Brought on by yet another product refresh by the Big Green Eyeball Gang, BI wants to take a moment to crawl under the hood to discuss what this sort of evolution means in practical terms. Specifically, the architectural changes that occur at the manufacturing level for the chips themselves -- using smaller and smaller integrated circuit etchings, and making minor tweaks to the layout of the circuitry itself. The former is typically called the "manufacturing process," which refers to the photolithography that etches the actual circuitry onto the silicon wafers -- the creation of the chip itself. The latter, where minor tweaks are made to the circuit layout from batch to batch, is referred to as the "chip stepping," and is most commonly discussed when referring to CPUs within a single generation.

The easiest way to think about the signals traveling on the circuits inside of any chip is as though they're commuters. They have to do the speed limit (okay, so they're obviously not from New Jersey; unlike what the NHTSA dictates, 186,000 miles per second; it's not just a good idea, it's The Law); anything that improves how they get from point A to point B results in improved performance. Shortening the commute or offering a more efficient route to travel both serve this greater purpose.

The big news of the past week for desktop gamers was the official release of Nvidia's GTX 295 dual-GPU card to the wild. Not content to sit on their hands, AMD announced, via the ever-thrilling Press Release, that they're undertaking development of a platform to provide high-shiny graphics to devices that don't sport the hardware to create them, as well as a realtime rendering system for photorealistic content that developers and cinematographers can utilize.

So, it looks like both ends of the spectrum are getting some love. Maybe even a three-way kind of thing.

At some point, BI's mind will leave the gutter it currently inhabits, but we don't advise anyone to hold their breath waiting for that to happen. (Hey, at least there hasn't been a "Two chips, one card" joke made yet. Oh, wait....)

So, it's two thousand and nine. Sure, our digital minions are faster and more capable than ever before, but do you ever feel like you're missing out on the whole Gernsback experience? Where the hell is my flying car? This was supposed to be the future, but it's just.... now. We're still using magnetic media, transistors, and keyboards -- no fancy bubble chips, rod logic, or tactical neural implants (to quote Montgomery Scott, "The keyboard; how quaint").

So, what does 2009 have in store for us?

For one thing, Small Iron, and lots of it. Manufacturers and hardware vendors throughout the industry spectrum are anticipating a boom in the so-called "netbook" segment. Everyone from AMD and Intel to Acer and Asustek are gearing up in expectation of soaring demand for the ultra-portable/mini-notebook niches that were more or less defined by the introduction of Apple's Macbook Air and the subsequent introduction of the Atom and Eee PC. These certainly aren't desktop-replacement level equipment, but for folks who are frequently on the go and need something more robust than an iPhone or Blackberry, there's every expectation in the industry that these are the New BigSmall Thing.

Okay, not awards, per se, but at least some recognition of things that didn't suck -- stuff like improved performance and big price reductions (sometimes). Generational advancement in the CPU and video card arenas brought more power to our desktop systems than ever before. DDR3 stopped costing its weight in gold. The Phenom... got its ass handed to it all year long. (Seriously, AMD? You can't roll out a replacement soon enough.)

Also, one of the biggest legends in the realm of physical vaporware finally came to market, but BI doesn't see a lot of folks ponying up two grand for the Optimus Maximus keyboard. At least it made it to market after a rumor-and-tease gestation period that rivals that of Duke Nukem 3D.

There were a handful of big stories in the realm of gaming hardware in 2008, and, for a change, they were almost all good news for gamers.

With the impending deployment of a new calendar (why, hello Miss January), a young gamer's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of higher resolutions, better anti-aliasing levels, and new DX10.1 effects. But something is knocking the luster off the lust faster than dropping Aunt Edna's fruitcake in your lap. Jacking up a single setting is dropping your framerate to a crawl, even with the latest drivers hot off ATI or Nvidia's server.

You've got multiple CPU cores and a fistful of dollarsRAM, and things still aren't remaining as smooth and speedy as you'd like? In short, is stuffing another video card in your box the way to achieve Nirvana? Chances are, if you're already sporting a rig with the aforementioned goodies, a multi-GPU setup is about the only way to get a performance bump. The question becomes, is throwing another couple hundred dollars at the problem worth it?

5. "Ludicrous speed, go!"

Let's say you've got an E8400; at factory speeds, this chip has a 1333MHz FSB and an overall clockspeed of 3.0GHz (9 x 333MHz; since the advent of the P4, Intel's FSB is "quad-pumped," running 4x faster than the motherboard's main bus). You've got some decent DDR3, rated for 1600MHz, so you should be able to run 1:1 up to about 400MHz on the front end.

If your goal is a fairly attainable 3.6GHz (9x400); all you'll really need to do in the BIOS is adjust the FSB, and maybe put a tenth of a volt more to the CPU. If you want to push on towards 4GHz, you'll have to do some juggling. The easiest thing to do, if your CPU is multiplier-unlocked and your BIOS allows it, is simply to kick the multiplier from 9x to 10x, and boost the vCore (that is, voltage to the CPU) enough to get there, assuming the chip is capable of it. You might want to make an intermediate stop at 9.5x to see how it's doing.

If, however, you're stuck with that 9x multiplier, you're going to have to jump up the FSB to 445 -- your RAM may not want to go there without an unsafe level of, shall we say, electrical coercion (ie: way too much voltage, or more than your board can provide), so ramping back the memory ratio to 5:4 (that is, it's running at 4/5 the speed of your FSB) may be the way to go.

There are a lot of sub-variables inside of these basic parameters (especially where memory timings are involved; DDR2 & DDR3 introduced a litany of fine-tuning options beyond mere speed and voltage; that's a subject unto itself); but with these basics in hand, you can wade into the waters of self-optimized BIOS configuration with a bit of confidence.

And, as long as nobody lets the magic smoke out, they all have a helpful MOMMY, MAKE THE BAD MAN STOP button, usually called "Load fail-safe defaults." You'll just have to re-set your PC's clock after you do so, unless you enjoy computing on January 1, 1900.




Pop Quiz: Where are each of the section heading quotes from?


Rafe Brox spends his days wielding a phone in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. When not causing friends and enemies alike to /facepalm electronically, he can be found extolling the virtues of the weird peripherals in his life, from kettlebells to the Trackman Marble. If you also share an unhealthy passion for PC hardware or know a good place he can get help for this addiction, the target coordinates are rafe.brox AT weblogsinc DOT com.

3. "Jane, stop this crazy thing!"

So, now that we've got a bootable rig, how do you get under the hood to start goofing around? You'll need to pay attention when you hit the power button (and RTFM), because the way to your computer's heart is through it's stomach keyboard. You'll need to press one of the Function keys, or Delete, or whatever your manufacturer prescribes to get into the BIOS. Often, this is depicted on your POST (power on self-test) screen as "Press [whatever] to enter Setup."

At this point, in large, friendly DOS-style lettering, you'll see your BIOS. Get your hand off the mouse, chief, we're in Keyboard-Only Land.

4. "It's not stupid; it's advanced."

There are a lot of things to play with in here, from power management to fan and hard drive speed & noise controls, but we're going to go rampaging straight for the tweakers' paradise of CPU and RAM optimization, which typically lurks in the "Advanced" or "Frequency" sub-sections -- usually, going into both areas will give you the best results. The specific names of these sections differ among manufacturers (of course), but they tend towards "Boring and Obvious" as far as naming conventions.

Going into the CPU configuration, there are three primary things we're looking to play with -- the FSB, the multiplier, and the voltage. The FSB and multiplier govern how fast you're going to push the CPU, and the voltage adjustments are how you get it there (or, for folks building silent systems for something like HTPC duty, under-clocking/under-volting to lower the heat generated to employ quieter cooling solutions).

Again with the warnings: Pushing too much juice to your CPU and/or memory can seriously damage them, especially without adequate cooling. Do so at your own risk, etc, etc, etc.

Hand-in-hand with the FSB is what ratio of that speed you're going to have your memory operating. In a perfect world, we'd be able to jack up the FSB as far as we want, lowering the multiplier to keep the CPU from committing thermal seppukku as need be, and keep a 1:1 ratio throughout. Also, BI wants a million dollars and a pony. This runs up against the harsh world of reality in three ways:

1. Your motherboard's chipset can't cope with infinitely increasing frequencies (depending on chipset, voltage tolerances, cooling, and luck, this varies; most quality units can get up above 400MHz, and some over 500MHz)
2. Your CPU can't scale its FSB infinitely
3. Your memory will scream uncle at some point

Taking all those factors into consideration, there's a balancing act that needs to be done to squeeze the best mix of FSB, overall clockspeed, and memory performance out of any given mix of components. There's a lot of trial and error that goes into this, and the errors usually result in a system that resolutely refuses to turn on (which is much better than having small, expensive bits of silicon explode). You will get very, very familiar with the CMOS reset procedure of your motherboard as you push the edge of the capabilities of your system.

Ready to put the screws to all that shiny stuff and get the most out of your rig? It's time to scare away the timid, or drag them screaming into the realm of the technorati.

It's time to tweak your BIOS.

That's right, it's time to play with the Blue Screen of Life. None of that namby-pamby, "I fell on my face choking on a device driver and puked up a memory address error" Blue Screen of Death crap today. We've got Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version of Beethoven's Ninth cranked up, and it's time to soar to new heights.

Besides, cranking up clock speeds is an excellent way to keep warm in the absence of hot cocoa, egg nog, or Irish coffee (which are fattening, vile, and not allowed at the office, respectively).

Okay, let's play the percentages and assume that you don't win the drool-worthy rig pictured above (and if you haven't entered the contest, what the hell are you waiting for? Make with the clicky on the picture!).

BI is, as a paid minion of BDL and the Mothership Network, sadly ineligible. Go ahead and make us jealous. We won't hold it against you. Much. Send us benchmarks and screenshots, and don't forget about the good times we had once you've moved on to bigger, faster things. *sniff*

For the rest of us, 'tis the season for holly-scented upgrades, hopefully free of tinsel and candle wax. Those clog system fans something fierce.

So, your computer has done something very, very, comprehensively, unquestionably bad. Unbootably bad. Now what? If you bought a system from HP or Dell or one of the other big players in the OEM PC market, you might be tempted to reach for the System Restore Disk (CD or DVD) that shipped with it to resurrect your moribund system.

A word of advice here: Don't.

Previously, we've discussed the power demands of the modern gaming rig. According to the US government's Energy Star program, home electronics are responsible for about 15% of the electricity consumed for the average household. That's everything from your home theater system to your cell phone charger, but the big ticket item in that bracket is your PC -- at a few hundred watts several hours a day (or, in some cases, 24/7), the KWh (kilowatt-hour) expenditure adds up. Some estimates put the total electrical consumption for server farms and the like at 1.5% of the United States' total power draw (which is why more efficient supercomputers are big news). It makes sense to think about ways to economize.

As we said at the time:

One other factor to consider when shopping for a new (or, if you're unlucky, replacement) power supply is the efficiency rating. Going green, or just being cost-of-operation conscious, has been made substantially simpler with the advent of the 80plus certification program. Many of the units listed by 80plus will also carry SLI/Crossfire certifications as well, so make sure to cross-check that the unit you've got your eye on meets all your needs.

Akela got our dander up a bit last week, with his shot across the bow of hardware fiends everywhere. BI could go on at exhaustive, tedious, and utterly facetious length about how someone can be somewhere other than the bleeding edge, but why bother being that guy? As was once pointed out by some dude with my byline at Massively, Max/Min is an @$$hole.

For instance, look at the tremendous popularity of PopCap and Big Fish and their ilk -- simple, flash-based clicky games that make next to no hardware demands at all -- legions of addicts (BI's Substantially Better Half included) must see something in them. BI will admit to killing an occasional hour with Peggle or something high-concept like Dyson -- when we need a break from something that puts the screws to our six-month old build, or don't feel like being social in World of Warcraft.

New hardware ain't cheap. Well, it's almost always getting less expensive, but that's because something newer and shinier and bad-assier (and more expensive, natch) displaces it. But Akela brings up half of an interesting point -- killer graphics (and their attendant wattage draws) do not a killer app make.

Which bitter flavor of OS do you currently use? BI isn't interested in XP vs Vista or Windows vs Mac vs Linux, simply:

Anisotropic Filtering: As a way of cutting corners, as well as to provide more verisimilitude, the further away part of a scene is, the less crisply it's rendered. Unfortunately, for the same reason we need anti-aliasing -- abrupt, discrete divisions, rather than organic smoothness is the way of the binary world -- these transitions often look unnaturally drastic. To improve the realism, anisotropic filtering helps smooth this out. Again, the higher the level of filtering you choose, the more processing power it requires (especially in terms of memory bandwidth).

Particle Effects: Lots of games involve weather, clothing, explosions, or all three. To render these realistically, particle effects are called upon. Depending on whether or not we're only shown an instant in the particle's life (for fire, fog, and similar visuals) or the entire trajectory (hair, clothing, grass, etc), they're both generated by the same mechanism. The fuzzy logic employed here means we're going to see more dynamic, varied visual effects than we used to get from pre-built sprite-based effects.

Okay.

Deep breath. Excedrin. Beer. Whatever.

Individual titles may also have additional effects -- lens flare, full-screen glow, Sparkle Motion (okay, you can doubt their commitment to Sparkle Motion) -- which you can toggle on or off, or adjust via a slider. As graphics evolve, more and more effects are brought to the toolkit developers and renderers have at their disposal to wow us. DirectX 10.1 has stuff that DX10 didn't, which has more than DX9 did, and so on down the line. Technology marches ever onward, et cetera, et cetera. Fortunately, video card makers are keeping ahead of, or at least keeping up with, the pace of graphic effects innovation, so that it's not long after a particular suite of visuals enter the wild before we can take advantage of them.

Yes, the most demanding titles will still have the capability of stomping cutting-edge SLI, multi-core systems flat when they first hit the market. Driver maturity and more processing power will improve performance.... just in time for the Next Killer App to come out.

Ignoring the historical chicanery, now that public ridicule has more or less nuked the practice, the easiest thing you can do is make sure you've got the latest drivers for your card. Code optimizations and the occasional setting-adjustment toy make this one a no-brainer. For folks who don't want to be bothered, a simple slider on the driver interface that ratchets between "Fast" and "Pretty" in a handful of discrete increments does the trick. For the rest of us, both AMD/ATI and nVidia allow more granular control over many of the specific settings.

Eye Candy Comes In Many Flavors

Resolution: This controls both how finely-grained your display will be on the screen and how much information can be displayed. Higher resolutions look better, because the individual pixels are smaller; the flip side of this is that ratcheting up the resolution requires your system to be able to paint that larger canvas fast enough. While it may not sound like a tremendous difference, just going from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 increases the pixel count by 66%. Yeah, it looks a lot better, but it's going to take a lot more processing chutzpah to deliver it.

With the proliferation of LCD displays on many of our desks, the resolution question is becoming we ask ourselves less often. Because these monitors look and work best at their native resolution (1280x1024, 1920x1200, etc), we're probably just going to stick with that and juggle other stuff to achieve the best balance of image quality and performance.

Anti-Aliasing: Any line that isn't perfectly vertical or horizontal is going to break across pixels, and this jagged edge is said to be "aliased." Anti-Aliasing (AA) is how graphics creators and the hardware that renders it cope with that effect to trick our eyes into seeing a smooth line. Naturally, nVidia and ATI have their own names for how they do it (utilizing different types of sampling algorithm and/or sampling densities) and while their approaches differ slightly, the nuts and bolts of AA boil down to "more samples give a smoother line." In a nutshell, a square looks more like a circle than a triangle does, and an octagon looks more like a circle than a square does. The way this is achieved is via supersampling. The downside is that for each step up in AA quality (2x, 4x, 8x, and so on), the entire scene needs to be rendered behind the scenes by your video card, and this multiple rendering puts a lot of demand on your video card's memory (both in terms of size and bandwidth).