"What is the Performance Difference Due to These Cheats?
A test system with GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and the 44.03 drivers gets 5806 3DMarks with 3DMark03 build 320.
The new build 330 of 3DMark03 in which 44.03 drivers cannot identify 3DMark03 or the tests in that build gets 4679 3DMarks -- a 24.1% drop.
Our investigations reveal that some drivers from ATI also produce a slightly lower total score on this new build of 3DMark03. The drop in performance on the same test system with a Radeon 9800 Pro using the Catalyst 3.4 drivers is 1.9%. This Performance drop is almost entirely due to 8.2% difference in the game 4 result, which means that the test was also detected and somehow altered by the ATI drivers. We are currently investigating this further."
This didn't get mentioned yet, but I thought it deserved it -- Nvidia got caught REALLY red handed today, but ATI isn't 100% innocent either, it appears.
Note for those who just won't read the PDF: This is NOT the same cheat as the Quack Quake 3 thing. ATI got caught cheating with the same "fix" that just caught NVidia.
I have a close friend who owns a Hobby Store which is the local Games Workshop re-seller. It is hard for them to make a living with the availability of cheep online stuff. Most sell at a 10-20 percent discont, which is the REAL problem.
No, the REAL problem was when stores were selling it for 30 - 50 percent discounts. GW put a stop to that a while back with the same trick they're doing now.
Guess cutting back to a 20% discount wasn't enough for them.
Of course, this could just be a misunderstanding. It's happened before, back when they stopped the 40% people. They might just be going after stores selling photocopied rulebooks or something.
Actually, you're about half right. It's being called a merger on paper, but in reality, it's a buyout.
A little background for those of us not familiar with Japanese role playing game companies: Squaresoft is a game development company, but Enix is a publishing outfit that handles all sorts of stuff (manga, anime, games, etc). Enix Japan is *much* bigger than Squaresoft Japan.
Enix' flagship RPG, Dragon Quest 7, sold 2.2 million copies it's first day in Japan and hit 4.06 million total, while Final Fantasy 9 hit about 2.9 million total.
Which is one of the reasons Squaresoft is in so much trouble -- their games are costing more and more to make, but are selling less and less in Japan.
The main shareholder of Squaresoft had a issue with the previous terms of the buyout, which basically was that 1 share of Squaresoft would become.81 shares of Square Enix. In other words, the Squaresoft stock lost about 20% of it's value / power in that deal. In the new deal, it only loses 15%. He's now ok with it. Interesting note, Sony owns about 20 percent of Squaresoft, and will thus own about 8.5 percent of the new company, unless my math is off.
As part of the deal, Enix is going to absorb Square's name and employees into their company, and pay off all of Square's (considerable) debts. Squaresoft saves money by not having to go through Sony to publish it's stuff, Enix gets a big boost to it's US sales due to Square USA's better presence. All in all a lot better than Microsoft buying them -- they made an offer a long while back but were basically laughed at.
They're promising not to fire anyone at Square, but, to be honest, I can't imagine them not trimming at least some of the fat in a few months.
Personally, I'm hoping to see a "Final Fantasy Monsters" type game come out of this with a similar or same engine as "Dragon Warrior Monsters." Or even better, a crossover monster breeder.
Or better yet still, a new Chrono Trigger sequel by the original development teams. For those of you who don't follow classic gaming, the development teams for Chrono Trigger was basically the guys behind both Dragon Quest and the guys behind Final Fantasy. Sorta an all-star RPG dream team thing. The man who does the story (Yuji Hori) for every Dragon Quest game did the story for Chrono Trigger, the guy that does the art for Dragon Quest did the art for CT, the fight engine was done by the guys that made Final Fantasy, etc etc. Now that they're one shop, the chances of them working together again are much higher.
Of course, we couldn't do anything with the data, since:
Why couldn't we do anything? They say we can't use this data to make an implimentation of this data... well, have someone at Redhat pay the liscense then immediately hit them with a lawsuit over it. If anything, they could probably get an injunction saying Microsoft is breaking the terms of their agreement with the courts.
Failing that, have someone in another country (read: England, ***CHINA***, etc) where something like this NDA just to get the liscense crap would be laughed out of court pay for the data, then re-release the information under some "Open Source Literature" type thing. China especially. Ask a few Chinese Linux hackers working on Red Flag Linux to help out, I *serously* doubt the Chinese government would give Microsoft the time of day in this regard.
Failing THAT... have someone do the same thing, logon to IRC using some Java client, and have guest548721765 spew out all the relivant data over IRC. "Oops, sorry Microsoft, I didn't sign any agreement, I heard it from a stranger on IRC."
Dangit, if I buy the hardware and want to modify it, I payed for it--it's mine--why shouldn't I be able to? Void the warranty, yes. But don't tell me I'm doing something legally wrong.
You aren't. Once you buy that XBox, you can do whatever you want with it. There's a long standing rumor that you can't mod your consoles -- but that's just a rumour, put there to discourage people from doing it.
That's why Microsoft doesn't go after modders themselves -- they litereally wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Instead they go after the modchip makers and sellers. It's a little easier that way.
I disagree. Disobeying bad laws in any form, as long as you are ready and willing to explain it to the Judge and accept the fact that you have a good chance to get put away for a long time is Civil Disobedience.
What's really different than 25 protestors storming a "Whites Only" diner in the south and 25,000 computer geeks posting DeCSS on their website?
I take it you haven't heard, The Bush administration claims the power to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial, an effective suspension of Habeas Corpus. All they have to do is label you a terrorist and you disappear in the night never to be heard from again.
Until the 2004 elections, when Gore, or whatever Demo-droid is running that year desides to make a stink of it. Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft likes to think they can get away with all this crap, but the Democrats WILL throw it in their faces come election time.
(And in 2 years, 9/11 will be a fading memory, unfortunately. Fortunately however, that means spin like "national security" will ring on deaf ears.)
Re:Live is actually pretty damn cool
on
Xbox Live Beta Report
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Also, since players can't edit the game files there are no cheaters.
Tell that to the mass victims of PSO Gameshark hacking. They have codes that will lock up your DC, and when you reboot, your character is destroyed. A few weeks of fun and work, ruined because some 12 year old decided it'd be fun to imagine the look on your face.
You can't even go online to play without linking up with people on GameFAQs boards and playing password protected games. Haven't been able to since like 3 months after release.
Think just because it's a console people won't find a way to be lamearses? You are sorely underestimating the craftiness of the average lamearse.
Um, I donno about you guys, but... I have dialup. 28.8 dialup. I'm going to have trouble keeping packets going from the game to the server, yet alone dealing with a bunch of SPS losers trying to trash-talk in digitally robotized voices every time I beat them. Yet alone thinking of the inevitable people who will be piping Ramstein at 140db down the pipe, or whatnot.
Ascii has made accessories for a very LONG time, one of my first controllers for the NES was an Ascii controller.
As for this keyboard.. look at the keys compared to the thumbpad -- those keys can't be much bigger than a laptop's keyboard. Would be quite good for typing and whatnot.
Yeah right. As one who suffered through Final Fantasy 8, I can safely say that Square doesn't give 2 cents about silly things like PLOT anymore -- they'd much rather have neato stuff like 2 hrs of FMV in *their* games.
If ya need me, I'll be camping out at my post office box -- my copy of Dragon Quest 7 should come any day.. *Drool*
Slashdot Mirror
Page 4 of 7, middle of the page:
"What is the Performance Difference Due to These Cheats?
A test system with GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and the 44.03 drivers gets 5806 3DMarks with 3DMark03 build 320.
The new build 330 of 3DMark03 in which 44.03 drivers cannot identify 3DMark03 or the tests in that build gets 4679 3DMarks -- a 24.1% drop.
Our investigations reveal that some drivers from ATI also produce a slightly lower total score on this new build of 3DMark03. The drop in performance on the same test system with a Radeon 9800 Pro using the Catalyst 3.4 drivers is 1.9%. This Performance drop is almost entirely due to 8.2% difference in the game 4 result, which means that the test was also detected and somehow altered by the ATI drivers. We are currently investigating this further."
This didn't get mentioned yet, but I thought it deserved it -- Nvidia got caught REALLY red handed today, but ATI isn't 100% innocent either, it appears.
Note for those who just won't read the PDF: This is NOT the same cheat as the Quack Quake 3 thing. ATI got caught cheating with the same "fix" that just caught NVidia.
No, the REAL problem was when stores were selling it for 30 - 50 percent discounts. GW put a stop to that a while back with the same trick they're doing now.
Guess cutting back to a 20% discount wasn't enough for them.
Of course, this could just be a misunderstanding. It's happened before, back when they stopped the 40% people. They might just be going after stores selling photocopied rulebooks or something.
You mean that Windows_XP_Sourcecode_NotAJoke.EXE that I downloaded off kazaalite last night wasn't real?
Ruh Roh. </scooby>
Actually, you're about half right. It's being called a merger on paper, but in reality, it's a buyout.
.81 shares of Square Enix. In other words, the Squaresoft stock lost about 20% of it's value / power in that deal. In the new deal, it only loses 15%. He's now ok with it. Interesting note, Sony owns about 20 percent of Squaresoft, and will thus own about 8.5 percent of the new company, unless my math is off.
A little background for those of us not familiar with Japanese role playing game companies: Squaresoft is a game development company, but Enix is a publishing outfit that handles all sorts of stuff (manga, anime, games, etc). Enix Japan is *much* bigger than Squaresoft Japan.
Enix' flagship RPG, Dragon Quest 7, sold 2.2 million copies it's first day in Japan and hit 4.06 million total, while Final Fantasy 9 hit about 2.9 million total.
Which is one of the reasons Squaresoft is in so much trouble -- their games are costing more and more to make, but are selling less and less in Japan.
The main shareholder of Squaresoft had a issue with the previous terms of the buyout, which basically was that 1 share of Squaresoft would become
As part of the deal, Enix is going to absorb Square's name and employees into their company, and pay off all of Square's (considerable) debts. Squaresoft saves money by not having to go through Sony to publish it's stuff, Enix gets a big boost to it's US sales due to Square USA's better presence. All in all a lot better than Microsoft buying them -- they made an offer a long while back but were basically laughed at.
They're promising not to fire anyone at Square, but, to be honest, I can't imagine them not trimming at least some of the fat in a few months.
Personally, I'm hoping to see a "Final Fantasy Monsters" type game come out of this with a similar or same engine as "Dragon Warrior Monsters." Or even better, a crossover monster breeder.
Or better yet still, a new Chrono Trigger sequel by the original development teams. For those of you who don't follow classic gaming, the development teams for Chrono Trigger was basically the guys behind both Dragon Quest and the guys behind Final Fantasy. Sorta an all-star RPG dream team thing. The man who does the story (Yuji Hori) for every Dragon Quest game did the story for Chrono Trigger, the guy that does the art for Dragon Quest did the art for CT, the fight engine was done by the guys that made Final Fantasy, etc etc. Now that they're one shop, the chances of them working together again are much higher.
Of course, we couldn't do anything with the data, since:
Why couldn't we do anything? They say we can't use this data to make an implimentation of this data... well, have someone at Redhat pay the liscense then immediately hit them with a lawsuit over it. If anything, they could probably get an injunction saying Microsoft is breaking the terms of their agreement with the courts.
Failing that, have someone in another country (read: England, ***CHINA*** , etc) where something like this NDA just to get the liscense crap would be laughed out of court pay for the data, then re-release the information under some "Open Source Literature" type thing. China especially. Ask a few Chinese Linux hackers working on Red Flag Linux to help out, I *serously* doubt the Chinese government would give Microsoft the time of day in this regard.
Failing THAT... have someone do the same thing, logon to IRC using some Java client, and have guest548721765 spew out all the relivant data over IRC. "Oops, sorry Microsoft, I didn't sign any agreement, I heard it from a stranger on IRC."
You aren't. Once you buy that XBox, you can do whatever you want with it. There's a long standing rumor that you can't mod your consoles -- but that's just a rumour, put there to discourage people from doing it.
That's why Microsoft doesn't go after modders themselves -- they litereally wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Instead they go after the modchip makers and sellers. It's a little easier that way.
I disagree. Disobeying bad laws in any form, as long as you are ready and willing to explain it to the Judge and accept the fact that you have a good chance to get put away for a long time is Civil Disobedience.
What's really different than 25 protestors storming a "Whites Only" diner in the south and 25,000 computer geeks posting DeCSS on their website?
Until the 2004 elections, when Gore, or whatever Demo-droid is running that year desides to make a stink of it. Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft likes to think they can get away with all this crap, but the Democrats WILL throw it in their faces come election time.
(And in 2 years, 9/11 will be a fading memory, unfortunately. Fortunately however, that means spin like "national security" will ring on deaf ears.)
Tell that to the mass victims of PSO Gameshark hacking. They have codes that will lock up your DC, and when you reboot, your character is destroyed. A few weeks of fun and work, ruined because some 12 year old decided it'd be fun to imagine the look on your face.
You can't even go online to play without linking up with people on GameFAQs boards and playing password protected games. Haven't been able to since like 3 months after release.
Think just because it's a console people won't find a way to be lamearses? You are sorely underestimating the craftiness of the average lamearse.
Um, I donno about you guys, but... I have dialup. 28.8 dialup. I'm going to have trouble keeping packets going from the game to the server, yet alone dealing with a bunch of SPS losers trying to trash-talk in digitally robotized voices every time I beat them. Yet alone thinking of the inevitable people who will be piping Ramstein at 140db down the pipe, or whatnot.
Ascii has made accessories for a very LONG time, one of my first controllers for the NES was an Ascii controller.
As for this keyboard.. look at the keys compared to the thumbpad -- those keys can't be much bigger than a laptop's keyboard. Would be quite good for typing and whatnot.
Yeah right. As one who suffered through Final Fantasy 8, I can safely say that Square doesn't give 2 cents about silly things like PLOT anymore -- they'd much rather have neato stuff like 2 hrs of FMV in *their* games. If ya need me, I'll be camping out at my post office box -- my copy of Dragon Quest 7 should come any day.. *Drool*