Tom's Hardware at Computex 2006!

[pschmid]

Tom's Hardware at Computex 2006! Today we kick off our pre-show coverage from the most significant hardware tradeshows on this planet: Tom's Hardware and TG Daily are reporting live from Computex 2006, which opens on June 6. Join us on the showfloor with up-to-the-minute news, videos and slideshows!

 

[Frank_M]

Hmm...
So ATI now says we should buy 3 graphics cards?
Good idea. And now for the dual-processor 16-core cpu mobo with 4 dual-core graphics cards! :roll:

 

[melarcky]

well it ssounds good to me but i wont be able to afford it tell ppll have 6 cards then maybe i will have 2 but as for Nvidea they will fight back they always do thats what i love about ATI and NviDea there is always something new to and you will never be dissapointed

 

[AlexanderTheGreat]

well it ssounds good to me but i wont be able to afford it tell ppll have 6 cards then maybe i will have 2 but as for Nvidea they will fight back they always do thats what i love about ATI and NviDea there is always something new to and you will never be dissapointed

If there was only a way to plug all cards into one display. there would be few reasons why not to get more and more graphic cards...

Why do you need more than one?

 

[monkey999]

wait... guys! idea.....
why not buy like 16-24 cheep vid cards and get a mobo with like 63 pci slots (cause u know like 42 for wireless and sound cards) and then a pcie slot can like print cash for me some how to buy all this other #$%#

 

[AlexanderTheGreat]

wait... guys! idea.....
why not buy like 16-24 cheep vid cards and get a mobo with like 63 pci slots (cause u know like 42 for wireless and sound cards) and then a pcie slot can like print cash for me some how to buy all this other #$%#

no, no... I've already thought about it. Let's just make a computer out of twigs, little pebles and some chemicaly encouraged bongs.

 

[Levium]

It seems like this is going to be more for enthusiasts than the normal user. No reason to knock it just because you can't afford it. If someone want's 3 graphics cards, let them get 3 graphics cards. If one is dedicated to physics I'm sure some of the eyecandy will be just amazing. This really isn't going to be practical for some gamers though, such as lan partiers and others. 3 Vid cards usually means a bigger psu, bigger case to fit and allow for good air flow, which means it's gonna be a big pain to haul around.

 

[mat347]

I just don't see the point in letting my expensive GPU do something else..if I buy multiple GPUs I want them to do graphics...not physics. Even dual 7900GTXs cannot run current games at the resolution I need (1920x1200)...why would I want to give up a ~$500 GPU to do something a cheaper $300 can do??

Either way, physics hardware will have to prove itself worthy if I'm going to shell out ANY $$ on it.

 

[melarcky]

to tell you the truth i really dont know why we need to have more than one card i now have A MX 440 128mb
and soon hope to upgrade to 6600 or even upto a 6800le for AGP and i would probably have that card tell its is like the MX

 

[mat347]

to tell you the truth i really dont know why we need to have more than one card i now have A MX 440 128mb
and soon hope to upgrade to 6600 or even upto a 6800le for AGP and i would probably have that card tell its is like the MX

It's mainly for the more hardcore gamer, if all you do is surf/Email/office/adobe apps, then just about any graphics card will do(even integrated). But when the 3D door is opened, the system requirements take a dramatic jump. For the enthusiast, spending $1,000 or more for just a few extra FPS is worth it to them.
There's also the upgradeability, someone(like me) can buy an SLI ready MB and GPU now and when the time comes for an upgrade, I can get my performance boost by either buying another GPU(at a much cheaper price), or simply get the newer GPU.

 

[TheMaster]

I think ATI should concentrate on making ONE, decently priced video card that can actually play today's games at a decent frame rate and operate on something less than a 1KW power supply.

Let the cpus handle all that physix nonsense.
As most people have figured out its not the cpus that are lacking in power its the video cards.

 

[AlexanderTheGreat]

I think ATI should concentrate on making ONE, decently priced video card that can actually play today's games at a decent frame rate and operate on something less than a 1KW power supply.

Let the cpus handle all that physix nonsense.
As most people have figured out its not the cpus that are lacking in power its the video cards.

what do you know about ati's 3200 video card?

 

[pschmid]

It's still pretty early to judge the physics products - whether it's Ageia, ATI or Nvidia. For the graphics guys it is a fairly logical step to do, as it increases the value of their products and also helps to sell more "graphics" cards.

I'm pretty sure that physics-intensive games will burden the CPU in the beginning. Given that we are only half a year away from first quad-core processors, this definitely makes sense.

Hope you enjoy our Computex microsite. Any feedback? Are there things we missed?

 

[joex444]

as a physics major, i laughed at the demo ATi gave...

 

[foshizzle]

Hmmm, is it just me or is the Computex page kind of screwy? I've clicked on specific article titles from Tom's home page and have several times been directed to the wrong article on the Computex page...wierd

Anyway, in reference to the Robson technolgy article...I thought that hard drives were going to come with flash based memory on them but this article is talking about the flash memory being on the motherboard and in the future possibly in the southbridge. Am I getting two different things mixed up?

That said, a boot time to a ready-and-waiting desktop in 30 secords is less is great. I would have hoped for like 10 second boot times though seeing as how with a pair of Raptors I can already boot in 30 seconds (after lots of programs are installed). After a fresh install of Windows on my RAID 0 array I've gotten boot times of around 17 seconds to a ready-and-waiting desktop. I hope that as this technology gets refined and matures that we'll see significant decreases in the boot time that it offers.

 

[Aaron McKenna]

Two different things - see this as a good example of what I think you may be thinking of.

What do ya'll make of the coverage so far, besides the odd scenic route around the links? (Sorry about that, we do fix these things as soon as we can.)


Best,



Aaron

 

[foshizzle]

Whoa, a 64gb flash drive as a hard drive??? That would be awesome!

I was actually thinking of regular hard drives with like 256mb of cache vs the 16mb we have currently...I probably just got confused when I heard about robson reducing boot times and automatically associated the memory as being part of the hard drive rather than the motherboard.

 

[DaBigHurt]

I thought ATI said that you can have one doing graphics and one doing phsysics. 'Cuz where the hell are we gonna put 3 graphics cards? Specially the size of the X1000 series, But it lookes like the cards that they had on that comp were pretty small compared to whats out now

 

[DaBigHurt]

as a physics major, i laughed at the demo ATi gave...

Did you laugh at the graphics card when the technology first surfaced also because you were comparing them to movies?
Keep in mind that this is a new technology as far as computer gaming goes, dont jump to conclusions when the physics technology is at its "baby steps", do you honestly think that its gonna stay that way forever? :roll:

 

[foshizzle]

as a physics major, i laughed at the demo ATi gave...

I thought it looked pretty cool and like a step in the right direction. I'm not sure I understand how it's laughable. Can you provide any clarification?

 

[AlexanderTheGreat]

I think that it's straight cheeze. Why do I have to give up 1k+ and two of the other three slots in my computer for an undeveloped blip on the radar. Why doesn't ATI stick all three into one and call it the super duper deal? Huh? I don't find it funny when I'm being screwed out of my money. Now on the other hand, some people might perfer that they do get screwed enthusiastilcy and that's up to them to decide, really.

 

[foshizzle]

I think you misunderstand my question. I totally agree that $1500 for graphics in a consumer PC is insane. I was questioning the "As a physics major" part. I'd like to understand how the physics was laughable.

Lol, if the person said: "As a person who has to work hard to earn his money, I laughed at the demo ATI gave" then I would concur

That said, physics seems to be the next "thing" in gaming so the fact that major companies are starting to support it better in their hardware is a "step in the right direction" as I mentioned.

 

[nukemaster]

That was one big a$$ chipset cooler zalman had now where can i get one

the link for ATI's phisics demo was wrong last night. will check again when i get home from work.... good coverage (but downloadable movies would have been nicer to see...i hate to stream)

 

[caamsa]

In an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD's executive vice president Henri Richard confirmed that AMD will scale its 4x4 technology to a total of eight processor cores next year. Sockets will also be open to be used by other products - such as physics processors.



Am I mistaken or does the link take you to the wrong article. The paragraph above describes the article and is right below the link.

???????

 

[AlexanderTheGreat]

Yes, ...Yes! The Phys. Major fellow did not give any credit to ATI, Is why I'm laughing at him with him. The fact that you noticed a move in the right direction is because physics in todays world of graphics are completely missing and what ever small step they took is fine for now. I'm sorry for going off like that with the finance/performance issue Since I usually do. Perhaps I will just wait and see what the future brings us, a better display of physics could indeed convince me to obtain by far more graphic cards than I should. For now at the price that graphics are, you would see a performance gain from having purchased extra RAM.