Matthew Rorie

I really can't say much about the development timeline here. In the end, Feargus' quote is the best summation of the situation:

Yeah, coming back into building computers after a couple of years off is always frustrating. All of the product line nomenclature changes and it's really tough to get a feel for everything again. Good luck with the build. FWIW, I went with a Core i7 920 when I got a computer a couple months ago, and it might be the best bet for you still if you don't like to overclock (I personally have never been able to make heads or tails of all that stuff). The i5 lines are the best price-performance, especially if you can overclock them, or so I hear.

Both Nvidia and ATI have had them for a year or so, I think. The GTX 295 is one such card, as is the ATI HD 4870x2. ATI generally puts an "X2" on dual-processor cards, while Nvidia just ups the numbering a bit. These basically act as a one-card SLI setup (although in practice it winds up being slightly slower since they usually have to underclock the processors a bit to make up for the heat generation). There should be an HD 5870 x2 coming out at some point by the end of the year that should be a beast of a card. (The X2 cards typically do draw more power and generate more heat, though.) Note that I'm not endorsing ATI here; I don't have one of their news cards, and I generally do prefer nvidia for their drivers. But at the moment the price/performance crown seems to sit on ATI's head. And I wouldn't say that the dual-processor cards are making SLI or Crossfire obsolete; they just make it less necessary. You can actually run the dual processor cards in SLI, if I recall correctly, but we're at the point where a single 5870 should run pretty much anything at a reasonable resolution and be fine at it. And it doesn't look like there are a lot of games coming out that are going to significantly push the envelope to the point where you need to spend $2000 on a new computer to run them.

I don't know the answers to all of these questions, but at the moment you really don't need 3 cards. A single 5870 can run three monitors so long as one of them is displayport. One of the editors over at HardOCP actually got a single 5870 to run across three monitors and was gaming at 3600x1920 resolution without too much of a problem. I know you specified nvidia, but ATI just released their top-of-the-line cards last month, and thus far nvidia's new top-of-the-line stuff is probably not going to be out until next year, possibly a few months into next year. Nvidia has not reduced their prices to match the new performance available in the ATI cards, so the price-performance ratio is in ATI's favor at the moment according to most sources. I think the closest approximation at that price point is the GTX 275 to the ATI HD5850. The 5850 seems to beat the GTX by around 10 FPS in most games. At any rate, the highest-end cards from ATI and Nvidia usually wind up with two graphics chips on the same card, so they're essentially SLI cards in one big package. That might be what you want to look for. Plus, these cards let you get around the age-old limitation of SLI, which is that you can only use it on one monitor.

I saw The Brothers Bloom recently and liked it enough to watch the commentary track and then invite some friends over to watch it again. Charming movie.

Isn't a 5870 a bit of overkill at that resolution? I mean, it's good to upgrade, but since you have a nice card now, you might want to think of getting a bigger monitor. My 4830 can run most games at 1920x1080 without a problem. Get a 24 incher!

I cautiously pre-ordered this on Steam. Curious to see how it turns out. With all the games that I'm working on but haven't finished, I think I'm going to need a little staycation sometime next month to catch up.

Sorry again for the long delay in putting out something official. It was frustrating for everyone involved, including you guys, I'm sure. I don't think I should extrapolate on the press release too much at this time; just keep in mind that, in the end, this is going to help Alpha Protocol achieve the greatest success possible for it. It sucks that it won't be coming out for a while, but it'll be awesome when it does.

Bah, my 5850 still hasn't shipped from Amazon. I really want it before Borderlands/Modern Warfare 2. Maybe I'll go check out a Fry's or something this weekend.

I got my copy today. Can't wait to get home and start playing!

A lot of crazy tech people say to get XFX and stay away from Sapphire. At least, that's what I soaked up over on Hardforum.com recently. But in the end they're all based on the reference boards. The main difference usually lies in length of warranty and quality of customer support.

What with the flurry of insane Steam/Direct2Drive deals, my playlist has expanded a bit. I'm still working on Tales of Vesperia, but now I've got Supreme Commander Gold, Company of Heroes Gold, World In Conflict Gold, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and I'll probably borrow my roommate's copy of Batman since he bought it right before he decided to go back to playing WoW 6 hours a night.

Some interesting links on what I'm sure will be a fascinating discussion: List of countries that allow gays to serve in the military A study of the effects of Australia's lifting of their ban on gays in the military "Based on the results of prior studies, eighteen in-depth interviews with informed military and non-military observers, and other data, this study finds that the full lifting of the ban on gay service has not led to any identifiable negative effects on troop morale, combat effectiveness, recruitment and retention, or other measures of military performance. Furthermore, available evidence suggests that policy changes associated with the lifting of the ban may have contributed to improvements in productivity and working environments for service members."

Anyone use blip.fm? Internet streaming DJ site. It's kind of neat if you like showing off your taste in music. Here's my URL. If anyone else is a member, post your username and I'll start following you.

I just realized that I'm looking forward to Supreme Commander 2 quite a bit. I just hope they don't want to dumb it down for a console release.

I never play RTS's online, so I'm no help there, but it's worth noting (if it hasn't been noted already) that COH is 5 bucks on Direct 2 Drive this week. Sweet deal. I also got Supreme Commander gold. 2.50 for Forged Alliance is well worth the money. I'm super looking forward to SupCom 2.

I believe Nintendo actually has rules against certifying projects that use open source software. Which is too bad.

I'm looking forward to trying it, especially since it's from the King's Field people. I actually enjoyed playing those games, which is weird since I youtubed it and I had totally forgotten that it looked . I'll probably rent it after the glut of games this year (maybe December?) and see how I like it. I'm not a huge fan of punitive difficulties nowadays; just want to have fun.

My guess would be one of those referral deals, where you have to sign up for all kinds of marketing offers and watch a bunch of ads for different companies, and then sign up ten other people to do the same thing, before you get your free stuff. I've known people who had this work for them, but it's an awful hassle.

AP's not going bye-bye, and there's no legal conflict going on. Beyond that, all I can say is "thanks for your patience". Sorry for the frustrating silence...hopefully it will end soon.

I don't know if it'd fit in my case. The 5850 is an inch shorter, so that's something. Plus I think the 5850 is going to be overkill itself for a while to come.

We don't really have any Quick Time Events to speak of, as far as I can recall.

I pre-ordered a 5850 from Amazon, but it hasn't shipped yet. As long as I get it before Modern Warfare 2 comes out...

Lord, watching all five seasons of Lost in three months or so would be a bit much for me. Although I did breeze through the DVD sets when I started watching it myself, so I guess it'd work. I think House sets the record for "best show that's exhausting to watch consecutive episodes of", though.

Hey all, Sorry that we've been quiet this week. Hopefully everyone understands that we (Obsidian) can't talk about this much at this point, one way or the other. Just wanted to say that we appreciate your patience, and that hopefully we'll be able to talk about all this at some point soon.