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[est]

This is the future hardware tech thread.  I had an idea to hijack the 3d modelled face thread, but this seems like a nicer way to do this.

Was just reading about Jeff Han's presentation at nvision (here: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/08/26/jeff-han-gets-all-minority-report-on-us-at-nvision/1).  I know that he has given this kind of demo before, but the product is looking slicker than ever, so it is an exciting clip to watch.  MS are touting multi-touch capabilities with Windows 7 (or Vista R2 if you prefer) so that they can get their "Surface" bullshit going into the commercial market.  To be honest I am not so crash-hot on their version.  From what I have seen of it it feels like a watered-down half-measure with useless shiny things added.

Intel are entering the SSD field in a big way http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39025/98/ and I think that within a year or so SSDs will be at mainstream prices.  This is pretty exciting because for the last umpteen squillion years mechanical drives have been the only way to go.  With the heat being turned up people like WD are already pushing their mechanical drives into new performance territory, ramping up the speed of the next-gen Velociraptor to 15k rpm instead of 10k.  I am hoping for a "format war" of sorts, but seeing as they all connect to your pc via a SATA cable there is no major detriment to the consumer.

I fucking hate the name, but the Intel Core i7 (formerly Nehalem) is looking interesting but not as interesting as it first seemed.  When I first read about it it was all about "oh, massive amounts of cores, by golly we sure are gonna be bristling with dicks" or something.  Now I read that it's gonna launch with 4 cores plus HT making it 8 logical cores.  Ho fucking hum.  You've added HT to a Core 2 Quad.  Congratulation.  I am still excited about the steps that come after that, but it's still a little bit of a disappointment to be honest.

The thing that I am the most excited about though is that there is finally the beginnings of a DIY laptop option coming out - http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2328318,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532 Antec are planning to release a range of laptop parts based on Intel's idea of a Common Building Block spec.  I have been waiting for this kind of thing for a very long time, and although it's an OEM-only type dealio for now I am pretty sure that the concept will become popular enough to leak into home-based DIY by the time I need to buy my next laptop.  The thought of a purpose-built, customisable, upgradeable laptop is quite exciting, because I am generally not very pleased with many of the generic laptop options around.

I will probably talk about these in more detail later after I get some work done.  I am also interested in AMD Fusion, Intel's SoC tech, the next gen of Atom (dual core) and VIA's nano2 platform.  What upcoming things are you guys getting excited about?  Do you have anything else you want to discuss about the things I mentioned?

[KvP]

Oh man, DIY lappies. That would be so great. I really don't like the laptops they have on market now, but then, I guess a more powerful computer that I'd really like presents its problems. There's a reason they don't really make gaming laptop rigs. Minimal circulation, and lots of parts that get hotter than a volcano's tit. But still, it's a nice development. Maybe we'll be able to build a laptop that can last more than a few years!

And it's nice that you started your own thread because hijacking my CG face thread would've been a total dick move, what with it being my special day. I would totally be cross with you. Not really.

[Catfish_Man]

I fucking hate the name, but the Intel Core i7 (formerly Nehalem) is looking interesting but not as interesting as it first seemed.  When I first read about it it was all about "oh, massive amounts of cores, by golly we sure are gonna be bristling with dicks" or something.  Now I read that it's gonna launch with 4 cores plus HT making it 8 logical cores.  Ho fucking hum.  You've added HT to a Core 2 Quad.  Congratulation.  I am still excited about the steps that come after that, but it's still a little bit of a disappointment to be honest.

Nah, it's more interesting than that. The "un-core" (Intel's phrase) parts of it are pretty dramatically different. QPI, on-chip memory controllers, L3 cache. If I'm doing my math right it's got ~50GB/sec aggregate IO bandwidth, which is pretty mindblowing for consumer-ish gear.

What I am curious about, though, is Intel's Larrabee GPU thing. The quote here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/874006404931 from Pat Gelsinger is... pretty damn aggressive. Maybe I'm just gullible, but I don't think they'd be talking that big if they didn't think they had something neat.

[Statik]

There's a reason they don't really make gaming laptop rigs.

Um, what?

Dell, Alienware, Toshiba, Gateway, and many others make gaming oriented laptops.  They have downsides, like lacking the ability to significantly upgrade them, and their size and weight, and they tend to have a shorter battery life, but they do exist.

[KvP]

Well yeah, I've seen the adverts for such things, but they don't really seem like a wise investment. If you're going to spend that much you might as well get a desktop rig that will actually last.

[Melodic]

There's a reason they don't really make gaming laptop rigs.

Sure, you can CALL them gaming laptops, but the point remains that they're standard mobiles with bigger GPUs, less battery life, and even worse heating issues. End-user laptop building is the first step to laptops as viable gaming platforms.

[Statik]

In my experience, they get hot when you are running GPU intensive games, otherwise they aren't too terrible.

I really don't think that you are going to stave off any of those problems (heat/battery) by having the user able to build them.  I don't think that laptops will ever be the "choice" for a dedicated gamer for some time.  The only realistic advantage I can see is the ability to personally upgrade your GPU(s) to extend the longevity a bit.  Otherwise, you are probably still looking at an expensive case and very expensive components (comparatively). 

Side note:  I'd be curious to see if Splashtop (the super low footprint OS built into mobos) is going to make it to laptops.  Also I think HP had a thing where you could boot up and play a DVD without getting in to the OS.  Laptops would definitely need more things like that.

[Melodic]

In my experience, they get hot when you are running GPU intensive games, otherwise they aren't too terrible.

Like when you play games on 'em? ; )

Also, I'm fairly confident that there will be at least a handful of techies making laptops that exceed what a normal laptop is capable of. Custom cooling systems might make a scene, and this will open up the market for the big 2 to create better aftermarket laptop GPUs.

[est]

I am constantly in awe of what some modders can achieve with desktop rigs.  They make their own cases, radiators, pumps, custom waterblocks, and find new and improved ways to do things that most of us just take for granted.  I have no doubt that once laptops have some kind of DIY configuration these guys will tear shit apart, mod it to hell & inspire a bunch of off the shelf upgrade kits for laptops as they already have in the desktop scene.

Also, you can mod gfx cards in certain subtle ways to improve their performance.  I've only re-flashed my bios to change default fan speeds (and as a result my card runs ~20 deg C cooler) but you can change out the default fan entirely to a higher-quality one if you want.  Some guys remove and re-solder higher-quality parts onto their cards to improve stability for overclocking and such, as well as hardware volt-modding to over or under-volt as required.  If there were more DIY options for laptops I am pretty sure that this could be done to unlock laptop gfx cards to such a degree that they can be underclocked for normal usage then knocked back up to stock or overclocked with higher-quality heatsinks and fans running at faster fan speeds when gaming.  Sure, the fans will scream at you for a while, but what do you expect, you're playing a game on it.

[Alex C]

I just don't see how they're going to conquer the basic surface area problems without making something unwieldy or hideous to look at.

[KvP]

I wouldn't put it past modders. Besides, if people will spring for something needlessly, pointlessly small and sleek, like a Macbook Air, there are going to be people who will gladly lug around a encyclopedia-thick gaming laptop. I've seen some pretty unwieldly consumer laptops in my time. I'll bet money that savvy kids could take those chassis and truly optimize them, surprise all of us.