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A couple more reviews that aren't as, um, positive:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=550&pid=2
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14606
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/04/23/amd_phenom_x3_8750/1

Vista? Didn't you get the memo? People in general prefer to run XP. Computer manufacturers are selling machines with XP. Often, software companies aren't even testing with Vista. Vista was oversold into an underpowered (for Vista) PC market.

There are some other good looks at RS780 performance:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=527 - looks at Hybrid CrossFire with several games in real world testing as well as GPU overclocking; also features the new AMD X2 4850e processor
http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/processors/780g-and-4850e/ - looks at both the chipset and CPU
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14261 - good motherboard review
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/03/04/amd_780g_integrated_graphics_chipset/1 - tests HQV and HD audio systems

I have nothing particularly insightful to add, but I just want to share this truly revolting picture of Steve:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/02/27/eu_fines_microsoft_682_million_in_antitrust_case/1

Don't foget Bullfrog Productions, Ltd. who gave us Dungeon Keeper. When Bullfrog was aquired by EA pretty much all the talent fled the company. When EA aquires a game studio, they pretty much kill it regardless if they mean to or not.

Spore: Hands-on Preview
Platforms: PC, Nintendo DS, Mobile, Mac
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Spore. Games don't come any more ambitious than Spore and although the premise of the now in-famously delayed game and magnum opus of Will Wright is fairly simple, the actual realisation of that concept has proven incredibly difficult.

The idea behind Spore is this; you are God, the Alpha, Omega and Almighty. You are omniscient, omnipresent and capable of creating a rock so big you can't possibly lift it. Then you can lift it. You're God and that type of feat is your bread and butter.

Specifically, you are the God of a particular species that you will design, craft, sculpt and guide through from primordial ooze to inevitable extinction.

You start off small, designing a single cell and guiding it through the cesspool in which all life must begin. As time passes you use evolution as the tool by which you will shape the destiny of your creature for better or worse. A mouth here, a leg there, and a twist to the torso - you slowly create the creature you want. You can do that. You are God.

Image: Spore is perhaps the most ambitious game ever

From there, the game expands ever outwards and you will move from guiding a single cell or creature to encouraging a small tribe, then a city. In the climax to this universe in a box you'll be aiding your civilisation in spreading to other stars and planets.

Such game concepts are truly the things of dreams - open, sandbox worlds with almost limitless possibilities and completely open setting. The game says to you; "Here are the tools, now do as you wish."

Unfortunately, with such an impossibly complex design even getting the basics of the gameplay right can be a daunting task in and of itself and, even with the full might of Electronic Arts behind him, Will Wright has struggled to get Spore working. The game, which he has reportedly been planning for the last decade at least, has suffered numerous delays. At the start of this year we gave it an honourable mention as a game which we thought would definitely turn out to be vapourware.

Now though, it looks like we may have to admit that we were wrong. Not only has EA confirmed that Spore will be out in time for the holidays, but the game is now in a fully playable state. All that is left to do is polish up a few glitches, test it and load it with content before release.

Image: The Cell Stage is where the full game begins

How do we know that, I hear you ask. Simple; we've played it--nearly all of it.

There are five stages or levels to Spore and we've played them all on the PC, as well as playing on the DS and Mobile versions of the game - though the latter failed to make as much of an impression, to be frank.

The first level is a basic arcade type game where players guide their single cell about its existence, helping it eat other creatures and grow. When it has grown enough it jumps into the Creature Stage, where players zoom their view out and manage the more complex needs of their creation. Survival skills must be complemented by socialisation skills as players enable their creature to build a tribe.

In Tribe stage the game zooms out once more and players are no longer controlling a single alien. In this stage it's more like The Sims as you monitor the needs of a small tribe as they carve out a niche in the alien landscape. The penultimate stage of the game is the Civilisation Stage where it transitions from The Sims into Sim City and you'll be controlling whole cities in cultures.

The last stage is the Space Stage where you hop off your polluted little rock and find new playgrounds to party in.

Share and share alike
Before we delve deeply into the well of never-ending gameplay that Spore claims to offer, we should talk about the Pollination System th

Spore: Hands-on Preview
Platforms: PC, Nintendo DS, Mobile, Mac
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Spore. Games don't come any more ambitious than Spore and although the premise of the now in-famously delayed game and magnum opus of Will Wright is fairly simple, the actual realisation of that concept has proven incredibly difficult.

The idea behind Spore is this; you are God, the Alpha, Omega and Almighty. You are omniscient, omnipresent and capable of creating a rock so big you can't possibly lift it. Then you can lift it. You're God and that type of feat is your bread and butter.

Specifically, you are the God of a particular species that you will design, craft, sculpt and guide through from primordial ooze to inevitable extinction.

You start off small, designing a single cell and guiding it through the cesspool in which all life must begin. As time passes you use evolution as the tool by which you will shape the destiny of your creature for better or worse. A mouth here, a leg there, and a twist to the torso - you slowly create the creature you want. You can do that. You are God.

Image: Spore is perhaps the most ambitious game ever

From there, the game expands ever outwards and you will move from guiding a single cell or creature to encouraging a small tribe, then a city. In the climax to this universe in a box you'll be aiding your civilisation in spreading to other stars and planets.

Such game concepts are truly the things of dreams - open, sandbox worlds with almost limitless possibilities and completely open setting. The game says to you; "Here are the tools, now do as you wish."

Unfortunately, with such an impossibly complex design even getting the basics of the gameplay right can be a daunting task in and of itself and, even with the full might of Electronic Arts behind him, Will Wright has struggled to get Spore working. The game, which he has reportedly been planning for the last decade at least, has suffered numerous delays. At the start of this year we gave it an honourable mention as a game which we thought would definitely turn out to be vapourware.

Now though, it looks like we may have to admit that we were wrong. Not only has EA confirmed that Spore will be out in time for the holidays, but the game is now in a fully playable state. All that is left to do is polish up a few glitches, test it and load it with content before release.

Image: The Cell Stage is where the full game begins

How do we know that, I hear you ask. Simple; we've played it--nearly all of it.

There are five stages or levels to Spore and we've played them all on the PC, as well as playing on the DS and Mobile versions of the game - though the latter failed to make as much of an impression, to be frank.

The first level is a basic arcade type game where players guide their single cell about its existence, helping it eat other creatures and grow. When it has grown enough it jumps into the Creature Stage, where players zoom their view out and manage the more complex needs of their creation. Survival skills must be complemented by socialisation skills as players enable their creature to build a tribe.

In Tribe stage the game zooms out once more and players are no longer controlling a single alien. In this stage it's more like The Sims as you monitor the needs of a small tribe as they carve out a niche in the alien landscape. The penultimate stage of the game is the Civilisation Stage where it transitions from The Sims into Sim City and you'll be controlling whole cities in cultures.

The last stage is the Space Stage where you hop off your polluted little rock and find new playgrounds to party in.

Share and share alike
Before we delve deeply into the well of never-ending gameplay that Spore claims to offer, we should talk about the Pollination System th

Anyone else having problems with the link in TFA? I had to edit it slight...

15 years ago you could buy keyboards with an lcd display in each and
every keycap.

Do you have any evidence for this? I just did quite a bit of searching and can find no evidence such a keyboard existed until this one was announced in 2005 (and only has function keys with programmable displays). This particular keyboard is evidently vaporware, and was announced after the Optimus keyboard, so it really doesn't count.

So, show us the evidence such a keyboard existed 15 years ago.

Have they gotten rid of the crazy DRM yet? I know Ken Levine said they'd drop it "in the future":

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/26/bioshock_activation_will_be_removed/1

Is the future now? Can I buy the game yet?

An article over on bit-tech.net talks about how Warren Spector has no ties to this one. So I wouldn't really expect a return to the exceptionally immersive world of the first Deus Ex. I hope they do take into consideration how badly the second one was rated and sold compared to the first one. However I don't have very high hopes for it. bit-tech.net story: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/07/24/warren_spector_not_bothered_about_deus_ex_3/1/

Source? I don't believe you.

...especially considering that the porn industry is backing HD-DVD.

"you could make water climb up hill using no moving parts"

Someone beat you to it

Yes it does have the motion sensing. If you read the keynote, when Kaz announced it he started off talking about how originally they thought there would be technical issues with having rumble and motion sensing but they have overcome those issues and have both in the new controller.

Apparently Kaz isn' a fan of the WarioWare Series, since Nintendo was able to do both in 2003 (when the game shipped in Japan). Perhaps he wasn't lying, and it had nothing to with Legal issues, maybe Nintendo has better engineers than Sony.

See:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/31/gigabyte_r amdisk/

Seems like a decent deal in a market where most products are nearly obsolete before you get them home. Having this chipset gives me the ability to upgrade to 4GB RAM if need be. From what I hear of Vista, I may just want to do so.

If your video card doesn't flinch at Supreme Commander, please share your secret. SupCom is capable of burying even the 8800 Ultra in tests.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/05/02/nvidia _geforce_8800_ultra/5.html
http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/geforce-8800u ltra/index.x?pg=4

I see Core 2 Duos with 2 megs per fucking core.

I see Turion 64 X2's with a paltry 256K.

That's just the LAPTOP end.

Remember the Pentium D (Basically a hyped up pentium 3 with 2 megs of L2 cache) that smoked many higher-end Pentium 4s in gaming?

Pay attention! My 640K AMD64 3000+ could be smoking many other machines if it just had a DECENT CACHE ON-DIE!

bit-tech has their own results, and a website that works:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/04/18/idf_sp ring_2007_benchmarking_penryn/1.html

Nothing new. Both HardOCP and Bit-Tech did experiments on submersion oil cooling years ago.

you're probably right, and I do agree that the software emulation will gradually get better over time
However it's the comments from Sony that they're going to be focusing on new content rather than backwards compatibility that's a little worrying
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/02/23/european_p s3_has_less_functionality_than_us_japan/

also given that we're paying more for less

after a bit of googling, found a couple of links on backwards compatibility so far
not necessarily EE related, but just backwards compatibility in general
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/02/23/european_p s3_has_less_functionality_than_us_japan/
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/745/745439p1.html

also a youtube on this, although I believe this problem has been fixed now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

you're probably right, and I do agree that the software emulation will gradually get better over time
However it's the comments from Sony that they're going to be focusing on new content rather than backwards compatibility that's a little worrying
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/02/23/european_p s3_has_less_functionality_than_us_japan/

also given that we're paying more for less

after a bit of googling, found a couple of links on backwards compatibility so far
not necessarily EE related, but just backwards compatibility in general
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/02/23/european_p s3_has_less_functionality_than_us_japan/
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/745/745439p1.html

also a youtube on this, although I believe this problem has been fixed now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

I think there is place for some middle ground as well as both extremes. I have some very "plain" cases, like the CoolerMaster Stacker (lots of space for hard drives and very good cooling - perfect for a video server). I also have a nice-ish case for the HTPC ("fits in" with the rest of the AV gear in the rack, wife-friendly). And there's middle of the road. I don't do square beige boxes anymore, but I don't go for designer cases either. I'll pay a few extra bucks to get a better looking case (good quality too), but nothing crazy.

Although there are some cases I really wish I had, like the WMD, but it takes too much time and usually costs too much.

I don't have the link, but a recent video interview did mention they are excited about having multicore processing, so there's been no announcement that they have dropped working on that. However, they have repeatedly said that you don't really start to see benefits (on the developer's side) until you reach quad-core. The quad-core statement was said not too long ago in an article detailing how they were trying to implement multi-core processing in a scalable manner, which from the article sounded pretty tough. If I had to make two guesses what caused the delay, it be either their multicore implementation or the console work.

In addition, considering the XBox 360 supports directx 10 and both the xbox 360 and PS3 are some premutations of multicore processing, I suppose it makes sense to try an integrate any cross-platform available features into a single scalable Source solution. I could see how their decision to delay now to do such a thing would speed the console adaption of later games based in the Source engine. It's not only a smart buisness decision, but it will benefit customers as well; no one wants a game to be delayed just because the engine has splintered and bloated up so badly that it takes independent teams significant work to port. If a delay now save time later and maintains coherency, I say its a good thing and eagerly await the results.

Oh, btw, the mulitcore article and a good suppliment article With Videos! (on the 4th page. Woah, deja vu.)

That would be Orac. I believe the article you're looking for is this one, and the associated mod page is this one.

YouTube videos are a nightmare - the BBC should be embracing bit torrent and as little compression as possible.

There is no point upgrading. XP's got support for the next six years, I'm in no great hurry for a 64-bit OS & DX10 is pointless until there's games support. Vista does have the distinct feeling of WindowsME about it. Another two year wait? No big deal, Vista got put off for that long, anyway & we all survived. Continued incremental hardware upgrades until XP dies a death, I feel.

Good article on the nVidia/Vista driver situation (also applies to MAudio)...
http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007/02/10/not_enj oying_the_view/1.html

It'd be rough justice if Intel knocks nVidia out in the meantime & it's set for the same schedule as the next Windows release...
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37 548

It appears that Creative is writing a driver that will intercept DirectSound calls and translate them into OpenAL calls, which Vista WILL support.

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2006/02/08/road_ahead _billgates/.

I found this using Google, of course. ;)

2 expansion slots, one of which is PCI-E, and an XpressCard slot for Bluetooth and 802.11whatever. Designed for lower power apps.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news_images/amd_announces_ dtx_for_small_form_factor/article_img.jpg

Be careful what you wish for:
http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2005/07/05/wood_ip od_zapwizard/1.html/
http://www.sybarites.org/2006/03/14/wooden-ipod-ca se-made-from-rare-woods/

I do. Lots of stuff that was wrong. Don't get me wrong, if I told you want was going to happen 10 years from now, I would be wrong too but I don't spew like Bill does.

Great rundown on the 1995 Book from BG

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2006/02/08/road_ahead _billgates/

So Intel is shipping 45nm? According to Bit-tech, these 65nm AMD chips are shipping today.

I agree, take things with a grain of salt until we see reviews. But you sound a little too skeptical of AMD to not be working for Intel.

There was something like that in WoW. News article about it.

Holy crud! I misread that: It is 220 WATTS AT IDLE! The idle TEMPERATURE in deg C is the 66.

bit-tech has an official statement from Nvidia here. Nvidia specified an incorrect resistor value in their bill of materials, so the manufacturer did its job correctly, but had slightly incorrect instructions.

With Videos! (on the 4th page.)

Nvidia issued an official comment here

Some Background
Thompson's rambling initial letter.
The Suit, from Jack's Perspective.
Ars Technica's take on what happened today.
A little bit about Jack (including favorite classics like "claims Janet Reno is a homosexual. Repeatedly." and "tries to get Florida bar ruled unconstitutional.")

Sooo... Take 2 has deep into Thursday to file an appeal. Thompson will likely retort on Friday, and a ruling made on Monday. 24 hours after this Take 2 will deliver a copy... on the release day.

As the site is currently down, does anyone know what the legal grounds are for this ruling? How can there be "more copycat violence" if the game hasn't been released in the first place?

For that matter, I'd like to demand a pre-release copy of Halo 3 to ensure that there isn't graphic violence and amazing multiplayer action.

Why didn't they just look at what the case modding community is doing? They've come up with some pretty awesome stuff already. And there's literally thousands of design ideas there to use.

I just snagged the Dell 2407WFP for about $800

Dell 2407WFP
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/06/23/Dell_U ltrasharp_2407WFP_monito/1.html

According to that review, it's generally the same as the Samsung 244T, though the Samsung has better color

Samsung 244T
http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=266 2

As I understand it, it was partly the heat, and partly the inability to physically get enough power to the chip circuitry. As process shrinks made the individual circuits smaller, the individual traces became less able to carry the power required by the 20-stage+ pipeline. Making the traces bigger made it harder to lay out the chip, and negated some of the advantages of the process shrink.

There's an interesting explanation of the whole situation here.

Here's a guy who actually did a custom case using eMachineShop. Sadly, all his pics seem to be offline. However, his descriptions and engineering logs are intact. I just skimmed it, but it sounds like it cost him about $700 to do the one-off job he needed. The per-unit price would drop rapidly if you began ordering your design in bulk. (For example, if you were selling it online.)

You're actually understating the issue. For the software that most people use, your processor is three, maybe even four, times as powerful as necessary. (RAM is kind of beside the point: you can always upgrade, and it's cheap as hell.) So it isn't just 3-year-old machines that people see no reason to upgrade -- it's machines that are much older!

Come to think of it, there's probably some connection between this issue, and the fact that Vista has extreme hardware requirements. Does your P4 have good threading support? Does your motherboard include a PCI-E slot? No? Then dude, you better go out and buy a new system, or you won't get the "Vista Experience"!

There's a pretty good review up at bit-tech too - 10 processors compared

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2006/06/16/ecs_shen_z hen_factory_tours/1.html