Oh man! Mean Streets is one of my all time favorite games. In fact, it was the *first* commercial game to take advantage of the 256 color SVGA pallette. Cooler still was Access' RealSound technology, which would play amazingly high quality audio using nothing but the PC Speaker in your computer. We're talking actual, understandable speech. The technology in that game still amazes me today.:)
Small nitpick - I'd call the above example C more than C++. Someone who started out with C++ is more likely to use cout "Hello World" than printf. But yeah, it works as C++ too, I'm just bored.:)
The problems with Call of Duty seem to be in the game more than the hardware. I've heard of people with nVidia cards having trouble with it as well. Drivers do seem to make a difference for some people, but none for others. IE: I've read that to get it working with a 9600Pro, you MUST you Cat3.6 - funny thing, I've had it running on both 3.8 and 3.9. There doesn't seem to be any hard set rule one way or the other, just that Infinity Ward botched something up in their additions to the Q3 engine.
And let's not even bring up driver stability and compatibility...
A year ago, I would've agreed with you. After the disaster that was the Rage, with its constant driver problems, I wrote ATI off. But when I upgraded my system this summer, I went with the benchmarks and bought a Radeon 9600 Pro and I've yet to run into a single driver related problem. It seems that ATI's finally gotten their act together, at least on the Windows side. Linux may be different, but I haven't tried it in any of my Linux boxes.
And yes, it's in the windows box. Even my old GF2 is overkill for what I do with Linux, and KVM switches are a wonderful thing.:)
The problem with a benchmark like this is that UT2003 is a DX8-level game, so it doesn't take really take full advantage of these newer cards as it doesn't use features such as PS2.0. We're not really going to know how the two brands truly stack up until next-gen games (Doom 3, HL2, etc.) which take full advantage of the hardware start to show up.
Early indicators seem to be that nVidia's cards struggle to handle DX9-level pixel shaders. While I'm taking the pre-release benchmarks on HL2 from Valve with a grain of salt, the Aquanox (DX9) benchmark and comments I've read from John Carmack as well as others seem to echo the fact that nVidia's hardware's just not up to snuff when it comes to next generation performance. IE: nVidia's cards are fine for anything that's out now, but if you want to hold onto a card for a couple of years, I'd stay away personally.
Let me also add in a disclaimer that I've been a long time fan of nVidia's hardware, having owned a TNT2, GF2, and GF4 previously. In fact, I'd sworn off ATI as crap back in the days of the Rage and it's absolutely horrendous drivers. So let's just say it wasn't an easy decision for me when time to upgrade rolled around this time and I ended up going with a Radeon 9600 Pro.:)
And since you asked, I'm not sure about Matrox (I assume they're still around), but S3 was recently revived from the dead. It seems they were bought out by VIA when they went bankrupt, who continued development of the hardware, and we'll be seeing a new chip from them called Delta Chrome sometime in the next few months. All the rumblings I've heard have indicated that this thing could be competitive with nVidia and ATI in the low and mid-range market segments. This should be interesting to watch play out.
They are, so long as the buyer and seller are in the same state, which is how I personally feel it should stay. In all honesty, I'd have to wonder whether the collection of local sales taxes from companies with no physical presence in a state would be able to stand on constitutional grounds - it sounds dangerously similar to state/local governments 'interfering with interstate trade' if you ask me.
Um, you do realize that Centrino is just the brand name for a particular bundle of hardware, right? Intel requires a low power proc, wireless ethernet and a couple of other things for a notebook to be certified Centrino. Most of the Centrino notebooks I've seen have had Pentium M processors, which is *gasp!* a PIII! Why? It's more efficient clock-for-clock than the P4 and draws less power. So why the rebranding? For people like yourself who think P4 > P3 without really understanding why they're using the "old" architechture.
You and I definitely have a different perspective on this.:)
I have no problem whatsoever with their conservative nature, in fact my favorite people to discuss issues with are those who disagree with me, precisely because it makes me think deeper about the issue at hand.
The problem I have is the promotion of themselves as "Fair and Balanced," which in mind mind implies that they intend to be unbiased. Or at the very least, give the other side a fair chance to make their case. Instead, I get to watch hosts bullying guests and what I consider to be rather unfair coverage of a lot of issues.
So honestly, I have no problems with Fox as be conservative leaning, but their approach bothers me. But as another saying goes, different strokes...:)
9/11 was an act executed by the terrorist group Al Quaeda. Therefore, by saying that Iraq was involved with 9/11 you're directly implying that Iraq is tied to Al Quaeda. Get your facts straight.
Actually, I'd have no problem with Fox news having a conservative bent if it weren't for the fact that they go so far out of their way to blur the line between fact and opinion. Look at the wording of some of the items in their ticker compared to other networks. CNN's, for example, uses very plain wording that simply gets the facts across. Fox's ticker intentionally words things in a flamatory, almost propaganda-like way. I think having different POV's is a very GOOD thing, but I really wishFox knew how to keep their punditry and fact reporting somewhat seperated.
I'll agree on the majors having slight liberal slant, but Fox News is more than 'slightly' right-leaning. You're talking about a network that goes out of its way to find the dumbest, most extreme left wingers to bring on the air so their hosts can ridicule them. Bill O'Reilly's shouting matches and mic cutting are pretty much SOP over Fox - they try to give the appearance of letting both sides tell their story, but in reality, are only interested in their side of the story. The other networks generally at least give conservatives a chance to speak without treating them like bafoons. That alone makes them far more centerist than Fox will ever be in my mind.
I seem to remember Colin Powell going before the UN Security Council and giving all sorts of 'evidence' that Iraq had ties to Al Quaeda. Oh, he also threw out something about 'yellow cake' in Niger while he was at it.
Ever seen pictures of Prodrives HQ in England? At any given time, there are about 30 plain, white Subaru Imprezas sitting in the parking lot waiting to be stripped down and transformed into full fledged rally cars.
I don't dispute that at all. I use the calculator built into my cell phone quite often -- when I'm away from the computer. I guess my point is, that anyone who's going to buy something like this buys it to get work done, not really as something to carry around with them everywhere they go. A simple, emulated calculator is fine for the type of math I might run into when I'm not trying to get anything major done, but is completely insufficient for solving anything of any real complexity.
My computer has this nice little calculator program on it. Ocassionly, I'll run into something while I'm working on the computer that requires me to do some quick math. What do I do? Pick up my TI calculator that I leave sitting by it and punch it in.
I'm sorry, PDA's are a nice technology, but they in no way are superior to a good calculator. With my calculator, everything I need is either right there, or at most 2-3 menu levels down. Whereas with a PDA, I'd be lucky if I could do anything much more complex than basic math without wasting time digging through menus, no matter how well organized.
That said, HP DOES have a hybrid - the iPaq line. But they're also smart enough to realize that those who need to solve problems that are of more than marginal complexity will appreciate a tool made to do just that in the most efficient manner possible.
It costs more than $50 to make the box with a CD, to ship it to stores, and to sell it to you.
Where the hell did you get that idea? The cost of packaging + CDs for a piece of software runs $5 a copy. Even with fairly hefty manuals, I'd be surprised if you broke $15 a copy. Granted, there are other costs, but it'd be kind of hard for value software companies that sell boxed product in the $20/copy range to exist if your insinuation were true.
(Not apathy, mind you, but complete lack of caring.)
from the All-Mighty dictionary.com: Apathy 1. Lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference. 2. Lack of emotion or feeling; impassiveness.
I'm not sure about that, but I do know that Gabe Newell and one of the other founders of Valve (who's name escapes me at the moment) were both former MS employees who had literally made millions off of MS stock options before they started Valve. This is why Valve was able to function pretty much as an independent developer before even the original Half-Life was released.
There's plenty of code scattered throughout there written by an ATI coder, true. But it's written to DX9 spec. The way I see it, nVidia's hardware just plain isn't up to snuff right now. They love to play the precision card as an excuse, but the cards are still running slow even at their 16bit setting, which is below DX9 spec. What good is 32bit precision if the card is unusably slow? The 'ATI-specific' code is nothing more than regular DX9 code - it's nVidia who needs their own, special codepath.
I should add the disclaimer that this doesn't make me happy as I've always liked nVidia cards and owned nothing but nVidia from the TNT2 up to this past month... when I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro. When the FX cards first came out, I was skeptical about ATI's lead, but the past 2 months have convinced me that nVidia is, and will be, behind until at least the next generation of GPUs. The GF FX is just plain inadequate for DX9 level shaders.
You have to remember though, Valve was formed by former Microsoft employees. They truly believe in MS software as a platform, and this is part of the reason why they're so gungho about DirectX.
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Oh man! Mean Streets is one of my all time favorite games. In fact, it was the *first* commercial game to take advantage of the 256 color SVGA pallette. Cooler still was Access' RealSound technology, which would play amazingly high quality audio using nothing but the PC Speaker in your computer. We're talking actual, understandable speech. The technology in that game still amazes me today. :)
Small nitpick - I'd call the above example C more than C++. Someone who started out with C++ is more likely to use cout "Hello World" than printf. But yeah, it works as C++ too, I'm just bored. :)
Cg != RenderMonkey. RenderMonkey is simply an IDE for writing DX9 HLSL shaders - nothing more, nothing less. More info here.
The problems with Call of Duty seem to be in the game more than the hardware. I've heard of people with nVidia cards having trouble with it as well. Drivers do seem to make a difference for some people, but none for others. IE: I've read that to get it working with a 9600Pro, you MUST you Cat3.6 - funny thing, I've had it running on both 3.8 and 3.9. There doesn't seem to be any hard set rule one way or the other, just that Infinity Ward botched something up in their additions to the Q3 engine.
A year ago, I would've agreed with you. After the disaster that was the Rage, with its constant driver problems, I wrote ATI off. But when I upgraded my system this summer, I went with the benchmarks and bought a Radeon 9600 Pro and I've yet to run into a single driver related problem. It seems that ATI's finally gotten their act together, at least on the Windows side. Linux may be different, but I haven't tried it in any of my Linux boxes.
And yes, it's in the windows box. Even my old GF2 is overkill for what I do with Linux, and KVM switches are a wonderful thing.
The problem with a benchmark like this is that UT2003 is a DX8-level game, so it doesn't take really take full advantage of these newer cards as it doesn't use features such as PS2.0. We're not really going to know how the two brands truly stack up until next-gen games (Doom 3, HL2, etc.) which take full advantage of the hardware start to show up.
:)
Early indicators seem to be that nVidia's cards struggle to handle DX9-level pixel shaders. While I'm taking the pre-release benchmarks on HL2 from Valve with a grain of salt, the Aquanox (DX9) benchmark and comments I've read from John Carmack as well as others seem to echo the fact that nVidia's hardware's just not up to snuff when it comes to next generation performance. IE: nVidia's cards are fine for anything that's out now, but if you want to hold onto a card for a couple of years, I'd stay away personally.
Let me also add in a disclaimer that I've been a long time fan of nVidia's hardware, having owned a TNT2, GF2, and GF4 previously. In fact, I'd sworn off ATI as crap back in the days of the Rage and it's absolutely horrendous drivers. So let's just say it wasn't an easy decision for me when time to upgrade rolled around this time and I ended up going with a Radeon 9600 Pro.
And since you asked, I'm not sure about Matrox (I assume they're still around), but S3 was recently revived from the dead. It seems they were bought out by VIA when they went bankrupt, who continued development of the hardware, and we'll be seeing a new chip from them called Delta Chrome sometime in the next few months. All the rumblings I've heard have indicated that this thing could be competitive with nVidia and ATI in the low and mid-range market segments. This should be interesting to watch play out.
They are, so long as the buyer and seller are in the same state, which is how I personally feel it should stay. In all honesty, I'd have to wonder whether the collection of local sales taxes from companies with no physical presence in a state would be able to stand on constitutional grounds - it sounds dangerously similar to state/local governments 'interfering with interstate trade' if you ask me.
Um, you do realize that Centrino is just the brand name for a particular bundle of hardware, right? Intel requires a low power proc, wireless ethernet and a couple of other things for a notebook to be certified Centrino. Most of the Centrino notebooks I've seen have had Pentium M processors, which is *gasp!* a PIII! Why? It's more efficient clock-for-clock than the P4 and draws less power. So why the rebranding? For people like yourself who think P4 > P3 without really understanding why they're using the "old" architechture.
You and I definitely have a different perspective on this. :)
:)
I have no problem whatsoever with their conservative nature, in fact my favorite people to discuss issues with are those who disagree with me, precisely because it makes me think deeper about the issue at hand.
The problem I have is the promotion of themselves as "Fair and Balanced," which in mind mind implies that they intend to be unbiased. Or at the very least, give the other side a fair chance to make their case. Instead, I get to watch hosts bullying guests and what I consider to be rather unfair coverage of a lot of issues.
So honestly, I have no problems with Fox as be conservative leaning, but their approach bothers me. But as another saying goes, different strokes...
9/11 was an act executed by the terrorist group Al Quaeda. Therefore, by saying that Iraq was involved with 9/11 you're directly implying that Iraq is tied to Al Quaeda. Get your facts straight.
Actually, I'd have no problem with Fox news having a conservative bent if it weren't for the fact that they go so far out of their way to blur the line between fact and opinion. Look at the wording of some of the items in their ticker compared to other networks. CNN's, for example, uses very plain wording that simply gets the facts across. Fox's ticker intentionally words things in a flamatory, almost propaganda-like way. I think having different POV's is a very GOOD thing, but I really wishFox knew how to keep their punditry and fact reporting somewhat seperated.
I'll agree on the majors having slight liberal slant, but Fox News is more than 'slightly' right-leaning. You're talking about a network that goes out of its way to find the dumbest, most extreme left wingers to bring on the air so their hosts can ridicule them. Bill O'Reilly's shouting matches and mic cutting are pretty much SOP over Fox - they try to give the appearance of letting both sides tell their story, but in reality, are only interested in their side of the story. The other networks generally at least give conservatives a chance to speak without treating them like bafoons. That alone makes them far more centerist than Fox will ever be in my mind.
I seem to remember Colin Powell going before the UN Security Council and giving all sorts of 'evidence' that Iraq had ties to Al Quaeda. Oh, he also threw out something about 'yellow cake' in Niger while he was at it.
5.4 seconds is unusually low for the WRX. The average 0-60 time I've seen is around 5.6-5.7. Seems C&D just got a car on each side of the spectrum.
Ever seen pictures of Prodrives HQ in England? At any given time, there are about 30 plain, white Subaru Imprezas sitting in the parking lot waiting to be stripped down and transformed into full fledged rally cars.
:)
Just a case-in-point.
Because the FX and standard A64 aren't pin-compatible. The standard A64 is Socket 754, the FX is Socket 940 (read: rebranded Opteron).
I don't dispute that at all. I use the calculator built into my cell phone quite often -- when I'm away from the computer. I guess my point is, that anyone who's going to buy something like this buys it to get work done, not really as something to carry around with them everywhere they go. A simple, emulated calculator is fine for the type of math I might run into when I'm not trying to get anything major done, but is completely insufficient for solving anything of any real complexity.
My computer has this nice little calculator program on it. Ocassionly, I'll run into something while I'm working on the computer that requires me to do some quick math. What do I do? Pick up my TI calculator that I leave sitting by it and punch it in.
I'm sorry, PDA's are a nice technology, but they in no way are superior to a good calculator. With my calculator, everything I need is either right there, or at most 2-3 menu levels down. Whereas with a PDA, I'd be lucky if I could do anything much more complex than basic math without wasting time digging through menus, no matter how well organized.
That said, HP DOES have a hybrid - the iPaq line. But they're also smart enough to realize that those who need to solve problems that are of more than marginal complexity will appreciate a tool made to do just that in the most efficient manner possible.
Where the hell did you get that idea? The cost of packaging + CDs for a piece of software runs $5 a copy. Even with fairly hefty manuals, I'd be surprised if you broke $15 a copy. Granted, there are other costs, but it'd be kind of hard for value software companies that sell boxed product in the $20/copy range to exist if your insinuation were true.
Not when the server's so loaded down that it's refusing connections.
from the All-Mighty dictionary.com:
Apathy
1. Lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference.
2. Lack of emotion or feeling; impassiveness.
Apathy IS a lack of caring. =)
I'm not sure about that, but I do know that Gabe Newell and one of the other founders of Valve (who's name escapes me at the moment) were both former MS employees who had literally made millions off of MS stock options before they started Valve. This is why Valve was able to function pretty much as an independent developer before even the original Half-Life was released.
There's plenty of code scattered throughout there written by an ATI coder, true. But it's written to DX9 spec. The way I see it, nVidia's hardware just plain isn't up to snuff right now. They love to play the precision card as an excuse, but the cards are still running slow even at their 16bit setting, which is below DX9 spec. What good is 32bit precision if the card is unusably slow? The 'ATI-specific' code is nothing more than regular DX9 code - it's nVidia who needs their own, special codepath.
I should add the disclaimer that this doesn't make me happy as I've always liked nVidia cards and owned nothing but nVidia from the TNT2 up to this past month... when I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro. When the FX cards first came out, I was skeptical about ATI's lead, but the past 2 months have convinced me that nVidia is, and will be, behind until at least the next generation of GPUs. The GF FX is just plain inadequate for DX9 level shaders.
Replied to the wrong post. Sorry. =)
You have to remember though, Valve was formed by former Microsoft employees. They truly believe in MS software as a platform, and this is part of the reason why they're so gungho about DirectX.