Classes are officially over but I do have to head over to campus this afternoon to contest the way a program my partner and I turned in close to two months ago was graded just a couple of days ago. It's something that could have been resolved via email but that only works if the person you're emailing actually responds to you :) Anywho, that's unfortunately what I'm up to this afternoon.
I got Deus Ex 2, I loved the original but I hated the fact that it ran like crap on anything but a 3dfx based card (which were far from the fastest cards out at the time). The sequel unfortunately won't run at higher than 1024x768 without getting choppy on a Radeon 9800 Pro; I have yet to try it on a NVIDIA card but I'm quite curious. I'm going to see if I can make a benchmark out of it at all as it could be an interesting addition to our game suite. I can't tell if the game is CPU or GPU bound yet as I haven't loaded it up on anything other than the Athlon XP that I happened to be near while I had the CDs, I will play around with that today.
Our first peripheral review in a very long time has been published today as promised, it's a 3-way shootout of entry-level pen tablets. If you're an artist and are curious about these things then you may want to take a look at the review. The next peripheral review due out is a Sub-$200 Photo Printer roundup and I'm hoping to have that available next weekend. This stuff is all new to us so we'd appreciate any feedback, including things you'd like to see on the peripheral front.
I mentioned storage reviews in my last blog, but I'm still looking for more response in terms of what you'd like to see first. One problem with the test suite as it stands is that it only tests up to the first few hundred MBs of the drive it is installed on, so what you lose is a difference in performance between inner and outer transfers. I'm working on a couple more test suites to stress those conditions to provide a more thorough analysis of disk performance, I'm hoping to have that done by the end of the weekend.
I saw Elf last night; it was better than I expected and actually pretty entertaining. I still haven't seen Matrix Re...Ra...the third one. I was waiting for my girlfriend to come down to see it with her but now I'm more and more tempted to just wait until it hits the $1.50 theaters, that somehow just seems wrong given that it is the Matrix. Maybe that will be my Christmas Day movie of choice this year :) Nothing is better than going out for a drive and seeing a movie on the 25th, the roads are empty and so are the theaters.
Enjoy the Saturday, as warm or as chilly as it may be where you are.
I got Deus Ex 2, I loved the original but I hated the fact that it ran like crap on anything but a 3dfx based card (which were far from the fastest cards out at the time). The sequel unfortunately won't run at higher than 1024x768 without getting choppy on a Radeon 9800 Pro; I have yet to try it on a NVIDIA card but I'm quite curious. I'm going to see if I can make a benchmark out of it at all as it could be an interesting addition to our game suite. I can't tell if the game is CPU or GPU bound yet as I haven't loaded it up on anything other than the Athlon XP that I happened to be near while I had the CDs, I will play around with that today.
Our first peripheral review in a very long time has been published today as promised, it's a 3-way shootout of entry-level pen tablets. If you're an artist and are curious about these things then you may want to take a look at the review. The next peripheral review due out is a Sub-$200 Photo Printer roundup and I'm hoping to have that available next weekend. This stuff is all new to us so we'd appreciate any feedback, including things you'd like to see on the peripheral front.
I mentioned storage reviews in my last blog, but I'm still looking for more response in terms of what you'd like to see first. One problem with the test suite as it stands is that it only tests up to the first few hundred MBs of the drive it is installed on, so what you lose is a difference in performance between inner and outer transfers. I'm working on a couple more test suites to stress those conditions to provide a more thorough analysis of disk performance, I'm hoping to have that done by the end of the weekend.
I saw Elf last night; it was better than I expected and actually pretty entertaining. I still haven't seen Matrix Re...Ra...the third one. I was waiting for my girlfriend to come down to see it with her but now I'm more and more tempted to just wait until it hits the $1.50 theaters, that somehow just seems wrong given that it is the Matrix. Maybe that will be my Christmas Day movie of choice this year :) Nothing is better than going out for a drive and seeing a movie on the 25th, the roads are empty and so are the theaters.
Enjoy the Saturday, as warm or as chilly as it may be where you are.
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Anonymous - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
(still #5, hit enter too soon) Additionally, by stopping posting his blog for so long I'm sure he alienated a lot of his reader base.Anonymous - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
Uh 118 comments in 43 days works out to about 3 comments per day. These new (daily) posts have more than that. It's cute that you're disgusted, but calm down there and think for a second charlie.Anonymous - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
I agree with both #2 and #3.Non-Top Related: Isn't it funny that now Anand posted on his blog two days in a row and hardly anyone has the time to comment on his posts. When he away for a month, then people came here and flamed him. All those people disgust me.
Eol - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
About storage: I would love to see how different RAID configurations affect the file system speed in practice and how they affect overall system "speed" or responsivness in general usage. Including SCSI both RAID and non-RAID into this would be great.With the SATA RAID being available on almost every new mainboard I think this is now worth investigating and I'd expect a lot o people to be interested.
BTW, I've been reading Anandtech for a few years now, great site! :)
Mike - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
As far as feedback on storage, You could either go for enthusiasts or enterprise in mind. I think most know the differences between SATA and PATA drives at the moment, performance is quite similar. Only the Raptor drives have peaked my interest thus far, perfect for a home user setup. I've been out of the server enviroment for years now, so I'm not too interested in Server Storage performance, though I'm sure there are many who are, but it'd be great to see something targeted at the enthusiast that could show what options give the best bang for the buck in certain price ranges for various drive types and RAID configurations. Hey Anand, you do know school is never going to end right? Good Luck!Shalmanese - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
Please review the Wacom 17" LCD cum Graphics tablet, if only so that we can drool over pictures of shiny, expensive things :).Seriously, I would be interested in how much of a difference there is between drawing on a tablet in your lap vs drawing on the actual screen.