There might be cases where an application queries how much memory is available, then allocates all of it to use as caching. If the driver doesn't manage that memory well (putting least-used data in the slower segment), that could cause performance to be lower than if it were forced to 3.5GB only.

That said, nobody seems to have found any applications where the memory management malfunctions like that, so it's more a theoretical quibble than actual at this point. And, knowing Nvidia, they'd just patch the driver so it would report a lower memory amount to that app only (they unfortunately tend to fill their drivers with exceptions or rewritten shaders to make big-name games run faster).

As usual, AnandTech's article is generally the best technical reporting on the matter

Key takeaways (aka tl;dr version):
* Nvidia's initial announcement of the specs was wrong, but only because the technical marketing team wasn't notified that you could partially disable a ROP unit with the new architecture. They overstated the number of ROPs by 8 (was 64, actually 56) and the amount of L2 cache by 256KB (was 2MB, actually 1.75MB). This was quite unlikely to be a deliberate deception, and was most likely an honest mistake.
* The card effectively has two performance cliffs for exceeding memory usage. Go over 3.5GB, and it drops from 196GB/s to 28GB/s; go over 4GB and it drops from 28GB/s to 16GB/s as it goes out to main memory. This makes it act more like a 3.5GB card in many ways, but the performance penalty isn't quite as steep, and it intelligently prioritizes which data to put in the slower segment.
* The segmented memory is not new; Nvidia previously used it with the 660 and 660 Ti, although for a different reason.
* Because, even with the reduced bandwidth, the card is bottlenecked elsewhere, this is unlikely to cause actual performance issues in real-world cases. The only things that currently show it are artificial benchmarks that specifically test memory bandwidth, and most of those were written specifically to test this card.
* As always, the only numbers that matter for buying a video card are benchmarks and prices. I'm a bigger specs nerd than most, but even I recognize that the thing that matters is application performance, not theoretical. And the application performance is good enough for the price that I'd still buy one, if I were in the market for a high-end but not top-end card.

Not a shill or fanboy for Nvidia - I use and recommend both companies' cards, depending on the situation.

With you so far.

And now you lost me. Twitter isn't for "anything of substance". It's either insubstantial stuff, or links to substantial stuff. People don't use it as, or want it to be, a place for "anything of substance". Leave that to the blogs.

The Logitech Anywhere MX has a physical middle-click button underneath the scroll wheel ("clicking" the wheel itself just toggles a friction gear on the scroll wheel). If it weren't for your additional complaint about needing a massive mouse (this thing is tiny), it would be perfect for you.

Interestingly, while it really can run perfectly on surfaces as weird as glass, I have found one surface it does not work on: my old mousepad.

Normally the x60 card uses a 192-bit bus, but nVidia's betting big on their texture compression and insane clock rate. Same reason the 980 uses a 256-bit bus instead of 384-bit.

Well, yeah, because ATI doesn't exist anymore, even as a brand. AMD bought them in 2006 and retired the brand in 2010. The last ATI card was the 5870 Eyefinity Edition, which packs about as much punch as this 960, but in a card with the size, noise and power draw of a top-end card. Everything since has been AMD.

I know exactly what you meant, and I even agree with you on your points, it's just hard to take those points seriously when you're using a half-decade-old name.

I've already given more data to Google than I would like. I'm not buying Glass unless I can use it as MY device, not theirs. No uploading shit to the cloud. No monitoring my location or what I look at or what apps I use.

I'm not worried about people recording me with Glass. I actually think that could do more good than harm (mainly by recording police). So I'd be recording anything I think interesting (fortunately for you all, I find humans incredibly dull). But those recordings would have to remain MINE, under MY control.

than /.Beta

There's still data to be found. You get a precise angle, and you can do things with the velocity it goes to the limits at (see Super Smash Bros), and good players will actually use partial range.

And even with the limitations on the data, it's still way more detail than a D-pad gives you.

Goldeneye had, primarily, a 2D gamespace. The graphics were 3D, but altitude rarely factored into things (unless you played Oddjob).

Any game with a real 3D gamespace was brutal on the N64. Daikatana, for instance, although that one had more problems than just control issues.

Consider games as part of an information system. Data flows from the game to the user (display, sound, rumble) and from the user to the game (controller). The more data that can flow, the more complex the game can be without overwhelming the user. On the output side, that's why game designers push for higher resolution and framerates. On the input side, that's why we go for the maximum number of analog inputs (two sticks plus analog triggers, plus sometimes a touchpad or touchscreen), and cram as many buttons as possible onto the pad.

From the tone of the articles, it seems more like "they couldn't justify continued funding with current levels of success". In other words, they're having a budget crunch (not unreasonable given the current economy), and the space program vanity-project was one of the first things on the chopping block.

Not necessarily - keyboard+mouse gives you one (really good) analog input, a gamepad gives you two analog inputs. The way it's normally mapped, it's WSAD for movement and mouse for camera, which is fine as long as you don't need precise movement. RTS, FPS, those kinds of things. Once you need analog movement as well as camera, a gamepad starts to be better - platformers, twin-stick shooters (obviously). Action games (like Assassin's Creed or Arkham) tend to be close to the crossover point, where a gamepad is better but keyboard+mouse is almost always sufficient.

Because the Republican offering is still going to be worse.

Tiny? Compared to what, an Atari joystick?

I have every generation of Nintendo controller out for testing and measuring. Every single analog stick is bigger, and has more range, than the D-pad on the SNES pad (which is slightly larger than on other controllers). So if your problem is that your thumbs are too big to finely use an analog stick, your thumbs are too big for a D-pad as well.

There's a reason analog sticks dominate the landscape these days. A D-pad simply doesn't have the sensitivity or the freedom of movement needed for a 3D gameplay environment. Even PC games know this - a mouse is used for any 3D game, rather than having two hands on keyboard.

Was the SNES controller good for SNES games? Of course. Nintendo actually experimented with analog sticks during the SNES's development, but couldn't find a good use for it with the predominantly 2D games the console was capable of. But look at the N64 controller - they still weren't sure, at launch, how best to control 3D games, so they made that weird controller you could hold three different ways. And then the analog stick proved to be so essential, later consoles had two of them.

The fact that this had to be explained to you makes me think you haven't actually played any games since the Super Nintendo.

I'm getting it from, of all places, the bible. Specifically, the Latin Vulgate - I learned more than enough Latin in two decades of Catholicism to be able to read it, with regular glances at a dictionary. There's some debate as to the quality of the translation, but a) it was the "standard" bible for far longer than any preceding *or* succeeding version, b) it was the basis for most other translations (only recently have English translations been done directly from the greek and hebrew), and c) the translators were far closer to the authors than we are, and so are less likely to distort it to a *modern* worldview.

The Exodus bit is a bit of a stretch - it pretty specifically says "if fighting men hit a woman who is pregnant" as a qualifier ("si rixati fuerint viri et percusserit quis mulierem praegnantem"). I would interpret that as a prohibition on forced abortions, which I don't think many people would argue with, but interpreting it as a blanket ban on abortion is extending things further than the literal text can support.

The Corinthians is a mistranslation on somebody's part. The Vulgate reads "neque fornicarii neque idolis servientes neque adulteri neque molles neque masculorum concubitores neque fures neque avari neque ebriosi neque maledici neque rapaces". I would translate that list as "fornicators, servers of idols, adulterers, the soft, the male concubines, thieves, misers, drunkards, slanderers and the greedy". The New International, and some others, seems to translate "molles" as "homosexuals", which is blatantly wrong (the same word is used as an adjective when Matthew speaks of "soft raiment"). King James translates that as "the effeminate", which most other translations agree with. So that at least relies on God speaking very indirectly to get to the point (if there's one thing Latin has no lack of, it's words for homosexuality - paedico, paedicator, pathicus, irrumator, et cetera). Honestly, given the phrasing, it almost seems like a later addition to the verse.

So yeah, even if I *did* still accept the bible as infallible, I would not be convinced by your citations.