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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

post://4306510762466182006/

I received my EVGA 295 GTX Co-Op today and here are the results!

17:45 - Card installed, powered on
18:00 - Drivers Updated, restarted
21:06 - done with benchmarking

Initial observations:
Compared to the 280 GTX:
- same length
- feels heavier
- a tad thinner

Hardware installation included 2 devices (GTX 295)
I left a 280 in there for strictly PhysX for now but going to do try benchmarks both with and without it on both cards.

Test: -/+ for decreased / increased performance

3DMark Vantage (Ambient Occlusion: ON | PhysX: ON): +
Score: 16209
CPU: 33477
Graphics: 13831

3DMark 2006 (Ambient Occlusion: ON | PhysX: ON): =
Score: 13260
SM 2.0: 4953
SM 3.0: 6965
CPU: 3268

3DMark Vantage (Ambient Occlusion: OFF | PhysX: OFF): +
Score: 12415
CPU: 8610
Graphics: 14560

3DMark 2006 (Ambient Occlusion: OFF | PhysX: OFF): -
Score: 13126
SM 2.0: 4830
SM 3.0: 6935
CPU: 3263

GTA IV: -
Benchark @ 1920 x 1200
Texture Quality High
Texture Filter Quality: Very High
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 30

Previous (2 x 280 GTX):
Average FPS: 52.01
Duration: 37.55 Sec
CPU Usage: 77%
System Memory Usage: 36%
Video Memory usage 92%

Current (1 x 295 GTX Co-Op):
Average FPS: 48.96
Duration: 37.72 sec
CPU Usage: 78%
System Memory Usage: 38%
Video Memory Usage: 99%

Crysis: -
I was a custom mix of Very High and High with a lower view distance with the previous cards but durring hectic battles I'd notice everything getting really choppy.

With the new card autodetect chose all High
1920 x 1200 was too much for it at first, but after it settled in and had the textures loaded it went relatively smooth and playable. I turned down to 1280 x 800, the next lowest 16:10 resolution in the list but the quality wasn't worth it. The text was way too blocky, and the trees all had squares where light shone in-between the leaves. I turned it up to 2560 x 1600 and it looked really good but and still had similar performance as the other resolutions. Overall I'd say this is an improvement as I can eek up the shaders and the physics with little to no impact in framerate... too bad said framerate is a steady 30 fps or so. I have the latest version and drivers but I remember a past bug in Crysis where it would run worse if you changed the resolution in game so I'll try this one again tomorrow.

NFS Undercover: +
I had it at 1920 x 1200 previously - with medium world effects (I hate the motion blur) all detail set to highest and 6x AA. I had turned off VSynch previously because it was pulling it down to 30 when I was probably getting about 40 or so, but I HAD to enable it with the new card. I was getting at least 60fps easy and even when I turned it up to 2560 x 1600 I had to turn on VSynch to make it not look like everything was in Fast Forward.

Benchmarks really don't gain much over my 2 x 280s and even go down in the game test. That's partly because the new card actually reduces my available video RAM. The RAM is what I had originally targeted as my bottleneck for draw distance in GTA and this isn't going to help at all, I even need to bring it down a little.

I'm not super impressed, especially since I could get the same performance and even better high resolution performance from my 2 (and now much cheaper) 280s. All in all I'm sure if you're running lower resolution you could kick some ass running 2 of these, but good luck with that.

Rendering is faster due to the increased clocks and there is a noticebly higher quality to the image but as far as sheer frame rates go - this card isn't going to cut it for anyone running higher then 1920 x 1200.

My recommendation is that if you're looking for high performance AND high resolution - stick with the 295 GTX 1g+ cards. I'll be waiting for the higher memory cards to come out, and praying my 90 days for the step up program is enough time.

Labels: 2009, 3dmark, consumerism, games, games for windows, hardware, materialism, video

posted @ 18:03

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Sunday, December 07, 2008

post://6314627219298098290/

Here's the same progression in GTA benchmarks. I didn't have to do much work for this because GTA writes each benchmark to a separate txt file automatically. I pasted into Google Docs and made a graph of it all.

The details are here but this is the graph:

Labels: 3dmark, consumerism, games for windows, hardware, materialism, SLi, technology

posted @ 11:37

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Saturday, December 06, 2008

post://8239767402186441602/

Ok, so after the dust has settled I've completed the Hard Drive externalization (technical prototype) and here are the past couple benchmarks:

2 x New Graphics Card + CPU

New Graphics Card + CPU

New Graphics Card

New Motherboard

Original

Read em and weep.

Labels: 3dmark, consumerism, games for windows, hardware, materialism, SLi, technology

posted @ 22:51

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

post://8616507402771462167/

Nicole got her G1 yesterday - the first and foremost "Google phone"
It runs android - the open source phone OS developed by Google.

At first glance it's about the side of an iPhone (and that's the exact demographic this phone is going for) though no where near as sleek. The screen swings out from the base and pops into place when going into landscape mode.

The home screen has a clock widget with 4 basic icons at the bottom. It appears you can fill up the whole screen with up to 16 icons, if you didn't have the clock there. You're not limited however, because if you slide your finger to the left or the right you have an additional screen on either side for other program icons or widgets. If your application icons aren't on the desktop, they're in the application window. Touch and slide the application tab at the bottom upwards and you'll see all your program icons but I didn't see a way to organize them such as folders or sorting. I'm awaiting more widgets, such as weather or RSS, but with Android being open source - it's only a matter of time (and it'll probably be free).

Making a call is pretty quick and the contact list imports your Gmail address book as soon as you add your info. It's a very detailed set of information and it's easy to add to it when you have a new number - just hold your finger on the number and you can choose new or add to existing.

The camera supports embedded GPS information, for those who like to add to Google earth.
There's no brightness/contrast that I could find, nor a zoom feature but it's pretty high quality with good autofocus. I'd also like to see video capture, but that's probably on the way.

Trackball is great - I'd compare it to an IBM laptop intellistick, similar texture but I still can't say for sure whether it's actually rolling or inferring based on the direction I'm moving my finger over the textured surface. In either case it's really sensitive and great for more accurate movements.

The google maps is pretty good, and uses mylocation over gps by default, so you have a large circle that is your general proximity rather then a precise dot. You can see streetview, which brings attention to one of the coolest features: Compass mode. If you're in streetview and turn on Compass mode whichever direction you turn (even up and down), the phone will indicate the corresponding street view. It's fancy and impressive, but I couldn't see a need for this at first until I realized this was "compass mode" - ie: which way is NESW. The image is good just for verification but not much else other then cool factor and I can't see it working without streetview at your location.

Setting up email was pretty quick, and we were able to get to both web based email as well as import an IMAP (also supports pop3) account without issue. It inferred the servers from the email address, just provided the password and boom - all set.

The data transfer was acceptible, but nowhere near "high speed" as it took over 45 minutes for a 20mb video file. Speaking of which: there's no standard video player. You can view YouTube but individual movies don't play.

When checking voicemail, it was neceesary to pull up the phone keys, press the button to delete, and then put the phone keys away, otherwise I'd accidently hit the keys when I put the phone back up to my ear. So it can be cumbersome to go through several voicemails at a time.

The touch on the screen isn't overly accurate, and dragging can get tricky. You also can't drag an icon from one section of the screen to another. For example: move an icon from the middle screen to the right or left when your main screen gets full. To do so you have to drag the icon to the apps tab to remove it, and re-add it to the screen where you want it. It's not that big of a deal, easy enough to do, but a seemingly needless limitation.

Depending on the application it's difficult to tell when you should hold your finger down, slide it, or tap. I had to try it several different ways for most applications to figure out which was necessary for the particular application. I think this is mostly standardization at this point, and will probably get better as developers get to use the device more.

The battery life doesn't appear to be stellar. I charged it to full in about 3 - 3.5 hours, then used it to download and perform nonstop data transmission for about 3 hours before it was down to 50% battery. I charged it overnight so we'll see how it does after a normal day in standby.

I'm a bit worried about the application store. Granted - each application tells you what permissions it requires from your phone before you download - but that alone can scare you. I'm worried about the rogue program that does what it promises but is actually phoning home and sending your info while you're using it. A lot of the applications require "full internet access", "gps positioning", and some even "access to contact information" such as the Weather Channel's application. That's pretty scary and I'm concerned what they might do with it - some people never read the fine print for free programs.

All in all it's a pretty powerful phone with a lot of potential. It's fairly slim, fairly light and the keyboard is handy and with the trackball you can do everything but type when the keyboard is away. It didn't do much without a data plan, but it does work. It can use wifi, and even with no data* or wifi I was still able to pull down GMail but no web or Pop3/IMAP. There's also no proxy settings like in Windows Mobile so looks like you'll need that $30 data plan.

*-I have Voicestream 2.99 unlimited wap internet on my account

Labels: consumerism, cool, linux, materialism, review, technology

posted @ 11:36

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...I'll proofread later :)

By Josh, at Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:06:00 PM

Thursday, June 05, 2008

post://6948603993605328803/

I just paid $4.19 for Super using CASH. I could have paid $4.39 if I used credit. Separate cash and credit prices?? Way to go back to <1984. I was amazed, I guess they just started this tdoay and it's just weird. I understand saving $2 for 10 gallons (in my particular case) but that could ammount to 5 to 10 dollars for SUV owners, and even more for truckers.

I listen to Bubba the Love Sponge (Sirius: Howard 101) now, a lot more for the past year or so and he's just as good as Howard in many a case. They're always advocating for the truckers so I'm a bit more understanding. I just can't conceive how someone who is an owner operator could possibly be making a living - let it be known, you've at least got a break if you're paying cash for gas in Holyoke, MA... go to the Shell station by the mall.

Out of principal I paid cash. I took it out of the business. I know a lot of people are running on credit card leins right now and it's kind of scary. I am doing ok, we're cutting down on groceries, and bought our big ticket items prior to this whole crunch, so all in all we're doing ok.

I got gas at this hour because I'm headed in to work early tomorrow for a big release party - hardly what it sounds like, we're switching our phone operations so I'm going to be there bright and early in case anyone has any issues. I've been working all this week to make sure we're ok a this point and it looks like we will be but I'll be there at 5, which means waking up at 4... and I'm not really down with that, and certainly not expecting any gas stations within my 30 miles to empty radius to be open. Considering I'm still up at 10:14PM EST --- I'm probalby going to be feeling it. My plan is redbull. Claratin D and redbull.

Labels: lament, materialism, politics, work

posted @ 22:01

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

post://1831564796362732751/

I've been needing to revamp the whole computer situation, and I think I've finally got it all in hand for the main PC: WinXP, WinXP64 on my SATA 3G RAID Striping HDs, and VISTA64 on my single SATA 3G. I've got to rebuild the VISTA boot menu to include the older choices, but that's just a matter of indicating which partition they're on.

The motherboard itself is acting wanky in the main machine. I bought an ASUS Crosshair so I could do dual 16x SLI and it appears to be having some sort of short related to the Clear BIOS switch. The LED and the included MB light (a light that illuminates the motherboard in case you're doing upgrades in the dark - which I often do) appear to be acting wanky after I cleared the CMOS (again). Hitting DEL to change the BIOS settings results in the computer turning off.

I dispise power issues, shorts, insufficient power... all bains to the otherwise straightforward process of assembling a computer.

So now the configuration is this:
TV PC running XP (since it's the only OS that will recognize my TV card) in the bedroom with the monitor. Main PC in the office running VISTA64 (with the others for backup should I need them) and this occured to me today - 160 Gig ATA133 with all my old TV shows and movies can go in the iMac which can be put in the living room and hooked to the TV. Since it's not HD there's no reason to go putting a big ol computer there. I'll also have the happy little iMac in the living room, it's silent and more of a living space sort of computer. I can record shows on the TV computer, edit and share them for the rest of the house on the network, so I can either watch them in bed or in the living room.

It's a much different arrangement then I was thinking before, but I think it works, especially given the ability to have the monitor upstairs with no fuss.

Here's some neat freeware I found:
Restoration - undelete even after emptying
Double Killer - find those duplicate files

Labels: hardware, materialism, media

posted @ 11:02

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

post://908898386208653685/

Phone's dead. Motorola RAZR 1.0 - well, maybe 2.0 since it was exclusive with Cingular for the first year. The battery was getting low all the time, phone was barely lasting through the day, then it lasted 2 hours. Last night it wouldn't charge, wouldn't turn on - the lights blink on then turn off again.

My old Sony Ericson is charging at home now. The screen is obscured by scratches and the plastic over the screen is partially broken away... but it'll work. (I think.) I didn't really want to give up the Sony, it does much better word guessing and it was more solid and compact. I only got a new one because of the screen, so I'll make due until I get around to getting a new one. Maybe for Xmas or something.

It's $150 for a PDA/phone from TMobile. I'd love to splurge, but we can't, too close to everything right now and far too many material things I need:
#1) Mason to fix the chimney, patch the basement up
#2) Bed from IKEA
#3) Finish Paying for the financed Mattress

and the things I want:
#1) Dishwasher
#2) Picnic Table
#3) Couch to accomidate increased seating for TV potential
#4) TV o Doom

and the distant house improvement items:
#1) paint the house
#2) tile for the bathrooms
#3) sink for downstairs bathroom
#4) driveway anti-sinkage

The TV has fallen from #1 to less then #1 - sad realization. I really hope we get a bunch of money because part of my wedding present from Jeremy is getting a discount on a TV so I'd need to spend otherwise necessary money to save money. The couch may not come first afterall, since technically we have a couch - it would just need to be moved.

Ahh yes, materialism. It comes in spurts, like Ogres.

Labels: gadget, materialism

posted @ 08:08

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