[geeks] Sun to adopt newest Intel Xeon chips for upcoming servers (link)

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>> Date: 2007/01/26 Fri PM 07:41:33 CST
>> To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>> Subject: Re: [geeks] Sun to adopt newest Intel Xeon chips for upcoming 
> servers (link)
> 
>> Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>>
>>> I don't keep a Windows box around for gaming anymore.  I just use Cedega 
>>> under NetBSD.  It works well enough.
>> It won't play any of the games that I like.
>>
>> I thought a few years ago that by now the emulation of Windows would be 
>> a done deal, but it still isn't really that good, at least not to me.
>>
>> The real solution is obvious of course:
>>
>> All games should be written to use OpenGL and OpenAL, and then they'll 
>> port easily.
>>
>> Yeah...
> 
> Or, the last few hold-outs can give in, and trade in their various *nix-based 
> systems for the perfect platform, Vista ;^)

You would be surprised how many people are jumping on Vista specifically 
to play games.

Vista is *SLOWER* than XP, so if you want to play games, XP is a lot 
better, but they have bought the hype.

Right now I have the following system:

	Asus A8N5X with a dual core Opteron 170 CPU
	2GB of memory
	EVGA nVidia 7800GS KO graphics card

To get Windows Vista to run the same speed as it does now, I'd need:

	a new Core 2 Duo or AMD slot F motherboard
	a $650 Core 2 Duo or $550 slot F dual core AMD CPU
	2GB of DDR2 DIMMs
	a minimum of a single nVidia 8800 graphics card

That's about $1500 in upgrades to get the same speed as the system I 
have now, so I can have cool looking desktop effects and DirectX 10.

Microsoft claims that DirectX 9 games will run 6 times faster under 
DirectX 10 and Vista.

It's completely bullcrap of course, but they get away with it because of 
the qualifications of this statement.  Written properly, the statement 
reads like this:

	"DirectX 9 games will run 6 times faster under DirectX 10 and
	 Vista, after you have upgraded your computer to run 8 times
          faster than what you have now."

It's classic marketing crap.

Kind of like all those ads that say things like "Now 30% faster!".  30 
percent faster that *WHAT* is always my question.

A 1977 Cheveolet Chevette is 200% faster... than a dead rabbit.

It is probably true that DirectX 10 will have neat features, but so far 
games have not fully exploited OpenGL 2.x or DirectX 9.x, so we don't 
really *need* it yet.