Blog - February, 2009 - Page 3

Feedback on bit-tech advertising

Posted on 10th Feb 2009 at 20:48 by Tim Smalley with 251 comments

You probably haven't noticed too many changes since bit-tech was acquired by Dennis in October 2008. We moved into our new offices at Dennis HQ over the weekend and we're slowly unpacking our boxes while hoping that we won't be moving again for a very, very long time.

One thing we've always prided ourselves on here at bit-tech is that we have always tried to provide advertising that is both non-intrusive and pertinent to the site and you, our readers. Without advertising, there would be no bit-tech at all – it's our sole source of revenue, which pays for the content, our facilities and equipment as well as the servers to keep the site running.

Tags advertising, bit-tech, feedback

What else do we need?

Posted on 10th Feb 2009 at 16:18 by Richard Swinburne with 19 comments

What else can motherboard manufacturers do to increase the features and sell us new things?

We've got plenty of everything these days: SATA, USB, Gigabit Ethernet, HD sound - it's all "good enough". Motherboard manufacturers are stretching to include energy efficiency wherever they can, and more recently, extreme overclocking and cool designs to draw people into upgrading but for the most part the core hardware levels have remained the same for several years. We're still looking at six to eight USB on the rear I/O, six SATA (sometimes more) on the board and a couple of Gigabit Ethernet sockets.

What have northbridges become? Nothing much - what more can you do with PCI-Express? We've hit two/three/four lanes of x16 or x8 at a squillion MT/s and it's now all pretty normal.

Games that break themselves: Hitman 2

Posted on 9th Feb 2009 at 06:58 by Joe Martin with 12 comments

I bought a game last week – the Hitman Triple Pack. It’s got Hitman 2, Contracts and Blood Money in it, all for £15.

It’s an odd, old purchase admittedly, but the buying habits of game journos tend to be quite different from regular customers in my experience. I already get sent and get to play all the new games as they come out, so any money I spend in stores is dedicated to collecting older games I missed out on before.

Hitman 2 though is a game I have a turbulent and colourful history, mainly because of one aspect of its game design. I've tried to complete it four times now and each time I've given up when I got to the Japanese levels.

Playing Hitman 2 over the weekend, I again got to the second Japanese level (the one with the ninjas, where you have to infiltrate the castle) and I thought of giving up on it again.

bit-tech vs. the Antec 900

Posted on 6th Feb 2009 at 10:10 by Harry Butler with 13 comments

Here at bit-tech we like to think of ourselves as connoisseurs of cases, the site’s modding heritage only adding to our cultured palette for all that is aluminium and shiny. Even in our busy offices, the excitement of unboxing of a newly arrived chassis is always something that gets people up from their desks to come and have a look.

We make no excuses for our preference for smooth, stylish lines in case design over industrial or military looks, and to us cooling performance isn’t everything – what’s the point of strapping dozens of high RPM cooling fans into a case when the noise it makes infuriates anyone within a twenty foot radius? Good design needs to reach a compromise.

Tags antec, cases, reviews

Games I Own: Call of Cthulhu

Posted on 5th Feb 2009 at 13:30 by Joe Martin with 4 comments

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of The Earth is one of my favourite games and I love it to bits. It’s tense, dark, truly and deeply frightening and possessed of the same permeating sense of atmosphere and macabre fiction as the HP Lovecraft novels it is based on. Created by Bethsoft, it really is great and there’s one chase sequence in particular that I’m sure was a major inspiration for Mirror’s Edge.

But, Call of Cthulhu is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. It’s frustrating and unrelenting, too difficult even at the best of times, with an inspirational chase-sequence that’s harder than Superman’s right hook and a story that both jumps the shark and leaves you hanging unresolvedly around.

The basic premise for the game is typical Lovecraftian horror, with players cast as a 1930s private eye who travels to Innsmouth to investigate a missing person. What at first seems to be a small American town drenched in depression and perpetual thunder, soon becomes something a lot more fearsome, with murders and dark sacrifices slowly coming to light.

This week, we're mostly looking at...

Posted on 4th Feb 2009 at 15:13 by Tim Smalley with 8 comments

We look at a lot of cool products here at bit-tech, but some of them aren't so cool. Today, we took delivery of a rather large package that's going to be taking up a big chunk of our time this week.

This one falls into the 'not cool' category and we honestly can't wait to see the back of it!

Tags dennis, office move, packing

Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon?

Posted on 3rd Feb 2009 at 15:21 by Tim Smalley with 2 comments

Although most of the world is hurting right now because of the economic slowdown, Intel looks set to release a new high-end Core i7 processor in the coming weeks or months following some early benchmark results which have appeared on the Xtreme Systems forums.

Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon? Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon

Xtreme Systems honcho Charles 'Fugger' Wirth teamed up with Corsair, Gigabyte and Intel to break the 3DMark05 world record, stealing it back from Team Finland, who put AMD back on top in this benchmark for the first time in a long time. He broke the previous record of 45,474 with his pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2s humming along at their stock speeds and clocked up a new highest score of 47,026.

Boxee - the outsider bringing media centres to the mainstream?

Posted on 3rd Feb 2009 at 10:21 by Richard Swinburne with 4 comments

While I mull over the hardware for our inagural home theatre PC (HTPC) buying guide, I'm back thinking about all sorts of (self induced) overly-complicated logic to do with total energy efficiency, GPU versus CPU acceleration, and inevitably, the software driving it.

You see, as much as ATI, Nvidia and even Intel have built in their respective video accelerators for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (DivX/Xvid AVI) and h.264, (most of) the software still needs to be coded to take advantage of it. Apart from paid-for software like PowerDVD or WinDVD, there is only Media Player Classic - Home Cinema edition that enables this option. The usual home theatre interfaces like Windows MCE and an all manor of other popular ones, do not. So we're still left with the CPU taking most of the grunt and that's not a bad thing until you get into super high bitrate 1080p.

One of these software packages I covered last year was the early alpha version of Boxee. To be honest I still feel like I don't get it but I'm willing to give kudos to these guys because they keep getting award after award, especially at CES.

Boxee still commands itself as the "social media centre," which I still think is wrong, but its advantage lies in the fact that it's been particularly tuned to be a one stop shop for online viewing of major networks. Simply being able to watch all your favourite shows through one portal is a huge advantage, especially as it's been designed for our American friends.

So, I built my new gaming machine last night

Posted on 2nd Feb 2009 at 12:55 by Tim Smalley with 33 comments

I've been wanting to build my new PC for some time now because I've been having my fair share of issues over the past few months, but it's not as new as many of you would expect. I've been running a quad-core processor since 2006 and I haven't felt the need to upgrade it yet, even though Intel has now released its true successor, Core i7.

I'm still running a QX6700 and this is the third system upgrade the same processor has gone through. I guess it's a testament for how forward looking Intel's quad-core processors were - performance enhancements came with the 45nm Penryn core and then there's even more performance available with a Core i7, but I'm more than happy with how much performance there is on tap with my QX6700.

So, I built my new gaming machine last night So I built my new PC last night

I've merely upgraded some parts of my system that were either on their last legs or just getting a bit long in the tooth.

Games I Own: Baldur's Gate 1

Posted on 2nd Feb 2009 at 10:38 by Joe Martin with 9 comments

There are four stacks I have in my assortment of computer games at home - two piles of DVD jewel cases, one stack of games in smaller CD cases and three or four small wallets of individual CDs. Badlur's Gate 1 is in the stack of CD cases and is one of only two games I own that have cardboard cases.

Before we go any further though, a clarification is in order; I don't actually own Baldur's Gate 1 (and its packaged expansion Tales of the Sword Coast) - they belong to my brother. I nabbed them from him when he stopped playing games as much as I did.

In fact, let's move from clarification to confession: I never really liked Baldur's Gate.

bit-tech.net

Feedback on bit-tech advertising

What else do we need?

Games that break themselves: Hitman 2

bit-tech vs. the Antec 900

Games I Own: Call of Cthulhu

This week, we're mostly looking at...

Intel to release Core i7 975, new D0 stepping soon?

Boxee - the outsider bringing media centres to the mainstream?

So, I built my new gaming machine last night

Games I Own: Baldur's Gate 1

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