Photos by Banjarconverto on Buzznet

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Summer glow in the graphics industry: GT200 or D10U?

After some time in comatose, computer graphics industry is about to witness once again, a head-to-head competition between NVIDIA and AMD. Remember these names: GT200, RV770.

To make it more interesting, let's have a look at these figures from NVIDIA:

D10U-30 and D10U-20.....
240 shader procs and 192 shader procs.....
512-bit memory and 448-bit memory......

more stories on DailyTech!

One thing I'm not sure is whether those above are based on GT200, as it was revealed that GT200 will appear as GeForce 9900, as mentioned here. As you go along, you will see these names: GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 are referred to D10U-30 and D10U-20 respectively. Well, go figure..


Thursday, May 15, 2008

Race Driver GRID demo : a preview

I just have downloaded a demo of Race Driver GRID, a soon-to-be-released racing game by Codemasters. I gotta admit that since the frustration due to buggy NFS Pro Street, I didn't play much racing game (except Juiced 2 HIN, which I haven't completed it anyway!) until now. Anyway, I just cross my fingers, hoping this demo would at least bring some good gaming time for me.

It's a 893 MB worth of demo, so yeah..probably an early indication of a well-packed, solid game, perhaps? So, went through installation procedures and then I executed the game straight away. I don't even bother to update my PC with the latest graphics driver or some sort. Let's see if this unoptimized gaming rig can run the game smoothly or not.

Okay, to begin with, I should mention that the menu is easy to navigate, direct and clear. Maybe I have to make an exception on the control settings for the controller (keyboard). Usually, you use Esc and Enter to basically change the settings, accept it and then escape from the setting menu. This time, you have to use Control to initiate the change, then Enter to change and accept it, before getting out of the settings. Try it for yourself and you'll understand it.

With default graphics settings at 1280x1024 res, I ran the game. I'm glad to say that my unoptimized PC ran this game at an average of 45-55 fps. with framerates that never went below 38 fps. It's a butter smooth graphics in my observation, thanks to 8800 GT under the hood. Anyway, this is not the maxed out settings allowed in the game. You have various graphics related tweaks to make the best graphics out of this game.

I just completed a few rounds of the demo and...oh yeahh, you got 3 circuits and 3 cars to try on this demo. What can I say is.......I think this game is going to cure my frustration!











Saturday, May 03, 2008

Ever heard of GeForce 9600 GSO??

If you ever come across this product, it is actually a rebadged 8800 GS. Yes, somehow NVIDIA wants to make it into the 9000 series even though 8800 GS had its brief moment in the market
before.

I keep reminding myself of the current trend of product introduction into the market. Sometimes, those products are not really worth what they are hype for. Tough times for gamers, maybe..no?

Thursday, May 01, 2008

GTA 4: Not Yet For PC

Normally I don't cover console games but as eventually some of them are available on PC platform, I think I should make this official here: Grand Theft Auto 4 is out! Of course, currently it's for XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3.

I played a few GTAs before: III, Vice City and San Andreas. For me, the best one was Vice City and San Andreas came close f*ckin' second (like quoting Naveen Andrews in Grindhouse: Planet Terror!).

I saw Anand's review here. He rarely does game reviews himself, but he did the review of GTA 4 unlike any typical game reviewer. It's more like a personal thoughts: you can agree and disagree at the same time. I suggest you guys go and have a look at it.

Like what Anand mentioned towards the end of the review, there's no reason why GTA 4 won't make it to PC; it's just a matter of when.