Quotes from that article:

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They're hard at work on Doom III, which is already a shoo-in for event of the year in the $10.8 billion videogame industry, even though it's not expected out until fall.
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But it's hardly a rehash. The new game sets a benchmark for computer graphics
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Doom III is the harbinger of technology to come."
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A mere demo was Best of Show at last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.
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Doom III, says Matt Helgeson, senior editor of Game Informer, "has slightly lower expectations around it than the second coming of Jesus."
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As level designer Christian Antkow says, "We cannot fuck this up."
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But id could pocket some cash from Microsoft. Redmond keeps calling, trying to convince the company to release a version of Doom III for the Xbox: "We're being offered a pretty significant amount of money to sit on it until an Xbox port is done," says Carmack. id hasn't announced a decision yet.
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By betting on a certain kind of hardware, Carmack creates industry standards. At stake are millions of dollars in upgrades, not only in graphics cards but in the surround-sound systems gamers will need to hear an Imp creeping up around the corner.

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They're hard at work on Doom III

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havent "they" been hard at work on doom 3 for like 6 years now.

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I am looking forward to this one! I will shortly be in the process of building a machine to play Doom3 when it comes out!

Here are the specs that I have in mind:

P4 3GHZ, hyperthreading
Asus P4C800 Canterbury chipset, 800MHZ DDR quad pumped! 6.4GB/second memory bandwidth! Here is a GREAT article on this, with the new 3.00 GHZ P4. The fastest damned thing on the market, bar none: http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20030414/index.html
ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro.
2 Corsair cas2 PC3200 512MB modules.
6 Drive SCSI U2W Raid 5 array, Adaptec .controller with 128MB cache on the board.

Should run okay, I guess.

O

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3 & 3?

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1 0 1 1 1 0

Then you add up all the digits, and get either odd or even as your answer. This bit you store on the parity drive. My example adds up to 4, even, so you would write a 0 to the parity drive. This allows the array to keep working even if you lose a drive, because it is then able to figure out what the missing bit is from the parity data.

O

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Thanks for the explanation O

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Get this: I bought an Ultra 2 Wide SCSI RAID controller off Ebay for $36!! And the company I work for just phased out 60 9GB U2W drives, and gave me 14 for my own use, so the RAID array is going to be rather quick!

O

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I don't recall having heard about you hitting the Superball Lottery lately...

Also, I haven't heard too much about hyperthreading being that essential for gaming yet. Does Doom3 use it, or able to take advantage of it?

[ 04-21-2003: Message edited by: jondster ]

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I quit using RAID 0 a while ago because I figured all I was doing was increasing my risk for data loss by doubling the number of drives that could fail.

Anybody here download and play Postal2 ?? Wow, incredibly politically incorrect.

[ 04-21-2003: Message edited by: jondster ]

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The 5 array that I am setting up will be cheap for me, around $100 total for what will now be a 7 drive array. Incredibly fast, and most of the parts were free...

14 U2W 9 GB 10,000 RPM Drives... Free
128MB Caching U2W Raid Controller $36
Adapters for 7 drives $76.95

Watching my face when running benchmarks: Priceless!

O

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Like a parity drive can restore full arrays of drives. And parity files when referring to movies can actually complete movies. Even if you have files missing.

I know a bunch about RAID because I just had a course and exam in an operating systems course. But I never got a decent explaination of parities. From the past I know you know your stuff so if you could enlighten the all mighty it would be appreciated

Lets say you have an array of five drives striped, with one assigned as parity, and you write a file that contains ten bits of data. The first bit will be written to the first drive, number two to the second, and so on. The sixth bit gets written back to the first drive, according to the stripe. Here are the ten bits that I am going to write to my array: 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0

Let's see how this looks:

1st Drive: 1 0
2nd Drive: 1 0
3rd Drive: 0 1
4th Drive: 0 1
5th Drive: 1 0

This is a five drive raid 0 array. The only difference between 0 and 5 is the parity drive, obviously. To figure out the parity data, simply add each column up. If you get an "even" total, you write a "0" to the parity drive. If you get an odd total, write a "1".

1st Drive: 1 0
2nd Drive: 1 0
3rd Drive: 0 1
4th Drive: 0 1
5th Drive: 1 0

Parity Dr: 1 0

Now, assume that you have configured your array the proper way, with an empty drive just spinning there with all the rest, doing nothing. The array controller has him marked as a "hot spare". When the array has a drive that dies, the controller will recognize that fact, and rebuild the lost data automatically on the hot spare, real time with no loss. Let's wipe out one of the drives, say the 3rd Drive, and find out the missing data mathematically. The math is fairly simple to figure out. Add up all data bits on the remaining drives, and look at the answer. Compare the total from the four drives left in the stripe to the parity drive. If you get "even" as an answer, like in the first column of data, but the parity shows that the ORIGINAL total was "odd", you know that there was a "1" on the missing drive. Same thing in reverse for the second column of data, it adds up to "odd", but the parity drive shows you that the sum HAS to be "even", so you know that there is a "1" missing yet again. So, the array controller figures this stuff out, and writes it to the host spare:

1st Drive: 1 0
2nd Drive: 1 0

4th Drive: 0 1
5th Drive: 1 0

Parity Dr: 1 0
Hot Spare: 0 1

Now the controller marks the hot spare as "3rd Drive" and honks at you to replace the dead hard drive, which becomes the new hot spare. This is done in real time, without taking the server (or in my case, desktop) down at all, while still having access to all the files.

Pretty amazing stuff.

If you want to be REALLY safe, use a dual channel raid controller, and mirror this entire setup on a new chain and set of drives. But the controller itself becomes a single point of failure, so most places use two controllers, two identical sets of drives, and so on. That way, no single piece of hardware failure can knock you offline.

The staffing company that I used to work for used this idea with their IBM RS/6000 Unix database servers. The product is called HACMP (High Availability Clustering Multi Processing), which is simply a fancy term for a "hot spare" server, that takes over for the main one should anything fail at all. It is a bitch to configure and get working properly, but it is the ultimate belt and suspenders solution to make sure that your pants don't fall down.

O

[ 04-23-2003: Message edited by: Oicu812 ]

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[ 04-23-2003: Message edited by: 20 20 ]

O

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My teacher didn't really want to get in depth with that stuff because alot of the people in my class are morons.

It makes sense to me now and that is pretty cool stuff

This summer I have about 200 computers under my control at my job so I will have plenty of stories to tell about me ruining things and hopefully fixing them aswell.....

The real question is what can a 20 year old do with fiber optic connections accessible to me

I am thinking that you need to run all 200 machines as a clustered server for the SETI project...

O

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The top of the line processor by December will be the P4 3.6GHZ Processor, running on the 200MHZ FSB at an internal multiplier of 18. I doubt they will actually try to go higher on the FSB, because of the lack of RAM that can handle it. The Corsair memory that I am looking at actually has a guarantee of 217 MHZ, turning a 3 GHZ processor into a 3.25 with no extra voltage required.

O

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Some of the computers are connected to servers via dial-up. Some are directly connected using hubs and routers. Which I would assume are connected to switch in which the fiber is connected to.

Just the fact that I have alot of computers to deal with is going to be an interesting task.

O

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You gonna have a killer box when you put that thang together O! I wuv my wittle P4 2.0, it is soooo solid, thing hasn't been rebooted in over a month.

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(FedEx tracker says they're on the delivery truck)

The P4 2.6 or 2.8 will have to wait.

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What I really want to upgrade is the monitor, I have a 21 inch in bedroom now, but would like to get a 32 incher like maybe one of those sampos. The 21 incher seems a lot smaller since the wife got me a widescreen xmas present for the den and we do like watching divx and dvd in bedroom as well. Size DOES matter.

$349, freight no charge at Newegg.com

Strangley, I find it's graphics only a marginally better than my GF4 Ti4600.

I haven't tried any analog capture yet, although they claim 30 FPS @ 640x480

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