|
|
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20667 |  Trogdor (39) Jul 14, 2008 - 08:51 pm
| » Lame
This is nothing special. "New SLI motherboards will feature the NVIDIA nForceŽ 200 SLI processor, Intel Bloomfield CPUs, and Tylersburg (X58) chipsets."
This is just like Skulltrail (and mobile SLI solutions). NVIDIA is still on the board, because they're putting nForce 200 on the X58 boards - and probably only some of them at that. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=17886 | Trogdor (39) Oct 16, 2007 - 03:38 pm
| » Image captures
Just curious... how did you capture the images? I have tried to do the same thing, with no positive results so far. Taking a picture using a camera doesn't work well, as I'm sure you know, and while I can capture DVD screenshots, the stupid HDCP stuff gets in the way for Blu-ray or HD DVD. Any help you can give? Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/5093/571 | Trogdor (39) Aug 07, 2007 - 10:36 am » Edited on Aug 07, 2007 - 10:37 am
| » Nice
There's a TON more you could say... but does anyone really want to watch a 30 minute video? Obviously, you glossed over a lot of areas, but you did hit the important stuff. Prices have dropped on similar components now, but the bottom line is that people should probably try to keep all of their components on a similar level for optimal performance. Of course, for gaming you can just go out and grab the cheapest dual core CPU you can find, overclock it as far as it will go, and throw in a high-end GPU. CPUs are rarely the bottleneck in games.
I suppose you win the contest by default? Over two weeks since the "finals" started (never mind the several month delay) and still no competing posts. Go Yoda - much talent you have! Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/36 | Trogdor (39) Jul 28, 2007 - 04:00 pm
| » Just for clarification
Some of that was tongue-in-cheek (i.e. P965 "for shame" comment), and most of it was just a stream-of-consciousness commentary on the video. (Or stream-of-video comments, I suppose.) Basically, I gave you a 7 so that I can give your competition significantly higher if he deserves it. If he doesn't, he'll get rated accordingly. :)
For the record, I would rate most of our articles in the 6-8 range, so a 7 isn't really bad. The sad thing is just how much more effort likely goes into doing a video review. You have to film stuff, then splice it all together, and then provide commentary. A small "typo" takes a lot more effort to fix than the same thing in a written article.
I really don't know *how* you're supposed to pronounce "x1" - which is why I say it literally "ex one". I do the same on CD/DVD speeds ("sixteen ex" for example).
I guess my chief complaint is that I was more of an analysis of the parts. Don't be afraid to tell it like it is. Something like, "X6800 is undoubtedly a powerful processor, but it's difficult to justify the cost. In a day where you can get quad core Q6600 chips for around $325, we would have difficulty recommending this CPU to anyone. X6850, QX6700, and various other CPUs in this price range would be better alternatives. Nevertheless, the X6800 is what we're using in our test bed, and it's certainly fast enough for any modern application; it's just difficult to justify the current price."
In a similar manner, you could talk about the 7600 GT: "This used to be a great entry-level to midrange gaming solution. Today, there's very little reason to purchase this card, considering its successor is now available If you want a card that is fanless and thus totally silent, it's worth a look, but for about the same price you can pick up a silent 8600 GT card that includes NVIDIA's new video processing engine and DX10 support - not that we actually think these cards will manage to run DX10 games at anything approaching acceptable performance."
As I said, the meat is probably coming in parts 2/3, but a bit more commentary might not be a bad idea. Truly, I think the whole series of reviews is basically meaningless almost, since the parts are all outdated. :| Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/36 | Trogdor (39) Jul 28, 2007 - 03:05 am
| » For shame...
...and you call yourself a techy? (Techie? Whatever.) It's P965, not 965P - the chipset, that is, not the motherboard name. Also, PCIe lists the speeds as x1, x4, x16, etc. not 1x. I always say "ex one" rather than "times one", though I've heard mobo engineers say "by one", "by 16", etc.
The intro siren was too over-the-top for my tastes, by the way.
LOL at the "plus seven" volts. Maybe with liquid nitrogen you could try that much and not just burn up the RAM, but I doubt it would work regardless. But of course we know what you mean (I hope). Also, mentioning the price of the DS3 as a plus would be reasonable, I think.
The 7600 GT - other than being a poor match for the X6800 if you play games - is more than just quiet. It could add noise in the way of heat, which would require the PSU and other fans to run faster, but that's not a big deal. RAM is also 700 MHz base, but technically DDR2-1400 if you use the normal naming convention (as you do later with the Corsair RAM).
Thermaltake Blue Orb... yuck. I'm sure it doesn't cool nearly as well as the top heatpipe towers. Claiming 17dB is also a joke. I wouldn't buy a TT PSU either (or the case for that matter - just not a fan of the way TT cases look). I seriously doubt the PSU can hit 87% efficiency, too.
X6800... isn't the price supposed to be MUCH lower now? I was looking around, but it's still at $975 or so. Maybe I'm thinking of the E6850 that's supposed to be a lot cheaper and offer improved performance (provided you can do 1333 FSB)?
Okay, I've been harsh, but it's actually a pretty good video overview. I'm sure the meat will come in parts 2/3, so this is just sort of fluff for the most part. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61942/506 | Trogdor (39) May 18, 2007 - 08:01 pm
| » Whoa
I liked the text, but I thought the scores were a bit nice on a lot of areas. The CPU in particular would have gotten a lot lower from me. Either get a QX6700 for about the same price, or save money and get that E6600 you used and overclock the sucker. (Never mind the coming price cuts.) Of course, I'm late to the party so the winner has already been decided. It was close, and you both did great work. Keep in touch! Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18926/500 | Trogdor (39) May 05, 2007 - 01:02 pm » Edited on May 05, 2007 - 01:20 pm
| » 45 Hours?
Whoa... you have to have the last part up in 45 hours? If you don't have the water cooling stuff (I forgot that was part of the case), that's going to make it difficult. Good luck! You should visit the forums here as well. :p Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18926/500 | Trogdor (39) May 05, 2007 - 12:56 am » Edited on May 05, 2007 - 01:00 pm
| » Back with more comments...
Okay, just going to randomly comment as I read this time. Then I'll figure out a score. LOL
Call of Juarez: is it any good? I realize this isn't really part of the article, but I have to ask as I haven't played the game. Readers always seem to want benchmarks with more games, but it's impossible to benchmark everything out there so most sites stick to a selection of the more popular games/engines. Does Call of Juarez use a proprietary game engine? My own personal opinion is that if the game isn't very fun to play there's no point in benchmarking it. A good example of this is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic -- FiringSquad uses that game, and while I actually did beat it I don't think I would give the game more than a 60% score (three stars out of five), so you might as well stick with the more reasonable Half-Life 2: Episode One. /tangent
The choice of resolution obviously has a large impact on how well most games run. Since I tend to use very large monitors and very high resolutions, I was actually a bit surprised at how well the 7900 GS performed at 1280x1024. It tends to be completely inadequate for 1680x1050 and above in most recent games (unless you turn down the detail settings). If you have access to higher resolutions that might be another area to examine.
Counter-Strike: Source: does GeForce 7 hardware actually support 6xAA? I thought that was specific to ATI hardware and GeForce 8 series cards. I also think it tends to be overkill and running at 4xAA is probably more than sufficient. 6xAA might also account for the poor performance of the 7900 GS at the high detail settings... although the card may simply be running out of memory bandwidth.
Given the cards you're testing, I almost think the comparison of different detail settings is pointless. At the very least, I don't think the low detail setting is necessary. I think the information in figure 5 is far more useful. It's too bad that you didn't have the 256MB aversion of the X1900 XT, or the X1950 Pro, as both of those cards compete better with the 7900 GS on price.
On your overclocked 7900 GS performance, you probably could have shown these results along with the stock and X1900 cards in games as well as 3DMark06. (3DMark = garbage, even if it is extremely easy to run. LOL)
Perhaps more telling about your overclocking results with the processor is that the 25% processor speed increase does virtually nothing for your 3D performance. Obviously, you're totally bottlenecked by the GPU right now, which as I mentioned on the previous article was pretty much a foregone conclusion. In fact, even at low detail settings the 25% overclock only resulted in about 10% faster performance in Counter-Strike: Source, and at higher detail settings you could probably run an E4300 and still be GPU limited.
I guess the game benchmarks really just point out the problem I mentioned in your first article: the selection of components is really haphazard and not generally something useful for showing true performance potential, unless you are simply looking at the performance potential of the graphics card. I would have liked to see your single core versus dual core Supreme Commander results with a faster GPU. Right now, your overclocked E6600 is only 7% faster in dual core mode, so it seems likely that with a bit more overclocking dual core wouldn't help at all in that game... unless you add in a faster GPU that is. This is more or less FiringSquad's fault and not yours; they should have sent most of you guys a much better GPU in my opinion. But I know how it goes -- it took a hell of a lot of work for me to get and 8800 GTX for my own use! :-)
Have I ever mentioned that I hate synthetic benchmarks? SuperPI and SiSoft Sandra are almost completely useless in my opinion. You state: "While the results obtained may not be representative of real-world performance, they are easily compared and thus popular with the enthusiast crowd." I could have phrased this differently: "Enthusiasts that compare SuperPI and SiSoft Sandra scores are a bunch of retards!" (Well, maybe not *quite* that harsh.) It's all just a silly pissing contest, just like most of the 3DMark results. Not that it's terrible to include them, but I still think they're pointless except as stress tests.
The results of your Thermaltake Blue Orb are hard to put into context without actual noise values. However, I'm a bit surprised that the results under overclocked settings were so close between the retail and Blue Orb coolers. Considering the price, I would say there's a good chance that the Thermaltake Blue Orb isn't even worth considering unless getting a quieter and cheaper CPU cooler is your primary concern. For overclocking, I think the Thermalright Ultra-120 (eXtreme) is probably the way to go in nearly all cases. Sure, it costs twice as much, but you have to look at it in terms of total system cost as well as CPU temperatures. If I'm going to spend $30 on a better HSF, I might as well go all the way and spend $60 for significantly better cooling performance.
Finally, I realize this is part two of three, but the article just sort of runs into a dead-end. I guess the hard part about all of this is that you guys only have a certain amount of hardware and you don't have a backlog of test results, but as it currently stands I find most of the information provided here is a bit outdated or at least not particularly useful. I can already imagine the conclusion: a lot of this hardware, while fast, doesn't make sense for the "hardcore gamer". Beam us a faster GPU, Scotty!
The organization and flow of this article was also somewhat lacking in my opinion. There's useful information provided, but I think you could put together a better introduction and conclusion for part two. Spend less time talking about the benchmarks and more time analyzing the results and helping the readers to understand whether or not the hardware you're testing is worth purchasing. Or maybe that's supposed to be part 3 -- I'm not quite sure what exactly is supposed to be in part to. If part two is supposed to focus on performance of the various parts, I think you've mostly covered the CPU, GPU, and cooler at this point. There still hasn't been much discussion of the motherboard or power supply. As a performance article, I think you could have trimmed down some of the extra information and added a couple more benchmarks looking at the other components.
Still, good job for the most part. I'm being very stingy with my scores, so don't take it too hard that you didn't get a perfect score from me. After all, I have to leave room for someone to come along and top your score. :-)
Link: http://www.anandtech.com Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18926/497 | Trogdor (39) May 04, 2007 - 11:35 pm
| | I know you didn't get to choose the components, which sort of makes the review a bit odd as well. If I were writing, I'd almost be inclined to say something like, "hey, a lot of this is great hardware, but a few of the component selections would be way off for a lot of users. Here's why, and here's what we would suggest if you were actually looking to build something...." But that's probably at least partly the Buyer's Guide editor in me. LOL Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61942/490 | Trogdor (39) May 03, 2007 - 09:02 pm » Edited on May 03, 2007 - 09:01 pm
| » Thoughts
I'm going to be something of a pain in the butt on these final reviews, as at this point it means you guys are getting very close to actually landing a job as an editor at FiringSquad. (That's my standard disclaimer for these article comments.)
Overall, I thought your article was slightly better than the previous article (jacobvandy). You provided more images, and you discussed the assembly process a bit more. However, as I said with his article I think you could use more analysis of the parts and how they go together. Also, the component selection continues to be a bit odd. Let's just say for argument's sake that the reason you have that Gigabyte graphics card is because you're trying to build a silent system. That would actually make quite a bit of sense, but you don't really mention this. As a gaming setup, unfortunately, that 7600 GT is going to be woefully underpowered. It's a bit crazy to have a high-end processor, power supply, memory, etc. and only run what amounts to an entry level gaming GPU these days.
I think your discussion of the components is more or less OK -- not too long while at least covering the basics. You cover the assembly process next, but I think you could easily increase that section to provide a lot more detail. That's the primary area where you have time to put in some critical analysis of the components and how everything fits together.
The operating system discussion at the end was at least somewhat interesting, and kudos to pointing out the need for installing XP prior to installing Vista if you want to dual boot (followed by Ubuntu/Linux for tri-boot). I think you could go into a bit more detail about what is involved in installing all of the drivers, however.
Overall, this is a very solid article and certainly worthy of publication on most hardware web sites. It's not perfect, and you would almost certainly get complaints about various aspects, but as a brief introduction it's not too bad. Just remember that in actual reviews you want to stay away from marketing material as much as possible and dwell more on the real world benefits. Or at least, that's my opinion. :-)
PS -- strange typos are the fault of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Link: http://www.anandtech.com Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18926/497 | Trogdor (39) May 03, 2007 - 08:50 pm » Edited on May 04, 2007 - 11:42 pm
| » Thoughts
I'm going to be something of a pain in the butt on these final reviews, as at this point it means you guys are getting very close to actually landing a job as an editor at FiringSquad. That disclaimer out of the way, I thought the overall article was well done. One major critique is that you continue to use first-person when writing. The sooner you leave that behind the better.
The other major issue I have is that there's a lot of information about the features of the various components without much discussion as to how it all goes together. You basically are just listing all the parts and getting a brief commentary of the features, and I would like a little bit more analysis of the components. For example, the 1200 W power supply is totally overkill for any current system, especially the one you're putting together. I think CrossFire HD 2900 XT in a dual socket (and CPU) system could make use of that sort of power supply. Without those extreme components I doubt you will ever pass 400 W of power draw.
OK, now I'm going to just give a few random comments as I continue through the remainder of the article.
Typo/missing text: "Because of this, I had to removet obstructs...."
Power Supply: Having four separate 12 V rails isn't necessarily a good thing. Discuss.
Your discussion of the motherboard could use some elaboration. Also, I believe the correct spelling is "Northbridge" and "Southbridge". A brief discussion of the differences between the 680i in the 680i LT would probably be useful. I would also be hesitant to replace the SPP and MCP heatsinks with passive cooling unless you know you have some airflow directed over them; otherwise they can to get very hot. Basically, the fans are there for a reason, and extreme care should be exercised if you decide to modify the cooling.
I know you didn't have to buy this hardware, but there's no way I would recommend anyone go out there in purchase and X6800 these days. If you're willing to spend that much money on a processor, I think getting a quad core QX6700 makes a lot more sense. You might not get quite as high of clock speeds with overclocking, but for those tasks that can use multiple cores quad cores where it's at. Video encoding is simply so much faster relative to dual core.
"This is perfectly fine, since a cooler like the Blue Orb will circulate air across any component in close proximity to the CPU socket." You might be correct, but I would be very interested in seeing some actual temperatures comparing CPU and chipset temperature with the retail fan and chipset fan against the Blue Orb II with no chipset fan. I'm sure the CPU will run cooler, but I wouldn't be surprised if the chipset ends up being warmer.
I think you could explain what SLI-Ready memory actually does for the end-user a bit more. Specifically, buying PC2-8500 memory actually serves no purpose unless you manually tweak the timings and overclock. You sort of hint at this, but I think you could say more. It's also worth mentioning: how important is it really to run the RAM and front side bus at the same speed? The quad pumped FSB is running at 1066 MHz, and the BIOS doesn't support that setting for the memory. Given that the memory is dual channel dual pumped (128-bit * 266 MHz * 2) while the front side bus is 64-bit quad pumped (64-bit * 266 MHz * 4), why is it even beneficial to have memory that runs faster than DDR2-533? (Yes, I know the answer is very complex.)
"As always, install the pair in similarly colored DIMM slots to enable dual-channel." That's not always true; it probably should be true, but there are some motherboards where you need to install the dams in the opposite colored slots. The EVGA board obviously gets the color coding correct, however.
"...dual-displays up to 2560x1600..." I don't think that's quite correct, although I admit I could be wrong. My recollection is that only one of the DVI ports on the 7900 GS is actually dual-link, while the other is single-link. So one of the ports maxes out at a resolution of 2048x1536.
Also, it must be said that the selection of components really seems to be haphazard. You have what amounts to a top-end case, an absolutely top-of-the-line power supply (at least in terms of wattage), very expensive memory, motherboard, and processor. All of this gets coupled with what is essentially a midrange graphics card at best. There's absolutely no point in having a 1200 W power supply and an X6800 combined with a 7900 GS if gaming is your primary concern. You would be far better served by a 700 W power supply, an E6600, and with the money saved you could potentially even get 8800 GTX SLI (or at the very least 8800 GTS SLI).
My final comment is that you could discuss the assembly process and how everything goes together in a lot more detail. In fact, you could greatly trim down everything that you say about the components and instead focus on the assembly.
If my comments sound harsh, don't worry about it too much. I am being very nitpicky and basically going over your article with a fine tooth comb -- just like our readers do for our articles. If you don't already have a thick skin, writing for a web site will help you develop one in short order. :-)
I think you should also include a lot more pictures. Pictures showing the assembly process for example would be very useful.
(If any of the above text doesn't make sense, I blame my speech recognition software.)
Link: http://www.anandtech.com Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=15018 | Trogdor (39) Apr 12, 2007 - 09:45 am
| » Cry me a river
Nice: "As far as I can tell, not having played the game..."
In other words, you're judging a game by what a bunch of whiny pricks on the Internet are saying without having ever tried it. Will, I don't care about multiplayer at all, but the single player was a very good experience. If you think it's easy to make perfect code for GAMES (pathetic little CS projects in school don't count).... wow!
A great game that you only play once is still a great game. The engine looks plenty good even though there are better looking games now. I'm a gamer first and foremost, however, so I'd take awesome gameplay with mediocre to decent graphics over lousy gameplay with amazing graphics any day.
Finally, for what it's worth, the game crashed to the desktop once during my ~25 hours of running. That was prior to the patch; never had a problem post-patch with crashes. There are a few cosmetic bugs (like the PDA not showing quest markers - just enter the main map and then the regular PDA worked again), but most of the "bugs" that people are bitching about have more to do with the game not running fast on older hardware. Sorry, but that's not a bug, and despite what some might think optimizing for a vast amount of different hardware is very difficult. "OMG my GeForce 6600 can't run this game worth crap at 1680x1050! Waaaaah!" Aiming lower doesn't just apply to developers. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=15018 | Trogdor (39) Apr 12, 2007 - 09:37 am
| Unlike the above posters, I loved the game. It's not perfect, but there have been a LOT of games that I haven't played through to the conclusion simply because I lose interest.
Anyway, my take is that CPU performance with any recent CPU is not going to really matter. For most people, the GPU is the bottleneck, but even for extreme GPU configurations you're left with a choice of liquid smooth 66+ FPS on a 3600+ of "even smoother" (not that you'd notice) 90+ FPS on stuff like the 6000+ and E6600 and faster.
Of course, you'll still get performance hiccups at times while the engine loads data. Would have been interesting to see minimum frame rates, but my experience is that with enough RAM the CPU won't impact that much either. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/432 | Trogdor (39) Apr 08, 2007 - 08:30 pm
| » Good, but...
You really needed to show a couple other CPU types I think. I would have liked to get a nice old Athlon XP, a newer Athlon 64, and even a Core 2 Duo and Athlon X2 thrown in there.
Of course, that stuff costs money, so if you don't have the parts available that's okay. A couple GPU options (yeah, I know it's AGP) would have been good to see as well - or just grab the fastest AGP offering to show what can be done. The X800 doesn't offer some of the features that the latest games would want - CoH and C&C3 might need SM3.0 to run better. But then at medium quality.... Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/22 | Trogdor (39) Mar 27, 2007 - 11:56 am
| » Thank goodness!
After that last "interlude" of getting-to-know-you posts, I was wondering when we were going to get to actually read some real articles again. I wonder if any of those blog postings even has an impact on the results?
So far (no offense to others), I'm thinking CanadaDave is way up there. I'll have to see how his actual tech articles go, as I don't remember the earlier rounds any more. BucNews and DaugWak had some good posts as well, along with the Ogre guy. (Wonder if he's related to Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds?)
Good luck to all! Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18766/355 | Trogdor (39) Mar 27, 2007 - 11:31 am
| » Big Business
I used to work for Target. God I hated the corporate politics. I saw people fired for minor offenses, and I saw suck-ups get promoted/raises for doing nothing. It's all a load of crap. Working for a large retailer can be a good experience, but you can only do it for so long before you either have to sell your soul or move on. I moved on (to AnandTech.com if you must know), and I couldn't be happier. I still shop at Target, but I hate the corporate BS that those companies put out. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/19453/365 | Trogdor (39) Mar 27, 2007 - 11:14 am
| » Fix the text
You've got a bunch of non-printable characters showing up in my version. Looks like you wrote this in Word and brought it over to the FS engine, and the conversion couldn't handle some of the stuff like directional quotes and long dash characters. Otherwise, a decent article. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/18 | Trogdor (39) Mar 27, 2007 - 10:54 am
| » Hmmm....
Can't say I'm a fan of this topic for the contest - at all. A few entertaining entries, but after scoring several very low because they were either derivative or bored me to tears, I think I give up on rating this round. Why don't you all come visit us in the forums instead? Just don't ask lame questions. :) Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14801 | Trogdor (39) Mar 27, 2007 - 10:46 am
| » Antialiasing
You guys went to a lot of trouble to prove what GSC/THQ already state in advance in regards to antialiasing. From the FAQ (http://info2.thq.com/faq_stalker/):
-------------
10) Why doesn't my anti-aliasing work?
A: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. uses a technique called "deferred rendering". Because of this, anti-aliasing has no effect on the game engine. (This is also used in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Rainbow Six.) Therefore, enabling anti-aliasing in the driver control panel has no effect.
-------------
Also, not only does CrossFire NOT work, but in my case it seriously reduced performance - by 50% or more! X1900 CrossFire gave me ~10FPS when enabled, compared to ~25FPS with it disabled. (That's on XP, naturally - I wouldn't touch Vista just yet.) Otherwise, nice article. Flag this | Edit this post |
| This message was posted anonymously and is hidden |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61804/232 | Trogdor (39) Mar 16, 2007 - 09:04 pm
| | So do you *have* to withdraw just because you're out of town/country? I'm not sure what the requirements are for the challenge, but you might be able to continue regardless - and I don't know that your withdrawal has officially been recognized anyway. ;) Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18926/279 | Trogdor (39) Mar 14, 2007 - 10:35 pm
| Okay, a little more detail then. Opinion as such isn't wrong. The problem is opinion based on incomplete knowledge. Long-term DX10 and Vista hold a lot of potential. Right now it's all unrealized potential, there are plenty of gripes that can be leveled at Vista, and the Vista WDDM while it advances some areas relative to the XP WDDM isn't what prevents MS from doing DX10 compatibility with XP (mostly).
I have no problem with an opinion of "Vista will be the future" - it's true, almost certainly. The way that opinion is presented is the problem. "I say, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." That's a bit combative I think, as is the suggestion that everyone needs to spend a lot of money on upgrades.
PC gaming may not be cheap, but neither does it have to cost $3000+ on an annual basis. More to the point, is it good for PC gaming if people always push the point that you need a lot of power to play games? Heck, Half-Life 2 ran on moderate PCs when it launched, as did Doom 3. Games are going to be forced to support DX9 and DX10 now (because ditching XP support is only something Microsoft can really afford to do - and then only for ulterior motives), which means Vista just made gaming development that much more costly.
Throw in the added cost of the new OS (why is the "new Home" more expensive now, and WTF is with a $400 Ultimate version), and Vista is going to keep the OEMs and Microsoft happy. A lot of the rest of us are going to upgrade, but we'll be pissed about it. Of course, there's always the reality that great games don't require great graphics; better visuals are nice and all, but it's still all about the gameplay. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61804/232 | Trogdor (39) Mar 14, 2007 - 10:20 pm
| » Thoughts
Check your grammar and spelling, and avoid using the same phrases repeatedly. Generally speaking, sentences shouldn't start with a conjunction (And, but, or, etc.) Your sound and music scores indicate that they are more like a 5 or 6 rather than an 8; 8 is really good in my view (unless you view it more as a B-, but I don't like letter grade scales for games).
I think the review as a whole could use more depth. You talk about the sides and say that they're really quite similar, but then your descriptions make them sound rather dissimilar. What about in comparison to other RTS games - how do you procure resources, how do you "screw-up the economy", and who would really go for this game? Basically, is it as good as something like Company of Heroes? If not, why not? (Also, don't speculate about DX10 until the patch arrives - I'd almost level a criticism at the game and say they should have either put it in at the start).
Finally, the common problem of using first person comes up. Just ditch it and pretend like you're already part of the FS staff and are writing with them. You can also try to just avoid use of pronouns in general. I'd move your system recommendations to later, and probably some screen shots would be good showing how the various settings affect the game. Let us also know what sort of system you used to play the game, so we know where you're coming from. If you haven't actually played it on lesser PCs, don't give recommendations for what *ought* to work. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/18926/279 | Trogdor (39) Mar 14, 2007 - 06:13 pm
| » Opinions vs. Fact
I strongly disagree with a lot of your opinions. Why is it that DirectX 10 requires Windows Vista? It definitely isn't because Microsoft had to go that route. The *new* WDDM changes quite a few things, but considering that OpenGL has managed to add support for most of the DirectX 10 style features, Microsoft certainly could have done the same with windows XP. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is in part using DirectX tend to force people (gamers) to upgrade to Windows Vista.
By the way, how are the Windows Vista drivers doing for you? In fact, let's say you're one of those lucky people that owns a DirectX 10 capable graphics card like the 8800 GTS/GTX; those Windows Vista drivers are great aren't they? No bugs there....
Basically, like many of these reviews, I found this to be pretty superficial. Sure, most articles are presenting aspects of the author's opinion, but drawing a line in the sand and placing yourself firmly on one side -- especially on a controversial issue -- isn't something that I generally think technical writers should do. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61831/301 | Trogdor (39) Mar 14, 2007 - 06:06 pm
| » Missing Details
I found the treatment of widescreen gaming to be relatively superficial. There are plenty of other resolutions besides 1680x1050 -- 1440x900 for example would correlate well with the 19" LCDs, but at 20/22" LCDs that you 1680x1050 would correlate better with the 20" standard aspect ratio LCDs that have a resolution of 1600x1200.
What about the games that don't properly support widescreen gaming -- of which there are many -- or performance using something other than a 7600 GT? There are also some technical errors (16:10 versus 16:9) that have mostly been addressed above. If you are going to write a technical article, accuracy is paramount. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14351 | Trogdor (39) Feb 18, 2007 - 09:49 am
| No one that primarily runs games gives a rip about the other NUMA aware OS options. NUMA is fine for stuff like workstations and servers, but gaming is going to be done 99.9% on Windows XP right now. It's all about the drivers, and until we see DirectX 10 enabled games, it really doesn't matter much. Don't forget that NUMA also doesn't mean jack squat unless you run at least four DIMMs, so either you purchase junk 512MB DIMMs (yeehaw - I have quad core and I'm going to totally limit the amount of memory I can install... and I'll upgrade to the much ballyhooed native quad core in the future, because that certainly won't cost an arm and a leg!) or you have to purchase 4GB of RAM and run a 64-bit OS. What were we saying about drivers a moment ago? LOL
I'd also really like to see overclocked Q6600 results thrown in. $210 + $850 gets you the EVGA 680i with Q6600, compared to $610 + $350. Throw in $100 of HSFs on the 680a and $50 on the 680i. Total difference in price is going to be about $100 in favor of the AMD setup, but I'd wager you can get about 3.4-3.5 GHz out of the Q6600. But of course, we're still missing an octal core upgrade path (rolls eyes). Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=12662 | Trogdor (39) Oct 23, 2006 - 01:51 pm
| » Flawed Comparison
Sorry Brandon, but I think this is a flawed comparison. It amounts to comparing two different chipsets and motherboards. I'd much rather see the tests done on the same motherboard, the X16 capable board in this case but force the PCIe slots to X8 bandwidth. It would also be interesting to see how ATI cards stack up, although that would entail using AM2 since there are no dual X16 Core 2 CrossFire chipsets/boards currently available.
What do I think your tests show? They show that the X16 board has been better tuned for gaming performance. We've seen similar results in a lot of the tests, and I'm personally not drinking the NVIDIA Cool Aid. The FSB running at 1066 provides 8533 MB/s of bandwidth, and PCIe is 4000 MB/s bi-directional. Perhaps the FSB is aggregate, in which case you really could pull 8000 MB/s for the two X16 links... only the link between NB and SB ought to be a bottleneck as well, right?
It would be good to see some single card tests forcing PCIe to X1, X2, X4, X8, and X16 if you want another perspective on how important PCIe bandwidth really is. Doing a true look at where AGP fits into the picture is also really required for this sort of article. Obviously, SLI/CF are still going to need PCIe regardless, but is that the only advantage? Well, that and NVIDIA/ATI/Intel selling more chipsets along with all the mobo makers getting people to upgrade. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=12507 | Trogdor (39) Oct 03, 2006 - 01:17 am
| » Love marketing!
"CrossFire has been an open platform from the beginning and it will continue to be an open platform even after our merger to AMD closes. CrossFire will continue to support Intel chipsets and Intel has given no indication that they will lock out ATI graphics in the future. Closed platforms, or platforms that tie GPUs and Chipsets together, are archaic and out-of-place in the modern PC. People should demand open platforms to give them greater choice."
By open platform, of course he means that it works on ATI at launch, and now on Intel 975X and P965. What "open" does not mean is that it will work on any NVIDIA SLI chipset, unless you hack the drivers or something. Flag this | Edit this post |
|
