André’s Weblog

It is a good holiday season for hardcore gamers! Nvidia, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processing units (GPUs), just released the most powerful GPU in the market to date! Introducing, the GeForce 8800 series!

I know that I am most likely speaking to a crowd who knows little of the subject matter. Enter André! :D To explain this in human language, it is best to give an example.

Have you ever played a game, especially a 3D game (First person shooters, MMORPGs, etc.), wherein it jitters or the movement seems slow? The most common problem a gamers would say is that the processor is too slow. Sometimes, this is true. But prices of CPUs are coming down really fast. However, the prices of graphics cards remain stagnant. For hardcore gamers, it is a must that you have the latest and greatest hardware to keep your games running at top-notch speeds. In games, it’s all about image quality and framerates! If you have a slow graphics card, you must lower the settings of the game to make it run smoother, otherwise, you will experience a lot of jitters.

With the advent of the GeForce 8800 GPU, a new era of gaming rises. In my years of experience, I have never seen such power from a graphics card. I won’t go into the details, because there isn’t any human translation for it. If you feel that you can understand what the specifications mean, click here to go to the GeForce 8800 product page.

The GeForce 8800 GTX is the answer to widescreen gaming. It has a whopping 575Mhz Core clock and a gigantic 768MB of video memory. That is more than enough to run the games of today. It is also the first GPU to wield a Physics processing unit. Games that support this technology will make everything even feel more realistic. Movements and in-game animation will be more fluid. There won’t be a need to produce pre-rendered cutscenes. With so much power, everything can be rendered in real time. Nvidia once again flexes its marketing muscle by coming up with “new” technologies to make games more engaging than ever before. The most notable is the Lumenex Engine. It is a new architecture that supports 64-bit and 128-bit floating point HDR (High Dynamic Range) and 16x FSAA (Full-scene Anti-Aliasing). In layman’s terms, the games will look awesome, really awesome.

I will be honest when I say that I was a hardcore gamer at heart during my teenage years. I used to stay at home to participate in an online battle of epic proportions. Counter-Strike is garbage compared to the online games I played. Tribes 1 and 2, Planetside, and all the Unreal Tournament games, to name a few. It’s more gratifying when you whip someone else’s ass in another part of the world, than whip the ass of someone in the same room.

With Nvidia leading the way, we are a step closer to games that look like CGI movies (does Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children ring a bell?)

With graphics processors becoming extremely powerful in a short amount of time, could there be another use for them? Are they far more powerful than regular CPUs? These questions are best left unanswered, for now.

I’m back! It’s been a while since I last posted something.

The past few days have been great to me! I got a new iPod Nano (2nd Generation). I have waiting for the right time to buy one. Now, I have a digital audio player that looks different from everybody else’s! I won’t walk around the mall seeing people with the same device of the same color. YOU HAVE TO KNOW APPLE! They update their products often. Knowing the right time to buy is extremely important. I can finally listen to my favorite podcasts on the go. Yay! (Click here for pictures)

I cannot believe how impossibly thin the new Nano is! If you thought the original Nano was thin and small, wait till you see this! I really appreciate the incredibly gorgeous screen. It’s really bright and vibrant. Everything looks so crisp and detailed. I have yet to see a cellphone screen that rivals the Nano’s. Another thing I like is the sound quality. I am proud to say that I have an extremely trained ear. I can notice the difference almost immediately. This is, by far, the best sounding iPod there is. If you plan to buy an iPod, don’t! Not until Q1 2007 arrives, that is. This is the time when Apple releases a brand new iPod. The new one will have a fullscreen display. That’s right. You will now be able to enjoy your videos on a huge screen. What will happen to the click wheel you ask? They have developed a new way of controlling the iPod. There is no clear answer yet, but recent patent filings by Apple show that the edges of the screen will be touch-sensitive and/or there will be a virtual click wheel. If you think I am wrong, boy are you going to be sorry when the New Year comes. :p

My brother got a PSP, which is something I think I am also lusting at. I think I’d rather get a PSP than a new cellphone (I still love my MOTO RAZR anyway. It’s the best phone I have ever used.). It’s been a while since I last played video games! Getting a PSP would help me relive my days of being a hardcore gamer. I used to be the GOD of Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2! I swear, nobody has ever beaten me. EVER. I also used to play online FPS all day. I don’t go to local internet cafés to play on LAN. It feels so much better when you whip someone else’s ass, who is sitting somewhere around the globe. Plus, there is so much more to online gaming than Counter-Strike, the most overly-hyped game ever created. Believe me. So much more.

I have 4 pictures of the iPod Nano in my Flickr gallery. I have a stream located at the right side of my blog. If you want, here is a direct link. Enjoy!

As promised, here is the part two of my Playstation 3 preview.

In my previous post, I previewed what the PS3 looks like on the outside and what its features are. In this post, I will explain what makes the PS3 appear so powerful and why Sony is claiming that it is not a mere video game console, rather, a supercomputer. Before I go on, you have to understand that Sony pours in a lot of money for their marketing campaign. Sometimes, they even go beyond what is actually achievable by the PS3. Sony is flaunting the capabilities of the processor inside the PS3: The Cell Broadband Engine.

The Cell Broadband Engine, more commonly known as The Cell, is a ground-breaking chip developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The picture above is the actual chip. What makes this a technological leap forward is the fact that it has 8 Synergistic processors. It’s synergistic because all 8 processors can perform different functions at the same time. I’ll give you an example of their claimed benefit.

When you use your computer, you don’t usually do a lot of stuff at the same time. You don’t download music, perform hard drive tune-up, watch movies, and play games at the same time right? Not because you don’t want to, but because you know the performance is going to bog down. That’s because you only have once processor. With The Cell, it is a different story. The Playstation 3 can perform 8 (just to make a clear example) different functions at the same time, without bringing the machine down to its knees. If what Sony claims is true, you can download download a movie trailer, communicate with your friends via video conferencing, record digital music, and play a game all at the same time, without ever seeing a performance hit. Sounds amazing eh?

With the Cell, games on the PS3 would look, feel, and play out of this world! Sony has actually released a TV ad on why consumers should care about the Cell processor. It’s on YouTube. You will see how serious Sony is on their marketing campaign.

Here are the videos that demonstrate the prowess of the Cell

TV Ad: “Smarter“

TV Ad: “Capacity“

If you’re on broadband, visit PlayB3yond.com for the videos. They are original source of the TV ads.

Of course, this is all on paper. The real life application has yet to be seen. If you want my opinion, I believe Sony is making things sound too good to be true. However, I do believe that this has a lot of potential. If game developers are really good, they can squeeze out tremendous power from the Cell Broadband Engine. If you’re thinking that they will release this for consumer PCs, think again.