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February 2003

Saturday, February 15, 2003

Diary Of A Madman Nine11 @ 11:39 Comments

The combination of a foot and a mouth is a wonderful thing... 'cept for the breath! My rants about the current state of PC gaming are the fertile droppings of a guy who resent the glamour of the consoles and the dissention of some game developers.

Things really came full-circle for the over the past few weeks. Blizzard is making a new game, which is a good thing, but it's probably gonna be a Xbox title. That's a double-edged sword because while it'll certainly be a swank title, they only make games every two or three years and there's only a slight chance it'll get ported to the PC. Serious bummer.

Papyrus is (also) leaving to develop games for consoles. They are considered the kings of PC driving simulations, and they'll be sorely missed. Maybe I feel dissed.

Watching a lot of G4TV also left an impression on my mind. The majority of what they show is console stuff, and it's fairly nifty as well. The Game Cube has some really killer apps, and P.N. 03 makes me seriously consider getting one. Quite a shock for a PC centric gamer.

I've also been surprised by the Gameboy Advance. Basically, it's a Super NES in the palm of your hand. The lighting is poor and the basic tech is quite old, but it's fascinating how much they can pack into a small and portable package. Throw in a Link cable and nab some buddies, and you've got an instant LAN. Throw in a Afterburner Kit or upgrade to the Gameboy Advance SP, and the lighting issues are gone for good.

A couple of titles stressed my hardware a bit last year, but an upgrade from a GF3 to a GF4 seemed to tide me over. Not that I wanted to spend more cash, but I was surprised I got by without swapping the mobo/CPU/DDR. Maybe I got lucky and ended up with the golden combo of hardware at the core of my system, but I simply may have ended up avoiding the muscle bound games that would've normally been kicking sand in my face. I don't know if that's luck or not, but it seems to mirror the dismal sales of PC hardware.

Flirting with Cage and his exotic toys is certainly a joy and, for him, the hardware is not an option. CFS3 and Train Sim just don't run well on an average puter for whatever reason. Still, if ya wanna play ya gotta pay. I remember paying two grand for a pimped-out 486DX just so I could play X-Wing! Ah, the good old days...

I'm still looking foreword to some PC titles like DOOM III and Freelancer. When the time comes, I'll upgrade and spend what feels appropriate... or sell a kidney... still got two of those. Of course, I could put off upgrading if I hang around till Duke Nukem FOREVER goes gold. Till then, I'll just poke along, try not to piss off too many people, tap away at my GBA (got the Afterburner Kit installed thanks to my buddy Rod), and maybe nab a Game Cube too. After all, there are good games to be had on all platforms.

Peace.

What Matters? Cage @ 1:15 Comments

Ah, the never ending struggle between what you want, and what you can afford.

What are you really willing to trade in time and money for what you want to do or have?

There are always choices to be made. For a gamer few choices are really all wrong. For some individuals using a game pad to control an FPS really isn't that big of a deal. Squinting at a small handheld dimly lit screen for long periods of time is a sacrifice they are willing to make because it's still fun.

I remember when I had my first Thrustmaster HOTAS setup for Flight Sims and games like Descent. For some it seemed like over kill. For me it added immeasurably to my enjoyment of those games.

Right now we are seeing a transition phase in the hardware market. The enthusiast market has been growing by leaps and bounds. Who would have thought that you would see Lian Li cases, Alienware systems, and all sorts of modding gadgets at CompUSA and Best Buy?

Sure, there will be some who go a bit ghetto with their choices, but as long as they are having fun and learning what difference should it make to the purists? Judging by some reactions, you'd have thought that someone had desecrated a holy shrine. Hobbies and organizations don't grow unless the new initiates are welcomed into the fold, and encouraged to create their own works of art. Heck, how many of our own early efforts were works of art?

And there will be those who love the hobby so much that being on the bleeding edge is what is fun for them. They are the pioneers, the early adopters. They understand the trade offs they are making. They know what's fun to them. Without pioneers our hobby will become stagnant.

Our maybe we should have all listened to those old farts way back when who rose up on their soapbox and proclaimed, "What do you mean, you think you need to upgrade?"

It's all about the prunes. Trust me.

Friday, February 14, 2003

Tough Love Nine11 @ 10:38 Comments

Tom's Hardware has a little tough love for the PC business. It's a little loudmouthed, but there's some truth in there. The "enthusiasts" cling to old standards, AMD missed the boat with Barton, the entire market is marginalized with a focus on mid-range systems, and Microsoft neutered PC gaming with the Xbox.

For the most part, I tend to agree and have felt so for quite some time. I think 2001 was the last great year from a gamer's standpoint because the graphics card makers were smackin' each other around like a couple of female mud wrestlers, CPUs were getting faster and incorporating more tech to speed graphics (3D Now & MMX... at least they sounded good), and games were innovative with deformable terrain, T&L, bump mapping, and the like.

I also used to swap video cards every 6 months and do a major upgrade every year because the performance was warranted. Today, video cards are changed about once each year and upgrades are lasting a year and a half. I also used to buy games every couple of weeks, then each month, then each couple of months. Last year I bought 6 major titles (NWN, MoH, DS, BF1942, W3, AoM) and only one of 'em chugged enough to make me swap out my video card.

This year will probably force me to upgrade once, and only because DOOM III will grace us around spring/summer/fall... whenever. I really don't see anything else pushing the hardware too much. The only other game I've added to my must have list is Freelancer, and that's only because of the most recent previews in PCG and CGM. My $800 upgrade will consist of the best $200 parts I can nab (AthlonXP, mobo, Crucial XMS DDR, and ATI Radeon PRO). Not exactly sexy stuff, but that'll get me to the LAN in enough style. That's a far cry from the $1000 to $1500 I used to spend.

PC's also used to reign at E3 and dominated the two main halls, and the third hall was a shoving match between the consoles and lesser PC titles. Things have changed and consoles are pretty damn sexy, and they've kicked their ugly PC sisters to the fringe of the show. Heck, even I have a GBA and spend more time playing LOTR: Two Towers than any of my PC games. I also don't hesitate to buy a quality GBA game, but I'll toss a PC title around in my head for weeks on end before deciding to part with any cash. Weird.

I also find myself lusting over the Xbox because it has the best Mech game to date, but the Game Cube is lookin' damn fine with Metroid Prime, the Starfox games, and P.N.03 (you'll hear about that one soon, believe me). All this from a PC gamer. Yep, the times are a changin'.

I'll still have a PC around for gaming, but there is too much else going on with the consoles to ignore. I hate to feel like the PC has lost it's steam, but nothing really exciting is happening or pushing the hardware too much. Sure, you'll need a beefy system to run the crappy code in Train Sim, Combat Flight Simulator 3, Unreal II, and Sim City 4, but spectacular games should be compelling us to upgrade and keep us glued to our monitors. The only thing which has floored me lately is 3DMark 03, and that's not even a game.

Stupid Computer Tricks! Nine11 @ 9:30 Comments

Some of this stuff really makes me cringe. Unfortunately, I've seen much of it before and I bet you have too. Please note the following - if you still own a Packard Bell or subscribe to AOL, you probably won't get the joke. Seriously.

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

3DMark Ate My Puter! Nine11 @ 19:31 Comments

In case you've been hiding under a rock, the latest version of Futuremark's 3DMark 03 is out. Of course, all the download sites are getting hit on like a drunken sorority sister at a Guns & Roses concert, but the file can be had at over 200KB/sec speeds if ya register at the Bit-Tech forums. You'll also need DX9.

Too bad the benchmark tanks my puter so bad. I'm talking 1 fps in some benchies. I should've learned to never bench my system when I'm feeling good about it, but I figure this is what DOOM III will run like and an upgrade is in my near future.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

PC Gaming Bitchfest Nine11 @ 18:27 Comments

I read the opening of Computer Games Magazine last night, which poked fun at PC gamers in general. Basically, we're never happy and complain too much about our favorite hobby. Games are never good enough, never on time, stray too much from the original premise, etc. You get the drill... nit-picky stuff.

I also finished reading a review of Unreal II over at GameSpy. Basically, they knocked it for ripping off the original and not offering anything significantly "fresh" for the FPS genre despite the fact the weapons inventory has been greatly expanded, you get to traipse across exotic environments including a living planet, and get to act as an engineer while setting up a perimeter defense and fighting off the inevitable horde of nasties.

The game has level bosses too, and we know how pass� those are. C'mon, this is a FPS, right? I bet this cranky-assed bizatch would review a RTS and complain having to build stuff and pump out units. Some sorts of things just work in certain types of games and shouldn't be questioned... period!

This approach to PC game reviews makes me sick, and I don't blame developers like Blizzard and Papyrus for making the switch to consoles. I've never heard a console gamer pitching a fit over another anime title, platform shooter, or 3rd person perspective shooter. Those are the givens of the console world, so why do PC gamers resent their heritage?

Maybe it's just a fad to blast every title which graces our hard drives, which I could understand if we lived on a John Romero colony and had to fight bionic frogs all day. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the situation), we live in the real world and have to deal with reviews that blast games for being what they are. If FPS games are feeling stale, maybe you should be playing a different type of friggin' game.

The end result is a mess of unhappy PC gamers who wanna slam quality titles after years of development and complain about the demise of PC gaming. Talk about biting the hand that feeds ya. We're lucky more PC games don't go the way of the Dodo Bird in this hostile economic environment, not to mention the mojo of the console because that's where the money is.

In the end, we'll probably see more high-profile PC game developers drop off our radar and watch console gaming get stronger. Hopefully, we'll be left with enough id's and Ensembles to feed our gaming Jones... only to have some stupid geek tank the best of PC games because that's the cool thing to do.

Monday, February 10, 2003

Barton Reviews Nine11 @ 12:52 Comments

There's gonna be a mess of AMD Barton Processor reviews, and [H] and Anandtech covered the chip fairly well. Basically, the Barton is a Thoroughbred with 512K L2 Cache and runs on the same bus. It's also much more expensive with the 3000+ part coming in over $600. The 2800+ should be a little over $400, and the 2500+ is M.I.A at this point. I'd guess that's because the OC crowd is waiting for a bargain-basement Barton just like they waited for Ti200's and Ti4200's.

Benchmarks are a bit of give 'n take between the 3000+ and Intel's flagship P4 3.06GHz, but AMD has lost it's price advantage over Intel. The Barton also isn't significantly faster than the Thoroughbred, so I don't really see it as a very good investment. If ya wanna grab some new silicone, send the little lady down to Boobs-R-Us!

I see the Barton as a transitional product between the Thoroughbred and the Athlon64. Sure, it's faster than Tai food making it's way through a 10 y/o, but there's something better just around the corner... like always.

Here's [H]'s take on the Barton:

It is for sure that AMD is headed in the right direction with their Barton core, although it will have to give way to the Athlon64 soon. I think the benchmarks prove that the extra 256KB of L2 cache is certainly not the CPU Holy Grail, but I don't think many of us expected it to be. The Barton core's introduction is just as important to the market as HyperThreading was last year. Barton CPUs will provide their users with a bit of a boost in performance when compared with the previous generation of CPU from AMD. A "free" 5 to 10% is what we think the average user will see.

Anand's take was a little long and cryptic.

Friday, February 7, 2003

Baked Apple Nine11 @ 12:15 Comments

Just to let you know I'm still alive, I found this linked from [H]. And Apple users think they're so smart!

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Quickie Cage @ 9:16 Comments

Thanks to Nine11's help my new Chip-Con Prometeia case from Hardware Gods has been put together. It went pretty well, and I should have pictures and a nice review in the next few days.

The paint job is simply gorgeous. It's black, with a mirror finish. Very nice, and very imposing. The total case is a little taller then a full tower system.

System CPU temps show -45 C. Yep, that's chilly.

Using an ASUS P4PE motherboard, 1 GB of PC3500 Corsair memory, and an Intel 3.06 GHz cpu. I was able to achieve 3.75 GHz, which was just a little short of what I'd wanted, but still not bad.

My ASUS GeForce 4 4400 video card appears to be the weak link in the system. It overclocks very poorly, barely getting to 190/600+ speed. I went ahead and ordered up a FIC Radeon 9700 Pro, which should improve things dramatically. I just wasn't patient enough to wait for another month or two before the new ATI r350 based cards come out.

I'll be sure to run some seldom seen benchies on my new system for sim fans like myself. It should be interesting to see what MS Train Simulator and MS Combat Flight Sim 3 can do on such a system.

Monday, February 3, 2003

It's Here - Prometia Mayhem Cage @ 9:59 Comments

I hope to have a bit of a surprise later tonight. My new Chip-Con Prometeia cooling unit case arrived this Saturday. Later on this evening Nine11 and I plan on slapping that bad boy together and seeing what it can do. If all goes well I should have some nudies and numbers to post up for your pleasure. Until then, it's time to grab some sleep.

Saturday, February 1, 2003

Space Shuttle Blows Up Cage @ 8:34 Comments

No, it's not some kind of joke. For those who haven't heard yet, the Space Shuttle blew up on re-entry over Dallas Texas. Check your favorite news site or TV for more info.