Tech Link (Industry): CeBIT 2010 Coverage

The folks over at Madshrimps has a pretty cool CeBIT coverage. They have lots of images of new products, and dang, they got pretty hot girls in there!

It´s that time of year again at Hannover Messe. CeBIT 2010 gave us high expectations. New CPUs from Intel and AMD, Nvidia Fermi video cards and loads more motherboard releases. Since we had only 2 days to wander around, we made the choice to meet and greet first the partners we work closely with and that supply us with all the review hardware. Our schedule had to be quite closely adhered too. Day 1 was less hectic in total visitor numbers, day two was already pretty crowded and much harder to snap decent pictures and guided tours.

Source:MadShrimp

Tech Link (Motherboard): Asus P5W DH Deluxe/WiFi In-Depth Overclocking Review

madshrimps has posted a review of a "relatively" old board. After reading it, I felt that it wasn't about the baord itself but more on the overclocking side of things. I kinda agree with the author about the Dewar + LN2 thing, as this seems to be the most common way to proclaim leetness nowadays. Am I against it? Definitely not, but I am not as excited as before, when I really have to dig out all the crazy mods and stuff like that. Anyway, check it out and sorry for the rant..

Conclusive Thoughts:

The P5W DH Deluxe will most likely be retired with honors as an Asus classic. Unfortunately we cannot do much about the boot-strap issue except to try and work with it. With the price of DDR2 4GB kits such as GSkill 2x2GB DDR2-667 for $199 Newegg (CL4-4-4-12 @ 1.8 ~ 19V) this would make for a powerful Gaming system in Crossfire mode, or a great little Server with WiFi and the EZ-RAID back-up. Although reading through the Xtremesystems thread indicates some P5W DH owners have misdirected their dissatisfaction towards Asus, sadly they seem unaware Asus cannot re-design the 975X. Lest we forget this chipset was originally released in 2005 and if any company would find a work-around Asus would given the 865PE pseudo-PAT debacle. When I began this article I wasn't sure where it would lead me and I thought 400FSB was my limit on this board. To see 445FSB performance and then 460FSB + potential I can only hope those frustrated P5W DH owners will go back to the BIOS and try again.

As I stated earlier 8300MB/s is the highest I can recall overclocking any Intel system lately and while it’s not up there with the “Big Boys”, so what. Anyone can buy the most expensive hardware and then break records; I don’t recall the Art of Overclocking ever being about that. Overclocking used to be a community of DIY hobbyists whom aided one another to get more from less. What happened? I can pour LN2 over my head and proclaim to be COOL, all it costs is the price of a Dewar. Although the P5W DH is still fetching a premium price ( $199 at Newegg) the P5W DH still has much to offer and I hope this review has shown just how much. We ran our E6400 at 445FSB passing all benchmarks and this system has been running for 14-days straight at that speed Gaming, multitasking and running SETI BIONIC without incident.

Source:Asus P5W DH Deluxe/WiFi In-Depth Overclocking Review

Tech Link (Benchmark): Rydermark Benchmark Preview

Looks like there's an upcoming contender for FutureMark when it comes to 3D benchmarking standard. I haven't tested it personally, but from the pictures, I find the interface ugly. Madshrimps posted their review and they even posted a nice short video clip of the said application. Check it out....

The minimum requirements for the Rydermark benchmark are set at:

# 3.0GHz Single Core CPU
# 1Gb system RAM
# DirectX 9-class GPU with 128Mb RAM
# Sound card with support for DirectSound 3D
# Windows XP & DirectX 9.0c

For the time being Rydermark is a Windows XP/DX9 only benchmark, maybe DX10 in the future under Vista.

Rydermark comes with an interesting readme which gives a bit of background information on the benchmark:

# Can we relate the benchmark performance to actual games performance?

Absolutely. RyderMark is a technology demonstration of a racing game currently in development. It is NOT a synthetic benchmark. Just like the game, in addition to the GPU, the benchmark also stresses the CPU, audio and memory subsystems.

The graphics is powered by Sahara, our in-house DirectX 9 graphics engine. Audio is provided by FMOD Sound System (www.fmod.org) which has already been used in dozens of games titles. Therefore, every technology used in the benchmark is directly relevant to the game.

# Do you have different shaders for GPUs from different manufacturers?

ABSOLUTELY NOT. This is something we wish to make crystal clear. We run IDENTICAL shader code on GPUs from all hardware manufacturers.

To reiterate the point, one of the main reasons we can stake the claim for creating a truly impartial and fair benchmark is the fact that we do not favor any hardware manufacturer over another by supporting obscure or optional texture formats or features in DirectX.

# How is the final RyderMark score calculated?

The final benchmark score is calculated as follows:

RyderMark Score = 20X Maximum Frame Rate + 40X Minimum Frame
Rate

# Why do you value the minimum frame rate much more than the maximum frame rate?

From our perspective as a games developer, we place a very high value on smooth gameplay. This requires a minimum of 30 frames per second at all times. At the same time, peak frame rates over 60 frames per second make no discernible difference to the gameplay experience.

Therefore, we urge users to look closely at the minimum frame rate as well as the overall score. PCs which fail to deliver a consistent minimum 30 frames per second may not provide an enjoyable gaming experience in next generation games.

# Can you describe some of the different shaders and technologies used in RyderMark?

These are some, but not all of the techniques used in the benchmark:
- Parallax Occlusion Mapping
- Motion blur
- Depth of field
- Soft shadows
- 32-bit and 64-bit HDR Lighting
- Fully dynamic lighting
- Intensive particle effects
- Dynamic reflections
- Refraction
- Normal mapping

Source:Rydermark Benchmark Preview