I long to hear the Zelda upgrade music.. DUH DA DUH DA! or why don't NV and AMD open up to more than 4 gpu cores?

As we approach a new era of gpu usage, and gpu scaling becomes tighter and better than ever before.. I think now is the time for Nvidia and AMD to start planning for the next year or two to release our cards from the 4 card restriction.. they have both done an excellent job this last ten years, congratz kudos and fanfare deserved!

now we are *firmly* in the 2010's.. time to look ahead to the next few short years, and I feel opening up the protocol to however people like use their hardware and putting the driver to work instead is the smart way to go.

DUH DA DUH DA!

more powerful cards  yes.. thank you thank you yes! but also a choice about how we wish to assemble our system.. its smarter for you to open up mid-range cards.. why? if you don't take their money someone else will with another component.. 4 way 5 way.. as many ways as motherboard manufacturer/chipset manufacturer can fit on a board, as many ways as customers like.

Imagine a horse, a thoroughbred, he can run the track in record time, but a trap brace can go much faster.. can be funded over time, and do not need to be thoroughbreds .. I would like to own two thoroughbreds, but money does not allow, and as such is a pipe dream, which comes with a luxury yacht and two Filipina models and it's this kind of thinking that may be holding back the industry, 'make an elite' with price points..so another company from another component field receives my money.

peace

Dava

Inde AA and Major Publisher AAA.. or Sagat vs Ryu

David Shaw
3 April · Edited


It's the hip thing these days to have a few inde games under your belt but If you are a AAA title only guy, I personally think thats okay too, coz you do what you enjoy!.. however I do enjoy inde games and have a few inde titles in my steam list myself, I have two categories, Inde and Inde AA.. the AA are the ones I felt were the best titles, and that's what I'd like to share in case you missed them. .. but rem with inde titles always youtube them first. word to the wise there.


'Nightsky'. It's a chill out puzzle game. atmospheric. level driven.

'The Stanley Parable'. anti-story within a story that never ends that's actually an anti-story.. that might be a story. narration driven.

'Splice'. DNA puzzle game. level driven.

'Kairo'. I'm new to Kairo..but I think the idea is excellent. exploration driven.


Couple of semi-indes too


Black Mesa. a remake of Half Life. available on Desura. ..just wow! .. I'm not HL fan, for Valve I'm a Portal guy, but this is 100% prime steak for free guys.


..did you also know Sniper Ghost series is ..inde?


Digressing slightly.. there has been offenders in the past.. EA.. who used to claim all physical media as their own, yes including the stuff you bought from them.. you were 'renting'. Ubisoft.. ooft! I don't know what your religious preferences are guys.. but I'm a believer and I don't expect to pay £40 to be insulted. y'see its not a game makers job to ridicule me or my beliefs no matter what they personally think of them.. why? because they make you pay for the game first, not decide whether you want to pay after.


To note though, since Origin.. EA have become much more friendly to the community.. they are giving away Dead Space right now for free on Origin.

And Ubisoft have yet to apologize


So why shouldn't people look elsewhere. and shake the foundations of every self serving company? every company *COUGH* CAPCOM *COUGH* that doesn't do any dev work and skates it to starving low level dev team for buttons. IP skating is a community crime of which Capcom, now pumps out as standard.. that they don't invest any money in their IP..how on EARTH they expect to grow their dying franchise portfolio, is beyond me.


So even if you love AAA, which I do too.. there are more reasons than you might think for checking out inde games..


Dava

Amd Vs Intel Benchmarks..the last of my OCN blogs..

Originally posted (Christmas 2011) on my former OCN blog. different time, different place, different thoughts.




......




After years of trying to like AMD's plucky 'do it on the cheap' attitude

I finally came to a conclusion today... i don't think they can cut it. i have my own long story in slow understanding of this, which i won't bore you with, neither the clich'e of starting a thread to whine about AMD vs Intel.




just to put it simply, I like Intels now. Intel's seem to do what I want, when I want, not be singing a wee song while doing the washing up. the little sparkler (candle) in my heart wants to defend AMD, but y'know just because i can afford it on my budget doesn't make it good. i can admit that to myself now, seeing how an AMD six core was beaten by a Intel quad. also 'yknow




3 is the magic number..ohh yes it is, ..its the magic number!.




Why didn't AMD bring out a range in 3Ghz back in the day? why because i think they couldn't ..  they don't know how to count to 3 (jk). their hz rating must be off or everyone in the whole I.T. community must be an intel fanboy lolololol 6 cores really?? you couldn't beat him with six cores? ..what do you need, an uzi*???




there are people in the eastern block given enough incentive could beat AMD with two years, a tin can, and some copperwire.




Intel are like the extra stick of ram in the slot. AMD won't ruin the Warranty on your PSU.




just a wee rant to get this off my chest, sorry. feel better now.







if you like AMD i didn't mean to offend you, i was just sick of pretending. not trying to be heavy.




peace




Dava




*@AMD was it because your brother had broken out of jail and your missus was pregnant, so you had a lot on your mind? W.O.E were you thinking?










(Updated spelling and grammar / 05/Aug/12/ back 'into' AMD just now.. very embarrassing though 8-cores being beat by still 4 cores.. even their own)




and again on 11/12/2012.










Got the new Vishera..erm.. im in lurvvv! wow.. some stupid thoughts I always had on the amd vs intel.. I had always thought AMD did capacity over intels speed. vboxing is easier with an amd proc. not by much, but man those cores really help with both stability and be more organised. this pixie magic, erm i mean Vishera, with flatten i7 if we work out how to clock 6ghz. in other words kik az! Im not going back to the 'yahyak nahhgg i hate amd/intel fanboiz' rubbish.. i like that people care a bit less about that these days.. its nice to have peace.. but also some and i stress the word 'friendly' rivalry. :)







-----------------------------------------------------


First time I spoke to Rob .. :)


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WeRNothiNg 12/16/12 at 2:28pm Very accurate analogy. AMD is not a bad CPU, don't get me wrong, but it is like driving a Saturn. No one wants to, it's just all they can afford......




dava4444 12/16/12 at 10:39pm Thank you for your comment, I feel *FINALLY* with the Vishera AMD have came back on form, Phenom was a nice series for gaming, the first gen FX, was no upgrade, Intel are still ahead in many respects, but MAANN, I have a Vishera and let me tell you, this is quite a chip! and is clipping intels top heels.




capacity and price vs speed and operability, I VBoxed for a hobby for many years, not any more, but man, I would take AMD's stability over Intel's sluggish vbox performance, especially with these new 8 core chips.




sorry, maybe that was OTT, ..it's just cos AMD guys ain't get'in respect back over the Vishera, most Intel guys prolly think it's like old FX, I guess. but man it's not.




peace




Dava




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 3:51am What's the product number on this cpu you are speaking of? As they have many Vishera models. Unfortunately I am one of those who cannot afford a Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition, which is $999 plus shipping of course, but am going to have to upgrade soon. I am currently running a Core2Quad Q8300, 6 GB PC2 6400, Invidia GeForce 8800 GTX OC, on a ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard. It has primarily been used for media, but I do play quite a bit of games as well. It will probably serve my movie and music purpose perfectly for some time now, but I believe by the next generation of games I will be forced to upgrade whether I have the money or not. I have always been an intel guy, but I think if it came down to it, I would buy an AMD before I went without online gaming.




dava4444 12/17/12 at 4:34pm I have the FX8350 which about $210 stateside. it's AMD's top of the range AM3+ processor. also the current gen GTX's are pretty amazing, the GT640 is like a GTX560ti for less than half the price, there are a few models, but one of those is very very similar to the 560ti, and the only difference's are the 128bit bus and DDR3 memory. for $100 bucks that's not back for 384:32:16 that's 384 cores. What's your budget?




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 4:57pm I cant seem to find a AM3+ motherboard with PCIe 3.0. That can't be right.




dava4444 12/17/12 at 5:11pm AMD doesn't have PCIE 3.0 yet. but it doesn't really impact you until you hit four cards anyway.. the ROG CHV (Crosshair formula V) has better lanes for the AM3+ socket.. really thinking about getting one myself so I can 3SLI. it's the only board that supports 3SLI.




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 5:12pm Ok, this is something I put together rather quickly, but a base price rig with upgradable CPU options.

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard, ASUS GTX 560 TI graphics, 16gb pc3 12800, and AMD FX-6100 3.3Ghz 6 core($104). This was I could upgrade for the Vishera when the price drops a bit, but should be happy with this setup for quite sometime shouldn't I? I just don't want to buy an AM3 board and be stuck with no upgradability options other than video. The grand total for this would only be $550 plus shipping.




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 5:18pm How do I fix the PMs? Says I am limited to 2 per day!




dava4444 12/17/12 at 7:55pmYes WeR man thats sounds good stuff! you should be able to game on that np. and yes save for the upgrade, smart. amd @panchoeltroll yes I had the ASRock version of that board (I think) mATX nice board.




WeRNothiNg 12/18/12 at 3:00pm Well, still wont let me send a PM. I do have steam, but it wont let me add friends as I have not bought any games through them. All the retail games I own are through origin. Do you have Origin?




dava4444 12/18/12 at 7:38pm yes, same username as before

How to Stack A Deck of Cards.. or whyohwhy can't a Titan-Z fallout the sky for me?

Hi Guys

I'm glad to see you guys becoming regulars, you're support is appreciated.

What is a GPU core?

A GPU core is made up of shader cores (USC) Texture mapping cores (TMC) and Rendering cores. The one to *really* pay attention to is the shader cores.. let's take for instance, a fav of myself and Rob's.. a Nvidia GTX 660Ti.. it has 1344 shader cores.. it also has 112 texture mapping cores and 24 rendering cores.. depending what you do with these parts, they can go from being essential to being window dressing, except the shaders, they always play a big part in what you are doing.

For example, if you were playing a 2D side scrolling game but it has many many effects, realistic fire, realistic waves/water, the texture mapping cores wouldn't be doing much, but I *think* the shaders and rendering cores would.but I find this all hard to translate to you guys as I don't know the inner workings of SMX's that well.

What is a 'good' graphics card?

Well as with most things computer that depends on what you will use it for. there is no use buying a Titan-Z to just play flappy birds and pokemon on emulators. any card *just* below mid-range can do those things comfortably and sometimes passively cooled so silently.

But you want to game right?? with cutting edge visuals and cutting edge engines! .. so yes, that takes a lot of Mister Ed's under the bonnet!

You have many options, asin~ if you are reading this you already know,
but.. 'biggest and best or divide and conquer'?

Rob's two 660ti's will give a 780ti a run for it's money, they are (basically) equal and Rob has got to enjoy that for the last year or so..ahead of when the 780ti came out. He got extra time enjoying his system, he got to choose how he would like to fund his gaming, becuase he bought one then later bought another.

Downsides are this is a more noisy way to game unless you go water.
if you use *excellent* headsets primo noise cancelling etc..then this problem goes away. SLI (and crossfire) has been known in the past to give people problems..but personally after many years SLI'ing I have not run in to a problem that wasn't caused by me ever.

Going SOLO
1 card to rule them all, etc.. This is probably the most expensive way to do things, instead of putting together a few high mid-range cards. but what you get is something simple and elegant in both it's power and it's beauty.

The prestige factor of even owning a top of the range from either AMD or Nvidia is HUGE, and others will come round your house like you own a ferrari and want to see.

..and yes it can totally game. ..but that brings me to the CPU aspect of this adventure.

It's no use buying a high end graphics card if your CPU stops the GPU at the front door everytime it just wanted to be nice and go and make you a coffee, CPU standing there thinking 'what is a coffee?'.
Sorry.. I mean, the data needs to be able to 'flow' and if it can't people call that a bottleneck.. imagine a river the river is data, if there is a narrow point along the river the water finds it harder to pass and so the water slows.

with single cards and many CPU's this is no problem, as long as you have 4 cores, you *should* be good to go.

RAM and textures
simply put.. the more Video RAM you have, the larger the texture = the quicker the load. bit-bus plays a part in this too and also AA.


To wrap up

IF I could.. I would watercool 4 GTX 670's (4GB) or 680's (4GB) and stomp all over a Titan for less than half the cost.. my 3 660Ti's will give a Titan Black a run for it's money, I lose out on high textures, with 2GB of VRam but I have more shader cores.

I have 21 Kepler SMX's the Titan Black has 15, the Titan-Z has 30.

the only downside is the extra noise and set up time.. but if I have a card failure, I can continue with the remaining cards.

sorry if any of that was boastful, I'm just so pleased with the 660ti's and think many would find a great advantage in both cost and usability that I feel gushing to tell you guys.

hope some of this made sense..

Dava :)

Edit:

The 660ti has a 3 card limit to SLI. the 670/680 is 4. 690 is 2 card limit, becuase it already IS two 680's combined on one card.

I'd rather have a bigger byte than a 'bit'..or ISP lingo and bingo

Hi guys

a few years ago now, I blogged on the topic of ISP terminology. I thought I would re-hash this for anyone who was interested. hash browns, bigger bytes, queue at mcdonalds, queue in servers for data loads from the ISP mmm.

When you buy a lovely BigMac one of the nice fresh ones, in an area/place you feel confidant has had no tempering, up market, the place might be ten years old, but as you sit it is so clean you feel like you are the first and only one ever sit in that booth.

You were told on TV in an advert, BigMac's for sale '300 Guineas'  you supposed it was some kind of dismissible joke, no one uses 'Guineas' nowadays they were only used in american colonies and in the UK in the 1700's. You go along with your £/$3 thinking 'what a great deal!', the restaurant is packed with slightly annoyed customers, but happy never-the-less. You approach the counter and ask for a BigMac and ask about the deal, The assistant says 'yes sir, that'll be 300 guineas' you reply how much is that in pounds(or dollars)?' he replies 'oh that's 5 pounds' you say 'erm that's not a great deal, its the same as your regular rates.. .. >:( ..:( ..' and he replies 'well since you are here and hungry, do you still want it?' sadly you are hungry and reply..':( ... :) okay'.  ....  this is just my imagination, but done to illustrate a point.

ISP's have an old way of counting speeds as a marketing tool to increase shopping confidence. They count in megabits per second, kilobits per second.. not *bytes* which is the more common counting method for everyone else. To explain, there is 8 bits in 1 byte, so a 20 megabit per second, is actually a 2.5 megabyte connection.. but there are many more factors that determine your true speed.

1. How far you are away from the ISP server, if they use traffic shaping, something i feel should be tolerated, but monitored by the government, that ISP's are not just cutting us for little to no reason, it has to be justified, and if not, why not? ..why not increase infrastructure to meet the demand you said you could prove to people you have now locked to a contract?? that costs money and if you were willing to enter a contract you should be proving the agreed service or have a just reason why you occasionally (1 hour a day) limit their internet.

2. loads on servers, much like traffic shaping, but not controlled by the ISP, like the old told tale of the world cup, and everyone* when to put the kettle on for a cup of tea and there was a blackout, too much demand all at the one time.

3. home networking ability. simply your ethernet/card/wifi or its drivers is not good enough to soak up all that data quickly enough.. harddrive/ssd plays a big part in this too, where the data is being stored has to be able to write the data quickly enough from the download.. slow drive can = slow download.

4. finally the ISP's themselves and their server policies, some but not all reserve bandwidth in case things get 'choppy/hectic'.. this bandwidth pretty much just sits there doing nothing, and unless Elvis comes back and Yahoo news or a Facebook viral video are first to report, I guess it's only used to bounce youtube around a little to bolster your bandwidth.


buuuut.. its this thing where.. they shouldn't be using an old measurement to impress people.

Story
I recently switched to Sky after years and years with Virgin Media.. they did a *very* bad thing to me 2 years ago, and I think they must have some the worst staff policies of any company out there. in 2011, they sold me a V+ box, I had talked it out with VM salesman over the phone..he had called me, its was £100 over three months (2 and a half), I said yeah sounds good..but that's not what happened, it £200 over 2 months, I had my internet cut off in a bad time in my life, I had broke up with my ex and was quite lonely, I was relying on the internet to keep in touch with friends as I don't have a car and they live far enough away thats it's not cool to ask them to come for me. I phoned VM up being a long standing customer I thought: 'I have put loads of money in their bank over the years surely they will give me an extension until I get paid two weeks later'. they didn't. and I was alone at already very isolated point in my life... I decided not to pay next time either I was furious at them at all the loyalty I had showed them for them to not even care when I needed them.. I rung them up and said I wanted to clear my bill and leave.. they told me with getting the V+ box I had renewed my contract and could not leave for another 2 years.. I had already told them I did not want it and wanted to return the box..which I did 2 weeks later.

I never forgot that..I wanted out of the painful reminder of what they had helped do to me in a bad time in my life..

So in October.. I phoned them up and said my contract is up and I want to leave. they danced around this and it took 3 separate phone calls to end my contract with them.. at one point a customer manager came on and tried her hardest to talk me out it.. I even told her the story above and she didn't want to let me go .. what a B*!! try to convince me by saying 'standard policy' hen you were doomed from before you lifted the phone but c'mon, not even trying here, except when it came to scare tactics.. oh she was good at that.. fine this! and fine that! but I held my ground. heartless B*.
I gave her 'laldy' she heard exactly what I thought of VM for doing this to 6 year (in 2011) customer.


when all was said and done I spoke to another gent a nice guy who wrapped it all for me/us. he even sent £13 refund for the end of a bill cycle.. I also felt he felt sorry about they way I had been treated, but that might have been my imagination.

I had good experiences with VM too, like when I wrote them some feedback in 2009 about a separate thing I don't remember, I mentioned I had a got one of their london call centers and the londoner had been abusive to me..they phoned me up and asked how i thought this could be avoided and I asked for scottish call centers..i think they did this, as a year later while calling them, I got through to a wow.. scottish voice. and the londoners 'I can't understand you.. speak english! do.you.know.english.?' seemed to fade away.

wow this is all just pouring out..should have I just continued with the article?.. I mean you get it right?


Dava





*(this was supposedly in London in the 60's or 70's IIRC)

FTR: VLog Information.

I am not a number!! .. or Apple discovers a new kind of isolation.

Hi guys

Just wanted to share a few thoughts on the new iCloud locking feature..

Firstly, yes I recently bought one of these iCloud locked iPhones on eBay, and yes I unlocked it after a week of trying..but I had many thoughts during that week and since.

In case you didn't know, with the release of iOS 7, Apple now tries to 'police' their phones, with the assumption that whomever has the phone in their possession should *only* be the first person that activated the phone with their iCloud account. ..is it just me or have you also instantly seen the huge fallibility in this idea??

in case you didn't, let me share what I instantly realized, people who activated the phone could sell the phone legally, then illegally claim on the insurance (home or phone or work). Not to mention the old caveat, that many users would not *really* understand what a device is, never mind them know to remove it from *some* account 'Apple made them get' to use their phone.

For these reasons, but not only, the morality of iCloud locking is *VERY* fallible.

Now to ulterior motives by Apple themselves, by doing this they push the price of (non locked) second hand units very high and force people to consider buying a new iPhone... however, they may have failed to see how high even some of the cheapest Android phone specs are. I can buy a Chinese *high quality* phone, for around £130/£170..top specs, higher than even the iPhones in many regards, be-lying the fingerprint reader. and have a great experience.

Have they cut the stalk to spite the goose? .. they could disappear from commercial view.. as the grassroots of ALL the traffic of commerce comes from resale of a brand product, as an introduction to a first time user.

So first time users according to this logic are also criminals, if they unknowingly buy an iCloud locked iPhone/iDevice, I am not a first timer, as I have owned iPhones before, it didn't occur to me that a phone might be stolen.. but am I a criminal?? noooo.

There are many scenarios I could use to defend myself, but the two above are the most likely, as by the law of averages, they have already happened. I find it hard to believe I should lack such faith in high reputation sellers on eBay..so.. WHO is APPLE to make me question the eBay community??

Apple are not very smart in this ham fisted approach to security, once a phone was attempted to be used, they should have asked for whomevers Apple ID, that presently has the phone and talked it out with them what happened..but no, they do this clumsy blind everyone is locked approach to security.

They use the IMEI number as a locking tool.. this number is now registered to a person, pretty much forever, if they die, forget they have an account, since they only used it once to sign up, or if this was a work phone in a company that went bust, and the boss needed the money (Reg'd to a former employee), again not really understanding what iCloud was, not wanting to contact the former employee.

In the UK, I can drop this phone off at the police station and if no one claims it or the police cannot find the original owner, I can 'legally' own the phone I recently purchased on eBay within 3 months.
What does Apple do then? it is no longer the property of the former owner and IMEI becomes mine, with all related features also becoming mine...including iCloud activation.

I am not a number.. I resent being locked to a IMEI.. I don't think of it as an intellectual security device, as a way to catch criminals.. when added with iCloud, it's a marketing tool.. 'your phone will never be lost or stolen, or we will disable it' .. they track you, they collect information on your whereabouts, they resent re-sale of iDevices.

if not then why?...

..they didn't contact me, but if they had and been intermediary between myself and the first owner, this all would have been easy, a few emails back and forth, so I know the first owner is genuine, wants the phone back and so I get the price I paid on eBay back.. call it a 'finders fee'. then this would have been amicable and not embarrassing. if they have replaced the phone and see I am a genuine person, then they maybe willing to release the IMEI to me which Apple could walk them through if need be.

A sense a fairness in the second hand market is what Apple is lacking.. I hope they see sense in this.

My debit card has stop working in iTunes/Apple.. coincidence?

I am not a criminal, I am not a number.

peace

Dava