Actually, the fastest solid state drive on the market at the moment is OCZ's Z-drive. Well, "on the market" may be a bit of a stretch, as no one has it in stock just yet, but it did officially launch yesterday. Super-Talent is releasing a similar (and possibly faster) drive next month.
As for reliability, OCZ's Solid 2 drives will use exactly the same flash memory as Intel's second generation X25-M. I'd expect Crucial to come out with such drives, too, since that's a brand name for Micron, which jointly owns the company that makes Intel's flash memory. (If a company makes flash memory used in solid state drives and also makes solid state drives, one might expect them to make solid state drives that use their own flash memory.) And if one really wants to get pedantic, Kingston sells drives that are physically identical to the Intel drives except with a Kingston sticker on them.
Anyway, Intel's main competitor for good solid state drives is Indilinx, not Samsung. The speed of the drive is mostly determined by the speed of the drive controller (as this varies by fastly more than the speed of the flash memory), and while Intel has the fastest controller, Indilinx is at least competitive--unlike Samsung. Saying to stick with Intel drives because they're the fastest is kind of like saying stick with Core i7 processors and avoid Core i5 because Core i7 is faster. Yes, it is faster, but it's a question of how much faster and at what price? Buying a slower but still fast enough processor at a lower price is the sensible thing to do for many people, and it's the same with solid state drives.
As far as the speed of the flash memory, Intel's flash memory is actually rather slow, and a lot slower than the Samsung flash memory that gets used in the Indilinx reference drives. Intel's drive controller is faster than Indilinx's by more than enough to make up for this discrepancy, except in sequential writes, where Intel's drive controller is slower than Indilinx's.
Confused yet? That's exactly what the companies pushing st-st-stuttering JMicron drives are hoping for.
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If GPU A is faster than GPU B, then usually 2x GPU A will still be faster than 2x GPU B. The main reason to use B over A would be the price. Some rumors are that the Radeon HD 5870 is competitive with the GeForce GTX 295, which is, in itself, essentially two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI on a single card. If one Radeon HD 5870 beats one GeForce GTX 275, then two Radeon HD 5870s in Crossfire will probably beat two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI--and by corollary, a Radeon HD 5870 X2 will probably beat a GeForce GTX 295.
It's not really an advantage of one ATI card replacing two Nvidia cards, though. The advantage is one of getting a given level of performance at a lower price, while using less power, and with greater compatibility with future programs. If one Radeon HD 5870 gives you the same performance as two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI (hypothetically; I'd expect it to be slower than that because a GeForce GTX 295 has to underclock the chips to avoid frying), then the Radeon HD 5870 would generally be superior to the GeForce GTX 275 if each card is the same price, but inferior if the Radeon HD 5870 costs four times as much.
It's also not a matter of, maybe the ATI cards will get Crossfire in the future. ATI already showed off four of them working in Crossfire last week, running 24 monitors between the four cards. ATI cards will have Crossfire at launch. The only potential hangup here is that the drivers for them may or may not work as well as they should. (I really have no idea whether this would require radical changes to drivers from past generations in Crossfire or only minor tweaks.)
Actually, the fastest solid state drive on the market at the moment is OCZ's Z-drive. Well, "on the market" may be a bit of a stretch, as no one has it in stock just yet, but it did officially launch yesterday. Super-Talent is releasing a similar (and possibly faster) drive next month. As for reliability, OCZ's Solid 2 drives will use exactly the same flash memory as Intel's second generation X25-M. I'd expect Crucial to come out with such drives, too, since that's a brand name for Micron, which jointly owns the company that makes Intel's flash memory. (If a company makes flash memory used in solid state drives and also makes solid state drives, one might expect them to make solid state drives that use their own flash memory.) And if one really wants to get pedantic, Kingston sells drives that are physically identical to the Intel drives except with a Kingston sticker on them. Anyway, Intel's main competitor for good solid state drives is Indilinx, not Samsung. The speed of the drive is mostly determined by the speed of the drive controller (as this varies by fastly more than the speed of the flash memory), and while Intel has the fastest controller, Indilinx is at least competitive--unlike Samsung. Saying to stick with Intel drives because they're the fastest is kind of like saying stick with Core i7 processors and avoid Core i5 because Core i7 is faster. Yes, it is faster, but it's a question of how much faster and at what price? Buying a slower but still fast enough processor at a lower price is the sensible thing to do for many people, and it's the same with solid state drives. As far as the speed of the flash memory, Intel's flash memory is actually rather slow, and a lot slower than the Samsung flash memory that gets used in the Indilinx reference drives. Intel's drive controller is faster than Indilinx's by more than enough to make up for this discrepancy, except in sequential writes, where Intel's drive controller is slower than Indilinx's. Confused yet? That's exactly what the companies pushing st-st-stuttering JMicron drives are hoping for. ----- If GPU A is faster than GPU B, then usually 2x GPU A will still be faster than 2x GPU B. The main reason to use B over A would be the price. Some rumors are that the Radeon HD 5870 is competitive with the GeForce GTX 295, which is, in itself, essentially two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI on a single card. If one Radeon HD 5870 beats one GeForce GTX 275, then two Radeon HD 5870s in Crossfire will probably beat two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI--and by corollary, a Radeon HD 5870 X2 will probably beat a GeForce GTX 295. It's not really an advantage of one ATI card replacing two Nvidia cards, though. The advantage is one of getting a given level of performance at a lower price, while using less power, and with greater compatibility with future programs. If one Radeon HD 5870 gives you the same performance as two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI (hypothetically; I'd expect it to be slower than that because a GeForce GTX 295 has to underclock the chips to avoid frying), then the Radeon HD 5870 would generally be superior to the GeForce GTX 275 if each card is the same price, but inferior if the Radeon HD 5870 costs four times as much. It's also not a matter of, maybe the ATI cards will get Crossfire in the future. ATI already showed off four of them working in Crossfire last week, running 24 monitors between the four cards. ATI cards will have Crossfire at launch. The only potential hangup here is that the drivers for them may or may not work as well as they should. (I really have no idea whether this would require radical changes to drivers from past generations in Crossfire or only minor tweaks.)
ocz=z 3300$ on ebay
earth call the moon earth call the moon
its fast tho 700 mb/sec read and right(not actual but around that )
I'm thinking of picking up a cheap, re-certified 260GTX to replace my aging 8800gts and waiting until the nVidia 300 series comes out. I was just reading an article about the new 300 series and how it is making some big leaps in graphics technology.
mm i wonder with all these new cards coming out are they still fitting say in a regular 8800gt area men mine was fairly big and
with the fan and all .probably i should just give this comp to my kid and just replace the whole thing
but with the vista commotion im kind of sketish of window 7 ,i think ill wait anyway its not like i would need it
hell only few game can abuse my comp right now my biggest slowdown is the hardrive
previous poster speed problem is probably same as me hard drive
but going balistic with a ssd drive like say andintel x25e or their new one if they have one is not cheap were from 500 to 800 i ear for the intel model
was fastest ,perfect for a game like everquest 2
Thats actually a good point theres really no point until software actually can catch up. An 8800 performs just as well as the other on todays games unless were talking milliseconds which unless your computer you wont notice. I would like to see more 64 bit and DX10 applications before upgrading
As far as cards go, it really depends on what you use it for. Right now performance in games is a mixed bag. Some are optimized for ATI, some for nVidia. When you look at the comparison between the current GTX285 and the HD5870, the performance gains aren't impressive. An average gain of 45% over the top range of the last generation. When you factor in many games are optimized for nVidia architecture then the comparison changes as the HD5870 is about 60~70% faster then the HD4870 on average.
If you do CAD or GPGPU tasks then the only choice right now for consumer brand and even professional grade cards is ATI. With multi-piece processing unit, a shit load more stream processors, and hardware tesselation you have alot more to work with. Considering the Global Foundry is going to start supporting full and half nodes, ATI can competely get out of TSMC and cheapen their parts further.
I think the next nVidia card is going to be really competitive, however they are going to lose the crown on dictating architecture. They lost it when they didn't support DX fully, and now it means nVidia has to conform to how ATI builds their cards.
As far as Larrabee being a competitive part in the current space of GPGPU or gaming I think is rediculous. Its just not designed for either, its more like a 2nd processor on your PCI-e over another socket. Considering its designed for x86 tasks, its already lost. With the limitations of 32-bit processing, more companies are going to be switching to 64-bit. Ofcourse 64-bit is something AMD does better which gives them another huge advantage into the coming year.
Comments
Actually, the fastest solid state drive on the market at the moment is OCZ's Z-drive. Well, "on the market" may be a bit of a stretch, as no one has it in stock just yet, but it did officially launch yesterday. Super-Talent is releasing a similar (and possibly faster) drive next month.
As for reliability, OCZ's Solid 2 drives will use exactly the same flash memory as Intel's second generation X25-M. I'd expect Crucial to come out with such drives, too, since that's a brand name for Micron, which jointly owns the company that makes Intel's flash memory. (If a company makes flash memory used in solid state drives and also makes solid state drives, one might expect them to make solid state drives that use their own flash memory.) And if one really wants to get pedantic, Kingston sells drives that are physically identical to the Intel drives except with a Kingston sticker on them.
Anyway, Intel's main competitor for good solid state drives is Indilinx, not Samsung. The speed of the drive is mostly determined by the speed of the drive controller (as this varies by fastly more than the speed of the flash memory), and while Intel has the fastest controller, Indilinx is at least competitive--unlike Samsung. Saying to stick with Intel drives because they're the fastest is kind of like saying stick with Core i7 processors and avoid Core i5 because Core i7 is faster. Yes, it is faster, but it's a question of how much faster and at what price? Buying a slower but still fast enough processor at a lower price is the sensible thing to do for many people, and it's the same with solid state drives.
As far as the speed of the flash memory, Intel's flash memory is actually rather slow, and a lot slower than the Samsung flash memory that gets used in the Indilinx reference drives. Intel's drive controller is faster than Indilinx's by more than enough to make up for this discrepancy, except in sequential writes, where Intel's drive controller is slower than Indilinx's.
Confused yet? That's exactly what the companies pushing st-st-stuttering JMicron drives are hoping for.
-----
If GPU A is faster than GPU B, then usually 2x GPU A will still be faster than 2x GPU B. The main reason to use B over A would be the price. Some rumors are that the Radeon HD 5870 is competitive with the GeForce GTX 295, which is, in itself, essentially two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI on a single card. If one Radeon HD 5870 beats one GeForce GTX 275, then two Radeon HD 5870s in Crossfire will probably beat two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI--and by corollary, a Radeon HD 5870 X2 will probably beat a GeForce GTX 295.
It's not really an advantage of one ATI card replacing two Nvidia cards, though. The advantage is one of getting a given level of performance at a lower price, while using less power, and with greater compatibility with future programs. If one Radeon HD 5870 gives you the same performance as two GeForce GTX 275s in SLI (hypothetically; I'd expect it to be slower than that because a GeForce GTX 295 has to underclock the chips to avoid frying), then the Radeon HD 5870 would generally be superior to the GeForce GTX 275 if each card is the same price, but inferior if the Radeon HD 5870 costs four times as much.
It's also not a matter of, maybe the ATI cards will get Crossfire in the future. ATI already showed off four of them working in Crossfire last week, running 24 monitors between the four cards. ATI cards will have Crossfire at launch. The only potential hangup here is that the drivers for them may or may not work as well as they should. (I really have no idea whether this would require radical changes to drivers from past generations in Crossfire or only minor tweaks.)
I love how technology waits for noone. One step closer to the Skynet takeover.
too true ,no long ago the first x-25-e was the fastest drive and now its not the fastest ,its hard to keep up
ocz=z 3300$ on ebay
earth call the moon earth call the moon
its fast tho 700 mb/sec read and right(not actual but around that )
mm i wonder with all these new cards coming out are they still fitting say in a regular 8800gt area men mine was fairly big and
with the fan and all .probably i should just give this comp to my kid and just replace the whole thing
but with the vista commotion im kind of sketish of window 7 ,i think ill wait anyway its not like i would need it
hell only few game can abuse my comp right now my biggest slowdown is the hardrive
previous poster speed problem is probably same as me hard drive
but going balistic with a ssd drive like say andintel x25e or their new one if they have one is not cheap were from 500 to 800 i ear for the intel model
was fastest ,perfect for a game like everquest 2
Thats actually a good point theres really no point until software actually can catch up. An 8800 performs just as well as the other on todays games unless were talking milliseconds which unless your computer you wont notice. I would like to see more 64 bit and DX10 applications before upgrading
As far as cards go, it really depends on what you use it for. Right now performance in games is a mixed bag. Some are optimized for ATI, some for nVidia. When you look at the comparison between the current GTX285 and the HD5870, the performance gains aren't impressive. An average gain of 45% over the top range of the last generation. When you factor in many games are optimized for nVidia architecture then the comparison changes as the HD5870 is about 60~70% faster then the HD4870 on average.
If you do CAD or GPGPU tasks then the only choice right now for consumer brand and even professional grade cards is ATI. With multi-piece processing unit, a shit load more stream processors, and hardware tesselation you have alot more to work with. Considering the Global Foundry is going to start supporting full and half nodes, ATI can competely get out of TSMC and cheapen their parts further.
I think the next nVidia card is going to be really competitive, however they are going to lose the crown on dictating architecture. They lost it when they didn't support DX fully, and now it means nVidia has to conform to how ATI builds their cards.
As far as Larrabee being a competitive part in the current space of GPGPU or gaming I think is rediculous. Its just not designed for either, its more like a 2nd processor on your PCI-e over another socket. Considering its designed for x86 tasks, its already lost. With the limitations of 32-bit processing, more companies are going to be switching to 64-bit. Ofcourse 64-bit is something AMD does better which gives them another huge advantage into the coming year.