug-in at say $75, (like the 8087 of yore) and did not take up any additional precious peripheral slots, then I would rate its chances of becoming main-stream to be pretty high. Seems as if Ageia should license their hardware DESIGN as soon as possible to nVidia or ATi at (say) not more than $15 a copy and have them incorporate the design into their motherboard chip-sets.
The current Ageia has 3 strikes against it for cost, hardware interface ( PCI ) and software-support reasons. The PhysX PPU certainly has NO hope at all as a periphreal device as long as it stays in PCI form. Must migrate to PCIe asap. Remember that a X1, or X4 PCIe card will happily work in a PCIe X16 slot, and there are still several million SLI and Crossfire motherboard with empty 2nd video slots. Plus, even on a dual-SLI with dual-slot-width video cards and an audio card present, it is more likely to find one PCIeX1 or X4 slot vacant that does not compromise the video-card ventilation than to find a PCI slot that is not either covered up by the dual-width video cards or that does not completely block airflow to one or other of the video cards.
So if a PCIe version of the PhysX ever becomes available... you will be able to sell your PCI version... at about the price of a doorstop. Few will want the PCI version if a used PCIe version is also available.
Hard on the wallet being an early adopter at times..... Reply
tonjohn - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThe developers did a poor job when it came to how the implemented PPU support in GRAW.
CellFactor is a MUCH better test of what the PhysX card is capable. The physics in CellFactor are MUCH more intense. When blowing up a load of crap, my fps only drop 2fps at the most, and that is mainly b/c my 9800Pro is struggling to render the actual effects of a grenade explosion. Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkWe will be taking a look at CellFactor as soon as we can Reply
Egglick - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
It seems most likely that the slowdown is the cost of instancing all these objects on the PhysX card and then moving them back and forth over the PCI bus and eventually to the GPU. It would certainly be interesting to see if a faster connection for the PhysX card - like PCIe X1 - could smooth things out....
You've certainly got a point there. Seeing as how a physics card is more like a co-processor than anything else, the PCI bus is probably even more of a limitation than it would be with a graphics card, where most of the textures can simply be loaded into the framebuffer beforehand.
I still believe that the best option is to piggyback PPU's onto graphics cards. Not only does this allow them to share the MUCH higher bandwidth PCIe x16 slot, but it would also mean nearly instant communication between the physics chip and the GPU. The two chips could share the same framebuffer (RAM), as well as a cooling solution. This would lower costs significantly and increase performance. Reply
DerekWilson - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkcombo boards, while not impossible to make, are going to be much more complex. There could also be power issues as PhysX and today's GPUs require external power. It'd be cool to see, and it might speed up adoption, but I think its unlikely to happen given the roi to board makers.
The framebuffer couldn't really be shared between the two parts either. Reply
Rolphus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkOn page 2: "A graphics card, even with a 512-bit internal bus running at core speed, has less than 350 Mb/sec internal bandwidth." - er, I'm guessing that should read 350Gb/sec? Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkYes. Correcting.... Reply
Rolphus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThanks for the quick response - I've just finished the article. It's good stuff, interesting analysis, and commentary and general subtext of "nice but not essential" is extremely useful.
One random thing - is images.anandtech.com struggling, or is my browser just being a pain? I've been having trouble seeing a lot of the images in the article, needing various reloads to get them to show etc. Reply
ATWindsor - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkAnandtech images doesn't work properly if you disable referer logging (pretty annoying), can that be the root of your problem? (adblock disabling it or something) Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkSeems to be doing fine from our end. If you're at a company with a firewall or proxy, that could do some screwy stuff. We've also had reports from users that have firewall/browser settings configured to only show images from the source website - meaning since the images aren't from www.anandtech.com, they get blocked.
As far as I know, both the images and the content are on the same physical server, but there are two different names. I could be wrong, as I don't have anything to do with the system administration. :) Reply
Rolphus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkWeird, seems to be fine now I've disabled AdBlock in Firefox... that'll teach me. It's not like I block any of AnandTech's ads anyway, apart from the intellitxt stuff - that drives me NUTS. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkClick the "About" link, then "IntelliTxt". You might be pleasantly surprised to know it can be turned off. Reply
Rolphus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkJarred,
*adds AnandTech to the list of non-blocked sites* Reply
Rolphus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI say "weird" because only about 1/3 of the images failed to load... if everything was missing, it would be fairly obvious what was going on ;) Reply
escapedturkey - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkYou should realize that the game you are benchmarking is using Havok physics even with PhysX.
That's why there is an issue. The game was very poorly coded. So when PhysX is enabled, it's using two physics layers: Havok and PhysX vs. one or the other. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkHence the conclusion. The added effects look nice, but performance currently suffers. Is it poor coding or poor hardware... or a combination of both? Being the first commercial game to support the AGEIA PPU, it's reasonable to assume that the programmers are in a bit of a learning stage. Hopefully, they just didn't know how to make optimal use of the hardware options. Right now, we can't say for sure, because there's no way to compare the "non-accelerated" physics with the "accelerated" physics. We've seen games that look less impressive and tax GPUs more in the past, so it may simply be a case of writing the code to make better use of the PPU. I *don't* think having CrossFire would improve performance much at present, at least in GRAW, because the minimum frame rates are clearly hitting a PPU/CPU bottleneck. Reply
saratoga - Friday, May 05, 2006 - link
We're still a little skeptical about how much the PhysX card is actually doing that couldn't be done on a CPU -- especially a dual core CPU. Hopefully this isn't the first "physics decellerator", rather like the first S3 Virge 3D chip was more of a step sideways for 3D than a true enhancement.
Thats a good question. Its hard to imagine a PCI bus device keeping up with a dual core processor when one can only talk over a 133MB bus with hundreds or even thousands of ticks worth of latency, while the other can talk in just a few clocks over a bus running at 10+ GB per second. I imagine all those FUs spend most of their time waiting on syncronization traffic over the PCI bus.
It will be interesting to see what a PCI-E version of this card can do. Reply
Orbs - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI'd be curious to hear how this performs with SLI and CrossFire setups. Also, do motherboards offer enough space for 2 GPUs, and two PCI cards (sound and physics)? It looked like the Asus board meant for the Core Duo might.
If mobo manufacturers are keeping this in mind, it may make AM2 and Conroe boards even more interesting! Reply
Orbs - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkDerek, on the performance comparison page, you mention the framerate differences with an FX-60. I think you mean FX-57 here. Reply
JarredWalton - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkFX-57. Fixed. That was my fault - been playing with FX-60 chips too much lately. ;) Reply
evident - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI really hope the price of these things drop by A LOT. especially if games in the future might "require" a physx card. I have to pay $400 for a top of the line 7900GTX and then another 300 for one of these??? argh! might as well pick up console gaming now! Reply
Mr Perfect - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkHonestly, I'm hoping these cards just quietly die. I love the idea of game pysics, but the priceing is murder. These things may be pocket change for some of the "enthusiasts", but as soon as you require another $300 card just to play a video game, the Joe Sixpacks are going to drop PC gaming like it's hot. Do you have any idea how much bitching you hear from most of them when they're told that their $100 video card isn't fast enough to play a $50 game? Or worse yet, that their "new" PC doesn't even have a graphics card, and they have to throw more money into it just to be eligable for gaming? The multiplayer servers could be awfully empty when a required Pysics card alone costs more then a new PS3. :\ Reply
bob661 - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkJoe SixPacks aren't gamers. They're email and Word users. People that game know what hardware is required. Reply
nullpointerus - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkThat's not how it works. New types of hardware are initially luxury items both in the sense that they are affordable only by a few and way overpriced. When the rich adopt these things, the middle class end up wanting them, and manufacturers find ways to bring the prices down by scaling down the hardware or using technological improvements. So in other words, pipe down, let those who can afford them buy them, and in an few years we may see $50-75 versions for ordinary gamers. Reply
Mr Perfect - Saturday, May 06, 2006 - linkI wish I could find the article now, but back a ways there was an interview with Ageia where it was said that prices would span a similar range as video cards. So yes, there will probably be low-end, minrange, and highend card.
What I'm concerned about is the people who already are fighting a budget to game. These are the highschool kids with little to no income, the 40 year old with two kids and a morgage, and the casual gamer who's probably just as interested in a $170 PS2. What happens when they have to buy no only an enty level $150 video card, but also a $150 physics card? I can only imagine if gaming was currently limited to only those people with a $300 budget for a 7900GT or X1800 XL that we'd see PC gaming become a very elite selection for "enthusiasts" only.
Hopefully we can get some snazzy physics without increasing the cost of admision so much, either by taking advantage of the dual core CPUs that are even now worming their way into the mainstream PCs, or some sort of new video card technology. Reply
nullpointerus - Sunday, May 07, 2006 - linkGame developers have to eat, too. They won't produce games requiring extravagant hardware. Your fear is irrational. When you go into a doctor's office to get a shot, do you insist that the needle be sterilized right in front of your eyes before it comes anywhere near your skin? No. The doctor wants to eat, so he's not going to blow his eduction and license by reusing needles... Reply
Mr Perfect - Monday, May 08, 2006 - linkWell obviously it won't be a problem if it's not required. If it becomes an unnecessary enhancment card, like an X-Fi, then all is well. All I've been saying is if it DOES become a required card there is the possibility for monetary problems for the bread-and-butter casual gamers who fill the servers. Reply
Googer - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI for one will not be an early adopter for one of these. First generation hardware is always so cool to look at but it's almost always something you do not want to own. DX9 Video Cards are a great example: ATi 9700 PRO Was a great card if you played DX8 games but by the time software rolled around to take advantage of DX9 hardware, the 9700PRO just was not truly cut to handle it. The 9700PRO lacked a ton of features that second generation DX9 Cards had. My point is you should wait for the revision/version 2.0 of this card and you wont regret it. By then programs should be on store shelves to take full advandage of PhysX hardware. Reply
Jedi2155 - Monday, May 08, 2006 - linkI think it handled the first gen dx9 games relatively well. Farcry was a great example as it played quite well on my 9700 pro (which lasted me till Sept. '05 when I upgraded to a refurb. x800 pro). It also was able to run most games on max details (although crappy framerates but it was able to do it!). I think the 9700 pro offered it lot for its time and was able to play the 1st gen Dx9 games well enough. Reply
munky - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkSure, the 9x00 series could handle DX9, just not at maxed out settings. I played Farcry on a 9800xt, and it ran smoothly at medium-high settings. But the physx card is just plain disappointing, since it causes such a performance hit in GRAW, even at cpu-limited resolutions. Either the developers did not code the physics properly, or the physx card is not all that it's hyped up to be. We'll need more games using the ppu to know for sure. Reply
rqle - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI bought a 9700 Pro, i saw it as so far ahead of ti4600 with its 4x the proformance when AA was apply. First card to play games with AA and AF even if wasnt directx9 games. BUT this ageia thing seem little pointless to me, i actually rather have 2 ATI or 2 Nvidia card, at least this gives you an option, less physics or better graphic experience. comes in handle for those 98% of games that not ageia compatible yet. Reply
PeteRoy - Friday, May 05, 2006 - linkI hope this thing will be integrated into video cards mobo or CPU instead of seperated card. Reply


text:
AZZA Silentium Case Review: Knowing the Limitsby Dustin Sklavos on 1/29/2013 12:01 AM EST
- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- quiet
22 Comments
Back to Article
The Von Matrices - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkAre all the pictures broken or has my browser gone crazy? Reply
csroc - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkbroken for me too unfortunately Reply
karasaj - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkhappened to me too, so I doubt it. Reply
colinstu - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkkinda pointless without the pictures! Reply
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkOur server was hosed, should be up with pictures now. Reply
pcfxer - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkWhat? No platter drives? I'm still trying to find a high quality "silent" case that is sharp, has more than just silicone drive mounts and isn't the SOLO or SOLO II. Reply
jimmyzaas - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkExactly, there should at least be one hard disk in there. I personally know many people have at least one hdd in their system. Just because they want it quiet, does not mean they want to sacrifice storage capacity. It's a shame no one else is doing suspension mounts like the Solo.
Temps of SSDs are kinda silly. They don't even get that hot anyway. HDD temps would have been a better measure of storage cooling, which often gets neglected in these quiet cases. Reply
hmaarrfk - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkSeriously :|, how is only having a 1 USB 3.0 port at the front allowed for a case that cost $100. The review should have stopped there and declared the case as a "do not buy". Reply
ShieTar - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkWhy? Personally, I have yet to find a usefull application for even a single USB 3 port, as I don't transport data on physical media but rather just through network connections. And nothing else I connect to USB, like keyboard, mouse, printer, WLAN-Stick utilizes USB 3. Or needs to be connected to the front of the case.
I also buitl 4 PCs for friends and colleagues the last year, and none of them had any USB-3 devices beyond external harddrives, and nobody ever mentioned he wants to connect two of those at the same time. So, I don't think a lot of people have any kind of interest in a second front USB-3 port.
As an engineer I can understand the annoyance with an odd number of case-ports given the fact that Mainboard-Connecters are always provided for pairs of ports, but still I would guess that for at least 80% of potential customers this fact is completely irrelevant. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkI transfer data from one external to another, via USB 3.0. 2 Ports is a bare minimum. Reply
Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkBut do you plug those drives into the front of your case? I plug my drives into the rear, and if I have a temp drive to transfer data to/from, then that one drive will plug into the front. Reply
cjs150 - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkNeed better thought than this.
Because I have no need for a full ATX board, Silverstone could do a fantastic silent case.
Take the TJ08, widen it slightly to allow room for dampening material (and cable management), maybe a revamp to the front so that (so similar to Antec 180), look at PSU mounting (lots of silicon dampening) and my personal bug bear - will someone please include some anti vibration mountings for optical drives! Reply
Grok42 - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - linkFirst, simply don't install an optical drive and it will add 0dB of noise to your system. If you can't handle not having "lasers" inside your computer then realize that spinning a 16g polymer plastic disc at 10k+ RPM is going to make enough noise that any vibration transmitted to the case will be incidental. Reply
ShieTar - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Remember what I said about noise levels in silent cases? This is what happens. The Ghost is able to do the best job of keeping our overclocked testbed quiet, but again the DS1 is able to handle the increased thermal load more gracefully.
We have to keep in mind that the Silentium simply isn't designed for this usage scenario, and that's fine. But in the process, cases like the Ghost and R4 start to look like better deals. The R4 is more expensive, but the Ghost isn't.
How is the Ghost doing the "best job", if the DS1 outperforms it in almost every single measurement?
And how does the R4 start to look like a better deal, if it is noisier than the AZZA with higher GPU temperatures, while being more expensive?
It seems like those conclusions were written without looking at the measurement results at all. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkMan I want that to case to come over here. Reply
UNhooked - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkGiven how we have so many All in one watercooling solution it would be nice if you started to incorporate a small section for watercooling with the mainstream coolers. Corsair H100, H80 etc. Reply
Ananke - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkI look at the picture, I read till " it's cheaper to use a single USB 3.0 port and a single USB 2.0 port by a couple of bucks" and decided that this is a $19-29 market case at best. At $99 it is a joke. My Dell workdesk PC is dead silent regardless its canny thick case. There is no reason this AZZA plastic POS to be $99 expensive. Reply
Beaver M. - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkSeriously, dont do it. Buy a case which is not like Swiss cheese and do it yourself accurately.
Even cheap cases will turn into sound eating monsters (especially weight-wise).
Plus they will be completely air tight, so the air flow of the case fans will be excellent without any increase in temperature.
Sure, getting off the side panel and back on, will be more work, but it will really eat sound like nothing and will be more than worth the 12 hours spent to get it done. I can actually run my fans on much higher speeds before I hear them and I never have issues with other noise. You wont believe how quiet my DVD drive is.
Pre-insulated cases are placebos. Reply
althaz - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkWhilst an air-tight case would definitely be quieter, it's not an option for most people as they don't wish to replace their entire computer every day after it is damaged from excessive heat.
If there's not fresh air coming in, your computer will gradually get hotter and hotter until something in it melts.
A closed design case will be quieter than an open design, but even closed designs need to allow for sufficient air to flow out of and especially into the case. Reply
Tech-Curious - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - linkI think he meant air-tight except for the fan vents. ;)
"Plus they will be completely air tight, so the air flow of the case fans will be excellent without any increase in temperature." Reply
Beaver M. - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - linkAs I said, the fans (of course they have openings) allow for enough air flow to not raise the temperature a single degree C. Reply
Grok42 - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - linkIt's about time we get a review of a case with 5 external bays. I was beginning to think that most cases only came with 3 these days given that there is nothing to put in them these days. I like to make dioramas in mine to make things more cheerful. Reply

subset: commoncrawl


text:
If you are a young conservative looking to advance in politics and public policy, a Leadership Institute internship is for you.
Interns are placed in Leadership Institute departments, including Campus Reform, Political Training, International Training, LI Studios, Technology, Development, and more. Interns receive personal mentoring from their supervisors and complete high-priority projects.
Interns attend all LI trainings free of charge, host conservative leaders at private weekly dinners, visit Members of Congress on Capitol Hill, and experience all that D.C. has to offer. Each intern leads a discussion on a book that has shaped the conservative movement. No two days in the office are the same.
In addition to weekly speaker nights arranged by the Leadership Institute, interns are encouraged to attend issue briefings by other conservative organizations. Interns also go on group outings to Mount Vernon, the Briar Patch (Morton and Helen Blackwell's home in the Blue Ridge Mountains), the U.S. Capitol, and other national landmarks.
With a focus on the four pillars of development -- professional, personal, political and philosophical -- the program has a track record of success. Many interns take their training and experience at the Institute and directly apply it in the workforce or on their campus.
For more information about the program, please contact Paul Alfonse, LI's Intern Coordinator.
An LI internship includes:
- - Free housing at the Sacher House, located a short, 10-minute walk from LI
- - $825 stipend per month
- - Free tuition to all LI trainings for one year
- - $200 book allowance to build your conservative library
- - Private dinners and lunches with conservative VIPs
- - Projects of high responsibility
- - Priority status in LI's Employment Placement Services
How to apply
1. Review frequently asked questions about applying for LI's intern program.
2. Complete a new jobseeker profile on ConservativeJobs.com.
3. Attend the Leadership Institute's Youth Leadership School, the boot camp of politics for young conservatives.
Application deadlines
Fall 2017
Spring 2018


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Women's golf defends Cougar Classic title
Published: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 at 11:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 at 11:58 p.m.
Improving by seven strokes in the final round, the Florida's women's golf team claimed its second-consecutive title in the Cougar Classic and its first victory of the 2013-14 season. As a team, Florida ended the event at 5-under (859), just one stroke ahead of the runner-up, Clemson (860).
Junior Anna Young shined on the final day, soaring from T16 to the top of the individual rankings, claiming her first title of her collegiate career and finishing the tournament at 5-under (211).
Gator newcomers Karolina Vlckova and Maria Torres proved themselves at their first collegiate tournament, shooting 2-under (214) and 1-over (217), respectively. Vlckova also had a top-10 individual finish. Katie Mitchell finished her first competition as a Gator 4-over (220), followed by Camilla Hedberg shooting 10-over (226).
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


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She's the gorgeous young pop star that has everyone talking! SELENA GOMEZ won our hearts as a Disney Channel sweetheart, and now she's updated her image in the film "Spring Breakers." She's here with a big announcement, and to perform her single, "Come and Get It"!
Then, America's favorite British imports, SOPHIA GRACE & ROSIE are in the building! These two talented youngsters were on the red carpet of the MTV Movie Awards! Watch and see what major stars they talked to!
This Monday, Ellen is off the charts!


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TORQUE (Tera-scale Open-source Resource and QUEue manager) is a resource
manager providing control over batch jobs and distributed compute nodes.
It is a community effort based on the original *PBS project and has
incorporated significant advances in the areas of scalability, fault
tolerance, and feature extensions contributed by NCSA, OSC, USC,
the U.S. Dept of Energy, Sandia, PNNL, U of Buffalo, TeraGrid, and
many other leading edge HPC organizations. This version may be freely
modified and redistributed subject to the constraints of the included
This package contains the PBS server.
Sat Mar 11 23:00:00 2006 Axel Thimm
- Update to 2.0.0p8.
Tue Dec 27 23:00:00 2005 Jarod Wilson
- Added missing BuildRequires
- Fix more lib/lib64 issues in configure
- Add torque pseudo-package
- Bump to version 2.0.0p4
Thu Dec 8 23:00:00 2005 Jarod Wilson
- Fixed scheduler items misplaced in server package
- Altered libattr.a file in devel package to avoid
conflict with libattr-devel
Wed Dec 7 23:00:00 2005 Jarod Wilson
- Initial build


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Girls Cozy Fair Isle Afghan by Karen Whooley
Welcome! You are browsing as a guestWould you like to see projects made from this pattern and much more? create a free account What am I missing?
© 2010 Leisure Arts
Girls Cozy Fair Isle Afghan
Fair Isle to Crochet 5 Afghans for the Family by Leisure Arts - Fair Isle isn't just for knitters! When you crochet these five afghans, you'll easily get the same richly detailed look as knitted Fair Isle designs. It's as simple as using single crochet stitches and following our full-color stitch charts!
The Girl's Cozy Afghan is a vivid palette that includes purple and pink.
For more information, see: http://www.krwknitwear.com/product/fair-isle-to-croc...


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For readers, one good thing about Aviation International News and its sister publications is our independence. We're not owned by a company that manufactures or operates aircraft, nor are we beholden to any trade association. Just as important, we don't let advertisers influence our coverage. We need them, of course, to pay the bills and make a profit. But we don't need any one of them so much that we let it keep us from reporting what readers deserve to know.
It's not that way at every magazine. The wall between advertising and editorial is strong at some publications, weak at others and nonexistent at still others.
At one end of the spectrum are the magazines that maintain a solid division between advertising and editorial. Then there are publications that will modify or kill articles that might upset advertisers. There are even periodicals where buying ad space entitles you to a second ad–one that's disguised to look like editorial, ostensibly to give it added credibility.
I'm happy to report that we're in the group that has erected a high and sturdy wall between editorial and advertising. Companies buy space in our magazines not to curry editorial favor but simply to reach the audience we deliver. And while we in editorial talk to our sales staff and happily receive suggestions from them (or from advertisers or anyone else, for that matter), nobody tells our editorial department what to cover–or not cover.
One interesting thing about all this is that it is not only the honest way to operate and good for readers; it also makes excellent business sense for us–and for the companies that buy space in our magazines. An advertiser might conceivably get some short-term benefit from a puff piece disguised as editorial or from a publication that mentions it only in positive ways. But you can't fool readers for long. Over time, a magazine with advertiser-influenced editorial will lose whatever credibility and shot at greatness it may have had. It might continue publishing for years without growing substantially–and without really serving its readers or its advertisers. Often, though, those readers will drift away as they begin to sense that they can't rely on the publication. Next to disappear will be the advertisers–and then the magazine itself.


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BURNLEY players helped to tackle domestic violence by filming a video shown to fans at half-time of the East Lancashire derby on Sunday.
It is shown that after sporting events domestic violence incidents increase, so the club used Sunday's game with Blackburn Rovers to get the message across.
The club and their programme for education, sport and society have teamed up with the White Ribbon Campaign and Burnley Community Safety Partnership to tackle domestic violence on match days.
They have produced a video featuring players, management and chief executive Lee Hoos all showing their support for the campaign.
Paul Brannigan, of the White Ribbon Campaign, said: "The White Ribbon Campaign charity encourages men and boys to not commit, condone or remain silent about domestic violence.
"Statistics show that domestic violence increases after a big sporting event. "The Burnley v Blackburn Rovers game was a big event locally, meaning women may have faced a greater risk of domestic violence."
Jonathan Sibley, chief executive officer of Burnley FC Programme for Education, Sport and Society, said: "Statistics show our home games do affect women locally and we wanted to counteract this by partnering with the White Ribbon Campaign to encourage our male fans to play their part in helping to reduce the risk of violence against women in their homes."


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Barrhead is a town in East Renfrewshire, Scotland, south-west of Glasgow on the edge of the Gleniffer Braes. At the 2001 census its population was 19,813.
Historically, most of what is now Barrhead lay within the parish of Neilston, in the county of Renfrew. The name Barrhead comes from the agricultural term Barr meaning long ploughed furrows for cultivation of crops. The original homestead or hamlet lay at the head of barrs and became known as Barrhead.
In 2007, Readers Digest magazine voted East Renfrewshire the second best place in the United Kingdom to raise a family. The magazine visited and cited Barrhead in their decision.[1]
Research Tips


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A flash of sparkle and a pop of contrasting color make this the "must have" bracelet of the season. Metallic Gold crystal beads have been hand strung with hot pink string and are finished with wonderful tassels. Layer them by the armful and mix and match the colors for the most awesome look.
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Sample Itinerary
Four Seasons can help customize itineraries for your group or party to this little-known jewel of the Caribbean, where near-perfect weather, silken sand and the warm, inviting sea await. The following is a sample group itinerary. We invite you to contact the Resort to discuss your needs.
day 1
Arrival at Resort
Begin your stay with an island welcome reception complete with music by local entertainers.
The tropical island reception continues – enjoy dancing on Ocean Terrace, overlooking the sea.
day 2
Your second day in this island paradise starts with an orientation breakfast. Afterwards, explore the Resort's facilities or venture further afield.
- Relax by one of the Resort's pools, work out in the Sports Pavilion or enjoy a treatment at the Spa.
- Visit nearby attractions such as the Horatio Nelson Museum, Nisbet Plantation or Montpelier House.
- Lunch at your leisure.
- Mini America's Cup Regatta – Experience the thrill of racing on a multimillion-dollar boat in the warm blue waters of the Caribbean. This exclusive regatta features two world-famous America's Cup racing yachts, Canada II and True North.
- Enjoy a lobster bake on the 18th Lawn.
- "Night Golf Skills Competition" – Wearing a glowing necklace, play on the illuminated golf course using glow-in-the-dark golf balls.
- The day ends with awards given to the winners of the Mini America's Cup Regatta.
day 3
Breakfast in bed or on your veranda before beginning the day's activities.
- "Island Tour Jeep Rally" – Explore the island and seek out Nevis' exciting secrets: What is goat water? Where is the famous conch shell? Where did Admiral Nelson tie the knot? An awards lunch follows.
- Spend the afternoon hiking, horseback riding or mountain biking.
- Engage in water sports – scuba diving, catamaran sailing, fishing or ocean kayaking.
"Charlestown Street Festival" – A typical market day in Charlestown, the capital of Nevis, is relocated to the Resort for your private enjoyment. Watch local artisans' displays and entertainment, then feast on hors d'oeuvres and a buffet dinner.
day 4
Breakfast at your leisure before beginning the day's activities.
- Sail a catamaran in the warm Caribbean waters.
- Have a beach barbecue in St. Kitts.
- "Beach Olympics" – Compete in the coconut toss, frog man relay, papaya walk, sand sculpting, baker's dozen and beach volleyball.
- "Boat-Building Classic" – Teams receive tools, supplies and expertise necessary to build a seaworthy craft. All boats will be tested in the Caribbean, and prizes awarded.
Dinner at your leisure.
day 5
Begin the day with a tournament-preparation breakfast.
Tournament day – Compete at tennis, golf, croquet, volleyball and bocce.
Winners receive their awards at a gala dinner.
day 6
Four Seasons bids farewell with a sumptuous brunch.


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Ask The Man Panel: 2013 Valentine's Day Lingerie
Every Valentine's Day involves a new barrage of "sexy" lingerie offerings, from lacy teddies to complicated themed costumes. But what do guys really think of these skimpy bedroom outfits? To find out, we asked a bunch of our guy friends to weigh in on six very different V-Day lingerie options and assign each one a sexiness rating from 1-10 (1 being not sexy, 10 being super sexy). Last year's Man Panel revealed that a large portion of the male population is harboring a serious "Fifth Element" fetish. What will this year's answers reveal? Read on for a hilarious peek inside the minds of men!


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Let the wheeling, dealing and selecting begin.
Your heroes pick 15th, barring a trade down (or up), and apparently are going to do something nice to remember the Boogey Man prior to their pick. Good for them.
Here we go.
ps, you can still get your Derek Boogaard T-shirts, proceeds to his charity Defending the Blue Line. See the previous thread.


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A few weeks ago, we asked one senior British government figure whether the uprisings would spread to the Gulf. There are "no problems" yet, he replied.
The language was revealing (when exactly did Britain see democratic change as a problem?) But it is probably to be expected given Britain's investment in the preserving the regional status-quo. Read more


text: First it sounds like a good idea with script part but as anyone here will tell you google is your friend use it. 2 nd to be honest no one wants here how anyone gets (someone else key) might want to read rules of forum cause we all take that subject very offensive and could lead you to a lot of trouble. 3rd The question every one will ask more then likely is did you use airplay or any kind of program like that I have a laptop that has the duo core 1.7 and it takes like 3 min at most with all the commands and stuff to run it.


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Seagate 7200.9 160GB: The Highest Platter Density to Date!by Purav Sanghani on 1/31/2006 10:29 PM EST
- Posted in
- Storage
23 Comments
Back to Article
yacoub - Thursday, February 02, 2006 - linkIf you're going to do an acoustics test, you should make a useful graph instead of that tiny one that makes them all look relatively equivalent in noise output. You should also note any particular sound properties the drive emits. Whine, pitch, vibration, etc. It would be subjective but it's also very important.
If anything, harddrive speed and performance are relatively similar among most drives. The noise output however, is often greatly different, and is especially important if the drive emits noise at a certain frequency that annoys the user. I'd rather wait an extra millisecond for a seek than have to put up with a constant ringing noise or whine from the drive.
You could also at least include a modern Samsung SpinPoint like the P120 SP2004C 200GB drive in your test list instead of the dated Samsungs you use currently. Aside from it having better performance than most of the older Samsungs you list, it also is one of the quietest 7200rpm 3.5" HDs out there - enough that it would certainly stand out in your acoustics test instead of the current lot you test with that leaves a graph that gives a false impression of "oh, looks like all HDs are about the same in noise so I won't bother using that as a purchase consideration."
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200511/SP250...">http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200511/SP250... shows a more useful acoustics test graph and the strongest point of the Samsung SpinPoint SP2004C - its SPL. Anyone building a quiet PC should certainly consider it. I love mine.
SilentPCReview also has a SpinPoint P120 SP2004C review but their site seems to be down at the moment. Reply
RallyMaster - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - linkIs this the ST3160812AS? If so...I have one! Never thought my 95 dollar hard drive was capable of doing so well. Wow. Reply
wharris1 - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - linkyes, this article was initially posted last week. Reply
Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - link> We also benchmarked a couple of these drives in a RAID-0 array as a brief look at RAID performance with results that were pleasing to our eyes.
No improvements in either application or game level load times.
Little improvements in the zip/unzip tests.
What exactly is so pleasing?
Results in vague iPeak tests? Reply
JWalk - Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - linkDing! We have a winner.
Nothing appears to have changed when it comes to real-world applications and RAID-0 performance. Anand himself and Eugene at storagereview.com have settled this numerous times.
If you want to see big synthetic benchmark numbers, run RAID-0. If you want actual real-world results, use a fast single drive. RAID has its place, but not in a RAID-0 array for normal desktop/gaming use. Reply
Ecmaster76 - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - linkDid this one get pulled and put back up or something? Reply
neogodless - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - linkI think the focus on RAID makes the omission of temperature and noise data a strange thing. How does that second drive affect the temperature inside the case, especially if the drives are side by side? How does it affect noise? Reply
patentman - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link"With the announcement and release of Seagate's new 160GB 5400.3 2.5" notebook drive, which utilizes the new perpendicular magnetic recording method"
I think I've said this before, but perpendicular magnetic recording is not new by any stetch of the imagination. There are patents on this technology that were filed in the late 80's. Mainstream products using this technology might be new, but the actual method of recording is, in the computer world, very very old. Reply
PuravSanghani - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - linkPatentman,
Though the patent may have been around since the late 80's, only recently has a hard drive manufacturer been able to implement the technology in their products.
Toshiba was the first to do this with their smaller drives and Seagate is the first do implement this technology in notebook drives. The race is on to see who will introduce desktop drives based on this technology!
Purav Reply
Mr Perfect - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkThe 160GB 7200.9 is not in either of the two temperature charts or the noise chart. The 500GB 7200.9 is there, but no it's little brother. Reply
PuravSanghani - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - linkHey everyone,
The thermal and acoustic results are now in the graphs. We pulled the article last week because of the missing data. Enjoy!
Purav Reply
Mr Perfect - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - linkWell, the thermals arn't anything special, but the accustics are the quietest ones on the cart. :) Might not be important to some, but it's got me interested. Reply
Lord Raiden - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkThats what I was exactly thinking. A mistake? Or was it deliberately done?
In my humble opinion, Seagate has the most respected drivsin the market for so many years so far. I sense some strange shifting of the mood in some reviewers articles around the world favouring the other companies in the reviews. Like Chip, the most selling, most respected magazine has monthly tables with TOP10 drives and seagate scores 9th out of 10 while his scores in particular cateories are comparative with top three every month... i laugh at that table as it is clear evidence of them being not really fair in judgements...
Anandtech is a respectable site and to believe they wasted a whole page talking about temperature where the drive discussed won't appear at all is simply strange.
:-) Maybe they got confused whether to add temperatures of two drives in RAID or make an average out of them... ;-) Reply
Lord Raiden - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkOoops,
... like CHip, the most selling, most respected magazine in my country... Reply
ATWindsor - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkYeah, that was one of the most interesting things to know, I want to now how warm and noisy it is...
Ender17 - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link"We are itching to see the performance of a RAID-0 array with Raptors!"
Didn't Anand already write an article on that back in 2004?
Western Digital's Raptors in RAID-0: Are two drives better than one?
Scarceas - Saturday, February 04, 2006 - linkThey need to compare a single drive not just to a 2 drive raid array, but 3 and 4 drives as well. And then u start getting into controller performance; it can get laborious. Reply
Xenoterranos - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkI think the point is that those tests were done with PATA drives, where a single drive comes close to maxing up the peak theoretical bandidth. With SATA II drives, even two raptors don't come close to the max theoretical bandwidth, so you have a much bigger road to run them on. The point made in that original article still stands: By doing raid-0, you're doubling the chance of data failure and doubling your cost for only a marginal increase. And to most people, loading Quake 10 seconds faster isn't worth 600+ bucks.(now, playing it a 10 fps higher on the other hand...) Reply
andrep74 - Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - link"With SATA II drives, even two raptors don't come close to the max theoretical bandwidth"
Especially since they're each on their own controller. Unless you're putting two drives on the same cable, not even PATA drives can come close to saturating the controllers (where I use the term "close" to mean ~90-95%). Most drives cannot even read at 70MB/sec (unless we're talking about solid-state drives). From buffer to controller is another issue entirely, but that rarely has a noticeable impact on overall performance, much less RAID performance. Reply
Live - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkWell I still believe that the theoretical/syntactical performance is all that really will go up in a Raid-0. Storagereview tester Eugene made this post about Raid-0 in connection to his review of the new 150gb raptor:
If Anandtech now takes the position that sata/sata2 somehow changed the disadvantages/advantages of Raid-0 on the desktop I really think they should do more to prove it then just a few lines in a hard drive review. Does Anand agree with the conclusions about Raid stated in this review? Reply
Orbs - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkIf you have a large, PATA backup drive, then the chance of failure issue really isn't that big a deal, especially with the longer warranties (Raptors are enterprise class products for WD, aren't they?).
The interesting question to me is, does performance increase with 10,000 RPMs, SATA bandwidth AND increased platter density.
I believe the Raptors aren't 3.0 GB/s SATA but they still should have plenty of room to run, and if I remember correctly, the 150 GB Raptors gained their extra space by a higher density platter than the 74 GB version.
Now that's a setup that might be worth $600. It all depends if it lives up to the potential. AnandTech, let's get a SATA RAID-0 Shoot Out going!! Reply
Orbs - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linkOh, and in general, great articles lately :) Reply
DS Delaroca - Friday, January 27, 2006 - linki think he means the new raptors WD1500ADFD 150GB on a raid setup. Reply


text:
This has been the craziest summer we have had in a long time, which is why you haven't heard from me for a couple months. We don't usually vacation in the summer, but we get involved in one or two extra activities per a kid. If you take this times six kids, it makes for one busy household.
The insanity started on June 3 with me going to Bureau Valley High School every morning from 7 to 9 a.m. for drivers' education. This required me to wake up in the morning at 5 a.m., so I could be out the door by 6:30 a.m. On many days, I had to go straight from drivers' ed to work at the cafe. I know this sounds like no big deal, but it made for very long days. This was my first experience with formal school. I am used to doing work for homeschool, but the homework and tests we got daily were new to me. I found it funny that when I had a question on my homework and asked another adult for their input, they usually got the questions wrong. Shortly after the class started and we took a test, we received our permits. I love driving, and even more, I love that my siblings never get to sit in the front seat anymore.
My oldest brother Justus spent the month of June at Soldiers and Sailors Park practicing for his part in Festival 56's "MacBeth." He had to go nearly every day and has been having a blast. He has met many new people coming from all over the country. But he has yet to be asked for his autograph (hint hint). Opening night was June 30, and the show is fantastic. It has lots of sword fighting, action and awesome costumes. I know he would love it if you went to see him. The show is every Sunday and Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. throughout July. By the way, he is killed on stage, which is probably every 13-year-old boy's dream.
My middle brother, Milo, 11, doesn't really get talked about much in our family. This past month he achieved a big accomplishment by earning his purple belt in karate. For those of you that are wondering, this is the order of belts; White, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown and black. Milo has been in karate for three years. Every day he does push-ups, sit-ups and different routines he needs to learn. They are called Katas. These involve lots of complicated movements with his arms and legs. I don't know how he remembers it all. Great job, Milo!
The highlight of my little brother's and sister's (Simeon and Faustina) summer has been daily art camp with Kathy Ballard and Jill Marti. It is held at the Prairie Arts Center, and they go for an hour each day to paint, draw, work with clay and have snacks. They did this last year and begged all year to go back. Those of you who know about my brother Simeon will love this story. He built a tank — I think it was a Panzer — out of clay, and it blew up in the kiln. He was a little sad, but we convinced him it was cool. (Milo also goes and loves it, but he already has a paragraph in my column to himself.)
My baby sister, Patsy, isn't enrolled in any extra activities but has been busy riding in the car while my mom drives us everywhere. She has also had fun catching lightning bugs, playing corn monster, swimming and eating popsicles until they drip all over her hands and feet. She loves to be outside and takes her job of letting out and putting away the kitties daily very seriously. She also loves collecting the eggs, and we finally got her to stop poking her finger into each egg to see how hard she could push on the shell before it cracks.
I hope you are all having a wonderful summer and are enjoying this beautiful weather. Summer can be a busy time, but remember to stop and enjoy the little things that make it special.
Amelia Bystry, 15, resides in rural Princeton. You can contact Amelia firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
See images from Himawari-8 in the new satellite viewer
This demonstration product is most suitable for people
with fast internet connection and high data allowance.
Low-definition satellite images
Satellite View Selection
20:30 AWST on Wednesday 23 August 2017 | Cloud/surface composite, Australia
Images from Japan Meteorological Agency satellite Himawari 8 via Bureau of Meteorology.
IDY28000 Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology Bureau National Operations Centre Satellite Notes for 0000UTC Chart on 24 August 2017 Issued at 11:31 am EST Thursday on 24 August 2017 The cold front that affected the southeast yesterday is now over the Tasman Sea. The cloud associated with it has an area of embedded thunderstorms. Low cloud in the wake of this front is over parts of the southeast. Cloud over southeast Queensland is due to a surface trough. A middle level cloud band extends across central Western Australia. This is associated with a jetstream in the upper levels of the atmosphere.


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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - It will be at least another week before a 13-year-old boy will learn if a judge will dismiss the murder charge against him.
Last month, lawyers for Cristian Fernandez asked Judge Mallory Cooper to throw out the first-degree murder charge because Florida sentencing guidelines require anyone convicted of that crime to face either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that it's unconstitutional for juvenile offenders to get mandatory life sentences.
Prosecutors say that the old Florida law that called for a 25-year-to-life sentence could apply, but defense attorneys say Fernandez should not be tried under the current law because they can't advise their client what kind of sentence he could face.
Fernandez, who was 12 when he was arrested and charged with killing his 2-year-old half brother, was due in court for another hearing Monday, but that was postponed until Oct. 15.
Fernandez also faces a sexual abuse charge involving an attack on a 5-year-old half brother.
Last month, Judge Cooper threw out the statements Fernandez gave to Jacksonville police in both the murder and sexual battery cases, ruling a boy that age without parent or legal counsel could not understand his Miranda rights and he did not understand the consequences when he waived them.
While charged as an adult, Fernandez is being kept at the juvenile detention facility.
The sentencing hearing for Fernandez' mother, Biannela Susana, has been pushed back again to Jan. 8. She has pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in the death of her 2-year-old son and faces 13-30 years in prison.
Copyright 2012 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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The Baltimore County Police Department is investigating a crash in Randallstown Thursday night that left one person deceased.
On May 1 at 10:51 p.m., Baltimore County Police and Fire personnel responded to Liberty Road and Chapman Road for a serious accident involving a pedestrian.
The initial investigation into this incident has indicated that a pedestrian wearing dark clothing was crossing a darkened area of Liberty Road from the south side to the north side. A BMW was traveling westbound on Liberty Road and struck the pedestrian when the pedestrian stepped into the vehicle's path. The pedestrian was thrown into an eastbound lane of Liberty Road and struck a second time by a Mitsubishi Eclipse traveling eastbound on Liberty Road.
The BMW remained at the scene. The driver of the Mitsubishi Eclipse continued home, and then contacted police.
The pedestrian was declared deceased at the scene by medical personnel. He has been identified as 18-year-old Caleb Aaron Moulton of the 3900 block of Noyes Circle, 21133.
This incident remains under investigation by the Baltimore County Police Department Crash Team. When the Crash Team is done their investigation, the report will be presented to the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office. The State's Attorney's Office will review the report and decide if any charges will be brought.