We had a tradition in my family, we unwrapped one present each on christmas eve. my dad kept hinting that I should unwrap the big box up front. I did. It had an NES in it.
My dad passed on opening one of his presents so i could open another one of mine. it had Wrecking Crew in it.
My father and I spent the next several hours alternating between two-player wrecking crew and super mario brothers, until mom made us go to bed because santa wasn't coming as long as I was up.
Actually I did stop playing wow to play d3. for like 3 or 4 weeks.
really though, it's just... it's just time. the game is a fantastic game, one of the best ever made, but it's been the same thing with new coats of paint for almost a decade now. you can only do this same dance so many times before you sit up, ask yourself "what else is there", and wander off.
I was in a world top 80 guild in vanilla. I personally was the highest DPS on the server for a good while. It was a 7-day-a-week job, but I was young and my GF (now wife) raided with me so it was doable. we both burnt out about the same time the rest of the guild did, it colapsed in on itself about the time we realized that the imminent expansion would completely negate everything we'd done. and it did. complete burnout. left the game for 6 months at least.
raided with a semi-serious raiding guild in TBC. I fought my way back up into a server-best guild again by the end of the next expansion (wrath is still the best thing they ever made imo), just in time for it to all repeat again.
didn't bother raiding cata. same song and dance again.
haven't even SEEN most of mop, i mostly just level alts now. dungeon finder circa level 15 to 55, and questing in northrend and cataclysm for nostalgic purposes, that's all the game is to me anymore, a time sink for nostalgic purposes. like putting weekend at bernies on the tv while you're cleaning the house.
I'm pretty sure that putting limits on the interstate commerce clause is exactly what Chief Justice did in the recent affordable care act case.
read up on it. in the furor over "omg he betrayed conservatives everywhere he's a villain! lynch him!" hysteria, the true legacy of his phrasing of the majority decision was pretty much overlooked.
I don't doubt that it works. I have a previous version of integrated intel graphics (yes I am aware of the advancements of the HD2000/3000/4000 series in comparison) on this laptop, and -can- game with the settings turned down... way down.
that said, I think my (somewhat cynical) "we are as good as a 6 year old card!" comments are pretty appropriate. Tom's hardware ranks the HD4000 roughly on par with the nvidia 6800 ultra (released in 2004) or the 8600GT (released in 2006).
the 8600gt was a fine midrange card, and can still run today's games, albiet at reduced resolution and details. if all you're looking for is the ability to run a game, period, these chips will work, but I can't really say they'd do much better than a console (the ps3 gpu is essentially an nvidia gtx 7800, and the 360 gpu is similar, only with unified shaders), and again they don't hold a candle to even modest dedicated cards today.
in a laptop, I might be interested. On the desktop, which is what the chips being reviewed are for, I can't see much use for these things when it comes to gaming (which, again, is their big selling point right now). if you're building a desktop machine you expect to do any gaming on, and the extra $100 for, say, a gts 450 or something like that is a budget breaker, maybe you should be saving up an extra month.
Pretty much until the sandy bridge era, integrated graphics were completely unusable for gaming, and they are still years behind dedicated cards.
Your statement that "90% of folks either of these is good enough." is true, but misleading. It is true that the extent of desktop/laptop gaming that most people are interested in maxes out at farmville (or whatever the new facebook gaming trend is, I certainly don't pay attention), and they do their gaming on their phone, tablet or console.
These articles however are written towards the community that constructs their own PCs, or at the very least is quite picky about what is inside their machines. You don't read these articles unless you care about such things. From that perspective, for the majority of the target audience of TFA links, these graphics performance of either brand is hardly good enough for any sort of main machine build.
Ironic statement, since the main selling point of the chip being reviewed here is its integrated graphics.
Which I find just silly really. These are fine chips to build a PC for your little cousin who surfs the web and maybe plays world of warcraft. for any real build, integrated graphics, for all their advancements, still read like: Intel: "Our new HD4000 graphics are nearly as fast as a mainstream card from 8 years ago!" AMD: "HAH, our new chip's graphics cores are as fast as a mainstream card from 6 years ago! we're two years of obsolecense better!"
even a $100 modern dedicated card will whallop either of these chips solutions.
you realize that attitudes like yours and GPs are exactly what turns prospective linux neophytes off, right?
For an every-day user, Linux has just as many problems as windows. the problems are just completely different. Source: I use both linux and windows every day. typing this on a linux laptop for pete's sake.
For the OP's concerns, linux very well may be his best option, but telling him that he's been playing in the little kid's sandbox is very nearly as counterproductive as telling him that he's a retard, as GP did.
of course not. that's part of the conspiracy. that's how you know it's the truth! the only way it could be MORE truth is if there was evidence directly contrary to the conspiracy, because that'd have to be planted evidence. lack of evidence is just THEM being tricky.
my 5g ipod with rockbox did between 10 and 11 hours playing -q4 (~128kbps) vorbis last time I tested it, which was really at least 3 years ago, probably better now. I know they've done improvements to the codec implimentation since then.
the same 5g ipod playing similar bitrate MP3, tested around the same time, was better by about 2 hours.
I'm not sure what qualifies as "guzzling", but I doubt I'm ever going to listen to my ipod for more than 11 hours without recharging it, especially considering I keep it plugged into a lighter socket in my car pretty much full time now.
I for one look forward to ubitiquous 1ms ping times in the future, where the electrical circuits in the router are actaully slower than the data transfer. hah.
I never used the earlier versions of unity. Maybe they were horrible. But unity in 12.04? Honestly I like it a lot. It feels modern, like something the look-and-feel design guys at Apple or MS might be proud of, without feeling flashy and bells-and-whistles "because we could" (cinnamon, I'm looking in your direction).
If somebody hated unity because it replaced your beloved gnome2, well, use debian then in all its gnome2 glory. I do occasionally (TAILS usb stick) and it's a fine user experience, if a bit sterile and old fashioned. for a modern every-day user experience, be it browsing, email, pdf reading, eclipse development, whatever, I really do dig unity (at least the 12.04 flavor).
quite honestly, in all truth, modern western MMOs (fuck that eastern masochism-as-an-mmo shit) are way better than trying to beat a 13 year old who has been off of school all summer at call of duty. kids today are inhuman, I swear.
I'll get my revenge though, by the time my own spawn is 13 years old, this current crop of kids will be in their mid-late 20s, and my boy will avenge his daddy! avenge I say!
Every FPS game I've played on both Console and PC (when available for both, obviously), I enjoyed immensely more on PC, simply because I didn't feel like I was fighting both the damn physical and virtual interfaces just to play the game.
I think the GP is referring to the fact that once we had a high resolution TV spec, pretty much all panel manufactuers decided that "what's good for TVs is good for computers" and no longer make any higher resolution than 1920x1080 unless you're willing to spend close to $1000 or more.
I see no reason to expect they'll do otherwise in the future, so any future TV resolution spec has immediate implications on future computer monitor resolutions.
most people, myself included, complain because 1080 vertical lines of resolution is a regression from where we were headed in the mid-2000s. all of a sudden, circa 2009 or 2010, 1080 vertical lines of resolution was the maximum you could get, no matter what monitor size you purchased, unless you were willing to spend over $1000 on a monitor. It's like every panel manufactuer in existance decided to just quit. all of them were constantly increasing pixel density every few years and then they all quit. just... gave up. either that or moved to smartphones.
This new standard, while laughably high, at least gives me hope that pretty soon pixel densities on standard computer monitors might start going up again. 16x9 ratio monitors might indeed be "ok" if we had double the vertical resolution we have now.
LTE is not a high speed internet connection. not in any way that truly matters. Not while the standard cap is 1-2GB/month. yes you can buy more, have you seen the price on that? 5GB/month (which is still an absurdly low cap) contracts end up about the same as my CAR payment, several times higher than my landline internet.
LTE is a top fuel dragster. it's really impressive for a quarter mile. then you have to take it apart and rebuild it for a month.
"look how fast I can download over my phone!" "yeah. that's great. you've already hit your cap for the month. it took 13 and half minutes."
what is the point of "high speed" internet that you can't use?
interestingly enough, the genesis (with it's CD and 32x) upgrades failed this criteria. the n64 (with it's external ram upgrade) failed this criteria. depending on what you want to run, ps3 fails this criteria.
We're increasingly getting diminishing returns with new console generations; the difference in what you can do with a 7 year old XBox 360 and what you can do with a modern top-of-the-line gaming PC has not yet become compelling enough to justify new hardware.
get a 1080p monitor with multiple hdmi inputs. hook your modern gaming pc up to one input, and your ps3 or xbox up to the other. pull up a game released for both platforms. one of the call of duties, mass effect 3, whatever. go to the same scene on both platforms. flip back and forth. I guarantee you'll be amazed at how much better the pc version looks. it's easily a "generation" ahead. when you stop to consider that most of the time these games are programmed for console first, and then later retrofitted for pc, it's even more amazing. there's a big difference. I speak from experience because I did exactly that.
I also don't see why staleness has anything to do with the console generation. There's nothing new in terms of story or gameplay that a new console would enable...
This I'll agree with. you can make them prettier, but not -better-. you either have a good gaming idea or you don't. the platform just decides what it looks like once you impliment it. although, that said, most people don't have keyboard and mouse for consoles, and certain types of games are way better with keyboard and mouse (fps, rts, mmo).
Slashdot Mirror
christmas eve, 1985.
We had a tradition in my family, we unwrapped one present each on christmas eve. my dad kept hinting that I should unwrap the big box up front.
I did. It had an NES in it.
My dad passed on opening one of his presents so i could open another one of mine. it had Wrecking Crew in it.
My father and I spent the next several hours alternating between two-player wrecking crew and super mario brothers, until mom made us go to bed because santa wasn't coming as long as I was up.
it was a good day.
Actually I did stop playing wow to play d3. for like 3 or 4 weeks.
really though, it's just... it's just time. the game is a fantastic game, one of the best ever made, but it's been the same thing with new coats of paint for almost a decade now. you can only do this same dance so many times before you sit up, ask yourself "what else is there", and wander off.
I was in a world top 80 guild in vanilla. I personally was the highest DPS on the server for a good while. It was a 7-day-a-week job, but I was young and my GF (now wife) raided with me so it was doable. we both burnt out about the same time the rest of the guild did, it colapsed in on itself about the time we realized that the imminent expansion would completely negate everything we'd done. and it did. complete burnout. left the game for 6 months at least.
raided with a semi-serious raiding guild in TBC. I fought my way back up into a server-best guild again by the end of the next expansion (wrath is still the best thing they ever made imo), just in time for it to all repeat again.
didn't bother raiding cata. same song and dance again.
haven't even SEEN most of mop, i mostly just level alts now. dungeon finder circa level 15 to 55, and questing in northrend and cataclysm for nostalgic purposes, that's all the game is to me anymore, a time sink for nostalgic purposes. like putting weekend at bernies on the tv while you're cleaning the house.
yes.
that's a limitation on the clause.
which is exactly what I said.
look, it's not exactly rocket science here.
I'm pretty sure that putting limits on the interstate commerce clause is exactly what Chief Justice did in the recent affordable care act case.
read up on it. in the furor over "omg he betrayed conservatives everywhere he's a villain! lynch him!" hysteria, the true legacy of his phrasing of the majority decision was pretty much overlooked.
I suppose it depends on which X2 processors you're refering to.
I have a "regor" based X2 that I purchased brand new in 2010.
I don't doubt that it works. I have a previous version of integrated intel graphics (yes I am aware of the advancements of the HD2000/3000/4000 series in comparison) on this laptop, and -can- game with the settings turned down... way down.
that said, I think my (somewhat cynical) "we are as good as a 6 year old card!" comments are pretty appropriate. Tom's hardware ranks the HD4000 roughly on par with the nvidia 6800 ultra (released in 2004) or the 8600GT (released in 2006).
the 8600gt was a fine midrange card, and can still run today's games, albiet at reduced resolution and details. if all you're looking for is the ability to run a game, period, these chips will work, but I can't really say they'd do much better than a console (the ps3 gpu is essentially an nvidia gtx 7800, and the 360 gpu is similar, only with unified shaders), and again they don't hold a candle to even modest dedicated cards today.
in a laptop, I might be interested. On the desktop, which is what the chips being reviewed are for, I can't see much use for these things when it comes to gaming (which, again, is their big selling point right now). if you're building a desktop machine you expect to do any gaming on, and the extra $100 for, say, a gts 450 or something like that is a budget breaker, maybe you should be saving up an extra month.
Pretty much until the sandy bridge era, integrated graphics were completely unusable for gaming, and they are still years behind dedicated cards.
Your statement that "90% of folks either of these is good enough." is true, but misleading. It is true that the extent of desktop/laptop gaming that most people are interested in maxes out at farmville (or whatever the new facebook gaming trend is, I certainly don't pay attention), and they do their gaming on their phone, tablet or console.
These articles however are written towards the community that constructs their own PCs, or at the very least is quite picky about what is inside their machines. You don't read these articles unless you care about such things. From that perspective, for the majority of the target audience of TFA links, these graphics performance of either brand is hardly good enough for any sort of main machine build.
I used to buy them back in the Athlon X2 days
"back in the day?" Athlon X2? Wasn't that like a year or two ago?
My first AMD build was a K5 200mhz (OC'd to 225mhz!), and I was late to the party... my buddy had a 40mhz AMD i386 years beforehand.
Whippersnapper, get off my lawn!
Ironic statement, since the main selling point of the chip being reviewed here is its integrated graphics.
Which I find just silly really. These are fine chips to build a PC for your little cousin who surfs the web and maybe plays world of warcraft. for any real build, integrated graphics, for all their advancements, still read like:
Intel: "Our new HD4000 graphics are nearly as fast as a mainstream card from 8 years ago!"
AMD: "HAH, our new chip's graphics cores are as fast as a mainstream card from 6 years ago! we're two years of obsolecense better!"
even a $100 modern dedicated card will whallop either of these chips solutions.
you realize that attitudes like yours and GPs are exactly what turns prospective linux neophytes off, right?
For an every-day user, Linux has just as many problems as windows. the problems are just completely different. Source: I use both linux and windows every day. typing this on a linux laptop for pete's sake.
For the OP's concerns, linux very well may be his best option, but telling him that he's been playing in the little kid's sandbox is very nearly as counterproductive as telling him that he's a retard, as GP did.
of course not. that's part of the conspiracy. that's how you know it's the truth!
the only way it could be MORE truth is if there was evidence directly contrary to the conspiracy, because that'd have to be planted evidence. lack of evidence is just THEM being tricky.
ow my head hurts.
So, what you're saying is, the answer to the Fermi Paradox is "Religion"...
my 5g ipod with rockbox did between 10 and 11 hours playing -q4 (~128kbps) vorbis last time I tested it, which was really at least 3 years ago, probably better now. I know they've done improvements to the codec implimentation since then.
the same 5g ipod playing similar bitrate MP3, tested around the same time, was better by about 2 hours.
I'm not sure what qualifies as "guzzling", but I doubt I'm ever going to listen to my ipod for more than 11 hours without recharging it, especially considering I keep it plugged into a lighter socket in my car pretty much full time now.
That's fine with me, My last hearing test said my ears only go to about 18 and 20 kHz respectively.
I for one look forward to ubitiquous 1ms ping times in the future, where the electrical circuits in the router are actaully slower than the data transfer.
hah.
I just don't understand the unity hate. at all.
I never used the earlier versions of unity. Maybe they were horrible. But unity in 12.04? Honestly I like it a lot. It feels modern, like something the look-and-feel design guys at Apple or MS might be proud of, without feeling flashy and bells-and-whistles "because we could" (cinnamon, I'm looking in your direction).
If somebody hated unity because it replaced your beloved gnome2, well, use debian then in all its gnome2 glory. I do occasionally (TAILS usb stick) and it's a fine user experience, if a bit sterile and old fashioned. for a modern every-day user experience, be it browsing, email, pdf reading, eclipse development, whatever, I really do dig unity (at least the 12.04 flavor).
quite honestly, in all truth, modern western MMOs (fuck that eastern masochism-as-an-mmo shit) are way better than trying to beat a 13 year old who has been off of school all summer at call of duty. kids today are inhuman, I swear.
I'll get my revenge though, by the time my own spawn is 13 years old, this current crop of kids will be in their mid-late 20s, and my boy will avenge his daddy! avenge I say!
Modded down for truth?
Every FPS game I've played on both Console and PC (when available for both, obviously), I enjoyed immensely more on PC, simply because I didn't feel like I was fighting both the damn physical and virtual interfaces just to play the game.
just run it full time in a VM, or on a spare machine you don't care about.
at that point, who cares?
"This adware can totally see everything I do on my computer... which is... download torrents. that's it."
22 hours of deliberations, in a courthouse 5 miles from apple HQ, in the heart of silicon valley.
yeah, I wanna see how this stands up to appeal.
I think the GP is referring to the fact that once we had a high resolution TV spec, pretty much all panel manufactuers decided that "what's good for TVs is good for computers" and no longer make any higher resolution than 1920x1080 unless you're willing to spend close to $1000 or more.
I see no reason to expect they'll do otherwise in the future, so any future TV resolution spec has immediate implications on future computer monitor resolutions.
you may have a point.
most people, myself included, complain because 1080 vertical lines of resolution is a regression from where we were headed in the mid-2000s. all of a sudden, circa 2009 or 2010, 1080 vertical lines of resolution was the maximum you could get, no matter what monitor size you purchased, unless you were willing to spend over $1000 on a monitor. It's like every panel manufactuer in existance decided to just quit. all of them were constantly increasing pixel density every few years and then they all quit. just... gave up. either that or moved to smartphones.
This new standard, while laughably high, at least gives me hope that pretty soon pixel densities on standard computer monitors might start going up again. 16x9 ratio monitors might indeed be "ok" if we had double the vertical resolution we have now.
LTE is not a high speed internet connection. not in any way that truly matters. Not while the standard cap is 1-2GB/month. yes you can buy more, have you seen the price on that? 5GB/month (which is still an absurdly low cap) contracts end up about the same as my CAR payment, several times higher than my landline internet.
LTE is a top fuel dragster. it's really impressive for a quarter mile. then you have to take it apart and rebuild it for a month.
"look how fast I can download over my phone!"
"yeah. that's great. you've already hit your cap for the month. it took 13 and half minutes."
what is the point of "high speed" internet that you can't use?
interestingly enough, the genesis (with it's CD and 32x) upgrades failed this criteria.
the n64 (with it's external ram upgrade) failed this criteria.
depending on what you want to run, ps3 fails this criteria.
We're increasingly getting diminishing returns with new console generations; the difference in what you can do with a 7 year old XBox 360 and what you can do with a modern top-of-the-line gaming PC has not yet become compelling enough to justify new hardware.
get a 1080p monitor with multiple hdmi inputs. hook your modern gaming pc up to one input, and your ps3 or xbox up to the other. pull up a game released for both platforms. one of the call of duties, mass effect 3, whatever. go to the same scene on both platforms. flip back and forth. I guarantee you'll be amazed at how much better the pc version looks. it's easily a "generation" ahead. when you stop to consider that most of the time these games are programmed for console first, and then later retrofitted for pc, it's even more amazing. there's a big difference. I speak from experience because I did exactly that.
I also don't see why staleness has anything to do with the console generation. There's nothing new in terms of story or gameplay that a new console would enable...
This I'll agree with. you can make them prettier, but not -better-. you either have a good gaming idea or you don't. the platform just decides what it looks like once you impliment it. although, that said, most people don't have keyboard and mouse for consoles, and certain types of games are way better with keyboard and mouse (fps, rts, mmo).