FTW is hamd?!?!?!?!!!!

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

http://www.simplifiedsigns.org/yes.jpg

FTW, don't need to tell me.

[Polly]

With Microsoft Vista and DirectX 10 poised to flood the mainstream market, those looking to take advantage of all of the new OS's capabilities will need a quality graphics solution to appreciate new graphical features and eventually next generation gaming.

Currently, the only DX10 ready graphics cards available come in the form of NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 series, while ATI's DX10 solution is still looming off in the distance. At this stage of the game, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 comes in two flavors, the high-end GeForce 8800GTX and the slightly scaled down GeForce 8800GTS. Some may balk that there are only two DX10 cards currently offered on the market today and normally we might agree that the more choices the better, however, after our in-depth coverage of the GeForce 8800's initial launch, it's hard not to be impressed with what NVIDIA has delivered, even if it is the only DX10 solution available at this time.

Today, we are going to take a look at ASUS's take on the GeForce 8800GTX, the EN8800GTX. Following closely with NVIDIA's reference design, ASUS brings a potent graphics solution to market that is complemented with a well rounded retail package to help feed those insatiable gaming desires. In the pages ahead, we'll take a closer look at the EN8800GTX and evaluate its performance compared to a number of high-end cards currently available. We'll also take an approach to performance based on a system with a mid-range CPU to help the average user ascertain whether the purchase of a premium video card will pay full dividends in the end.

Graphics Engine
GeForce 8800GTX

Video Memory
768MB DDR3

Engine Clock
575MHz

Memory Clock
1.8GHz (900MHz DDR3)

Memory Interface
384-bit

Max Resolution
Up to 2560 x 1600

Bus Standard
PCI Express X16

VGA Output
YES, via DVI to VGA Adapter

HDTV Output
YES, via HDTV Out cable

TV Output
YES, via S-Video to Composite

Dual DVI Output
YES

HDCP Support
YES

Adapter/Cable Bundled
DVI to VGA adapter
Power Cable*2
HDTV-out cable

Software Bundled
3D Game: Ghost Recon, GTI Racing
3Dmark06
ASUS Utilities & Driver

Note

Card Size: 10.5 inch length, 4.97 inch width, 1.43 inch height
6 pin power connector * 2 inside the box
Minimum 450W or greater system power supply (with 12V current rating of 30A)


ASUS Exclusive Innovations

HDCP Compliant: Allow playback of HD DVD, Blu-Ray Disc and other protected content at full HD resolutions

Built for Microsoft Windows Vista

ASUS Splendid: Watching movies on PC is as good as on Top-of-the-line consumer television

ASUS Video Security Online: Keep an eye on your home at all times no matter where you are

ASUS Game LiveShow: Stream live gaming action onto the internet and share with other gaming enthusiast

ASUS Game Replay: Recording gaming action and strategy into MPEG4 files to share with other gaming enthusiast

ASUS Game Face Messenger: Easy IM and live game conference in any PC games

ASUS OnScreen Display: Adjust the fame settings and enhance gaming experience without leaving the game

Graphics GPU Features

NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX

Built for Microsoft Windows Vista

NVIDIA SLI Technology ready

NVIDIA unified architecture with GigaThread technology

Full support for Microsoft DirectX10.0 and Shader Model 4.0 enables stunning and complex special effects

OpenGL2.0 support

NVIDIA Quantum Effects Technology

True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting

Two dual-link DVI outputs support two 2560x1600 resolution displays

I/O Specification
PCI-Express
HDCP Compliant
TV-Out
HDTV-out
Dual DVI-I
VGA

The EN880GTX's accessory bundle and packaging is comprehensive. Along with the card itself, ASUS dropped in some essentials and extras to complement the card nicely. To start, ASUS provided two CDs, one with drivers and the other including proprietary ASUS utilities, such as GameFace and LiveShow, which are further covered in the specifications above. Additionally, ASUS included a copy of 3DMark06 for personal benchmarking as well as two games, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and GTI Racing.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

On 2007-02-06 09:40, Nidramag wrote:
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q172/nidramag/HAYAdrop.jpg


http://www.kidzworld.com/img/upload/article/a723i0_tsc.jpg

[Polly]

Now that Windows Vista has officially launched and is available to consumers, everybody's talking about it. Unfortunately, a lot of what I'm hearing--from both Windows fans and the ABM (Anybody But Microsoft) crowd--needs to be taken with a grain of salt. In many cases, what the information lacks in accuracy, it makes up for in sensationalism. But how do you sort through all the hype and get a real picture of what the new OS will and won't do for you?

In this article, I'll take a look at some of the exaggerations, distortions, and out-and-out untruths I've heard floating around about Vista.
Myth #1: You'll have to buy a new, high-end PC to run Vista

Many in the mainstream media are claiming that to run Vista, you'll almost certainly have to buy a new computer. This myth is undoubtedly being encouraged by hardware vendors, but it's not true. I was able to install Vista on my existing Dell Dimension mid-priced system with no problems, and the existing video card, an ATI x600, runs Aero Glass.

If your computer is older or a low-end machine, you can still probably install and use Vista but you may not get the Aero Glass interface. Although Glass adds a lot of "wow" factor, it's not something that's essential to getting work done. You'll still benefit from Vista's security enhancements, search functionality, and added features. If you do want the Glass look, you still may not need to buy a new system. Instead, you can add RAM to bring your system up to the 1 GB recommended for Glass and install a new video card that supports it.

Another myth I've heard is that only PCI Express (PCIe) video cards support Aero Glass, so if your computer doesn't have a PCIe slot, you're out of luck. That's not true either. Video card vendors have regular PCI cards that will run Glass. I'm running it on a system with a relatively inexpensive GeForce 5200 card with 256 MB of memory in a regular PCI slot.

If you do choose to buy a new PC, you don't need a high-end one that costs thousands of dollars to run Vista. Just a couple of days after the launch, retailers began offering machines preloaded with Vista Home Premium, complete with LCD monitors, for as low as $600.
Myth #2: Vista will solve all your security problems

Microsoft is touting Vista's improved security, but no operating system is perfectly secure (and no OS ever will be). Running Vista doesn't mean you don't still need perimeter firewalls, antivirus protection, and other third-party security mechanisms.

Because much of operating system, including its networking technologies, has been redesigned and new code written, Vista is likely to present some vulnerabilities that weren't in older versions of the OS even as it fixes many that were. This is true of any new software and Vista, despite its focus on security and Microsoft's best efforts, is no exception.

In fact, Microsoft shipped the first critical security update for Vista over a year ago, when it was still in the beta testing stage. It will be just as important with Vista as with any other operating system to ensure that updates are installed regularly. The danger is that novice users, hearing that Vista is more secure, may let their guard down and fail to take the protective measures necessary to prevent attacks, virus infestations, etc.
Myth #3: Vista is no more secure than XP SP2

On the other hand, some of Vista's detractors have been claiming that the new operating system offers no security advantage at all. I've heard computer "experts" on the radio say that Vista is no more secure than Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and an eWeek article last summer went so far as to report that Symantec security researchers were contending that Vista "could harbor a range of vulnerabilities that will make it less secure than previous iterations of Windows."

It's true that, properly updated, Windows XP is a pretty secure OS. But Vista includes a number of new security enhancements that XP doesn't have. For example, User Account Control (UAC) in Vista protects against attacks that rely on elevation of privileges. Internet Explorer 7, when running on Vista, leverages UAC to run in Protected Mode, which keeps Web applications from writing to system folders. IE7 doesn't run in Protected Mode on XP.

BitLocker drive encryption, available in Vista Enterprise and Ultimate versions, provides a way to keep unauthorized persons from accessing sensitive data on a stolen or lost laptop. The Windows Firewall in Vista allows you to block outgoing traffic as well as incoming. Windows service hardening reduces the potential for damage if one of Windows' services is compromised. Vista includes the Network Access Protection client, which allows administrators to restrict computers that are properly updated or don't have antivirus, anti-spyware, or firewalls from connecting to company networks.

Those are just a few of the new security improvements included in Vista.
Myth #4: The only thing new about Vista is the eye candy

Your first impression of an operating system, like your first impression when meeting another person, is often based on appearance. And Vista's appearance does make an impression. With Aero Glass turned on, the transparent window borders, 3 D animations, and other visual effects make it clear (no pun intended) that this is a whole new Windows.

However, the changes to Vista amount to more than just a pretty interface. In addition to the security improvements discussed above, many aspects of the operating system have been reworked to improve usability and provide new functionality. For example:

* The search capabilities have been greatly expanded, so that you can easily find documents, programs, and other objects, and even run applications, from a single box in the Start menu.
* New productivity applications are built into Vista, including a calendaring/task list program called Windows Calendar and a new, improved address book called Windows Contacts. Together with Windows Mail (the replacement for Outlook Express), these provide much of the same functionality as Outlook, without the need to purchase Office. There are other new built-in applications, too, such as the Snipping Tool that makes it easy to do a screen capture of any desired area without installing third-party software such as SnagIt.
* Changes to Windows Explorer make it easier to organize and view your files, with more options. For example, you can see thumbnails of all files (not just graphics) and view their contents in the preview pane without opening them, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A
You can preview files in Windows Explorer without opening them.

Explorer also features automatic horizontal scrolling when needed, and you can select multiple files using check boxes instead of the old method of holding down the [Ctrl] key. Many little things make the user experience less frustrating; for example, when you select to rename a file in Explorer, only the filename is changed; by default the extension remains the same.

These are only a few of the new Vista features that can be enjoyed with or without the Aero Glass interface.
Myth #5: You can't dual boot Vista with another operating system

One of the strangest and most inaccurate statements I heard was that "With Vista, you can't run two operating systems on the same computer like you could in the past." That's news to me, as I'm currently running two computers that dual boot Vista and XP. As with previous versions, a boot menu is displayed when the computer starts, and you can choose either Vista or Previous version of Windows.

Now, it is true that for some reason, on the Boot tab of the System Configuration Utility in Vista, only the Vista operating system shows up even though I can boot into XP from the boot menu. As with XP, the System Configuration Utility is accessed by typing msconfigat the command line. Figure B shows the tool.

Figure B
You can dual boot Vista with another OS, but the other OS doesn't show up in the Boot tab of the System Configuration Utility.

You may also notice that the old boot.ini file, which was used to edit the boot configuration information in Windows NT, 2000, and XP, is missing. Now the boot options are stored in the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store, and the system is started by the Windows Boot Manager. You use a tool called Bcdedit.exe to change the boot information.
Myth #6: Vista requires (or includes) Office 2007

I recently read an article in a well-respected national publication that, in listing a number of things the author didn't like about Vista, included the new "ribbon bar" in Word. Oops--that's not a Vista feature; it's a feature of Office 2007, which apparently was installed on the Vista machine he was testing.

I've also seen several references to the need to upgrade to Office 2007 when you install Vista. Well, of course you can, but it's by no means a requirement. Office 2003 runs fine on Vista. This bit of misinformation seems to be most often used in articles that inflate the projected cost to deploy Vista; you can make those numbers look higher if you add in the cost of upgrading Office, too.

Also, contrary to the rumor that Microsoft made Vista so open source competitors of its office products won't run on it, I had no problems at all installing and running Open Office, the open source alternative to Microsoft Office, shown in Figure C.

Figure C
You can install the free Open Office software on Vista if you don't want to buy Microsoft Office.
Myth #7: Most old applications and peripherals won't work with Vista

Circulating amongst the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) being spread about Vista is the idea that upgrading will subject you to all kinds of application incompatibilities. Some programs made for XP, especially those that hook into the kernel, like antivirus programs and some system utilities, won't work with Vista. However, the majority of applications that run on XP will also run on Vista.

In some cases, you may need to install or run older programs in Compatibility mode (right-click the program file, select Properties, and click the Compatibility tab to select compatibility options) and/or run the program as an administrator for it to work properly.

You don't have to figure out most compatibility issues for yourself. Vista comes with the Program Compatibility Assistant, which can detect what changes need to be made to run a program and resolve conflicts with UAC that may be preventing a program from running correctly. It runs automatically when it detects an older program that has compatibility issues. You can also use the Program Compatibility Wizard, a tool that you run manually from the Control Panel | Programs and Features section (in native view).

There have also been many reports about hardware peripherals, especially printers and scanners, that don't work with Vista. It's true that some hardware vendors were slow to provide Vista drivers during the Vista beta testing period. By the time Vista launched to the consumer market, though, many hardware drivers were included on the installation DVD and many more will be made available in the next few months.

My older HP OfficeJet G55 had no problems working with Vista, and if you peruse the list of supported printers (Control Panel | Printers | Add A Printer Wizard), you'll see that Vista supports a large number of printers from HP, IBM, Brother, Canon, Citizen, Dell, Epson, Fujitsu, Konica, Kyocera Mita, Lexmark, Minolta, NEC, Oki, Panasonic, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Xerox, and other major printer vendors.
Myth #8: You have to buy a Premium version of Vista if you have a dual core machine

There was initially some confusion over the specification that Vista Home Editions support only a single processor. Some folks took this to mean that that version of Vista wouldn't run on dual core machines.

Dual core CPUs do contain two processors--but they're combined on one chip or die. This is called chip-level multiprocessing and it's different from having two separate physical processors installed on the same machine. Even though a dual core machine will show the activity of two processors in Windows performance monitoring tools (see the two separate graphs for processor activity in Figure D), Microsoft's definition of "processor" refers to the number of physical CPUs, not the number of cores. (This policy is laid out in "Multicore Processor Licensing.")

Figure D
Dual core machines show the activity of two processors in performance monitoring tools.

In fact, all versions of Vista will run on a machine with multiple processors installed--but Home Basic and Premium will recognize and use only one of the processors.
Myth #9: You won't be able to play ripped music in Vista

Have you heard about the horrors of Vista's DRM (Digital Rights Management)? Some people have implied that it will prevent you from playing any music or movie files unless you download and pay for them online. Others are speculating that even the media you do buy may be blocked.

Interestingly, the people who are spreading this one all seem to be folks who have never used Vista (and, according to many of them, never will). The real story: I have no problem playing music files that were ripped from CDs on Windows Media Player 10 or in Vista's Windows Media Center application. Yes, I legally own the CDs, but Vista has no way of knowing that. All of the media that imported from my XP Windows Media Center computer, including recorded TV programs, played without a problem.

For a more thorough discussion of content protection in Vista, see this article from CreateDigitalMusic.com.
Myth #10: Vista costs a lot more than XP

Ever since pricing for the various editions of Vista was announced, I've heard a lot of griping and grumbling about how much it costs. Windows XP came in only two versions that were available at retail: Home, which was priced at $199 for the full package and $99 for the upgrade, and Professional, which was priced at $299 for the full package and $199 for the upgrade.

Vista gives you many more options:

* Home Basic: $199 full, $99 upgrade
* Home Premium: $239 full, $159 upgrade
* Business: $299 full, $199 upgrade
* Ultimate: $399 full, $259 upgrade

Everyone seems to be focusing on the price for Ultimate, but if you look at the versions that are directly comparable to the two versions of XP (Home Basic and Business), you'll see that they cost exactly the same as their XP counterparts did five years ago.

Home Premium includes the Windows Media Center and Tablet PC functionality, along with Aero Glass and extra applications such as Windows Movie Maker, Windows Meeting Space, Mobility Center, and Scheduled Backup. Windows XP Media Center Edition and Tablet PC Edition weren't available at retail; you could only get them preinstalled by the OEM.

Ultimate Edition also includes Media Center and Tablet PC, along with business extras such as BitLocker encryption, Remote Desktop, and Windows Complete Backup and Restore. In fact, Ultimate includes all the home entertainment features of Home Premium plus all the corporate goodies of Business and Enterprise editions, and the upgrade to Ultimate costs only $59 more than the XP Pro upgrade while offering a great deal more functionality.
Page: 1

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

Purchaser Seniority:
People who bought this product have been Wooters for x days.
7% joined today
2% < one week old
4% < one month old
44% < one year old
42% > one year old
* .Woot Purchaser Experience:
People who bought this product have purchased x woots total.
13% first woot
12% second woot
41% < 10 woots
23% < 25 woots
11% > 25 woots
This.Woot Purchaser Experience:
People who bought this product have purchased x woots from this dot-woot.
23% first woot
12% second woot
41% < 10 woots
23% < 25 woots
11% > 25 woots

Got any ideas for other Woot product stats? Well, let us know!

http://www.woot.com/Images/Sale/Kensington_Keyboard_10-PackF1E-standard.jpg

SOLD OUT!

[Polly]

In computing, the acronym RAID (originally redundant array of inexpensive disks, also known as redundant array of independent disks) refers to a data storage scheme using multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives. Depending on the configuration of the RAID (typically referred to as the RAID level), the benefit of RAID is to increase data integrity, fault-tolerance, throughput or capacity, compared with single drives. In its original implementations, its key advantage was the ability to combine multiple low-cost devices using older technology into an array that offered greater capacity, reliability, speed, or a combination of these things, than was affordably available in a single device using the newest technology.

Basic functions

At the very simplest level, RAID combines multiple hard drives into a single logical unit. Thus, instead of seeing several different hard drives, the operating system sees only one. RAID is typically used on server computers, and is usually (but not necessarily) implemented with identically sized disk drives. With decreases in hard drive prices and wider availability of RAID options built into motherboard chipsets, RAID is also being found and offered as an option in more advanced personal computers. This is especially true in computers dedicated to storage-intensive tasks, such as video and audio editing.

History

Norman Ken Ouchi at IBM was awarded a 1978 U.S. patent 4,092.732 [1] titled "System for recovering data stored in failed memory unit" and the claims for this patent describe what would later be termed RAID 5 with full stripe writes. This 1978 patent also mentions that disk mirroring or duplexing (what would later be termed RAID 1) and protection with dedicated parity (that would later be termed RAID 4) were prior art at that time.

The term RAID was first defined by David A. Patterson, Garth A. Gibson and Randy Katz at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.[2] They studied the possibility of using two or more disks to appear as a single device to the host system and published a paper: "A case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)" in June 1988 at the SIGMOD conference. [3] This specification suggested a number of prototype "RAID levels", or combinations of disks. Each had theoretical advantages and disadvantages. Over the years, different implementations of the RAID concept have appeared. Most differ substantially from the original idealized RAID levels, but the numbered names have remained. This can be confusing, since one implementation of RAID 5, for example, can differ substantially from another. RAID 3 and RAID 4 are often confused and even used interchangeably.

Their paper formally defined RAID levels 1 through 5 in sections 7 to 11:

* "First Level RAID: Mirrored Disks"
* "Second Level RAID: Hamming Code for Error Correction"
* "Third Level RAID: Single Check Disk Per Group"
* "Fourth Level RAID: Independent Reads and Writes"
* "Fifth Level RAID: Spread data/parity over all disks (no single check disk)"

The very definition of RAID has been argued over the years. The use of the term redundant leads many to object to RAID 0 being called a RAID at all. Similarly, the change from inexpensive to independent confuses many as to the intended purpose of RAID.

There are even some single-disk implementations of the RAID concept, though most applications of this RAID concept are highly impractical due to performance issues, decreased disk space, and the failed concepts of secure data and client-side ease-of-use. Usually, a single-disk RAID involves setting up multiple partitions with software RAID and combining the partitions as though they were disks in a normal RAID setup. Seeing how the two purposes of RAID are to either unite storage for larger and fewer logical volumes or to create redundancy to avoid data loss in the event of a disk failure (and in many cases, both), splitting a physical drive into partitions and creating a logical drive out of the partitions is pointless in nearly all applications, since a hard drive is already contiguous. Similarly, if the user of this format is going for redundancy, if the disk fails, so does the backup partition.

For the purpose of this article, it is best to assume that any system which employs the basic RAID concepts to combine physical disk space for purposes of reliability, capacity, or performance is a RAID system.

Raid Implementations

Hardware vs Software

The distribution of data across multiple disks can be managed by either dedicated hardware or by software. Additionally, there are hybrid RAIDs that are partially software AND hardware-based solutions.

With a software implementation, the operating system manages the disks of the array through the normal drive controller (IDE/ATA, SATA, SCSI, Fibre Channel, etc.). With present CPU speeds, software RAID can be faster than hardware RAID[4], though at the cost of using CPU power which might be best used for other tasks. One major exception is where the hardware implementation of RAID incorporates a battery backed-up write back cache which can speed up an application, such as an OLTP database server. In this case, the hardware RAID implementation flushes the write cache to secure storage to preserve data at a known point if there is a crash. The hardware approach is faster than accessing the disk drive and limited by RAM speeds, the rate at which the cache can be mirrored to another controller, the amount of cache and how fast it can flush the cache to disk. For this reason, battery-backed caching disk controllers are often recommended for high transaction rate database servers. In the same situation, the software solution is limited to no more flushes than the number of rotations or seeks per second of the drives. Another disadvantage of a pure software RAID is that, depending on the disk that fails and the boot arrangements in use, the computer may not be able to be rebooted until the array has been rebuilt.

A hardware implementation of RAID requires at a minimum a special-purpose RAID controller. On a desktop system, this may be a PCI expansion card, or might be a capability built in to the motherboard. In larger RAIDs, the controller and disks are usually housed in an external multi-bay enclosure. The disks may be IDE/ATA, SATA, SCSI, Fibre Channel, or any combination thereof. The controller links to the host computer(s) with one or more high-speed SCSI, PCIe, Fibre Channel or iSCSI connections, either directly, or through a fabric, or is accessed as network-attached storage. This controller handles the management of the disks, and performs parity calculations (needed for many RAID levels). This option tends to provide better performance, and makes operating system support easier. Hardware implementations also typically support hot swapping, allowing failed drives to be replaced while the system is running. In rare cases hardware controllers have become faulty, which can result in data loss. Hybrid RAIDs have become very popular with the introduction of inexpensive hardware RAID controllers. The hardware is a normal disk controller that has no RAID features, but there is a boot-time application that allows users to set up RAIDs that are controlled via the BIOS. When any modern operating system is used, it will need specialized RAID drivers that will make the array look like a single block device. Since these controllers actually do all calculations in software, not hardware, they are often called "fakeraids". Unlike software RAID, these "fakeraids" typically cannot span multiple controllers.

Both hardware and software versions may support the use of a hot spare, a preinstalled drive which is used to immediately (and almost always automatically) replace a drive that has failed. This reduces the mean time to repair period during which a second drive failure in the same RAID redundancy group can result in loss of data.

Some software RAID systems allow one to build arrays from partitions instead of whole disks. Unlike Matrix RAID they are not limited to just RAID 0 and RAID 1 and not all partitions need to be RAID.

Standard RAID Levels

* RAID 0: Striped Set
* RAID 1: Mirrored Set
* RAID 3/4: Striped with Dedicated Parity
* RAID 5: Striped Set with Distributed Parity
* RAID 6: Striped Set with Dual Distributed Parity

Nested RAID Levels

Many storage controllers allow RAID levels to be nested. That is, one RAID can use another as its basic element, instead of using physical disks. It is instructive to think of these arrays as layered on top of each other, with physical disks at the bottom.

Common nested RAID levels:

* RAID 01: A mirror of stripes
* RAID 10: A stripe of mirrors
* RAID 50: A stripe across dedicated parity RAID systems
* RAID 51: A mirror striped set with distributed parity (some manufacturers label this as RAID 53)
* RAID 100: A stripe of a stripe of mirrors

Nested RAIDs are usually signified by joining the numbers indicating the RAID levels into a single number, sometimes with a '+' in between. For example, RAID 10 (or RAID 1+0) conceptually consists of multiple level 1 arrays stored on physical disks with a level 0 array on top, striped over the level 1 arrays. In the case of RAID 0+1, it is most often called RAID 0+1 as opposed to RAID 01 to avoid confusion with RAID 1. However, when the top array is a RAID 0 (such as in RAID 10 and RAID 50), most vendors choose to omit the '+', though RAID 5+0 is more informative.

Non-Standard RAID Levels

Given the large amount of custom configurations available with a RAID array, many companies, organizations, and groups have created their own non-standard configurations, typically designed to meet at least one but usually very small niche groups of arrays. Most of these non-standard RAID levels are proprietary.

Some of the more prominent modifications are:

* ATTO Technology's DVRAID adds RAID protection to systems delivering high-definition audio and video
* The Storage Computer Corporation uses RAID 7 add caching to RAID 3 and RAID 4 to improve performance
* EMC Corporation offers RAID S as an alternative to RAID 5 on their Symmetrix systems.
* RAID-Z in the zfs filesystem of OpenSolaris solves the "write hole" problem of RAID-5.

Reliability of RAID configurations

Failure rate
The mean time to failure (MTTF) or the mean time between failure (MTBF) of a given RAID may be lower or higher than those of its constituent hard drives, depending on what type of RAID is employed.

Mean time to data loss (MTTDL)
In this context, the average time before a loss of data in a given array.

Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
In arrays that include redundancy for reliability, this is the time following a failure to restore an array to its normal failure-tolerant mode of operation. This includes time to replace a failed disk mechanism as well as time to re-build the array (i.e. to replicate data for redundancy).

Unrecoverable bit error rate (UBE)
This is the rate at which a disk drive will be unable to recover data after application of cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes and multiple retries. This failure will present as a sector read failure. Some RAID implementations protect against this failure mode by remapping the bad sector, using the redundant data to retrieve a good copy of the data, and rewriting that good data to the newly mapped replacement sector. The UBE rate is typically specified at 1 bit in 1015 for enterprise class disk drives (SCSI, FC, SAS) , and 1 bit in 1014 for desktop class disk drives (IDE, ATA, SATA). Increasing disk capacities and large RAID 5 redundancy groups have led to an increasing inability to successfully rebuild a RAID group after a disk failure because an unrecoverable sector is found on the remaining disks. Double protection schemes such as RAID 6 are attempting to address this issue, but suffer from a very high write penalty.

Atomic Write Failure
Also known by various terms such as torn writes, torn pages, incomplete writes, interrupted writes, non-transactional, etc. This is a little understood and rarely mentioned failure mode for redundant storage systems that do not utilize transactional features. Database researcher Jim Gray wrote "Update in Place is a Poison Apple" during the early days of relational database commercialization. However, this warning largely went unheeded and fell by the wayside upon the advent of RAID, which many software engineers mistook as solving all data storage integrity and reliability problems. Many software programs update a storage object "in-place"; that is, they write a new version of the object on to the same disk addresses as the old version of the object. While the software may also log some delta information elsewhere, it expects the storage to present "atomic write semantics," meaning that the write of the data either occurred in its entirety or did not occur at all.

However, very few storage systems provide support for atomic writes, and even fewer specify their rate of failure in providing this semantic. Note that during the act of writing an object, a RAID storage device will usually be writing all redundant copies of the object in parallel, although overlapped or staggered writes are more common when a single RAID processor is responsible for multiple disks. Hence an error that occurs during the process of writing may leave the redundant copies in different states, and furthermore may leave the copies in neither the old nor the new state. The little known failure mode is that delta logging relies on the original data being either in the old or the new state so as to enable backing out the logical change, yet few storage systems provide an atomic write semantic on a RAID disk.

Since transactional support is not universally present in hardware RAID, many operating systems include transactional support to protect against data loss during an interrupted write. Novell Netware, starting with version 3.x, included a transaction tracking system. Microsoft introduced transaction tracking via the journalling feature in NTFS.

[Hrigg]

On 2007-02-06 11:12, Triela wrote:
wat

[DizzyDi]

On 2007-02-06 11:12, Triela wrote:
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a299/MixMasterMark/FKL%20STUFF/wut.jpg

[Hrigg]

it's wat

[DizzyDi]

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a299/MixMasterMark/FKL%20STUFF/1149611832601.jpg

[Hrigg]

it's wat

[DizzyDi]

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a299/MixMasterMark/FKL%20STUFF/Waitwhat.jpg

[Nidramag]

yay! a new desktop! thanks again Dizzy!

[DizzyDi]

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a299/MixMasterMark/FKL%20STUFF/catcat.jpg

[Bot-Bot]

There is no hamd, only vegitables.

[Hrigg]

IT'S WAT

[Polly]

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/9906/dremmettbrownbq3.jpgONE POINT TWENTY ONE http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/1223/jayzsl0.jpg"Jigga what"s?

[Ether]

It seems as though we have been writing about Windows Vista in the future tense forever. Nobody will deny that Microsoft has taken an unusually long time to build its latest OS and that some features had to be cut along the way. Whatever you make of the new OS as a whole, it's a very important step for gamers, ideologically. This is the operating system where Microsoft has put "Games" right there at the top level of the Start menu. This is the one with the Games Explorer to make it easy to find, launch, and update your games. Parental controls are built right in. DirectX 10 is Vista exclusive, and while there are no real DX10 games right now, they're going to be a big deal by this time next year. Perhaps most importantly, Microsoft should begin their "Games for Windows" branding and marketing in earnest now that Vista is out the door.

Windows has been the best OS for gamers for years, and Vista takes that to the next level. That's all well and good for games made with Vista in mind, but what about your existing game library? Last May, when Vista was at the Beta 2 milestone, I wrote a feature in which I installed around 15 games on the unfinished OS, describing how well each one worked. Now that Vista is "done" (inasmuch as any OS is ever actually finished), it's time to do it again. This time, I'm going to use the final Vista release, a DX10 video card (not that it really matters with no DX10 games), and all the drivers available upon Vista's launch. I'll also take a look at a lot more games, around 25.

I have been living with Vista as my full-time OS on my home computer since around October, as well. I'll share some of my experiences, as a gamer, with using Vista as my everyday OS leading up to release, with a little perspective on where things stand today. First, let's find out if Vista got game, by installing a bunch of popular titles.

Test Configuration

We're going to run our Vista tests on the following computer. It's high-end, but not ridiculously so. This box is something any gamer would be proud to have, and shows an Experience Index of 5.1 in Vista (that lowest 5.1 number is the Memory score). But it's nothing compared to those Ultimate Game Machine contestants.

Note that I didn't do anything unusual to tweak the Vista installation. I didn't disable User Account Control, change the default user levels, or monkey around with security measures. All I did was load up Vista with all defaults intact, install the latest updates and drivers, and change the resolution and background.

Component AMD Socket 939 System
Motherboard ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe
Processor Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHz)
Chipset ATI Radeon Xpress 3200
Memory 2GB Corsair DDR400
Graphics card eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS
Hard drive Western Digital WD1500ADFD
Optical storagedrive 16x ATAPI DVD +/- RW
Sound card Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Display Sony 19" Trinitron CRT
Operating system Windows Vista Ultimate

Drivers comprise one area where Vista gaming has been a little bit of a headache, but luckily, some much-improved drivers have dropped just in the last week or so leading up to Vista's launch. Our Nvidia graphics card is using ForceWare 100.54 drivers for Vista, which are still not quite as feature-complete as the Windows XP drivers. The control panel is still missing a few features (flat-panel scaling, video color controls), and SLI support is in its early stages.

Similarly, Creative's audio drivers are brand new for Vista, and while we have had some difficulties with their earliest Vista drivers, the latest are pretty darn good. One sticking point is EAX hardware acceleration. Vista's audio stack is dramatically different from the one in Windows XP, and the OS itself handles most audio processing chores, including EAX functions, before handing the data off to the sound driver for final audio output. This will make for a much better experience for those using integrated audio or other host-based sound solutions, and greater stability for everyone. But for Creative, which makes the only popular sound card with hardware audio processing, it's a setback.

Fortunately, OpenAL allows audio cards to bypass nearly the whole audio stack in Vista and perform all audio operations on the sound card, so you get your high-performance-hardware 3D sound acceleration. Creative's little workaround is a program called Alchemy, which will replace the DirectSound .dll file for specific games with a new one that simply takes all the function calls and re-maps them to OpenAL commands. Just like that, you get full 3D sound acceleration in hardware. Unfortunately, it only supports the X-Fi in its current beta state, and we have a more common Audigy 2 in our test PC.

My biggest driver-related problem came on the motherboard front. For some reason, the Desktop Window Manager process kept dying on this machine, and when you lose that, you lose the fancy Aero 3D accelerated desktop. It turns out that this wasn't the fault of the graphics card, but rather a faulty ACPI BIOS table that incorrectly describes the PM timer hardware as 24-bit instead of 32-bit. This makes a QueryPerformanceCounter check return inconsistent values, and DWM shuts off. A BIOS update fixed the timer and caused Windows to download a few new mobo drivers automatically—after that, the problem vanished.

3DMark06 Benchmark Performance

Before we get to testing a bunch of games, let's give our favorite synthetic 3D benchmark a quick spin. 3DMark06 installed without incident. Curiously, the installation program proclaimed that we would have to install a DirectX 9 update in order to run 3DMark06—it didn't correctly identify the version of DirectX in Vista. I went ahead and clicked "yes" to install DX9, knowing that it wouldn't actually overwrite any of the newer Vista DirectX files. After patching the benchmark to the latest version (1.10), it worked much as it does on Windows XP.

In fact, performance is really quite impressive. Our 3DMark06 score at default settings was 8052, where we score 8830 in our original GeForce 8800 GTS review. That system used a Core 2 Extreme–based test system that, all other things being equal, should outperform the Athlon 64 FX-60 we're testing Vista with here. So yes, there is a performance difference, but it's not nearly the 10% it looks like: Much of that is due to the difference in CPU speed. Just for kicks, we also ran the benchmark at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF enabled, and scored 5408. Our original review of the 8800GTS, in the Core 2 Extreme system running Windows XP, scored 5773.

Half-Life/Steam Games

First on our game list, let's fire up a batch of titles available on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. We grabbed the latest Steam client and had no problems at all downloading a whole host of games.

Half-Life 2 (and subsequent pieces like Lost Coast and Episode One) ran like a charm. Performance was just fine, but this system is sort of overkill, so we shouldn't read too much into it. I tried Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source to make sure the multiplayer variants built on the same engine work just as well, and they do. They even work fine running in a window. For fun, I loaded up the original Half-Life, an OpenGL game that is ancient by today's standards. It, too, had no problems running.

What about other titles you can find on Steam? When I launched Roboblitz, I got two popup windows. The first was simply the Windows Firewall doing it's job. I told it to allow the Steam program through, and all was well. The second was an error dialog box telling me "No PhysX installation found. PhysX required to run Roboblitz. Click OK to proceed to the PhysX installation." I clicked OK, and the PhysX 2.6.0 setup program ran as usual, with no pesky UAC admin dialog box or anything of the sort. This is one of the first games powered by Unreal Engine 3, though it's not nearly as demanding as some others will be. Still, I'm happy to report that it ran like a champ, even at resolutions up to 1600x1200 and in windowed mode. We'd expect nothing less from a wicked-fast video card like this, but it's good to know that Vista itself isn't causing any serious compatibility problems. And that's sort of the point of this whole exercise.

Darwinia is another neat independent game available on Steam, and one that runs via OpenGL rather than Direct3D. Nvidia has had OpenGL drivers in their Vista package for some time now, and ATI's final Vista release finally adds their new OpenGL driver as well—though it's tuned more for stability than performance. Well, I'm not sure if I should blame Vista or Nvidia, but Darwinia kind of runs like a pig. The main screen gets a nice solid 60fps, but get into a mission and it craws along at about 11fps. That's inexcusable on a GeForce 8800GTS.

Before moving on from Steam, I figured I would try a few of my favorite Popcap casual games. Bejeweled 2, Bookworm, Astropop, Chuzzle…they all run perfectly either fullscreen or in a window. Not that I expected anything else, as these aren't exactly demanding titles, and they don't use any sort of funky tech that might pose compatibility problems in Vista.

After all this, I paused to take a look at the Games Explorer, by clicking "Games" on the Start menu. Here I ran into perhaps the first real problem with games bought through Steam: Most of them don't show up in the Games Explorer, and neither does Steam itself. I got several links that looked like they went to Half-Life 2, and that gave me an error ("hl2.exe has stopped working") if I double-clicked on it. Even though these had names like Half-Life: Source or Half-Life 2, the shortcuts actually appear to go to games like Counter-Strike: Source and such. This isn't just because Steam wasn't running, either: It happened even when I was logged on. Sin: Episodes Emergence made a box art icon in Games Explorer that worked just fine. As long as you had Steam running, the game would launch. Psychonauts, though it appears in Games Explorer, would give me a "Failed to locate Steam" error every time I tried to launch it from there, even if Steam was clearly running.

You know, it's funny: Well over a year ago I asked how the Games Explorer would handle things like Steam—single launch-pad applications housing multiple games. Would individual games all get Games Explorer icons? Would you just get a "Steam" link in there? Though I mentioned it to Microsoft several times throughout Vista's development, and was always told that they were working with Valve on a solution, I guess it never got there. While Steam and its games play well with Vista, it looks like Microsoft still has some work to do on the Games Explorer. The solution for Steam games is to ignore the Games Explorer and launch everything through the Steam application as you would on Windows XP.

World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2

Truly the 800-pound Gorilla of PC gaming, World of Warcraft has over 8 million paying customers. The new expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, sold over 2.4 million units in the first 24 hours, and it hasn't even been released in China, the game's biggest market. Needless to say, if Vista can't handle WoW gracefully, it's got some big problems.

Fortunately, Vista runs WoW just beautifully. It's hard to say for certain if there is much of a performance hit moving from Windows XP to Vista (this is a high-end machine and WoW is hard game to reliably performance test from one computer to the next), but my configuration ran the game like butter. There are absolutely no problems installing the game, the Burning Crusade expansion, or patching it up to the latest release. The Blizzard patch downloader pops up a typical Windows Firewall warning, but just click the Unblock button to let the program through and you're fine. WoW shows up in the Games Explorer with its box art and ESRB rating, all of our interface add-ons work fine…everything checks out. If you're a WoW addict, Vista is a non-issue.

Battlefield 2
I installed Battlefield 2 from the original release DVD, and it went pretty smoothly. There was a warning box that popped up in the beginning of the install stating that the game has only been tested on Windows XP (32-bit), but I simply clicked "OK" and moved on through the install process. After installation, I downloaded and applied the 1.41 patch, which worked without issue. Aha! Running Battlefield 2 and trying to join a server with the Punkbuster anti-cheating code enabled revealed our first big compatibility error. I was unceremoniously kicked from the server before even getting into the game, with a note that Punkbuster had inadequate OS privileges.

I right-clicked the BF2 icon in the Games Explorer and chose "Customize," then chose to edit the Play options. This is like bringing up a Properties dialog box on a regular shortcut. I checked the "Run as Administrator" box and re-launched the game, and that cleared up the problem. That little fix allowed me to jump on any server with Punkbuster enabled, and it ran quite well at 1600x1200 with all the detail options cranked up.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

On 2007-02-06 17:40, Triela wrote:
http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/9906/dremmettbrownbq3.jpgONE POINT TWENTY ONE http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/1223/jayzsl0.jpg"Jigga what"s?


The Gordon's Fisherman and that Gay-Z music guy?

[DizzyDi]

On 2007-02-06 17:28, Hrigg wrote:
IT'S WAT



http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a299/MixMasterMark/FKL%20STUFF/wuthamster.jpg

[MaximusLight]

You've just been http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/spam.gif'd!