kalniel

You don't appear to have a CPU, so I'm amazed it runs at all :p What OS are you using?

This thread seems a good a place as any to put suggestions seeing as I can't find the link anymore to send them in :p Game is actually my top choice for retail games - IMHO they are the cream of the crop - if I want a game fast they can't be beaten, and getting into trouble for sending out games way before they are officially meant to be released never seems to stop them. In addition they often have exclusive collectors editions, and the reward card scheme is also good. The only thing they are not so good on is cut-down prices, but that's less of a problem for pre-orders which the most dedicated gamers will use. Service and after sales support are excellent. If price is the main concern, then how about one of the other Game-owned companies like the one people from one of my unis set up: Gamestation. Amazon is a very popular affiliate choice, simply because they offer so much. Price-wise they are hugely variable, but it's often possible to pick up a real bargain especially on slightly older games. They're not so good for release day stuff, but that's what Game is for. What I wouldn't advice would be the ones based in other countries that import - you can't avoid that with some of Amazon purchases under £18, sure, but there are whole companies who are based in other countries and they offer a worse service IMHO - not to mention the lack of legal liability they have compared to UK companies. Shop-to are a pain for me, because you have to have two orders sent to your billing address before they consider delivering elsewhere which makes it unfeasible for me to buy from them unfortunately. A left-field choice: Good Old Games (CD-projekt's DRM free classics site). I've seen them do some fanastic affiliate deals with other forums.

Yes, essentially. You don't have to worry too much about the networking/authentication/online servers etc. type thing, because you use Live and MS servers, but all of that had to be created from scratch for the PC version. Secondly QA for the X360 is much more straightforward - you only have one or two exact specifications to test against, and I there are several companies (MS even I expect) who can perform testing for you. On the PC there are almost unlimited variations in hardware and software to test against, so QA takes longer.

As opposed to the adverts that appear in other places? :p The forums don't pay for themselves and I think affiliate links are one of the nicer revenue streams that don't detract from the experience as much as others can.

My view is you'd have to cost it well to make sure you didn't end up losing money over it - a G25 is pretty expensive. If you're being given the G25 for free then great, but check carefully with whoever gave it you, as most freebies can't be used commercially (if you required money be given to take part in the competition for example). The formalities will not be insignificant either - as soon as you tie donations to something like this you might be entering a world of legal pain because you are now selling something (regardless of how you word it). Of course, you probably know that and would cope with it just fine :cool:

Which is itself a renamed 8800GTS.. :p

They are all very similar in what they can do - the only differences are caused by how much the factory overclock the card, which is still the same chip as everyone else is using. But I wouldn't go for a highly overclocked card to be honest, as they tend to have a shorter lifespan and you'll end up seeing the same thing as with your current card! Look for what bundle you get with the card, length of warranty, and how easy it is to return a card should you have problems. Asus, Sapphire etc. are rated quite highly for that sort of thing, XFX are rated quite badly. Sure, it's fine, better value might be something like this sapphire: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-195-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1403

I can't remember... Oh, that's it :p

The 4870 512mb/1gb and 4890 1gb are all significantly faster than your current card, and the latter is basically the same as the GTX 275. (+/- depending on game and how overclocked it comes out of the box). ATI cards have the advantage of DirectX10.1, which forms a large part of the DirectX11 specifications as well, meaning they'll be faster for DX11 capable games than nVidia's DX10 only cards. nVidia cards have the advantage of PhysX, which some games are starting to use to offload physics calculations from the CPU. IF you have a slow CPU then this might make a difference for non-graphically demanding games, but if the game is very graphically intensive then you don't really want to be wasting GPU power on stuff the CPU can normally do very well. Dragon Age is going to be a good example of a fairly low graphics game that makes use of spare GPU capacity for PhysX. You can't go wrong with either to be honest - look at the price and performance in your favourite games first and foremost, and only if they're dead equal would I swing towards these other features.

What I love about PCs is the ability to take something that's getting a bit old and just by replacing parts as funds allow you can keep it up to date and really fast. My PC will be turning four years old later this year, and I'm only just considering changing it later when DX11 cards come down in price and Core i7 builds become feasible. AMD are providing great performance for the money these days as well, just like four years ago :)

Woah.. hold on. Your motherboard will support ATI cards absolutely fine - what they mean is it only supports multi-card configurations with nVidia, ie if you want to run two cards in SLI then you need to use two identical nVidia cards. Trust me, it is *much* faster than your 8800GTS. If a game can't run max with one of these then it won't with the 285 either.

Yes it's definitely your card on the way out. You might be able to postpone its death by underclocking the GPU and VRAM, but it won't last forever. The GTX 285 is a great card, but not worth £220. For half of that you can get a 4870 1gb which performs slightly slower, but if you want to stay with nVidia then they are good - alternatively look for a GTX 275 which is still very fast, but should be a lot cheaper than a 285. Finally, in the autumn new DirectX 11 cards are coming out, and while nothing takes advantage of them yet, if you wanted to be more future proof then you might want to hang on till then (either by underclocking with the current card, or getting a cheaper, maybe second-hand, card to tie you over until then).

This is a very hot Lambo! - luckily for some it's not a diablo though ;) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8138012.stm

What? It had nothing like a lackluster performance. You're also missing out the focus on online gaming. That says nothing about becoming the 'official' game dev.. Read it again: "Wilson also said that Atari "will be much more focused in investing in our intellectual properties, whether the classic IPs or the properties coming out of Cryptic." Or the properties coming out of Cryptic, meaning they don't cover the classic IPs. Also you only have to check the industry networking sites to see Eden are very much alive and well, and developing. Yup you're wrong on virtually all those points :p The one you got right was that it was developed in Poland :p This is called consolidation, and is just maximising the tools at your disposal, but has nothing to do with whether TDU is made or not. That's talking about the 'new' Atari side of things.. forgetting that Distributed Partners now handles what we'd think of as traditional Atari games. What?! Sorry, that's pure conspiracy theory! :p Eden and Cryptic are both two studios covering similar areas, now they're are both subsidiaries it makes sense that they don't duplicate efforts and instead work together, each concentrating on slightly different things. That's certainly true, hence the wait for official announcements about TDU2. And the information then, and since then, if you want to be sure ;) Absolutely not. If they're not ready to give a statement then they won't be any more ready just because they're being harrassed. It's better that they don't give any information which is subject to change - like you say, you already disregard certain information, so that might well apply here as well. Bottom line: Has TDU2 been announced? No. That is and remains the official position. Everything else is speculation, which is fun, so long as people don't take it for more than that :)

You trust anything from a site that says TDU2 is going to come out in March 2008??

Why can't you play with the CD?

But is it a driving game? :p

Looking at those screenshots it's obvious you have to pay extra for a pair of glasses for your driver in this game - that's a world first, putting you in the shoes of a myopic person :P

I'm sure they'll keep the brand name to ressurrect if they survive this period. But they are in MASSIVE financial trouble, and even this drastic action is possibly too little, too late. I'm just glad Opel has been spun off - they made very useful cars.

Ok so just check the following things for me: You have bought two copies of the game and two copies of the megapack? You have made sure to keep the copies separate, and haven't accidentally installed the desktop copy on the laptop for example? Your laptop doesn't have any firewall that's blocking the internet authentication for the megapack?

Good news for those that get this instead of RROD - MS have determined that the E74 error is caused by the same hardware failure as RROD so have added it to the same extended warranty. http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/46148/Microsoft-Extends-Xbox-360-Warranty-Period-For-E74-Errors

Yes, that corsair is more than enough to run a 4850. Total wattage has almost nothing to do with whether a PSU is powerful enough for a graphics card and you should never use that as a measurement. I run that cards big brother, the 4870, on a 480W PSU.

And the fact that there aren't a fixed number of gears ;) You just change up as you accelerate, and change down as you slow down :p All very fun. Apart from the bit where it crashes every time I try to go online :(

Which is why it's a shame the PS3 chip is based on 7000 series architecture ;) But PhysX can be run on any central processor too - x86, powerPC, Cell, Broadway - hence why they've been giving away the SDK for things like the PS3 and Wii as well. Havok runs even better though, hence why it was used in TDU and should hopefully be used in TDU2.

It's a game, not real life, I think licenses will make the game more fun.