It's not just gamers that can't get Graphics cards, it's scientists as well.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, pyrojoe34 said:

Yea, that’s not true at all. Budgets are being slashed every year (thanks Congress, the cost of one of those tanks the army doesn’t even want could fund our lab for a decade) and most grants are given preferentially to big, well funded labs leaving the rest of us clawing for basic supplies and reagents.

 

Yeah, I don't know what worries me more, the lack of funding going into science or the fact that nearly every government on the planet is seriously increasing their defense budgets.  Even Australia is doing it.

 

 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

I understand what you're saying but as a former University student this infuriated me a lot. Tuition fees are blowing up and the quality of the Education couldn't be more disappointing! University professors didn't care much about teaching, but they were very passionate and proud about their research. I relied mostly on my TAs for everything. The professors we're marginally useful. You could always tell they were too busy with research to provide a positive learning environment. 

 

My point is Universities suck at teaching because they focus way more on research and funding over learning. In my experience, Tech School was wayyy better at teaching me things as the instructors we're more involved with the students. 

That is a requirement put on them by the University though, professors are required to conduct research and publish a certain number of papers and the pressure to do that is extremely high. It effects the funding you get and it also effects the Universities international rankings.

 

Also any funding you get a large portion, it's not uncommon 50%-70%, is taken by the University. Out of the remaining funds that are left you actually get to use and you have to pay for everything right down to the lab technicians, equipment, materials etc. Big sums of money doesn't go as far as people think it does.

 

We have departments that have servers they purchased 10+ years ago still running in our data centers because they cannot afford to replace them, some of which have had RAID card failures that I've had to repair for them. Science isn't sexy and filled with cool toys, we just show those off to the public to look great and attract students but for every new cool thing there is 20 decrepit old junkers hiding behind it.

[pyrojoe34]

1 minute ago, kokakolia said:

I understand what you're saying but as a former University student this infuriated me a lot. Tuition fees are blowing up and the quality of the Education couldn't be more disappointing! University professors didn't care much about teaching, but they were very passionate and proud about their research. I relied mostly on my TAs for everything. The professors we're marginally useful. You could always tell they were too busy with research to provide a positive learning environment. 

 

My point is Universities suck at teaching because they focus way more on research and funding over learning. In my experience, Tech School was wayyy better at teaching me things as the instructors we're more involved with the students. 

I completely agree that that’s an issue, it needs to be rectified. The way I see it the best way to tackle this is to free up the professors by not making them spend over 3/4 of their time trying to get funding (most do not do much actual lab work so it’s not the research itself that’s the issue, it’s the funding problem), by not hiring professors solely on their funding/publications but also consider their teaching ability (this means the ones who focus on teaching don’t get hired as often because they only hire the ones who spend all their effort on the lab), and by separating out the roles of teaching professors and researchers (hire teachers for teaching and researchers for research). There is also the problem (just like every level of education) in requiring them to do more than ever before and stretching them too thin.

[kokakolia]

Just now, pyrojoe34 said:

I completely agree that that’s an issue, it needs to be rectified. The way I see it the best way to tackle this is to free up the professors by not making them spend over 3/4 of their time trying to get funding (most do not do much actual lab work so it’s not the research itself that’s the issue, it’s the funding problem), by not hiring professors solely on their funding/publications but also consider their teaching ability (this means the ones who focus on teaching don’t get hired as often because they only hire the ones who spend all their effort on the lab), and by separating out the roles of teaching professors and researchers (hire teachers for teaching and researchers for research). There is also the problem (just like every level of education) in requiring them to do more than ever before and stretching them too thin.

I have a simpler solution: get rid of the Bachelor's degree at the University. 

 

Universities can still do grad school and research. Leave the rest to Community College and Tech Schools. They do a far better job at teaching things and cost less. 

[pyrojoe34]

Just now, kokakolia said:

I have a simpler solution: get rid of the Bachelor's degree at the University. 

 

Universities can still do grad school and research. Leave the rest to Community College and Tech Schools. They do a far better job at teaching things and cost less. 

Which is more or less the same as I said in separating out the roles. Keep research separate from education, combining the two means both sides suffer. Hire teaching professors to teach and researchers to research. It's kinda like a company hiring an engineer to do engineering, accounting, training, PR work, and management simultaneously when all they should really be doing is engineering.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, asus killer said:

 

"About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce® graphics products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro® graphics products and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla™ computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com."

http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1238405290161.html

 

they even have separate divisions. Agree to disagree and lets move on. 

Why does Nvidia get to tell you what you can do with a product you have purchased? Would you listen to them if they came out tomorrow and said GeForce cards are not for gaming and only for mining and you should not game on them?

 

The actual GPU has very little difference between GeForce and Quadro, it's the same architecture. The main difference is the firmware and maybe ECC VRAM, the firmware allows you to use the Quadro drivers. You can see the direct evidence of this with the Titan cards after Vega FE came out, Nvidia rolled in to the Titan drivers some of the Quadro driver features. If there was an actual GPU hardware requirement or limitation that would not have been possible.

 

99% of the difference between GeForce and Quadro is just a sticker that Nvidia put on it themselves, you buy the Quadro when and only when you need that 1% difference.

 

Tesla is the only exception to this as it actually does have a different GPU in it with full FP64 capabilities.

P.S. I know the top model Quadro's (P100) used the same GPU die but that is a single product in a line of products that do not.

[grimreeper132]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Yeah, I don't know what worries me more, the lack of funding going into science or the fact that nearly every government on the planet is seriously increasing their defense budgets.  Even Australia is doing it.

 

 

I don't get that who is america planning to fight, your not at war with any big superpower and hopefully never will be. I think the UKs budget for the army is decreasing every year, but at the same time so is the NHSs which is far more important to most brits and is in desperate need of the money but they won't give it to them and instead give them "more and more each year" but that's only in theory tin practice it's less and less

 

1 hour ago, kokakolia said:

I have a simpler solution: get rid of the Bachelor's degree at the University. 

 

Universities can still do grad school and research. Leave the rest to Community College and Tech Schools. They do a far better job at teaching things and cost less. 

Bachelors makes sense for many courses, especially over here in the UK, some maybe not (engineering) but certainly for other ones, for example a forestry masters makes you too qualified so it makes it harder to find the job

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, grimreeper132 said:

I don't get that who is america planning to fight, your not at war with any big superpower and hopefully never will be. I think the UKs budget for the army is decreasing every year, but at the same time so is the NHSs which is far more important to most brits and is in desperate need of the money but they won't give it to them and instead give them "more and more each year" but that's only in theory tin practice it's less and less

 

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Aus. and US defenses are in response to china's size and movements in the south sea.  

 

Also I think they want to increase the UK budget for defense to 3% of GDP but that has been said to come at a cost to health and education. 

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, kokakolia said:

I have a simpler solution: get rid of the Bachelor's degree at the University. 

 

Universities can still do grad school and research. Leave the rest to Community College and Tech Schools. They do a far better job at teaching things and cost less. 

 

2 hours ago, grimreeper132 said:

Bachelors makes sense for many courses, especially over here in the UK, some maybe not (engineering) but certainly for other ones, for example a forestry masters makes you too qualified so it makes it harder to find the job

 

Over here we don't really have a separation of Colleges and Universities, we mainly just have Universities. There are a few institutions that are considered Colleges but there aren't that many of them.

 

Comes down to population size, we just don't need or could support that type of thing.

[grimreeper132]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

 

Over here we don't really have a separation of Colleges and Universities, we mainly just have Universities. There are a few institutions that are considered Colleges but there aren't that many of them.

 

Comes down to population size, we just don't need or could support that type of thing.

we have both colleges and unis here, colleges do HNCs and HNDs in stuff like animal handling, cooking  and other courses tat universities don't do, as well as some of the courses the universities do just at a lower level. Where as universities do it at a higher level and do a large amount of research as well. (colleges do do research, but not on the same scale.

[kokakolia]

18 hours ago, grimreeper132 said:

I don't get that who is america planning to fight, your not at war with any big superpower and hopefully never will be. I think the UKs budget for the army is decreasing every year, but at the same time so is the NHSs which is far more important to most brits and is in desperate need of the money but they won't give it to them and instead give them "more and more each year" but that's only in theory tin practice it's less and less

 

Bachelors makes sense for many courses, especially over here in the UK, some maybe not (engineering) but certainly for other ones, for example a forestry masters makes you too qualified so it makes it harder to find the job

Bachelors do make sense for some people yes. But most people should not have to commit to a 4 year program. It's too much to commit to! The baseline that everyone should start with is a 2-year program and then they can choose to upgrade to a Bachelors degree if they want to. This is what Tech schools are already doing in Canada. Some 2-year programs like accounting, civil engineering or forestry can be upgraded to Bachelors degrees with another 2 years. In many cases specialized 2-year programs are more effective for entering the workforce than broad 4-year programs that don't teach the proper skills to be hired. This is why I don't want to support Universities at all. I don't want to give them a dime. On the other hand I'd happily support tech schools and community colleges. 

[leadeater]

55 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

Bachelors do make sense for some people yes. But most people should not have to commit to a 4 year program. It's too much to commit to! The baseline that everyone should start with is a 2-year program and then they can choose to upgrade to a Bachelors degree if they want to. This is what Tech schools are already doing in Canada. Some 2-year programs like accounting, civil engineering or forestry can be upgraded to Bachelors degrees with another 2 years. In many cases specialized 2-year programs are more effective for entering the workforce than broad 4-year programs that don't teach the proper skills to be hired. This is why I don't want to support Universities at all. I don't want to give them a dime. On the other hand I'd happily support tech schools and community colleges. 

I did my Bachelors at what is considered a College, also most Bachelors even at a University is a 3 year program with the 4th year usually being honors year (sometimes that extra year is mandatory though).

 

The difference with my degree is it's Applied, Bachelor of Information & Communications Technology (Applied), which basically means it's more practical/assignment based than having ~80% of your mark per paper being end of semester exam. The course was also very focused so you weren't doing statistics or physics papers in your first year unlike the degree I was originally doing at a different university, which only had 2 out of 8 papers actually being ICT related at all in the first year, not that I didn't enjoy them but highly not useful.

 

One of the best parts of the degree was in the final semester you had to do an industry project which you had to find that project yourself. Typically if that went well you ended up working at the place you did your project at after graduating but if you didn't you at least had a decent sized project on your CV with a good reference and some practical work experience. Great degree overall and far more suited to people wanting to be Systems Engineers/Administrators or Networking Engineers and IT companies generally end up hiring people who did this degree than the other local, much larger, university which funnily enough I now work at.

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I did my Bachelors at what is considered a College, also most Bachelors even at a University is a 3 year program with the 4th year usually being honors year (sometimes that extra year is mandatory though).

 

The difference with my degree is it's Applied, Bachelor of Information & Communications Technology (Applied), which basically means it's more practical/assignment based than having ~80% of your mark per paper being end of semester exam. The course was also very focused so you weren't doing statistics or physics papers in your first year unlike the degree I was originally doing at a different university, which only had 2 out of 8 papers actually being ICT related at all in the first year, not that I didn't enjoy them but highly not useful.

 

One of the best parts of the degree was in the final semester you had to do an industry project which you had to find that project yourself. Typically if that went well you ended up working at the place you did your project at after graduating but if you didn't you at least had a decent sized project on your CV with a good reference and some practical work experience. Great degree overall and far more suited to people wanting to be Systems Engineers/Administrators or Networking Engineers and IT companies generally end up hiring people who did this degree than the other local, much larger, university which funnily enough I now work at.

I gave up on one of my engineering courses for that reason.  Give me a soldering iron or a welder, not 15 pages of formulas.

[kokakolia]

16 hours ago, mr moose said:

I gave up on one of my engineering courses for that reason.  Give me a soldering iron or a welder, not 15 pages of formulas.

I hear ya! But you can't really avoid this. When I was in tech school recently for Geomatics I had to do a pointless introductory Physics course and the same English course twice with a different course number. Sometimes programs aren't well put together so you have to scrupulously inspect the course list. And that's a lot to ask for the general public that doesn't know anything (they wouldn't take the courses otherwise). At the end of the day the program was solid and I got a job out of it. And the school changed the program for the reasons above after I graduated

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, kokakolia said:

I hear ya! But you can't really avoid this. When I was in tech school recently for Geomatics I had to do a pointless introductory Physics course and the same English course twice with a different course number. Sometimes programs aren't well put together so you have to scrupulously inspect the course list. And that's a lot to ask for the general public that doesn't know anything (they wouldn't take the courses otherwise). At the end of the day the program was solid and I got a job out of it. And the school changed the program for the reasons above after I graduated

 I know you are right to a very real degree, but I am one of those stereotypical ADD blokes who can't sit still longer than 2 secs.  As a consequence I have four professions my belt and proficient enough with another 3.   I switch between them all depending on my mood.  I basically can do what I want now.