Project Metaversa: LCD goodness (small update 17/07/05)

Personally i'd just go for X800 XT, you'd easily hit PE speeds with that block If he went SLi (which is overkill anyway) he'd need to buy 2 new GPU blocks, it doesn't make alot of sense tbh. An X800 XT is more power than you'll ever need

 

And for a game/appliction to make use of SLI, it needs its own specific drivers. So far only about 12 games are supported by SLI. For the rest it is pointless...

 

that sucks

they should make some sort of universal driver thing so that every game works. it shouldnt be to hard to split the processes between 2 cards. keep up the good work though

P.S. is SLI only for NIVIDIA cards, or are there SLI ATi cards too? just wondering.

 

I was of the understanding that SLI was handled by the drivers... so should work on all games.

AFAIK both NVidia and ATI have SLI capable boards.

 

case looks awesome..... dual processor.....lucky

 

As far as I know, it is someone taking the time to figure out which mode and tweaks it take to get the best performance/detail level in a game. It can be done by the end user... (I'll locate the article that explains it) but what everyone wants is for the drivers to come "pre-programmed" from Nvidia for the optimizations to already be there.

If you absolutely need them, and want to configure the drivers yourself for a currently unsupported game... then you have the tools already within the drivers to do so. Poke around... You will find them likely before I find my link.

 

The drivers are fine. IIRC it's the profiles nVidia need to sort out.

 

Yes, the drivers *are* fine, and perform as they are supposed to.

The issue is that people running a game that is not currently in a profile in the driver, some think that there is no way around this.

Well, there is:
HardOCP workaround

What it will take is some experimenting by the end user to find the proper rendering technique that works best for the game.

Now, from what I have read, NVidia is working on setting up more and more profiles for the most popular games, but I'm willing to bet that if you have a lesser known game, you will likely have to learn this technique to get your game profile completed. I could see the community at large testing out large numbers of games and finding out hte best settings for each game. Would be good if someone, somewhere setup a repository of these configurations, that way, people could simply access the site, copy the text out that they need to setup the profile, and move on!

HTH!

 

It is handled by the drivers, but a "game profile" is required for SLI to work in that game... even then, the title may not be supported by SLI as it may require either SFR or AFR (split frame or alternate frame rendering), the former requires a load balancing algorithm to be created.

NVIDIA are adding SLI profiles and support to games with newer driver releases, but you are going to be forced in to using beta drivers right now.

Only NVIDIA have SLI capable boards, seeing as it as NVIDIA-exclusive technology right now.

There were rumours of an ATI solution known as AMR - ATI Multi Rendering, but there is no such thing right now, and if/when it arrives it will require quite a bit of work I feel - it's taken NVIDIA 3 years to get to where they are right now, and SLI is far from perfect as stated above.

There's also Alienware's solution, which I'm yet to see anything of other than an E3 demo showing SFR, but I'd be surprised if we see that in the near future, as it takes a long time to develop something like what they are trying to do with all of the load balancing algorithms, which is why AFR seems to be the favoured method of rendering right now, because the time-to-market is considerably less than the time to market for an SFR method using load balancing - it's required to be bug tested throughout many games and many levels of each game. For example, the load balancer breaks in FarCry right now, whenever water is on screen.

 

Im hearing the phrase "You'll never need more than 128k of RAM" spin in its grave

 

Well, (back on topic) this is my first post on Metaversa (I named her: Navi). Yeah!

It is fast. It is very fast. I mean, waayyy fast! No matter what I throw at it, it just doesn't even hesitate... Oh, the power...

Temps do not exceed 43C generally, perhaps 44C if I really make it work for a living. Nice.

 

I can only imagine how it must feel Nexxo, its been what? Almost two years now since I first saw you posting about you having a new project in planning Now get the exterior finished so we can dr00l some more and mabye begin a new two year period of nexxo-modding-maddness on a new case?

 

Congratulations. You must have a huge grin plastered all over your face

Keep it up.

 

So do you want to give us some action shots?

 

[Zombie]

...Photos....we crave photos...

[/Zombie]

 

OK, photos! There was a technical problem with my host, so I haven't been able to upload them before. But here they are.

Before we continue, a small but important warning for all you modders out there: DO NOT BUY USB 2.0 PCI CARDS BUILT AROUND THE VIA VT6202 CHIP!
This chip has serious issues with windows (XP, anyway) preventing it from functioning as a USB 2.0 card --it will work as USB 1.1 only. Attempts over the last years by Mircrosoft and VIA to resolve the driver issues around thic chip have met with failure. Some companies have tweaked onto this and have started to change chipsets, but the VIA is an ubiquitous chip and many shops still sell USB2.0 devices with this chip. Inspect closely, and avoid. To illustrate:



On your left, a PCI USB 2.0 card with the (bad) VIA chip. On your right, an identical card but with an Ali chip! This chip, by the way, works like a charm --you don't even need the driver disk, Windows XP SP2 recognizes it off the bat.

OK, moving on now...

Some eye-candy of the 5" screen: displaying "Scanner" by Steffen Gerlach:



Displaying Glint (you can resize Glint to fill the screen if you want; all the squares flash prettily ):



Displaying a wallpaper:



Displaying a screensaver by Goheer.com. Just eyecandy.



The mobo tray re-cut to allow access to the back of the CPU sockets (no need really, but you never know). The other holes are under "hot-spots" of the mobo (SB chip and memory) to allow better cooling. I have some plans for the side panel of the case there, and for lighting...



Some wiring of the internal lighting: a white LazerLED and a LEd for the Aquatube. Note that the connectors are colour-coded: white = 5V, black = 12V.



Bright enough for ya?



The case up and running. Still a work in progress, but nearly there.





And experiments with some accent lighting. There will be more, but this is the more "functional" lighting of the blocks and tubing (EDIT: made a better pic).



Much more to do. I have to re-flash the DVD/CD-RW drives to Slave mode, then I can tidy up the IDE cables. Then I have to finalise lighting and tidy up the power cables. Meanwhile I will be looking at cutting a window in the side panel (one side) and perforated aluminium in the other panel --and get a chrome panel CNC'd for the logo there --EL backlit. Need to order machine screws for the mountings... design the window etch... stuff to do, stuff to do...

 

nice to see you have it up n running

slater..

 

Some gratuitous pimpage:







It's ALIVE!

 

This is too good for words Lovely touch on the subtle yet effective lighting, wow just wow LCD screen looks great, speaking about LCD's, where's the Matrix Orbital got to?

 

What you need is a small webcam inside the box so you can set the min-screen to show the innards