Latest Articles (Page 3590)

A bit of a consumer-interest story, this one. If you have upgraded your PC recently, you will no doubt have noticed that memory prices are at an all time low. At a decent dealer such as Scan, a 128Mb stick of 133MHz SDRAM will set you back a paltry £47 plus VAT, whereas only a month or two ago it was literally twice that. If you were stung by the price fluctuations and had to buy some at full whack, you could certainly be forgiven for wondering just what was the determining factor here. You see, big OEMs like Dell, Evesham, Time etc, all buy memory direct from the manufacturers are a fairly set price. Whatever is left over is then sold on to the rest of the market, the domestic buyer in this case. Because of the Taiwanese Earthquake last Christmas there was a big shortage, and supply went down to a trickle. At this point, the price to OEMs rose about 10%, but as you will have seen, the price to the consumer leapt by as much as 50% or more, and continued to rise until recently. With only about 20% subject to supply-and-demand pricing, if the OEMs want more, they get it, and we suffer. However recently, the OEMs haven't wanted as much for whatever reason, presumably because of alternative solutions which require RAMBUS or other types of memory. As such, the amount of memory available to the average consumer has grown exponentially, and so the retailers are left with a big surplus that the OEMs won't touch, and frankly not too many consumers are interested in either. As such the prices are dropped to compensate, and the consumer gets a bit of revenge on the tight-fisted retailers, whilst the OEMs are still paying the higher prices. Power to the people!

Just two years ago 3dfx bought board manufacturer STB so that they could design, build and sell graphics cards based on their own Voodoo family of processors. At the time 3dfx were at the top of the PC graphics industry, their Voodoo 2 was the fastest 3D accelerator on the market, and you could buy graphics cards based on the chip from half a dozen different board manufacturers. But the STB buy-out proved to be an ill-fated decision, upsetting 3dfx's former partners and distracting the company from what they did best - designing graphics chips. Profits at 3dfx have slumped since the take-over, and a series of costly product delays has forced the company to slash prices so that their cards could compete at the lower end of the market. Meanwhile all the jilted board manufacturers dumped by 3dfx in 1998 have turned to NVIDIA, whose GeForce family of cards now dominates the market, and is available in literally dozens of different brands and variations.

If you want to get in some jaw-on-floor practice, we suggest you check out the latest Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within theatrical trailer. The trailer focuses on Aki Ross' dream, which may have originated from an alien force, but Grey is caught in the middle. If you've ever wondered what a completely life-like rendered movie would look like, check this out. If you'll excuse the editorial outburst, oh my God!

Yesterday afternoon we discovered that technology site Australian IT had benchmarked and reviewed a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 system, labelling it as an over-priced, under-performing paperweight which would prove unreachable for most and only as impressive comparatively as an Athlon of about 1.2GHz or thereabouts. The review, which is fairly sizeable, includes a demonstration pic of the processor itself, showing its size to be somewhat larger than current flip-chip and Socket A processors. Ultimately though, the reviewer, the reputable Dan Rutter of DansData.com fame, couldn't get past the fact that you would need nearly 4,000 Australian dollars to pay for the CPU, motherboard and memory alone, whereas an Athlon machine of similar power could be had for nearly a third of that. Elsewhere, ZDNet has a story about the Pentium 4's imminent launch on Monday and how it thinks the processor will grow in its market share towards the end of next year. It seems however that they are reluctant to use Intel executive VP Paul Otellini's comment about "aggressive pricing" outside of quote marks.

UbiSoft have signed a deal with Crave Entertainment to distribute their games in nine European countries, including the UK, France and Germany. The agreement takes in twenty games due for release between now and March 2001, including five PlayStation 2 titles such as "Kengo" and "Evergrace", as well as everything from "Mort The Chicken" and "Men In Black 2" to "Wave Runner" and "Ultimate Fighting Championship" on the Dreamcast and PlayStation. Beyond that there are more titles in the works for PC and next generation consoles. For the full story, read the press release.

While most of the attention and glory in computer games is focused on the graphics, the sound is just as important a part of the overall experience, and one which is often neglected. But have you ever wondered what goes into preparing the sounds for a game? No? Neither have we really, but thanks to the guys at Swedish developers Termite Games (formerly known as Insomnia Software) we now have some idea of what goes on behind the scenes as they develop their first person shooter "New World Order"...

It's about time that the GameBoy got its own card game. The PC versions of Solitaire, Hearts and Freecell which have been included with Windows since the dawn of time have for all intents and purposes become the most popular computer games in history. Along with Minesweeper, the games have defined gaming with a PC, and if my own laptop is anything to go by, see more use than any work-related program out there for mobile businessmen. As such it's really quite startling when you realise that before Uno, the GameBoy Color had very little in the way of card games to keep the player occupied. No wonder then that developers HotGen decided to work on it whilst other programmers in the company beavered away on the GBC conversion of Resident Evil, it's the perfect stop-gap. But at £20, it is just a card game. How worthwhile is the expenditure at such a price? And how good an implementation of the classic holiday card game is it?

It is nearly the season to be jolly, for oh so many reasons, but despite AMD debuting a 1.5GHz part at Comdex (see previous story), Intel have got the jump on them by announcing that its own 2GHz Pentium 4 will be alive and jumping as early as January of next year. According to the chip giant, yields are proving very impressive, and it should be no time at all before the core is regularly producing 2GHz capable parts, far and away the most impressive processor ever seen on the market. According to an anonymous VP at Intel, "yields on P4 are excellent and there are going to be lots of parts available much earlier than originally anticipated". So AMD basically has two options; to hope and pray Intel's CPUs underperform in the vital areas and work on a 'performance not numbers' advertising campaign, or to throw everything it has into the development of Sledgehammer, which is already assured of compatability with Microsoft's forthcoming 64-bit operating system. Rest assured though, that the ongoing saga of Intel versus AMD will continue well into next year.

Ever wondered what a 1.5GHz PC looks like? Well, it looks like this. Of course, the undulating crowds trying to get a peek at it during this week's Comdex show weren't going to be impressed by this simple readout of speed. But surprisingly, this is pretty much all the general public got, although technical demonstrations (a few simple benchmarks) were available from an on-hand AMD fellow. The question, though, as we approach the end of the year 2000, is how close the Athlon core has come to its peak. When the 1GHz barrier was broken by both AMD and Intel, their respective Athlon and Pentium III processors were considered to be at the high-end of their capabilities, and yet here we are looking at AMD's output for next year, an Athlon approaching 1.5GHz, a mark only the Pentium 4 has been able to lay claim to before today. Ultimately, AMD hope to have a 1.7GHz Athlon available to consumers next year, although they aren't willing to put a lid on things just there. If they can, we forsee them attempting to pump the Athlon core up to 1.75GHz and perhaps even 2GHz for the latter stages of next year. With Intel promising similar things from its P4 core and then some, AMD may need to find a new line to market its processors before they are superseded by Intel's speed demons. However in the mean time, all this good change, depending on whether or not AMD can sort out a stepping of the Athlon which can handle higher frequencies.

The big Comdex electronics trade show is now underway in Las Vegas, and a veritable flood of new product launches are starting to emerge as computer hardware companies unveil their latest doohickeys. One of the biggest announcements so far is probably NVIDIA's long awaited entry into the laptop market - the "GeForce 2 Go", which the company are describing as the "world's first mobile GPU". Although the announcement doesn't come as any surprise (we've known for some time that NVIDIA were planning a mobile solution), we do at least now know all the gory details...

As recently as September's ECTS trade show in London, 3dfx were demonstrating a near-complete sample board of their Voodoo 5 6000 graphics card. Powered by four VSA-100 chips supported by 128Mb of memory, the card would have set you back $600, making it purely for the hardest of the hardcore gamers. Over-powered, expensive and ridiculously long, we described it as the "stretched limo of graphics cards". It even required a seperate external power supply! The Voodoo 5 6000 really was a ludicrous piece of hardware, a triumph of brute force engineering, but there was something strangely alluring about this foot long lump of silicon, and it was undoubtedly a strong performer.

Razer broke into the hardcore gaming scene recently with their Boomslang mouse, which featured above average sampling accuracy and a rather .. unique design. The bizarre shape of the mouse means that it isn't for everyone though, and Razer have a new mouse called the Mamba in the pipeline, based on feedback from Boomslang users and extensive testing with professional gamers. Due for release next summer, "the Mamba will be lighter and more maneuverable than the Boomslang" according to general manager Robert Krakoff, aka Razerguy.

The weekend of November 10th - 12th saw the latest in the Multiplay i-series of LAN parties, with up to 1000 players assembling at Newbury Racecourse in wet and windy Berkshire. Having missed out on i4 and i5, both of which have been highly praised, I was not about to make it a third missed event in a row. So, with fellow Dark Republic clannies Comatosed and Xena crammed in the car, we braved the M25 tedium and headed for Newbury.

When the Unreal-engined Viking action game "Rune" was released recently, it fell slightly short of our high expectations. The graphics were beautiful, but the combat was rather hit-and-miss, and the opening levels were rather repetitive, mostly thanks to a serious lack of variety in the monsters you were facing. In a recent online chat session, developers Human Head admitted that "we probably should have spent more time balancing the early levels with different types of monsters, but didn't have the time due to deadline pressures".

The stunning adventure game "The Longest Journey" has been available across Europe for some time now, but the game's American release has rekindled interest in the title. But how has the critical and (for an adventure game) commercial success of the game changed the lives of its developers?

Although most of the media interest in professional gaming has been centered around competitions using first person shooters like the Quake series so far, there is also a big community based around motor racing games. Now British virtual racing group "Team Redline" have announced a sponsorship deal with Thrustmaster, which will see the hardware giant funding them "to enhance the team's performances and provide the support and backing necessary to keep us at the top of sim racing". Having recently won recent "Grand Prix 3" and "Grand Prix Legends" competitions, the team is now "looking forward to a successful future".

For some years now the media and gamers alike have been getting excited about the advent of the virtual battlefield, combining the first person shooter with tank and flight sims to produce an all-encompassing simulation of war. And yet, despite a few brave ("Wargasm") or simply downright foolish ("Codename Eagle") attempts, this apparent gaming nirvana still hasn't truly arrived.

The Online Gamers Association has relaunched its website after an extensive overhaul, with several major new features added. For a start you can now select what kind of OGA news you are interested in seeing, picking which of several categories of news will be displayed when you log into the site. You can even opt to view headlines from your favourite sites listed on the OGA front page - Blue's News, Barrysworld, EuroGamer and other sites are already supported, with more on the way!

One of the most unusual games we've come across so far this year is "Sheep" from Empire Interactive and Minds Eye Productions, which sees you trying to guide the eponymous dumb animals through a series of levels on their way to Mount Mouflon. Now Empire have launched the game's official website - Save Our Sheep - which features information about the characters you will control, the worlds you will find yourself in, and the truth about sheep, who are actually highly intelligent interstellar travellers who have just forgotten why they are here. No, really. For all the latest on the soon-to-be-released game, head over to the Save Our Sheep website now!

3DO Europe have announced that their soccer sim "Alex Ferguson's Player Manager 2001" will be available on PlayStation from Friday November 24th, with PC and PlayStation 2 versions to follow early next year. The game features an all-new engine, enhanced menu system, 122 new motion captured players, a new control system, more stadia, and the proverbial much much more. For the full scoop, read the press release.

have announced that the Counter-Strike teamplay tournament at their debut event in the German city of Köln will be sponsored by Razer, creators of the Boomslang gaming mouse. Prize money for the tournament will total 10,000 euros, with 32 teams of 5 players taking part. Ten of those teams have already qualified from various events over the last few months, but the other 22 slots are open on a first-come first-serve basis, and registration for these open slots will begin tomorrow. For the full details, check the CPL Europe website.

Yesterday marked the release of 3DO's "Action Man : Destruction X" on PlayStation across Europe, with the popular toy starring in his own game developed by BritSoft company Blitz Games. "Dr. X, Action Man's greatest enemy, has hatched a devious plot to take over the world, and only the man of action himself can stop him", according to the press release announcing the game's arrival. "His quest to discover Dr. X's plan will take him across 36 all-action missions from burning desert sands to the bitter cold of the North Pole, testing his courage and determination all the way. Robot warriors, mutant plants and deadly insects are just a few of the surprises awaiting him."

UbiStudios UK are currently hard at work on "Dragonriders : Chronicles of Pern", a mixture of action, adventure and role-playing elements set in the world of Pern created by popular fantasy author Anne McCaffrey. But although the lead character is the dragon-rider of the title, a rugged hero called D'Kor, his dragon Zenth is also a major part of the game.

When "X : Beyond The Frontier" was released just over a year ago, we had high hopes for it. As fans of the "Elite" series right back to the original BBC Micro version of the 1980s, the idea of an open-ended space sim in which you could be a pirate, trader or bounty hunter was enough to get us excited.

The original MDK introduced us all to the joys of the sniper rifle, which has now become an indispensable part of almost every new first person shooter. MDK's stealth suited hero returned in the recent sequel on PC and Dreamcast, along with his mentor the Doc, and a bizarre four-armed two-legged dog with a bad attitude. Now MDK2 is coming to the PlayStation 2 in the form of "MDK2 : Armageddon", a specially enhanced version of the already colourful game.

The first flight simulators were designed not for gamers, but for pilots. Used by both military and civilian trainers, these things make even the most authentic of PC flight sims look like an arcade game. Recently some of the SimHQ team got a chance to visit the US Navy in southern California to see their Miramar F/A-18 simulators, which feature an imitation cockpit inside a dome on the surface of which the sim's graphics are projected, all powered by a room full of mainframe computers. And it doesn't come cheap either - "just to run these two simulators and the massive number of mainframes to go with them, it costs one million dollars per month", and "that's not including personnel, maintenance or anything else .. just the electric bill"! So now all our American readers know where their tax dollars are going...

Microsoft today announced that DirectX 8.0 is now available for download. For those of you living under a rock, DirectX is the API used by many games and multimedia applications running under Windows, and the latest version adds a whole shedload of new features as well as many improvements and performance tweaks to make the API even more credible for game development, gaining support from the likes of Epic's Tim Sweeney of Unreal fame as well as graphics card manufacturers 3dfx, ATI, NVIDIA.

Once again it's been a big week for new releases on the PC as the industry builds itself up into a frenzy in the final countdown to the festive season. The biggest new arrival was probably the latest Electronic Arts soccer sim, "FIFA 2001", which is sure to be a massive hit regardless of what (if anything) has changed since "FIFA 2000"... Meanwhile for those of you who prefer your sports to be of the extreme variety, THQ "MTV Sports Skateboarding" is out. If you want something a little more sedate, then Microsoft's "Links 2001" golf sim might be more up your street. Finally, escaping from the glut of new sports games, Cryo's adventure game "Egypt II" is now available, bundled with one of their older titles, "Aztec".

Over the past few years the computer games industry in what used to be the Soviet Bloc has seen something of a renaissance, with fresh new developers springing up across eastern Europe, from Poland to Yugoslavia.

Television series about computer games have traditionally been rather hit or miss, and even the relatively successful ones have tended to enjoy a love / hate relationship with their target audience - witness "Bits". Sadly it looks like the BBC's innovative new series "Bleeding Thumbs" isn't even going to be given the opportunity to tank gracefully, with a researcher who had worked on the show revealing that "Bleeding Thumbs has been postponed indefinitely with the series being put on hold".