Saturday, July 20, 2002

Fun with Drivers -- 10:20 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yesterday I decided to get Neverwinter Nights. So far it seems like a pretty nice RPG. Bioware claims a 60 hour single-player experience, but given the amount of time I've already invested, I'm guessing it'll be much longer for me.

One thing I did notice is that my framerate was not what I thought it could be. So I decided to try the latest "official" NVIDIA drivers, 29.40. Those gave me a serious framerate boost (better than double) over the 21.83 drivers that I was using. Unfortunately, they made Jedi Knight II lock up. So I tried the drivers Raven recommends (23.11). JK no longer locks up and Neverwinter gets a framerate boost. It's all good. Even better, they are the only drivers I've found other than the 21.83s that will work with Diablo II. It was a pain, but it was worth it.

Just an FYI, this is the command to check your framerate in NWN. Pull down the console with the ~ key (you will see a ">" at the top left of the screen) and type:

trace fps

The only caveat is that I don't know how to turn it off other than restarting the game :) I hope the Linux client comes out soon so I won't have to reboot anymore. I've got plenty of room on my root partition just waiting for it.

Thursday, July 18, 2002

ATi Radeon 9700 Revealed -- 10:25 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In case anyone was worried about someone keeping the pressure on NVIDIA with 3dfx out of the picture, they needn't have worried. ATi revealed their Radeon 9700 today (formerly known as the R300) and it absolutely crushes the GeForce4 4600, the current king of the hill. With 4xAA turned on, the 9700 outpaces the 4600 by nearly (gulp!) 300% in the UT 2003 demo. Wow. Absolutely amazing. Kudos to ATi! Mind you, this is the technology that id was using to run the DOOM3 demos recently. The Carmack gives it his seal of approval. You can check out all the goodness at places like Anandtech or HardOCP.

Ren and Stimpy Confirmed -- 10:05 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

E! Online confirmed the story we ran earlier that TNN has picked up the rights to my favorite cartoon, Ren and Stimpy. In addition to broadcasting all of the old episodes uncut, they also hired R&S creator, John Kricfalusi, to do six brand-new shows. The episodes will appear in 2003. Thanks Blue.

I remember in one of the XWing series of games, you encountered a ship called the Stimpsonj'kat. That of course is Stimpy's full name, Stimpson J. Cat. Very silly indeed. Everytime I read Kenn Hoekstra's name, I think of how in some of the R&S episodes various characters pronounce Ren's last name (Hoëk) as "Hoe-Hick." Everytime I type a .plan update news blurb about him I want to type Kenn Hoe-Hickstra. OK, maybe it's just me . . .

No Old News

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