Pentium M out the door, what's next
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 24, 2005 1:48 PM EST- Posted in
- Anand
As promised the Pentium M Desktop article using ASUS' Socket-478 to 479 adapter is live. I hope you all enjoy it. It doesn't look like there's too much potential for the Pentium M (Dothan) on the desktop, but Yonah may be another story. ASUS did an excellent job with the CT-479 adapter though, it's by far the best solution if you do want to use a Pentium M on the desktop.
With the Pentium M article out of the way, I'm going to spend this weekend working on the ATI Theater 550 review as well as a $999 MCE review I had pushed aside for a little while. I've received a lot of requests for articles similar to the WoW Performance Guide but for other games (e.g. Everquest 2). I've had the idea for a while but never really had the time, but I think my schedule may be open enough to squeeze in a few game performance articles.
I'm eagerly awaiting Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, unfortunately it comes out the day I leave to go visit AMD in Austin. It'll be a short trip so I should be able to enjoy the game over the weekend at least.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is the perfect example of what's wrong with gaming on the Mac. Looking at the Mac game library you'll see a lot of the major titles, Doom 3, UT2004, WoW, etc... but the issue with games that are released on the Mac is that they usually take far too long to get there. Doom 3 is finally out on the Mac, and at one time I would've waited to play through it on the Mac but I grew bored of it last year on the PC and have no desire to play it on the Mac now. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the next Splinter Cell, but it's not going to be out on the Mac so there's no way I'm waiting for it to be ported before playing it.
Then there's the issue of performance, both WoW and Doom 3 appear to run at about half the speed on the Mac as they do on the PC. Granted the Mac isn't a gaming platform, but this type of performance is just unacceptable since, architecturally, there's no explanation for the performance. It's a software/OS issue somewhere, but I'm hardly qualified to say where or why it still remains un-addressed by Apple. I guess I'd just like to be able to play the handful of games that I do play on the Mac, apparently that's too big of a wish.
So either this weekend or next week I'll be putting together a game machine in preparation for Chaos Theory :)
With the Pentium M article out of the way, I'm going to spend this weekend working on the ATI Theater 550 review as well as a $999 MCE review I had pushed aside for a little while. I've received a lot of requests for articles similar to the WoW Performance Guide but for other games (e.g. Everquest 2). I've had the idea for a while but never really had the time, but I think my schedule may be open enough to squeeze in a few game performance articles.
I'm eagerly awaiting Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, unfortunately it comes out the day I leave to go visit AMD in Austin. It'll be a short trip so I should be able to enjoy the game over the weekend at least.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is the perfect example of what's wrong with gaming on the Mac. Looking at the Mac game library you'll see a lot of the major titles, Doom 3, UT2004, WoW, etc... but the issue with games that are released on the Mac is that they usually take far too long to get there. Doom 3 is finally out on the Mac, and at one time I would've waited to play through it on the Mac but I grew bored of it last year on the PC and have no desire to play it on the Mac now. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the next Splinter Cell, but it's not going to be out on the Mac so there's no way I'm waiting for it to be ported before playing it.
Then there's the issue of performance, both WoW and Doom 3 appear to run at about half the speed on the Mac as they do on the PC. Granted the Mac isn't a gaming platform, but this type of performance is just unacceptable since, architecturally, there's no explanation for the performance. It's a software/OS issue somewhere, but I'm hardly qualified to say where or why it still remains un-addressed by Apple. I guess I'd just like to be able to play the handful of games that I do play on the Mac, apparently that's too big of a wish.
So either this weekend or next week I'll be putting together a game machine in preparation for Chaos Theory :)
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blckgrffn - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
LOL!If only I could just build a new machine every time that I wanted to play a game!
The dothan article is awesome, it should finally put to rest the debate about what is the most powerful desktop porcessor.
Enjoy your new box and Splinter Cell!
Nat
Ecgtheow - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
On the Doom 3 slowness: There's a very good thread on the Ars Technica forums (http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/... that deals with this issue. There are in fact some architecture differences between the PPC and x86 that are at fault (float to int conversions, etc.).