angshuman

Let's not even mention EQ2. That shoddy piece of code doesn't even deserve a mention in a discussion involving quality products like WoW and GW. As you mentioned, the reasoning behind monthly costs for "true" MMORPGs has been discussed extensively on these forums, so there's no point getting into it. I actually do appreciate the fact that maintenance costs will be much higher in a WoW-style MMO. My intention was not to spark the age-old topic. However, as a consumer, I like the Guild Wars payment model. I do not like the WoW payment model and I don't believe I will ever pay monthly fees for a game. I am quite satisfied with GW's 8-12 man missions, and I feel that the improvement in gameplay experience from a WoW-style interaction is not worth all that money. That's all there is to it.

IMO the Guild Wars model is awesome. You get all the minor updates - regular balance fixes, bug fixes, new weapons, small to moderately large new areas, special events, etc. - for free as part of the $50 you paid for one game. You get to buy the major new content - new continents, professions, skills, etc. - as independent Guild Wars games ("chapters") released every few months. Regardless of what chapters you own, you can interact with the entire community across all chapters in co-operative and competitive settings. No monthly fees, of course. Incidentally, IIRC some of the Asian countries have the option to pay monthly fees for GW, in which case they don't have to pay the $50 up front. Makes perfect sense to me.

Nah... pumps are (supposed to be) pretty silent. I suppose I'm the odd one out here, but I really don't mind some noise on my primary gaming box. I want my HTPC to be as silent as possible, but my gaming rig can roar a bit if it wants to, simply to demonstrate the power that lies underneath. :D I just don't want it to start affecting my electricity bill.

Don't worry, they'll learn. CPU makers hit the power wall quite hard a few years back, which is why they have been taking appropriate steps in the past few years. GPU makers have been ignoring the power problem until recently. The G70 was the first product (AFAIK) that had multiple clock speed domains and other tricks to try and contain power and temperature. They are now coming up against the wall and will take appropriate steps. The first few DX10 cards might require their private gnuclear reactors, but hopefully the situation will improve quickly.

Eldar, you are correct for the most part. The problem we are talking about here is Programmer productivity. This is with respect to Graphics, AI, Physics, everything. Sure, the Cell has a huge peak potential, but how much effort does it take to extract all that? A hell of a lot, it seems to me. Why does it matter? After all, all we care about is the games right? Yes, when the platform and the games finally arrive, all these discussions would be moot. However, at this point in time, the technical information about the console is all we can use to *speculate* what kind of games we would be able to see on the console. Why do we care to speculate? Just for fun, being geeks and all. After all, we won't have to buy the damn thing until it is launched. And as far as Cell vs. Xenon goes, it is not just the heterogenous nature of the Cell that is going to make programmers pull their hair out. The individual SPEs are also nothing like traditional processors. Together, they have very high peak processing power, but they lack a good deal of the "intelligent" stuff present on modern processors. This "intelligent" stuff (branch prediction, out-of-order execution, memory disambiguation etc.) discovers properties of the program being executed on the fly and exploits these properties to improve performance enormously. Trouble is, all this extra baggage consumes a lot of power and area. Cell's SPEs have a lot of compute power, but they rely on the Programmer and Compiler to do all of the "intelligent" stuff and spoon-feed it with pre-processed optimized instructions. So, in the ideal case, a guy can sit over a desk and hand-tweak his code for months and end up with a super-fast application. But real life is hardly ideal.

(w00t) Now that's the kind of document I like to read. Thanks a bunch Alan. Instead of ranting I could just as well have gone and searched for these myself . I'll post my comments on the article soon.

Thanks for the link, there is definitely some technical content there. I still think it's a PR release though.

Gotta love the PR folks. :D

Hey, I'm contemplating the exact same upgrade... problems aside, is there any noticeable difference in audio quality or CPU utilization?

After an insane amount of Essence Farming killing Bats, I finally managed to get my Unlabored Flawlessness . For the unenlightened, the UF is a Ninja Gaiden weapon that you obtain when you upgrade the Wooden Sword (a piece-of-**it weapon) to level 7, after which it changes to its "True Form". The thing looks like a cross between an Oar and a huge hand-made Cricket Bat with Kanji Characters on it. It is a bit unwieldy and leaves you somewhat vulnerable during its regular attacks, but packs an insane punch. Its damage dealing capacity increases in inverse proportion to your health. At 100% health it deals about twice as much damage as your other weapons. At 5% health, the Kanji on the thing start glowing, and it deals about an order of magnitude more damage. Madness.

I haven't heard that. Do you have a link? @10K fists: Thing is, folks at T. J. Watson are very, very smart. I doubt they would have come up with something that doesn't work in practice. I'm not questioning what you're saying, 10K. All I'm saying is that it seems strange for IBM to mess up this bad. In fact, this is something that I've always wondered about the Cell. It's obvious that the thing has a lot of raw potential, but also that it's going to take quite a bit of programming effort or a fantastic omnipotent compiler to get anywhere close to that peak amount. Either that, or, there's something unique about some part of game code that's really easy to code on those SPU's with little programmer or compiler effort. But all programmer feedback received thus far seems to indicate otherwise.

Doh... slight mixup... In past and current AMD and Intel implementations, Virtual Address is 48 bits wide and Physical is 40 bits. Other integer operations are full 64 bits. Intel's newest implementations (beginning from Yonah and Conroe, I believe), will have a full 64-bit Virtual Address, but the Physical Address will remain 40 bits wide. References: Intel, AMD. I'm pretty sure the off-chip Data bus is 128 bits wide. This and Physical Address width are limited by pin count, something that is not easy to expand.

While the application-perceived Virtual Address space is 64 bits, the actual Physical Addresses that go out to DRAMs are 48 bits wide. Data Bandwidth however, is a different issue. Off-chip bandwidth used to be, and still is, 128 bits from the CPU to the DRAM system. This is exactly equal to the block size of the on-chip L2 cache. On-chip, Intel and AMD have different cache configurations. I'm not sure about the bus widths and block sizes used between the cores and caches. Within the cores themselves, different ALUs (Integer, x87, SSE etc.) and their associated bypass networks have different Operand, Result and Bypass bus widths. My guess is that on the newest microarchitectures, the Integer networks are all 64 bits wide, but I'm not sure if this was the case on Intel's first few tacked-on 64-bit implementations.

I too have a 64-bit processor, Hades. But will any of our software/games run faster even though the source code of said software/games is not coded to take advantage of 64-bit tech? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nope.

Where at? I have some..er...things I wouldn't like being seen by the head of a billion dollar corporation. :"> <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In Internet Explorer: Tools/Internet Options/Programs Tab/Manage Add-Ons. In the list that appears in the window, look for Windows Genuine Advantage. Select it and click deactivate. Voil

One thing that I'm really looking forward to is its promised focus on limited user accounts. Personally, I have always used Limited accounts on my Windows machine, and I have never faced any virus or security problems (obviously). However, switching to Admin mode on XP for administrative and installation tasks is a big hassle. It's not as easy as doing a "sudo" on a Linux system. Bulk of the reason for the perceived security vulnerability of Windows platforms is the fact that Limited accounts are inconvenient AND under-advertised to the average user. Several applications flat-out refuse to function under non-Admin mode (Far Cry), and many others bitch and crib (NWN). Therefore, most people end up running their systems as Administrators. Can you imagine running a Linux system exclusively as root? Well, Vista's supposed to fix all that. My understanding is that it will not only make sure all application programs are able to execute with limited privileges, but also provide nice hooks to quickly switch to Admin mode for common administrative tasks (a.k.a. "sudo"). I've also heard that the Terminal/Shell is a lot more feature-rich, unlike the god-awful afterthought-ish Command Prompt that has been a staple of all Windows distributions till date.

Exactly. Incidentally, I'm really liking IE7. I haven't used Firefox on my Windows box ever since it was released. Apart from a few rare rendering bugs on some websites, everything works exactly as it's supposed to. Sure, it's a Firefox ripoff, but a damn good one.

:">

The real question is, how *fast* is it? The OP didn't have a clue about where to buy the game at 12:35, and 11 minutes later he/she was trying to figure out how to level up. :D

Is that a trick question?

*claps hands* ... congrats, and enjoy! By the way, 45C immediately after exiting a game is really good. That heatsink must be awesome. My 7800GTX stays at 55C at idle!

Interesting question... that would make it a 3-card system! I really have no idea if it would work. At any rate GTX prices will always be significantly lower than GX2 prices, so if the GX2 really crashes it might make more sense to pick up an additional GTX instead, with its far superior cooling solution.

I've heard God of War and Devil May Cry 3 are similar to Ninja Gaiden? I'm playing NG currently and it's driving me wild. I might end up picking a cheap used PS2 for GoW and DMC3. What are GoW and/or DMC3 like in terms of Combat (pace, challenge, variety, balance), Presentation, Story and Badass-ness of the Hero? Yeah yeah yeah, I know Kratos is the baddest of them all :D, but can he match Ryu wiping blood off his True Dragon Sword after performing a Storm of the Heavenly Dragons? Huh? Huh?

Broken link! We want pictures!!!