PC General Discussion Thread

[Sim88]

Originally Posted by laputaquelepario

...then again, there never was a chip that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features!

QFT and laughs

[Power666]

Originally Posted by E6600

OMG, 1 TByte/sec!! That's an overkill

I can think of a few things that could use 1 TByte/sec of bandwidth today. The obvious use would be video cards as GPU's can utilize all the bandwidth they are given. 1 TByte/sec is is roughly a 7.5x increase in bandwidth for them. Designing GPU that's 7.5x times faster is a straight forward process of increasing the level of parallelism in today's designs.

The next thing that comes to mind are 100 GBit switches which have to provide that much bandwidth per port.

[downphoenix]

Im building/buying a new computer in 08.

Anybody know how feasible it would be to make it a part of my entertainment center.

As in, I wanna hook it to my TV through the HDMI port and enjoy big screen PC gaming and internet surfing galore. But I wanna do it on the cheap. I want the base of the computer (CPU, Mobo, etc) to be very solid and I want a decent graphics card, but it doesn't need to be anything insane, just something decent for now but I want the base to be awesome so I can enjoy graphics, ram, and CPU upgrades without having to upgrade like everything else to do so.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by Power666

I can think of a few things that could use 1 TByte/sec of bandwidth today. The obvious use would be video cards as GPU's can utilize all the bandwidth they are given. 1 TByte/sec is is roughly a 7.5x increase in bandwidth for them. Designing GPU that's 7.5x times faster is a straight forward process of increasing the level of parallelism in today's designs.

The next thing that comes to mind are 100 GBit switches which have to provide that much bandwidth per port.

I could see it being used for routers and switches, makes a lot of sense, since they handle huge amounts of data, but I don't know of any GPUs that can process 1TB/S, I could be wrong though.

Originally Posted by downphoenix

Im building/buying a new computer in 08.

Anybody know how feasible it would be to make it a part of my entertainment center.

As in, I wanna hook it to my TV through the HDMI port and enjoy big screen PC gaming and internet surfing galore. But I wanna do it on the cheap. I want the base of the computer (CPU, Mobo, etc) to be very solid and I want a decent graphics card, but it doesn't need to be anything insane, just something decent for now but I want the base to be awesome so I can enjoy graphics, ram, and CPU upgrades without having to upgrade like everything else to do so.

Entertainment center PC, otherwise known as HTPCs, are a tricky beast to get the parts right. Obviously you can assemble just any PC and it will work, but there are four factors you need to look into - the value of these factors is yours alone to decide; nevertheless, here they are:

Noise: If you are going to have this PC sitting in your living room, you will want it to be quiet. Real quiet, as in about PS3 / Wii loudness. Why? Just watch any movie with an engaging dialogue and have those fans hissing away at you, and you will understand where I'm coming from. Unlike video games, where most of the game's audio masks the sound emanating from the console, movies tend to be a mix of explosive action intertwined with nothing but dialogue. One more thing: Virtually everything in your PC - fans, GPU, CPU, hard drives, optical disk reader - are potential noise generators.

Heat: If noise bothers you, then you will need to invest in good, silent components, which costs money. Fans are at the top of the list, but regardless of fan noise, you can't just place, say, four 120mm fans and think that airflow will be sufficient - which it will be, but you sacrifice noise! Therefore, you will most likely only use 1-2 fans, which means your temperatures will creep up. How much this will impact temperatures across the board depends on your setup.

Presence: Nothing looks as bad as having a slick home theater setup, only for a beige box to blemish an otherwise attractive package. Good-looking (and good cooling, low-noise) boxes are hard to come by on the cheap, and most likely you will encounter expansion issues.

Expansion: If you are really serious about HTPCs, and would like a setup that allows you to grow into your media center setup, you need to look for ATX cases. The main reason for this is TV capture cards. Here's the problem: Currently most TV is still analog, with digital transmissions already being rolled out worldwide. If you want to record TV on one channel while watching another channel, you need two slots to house your TV capture cards. However, if you want to be able to record both analog and digital TV, you need four (!) slots - two for each type of signal! There are cards, such as the Twinhan series, that come with both analog and digital tuners built-in, saving you two slots in the process.

I would recommend visiting silentpcreview.com | Everything about Silent / Quiet Computers to gain a better understanding of the ins-and-outs of building your own HTPC. From there you will undoubtedly find other resources (and evermore questions!) that can guide you along.

But one thing you cannot underestimate, and that is the amount of noise your typical PC generates!

[Darth Alec]

God.

I hate those guys. They make shizzle I want. Once again, maybe that could run Crysis.

[Gnu]

Originally Posted by downphoenix

Im building/buying a new computer in 08.

Anybody know how feasible it would be to make it a part of my entertainment center.

As in, I wanna hook it to my TV through the HDMI port and enjoy big screen PC gaming and internet surfing galore. But I wanna do it on the cheap. I want the base of the computer (CPU, Mobo, etc) to be very solid and I want a decent graphics card, but it doesn't need to be anything insane, just something decent for now but I want the base to be awesome so I can enjoy graphics, ram, and CPU upgrades without having to upgrade like everything else to do so.

I just picked up a DVI->HDMI cable and away I went. I play games no issues, and use media player and full screen to watch a movie. Not as refined as some of the out-of-the-box computer entertainment center solutions, but it also doesn't cost anything (aside from a $20 cable), and works without any issues.

[Power666]

First review of the new 512 MB Geforce 8800GTS has popped up. It is faster and expected to be cheaper than the Geforce 8800GTX. The card uses a different GPU chip than the older Geforce 8800GTS which explains the massive performance differnence. I really hate nVidia's naming convention.

[Darth Alec]

I might pick that one up sonner or later.

Good price.

[Power666]

IBM has created an optical chip to chip interconnect. This will be put to use in there ultra high end chips like the POWER6 that have several pieces of silicon in the same package. While the article notes that this technology may take 10 years to arrive, I suspect IBM is going to try and get it into production head of that estimate. This break through allows for a really huge performance gain with their high end chips.