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Go easy on FanGirl!  She's like a little sis to me!
 
 
 
My invitation to man-marriage is still there Turpit!

 
 
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

^:lol: Run a way thread! Hijacked thread

I did that tons before.
 
Ah, the good old days.

 
 
Thanks, hadnt seen that one

 
 
I have, and the vast majority of it ai AMD fanboy bloger crap, not actual information. The actual report was deliberately vague in several area purportedly to protect the OEMs allegedly involved. You'll have to forgive me, but I instantly disregard fanboy blogs

 
 
Isnt it?  A population of under 2.5 million for the entire region doesnt exaclty put it into the catagory 'throbbing metropolis'.
 
 
I didnt know you were a canuck. It explains a lot about the differences in our perspectives, simply because the 'worlds' we live in, though theoretically not that different, are.....well, worlds apart. Canada and the US might as well be Mars and Venus for all their similarities.
 
Yah, you guys would still have a thriving mom and pop culture. Dont get me wrong about mom and pop shops, I have nothing against them....I wish they were still a thriving part of the US, but they just couldnt compete against the heavies in most parts of the states. As a result, the vast majority of the mom and pops slowly died off. A few, like A2Z made it to the majors, but theres not a lot of room to compete in between, NE, TD, ZZZ Buy.com and the like. Even CompUSA was consumed. Up in Canukia, well, thats a pretty rural country,  and if I were you, personally, I wouldnt take offense at that comment....Id be thankful for that....the urban spraw and 'walmartism' slowly consuming the US isnt anything to be proud of. And sooner or later, it will make its way up north, if it hasnt started already.  
 
Here in the states, we used to have mom and pops all over the place. The problem in the states with the mom and pops, (be it computer hardware, housewares, hardware, clothes etc), is that they havent been able to compete for years. In the case of computers, the mom and pops cant afford to compete simply because they cant afford to buy 1000 a pop of every CPU, GPU, mobo etc a customer might want. As such they cant get the 'tray prices' (volume discounts) the OEMs and e-tailers get. Where mom and pops did business in the US after the advent of the buy.coms was convienience and service. But with the huge expansion of the transportation and communications industries, coupled with the sales tax breaks for 'mail' order purchases, the convienience and money savings of the e-tailers became increasingly attractive.
 
Being Canadian you may not know what happend in the US over the past 35 years, but then again given your age and intellect, you may. You may remember back to the 70s, when the US corporations (not computer, but everyone) looking to expand their shares of the limited markets within the US came to the realization that they had been overlooking a huge, untapped segment of consumers....women. Immediatly after that little 'revelation', there was an explosion in the products targeted at women, with attendant shifts in advertising targeting women. The days of frying pan and dishwasher ads were over, being supplanted by 'femine hygine' ads, 'luxury this that and the other' ads, slippers, robes, comforters, etc....anything a woman might want.  Shortly there after, in the 80s, our corporate 'geniuses' 'discovered' the other 'market segment' that needed 'attention'....kids.....bam, the toy explosion and the begining of "infotainament"...movies, TV shows, comics, etc designed deliberately to sell products.  
 
Then came the 90s, and the next market expansion.....china....which backfired horribly.  
 
All that crap above is the reason for the death of the mom and pops in the US. As consumerism supplanted the industrial/service based economy of the US, (driven by corporate america) the corporations needed to sell more and more products. The problem was that the consumers had limited income.  
-In comes the wonders or expanded lines of credit. Income problem solved, right?  
*Still not enough to feed the corporate giants.  
-Reduce production overhead by shipping manufacturing overseas...increased margins, lower retail prices...problem solved right?
*Still not enough.  
-Reduce overhead by cutting manufacturing costs further--"on time" production. Eliminates idle quipment and eliminates inventory storage costs...problem solved, right?
*Still not enough
-Lower prices through volume selling.....'walmartism'.....the nail in the coffin of US mom and pops....
*still not enough, and the death of a huge chunk of US history/culture. Even Sears and Kmart couldnt do what walmart and the etailers did.  
 
Now, mom and pops still exist in the US...but only in the rural areas. The areas that walmart, home depot, lowes and the like have deemed to have insufficient population/income bases to support their retail stores. Areas where high speed internet doesnt exist (yet) and people cant afford computers. Areas like that still exist in the US, and those are the only places mom and pops can still operate. Even the food service industry (resurants), one of the last bastions of the "mom and pop" in the US,  is slowly going corporate...with Ruby Tuesdays, TGI Fridays, Outback, etc. The Shoneys, Villages Inns,  etc, the "kmarts" of corporate food service are slowly being killed by the 'walmarts' of the food service industry, and the mom and pops are stuck in between, like a stone in a crusher.
 
Now, interstingly, there is an area where mom and pops have made a sort of tiny resurgance in the US.....the internet. Ebay. But those tend to be specialized cases, of folks buying overstock, surplus, DRMO crap, blemishes, discontinued products and the like. But there, they take what they can get for it, and its offered without the service. These are the low volume areas, where the heavies have no interest in delving, and even then, there are a few heavies working the area.
 
All I can say is enjoy your culture while it lasts....its days are numbered.
 

 
 
Sure its gotten better...Its just that, I know I for one, and Im sure many others, got 'comfortable' with the game of hopscotch ATI and Nvidia had been playing. Between that 'comfort', the fanboy hyper-hype, and ATIs press, I know I and a lot of others were expecting the R600s to be another big 'jump', right out of the gate. What we got was not what were were expecting, or had become accustomed to from ATI. In short, a bit disapointing. ATI has always 'made its money' on hardware, so putting themselves in a position where they had to rely on drivers to pull their performance up was out of character. Que Sera Sera....the damage was done and sales were stunted, even though drivers eventually got the performance up. The initial pricing didnt help either.  
 
I wouldnt count on R700 being as good as anyone hopes, nor would I count on it being garbage. Ive been using ATI since Diamond 'died' all those years ago, and would love to see whatever they produce do well, but given everthing thats transpired, I'm in the catagory of 'wait and see'.
 
Im one of the few people whos not cursing Ruizs name these days. I used to, but Ive come to understand the depth of the intentions behind the ATI purchase, and honestly, IMO, for AMD it was the right move. They needed ATIs capabilities to drive their platforms and their GPU on CPU plans. AMD simply cant compete with Intel on the R&D or production front. Intel cant outright 'kill' AMD because the FTC would fall on them like the sword of Damocles. Its a bizzare relationship. But ATI was a potential R&D equalizer for AMD. ATI gives AMD the technological leg up they need to compete with Intel, by circumventing the years worth of in house R&D AMD would have had to go through by themselves to get to fusion.  
Unfortunately, for AMD, there was one small monkey wrench in their plan: Intel didnt sit still.  
 
Every time I think about this, I see the same thing...a friggin greek tragedy. AMD was damned if they did, damned if they didnt. And the tragedy all revolves around one little thing...C2D. Had C2D been another netburst, every single AMD fanboy on the planet would be singing Hector Ruiz's praises as if he were the second coming of (insert whichever deity you prefer here). But C2D wasnt netburst. AMD couldnt have afforded to purchase ATI much earlier than they did. Had they waited longer, tehy would have been SOL.  C2D would still have had the same effect, on AMD, with or without ATI. It strangled AMDs margins. Had AMD not purchased ATI, they may or may not have been behind the R&D ball (for K10) but even had they got K10 out sooner, at higher clocks and TLB free, they still would have been in a price war with Intel, and at capacity. Meaning they would still have suffered reduced margins.  Those reduced margins would still have slowly bled them of funds, albeit at a rate lower than what actually happend. The result is that they would have found themselves  back in the position that they could not have afforded the ATI purchase. So they would still have found themselves bleeding to death, just a little bit slower, and without the tech they needed for the future.  
 
While AMD was screwed either way, ATI may yet save them. Not through its revenue, which will likely never be enough to offset the losses AMD has been seeing, but through its technological contributions to chipsets and fusion Unless of course DAMMIT starts trying to make 45nm GPUs. But even thats a longshot and given what AMD wanted ATI for, seemingly not in the cards. And unfortunately, AMD owns ATI, not the other way around, so I cant imagine AMD would short R&D funds from their CPUs to pay for R700s development, especially when fusion makes great sences for mobile and platforms. Maybe they did...who knows. All we can do is wait and see.

 
You havent been around very long if you think this thread is a flame fest or that Reynod is anywhere close to getting banned.  
 
Hes not and this thread doesnt even measure up to a burned out candle where the classic knockdown drag out THG flamefests are concerned.  Hell, MMM hasnt been around threatening anyone, the days of action mans "das keyboard" are (sadly) gone, and sharinincompoop hasnt been in here trying to convince everyone that exploding laptops are caused by Intel processors and not crappy LiIon batteries.

All excellent points turpit. When I lived in Canada, 10 years ago it was, they didnt like my comments about them being 20 or so years behind US. Thing is this, if the moms n pops, the little guys can just hold on (just like AMD) and not cave to the corporates, then they too can achieve, like you pointed out. Its being in the middle (like AMD,k-mart and Sears) thats tough. Wool worths, gone. Montgomery wards, gone. Theres alot others as well. One thing that caused this problem may also solve it. The use of ease of getting the product costs alot of energy. Or oil. I see a future of a more localized economy, bringing hope for the moms n pops back. China is going though its faze now, and Canada will also, but places like the US and Austrailia are unique in that weve been there done that, but at the same time, were young, with lotsa room, lotsa potential. Cant say the same for Europe. I hope Im right, and we decentralize, it helps to know your neighbor, its nice to know the guy that sells you that article is the store owner, and not some snotty who gives a damn teen. Ive lived ( in the US ) in the country and found this a very nice thing indeed. Id be willing to lose a few things of convenience for those things again, except this time, with energy going the way its going, we may have to

LOL Yea but then all those guys at the electric company would lose their jobs

 
Ok let me put this to you Turpit..
 
What more can video cards give us...
 
I mean yes graphics have improved over the years, when you look back at Alone in the Dark for example nearly 10 years ago which was a low count polygon game we were left in tender hooks then to what ever how many polygons or texturing they got now,  the games do look worlds appart.
 
Even wired framed graphics took a leap forward in the 80's with the BBC version of Elite.. For its time it was way ahead of anything and was programmed by 2 people Ian Bell and David Braben.. Google it, its worth it..
 
Now games written back there were hard coded and the games were more efficient then, compared to games now have graphics imported from 3d studio max, photoshop etc and then ran on game engines like Havoc for example.
 
These application to game swap over are not coded well due to the limitations of the engine etc etc, and at the end of the day its still running in an engine which has its draw backs as it is not talking direct to the machine in its code due to direct x etc let alone being interfaced under Windows.
 
My point is graphic cards are getting better,  but how much better can graphics get.  
 
With the games already requiring atleast a 100 "artists" getting a title ready and even then some of the playability is left out because 9 times out of ten its rushed at the end... Look at Hellgate London for example.. Looked good on paper, played poop..
 
At least back then there was a fine balance between playability and graphics , with sometimes playability being better.  
 
In most cases nowadays graphics rule first to impress us which swallows up a tedious game...
 
Most people have mid range video cards but the top end cards are not in my opinion really fully utilized on anything except the shabbier coded stuff which they cant be bothered to optimize.
 
These should run efficient on mid range cards as the speed of mid range hardware  is unrecognizable to what we had over 10 years ago, let alone 3dfx etc...
 
Are we going to reach the point where the limitations of game companies can not simply make games to satisfy the hardware we have in our machines, the rising costs of games only prooves this.  
 
Orange box for example has excellent playability and doesnt need anything really that special. Still plays on my 7800GTX ( which is nearly 3 years old now )  comfortably where other un-efficient coded games require my 8800gtx to get anything running really smoothly ( Crysis or Oblivion for example ).
 
Yeah I got a 8800GTX in another machine and i got a 9800GTX ( im finding it hard to find why i need to put it in my new machine and to be honest i cant see any benefit as of yet as the 7800GTX plays most reasonably well ) ,  but there is no game that doesnt run on it, now there is a 9850gx2 and the new 4000 series radeons on its way with 9900s comming too. What more can this give us, to what we got already .. I just cant see the point until something really radical turns up, which hence will ad more burden to game companies development costs making it look that extra bit special...
 
I mean we have Quad Core Processors and they have not really been taken advantage of yet have they to make it a mainstreme event. So whats the point having it...  Incase we get multi threaded stuff -- oops  adding more to the cost of the game too..
 
I would'nt  like to have a game studio right now, except for Lionhead as hes stuff is just the best IMHO.
 
Maybe Eastern european game companies will rise such as the Armed Assault guys as they have lower costs compared to the Western World.

Thats where DX10 was supposed to come in. They altered it because nVidia had already released their "DX10" cards, and werent compatable. Now DX10.1 is availible on Vista sp1, but this also has put a hurt on the game devs. DX10 was/is a huge relief for some of this, but its been skewered by so many things, people are already looking toward DX11.

 
 
To be honest Direct X 10 didnt really do anything for me... Oh yeah maybe there were benefits , I didn't notice any,  but as most games are now console ports and console ports are based on X9 then whats the point of direct x10.
 
Is that why DX10 flunked.. It wasnt that radical enough.. Need some input guys.. DX9 seemed to do it for me..
 
Maybe XBOX 360 Worked against Windows Vista for this fact alone..
 
The only Real Vista only game was pants, - a 2 year old Halo 2 - whoopee which was better on the old Xbox anyway !
 
If this is so, does it mean all this DX10 or DX10.1 are a waste of time !!!!!!!  We should of skipped Nvidia 8000 series, atis 2000 and 3000 series and even Nvidia 9000 series as well  Vista and gone for Windows 7 maybe, as seven's a lucky number

What I meant was, DX10 was supposed to library many things that game devs use. Take it off the varying hardware, and put it on software. It obviously didnt happen. Im not talking the xisual benefits here, but the coding benefits. nVidia cards were made prior to this ability, thats why M$ decided to do this : http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/arch [...] -dx10.aspx This opened a can of worms, leaving then ATI with a product that came later that wasnt tuned for the "new" DX10, which both cards could run. With the Vista sp1 update, it includes DX10.1, but thus far only 1 game includes it, and you see performance gains in the ATI/AMD solution. It isnt a matter of DX9 and going to DX10 exactly. All newer DX models are backwards compatable, so porting from a console isnt the problem