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AMD Wants To Standardize the External GPU (arstechnica.com)
Soulskill writes: In a recent Facebook post, AMD's Robert Hallock hinted that the company is working on a standardized solution for external GPUs. When people are looking to buy laptops, they often want light, portable machines — but smaller devices often don't have the horsepower to effectively run games. Hallock says, "External GPUs are the answer. External GPUs with standardized connectors, cables, drivers, plug'n'play, OS support, etc." The article points out that the Thunderbolt 3 connector already (kinda) solves this problem, providing up to 40Gbps of bandwidth over a single connector. Still, I find external GPUs intriguing. I like the idea of having a light laptop when I'm moving around, but a capable one when I sit down at home to play a game. It'd also be nice to grab my desktop's GPU when I want to game on my laptop in the living room. Standardization may turn out to be important for GPU-makers if VR ends up taking off. The hardware requirements for those devices are fairly steep, and it'd facilitate adoption if graphics power was more easily expandable.
What does it take to get canned as a /. editor?
Did he RTFA or go a week without posting a dup?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The External GPU plays perfectly into Microsoft's Continuum strategy or think about a console where you and a CPU double pack, etc.
As usual, AMD is stuck in the past.
This. My family owned a computer gaming store from 1982 until 2012. After 2011, the bottom just dropped out of the market. Casual games that don't need a big upfront purchase of a game or a fast video card have taken over the market. Even the most hardcore gamers I'm friends with haven't bought a new game in years. Quake 3 was the best FPS so there's no point in buying anything else. Age of Empires II was the best RTS, so again, there's no point in buying anything else. The new SimCity game is terrible compared to the second one. And so on. The gaming market is dead. The new games aren't as good as the games we already own.
Also, you're correct about the XBox not being popular. My parents would go weeks without selling an XBox game.
Seems like trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The weight of a GPU chip and a couple of extra VRAM chips isn’t going to break anyone’s back. The extra weight on a “gaming laptop” usually comes from the extra battery capacity (to support the power sucking GPU), and the fact that the screen itself is usally on the larger side. Plus whatever “bling” they put to make the case look all cool... Any intelligently designed laptop is going to have a shared heat pipe / cooling system that covers the CPU, GPU, and northbridge, so there’s not much to be saved there. I’d venture that the weight of the connector and cover for it, plus the extra hardware to stiffen up the case around that, etc. is probably going to weigh more than the GPU & RAM plus a little bit of extra heat pipe you’re removing. If you have a laptop with a dual embedded / discreet GPU setup, you can even skip the big battery to run on the lower power GPU normally since gamers are probably plugged into AC when they’re playing on the bigger GPU.
Now... If your goal is to sell people who already own a laptop a new GPU module in a couple of years, that makes sense, at least for AMD.
Does someone have timothy's linkedIn? I'm curious what he actually does for a living. It cannot be this.
Good point about XBoxes. I worked as a cable installer for a couple of years, and I never saw one.
Timmy is 8 and lives with his parents. He doesn't need a job.
When he grows up, he's going to make blockbuster movies with his video camera.
I think that it's Hipsters/Millennials who have ruined gaming.
Since they've started getting involved with the industry, we've seen games go from being fun and innovative, like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake and SimCity were, to being dull, unplayable shitfests that aren't worth our time.
Worse, these Hipsters/Millennials have taken gaming from something that was enjoyable and turned it into a political shitshow with their social justice shenanigans.
This has happened to all of the software that Hipsters/Millennials have gotten involved with.
Their awful ideas and UI "designs" have ruined or tarnished Firefox, GNOME, Windows, iOS, OS X, most web sites, and numerous other software products.
They've also chosen to use the worst programming languages around, including JavaScript, PHP, Ruby and Rust. Now we get to deal with the shitty, slow and unmaintainable code they've written. Since they're so "trendy", they move on to the next fad quickly, forcing everyone else to fix the broken shit they've left behind.
I don't know much about the next generation, but I sure as hell hope that they're able to undo all of the damage that the Hipsters/Millennials have managed to do in such a short time.
guess what
I'm a high school comp sci teacher, and not once have I heard a student talk about an XBox, and they constantly talk about computer games. Microsoft's sales claims must be complete BS.
>> It'd also be nice to grab my desktop's GPU when I want to game on my laptop in the living room.
Congratulations: you just invented the home graphics mainframe!
Eh, Alienware still sells external PCI-E expansion bays for their high end laptops for this purpose. They're built to fit the largest cards. Some laptop makers are modularizing the videocards as well. You can technically replace the videocard in certain MSI laptops.
He has a law degree according to his profile. That explains a lot.
I understand external GPU have been possible for a while. And with usb-c and thunderbolt perfectly doable but Intel doesn't want it and won't certify eGPUs on thunderbolt. In a normal market and society this is where competition and regulation steps in favour of consumers and innovation.
Intel has already done the heavy lifting by giving us the Thunderbolt standard that can expose a 40Gbit (or more if you gang connectors) external interface that can transport PCIe to a GPU in a seamless manner.
If AMD wants to work on making the enclosures, cooling, and power supplies more standardized to make plugging in a wide range of GPUs easy then that's great. If they get all NIH and think they can gin up some proprietary connector instead of just using Thunderbolt then you can forget about this entire announcement right now.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
As usual, another special snowflake thinks their hermit-like life is representative of the greater world.
Also, nobody buys thems xboxes because everyone of worth knows how shit they are, and have a PC to play all those "exclusive hits".
Millions of people regularly play resource-intense games.
> Age of Empires II was the best RTS
Was and still is. It's too bad that Microsoft fired all of the Ensemble Studios employees and ripped them off on severance, insurance and other benefits. My old roommate worked there, and Microsoft was so hateful that the stories were almost comical. Well, they would be funny if it wasn't your friend getting screamed at and threatened daily. For months he couldn't sleep and ended-up trying to commit suicide. I'd love to see an updated AoE game, but after what Microsoft did, there's no way the people that made the old game so great would ever help them remake it.
I haven't bought one in over a decade, and even my most hardcore gaming friends I have don't own one. Also, other than Microsoft employees, I have never met someone that has one of those XBox things. They just aren't selling. How about improving your mobile CPUs before working on something that no one wants now. As usual, AMD is stuck in the past.
As I type this there are 11 million users logged in to Steam, the primary source for PC games. There are nearly 2 million players actually in-game right now between the top 10 titles alone.
A market of millions is nothing to sneeze at. I personally would love external graphics to become a proper supportable thing rather than the occasional one-off proprietary setup I can't expect to use with the next model. I have a desktop for gaming and a laptop for portability, but with a proper external GPU option I could just have the laptop and pair it with a GPU-equipped dock for when I'm at home.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
if only express card breakout boxes existed for single link pci-e performance and you could put a video card in, oh wait...
add in the newer high speed buses and breakout boxes...
problem was already solved
Agree with all of the above. The internal political workings at DotSlash(tm) are of interest to the community... and there needs to be discussion, details, secrets, leaks of the photos of staff screwing goats, etc. This sort of stuff is far more interesting than the 5 daily postings of the FBI unlocking the iPhone shit. This site's primary purpose seems to have become aggregating news about the Apple encryption saga.
Not only that, the big "hail mary" of GPU's (virtual reality), turned out to be so much bunk
After years of development...how many Occulus Rift devices actually sold? 2? maybe 3?
2016 is the year of Linux on the desktop. We don't need fancy GPU's to run a command line.
Having the GPU external would decrease cooling needs in the main system as well as me not having to fish cables around a big card with a fridge stuck to the side of it that barely fits in the case. Implementing this properly is a biggie so yeah. Almost should just be the docking stations some computers used to have from the sound of things.
Quake 3 was the best FPS
LOL
Of course they do. And nVidia wants to standardize as well. Unfortunately, they each want their own proprietary scheme to be the standard, so it ain;t gonna happen.
Cue the obligatory xkcd about standards.
I call bullshit. Your friends may not have bought console games in years due to your argument on games being comatose because the console controllers ceased evolving their input quantity, thus putting a stop on gameplay advancement,
but there is still plenty of PC gaming innovation happening thanks to the keyboard. Mount&Blade games, space sim, RTT games in the past 3 or 4 years had great releases, the continuation of great RTS storytelling and some innovation with the ex-Relic team coordinating the Homeworld successors,
FPS games that get advancement beyond the quantitative and response time capacity of console controllers (hybrid building/FPS or crazy shit like Planetstorm),
etc. etc. etc.
The only comatose things are consoles, as they are now mostly copy pasta with games we already played as you say, except with a focus on improving graphics and dicking around with "cinematic experience" because gameplay advancement is down the toilet.
PC gaming is just fine and dandy, with indie devs slowly piling up their revenue of initial smaller games on the road towards AAA conglomeration without any Publishers like EA fucking them up with the contractual "innovation is too risky" BS.
The only thing that's missing is Valve creating a marketing push with SteamOS like Microsoft did in the years it was focused on spreading Windows to every household everywhere via gaming, by fully focusing on helping devs with development teaching, bug fixing help, development tools, and stuffing their SteamOS brand on every video game start screen;
and AMD getting their shit back together by hopefully being the first to implement graphene and giving Intel a giant competitive nudge.
They've sold 20 million XBox One. Your getting the wrong conclusions from your evidence. From 1982-2012, sales went first away from mom&pop stores, and then towards online purchases.
Also, I think you've just gotten older. You get sentimental over games from when you were a kid...Kids don't play Quake anymore, of course they could. The game is dated, the model has been improved upon.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
One of my users was on a big gray Mac Pro, with a fiber card to access the SAN and an AJA card that puts video on the preview/client preview monitors - it's a video card, but a really strange one that acts more as a codec than a traditional video card.
When that machine became a crash-fest I moved him over to a newer Mac Pro trashcan. That fiber card and AJA card can't be put in the trashcan as it lacks PCIe slots. So I got this Magma Thunderbolt PCIe housing. That AJA card working in there beautifully. I doubt the Quadro Pro from his old system would work in that thing (it might - I may have to experiment one day) but I have little doubt a budget GeForce card would work in there.
I could totally plug my ThinkPad W540 into that box and just about any of the newer Macbooks in the building accomplishing what this article is all about.
Still - intentional and standardized would be nice. Especially with all these Mac people in my building - it would be nice to have GPU's in the Thunderbolt monitors we have floating around - it could save us money when buying laptops if we didn't have to worry about which laptop went to who as long as the monitor was able to handle the job.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
So what this sounds like to me is a standardized docking station.
Just put a standard connector in a standard location that passes through the VESA Local Bus (or whatever newfangled thing is popular these days). Then have a docking station with a card slot, install a standard desktop video card, and you're all set. This lets AMD (and others) sell video cards to end users of laptops just like they have always done for desktops.
Now where this could get really interesting is if they do this right, and create something that ends up getting applied not just to laptops, but to tablets and phones.
Proprietary tech under Apple lock and key is not - and frankly should never be even proposed as - a solution to any question or challenge regarding PC design, especially when you're talking about specifying new standards: you might as well suggest using code SCO thinks it wrote while you're at it.
No, the answer when specifying new standards is... to develop NEW standards the whole industry can use, and as the developing body, you get to benefit from leading the charge and being on top. Proprietary hardware and software designs is why Apple's major market today is cellphones, not computers: if they should choose to open the spec for Thunderbolt, that would be one thing, but until then, AMD should be looking for other solutions to this question, such as a dual-link utilizing two USB3 ports, or perhaps a USB3 and eSATA port, both of which are already mature technologies commonly available on many PC's and even laptops.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
I'd just like to add to your extremely insightful comment that anecdotal evidence is clearly the way forward when determining the global demand for something.
>> Quake 3 was the best FPS
> LOL
No, that's the best moba.
Millions of people regularly play resource-intense games.
Where are they? I'm a developer that currently works as the chief evangelist for a reporting company, teach Java at a local community college, host two regular meet-up tech groups, and all of my friends (sadly) are also developers. I talk to hundreds of developers or aspiring developers a month, and I can't remember hearing any of them talk about playing computer games in at least five years.
Years ago, computer games were very popular. I founded my local NetBSD user group in 1994. Despite being a *NIX group of people, we still talked a lot about DOS games and even sponsored a couple of LAN parties to play Doom. Now, even the Microsoft fanboi groups I go to don't even talk about DOS/Windows games, and they use that crap.
Lately they're going for all these crazy niches and "next big things" that usually works out to either being a flop or if it's big, then nVidia can just stroll in from behind with a product once the market is mature. Like an ITX size 175W graphics card and so on. Even when they "win" like with Mantle nobody really cares until it becomes a standard like DirectX12 or Vulkan. Like this, I'm sure AMD will use a ton of money on the standardization effort, then nVidia will come and say "that's neat, here's Maxwell/Pascal in a box" and walk away with 80%+ of the market AMD built up.
And for all those hoping for VR to save the day, it rode the 3D TV hype wave. Now consumers have mostly rejected it and 4K is all the rage, people don't like wearing glasses and helmets even less. And Google Glass totally failed to make the cyborg look seem cool. I think the people behind it sold out to Facebook at just the right time and really... it's a $599 accessory for people with a $1000+ computer, that should be a hint. AMD won't recover until they get back to making good CPUs/GPUs and stop flailing around from one hare-brained scheme to the next.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You can already do this with a mini-itx setup, why buy a laptop if not for portability? Having to lug around a huge external GPU sort of defeats the purpose.
don't forget to also manufacture a giant red vibrating horse dildo
I believe it uses the new Intel Thunderbutt interface
The people who sink their time into resource intensive games are not your peers any more
You're old
lots of people play video games, including resource-intensive pc games. I will use the same argument you did to "prove" my point: all my friends do.
I'm in my 40's and my 'device that does it all' is my cell phone. I hardly get on my laptop anymore. This may actually bolster a case for external graphics cards through; With MS continuum and an external graphics card I could play a lot higher end games that I practically can on my phone.
Your experience does not match the overall trend.
PC Gaming Market is Estimated to Grow To $35 Billion by 2018 [REPORT] There's a nice graph at showing how the PC games industry has doubled since 2009.
Translation: I'm getting older and so are my friends. But I remember the good old days.
In fact, more people than ever play games now. (alotofthoseareonmobilephonesbutstill)
Did you miss the part where you don't lug around a huge external GPU? The idea is that you'd be able to take your laptop to class and take notes or whatever with all kinds of battery life, then when you get home you plug in the external GPU for some gaming.
You're kidding, right?
Hardcore gamers do this so that they can bring the laptop without having to bring the GPU. They bring the GPU to the LAN parties, but not to the coffee house, or to work, or the living room, or the back yard. The alternative is to have a laptop + a desktop, but then they must keep the two in sync.
Thunderbolt 3 is fierce and could do it. The issue is always market, even with standardization.
Meanwhile we have morons like Palmer Luckey attacking Apple; basically the kingmaker in pushing to market modular, externalized resources like Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C.
I don't play much either, too many real life things to get done. That doesn't mean I don't want to...
That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. Minecraft made Notch millions long before it was ever ported to a console. Kerbal Space Program. Your "group" must be cloistered dopes or you don't listen very well.
Hmm, how about: "AMD: the Cyrix of microprocessor manufacturers..."
So future predictions are now considered trends...?
I see lots of people here commenting and bitching that this is a horrible idea. I, however, am apparently the target audience for this very device.
Right now I'm typing this up on my tiny little 10 inch netbook. I travel around the country very frequently with this thing for casual browsing from hotel to hotel. However, when I'm at the office, I have a full keyboard, mouse, and 22" monitor hooked up to this thing. Am I carrying around a bulky monitor around the country? Nope. But when I'm in the office and docked in, I have these resources available to me.
Enhanced GPUs are for far more than just gaming these days. For me, besides casual browsing on the go, the laptop also serves as a portable hard drive to dump photos on that I take with me. When I get back to the office, Lightroom and Photoshop come into play for editing. Both of these applications are now heavily GPU accelerated. While I have a decent desktop at home for editing that has a nice beefy GPU in it, it would be great to have closer to that same performance experience in the office when docked into the large screen and big keyboard/mouse.
Your experience does not match the overall trend.
PC Gaming Market is Estimated to Grow To $35 Billion by 2018 [REPORT] There's a nice graph at showing how the PC games industry has doubled since 2009.
"These statistics clearly paint a promising picture of overall gaming industry. While PC, mobile and 3 Consoles games are becoming instrumental for the projected growth, some of the leading online gambling sites, such as Casino.com, are also making a significant contribution to this growth."
What are "3 Consoles games"? The entire article was written by a bot, and the bottom of the graphic is clipped off where it would show that at least part of it is a projection out to 2018. The article was written in March 2015, so what, at least the last three points on the graphic are just made up?
Ah, an unreal fanboy I presume. Why are you people allowed to live?
Their update process is broken, and I don't know anyone that can get the games that they paid for to work.
Sure thing, retard.
I haven't bought one in over a decade, and even my most hardcore gaming friends I have don't own one. Also, other than Microsoft employees, I have never met someone that has one of those XBox things.
Okay, but the PS4 is doing great. Maybe you should buy one of those. I hear there are roughly 20 good games for it by now.
Yelling "get off my lawn" only works if you know what you're talking about. Bullshit, by the way... Plenty of people play serious games on computers.
Holy crap, 15 years of doing only this and 73 connections. That explains a whole lot.
Agree. The fellow is out of touch.
Apparently, he is 10 years old.
http://fairlyoddparents.wikia....
But I don't think that is the Timmy we are speaking of.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"and I don't know anyone that can get the games that they paid for to work." That one's easy: You know 0 people who use Steam. Chances are also good that you know 0 people altogether.
Right now, I can buy an entire desktop computer with an i5-2500 on ebay for $120. For another $130, you can get a GTX 950, and the system can play any current game beautifully. So that's $250 for an entire non-half-assed gaming solution, which would be useful for many other things around the house if you choose.
Even if you have a laptop with a comparably fast CPU - chances are you don't, and why would you? - you will almost certainly pay more than $250 for the clunky breakout box that allows you to play modern games, and the overall results will be worse. So I don't see this kind of kludge making anyone very rich.
Add an external CPU. Get more cores with higher processing power.
Add external memory. (Probably not needed, several years back could have benefit.)
Add more storage. (Opps, been done forever.)
Starting to sound like a remote terminal that has access to local OS/files.
What's to keep in sync if the two machines serve two mostly orthogonal purposes? In the age of the cloud, that sort of thing should be a total non-problem. You shouldn't worry about the state of your two PCs anymore than you would worry about the state of n+1 mobiles and streamers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The DDR memory bus is right there, already a nice standard right beside the CPU and slots on mother boards.
mod parent up! (god, I miss mod points now)
> Also, other than Microsoft employees, I have never met someone that has one of those XBox things.
Really? Do you only know boring people ? MS sold about 35 million XBox 1st gen, 85 million XBos 360 and 20 millions XBox One. [1]
That figure includes 12 millions XBox One in the North America. That is about 10% of US Household. So in all likelyhood, there are multiple on your block.
[1] http://www.vgchartz.com/analys...
I know someone with Steam. Me. Of course I play no Steam games since the damn thing doesn't work. I can't play any of the games I paid for.
Having one of these would be great for training / running your own personal neural network. Instead of beaming all of your data to a 3rd party you have the work done locally (or series of GPUs even...)
I can't play any of the games I paid for.
Alternatively, 100% of games you paid for work perfectly.
That's the weird thing with 0/0.
Tenderbutt
Having a store losing business means that games aren't popular? I guess that means that since HMW and BestBuy are down in business it's because nobody is interested in music or movies, too.
For PC, fewer people but physical media, but gaming is still alive and well. Like music or movies has moved towards iTunes/Play/etc, so too are most PC games on Steam or Origin.
AMD promoting a specialized connector for a third-party GPU reminds me of the short lived VESA local bus connector in the early 1990's. It became unnecessary as soon as a general purpose expansion bus (PCI) became available which was fast enough to support gaming GPUs.
With the arrival of Thunderbolt 3, it looks like AMD's idea is pretty much dead on arrival.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Did you miss the part where you can already do this with a separate gaming rig?
I mean if you have to GO HOME to use something then what the fuck is the laptop for?
just buy two systems
This will have important knock-on effects for virtualisation users, as they will have to improve the drivers to support hotplug, which will allow virtual machine desktops to be migrated, where they are currently pinned due to requirements to have a physical GPU mapped through pcie virtualisation.
Right now, I use several virtual desktops, but the two I use for CAD running Windows and Linux are pinned to a specific host and GPU, and I lose the functionality of snapshots and migration, effectively reducing my kvm systems functionality to that of a primitive LPAR. If the drivers were to support GPU hotplug, then I could simply "unplug" the GPU, save the system state, and everything would work like all my other VMs.
I don't really need or care about external GPUs for my notebook, but I'm enthusiastic about the hotplug support they'll need to add.
-puddingpimp
I'm having a really hard time figuring out any usability benefits?
- Laptop-oriented gamers typically want a gaming laptop because they play their games in a variety of locations. So now, if I want to play Civ on a break at the coffeeshop I have to lug a giant ugly box around and look like that guy from the meme with the full desktop at Arby's? As a member of this category, I can assure AMD that I'll never buy unless you somehow cancel all the other lines of discrete GPU laptops.
- Laptop Users + Desktop gamers lose all the benefits of a desktop, such as a large screen and a full size keyboard, and take on the desktop's largest negative feature - non-portability. And if the Razer is any indication, it costs more to get this less functional set up. And they could have just bought a budget laptop for their work use.
Unless someone creates a way to make the GPU box as non-intrusive as the laptop itself, I don't ee this ever being compelling.
I'm sure it's been considered but at least from a programming perspective I'd be more concerned about the latency on the port as regards the ability to process realtime high framerate graphics through there. When I was doing CUDA programming the most difficult (that is, time consuming) part was getting data from main memory to the graphics card. Would the Thunderbolt interface be as fast at shuttling data from main memory to an external graphics card? 40Gbps is great and all, but is the latency low enough?
Data from 2009 to 2015 is not a future preduction.
3 consoles = XBOX, PS4, Wii U.
The graphic isn't clipped for me (I'm using Firefox 44.0.2). The axis is labeled from 2009 to 2018. Here is the raw image if you want to look at it that way. Your confusion probably stems from not seeing the axis. The graph shows both historical data and projected data. Since the discussion is about the historical data, you can debate if the future predictions are "made up" or not, but it makes no difference to the point at hand. The AC I replied to was saying that PC gaming is dying, which didn't match my experience. So I found this chart to see who was right.
You could certainly do it that way - dedicated PC for games, laptop for everything else. Some people find that inconvenient to maintain multiple computers. And your UID is low enough that I am guessing you can recognize that not everything is in the cloud. :-)
I'm at a LAN party, and I wanna show something I am working on - my recent Photoshop projects, something I am coding in Visual Studio, an object I am designing in Blender... I don't wanna install all that on 2 machines and keep them in sync. Maybe I don't keep those files on the cloud. Maybe I don't feel like dual-booting Windows and Linux on both boxes. Plus: I just paid for 2 Windows licenses, and 2 sets of hardware. Blech. Gimme one machine that can do it all, and if I can detach the hardware I don't need then *BAM* you have the best of both worlds. Portability and power. Also, the power gamer prefers the laptop w/ external video card because it is still easier than lugging around a tower case.
The real trade-off here is, does the hardcore gamer get enough value out of the laptop+exteranl GPU -vs- the desktop? They probably can't upgrade the CPU on that laptop, and the HDD is probably smaller and more expensive. That's where having the separate laptop + desktop pays off.
There are a lot of people out there with laptops, All In Ones, and small form factor desktops out there who are stuck with crummy integrated graphics. They have no way to add a bigger power supply or a giant two slot PCI-E graphics card, so a solution like this would be a godsend to them! Plug it in when you want to play PC games, and leave it disconnected when you want to be portable.
So, where do I buy one?
But the last one I bought sucked. I bought a better Nvidia card and it's so much easier to set up, and cross platform works better.
You must have missed Battlezone, Battlezone II, Clive Barker's Undying, Dark Forces, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam II, Shadow Warrior, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, Star Trek: Elite Force II, System Shock, System Shock 2, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, TRON 2.0 and Unreal, which are all vastly superior FPS games. Even Halo is better than Q3.
Also to a UT player everything in Quake III felt like slow motion with shit weapons and poorly designed levels. Quake III was nothing more than a tech demo and the people who play it are a joke.
Quake 3 was the best FPS
LOL
No, that's the best moba.
I wouldn't know, since it was only released in Japan on Dreamcast.
You're confusing single player games with multiplayer games like quake.
You get sentimental over games from when you were a kid.
As I've gotten older, I'm less inclined to pay $60 for a PC game. I can wait a few years to buy the same title for 20 bucks or less on Steam. I may have even replaced the video card to play the game in its AAA glory.
I wouldn't be surprised to see fast paced fps games revive, publishers have worn out interest in the slow modern 'realism' shooters by releasing them every year.
He was part of Dice, he came in with them and left with them.
You're confusing single player games with multiplayer games like quake.
Many FPS have single-player and multiplayer game modes. If the game doesn't have a good single-player mode, I'm not interested. I rarely ever play multiplayer mode unless it has a sniper rifle and I can snipe as I run around. Nothing infuriates an opponent than a head shot on the run.
When BizX bought Slashdot, they brought only a portion of the existing Slashdot staff with them. That included one of the three editors and one of the four engineers. I'm not sure about the other departments. I'd guess they intended to fill those roles with people from their own organization, but I don't know anything about how they're going about it.
I never met or talked with any of the BizX folks, so I can't tell you much more than that. We editors were the bottom of the decision-making totem pole for the site, so I didn't know about the acquisition until it was done.
Even if I'm no longer affiliated, I still love the site and the community. I'll keep contributing until I see good reason not to.
Yes, I've found another job -- I start on Monday, actually. Really looking forward to it. :)
It's almost like somebody, somewhere, might want to only buy one system. How absurd!
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
While I disagree in general that the gaming market is dead — certainly the decline of brick & mortar stores tracks to some degree with the decline of games being distributed on physical media — I do agree that Quake 3 is the best FPS.
Negative; I started at Slashdot in December, 2007. Dice didn't buy it until Fall 2012.
Even Halo is better than Q3.
I was almost taking you seriously there.
Apple do own the IP to the Lightning connector though.
"Also, you're correct about the XBox not being popular. My parents would go weeks without selling an XBox game."
What a dumb statement. Of course they'd go weeks - brick and mortar game shops are dying. People who own XBox One and PS4 systems are using digital distribution for the most part.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
So, you work for another thing that is dying, and suddenly think your experience is representative of the masses.
God damn you people are stupid.
"high school comp sci teacher"
You can stop talking now.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Indeed. Also very convenient for the increasingly rare LAN party. Man I miss those.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
You want to make it a standard?
Don't encumber it with patents.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Good luck and best wishes
Nothing infuriates an opponent than random missing words in your sentence.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
The bottom dropped out of retail computer games, because millions of people switched to the online distribution methods: Xbox and Playstation have their own online store, and for pc you can buy umpteen thousand of games through steam, at prices retail stores can't compete with. People still buy plenty of games - the big franchises can sell for literally hundreds of millions of dollars in pre-orders alone... they just don't need gamestop anymore. All those 'hidden' gamers still buy powerful graphics cards.
And you're confusing the term "FPS" with "multiplayer games".
Also, most of those single player games have multiplayer too.
At least Halo is a game.
The dell uses some proprietary connection. At least when they first demo'ed it. AMD is trying to uncouple external GPU from the manuf of the laptop.
...AMD cant manage driver support for the life of the laptop.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
I'm into data science and machine learning. GPUs = the only game in town. However, I need to use laptops for a lot of my computing, and buying a dedicated machine learning box can be very expensive, usually non-mobile, and super task-specific. If I could buy a decent external GPU, I would totally happy spend $1000 on the thing. I'd probably also use it to play games occasionally. Scientific computing is really something that needs the ability to add GPU grunt to the processing.
Wow, someone being nice on Slashdot. :).
My hat is off to you, sir
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
2018 is, you dick.
This is true as far as it goes, but misses the point that the GPU connection at that point is PCI-E. You can pick and choose your GPU in the Dell/Alienware solution and it works really well. Yes, the connector is proprietary, but that's because there were no standards for external, pluggable PCI-E.
For the record, I have an Alienware 15 that is my primary box and I love it. I have the external box (Amplifier) with a GTX-980 in it right now for heavy lifting on games. It's really nice when I'm on the road to be able to still play games with the integrated GTX-970m, but then play my heavy games at home on the amp. In addition, it acts like a dock of sorts with 4 USB sockets in the back... so I have a good keyboard, gaming mouse and Logitech G13 attached permanently to it. I do wish it had integrated gig-e but I can understand why they didn't do that.
When I am at HOME I use a watt sucking 10 fan dual GPU box to play games. That wont fit in a suitcase or I would take it with me.
Thanks for posting! Congrats on the new job!
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