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**Asher** · November 22, 2001, 04:25

Tom is entitled to his often-wrong always-biased opinion.

The thing is powerful, moreso than any other console.
And this power is systematic across the board, so all games can use all the power (something you can't do on the PC).

Tom just looked at the hardware specs, primarily the CPU.

The video system on the Xbox would be considered ultra-high end for the PC (in fact, it'd cost more than the entire Xbox itself just to get the AGP card).

The CPU doesn't really have to do anything but AI and Physics. Sound is done completely on the Nvidia MCP, Graphics on the Nvidia GPU (unlike the PS2, which does much of this on the CPU).

There are many distinct advantages the Xbox has over the PC, but I'm sure you already know that.

Tom's bias is so blatantly obvious, I'm sure you've noticed it. Take this line for example:

(graphics are the) only significant difference between Xbox and its competitors.

**Wraith** · November 22, 2001, 12:59

--"While true in one sense, Wraith, you left out some other important features."

I said "In many ways" instead of "In all ways" for a reason.

The second vertex shader pipeline is of limited utility. In the X-Box's situation it's a good thing. There's not going to be any games going over 480p, so there's no worry about the memory bandwidth the extra shader requires at high resolutions. People on PCs tend to run in higher resolutions, however, and since graphics cards are already memory-starved, adding another memory-sucking feature isn't going to improve things.

--"Then there's also the fact that the Xbox actually has a hypertransport bus installed"

So buy an nForce motherboard. That's probably going to be in my next machine.

--"There is zero OS overhead on the Xbox."

Bull****. There may well be less OS overhead than on a general Win 2k or whatever machine, but zero is not possible unless they've put the OS in hardware.

--"That's theoretically the same memory bandwidth,"

Not exactly. Don't discount the memory bus width in this. X-Box, from what I've read, has a 64 bit bus. The GeForce 3, IIRC, is a 128 bit bus.

--"Tom is entitled to his often-wrong always-biased opinion."

Odd. He's been biased towards Intel and MS lately. This is most easily noted in his recent reviews of the Athlon XP, where slim P4 leads in benchmarks were "overwhelming" while fair AXP leads were "we'll see how the new version of the program effects these results". He was also using a single sub-test of a particular set of benchmarks, the only one of the set that happened to be won by the P4.
Sorry, but it's hard to accept your condemnation of bias in the spirit you intended.

Besides, Ananad, one of your link points, has a similar article up.

--"Xbox does HDTV game output. Only competitor here is Gamecube with its 480p support."

IIRC, Dreamcast can do this as well.

--"And as a sign of how much he knows what he's talking about, he's got a bunch of the numbers wrong. It's an 8GB HD and 233MHz graphics chip"

As a sign of how much you what you're talking about, it has been confirmed that there are two different hard-drives being used in the X-Box. One is 10 GB from Seagate, the other is 8 GB from someone else.

Wraith
"There are only stupid people around me, but they mean well."
-- Hiei, Yu Yu Hakusho

**Wiglaf** · November 22, 2001, 13:13

So where is this mythical article of yours? Who were these panel of experts? What was their justification? Who were these consumers? What was the question asked? When was it asked?
All contained in the article you say? Aww. Too bad this mysterious article doesn't appear to exist.

It's AOL ONLY. I can't link it, legally or if I wanted to. Not really a web address.

You do realize that game companies send reviewers the copies first, right?
Much like movie reviewers typically see movies before they're released?

the copy of Axis and Allies reviewed by IGN must then be COMPLETELY different from the one on store shelves. questions:

1) have you read either A&A review on ignpc?
2) have you played Iron Blitz or Axis and Allies CD?

if you've done both, you'd notice the review to be at least 5/10 points off, and it mentions NONE of the dozens of known bugs that plagued the game since release and still do. Again, it's either a biased or horribly poor reviewing site.

China isn't a straight communist country anymore. Duh.

If there is such a thing as 'normal' communism. China was originally Maoist Communism (after Mao Tse-tung, obviously) who adapted Lenin's Communism to the primarily agrian population of China. Over the years it's become more open to foreign investment and it's economy and politics have changed somewhat. Communism, on the other hand, hasn't. Damn those abstract ideas and philosophies! Damn them all!

The sort of communism they have in Cuba? Sorry, try again. You really don't know anything about communism (or seemingly any political philosophy, the word you're looking for is fascism, not communism - but even then you'd be wrong), do you?

I go by the dictionary. Asher does it from time to time, after all. (one of the older MS threads)

**Wiglaf** · November 22, 2001, 13:16

And of course I sound like Glonk. Who do you think he learned the art of Zealot-bashing from in the first place?

asher, when did you change your handle? jeppsters giving me the DL creeps, with his infinite login knowlege.

**Asher** · November 22, 2001, 13:57

Originally posted by Wraith
Not exactly. Don't discount the memory bus width in this. X-Box, from what I've read, has a 64 bit bus. The GeForce 3, IIRC, is a 128 bit bus.

The GeForce 3's memory is weird, it works via 4 x 64-bit controllers. Anyway, the end result is the GeForce 3 Ti200 has 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth (Source: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...tanium-02.html)

Odd. He's been biased towards Intel and MS lately. This is most easily noted in his recent reviews of the Athlon XP, where slim P4 leads in benchmarks were "overwhelming" while fair AXP leads were "we'll see how the new version of the program effects these results". He was also using a single sub-test of a particular set of benchmarks, the only one of the set that happened to be won by the P4.
Sorry, but it's hard to accept your condemnation of bias in the spirit you intended.

You've got that backwards.
Take these quotes for example: "The Pentium 4/2000 doesn't even enter the picture until fourth place." (P4 lost by 150 3DMarks)
"We were in for a surprise with the new MPEG-4-Codec DivX 4.02.1: when used together with Flask Mpeg 0.6, the Athlon XP 1800+ (clocked at 1533 MHZ) knocked the stuffing out of the Pentium 4, clocked at 2000 MHz." (Athlon had 23.3, P4 had 21.5)

Besides, Ananad, one of your link points, has a similar article up.

Indeed he does, and it's a FAR better writeup. MUCH more detailed, ACCURATE figures, and unbiased responses.

As a sign of how much you what you're talking about, it has been confirmed that there are two different hard-drives being used in the X-Box. One is 10 GB from Seagate, the other is 8 GB from someone else.

If you'd look into it, you'd see the Xboxes all only read 8GB regardless of if it's a 10 or 8 gig drive (mine's a Seagate, still says 10,000 blocks of memory -- same as the blocks of memory for the 8GB drive).
It's really an 8 gig drive, despite the fact that it's maximum is 10.

It's AOL ONLY. I can't link it, legally or if I wanted to. Not really a web address.

Didn't you say earlier it was by the Associated Press? Go find it in Yahoo or something. If it's an article written by AOL, I will laugh so hard at you...

asher, when did you change your handle? jeppsters giving me the DL creeps, with his infinite login knowlege.

Jep lives across the country from me (you can check his IP). He's going to Waterloo and I'm here in Calgary. And why the hell would I create a login just to make fun of you? I do that just fine with my own.

**Zealot** · November 22, 2001, 15:02

Originally posted by Wiglaf
glad to see you got it today, but I'm looking for something a little more in depth from such an MS zealot.

Let's get one thing straight "mister" Wiglaf! If there is any Zealot around here that's just me! So get that straight into your mind before you start invoking my nick!

Down with MafiaSoft! The price of the X-Box in Europe is absolutely outrageous! Boycott X-Box until it has the same price as the US!

**Wiglaf** · November 22, 2001, 15:19

Didn't you say earlier it was by the Associated Press? Go find it in Yahoo or something. If it's an article written by AOL, I will laugh so hard at you...

no, it wasn't written by AOL. nothing is original on it except for the little steve case letters.

Let's get one thing straight "mister" Wiglaf! If there is any Zealot around here that's just me! So get that straight into your mind before you start invoking my nick!

You'll be sorely dissapointed if you look at some of the more recent threads only to see that your act is one many are trying to follow, especially when it comes to technology. It's all in vain of course, even Asher falls short of being completely serious.

I mean, good job dropping the IGN issue, glonk.

**Zealot** · November 22, 2001, 15:29

Originally posted by Wiglaf
You'll be sorely dissapointed if you look at some of the more recent threads only to see that your act is one many are trying to follow, especially when it comes to technology. It's all in vain of course, even Asher falls short of being completely serious.

Huh?

Didn't understand a bit.

But I was just joking man. Don't think I was serious. Otherwise I wouldn't have blinked!

Anyway, boycott X-Box in Europe!

**Asher** · November 22, 2001, 16:16

Originally posted by Wiglaf
no, it wasn't written by AOL. nothing is original on it except for the little steve case letters.

If it wasn't written by AOL, it's not unique to AOL.
Go fetch.

I mean, good job dropping the IGN issue, glonk.

There is no IGN issue. I've never played the Axis and Allies games nor do I have any knowledge of it.
I never did state they were the best site out there, someone else brought IGN's reviews into the picture and I just responded to it. Nice job dropping that issue, Wiglaf.

**November Adam** · November 22, 2001, 17:01

Actually Wiglaf brought up the IGN issue. He told me to look there for an unbiased review for NFL Fever. I told him it wasn't that bad and then he stated that they are biased. Oh well.

**Asher** · November 22, 2001, 17:05

Originally posted by November Adam
Actually Wiglaf brought up the IGN issue. He told me to look there for an unbiased review for NFL Fever. I told him it wasn't that bad and then he stated that they are biased. Oh well.

Indeed. He claims that IGN is biased (not owned at all by MS, Intel, or Nvidia. Not one shred), and then he goes and cites mysterious sources he found on AOL (and we all know AOL-Timewarner (Netscape) would never be biased against Microsoft, right?

Wiglaf is just too dense to understand what he's saying, let alone anyone else...

**Wiglaf** · November 22, 2001, 18:16

Originally posted by November Adam
Actually Wiglaf brought up the IGN issue. He told me to look there for an unbiased review for NFL Fever. I told him it wasn't that bad and then he stated that they are biased. Oh well.

wrong. I said for you to go to IGN for a somewhat reasonable, and not very good for MS, review of NFL Fever. you got one, but it still was an inflated score because of ign's pro-Xbox bias. (the editors are known for their fanatical support of a given console, PC genre or whatever. brandon justice, IGNDC, anyone?)

it's a good source for that particular title, compared to what you'll find Microsoft advertising. still isn't perfect, though.

Please don't twist everything I say.

**Wraith** · November 22, 2001, 20:15

--"The GeForce 3's memory is weird,"

It's not weird, it's very efficent. Their crossbar controller allows the memory to get much closer to the theoretical maximum bandwidth, by allowing the controller to move data in smaller chunks (4x32, btw, not 64). Since most of the data used in the video processing is not stored in 128 bit increments this works out very well. It also means that the X-Box, with it's 64 Megs (unless they're doing a 4x32bit with 16 megs on each, which doesn't seem likely given the photos showing number of RAM chips), will not operate as efficently. It also has to deal with sending all the other traffic over that same bus (DVD to HD, etc), so it simply will not have the same graphics bandwidth as the Ti200.

--"You've got that backwards."

So you were able to find two favorable Althon quotes. Congratulations. The AXP does win some benchmarks so readily that even Tom can't ignore it without looking a fool. And that still doesn't touched the biased benchmark suite.

--"If you'd look into it, you'd see the Xboxes all only read 8GB regardless of if it's a 10 or 8 gig drive"

This is exactly the kind of argument that I despise to get, and exactly the kind of argument you make all the damn time. You know good and well that the drive itself is 10 gigs, whether or not the X-Box OS is willing to recognize it. This is an arbitrary limitation of the software, and has nothing to do with the hardware.
Look, you were either wrong (in which case you should just accept it and move on) or you're trying to cover your ass because you were trying to embarras UR regardless of the facts and were hoping no-one would know better (in which case you've been called on it and should stop doing it).

--"Please don't twist everything I say."

Wiglaf, if you're going to argue with Glonsher, you'll have to get used to it. This is his SOP. Every time he realizes he's loosing an argument he starts context-dropping and twisting everyone's comments. It's incredibly frustrating, and if he acts like this in person I'm surprised he hasn't had all his teeth knocked out yet.

Wraith
"++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start."
-- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

**Wiglaf** · November 22, 2001, 20:52

as for the xbox/PC power issue.

I just played some RTCW today. It completely blows console graphics I've seen out of the water, especially some of the launch titles for xbox and gamecube. Seeing that thing at 1024x768 really took my breath away. Get the right monitor, and the PC is the only act in town. No competition, especially since the depth is so much greater to begin with.

Some comparison shots:

Halo/Xbox:

404: Not Found - GameSpot

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2001/vgnews/101201/xbox/halo/halo_tgs_screen013.jpg