DrSchmoe

Aureal has ceased all hardware and driver development, and has no intention of reviving anything unless they are purchased. However, to my knowledge they are not in serious negotiations with anyone in that regard. There was some talk of being acquired by ESS, but I haven't heard any more than a whisper. The www.aureal.com site was brought back mostly at the request of investors to keep them in the loop based on the Ch. 11 filings. A lot of people lost a lot of money based on the failure of that corporation. Just be glad you might own a sound card, and not their stock.

Out? What's that? Is that where pizza comes from?

[censored]... It has got to be [censored]. Whenever you don't know what something is being used for, isn't it always [censored]? That would explain the consumer quality hardware. [censored] never has a high production value.

Heheh... No doubt, that is probably the strangest configuration I have ever seen. Any gamer would be a little loopy (er, no offence). I mean seriously, what game requires 2GB of memory? And 120GB of hard disk space is a bit overboard. Maybe if you wanted to create a RAM drive and load your Diablo 2 installation into it, but that would still leave 512MB memory free However, what is equally strange is that configuration isn't suited for rendering. GeForce hardware is an *extremely* far cry from professional quality rendering hardware. The output would be substandard, only really suitable for low-resolution. There would be way too much tearing and lots of lighting and edge problems. As a server the memory makes sense, however the hard drives are all wrong. SCSI RAID-5 or RAID-50 would make a lot more sense. Not to mention, I don't know any servers needing a TV-tuner and GeForce =) It looks like it could be used for video production, possibly as a NLE system slaved with an AVID or Play Inc. Trinity, but even then SCSI RAID and more capable video hardware would be *strongly* preferred. Not to mention NLE systems are actually fairly happy with smaller amounts of memory. Also, interesting that the 56K USB modem is there! Gotta love that blazing Internet connectivity =) Jack of all trades, but master of nothing, I guess! [This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 13 July 2000).]

Er... Do you have a thing for Canada, or is ATi giving you kickbacks? I have owned nothing but ATi cards. I have an Nvidia in the office and have been quite happy with it. However, preliminary benchmarks of the Radeon show it lagging 10-30% behind the GeForce 2, roughly in parity with the Voodoo 5500. Also, in 2-3 months, the NV20 will be available, which will run 2-4 times faster than the GeForce 2. ATi will not have a comparable card until March of next year (or later). The NV20 will render out at 1600 Mpixels, or 6.4 GTexels, which is 4 and 5.3 times faster than the Radeon for the same statistics (400 Mpixels, 1.2 GTexels). ATi has never tried to have the fastest card. Rather, they attempt to suit their OEMs, which generally involves making an inexpensive, well-rounded product. Both companies are just fine for their repsective target markets. ATi for low cost, high volume OEM sales, and Nvidia for high cost, moderate volume add-on sales. Nvidia has made some headway into the OEM market, but currently has 25% of the penetration of ATi.

This probably isn't the place, but a lot more people read the hardware forum Internet Explorer 5.5 is out, and Microsoft announced that Windows Media Player 7 will be released on July 18th. I would also assume that the SP1 release will also occur sometime around the 18th.

Well, if you are using Windows 2000, it is only a 5-6MB download. There is print preview, which is nice, and then bug fixes and faster performance. Basically, the typical enhancements of a new browser. Most of the new additions are for developers, and not obvious for end users.

No. Creative explicity says hardware passthrough is only supported on Win9X, not NT or 2K. Although, it could show up in a future driver update, and it probably will. From their FAQ. ------ Q12. Does "Live!Ware 3.0 for Windows 2000" support AC-3 pass-thru? A. No, "Live!Ware for Windows 2000" does not support AC-3 pass-thru. Currently, the feature is only supported in Live!Ware 3.0 for Windows 95/98.

You are one paranoid man... Somehow I don't think Creative Labs is out to get us. It is just as likely the news server is having some problems. Had they really been worried about posts, they would have taken the server off line or deleted them. It has hiccupped a few times before, but I tend to ignore it, because sooner or later someone reboots it.

No. Those are the drivers for a different product. Good try though.

Quote: Originally posted by slkh: How about Asus CUR-DLS dual processor motherboard? http://insanehardware.com/reviews/hardware/cur-dls/ That is a bad idea... The board itself is good, but has 4MB of onboard video, which makes it useless for the job of a rendering machine. This product is only intended for servers. Another version of the board will be out later in the year with AGP support, but I don't think anyone wants to wait until October/November. [This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 27 June 2000).]

I wouldn't do the SuperMicro... The chipset is the GX, which is even older than the previously mentioned ones. Not to mention it doesn't have 133MHz support. The RAID port is a proprietary Adaptec technology. Adaptec makes great SCSI products, but when you look at RAID, there are much better options (i.e. almost anyone else). As far as I can see, the only real drawback to an 820 solution is the price of RDRAM, and being limited to 1GB. Although, fortunately the price of RDRAM keeps falling.

i840 is a much better route to take. BX has its advantages, namely that it has been proven over 2 years, but the 840 technology is vastly improved. Truthfully though, I would look into an i820 board and get RDRAM. The combination will yield a significantly faster system than the 840, especially for rendering and media intensive tasks. I would personally recommend the ASUS P3C-D, however if you have a favorite manufacturer it is just as easy to go with them. Also, when considering drives, the polygon counts do not matter. That is only an issue of CPU overhead. If you intend to do DVD resolution at 30 frames per second (720x486), then you need to go SCSI. The ASUS P3C-D does not have built in SCSI, which is a good thing. I would add an aftermarket RAID card, which could be used in either single drive, or RAID array configurations. You might want to consider the AMI MegaRAID Express 100, which would probably be an ideal match for your system ($300). Or you could go for the slightly more powerful Express 200 ($550), or Express 500 if you want 160MB SCSI support (don't know the price). But I seem to be digressing... If you do high-resolution animation SCSI is worth it. However, if you are rendering out single frame images, then IDE should suit you fine. Personally, you can never have too much storage. If you go the IDE route, I would look at the IBM 75GXP drive. It is priced around $500 for 75GB. It will also blow the doors off anything but the best 10,000-RPM SCSI drives. Anyway, I hope this helps... I am not sure what your budget is, so I my recommendation might be a little steep. If you need to conserve money, I would start with 256MB of RDRAM, and add the additional 256 at a latter date.

I am not sure what your budget cap is or what you are considering "3D Animation"? Are we talking 3DMax with high-resolution renders? For hobbyist level things, the machine should be more than sufficient. However, if you want to do professional work I would look at an Elsa Gloria II instead of the GeForce2. Technically its raw speed would be less but the output quality should be significantly better. Also, you would probably want a good SCSI drive (Cheetah), or a RAID-0 array made up of multiple Cheetahs. Here's why: We do DVD quality renders here. We just recently completed a 30 second animation, which in uncompressed form requires 1.5GB. To play the animation in real time requires a hard disk with 50MB/sec-sustained transfer. 3DMax can dump compressed output, however, if you want to do digital posting you shouldn’t get "lossy" until the last step. Hope this helps.

I wish I could say something witty, but that behavior is perfectly normal. Starting the root server of an Active Directory forest takes time... The time is somewhat variable depending on which tasks this particular server is delegated, but it sounds like it might be the only one on the network, hence it is processing all the functions of AD. If you would like, I could elaborate why, but there are some pretty good articles from Windows 2000 Magazine that would explain it, plus I am lazy and don't want to type that much =) [This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 26 June 2000).]

True, the 98 CD is bootable, but I would say "everyone I know that uses a Microsoft OS uses win98 or at least dual boots" might be true of your pals, but highly innacurate when comparing all the 2K users (especially considering most of them use it for business). Actually, myself and my company do not own 9x, only NT4 and 2K. If an employee came to me wanting my sign off on the purchase of a 9x workstation, I would probably look at them as if they weren't speaking my language, then quickly inform his or her coworkers so they could plan an intervention...

Halen: Yes, you are right, it would be easier, but it would also be illegal. Bundling a disk image would include MS-DOS system files, which are still copyrighted material. There are other versions of DOS (non-MS) that could be bundled, however they don't have 100% compatibility and some upgrade utilites won't work properly. Here is something even more pathetic... I own a Xerox printer. Recently, Xerox released a firmware upgrade, however the upgrade utility is Win9x only!!! I honestly don't have access to any 9x machines (2K at home and a NT/2K mix at work)! They could have made it DOS based, and made my life easier. So it looks like I need to drag my printer to Kinko's if I want to upgrade. How sad is that?

You know, I just love the fact that WHQL certification adds another 4-6 weeks to the driver development process... Just so that darn warning screen doesn't pop up telling you it isn't certified I have a love/hate relationship with Creative. They only *try* to release drivers when they are done, but at the same token it would be nice if they occasionaly dropped a beta or two.

Here is something funny for you. 3DFX is currently valued at $217.2M, whereas NVidia is worth $5.26B. Put another way, NVidia is worth 24 times more than 3DFX. (NASDAQ symbols, TDFX and NVDA respectively)

Cryptonium was right on the money, this was posted to the NT Compatible home page a couple days ago: -------- Liveware 3 Update Posted Thursday, May 25, 2000 Thanks to Anthony for forward the follow note to me: Latest info that I have so far looks like around mid-June, folks. If the date changes, I'll update it. And if it looks like its going to get posted sooner, I'll try and beat you guys to posting the news. Still checking on the CT4700 issue for the folks who inquired in this NG. -- Harvey Fong Technical Marketing Spe[censored]t Audio Products Creative Labs Inc. [This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 28 May 2000).]

Er... And remember Aureal is filing for bankruptcy, so it is doubtful that newer drivers will be released. Which leaves ESS, Cirrus Logic, and Creative Labs. Beyond those companies, there aren't all that many options. [This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 27 May 2000).]

Actually, I want to correct people on the issue of LCD prices. In reality, they cost roughly the same as CRTs. However, the technology is currently only manufactured in Japan. For this reason, countries such as the United States have a 100% tariff on LCD panels. The government is using the tariff as an incentive to push US companies into LCD production. As more companies enter the marketplace, eventually the tariff will be repealed, and LCDs will probably be cheaper than CRTs. As for the size, 18" LCDs are roughly similar to 21" CRTs. The reason is because the LCD screen is uniform from edge-to-edge. With CRTs the viewable image area is the entire face of the tube that is not masked by the case. However, the image quality degrades fairly substantially around the edges. For this reason, most people don't expand their screen out all the way. Most of you have a very small border around your screen, but in reality, this border adds up to remove another inch from your viewing area. So, a 21" CRT with 19" viewable roughly has 18" being used. Also, the refresh rate of LCDs is 60Hz. It is not necessary to go any faster, because of the nature of the technology. Even if it were running at 1Hz, the screen would not flicker. The 60Hz rate refers to the speed at which it redraws, for this reason, a poorly designed LCD will blur while dealing with high-action (movies, games, etc).

Are you legitimately an MSDN member? Just because you have an MS Online ID does not give you access to MSDN. The approximate charge for MSDN is US $2500 for the first year, and $2000 for each renewal year. There is another level down, which does not offer as many developer components, and that is $800 or so. tylau: if you missed my previous comments, the service pack is 60MB for the full version. MSDN members are downloading a CD image, hence the large size.

Yes, you are right, the MX-300 is a Vortex 2. However, he is talking about the MX-25, which was the original Monster Sound. I am not sure which chipset it uses. It may even be an ESS, but I am not certain.

I am an SB Live person, so I don't really know... I think it might be the Vortex 1. However, to be certain, you can go to this page and download the Vortex ID utility. http://support.a3d.com/utilities/index.htm Or, open your computer and read the imprint on the chip.