The Midaged Gamer Report for 7-6-2012
So this week is a mixed bag, let's get started!
Good old Blizzard is apparently banning Linux users using
Wine to play Diablo 3 . The
configuration is officially unsupported but it seems Blizzard may be taking it
a bit farther than that. Apparently a
recent patch has flagged many such users
as allegedly using cheats and banned their accounts with no refund
offered. Blizzard is unapologetic and
claims:
I'm still waiting to hear if they apologized for the server
launch debacle.
On the motherboard side of things apparently Gigabyte is
beating ASUS and MSI to the punch by having the first certified Dual
Thunderbolt port boards for the PC. In
case you don't know Thunderbolt is effectively Intel's light peak architecture
(sans the light part) offering 10 Gbps I/O performance (2x that of USB 3.0) per
channel/connection. It uses a combination of PCI-Express and
Display port protocols on a single cable.
That's how you can
have a Thunderbolt display like Apples 27" daisy chained to the same port
as an external disk array. The question
is, if this is running off the PCI-E bus, will that consume PCI-E lanes
possibly affecting configurations using SLI or crossover?
With dual connections
on the GIgabyte board you can run up to 12 devices and 2 displays (6 devices per
channel 1 display per channel). In this week's
TWICH on TWIT Ryan Shrout reported that he's been using a Thunderbolt drive
array and having a generally positive experience. Apparently Thunderbolt devices show up as
internal instead of external meaning you could theoretically have a huge storage
array and not have to keep it your case.
.JPG) |
| Not A dual thunderbolt enabled board :-) |
This could finally
put USB and ESATA out of their misery as soon as prices come down. Cables seem to be the real bone of contention
with Thunderbolt with prices starting around $50. Far from being just a patch cable,
Thunderbolt cables employ logic chips in the cables themselves to sort out the
signals making them active instead of passive connections.
In completely unrelated news, PCPer is reporting speculation
from a Digi-times article (since removed) that ASUS and Gigabyte may be
improving the motherboard RMA and warranty experience according to a Digitimes
piece. What gamer hasn't had a flaky
board returned to them on their dime once or twice. From the article..
"If
these changes to the RMA procedure are indeed accurate then the worry of a
faulty board being sent back to you if the damage was judged not to be a
factory defect need no longer prevent you from sending a buggy or even
non-functional board back to the manufacturer. There are likely to be some
limits on these new policies, keep your eye out for updates as the arrive."
http://pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Some-good-warranty-news-change-ASUS-and-Gigabytes-new-competition
So the new AMD 7970 GHZ edition is said to be a bit faster
than GTX680. Of course that's an overclocked card but some
will argue that all enthusiast level cards are over clocked even if the box
doesn't say so. I don't buy it...
That's great for AMD fans waving the performance flag but
you can't run away from the fact that to beat a GTX680 at load means using 60
more watts of power to do it. So what's
60 watts in comparison to the whole system.
Well, have you ever touched a 60 Watt incandescent light bulb when it
was on? I guarantee you didn't touch it
for long.
Of course if you're the type that just simply must have the
fastest anything then my arguments fall on deaf ears. Performance is a relative thing especially
with computer hardware so it's best to focus on more tangible factors. Those being power, heat and price.
I know I sound like an NVIDIA fan boy but the truth is I'm
not impressed with hollow victories.
Match the power consumption and performance of the 680 and I'll be
satisfied. Also note that I currently
run AMD cards in my both my gaming rigs (a 6970 and a 6950) So much for the
BIAS argument....
Catch the latest TWICH on TWIT for more info on Ryan Shrout's
experiences with the 7970 Ghz edition.
YouTube's been buzzing again about the possibility of a
dinosaur mode in BF3. (just search for
BF3 Dino mode) It all started from a forum exchange with a Dice developer that
was followed up by a reddit post.
Speculation says it's more along the lines of the Zombie maps in Call of
Duty. So think of it more as a novelty
than a real game mode. Further
speculation says it may show up with the aftermath DLC. If it does come to pass at least it won't be
another zombie DLC pack.
I'm getting kind of
tired of stumbling corpses. Although I
don't know how much better running around Caspian Border shooting at Barney the
purple dinosaur would be. The whole
dinosaur thing was kind of played out in the 90's. Actually, it could work, I always hated
Barney....I love you , you love me....blech..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv_uCHLkxJI&feature=plcp
I just wanted to see if I could make something cool and I
think I did.
The argument copyright holders (meaning the record companies
and not the artists) often make concerns of all things milk and cows. They say if the milk was free why would the
farmer invest in producing it.
I have two thoughts on that.
The first is simple.
I think the farmer should make money on the milk but not after it's gone
sour. In other words, have a reasonable
limit to copyright, say 10 years then let it fall to a creative commons license
where usage such as mine is allowed so long as I give credit to the
artist. No harm, no foul and it could
give new life to old material.
The second thought goes even farther. Consider that perhaps the farmer shouldn't be
producing milk at all but rather growing renewable crops . In other words, the farmer's role of milk
producer is obsolete and only kept relevant by an obsolete transactional system
that ultimately prevents him from moving past it. He's inhibited by his reliance on the revenue
that is only possible under the old system.
His survival is tied to it and ultimately controls his actions.
I only mention this because at some point you may run into
the same thing especially if you like to upload
game videos to the Internet. If
it makes you angry turn it into action and support organizations like the
Creative Commons Organization. http://creativecommons.org/
That's it for this week!
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