Golden Moments..or why the flip doesn't Sega just 'go PC'?

Some music while reading. enjoy!

Hi guys!


Do you like nostalgia gaming? I do.. I like the Dreamcast.


I'd like to see Sega re-issue and dev on PC, using Steam as their distribution service. that way they don't have to invest in hardware and we get get all the old Dreamcast games and new ones, without restriction. just use your fav controller and done!

I also think publishers having their own pages on Steam would be great, giving them a storefront on Steam...and I'd like a 'Dreamcast Zone' on their own Sega Steam page. Ultimately 'why not?' is my question.. they just sell games..people buy the games. simple.

I am concerned at pricing though.. as these games should come in at *I feel* around £2.99 each. why? coz you can get a current AAA for a tenner, and these dreamcast games are over a decade old, it like when an indie publisher puts something out and I'm like 'what the flip?? £10, £20??' when what you basically get is an old NES title with an updated story. dont get me wrong some indies are just staggeringly amazing.. and I dont regret buying Stanley Parable at full price..or even when I tried Kairo and thought I got a total bargain.

But what they are selling is nostalgia..and for £2.99 its worth a try even if your memories are golden and your new experience is not.. for £10.. noooo you feel ripped off and handed a bruised ego.

As for hardware.. the Dreamcast is now gone.. and I genuinely feel it shouldn't come back, few years ago I never would have said that.. but I'm a PC gamer now..to me the PC just makes sense as a platform for Sega.. no restrictions, no one tells them to cough up for licenses or you can't do that on our platform its too close to something we do.. etc etc.

Sega has so many titles that could be re-issued.. and when the re-issue is successful ..why not bring out a new game continuing the series? it's simple for them. really.

I wish they would re-issue Shenmue 1 & 2, House of the Dead and Soulcalibur .. where else are we going to get legit Dreamcast games without actually using a Dreamcast?

With the recent and (current) Sega Humble Bundle I now have Dreamcast games as part of my Steam collection and not having to pay full price.. kudos to Sega..'back in the game!' as a publisher!

peace :)

Dava

A Beginner's guide to shaders...or can my PC make a decent cuppa?

Hi guys

If you're new to PC gaming or haven't paid attention to how graphics cards work (we've all been there).. or if you say this often; My CPUS seem FASTZ! why no GOOD GRAFIX?? bad feelz! haha

There is a simple way to remember all this graphics card junk.

Shaders.. MOAR shaderz!!

2000+ shaderz + decent other core parts + decent Vram (2GB/3GB/4GB/MOAR!)

Means you can pace at a decent frame rate.. Crossfire and SLI for each card doubles many of these things but not all. SLI scaling is something beautiful these days.. I haven't tried Crossfire but AMD guys seem to keep complaining about the drivers and with my new, 280x I can see why, with gimped features.   ...lovin' the 3GB Vram & 2048 shaders though.

Each of the 2048 shader cores has a clock rate just like your CPU.. speed them up and the PC finds it easier to create the game.

These days I would recommend no less than 1024 shaders for any medium 1080p gaming build. but really you should be thinking about trying to get around 1500+ & 2GB of Vram for a medium build.

Rob mentioned James' GTX 660ti 3GB, that's a great card, and he's correct, these days Vram is sooo important for many games, simply put: the shaders and AA (detail) are what you see, the Vram is how quickly it is loaded. there's more about bit bus but thats for another day.

If you dial up the settings to maxout, everything's going to slow down becuase that takes a lot more work.. so less shaders means you put lower settings and everything will work as it should. or overclock the shaders you have..but be careful you don't burn down your house or fry the card or go on holiday to the seaside for a decorative hat.

left the PC on battlefield!

paused!

Of course there's loads more factors but these days as long are you have a reasonable CPU (current gen for AMD and Intel) and 8 to 32GB of RAM (I recommend 16GB @ 1866mhz) you should be G2G.. SSD doesn't hurt either. but HDD 7200rpm yes will run games fine.

peace

Dava

MOAR RAMZ!!

The Wattage Dilemma .. or calculators at the ready!

Hi Guys!

External Power Supplies & Secondary PSU's have been in demand for around a decade now.. but as yet, no one company has stepped up to the challenge; With the exception of NesteQ, which is altogether ugly solution, I still commend them for trying.

Where is FSP? Where is NZXT? Where is Zalman? Where is EVGA?

Have you too many optical bays?? I do too.. if we could get a extra PSU to fit within these extra bays, and a power header cable to connect that would be great! instead of the case power switch connecting straight to the motherboard it could have its own recessed slot in the secondary PSU, which then has a similar cable leading to the motherboard to trip the primary PSU via the normal motherboard method.

WHY would anyone want these.. I think manuf. think 'this is crazy, these guys spend a fortune on their rigs and don't want to buy a higher wattage PSU??' to reply, sometimes, it's just far too much hassle to disassemble your rig*, especially if you're on water, other times, it becomes totally impractical, for instance if you were to buy a PSU and only need another 200w for a third graphics card, speaking from experience there.. and in my situation right now.. I have a HP* proprietary PSU, non-standard ATX with pins the wrong way round. its £120 for the 600w version, which is just insulting.

If I could buy a Secondary 500w 80plus bronze PSU for £60, that would solve my problem.. I could have as many cards as I wish in my PC. to be clear, that's what I feel many want that ability for; to power all their cards and a few drives.. that's it.

The big ugly cable problem.. well I thought of a solution to that problem..have a clip for one of the back card slots and once the cable is inside the PC.. it doesn't need to be big and ugly anymore huh? just a normal slim one with very generous slack enabling us to cable tidy. individual wires still somewhat thick and each can be routed to the power in port which no longer needs to be a kettle plug, but could be for each power wire.

The PCIE and drive power cables could be very flat and be ready to to be hidden. sleeving could be another option, but now more and more retailers are selling sleeving, which is frankly superb!

Sometimes companies are dumb.. they see a market but for whatever reason they don't take advantage of it.. this is ten years of people asking for secondary and external PSU's.. so I guess who is first to this market will clean up.. and then THEY will be the ones in the need of a calculator not us! :D

peace

Dava


---------------


*if I have my PC settled and I dont want to mess with it and just make a slight upgrade, this becomes first choice!

*Don't get me wrong HP are coming along these days, the old HP I hope is changing. Buying their products at times is little like buying Mac, but then they had that nightmare of a website for many many years.

I have a HP Z400/W3550 then w/X5650 Xeon upgraded .. got this PC a three weeks ago, very happy.

There is no Santa.. or don't let the Advertising Department have Crystal Meth (Zenimax Online Studios and ESO)

Hi Guys

In my last post I wrote about Bethesda's release schedule & Development for future Devs but I also mentioned their sister studio Zenimax Online in the notes.. this reminded me of a pet hate I have, that I have not had to think about for many many years.. advertising campaigns; ones that are so far from the reality of the playing experiance it ruins the game. ..seriously.

To let the corps know.. give your ad dept half a chance and they will ruin your game.. full stop. It is widely known in the advertising industry, biggest liar wins if they fool their corp heads. for games the biggest liars are the renderers.. they render a cartoon of something, because they do not feel the game is strong enough for 'in-game footage only' or they are inexperienced in the particular industry they are promoting the product to.

I am not going to be unkind to those guys.. they are just doing a job, but if you watch the movie 'crazy people' there was a revolution in the advertising industry around 25 years ago. This movie is a parody of the quite real revolution.. which was started by the people who advertised 'Ronseal', this was the first advert to tell customers the truth, and they responded in droves. Ronseal is a wood and metal sealer, to protect your outside structures from the weather.

'does exactly what is says on the tin'

Very famous lines, and a practicality that meant people knew they were not lied to.

Zenimax Online's ESO advert, was appalling compared to the actual in game event, which from what I have seen was nothing more than a small place with a few NPC's fighting.

To Zenimax Online, you are a new studio, so mistakes will be made, that's just life, but I'm sure you know and accept this. However, you need to keep a very tight rein on your ad department from now on.. it's a little like, the 'cock of the walk' biggest liar wins works in many industries, they are taught this..but not in the games industry.. and ESPECIALLY in sub-based MMO's as you have now found out regarding all the hate fans poured out for you. 'cagey'.. is not even a sufficient word for a new MMO advert.. you will make already dedicated fans into crazy fans quite easily with even a small shift change in the format of the game..RENDERING a advert is suicide. Blizzard/WoW Valve/DoTA get away with slight rendering because their fans already know what to expect, you were launching a new game, oh man!

please keep in mind, for MMO's, the ad dept is like a seagull and you have a sandwich.. the seagull wants the sandwich and if you let your guard down, it will take it from you, and all you're left with is a mess on the ground. Finding Nemo; 'MINE!'.

Of course, you can do mixes of rendering and in-game footage for single player games.. gamers in-general HATE it, but yeah it can be done..we ONLY like in game footage.. it makes us happy.

Gearbox/2k advertised 'A BAZILLION GUNS' all with in-game footage.. were we disappointed? no! fans still flock to that game. that was smart. that was truthful.

Sony did an excellent job controlling the hype of DCUO, at first its just a render cartoon, and while you are watching you're thinking 'ohw man it's never going to be *this* good.. they probably won't including flying, the powers will be limited and the girls much less sexy'.. well.. that was, wrong, wrong and wrong. And while it sounds hypocritical, once you can fly around the TWO full cities at leisure, you start to see the beauty of what they were doing, but not just any cities, these are ones I have known since childhood, Metropolis and Gotham... rem DCUO is Free2Play too, and only a £5 purchase means you get a slight upgrade to membership permanently, without subscription.

But what Sony really did correctly is how they structured your involvement in said cartoon, you were the answer to their (the Justice League's) problem, I'm finding this hard to explain this without you knowing the specifics, but you were the answer and in this they DID NOT lie. and they didn't gimp the powers either, neither for free or premium or Sub-based (Legendary).. you have access to all Superman's powers right from the start, to Batman's, to Wonder Womans.

So you are about to tell a child there is no Santa.. how can you be so cruel to formally tell them they are about to receive their true wish, 'if you good and are on the good list and buy our game'; knowing all along it is a lie.

YOU just can't do that with MMO's. the hate will haunt Zenimax and the employees for a few years yet. And that's a shame coz for *some* moronic reason, the ad dept did NOT focus on the truly awesome size of ESO, which in itself is a HUGE selling point for fans. whyyy?? just be honest..there was no reason to render a lie when you have already a MASSIVE selling point.. ESO is a continent.. Tamriel. showing this in adverts( again in-game only), at least would have controlled the hype, and not lead to disappointment, and much nerd-rage..tbh WELL deserved nerd-rage.

Here is games reviewer Angry Joe's vid on ESO.

I heartily agree with him on many many points.

You can't milk a long term investment without hurting your long-term credibility as a company.
MMO's are 'drip-drip' not 'cash-cash'.

peace.

Dava

Silence on the Hill.. or Bethesda portfolio expansion, but still no Fallout..

Hi Guys!

So yesterday I saw a mention of Tango & Bethesda's 'The Evil Within' instantly I knew it was a remake of Silent Hill, looks well done after watching the vid. yes, Capcom* will be mad haha.

What they are doing is smart business.. they are expanding their portfolio..they are a big hitter now, and have both a weight on their shoulders, and great opportunities. But with that comes 'Great Expectations'...

I am a huge Fallout fan.. having around 3000 hours play*..  I am waiting for Fallout 4, but I realise they are milking while waiting, but like I said that's smart business practice.. what I don't appreciate is the schedule.

Here is hopefully peacefully*, a schedule that I feel is fair to both devs and players.

Dev's have 4 years to make a main game, with a 2 year schedule for a second tier, second tier doesn't mean 'second rate' it is the experimental branch of the main series given to a similar studio, with similar ideas for a release 2 years after the main title*, this alleviates the gamers desires. boosts profits, and builds the series into a franchise.   also I feel, just smart business practise.

As a company if you get a lot of 'Shut up and take my money' from fans, then they have unsated desires, and you have business opportunity*, Beth is amazing with fans, really, the GECK with an all out stoke of genius, shows a kind side in a business where that is hard to do without putting work into something and giving it away for free, the exception being the kit itself, but then the ten's of thousands of mods users get mods for free from ModDevs.. who Beth are again being the leader of the industry in encouraging the new talent to code and texture from grass roots.. again genius, beneficent.

I want a new Fallout.. flip I think there are people in the arctic who want a new fallout..its been too long, the GECK takes the pressure off for now, and we have Skyrim to play with and pretend its Fallout..but I can't help feeling Beth could have asked Obsidian to put out another Fallout in the meantime.. even approaching Dev Teams* and suggesting funding and direction, seeing the skill and sharing the skill between both. Dev Teams have real-life jobs, OB could provide a future to such teams..saying if you're in, then we will re-hire you for our second tier. And while the project was being finished, hire & pay them for the duration. that's good stuff on your resume.. hired by Obsidian..wow.

tbh I'd have paid for Project Brazil.. around £5 sounds fair. mini-quel three-parter easy money, why? because the devs love what they are doing.. you really think they clock off at 5?* haha.

Skyrim's engine supports HDT physics, this makes me think that if these engines are/were in some way modular, why not all engines, why do we need multiple engines.. couldn't the industry as a whole come together in a initiative, and make ONE game engine, that is FULLY modular, like browsers are these days, when skyrim came out, there was no physics, now with a simple* plug-in and the coding of the game from the ground up.. it's possible.. ANYTHING is possible, textures can always be added, so as long as the engine can handle what is going on, it won't crash, so a *highly* stable engine under a myriad of conditional plug-ins. We Beth fans oft joke about Beth's coding (well for fallout hehe)..but they have improved drastically in the last ten years..

Fallout was 2007 but like the weather 'feels like 2004'.
but they have improved drastically in the last 7 years. :))

Is this a trite whine for Fallout 4..?..?... YOU BET!
You are amazing but now you are disparaging people who obviously believe in you. myself included. .. 7 years is not good enough and no amount of Silent Hill's will make that to a professional release standard.

here's some music I was listening to while writing.. I found it apt.

 yes she has boobs.. but shhh.. she might not notice.

peace.

Dava


-----------
* update: (oops Konami.. Capcom was Res. Evil)
*3 Xbox plays inc. my brothers + PC
* (even though I'm pretty nerd-raged haha)
*with each main title come an updated/upgraded engine/graphics & physics scheme, and the main game can contain the choicest picks from the second tier ideas that were liked, and ditch the unpopular ones. it's win win!
* (Project Brazil unfinished )
* I hear on youtube, many are displeased with Zenimax Studios/ ESO, while they are a new studio, they broke the cardinal rule: never overhype.
if a online MMO doesn't do hype well.. believe me it gets talked about coz of the subscription based nature.. this is something I feel Sony avoided with DCUO, they did exactly what it said on the tin..keeps the crazy fans calm..you are telling a child there is no Santa, try it again without the crystal meth. that comment is aimed at the advert Zenimax Online had; that 'Angry Joe' a games reviewer, so succinctly demonstrated, was not only far from advertised, was poor for inde devs, nevermind a company with funding. ..much funding. rem to keep a tight leash on the ad dept, they will ruin your game given half a chance. IF your game is NOT good enough for 'in game footage only' then there is something wrong with the game. period.
* ease of use for end users
*I DO NOT endorse overworking though, as with the legend of Bondi studios.. what was revealed, was truly shocking, and I commend R* for stepping in and being merciful to those workers.

An Open Letter to AMD.. or hold on, my change wasn't correct, I'm a few cores short.. :(

To AMD

Recently, I had a problem, my rig died in a water incident, since then I have been searching for a way to build a rig while still saving for my OH to come to this country, we are applying for her VISA soon and it costs enough that I do not have cash to spare.

I have the remaining parts from the original rig, but don't know which is faulty and have no way to test, I also have a C2Q 6600 and could buy a board that took DDR3, but alas! only 2gb modules are supported.. I have 4x4GB. My first reaction is ..to build one of your fine APU offerings, best IGP money can buy, can even game at 720 properly ..or partially at 1080.. this is some feat and I congratulate you on such a task undertook.

But now to what I discovered.. it boggles the mind.. WHY if I buy a 7850k and a R7 250 are the extra shader cores disabled??

The 7850k has 512 shader cores and the highest Dual Graphics Radeon supported card has.. 384.. crossfire NEEDS these to be equal or it shuts off shader cores!! why why why?? .. was this just an oversight..please tell me this was just an oversight.. please DON'T WRECK your plan for system on chip, by thinking marketing ploys will still work for APU's.. for APU's it doesn't work the same way it did in the past..

For example.. a motherboard manufacturer wants a price cap, they say, this is our low end motherboard its marketings responsibility to price it accordingly..they come back the R&D and say, we want to limit the features... to justify the price..*usually* they limit the RAM speed..but Homer Simpson DOH! APU's relies so heavily on RAM speed.. you are gimping your product.. and so the whole platform. the LOWEST RAM speed for APU mobos, at the poor end should be 1866 here.. the high end enthusiast being 2666mhz. supported and QVL'd.

In a more complicated way you are doing a similar thing, by thinking you can have different specs for cards and APU's. you can't..well, you can but you destroy the idea of apu's being a platform.

your highest APU the 7850k has 512 shaders, 32 texture, 8 rendering cores.. so you needed only ONE card in the Radeon line up to match this EXACTLY for YOUR idea to work..you spent.. xxxxx dollars already developing and marketing the idea to your customers and fans, spending money to create a building structure for PC builders to find easy to understand. but.. POOF.. gone!! when marketing decided.. 'erm lets put the cores at 384'. And if you wait for the next hardware refresh to fix this.. it will be even worse in the mind of consumers.. why? because the gamers & builders..like myself you have now screwed, with no performance upgrade path, by ending the 990FX chipset chain.

please just for once.. be sensible and respond to a glaring oversight. release a R7 255 Dual Graphics card. matched exactly to your top apu.

You can't price cap these things in the traditional way.. it works differently. you can cap the CPU side yes, and it slows ..everything.. down..but capping the gpu or cards slowly 'chips away' at the work you have already done building the idea of what a apu should be. YOU AMD are the leader in this field..you can't make such gaffs and hope to fix it later.. fix it now, people will respect your honesty and forgive.. fix it later and you look like goofs.

I have been using AMD since I started in 2006, I have blogged many times about your products, and all this passionate writing comes not from a position of opposition but from one of your own fans.

Yours Sincerly

David Shaw

aka Dava

Dava's Hitchhiker's Guide to 'End of Life' ..so long and thanks for all the chips!

[Here is a lighthearted look at 'End Of Life' known also as EOL, when a product moves from the support phase to a coffin somewhere in the ethernets of a Skyrim graveyard.. or no longer supported by the manufacturing company, while this is not always the worst thing ever to have happened in existence.. try paying £4000-12000 for a MacPro and tell me in 6-10 years if you feel like a little cry :'(

Now please listen to the hitchhiker's guide music, and have a reasonably astute voice in you head, for the duration of the proceedings. ~ahthankyou]


Once upon a time in the 1970's of 'earth' The Planetial Conglomeration Interstellarfractuation, also known to the locals as IBM, realized once consumers worked out that the original company that sold them their 'Till device', was then responsible to help them use it for a unlimited number of years, they became aware & alarmed this was going to be all too costly.. negating the disastrous PR problems that occurred with a Till that tallied the wrong outcome this would come second and third place.. oh my!

By the 1980's every major company had just assumed the humans were stupid and would accept; 'when a new model comes out we stop supporting the old one' and many stupid humans did, even though they paid the same price for a system as you would for a kidney on the black market, they just said 'okay' and bought the new model.

Two companies did not think they should be so mean to the stupid humans.. IBM and Apple, in the early 80's it was IBM offering extended support, and in the mid-80s to 1990's it was Apple giving up to 6 years EOL support, today Apple offers 6 years half-life support, with a full life of 10.

One may note another.. Clive Sinclair, whose systems he made sure were backward compatible.. possibly the first human to do this on a whole range of computers, and so risk losing money.

By 1995 the idea you had support what-ever-on-earth you were selling had caught on, and people would get quite cross ..if you sold them junk and disappeared to china they would report you to Interpol because they would have nerd-rage if something didn't work *exactly* as stated!

By 2000's graphic chip vendors, became proud of their place within the community, offering much laxed policies on RMA and EOL, even cards from those eras still receive support today.

*

Don't let the talking whale delude you, all of this was hard fought, with many angry letters about amps and millivolts .. usb ports with strange colors that no one knew what they meant.

In history there has been many strange occurrences of faulty goods, like the hypnotic vacuum cleaner incident of 2070, where as you know, many people where convinced that cleaner was working but in-fact it had no motor and only a MP3 player and a speaker... or the woeful tale in 2102 of the faulty electric massage underwear, .. so many lives lost, they will be missed.

People enjoy knowing who to trust.. now if you just pop in the scales and I'll warm up the probe..
.. ohw you *have* lost weight, must be all the seaweed we feed you. .. its vibrating .. oh! i think that means its ready..

notes----
*Shixxor of Reddit's Flying Whale. great artist!

PC Satellite Devices.. or Homer Simpsons asks 'Can.. my Monkey.. Have a Pet??'

Hi Guys!

These days we all have smartphones.. like a satellite device for our PC's.. a mini part of our computing life 'on the go'.. there is talk of smartwatches that satellite our phones, while this *has* happened it's yet to catch on.. I think this a great idea!

It would give us a second smaller screen for our phones, linked via bluetooth, we can check our notifications just by turning our wrist, naturally, and we can have traditional wired headphone headsets running up our sleeve, to saving us from the often strange looking mono electricity using bluetooth headsets, we can store & sync more data and have a place to exchange data on our person, when we run out on the move. We wouldn't have to reach to our pocket to take our phone out, which is handy for both security reasons and a more elegant solution.

This would facilitate phablets a bit more, for mobile movie watching too, as most other small tasks would/will be shown on the smartwatch, answering & ending calls, viewing text and fb messages.. although replying requires the phone, we can be patient until we are seated, or have hot-presets like 'ok' 'yes' 'no' 'thanks' 'yes please' 'no thanks' and user defined ones via the our phones. A camera on the side of the watch for easy skype, making it easier to play cameraman.

tbh I really don't like Tablets, I know its a matter of taste, but I don't see the point in them other than for the lady in your life. large and cumbersome, without the nice little luxuries of a laptop, i'd rather keep that to the foray of the phone.. but i could be wrong, as many seem to be making the move to combine laptop and tablet as one device..but i'm still not convinced.

But there seems to be a major fault in the pricing, afterall this is a *watch* we are talking about.. many many if not all, seem wildly overpriced even prohibiting the market into being a grown market and a established technology. Many charge from £300 to £5/600 which is ridiculous! again, you do realize this is a WATCH .. many pay around £30 to £150 for their watches.. so starting at £75 for a basic Android Samsung/HTC/Sony then having a top wall of £150 makes this an *actual* possibility of buying one and becoming a market. I think they got greedy or had starry eyed expectations as far as pricing, but its new tech and no one knows what price it should be at first, but I think we can all see now it's been out for two years.


So... in five years.. 'SmartRing' anyone? :)


Dava

A Tree! A Rock! A Bush! 20 Answers on the misconceptions of distance in games

Hi Guys,


In my journey of understanding.. learning much more about pixel counts and how much of a gaff I made about how many pixels my TV could *actually* do.. I learned this:

1.the measurement for textures vs distance in 1080 is wildly wrong.
2. the closer you get to a rock/object the sharper, NOT vaguer, the object should be.
3. Downsampling exists, even though I found it by accident. innocently.
4. Downsampling 'corrects' the 'error of view' in many ways.
5. 3k textures at a sample of 3200x1800, but only have 1920x1080 active pixels, adds three times the 'Perspective Of Correct Distance' (POCD) to coin a phrase.
6 There is still a very long way to go before we fill 1080 correctly in games. but even by then, we will have moved on to 4k/8k by the time we have 'accidently' corrected it.

but by then the 4k and 8k distances will be even more incorrect and.. its backward to human nature, the closer we come to an object the more we see.. not less.

at 4k and 8k you need to load 12k and 24k textures to hope to correct the POCD.. hmmm.. downsampling screen + sophisticated drivers + high textures = POCD.

I feel it should be a standard expectation on the part of the games maker to provide much higher textures to consumers than even the consumers think they need.

Did anyone see the original Bioshock 2 assets in the unreal 4 engine? Feb. 2010.. over 4 years ago. nice huh?

An open modular engine, would be able to adapt to the things i mentioned here, it would not need to have a lifespan, much like an API, if someone used a tool, we as consumers have the plugin tool as part of the initial install.

7. time constraints for devs made me feel cheated but I knew I was just being a baby and should suck it up.

8. DEVS ARE being crappy using DX9. period.

9. To understand distance Rene Magritte is a great example, he is using the thin stick of reality as a counterpoint of distance.. and making it an illusion.. devs need to reverse this process and make an illusion become distance and 'prose a reality'.

10. .. ten does not exist. I think I made my point.


oohw needed that off my chest playing a lot of Skyrim.. kept thinking the trees and rocks and paper christmas trees were awful.. and I already got the super high texture pack too.

and... thanks for reading my rant :)

have a great day!

Dava

Apples, Pears and Oranges.. or How to 'short-sell' In a Global Economy ..

Hi guys!

----
firstly, I am quite sick and have been for a couple of months, I have been focusing more on my OH and trying to feel better. We've been trying to get her here to Scotland and that is still going on :)..if I am sporadic in posting, please grant me grace. thank you.                  

now, on with the article...
----

How do you 'build a brand'?

MS is King at this.. there is no other company with such success in the whole world (Sony, Apple and oil companies coming in close after)..

how do MS do it??

Quick answer: they 'short sell' at a loss. not directly to consumers.. but to OEM's with their OEMAct licences for Windows, in fact its a little like a ponzi scheme, but no one loses, the bottom rung has the most benefit. everyone wins! however MS is hugely benefited in the indocturine stage.. someone who uses windows when young will probably use when old.. and that lends major clout to a company.. if you can say to potential investors, 'We're going to be around for another 60 years' and MEAN it that's 1. impressive 2. prooveable 3. no other software company in the world has such a chance for that to become fact.. even Apple with the super fancy iPhone and OSX iOS and a reference to the Tree of Knowledge (it was actually a fig not an apple..but we get the point)..then yes is the resounding answer from investors, being able to claim longevity in an industry where they have seen so many companies die and it be PLAUSIBLE is a feat in itself.

and... Apple never short sell. they provide the longest support of all the companies or have done so far, and MS do support via compatibility, but Apple give a 10 year full life cycle for products and even a 6 year half-life, compared to MS's half-life 4 years and full life of 8.

Oranges..

This is all an alien planet to Ubuntu fans.. the open market is in no way *practically* the same. the Linux Companies ie Canonical, exist on person to person interaction, a few websites and mostly video sites, which every video posted could seen as an advert for their OS. grassroots.

and of course, the great big jelly beanstalk in the sky that is Android! :)

Without XP OEMAct on PC's MS would have DIED dragging their heels on DX9 for 8 years..they didn't even use DX10 on their own consoles. But somehow they survived.. not just survived managed to stay relatively stable AND increase brand growth-age.. wow!

These days with win8 they have learned to short sell.. you can pick up the top consumer version for around £50.. that's smart ..and beneficial to end users.

Congratz to MS for nearly 40 years in the Biz!

peace

Dava

--
note: I am MS neutral.. pro-Linux/Ubuntu.. although to quote the TARDIS 'you're like 14 year old trying to repair a motorbike in his bedroom'.. pro-Apple but with some grievances.


The first of January 2015.. will be MS's 40th anniversary of being founded.

I long to hear the Zelda upgrade music.. DUH DA DUH DA! or why don't NV and AMD open up to more than 4 gpu cores?

As we approach a new era of gpu usage, and gpu scaling becomes tighter and better than ever before.. I think now is the time for Nvidia and AMD to start planning for the next year or two to release our cards from the 4 card restriction.. they have both done an excellent job this last ten years, congratz kudos and fanfare deserved!

now we are *firmly* in the 2010's.. time to look ahead to the next few short years, and I feel opening up the protocol to however people like use their hardware and putting the driver to work instead is the smart way to go.

DUH DA DUH DA!

more powerful cards  yes.. thank you thank you yes! but also a choice about how we wish to assemble our system.. its smarter for you to open up mid-range cards.. why? if you don't take their money someone else will with another component.. 4 way 5 way.. as many ways as motherboard manufacturer/chipset manufacturer can fit on a board, as many ways as customers like.

Imagine a horse, a thoroughbred, he can run the track in record time, but a trap brace can go much faster.. can be funded over time, and do not need to be thoroughbreds .. I would like to own two thoroughbreds, but money does not allow, and as such is a pipe dream, which comes with a luxury yacht and two Filipina models and it's this kind of thinking that may be holding back the industry, 'make an elite' with price points..so another company from another component field receives my money.

peace

Dava

Inde AA and Major Publisher AAA.. or Sagat vs Ryu

David Shaw
3 April · Edited


It's the hip thing these days to have a few inde games under your belt but If you are a AAA title only guy, I personally think thats okay too, coz you do what you enjoy!.. however I do enjoy inde games and have a few inde titles in my steam list myself, I have two categories, Inde and Inde AA.. the AA are the ones I felt were the best titles, and that's what I'd like to share in case you missed them. .. but rem with inde titles always youtube them first. word to the wise there.


'Nightsky'. It's a chill out puzzle game. atmospheric. level driven.

'The Stanley Parable'. anti-story within a story that never ends that's actually an anti-story.. that might be a story. narration driven.

'Splice'. DNA puzzle game. level driven.

'Kairo'. I'm new to Kairo..but I think the idea is excellent. exploration driven.


Couple of semi-indes too


Black Mesa. a remake of Half Life. available on Desura. ..just wow! .. I'm not HL fan, for Valve I'm a Portal guy, but this is 100% prime steak for free guys.


..did you also know Sniper Ghost series is ..inde?


Digressing slightly.. there has been offenders in the past.. EA.. who used to claim all physical media as their own, yes including the stuff you bought from them.. you were 'renting'. Ubisoft.. ooft! I don't know what your religious preferences are guys.. but I'm a believer and I don't expect to pay £40 to be insulted. y'see its not a game makers job to ridicule me or my beliefs no matter what they personally think of them.. why? because they make you pay for the game first, not decide whether you want to pay after.


To note though, since Origin.. EA have become much more friendly to the community.. they are giving away Dead Space right now for free on Origin.

And Ubisoft have yet to apologize


So why shouldn't people look elsewhere. and shake the foundations of every self serving company? every company *COUGH* CAPCOM *COUGH* that doesn't do any dev work and skates it to starving low level dev team for buttons. IP skating is a community crime of which Capcom, now pumps out as standard.. that they don't invest any money in their IP..how on EARTH they expect to grow their dying franchise portfolio, is beyond me.


So even if you love AAA, which I do too.. there are more reasons than you might think for checking out inde games..


Dava

Amd Vs Intel Benchmarks..the last of my OCN blogs..

Originally posted (Christmas 2011) on my former OCN blog. different time, different place, different thoughts.




......




After years of trying to like AMD's plucky 'do it on the cheap' attitude

I finally came to a conclusion today... i don't think they can cut it. i have my own long story in slow understanding of this, which i won't bore you with, neither the clich'e of starting a thread to whine about AMD vs Intel.




just to put it simply, I like Intels now. Intel's seem to do what I want, when I want, not be singing a wee song while doing the washing up. the little sparkler (candle) in my heart wants to defend AMD, but y'know just because i can afford it on my budget doesn't make it good. i can admit that to myself now, seeing how an AMD six core was beaten by a Intel quad. also 'yknow




3 is the magic number..ohh yes it is, ..its the magic number!.




Why didn't AMD bring out a range in 3Ghz back in the day? why because i think they couldn't ..  they don't know how to count to 3 (jk). their hz rating must be off or everyone in the whole I.T. community must be an intel fanboy lolololol 6 cores really?? you couldn't beat him with six cores? ..what do you need, an uzi*???




there are people in the eastern block given enough incentive could beat AMD with two years, a tin can, and some copperwire.




Intel are like the extra stick of ram in the slot. AMD won't ruin the Warranty on your PSU.




just a wee rant to get this off my chest, sorry. feel better now.







if you like AMD i didn't mean to offend you, i was just sick of pretending. not trying to be heavy.




peace




Dava




*@AMD was it because your brother had broken out of jail and your missus was pregnant, so you had a lot on your mind? W.O.E were you thinking?










(Updated spelling and grammar / 05/Aug/12/ back 'into' AMD just now.. very embarrassing though 8-cores being beat by still 4 cores.. even their own)




and again on 11/12/2012.










Got the new Vishera..erm.. im in lurvvv! wow.. some stupid thoughts I always had on the amd vs intel.. I had always thought AMD did capacity over intels speed. vboxing is easier with an amd proc. not by much, but man those cores really help with both stability and be more organised. this pixie magic, erm i mean Vishera, with flatten i7 if we work out how to clock 6ghz. in other words kik az! Im not going back to the 'yahyak nahhgg i hate amd/intel fanboiz' rubbish.. i like that people care a bit less about that these days.. its nice to have peace.. but also some and i stress the word 'friendly' rivalry. :)







-----------------------------------------------------


First time I spoke to Rob .. :)


-----------------------------------------------------







WeRNothiNg 12/16/12 at 2:28pm Very accurate analogy. AMD is not a bad CPU, don't get me wrong, but it is like driving a Saturn. No one wants to, it's just all they can afford......




dava4444 12/16/12 at 10:39pm Thank you for your comment, I feel *FINALLY* with the Vishera AMD have came back on form, Phenom was a nice series for gaming, the first gen FX, was no upgrade, Intel are still ahead in many respects, but MAANN, I have a Vishera and let me tell you, this is quite a chip! and is clipping intels top heels.




capacity and price vs speed and operability, I VBoxed for a hobby for many years, not any more, but man, I would take AMD's stability over Intel's sluggish vbox performance, especially with these new 8 core chips.




sorry, maybe that was OTT, ..it's just cos AMD guys ain't get'in respect back over the Vishera, most Intel guys prolly think it's like old FX, I guess. but man it's not.




peace




Dava




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 3:51am What's the product number on this cpu you are speaking of? As they have many Vishera models. Unfortunately I am one of those who cannot afford a Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition, which is $999 plus shipping of course, but am going to have to upgrade soon. I am currently running a Core2Quad Q8300, 6 GB PC2 6400, Invidia GeForce 8800 GTX OC, on a ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard. It has primarily been used for media, but I do play quite a bit of games as well. It will probably serve my movie and music purpose perfectly for some time now, but I believe by the next generation of games I will be forced to upgrade whether I have the money or not. I have always been an intel guy, but I think if it came down to it, I would buy an AMD before I went without online gaming.




dava4444 12/17/12 at 4:34pm I have the FX8350 which about $210 stateside. it's AMD's top of the range AM3+ processor. also the current gen GTX's are pretty amazing, the GT640 is like a GTX560ti for less than half the price, there are a few models, but one of those is very very similar to the 560ti, and the only difference's are the 128bit bus and DDR3 memory. for $100 bucks that's not back for 384:32:16 that's 384 cores. What's your budget?




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 4:57pm I cant seem to find a AM3+ motherboard with PCIe 3.0. That can't be right.




dava4444 12/17/12 at 5:11pm AMD doesn't have PCIE 3.0 yet. but it doesn't really impact you until you hit four cards anyway.. the ROG CHV (Crosshair formula V) has better lanes for the AM3+ socket.. really thinking about getting one myself so I can 3SLI. it's the only board that supports 3SLI.




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 5:12pm Ok, this is something I put together rather quickly, but a base price rig with upgradable CPU options.

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard, ASUS GTX 560 TI graphics, 16gb pc3 12800, and AMD FX-6100 3.3Ghz 6 core($104). This was I could upgrade for the Vishera when the price drops a bit, but should be happy with this setup for quite sometime shouldn't I? I just don't want to buy an AM3 board and be stuck with no upgradability options other than video. The grand total for this would only be $550 plus shipping.




WeRNothiNg 12/17/12 at 5:18pm How do I fix the PMs? Says I am limited to 2 per day!




dava4444 12/17/12 at 7:55pmYes WeR man thats sounds good stuff! you should be able to game on that np. and yes save for the upgrade, smart. amd @panchoeltroll yes I had the ASRock version of that board (I think) mATX nice board.




WeRNothiNg 12/18/12 at 3:00pm Well, still wont let me send a PM. I do have steam, but it wont let me add friends as I have not bought any games through them. All the retail games I own are through origin. Do you have Origin?




dava4444 12/18/12 at 7:38pm yes, same username as before

How to Stack A Deck of Cards.. or whyohwhy can't a Titan-Z fallout the sky for me?

Hi Guys

I'm glad to see you guys becoming regulars, you're support is appreciated.

What is a GPU core?

A GPU core is made up of shader cores (USC) Texture mapping cores (TMC) and Rendering cores. The one to *really* pay attention to is the shader cores.. let's take for instance, a fav of myself and Rob's.. a Nvidia GTX 660Ti.. it has 1344 shader cores.. it also has 112 texture mapping cores and 24 rendering cores.. depending what you do with these parts, they can go from being essential to being window dressing, except the shaders, they always play a big part in what you are doing.

For example, if you were playing a 2D side scrolling game but it has many many effects, realistic fire, realistic waves/water, the texture mapping cores wouldn't be doing much, but I *think* the shaders and rendering cores would.but I find this all hard to translate to you guys as I don't know the inner workings of SMX's that well.

What is a 'good' graphics card?

Well as with most things computer that depends on what you will use it for. there is no use buying a Titan-Z to just play flappy birds and pokemon on emulators. any card *just* below mid-range can do those things comfortably and sometimes passively cooled so silently.

But you want to game right?? with cutting edge visuals and cutting edge engines! .. so yes, that takes a lot of Mister Ed's under the bonnet!

You have many options, asin~ if you are reading this you already know,
but.. 'biggest and best or divide and conquer'?

Rob's two 660ti's will give a 780ti a run for it's money, they are (basically) equal and Rob has got to enjoy that for the last year or so..ahead of when the 780ti came out. He got extra time enjoying his system, he got to choose how he would like to fund his gaming, becuase he bought one then later bought another.

Downsides are this is a more noisy way to game unless you go water.
if you use *excellent* headsets primo noise cancelling etc..then this problem goes away. SLI (and crossfire) has been known in the past to give people problems..but personally after many years SLI'ing I have not run in to a problem that wasn't caused by me ever.

Going SOLO
1 card to rule them all, etc.. This is probably the most expensive way to do things, instead of putting together a few high mid-range cards. but what you get is something simple and elegant in both it's power and it's beauty.

The prestige factor of even owning a top of the range from either AMD or Nvidia is HUGE, and others will come round your house like you own a ferrari and want to see.

..and yes it can totally game. ..but that brings me to the CPU aspect of this adventure.

It's no use buying a high end graphics card if your CPU stops the GPU at the front door everytime it just wanted to be nice and go and make you a coffee, CPU standing there thinking 'what is a coffee?'.
Sorry.. I mean, the data needs to be able to 'flow' and if it can't people call that a bottleneck.. imagine a river the river is data, if there is a narrow point along the river the water finds it harder to pass and so the water slows.

with single cards and many CPU's this is no problem, as long as you have 4 cores, you *should* be good to go.

RAM and textures
simply put.. the more Video RAM you have, the larger the texture = the quicker the load. bit-bus plays a part in this too and also AA.


To wrap up

IF I could.. I would watercool 4 GTX 670's (4GB) or 680's (4GB) and stomp all over a Titan for less than half the cost.. my 3 660Ti's will give a Titan Black a run for it's money, I lose out on high textures, with 2GB of VRam but I have more shader cores.

I have 21 Kepler SMX's the Titan Black has 15, the Titan-Z has 30.

the only downside is the extra noise and set up time.. but if I have a card failure, I can continue with the remaining cards.

sorry if any of that was boastful, I'm just so pleased with the 660ti's and think many would find a great advantage in both cost and usability that I feel gushing to tell you guys.

hope some of this made sense..

Dava :)

Edit:

The 660ti has a 3 card limit to SLI. the 670/680 is 4. 690 is 2 card limit, becuase it already IS two 680's combined on one card.

I'd rather have a bigger byte than a 'bit'..or ISP lingo and bingo

Hi guys

a few years ago now, I blogged on the topic of ISP terminology. I thought I would re-hash this for anyone who was interested. hash browns, bigger bytes, queue at mcdonalds, queue in servers for data loads from the ISP mmm.

When you buy a lovely BigMac one of the nice fresh ones, in an area/place you feel confidant has had no tempering, up market, the place might be ten years old, but as you sit it is so clean you feel like you are the first and only one ever sit in that booth.

You were told on TV in an advert, BigMac's for sale '300 Guineas'  you supposed it was some kind of dismissible joke, no one uses 'Guineas' nowadays they were only used in american colonies and in the UK in the 1700's. You go along with your £/$3 thinking 'what a great deal!', the restaurant is packed with slightly annoyed customers, but happy never-the-less. You approach the counter and ask for a BigMac and ask about the deal, The assistant says 'yes sir, that'll be 300 guineas' you reply how much is that in pounds(or dollars)?' he replies 'oh that's 5 pounds' you say 'erm that's not a great deal, its the same as your regular rates.. .. >:( ..:( ..' and he replies 'well since you are here and hungry, do you still want it?' sadly you are hungry and reply..':( ... :) okay'.  ....  this is just my imagination, but done to illustrate a point.

ISP's have an old way of counting speeds as a marketing tool to increase shopping confidence. They count in megabits per second, kilobits per second.. not *bytes* which is the more common counting method for everyone else. To explain, there is 8 bits in 1 byte, so a 20 megabit per second, is actually a 2.5 megabyte connection.. but there are many more factors that determine your true speed.

1. How far you are away from the ISP server, if they use traffic shaping, something i feel should be tolerated, but monitored by the government, that ISP's are not just cutting us for little to no reason, it has to be justified, and if not, why not? ..why not increase infrastructure to meet the demand you said you could prove to people you have now locked to a contract?? that costs money and if you were willing to enter a contract you should be proving the agreed service or have a just reason why you occasionally (1 hour a day) limit their internet.

2. loads on servers, much like traffic shaping, but not controlled by the ISP, like the old told tale of the world cup, and everyone* when to put the kettle on for a cup of tea and there was a blackout, too much demand all at the one time.

3. home networking ability. simply your ethernet/card/wifi or its drivers is not good enough to soak up all that data quickly enough.. harddrive/ssd plays a big part in this too, where the data is being stored has to be able to write the data quickly enough from the download.. slow drive can = slow download.

4. finally the ISP's themselves and their server policies, some but not all reserve bandwidth in case things get 'choppy/hectic'.. this bandwidth pretty much just sits there doing nothing, and unless Elvis comes back and Yahoo news or a Facebook viral video are first to report, I guess it's only used to bounce youtube around a little to bolster your bandwidth.


buuuut.. its this thing where.. they shouldn't be using an old measurement to impress people.

Story
I recently switched to Sky after years and years with Virgin Media.. they did a *very* bad thing to me 2 years ago, and I think they must have some the worst staff policies of any company out there. in 2011, they sold me a V+ box, I had talked it out with VM salesman over the phone..he had called me, its was £100 over three months (2 and a half), I said yeah sounds good..but that's not what happened, it £200 over 2 months, I had my internet cut off in a bad time in my life, I had broke up with my ex and was quite lonely, I was relying on the internet to keep in touch with friends as I don't have a car and they live far enough away thats it's not cool to ask them to come for me. I phoned VM up being a long standing customer I thought: 'I have put loads of money in their bank over the years surely they will give me an extension until I get paid two weeks later'. they didn't. and I was alone at already very isolated point in my life... I decided not to pay next time either I was furious at them at all the loyalty I had showed them for them to not even care when I needed them.. I rung them up and said I wanted to clear my bill and leave.. they told me with getting the V+ box I had renewed my contract and could not leave for another 2 years.. I had already told them I did not want it and wanted to return the box..which I did 2 weeks later.

I never forgot that..I wanted out of the painful reminder of what they had helped do to me in a bad time in my life..

So in October.. I phoned them up and said my contract is up and I want to leave. they danced around this and it took 3 separate phone calls to end my contract with them.. at one point a customer manager came on and tried her hardest to talk me out it.. I even told her the story above and she didn't want to let me go .. what a B*!! try to convince me by saying 'standard policy' hen you were doomed from before you lifted the phone but c'mon, not even trying here, except when it came to scare tactics.. oh she was good at that.. fine this! and fine that! but I held my ground. heartless B*.
I gave her 'laldy' she heard exactly what I thought of VM for doing this to 6 year (in 2011) customer.


when all was said and done I spoke to another gent a nice guy who wrapped it all for me/us. he even sent £13 refund for the end of a bill cycle.. I also felt he felt sorry about they way I had been treated, but that might have been my imagination.

I had good experiences with VM too, like when I wrote them some feedback in 2009 about a separate thing I don't remember, I mentioned I had a got one of their london call centers and the londoner had been abusive to me..they phoned me up and asked how i thought this could be avoided and I asked for scottish call centers..i think they did this, as a year later while calling them, I got through to a wow.. scottish voice. and the londoners 'I can't understand you.. speak english! do.you.know.english.?' seemed to fade away.

wow this is all just pouring out..should have I just continued with the article?.. I mean you get it right?


Dava





*(this was supposedly in London in the 60's or 70's IIRC)

FTR: VLog Information.

I am not a number!! .. or Apple discovers a new kind of isolation.

Hi guys

Just wanted to share a few thoughts on the new iCloud locking feature..

Firstly, yes I recently bought one of these iCloud locked iPhones on eBay, and yes I unlocked it after a week of trying..but I had many thoughts during that week and since.

In case you didn't know, with the release of iOS 7, Apple now tries to 'police' their phones, with the assumption that whomever has the phone in their possession should *only* be the first person that activated the phone with their iCloud account. ..is it just me or have you also instantly seen the huge fallibility in this idea??

in case you didn't, let me share what I instantly realized, people who activated the phone could sell the phone legally, then illegally claim on the insurance (home or phone or work). Not to mention the old caveat, that many users would not *really* understand what a device is, never mind them know to remove it from *some* account 'Apple made them get' to use their phone.

For these reasons, but not only, the morality of iCloud locking is *VERY* fallible.

Now to ulterior motives by Apple themselves, by doing this they push the price of (non locked) second hand units very high and force people to consider buying a new iPhone... however, they may have failed to see how high even some of the cheapest Android phone specs are. I can buy a Chinese *high quality* phone, for around £130/£170..top specs, higher than even the iPhones in many regards, be-lying the fingerprint reader. and have a great experience.

Have they cut the stalk to spite the goose? .. they could disappear from commercial view.. as the grassroots of ALL the traffic of commerce comes from resale of a brand product, as an introduction to a first time user.

So first time users according to this logic are also criminals, if they unknowingly buy an iCloud locked iPhone/iDevice, I am not a first timer, as I have owned iPhones before, it didn't occur to me that a phone might be stolen.. but am I a criminal?? noooo.

There are many scenarios I could use to defend myself, but the two above are the most likely, as by the law of averages, they have already happened. I find it hard to believe I should lack such faith in high reputation sellers on eBay..so.. WHO is APPLE to make me question the eBay community??

Apple are not very smart in this ham fisted approach to security, once a phone was attempted to be used, they should have asked for whomevers Apple ID, that presently has the phone and talked it out with them what happened..but no, they do this clumsy blind everyone is locked approach to security.

They use the IMEI number as a locking tool.. this number is now registered to a person, pretty much forever, if they die, forget they have an account, since they only used it once to sign up, or if this was a work phone in a company that went bust, and the boss needed the money (Reg'd to a former employee), again not really understanding what iCloud was, not wanting to contact the former employee.

In the UK, I can drop this phone off at the police station and if no one claims it or the police cannot find the original owner, I can 'legally' own the phone I recently purchased on eBay within 3 months.
What does Apple do then? it is no longer the property of the former owner and IMEI becomes mine, with all related features also becoming mine...including iCloud activation.

I am not a number.. I resent being locked to a IMEI.. I don't think of it as an intellectual security device, as a way to catch criminals.. when added with iCloud, it's a marketing tool.. 'your phone will never be lost or stolen, or we will disable it' .. they track you, they collect information on your whereabouts, they resent re-sale of iDevices.

if not then why?...

..they didn't contact me, but if they had and been intermediary between myself and the first owner, this all would have been easy, a few emails back and forth, so I know the first owner is genuine, wants the phone back and so I get the price I paid on eBay back.. call it a 'finders fee'. then this would have been amicable and not embarrassing. if they have replaced the phone and see I am a genuine person, then they maybe willing to release the IMEI to me which Apple could walk them through if need be.

A sense a fairness in the second hand market is what Apple is lacking.. I hope they see sense in this.

My debit card has stop working in iTunes/Apple.. coincidence?

I am not a criminal, I am not a number.

peace

Dava

The Future of PC Gaming ..

(First posted on my blog on OCN , 30th May 2013)

Hi!

Do you ever wonder how much power the community has within big corporations? I am glad the old attitude of those grey stault buildings, and the attitude of 'we hate you go away, release the hounds!' from the 70's has disappeared, but now in the twenty-tens, it now seems like a place of confusion for big business.

WHY?
because who do they listen to? someone who is paid to tell them which is the most profitable way to go, or people on the internet, dedicated loyal fans..

I am really thinking about MS when speaking about this, because they have came on LEAPS and bounds with the community, since the *shock* they got with Vista.. it actually did them a lot of good, coz after then they had to come out of their grey office and see other people in the sunlight. ..life beyond the screen and numbers.

I mentioned they became friendlier.. it was only here and there.. but even extending to the FOSS community.. to which they are still hostile, as per the Novell patents, but there was improvement. They are, I hear, working on some cross compatibility with Windows and improving the Windows kernel learning from linux*, over time they have been friendlier and withdrew also, take Moonlight Mono, a MS/Novell Silverlight for Linux, they worked on that for 2 years, but have since ceased.

What I have written has made even me feel 'grey' but this was just a salad* now for.. the main course!

The Xbox One was announced and shown a week and a half ago, I had read and seen many things about this console, while waiting for that aforementioned day. Microsoft plans to have this as their mainstay and have no hardware refresh for ten years. that means.. WE the PC gaming community will be using DX11.. for the next ten years. I heard they also plan 'lock ins' which is a system where if you buy something it is yours and no one elses ever. no resale value on any media, zero. Nothing new with Steam, and also I think the cloud is an amazing way to go, ..but they mean disks too. so sad.

Ask yourself this how many DX9 based games do you own?

DirectX9 first released :December 19, 2002. last release : April 21, 2008.
Consoles didn't use DX10, so we didn't for the most part either, DX11 will see its full potential which I am glad of, but think on this.. how much barrel scraping did we do to DX9?? DX9 died in 2008.. and all devs could do was dig it up and shake the bones at us! ..for 4 years.

What if this happens with DX11 in 3 or 4 years time? microsoft like repetition on ideas that worked, sometimes that's pretty smart, but the nature of what they perceive to be the 'community' has changed and I do not think they know it. WHY? coz they waited faaar too long to release the new xbox.. the barrel scrapping was done by 2010/11 in THAT year they should have released a new console.. not 2 years later, in which those two years.. people everywhere noticed, that the dev in town was skeletor!

I actually find the graphics of DX9 are quite macabre now.

Steam Linux and OpenGL.

Unless Devs and publishers have decent distribution platforms, they won't move and rightly so, they don't want anyone to lose their jobs, even if it is a bit noble. I agree. but WE are now as locked in as console gamers.. locked in to DX11.. we cannot progress neither in hardware (what's the point??) or software, past DX11. Unless Devs give us a second option.. OpenGL and Steam and Linux.

If not then. Windows it is! again! for ten years! no way out! Metro 2033 claustrophobia get me out of here.. I'm a Doctor Jim not a chairlift.

peace

Dava





*while this doesn't seem like a win for FOSS we will benefit inside Linux with interpolarity. accessing Windows from Linux and vice versa. hey, maybe they will even throw in a read/write EXT filesystem extension/driver for windows.
*you needed this to know a bit of background.

UPDATE: 20/06/13. for the sake of accurate information.. ie. the truth. Today MS announced that they are NO LONGER doing the 'lock in' disc system. and I would like to praise them for taking it even further and getting rid of the anachronistic 'regional restrictions'.. a left over from the 1980's and 1990's Japanese games that is no longer needed. what does that mean for this article.. who knows?

A Laymans Guide To What Overclocking Is

(first posted on my former Blog on OCN)

Posted 15/4/12

Hi Guys..

Sometimes it's embarrassing to ask questions about things that you think everyone else knows..
So a wee guide of things I had to learn and kinda wish i'd known.. but y'know it's all part of the journey!

*Nay fancie pants boastin' here! terms I would *actually* use in my head!

Okay, so, your CPU has a 'Wall' a top boundary of how hard you can push it, based on your cooling and motherboard and how well you adjust your settings.. complicated already?? no sweat, we'll take it slow..

The idea is *not* to cobble parts together, but to have an idea what the comp will be used for from the start.. and so a [Purpose] I imagine most on here built their rigs as Gaming computers, as Gaming rigs are a kind of 'do it all' affair, they can do everything from Media Encoding and Streaming to Image Manipulation to Audio Production, although the RAM for AuP might change.

Air is lowest form of cooling, but even air can be more effective than water cooling, if the water cooling is done badly and the air cooling is done well, but air is super noisy regardless, note my rig..I was trained as a muso, I love sound, this is why my rig is the way it is. silent.

But we're starting with the basics, say you've just built your first rig, and want to know what all this 'Overclocking' fuss is all about..

So you made a rig for around £$ 300 or so, cheapo PSU hoping it won't blow up*, cheapo Biostar £$20 motherboard off ebay or such, AMD dual core, RAM and bits and bob's to fill the MIDI case (how do i know this?.. i did it too!).. but you want a faster computer for free! free is good! and lots of guys on here know how to do that!

Well, depending on your motherboards ability to adjust the Front Side Bus, FSB, which is the speed of that the Motherboard 'Talks' to the CPU, relies on whether you can Overclock at all! if your motherboard doesn't have the option to adjust this setting then you cannot do it at all!*

There are lots of scary settings in your BIOS*, that can harm your computer and make you lose the work you have already done, but getting into OverClocking also known as 'OC'ing' is a kinda of thing where, while there will be losses, you cut your losses and try again, if not, then think hard of what you value more, ..data and work, or growth and personal experience.

Firstly, hit whatever key takes you into the BIOS, just have a look around, you don't need to do anything except look and absorb the information that your seeing, the terms you are seeing are very ''coke and pepsi'' meaning they vary depending from one manufacturer to the next. One company calls something this, and another calls it that, but they are all the same thing. Don't worry though, when you ask around using those terms, people on here will know what you mean.

The ''FSB'' of the motherboard, is like the speed of a motorway, imagine you have a transit system, and on the transit system there are buses, the buses go around picking people up and dropping them off where they need to be, the people are data, and the Front Side Bus is the top speed of the motorway. If you tell the Motherboard the speed can go up, then it will send the buses faster around the system, and so the people/data will get there faster, but too fast and all the buses will crash and all the people/data will be lost.

So ..we don't get silly with the FSB. The guys on here prolly been OC'ing for years, they know their stuff, but ..they didn't start out that way from day one, and you shouldn't feel intimidated if you don't know something, remember they did the silly things too, made all the mistakes you're about to make, ..but hopefully this article will speed up your understanding of what's happening inside your computer and your understanding of overclocking.


The BIOS has more than one place it can tell the buses to speed up on the transit system, it can tell the buses to speed up at certain places, think of a posh village called 'NorthBridge' if you tell the buses to move fast there because the people/data is needed quickly, then this is what will happen.

The RAM is like the bus depot where people/data waits until needed.

The CPU is like a factory where all the people work, and the CPU Multiplier is like a work-shift in the factory and you can set how many hours they all work.

Lastly for this, A thing that chokes many a PC unnoticed, is 'Drive Bandwidth', the more harddrives you have, the more the your bandwidth can ease up and deliver data quicker and more orderly.



A few of *RULES OF THUMB* for PC building in general..

1. if something goes wrong it's *usually* the RAM.

2. The more you pay for your parts the more reliable the computer *usually* is as a whole. reliability is essential for OverClocking!

3. When Windows fails, and it will*, make sure you have your docs and pics and music backed up on another drive. drivers wouldn't hurt too.

4. Linux is HARD. it's like a whole separate hobby. not always but sometimes and often. Ubuntu is your best bet for Mac on PC.. go Intel and you should be fine. like Hackintoshing without the Hacking or the Toshing.

5. Finally, PC Gaming is an experience, but more than that, because you picked the parts yourself, waited for them to come, did your build, install after installed a huge variety of things, and now you get what other people were talking about.. performance. Your Computer that YOU built, prolly faster than anyone's computer you know, because you built it. well done!



peace

Dava


*am Scottish n'sometimes it jist comes oot.

*NEVER cheap out on a PSU!

*I know about 'Software overclocking' but since canard took SetFSB off the radar, i think we're stuck. just IMO.

*not used an EFI yet personally.

*got a lot better over the years to be fair, but y'know.. it will happen :/

Realworld Performance and What It Means to You...

(First posted on my former Blog on OCN. December. 30th, 2012)

Realworld Performance and What It Means to You...

Posted 12/30/12

For years many enthusiasts have debated hardware, I am one of them, you probably are one too, seeing you are here, on OCN..

But in these times the gaps become shorter and shorter I feel, between competitors, and we get much more 'bang for buck' than we ever could have imagined ten years ago..

it's only when a company with a large user base makes a mistake that the community really takes notice these days..

I am going to do some barrel scraping now, so cover your ears if you have sensitive hearing!

AMD vs Intel

many many moons in the past AMD trumped Intel, for one shining moment for many. and then it was gone. not to be repeated. But now with the new line from AMD, which I have myself, why should I buy a Core i7? it performs better than my CPU, it's desktop performance (meaning Windows response) is better but also cost 7 times the price of my CPU. these things now seem small to me because I feel I realized something, that nowadays we have powerful enough hardware to run everything, not like the bad old days of processing video or photoshopping, now we can comfortably run a whole OS at a good speed and play the latest PC games for a reasonable price. 'Is this an advert for AMD?'..no it was my little way of saying I am happy with my rig, and feel the Vishera 8350 is a fitting processor to be AMD's flagship.

In the 'realworld' I gain nothing moving to Intel now.. sure you could say 'but you will get more frames in games' or 'your single thread apps will start faster' but yknow.. I'm not that fussed.. even worse.. I'm actually happy with the Vishera..oh. my!

Now, to every story there are two sides..I know this.. let's take Intels..

The reason Intel has done so well is because they worked harder and smarter than AMD, over 70% of the world's CPU's are Intel, they hand pick geniuses, in all fields to fit the job that the person was born to do. and it shows in the results. I am not dis'ing AMD staff, I only say that Intel were/are richer and smarter for many a'year out of the years on top. Core 2 was a masterpiece, a breakthrough of vision, and at the time AMD had the original Phenom series, which, I feel, was not up to par. Had it been golf.. they were Tiger woods and we.. were.. the ball boy.

Again Intel comes to us with a masterpiece! the Core i series.a thing of beauty in a world of architectural silicone. why? because we know how well and efficiently it performs, and this adds beauty.

But will I buy it? no. would I buy it if i were rich? possibly. but it wouldn't be something that I would ever notice.

I mentioned Photoshop and video encoding before..

If you max out your board with very reasonably priced RAM (around 100 to 150 pounds) and a sensible CPU, (AMD or Intel ) You can work faster and be more versatile than has ever been possible in the history of computing.. flip! shove on youtube and facebook while you're waiting! your system wont even notice.* I drop entire games to memory and forget for hours on end. only to come back to a still working game.

More Bang for Buck!

I feel we have came to point where, the difference is slight.. it is slighter than it has ever been.

I could go on about how much I like Nvidia.. but y'know what? right now AMD has the edge in both price and power.
I'm still with Nvidia though.. they were my first gaming card by accident. fondly.


So i'll stop dithering and come to the point, what does paying double the price get me? not much, only a few frames more.

1. if you have an SSD

2. a modern OS.

3. quite a lot of RAM.

4. a current gen mid to high range card.

5. a current gen CPU with 6 cores or more.

What do we need all this power for? rendering? folding?
What happens in the next two gens.. what do we need all that new power for??

Soon we will outgrow operating systems, the hardware is too powerful.. no. the OS is too weak.

I have Windows 8 now.. its a bit of a pain and flakey at OC, but okay i guess.. but then again I have used Win98.

These are the things of museums.. the little window that goes side to side, minimizes and maximizes.

We have the power in our PC's now that MS had pushed us to have with Vista, but I find 'the same IS the same'.. bring on holograms and give us a challenge, involve us like every sci-fi movie has promised us since we have been children!


Dava

*IF your a PRO reading this and are thinking about the office computer, no. .. please buy either professional dual socket or suffer the consequences.

NOTE: this has kind of turned out as a little ad for AMD which it wasn't supposed to. it was meant to be what is all this power for? and why do we ever need more? ALL OS's are getting bland in contrast to this powerful hardware that we all have now.

384-bit ways to squint your eyes.. or AA vs Better Textures

19 April


Hi guys.. wanted to share some info about 'AA' for those who are new to gaming..

Sometimes menu options are little like trying a new restaurant, you open the menu and don't know what's good. And if it's ethnic food..you don't know what all those strange words are ..

AA is 'anti-aliasing' it's designed to trick your mind into thinking far away objects are blurry but still have definition.. in a small way, it's something your eyes do in real life. not every game is good at AA implication, and makes mistakes (this is on the software level) but many games are.


using AA can make close things blurry too, but on a much smaller scale. It rounds the hard edges of pixels.. Imagine a 8-bit retro ball made from pixels and one using AA.

Memory bit bus bandwidth also plays a role on how well the card can effectively use AA..the GTX 660ti and the GTX 670 only have 1 feature change but it's an important one, the 660ti has a 192-bit bus and the 670 has 256-bit bus, the cards otherwise are identical.

Why did Nvidia do this? to mark a price point, because the bit bus is designed to enable certain AA levels..which I'll explain.

depending on the game..

64-bit bus = no AA.
128-bit bus = no AA to x2 AA
192-bit bus = x2 to x4
256-bit bus = x4 to x8
384-bit bus = x8 to x16
512-bit bus = x16 to ?


The smaller the bit bus the more it 'chokes' the effectiveness of the VRAM and the AA. But if you SLI or XFire.. you get double the bit bus coz each card counts as a single bus. .. if you have enough shader cores to handle high AA settings and a decent bit bus.. (256-bit) then you can use AA comfortably without a huge impact on your frame rate.. however if you don't ..and even heavy OC'ing you card.. I mean you'd have to be able to 'toast bread on it hot' to match a card with a bigger bus. The higher the AA the more heat inside the GPU if the card can't shoot out those images fast enough, also overclocking the card.. ooffft! ..so if you wondering why you card is stuttering.. try without AA on.. ?

When I open up the menu.. I think 'yeah I want it all!'
like I just hit an all-you-can-eat buffet ..but no. I can play Farcry3 in SuperHD with x2 AA or I can watch it stutter for 4 hours.

hope this fills your mind instead of fills your eyes.. yumm! haha

peace

Dava

addition:

I think its very true how an engine implements AA can make like a 20 frame difference and that's difference between being able to play a game and not. The Source Engine is the lightest engine i know of.. and its also feature complete.. controller compat. AA scaling liquid participle lighting etc.

NVCP.. contains more settings for AA all the way up to-----  

x2 AA

x4 AA

x8 CSAA

x8 AA

x16 CSAA 

x16 Q CSAA

x32 CSAA

--------

SLI

x12 

x24 CSAA

x24

x48 CSAA

x48Q CSAA

x96 CSAA

Your settings might show up differently, as I have 3 way SLI, or it could be different in the the AMD catalyst control center. It's under the [Anti-Aliasing Mode] 'Enhance the application'.


but ultimately I feel.. higher quality textures are always better than.. a bit of trickery.

Dava's Hitchhiker's Guide to Operating Systems ..BYOBF (bring your own babelfish!)

[I hope you enjoy this lighthearted look at operating systems. now please imagine hitchhiker's guide voice in your head for the remainder of the article*]

Far Far Away, long long ago in the awaking land that is the 1950's people got bored, and without the internet and iPhones and interstellar travel, it's easy to see why.. they wondered 'wouldn't it be nifty if this calculator thingy did something fun too?' and they decided Tennis was fun.. 'let's do that!'.* This had been thought of before by others, but they had only succeeded in making a strange christmas tree machine* that got angry when it lost, and often thought to itself, it would have rather been a politician. ... or tennis player.

It wasn't until the Planetial Conglomeration Interstellarfractuation, who are known to the locals as ' I B M' , introduced new tools, GUI and new ways to interact with said calculator, that an idea that an Operating System could be more than just words and numbers, started to form in the minds of those who saw.

The machine was used to make money for them, as well as count money, and was called a 'Till', they used the same code used within this machine as basis for their UNIX architecture. so yes, by association.. Android is based on a cash register. :D .. others had operating systems, but frankly they weren't very good at much, except at annoying people playing text based adventures due to the inability to save game progress and giving them thoughts of AI world domination.

Sometime later in the land of 70's people took many mind altering drugs that led them to believe this had already happened.

Three companies emerged, to be the leader in the 'operating system with calculator function!'  new technology. Microsoft,  whose time travel technology enables millions today to travel back and laugh at their ancestors, had this slogan: 'operating system with calculator function.. and clock!' .. rival company Apple was the second, the Apple CEO had seen the advert and started his own campaign
'operating system with calculator function ..and *attractive* clock!' while IBM thought this was all too silly and used the slogan 'Calculator.. with bundled operating system'. Due to IBM's campaign and Apple's pricing structure.. Microsoft won by a landslide.


It wasn't until the 1990's that a man claiming to be Linus Torvalds, invented the 'Linux Kernel', he was in fact a bored Microsoft employee from the year 2821, who was tired of the humdrum attitudes of his colleagues always saying to him 'WHY do you want to do THAT??' and  'oh no!! you can't go back to change history!!' ..how wrong they were.

Once Microsoft had dominated the market, they found it sad in their hearts to let the consumer go.. they tried many things to keep the consumer happy. none of which worked, except by chance, they produced an operating system called XP. XP was cheap fast worked.. well none of those, but people seemed to like it anyway because you could change the desktop background to *sexy girls*.. and write 'Elvis Lives!!!' on the screensaver.

and the same is true today.. this is what most people use their calculators for, putting sexy girls on the desktop background and trying to find Elvis in GTA.


I hope you enjoyed : whatever on earth i just said.

and always remember cattleprods should be cleaned after AND before use!

Dava


*

*

*
Nimrod

CaseZilla vs OOKaDApus or Please Release Me Let Me Go..

Hi guys.

If any of you have seen the pics of my case*, you know my case is fighting for its life with my water setup. For me it's just much easier and less costly to let this continue..but actually.. I should have chosen a better (bigger) case.

I have a Xigmatek White Knight 7 slot case, which is quite pretty but I have struggled.. and if you will indulge me some opinions, I would like to share my thoughts on case sizes and form factors.

The case itself is a nice case and I would buy Xigmatek again, and have since buying the White Knight.
but  ideally, I would have a 9 or 10-12 slot case. I know I have strange tubing, I admit that, and I have an order on OverclockersUK to correct that..(not in stock but on order)..but even with that, with three 2 slot cards (I plan to get my third 660ti back) .. I am going to filled to the brim! ..but I am going to miss my pretty white case. I don't want to let it go.

The definitions for cases by case manuf. are changing for a more modern age,  presumptuously perhaps, I have some opinions on what's what, as far as case size and form factor and definition.

I would say :

1, 2 and 3 mITX to ITX. Micro builds or SFF.
4 to 6 slots is ITX to mATX and Small Form Factor (sometimes also ATX for SFF)
6 to 7 is mATX to ATX, a MIDI Tower size case. general computing. small gaming build.
8 and 9 is ATX to E-ATX, a Full Tower size case. 8 being small 9 being large. Gaming 3 cards.
10 to 12 E-ATX to XL-ATX a Super Tower, great ventilation for gaming, can be used in a workstation build. Premium for gamers. 4 cards.
12+ slots for a workstation/server build. .. AFAIK, there are no cases like this on the market, perhaps there are workstation servers that I don't know about.

The cost of  Full Towers is coming down at the time of writing, you can get a small Full Tower for around £60 to £80 and a large one for around £100 to £140. 8 slots meaning four 2 slot graphics cards.. facilitating easy upgrade. 9 slots means you have clearance too.. which depending on your power supply, can be very needed.

While you can fit 3 cards in a 7 slot case.. trust me, it can get messy pretty quickly and cable tidying can be a nightmare.

We have had multi-card protocols for a while now.. and perhaps gamers, want more from their cases. now if I am buying for my main rig.. I know better, not to go below 8 slots.

peace

Dava


*https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=839032056114281&set=pcb.290615997754654&type=1&theater

7 Slot case + 2 card+ water cooling