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ATI Radeon 9700 Dissected
Bender writes "The guys who laid out the future of real-time graphics a while back have now dissected ATI's Radeon 9700 chip. Their analysis breaks down performance into multiple components--fill rate, occlusion detection, pixel shaders, vertex shaders, antialiasing--and tests each one synthetically before moving on to the usual application tests like SPECviewperf and UT 2003. You can see exactly how this chip advances the state of the art in graphics, piece by piece. Interesting stuff."
Bad kaaarma duuude. YOu only get twOoo posts... a day.... unless you log out.... we're geniususues
what's in this whole ATI thing for me? By the way, I don't believe in your saviour.
Last Friday night, my friends Mike (Locke Lionheart, chaotic good thief), Adam (Alyon the chaotic evil Mage), Mark (Dustaine Mave, the lawful good Paladin), Lee (Kipisficus the Chaotic Neutral hobbit fighter), Justin (Lord Zio, Lawful Evil psionic), and I all gathered in my parents' basement, bringing 6 24-packs of Big K Cola, $160 in Pizza money (they can deliver to a small window), an entire box full of AD&D 2nd edition manuals and other Dungeons and Dragons necessities, and 20 hits of high-powered blotter acid, along with 3oz. of weed for calming us down.
The paramount item in our cache was a PC with all the Rhapsody albums (ripped from our purchased albums) in raw WAV format on it, set to loop infinitely under Winamp. We all wore cloaks, armor, and holy symbols as appropriate for our D&D characters, some of us carrying swords we bought at flea markets.
We locked the door, threw a circle of salt around our table to keep the demons away, cranked Rhapsody's Rain of 1000 Flames up on Justin's (Lord Zio) monstrous Logitech Z-540 speakers to the point where we had to shout to hear each other clearly, and dropped two hits of acid apiece.
We began with the usual start in the town, buying equipment and visiting the inn, and within 30 minutes, during "The Wizard's Last Rhymes," our dingy and dark basement became an ancient forest full of kobolds, goblins, and elves. The DM started losing his mind within the hour of the hallucinations, and we were no longer rolling dice, but slaying ogres with our swords and spells! Luca Turilli came riding in on a horse with a sword and a shield, and joined our party as an NPC to fight the evil sorceror, King Diamond! We ventured through the Carpathian forests and into the darkest dungeons in giant castles and forbidden crypts with Luca, fighting countless abominations with a brave heart, as the music of Rhapsody filled us with true reality!
After we vanquished King Diamond, we freed Fabio and Alex, and partied out for hours, playing air-lutes and amazing each other with cantrips and Tenser's floating discs. Exhausted, we found our massive dragon pipe and smoked about an ounce of weed between us, and the hallucinations began to die down. The basement laid in ruins, with boxes slashed open, and a few charred D&D books lying over in the corner -- explaining the poison gas released by a dragon that made us cough. Taking a break and trying to remember if we were dreaming or not in our post-hallucination haze, we ordered a few pizzas and gave the pizzaman all our money, as we were unable to count. We drank 2 24-packs of Big K cola, pissing in the corner and defecating in the crawlspaces (wiping with notebook paper) as we continued to smoke weed. While listening to "Dargor, Shadowlord of The Black Mountain," we decided to take our last hits of acid and begin again!
The next part was a haze, but we know Rhapsody was there the whole time! I don't remember much, but I do remember this woman with pierced breasts wielding swords, and Luca Turilli fighting valiantly against an evil Will O' Wisp! We came to at what we realized was Sunday afternoon after two days of hallucinations and sleeplessness. Sliced-up pizza boxes laid strewn across the floor, an entire makeshift shelf full of boxes was chopped up with an axe and collapsed all over the place, and there were burnmarks from more than one fire started. The water heater was also punctured, and Mike had a really nasty cut with blood all over his Stratovarius shirt -- the chain mail was the only thing that saved him -- and Adam was either bruised or burnt. The monitor was broken by blunt trauma, but the speakers continued blasting Rhapsody's "Legendary Tales" at a deafening volume. The air reeked strongly of fire smoke, marijuana, urine, and feces; our ears rang horribly, and we were exhausted and injured -- just as it would in medieval times, and we felt satisfied!
When my parents got back home from their weekend quest to the Rockies, they were infuriated and told me that I really needed to get a job or go back to college, and move out -- but they're too afraid to do anything, and life resumed to normalcy the next week, as we saved up our parents' money for our next Rhapsody adventure!!!
Does anyone else have anything similar to share? Any stories of mixing Rhapsody with either D&D, RPGs, and/or LSD are welcome!
Rhapsody is the truly the greatest band to bring fantasy to life!
Fuck you man!!!
.any way fuck Ed and Ein.
Cowboy Bebop is cool. Spike is awsome. Faye is hot. Jet is badass. Ed and Ein are kinda funny. .
Get over yourself; get over death. It is not like innocent people dying is some new phenomenon. It has been happening for a long time. Slashdot and the Internet are here because of it.
Your priorities suck. You will die. I will die. It is just a question of when. The bodies you whine about are already dead.
Live in the now man. And don't let me catch you speaking ill of Cowboy Bebop again!!!!!!