Being self-centered, Let me just apologize for the whole freakin' lot of us.
I tend to have that base effect on all the lists I frequent. I was going
for entertaining rather than bitful. To bastardize a phrase:
if you hit someone over the head with a techno-bit, they walk away
with a sore head. If you make them laugh about it, you know
you've reached them.
BTW, I went over to the Sony site to drool over the ultra-lightsand try
and figure out how I can get my friend who works at SPI to get
a discount on one for me without the cash upfront. I came across
the new MultiScan displays that they were putting out. Some features
of their 21" model that retails for about $1800 are automatic centering
and sizing, resolutions up to 1600x1200 @85Hz, and dual inputs.
This last feature is what sets it apart from all the rest.
http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/displays/ps/gdm500ps.html#features
Dual inputs allow you to daisy chain graphics cards and interleave the
rendering. For instance, Graphics Blaster's new 12Meg 3Dblaster
(4meg frame buffer, 8meg texture -- it's unclear how this configuration
relates to an AGP which uses main system RAM for texture) based on
3Dfx's Voodoo2 chipset allows up to two cards. A single
Voodoo2 graphics enabled card is good enough for 30 frames per second
at 800x600 for a Pentium 333mhz. Putting two of them in comes
99% to doubling the performance (i.e. the coordination is built
into the hardware). The beauty of the idea? One card renders
the odd scan lines, the other the even. Some rocket scientist
should win a Nobel for that one.
http://www.voodoo2.com/3dblaster.html
Some interesting bell curves.
97% of all people can't determine the difference
for refresh above 85Hz.
97% of all people can't determine the difference
for frame rates above 30 fps.
80% of all source code is user interface code.
What this all means is that you can trade off refresh
and frames for quality of rendering and detail. The
whole point isn't to play Quake2 at 120 fps, but to
utilize it to increase graphical immersion capabilities.
Another aspect? In the computer of the future, it probably
won't matter much what CPU you have in it, but what graphics
processor you have. Now, I'm not recommending shorting
Intel and buying 3Dfx, it's just a trend that seems to
be taking hold or else why would all these CPU producers
start putting graphics instructions on the CPU?
Greg