It is said that a great game is easy to learn but difficult to master. Demigod has the latter part down—the former, not so much. Veterans of the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, from which this game draws much of its inspiration, will have an easy time grasping the excellent concept, but to most other players it’s a very new form of multiplayer role-playing game, and the lack of tutorials makes learning the ropes a challenge.

To make a long, superfluous story short, portals on both sides of a symmetrical map spew out waves of AI-controlled troops that clash in the middle. Controlling a single powerful character, your goal is to push the tide of battle back at the enemy and topple their citadel. It sounds fairly simple, but thanks to a blizzard of game elements such as eight character classes, structure and minion upgrades, item purchasing, and flag capturing, Demigod becomes extremely complex.

Continue reading after the jump!

For the second week in a row, the gang returns with another news-packed podcast. This week, we talk about our first hands-on with the ZuneHD, the RTM of Windows 7, Logitech's new G500 laser mouse, oh yeah, and the rumors about Intel's new Core i5 CPU. Listener questions are answered, technical difficulties get resolved, and everyone involved has a great time. Most importantly, Gordon makes a triumphant return to the Rant of the Week!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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Although the various Linux distributions have a wide variety of software available, you may have a few Windows programs that you may not be willing or able to part with. Although many people dual-boot or use virtual machines to get around this problem, there is yet another potential option that many people new to Linux may not have considered--- Wine. Wine stands out from the other options because it does not require a separate Windows license. 

 Wine is a program that allows you to run Microsoft Windows programs on Linux. Although it is emulator-like in appearance and by observation, Wine is not an emulator; in fact, the very name of Wine is an acronym for Wine is not an Emulator. A true emulator can emulate CPU architecture in addition to the actual software it is running. For instance, a program that could execute Intel x86-based Windows software on SPARC-based systems running the Solaris operating system would be a true emulator. However, Wine is actually a compatibility layer since both Windows and Wine run natively on x86 and no hardware emulation is required.

Read on to find out how to acquire and configure Wine to play Half-Life 2!

I have RAID 0 on my PC and store my OS on it. But what else goes there? Do I install my games to the RAID or to my other drive? I also have games imaged so I don’t need the CD/DVD. Should those games be on the RAID or not? Are there any apps that would do better on the RAID? As it stands, I install most of my apps to the RAID 0 (Firewall, antivirus, Yahoo!, etc.). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Read on for the answer to Martin's question.

While we're big fans of the proven awesomeness of open-source software, we don't automatically download every free application that's labeled as an open-source project. What make more sense is the use of open-source as the tool that effects some kind of massive or otherwise unreachable change in a common device. Case in point is open-source firmware, named not for any philosophical belief behind its creation, but because few would want to heft the banner for these changes themselves. After all, creativity comes from a wide range of sources and inputs--as does software testers. You sure wouldn't want to be the one person working on third-party iPhone firmware, bricking device after device in a quest to add additional functionality that Apple didn't first design.

But that kind of unintended funcitonality is the sole benefit to open-source firmware. Throw those aspirations of community membership and open-source allegiance out the window: You want to increase the power of your device akin to a Sim tinkering his or her hardware to gain mechanical skill points. There's no shame in that. In fact, you can accomplish much by adopting third-party firmware in place of standard manufacturer packages. For example, building increased sound codecs into your MP3 player of choice, or adding on-screen level meters to your digital SLR. You can even turn your router into a bridge, perfect for extending the range of your neighbor's wireless signal so you can thieve his connection from additional locations in your apartment. You can also brick your device.

We jest, but only partially. For the danger of running third-party firmware--safe as many of the packages can seem to be--is that you could render your device of choice unusable. It happens to "real" firmware upgrades; it can happen to "unofficial" firmware upgrades as well, only I venture that you'll probably find more problems in the latter scenario than with a manufacturer's tried-and-tested update. But still, the benefits can often outweigh the risks, especially if you're looking to extend your legacy devices with additional features. An entire ocean of open-source firmware fixes awaits your perusal -- we take a look at some outstanding examples of open-source firmware, and teach you how to install them on your own gadgets!

I recall that Maximum PC advises against defragmenting flash drives, such as the ones in an iPod. Does that include solid state drives, like in the Eee PC?

Read on to see the answer to Aaron's question.

After taking a week off, the gang returns with a news-packed podcast. Having recovered from dressing up and taking cosplay photos at Comic-Con, we discuss the leaked schematics of the planned Microsoft stores, Yahoo's search deal with Bing, and Creative recently announced would-be iPod Touch killer. Listener questions are answered, technical difficulties get resolved, and everyone involved has a great time. Join the party by downloading the podcast!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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Sometimes, you just have to keep things real. Last year, our Dream Machine was a paean to excess, a chrome-plated $17,000 wünder-rig. While we’re still quite fond of that machine, this year we decided to take a different tack and see if we could build a more reasonably priced, but still lust-worthy Dream Machine. Well, actually, we built three of them. While the combined cost of these three machines is about half the price of last year’s rig, we packed a lot of awesome into our relatively tight budgets. The lesson is simple: Dream Machine isn’t about spending a ludicrous amount of cash on a PC, it’s about getting the best rig you can for the money you spend. I think you’ll agree that these three machines pack a ton of power and are all great values.

Without further ado, we give you this year’s crop of Dream Machines.

I bought a new motherboard, processor, and memory online and put it in a case. I was installing my original copy of Windows XP Pro and before the installation completed my motherboard just locked up. My power supply fan stayed on, and my hard drive LED stayed lit, but my power light was off and nothing would happen.

I exchanged the board for a duplicate.

I installed Windows XP Pro and it ran for almost a whole day, but then the same thing happened. I called the store and talked to tech support and was told that I must have a limited copy of XP Pro that will only work with components that were out around the time the OS disc was made, and because I tried to use it with more modern hardware, Windows put a BIOS lock on my mobo. I’d never heard of such a thing, and the only thing I can find online regarding “BIOS lock” is how to set up a password in the BIOS. Is this technician feeding me a line of bull?

Read on to see the answer to Lee's question.

I have 2TBs of movies that I’m afraid I’ll lose if the NAS device they’re stored on fails. Is it possible to recover the files on these hard drives by putting them in another device, or do I have to have the same product I’m using now? Making DVDs for 2TB of files is not realistic and I don’t really want to buy another 2TB of hard drives just for backup. How long can I expect a typical hard drive to retain data before it fails? One year? Five?

Read on to see our answer for Norm.

I just did a Core i7 build for audio/video production purposes and 3D rendering. I’m not a gamer, but I do a lot of heavy-duty audio stuff and 3D rendering with Cinema4D, After Effects, Poser, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, etc. The system is a Core i7-920 with an ATI 4870 X2 and Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

Vista has really started to get on my nerves. I am getting random BSODs, and there is no pattern to when they come (although it seems the computer is usually idle for a little while when it happens). The BSOD message says it’s due to a hardware exception, and is always the same. I’ve done some general diagnostics on the hardware using CPU-Z and SpeedFan, and everything checks out.

I think it may be the result of something as simple as an unseated videocard, but it would be nice if I knew how to access the error log that is written whenever a BSOD occurs, like I used to with XP. I would imagine that Vista has the same feature; I’m just not sure how to get to it. Can you tell me where to find this or offer some suggestions to help me troubleshoot this?

Hall H is the Comic-Con equivalent of the big game, all the biggest panels and previews are there. Even with 6000 seats in the theater, there were people lined up outside all day long to see Twilight, Avatar, and more! Check the video after the jump.

Our intrepid camera crew did a full walkthrough of the show floor this morning. Here's everything you'd see if you were at Comic-Con, in about two minutes. Hit the jump to see the full video.

I need recommendations on building a box that will play Blu-ray discs. My main computer (Q6600, Nvidia 8800 GT, 64-bit Vista, 8GB RAM) plays them fine. My media rig (older AMD, Nvidia 7900, XP Home, 4GB RAM) chokes on Blu-ray discs. When playing Blu-ray, which is more important, videocard or processor? Should I buy a cheaper processor—say, a Core 2 paired with a beefy GTX 850—or a quad-core with a 9500? And should I go Vista, or will XP be fine?

I’m ripping Blu-ray discs to the hard drive and playing them with PowerDVD 8 Ultra.

We’re constantly on the hunt for top-shelf PC performance—you’re not reading Bottom-Feeder PC, after all. When rendering our review verdicts, we do factor in price, but recommending a subpar product just because it’s cheap is sacrilege to us. Pricing can be relevant, but when it comes to videocards, we typically anchor our opinions on the toughest criteria we know of: 3D performance in the most demanding games on the market, at resolutions of 1920x1200 and higher and with all eye candy enabled.
 
While our editorial mantra might best be expressed as “better, faster, stronger” (hey, we should do a cover story on that!), there’s no escaping the fact that the videocard market boasts a broad spectrum of inexpensive—and intriguing—alternatives. In fact, as AMD and Nvidia have been battling for supremacy at the top of the market, we’ve watched the entry points for penultimate-performance videocards gradually but consistently come down to earth. Sure, playing Crysis on a 30-inch panel might be out of the question if you’re running one of the lower-priced cards, but we still wanted to discover the 3D tipping point—the point at which you’re better off giving up PC gaming altogether because the card you’re running is horribly, utterly lacking in horsepower.

Continue reading after the jump.

I just bought a brand-new Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 and I cannot format the drive. I own a Dell XPS 630 with Windows Vista Home Edition and I bought the drive to use as a second hard drive to store photos and movies. When I installed the drive I saw that the BIOS was showing the full 1.5TB but when I went into Windows it was showing only 1.37TB. I tried to format the drive by going into Disk Management, but when it’s about half way into formatting the drive, it just freezes and stops working. Please HELP!

The Radeon HD 4830 at the heart of this card is a cut-down version of AMD’s second-best graphics processor, the RV770. The 4830 has 640 stream processors, compared to the 800 processors in a higher-end card such as the Radeon HD 4870.

The 4830 is designed to run at slower clock speeds, too, and PowerColor sets this model to operate its core at 575MHz and its 512MB of GDDR3 memory at 900MHz. These are pretty hobbled specs compared to those of the reference-design Radeon HD 4870, which boasts core and memory clock rates of 780MHz and 1GHz, respectively.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

Whereas AMD’s Radeon HD 4830 resembles a Radeon 4870 after a partial lobotomy, the Radeon HD 4850 that sits between these two cards comes with a full complement of 800 stream processors. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you can overclock a 4850 board to achieve the same performance as one based on the 4870: The latter uses GDDR5 memory while the former is limited to GDDR3.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GT is really just a rebadged GeForce 8800 GT, which makes it the only card in our roundup based on a previous-generation GPU architecture: Nvidia’s 65nm G92. Despite its age, however, the G92 helped EVGA’s GeForce 9800 GT best PowerColor’s Radeon HD 4830—at least in terms of gaming performance.

EVGA runs the 9800 GT’s core at 600MHz, but takes full advantage of its 112 shader processors’ capacity for operating at much higher frequencies: 1,500MHz in this implementation. The card has a 256-bit memory interface to a full gigabyte of GDDR3 memory running at 900MHz.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

This card is based on Nvidia's most current GPU architecture, the GT200. Priced at $200, it's the least expensive model we tested that's capable of running Crysis at 60-plus frames per second.

 Continue reading this review after the jump.