bit-tech's Heroes and Villans of 2004

The lian li PC6x cases are all cool, but maby alle the same. v1200 is great, but the rest of em really is nothing.

edit: PC6099B: is the only Door-case that's ok.

 

Fair enough some people liked the game, i personally hated it (no excuse that it's an engine advert), but to say it's better than hl2 is just lunacy!

As for the awards, were they decided by a democratic system and was the article agreed by the majority of key members? Cause it strikes me as very opinionated. For instance, microsoft making the best mice. I know that's a straight up 50/50, logitech are just as good. etc.

 

AMD hasn't done much apart from CPU's, but the AMD 64bit technology is over a year old, probably why their is no mention, but they have had the games performance crown for that time.

'doc

EDIT: I played Doom3 for a few hours and gave up, twas crap imho.

 

I definitely agree with the Doom 3 statement. It's soul destroyingly dull

What annoys me more is some of the reviews it got. PCFormat gave it 90%!!!

 

Couldn't agree more on the DOOM3 front, an awful game.

But the V series of cases from Lian-Li are beautiful.

 

Doom 3 was pretty boring, IMO. So I second your opinion.

Firefox should have been mentioned though :/

VIVA FIREFOX!

 

Mac users

 

yer firefox should have been a hero IMO, but if you were to go down to that sort of level the article would have been 2000 pages long.

IF things had been slightly different, MS HAD released their 64bit OS, Intel would have been holy sc****d. amds chips would be dominating the market if win64 turned out to be as good as XP. but theres always next year. On the mention of 64 bit what has intel done... but then what has amd done appart from increase the clock speed and cache, farily boring like bigz compared to the likes of ATI and nVidia bringing out their new gfx cards, not to mention nforce 4 is on the cards. DDR2 wasnt as big as i thought it may have been so im a little suspect with corsiar being in there

To be fair for the average user games havnt progressed far enough to drive the hardware onto the next stage, here im siting, with my 2500+ and my 9800pro happly playing nfsu2, hl2 and doom3 at max quality with no problems, ok im not running it at 50fps, but when my eyes only see 16-18 fps (to spot jerking) who cares?

/me ranting

i know this is slighly off topic, but what big games are due out for next year, driv3r and gta3:san andreas along with american choper, matrix online b&w 2 and unreal 3 (/me drools)

but hey its all IMO

 

I totally agree. Havent needed to upgrade sub-system and graphics for 18 months myself.
GTA3:SAN is still GTA3 engine (tweaked), which is a PS2 port. GTA wont get a new engine until PS3. Unreal 3 will probably be 2006, or at teh earliest late 2005 - dont worry about it. Dont forget all the games based on the Doom3 and Source engine. Having said that, Id get any game with the Doom3 engine - top notch engine and quality storyline? HL2 killer? Easy - Source engine (environmentals mostly) is technologically inferior to D3, but it doesnt mean itll make a good game (as is evident from the HL2 vs D3 argument).

 

What a load of crap

Doom 3 is exactly what ID said it was going to be. People hyped it up as being the best game of all time which ofcourse it was not, thats not IDs falt. It was suppose to be awsome looking remake of the first game and that exactly what it was. Yeh HL2 is better but that dosent make Doom bad

Intel releces the worst CPU of all time and tops it off by relecing the worst socket design of all time and you think they are a Hero? What a load of BS. They make you buy stupidly expencive DDR 2 but are still worse than AMD. I dont care what other junk they have come out with this year, nothing can make up for Prescott. (even dothan)

Lian Lis new cases have finaly cought up with what the enthusiats were doing 5years ago. I dont see any other manufacturers that are anywhere near their new designs. How can you call them a villain?

Its fine to have an oppinion but if your going to be posting your oppinions on the frontpage please get a 2nd oppinion first. It makes Bit-Tech look like a bunch of dumbasses.

(pope - see what happens when you ask for my oppinions )

slater..

 

In my opinon, it has been about as interesting as it was ever going to get. I'm surprised to see that AMD didn't get a mention, however, since they have worked their socks off during 2004...and we have seen a seamless transision to 64-bit, onboard DDR controllers and 90nm pulled off without a hitch. Intel releases a crappy socket, the need for DDR2, a terrible transition to 90nm, and can't keep up with the competition. Where is the justice in this world?

Dodge, Win64 = Windows XP 64-bit Edition, so yeah it's as good as XP.

 

I think he was talking about hardware support, stability, etc.

I have to hand it to AMD's PR, they really have made it sound like 64 bits is going to make your computer twice as fast, even though they haven't said as much (good thing, cause it ain't even close to true). Thus the average Joe with too much $$$ decides that twice as fast is worth paying twice as much for and there is another sale for AMD...

I'm intersted to see how Intel pitches their 64 bit to the average Joe

 

In all truth, last year (as in 2003) was a more interesting year for CPU's, afterall that was when the Athlon 64 was initially released. It's a very strong brand, and they have continued with their initial successes. Intel on the other hand, have been in free fall with respect to CPU's, and the reason why this year has been boring for CPU's is because we haven't seen a great deal more other than an increase in core speed looking at the bigger picture.

Next year is a considerably more important year for CPU's, and I will garauntee that there will be a big mention for both AMD and Intel in next year's version of this article, as dual core is set to ship later on in 2005. Now, that is an interesting release IMHO.

Graphics started off the year on a much more interesting trail, doubling the speed of previous generations, however it all fell foul when neither Nvidia or ATI could meet the demand they created.

Intel's mention wasn't for their CPU's, they've done a lot more than cancel the P4 4.0GHz this year.

 

Firefox should be in the heroes section, they made MSFT lose 10% of the market share for their Internet explorer browser, which is riddled with bugs, for the first time in 6 years. That is definitely a hero...

 

americansoda.co.uk - villian for rip off prices... BOO!!

 

blaming the wrong person on the nF4. you should be blaming nVidia and ATi, not AMD and ATi. AMD has nothing, i repeat _nothing_ to do with motherboard/chipset availibility.

Regardless of what anyone says, AMD _definitely_ deserves a hero placement. they went 90nm with success, unlike intel. the went to a new socket with total success, unlike Socket T's wary reception. They (indirectly, not really them) provide support for both AGP slots and PCI-Express slots, something Socket T can barely manage to do (with a drastic performance hit). AMD definitely deserves a hero spot, not intel.

 

You should blame the government for the tax.

They buy from US - US people make money, govt makes money, shipping makes money, then they need their own markup - you do the math.

 

I beg to disagree on three points:
Firefox or Mozilla corporation should definately be in the heroes for releasing a kickass open source browser..
Blizzard should be a total world domination villain for just giving WoW to the yanks...
And really Valve did not succeed to stop the piracy of hl2 i've seen a bunch of working releases from the piracy people...

thats it.... for now

 

In a year that has been completely dominated by the Athlon64 and ATI's 9800Pro (being surely the most popular enthusiast card of the year?), and Intel and nVidia get the gongs?

 

depends what you define as enthusiast? I would have said the Radeon 9800 Pro is a mainstream video card; GeForce 6800 GT and Radeon X800 Pro are what I would call enthusiast cards, it's a debatable topic, though.