i have to agree with you, i've had numerous AMD based gaming machines, socket 754, 939, am2+, and NEVER had any issues with clockscaling, nor has my little brother who is on his second AMD gaming rig
Granted, i have some trouble coming to terms with the fact that my Geforce 4 isnt the bees knees anymore (got a GTX260 in my main machine, but i likes me oldskool games), but the cpu/mobo are just fine and dandy.
Yes AMD had some quality issues in the past, but these days a decent AMD mobo and a matching cpu are a very trustworthy combo
not to rain on your parade, but if your dad got a socket am2+/am3 machine, then why not build him a machine with a 'fast enough' cpu now (like the amd athlon II X2 240 in my dads machine), and leave the futureproofing to the socket/pricedrops? If your dad would feel his x2 is getting slow, dropping in an x4/x6 is trivial, and by that time, probably much cheaper/faster
i would say though, that if the budget had allowed for it, my dad would have an athlon II X4 as well, just for kicks..
*fights off urge to order a quad-core to replace the 7750 in his system*
halo would be completely playable with either the classic controller add-on or just any old gamecube controller. And nintendo has a history of requiring extra hardware for certain games. (sure you get a motionplus with wii sports resort, but if you want to play anything multiplayer, thats another 20 towards nintendo for every player..)
Hell, some gamepublishers actually ship some hardware extensions with their game, you could make a decent shooter and ship a 3rd party classic controller (or gamecube pad clone) with it, problem solved.
The REAL problem is that when they finish a 360 game, they cant just have a couple guys port it to the wii in a month or so, like you could in the olden days between xbox/ps2/gamecube. Sure that would require you to match performance with the lowest common denominator, but a ps2 game could look acceptable on the xbox. Try porting a wii game 1:1 to the 360 and see how that panns out..
I don't think too many games are CPU-limited, even on the Wii and its relatively weak PowerPC-based CPU. I'd guess some realtime physics and AI might give it a few fits, but the GPU and the fact that it limits the Wii to non-HD resolutions would seem to the the real problem.
While i agree the GPU is also a huge bottleneck in the wii (even in non-hd it cant match the amount of polys of a 360 by a mile), i think you are underestimating the importance of a cpu in games. Take GTA4 for example, a game which on the pc pretty much NEEDS a quad core to run smooth. With some shoe-horning that game runs pretty well on the 360 and ps3, but the wii's cpu would never be able to take on something on that scale. The same is evidenced by dead rising. On the 360 the game simply rules because of the HORDES of zombies on your screen. Then they made a wii version, where you have 4-5 zombies on screen max, and not just because of the GPU, think of all the AI/physics a game like that needs
The ppc in the wii might be a more powerfull architecture (out of order execution etc..), but it is a single threaded single core running at ~700 MHz, compare that to the 360, which has six hardware threads (Three 'hyperthreaded' cores) and just consider, how would you enjoy gaming today on a pc with a 1ghz pentium 3?
For nintendo it does, the wii has never been sold at a loss (well what do you expect? take gamecube hardware, do a dieshrink/clockbump and tack on some ram, sell for three times the price... profit!).
Off course the games are also an important factor, but unlike MS/Sony, each wii sold actually means money going into nintendo's pocket. a ps3 sold with only 2 games in its life might mean a nett loss for sony, but for nintendo, they are ahead from day one
the gamecube pretty much showed that damaging developer relations with a previous platform can hurt the next one. The N64 had very little quality 3rd party titles, and this continued on the gamecube, even though hardware wise the cube was very potent for its day and age.
If i were a software developer currently ignoring the wii, i'd have little reasons to think the new nintendo machine would be a serious turn around. It is doubtfull nintendo could make the jump from the wii to a system capable of competing eye to eye with the next xbox/ps.
And the fact that most wii owners have very low attach rates for games also hurts the prospects for the wii2. The joe-sixpack who got a wii for wii-bowling doesnt want the newest/fastest/shiniest, like all the hardcore fanboys. This means that the wii2 would have a lower uptake in the hardcore market because of a lack of serious games (which is what got me to turn my back on nintendo, they just dont care about gamers anymore), and will strugle to compete in the non-traditional gamer market, since that is pretty much saturated with wii (no pun intended).
From a hardware/marketing point of view nintendo's new machine will be very interesting, but the only reason i'll ever buy one is because my girlfriends want to play wii-fit 2 HD or whatever... (and i'll never touch it after the first week)
As for the noise/attention thing, when i had my bike locked (and trust me, the lock wasnt shimable), and i went at it with the bolt-cutters, everyone in a 100 meter radius came to check up, see what the hell i was doing ("what are we doing there son?"). Then i got the angle grinder, borrowed some juice at a nearby shop, and nobody even approached me
somehow a guy with bolt-cutters has to be up to something, but when you get an angle-grinder in on it, then things must be all-right....
i guess the common thought is that once you get extremely obvious and loud about something, you wouldnt be a criminal
just because, if i step out of my tent set up in the backyard to go and get some milk, i fail to notice a car barreling down on me, it can kill me, doesnt make camping in the backyard a valid simulation of space travel.
62 feet down is shallow enough that you can survive travel to the surface without any diving equipment, go a tiny bit deeper and the bends might kick in, but i would assume support vessels will be closeby anyway
i do not remember being forced to read an agreement (or even seeing one), before paying for my ipod touch at the local mega-electronics-chain store, they took my money without requesting my signature under an agreement
just curious about how though those clamps are.. I once chained my bike to a steel fence and snapped off the key, couldnt get it open. I got the biggest rebar-siccors i could find, didnt even dent the chain, then got an angle grinder, and 30 seconds later my bike was free again
How about we declare a St. Tesla's Day, where everyone has to sacrifice 1 kWh of energy by doing pointless but spectacular HV experiments with lots of sparks, ozone and thunder?
For the less engineering enclined of us, is playing some red-alert and using only tesla-coils, tesla-troopers and tesla-tanks also ok?
true to some extent, but having windows on a platform might just give some developers the small push they need to re-compile their stuff for arm. It is a lot easier to just punch in a different architecture into the compiler then it is to rewrite your software to use linux libs instead of all those dll's or even.net framework.
If MS ported.net, you might even be able to run all.net apps without a recompile, i think.net runs interpreted.. (might be wrong though)
my understanding is that apple gets 30% of all sales, and dont even have to give that back when refunds are given (for whatever reason). This all for some piddly amount of bandwidth for the store and some clowns clicking 'approve' or 'deny' on new submissions
the app store might not be apple's mainstay, but it is essentially free money, why would they not defend that? (and keep in mind that with the ipad they added one more 'free money' generating device to the line-up, with generally higher app prices)
oh man, i so wanted steel batallion back in the day, too bad it was way over my piddly budget as a student. They should do a new one for the 360, i imagina a big mech driving game would also be much better sitting behind a HUGE hdtv
i'm not quite sure it's a vlc thing, sometimes pulse-audio also completely refuses to play sound from my browser (yes i know, flash is an ugly mess, especially on linux). So i just blame ubuntu for wanting to go with this flashy new pulse-audio thing without actually taking the trouble to make it work well. They must have tested on one machine for five minutes and called it a succes..
On a side note, downloaded 10.04 yesterday, to put into a VM in virtualbox OSE on my 9.10 install, and what do you know, even after installing the guest additions, it will not go above 800*600
I think i'll just give up with ubuntu, if i'm still gonna have to edit obscure config files every install, i might as well get something usefull and stable
Slashdot Mirror
Certain SIS chipsets required sacrificing a goat in order to be able to (badly) run Linux.
hmm, i havent tried that yet on my mini-itx board (intel d201gly2, damn sis chipset doesnt have propper video drivers)
*searches e-bay for a cheap goat and a sacrifical knife*
i have to agree with you, i've had numerous AMD based gaming machines, socket 754, 939, am2+, and NEVER had any issues with clockscaling, nor has my little brother who is on his second AMD gaming rig
my 6,5 years old Athlon XP still runs smoothly
Granted, i have some trouble coming to terms with the fact that my Geforce 4 isnt the bees knees anymore (got a GTX260 in my main machine, but i likes me oldskool games), but the cpu/mobo are just fine and dandy.
Yes AMD had some quality issues in the past, but these days a decent AMD mobo and a matching cpu are a very trustworthy combo
Don't doubt for one minute that Intel gets that too.
That's why intel disables their VT instructions on certain CPU's
Friends don't let friends run celerons? (or norton....)
Honestly dude, virtualize that mail server you are running on the P4 in the basement and give that thing to her, it's the right thing to do
not to rain on your parade, but if your dad got a socket am2+/am3 machine, then why not build him a machine with a 'fast enough' cpu now (like the amd athlon II X2 240 in my dads machine), and leave the futureproofing to the socket/pricedrops? If your dad would feel his x2 is getting slow, dropping in an x4/x6 is trivial, and by that time, probably much cheaper/faster
i would say though, that if the budget had allowed for it, my dad would have an athlon II X4 as well, just for kicks..
*fights off urge to order a quad-core to replace the 7750 in his system*
halo would be completely playable with either the classic controller add-on or just any old gamecube controller. And nintendo has a history of requiring extra hardware for certain games. (sure you get a motionplus with wii sports resort, but if you want to play anything multiplayer, thats another 20 towards nintendo for every player..)
Hell, some gamepublishers actually ship some hardware extensions with their game, you could make a decent shooter and ship a 3rd party classic controller (or gamecube pad clone) with it, problem solved.
The REAL problem is that when they finish a 360 game, they cant just have a couple guys port it to the wii in a month or so, like you could in the olden days between xbox/ps2/gamecube. Sure that would require you to match performance with the lowest common denominator, but a ps2 game could look acceptable on the xbox. Try porting a wii game 1:1 to the 360 and see how that panns out..
I don't think too many games are CPU-limited, even on the Wii and its relatively weak PowerPC-based CPU. I'd guess some realtime physics and AI might give it a few fits, but the GPU and the fact that it limits the Wii to non-HD resolutions would seem to the the real problem.
While i agree the GPU is also a huge bottleneck in the wii (even in non-hd it cant match the amount of polys of a 360 by a mile), i think you are underestimating the importance of a cpu in games. Take GTA4 for example, a game which on the pc pretty much NEEDS a quad core to run smooth. With some shoe-horning that game runs pretty well on the 360 and ps3, but the wii's cpu would never be able to take on something on that scale. The same is evidenced by dead rising. On the 360 the game simply rules because of the HORDES of zombies on your screen. Then they made a wii version, where you have 4-5 zombies on screen max, and not just because of the GPU, think of all the AI/physics a game like that needs
The ppc in the wii might be a more powerfull architecture (out of order execution etc..), but it is a single threaded single core running at ~700 MHz, compare that to the 360, which has six hardware threads (Three 'hyperthreaded' cores) and just consider, how would you enjoy gaming today on a pc with a 1ghz pentium 3?
For nintendo it does, the wii has never been sold at a loss (well what do you expect? take gamecube hardware, do a dieshrink/clockbump and tack on some ram, sell for three times the price... profit!).
Off course the games are also an important factor, but unlike MS/Sony, each wii sold actually means money going into nintendo's pocket. a ps3 sold with only 2 games in its life might mean a nett loss for sony, but for nintendo, they are ahead from day one
the gamecube pretty much showed that damaging developer relations with a previous platform can hurt the next one. The N64 had very little quality 3rd party titles, and this continued on the gamecube, even though hardware wise the cube was very potent for its day and age.
If i were a software developer currently ignoring the wii, i'd have little reasons to think the new nintendo machine would be a serious turn around. It is doubtfull nintendo could make the jump from the wii to a system capable of competing eye to eye with the next xbox/ps.
And the fact that most wii owners have very low attach rates for games also hurts the prospects for the wii2. The joe-sixpack who got a wii for wii-bowling doesnt want the newest/fastest/shiniest, like all the hardcore fanboys. This means that the wii2 would have a lower uptake in the hardcore market because of a lack of serious games (which is what got me to turn my back on nintendo, they just dont care about gamers anymore), and will strugle to compete in the non-traditional gamer market, since that is pretty much saturated with wii (no pun intended).
From a hardware/marketing point of view nintendo's new machine will be very interesting, but the only reason i'll ever buy one is because my girlfriends want to play wii-fit 2 HD or whatever... (and i'll never touch it after the first week)
As for the noise/attention thing, when i had my bike locked (and trust me, the lock wasnt shimable), and i went at it with the bolt-cutters, everyone in a 100 meter radius came to check up, see what the hell i was doing ("what are we doing there son?"). Then i got the angle grinder, borrowed some juice at a nearby shop, and nobody even approached me
somehow a guy with bolt-cutters has to be up to something, but when you get an angle-grinder in on it, then things must be all-right....
i guess the common thought is that once you get extremely obvious and loud about something, you wouldnt be a criminal
well i realize you would need some stealth, but the GGP suggested a blowtorch, i guess a battery powered angle-grinder would be just as stealthy
heh, bull
just because, if i step out of my tent set up in the backyard to go and get some milk, i fail to notice a car barreling down on me, it can kill me, doesnt make camping in the backyard a valid simulation of space travel.
62 feet down is shallow enough that you can survive travel to the surface without any diving equipment, go a tiny bit deeper and the bends might kick in, but i would assume support vessels will be closeby anyway
i do not remember being forced to read an agreement (or even seeing one), before paying for my ipod touch at the local mega-electronics-chain store, they took my money without requesting my signature under an agreement
winrar?
works perfectly for cutting large files into smaller parts for ease of transmission/transfer
or have spock vaporise it
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Rock_Paper_Scissors_Lizard_Spock_en.svg
how about an angle grinder?
just curious about how though those clamps are.. I once chained my bike to a steel fence and snapped off the key, couldnt get it open. I got the biggest rebar-siccors i could find, didnt even dent the chain, then got an angle grinder, and 30 seconds later my bike was free again
How about we declare a St. Tesla's Day, where everyone has to sacrifice 1 kWh of energy by doing pointless but spectacular HV experiments with lots of sparks, ozone and thunder?
For the less engineering enclined of us, is playing some red-alert and using only tesla-coils, tesla-troopers and tesla-tanks also ok?
You better watch it with the nested posts, your stack might overflow
*ba-dum ching*
true to some extent, but having windows on a platform might just give some developers the small push they need to re-compile their stuff for arm. It is a lot easier to just punch in a different architecture into the compiler then it is to rewrite your software to use linux libs instead of all those dll's or even .net framework.
If MS ported .net, you might even be able to run all .net apps without a recompile, i think .net runs interpreted.. (might be wrong though)
Please submit some evidence that windows does that for apple products
That way i might just be able to convince my employer to let me use linux instead due to 'mental health concerns'
my understanding is that apple gets 30% of all sales, and dont even have to give that back when refunds are given (for whatever reason). This all for some piddly amount of bandwidth for the store and some clowns clicking 'approve' or 'deny' on new submissions
the app store might not be apple's mainstay, but it is essentially free money, why would they not defend that? (and keep in mind that with the ipad they added one more 'free money' generating device to the line-up, with generally higher app prices)
oh man, i so wanted steel batallion back in the day, too bad it was way over my piddly budget as a student. They should do a new one for the 360, i imagina a big mech driving game would also be much better sitting behind a HUGE hdtv
bad MTV videos that featured kids in school.
wow, when reading this the twisted sister vid for 'i wanna rock' popped into my head
too bad i dont have any 80s glamrock on my ipod, otherwise today would have been Glamtastic!
i'm not quite sure it's a vlc thing, sometimes pulse-audio also completely refuses to play sound from my browser (yes i know, flash is an ugly mess, especially on linux). So i just blame ubuntu for wanting to go with this flashy new pulse-audio thing without actually taking the trouble to make it work well. They must have tested on one machine for five minutes and called it a succes..
On a side note, downloaded 10.04 yesterday, to put into a VM in virtualbox OSE on my 9.10 install, and what do you know, even after installing the guest additions, it will not go above 800*600
I think i'll just give up with ubuntu, if i'm still gonna have to edit obscure config files every install, i might as well get something usefull and stable