Tuesday, January 12, 2010
PC Build i7 950 @ 4Ghz Stable
Friday, January 8, 2010
Chasing the PC Hardware performance envolope
I have a slew of PC’s in my office that do double duty. On one hand they aid in the chores of work and the other is entertainment. There was a time when both work and play were reasons to have the best built PC rigs.
Interesting enough for me the terms of work and play were very similar. Polygons, textures, and rendering of all types. The best CPU/GPU’s would cut the work in half and make the most recent game releases …. playable.
So something happened and it happened in or around November of 2007. Where the gaming side of performance ran head first into a high end fail. Both Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 failed to move considerable units.
It seemed that in almost any other year, high end PC gaming titles reigned in the need to upgrade or build an entirely new PC. Now for the first time in many years, people scoffed at the requirements and lamented the poor stories and mechanics of these games. I won’t go into the right or wrong in expectations of these titles, but just note that it became clear that punishing hardware specs were not going to fly anymore.
I’ll mention that November of 2007 also marked the release of Valve’s the “Orange Box” which provided games that both looked very well and ran nicely a variety of PC hardware. In short the PC specs were not steep and game play was superior to Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3.
Here I am with a new PC I’ve built with very nice specs. i7-950 OC’d to 4GHz and nVidia 285 in SLI, 12GB Ram. So why write an article minimizing the need for PC hardware speed. Well for one it’s just one PC and my work requirements are always edging higher. In years past I was upgrading and refitting 3 to 4 PCs at a time to cover gaming. Now what worked in 2007 is still capable in todays gaming. Dual Cores running 3.2 to 3.8 GHz will be very capable for some time to come.
The PC Gaming and Enthusiasts markets have allot less to build for. Today entertainment platforms are many, and the profits of PC game development aren’t. The high end PC Desktop is not venerable cornerstone it once was.
Valve has a pulse on their market and I don’t expect they will outpace what the a majority of the general gaming populace uses. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
Interesting enough for me the terms of work and play were very similar. Polygons, textures, and rendering of all types. The best CPU/GPU’s would cut the work in half and make the most recent game releases …. playable.
So something happened and it happened in or around November of 2007. Where the gaming side of performance ran head first into a high end fail. Both Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 failed to move considerable units.
It seemed that in almost any other year, high end PC gaming titles reigned in the need to upgrade or build an entirely new PC. Now for the first time in many years, people scoffed at the requirements and lamented the poor stories and mechanics of these games. I won’t go into the right or wrong in expectations of these titles, but just note that it became clear that punishing hardware specs were not going to fly anymore.
I’ll mention that November of 2007 also marked the release of Valve’s the “Orange Box” which provided games that both looked very well and ran nicely a variety of PC hardware. In short the PC specs were not steep and game play was superior to Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3.
Here I am with a new PC I’ve built with very nice specs. i7-950 OC’d to 4GHz and nVidia 285 in SLI, 12GB Ram. So why write an article minimizing the need for PC hardware speed. Well for one it’s just one PC and my work requirements are always edging higher. In years past I was upgrading and refitting 3 to 4 PCs at a time to cover gaming. Now what worked in 2007 is still capable in todays gaming. Dual Cores running 3.2 to 3.8 GHz will be very capable for some time to come.
The PC Gaming and Enthusiasts markets have allot less to build for. Today entertainment platforms are many, and the profits of PC game development aren’t. The high end PC Desktop is not venerable cornerstone it once was.
Valve has a pulse on their market and I don’t expect they will outpace what the a majority of the general gaming populace uses. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The Decline of PC Gaming (as we know it) Part I
Notice the title doesn’t say the Death of PC gaming. The reason being is that if you were old enough to read PC gaming or enthusiast magazines in the early 90’s you would have read articles that covered the Death of PC gaming seemingly every other quarter. Yes, in what could now be considered the Golden Age of PC gaming, there were reasoned warnings noting the writings on the wall. The fractured sound and 3D card market, bug ridden releases and overdue patches and trying to tame DOS. Those were just some reasons which were valid then. The reasoning is somewhat different then than it is today, but nonetheless doom and gloom articles were there and sound reminiscent as to what we read today.
One constant that has always played out in the death of PC gaming was and is the platforms costs. In what seemed like an industry bent on pushing hardware requirements, game developers released titles that required the latest and greatest to get the best performance. It was always stated that developers planned their games for hardware two years out. When their title was released, it would match the state of industry - because no one wanted to play on dated graphics. So just as it is today, there was an emphasis on graphical appearance. The cost of achieving them was considered less detrimental than being knocked as dated or old. PC hardware was never static and benchmarks were always being broken, so games were developed to advance along the hardware path as well.
Multimedia PC
I know I personally helped sell so much PC hardware in the early 90’s, but the PC was still largely difficult to master. Playing with DOS and maximizing memory requirements was seen by the uninitiated as some form of dark art. Installing a PC game on a competent machine did not insure that it would run. Even though Multimedia PC’s as they were called sold well, DOS was not the most user friendly experience to work through.
In the mid 90’s Microsoft delivered Windows 95 and the phrase Multimedia PC actually became more relevant. The games that were once the domain of uber geeks were now more accessible to every day users. From 1996 through 1999 the PC gaming landscape was completely reshaped.
PC manufacturers and PC gamers jumped on it. Everyday personal computers could be networked together affordably and PC game publishers jumped on the capacity for Networked LAN and Internet gaming via modems and later even DSL. The promise of PC gaming for most everyone had actually come to fruition.
Part II
PC game Hardware Standards, PC Games Mature, Piracy and Xbox and PS2.
Part III
Quad what? SLI Video cards? Windows Gaming? The PC Desktops relevance in a multi-platform world
One constant that has always played out in the death of PC gaming was and is the platforms costs. In what seemed like an industry bent on pushing hardware requirements, game developers released titles that required the latest and greatest to get the best performance. It was always stated that developers planned their games for hardware two years out. When their title was released, it would match the state of industry - because no one wanted to play on dated graphics. So just as it is today, there was an emphasis on graphical appearance. The cost of achieving them was considered less detrimental than being knocked as dated or old. PC hardware was never static and benchmarks were always being broken, so games were developed to advance along the hardware path as well.
Multimedia PC
I know I personally helped sell so much PC hardware in the early 90’s, but the PC was still largely difficult to master. Playing with DOS and maximizing memory requirements was seen by the uninitiated as some form of dark art. Installing a PC game on a competent machine did not insure that it would run. Even though Multimedia PC’s as they were called sold well, DOS was not the most user friendly experience to work through.
In the mid 90’s Microsoft delivered Windows 95 and the phrase Multimedia PC actually became more relevant. The games that were once the domain of uber geeks were now more accessible to every day users. From 1996 through 1999 the PC gaming landscape was completely reshaped.
PC manufacturers and PC gamers jumped on it. Everyday personal computers could be networked together affordably and PC game publishers jumped on the capacity for Networked LAN and Internet gaming via modems and later even DSL. The promise of PC gaming for most everyone had actually come to fruition.
Part II
PC game Hardware Standards, PC Games Mature, Piracy and Xbox and PS2.
Part III
Quad what? SLI Video cards? Windows Gaming? The PC Desktops relevance in a multi-platform world
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Monday, December 31, 2007
Ipod
December 30, 2007
Ipod Touch - 1.1.1 2 to 1.1.1. and Jailbreak
Here's are some videos I made to help people get Jailbreak working on your iPod Touch.
Before going too far, you'll need to download the following file from Apple. This is the Firmware 1.1.1 that allows Jailbreak to run. 1.1.1 Firmware Download
Below is a three part video I quickly put together that will get you through the process. Good luck and have fun!
Ipod Touch - 1.1.1 2 to 1.1.1. and Jailbreak
Here's are some videos I made to help people get Jailbreak working on your iPod Touch.
Before going too far, you'll need to download the following file from Apple. This is the Firmware 1.1.1 that allows Jailbreak to run. 1.1.1 Firmware Download
Below is a three part video I quickly put together that will get you through the process. Good luck and have fun!
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