NO. If I wanted glitzy-ass social networking, I'd go for some. And here I recently got plenty riled up with these people enough for...
1) Tying Skype updates to Windows Store (comes with free complaints over decided inability to use far earlier versions... you know, without bloat, but that's a given) 2) Taking away themes (no option to white and blue Skype was a pain when by necessity working in a dark room in the middle of the night with a dark theme), followed by... 3) Giving me the option of trying a newfangled Skype on the PC (which actually did have a nice dark theme option included)... whilst making it impossible to turn off graphic emoticons, since I'm getting old and prefer my smiley faces to look like someone's fallen onto their side after drinking too much.:| This reminds me too much of the days when I started noticing a worrying trend with MSN Messenger way back when, hit Trillian for my multi-platform needs and never thought too much of it, until I spied my brothers using it some years later. Graphic/animated emoticons had not only growing in number, but in size too. 4) I forget, tacos for everyone. 5) Bloat. (Hey, I remembered.)
Sadly, I suppose I can only blame myself for jinxing it upon trying the new Skype on the PC, thinking that at least they couldn't possibly frak up Skype on Android. More. But then I keep forgetting that MS seems to be a late middle-aged man trying to wear baggy jeans like they just became fashionable and never understanding why people laugh and cry.
Screen size has nothing to do with how much Video RAM you want. You're storing textures in that memory. The more memory you've got the more textures you can store and the higher resolution they can be. Being able to max out the texture detail in a game makes a huge difference in appearance.
To clarify: I was referring to those TFT screens that tend to have a max 1280x[whatnot] resolution in any case, not necessarily larger screens. If I don't have need for resolutions higher than that, then I would wager I do not really need a whole lotta video RAM. A smaller amount of GDDR5 makes far more sense in that situation than an overabundance of GDDR3.
Also, you'd be surprised what a difference just a graphics card upgrade can make in frame rates. Maximum PC ran an article a while back where they upgraded some old machines... if I remember correctly one of them got something like a 70% FPS improvement from a new card.
I wouldn't be too surprised! Still, even today it sometimes (strangely enough!) comes down to the CPU or RAM being the limiting factor, but it isn't necessarily the hardware's fault...
What's the point with 2Gb of GDDR3, or even 1Gb in that price segment? Even a 512MB HD 4850 is good enough for the people most likely to buy it (aka people with no fancy, high-resolution wide screen TFT monitors) -- it's certainly good enough to play stuff at at 1280x[whatnot]. (Yes, hello, it is I.) In that range, with this card, I'd wager the bottlenecks'll just be elsewhere; the CPU, the RAM, heck, maybe the GPU's memory bandwidth. Even if the GPU were the source of the bottleneck, just get a HD 4870 than this, really.
It's nicely marketed, of course, much like selling Doc Legit's Miracle Snake Oil, which'll put hair on your head again, cure your hemorroids, caffeine addiction and make your keg into a six pack again.:P
My immediate thought upon reading this article was that the commissioner is German - and as you've already more or less said, we all know how Germany's been regarding violent video games in the past. It's almost as hilarious as Carmageddon with green-blooded zombies.
Furthermore, I'm annoyed that the writer had to go and say "Europeans were riled..." - wtf? Unless they're referring to Germans alone, BLEEEEP. We're not the States. Don't lump Europe into one mold! We've got a bunch of different cultures in the EU with different takes on Christianity in many of the member countries. Comparing Germany and Finland, I can tell you Finns don't get this popular hysteria. I can't remember the last time I've seen or heard of anyone blaming video games for violence over here. I'd rather blame parents and educators. I could blame genetics, too. And I could blame the country, as the more people one has in a country, the likelier it gets that violent crime happens. (Oh, all right, that last bit was just as bad saying "Europeans were riled..."
This was a brat-from-a-Nordic-welfare-state broadcast. Back to you, Jim.
Slashdot Mirror
NO. If I wanted glitzy-ass social networking, I'd go for some. And here I recently got plenty riled up with these people enough for...
1) Tying Skype updates to Windows Store (comes with free complaints over decided inability to use far earlier versions... you know, without bloat, but that's a given) :| This reminds me too much of the days when I started noticing a worrying trend with MSN Messenger way back when, hit Trillian for my multi-platform needs and never thought too much of it, until I spied my brothers using it some years later. Graphic/animated emoticons had not only growing in number, but in size too.
2) Taking away themes (no option to white and blue Skype was a pain when by necessity working in a dark room in the middle of the night with a dark theme), followed by...
3) Giving me the option of trying a newfangled Skype on the PC (which actually did have a nice dark theme option included)... whilst making it impossible to turn off graphic emoticons, since I'm getting old and prefer my smiley faces to look like someone's fallen onto their side after drinking too much.
4) I forget, tacos for everyone.
5) Bloat. (Hey, I remembered.)
Sadly, I suppose I can only blame myself for jinxing it upon trying the new Skype on the PC, thinking that at least they couldn't possibly frak up Skype on Android. More. But then I keep forgetting that MS seems to be a late middle-aged man trying to wear baggy jeans like they just became fashionable and never understanding why people laugh and cry.
Screen size has nothing to do with how much Video RAM you want. You're storing textures in that memory. The more memory you've got the more textures you can store and the higher resolution they can be. Being able to max out the texture detail in a game makes a huge difference in appearance.
To clarify: I was referring to those TFT screens that tend to have a max 1280x[whatnot] resolution in any case, not necessarily larger screens. If I don't have need for resolutions higher than that, then I would wager I do not really need a whole lotta video RAM. A smaller amount of GDDR5 makes far more sense in that situation than an overabundance of GDDR3.
Also, you'd be surprised what a difference just a graphics card upgrade can make in frame rates. Maximum PC ran an article a while back where they upgraded some old machines... if I remember correctly one of them got something like a 70% FPS improvement from a new card.
I wouldn't be too surprised! Still, even today it sometimes (strangely enough!) comes down to the CPU or RAM being the limiting factor, but it isn't necessarily the hardware's fault...
What's the point with 2Gb of GDDR3, or even 1Gb in that price segment? Even a 512MB HD 4850 is good enough for the people most likely to buy it (aka people with no fancy, high-resolution wide screen TFT monitors) -- it's certainly good enough to play stuff at at 1280x[whatnot]. (Yes, hello, it is I.) In that range, with this card, I'd wager the bottlenecks'll just be elsewhere; the CPU, the RAM, heck, maybe the GPU's memory bandwidth. Even if the GPU were the source of the bottleneck, just get a HD 4870 than this, really.
:P
It's nicely marketed, of course, much like selling Doc Legit's Miracle Snake Oil, which'll put hair on your head again, cure your hemorroids, caffeine addiction and make your keg into a six pack again.
...start running around in circles, screaming. I do wonder what they'll make of this. ;)
Shouldn't they be covering the entry point instead?
My immediate thought upon reading this article was that the commissioner is German - and as you've already more or less said, we all know how Germany's been regarding violent video games in the past. It's almost as hilarious as Carmageddon with green-blooded zombies. Furthermore, I'm annoyed that the writer had to go and say "Europeans were riled ..." - wtf? Unless they're referring to Germans alone, BLEEEEP. We're not the States. Don't lump Europe into one mold! We've got a bunch of different cultures in the EU with different takes on Christianity in many of the member countries. Comparing Germany and Finland, I can tell you Finns don't get this popular hysteria. I can't remember the last time I've seen or heard of anyone blaming video games for violence over here. I'd rather blame parents and educators. I could blame genetics, too. And I could blame the country, as the more people one has in a country, the likelier it gets that violent crime happens. (Oh, all right, that last bit was just as bad saying "Europeans were riled ..."
This was a brat-from-a-Nordic-welfare-state broadcast. Back to you, Jim.