Posts by Simon

Samsung fires up 128GB SSD massive attack

@Steve

"Where do your figures come from?"

I believe Gotta's figures come from a proper reading of the text.

Lets see if you can work it out. :-P

Ruckus and Terranet rewire Mesh Wi-Fi dream

@AC

This really isn't about broadband though is it? This is about mesh networks and their multiple applications. Yes, they can be used to provide broadband, quite cheaply and efficiently as it happens (think 1 broadband connection used by 1 person 25% of the time using 15% of its available throughput [actually a lot less generally] compared to 25 people using 5 connections (the costs of nodes are minimal about $50 or £30).

The benefits of a community wireless mesh should be obvious (OK, OK, broadband 'power-users' like most of El Reg's readership probably still require a dedicated connection but your average joe reading emails/browsing pRoN/reading BBC news has all he needs and for a fraction of the cost). It already works successfully in many parts of the country - a good example is SussexNetShare (SnS), it actually has meshes all across the country and is a major contributor to the open-mesh.org project.

Wanted: AMD Athlon upgrade advice

All sounds fine to me.

This is very similar to the spec I run (apart from my CPU is an AMD 4200+ X2 and my RAM is standard DDR).

I'd definitly suggest the 8800GT over the GTS (much better bang for your buck).

As to the motherboard - Most good quality boards which are any good for gaming come with SLI or Crossfire anyway (you don't have to use it after all), but I would always recommend ASUS. I've had a couple (amongst many others) and they are excellent performers and very reliable. I'd suggest one of the nvidia nForce based chipset boards, such as the P5N32-E SLI which is basically the intel CPU version the motherboard I have.

My spec is as follows and runs Crysis fine in 1280x1024 all on ultra high quality (used a small hack to enable the so called 'DX10 only' graphical features).

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4200+

RAM: 2GB DDR 3200 (in 512MB pairs)

HDD: 2 x 250GB 7200rpm Maxtor

MoBo: ASUS A8N32 SLI

PSU: OCZ 600W StealthExtreme

(And a bunch of other gubbins)

The only thing I'd suggest is that you make sure that you PSU is upto the job - 600W is easily enough (if that is what it actually provides!), but its all about the stability and oomph of the 12V rail(s) when dealing with powerful gfx cards. I'd always suggest a PSU with more than 1 12V rail (ideally 3 or 4) with at least 15+ Amps per rail.

Hope that helped.

Cheers

US boffins create darkest material ever

Re: but..but

This is absolutly true Louis.

Therefore what you would be seeing when you looked at it would be the absence of any reflected light (this is why black is black), so you would still (rather easily) percieve it visually, if not actually see it in the most literal scientific sense of the word.

In essence what you would see is a patch of black amongst everything else around it.

It would certainly look (near as dammit) 2D, due to this, you certainly would not be able to see any surface detail unless in profile (so in a way these details are invisible).

Does this help?