Just wondering if any of you have read the latest or the March copy of PC format ?
Well this in March’s edition they included a small overclocking magazine that covered all kinds of setups and components that they recommended. In the Main magazine itself they also covered such things as a big CPU test showing fps in current games (even though they left out the e6600).
The thing that slightly annoyed me was the fact that it seemed like in one part they were saying there was no point in going for anything more than a e6300 or e6400 because you could effectively get clock speeds of more than the X6800 with a bit of overclocking. Then in another part of their magazine they are stating that the only way they were playing the latest games with the graphics turned all the way up, was with the latest quad core QX6800 or Q6700 with dual 8800 GTX cards in SLI. This not only seemed incredibly contradictory but also very worrying. When you look at the price of current hardware it seems like a very expensive affair to put together a system that is future proof when you cant afford to get anywhere near the top of the current specs.
Meanwhile on most of the other places on the internet everyone seems to be going for more reasonable specs of a e6600 and a single 8800gts or GTX or even the top end DX9 cards. Unless its me it seems to have become a far more confusing affair at the moment when it comes to knowing what to buy. About 4 years ago when I purchased my previous gaming system which was something along the lines of a
P4 2.8ghz 'C' 800
1 Gig of DDR PC400
Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Radeon 9800pro 128mb
you just had the choice of AMD or Intel and ATI or NVIDIA. Intel and ATI were at the time easy choices. The way I have angled it is to go for a decent motherboard which is SLI enabled and a e6600 and then when the prices of the quad core processors come down and the 8800gtx's become cheaper I will be able to upgrade.
But that leads me onto another point. When hardware suddenly takes a leap forward (as seen with the Conroe)it seems all developers just suddenly start releasing software what can only be described as containing inefficient code.
They get what a developer friend described to me as lazy. They know there is hardware out there that can run their dodgy code, the fact that hardly anyone can afford to buy it yet is not their concern. Where as if they were to either spend a bit longer streamlining that code, or coding it properly you could probably have the game / app running on a system half the specs.
As a developer myself I often see this happening there is a right efficient way of coding that takes longer more planning and a bit more of a thought process and then there is the quick "hack" way of doing something just to get it to work quickly.
Evidence of this kind of thing is apparent when a sequel to a game is released looking almost exactly the same as the first game with the same graphics but with some new levels and so called "new content" a new weapon or two but seems to run about 30% slower than the original.
Well this in March’s edition they included a small overclocking magazine that covered all kinds of setups and components that they recommended. In the Main magazine itself they also covered such things as a big CPU test showing fps in current games (even though they left out the e6600).
The thing that slightly annoyed me was the fact that it seemed like in one part they were saying there was no point in going for anything more than a e6300 or e6400 because you could effectively get clock speeds of more than the X6800 with a bit of overclocking. Then in another part of their magazine they are stating that the only way they were playing the latest games with the graphics turned all the way up, was with the latest quad core QX6800 or Q6700 with dual 8800 GTX cards in SLI. This not only seemed incredibly contradictory but also very worrying. When you look at the price of current hardware it seems like a very expensive affair to put together a system that is future proof when you cant afford to get anywhere near the top of the current specs.
Meanwhile on most of the other places on the internet everyone seems to be going for more reasonable specs of a e6600 and a single 8800gts or GTX or even the top end DX9 cards. Unless its me it seems to have become a far more confusing affair at the moment when it comes to knowing what to buy. About 4 years ago when I purchased my previous gaming system which was something along the lines of a
P4 2.8ghz 'C' 800
1 Gig of DDR PC400
Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Radeon 9800pro 128mb
you just had the choice of AMD or Intel and ATI or NVIDIA. Intel and ATI were at the time easy choices. The way I have angled it is to go for a decent motherboard which is SLI enabled and a e6600 and then when the prices of the quad core processors come down and the 8800gtx's become cheaper I will be able to upgrade.
But that leads me onto another point. When hardware suddenly takes a leap forward (as seen with the Conroe)it seems all developers just suddenly start releasing software what can only be described as containing inefficient code.
They get what a developer friend described to me as lazy. They know there is hardware out there that can run their dodgy code, the fact that hardly anyone can afford to buy it yet is not their concern. Where as if they were to either spend a bit longer streamlining that code, or coding it properly you could probably have the game / app running on a system half the specs.
As a developer myself I often see this happening there is a right efficient way of coding that takes longer more planning and a bit more of a thought process and then there is the quick "hack" way of doing something just to get it to work quickly.
Evidence of this kind of thing is apparent when a sequel to a game is released looking almost exactly the same as the first game with the same graphics but with some new levels and so called "new content" a new weapon or two but seems to run about 30% slower than the original.
