I just don't get it! (64bit, crossfire, vole)

[Spackymojo]

Wondered if anyone could help me with a few answers that have passed me by:

1. with the arrival of the Athlon 64 we were told this was next gen stuff - just as soon as a 64bit OS arrived (which didn't happen in it's life time). Now we have 64bit Vista what happened to all the hype? No one's waxing lyrical about this 'huge step forward'. Is 64 bit just more hot air?


2. I went SLI a few years back with the 6600GT, which at £300 didn't really make sense. I now stick to high spec singles but why is Crossfire such a non starter?
I thought you weren't resticted to indentical cards which seems like a massive advantage. I eagerly antisipated the 2900XT (gutted or what) because I thought; buy this one, then next time I upgrade the 2900XT gets recycled as the second card in crossfire. Have I got this all wrong?

3. Can anyone direct me to a difinative guide or table were I can easily compare all these CPU, graphics & chipsets. Keeping up with all these QX6950, 3850, RV670, X38, 680 codes is making my head spin

4. What is the VOLE?

[Fraz]

Wondered if anyone could help me with a few answers that have passed me by:

1. with the arrival of the Athlon 64 we were told this was next gen stuff - just as soon as a 64bit OS arrived (which didn't happen in it's life time). Now we have 64bit Vista what happened to all the hype? No one's waxing lyrical about this 'huge step forward'. Is 64 bit just more hot air?

Read this:

bit-tech.net | 64-bit: More than just the RAM - Introduction and History

2. I went SLI a few years back with the 6600GT, which at £300 didn't really make sense. I now stick to high spec singles but why is Crossfire such a non starter?
I thought you weren't resticted to indentical cards which seems like a massive advantage. I eagerly antisipated the 2900XT (gutted or what) because I thought; buy this one, then next time I upgrade the 2900XT gets recycled as the second card in crossfire. Have I got this all wrong?

Yes - the cards have to be from the same series, otherwise it doesn't work.

3. Can anyone direct me to a difinative guide or table were I can easily compare all these CPU, graphics & chipsets. Keeping up with all these QX6950, 3850, RV670, X38, 680 codes is making my head spin

I think that's the same for everyone...

4. What is the VOLE?

No idea!

[0iD]

4. What is the VOLE?

[BUFF]

1. now we have the OS we just need more drivers to support hardware under it & more apps to work in it.

2. because Crossfire never worked as well in practice as SLI & for the last year AMD/ATI cards have been behind nVidia's so given the choice of 2 8800s or 2 X1950s or even 2900s you would prefer 2 8800s.

3. no - too many for 1 table ...

4. Microsoft

[dangel]

Wondered if anyone could help me with a few answers that have passed me by:

1. with the arrival of the Athlon 64 we were told this was next gen stuff - just as soon as a 64bit OS arrived (which didn't happen in it's life time). Now we have 64bit Vista what happened to all the hype? No one's waxing lyrical about this 'huge step forward'. Is 64 bit just more hot air?

Windows XP 64bit did exist way back when but it wasn't well supported. Reason? Because we didn't need it so much then as we do now - it's when you want to use more than ~3GB of memory that 32bit becomes a problem. 64Bit Vista is much better supported, with parallel releases of drivers from nVidia for example, and it's much more widely used because of the aforementioned memory limitation. There's plenty of threads here explaining 32bit limitations so i'll not go into them here. The chief advantage is being able to address lots more memory - speed advantages are more application specific but in general most stuff runs at similar speeds or a little faster.

2. I went SLI a few years back with the 6600GT, which at £300 didn't really make sense. I now stick to high spec singles but why is Crossfire such a non starter?
I thought you weren't resticted to indentical cards which seems like a massive advantage. I eagerly antisipated the 2900XT (gutted or what) because I thought; buy this one, then next time I upgrade the 2900XT gets recycled as the second card in crossfire. Have I got this all wrong?

Dual cards have largely been a non-starter. nVidia got their implementation out earlier and it's (generally) worked better than ATI's. The HD2xxx series of cards has been a bit of a disaster for ATI at the high end because they haven't really competed with the 8800 series. They do well in the mid-range though and are (generally) better choices for media centres. Dual cards cost big bucks, don't give you 2X the performance (more like 1.5) and need more power etc etc. I've always thought i'm better off with one big monster card. I think you're right in that crossfire allows mistmatching but most people are just going to flog their old card on me thinks.

3. Can anyone direct me to a difinative guide or table were I can easily compare all these CPU, graphics & chipsets. Keeping up with all these QX6950, 3850, RV670, X38, 680 codes is making my head spin

Intel processors - Intel® Product Comparison Chart

Intel chipsets - Intel® Chipset Comparison Charts

AMD chipsets/motherboards - Motherboards with AMD Chipsets

4. What is the VOLE?

Microsoft. Wiki says: "Some techies refer to Microsoft headquarters as 'VoleHill' and Microsoft as 'the Vole.' It has been suggested that the origin of this usage lies in the name of the genus of many North American voles: Microtus. The Inquirer, an online IT oriented magazine, has popularised this usage (see also: VoleWare)."

[Neilsson]

3. Can anyone direct me to a difinative guide or table were I can easily compare all these CPU, graphics & chipsets. Keeping up with all these QX6950, 3850, RV670, X38, 680 codes is making my head spin

Video Card Reviews and Specifications - Welcome To GPUReview.com! - GPUReview.com

The Latest News, Reviews, Guides and Rankings for Motherboards and PC Hardware. Motherboards.org

[EllTheGamer]

Re Q3:
For performance guides for the different cpus look here and for the gpus look here