From the Labs is the Custom PC blog, giving an inside look at cutting edge PC hardware, benchmarking and the world of CPC
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Loading ...The graphics card toaster
Alex Watson
It hasn’t escaped Nvidia’s attention that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is rather quick - quicker in fact than its own GTX 280. Nvidia isn’t the kind of company that enjoys (or tolerates) not coming first, so it’s trying to come up with a way of getting ahead of the 4870 X2. For this reason it’s been very keen for the press to test two GTX 260s in SLI against the 4870 X2, on the basis that since the 4870 X2 is a ‘dual GPU’ product, it’s only fair to test it against an Nvidia dual GPU set up. This conveniently ignores the fact the 4870 X2 is a single card (just one with two chips on it), and that it works in any motherboard… and that it’s cheaper than a pair of 260s.
Still, given that Nvidia were more than willing to send us a pair of 260s and an nForce 790i motherboard, we were happy to spend a couple of days in the lab running some preliminary tests. Unfortunately, we weren’t left with a positive feeling; the tests toasted the Southbridge on the motherboard, as two hefty graphics cards don’t make for great airflow over a motherboard. The fact the board died during testing meant we didn’t have a chance to get any meaningful performance results, but the fact that Nvidia is already thinking about revising the GTX 260 may mean the company has other ideas about how to compete with ATI, or has figured out that it’s not the X2 that it should be worried about - comparatively few people buy such high-end graphics cards. The sub £200 market is far more important, and here the 4870 is a big threat to Nvidia’s GeForce cards.
Toast picture from Flickr user Iggy.
Rated: 100% (3 votes)
Loading ...VRMs under the spotlight
James Gorbold
This week Mark and I are buried in the CPC lab benchmarking and evaluating dozens of motherboards for a massive Labs test which will be published in Issue 62 (on sale 25 September).
In addition to all the usual overclocking tests, we’re also planning some more in-depth coverage of the latest batch of super-expensive models (£180+) to see if they really can justify their high price. Read more
Rated: 53.33% (3 votes)
Loading ...Most misleading press release ever?
Clive Webster
Just received a press release about the ‘historically accurate turn-based strategy game’ World War One being re-released soon. Trouble is, the subject line read: ‘World War One set for November re-run’.
Really? Cripes! I’d better get down the army surplus store and get me some good boots, green overalls and a steel helmet - only two months to plan for the outbreak of a World War seems a bit tight to me.
The game (rather than the global conflict) is set to re-launch in November and the press release reads:
“Players can take on the role of Kitchener, Joffre, Luddendorf, Clemenceau, Czar Nicholas II or Enver Pasha as they search for the strategy to avoid defeat in the first truly global war. All the tools for victory are available within the game, but it is up to the player to identify them and employ them in the most efficient way.”
See Ageod for more details.
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Loading ...Microsoft is finally going to do something about Games For Windows Live
Alex Watson
Given how universally well regarded the Xbox 360’s online abilities are (even we were impressed by it on our PCs vs Consoles test), it’s difficult to believe Games for Windows Live is a product of the same company. Even if it was a product in a field of one it would be hard to recommend, as it was buggy, confusing and had a dreadful UI. It could only be run from inside a compatible game (both of them), needed frequent patches and often asked you to press Xbox controller buttons even when you didn’t have on plugged in. Oh, and you also had to pay for it, if you wanted the premium service. Hardly a wonderful piece of work, and fortunately for us PC gamers, it didn’t stand alone. It was going up against, among others, Steam, Valve’s quietly revolutionary gaming app that’s slick, well designed and free.
Microsoft recently announced GFW Live would be free, but I was far from convinced that was enough for it to clamber out of the grave. After all, Microsoft’s website is still plugging PC-vs-360 gaming on such popular titles as ‘Universe at War, Lost Planet: Colonies, Shadowrun…’, and as long as GFW Live wasn’t an app but an aetheral service that only existed inside a few games, it was never going to gain ground. However, in an interview written up by Ars Technica, Microsoft’s Kevin Unangst* mentions that Microsoft will be making GFW Live a standalone program:
“We will have an out-of-game client [with the fall update]…. Expect to see that through the Vista Game Explorer, or running on the task-bar. We want it to be as discoverable as possible.”
Ars also has a pic of the new interface compared to the old interface (see below - click to enlarge) - and it looks much improved. It drops the bastardised Xbox look the original GFW Live used, and opts for a Vista-style translucent blue. Just as critical, however, will be the actual experience of how GFW Live works. Steam has won many fans because it’s unfussy, quick to load and its efficient rather than flashy style suits gaming on the PC. While PC gamers are drawn to certain aspects of the 360’s online software, Microsoft needs to make sure GFW Live has a distinctive identity, and actually feels like a true PC app rather than a port of the Xbox version. ”Cross platform synergy” sounds great in the boardroom from some slick-haired strategy wonk, but people actually want different things from different devices.
* Definitely in the “Top 10 PR people with the best names”
Rated: 90% (4 votes)
Loading ...Beyond CTRL ALT DEL
Alex Watson
Windows has lots of hotkeys aside from CTRL-ALT-DEL, but unfortunately most of these are only documented deep in the bowels of the Help system. For example, hitting the ‘D’ key at the same time as the Windows key will automatically minimise every app to the Taskbar, leaving only your Desktop exposed. You’ll find a comprehensive list of them here, but only if you can stomach a little HTML 1.0.
There are also a couple of useful Shift modifiers that aren’t listed. As you know, if Windows finds a file of the same name, you can direct it to overwrite the file (Yes), overwrite all duplicate files (Yes to All), or skip that file (No). It doesn’t provide the option to skip all duplicate files (No to All), but if you hold down the Shift key and click ‘No’, it will skip all duplicate files without asking again.
There’s also a hotkey that’s handy for when you’re deleting files. When you delete a file in Windows, it goes into your Recycle Bin, but these files still take up disk space. To delete the file permanently, hold down Shift when you choose Delete from the right-click menu. Anyone else got any shortcuts they want to share?
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...If ATI and Nvidia made cakes, not graphics cards
Alex Watson
Sometimes I think graphics cards bring out the worst in people - the arguments about Nvidia vs ATI that rage across forums are some of the most inexplicably fierce on the web. Cake, however, clearly brings out the best in people, as the answers to our CPC 5th Anniversary Cake Competition show. The prize was simple and delicious - a limited edition Custom PC cake, which we had made for our fifth birthday. The question you had to answer was: If Nvidia/ATI made cakes instead of graphics cards, what sort of cakes would they make? Feel free to describe the cake’s appearance, taste and other qualities such as cost, weight, construction, colour etc. Answers are after the jump - they certainly had me laughing (and also dreaming of ways to benchmark cake….) Congratulations to the winners!
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Loading ...CPC on Radio 5 Live again
Alex Watson
A couple of months ago, I ended up talking about PC gaming versus consoles on BBC Radio 5 Live on a show called Up All Night which goes out from 1AM to 5AM. It was a lot of fun to record first time - essentially it’s just a late night chat about games - so I was really keen to go back. Last week I had the chance, and was on the show for the second time, with an excellent panel of guests including Nvidia’s UK PR guy Ben, Eurogamer’s MMO Editor Oli, along with the BBC’s Adam Rosser and show host Dotun. Adam had interviews with the producers of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and the guys behind Soul Calibur 4, so we started off talking about what makes Japanese games Japanese, how they try and appeal to the hardcore otaku, before attempting a completely smooth segue into why it’s hard to buy graphics cards for the PC. Finally, there’s some chat about E3 as Oli covered the show for Eurogamer.
I was a huge fan of the original Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast (and before that, Soul Blade on the PlayStation) and I’ve got to be honest, the introduction of Star Wars characters to the medieval-set story seems a ridiculous and fairly blatant play for hardcore geeky gamers that spells ruin for the game. As I pointed out on the show, though, there’s often a choice, when it comes to making a sequel: do you re-do the game and just make it appeal to its core audience, or do you try and broaden the game’s style and introduce new features?
Adam sent me the whole show as an MP3; if you’re into games, in the words of Clive, ‘it’s all kinds of good‘; if you just want PC bit, it starts 15 minutes in. Click here to download the episode, or listen to it in your browser by clicking the play button below.
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
Loading ...Happy 5th Birthday Custom PC (and win cake!)
Alex Watson
It’s a little difficult to date exactly when Custom PC began - our first issue has ‘October 2003′ printed on it, and was released in August of that year. I started work on the magazine at the end of July, but Gareth (founding editor, now departed to work for Corsair PR) and James had been working on the magazine since much earlier - January or February. We may not know the exact date, but our 60th issue came out on the news-stand today. I’d like to say thanks to everyone who’s been part of CPC’s success, whether that’s contributing to the magazine, helping us out with cutting edge kit, or most important of all, being one of our many dedicated readers. Especially those of you who’ve travelled the world and taken CPC along for the ride. We’re celebrating the 5th birthday in a number of ways - one of which you can see above, more of which you can discover after the jump…
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Loading ...No WoW
Alex Watson
Just upgraded the graphics in my work PC (for multi-monitor support, not that I’ve got the time to join Computer Shopper in their lunch-time CoD2 LAN). I found a Radeon X1650 with two DVI ports, so whacked that in.
Seeing that ATI has updated its graphics driver to Catalyst 8.7, I downloaded that and hit Express Install. Imagine my horror when it automatically installed a two week trial of World of Warcraft! I’ve never seen the point of MMOs – there’s no end and therefore no story and therefore no point goes my argument – and there’s a certain amount of ridicule for WoW in the office to contend with too. I uninstalled it as soon as I’d made sure the new driver worked OK.
My warning is to avoid the Express install option in the Catalyst 8.7 driver and unselect the WoW installer (it’s only 0.2MB, so it least it didn’t needlessly inflate the driver download unnecessarily).
It’s curious that both ATI and Nvidia seem to be doing this though – bundling game demos and trials with driver downloads. Clearly it’s a source of revenue for them, but it’s a bit annoying that driver installs dump icons on your desktop for games you either care nothing about or have already got. Please stop – driver downloads should be should that.
Oh, unless ATI and Nvidia are making so much cash from the games companies for these trial installs that they hire extra people to work on delivering better drivers that is!
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Welcome to the Labs
Alex Watson
Welcome to Custom PC’s new blog, From The Labs. When we relaunched the Custom PC website last summer, we built in blogging powers courtesy of Wordpress. As well as allowing our readers to sign up for blogs to document their mods (and everything from hardware tips to anime obsessions), all the members of the CPC team had their own blogs. This had its advantages – we were free to talk about whatever we liked, and the rest of us could disassociate from James when he invoked the wrath of the fanboys – but it also meant the CPC blogs ended up a disparate and disjointed affair, difficult to keep up to date and difficult for people to engage with.
Not good, so we’re pressing the reset switch. Enter From The Labs, the new official CPC blog. It’s a joint blog which every member of the team will contribute to, so it will be easy to keep track of. From The Labs will give you an inside look at cutting edge PC hardware, benchmarking and a peek behind the scenes at the world of CPC.
I’m keeping this post short and to the point (underpromise, overdeliver, you know what those management books say), so there’s not much more to say than From The Labs’ url is: http://www.custompc.co.uk/blogs/fromthelabs and if you never want to miss a thing, the RSS feed is http://www.custompc.co.uk/blogs/fromthelabs/feed/.