Well! There is a third way!

[BGP Spook]

Yeah, games are the most dynamically CPU intensive.

Good point on AI, gmat.
What about real on the fly physics in games?
What is out there now, as much as they have impoved in the last few years, is still a preprogramed approximation, or simplified attempt at physics (like rag doll physics).

@LHG
Dang, need to use an acronym finder to understand what you were talking about LHG. I can barely conceive all the applicable factors in doing all three. Can't imagine trying to do them by hand!

As bobo5195 said, OCing becomes more attactive. We can always dream up new and intensive ways of taxing our CPUs.

[BillA]

but we are geeks/gearheads/gamers (the last not I); yes to AI
if anything is possible, the Chinese will do it, so many clever people there

the power is coming, but can Joe Sixpack be suckered to pay for it ?
sure, we have really good marketing

[gmat]

FEA is another example CPU hog, and there's never enough power for it - the day you multiply by 10x the power of your mainframe, the next day your engineering team finds a way to put it down to its knees. The race to mainframe power is still on and raging thanks to the Japanese (NEC & Fujitsu leading the charge) who are putting a heavy pressure on US labs and IBM. The goal is more power in a smaller space. With time the technologies developped for mainframes trickle down to consumer level (look at AMD64 platform architecture..) so i'd say we're not near the end of the race.
About physics engines they're now able to simulate full newtonian physics (in a limited reference frame though, but enough for games), they're now at such a point that whole companies are specialized in programming and licencing them (heard of Havok ?). For todays games i think they *all* licence a 3rd party physics engine, it's just logical (and saves man-years of work). Still those engines are highly tuned down to suit just the needs of the game, and not hog all the CPU cycles.
There's also this Ageia thing, although i highly doubt it will ever catch due to ppl not *seeing* the result of what they buy (a physics engine being quite abstract). The idea is good (hardware chip running Havok-like engine) but the marketing is flawed (add-on card that does just that). Just wait until that Ageia chip is integrated in a mobo chipset, or a CPU/GPU.
So i'm not taking risks predicting ever more CPU intensive games, look at Warren Spector views on the future of gaming, i really like his approach (and the fact he's behind some of the greatest games ever, Thief series, System Shock 2...). His dream is to immerse the player in a totally free and lively world, with NPC living their lifes... about this look closely at Bethesda next steamroller, Oblivion: they're getting close to that concept, and the more CPU power you have, the better the game will run, there's so much more than just nice 3d graphics to this game. BTW just like Origin games in their times (remember Wing Commander or Ultima series ?) Bethesda games are pushing the market forward, look at how many ppl are upgrading their hardware just to meet the requirements. In the old tradition their games require the "next gen" hardware, which we didnt really need before... So i label Oblivion "killer app".

[TerraMex]

His dream is to immerse the player in a totally free and lively world, with NPC living their lifes...

just to make a reference to Ultima VII.
Best coding of npc's i've seen to date, as far "life" keeps going.
Shops had open and closed times, npc's went home, slept, went shopping, or go out on a travel (had to wait a week for a merchant on a point), etc. You could even have sex with one of the NPC. And there were secondary plots very interesting (damn those goblins).

I've played the Arena series since day one , and the "not so funny detail" is that visually it has improved considerably in Morrowind, but has not in terms of the game itself, specially on the points above. It actually went backwards in Morrowind. In Daggerfall shops closed at night, people went home. In Morrowind npc's pretty much stand around all the time, and have the exact same lines of dialog, doing the same thing. Even U7 is better than that. Game lacks immersion on those key points. Even the secondary missons and plots aren't that great. Good, but not great. And given it's background, i honestly expected better.
So if Oblivion (which i'm waiting) doesn't excel in simple (and it is , simple) NPC interaction and behaviour (other points could be given), and even more now, from what i've experienced, players demand quality not only in graphics, it wont be as a hit as it's expect it to be. Pretty only goes so far.

PS: don't put Thief and SS2 in the same sentence, it's insulting .

[Joe]

SS2, rock the hell on! It is one of the best games ever, as was System Shock 1 for its time.

[gmat]

TerraMex, i only speak of the intent. Maybe the result will be disappointing, who knows. The intent is to have life-like games, strong AI, relative freedom...
(oh and yes i put Thief and System Shock series in the same bag, they're from the same team, and both represent the best of computer RPG, esp. second episodes of each, Thief2 was totally awesome, and so was SS2 - hailed best game ever by anyone who played it, just search on slashdot - Deus Ex was quite good too)

A thing to note is the focus is now more on the sofware contents, and not the amazement of discovering new technology and tweaking it. Makes me think of car history dont you think ? Now the car market is focused on fuel economy, and onboard gizmoes - not the engine itself, which is totally maked away on newer models. I tend to think computers are following the same path. The interest in tinkering in the innards will fade away for the general public, and will remain only in the hardcore fringe (like, us)

[Long Haired Git]

Apologies:

ETL: Extract, Transform, Load.
For me, I have to get data out of System A in a certain format, and change it all to be in a different format, and load it into System B. Some of the trades ("Asset Swaps") take 6 minutes each on an eight-CPU v880r with 32 GB RAM. I've got tens of thousands of them.

VAR: Value at Risk. A risk calculation to determine how much of a trade's value is still outstanding and hence at risk if the customer goes belly up.

NPV: Net Present Value: Basically the P&L of the trade at a point in time.

Both VAR and NPV of some of the trades are calculations that see Mathmaticians get jobs outside of Universities. Very, very ugly maths, and non-trivial volumes of data.


As for the approximator itself, its quite straight forward to calc things. Again, no trying to solve equations, instead I start at 5 LPM, calculate the head (positive for pumps, negative for components). If its positive, I nudge the flow up, if its negative I nudge it down, and I repeat and reduce the nudge amount and when I get close enough to net zero head I stop. Looping through tiny data sets and doing floating point math is very, very fast even in java (which is like 100 times slower than C).

As for games, I still play BZFLAG. Sodd graphics, I want engaging game play, which BZFLAG has delivered (essentially) unchanged for years. See you at Lou's Laser Mania....

[metarinka]

I would just like to take contention that the future of water cooling. As it gets to be more refined and commercialized there will always be the need for a knowledge base and DIY community. I think this to a level mirrors the automotive industry. in the beginning there were many competing designs and theories in automotive technology and it took about 30 years or so for there to become a general consensus in terms of construction and theories (internal combustion, assembly line etc) now cars are more complex to a large factor but I see the same thing happening in watercooling. In the beginning there was many competing designs and interesting formats (anyone remember that block that was coiled copper tubing on base plate?) It was exciting and every few months a better design came out. Soon watercooling will become pretty cheap, commercial and just plane (still exotic to the non hardcore computing crowd). All the arguments and design of parts will pretty much have been fleshed out with little room for "new ideas" . But - as in cars- there's still much room for tweaking modification and "bling" to make off the counter parts something that is yours, or even possibly something that performs better.
I'm an amature watercooler compared to you guys, but I saw the exact same thing is happening in the modding community where LED fans went from being OMG AMAZING HOW DID YOU SOLDER THAT!!!!11! to being a $4 item you can get at best buy. but just as in modding, there's still plenty of room left for creative design and implementation in setups. I'm not claiming to be the most innovative or anything but I'm trying to be novel at the very least by building a passive radiator (designs in the radiator section).
At any rate the reason I came to procooling from bit-tech (although I still post there) Is the pure technical knowledge of members. I posted a clear cut question on Joint fitment in acrylic. Here I got 33 views and 3 very helpful answers; on bit-tech I got 40 views and no one has even responded. I'm guessing it's not interesting or too technical for most of them. At any rate I have high hopes for the wiki If I had the time to sit down and really learn the format I would try wipping out more articles on what I know best as a educated welder and fabricator. I think the future of procooling is our extensive knowledge base for the DIY aspect as no matter how cheap or common place water cooling becomes there will always people pushing the envelope or just doing something different such as building your own flow meters or crazy radiators in my case. Watercooling as cars may become common place, but there will always be a need for mechanics

- Meta out

[Cathar]

Hi All,

Decided to drop by here after spending two (working) weeks in India, and a workload prior that can at best be described as inhumane. Marci is right, what little time I have spare from my real job (and we're talking maybe 16 spare hours a week in total where I'm not either sleeping or working or eating), I'm out on the bike enjoying the smallest chance I can get to escape from everything. That's not a whinge, it's just the way it is.

I never understood what the argument was against knowing Tjunction. I got sick of the general illogical crap that surrounded a call for less knowledge, and generally ceased to care any longer as my work pressures piled up further and further.

I got sick of the constant jabs by Bill, even when I wasn't even involved in any part of the thread that the jabs were contained in, and Bill's general character assassination. Found it inane and childish to the extreme. Sure, for a while I fought back, but remembered that saying that is oh so bitingly true:

"If you argue with a fool for long enough, then others often can't tell the difference between the two of you".

Not that I think Bill is a fool for most things, only for the persistent argument against knowing Tjunction as an additional data point. Could never understand why we would want less information. It was time to end the pointless game of biting the carrot. It was doing too much harm in the forums where it sadly took place, and I openly apologise to all who had to put up with it.

Nice to see that Swiftech have now started making a Storm Rev2, based upon my recommendations prior to me even being aware of the Apogee. Would also be nice if they contacted me at some stage as per our agreement to honor the design licensing arrangement. Last I was told was that it would be an automatic payment deal. Haven't seen anything head my way since about a month before the Apogee surfaced. Seems that I've been taken advantage of yet again.

No, what was once a very enjoyable hobby quite quickly turned into a sad set of bitter experiences, where some individuals couldn't even muster the self restraint to agree to disagree with dignity, and even to this day continue to poison the forums with their barbed statements. What was a sense of such high pride in my work, had been fairly neatly hijacked and destroyed by those with other agendas.

The Storm design could have quite happily be expanded to work across a larger area than it presently does, if that was deemed necessary. I still wasn't seeing the required proof that I was looking for to justify such though, and third party results are presently as good as inconclusive. Heck, could have even made it substantially cheaper to make had I been given the opportunity to participate in a re-jigging of the design, but I was excluded in this, and the design was subject to an unfair assassination attempt without really giving it a chance to be adjusted to fit the target market segment. Having effectively handed over the marketing control to a company who then proceeded to assasinate the design, rather than seek my assistance, was bitterly disappointing to say the least. Would not have hurt to have at least asked me "Hey - this is what we're seeing - we think this is the reason why - do you think you could match and/or exceed it?". Rather it was a bit of a cloak and dagger game of partial information extracted painfully, rather than an open co-operation which I would have been happy to participate in. I was still attempting to justify correctness and veracity, and the whole time my arguments were continually dismissed as mere misplaced pride, and in forums with a mountain of personal attacks.

So that pretty much sealed it for me. The industry is like a dog eating its own tail, and I think it's about up to the arsehole by now, and everything stinks as a result.

What used to be a place of free and open discussion about the way to move forwards, has often descended into bitter and pointless disputes, and little figures, and what figures do get disclosed, get dismissed anyway.

I like my hobbies to be enjoyable, where I'm learning, experiencing, and can see the fruits of my work. Have a lot of fond memories, but so little in recent times. My happiest memories of late have been working with Marci on the Thermochill PA radiators. There's a guy who understands what drives people to water-cool. Rides motorcycles too. Very proud of the work that went into the PA rads. Very proud of the work that went into the G7 blocks.

Yeah, I know full well that overclocking is becoming increasingly pointless (if it isn't already), and performance water-cooling even moreso. It's why I've shifted my designs towards optimsing for a low-flow/low-noise tolerant view of the world, which is where water-cooling still makes a whole lot of sense. Water-cooling will remain a niche market, but it's understanding where that niche is that's important. Enthusiasts will pay for the clever designs and the designs that look good. The masses will just pay for what works. No harm done in targetting either, but there's also no need to insult those who target either goal as well. There's room for everyone here.

What a rambling post. Sorry for it. Still a lot more to say, not that anyone seems to either care, or be reading, any more. The wise ones have long since realised that the quality is gone from the show when the stage is being run by bullies. Don't blame them one bit. It's why I've not been here in ages. Every time I come back to take a look, it's the same old shit, months on.

If you want to know why this forum is in decline, answer these questions: Where have all the enthusiasts gone, and why did they leave? Lets face it, forums like this live and breathe on the hardcore enthusiasts. Is it because enthusiasts share joy in each other's work, rather than tear it down as happens here?

I'll be back, occasionally. Care factor is admittedly rather low though.

[BillA]

"Bill here would happily have you all believe that the TTV has ne'er produced inexplicable data, that it is infallible "because Intel made it". Bill clearly regrets the day that he actually shared a wealth of TTV test data with me, because unlike some people I choose not to see the world through Intel tinted rose colored glasses and will call a spade a spade. Bill works in an industry where to risk alienating Intel over their provided test equipment is akin to commerical suicide because in the larger industry everyone's gunning for Intel qualification, because without it no OEM's are going to buy your cooling gear. He's not going to risk saying a single bad thing the Intel TTV, ever, or at least certainly not while his paypacket is derived from an industry that relies on currying favor with the Intel testing marketing arm."

complete post here http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.ph...0&postcount=69
the thread http://www.hardforum.com/showthread....=Intel+support

Stew; when you discount my technical opinion by calling me an Intel/industry whore, what do you expect ?
- not my respect certainly

why did you bring this up again ?
Bill baiting, and it worked; feeling better now ?
I am not.

[jaydee]

I think we can leave this thread as is. Enough said.