bit-tech's Heroes and Villans of 2004

http://bit-tech.net/feature/72/

 

I have to disagree - it's a 2004 remake of the original DOOM, which itself had no more story than this... id have NEVER been ones for storylines - it's overly harsh to brand them "Villans" simply because you were brought up in the post-HL era.

I don't want to start a Doom3 vs HL2 flame war - they both tickle different parts of my gaming brain. I'm just registering my disagreement with their nomination.

 

I'm with you Pope. I know it was mostly dark halls and cheap scares, but there were some truly creepy moments in that game. When I followed phantom bloody footprints down a hallway listening to the chilling voice of a girl mourning the abduction of her baby I threw off my headphones and leapt away from my mouse and keyboard. And to iD's credit, there was much more story than most expected. All the notes and emails in the PDAs gave the world that much more depth. I was also surprised by the Web sites that gave astute (or at least not-dim) players little goodies to find if they took the time to investigate the Martian Buddy promotions. Here, I'm going to say it: I liked Doom 3 better than Half-Life 2. I don't think you can really compare the two games, but I think I enjoyed Doom 3 more. And that's what it comes down to right? Story or not, was it fun to play?

 

How come the RIAA and MPAA aren't in the villains? I'm pretty sure that they were almost as evil (if not more evil) than Microsoft. Or at least as anyone who downloads music and/or movies is concerned. Although I'm not saying that I do either

 

I'd have to disagree with intel being any kind of "hero" this year (who writes this stuff anyway?! j/k). They've had a crap year. Sure they got the ball rolling for LGA775, but it hasn't taken much of a step forwards. Just a better design socket (no more ripping the cpu out with the heatsink) and it isn't alot faster then Socket 478 setups. Then they binned any hope for a 4ghz p4 and we still haven't seen any sign of the 3.8ghz either.
Outside of the CPU department intel has been doing better though.


AMD on the otherhand, has had a great year. Moving over to a 90nm process went very smoothy for AMD (as oposed to intel's terrible effort (imho) with the prescott). AMD also produced socket 939, making a dual channel 64-bit system, affordable. Any mainstream (not server based) 64bit chips from intel yet? nope!

 

Just wondered why there was no mention of firefox in the heroes section.

 

I have to agree with Geoff on this one too. ID made the game as an advert for the engine. They will make more money off of the engine lisence than Doom3.

psuedo-winner - Intel's Azalia, HD audio inbuilt into PCs? Gotta be a good first step. However i also agree about Intel's suffering from LGA, PCIe and DDR2 blues, as well as poor CPU sales compared to the more favourable AMD 939.

I dont think that many people care as much about WinXP 64 than they did about SP2 also.

I agree with the rest more or less though.

 

Amen. Intel had a disasterous year, what with forcing users to buy a new processor, motherboard, video card, and RAM all at once. on top of that, their top end processors couldn't even run at full speed with the stock heatsink! Also, lets not forget how crappy DDR2 actually is (for the time being). half as slow and twice as expensive as DDR1 anyone? Intel's year was an utter failure, if you ask me.

AMD had a fantastic year. Stocks doubling around november-december, the successful launch of a good 90nm processor that actually ran cooler than its predecessors (see: prescott), the launch of socket 939, and towards the end, the launch of PCI-Express motherboards (see: nForce 4 and K8T890, though i have yet to see any of the latter for sale anywhere).

 

If Intell is a hero, AMD should be a Super Hero then.

 

On a slightly smaller scale than intel, microsoft etc... Chill-Tek was deffinatly a Villain this year and the end of last year as well, its been over 12months since i ordered a couple of things and still no luck, and i know alot of people had the same problem, so not really a super villain, more of a common crook that i thought deserved a mention.

 

i agree w/ everyone else, the only thing to really take off for Intel is the Centrino (Dothan), AMD really ran the market w/ they 939 A64's or any of the A64's and even the Bartons earlier in the year were doing very well. I admit, the only case that was great from Lian Li this year was the v1000 but if they're going to award a villain for cases then i think the hero should be CoolerMaster w/ their WaveMaster and the Stacker case. The WaveMaster's design is wonderful and CoolerMaster should be recognized for their great cases this year. another Hero should be Shuttle in the SFF market which is really taking off, they're variety has increased dramatically.

 

Sco should be in the villians

Abit should be in the Heroes?

 

Did Intel bribe you guys?

Seriously Intel really has had a crap year. Their new socket improves the heat problem a bit, but the 3800+ runs absurdly hot, and is a horrific underperformer in 3D applications. Even 3D studio Max, which is encoded to work better on pentium 4s, the 3.8Ghz Pentium 4 loses to the FX-55; and they have nearly identical price points. In gaming, the 3.8 Ghz Pentium 4 places between a 3200+ and a 3500+. So tell me, why is Intel a hero and why doesnt AMD even get a nod for their terrific efforts? Is there some fanboyism at play here?

 

Why would we accept a bribe to say something good about a company?

I think that Intel have had a very average year with respect to their primary market - CPU's, and their chipset hasn't been all that great either. However, the introduction of HD Audio is something that many of us take for granted, and also if it wasn't for Intel - there wouldn't be this massive push towards PCI-Express which is going to dislodge AGP eventually, whether we like it or not.

AMD have had a good year, but the CPU market has been a very boring one.

I was surprised that there wasn't more said about Nvidia and, of course, ATI... I think that Nvidia fit in to both the hero's and villians, as do ATI. My reasoning? Product availability.

Sure, they've churned out some absolutely fantastic technology this year, and kudos to ATI for retaining the performance crown, albeit by a whisker.

Unfortunately, there have been too many invisible products this year on both sides of the coin, far more than ever before - remember you could actually buy a 9800 XT fairly readily? Why can't you buy an X800 XT Platinum Edition, why can't you buy a 6800Ultra as readily as you could buy yesteryears bleeding-edge parts? Personally, I would rather be able to buy a product and have it a little slower, than have something that does nothing but create hype and a bad taste in the consumer's mouth, simply because they crave something that doesn't exist in any volume.

 

Probably for the money

I've gotta disagree with your opinions on Lian Li, I think the v-series is the best and coolest thing to happen to cases since the removable mobo tray and is more than a worthy sucessor to the PC60 (etc) cases IMO. The case villian should be thermaltake for making more knockoff's of CM cases than ever, although apparently their BigWater fared pretty well despite their watercooling history.

Totally with you on Doom3 though. It wasn't worth copying my friend's pirated copy directly off of his hard drive (as in I only wasted time, not media).

ATI and AMD really have to go down as villians, for all of the horrible paper launches (NF4 and x8** series, although I did get my SLI board yesterday!). Believe it or not I saw enough parts to put together a full LGA775 intel system within a couple of days of it being announced despite people calling it a paper launch.

 

Not really sure why abit are in the heroes section tbh... They've really gone off the boil recently... Ok they've put one some shows, but does that really matter if they produce poor products?
The NF7 s2 series is a waste of time, confusing buyers into thinking they are getting better board than the older boards... Have also heard a fair few complaints about the newer motherboards too, being poor quality and lacking the features and forward thinking abit used to provide....

I belive (unless a re-read is required) you missed OCZ off the list (in fact they should replace Abit IMHO) they've given so much back this year, with some great products, read EB, their DDR booster, the powestream series (and now modstream) the new high voltage VX series... Their tech support is second to none as well. They've catered for all areas.

 

I think for cooling Danger Den should have had a mention, they've had an awsome year imo.

 

Valve nuked piracy of HL2? lol, they managed to delay the warez release by a few days thats all
and to do that they pissed off just about everyone who bought it with their Steam shennanigans
valve should be down as heroes for making such a great game but villians for steam

 

well if DangerDen deserves a nod, i believe Laining, the makers of the DangerDen and Swiftec pumps, deserves a nod for releasing the 600,650v2 and the DDC. and the makers of the BlackIce series of radiators, i'm sure, had a great year and deserve a nod as well. afterall, Asetek uses BlackIce rads. Asetek should be a villain for copying the design of another waterblock to make theirs. and i agree with Firehed, ThermalTake should be a Villain for copying the CoolerMaster designs. as far as motherboard manufacturers, i don't really think any one company stood too far apart from the others. it usually comes up to preference. i think losers in the bunch would be Soyo, i have no idea why they didn't implement an Nforce board.

 

I second the RIAA/MPAA villians nomination. I do not participate in illegal filesharing, but they have made legal filesharing all that much more difficult. Their "No tollerance" attitude is nothing short of technophobic, and they need to grow up and stop bribing the polititions.

Just my opinion.

And Rotosequence, Intel has been doing a crap load of awesome stuff that doesn't involve CPUs (which AMD hasn't been doing a whole lot of extra stuff to my knowledge). And they were kicking AMD's butts until AMD came out with their 64 bit stuff (remember this is reviewing the entire last year, not just the last 6 months ).