Thread: 7800gtx
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Old January 2nd 06, 05:50 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia
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Default 7800gtx

benjamin schrieb:

Benjamin Gawert
Benjamin i think that ur a comp pro


Well, this is part of my job for over 15yrs now. Besides other work I'm
also responsible for a ****load of workstations (Windows and HP9000),
servers (Windows and HP-UX on PA-RISC and Itanium) and three
supercomputers (HP Superdome Integrity). That probably makes me
something like a "pro" but then I know the business market very well but
I have no clue of what mainboard or cpu is the best for overclocking or
what is the best watercooling or such things, simply because I rarely
have contact with generic do-it-yourself parts at all. So in this case,
I'm probably a "noob" (is that spelled correctly?) also ;-)

(well,I'd like to be one
*desperately*)
well right now i'm just a highschool kid.And i live in India.

Any personal info on urself that u'd like to share with me?


Sorry, but I usually don't give too much info about myself away,
especially details what exactly my job is for for whom I work as my
employee doesn't like that. Most things that might (or might not) be of
interest should already be stored by groups.google.com.

I live in Germany (Bavaria, to be exactly) where it snows alot in
winter. I hate snow ;-)

Well, of course the majority of used PCs is still 32bit (and that will
probably be the case for at least another year). But _new_ computers
which are available in stores are already 64bit for over a year now...



And they're still not popular?r'nt they worth buying? do they suck?
R'nt they meant to be better than 32-bit????(Well if there's one person
who can answer all these questions, it might b u. B'cause u use a 64)


64bit is nothing new. The first 64bit processor reached mass production
around 1991 (MIPS R4000) and was used in several desktop computers and
servers from several manufacturers (i.e. SiliconGraphics). Around 1994
the first 64it operating systems followed (Digital Tru64, SGI IRIX 6,
HP-UX 11.0). For standard PCs it's new, but for RISC systems 64bit is
quite old. Even the Apple Macintosh (or "Mac" as Apple calls them today)
is already 64bit (PowerPC G5 and MacOS X 10.3/10.4). 64bit Windows also
is nothing really new as in 2001 when MS announced the (at that time
new) Windowsxp they also delivered the final version of "Windowsxp
Professional 64bit Edition" which runs on IA64 machines (Itanium).

There are several reasons for the move from 32bit to 64bit. The first
(and probably most important as it's already a limiting factor for
several applications!) is that 64bit systems can address more memory
(4096 MBytes w. 32bit vs 17592186044416 MBytes with 64bit). The 4GB
limit of 32bit systems (which in real life is a 3.5GB limit on PCs due
to the PCI address space) already was a heavy bottleneck for huge
databases over 8 years ago, and it is for more and more applciations
(i.e. HDTV video editing and composing, huge CAD projects, image
processing etc) already. So 64bit is the way to go...

Another benefit of 64bit systems are the wider registers and the higher
precision which is important for i.e. scientific calculations...

Except the 64bit enhancement in the cpus they are basically
the same like 32bit PCs...



what kinda enhansmant?


AMDs Athlon64/Opteron and intels EM64T processors are not "real" 64bit
processors. Unlike other 64bit platforms like Itanium, SPARC, or PA-RISC
the AMD64 (or "x64" as itÄs also called) is a 64bit expansion on top of
the standard 32bit x86 ISA (Industry Standard Architecture). That's why
these processors often are called "64bit enhanced" or "64bit extended".

This is practically irrelevant as they do everything 64bit as their
"real" 64bit brethren are doing...

Besides that, 64bit doesn't automatically make a program run faster.
Really, usually most 64bit programs indeed are a bit _slower_ than their
32bit counterpart if the program can't make use of the specialities
64bit offers (i.e. bigger address space, additional registers).



But y'd any mad Guy make an application which does'nt make use of the
specialities that the platform has to offer?(*bigger address space,
additional registers* wat ever that means?)


Well, Office is a good example. There is no use to make a 64bit Word
application, as the purpose of this program has exactly _zero_ benefit
from everything 64bit offers. So there is no practical reason to build a
64bit text processing program...

It's another thing for Excel (spreadsheet) and Access (database) because
spreadsheet applications usually are used for calculations, and
databases (well, usually not Access) often want more RAM than 4GB, so it
might make sense to make them as 64bit applications...

Well, the are a few professional applications (i.e. expensive MCAD
packages) for WIN64, but basically that's it. For the consumer markets
there are just the few games for which a 64bit client also is available,



well that might be an answer for the lack of popularity of 64-bit(It
won't be like this all the time!!)


The problem is that 64bit is not an advantage for every program or for
games. For the professional market 64bit is standard for over a decade
now, and for the mass market it's just a buzz word. The use for the
mainstream market is extremely limited...

However, modern 64bit processors like Athlon64 also got optimized for
32bit programs which makes them faster than their 32bit-only
predecessors even if you run only 32bit Windows and 32bit programs...

R u a gamer by any chance?
(well i'm a hardcore gamer.)


Sure. Mainly single player fps (like HL2, FEAR, GTA etc) and also some
few 3D RPGs like Vampire or GTA ;-)

but they hardly justify the move to Winxp 64bit...



But benj dear, u OWN a 64 bit pc, does that essentially mean that ur a
softie pro(software pro) or ur not a part of the consumer market?


I'm not part of the consumer market (well, how many consumers buy a HP
Dual XEON workstation just for fun?). I have several computers at home,
but if it had been just for fun I probably hadn't spend all that much
money for them and probably had bought something more generic (i.e.
single processor computer). But then, the price for the computer wasn't
that high (HP has very attractive prices for their Dual XEON and Dual
Opteron workstations which made it not much more expensive than building
myself), but the memory upgrade was (4x2GB DDR2 ECC cost an arm and a
leg today)...

Benjamin