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cutterjohn

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Everything posted by cutterjohn

  1. TAGES then DRM used in the NA release of The Witcher Enhanced Edition, forced me into booting up XP Pro again (usually use win2k for gaming and linux for anything useful) as it apparently, depends on the hook added to the XP kernel. They, apparently, used Starforce in Europe, but there's a "universal" crack for that. That said, at least TWEE doesn't restrict to 3 installs, as I'd already be down 2 just trying to see if I could get it up and running under 2k, then having to go back and re-install it for XP as I didn't feel like spending the time on registry hacking assuming that the 2k registry got FULLY updated and I could track down all of the necessary entries... If this were SPORE, a likely soon hw upgrade would eat my last install. Yay! For renting while lying and telling you that wait, you're not really renting...
  2. OK, I'm going to admit a small amount of heresy here: I ended up purchasing Evochron Renegades from Starwraith this week, as I was thinking that it looked like it should work just fine on a netbook or slightly more powerful notebook platforms. It seemed to have all the features that one would expect from a heavily Elite-like derivative game, yet when I mentioned ina post on their forums some very vague references v. X series/ "BC/UC" I essentially got jumped allover more than I would've EVER expected here, even in the darkest days. Anyone know what is up with these people? As it's not exactly something that would make me recommend their games to anyone for ANY purpose... [EDIT] *cough* Expect to purchase UCCE once I scare up the cash for some portable system + UCCE... [/EDIT]
  3. I'm still around, and occasionally read the boards although not as often in the past as I've been devoting more time to Minions of Mirth again (MMORPG), and I picked up a DS Lite around Christmas so I've been playing alot of DS games and for the first time have really been able to enjoy my GBA games. (I have the original GBA with no backlight that was awful to try playing unless you could a nice spot just right in extremely sunny conditions since most devs seemed to absolutely insist on using the darkest palettes possible for most of the games that I had for it. After market lights didn't help.) Putting away spare change now and then with an intent to eventually pickup BCCE, but it's waiting in line behind a few other more expensive items that I really need to get before they disappear from the market, plus a few repairs that need to be made which are beyond my capabilities -> expensive.
  4. a. since they did NOT mention video, we'll have to assume that it's likely the standard X300, which is NOT truly capable of running F.E.A.R. here is a quote from the article: quote:We suspect, however, that the fact that these computers were marginal at running F.E.A.R.The ~15FPS quoted in the article further supports this argument. The Dell Optiplex GX280, in standard configurations, really isn't capable of running F.E.A.R., a FPS, decently in the first place. b. Every single bench that I have read that uses FEAR clearly shows with the same CPU that GPU choice makes a SIGNIFICANT difference in framerates, indicating that it is not entirely CPU limited. With a CPU limited game, FPS would not vary all that much, say <10% amongst various video cards although in that case there COULD be GPU limitations that also affect the FPS results, e.g. memory bandwidth of the particular video card family, etc. The real question here is that NIC worth $280 to improve performance of a machine with presumably low configuration or would it be better to spend that $280 on other upgrades? IMO the clear answer is that other upgrades at this point, based upon this single "review", are far more likely to produce improved game playability overall, and not just for network based games.
  5. Yep, it does look like a DM client will appear after all. Supposedly it will be a separate download after the game is released. And on a more ominous not, a quote from the Q&A: quote:Shane stated that the only definite additions after the release of the game will be the DM Client, and that other plans for work on the game after release will be decided after the game is on the shelves. He added that since the publisher, Atari, is much more involved with the release of Neverwinter Nights 2 than they were with its predecessor, a lot of the development after the game's release is dependant on them. or as I would take it: Expect *NOTHING* extra unless this game saves Atari. It's really too bad that Bioware itself doesn't own the license for AD&D and other D20 products...
  6. ...anyways, here is some additional fuel for the fire. IGN does a "benchmark" which, unsurprisingly, supporting(more than) Killer NIC's claim to fame. Of note, they apparently usedmachines barely capable of running FEAR(their test app) with bog standard crappy Dell machines, which AFAIK don't offload ANY of their networking functions to the onboard NIC. It'd be nice to see them against an nForce board with all offloading enabled, not to mention the review on a site like Tom's Hardware or Anand who at least give out more complete details of the test setup, and conditions...
  7. Here we go again, boys and girls: Yet another piece of hardware to supposedly improve AI performance this time. In a quick look, I didn't see anything regarding pricing I didn't see a thing, but I'd expect another $300 or so card, considering the Ageia card and that "killer" "NIC". I guess that these guys can't suck enough money out of companies licensing their libraries without adding on a piece of hardware which they can grossly markup the price with. I'm sticking with my story, if anything kills PC gaming it's going to be the coprocessor card surcharge, which so far have failed to show any value whatsoever. (Not to mention that just about every new mb that I've seen has at most 3 PCI slots, some even have only 1 or 2... and I've yet to see any real peripherals that use PCIe x1, x4, or x8 slots(discounting SLI'ed GPUS). I did see that there is a GPU that is x1, but I never bothered to look at it's specs...) I just can't wait to the uber 1337 gfx effects co-processor... followed by the gold farming co-processor.
  8. I plan to wait as well, to see if they DO release DMC and if they DO support NWN2 even halfway as well as Bioware supports NWN1... Looking forward to no more "tiles" as well...
  9. Damn, wish that I could mod the title, but anyways, I've just uncovered another disturbing piece of info re NWN2 (if anyone cares): It would appear that the inept Obsidian Studios are further damaging NWN2 by stalling, if not entirely removing the Dungeonmaster Client So, now we're up to no ridable horses with combat(which has been added for use in NWN1 now), and loss of the DMC(very useful for more complicated multiplayer and other modules/worlds). In other related news, Bioware has released patch v1.68 WITH visible cloaks(yes you can gloat over your +5 cloaks of protection now), and furthermore plans at least one more patch... Care to bet that Obsidian doesn't give this kind of support?
  10. ...and here, I've been led to believe that PC gaming(and gaming in general) were in the decline, but here we are, continuously inundated by ludicrously priced hardware of dubious value... (still waiting for a definitive demonstration of the physics card...)
  11. Either go for 2 matched 512 sticks OR 2 matched 1G sticks period. If you don't your memory bandwidth will suffer. The system posted in the first message COULD benefit from the additional ram. RAM upgrades the cheapest performance boosters in existence, and if you plan to go to Vista you WILL want a minimum of 1G, and actually from what I've read a 2G system running Vista should be roughly equivalent to a 1G Windows XP system today... i.e. the moral of the story is more memory never hurts, and will help, if you're planning to go vista even 1.5G seems like it will be a little short, lastly make up your own mind, find a good price and do it, or don't...
  12. Ahm... they got the machine back in June, and arrested 2 punks, and looking for a third last I heard(radio) for that theft and 5 others in the area. The FBI claims that it was just random chance, and that their "forensics" indicate that the data was not accessed, etc. (Heard this the other week or so...)
  13. Computer Gaming World USED to be a GREAT mag with legit reviews back in the day(80s, early 90s), then it really started to be ultra crappy, so it's no big loss. (Sort of like BYTE back in the day for general PC(and not just IBM compat) coverage...) As a matter of fact I haven't found a gaming mag that I've cared for in years, and my old favorite for reviews online may as well be dead since yahoo borgified it, gamesdomain. Their reviews used to be pretty decent. (Same for general PC mags... just rags...) Nowadays, I pretty much stick to just-rpg, and the news page of rpgdot with a smattering of strategy informer, just adventure, etc.
  14. DDR memory of all types (original, 2, 3, etc.) require two MATCHED(BUY a pair in a package TOGETHER(!)) to operate that the double data rate, ow. your's just getting a bit faster single rate RAM which will bottleneck even more than DDR. Also you need to verify which 2 slots are in which bank. Sometimes the mb markings(if any) and/or the mb manual are WRONG. If these are plain old DDR(socket 939, etc.) systems I'd just go for 1G, esp. if you plan to replace them w/in a year(or less) or so as you will undoubtedly be moving to a mb that no longer supports plain old DDR. If it's a system that you plan to keep for a while, or is already DDR2, I'd hazard that 2G, esp if you plan to go to Vista will be necessary... If you go 2G, get 2 1G sticks ow you're likely to have to go to slower memory timings for most AMD systems... If you're NOT overclocking or anything you could go with cheaper(lower specced) RAM, but I'd still get some sort of brand name like Kingston, Crucial, Mushkin, OCZ, etc. 2 512M should be under $100. Check the usual pricing sites pricewatch, pricegrabber, etc. AM2: DDR2 w/the current AMD AM2 CPUs will only get you 2-5% more bandwidth at the expense of a slight increasein latency no matter what AM2 CPU you get. They appear to not have done a great job on the integrated DDR2 controller... Of course Intel CPUs, while tending to squeeze out a little more bandwidth still don't get as close to the theoretical max as AMD did with DDR, which was still quite a bit lower than max... All memory subsystems other than onboard CPU caches(and even those, but to a MUCH lower extent) bottleneck the CPU for memory intensive apps.
  15. I'd go with a 939, or AM2 if you can't/don't want to re-use the memory from the old machine. AM2 would be more future proof, or hell I'd even spec out pricing on Intel Core 2 Duo boards for that matter. The 6150 though, is GOING to be a WEAK performer. It MAY do OK for UCSE, but it aint gonna run Oblivion, FEAR, etc. worth a damn. I'd try for a 7600GS or GT if at all possible, or do like I did (see below) get a board with an AGP(or pseudo AGP-PCI bridge slot) and suffer with what you've got until you can afford a better card...) Try to hauk the old stuff for a little extra cash too... You're likely going to need a new PSU any way you go too, unless you've got something c. 400W(good! no cheapos) or better too... Check out ebay. I ended up getting a 939 mb(Biostar TForce4 U), AMD 64 3200+ (vencice), and 2G of DDR 400 mushkin RAM for c. $200! (Practically new(2m old), the guy replaced it with an Intel machine for hw virtualization support...) My advice on bidding, decide how much you THINK that it's worth, and place a bid for THAT amount when you find something that looks good. I also check at the end, and tend to go up a few dollars more(sometimes) after re-checking retail prices. It's what I had to do on the above, but I only had to go up a couple dollars more, but I was willing to go $20 more as it still would've been cheaper than all of that new($90 mb, $130 CPU(at the time), c. $180 for the RAM from online stores...). PAY ATTENTION to the item descriptions, as many times sellers poorly word(or intentionally try to mislead) buyers. ASK them questions(click the button) if unsure. Do NOT bid if they don't respond w/in say a day. CHECK the item location(I've seen several items(CPUs & GPUs mainly) listed from Poland and China, not places that I'd want to bid on something from... too easy to get ripped off... with zero recourse.) WATCH the shipping charges, as some of those guys put in ridiculously LOW bid starts, yet have insane shipping like $50+ for an item that should cost $8 to ship!! If you want to play it safe, I'd strongly suggest checking out items from zipzoomfly, monarch computers, and newegg also use pricewatch(not so good any more), and pricegrabber(better) too, but I'd be wary of retailers with lowest pricing, but poor customer ratings, especially the ones that pull the out-of-stock swindle. I didn't have much luck with other components though, I ended up picking up a WD 250G caviar SATA2 & eVGA 7600 GT KO locally(approx within online prices when you add shipping minus tax, plus I got it RIGHT NOW!!! ) Still looking for CPU, eyeing 4400+ & 4800+s to see if they'll go down any more. If the 4800+ goes down a little more I'll spring for that. Either way I'll also need a new PSU, so I'm also checking those out.
  16. Well, I've decided to add a little speculation about this merger: Anyone care to place wagers? GPU on AMD's proposed processor direct slot(Hypertransport direct access), adding SOI and other power saving mafg techniques to the card. AMD COULD put together a nice integrated platform(WAY better performing than the current lot), and/or a nice powerful, but lower powered graphics monster machine. I'd also guess that if it sits on the Hypertransport bus they might come out again with cards that make use of main system memory as bandwidth would be ok for lower end mid-range cards, with onboard memory for the higher end cards... I'm really hoping for some sane power requirements from ATI GPUs after this merger... If they can do anything halfway decent it will kill nVidia nless someone else(Intel) buys them...
  17. A little late, but I would hazard the 9550 for speed over the 6200. Drawbacks of the ATI would be that it's only a shader model 2.0 card, while the 6200 supports shader model 3.0. (However this makes little difference as the card isn't nearly good enough to run new games well. I know from personal experience with a AGP 8x 6200 eVGA, 256M.) Also, CHECK the various sites for reviews of the cards(and others), tomshardware, anandtech, etc. If you can, I'd try a little higher like an AGP 7600GS (or GT if available) at least... Just picked up a eVGA 7600 GT KO last weekend myself, and it is nice. Actually when I checked mine with rivatuner it was clocked at their superclocked speeds (600MHz core, 788MHz Memory(1566 effective)). Only scores around 3200 or so on 3DMark06 though... but can run Oblivion with most setting maxxed smoothly at 1024x768. (The old 6200 would tend to vary WILDLY in framerate, plus I had to use bloom instead of HDR.)
  18. Does anyone around here still play netrek ? or ever played it? (Every once in a while I find a client and a server with people playing and play for a while, along with bolo, which I can't find a good link for ATM. I had a friend at the university who got absolutely addicted to netrek for about a year, until his grades had dropped sufficiently enough to force his dropping of the game...)
  19. ...it also appears that only the windows version is free as I see no mention on any of the linked pages regarding the original Mac OS version... (Yet another good mac company sucked into the blackhole that is M$... Bungie being the other major one, which was worse as Bungie was the ONLY good mac primary game developer... sometimes Apple can be really stupid... Halo was designed as a mac game, not an xbox game, and certainly not a windows games...)
  20. ...erm didn't M$ already have an ipod "killer" before? (I'm way too lazy to look it up, as I know it would only turn up the other 1000 or so ipod "killers" as well...)
  21. well well well... Anyone care to start taking bets on an Intel/nVidia merger if this goes through? Intel really needs people who have a clue about graphics...
  22. It appears that AMD is moving closer to IBM. (A good indication that AMD thinks that it's unlikely that they can keep architectural advancements apace with Intel. SOI, strained Si, and their 65nm process all have been courtesy of IBM along with a few other items, but this looks to expand that somewhat as in I wouldn't be at all surprised to see aspects of the Power arch & cell uP to show up in AMD designs. It also explains why Intel lacks SOI IIRC.)
  23. There IS a god! FINALLY! They'd better not just be teasing... WWII Theme: They probably feel that they can't what with DoD Source and all... Not to mention what you already said why break a good thing, and it IS significantly less realistic than most of the WWII themed games/mods.
  24. LostInSpace(not to be, ahm, arrogant but): Thanks, I actually already do have an AMD 3200+, which is actually the Venice core and potentially overclockable to 2.6G w/std HSF or so I've read.  (I've chickened out wrt trying until I build a second new machine and replace the current PSU.) And actually what you are talking about is the number of instructions processed per second by the CPU's core ALU/FPU/subunits, the bits have nothing to do with it really.  The superior AMD instructions/s(until Conroe) were a combination of shorter pipeline(shorter recovery time from branch mis-prediction and other operations that req. piepline flushing), more efficient memory access/control, and some more efficient operations v. Intel netburst arch. The real question though, is a 3200+ or 3800+ or 4400+ AMD processor really and truly considered to be the equivalent of 3.2, 3.8, or 4.4GHz Intel(non-Conroe) CPUs? i.e. I've already covered everything above, I'm just REALLY curious as to actual/perceived performance from the point of view of professional developers... or i.e. to repeat I know that AMD processors are more efficient than Intel netburst based CPUs, but what sort of guidance should I be taking wrt speed reqs as they are almost always only given in terms of Intel netburst CPU speeds, and this will be exacerbated with the Core 2 Duo as they will also be lower speed, but significantly more efficient than current AMDs and even more so than the old netburst arch... One enquiring mind would like some feedback, perhaps I should try avault...
  25. Wow!  And actually I knew when Derek had very few posts as I was originally a member of the first boards(looked almost exactly like these IIRC) but I lost track of my account, or more likely it got deleted.  (This was from back in the BC3K 1.0 Take 2 then all the upgrades that Derek did, then the 2.0 Interplay re-release.  After that I lost my way for a few years.  (Tried too go mostly mac only, but gaming was putrid...)) In any event, it's nice to see a developer that sticks around backs up his product, helps out customers, and generally just hangs out...  It's become almost unheard of for developers to do this (or at least publically) in this day and age...  I miss the old days...
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