The testing for Part II is done; my little NCQ sidetrack made this take a lot longer than expected, but the end result is quite positive and I also have some more NCQ benchmarks for the article. I'm going to go ahead and call it a night now so I can be fresh to finish this thing up in the morning...er in the later morning. I'd expect it up by the early afternoon.
With this out of the way I'll have time to focus on a couple of other articles I'm interested in tackling: a Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance Guide, NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition vs. Intel's 955X Chipset and a thorough look at Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. I've set some pretty aggressive goals for myself to get those articles complete, honestly I don't believe they're realistic but I'll know more after I get a move on testing.
I'm back to ask for your feedback once more, this time on the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition review. Is there anything in particular you all would like to see? Right now I've got two options - make it a quick nForce4 vs 955X comparison, or make it a longer, more thorough nForce4 vs 955X and nForce4 Intel vs. AMD comparison. I'm currently leaning towards the latter, which unfortunately means it'll take a little bit longer.
It also looks like the board I have won't support dual core without a BIOS update...an update that won't be ready for another week at the earliest, which is a bit of a bummer. NVIDIA says it's up to the motherboard manufacturers to implement dual core support on their nForce4 SLI Intel Edition boards. I don't like grey areas like that, especially when dual core is the only interesting thing to come out of Intel in a very long time, so I'll be doing some digging.
Goodnight folks.
With this out of the way I'll have time to focus on a couple of other articles I'm interested in tackling: a Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance Guide, NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition vs. Intel's 955X Chipset and a thorough look at Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. I've set some pretty aggressive goals for myself to get those articles complete, honestly I don't believe they're realistic but I'll know more after I get a move on testing.
I'm back to ask for your feedback once more, this time on the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition review. Is there anything in particular you all would like to see? Right now I've got two options - make it a quick nForce4 vs 955X comparison, or make it a longer, more thorough nForce4 vs 955X and nForce4 Intel vs. AMD comparison. I'm currently leaning towards the latter, which unfortunately means it'll take a little bit longer.
It also looks like the board I have won't support dual core without a BIOS update...an update that won't be ready for another week at the earliest, which is a bit of a bummer. NVIDIA says it's up to the motherboard manufacturers to implement dual core support on their nForce4 SLI Intel Edition boards. I don't like grey areas like that, especially when dual core is the only interesting thing to come out of Intel in a very long time, so I'll be doing some digging.
Goodnight folks.
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Rand - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#12- Thanks, but I've seen the article. It's better then some and has a decent enough description of the implementation but the testing is still largely relegated to the stereotypical PCMark/SiSoft bandwidth tests.Nothing on latency, seperating read/write bandwdith, impacts of prefatching or anything else.
Anand- No need to thank me, I'm merely stating my opinion. In the end it's you that's made me come to said impression, so the thanks should be directed towards you. :)
I don't envy you in dealing with the numerous complaints/requests and questions of bias you must be constantly inundated with.
AnandTech is a large and influential site thats bound to draw considerable attention.
I've only wrote for smaller sites, and even then primarily editorials, and architectural analysis. Not nearly so controversial as benchmarking, but even so I've come to expect a certain number of accusations of bias after any given piece.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
RandThanks for that, I appreciate your honesty and your confidence.
Take care,
Anand
Rand - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
"but with all of the conspiracy theories bubbling out there I'm sure someone would interpret it as an Intel/NVIDIA forced move :)"Frankly I suspect that's bound to happen even if you do include them, any unusual or unexpected results or surprising gains that cause the NF4 Intel Edition to approach AMD where it normally wouldn't will be looked upon with suspicion by some.
I'd simply try to ignore it and continue on as you do, people will have to decide for themselves whether their willing to put their faith in your integrity.
Personally I long since decided you were reasonably knowledgeable and legitimately concerned with presenting the most accurate and realistic results you could for readers.
Ganted, there have been articles I found very questionable and others I simply felt poorly written but the evidence has always led me to feel those rare incidents are more likely due to a rushed article or incompetence (No offence intended, even the best of writers make mistakes) rather then outright deception or bias.
There are many sites out there and many more reviewers, given time people will come to their own conclusions on whom they feel they can/cannot put their faith in to present valid results.
Son of a N00b - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
w0w, the articles that you are going to try and tackle are exactly what I would like to see.I think a nice quick and to the point article of AMD nforce4 vs Intel nforce4 would be suffcient. Just some fps graphs of Halkf Life 2, Doom 3, UT...and your ever so treausred final words...no need to go to in depth right now, wait for some more Dual Core action so you could right an in depth article of AMD dual core SLI vs Intel dual core SLI, and how it compares in extreme computing...
biffzinker - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
In reponse to #2:HH had a more in depth preview discussing the memory controller.
Here's the link if your interested: http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article...
Aquila76 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
If you're looking to see how AMD SLI fairs against Intel SLI, Tom's Hardware has compared them, so give Anand a break this review! And yeah, AMD still beats Intel in gaming while Intel wins decoding and stuff (like always).http://tinyurl.com/6t2oz
Illissius - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Yes, I agree... judging by the other articles out there there the nForce4-IE is fast, but not fast enough to make any significant difference in the Intel vs AMD comparison (I'd say just paste in some numbers from older articles to save people the trouble of going back and checking manually, and leave it at that). The only new thing it brings to the table compared to the AMD version is RAID 5, so some numbers on that would be nice.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Thanks for the responses - not having to run the AMD numbers will save me a lot of time. That's normally the approach I'd take because it makes sense, but with all of the conspiracy theories bubbling out there I'm sure someone would interpret it as an Intel/NVIDIA forced move :)Take care,
Anand
Houdani - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Of the three upcoming projects you'd like to tackle, I'd rank the SC:CT guide the lowest and flip a coin between the Win64 and NF4 vs. 955x article.For the NF4/955x study:
AMD numbers would be nice to have as a visual reference, but I wouldn't go too far out of my way to include them. I imagine you'll wind up repeating a bunch of these tests when the dual AMDs arrive, so it's really up to you whether you want to collect data on the single core AMDs now or later.
GTaudiophile - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#6: Wow, I had forgotten all about VIA! They must be on their way down the drain at this point...in terms of motherboard chipsets. They are quickly becomming irrelevant, IMO.