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Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it.

Monkeyboi

Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it.

Monkeyboi

Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it.

Monkeyboi

Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it.

Monkeyboi

Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it.

Monkeyboi

Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it. Don't read this, I mean really. Its a load of crap. Really, it isn't good. Its just writing for the sake of writing. Honestly. I mean it.

Monkeyboi

Try the hidden Printer (and reader) Friendly Version!

The big problem with the new DRM technologies is that it requires new hardware. Up until very recently, it was nearly impossible to get video cards that support HDCP. Even when the GPU claims to support HDCP, the cards usually lack the cryptographic keys to make it work. The situation is slightly better with monitors, but there's still a huge installed base of expensive LCDs that don't support it. Users are going to be very cranky if they suddenly find the content that they purchased won't play unless they replace their monitor and video card.

I really don't understand why the movie industry is so concerned about high-definition video being sent to the monitor in the clear. Pirates will settle for movies recorded by a video camera in a theater, so they probably won't mind a reduced-resolution rip. If anything, it's easier to pirate the down-sampled version, simply because the high-definition output uses so much bandwidth (1080i uses something like ~1.5 Gbps!).

Read the print article: http://firingsquad.com/print_article.asp?current_s ection=Hardware&fs_article_id=2018

Great, of all the things /. could be importing from digg, its blog spam.

How about a link to the original article?

- http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=482
- http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=861&cid=1
- http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6538
- http://www.mvktech.net/content/view/3357/48/
- http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=287
- http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=33872
- http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/23/review_ati _radeon_x1950_xtx/
- http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/X1950XTX
- http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=954
- http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/radeon-x1950x tx/index.x?pg=1
- http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2007324 ,00.asp
- http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/23/ati_releases_rad eon_x1950/
- http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/375/
- http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131
- http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2 020&cid=3&pg=1
- http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x19 50_xtx_performance/
- http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/X1950XTXreview /

up to date list: http://www.madshrimps.be/forums/showthread.php?s=& threadid=26526

I agree that the lawsuit risk is big, but there's more to it. If you want to see what I'm talking about, take a look at this article:
http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?se archid=10518
Minnesota will FINE you if you're a minor and purchase a M/AO rated game. These are the type of people you see in the movie Footloose, just with a more modern cause.

The current announcements don't seem to spell out that this is based on .NET, but I'm sure it is. Microsoft has mentioned before that getting .NET on the XBox 360 was part of XNA. Also, see this FiringSquad article. They mention that 95 to 99 percent of the code from the windows version of a game could be retained in the X360 version. Also:

Microsoft indicated in their presentation that they feel the Xbox 360 security, both in hardware and software, will be able to eliminate any threatening code from getting out on their consoles and they claim there will be automated and non-automated ways to detect such code.

Managed code seems like the only reasonable way to enforce this security.

On March 22nd, we will release some of the details behind our technology. The technology is called LLR, Lag and Latency Reduction. Everyone can read more about LLR at our website on that day. In general, you've said it right, it helps to fight Lag. It does this using a custom designed Gaming Network Processor (the first of its kind) to fight all 3 of the causes of Lag (Client, Network, and Server). If I told you exactly how it worked, I'd have to kill you

On March 22nd, we will release some of the details behind our technology. The technology is called LLR, Lag and Latency Reduction. Everyone can read more about LLR at our website on that day. In general, you've said it right, it helps to fight Lag. It does this using a custom designed Gaming Network Processor (the first of its kind) to fight all 3 of the causes of Lag (Client, Network, and Server). If I told you exactly how it worked, I'd have to kill you

If you want to be able to play the latest and most popular games guess which OS you better be running?

Guess the percentage of Windows apps can be found for a Mac? If you guess 50 you are being way too optomistic

"Even though E3 was more strict this past May in keeping some unnecessary people out, there were still a ton of people that showed up that had no business attending the show (you know who you are)."

That hurts a lot coming from this guy: http://www.firingsquad.com/authors/author_profile. asp/44

While I understand that E3 is a trade event, I think there's something to be said for "the masses" being allowed in. We're the people who buy the games they're peddling, and for that matter support the press who cover the event. Without us neither game publishers, nor this Firing Squad goober would have a job in this industry.

I should point out that this is definately game dependant. Half Life 2 is a big example of where CPU scaling affects gameplay:

CPU Scaling with a 7800GTX in HL2

Notice that the FX-57 pulls almost 40 frames more per second than the 3000+ in 1024x768. This is less apparent at the high res 16000x1200, because at that point the video card becomes the bottleneck.

Read this: http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?se archid=10588 Nintendo says they're not expecting losing much at all at launch.

hrmm...where have i seen this before??? OHHH!!! thats right... http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/v55500preview/ default.asp

Which is, of course, why almost all non-UMA graphics architectures work this way. Reading from the local memory of a PC graphics card is also an extremely slow process. We're talking tens of megabytes per second over a 4GB AGP bus. That really doesn't hurt anything --- because you almost never need to read from GPU memory.

Which is why AGP has been relegated to "legacy" status, and PCIe is the future of GPUs.

The Xbox 360 is capable, and has seen good performance, using Havok's physics libraries, doing physics calculations on the GPU.
http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?se archid=9435
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136639.html

In the second article, they reference the PS3, but I'm guessing that if the Cell is incapable of properly reading from the GPU's local memory (or causes a ridiculous system stall while doing so) we'll never seen high-end physics processing on the PS3, which is lame.

The video demonstrations I've seen of hardware accelerated physics are simply amazing. Imagine pixel/vertex shaders for geometry. It's beautiful, and adds a tremendous amount to gameplay. There's a game up-and-coming which takes advantage of the PhysX processor, and I'm guessing that Havok (from their interviews) is going to start accelerating all their physics operatins on PCIe accelerates in Havok 3.

All of this is denied to the PS3. If they can shoe-horn this into XBox 360 titles, the 2007-2008 line of XBox games will be visually superior to PS3 games, and that's not good for a system released two years after the XBox 360.

I say this as a serious anti-Microsoft person. I hope the Wii can beat both ;-)

I may be wrong, but it appears that benchmark was deliberately chosen out of a bias. The UT04 benchmark seems to run better on AMDs. When making comparisons of dissimilar architectures, no single test, nor any single type of test is suitable. While the AMD is faster at most of the other tests, most of them don't have nearly so much of a disparity.

I totally agree, testing just one game isn't right.

Here are some benchmarks for Half Life 2, just to be fair.

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try Quake 4:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual cores vs Intel dual cores
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try F.E.A.R:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual core vs Intel dual core
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

I may be wrong, but it appears that benchmark was deliberately chosen out of a bias. The UT04 benchmark seems to run better on AMDs. When making comparisons of dissimilar architectures, no single test, nor any single type of test is suitable. While the AMD is faster at most of the other tests, most of them don't have nearly so much of a disparity.

I totally agree, testing just one game isn't right.

Here are some benchmarks for Half Life 2, just to be fair.

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try Quake 4:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual cores vs Intel dual cores
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try F.E.A.R:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual core vs Intel dual core
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

I may be wrong, but it appears that benchmark was deliberately chosen out of a bias. The UT04 benchmark seems to run better on AMDs. When making comparisons of dissimilar architectures, no single test, nor any single type of test is suitable. While the AMD is faster at most of the other tests, most of them don't have nearly so much of a disparity.

I totally agree, testing just one game isn't right.

Here are some benchmarks for Half Life 2, just to be fair.

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try Quake 4:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual cores vs Intel dual cores
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try F.E.A.R:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual core vs Intel dual core
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

I may be wrong, but it appears that benchmark was deliberately chosen out of a bias. The UT04 benchmark seems to run better on AMDs. When making comparisons of dissimilar architectures, no single test, nor any single type of test is suitable. While the AMD is faster at most of the other tests, most of them don't have nearly so much of a disparity.

I totally agree, testing just one game isn't right.

Here are some benchmarks for Half Life 2, just to be fair.

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try Quake 4:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual cores vs Intel dual cores
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try F.E.A.R:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual core vs Intel dual core
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

I may be wrong, but it appears that benchmark was deliberately chosen out of a bias. The UT04 benchmark seems to run better on AMDs. When making comparisons of dissimilar architectures, no single test, nor any single type of test is suitable. While the AMD is faster at most of the other tests, most of them don't have nearly so much of a disparity.

I totally agree, testing just one game isn't right.

Here are some benchmarks for Half Life 2, just to be fair.

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try Quake 4:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual cores vs Intel dual cores
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try F.E.A.R:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual core vs Intel dual core
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

I may be wrong, but it appears that benchmark was deliberately chosen out of a bias. The UT04 benchmark seems to run better on AMDs. When making comparisons of dissimilar architectures, no single test, nor any single type of test is suitable. While the AMD is faster at most of the other tests, most of them don't have nearly so much of a disparity.

I totally agree, testing just one game isn't right.

Here are some benchmarks for Half Life 2, just to be fair.

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try Quake 4:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual cores vs Intel dual cores
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

Lets try F.E.A.R:
AMD FX vs Intel EE chips
AMD dual core vs Intel dual core
Mainstream Athlon64 vs Pentium4

Results: Higher frame rate with AMD chips.

With PhysX all destructible objects in the game now explode with greater realism.

All other particle behaviors in the game are physically simulated, including trash and grit blowing in the street, and bullets kicking up shards of any object shot in the environment.

AGEIA Smart Particle Fluids are utilized to enable enveloping smoke from explosions. There is no equivalent effect without PhysX.

They have come a long way since the power glove but there are recent failures as well.

I own both of the above devices, I have an unhealthy fetish with unique control mechanisms, and seeing what interesting things I can do program wise with their APIs, despite that both of them are crap and share dusty shelf space next to my VFX1 Headset (with puck), Mixman Pro, and the far more useful (at least for solid modeling) 3D space mouse.

Leading up to their announcement of the controller design I was CONVINCED this wouldn't be it because of all the past failures. It's one of those things that looks really good on paper but is just poor in practice, due to inherent flaws like users trying to find their home position, quickly tiring their arms out trying to keep them afloat while using it and very difficult to interpret sensor outputs. Past that gaming that requires lots of movement past the thumbs is usually reserved for occasional play as opposed to the only mode of play. It's nice to hit the arcades on the weekend but for a relaxing game after work most still prefer the minimal movements required by a keyboard and mouse or gamepad.

Honestly if Nintendo pulls this off it will be a stroke of genius, and if anyone can it's them, even still I'm not holding my breath.

A dual-core really doesn't make games snapper, as I can't think of any that are designed as multi-threaded

Most games may not be designed for dual core currently, but some of the latest game's have had patches that have provided excellent results, so I bet we'll see more soon. From Firing Squad's review of the Quake 4 patch, "Biased or not, beta or no, there's a lot to like about the latest patch for Quake 4, whether you have an Athlon 64 X2 or a dual-core/Hyper-Threaded Intel chip. The two architectures each pick up phenomenal performance gains." Their review mentions a similar patch for Call Of Duty 2.

Yet enter DRM: Sony and pals are so scared of nerds ripping off their signal and trading it peer-to-peer they're going to screw those who spent $3000 on TVs and who can afford and do purchase large amounts of DVDs.

Wasn't a key part of the PS3 delay announcement that Sony had been held up producing PS3s due to wrangling over downsampling content that can't find End-To-End HDCP encryption but they had finally got agreement to drop that aspect.

So, if I read that correctly:

Sony and Blu-Ray (along with the PS3) IS NOT going to screw people who bought a $3000 TV that doesn't have HDMI and HDCP.

Microsoft and HD-DVD (along with Vista and the 360 should it gain an external HD-DVD) ARE going to screw people who bought a $3000 TV without HDMI/DVI-D and HDCP and are going to screw every PC user who's bought a current gen graphics card that doesn't come with an HDCP chip.

The entertaining irony in all this, as I recall, was that Sony were the ones who initially gave the movie industry more of the restrictive terms the industry wanted. Microsoft sided with HD-DVD specifically because it allowed you to do more on your PC with it but that freedom meant the movie firms jumped behind Blu-Ray not HD-DVD and the race was pretty much considered over. Then, once they'd won the get-the-movie-firms race, Sony turns around and says they ARE NOT going to downsample for anyone without end-to-end HDCP - making the product with all the movie firms backing it now the best product for consumers too.

So, by all means accuse the "and pals" part. Even accuse "Microsoft and pals". But, given Sony is outputting to non HDMI analog HD sets just fine, it seems a little unfair to brand them too.

As a gamer and amateur game developer, it's to my advantage that MS has moved in this direction. This may put pressure on the PC retail industry to stop using shitty integrated graphics for game developers and the PC game industry to deal with. From: http://www.firingsquad.com/features/epic_games_rei n_interview/ FiringSquad: What is Epic's feeling about PC game hardware and how will the Unreal engine be part of that? Mark Rein: I wish I could report only good news but that's not the case. [...] Unfortunately the bad side is getting really bad. It is getting harder and harder for the average consumer to buy a computer with a decent graphics chips in it. When I go to major electronics retailers I see that most of the machines being sold are using Intel Integrated graphics - including the vast majority of laptops. Some of the desktop machines don't even have slots for discrete graphics cards which I find personally offensive. Laptops of course are mostly not upgradable so a bad laptop is a bad laptop forever and considering how many people are replacing desktop with laptops this is especially worrisome. It is really sad when you see the moniker "media" or "entertainment" attached to something with Intel Integrated graphics in it. I question the logic of developing dual-core CPUs and saddling them with ultra-low-end graphics especially considering that one of the big benefits of Windows Vista will be a hugely improved graphical user interface that will help improve productivity. There are some seriously expensive desktops and laptops with crappy graphics chips in them - these aren't just the low-priced machines either. Intel salespeople are probably patting themselves on the back for these design wins but the truth is the more successful they are with this strategy the faster they could be killing off the PC games market and nobody has the balls to stand up and cry foul because Intel is so powerful. If people take those machines home and try to play recent PC games on them they're going to have a horrible experience and possibly give up on PC gaming altogether. Users aren't educated in this area but when their new $1,500 PC says "no" to a decent PC game they're going to just assume the PC games market had passed them by. This is sad because the difference in cost the PC manufacturer to put in a decent graphics chip isn't very much.

Whatever happened to 100mhz > 66mhz, and 486 > 386?

Depends whether you want a PCI-Express or AGP card. If you're going AGP, you probably want to check this out.

And a new Video card http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_hdc p_support/default.asp/

From the article:
An ATI representative said: "People will not be able to turn on HDCP through a software patch since the HDCP keys need to be present during the manufacturing. We are rolling out HDCP through OEMs at this time but we have not finalized our retail plans yet."

As I pressed for more information about potential retail plans (i.e. trade-in programs, whether existing boards already have traces for the HDCP hardware where it can be plugged in), I got only a vague response: "We cannot get into more detail at this time, as any further discussion would get into our trade secrets. However, we do promise to give you a full update on our retail plans once they are finalized."

I'm not going to speculate on whether ATI's reticence is because they're trying to downplay a big fiasco, or if they're trying to keep their super generous solution secret to throw off the competition. There's actually no way to know. Well, what about NVIDIA? They were actually very direct: "The boards themselves must be designed with an extra chip when the board is manufactured. The extra chip stores a crypto key, and you cannot retrofit an existing board after the board is produced."

And yet it has 1024x768, and no HDCP support?
Slashdotters seem to have a short memory anyhow. Here's a jogger.

'Halo 2 the game that redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action for millions of gamers worldwide, is set to explode onto PCs exclusively for Windows Vista.

Are you kidding me? Damnit bring back a robust Tribes and make sure Vivendi Universal has nothing to do with it. Console Kiddies and their boxed in Halo.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6122837/index.htm l/ http://www.firingsquad.com/games/top_10_2004/page3 .asp/

CPU bottlenecks between processors can produce 10 fps differences depending on the game, more than enough to see. Often the game will choke and produce slowdowns with differences greater than double between two comparative processors.

Click if you want a current example The bottleneck for the higher resolutions is the videocard. You'd see an even larger difference between FPS in CPU intesive games like BF2, and in future games that'll require more processing. Other benchmarks (such as Tom's Hardware's CPU chart) show a 25% FPS difference between AMD's top of the line and Intel's top of the line. Currently AMD is king, and in a few games the difference is noticeable.
 
Claiming that rich gamers are buying AMD for the underdog factor is stupid, even if there were only 1% differences between the CPU. They buy what's the best. I buy what's fastest for the price, and AMD still wins for the most part in that category.

Actually, this is improvement is a result of new drivers being released by ATI which fixed many of its previous shortcomings.
If you want another review, visit these links form firingsquad:

Original review ATI vs NVIDIA: http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_xgi_mai nstream_video_quality_comparison/

Updated review for ATI with new drivers
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_catalyst_5.13_ video_quality/

Actually, this is improvement is a result of new drivers being released by ATI which fixed many of its previous shortcomings.
If you want another review, visit these links form firingsquad:

Original review ATI vs NVIDIA: http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_xgi_mai nstream_video_quality_comparison/

Updated review for ATI with new drivers
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_catalyst_5.13_ video_quality/

I should have previewed, damnit. The link I wanted to include points to an interview...

One notable bug turned into a features was the A20 Address Line thing.

Really bad example with the airplane, because as long as the off-to-shot time is short enough, it all comes down to the speed of the autofocus. For that the $1000+ DSLRs beat even the $650 Panasonic DMC prosumer line handedly.

Considering my next camera in a year or two will probably be a Canon S80, I'll have to hope the autofocus and aperture capture it. Having practiced with it though, I'll know the controls though to rapidly switch to shutter-priority mode and select at least 1/400th of a second if it's a sunny day. I'd like a prosumer model with image stabilization, but a compact size is more important to me. Taking the time to learn how to use a camera is what matters with any camera, digital or otherwise. Getting to experiment with the digital means I'll know the settings to use to capture a moment. Getting a digital with enough controls to quickly adjust is another matter. The S80 is near the bottom of that scale, but it beats other compacts and super-compacts that force using menus to change the ISO or shot mode.

No, most games won't be CPU limited since higher graphical detail doesn't require more CPU power. If you take a look at new games like Quake 4 and F.E.A.R they are very GPU limited.

Quake 4 @ low resolution:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-c ore_performance/images/amd800.gif

Quake 4 @ high resolution:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-c ore_performance/images/amd6xaa.gif

No, most games won't be CPU limited since higher graphical detail doesn't require more CPU power. If you take a look at new games like Quake 4 and F.E.A.R they are very GPU limited.

Quake 4 @ low resolution:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-c ore_performance/images/amd800.gif

Quake 4 @ high resolution:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-c ore_performance/images/amd6xaa.gif

How about Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2?

A link to the non-castrated version of the article with images, for the lazy among us. Lots of nice ads to look at too! http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_catalyst_5 .13_video_quality/

I'm being conservative with the CPU. Compare the 733MHz to the 3.6GHz in almost any benchmark, and the 3.6 will be at least 3 times as fast. But I didn't claim the 3 cores would make it 9 times as fast.

Now I found some benchmarks for those games tested with cards from a GF4200 to a 6800. Keep in mind that the GF3 was even slower and paired with a 733 chip, not the latest and greatest. Also remember that the 7800 can do twice as many frames as the 6800. So just from the benchmarks alone, the 6800 on Farcry get 83fps at 1024x768, and the 4200 gets 34.5 at 800x600.

I'm not sure we've agreed to this, but I consider the increase in resolution and effects a hard to quantify increase in power. So the fact that the 360 can take an xbox scene and render it in HD with new effects and still get at least 3x the frames makes it 8x as powerful.

For Doom 3 a 6800 Ultra Extreme at 1024x768 High quality gets 100.2fps. A GF4200 Ti at 640x480 Medium quality gets 36.7fps

So taking these fps's and doubling for the 7800, then doubling again because the GF3 was half as powerful, and that appears to show that even with increasing the resolution and effects, the 7800 is 8x as powerful. This still doesn't consider how much worse the fps's would have been with a 733MHz chip.

So if the PC can do 8x better at high res, why can't the 360? If memory bandwidth really is such a bottleneck, what was MS thinking?

I'm being conservative with the CPU. Compare the 733MHz to the 3.6GHz in almost any benchmark, and the 3.6 will be at least 3 times as fast. But I didn't claim the 3 cores would make it 9 times as fast.

Now I found some benchmarks for those games tested with cards from a GF4200 to a 6800. Keep in mind that the GF3 was even slower and paired with a 733 chip, not the latest and greatest. Also remember that the 7800 can do twice as many frames as the 6800. So just from the benchmarks alone, the 6800 on Farcry get 83fps at 1024x768, and the 4200 gets 34.5 at 800x600.

I'm not sure we've agreed to this, but I consider the increase in resolution and effects a hard to quantify increase in power. So the fact that the 360 can take an xbox scene and render it in HD with new effects and still get at least 3x the frames makes it 8x as powerful.

For Doom 3 a 6800 Ultra Extreme at 1024x768 High quality gets 100.2fps. A GF4200 Ti at 640x480 Medium quality gets 36.7fps

So taking these fps's and doubling for the 7800, then doubling again because the GF3 was half as powerful, and that appears to show that even with increasing the resolution and effects, the 7800 is 8x as powerful. This still doesn't consider how much worse the fps's would have been with a 733MHz chip.

So if the PC can do 8x better at high res, why can't the 360? If memory bandwidth really is such a bottleneck, what was MS thinking?