angshuman

Bah... I don't care. These two consoles are shrouded in so much "next-gen" marketing BS and hype that I'm completely turned off. Edit: However, if you dangled me off a cliff and threatened to release me if I didn't buy one of these, there's one thing I know for sure -- it's not going to be the PS3. The reason for that is simple, I hate Sony with a deep and intense passion.

Aww... c'mon, give us simple-minded folks a break :D, quit being so sarcastic.

I would consider that a bait. Most players could see that coming from a mile away. I, for one, was completely expecting it to be the "big shock... not!" moment of the game. The actual twist was quite unexpected, and worked because I took the bait and was expecting the cliche and nothing else. What I did not understand was why the story actually followed through with the bait even after the actual revelation. I thought that was quite pointless.

Well, as a "reader", I'd prefer a cliche (how do you get the accent-ague?) done well to a reversal implemented horribly. I did enjoy KOTOR's story a whole lot, cliche or not. Edit: And I guess it's people like me that are responsible for lowering the lowest common denominator that most games seem to be designed for nowadays

Given that your original challenge was: (BF2 on HDTV) > the universe, I think what Hades actually meant was: Baldur's Gate > (BF2 on HDTV), but what you interpreted Hades' comment as was: (Baldur's Gate on HDTV) > (BF2 on HDTV).

Ah, I see... thanks for the correction. Let me see if I can reconstruct the timeline. Of course, the comparisons aren't exact, since both manufacturers introduced their products at slightly different times. P-III Coppermine <=> K7 (Thunderbird etc.) P-4 Willamette, Northwood <=> K7 (Thoroughbred etc.) P-4 Prescott <=> K8 (Hammer, Winchester etc.)

Please tell me you were kidding...

The PS3 is supposed to have more raw peak performance, but it takes a significant amount of effort on the part of the programmer to bring out this performance. The X360 is a lot easier to program for and extract optimal performance from. My original opinion, based on whatever public information was available, was even more extreme. It was clear that there was a lot of potential in the Cell (the PS3's CPU), but I felt it would be *impossible* to even get remotely close to its theoretical peak efficiency. In fact, I am still completely confused about why IBM/Sony decided to take this approach. The only thing stopping me from making a statement like "PS3 is teh suxorz !!1!shift1" is that I know IBM is not stupid (not so sure about Sony though... but then, I hate Sony with a passion). Time will tell.

All processors operate in units of time known as "Clocks". The time period of this clock is what determines the frequency (or the GHz rating) of the processor. For example, a 3.0GHz Pentium4 has a clock that ticks 3 billion times a second, which means that the "clock cycle time" is about 0.33 nano-seconds. As a user, however, you should neither be interested in the clock frequency nor the amount of work done per clock. What you are interested in is, quite simply, the amount of work the processor can do per second, which is given by (work done per cycle) * (cycles per second or GHz). During the Pentium-III / AMD K6 era, both vendors had very similar microarchitectures, which meant that the (work done per cycle) part of the equation was similar. Therefore, performance was directly proportional to the GHz rating. With clock frequencies hitting 1 GHz, it became apparent to both vendors that they would no longer be able to continue increasing the frequency at the breakneck speed thay had been until now, due to several reasons. Here is where both companies split off in different directions: AMD decided to bite the bullet and stick with making marginal changes to their microarchitecture while continuing to increase clock frequencies at a reduced rate, and brought out the K7 (AthlonXP). Intel pulled a fantastic stunt -- they designed a completely new microarchitecture that did a lot LESS work per clock, but enabled the continued bumping of frequencies at breakneck rates. The Pentium 4 was born. This was purely a marketing decision -- Intel's genius sales people decided that the average populace actually did not know anything about performance, but they did associate with the hyped-up GHz rating. The end result was that both vendors ended up having more or less similar performance, but Intel's sales shot up due to its brilliant marketing. However, towards 2003-2004, all hell broke loose for Intel. Power and temperature problems became so severe that they could no longer continue to increase the clock frequencies. They further refined their microarchitecture to bump up the frequency even more (and you guessed it -- do even less work per clock) and came out with the Prescott, but this core was an absolute disaster (incidentally, all Pentium4's you can buy today are Prescott derivatives). People were becoming more and more performance savvy, and GHz was no longer selling. Meanwhile, AMD had continued to make incremental improvements their age-old microarchitecture, and finally came out with the K8 (Athlon64, Sempron etc.) -- this core was simply beautiful. Elegant, ultra-refined due to the years of work, power-efficient, and high-performing. To put the nail into the coffin, AMD squeezed a piece of circuitry that was until now to be found only on the motherboard -- the Memory Controller -- into the processor chip itself. It is this On-Chip Memory Controller that by far plays the most significant role in ensuring AMD's performance superiority in a lot of applications, and games in particular. Intel processors are supposed to have better SSE engines than AMD's, which is why they are slightly superior in media-encoding and decoding applications. To summarize, if you compare Intel's and AMD's processors at a specific price point: - Ignoring AMD's memory controller and Intel's SSE engine, processors from both vendors perform about the same -- Intel has a higher frequency but does less work per clock cycle, vice-versa for AMD. - Intel's processors run blazing hot, and it is possible for your house's lights to grow dim if you switch on a Pentium4-powered machine. (edit: just kidding about this, but they are seriously power-hungry) - Intel's SSE engine gives them a slight performance edge in media applications. - AMD's on-die memory controller gives them a slight edge in most general-purpose applications, and a significant advantage in gaming.

That's a very good CPU, but I would say that the best value for money right now is the Athlon64 3200+ (Venice). Here in the US, it costs about $15 more than the 3000+, and the increased performance is worth it. Beyond the 3200+, the price curve steepens horribly.

Aaaaaaaaaaaccchhh!!! Nein! Nein!!! 1). Intel's current desktop CPU's are the *hottest* running among all contemporary processors **** BY FAR ****. They require a much more elaborate heatsink than their AMD counterparts in order to operate within their specified thermal envelopes. Their power consumption is also MUCH larger. The Prescott core is a joke, you can actually fry eggs on it. 2). In terms of pure performance, if you look at Media Encoding tasks (MP3, Divx encoding etc.), Intel's desktop processors have a slight edge due to their superior floating point (SSE) engines, but at everything else, AMD's processors perform better. The performance gap is *ridiculous* for games. In the light of the above 2 facts, if you look at the Power/Performance equation, you will start wondering how Intel has even managed to survive in the desktop market for the past couple of years. (The answer is simple -- AMD's manufacturing and supply capabilities are laughable compared to Intel's). The story is very different for Mobile processors, though. The Pentium M (used on Centrinos), to put it simply, just rocks. The bottom line is, stay away from Intel until they launch Conroe.

Will they be releasing a PC demo soon?

It was a nice single-player shooter by those days' standards. Pretty immersive, superb music, and the first few levels were great. Unfortunately, I felt that the action became a little repetitive after a while, and never got around to finishing the game. Unreal 2 was a joke. The U-Tournaments, of course, are very good games.

I like having full control over my henchmen, but I dislike turn-based combat in general. Real-time combat with the ability to pause and issue commands to everyone would be awesome. Obviously, all actions should take an explicit and finite amount of "real-time" (as Guild Wars' spells do).

Don't laugh, but I was quite impressed by that Turbo button. I would keep it switched "off" most of the time... felt like an afterburner or something, I didn't like keeping it switched on for prolonged periods.

Eww... can't they do some dynamic recompilation or something? On second thought, they probably are doing something like that already, otherwise I don't see those 3 brain-damaged cores actually *emulating* anything worthwhile.

Quite the contrary, I'd say. Video card product cycles typically used to be 6 months in length. Nowadays, as you mentioned, they're more like a year. About that 9500 Pro, yeah I've heard a lot of good comments about it, although I've never tried one. I always tend to stick to Nvidia due to their excellent Linux support. I've owned a GF2MX, a Ti4200, a 6600GT, and now a 7800GTX

At this point, a 6800GS would give you the best bang for the buck ($199). Currently, they are only available in PCI-Express form, but I have heard several rumors that it is going to be released in AGP. However, the 6800GS in all avatars is expected to be a short-lived product, with the upcoming 7600GT and 7800GS flanking it from either side within a few months. At any rate, if I were you, I would probably grab a 6800GS AGP the moment it lands if it retails for ~$190. It's tough to get a sweeter spot than that. There's arguably just one card in history that can rival that -- the legendary Ti4200.

I can understand if people prefer one platform over another. But why such a negative attitude, bordering on fanaticism? *I* prefer my PC, but I cannot deny the utility of a dedicated gaming platform that makes games accessible to a very wide audience.

If this was in response to my post, you might want to read it again a little more carefully

Maybe it's a technicality, but even the devs prefer to NOT call it an MMORPG. For better or for worse, the game does away with several classic MMORPG traits -- level grinding, global (as opposed to instanced) zones, penalizing of casual players, and of course monthly fees.

I refuse to play WoW on principle

One of the several reasons I refuse to pay a monthly fee for any game is because to some extent it gives the studio control over when and how I play the game. If I pay a fee, I have a psychological obligation to put in at least some hours every month into the game, or I'm wasting my money. That's NOT how I wish to play a game. I want to be able to *not* play it for a month -- nay, an entire year, if I wish, and get back to it when I have the time and desire. I play when I want to, simple. I paid 50 bucks for it, now let me have fun, leave me alone and STOP freaking trying to LEECH every last penny out of me, you goddamn parasites. Monthly fees my a**.

Guild Wars doesn't have to try and "live up to the standards" set by any other game. It's a very good game in its own right. As others have mentioned, it is very gameplay and combat oriented. There is a tacky storyline, it's not that immersive, what will keep you involved will primarily be the combat. That does not imply that it is a hack-n-slash clickfest, though. Far from it -- there's a lot of depth to the gameplay. In case you haven't hread already, every character has as assortment of upto 150 skills, of which only 8 can be equipped at a time before going out of town. There is a large variety of feasible combinations, but at the same time you cannot just randomly equip 8 spells and hope to nuke the living daylights out of anything that moves. You can have anything from straightforward builds such as paladins and nukers, to complex interrupting builds, all are very rewarding to play depending on your tastes, and none are really overpowered.

Monolith. Maybe not top 5, but definitely deserves a mention.