Monday, February 28, 2000

NV11/15 Rumor Mill -- 8:38 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Several sites have linked to this report on K-Bench quoting the well-known "close source" on specs for NVIDIA's upcoming successors to the GeForce, the NV11 and NV15. Here's a snip:

The source told us that NV11 is at least 1.5 x faster than NV10 and it is targeted at budget customer solutions against NV15. NV11 has 2 texel/pixel, 2 pixel/clock rendering pipeline structure and supports both SDR & DDR SDRAMs. Memory clock of SDR SDRAM version of NV11 will be 166MHz.
. . .
NV15 will be 3 times faster than GeForce256 with 400MHz of DDR SDRAM. It has 2 texel/pixel, 4 pixel/clock rendering pipeline structure and supports 720P HDTV. NV15 can be configured with SCA(Scalable Cooperative Architecture) that 1 AGP + 1 Virtual AGP(PCI) can be set. 90 frames / second at 2048 x 1536 x 32bit color is expected, the source said.

It sure sounds cool. Time will tell if there's any truth to it.

Sodding BSOD -- 3:58 pm CST, Update by The Master

Okay, I've had about 10 minutes to get revved up for this one:

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THE BSOD!
NONE! ZERO TOLERANCE! There is NO reason for a decently (hehe) written kernel to crash. An app can crash. A browser can wipe out. But the BLOODY SYSTEM KERNEL SHOULD BE A FRIGGIN ROCK! Okay-I'm going to take my valium now. . .

A.T. Hun comments: Linux looks better every day. When the next version of X comes out with the DRI (think DirectX) stuff, I may no longer have an excuse to stay with Windows.

J.t.Qbe comments: Come to the light side, where the light is not blue. Keep Windows for games; it's acceptable for toys to break. It's unacceptable for an OS to take your real work with it. Repeat after me: Linux and BSD, Linux and BSD, Linux and BSD. . . I guarantee that you will see no BSOD in the Unix world. (Well, actually I came to work today and found the NT BSOD on my screen. Weird, since I run Linux. One of the screensavers is an "OS death hall o' fame". . .)

The Master comments: I wish I could switch OSes at work. However, I can't break corporate policy that easily. Plus I think it'd be rather difficult to write Delphi Win32 code in Linux. Or NT for that matter since the Win32 "API" isn't consistent between NT and Win9x anyway-and my user base is Win9x. Gotta love Windows. NOT.

Jakeworld -- 11:53 am CST, Update by The Master

Jake Simpson updated his .plan today with news of a Release Candidate of SOF being QA'd, and news of some freebie software he put up on his Jaakeworld personal website.

Hey, I'll post for ya there Jake-I knew you were cool before I saw the Doctor Who stuff up in your J-Cam :-)

Who Wants to be a Mod Maker? -- 9:56 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic's Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan with fond farewell to Dave "Zoid" Kirsch as he leaves id to pursue other opportunities. This is starting to sound like a wake! He also points to his own article on Gamespy, talking about the problems that mod makers have to deal with. It's a good read for those who have the skillz/determination for that sort of thing. Wish I did . . .

Sunday, February 27, 2000

Carmack on Zoid departure -- 12:46 pm CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack made a Slashdot post concerning Zoid's departure from id. Check it:

I had talked with Zoid about it a few times over the years, and I think he is making a pretty good decision.

It wasn't always clear from the outside, but Zoid was a remote contractor, not an employee. It was a low key relationship that worked out well for all of us. He stayed in canada and basically worked on whatever he liked, because I thought he had pretty good judgement. He had responsibility for the linux ports and the CTF code, but much of his time was his to allocate as he wanted.

With Loki now picking up the maintenance of the linux port (as well as my steadily increasing involvement with linux), and a new game design starting at Id, his choice was basically to either go develop a brand new Q3 mod by himself, or go work for one of the many gaming companies that had been trying to hire him.

We weren't interested in bringin on another core programmer at id, especially another one with immigration hassles (we have had enough issues with that for a small company). We would have been happy to continue the current arrangement indefinately, but he wanted to get out of the holding pattern.

Another thing he mentioned that I am sympathetic to is the desire to get a bit out of the community limelight. Being a public figure of some note isn't always all it is cracked up to be.

We are parting on the best of terms (leaving right AFTER a project completes is the considerate way to go). He is going to finish up the Quake2 linux updates (better X/GLX support), even if he has to complete the work from his new job.

Past Two Days' News

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).