Friday, June 30, 2000

Overclocking the GeForce2 MX -- 8:00 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

RIVA 3D slapped up a brief article detailing their results from overclocking the GeForce2 MX from its default chip speed of 175Mhz to 220 and the memory speed of 166 to 210. Naturally, they added a heatsink/fan combo. The results will impress you. Even more impressive is that it has been running for a day with no lockups and no graphical glitches at all.

Obi-Wan Preview -- 7:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yet another Obi-Wan preview (YAOWP), this time from the folks at Gamespot UK. They talk a bit about the new lightsaber control system, which should be interesting (too say the least). Thanks Blue.

Palm Memory Problem -- 9:52 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Palm Computing has identified a problem with the 8M DRAM chips on some of their Palm IIIc, IIIxe, and Vx products. According to other sources, similar products (like my Handspring Visor Deluxe) may also be affected. Palm has released a software patch that supposedly "provides a complete fix." I must wonder right along with the Slashdot folks (thanks for the link, guys!) how a software patch fixes a hardware problem.

Detonator Comparison -- 9:44 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Riva Station has posted a comparison of the recent 5.xx Detonator drivers from NVIDIA. They pit the 5.16, 5.22, and new 5.30 in a battle royale. In most cases, all three versions are within a few tenths of a fps of each other. The 5.30 give significant speedups in 3DMark's full-scene anti-aliasing tests (31% with 2x AA, 68% with 4x AA). So if you are into the whole FSAA thing on the GeForce (especially the GTS), 5.30 is the way to go. Thanks Shugashack.

Microsoft C#? -- 9:27 am CST, Update by The Master

There's a Yahoo! News article online entitled "C#: Yet Another Programming Language?", which is a commentary on Microsoft's new C# (Pronounced C Sharp), which supposedly is NOT an attempt to derail Java, even though it "does everything Java does, but isn't Java". Umm, okay.

Thanks to Dave for this one.

J.t.Qbe comments: I was just reading some interesting discussion about this on comp.lang.lisp and found a reference to this article at The Register. It's worth a read if you have a few minutes, especially for its discovery of C#'s relation to M$'s "Cool" project (anyone remember that one?).

Thursday, June 29, 2000

More MOO3 news -- 8:42 pm CST, Update by The Master

There's a couple more articles on Master of Orion 3 online. First is an The Atrium interview with Scott Godfrey, 3D artist at Quicksilver, and second is an The Orion Senate interview with Alan Emrich, designer at Quicksilver. Not much in these either, but it's good to know the team that has taken on MOO3 really cares about the game.

New Games at CompUSA -- 1:37 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

During my lunch hour I ran down to CompUSA. Just inside the front door I saw a display containing two long-awaited games: Diablo II and Icewind Dale. Both look good, but require a minimum 233 MHz machine--not a big deal for most of you, I suppose, but my fastest machine is 200. Too bad. . .

Warren Spector Interview -- 12:00 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Mushroom's Legit section has an interview with ION Storm's Warren Spector, the man behind Deus Ex. I played a bit of the demo and it seems like an incredible game. I really can't argue with people starting to make "Game of the Year" rumblings about it. One thing I liked is that the voice acting was very well done. The German android guy in the training mission actually has a decent German accent--what a concept! My only gripe is that I can hear my poor TNT scream in pain every time I play it. Deus Ex really requires a lot more horsepower than I can afford to throw at it right now. But once I get that GeForce2 MX . . . Thanks Blue.

A Smidge of Downtime -- 9:47 am CST, Update by The Master

There was a couple minutes of downtime just now while I made some database adjustments. Sorry about that :-(

No History Today. . . -- 9:17 am CST, Update by The Master

I'm not posting a history today section, since I finally got off my butt last night and started work on my history database. I'm through my May 7 entries, and hopefully tonight I can pound through the rest. Maybe. They've gotten rather large the last few weeks.

In addition, since we're working on a Avantgo version of the site right now, I'm working on automating articles so we can Avantgo them readily for users of mobile devices. Hopefully these and other improvements will be online shortly.

So You Want to Make a FPS -- 8:58 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Lowtax has slapped up a list of rules for making a successful first-person shooter. These rules must be strictly followed, under penalty of impalement. This list includes "contributions from big-name FPS site directors (Hellchick), experienced game programmers (Greenmarine), and disco pirates (Cliffy B.)."

Sharky Extreme GeForce2 MX Preview -- 8:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The wacky kids at Sharky Extreme have posted their hands-on preview of NVIDIA's new GeForce2 MX. One thing that makes Sharky's review noteworthy is that they leave sound on in the Quake III Arena benchmarks. Why anyone would benchmark with the sound off is beyond me, other than to artificially inflate the scores. Somewhat surprisingly, their test showed the MX to be slightly slower than the old GeForce 256 SDR, while Anand's yesterday showed it to be slightly faster. Take it for what it's worth, I guess.

One thing that NO preview I have read so far has mentioned is the fact that this should be a good card for people whose motherboards (most notably, ones that power AMD chips) have some problems with the AGP slot providing enough power. The GeForce2 MX uses 1/4 of the power that an original GeForce requires. Mind you, this is speculation without running actual test, but it would certainly stand to reason.

Past Two Days' News

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