Friday, November 12, 1999

GamePC GeForce Review -- 9:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GamePC has put up a review of the Creative Labs Annihilator card, powered by NVIDIA's GeForce 256 and SDR RAM. To make things interesting, they included benchmarks with Matrox' G400 MAX. While the G400 won the 3DMark tests, the GeForce handily beat it on the Q3test timedemos.

Man, now I want a GeForce AND Quake III Arena. Please feel free to send me large sums of money in small, unmarked bills to "Buy A.T. a GeForce". Thank you. (The Master): Hey, don't I get a piece of the action too?

Thanks Redwood for the link.

Intel Stock Down -- 1:15 pm CST, Update by The Master

According to the CNN stock ticker, and Yahoo!, Intel stock down 4% after Merrill Lynch downgrade, an article on Yahoo! concerning the hit Intel's stock is taking after a M.L. stock analyst downgraded Intel's stock from $100 to $90 because of concerns over AMD's new Athlon competition, RAMBUS's falied release, and the delays on Intel's new IA-64 processor (which, BTW will be a WICKED NASTY FAST processor when it finally releases).

GeForce Scalability -- 11:23 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A German site called RivaStation has posted a bunch of benchmarks showing the scalability of the GeForce 256 DDR on various CPUs (K6-2 350, Celeron 300, PIII 500, and PIII 750). They run the same benchmarks on a system equipped with a TNT2 Ultra for reference. Just a word of caution, the English translation on the site leaves something to be desired. Here's an example:

Fans of the Quake series rather can find a way past GeForce.

Translation: Fans of the Quake series will want to get a GeForce. The benchmark graphics need no explanation, however. Thanks VE.

More Q3A Model Shots -- 10:45 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Redwood has posted three more shots of some of the new models in Quake III Arena. This time out there are the Ranger (Quake I Marine), the Major (Quake II Female Marine), and the Anarki. These new models are about 50 pounds of cool in a 10 pound bag.

New GLSetup -- 10:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There is a new version of GLSetup available. This handy little program makes sure that your card's OpenGL drivers are as up-to-date as possible. No more scouring the web for the latest updates! Thanks Blue.

Q3A Preview at FiringSquad -- 10:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The FiringSquad has posted a preview of Quake III Arena from a recent trip to Texas for a bit of beta testing. They focus particularly on the single-player game. It's an excellent read--check it out!

Thursday, November 11, 1999

RealNetworks Sued -- 9:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A ZDNet article reports that someone claiming to represent RealJukebox users has filed suit against RealNetworks in Federal District Court. I don't like what RealJukebox did (see this previous news item for more information), but I'm certain that a lawsuit is not the answer. We live in a far too litigious society as it is. Symbolic lawsuits like this rarely solve anything, they just exacerbate the problem.

GeForce Overclocking -- 5:25 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The folks at Fast Graphics strapped the mother of all heatsinks on a GeForce card to see just how high they could overclock it. They managed to overclock the core speed of the chip to 165Mhz (default speed is 120Mhz). Vroom! That's worth a 30% speed-up at 1600x1200x16 in Q3Test.

I was impressed that they were able to overclock a CL Annihilator core to 135 and the memory to 200 (default 120/166) without any "super cooling" solutions. Standard disclaimer: don't try this at home! Thanks PlanetRiva for the heads-up.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 4:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Just a couple of quick musings on an otherwise tiring day:

• I saw an ad for an online merchant (which shall remain nameless) which was advertising Quake III Arena preorders for "only" $56.99. Ooh. Can I have two?
  
  
• Why do people find it necessary to go to gaming websites' forums and post about how much they dislike that site? Umm, hello? Do you really think that anyone cares?
  
  
• I regret that I posted anything about a potential Shogo 2.3 patch. I'm now relatively certain that we're being jerked around about it. Not that that's a news flash to anyone who has been following the Shogo scene for any amount of time.

Whew! I feel better now.

GameSpy Industries pairs with ZDNet -- 3:02 pm CST, Update by The Master

Some huge news, with ZDNet and GameSpy Industries entering into an exclusive marketing and content alliance. This is rather huge, since the monster ZDNet network and GameSpy together have a lot of throw. FWIW: The folks who run GameSpy also run the 3d Action Planet (PlanetQuake, etc).

Y2K fix is patented? -- 9:08 am CST, Update by The Master

According to this MSNBC Article, the primary, and oldest method of fixing the Y2K bug, has been patented. I hate to tell this (*expletive deleted*) idiot, but the whole windowing trick (dividing a two digit year so that the upper end is the previous millennium) has been around longer than his useless (*expletive deleted*) has been. Get a life, loser.

A.T. adds: Someone should go over to ye olde patent office and wake the folks up over there. That's like when someone tried to patent the concept of "multimedia" too. At least it gives the lawyers something to do other than drilling holes in the heads of small woodland creatures.

Ion Storm Big Gulp? -- 8:59 am CST, Update by The Master

Well, according to GameSpot, Eidos is going to finish putting the kabosh on Ion Storm's independence with the finalized buyout Friday. And then some of the major egos (read: Todd Porter and Jerry O'Flaherty) will be let go then. Heh. Was wondering when this one would finally go through. Course, Eidos is so unhealthy right now, who knows what will happen in the end. I really hope Ion holds together long enough to release Anacronox, which will be an awesome game.

HL: OpFor Gold -- 8:53 am CST, Update by The Master

According to Gone Gold, Half Life: Opposing Forces has gone gold. For those not in the know, "gone gold" refers to the final gold CD-RW CD-ROM that is used to make the first master copy of a program for distribution. Current predictions for the game's market release is the end of the month.

John Carmack .plan update -- 8:48 am CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack made a SMALLER .plan update today :-) These things are getting so full of minutinae that Q3A should go gold any day now.

• teamplay menu comment
• shrank and moved "RECORDING demo:" text
• identified and worked around Apple input queue issue
• properly send configstring resets on map_restart
• don't clip sound buffer on file writes
• don't draw scoreboard during warmup
• auto load added bots in single player
• swapped order of map_restart and warmup configstring
• disable dynamic lights on riva128 due to lack of blend mode
• put frags left warning back in all gametypes
• removed joystick button debug prints

Past Two Days' News

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