Fozzik
06-07-2005, 08:38 PM
Over on the OVF, Vekna started a thread much like the one Alodar started over here a while ago. I thought I would grab his original post and respond at length here in my little home. ;)
Here's his original thread at the OVF - linky (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=14989)
And here's Vekna's questions -
Everyone knows how fast the computer changes. Every day something new is happening.
I know enough about a computer to build one, but I have been working so much the last 6 months that I feel out of touch.
I am a bit foggy on the difference between SLI and PCI / PCI Express and if any of it really is better then a simple AGP card. Are two cards better than one? A little better? Twice as good? I saw recently NVidia has a card out with 512MB ram on it. Sounds awesome, is it?
Ok, SLI stands for Scaleable Link Interface. It's a technology that was original developed by 3DFX back in the day, and is meant to be a way of using two graphics cards to render the same 3D scene. Back when 3DFX did it, "SLI" stood for Scan Line Interleave...and that's exactly what it did. Each graphics chip drew half the lines in each frame, one card handling the even numbered lines, the other handling the odd numbered ones.
That was then, and several years ago 3DFX was in big trouble and was bought by Nvidia. Nvidia kept some of the ideas and talent around from those days, in fact some of the recent GPU designs from Nvidia include the work of some old 3DFX engineers and designers. Nvidia decided to do a dual-GPU solution again, but this time they are handling it a little differently, and technology has improved a huge amount to allow for a much better dual-GPU implementation.
Nvidia's new Scalable Link Interface connects two PCI-Express Graphics cards using a hardware link between them.
EDIT: fixed the modes available - someone on the official forums pointed out my mistake, it looks like only two modes are available, not three.
Two modes can be selected in software... having the cards render alternating frames (one does the even frames, the other does odd), or each card doing half the frame (top/bottom split). Each of these modes can be manually selected, and will give different results depending on the game.
As I mentioned, SLI will only work with PCI-Express cards, and further, because they need an actual hardware link (a small daughter board that plugs into the top of both cards), you actually have to buy two cards that have the connector for SLI. This means that only current-generation (and next-gen when it arrives) are capable of SLI.
ATI has been quite frustrated by Nvidia's lock on the dual-GPU market, and has announced their own version. It's called "crossfire", and is different in several ways from SLI. ATI will offer a "master" card for crossfire, which will include an additional chip on it for handling communication...which means you will be able to use any current X800 card in a dual-GPU config. Crossfire requires an external connection between the two cards (which means a cable that plugs into a DVI connector on each card). ATI will offer an additional dual-rendering mode, called tiling, where the scene will be broken up into a checkerboard and each card will render alternate squares in each frame. ATI will also be offering some additional "kickers" in their software...They will have new very heavy anti-aliasing modes that will only work with dual cards in a Crossfire setup.
At the moment, it looks like Both ATI and Nvidia will require you to purchase a motherboard using their own motherboard chipset if you want to use their dual-GPU technology. This may change (especially since ATI's motherboard chipsets suck), but for the time being, if you want SLI, get an Nvidia motherboard and graphics cards. If you want Crossfire... bleh. Maybe wait for a while. ;)
I am partial to AMD
I can see we're going to be great friends. :D
I'm kidding...
sort of.
because I have always heard that when it comes to gaming, AMD was best.(not to mention cost vs. Pentium)
Since the release of the Athlon 64, there is no contest. AMD is absolutely the best for gaming. Although prices are becoming much more competitive between the two companies, you're right. AMD still generally offers more performance for the dollar (and for the watt, and for the degree C ;) )
I know Pentium is better in most everything else, but I use my computer for gaming and internet and simple XLS programs that a commodore 128 could handle with ease.
Actually, Pentium4's are no longer better in just about anything (now that dual core chips are out). It was true for a time that the Netburst architecture of the Pentium4 was well-suited for media encoding, and the Pentium4's Hyperthreading helped out a little for applications that were multi-threaded... but with the release of dual-core, AMD now takes the lead in every category. With the exception of only a few applications, the Dual-core Athlon X2 is an absolute Intel killer (with a price tag to match *wink*).
I want to rebuild my system.
amd2800 asus mobo
1g dual channel 2700
Geforce5700LE oc'd
I'll bet you my shirt that the system you just quoted will play Vanguard on low settings. Just in case you felt like using it as a second box or something.
AMD x2 the way to go? Does dual core help? Does the 2nd core kick in when the main one is being tapped out? or do the programs have to be designed to use the 2nd core?
As I mentioned above, if you don't mind the price tag (they will probably come down in price a bit by the end of the year)... the X2 is a monster, and worth getting. One very positive thing about AMD's X2 chips is that they will work in most socket-939 motherboards with only a BIOS update. If you didn't feel like spending that much money ($550 and up) right now on a processor, you could get a socket-939 single-core Athlon 64, and upgrade later to an X2.
Windows has been designed for a long time to take advantage of two processors (although it has been refined recently to work a bit better across the board than it used to). Dual-core looks like two processors to Windows, so it treats it the same way. Multitasking will be smoother, programs will be more responsive, and you'll be able to do things that are pretty much unheard-of on a single core chip (like running a graphically intense game and encoding a DVD in the background).
With that said, those are the small benefits of dual-core. The big benefits come when a single application is written to put multiple CPU-intensive threads in flight at the same time, utilizing both processor cores to get its job done faster. Right now, programs like Photoshop and some encoding software will do this...but most applications and games do not. This will be changing within the next year, and by the end of 2006 there will probably be a decent numbers of games that will utilize multiple cores to get performance increases in AI, physics, animation, and other systems. Vanguard may very well utilize CPU-multithreading (we've heard a rumor) for its animation system, and maybe for other things too.
Hyper transport ? what is it, do I need it ?
Hypertransport is the high-speed serial bus that AMD designed...it is in use as a chip-to-chip interconnect on motherboards, as well as a multi-purpose bus for the Athlon 64. In the case of the Athlon 64 and Opteron processors, Hypertransport buses serve as connections between the CPU and the rest of the system, and also between CPUs in a multi-processor system. It is scaleable (can be increased in speed and width to allow for HUGE bandwidth in the future), and will be able to supply plenty of bandwidth for the purposes it serves for quite a while.
Is Pentium faster since it can use ddr2 and the AMD can't?
Because of the differences in the way a Pentium 4 and an Athlon 64 are designed, the speed of the RAM can not be directly compared. It is even more complicated because the Athlon 64 has its memory controller on-die, instead of on the motherboard northbridge like most other desktop processors.
DDR2 at high clock rates does supply more bandwidth, but at the moment the Pentium 4 needs that extra bandwidth to stay competitive. Because of difference in design, the Athlon 64 works very well with the slower DDR RAM.
Next year, as AMD moves to faster dual-core chips and beyond (quad core is coming :D ), they will be switching over to support for DDR2 RAM.
At the moment, the DDR2 on the Intel side does not make the overall platform "faster" than an AMD computer. In fact, the advantage in RAM speed on the Intel side is very much countered by the increased latency of DDR2 RAM, and the decreased latency of AMD's on-die memory controller. Memory speed is only part of the picture...response time is also very important.
Is dual hard drives in a raid set up better than a (scsi?) 10k rpm? Does raid or scsi help on games?(currently using 7200rmp single drive with 8mb cache)
RAID is pretty much a flop from a desktop performance standpoint. It gives you basically nothing. If you want to do a RAID 1 setup for data security, go for it...but RAID 0 is a waste of money.
SCSI 10k drives, in fact any faster-rotating drive, is going to offer lower seek times and somewhat improved performance. Other things like Native Command Queuing (part of the SATA2 spec) and cache size can be important, but nothing overcomes a faster rotation speed.
With that said, a 7200RPM drive with 8MB of cache is going to perform just fine. If you have the money and want a decent boost in game loading performance, I'd recommend a Western Digital Raptor 10k SATA drive. If you need the space though, some of the 7200 RPM drives with 8 or 16MB of cache are not far behind the Raptor in most benchmarks.
Does a separate sound card take any load off the CPU?
Yes. Especially with newer cards like the Audigy 2 ZS. I always recommend a soundcard for a gaming system...onboard sound (regardless of how fancy) almost always uses the CPU for sound processing
EDIT: added a bit more.
Depending on the effects being used and the particular sound chip installed on the motherboard, the CPU utilization can be quite high. Sound cards are pretty cheap, and are now pretty much all alone on the PCI bus. The performance increase might not be huge...but it will give you some free CPU cycles to be used elsewhere.
Which is better nforce chipset or Via ?
Nforce4 is superior to the Via K8T890.
At some point in the future things might shift, so never good to just say one company is always going to be better. Right now though... features and stability and speed all go to Nvidia.
I am sure there are other questions I could think of, but you get the idea. If anyone has any suggestions or explanations remember I want to build 100% gaming machine. Anything else I do, I'm sure a gaming machine could handle.
Thank for any clarifications / suggestions in advance.
Keep the questions coming! I live and breathe this stuff. =)
Here's his original thread at the OVF - linky (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=14989)
And here's Vekna's questions -
Everyone knows how fast the computer changes. Every day something new is happening.
I know enough about a computer to build one, but I have been working so much the last 6 months that I feel out of touch.
I am a bit foggy on the difference between SLI and PCI / PCI Express and if any of it really is better then a simple AGP card. Are two cards better than one? A little better? Twice as good? I saw recently NVidia has a card out with 512MB ram on it. Sounds awesome, is it?
Ok, SLI stands for Scaleable Link Interface. It's a technology that was original developed by 3DFX back in the day, and is meant to be a way of using two graphics cards to render the same 3D scene. Back when 3DFX did it, "SLI" stood for Scan Line Interleave...and that's exactly what it did. Each graphics chip drew half the lines in each frame, one card handling the even numbered lines, the other handling the odd numbered ones.
That was then, and several years ago 3DFX was in big trouble and was bought by Nvidia. Nvidia kept some of the ideas and talent around from those days, in fact some of the recent GPU designs from Nvidia include the work of some old 3DFX engineers and designers. Nvidia decided to do a dual-GPU solution again, but this time they are handling it a little differently, and technology has improved a huge amount to allow for a much better dual-GPU implementation.
Nvidia's new Scalable Link Interface connects two PCI-Express Graphics cards using a hardware link between them.
EDIT: fixed the modes available - someone on the official forums pointed out my mistake, it looks like only two modes are available, not three.
Two modes can be selected in software... having the cards render alternating frames (one does the even frames, the other does odd), or each card doing half the frame (top/bottom split). Each of these modes can be manually selected, and will give different results depending on the game.
As I mentioned, SLI will only work with PCI-Express cards, and further, because they need an actual hardware link (a small daughter board that plugs into the top of both cards), you actually have to buy two cards that have the connector for SLI. This means that only current-generation (and next-gen when it arrives) are capable of SLI.
ATI has been quite frustrated by Nvidia's lock on the dual-GPU market, and has announced their own version. It's called "crossfire", and is different in several ways from SLI. ATI will offer a "master" card for crossfire, which will include an additional chip on it for handling communication...which means you will be able to use any current X800 card in a dual-GPU config. Crossfire requires an external connection between the two cards (which means a cable that plugs into a DVI connector on each card). ATI will offer an additional dual-rendering mode, called tiling, where the scene will be broken up into a checkerboard and each card will render alternate squares in each frame. ATI will also be offering some additional "kickers" in their software...They will have new very heavy anti-aliasing modes that will only work with dual cards in a Crossfire setup.
At the moment, it looks like Both ATI and Nvidia will require you to purchase a motherboard using their own motherboard chipset if you want to use their dual-GPU technology. This may change (especially since ATI's motherboard chipsets suck), but for the time being, if you want SLI, get an Nvidia motherboard and graphics cards. If you want Crossfire... bleh. Maybe wait for a while. ;)
I am partial to AMD
I can see we're going to be great friends. :D
I'm kidding...
sort of.
because I have always heard that when it comes to gaming, AMD was best.(not to mention cost vs. Pentium)
Since the release of the Athlon 64, there is no contest. AMD is absolutely the best for gaming. Although prices are becoming much more competitive between the two companies, you're right. AMD still generally offers more performance for the dollar (and for the watt, and for the degree C ;) )
I know Pentium is better in most everything else, but I use my computer for gaming and internet and simple XLS programs that a commodore 128 could handle with ease.
Actually, Pentium4's are no longer better in just about anything (now that dual core chips are out). It was true for a time that the Netburst architecture of the Pentium4 was well-suited for media encoding, and the Pentium4's Hyperthreading helped out a little for applications that were multi-threaded... but with the release of dual-core, AMD now takes the lead in every category. With the exception of only a few applications, the Dual-core Athlon X2 is an absolute Intel killer (with a price tag to match *wink*).
I want to rebuild my system.
amd2800 asus mobo
1g dual channel 2700
Geforce5700LE oc'd
I'll bet you my shirt that the system you just quoted will play Vanguard on low settings. Just in case you felt like using it as a second box or something.
AMD x2 the way to go? Does dual core help? Does the 2nd core kick in when the main one is being tapped out? or do the programs have to be designed to use the 2nd core?
As I mentioned above, if you don't mind the price tag (they will probably come down in price a bit by the end of the year)... the X2 is a monster, and worth getting. One very positive thing about AMD's X2 chips is that they will work in most socket-939 motherboards with only a BIOS update. If you didn't feel like spending that much money ($550 and up) right now on a processor, you could get a socket-939 single-core Athlon 64, and upgrade later to an X2.
Windows has been designed for a long time to take advantage of two processors (although it has been refined recently to work a bit better across the board than it used to). Dual-core looks like two processors to Windows, so it treats it the same way. Multitasking will be smoother, programs will be more responsive, and you'll be able to do things that are pretty much unheard-of on a single core chip (like running a graphically intense game and encoding a DVD in the background).
With that said, those are the small benefits of dual-core. The big benefits come when a single application is written to put multiple CPU-intensive threads in flight at the same time, utilizing both processor cores to get its job done faster. Right now, programs like Photoshop and some encoding software will do this...but most applications and games do not. This will be changing within the next year, and by the end of 2006 there will probably be a decent numbers of games that will utilize multiple cores to get performance increases in AI, physics, animation, and other systems. Vanguard may very well utilize CPU-multithreading (we've heard a rumor) for its animation system, and maybe for other things too.
Hyper transport ? what is it, do I need it ?
Hypertransport is the high-speed serial bus that AMD designed...it is in use as a chip-to-chip interconnect on motherboards, as well as a multi-purpose bus for the Athlon 64. In the case of the Athlon 64 and Opteron processors, Hypertransport buses serve as connections between the CPU and the rest of the system, and also between CPUs in a multi-processor system. It is scaleable (can be increased in speed and width to allow for HUGE bandwidth in the future), and will be able to supply plenty of bandwidth for the purposes it serves for quite a while.
Is Pentium faster since it can use ddr2 and the AMD can't?
Because of the differences in the way a Pentium 4 and an Athlon 64 are designed, the speed of the RAM can not be directly compared. It is even more complicated because the Athlon 64 has its memory controller on-die, instead of on the motherboard northbridge like most other desktop processors.
DDR2 at high clock rates does supply more bandwidth, but at the moment the Pentium 4 needs that extra bandwidth to stay competitive. Because of difference in design, the Athlon 64 works very well with the slower DDR RAM.
Next year, as AMD moves to faster dual-core chips and beyond (quad core is coming :D ), they will be switching over to support for DDR2 RAM.
At the moment, the DDR2 on the Intel side does not make the overall platform "faster" than an AMD computer. In fact, the advantage in RAM speed on the Intel side is very much countered by the increased latency of DDR2 RAM, and the decreased latency of AMD's on-die memory controller. Memory speed is only part of the picture...response time is also very important.
Is dual hard drives in a raid set up better than a (scsi?) 10k rpm? Does raid or scsi help on games?(currently using 7200rmp single drive with 8mb cache)
RAID is pretty much a flop from a desktop performance standpoint. It gives you basically nothing. If you want to do a RAID 1 setup for data security, go for it...but RAID 0 is a waste of money.
SCSI 10k drives, in fact any faster-rotating drive, is going to offer lower seek times and somewhat improved performance. Other things like Native Command Queuing (part of the SATA2 spec) and cache size can be important, but nothing overcomes a faster rotation speed.
With that said, a 7200RPM drive with 8MB of cache is going to perform just fine. If you have the money and want a decent boost in game loading performance, I'd recommend a Western Digital Raptor 10k SATA drive. If you need the space though, some of the 7200 RPM drives with 8 or 16MB of cache are not far behind the Raptor in most benchmarks.
Does a separate sound card take any load off the CPU?
Yes. Especially with newer cards like the Audigy 2 ZS. I always recommend a soundcard for a gaming system...onboard sound (regardless of how fancy) almost always uses the CPU for sound processing
EDIT: added a bit more.
Depending on the effects being used and the particular sound chip installed on the motherboard, the CPU utilization can be quite high. Sound cards are pretty cheap, and are now pretty much all alone on the PCI bus. The performance increase might not be huge...but it will give you some free CPU cycles to be used elsewhere.
Which is better nforce chipset or Via ?
Nforce4 is superior to the Via K8T890.
At some point in the future things might shift, so never good to just say one company is always going to be better. Right now though... features and stability and speed all go to Nvidia.
I am sure there are other questions I could think of, but you get the idea. If anyone has any suggestions or explanations remember I want to build 100% gaming machine. Anything else I do, I'm sure a gaming machine could handle.
Thank for any clarifications / suggestions in advance.
Keep the questions coming! I live and breathe this stuff. =)