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| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 |  kevinSpiess (156) Mar 16, 2007 - 05:49 pm » Edited on Mar 16, 2007 - 06:17 pm
| | None of the optimized drivers are available for Vista. The general consensus from the development teams seems to be that they are waiting for more stable, more polished official Vista drivers before they start optimizing them. All the drivers -- with the exception of DHZer0point -- will be Vista compatible in future releases (probably the next release). About the CCC, it was sort of addressed in my spiels about the drivers, but to reiterate, Omega, NGo, and DNA drivers do not have the Catalyst Control Center in them, primarily because of the high system requirements of the program. In place of CCC they use the excellent ATI Tray Tools. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 16, 2007 - 05:37 pm
| | Good question Knuckles -- it is good to be aware of these possibilities. But I'd say, in the case of these 4 drivers, the chances of included malware are pretty slim. These drivers have been in development for extended stretches of time, with fairly regular releases, and are aimed at a smaller, enthusiast audience. They would not be very good packages to infect the public with. Also, the people who generally install 3rd party optimized drivers are generally technically proficient, so they would be the ones most likely to spot any included malware. Additionally, I did a few scans with Xoftspy, and was on the lookout for trouble -- by the way, the ati MOM.exe file, which is a legitimate ATI file but shares the name with a keylogger program, give me a bit of shock before I figured out that it wasn't malware. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 15, 2007 - 03:29 pm » Edited on Mar 15, 2007 - 03:31 pm
| Thanks for your comments suibhne. I regret having a few grammatical errors in the article -- I should have polished the article a bit more before posting it.
The carriage return thing is something else altogether. I originally put extra spaces between each paragraph (like I did in my last article, the Marvel: UA review). But then the article looked TOO spaced out, so I took most of them out. Jacobvandy was also mentioning it didn't look right. I'm not sure which way I should of done it; I think other people in round 2 went both ways.
I'm glad you liked the opener. "Gonzo games journalism" -- that's awesome :) . I thought it made the article more interesting; sort of put a little personal spin on it. But you don't see that kind of thing very much (especially for a more tec. related article). its sort of a 'new game journalism' thing, so it was a bit of a risk to try it out. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 15, 2007 - 03:12 pm » Edited on Mar 17, 2007 - 03:57 pm
| Thanks Fedor. Done again, I would like to throw another game in there -- and your suggestions are right on. Especially with Oblivion -- I used to own that, and I spent a lot of time trying to squeeze a few more fps out that resource-hungry beast... I would like to see what effect the drivers would have on that game.
later edit: After some reconsideration and great advice from a member of the NGO team, it seems that I probably should have only compared drivers based on the same Catalyst version. Live and learn, I guess :) Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 14, 2007 - 08:15 pm » Edited on Mar 15, 2007 - 12:49 am
| | Thanks for your comments Beefysworld. And as I said in the article: I did the test twice to check it out -- but, the results held true. The difference is hugely significant when you consider just the driver change can give you 5000 marks. It is my theory that zeropoint has some specific tweak that just has a massive impact in this particular test. I invite anyone out there to test'em out, and report their results, if they switch to zeropoint -- I'm just as interested as anyone else as to whether the AquaMark results would hold-up on another system. But: hey, that's my benchmark, and I'm sticking with it :) ! Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 14, 2007 - 06:57 pm » Edited on Mar 14, 2007 - 07:02 pm
| | I was thinking about adding that... I think I will do that now... I did take a few screenies of the HL2 stress test -- I'll append'em. I'm pretty certain that they will all but indistinguishable from one another though (that's why I didn't put them in). But yeah, wouldn't be a bad idea to put them in...thanks. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/15 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 14, 2007 - 06:43 pm » Edited on Mar 14, 2007 - 06:45 pm
| | They are pros, dude; I'm sure your comments wouldn't have a big effect on their ratings of your articles. They just want to find the best person for the job (and have a cool FS contest while they're at it). Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14681 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 14, 2007 - 06:41 pm
| Happy birthday!
Enjoyed your article.
Two little things I wanted to mention: 1) never knew they made a babylon shooter -- too bad that never saw the light of day, and 2) I think you are right about increasing screen sizes becoming a big part of the future of gaming, but I think I would put my money on projectors as the way forward. But who knows. Just a guess. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/62001/311 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 14, 2007 - 06:31 pm
| Whew! That's done with. It took some time to put it all together -- I hope some people find the data useful, and I encourage everyone to support the 3rd party optimized driver community, because, hey, better performance for free is cool.
I learnt a great deal putting this thing together. And if anyone is wondering, I'm using the NGO drivers now, because I've been playing a bit of S-C, as of late.
Any comments appreciated, as always. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=3964 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 12, 2007 - 04:43 pm
| | I agree somewhat. Star Trek tec is waaay to powerful. They are practically gods: teleportation, time travel, insane-speed space travel. It kind of ruins the drama from a fiction standpoint because the Star Trek dudes are pretty much invulnerable to everything. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/15 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 12, 2007 - 03:48 pm
| | Side note: Any other contributors out there surprised at how long benchmarking takes? I never would have guessed that it would be this time-intensive. My article is almost ready, but wow, has it ever taken a lot of time to gather all the info. Note: not complaining -- it's been an intresting so far, and somewhat fun; but just saying: yeah, it is a lot harder than I orginally anticapted. I guess many people are in the same boat as I am, judging by the low amount of entries that have been so far submitted. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/15 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 12, 2007 - 06:30 am » Edited on Mar 18, 2007 - 03:38 pm
| | Yeah, I wasn't expecting much from ValueRam, but I've had more trouble then I expected. My first stick was D-O-A. My second stick works, but my system is unstable. It seems it's going to take a lot of fiddling with timings and stuff to get any decent, stable performance out of them -- so far this Kingston pc3200 ram is much slower than my old, better quality pc2700 ram. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Cluster Shout Box Link » /matrix/cluster.asp/15 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 09, 2007 - 08:51 pm » Edited on Mar 09, 2007 - 08:57 pm
| | Naaa...the burden of my new ram not working could also fall somewhat on ASUS's shoulders (some ram I bought is strangely, and for no good discernible reason, incompatible with my mobo). Flag this | Edit this post |
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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14582 | kevinSpiess (156) Mar 05, 2007 - 04:30 pm » Edited on Mar 05, 2007 - 04:50 pm
| | Sweeeeet! Aw'right, nice work everybody, and bring on round 2...! I'd also like to say "Great article dude," to darrellwu for his article on graphics, which I thought was really well done, and I'd like to say "In your face dude!" to whomever it was that gave people (including myself) 1's and 2's to make their own articles look better. Good luck to everyone in the next round. Flag this | Edit this post |
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