An ideal one would keep the same rate regardless of variation in power supply, temperature, air pressure, magnetic fields, or any other disturbing influences.

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Some sources of potential error have been known for a long time (for example, because of slight changes in their orbits, satellites do not always take temperature measurements at precisely the same time of day).

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One of the strange things we learned during our hands-on was that SLI is complicated by NVIDIA's GPU Boost technology, which causes individual cards in the same chassis to run at different clock speeds depending on their load and temperature.

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An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010.

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For Phelps, who lived one of the more regimented existences during the past two decades, golf represents an opportunity to compete in venues that have a little more variety than 50-meter pools all set to the same temperature.

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