Technology Speed Track

Does Low Latency Memory Really Make Your Mac Go Faster?

Opetek — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:20:47 +0000

Originally posted April 25th, 2008, by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist
Updated May 1st, 2008, with “video to layers” test similar to Corsair’s

Corsair’s press release and “white paper” made a big splash in the news. They claimed as much as a 19% gain in Photoshop performance when a 4GB kit of CAS 5 memory was replaced with their 4GB kit of CAS 4 memory. We were skeptical so we tested the Corsair modules against various brands of “normal” latency SODIMM memory kits in our “Penryn” MacBook Pro 2.6GHz laptop.

First we ran a memory benchmark. We used a specially built version of STREAM to run in 64 bit parallel multi-threaded mode and use 2.7GB of RAM.

Next we ran three real world apps that gobble up over 3GB of RAM and use all available CPU cores.

Finally, we ran a test similar to that offered by Corsair as proof of speed gains. They used Photoshop to convert a video to layers. We took an Apple ProRes 422 movie file and converted the first 500 frames. We rebooted between runs to defeat caching and averaged three runs. They claim this test produced the fabled 19% speed gain when shifting from CAS 5 to CAS 4. We saw vitually no gains.

GRAPH LEGEND
All memory was PC2-5300 667MHz 200pin SODIMMs
Corsair C4 = Corsair VSA4GSDSKIT667C4 CAS 4, 4GB (2 x 2GB) kit
OWC C4 = OWC OWC53C4DDR2P4GB CAS 4, 4GB (2 x 2GB) kit
Corsair C5 = Corsair VS2GSDS667D2 CAS 5, 4GB (2 x 2GB) kit
OWC C5 = OWC OWC53C5DDR2P4GB CAS 5, 4GB (2 x 2GB) kit

CONCLUSION
The Corsair CAS 4 low latency memory is ”oh so slightly” faster than the Corsair CAS 5 “normal” latency memory. Ditto for OWC’s CAS 4 versus CAS 5.

The STREAM benchmark showed a 5% increase comparing CAS 4 memory to CAS 5 memory. But in the REAL WORLD, the average gain for three memory intensive apps using low latency memory was 1%. Though consistent, it’s not significant in my estimation. Without a stopwatch, you would not notice the difference.

We saw nothing close to the 19% gain in Corsair’s Photoshop test published in their “White Paper” when they compared a CAS 5 four gig kit with a CAS 4 four gig kit. I think somebody in their lab either goofed or moved a decimal point.

If you are getting ready to upgrade from 1GB or 2GB to 4GB — and you want to squeeze every drop of speed out of your MacBook Pro or MacBook or iMac, then maybe low latency memory is worth getting. If you already have a CAS 5 “normal” latency 4GB kit installed, then it’s NOT worth trading up for a CAS 4 kit.

And if you do go for a low latency CAS 4 kit, take a look at OWC’s 4GB CAS 4 kit which is priced lower than the Corsair CAS 4 kit.

BIG MAHALO
Thanks goes CanadaRAM and OWC for providing various and sundry memory sample memory kits.

For the record, we tested five brands of CAS 5 memory (Corsair, DMS, Kingston, OWC, and Patriot). They all performed within tenths of each other. We decided to graph only the OWC and Corsair since we had samples of both CAS 4 and CAS 5 from those memory makers.

[Source]http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp03.html

Royal Battle - Hardware: Apple vs. Other Manufactures

Opetek — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 10:54:37 +0000

I just got the new (to me) old late-2007 model of Macbook Pro. Here are some small things I like about Apple’s hardware… briefly

Keyboard: automatically adjust back-lit (it doesn’t matter much to me since I am a 10-finger typer )
Monitor: automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes
Trackpad: multi-touch, and gestures (even though Synaptics does have this technology, somehow they disable this feature (???) )
Battery: nice compromise between powerful and mobile (lasts up to 7 hours), indicators in front (with new model), able to be swapped to another when laptop in sleep
AC adapter: magnetic-safe, nice design to pack up wires
Heat air vent: hidden in the back (with my late-2007 model)
Sensors: ease to monitor all the values (iStat)
Speakers: loud enough, and louder with software amplifier (mPlayer, VLC)
Body: aluminum case, unibody (late 2008)
Remote: IR remote for media, alarm (nice feature with discontinued iAlarm software)
Nice close/open lid mechanism
Nice Apple logo in the back of monitor with light
Nice slot-loading DVD/CD drive

Here are what I don’t like or need to get used to:

Keyboard: lack of insert key (I used it a lot to paste text in Terminal in Linux), combined keys (page up, page down, home, end), less sensitive (even though it’s very soft-pressed), small arrow keys
Less of USB ports (might be essential to some people, i don’t need that much)
Does not have nice touch-sensitive buttons (I like these buttons from other laptops’ manufactures)
Mini DisplayPort (in new models): free, but less popular than HDMI interface, need adapter

How to install Ubuntu 9.04 on an Intel-based Mac laptop

Opetek — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:14:35 +0000

(Last update on September 7th, 2009 for Snow Leopard)

Many thanks to Richard Cavell for this very details instruction: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=de17cb633331c3cf76cee5e1c9d19175&t=1192296

Loccy’s BetterBrowser for HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1)

Opetek — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:49:55 +0000

Release notes/changes for 1.4/1.4.1

fix to force close on mobile sites when double tap zoom cycle goes back to the “all the way out” setting
double-tap/triple-tap anywhere on a page to zoom
setting to change triple tap delay value in advanced settings (so the lower the setting, the more responsive double-taps are, but the quicker you have to get your triple-tap in!)
setting to change double-tap behaviour, between the existing zoom cycle, and also now just a simple zoom out only setting (so if you want to just keep it simple, and have double-tap to zoom in, triple tap to zoom out,
the latter will be the setting for you). How many zooms this will result in per cycle will depend on the page you’re viewing.
change to double-tap zoom cycle behaviour - now zooms ALL the way out to give a true page overview, and also introduces an intermediate step between page overview and 1:1 zoom (this is a nice level for sites with
big fonts, eg. aintitcool.com)
click title bar (or top of screen) to bring down the address/search bar
click top left of screen to go to home page. Click it a second time when on the home page to exit the browser completely (or double-click from elsewhere).

Yes, lovely, release notes are great. But, errrm, what actually is this?

This is a new build of the stock browser, that incorporates the multitouch code from Cyan’s build, along with some additional code of my own, primarily intended to make zooming less painful, and looking to gradually move towards an experience as rich as the Hero browser.

What does it do that’s new, then?

the stuff it will say in the release notes for the latest version at the top of this thread, plus:
option in settings to disable the obnoxious on-screen zoom buttons that usually appear (turn off “Visual Zoom Controls” in the menu to get rid of them - off by default).
when Visual Zoom Controls is disabled, option in settings to add zoom in and zoom out to the menu (although this will bump over options that are normally on the main menu to the “More…” list)
double-tap the screen to zoom in. When it gets too ginormous (about four zooms) a subsequent double-tap will zoom all the way out. Or you can just change this in the settings so double-tap always zooms in.
triple-tap to zoom out!
an option for “Mobile Web Settings”. Select from Android, iPhone or Desktop browsing.
an option to lock in landscape mode.
setting to enable hiding/showing of notification bar. Note that this needs the entire Browser process to be restarted to take effect (so you might need to use some kind of task killer, or if you don’t have one, reboot your phone).

What do I need to run it?

It was written to run on Cyanogen builds, originally. Others have tried it on JACxROM and other ROMs with multitouch in the kernel. I personally see no reason why it wouldn’t run on pretty much any Cupcake ROM, although multitouch won’t work. In fact I think some people have run it on Hero, although why you want to do such a thing is beyond me. I, personally, have only tried it on Cyan 4.0.x.

How do I install it?

I am assuming that anyone on this thread is familiar with pushing things to their phone with adb. So I, personally, would install with something like

Code:

adb remount
adb shell cp /system/sd/app_s/Browser.apk /system/sd/app_s/Browser.old
adb push Browser-bb-whatever-the-filename-is.apk /system/sd/app_s/Browser.apk

This, of course, is assuming you have an a2sd ROM with your system/app stuff on the SD card in app_s. If not, you will need to modify that accordingly.

However, some people have been reporting successful installations using Linda File Manager from the market and just installing the APK like any app. I don’t do it this way so caveat emptor.

Is this the same browser that’s been doing the rounds on this board lately? What’s with the version 1.x stuff? Wasn’t it on version 5 or something?

Yes. I’ve reset the version numbering and given it a name (i.e. BetterBrowser). So this is BetterBrowser v1 (which comes after Loccy’s Browser v5 ). Next versions will be 1.1, 1.2, etc. It was getting a bit silly going up a version number every time I added a single menu option!

I installed your browser and now I can’t browse the interweb, my phone exploded, I lost my job and suffered an embarrassing rectal prolapse in a public place. I blame you!

Thank you, please call again. All purchases are final. I would suggest that one uses a program to back up your bookmarks at the very least before installing this.

This is the best thing since self removing trousers! What do I do now?

Send me money by clicking here.

Future improvements I’m hoping to do:

a proper full screen option (i.e. where you’d also hide the title bar as well as the notification bar, and only show it when pages are loading)
maintain zoom level across pages on same site (so it doesn’t suddenly zoom back to 1:1 level when you browse to the next page).
hero-style lairy Mac coverflow-esque bookmarks (some way off in the future me-thinks!)
tidy up what behind the scenes is, unfortunately, some really kludgey code!

– Loccy, senior member of xda-developers.com –

[source]http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=551119

XBox - Project Natal: A Revolutionary New Way to Play

Opetek — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:45:42 +0000

Introducing Project Natal, a revolutionary new way to play: no controller required. See a ball? Kick it, hit it, trap it or catch it. If you know how to move your hands, shake your hips or speak you and your friends can jump into the fun — the only experience needed is life experience.

Here are some demos for it:

Project Natal - Milo demo

Project Natal - Official E3 First Look

For more information, check out its website at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/