Survey posted 2000-03-25 19:17 by Andy.

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Ummm...how about "all of the above"?.. :-)

Yeah, the only thing I don't really care about would be a color display, but a built-it backlight (indiglow? [sp?]) would be cool.

You can adapt(borg) your calc to do that, but the problem is that the backlight uses too much power and drains the batteries faster. Not only that, but the decreased power slows the procrssor down dramatically. you would need a calculator that ran on AA or D batteries before you could get a decent backlight.

Why use D batteries! Those calculators whould be HUGE!!! Forget hand held, more like .......whatever. :)

Laura

More like...
(choose one)
1) stationary
2) inert
3) unmovable
4) laptop :-)

--BlueCalx

That's it! :)

My dad has a calculator from the early 70's that uses either 4 or 6 D cells...cost him $100 back in the day. All it does is the four basic arithmetic functions and maybe square root and memory. Hey, it's backlit though! :)

who cares about your dads sucky calculator

my thoughts exactly...lol

Ok, my dad had one of those 'sucky' old backlit calcs and he sold it on eBay for 70 bucks, granted it cost more than that new but who cares.

I care because it shows the massive improvements made over just 20+ years and makes me wonder if twenty years from now we'll look back at the TI-8X and 92 series as being pathetically primitive.

I already think they are pathetically primitive...

(Laughs as he whips out his Palm V)

All in good fun...

<fantasysequence>

Laughs even more as he whips out his PalmVII, connects to his AMD-K7 1000MHz computer with 1024MBytes of RAM and 120GBytes hard disk space via IR. Oh yeah, it's running Linux.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

</fantasysequence>

Ciaran

i REALLY envy you!

laughs as he pulls out his four-function calculator and then realizes no one else is laughing w/ him

with a comp that fast why would you need a Gig of RAM? you couldnt see a difference in perforance over 128 MEGS! besides an amd running at that speed would overheat the second you turn it on, amd's have(will have) a bad habbit of burning out, my friend's room gets so hot he turns his a/c way down
PII or P3 are low heat processors that will last a lot longer than AMD(yuck)... just to clear everyone up who thinks amd is faster....
1. AMD's 3d NOW technology is a joke, compared to P3's sse instuctions.
2. AMD is so called faster that of a P3 of the same mhz, false because, just because amd runs on 200 mhz RAM bus, the 133 SYSTEM bus makes it the same speed as an Intel(the ram bus doesnt deal with actual ram much, the system bus does)
3. amd processors are probably going to get a lot of hype when the start to burn out
4. Intel is now using RDRAM(rambus) which is 5 to 10x's faster than PC-133, on a higher note amd is not going with RDRAM since it doesnt want to go bankrupt for research on motherboards for it.
5. even with the 512k cache on amd, amd uses the same cache for ALL its processors, while the P3's use the second generation 256k cache getting better preformance.
6. Intel supplies numeric math co-processors and last time i checked, amd didnt
7. and now were down to amd's "wonderful", "great", and "what makes amd go over the top", its ""FLOATING POINT OPERATIONS"" which are ONLY used for JAVA!!(*hint: in #1 the SSE instructions on a p3 are used a lot for about anything)

thats alot but Amd is in over its head against Intel
(any intel lovers reply to this, hehe(like me))
(*all sarcasicm in " ", if u didnt know)

Wow, you really, really, REALLY have no clue what the hell you're talking about, do you?

More RAM is usually MUCH better than a faster processor (and more expensive, too). While the amount needed depends on what programs the user is running and how many of them at once, once they've surpassed the amount of physical RAM the OS must swap it with HDD space used as virtual RAM. This is a _major_ bottleneck, especially with 5400 RPM hard drives, and much more important than processor speed once a certain threshold is overcome.

Athlons have not been shown to have any problems with overheating - that rumor was started because the Athlon uses more power than an equivalent P3, but its better architecture actually makes it less likely to do so.

1. 3D NOW! is currently _much_ better than SSE instructions, due to the lack of use of SSE while 3D NOW! is used throughout the industry. SSE is just Intel adding more CISC instructions to a somewhat RISC core, and although programs using SSE will run faster, other programs will actually be slightly _slower_. Once SSE gains widespread support, I wouldn't expect much difference.

2. ACTUALLY, the Athlon DOES use a 200 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus), which IS the important part. The RAM is what still runs at 100/133 MHz, depending on what type you use. The Athlon is judged faster than the P3 based upon benchmarks in several applications, which take ALL ASPECTS of the chip and the motherboard into account. This lead has been decresing since Intel released their own compiler with SSE optimizations last December.

3. "When they start to burn out"??? First of all, that's an "if," and second of all, they are much less likely to do so than P3s of the same clock speed due to their superior architecture. There have been no reports of any major problems so far. Show me some proof rather than spew lies.

4. RAMBUS IS _NOT_ FASTER THAN SDRAM! While RAMBUS has a higher transfer rate, it has a much lower latency time. The end result is that it is not only much more expensive, but - according to many benchmarks - actually runs SLOWER on average than SDRAM and never seems to be more than 5% faster. Intel bought a majority share in RAMBUS several years ago, and they are using RAMBUS becuase they need the company to stay alive. The superior alternative is DDR (Double Data Rate) DRAM, which is already found in many devices such as Geforce chips and being adopted by AMD with its next major speed increase. Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com), one of the leading hardware sites, has a great article on this.

5. A semi-valid point, but once again for the wrong reasons. AMD does NOT use the same cache for all its processors - everything 650 MHz and under has a 1/3 multiplier, while 700 and up needs a 2/5 multiplier due to the large speed discrepancy. But the reason the P3 excels here is because the NEWER P3s alone - the "coppermine" 600 MHz and up processors - use on-die cache while Athlons still use off-die. Once again, this will be implemented in AMD's upcoming processors.

6. The Athlon has a better Floating Point Unit (primarily for 3d games), but slightly slower integer performance. All modern high-end chips have a math coprocessor now, as far as I am aware.

7. I'm not going to ask where the "only for java" bit comes from - all 3d games rely heavily on floating point math. AMD's superior FPU is one of the main reasons why it outdoes the P3 in Q3 and UT benchmarks. No FPS game has yet to be released using SSE enhancements, so those aren't even a factor now.

Next time, try providing reliable sources for your arguments rather than giving false information. And as a disclaimer, yes, I am running on an Athlon and have done my research.

first of all where did you ever get that info? amd.com?
1. think of scsi drives, ppl use them alot on pentium systems, and if amd used more power, then fluctuations could happen, ex. if your 3.3 or 5 vcore wasnt in line you video card might mess up, which is the case in the Athlon motherboards, source: PCGAMER mag
2. if you didnt notice that you could only put the type of ram speed with the bus speed, a 133 is on amd somewhere to interface with the ram, you couldnt put PC-66 on a 100 FSB chip could you...
3. RAMBUS is benchmarked ALOT higher that sdram, and it is about $7 a meg, and it requires it's OWN motherboard, the ¡820 and the cc820 intel motherboards!(Intel did make it PC-100 compatible LATER) while sdram requires some form of EPROM or other kind of bus, called a memory translator hub, which is non-existant in RAMBUS...
oh, and where did you ever get any "real-world" benchmarks, if you have an athlon you wouldn't know...
oh, and 128 IS the maximum amount of RDRAM you put in and not see a preformance change when you go higher...
when pcgamer installed some they were amazed how much faster it was...
second of all DDR ram would cost more than RAMBUS...
source:PCGAMER magazine
4. give me the info on where you found 3d now tech. to be soooo great, and i know of 2 games that use SSE instructions, Homeworld and Unreal Tournament, whicb there could be more...(i havent looked at the system console in q3)
5. ever notice why ppl's motherboards are burning out? same heat factor, source:PCGAMER magazine.
6. floating point is widely used in Java, never noticed ehh... and ive never seen compatibility for games(show me), oh well, the P2's were made for the internet and Java, which ran smooth, so y do you need a "faster fpu"?
7. Advanced Placement cache is in the P3's, and it is L2 cache but the p3 boards usually come with a little L1 cache.
8. Intel's on-chip processors have been here a lot longer than amd, my old p2 400 runs about 409! in a benchmark...
9. there has been several ppl, on a talk show for computers, that their RTC gets off a second or more about every week! on athlons!, they check their time on a widely known web site(i forgot the adress)(oh i forgot, youll probably say yours doesnt do that huh.. well it IS a fact.)
10. Microsoft is fixing to help Intel out... With their new video game system, it has a p3 600 coppermine that can pull 300 million polys a sec...
11. why does amd copy EVERYTHING intel has done? everything intel gets, amd is close behind, sort of a tag along deal...
12. your lucky AMD is bringing out mobile processors or i would have said something...(Amd mobile's were already supposed to come out)
13. with the release of these new video cards, these chips wont preform any better than the other...(the voodoo5 6000 will have 4 VSA-100 chips each with 32 megs, for a total of 128 megs! so geforce will be up to another challenge even with double chips)
14. if your Athlon pulled better benchmarks than intel why does the athlon *FAILS* the 1600x1200 tests on q3 and P3 at least gets 8 fps...(that was a *700* Athlon they benchmared with everything turned on with a geforce and an intel the same way)
15. tell me if you think a p2 400 is slower than an amd 380..
16. you'll probably agree on this though, the celeron sucks...
(most of my info is from PCGAMER but some other is from other pc magazines)
(oh and if you feel thats all i know, i still got more, i would just be adding to the download time of this page if i added everything)
Im greatfully sorry if i wrote too much information but im just trying to get a point across.

My info is primarily from Tom's Hardware, Hardware Central, Sharky Extreme, Anadtech, and various slashdot posts:

1.) Power fluctuations can always happen - that's what a surge protector is for. If there's a surge due to hardware flaws, that's another story, and I'll believe that when I see some evidence of such.

2.) Yes, you CAN put PC66 on a 100MHz bus, I believe - in fact, you could theoretically tun PC133 on a 100MHz bus were a motherboard made to support it, but that would be pointless.

3.) RAMBUS isn't just on Intel motherboards - see the VIA boards that supported RAMBUS _before_ the i820 came out (and before its original planned date before the delay). All benchmarks I used as a reference were using identical systems with the exception of the motherboard and RAM type, and RAMBUS was clocked as being slower in Microsoft Office and certain applications, and a max of 5% faster in Q3Test (when the benchmarks were first made) and later confirmed in the finished version of Q3.

4.) Unreal Tournament does NOT use SSE enchancements right now, last I checked, they were supposed to be in a future patch. Not sure how recent that was, though.

5.) PCGamer's results were relevant FOR THOSE MOTHERBOARDS ONLY, NOT THE CHIPS! Yes, many Athlon motherboards are poor, but that is unrelated to the chip itself. Furthermore, the new chipset designs that have been on the market for a couple months now (the ones supporting PC133 RAM) are far superior to the old ones.

6.) You're not seriously trying to tell me that the FPU isn't used in games. . . LOL. If that were true, Intel's SSE instructions wouldn't do anything to these games, either. You're way off on that one, especially at lower resolutions, where the processor takes more of the load than the 3d accelorator.

7.) It is NOT "advanced placement" cache, it's "advanced transfer" cache. If you're going to argue, get your terminology right - it's for the on-die integrated L1 cache on coppermine P3s and upcoming Athlons.

8.) That was pointless - of course some processors will vary in speed from the specifications. They just take the same core and stick different transistors in em to change the rate.

9.) Dude, the clock is NOT in the processor, again.

10.) The high poly count comes from the specialized NVidia graphics coprocessor and not from the x86 chip - Microsoft and Intel aren't doing each other any favors. Microsoft said that they explored using an AMD chip, and Intel is leading an effort to port Linux to IA-64 (the trillium project, I believe).

11.) First of all, that's irrelevant. Second, I'm sure AMD just developed their own processor/motherboard slot interface, made 3D NOW!, used a 200MHz FSB, shunned RAMBUS, and improved the FPU as part of their plan to copy Intel, huh? And the fact that they released their faster processors before Intel was just a fluke, right? Thirdly, Intel is the industry standard x86 chip and any company who wants to compete MUST copy certain aspects in order to do so.

12.) AMD's mobiles will suck due to their massive power absorption. The Crusoe will beat the crap out of them both in portables, anyway.

13.) That's actually all resolution dependant. At low resolutions, processor speed is very important to max out the framerate, regardless of the 3d accelerator used.

14.) Mine works fine, as do the benchmarks at every one of the sites I listed up top, so I'm not gonna even bother with whatever test you're using. And processor speed is not as important at high resolutions. And the color depth/bits per pixel is an important factor in that data, too.

15.) I wouldn't know - I'm talking solely about the Athlon core.

16.) The celeron is ideal for the task it's meant for, as a value PC chip. The celeron 2 looks cool, too. And the celerons from the 300A on rule thanks to their P2 core, allowing for massive overclocking.


There's obviously no point in arguing with someone who can't get his terminology right, can't tell motherboard flaws apart form the processor, doesn't understand how to interpret different benchmarks at different resolutions, and uses PCG for processor info. . .

ill have to reply when i have more time, its now midnight when i read you comment...
i didnt get processor info from pcg...
i sometimes mix words in with their actual name(im sorry for not being perfect)
overclocking reduces processor life and you loose your warranty, last time i checked
i have unreal and it DOES use SSE, its checks for it when it starts in the system console, check it after the game starts, or go into safe mode and there will be a box for the game to not use it...
do you have a clue what the difference is between L1 and L2??
i didnt say that fpu's werent used i just read another number of your long and tedious comment...
i have asked numerous computer experts and you CANNOT use a different mhz ram that your fsb.
ill write the rest later..... i want some sleep......

This space is becoming awfully small, so let's continue this farther down, shall we?

20 years? Try about four. Compare the 83 and the 92.

think about what cell phones use. arnt their battreries small and can last up to 4 days just turned on? thats what calcs need...

small? not quite, unfortunately. Laptop batteries account for a good majority of the overall weight.

Hello?? did you hear him, he said cell phone batteries not laptop. why would you want a lap top battery in your ti-calculator?? Also i think a built in battery like that would really help. because you could charge and charge it again. (have it come with a battery charger [what a concept])

My bad. I was tired. =) n33d sl33p

It needs a palm Vx battery those thing last for ever, are lithium-ion, and are light as hell (if you have every held one) and they also last a long time you would just need to hook it up for one night and you would be set for the week. :) thats what i want.

Better yet, just do what I do, go out to radio shack, buy 4 rechargable 1.5v AAA alkaline (yes they made them rechargable) batteries, a compatable charger and use that, I use Rayovac (well known for rechargable versions of normal batteries). Better yet, they seem to hold their power longer, since they developed them to have high capacity.

recharagable batteries use a lower voltage (1.2v and alkaline's 1.5), and usually dont last as long as alkaline
ive had my case of rechargable batteries(a ton)

calculators can last more than 4 days always turned on...

excuse me but a calc has a lot less to do than a cell phone...
a calc just sits there and blinks a cursor...WOW!!!!
a cell phone is in constant communication with a cell tower...hmmmm, that needs some battery juice to do that doesnt it... i rest my case.

No, you forgot that they use power to maintain whats in their ram, still not much, your right though except for the fact that some cell phones just sit their waiting for a signal that you are being called, its not always in constant communication. In other words they all use as much power as a wireless home phone sitting on the table on.

then how does it give you signal strenght and battery power indicators continously refreshing themselves?, if it only waits then the signal power or battery bars would always stay the same, is that it? i dont think so

How did you find this out? Did you spend 96 straight hours playing calc games?

i would hate getting D batteries for my calc...