mkreku

And this is a bat attacking the party in a dungeon The weird thing is that I don't remember the graphics of Ultima being this good!

If you look past the spelling errors and syntactic inventions (hrmm), Kalfear does have a point. 1. Consoles are a great way of getting sophisticated technology cheap. As he says, a normal GPU for a computer costs more than a brand new console, which is true. Metadigital claims consoles offer obsolete technology. I beg to differ though, as the Playstation 2 basically introduced the DVD to the large audience, just as the Playstation 3 probably will with Blu-Ray (speculation). 2. A console may be impossible to upgrade, but that also means the developers have more time to learn the technology, resulting in software upgrades several years after the system is introduced. Metadigital claims his laptop is two years old and plays all games of today.. While I'm not even sure that's true, that laptop must have cost 10x more than a console anyhow, and it's still not going to show off the constantly changing, evolving graphics of the PC games (new DirectX versions, Shader models, etc.). 3. The Playstation 2 was introduced in the year 2000. Back then a normal PC had a 300 MHz CPU and 32 MB ram. Today it wouldn't even run the OS that's needed to play the games! Meanwhile some of the best games ever on the Playstation 2 have been released this year or late last year (God of War, Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus). Pretty good investment for $300 (if you bought the console early). Of course, noone is forcing anyone to upgrade, but who is still sitting with 32 MB RAM? You upgrade your computer out of necessity. Edit: Of course not! I wasn't trying to say I know better than you, I was merely giving you a second opinion seeing as you haven't played the games yet and I have. Why would I be offended because we have different taste? Except when it comes to Gothic, Wasteland and Deus Ex, because, as we all know, those games rock and everyone who thinks they don't SUCK )

I hope you get a lot of big bills in the mail soon!!

so, that like, makes the cheese taste better? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'd say it's a method of 'hiding' a DLL-file (which means it's a Windows based technology) by encryption. Probably used as some sort of copy protection, as it's comparing files with low tolerance. I'm probably wrong as I don't speak geek.

I stillplay Wasteland from time to time. I always have it installed

I would heartily recommend that 6800 Ultra! I didn't think you could go that high in price though, or I would have suggested it. It's a huge card though, make sure you have room for it (sometimes it collides with your CPU fan or forces some smaller PCI cards out of the way).

Yeah, it's just weird that all those american muscles seem to concentrate around the waist..

And quadruples the ugliness.

Yes, I did. It had nothing to do with the reading speed of the drive though (which is the main difference between different Playstation 2's). You'll see what I mean when you check the intro movie of the boy riding his horse towards a huge temple in the distance. It probably goes down to single digit frame rates. Also, in Fahrenheit, in the beginning at the diner, try standing at the main entrance of the diner, looking down towards the restrooms. The game slows to almost a crawl. It's not that big a deal, but it's there and it's visible on whatever Playstation 2 you play it on.

The problem with the card you linked lies in its memory: 128 MB is not a good buy nowadays. 256 MB is pretty much the standard now, and ATI are just releasing cards with 512 MB now. I'd really go with a 256 MB card. As for ATI and Nvidia: apples and oranges. My entire reviewing crew runs ATI (cheaper, faster, more reliable) while other say the same thing about their Nvidia GPU's. It probably just means that both manufacturers make good cards since everyone seems to be so happy with theirs.

I really think the Way Off Topic forum should be handled by Authority alone. This is supposed to be the place for junk and Authority fits right in! ) Seriously though, he's got a pretty relaxed attitude that fits with the forum atmosphere and he does his dirty work with humour, instead of trying to sound authoritarian or powercrazed. The other fora might need a more strict ruler, but here, where the buffalo roam, there should be just the kind of slack he has shown so far. And he's swedish to boot!

Yes, it's pretty. But it has serious framerate problems.

You have a AGP 8X, I am certain of it. I'm not even sure the Gf 5200 comes in a PCI-Express version. And even if you only had a AGP 4X slot, it wouldn't matter as all 8X GPU's work on those too, and you wouldn't notice any difference in most games, except the very most demanding ones. You can check this yourself though. If you have ONE large slot and several small ones, then you have AGP. To see if it supports 8X, just go into the BIOS and look for your AGP features. If you have lots of similar looking slots (where one has a different colour), you're using PCI-E. Then it's PCI-E 16X. Simple as that. Edit: I lost a t in "matter", but found it under my desk and replaced it in the post.

Fixed!

Actually, regarding the Xbox 360/PS3 it's the other way around. This time it's Sony bringing their console out one year (perhaps, who knows) after the Xbox 360. We'll see what Sony can make of that extra development time. Maybe it's smoke and mirrors, maybe it's not. I, for one, do not think Sony used more "smoke and mirrors" than any other console developer. I think the Playstation 2 has managed extremely well, seeing as it's clearly weaker than both the Xbox and the Gamecube from a purely technical standpoint. By the way, it's funny that you still call Sony's claim that the PS3 is stronger "smoke and mirrors", even after everyone from the ID head honcho to J.E. Sawyer calls it more powerful. I guess you are still lost in Microsoft's smoke and mirrors. The only game out of the ones you mention that looks really good is Ninja Gaiden. But that's probably because I've seen the PC version of Doom 3 and Splinter Cell 3.. Far Cry: Instincts is pretty good looking too now that I think about it.

And this is why you SHOULD prefer real football: To the mods: Those are birthmarks! Honest!

Hmm. I wonder why he changed company like that. It would have made sense if he had crossed over after the project was finished, but walking away in the middle of production is puzzling to me. I can see the personal work safety increasing in going from a tiny developer (Obsidian) to a gigantic company that brings in tens of millions every month from just one game (Blizzard and World of Warcraft), but I don't immediately see why he chose to do it now or how it's going to increase his personal development as a designer. But I'm probably just stuck in the myth that you have more personal freedom to create in a small company compared to the industry giant..

Yeah, but the GF6600 is a weaker card than even my old Radeon 9800 Pro, so I would still not recommend it to anyone. I'd go for at least the 6800, but then there's that price thing..

And just because this is a thread about GPU's, I have to add this: http://apps.ati.com/ir/PressReleaseText.as...eleaseID=772964 )

There's a ATI X800 that's supposed to be extremely good value for your money. It has the exact same specs as the much more expensive cards, and if you reflash the bios you unlock massive amounts of power. I'll look it up and get back to the thread. Edit: Here it is! It's a X800 that's flashable to a X850! Great value for your money. http://www.ciao.co.uk/Sapphire_ATI_Radeon_..._Review_5537302 Edit 2: Also, I'm assuming from your listed specs that you're using AGPx8. If you can find the above mentioned card, it's well worth it. But I just looked p my favourite swedish online stores and none of them had any left Edit 3: http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.asp?sku=311656&cks=PRL

I really don't think it was the unused fill rate potential that made Playstation 2 games look inferior to their Xbox counterparts. I think it was more the simple fact that the Playstation 2 was a weaker machine overall, with half the internal RAM of the Xbox, half the CPU clock cycle rate (not that it is directly comparable) and one full year between releases (and subsequently technology). I'm actually surprised that the differences between the best looking Xbox games and the best looking Playstation 2 games aren't bigger, considering the advantage the Xbox has in hardware specifications on paper. Which are the best looking Xbox games by the way? The best I've seen on the Playstation 2 would probably be God of War and perhaps Resident Evil 4 (amazingly enough).

And this is where it sucks to be a reviewer. I never felt the way Muso and RP felt when I played through Deus Ex. I enjoyed that game so much that every level was a blast and when it all ended I already longed for more. The problem here is that it's impossible for me to see the things they see in the game, even though I know by reason that they're probably right. I hate knowing that, because it makes me blind and unable to do my job properly. Fortunately this only happens with one game out of 50 (or so).

Did you play Akallabeth or Ultima 1? They were NOT considered very good games when they arrived. Average or below average, although they sold well. Ultima 2 was just Ultima 1 with more content (because of more space, I assume). It was Ultima 3 that started the real Ultima technology and setting, and Ultima 4 was the real breakthrough.

Yeah.. And that will matter as soon as I figure out how to play a series instead of the individual games I currently am forced to install. If I feel like playing Fallout, Fallout: Tactics will have no influence whatsoever on my gaming experience, no matter what I think about that sequel. Why would anyone view individual games as a series..? What's the point of that? That would mean that the Ultima series is bad, seeing as Ultima 1, Ultima 2, Ultima 6, Ultima 8 and Ultima 9 are less than average games. Still people regard the good Ultima's as some of the best games ever.

Really? So if an Xbox 360 developer needs 1 GB for graphics and 400 MB for program code, the unified memory architecture takes care of that too? Wow, UMA most be much better than I thought if it provides developers with 'no compromises'! In the real world, where the rest of us lives, there's more choice with UMA but ALSO more compromises. A program is never static in its memory usage, as it usually varies dramatically from time to time. A developer would have to set the RAM limits himself, but when he does that he has to take into account the worst possible scenarios, as I bet writing realtime memory allocation between GPU and CPU would be extremely difficult to do. That's just my (somewhat educated) guess from only a few years of high level programming though. The static PS3 design is easier in that the developers always know what they have available, but it also lessens the degree of choice from the developers point of view. Still, this is the common setup and the one most developers are used to working with. It hasn't been a problem for the last 20 years, so I am sure they'll cope with it this time around too. I would love to hear a developers point of view on this, as I've always thought UMA was more of a hassle than a blessing. Maybe that's about to change or maybe I've been wrong from the start?