ATI hires top overclocker

[karlotta]

Well a lot of people do have usb hdd I am one of them.

Further, this is a poor way to look at things, and basically smacks of why do we need faster CPUs? Why do we need anything to perform better after all? Because we want it to, and b/c at some point things will take advantage of it.

Heck people thought USB was fine at first till they realized it sucked and made usb 2. Someday we will have usb 3 (but I think that is supposed to be wireless and probably will be slower to boot).

But i can tell with some H/W, CPUs andvidcards..HDDs just arnt one of them. The diff of a raptor( and its the loudest HDD) and my other 7200rpm HDDs is nill in any realworld usage i have done.
And you would notice the speed using a USB HDD between a r450 and a nf4... but the dif would be... "hey this is slower", by what a min? But yes i want more. just that alot of crap is in the benchmarks and opinions of said benchmarkers... Lets hope this hire will help the bios feature set in future ATI MBs.

 

[Skrying]

Imo they should have never released the chipset with the usb problems and pci problems.
It really makes em look bad.
They dont really need to be in the chipset business so why rush it?

Not really the point of their business I believe. Its to tap the intergrated graphics market. To a lot of OEM's if they can promise a stable chipset and good (compared to other intergrated solutions) then they will make money.

 

[IgnorancePersonified]

I've got 3 external USB hard drives - I can't tell the difference between the latest 2 (4200rpm laptop HD and a 7200 rpm 3.5 HD). I transfer gbs per day and don't notice when transferring between the various platforms I work on which include a via and 3 different intel's and a uli. The oldest is a 9GB 'ancient' laptop HD so yeh taht's to be expected. If you want fast robust external drive support go with fire wire. The issue that stopped me buying an ati mobo for personal was the price. I work with 30,000 integrated mobo's. Price and Reliability and then features was what won the day and the account. We do a hardware refresh next year. I'm thinking multi flat panel support and quietness will be high on the agenda since we move from crt's and pentium 4's. Amazingly the client was pushing for wireless optical mice at the top of the list ... it will be interesting to see the winner.

Edit: USB ports are disabled for security reasons on 29,500 w/s.

 

[martrox]

The usb "problem" is just from a benchmarking standpoint. In real world usage, there's very, very little difference, if there is any difference at all......

This is just another case of benchmarking having little to do with the real world......

Even Kyle at at [H] agrees with this:

"So why is DFI first to market with their CrossFire motherboard? DFI, which can be considered a very small company in the motherboard game, bucked the system and decided to use the ATI SB450 southbridge, which was not plagued with supply issues. This southbridge has gotten some negative press over the last few months for what I really consider a “non-issue issue.â€￾ A non-issue issue is one of those things that everyone loves to gripe about, and may be correct in doing so, but it is truly something that means little in the real world computing experience. ATI’s southbridge’s USB 2.0 performance is 10% to 25% slower than the competition in terms of moving data across the bus"

Get a grip.........

 

[_xxx_]

Get a grip.........

Yes!!!

 

[dizietsma]

It's always a good idea to have someone who uses and has used a very large range of motherboards to give advice. Macci is very good at power supply / regulation / mods and no doubt he also has very good ideas on what is good component placement and what works where. Conversly I'm sure he will also stop "great ideas" at the design point if it is not practical in reality. He must have seen every chipset/motherboard close up since the Intel BX at least, probably something that is unique at Ati

 

[Sxotty]

But i can tell with some H/W, CPUs andvidcards..HDDs just arnt one of them. The diff of a raptor( and its the loudest HDD) and my other 7200rpm HDDs is nill in any realworld usage i have done.

What? Did you mean fastest? As in fastest SATA HDD? If you cannot tell the difference between a raptor and a regular drive I am sorry, but I can tell a HUGE difference in speed. It is not the loudest hdd btw, though it is louder than average.

Anyway, look it is in your best interest as a consumer to at least be displeased if a company borks its implementation so it is fixed, if no one complained about the original issues on the nforce it would still have them.

I really do not understand this as HDD performance is one of the major things holding back the performance of computers. I want them to come out with a 15000 rpm SATA hdd soon. And I bet Western Digital would if there was any other competition from other HDD makers out there, but apparently all the rest have just decided to produce lower performing products since the majority of people apparently do not care.

 

[Skrying]

Uhh, the Raptor drives pretty much SUCK from an effiency point of view. And overall they are not nearly the fastest drives these days in SATA. Hitachi released a 7200RPM drive that performs overall better than the Raptor.

 

[Sxotty]

Uhh, the Raptor drives pretty much SUCK from an effiency point of view. And overall they are not nearly the fastest drives these days in SATA. Hitachi released a 7200RPM drive that performs overall better than the Raptor.

You ought to at least state the model of drive you are refering to when you make an assertion like this.

If it is the 7K500, well I don't really think that is a very accurate assesment as the raptor does beat it in a variety of benchmarks and looses in others. That is a sata II drive btw, and not a SATA I drive, but that is fairly irrelevant. If you are reading reviews in maximum pc or from some other crappy source that does not actually include any information on the testing procedure, well I hope you had fun. (And you might want to check what revision of raptor they are using since it has been around for over a year).

If you go to storage review for example and compare the raptor to the 7k500 drives you will see that what I said is accurate. The 7k500 never beats the raptor in their game tests just go to drive comparisons to see. It also louder than a raptor which is amazing since raptors are loud, and uses more power, as well as being a 5 platter design. Looking at other items such as the i/o per second is rather laughable, but the 7k500 is not geared towards that so it should not be held against it.

Comparing the Raptor against behemoths such as Hitachi's Deskstar 7K500 and WD's own Caviar WD4000KD yields an interesting dichotomy. At the time of this writing, the Raptor can be had for as little as $160 while the biggest 7200 RPM units can run upwards of $400. As a result, it is ironically the 10,000 RPM drive that represents the affordable performance solution while the larger, more expensive 7200 RPM units satisfy those looking for both speed and capacity.

If raptors are not nearly the fastest though please tell me what other drives you are referring to, as I am sure we would all like to know.

BTW the 7k500 seem like a nice drive in that you can get one for $375.00, and a raptor is $150 and quite a bit smaller, but that does not really relate in anyway to my comment.

So skyring can you tell the difference between a 7k500 and a 4200 rpm drive? That was the assertion that he could not tell the difference between a 4200rpm drive and a 7200 rpm drive.

Personally I am looking forward to the next gen raptor with 16MB cache, hopefully double the storage and of course 10krpm.

 

[karlotta]

ok this is even more OT, but the whole HDD issue started with Radeonic2 comment on the 450chipset's lower "benchmarked" scores relative to a asus nf4. Which i respond to, has no real value to realworld usage...except when you use a USB HDD to move around large volumes, you might notice it (450) is a lil bit slower than the nf4, like maybe a minute or two.(which is alot in computertime). I use 11 usb devices on a 480/uli right now. My webcam at 3megpix on a USB2 or USB1 is no diff than it was on my other rigs, INtell via sis.... my printers dont act any slower...ect.... As for the raptor.. it is no faster (realy) in loading Bf2 than my deskstars, or spinpoint. And its the loudest device in my current box ( the pitch is low so its above the fan sound) in 2d mode.
My hitachi's are very quiet, except for the early k250 that meows about once a hr. Then the reviews at StorageReview, are great, but the raptor one is real old, and they are not the same.In the forum most ppl with raptors complain about the noise.

 

[Sxotty]

Then the reviews at StorageReview, are great, but the raptor one is real old, and they are not the same. In the forum most ppl with raptors complain about the noise.

Your definition of Old is very different than mine, but you are probably right on the cutting edge.

December 7, 2005

Man that review is a day old, freaking A it is outdated. Things really move fast in the technology sector, one day and it is outdated jeez you have high standards

P.S.
The methods for measuring noise were the same and the raptor was quieter though it is a loud drive IMO, but no louder than many other drives I have had.

 

[ANova]

I see 300 GB, 7200 rpm drives with 16 MB cache on sale for around $100 or less all the time so a $400 drive like the 7k500 doesn't make sense to me. Yes it has better performance but it's nothing really impressive and yes the raptor is still faster, though considering its price and mere 74 GB size I have a hard time recommending it as well.

 

[DudeMiester]

I don't see why you are talking about HDDs lol. Macci is an overclocker, and you don't overclock HDDs lol. Although I imagine on his system, with about a 3.8Ghz A64, and crossfire 950Mhz X1800XTs, you could probably be bottlenecked by your HDD, lol. Still, imho Macci's greatest asset is his coolers that run at about -130C. He didn't make them though, a fellow by the name of Chilly1 did. I mean, Macci isn't the only pro OCer, for example OnePageBook is probably better then him at tweaking RAM. Still, I would much rather buy Macci branded hardware then Fatality branded.

 

[Skrying]

Fatality is a brand, that's it. Macci can actually offer something, if not a ton, to ATi besides being a brand. Lets face it, Fatality is about 100,000:1 better known than Macci, the idea that ATi would have Macci as a brand name is extremely ridiculous.

 

[DudeMiester]

If you read the XtremeSystems thread, Macci was hired by ATI's marketing department. I think he's going to be a brand.

 

[Skrying]

If you read the XtremeSystems thread, Macci was hired by ATI's marketing department. I think he's going to be a brand.

Wow, sounds like another stupid ass ATi management idea.

 

[Sxotty]

The idea that ATi would have Macci as a brand name is extremely ridiculous.

Youguys I agree with sky on this "Macci" wow that doesn't tingle a nerve... Maybe he was hired to go to events and such, I doubt ATI would utilize this as a brand, I mean it doesn't have much of a ring to it...

 

[karlotta]

Your definition of Old is very different than mine, but you are probably right on the cutting edge.

Man that review is a day old, freaking A it is outdated. Things really move fast in the technology sector, one day and it is outdated jeez you have high standards .

LOL i was there on the 6th... "Seeks rumble away of course- louder than those of 7200 RPM drives"
my biggest compaint..

Macci can be a brand. As long as they get the cool bios feature set, and great voltage OC... Fatality was nobody at one time.

 

[Moloch]

ok this is even more OT, but the whole HDD issue started with Radeonic2 comment on the 450chipset's lower "benchmarked" scores relative to a asus nf4. Which i respond to, has no real value to realworld usage...except when you use a USB HDD to move around large volumes, you might notice it (450) is a lil bit slower than the nf4, like maybe a minute or two.(which is alot in computertime). I use 11 usb devices on a 480/uli right now. My webcam at 3megpix on a USB2 or USB1 is no diff than it was on my other rigs, INtell via sis.... my printers dont act any slower...ect.... As for the raptor.. it is no faster (realy) in loading Bf2 than my deskstars, or spinpoint. And its the loudest device in my current box ( the pitch is low so its above the fan sound) in 2d mode.
My hitachi's are very quiet, except for the early k250 that meows about once a hr. Then the reviews at StorageReview, are great, but the raptor one is real old, and they are not the same.In the forum most ppl with raptors complain about the noise.

Um obviously my comment was dealing with using a usb hdd.
But the fact remains that subpar performance is still subpar ragardless if you care or use usb HDDs, btw it uses more cpu also.
Now I hope people realize with this thread that I'm not an ati ******

 

[IgnorancePersonified]

Sounds good to me. They had him at the 520 launch and just about every forum thread I read mentioned him or his efforts in tones like "they have Macci there! its going to be fully sick!!!1!"
So I guess I disagree. the fatality brand name doesn't really apeal to me - nor will this I guess unless it has some substance behind the name. That's not too say thier isn't a market that will.

That was the assertion that he could not tell the difference between a 4200rpm drive and a 7200 rpm drive.

if you are referring to what I said then I will repeat and expand on it once more.

I cannot tell the appreciable difference between using a laptop hard drive or a reasonable fast 3.5 format drive when transferring large files between differing platforms. Guess what? no, I don't sit there with a stopwatch on this shit - I get on with whatever else I do. Yesterday I moved about 15 gb's of msdn ISO's and os images between two machines. I used a 3.5 USB2 drive because I didn't have to carry it very far. It's not like I have to get a cup of coffee in between copies but the difference, if any, is not a major concern. Its still a lot faster and more convenient than using DVD's. If you are craving for blistering external hard drive performance then go firewire. If you need fast serial transfers from a vid camera then go firewire. The difference is benchwanking and not a real concern for USb performance.
ATI with their chipset and integrated graphics are trying to establish in the large OEM integrated market - not cater for pimply faced geeks. They also delivered a high end enthusiasts variant that relied on the same south bridge. Oh well is everyone over it yet or is thier a need to bleat on and on about it? Other NB - SB combo's were available - blame your manufacturer for not being inventive and just following reference designs.