The testing methodology made coming to conclusions difficult as to the cards and their drivers.

They compared 2 video cards on a Core 2 duo at 2.66 and a quad at 3.6.
What they needed to do was isolate frequency benefits from threading issues by teasting them at same frequency or disable 2 cores on the quad and compare frequency benefits. Some games will benefit from frequency more due to IPC, while others will benefit from threading.
A little more work and it might have made for an interesting comparison.

It would be interesting if the catalyst driver and X2 benefits from more cpu's. That could mean poor threading model for C2D or good threading to take advantage of more cores, hard to say.

Someone needs to do a proper test here and uncover what is up.
This comment was edited on Feb 3, 19:27.

Awwwwww

It's not that consoles are stealing gamers, hardcore or otherwise...

It's PC developers jumping ship and making their games console games and the PC a port. Devs are not providing anything better for the PC, just a port that was made to work in the hardware confines of the console. If you give me the same exact game on both platforms some people rather get it on console. Granted mouse/kbd is best for fps's.

Epic sounds more and more like it's embracing weak ass console gameplay and calling it hardcore.

Pretty sad when a company with the Unreal franchise as it's pedigree has team members buying fps's on console instead of PC, sad indeed and is a reflection of where their head is at.

This comment was edited on Jan 31, 12:07.

"...the game will be released simultaneously for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3."

Oh won't that just be a wonderfully ported game.
No doubt they will be putting all the extra touches that are needed for each platform. /sarcasm

Not that i would ever get 3-way SLI but atleast performance scales like one would expect in GPU bound games like Crysis.
I'm actually surprised it scales as well as it does.

Flagship should hurry up and make a compelling game.

I'm suprised they aren't reminding us about the limited special editions again that were supposed to dry up before the game hit shelves.

Ohhh and they are making patches for everyone. I guess the people that bought the game should be incredibly appreciative that they are deemed worthy for the necessary patching.

Only way Flagship can win me over is make a fun game beyond the first hour.

It's the normal large company happenings.
They(Gamespot) feel they have to sell out for the mighty dollar and in order to beat competition.

Producing the best quality product should gain a following, not the shortest/easiest path to gain.

Either quality workmanship doesn't work for the executives because it falls on deaf ears of the audience (gamers) who can't appreciate it OR they just don't want to compete with pricey employees and high caliber content without compromising objectivity when it's easier to sell out.

This comment was edited on Jan 12, 21:20.

That AMD zone benchmarking is so minimalistic that it doesn't deserve a news blurb let alone being published.

Do thorough proper testing, not just some quick suite of 3 runs, a sentence summary and make some judgment. 50% of forum goers could have done better.

I was left with the feeling of what a lame way to generate hits.

Being on the heels of the Valve acquisition I just think it's Valve wanting it to be up to their standards. Furthermore I'm sure the devs would have liked more time to do some more things rather than pushing to button it up (always somewhat of a cluster) but lacked the funds, that has changed. That is a good thing.

The answer to the format war is simple...

Inexpensive quality dual format players.

If I have a dual format player then the studios, Sony & Toshiba and the greed & politics can all bend over for each other.

I'm tired of them trying to ram the format they say I should have down my throat. Seems like the studios are the cause of all these problems and their greed.

Seems like a strange way to spend money for Valve. They should spend more an another in house project, more technology, more support for their games, more for server space for steam with things like maintaining save games online so when you go to a different PC your save games are optionally downloaded too.

Buying developers out is too similar to what a publisher does. I'd hate to see all the dividends from steam guide them into that mentality. Then inevitably as their size grows they will not be any better than the corporate bean counters of publishers today.

Currently I think Steam is great but their is no guarantee it will stay that way.

Damn I hope not.

I haven't looked at Microsoft peripherals in a long time since Logitechs Mice and speakers are far superior.

This is just another case if you can't beat the competition in quality product just buy them and bury them, getting them out of the way. Sucks but it's true and has happened alot.

I would never play something like Eve, because that would be too mind numbing to me. This gives me good overall immersion of being in space in a ship.

I've been playing the game for the last week again with latest bonus packs. You start out trying to survive in space to becoming all powerful to the end you can eliminate entire sectors and races.

If you want a game that you can invest time in then this is it. Sometime I leave it on over night in time acceleration mode while I make the millions. For $10 it's a steal and a large constant community pumping out mods and scripts. X-mod is supposed to be really cool but I haven't tried it.

Looking forward to trying this.

I'm not going to let any load times make or break a game for me. It's always something.

XP has already been faster and more responsive for any power users that need to move through windows at full speed. You can't move through files and the UI nearly as fast with base Vista as base XP.

I still doubt that Microsoft would make, or even allow, any performance improvements to XP at this stage of the game. Maybe it will happen by mistake but it's probably something stupid like boots up 10% faster which means nothing to people who leave their machines running.

I give props to the guy for having the balls to speak up and tell it like it is. Why spend 2-3 years on a project just to rush it at the end and screw up 3 years of investment. Publishers sometimes can't see the obvious. Publishers need to wake up and not throw projects away in the final days.

This shit happens all the time and devs don't speak up in fear of losing their jobs so good for him.

There won't be any large performance increases with any patches unless they reduce quality. It's the huge amount geometry and shaders compounded with resolutions. Hoping for any large performance increases from some mysterious optimizing is a false hope.

"Windows XP SP3 boasts speed boost, testers claim."

Malarchy!

microsoft already said there wasn't going to be any meaningful updates like that to the OS.

Yeah, like they want to even make Vista look even worse and make XP more inviting. That is not the Microsoft way.

Oh no 2GB! We had close to 2GB demos 2 years ago.
So you have to wait longer, whoopie.

If you have to pay per MB then it sucks with any demo, but most people don't have to yet. That is what game magazines and DVD's are for.

I don't care if it's 2GB or 3GB, which is following next soon, I'll just have to wait a bit longer as it downloads in the background.

I'm not interested in whining like a school girl at every thing that comes out in the gaming scene. Doesn't this have ads, Securom, DRM, online activation? Damn, well I guess I can complain about demo size then. There is always bandwidth under privileged, that has been true since the onset of the internet, but like it or not, it's the problem of the technology underprivileged. People shouldn't be trying to do what they don't have resources for, then complain when they can't.
This comment was edited on Nov 25, 15:09.

Also keeping your beans preserved in the freezer is a good tip to keep them fresher longer.

Personally, I prefer beans ground a bit on the large side, less acidic taste and better after taste for my preference.

So Blue, where do you find a decent inexpensive burr grinder, I've looked but only found industrial ones.

This comment was edited on Nov 16, 10:24.