[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 Up until the point where it looks real, is this really a bad thing?

No, not to me... games have been driving the high end of the PC market for years. If it weren't for games we might have stopped awhile ago (at least in the consumer market), since you don't need 3 GHz to run a spreadsheet or browse the web...

Edit -- of course if I were a hardcore gamer I might be a bit incensed at having to upgrade my video card, CPU, motherboard or whatever every 6 months just to be able to play the latest games...

 

[cadobhuk]

6 months is an exaggeration.If you want to be able to play all the newest most graphically advanced games with all gfx maxxed out,you need to upgrade your videocard once a year,if you want to be able to run any existing game with normal graphics and acceptable framerates,you need to do it once in a two years perhaps.CPU and other stuff doesnt affect perfomance as much,so it needs upgrading half as often or something.Without games progress of technology wouldnt stop of course,but would be much slower,and very different.Besides games there are other applications that demand high perfomance,3d-modeling progs like 3DSmax and maya,videoediting tools like Combustion or Premiere,and so on.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch No, not to me... games have been driving the high end of the PC market for years. If it weren't for games we might have stopped awhile ago (at least in the consumer market), since you don't need 3 GHz to run a spreadsheet or browse the web... Edit -- of course if I were a hardcore gamer I might be a bit incensed at having to upgrade my video card, CPU, motherboard or whatever every 6 months just to be able to play the latest games...

Sure but as the high end goes up getting normal consumer stuff gets cheaper... why complain? Is it simply because programmers write fluffier programs as hardware performance goes up?

BTW, my XP1900 @ 1.71GHz has a hard enough time upsampling to 192KHz, I'd be up a creek trying to do this if I had a 1GHz Athlon (the stopping point for most people that seem to argue for "this is as high as we need to go for applications")

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 BTW, my XP1900 @ 1.71GHz has a hard enough time upsampling to 192KHz

Really? How much of your CPU time does it suck? If I underclock my mobile Barton XP2600 to 1.4GHz (quiet/power saving for only listening to music) it still only uses about 55-60%. Perhaps that is the Barton's extra 512K of cache helping out. Up at 2.3-2.5GHz, it's only about 20-30%.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer Really? How much of your CPU time does it suck? If I underclock my mobile Barton XP2600 to 1.4GHz (quiet/power saving for only listening to music) it still only uses about 55-60%. Perhaps that is the Barton's extra 512K of cache helping out. Up at 2.3-2.5GHz, it's only about 20-30%.

40-50% but things run a bit slow, particuarly web surfing since my firewall likes to look at everything before it lets it through (momentarily sucks a lot of cpu time everytime a web page loads)...

For the most part it's not a big deal though, besides, this card sounds really freaking good at 44.1khz so half the time I have upsampling turned off...

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 For the most part it's not a big deal though, besides, this card sounds really freaking good at 44.1khz so half the time I have upsampling turned off...

I keep changing my mind on whether it sounds better upsampled or not, and I starting to think it's making me nuts!

Seriously though, the non-upsampled sounds a bit more direct and impactful, but with less air and a narrower soundstage than upsampled.