Maximum PC May 2005 RSS Feed

May 2005

Maximum PC — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:35:09 -0500

The State of the Motherboard UnionIt's the most critical component of every power-user's rig, but blink and you'll find that the landscape of motherboard technology has suddenly changed. Don't panic! We'll show you the hot new chipsets, explain all the latest features, give you tips on picking the perfect mobo, and pit the biggest contenders against each other in a showdown that only the strongest will survive.

Fooling with Water CoolingYou don't have to start from scratch to trade up to a water-cooled rig. Maximum PC tests five water cooling kits that you install yourself for extreme overclocking goodness, or just a little peace and quiet.

Behind the Scenes of MMORPGs Curious how a guy in New Jersey and a gal in Seoul can bet the porridge out of the same two-headed monster in a faraway land? Maximum PC takes you on an exclusive tour of the hardware and software that sustains the enormous worlds of massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

Maximum PC — Fri, 06 May 2005 18:25:27 -0500

This sequel makes for a strong case of DÃ©jÃ vu

Single player roleplaying is far from dead. The first Knights of the Old Republic rekindled our love for captivating RPGs and delivered a perfect Star Wars game. This sequel reprises the same formula—complex storytelling and difficult moral choices—to great effect. Irritating bugs and a rushed ending dull its shine, but the Force is still strong with Kotor 2.

Set five years after the conclusion of the first game you reenter a galaxy far, far, away in the same way you did in the previous adventure—an amnesiac with a mysterious past. As an exiled Jedi who fought in the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil Wars, you’re hunted by the Sith and an alliance of Bounty Hunters. As you journey, wayward travelers—each with their own interesting back stories—join you on your quest to rebuild the Republic and the Jedi Order.

Kotor 2’s writing is definitely its strongest asset. The spellbinding plot is wonderfully layered and complex, and almost all of your missions and actions actually build upon the underlying narrative. You travel to various planets in search of Jedi Masters, but at each location, they are unveiled differently and with unique story elements. On Dantooine, you can join a Jedi defending a key building from mercenaries, but on another planet, the resident Jedi will come to your rescue after an unfortunate misstep.

As the title suggests, many of the sequel’s underlying themes lay with the history of the Sith, and their purpose in balancing the Force. Once again, your actions determine whether you follow the light or dark side of the Force. But this time, your inner struggle is complicated by the ability to sway the faith of your up to 10 allies, who each have their own motives and troubled personalities.

The character Kiera, for example, will constantly warn of the weaknesses of blind selflessness, and impose her pessimistic ideals whenever present. You can either listen and build up your level of influence with her, or try to persuade her to change her outlook. Similarly, a Sith assassin who joins your party is very impressionable, but you’re free to either manipulate her beliefs or try to bring her to the light. The dialog does an admirable job of fleshing out complex relationship between Jedi and the Sith, and there are definitely times when the Sith convictions sound appealing.

Kotor2 also includes plenty of side quests to keep you busy. You’ll often have to rescue hapless settlers or refugees who’ve been scammed or have had friends or relatives kidnapped. While you don’t have to complete all of these missions, finishing them opens up shortcuts to advance the plot, and grants valuable experience points to level up your character. We were able to max out key skills early in the game, leaving us free to experiment with both light and dark force powers later on.

Numerous references to the first Kotor will delight fans, key characters from the first game show up for cameos. Your ship is again the Ebon Hawk, hinting at a connection between your character and the events of the first game. Also, both mini-games of Pazaak and Swoop Racing make a welcome return, and are as addictive as ever.
What you won’t enjoy are the unacceptable technical shortcomings, such as scripting bugs. NPCs often run the same scripting triggers repeatedly, and cut scenes occasionally lack models or movement. The almost archaic graphics are understandable considering it’s a console port, but the low resolution pre-rendered cut scenes are pitiful. The game even crashed twice between loading sequences, so make sure you save often.

There’s no doubt that Kotor 2 is essential to any respectable gamer or Star War fan’s collection–you might just want to wait until a patch comes out before embarking on the adventure. --Norman Chan

+ Sith Lord: Deeply involving plot, smart storytelling and layered complexity, Pazaak!

- Sith Lackey: Rampant scripting bugs, slow start, unresolved plotlines, dated visuals.

Month Reviewed: May 2005
Verdict: 8
URL: www.lucasarts.com

Shuttle XP17 Lite

Maximum PC — Sun, 01 May 2005 15:14:54 -0500

An impressive display that's made to travel

Shuttle is a pioneer of small formfactor boxes and the brand remains a favorite of LAN party enthusiasts, so the XP17 Lite is an obvious companion piece to the popular wee gaming PCs. Like those machines, the XP17 Lite LCD sports a sleek, stylish, high-tech aesthetic. The 17-inch screen is encased in a glassy, acrylic pane, so the unit’s face is totally slick and seamless. But there’s a downside to all the gloss. The shiny bauble of a monitor is distractingly reflective.

This was immediately apparent when we fired up DisplayMate’s (www.displaymate.com) Dark Screen, which is meant to evaluate an LCD’s black levels. Far from black, the screen held mirror images of our lovely mugs and our Lab surroundings. And in DM’s gray-scale screens, we had trouble discerning the dark grays from true black unless we viewed the screen off axis. At the light end of the gray scale, the display fared much better. (After receiving our review unit, Shuttle released Temp AG and Temp AR versions of the monitor, which feature tempered anti-glare and anti-reflective screens, respectively, so those are probably better options).

Serif fonts appear crisp and clearly legible at 9-point, and the XP17’s performance in Need for Speed: Underground—our fast-motion game test—was perfectly acceptable, even with the resolution interpolated to 800x600.

As for transportability, the XP17’s handle is sturdy and comfortable enough, and the stand that’s attached to the monitor’s frame lets you rotate the screen and/or slightly adjust its uprightness, but sorely lacking is any kind of protective carrying case. Shuttle offers one as an after-market accessory, but we think it’s fundamental to any monitor meant for travel. --Katherine Stevenson

+ Personalized luggage: Slick aesthetic, super bright screen, and made to travel

- Personal baggage: Reflection issues, no protective cover

Month Reviewed: May 2005
Verdict: 9
URL: www.shuttle.com

BenQ FP785

Maximum PC — Sun, 01 May 2005 15:10:49 -0500

It can "handle" most any task!

Maybe it’s the rounded corners and burgundy trim, or the fact that the FP785 debuted at Milan’s fashion week, but we have a hunch LAN partiers aren’t the FP785’s target audience. Indeed, the unit is designed to look like a handbag when carried. Elegantly, the handles also serve as the monitor’s base. The screen can be tilted slightly forward or back on its stand.

In DisplayMate tests, the FP785 initially came across as a champ. In the first several screens, we were loathe to detect flaws, and next to the Shuttle XP17, the FP785’s superb visibility was a testament to the wonders of anti-glare and -reflective coating. But problems arose when the FP785 was tasked with reproducing gray scales consisting of more than 65 steps of gradation. In the various 128- to 256-step scales, striations peppered what should have been a smooth transition of shades from black to white. This indicates a limited number of intensity levels at the extreme ends of the scale, something that might result in artifacting when displaying content with a lot of very dark or light elements.

Serif-font legibility was good, but not great, from 9-point. There was faint evidence of red, green, and blue in the edges of some of the characters, probably due to slight variations in the black levels of the primary color channels.
Need for Speed: Underground ran without any glaring visual artifacts—in native and nonnative resolutions—but detail during fast-motion sequences was slightly less sharp than with Shuttle’s monitor.

The FP785’s totability was on par with Shuttle’s XP17, although it’s more than a pound heavier. Both models are slim and lightweight by even LCD standards, but the load is not totally insignificant, especially when you factor in these monitors’ external battery packs. Like the XP17 Lite, BenQ’s portable is sold sans carrying case. --Katherine Stevenson

+ Traveling light: Easy to transport; decent performance

- Missing your flight: Limited gray-scale range; no protective cover; pricey

Month Reviewed: May 2005
Verdict: 8
URL: www.benq.com

Multicore Madness

Maximum PC — Sun, 01 May 2005 14:41:10 -0500

By Tom R. Halfhill

It's hard enough explaining the differences between multitasking, multiprocessing, multithreading, Hyper-Threading, single-core processors, multicore processors, and multiprocessor systems. Now Intel comes along and throws us another curve ball by announcing multicore processors that are actually multichip modules.

Intel recently announced a bunch of multicore processors with typically obscure code-names. Smithfield, officially christened Pentium D, has two Pentium 4-class processor cores on a single die. It’s a true multicore processor. But when Intel moves to the next-generation 65-nanometer chip-fabrication process, the company will introduce a new desktop processor code-named Presler that encloses two die in one chip package. Presler will look like a multicore processor to the operating system, but inside, it will actually have only one core per die. That's not quite a true multicore processor.

There's a common term for a processor like Presler: multichip module (MCM). An MCM is simply a chip package containing two or more die. Old-timers might recall that Intel's Pentium Pro, introduced in 1995, was also an MCM. It enclosed a processor chip and an SRAM chip in a single package. The SRAM was an external L2 cache, because in those days it was too expensive to integrate a large L2 cache on the same die with the processor. But today, it's obviously not too expensive to integrate two processor cores on a single die. So why is Presler seemingly taking a step backward?

First answer: economy. The 65nm process shrink will dramatically reduce Intel's manufacturing cost for a single-core chip. MCMs are more expensive to produce, but Intel has made some advances in this technology since the Pentium Pro. Therefore, it will be cheaper for Intel to stuff two Presler-class dies into a single package than to make a dual-core Presler-class die, even with the additional cost of the MCM package.

Second answer: flexibility. By designing Presler with one core per die, Intel can make a lower-priced Celeron version of Presler with only one die per package. This would be even better for Intel, because the company wouldn't have to disable part of Presler's L2 cache to make a lower-end processor (as Intel does today with Celeron), and the single-die package would eliminate the extra cost of the MCM.

So Intel's multicore strategy certainly makes sense. And most people will call Presler a multicore processor without ever knowing the difference.

Beat on the Brat (with a Baseball Bat?)

Maximum PC — Sun, 01 May 2005 14:09:07 -0500

By Thomas L. McDonald

Personal and parental responsibility is a semi-ongoing theme of this column, and I’ve read so many attacks on games by half-assed politicians looking to score cheap political points that I’ve spent all my outrage. Well, almost all of it.

The latest idiocy to pop across my screen was an article from Seattle headlined “Bill Would Hold Game Makers Accountable for Players' Actions.” I saw this only minutes after a Drudge headline that read “Microsoft Robots to Watch Kids,” leading me to wonder if Bill Gates was deploying his killbots to monitor groups of game-playing kids and weed out the campers and spawn killers. If only.

The article was about a Washington state House bill that would “hold the makers and sellers of violent video games liable if someone under 17 years old commits a crime, due in any part, to playing the game.” (KOMO 1000 News, 3/1/05, emphasis added) Bill Hanson of the Washington Police and Sheriff's Association thinks this is a swell idea: “If you sit up and watch this and play these games over and over again... it seems that this is alright to walk up and hit a police officer over the head with a bat.”

Seems all right to whom? This has never, and will never, happen. Ever. And the person who claims it did happen is looking for a cheap excuse and a free pass from the core requirement of being a human being: personal responsibility. Games are pretty flimsy things to bear the weight of responsibility for civilization’s collapse.
Look, conservatives will continue flog the issue to score points with their base, but they know the bottom line is decided by the marketplace. Liberals will hitch up their First Amendment diapers and continue to oppose these half-hearted gestures, thus scoring points with their base. Editorial writers will continue to weigh in on both sides of the issue, thus maintaining job security.

I’ve already spent my time fretting about the latest cryptofascist boogeyman of the liberal imagination, whether his current name is Ed Meese or Pat Robertson or Joe Lieberman. Political poseurs come and go, but porn and M-rated games endure, with a shocking paucity of baseball-bat attacks to their credit. To be honest, the notion that games induce crime is much less important to me than the far more immediate concern I have for spawn campers, so let’s hope the MSKillbots are deployed sooner rather than later.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Maximum PC — Sun, 01 May 2005 11:56:17 -0500

By Michael Brown

My dad gave me some advice when I was a kid. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said, “because you just might get it.”

I’ve thought of that advice many times over the past few weeks as I’ve pondered my role as editor in chief of Maximum PC. As I said in my first column [“I Am the Firestarter,” March 2005], I never got over the unmitigated joy of writing for this magazine. And the more time I spent in meetings, tending to details, and performing the administrative duties that a manager is tasked with, the more I realized how little time I was spending playing with the latest tech gear, talking with vendors about developing trends and new products, and writing.

As much as I thought I wanted to be editor in chief of this great magazine, I’ve come to realize that while being at the top of the masthead has been an honor, it wasn’t delivering the sense of professional accomplishment I’m looking for. So I am relinquishing the title of editor in chief and stepping into the role of executive editor, where I’ll be able to do more of what I dig about being a journalist: benchmarking hardware, evaluating software, celebrating the best products the tech industry has to offer—and mercilessly disparaging the rest.

The editor in chief’s job is unquestionably the most important position at any magazine. This is the person who is responsible for setting the magazine’s editorial direction, for deciding which stories and products are worthy of coverage, for honing the magazine’s edge, and for keeping the rest of us on our toes. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that beginning with the very next issue, that position will be filled by Maximum PC’s current executive editor, Will Smith.

Will brings supreme tech savvy, excellent leadership skills, and unshakable integrity to the job. He’s going make a fantastic editor in chief.

On the Disc: June 2005

Maximum PC — Sun, 01 May 2005 03:01:03 -0500

Apps & Utilities
> BigOven
> Beyond TV
> InfranView
> Morpheus
> EZCalendar
> Opera Web Browser
> PCMark 04 demo
> Say The Time 2005
> FireGraphic 7 trial
> CyberScrub 3 Professional
> iPod Access
> JiWire Hotspot Locator
> Microsoft Anti-Spyware beta
> NetPeeker
> NetStumbler
> #1 DVD Ripper trial
> PGP 8
> Private Disk
> SiSoft Sandra
> AirSnare
> Avast! Antivirus
> Microsoft Malicious Software Tool
> Winzip 9 trial

Game Demos!
> Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
> AirStrike II: Gulf Thunder
> Luxor
> MagicBall 2
> Poker Superstars
> Charm Tale
> Guild Wars Trailer

Extras
> nVidia 71.84 XP video drivers
> nVidia 71.84 x64 video drivers
> Audigy 2/2 ZS beta drivers
> ATI catalyst uninstaller
> DirectX 9.0c
> Hitachi "Get Perpendicular" video
> nForce 5.10 chipset drivers
> Windows Media Encoder
> ATI Catalyst 5.4 video drivers