Ξ August 26th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
The Abit KN9 SLI sucks ass. Hardocp got it right but Hex dot us obviously live in some parallel dot dimension where Abit AM2 boards actually work. After wasting epochs of man hours working with revision after revision BIOS’, and even after publishing the article we were informed of yet another BIOS revision (1.4) which inevitably turned into another frustrating experience.
Even after 1.4’s apparent “complete overhaul” booting into windows turned into a labour some experience. The system would just hang after an already drawn out windows loading screen followed by a further 2 minutes of blank screen before finally getting into the OS sometime around a midnight in 2010. If it didn’t lockup within 2 minutes of being in the OS it would reboot itself, then for some divine intervention it was stable and I did manage to get the 91.33 drivers installed, and the 7900GTs in SLI, I realised I had to reboot and set the memory from 5-5-5-23-2T to 3-3-3-9-1T @ 2.3V, which we know works, it would sometimes work fine and POST but other times it couldn’t be bothered. At least that’s 50% better than always hanging with pre-1.4 BIOS if you try to do too much at once, without the gentle coaxing like encouraging a newborn to walk before it runs.
It’s a perfect experience of pure frustration that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. In “my professional opinion” it really requires a whole new board revision, from the ground up, rather than trying to put plasters on a haemorrhaging wound. I feel sorry for Abit’s BIOS engineers. You can’t polish a turd.
Tim (Smalley) assures me that the AN832-SLI was pretty decent, but I never used it, (edit: So was the KN8-SLI which I reviewed even. That was a decent board!) and we recently had to send back a Fatality AN9 because it was part of a mass recall so it doesn’t look too promising for Abit’s AMD motherboard division. Their Intel boards are generally rock solid though; I still use a AW8-MAX (955X) which I love to bits, and have a AW8-D (975X) spare, but it has those nasty PCI-Express lanes at the expense of PCI slots which I can’t yet afford to sacrifice. We aren’t going to review their AW8-D either, simply because there’s no point as it doesn’t support Conroe. I mean, by the time we would get around to doing it no one in their sane mind would ever consider buying an end of line P4 now Core 2s are widely available.
In other news; I feel sorry for those holding out for the 590SLI Intel boards. Haaahahaha! It was meant to be released three weeks ago but the red company put it back and back.. and now back again, deciding to release the 570SLI Intel chispet instead. So next week we should have a rather “basic” (for lack of a better word) Asus 570 SLI Conroe board review done. That is, providing them reds dont change their minds again. Actually, why the fuck am I laughing?? I should be pissed off at the fact I wrote three quarters of a 590SLI Intel review 3 weeks ago to have them change their mind the day before the NDA was up. After we (and no doubt every other review site) put all the effort in for testing. Bastards.
Ξ August 14th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Playing against other humans is always going to offer a more real experience, but with every good side there’s a pile of crap waiting to be trodden in. After reading about the new Train map for CS (I haven’t played since 1.1. Popularity/Retail killed it. Beta 6-7 was the best time to be a part of CS) featuring HDR it reminded me that online gaming isn’t such a fantastic idea as everyone claims it to be:
1) People are idiots. That should be enough said, but I’ll explain anyway. Generally if you don’t know who you’re playing with you’ll always get some idiot spamming crap or talking “leet speak”. God forbid there’s audio enabled and some snotty teenager is having a bad (every) day.
2) If you don’t play from the get-go then you’re fucked. Some people will play day in day out from the minute the preload on steam unlocks or the DVD falls on their mat. They know every-single-map inside out. They are naturally fantastic at gaming and are loaded up to the eye-balls on caffeine. You turn up 3 months later for a quick blast and you last 3 seconds before being walked over and shat on. Wohey, what an incredibly fun experience. Which leads me on to…
3) You need to invest inhumane amounts of time into it in order to get anywhere. Take ANY MMO for prime example. For god sake people, read a book. Go o-u-t-s-i-d-e?! Get off your fat ass and stop spending 50% of your day in front of your PC mining gold or playing dust again and again and again…
4) People cheat. They do in every-single-game, and it sucks ass. Even if it’s not cheating, bending the game rules is just as bad. If you can do it, that’s great but its crap for everyone else, especially if it affects their gaming experience.
5) Why would you turn something fps killing on, like HDR, to hinder your potential against your human foe? The thing to do is turn it down to 640×480 which makes all the little men MASSIVE, turn off all AA cause you want to get the exact edges of hit boxes and turn off all funky lighting or particles and anything else which makes the game look real and has further evolved than something from the SNES. Why would you turn on stuff which blinds you? makes it foggy? hinders what you can see?? Makes it look half decent?? No. Winning > all.
So, there you are. The top 5 reasons why online gaming sucks.
Ξ August 13th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Ok, so I was told that cubing on HD should only be attempted with a decent upscaler. I suppose it’s something everyone should invest in if watching DVDs in HD anyway but it’s not as if those things are common, or cheap.
I also bought an Xbox 360. Silly idea since I’m strapped for cash for car/travel/life but I can’t resist a bargain. £260 for the Premium kit + 2 wireless controllers + VGA cable and 5 games = ka-ching! I was going to buy one eventually anyway, but was gonna hold out ’til December to see if MS bundled in a HDDVD drive that brought the prices down, but with Dead Rising coming out soon, I just can’t hold off any longer. I also feel an overwhelming urge to play PGR3.
NBS is up to episode 12 now, with 13 just been recorded. Again, stupid Powergramo refused to record the last 30 minutes of the 90 minute cast which pissed me off no end. I’m trying to sort out some sort of mixer system to record into audition directly but I need 2 PCs, a splitter and a mixer to output my mic into both recording and skype as well as record & hear the input from other peeps.
Recently reviewed a Shuttle SN27P2. Nice unit, pretty looking shame it’s AM2 though. That’s like the new “dirty word” it seems, taken over from the letter P and number four. I couldn’t live with an SFF having owned a YY cube for so long, you get used to the size and using it as another table. It’s not LAN party-able though, but, who cares.
I’ve also been helping Brett (Thomas) write his raytracing column for Bit, which should be interesting when it goes live. It’s not quite transformed itself into a transcript of our discussions on the topic but he keeps trying to write something paragraph and Im constantly editing bits with my input! Haha. He’ll never get it out at this rate.
