4 Hardware bandwidth questions. (Related to ram,pci-e,cpu,gpu,sli).

Skybuck Flying wrote:

[removed the groups where this is OT]

Q1: Some websites specifications say:

1. The Athlon X2 4800 processor is limited to 6.4 Gigabyte/sec of memory
bandwidth.
2. Intel Pentium Extreme Edition processor is limited to 6.4 Gigabyte/sec of
memory bandwidth.

Case 1. Does this mean 3.2 Gigabyte/sec in both directions ?

No. The FSB of the Pentium4 is bidirectional, being able to do 6.4GB/s
in both directions. The AMD x64 CPUs (Athlon64, Opteron) use
Hypertransport links that are unidirectional...

But then, with intel all processors share the same FSB which is a really
big limitation when having more than one CPU...

Case 2. Or is it possible to have 6.4 Gigabyte/sec going in one direction ?

Right.

Q2: Some website specifications say (more or less):

PCI-E 16x slot is 8 Gigabyte/sec, 4 Gigabyte/sec IN and 4 Gigabyte/Sec out
PCI-E 8x slot is 4 Gigabyte/sec, 2 Gigabyte/sec IN and 2 Gigabyte/Sec out
PCI-E 4x slot is 2 Gigabyte/sec, 1 Gigabyte/sec IN and 1 Gigabyte/Sec out
PCI-E 2x slot is 1 Gigabyte/sec, 512 Megabyte/sec IN and 512 Megabyte/Sec
out
PCI-E 1x slot is 512 Megabyte/sec, 256 Megabyte/sec IN and 256 Megabyte/Sec
out

One PCIe link (PCIe 1x) provides 250MB/s in and out. PCIe 16x can do
4GB/s in and out.

Case 3. So does this mean that PCI-E 16x slot is limited to 4 Gigabyte/sec
in one direction ?

No. 4GB/s in every direction. PCIe is unidirectional...

Case 4. Or is it possible to go 8 Gigabyte/sec in one direction ?

No.

Furthermore it seems current SLI motherboards when in SLI mode,
turn the two PCI-E 16x slots into PCI-E 8x slots.

Right.

So the bandwidth that is available in SLI mode is the same as in SINGLE
mode.

Regarding the overall bandwith, yes.

Anyway in both cases this would mean a maximum input for the graphics cards
of:

Single: 4 Gigabyte/sec Input.

.... and output.

SLI: 2 Gigabyte/sec + 2 Gigabyte/sec = 4 Gigabyte/sec Input.

No. 2GB/s in and out. You can't just add these numbers...

So that would leave 2.4 Gigabyte/sec for output.
(from graphics card back to RAM)
Single: 2.4 Gigabyte/sec Output

SLI: 1.2 Gigabyte/sec + 1.2 Gigabyte/sec = 2.4 Gigabyte/sec Output.

No. 4GB/s for single gfx card and 2GB/s for SLI...

So if I were to buy such an SLI motherboard it would be pointless to buy a
graphics card which can handle more than 2 gigabyte/sec of input and more
than 1.2 gigabyte/sec of output.

No. Even 2GB/s are much more than what even the latest and greatest
games need....

Q3: How much bandwidth can the new Nvidia GTX 7800 process for input and
generate for output ?

The 7800GTX has a native PCIe 16x interface which can handle up to 4GB/s
in and out (16x 250MB/s)...

The internal bandwith between GPU and gfx card RAM is much higher,
though. The 7800GTX has an internal bandwith of around 38GB/s (yes,
gigabytes!) between the GPU and the gfx card memory...

Q4: How much bandwidth can the processors handle ?

see above.

Alternatively I could wait for new motherboards to come out with FULL
BANDWIDTH PCI-E 16x slots.

Won't take long...

Then the picture would look like this:

Single: 4 Gigabyte/sec Input.

.... and output.

SLI: 4 Gigabyte/sec + 4 Gigabyte/sec = 8 Gigabyte/sec Input.

.... and output.

BUT this is now limited by the the processor/memory controller: 6.4
Gigabyte/sec

SLI: 3.2 Gigabyte/sec + 3.2 Gigabyte/sec = 6.4 Gigabyte/sec Input.

That would leave no room for output... that s bad.

Nope. As I said even PCIe8x is much more than current and even future
games need....

So I think I must come to the conclusion that with this processor/memory
controller/bandwidth limitation waiting/buying this new motherboard will
solve absolutely nothing. Since the bottleneck is in the processor/memory
controller.

Nope. The

Anyway these dual core processors are very expensive.. so just upgrading
them in the future for a little bit more bandwidth seems crazy.

My conclusion is as follows:

1. If the single card (the gtx 7800) is able to handle 6.4 Gigabyte/sec of
input + output then I don't need SLI

Apples and oranges. SLI is not there to improve bus performance. SLI is
there to improve rendering speed. Again, the busses are more than fast
enough. The limitation still is the GPU, that's why there are techniques
like SLI...

Benjamin

Hello Benjamin thank you for some answers.

However this thread is ofcourse about future limitations.

What games do now is totally uninteresting.

What games will do in the future say 1,2,3,4,5 even 10 years from now is
much more interesting.

Currently I am not aware of any software or hardware which allows measuring
how much bandwidth travels through the computer at any giving time, playing
games, using applications, etc, whatever.

These tools possibly don't exist that's why people have to fall back on
games, which ofcourse don't push the system to it's limits. Doom 3 is an
example which simple limits the game to 60 fps per second.

Other games might use less textures than the system can handle etc.

Therefore I am more interested in software, maybe like sandra synthetic
benchmarks which push every little piece to it's maximum performance. Still
even these benchmarks might not be suited to test individual components
since the individual component being tested might not reach it's full
potential because of other system limitations.

Knowing each component's true limitation/maximum performance is important
for selecting components to build a PC with.

The longer the PC lasts and keeps up the more valuable it is. A pc which
cant keep up because some individually component is the bottleneck is less
valuable. The problem is how to find out which component is the bottleneck


When simply measuring the following dilemma exists:

1. Is the component the bottleneck ?

or

2. Is the system bottlenecking the component ?



So having some specifications about maximum throughput of each technology
can help.

Also tools to measure the bandwidth to get more insight into the system
performance would help greatly.

Combining these two pieces of information would allow one to pin point/guess
which component might be the limitation factor/bottleneck. Etc.

Apples and oranges. SLI is not there to improve bus performance. SLI is
there to improve rendering speed. Again, the busses are more than fast
enough. The limitation still is the GPU, that's why there are techniques
like SLI...

How do you know the GPU is the limitation ? Do you mean executing
instructions ?

Prove it

Bye,
Skybuck.

Skybuck Flying wrote:

Hello Benjamin thank you for some answers.

However this thread is ofcourse about future limitations.

What games do now is totally uninteresting.

What games will do in the future say 1,2,3,4,5 even 10 years from now is
much more interesting.

Ok, then think about on what computers were highend 10 years ago:
Pentium 200MMX with 16MB RAM and one of the first 3D cards like a Matrox
Millenium PCI. And now think about who cares about these computers
today. Exactly. no-one. Almost everything has changed during the last 10
years: busses, processors, memory, gfx cards, and much more...

In 10 years from now certainly no-one gives a **** on PCIe 16x any more...

Currently I am not aware of any software or hardware which allows measuring
how much bandwidth travels through the computer at any giving time, playing
games, using applications, etc, whatever.

These tools possibly don't exist that's why people have to fall back on
games, which ofcourse don't push the system to it's limits. Doom 3 is an
example which simple limits the game to 60 fps per second.

Other games might use less textures than the system can handle etc.

Therefore I am more interested in software, maybe like sandra synthetic
benchmarks which push every little piece to it's maximum performance. Still
even these benchmarks might not be suited to test individual components
since the individual component being tested might not reach it's full
potential because of other system limitations.

What do you want your PC to be: a tool or a penis enlargement? PCIe is
the last thing that is a performance bottleneck. Number one are disk
drives which are slow like hell compared to all other data transfer
processes in a PC. Second is RAM which is still plain slow compared to
what CPUs are able to transfer...

Knowing each component's true limitation/maximum performance is important
for selecting components to build a PC with.

Nope. Especially since just counting numbers like you do is quite silly.
To understand the limitations of a system you need much deeper knowledge
than just a few figures you read from a website. And it heavily depends
on the applications that are used, and the data that is processed, and a
lot of other variables that simply make it impossible to give something
like a universal rule...

And it's also important to understand that benchmarks like the ones
you're looking for are just that: benchmarks. And the only thing they
can tell you is how a computer performs at that benchmark. They _don't_
tell you how this PC will perform with real applications...

The longer the PC lasts and keeps up the more valuable it is. A pc which
cant keep up because some individually component is the bottleneck is less
valuable. The problem is how to find out which component is the bottleneck


No matter what you buy today, it _will_ get outdated. And no matter what
you buy, even the ultra-best and finest components that you can buy for
money today will perform like **** compared to what will be available in
any el-cheapo PC in 3, 4, or 5 years from now...

Apples and oranges. SLI is not there to improve bus performance. SLI is
there to improve rendering speed. Again, the busses are more than fast
enough. The limitation still is the GPU, that's why there are techniques
like SLI...


How do you know the GPU is the limitation ?

Because SLI is made to increase the rendering performance, not because
the bus limits throughput...

Do you mean executing
instructions ?

Prove it

I don't have to. Anyone who is at least at medium knowledge in computer
hardware should know that. You asked a question and got an response.
What you make from it is your part. But there should be enough sources
around the web which will explain you where the bottlenecks in todays
computers are and where not...

Benjamin

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
Skybuck Flying wrote:

Hello Benjamin thank you for some answers.

However this thread is ofcourse about future limitations.

What games do now is totally uninteresting.

What games will do in the future say 1,2,3,4,5 even 10 years from now is
much more interesting.

Ok, then think about on what computers were highend 10 years ago:

Ok, windows 95 era.

Pentium 200MMX with 16MB RAM and one of the first 3D cards like a Matrox
Millenium PCI.

Great computer. Internet, word processing, even some shooters which haven't
changed that much... aka doom3 aka quake 4

And now think about who cares about these computers
today.

People who want to internet and word process ?

Exactly. no-one.

Lol, are you the all knowing god ?

I think a poor person in some under developed country would be happy with
such a computer.

(Or people fed up with cleaning out dust from the dust sucking pc's nowadays
LOL)

Almost everything has changed during the last 10
years: busses, processors, memory, gfx cards, and much more...

Gje, when will those *******s get it right huh ?


In 10 years from now certainly no-one gives a **** on PCIe 16x any more...

Most people don't give a **** today since their clueless ?


Currently I am not aware of any software or hardware which allows
measuring
how much bandwidth travels through the computer at any giving time,
playing
games, using applications, etc, whatever.

These tools possibly don't exist that's why people have to fall back on
games, which ofcourse don't push the system to it's limits. Doom 3 is an
example which simple limits the game to 60 fps per second.

Other games might use less textures than the system can handle etc.

Therefore I am more interested in software, maybe like sandra synthetic
benchmarks which push every little piece to it's maximum performance.
Still
even these benchmarks might not be suited to test individual components
since the individual component being tested might not reach it's full
potential because of other system limitations.

What do you want your PC to be: a tool or a penis enlargement? PCIe is
the last thing that is a performance bottleneck.

I hope so, that would be great.

Number one are disk drives which are slow like hell compared to all other
data transfer
processes in a PC.

True, access time hasn't changed at all the last 10 years.

Throughput however has become quite fast...

Second is RAM which is still plain slow compared to
what CPUs are able to transfer...

Hmm.. I like to think of RAM being fast.

How fast do you think CPU can generate data ?


Knowing each component's true limitation/maximum performance is
important
for selecting components to build a PC with.

Nope. Especially since just counting numbers like you do is quite silly.

I think it's quite smart to start at the theoretical limitations and proceed
downwards from there.

To understand the limitations of a system you need much deeper knowledge
than just a few figures you read from a website.

I read a lot more than just some numbers

And it heavily depends on the applications that are used,

Then stop using those applications to measure your system's performance.

Use a synthetic benchmark to test the true performance of your hardware.

and the data that is processed, and a
lot of other variables that simply make it impossible to give something
like a universal rule...

You should seperate hardware performance from software performance since
those two things are two completely seperate things.


And it's also important to understand that benchmarks like the ones
you're looking for are just that: benchmarks.

No there are different benchmarks.

I in particular like the benchmarks which drive every component to it's
maximum.

And the only thing they can tell you is how a computer performs at that
benchmark.

The idea is ofcourse to use a good benchmark which will show the maximum
performance of the hardware.

They _don't_ tell you how this PC will perform with real applications...

Again you are mixing software performance with hardware performance.

If the hardware performance is good and the software performance is bad then
what does that tell you ?


The longer the PC lasts and keeps up the more valuable it is. A pc which
cant keep up because some individually component is the bottleneck is
less
valuable. The problem is how to find out which component is the
bottleneck


No matter what you buy today, it _will_ get outdated. And no matter what
you buy, even the ultra-best and finest components that you can buy for
money today will perform like **** compared to what will be available in
any el-cheapo PC in 3, 4, or 5 years from now...

The point of this thread is to focus on bottlenecks and raise those necks so
that the computer will keeping performing incredibly well for the coming
1,2,3,4,5 years at least.

Component selection/understanding is what it's all about. Do your job well
today and you'll be laughing at people 5 years down the road because they
bought a PC off the shelf with a 5000+ CPU but have some serious bottleneck
elsewhere without them even knowing about it

Apples and oranges. SLI is not there to improve bus performance.

Maybe you are wrong.

It seems that future motherboards can simply add PCI-E lanes and increase
bus performance.

SLI simply uses multiple PCI slots and could therefore increase the ammount
of bandwidth flowing to the graphics cards.

SLI is there to improve rendering speed.

Lol, you funny, what do you think is needed for rendering ? Exactly data !
That data has to be transferred !
Thus the bandwidth bottleneck is born

Again, the busses are more than fast enough.

Oops, now you are just dead wrong.

Just install poorly written game x out of a million and watch your pc crawl
to a halt

In other words, 25 textures of 1024x1024x32 bits colors being pushed through
the system at 70 frames per second. That's 25 * 70 * 4 MB = 100 * 70 = 7
GB/sec.

And we haven't talked about all other things that need to be transferred
etc...

Even the 7 GB/sec the athlon can't do.

The make matters worse a single card can't pull that kind of data simply
because PCI-E 16x slot is limited to 4 GB/sec.

So these figures are worrieing.

So maybe the following statement could be true:

If I choose a pentium chip over an athlon chip then the pentium chip might
have lower frames rates in present games... but the pentium chip might
achieve the same frame rate in future games simply because it can sustain a
higher bandwidth.

The athlon chip simply can't provide enough bandwidth and therefore an
athlon based system will simply hit the bottleneck much sooner and cause
games to crawl.

So as you can see it's very interesting to get some facts/measurements about
all this and not just somebody on a newsgroup claiming that bussess are fast
enough

I was hoping to use nvidia's NVPerfMon to do some measurements on some of my
favorite opengl games on my current computer and to figure out what the
bottlenecks are for these games, which could be extrapolated onto future
system requirements

The limitation still is the GPU, that's why there are techniques
like SLI...


How do you know the GPU is the limitation ?

Because SLI is made to increase the rendering performance, not because
the bus limits throughput...

Why use SLI in the first place ?

Why not simply put two GPU's on one card

Maybe Scalable Link Interface is like two network cards: it increases the
bandwidth.

Some motherboard manufacturers are coming out with two "full bandwidth"
pci-e 16x slots.

Ofcourse this could only be marketing bull**** or maybe there is some thruth
in it.

The current bottleneck is not PCI-E or SLI but the bottleneck is the
CPU-RAM connection which can only deliver 6.4 GB/sec. (As I tried to
explain in one of my previous post).

The question is thus if Athlons/SLI/Nforce4/Geforces are worth their money
price/performance wise.

Euhm what are our choices:

1. Buy into Athlons/SLI/Nforce4/2 Geforces and then be bandwidth limited.

or

2. Buy into Pentium/????

At this point I am not sure if the bandwidth limitation is Nforce4 chipset
specific or if it's only athlon cpu specific. (Think of integrated memory
controller etc, northbridge chip etc)

The northbridge chip is normally part of the chipset I believe so it could
be Nforce4 chipset specific... that could mean a new/different chipset is
needed which doesn't have this main memory bandwidth limitation to fully
justify SLI/double graphics cards etc...

It's quite interesting to see if their is or is not an alternative competing
technology from intel or ati

However ati has buggy drivers so that rules out ati, which means intel
remains... though intel is said to have power hungry and overheating cpu's
so the athlon/sli/nvidia deal seems best at the moment =D

Do you mean executing
instructions ?

Prove it

I don't have to. Anyone who is at least at medium knowledge in computer
hardware should know that. You asked a question and got an response.
What you make from it is your part. But there should be enough sources
around the web which will explain you where the bottlenecks in todays
computers are and where not...

Cheap.

You should really try to figure stuff out yourself and if you have the
chance test it... otherwise you run the risk of marketing people screwing
you over lol =D

Bye,
Skybuck

Skybuck Flying wrote:

[due to the amount of nonsense I answered only the most anoying parts]

Ok, then think about on what computers were highend 10 years ago:


Ok, windows 95 era.


Pentium 200MMX with 16MB RAM and one of the first 3D cards like a Matrox
Millenium PCI.


Great computer. Internet, word processing, even some shooters which haven't
changed that much... aka doom3 aka quake 4

Maybe these shooters didn't change much regarding game content. But they
changed a lot when it comes to system ressources...

And now think about who cares about these computers
today.


People who want to internet and word process ?

Yeah, right. You definitely want to do internet with an outdated OS that
doesn't get updated any more like Windows95, because only there you can
be sure to catch _every_ bit of malware that's around...

Exactly. no-one.


Lol, are you the all knowing god ?

I think a poor person in some under developed country would be happy with
such a computer.

Sure. Tell the people that are dying because of hunger or diseases
because they are so poor that they can't afford food and medicine that
everything is good as long as they have that old Pentium200 running
Windows95. It's not that they don't have any bigger problems...

Besides that, even in development countries, such a system will be quite
useless because even there it catches all worms that are floating
around. But yeah, we definitely need more unsecure computers that are
used as SPAM sources...

Almost everything has changed during the last 10
years: busses, processors, memory, gfx cards, and much more...


Gje, when will those *******s get it right huh ?


In 10 years from now certainly no-one gives a **** on PCIe 16x any more...


Most people don't give a **** today since their clueless ?

Or perhaps they just know it better than you?

Number one are disk drives which are slow like hell compared to all other

data transfer

processes in a PC.


True, access time hasn't changed at all the last 10 years.

Throughput however has become quite fast...

Yeah, right. ~60MB/s is sooo fast. And you're whining about PCIe being a
bottleneck...

Second is RAM which is still plain slow compared to
what CPUs are able to transfer...


Hmm.. I like to think of RAM being fast.

Wrong thought.

How fast do you think CPU can generate data ?

The old Pentium4 1.5GHz that sits here besides my desk does around
12GB/s between CPU and L1 cache and ~10GB/s between CPU and L2 cache...

BTW. that's the reason why processors do have cache: simply because RAM
is so slow...

I think it's quite smart to start at the theoretical limitations and proceed
downwards from there.

Nope, it's useless, especially as a end user like you that only has the
choice of a certain amount of components that are available on the
market. As long as you don't do electronics engineering such discussions
are worthless...

To understand the limitations of a system you need much deeper knowledge
than just a few figures you read from a website.


I read a lot more than just some numbers

Yes, you read a lot, but you obviously are lacking the technical
background to fully understand what's really going on inside the
computer. Sadly, most websites won't help you there...

Then stop using those applications to measure your system's performance.

Use a synthetic benchmark to test the true performance of your hardware.

Synthetic benchmarks are called "synthetic" because they have no
relation to real-world applications. But the latter are the things that
are important, because most people buy a computer to work with real
applications and not for running synthetic benchmarks...

You should seperate hardware performance from software performance since
those two things are two completely seperate things.

Nope, they are not. Software performance depends on the hardware and
vice versa...

And it's also important to understand that benchmarks like the ones
you're looking for are just that: benchmarks.


No there are different benchmarks.

I in particular like the benchmarks which drive every component to it's
maximum.

Fine. But that's really only useful if you see your PC as a penis
protesis...

Component selection/understanding is what it's all about. Do your job well
today and you'll be laughing at people 5 years down the road because they
bought a PC off the shelf with a 5000+ CPU but have some serious bottleneck
elsewhere without them even knowing about it

So, then tell us what PC one should have choosen 5 years ago to be able
to lough about people that have a current system?

Apples and oranges. SLI is not there to improve bus performance.


Maybe you are wrong.

No. Maybe you should start reading Nvidias SLI documentation...

It seems that future motherboards can simply add PCI-E lanes and increase
bus performance.

Not ad infinitum.

SLI simply uses multiple PCI slots and could therefore increase the ammount
of bandwidth flowing to the graphics cards.

No, since bandwith isn't the problem...

SLI is there to improve rendering speed.


Lol, you funny, what do you think is needed for rendering ? Exactly data !
That data has to be transferred !
Thus the bandwidth bottleneck is born

BS. You really should learn some basics first. Of course generating 3D
visuals needs huge amounts of data. But these data are not generated by
the CPU but by the GPU. The amount of data that is floating from the CPU
is much smaller than what leaves the GPU. That's why the GPUs have such
fast connections to their on board memory, and why even AGP4x is more
than fast enough...

Again, the busses are more than fast enough.


Oops, now you are just dead wrong.

Just install poorly written game x out of a million and watch your pc crawl
to a halt

In other words, 25 textures of 1024x1024x32 bits colors being pushed through
the system at 70 frames per second. That's 25 * 70 * 4 MB = 100 * 70 = 7
GB/sec.

Again you prove your lack of knowledge. Textures are only loaded once in
the gfx card RAM, not again and again. And of course you're totally
ignoring the fact that the _GPU_ does all the calculations, not the CPU.
The CPU doesn't have to send the content pixel for pixel to the gfx
processor. The CPU send raw position and processing data, and the GPU
does the processing....

If I choose a pentium chip over an athlon chip then the pentium chip might
have lower frames rates in present games... but the pentium chip might
achieve the same frame rate in future games simply because it can sustain a
higher bandwidth.

The athlon chip simply can't provide enough bandwidth and therefore an
athlon based system will simply hit the bottleneck much sooner and cause
games to crawl.

So as you can see it's very interesting to get some facts/measurements about
all this and not just somebody on a newsgroup claiming that bussess are fast
enough

Well, I _know_ that the busses are fast enough. Which btw every somewhat
reliable source confirms...

How do you know the GPU is the limitation ?

Because SLI is made to increase the rendering performance, not because
the bus limits throughput...


Why use SLI in the first place ?

SLI is technology from 1997, made by 3DFx and bought by Nvidia. The
reason SLI is quite rare is that most games simply don't scale linear
with the number of gfx cores. So having two GPUs doesn't mean you get 2x
the performance of a single card...

Why not simply put two GPU's on one card

Asus does that...

Maybe Scalable Link Interface is like two network cards: it increases the
bandwidth.

Again, read the documentation first...


I don't have to. Anyone who is at least at medium knowledge in computer
hardware should know that. You asked a question and got an response.
What you make from it is your part. But there should be enough sources
around the web which will explain you where the bottlenecks in todays
computers are and where not...


Cheap.

You should really try to figure stuff out yourself and if you have the
chance test it... otherwise you run the risk of marketing people screwing
you over lol =D

Well, I'm already very deep into that stuff in my job so I don't need
any marketing droids or geeks to get my informations from...

EOD

Benjamin

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
Skybuck Flying wrote:

[due to the amount of nonsense I answered only the most anoying parts]

Good, that means you getting tired of your own non-sense


Ok, then think about on what computers were highend 10 years ago:


Ok, windows 95 era.


Pentium 200MMX with 16MB RAM and one of the first 3D cards like a Matrox
Millenium PCI.


Great computer. Internet, word processing, even some shooters which
haven't
changed that much... aka doom3 aka quake 4

Maybe these shooters didn't change much regarding game content. But they
changed a lot when it comes to system ressources...

So what the classics are better anyway LOL.


And now think about who cares about these computers
today.


People who want to internet and word process ?

Yeah, right. You definitely want to do internet with an outdated OS that
doesn't get updated any more like Windows95, because only there you can
be sure to catch _every_ bit of malware that's around...

Simply patch it, update it and it won't be that bad.


Exactly. no-one.


Lol, are you the all knowing god ?

I think a poor person in some under developed country would be happy
with
such a computer.

Sure. Tell the people that are dying because of hunger or diseases
because they are so poor that they can't afford food and medicine that
everything is good as long as they have that old Pentium200 running
Windows95. It's not that they don't have any bigger problems...

Besides that, even in development countries, such a system will be quite
useless because even there it catches all worms that are floating
around. But yeah, we definitely need more unsecure computers that are
used as SPAM sources...

Bull, see above.

There are even companies specially in re-using old computer equipment for th
ird world countries.


Almost everything has changed during the last 10
years: busses, processors, memory, gfx cards, and much more...


Gje, when will those *******s get it right huh ?


In 10 years from now certainly no-one gives a **** on PCIe 16x any
more...


Most people don't give a **** today since their clueless ?

Or perhaps they just know it better than you?

Nope, I doubt it


Number one are disk drives which are slow like hell compared to all
other

data transfer

processes in a PC.


True, access time hasn't changed at all the last 10 years.

Throughput however has become quite fast...

Yeah, right. ~60MB/s is sooo fast. And you're whining about PCIe being a
bottleneck...

Dude, where do you get these silly numbers ?

1. First of all my own old PIII 450 mhz is able to read with 180 MB/sec from
the harddisk and that is only the harddisk, go figure !

2. Second of all the sandra benchmark shows a bandwidth of 7 GB/sec. So that
means either sandra is full of bull**** or you are full of bull**** LOL.

Gjee I wonder which case it might be ? Euhhmmm yeah me goes for second
option: you full of bull**** LOL.


Second is RAM which is still plain slow compared to
what CPUs are able to transfer...


Hmm.. I like to think of RAM being fast.

Wrong thought.

Right thought, get your facts straight.


How fast do you think CPU can generate data ?

The old Pentium4 1.5GHz that sits here besides my desk does around
12GB/s between CPU and L1 cache and ~10GB/s between CPU and L2 cache...

I wouldn't know about that... but you have inspired me to go test everything
to understand my current system's limitations... I am especially interested
in finding out if the system buys is the most limitating factor.

Seeing you being off on all other figures no doubt are you off on these
figures as well

BTW. that's the reason why processors do have cache: simply because RAM
is so slow...

Sure if you say so, NOT


I think it's quite smart to start at the theoretical limitations and
proceed
downwards from there.

Nope, it's useless, especially as a end user like you that only has the
choice of a certain amount of components that are available on the
market. As long as you don't do electronics engineering such discussions
are worthless...

At least I am not an idiot like you, and yes I can get any component I want
thanks to the internet.

Welcome to the real world, from crawling forth from under your stinking ROCK
lol.


To understand the limitations of a system you need much deeper knowledge
than just a few figures you read from a website.


I read a lot more than just some numbers

Yes, you read a lot, but you obviously are lacking the technical
background to fully understand what's really going on inside the
computer. Sadly, most websites won't help you there...

It's obvious that you are a clueless troll and I wish you lot's of lack with
it.


Then stop using those applications to measure your system's performance.

Use a synthetic benchmark to test the true performance of your hardware.

Synthetic benchmarks are called "synthetic" because they have no
relation to real-world applications. But the latter are the things that
are important, because most people buy a computer to work with real
applications and not for running synthetic benchmarks...

Sure, synthetic benchmarks are useless.. (NOT ) the only push the system
to it's maximum performance.... gjeee


You should seperate hardware performance from software performance since
those two things are two completely seperate things.

Nope, they are not. Software performance depends on the hardware and
vice versa...

Sure thing trollyboy, if you say so, NOT


And it's also important to understand that benchmarks like the ones
you're looking for are just that: benchmarks.


No there are different benchmarks.

I in particular like the benchmarks which drive every component to it's
maximum.

Fine. But that's really only useful if you see your PC as a penis
protesis...

Lol, all trolls think like that.


Component selection/understanding is what it's all about. Do your job
well
today and you'll be laughing at people 5 years down the road because
they
bought a PC off the shelf with a 5000+ CPU but have some serious
bottleneck
elsewhere without them even knowing about it

So, then tell us what PC one should have choosen 5 years ago to be able
to lough about people that have a current system?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Idiots like you ofcourse with systems which only achieve 66 MB/sec
hahahahahahahahaahahahahaha.


Apples and oranges. SLI is not there to improve bus performance.


Maybe you are wrong.

No. Maybe you should start reading Nvidias SLI documentation...

Maybe you should give it up troll


It seems that future motherboards can simply add PCI-E lanes and
increase
bus performance.

Not ad infinitum.

Gje, you think ?


SLI simply uses multiple PCI slots and could therefore increase the
ammount
of bandwidth flowing to the graphics cards.

No, since bandwith isn't the problem...

Sure if you say so troll, NOT.


SLI is there to improve rendering speed.


Lol, you funny, what do you think is needed for rendering ? Exactly data
!
That data has to be transferred !
Thus the bandwidth bottleneck is born

BS. You really should learn some basics first. Of course generating 3D
visuals needs huge amounts of data. But these data are not generated by
the CPU but by the GPU. The amount of data that is floating from the CPU
is much smaller than what leaves the GPU. That's why the GPUs have such
fast connections to their on board memory, and why even AGP4x is more
than fast enough...

Sure, if you say so TROLL, get some facts man, at least be a plausible
troll, LOL.


Again, the busses are more than fast enough.


Oops, now you are just dead wrong.

Just install poorly written game x out of a million and watch your pc
crawl
to a halt

In other words, 25 textures of 1024x1024x32 bits colors being pushed
through
the system at 70 frames per second. That's 25 * 70 * 4 MB = 100 * 70 = 7
GB/sec.

Again you prove your lack of knowledge. Textures are only loaded once in
the gfx card RAM, not again and again. And of course you're totally
ignoring the fact that the _GPU_ does all the calculations, not the CPU.
The CPU doesn't have to send the content pixel for pixel to the gfx
processor. The CPU send raw position and processing data, and the GPU
does the processing....

Dude, get real, try a fast moving shooters, enough said.


If I choose a pentium chip over an athlon chip then the pentium chip
might
have lower frames rates in present games... but the pentium chip might
achieve the same frame rate in future games simply because it can
sustain a
higher bandwidth.

The athlon chip simply can't provide enough bandwidth and therefore an
athlon based system will simply hit the bottleneck much sooner and cause
games to crawl.

So as you can see it's very interesting to get some facts/measurements
about
all this and not just somebody on a newsgroup claiming that bussess are
fast
enough

Well, I _know_ that the busses are fast enough. Which btw every somewhat
reliable source confirms...

You know jack squate, good luck with your next bandwidth limited PC

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

What will be next, 100 MB/sec ? LOL !


How do you know the GPU is the limitation ?

Because SLI is made to increase the rendering performance, not because
the bus limits throughput...


Why use SLI in the first place ?

SLI is technology from 1997, made by 3DFx and bought by Nvidia. The
reason SLI is quite rare is that most games simply don't scale linear
with the number of gfx cores. So having two GPUs doesn't mean you get 2x
the performance of a single card...

Oh boy, did you bother read an actually benchmark this time ? Good for you
LOL.

You still have no clue to how fast it really is.


Why not simply put two GPU's on one card

Asus does that...

Yeah so ?


Maybe Scalable Link Interface is like two network cards: it increases
the
bandwidth.

Again, read the documentation first...

Try getting a clue yourself for a change



I don't have to. Anyone who is at least at medium knowledge in computer
hardware should know that. You asked a question and got an response.
What you make from it is your part. But there should be enough sources
around the web which will explain you where the bottlenecks in todays
computers are and where not...


Cheap.

You should really try to figure stuff out yourself and if you have the
chance test it... otherwise you run the risk of marketing people
screwing
you over lol =D

Well, I'm already very deep into that stuff in my job so I don't need
any marketing droids or geeks to get my informations from...

LOL,

You just another incompetent clueless idiot claiming to have a job
hahahahahahaha.

I am pretty mcuh done with you, have a nice day

Bye,
Skybuck =D Wieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeee.

So what is the point of a newsgroup if all you are going to do is bash
on one another. What would be nice is if you guys could support your
arguments with some credible facts. Don't just regurgitate what you
think is correct, give some supporting facts to go with it. As for the
name calling, is it necessary?

Oh yeah, one more thing. Isn't this newsgroup about game programming
and algorithms? If not, then I guess I need to go find that newsgroup.

'Mushr00mhead' wrote:
| Oh yeah, one more thing. Isn't this newsgroup about game programming
| and algorithms? If not, then I guess I need to go find that newsgroup.
_____

Notice that this thread is crossposted to
atl.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
alt.comp.periphs.videocardsnvidia
comp.games.development.program.algorithms
so you will see replies from participants in all three newsgroups.

The original poster is 'Starbuck Flying' who has been the only source of bad
behavior. If you look at other 'Starbuck Flying' in other threads you will
see consistent behavior.

Phil Weldon

"Mushr00mhead" wrote in message
news:Nl4bf.4967$UF4.2752@fed1read02...
| Oh yeah, one more thing. Isn't this newsgroup about game programming
| and algorithms? If not, then I guess I need to go find that newsgroup.