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ON3 Network - All (Steam) Servers Restart

September 02, 2010, 01:17:35 pm by Dark//Virus

Hi guys,

Steam have moved their master servers so for our servers to show up in the master list we need to restart them.

Ill look at doing this around 3pm.

This is for CS1.6, CSS, TF2, DOD:S, L4D, L4D2, Alien Swarm.

TY

This announcement, brought to you by the letter B and the number 6

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on3 Review: The Seagate Momentus XT – Hybrids Aren't Just for Hippies

September 01, 2010, 07:52:50 pm by philo-sofa

The computer builder and upgrader who has cash lying around faces a bit of a dilemma; those in the know, know that the most effective use of their money is to buy a Solid State Drive (SSD). This speeds up program loading, savegame loading and pretty much everything else. The catch of course is that they’re expensive. Exactly just how ruinously expensive they are depends on your needs – if you have ~100GB of information on the system drive, you’ll looking at spending about $NZ 500 to move into the 21st Century of data storage, for ~250GB, you’re looking at a grand (NZ). Oh and you may be best placed to do a fresh Windows install, as ‘imaging’ from a HDD to SSD is still fraught with misalignment problems. To save money, one can put frequently used programs into a $NZ 300 ‘boot drive’ and keep the rest on a traditional hard drive, this leaves you with two system drives, and a completely new Windows install (epic yawn) or about the same amount of time you’d spend reinstalling Windows spent instead uninstalling programs till you can fit it in ~50 GB. That’s not to mention the task of imaging it over onto the boot SSD... and then spending even longer reinstalling the uninstalled programs onto a normal hard drive...... assuming the imaging onto the SSD worked of course.

As a result, I suspect almost as many people as have said ‘fuck it, I’m not spending that much’ have said ‘fuck it, I’m not spending that much time’ or mumbled some combination of the two before looking at a new graphics card. If only there was some way of combining the best of an SSD with a traditional hard drive huh?... Now, those of us who can actually read title, or alternatively have above room temperature I.Qs, won’t find it all that surprising that what we have on review here today is exactly that. The XT is a ‘hybrid drive’; at its heart beats (well it spins actually, much like Dick Cheneys heart) a standard 7200rpm 2.5” laptop platter drive, paired with a single 4GB SLC NAND flash chip. In short, it's the lovechild of an old hard drive and a hot young and naive solid state drive. To see how well they work, follow me down the SSD rabbit hole that I’ve lived in of late (well since the recession anyway).

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHUqdMLlSTY" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHUqdMLlSTY</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT75O20uXf8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT75O20uXf8</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pjXRaCvyF4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pjXRaCvyF4</a>

P.S. Rabbit Holes are Also Full of Maths

There are two stages to loading files: firstly the drive will find the correct data block, then it will reads it. SSDs are fast because they have low ‘latency’ – they reduce the time it takes to find data down from ~13ms to 0.1ms – they’re also faster at the actual reading or writing, but this is actually secondary to the reduction in time spent assing around looking for the correct piece of data. This is where it gets interesting though – when reading a 500mb file, a drive may have to ‘re-align’ itself a few times during the read, this kind of operation is actually fine on a platter drive, it’s when you get to thousands of realignments things slow to a crawl. Imagine instead of one 500mb file, you have a thousand 0.5 MB files. The drive will then need to ‘seek’ 1000 times, instead of 4-5 times, each time entailing a 13ms wait. The overall read time breaks down as this:

1 x 500MB file:
4 x seek operations @ 13ms = 52ms
500MB read @ avg 80MB/s = 6.25
Total = 6.3s

1000 x 0.5MB files:
1000 seek operations @ 13ms = 13s
500MB read @ avg 65MB/s = 7.7s
Total = 20.7s

This is a rough calculation, but it shows how dividing up programs into small files can have a huge effect on read times. Traditional drives actually perform ok as long as you feed them only large files however that’s rarely the case. There is an implicit tweak here that the XT uses though; if small files hold a normal HDD back, then why not put those onto flash memory, keeping the rest on a platter? The XT goes a step further and keeps everything on its platter, learning which small files are used regularly using an algorithm – it then duplicates those files onto the 4GB flash memory and the next time you access them, hey presto! Everything moves along quickly. This does only apply to reading files though, writing still takes just as long as with a traditional hard drive. The questions then are how quickly and well the Seagate algorithm learns what files to cache, whether a single 4GB chip is enough to affect performance and how the performance stacks up in the real world. At $NZ 200, if it can answer all these positively, it’ll be a heck of a drive - shall we get to testing?

How quickly does it learn?

It takes a while - a good nine or ten attempts for the drive to learn how to optimise Windows loading for example however, when it did the XT performed exceptionally, beating the fastest traditional drives hands down.

So 4GB of Flash Makes a Difference Then?

Mostly. It depends a lot on the application, some do actually run slower than on a fast traditional desktop drive - at the XT’s core is a comparatively anaemic laptop drive and when it’s forced to rely on this, things can ‘stutter’ and lag a little. Overall it does elevate what would be a relatively slow drive (for a desktop user) to a fast one.

WTF Was the third Question Again?
(Subjective) real world performance. This is fairly complex, but the impression I had was that this was definitely not a solid state drive, rather it was somewhere above a normal 7200rpm drive, but slower than a Velociraptor. Being attuned to every little crease in the test systems behaviour, there was a slight feeling of inconsistency but this is nothing that would trouble the average user. The XT is best described as ‘spritely’.

Test System & Methodology

Intel Core i7 860 @ 4.0 GHz
2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 CL8-8-8-24 1T
MSI P55-GD65
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 @ 9000/5200
Corsair HX-620

All drives were connected via the onboard Intel ICH10R controller, in AHCI mode for the Vertex 2 and IDE mode for the WD Black and Seagate Momentus XT. A fresh build of Windows 7 Professional was made onto the Vertex 2, drivers and programs were installed and TRIM confirmed as being enabled using Intels SSD Toolbox. This installation was then ‘imaged’ onto the WD Black and Seagate Momentus XT using Seagate Seatools, and a defrag performed on these drives. All timed tests were run ten times each, with the average (mean) value being reported.

HDTach 3.0.4.0 - 32mb (long zones) Sequential Test:

IOMeter (2006-07-27 Build) Test:

This pair of synthetic tests illustrates primarily the performance of the underlying platter drive. The key metric is the quite frankly huge 20ms latency - when the XT is forced to behave like a normal drive, it's fairly slow - its that flash memory that turns it into a piece of performance kit. Thankfully, there are only a few occasions when this will be the case - for the most part

General System Performance Test:

These numbers show what happens when the rubber meets the road - the XT moves faster in real life than a normal drive. It's only in applications involving large amounts of data being loaded that performance drops a bit. Overall, I'd call this a pretty big win.

Further Testing – How The XTs Family Genealogy Stacks Up

We also wanted to test out just how smart the XT really is – as the algorithm presumably looks at what files are used most frequently, how easy is it to trick into screwing up. To do this we replaced the RAM in the test system with 1GB of DDR3, moved the Windows paging file over to the XT and proceeded to engage in memory intensive tasks. Awesomely the XT refused to cache the pagefile, even when we made it 1GB.

This is Seagates second generation hybrid drive, and it shows. Whilst the XTs predecessor was slow and clunky, this thing meets and exceed reasonable performance expectations – a revolution it’s not, but it’s a solid case of much-needed evolution. As a whole, system drives will become SSDs – by the beginning of 2011 you’ll be able to buy twice as much storage per $ as you can now (and it’ll be faster to boot). However, the hard drive as we know it is far from dead – it’ll be some time before the prospect of storing all your downloaded pr0n and warez becomes a possibility on an SSD (as in we’re talking a good half decade) and during that time we’ll likely see more and more platter drives take on some of the increasingly cheap flash memory to speed things up. Hybrid drives are anything but a flash in the pan, they merit attention and are going to be growing with us for some time. Watch this space.

Conclusion

Overall the Momentus XT is a solid piece of equipment; it performs slightly faster on the whole, than fast desktop drive. However for the desktop user, it’s just not fast enough. The XT is ~$NZ 200, close to three times the price of a 500GB Samsung F3 or WD Black. There is a fairly significant performance difference, however given the availability of ~$NZ 300 solid state boot drives the overall effect isn’t quite enough to recommend. Desktop users are better off to go down the ‘boot SSD + HDD’ route. However for the mobile user, the situation is different – for a start typical notebooks only have one drive bay and more often than not it’s occupied by a painfully slow 5400rpm dinosaur. For that burgeoning laptop market then, the XT starts to makes a huge amount of sense - you can upgrade to a roomy new hard drive that actually performs above the level of most desktops. Given the higher prices laptop hard drives command ($NZ 100 for standard 500GB laptop drive vs $200 for the XT) this is represents good value. For laptop users who don’t want to shell out $NZ 3,000 for a ~500GB SSD upgrade, the good news is that the Hybrid Drive was meant for you.

What we’d like to see in the future is a Hybrid for desktops based around a fast 7200rpm desktop drive such as the Samsung F3. Given the imminent doubling of NAND capacity in 2011, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine such a drive with two 8GB chips – the result being a performance beast that could compete toe-to-toe with a solid state drive, whilst coming below the $NZ 250 mark. Overall, given the long timeframe for true SSDs to ‘take over’ the future for Hybrids is very bright (just imagine a Hybrid Velociraptor). For the here and now though, this is more than just a proof of concept; it would make sense for every performance oriented laptop to use the Momentus XT and increasing numbers of mobile system builders are doing just that. If you’re looking for a reasonably priced, fast laptop HDD this is the one you want.

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LANON3: B1G1 - Armageddon or bust!!!!

August 30, 2010, 03:13:46 pm by Arseynimz

The slang "it's on like Donkey Kong" doesn't begin to explain the awesome. With Auckmageddon having had a big weekend just gone, it's time to turn your attention to the next big LAN event to put on your calendar, and come October 23rd, Labour weekend will fire in to gaming life as LANON3 goes on tour to Armageddon!!!!

Auckland's Armageddon event at the ASB Showgrounds will house up to 500 gamers in one of the entry halls to the Auckland's biggest expo centre. With a variety of gaming planned across over 10 different tournaments including:
Call of Duty 4
Team Fortress 2
Quake Live
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Medal of Honor
Starcraft II
Heroes of Newerth
Counter-Strike: Source
Guitar Hero
DJ Hero
Halo: Reach
and we'll also be introducing ON3's WCG Fighter Club to see who is the best console fighter we can find as players will battle it out on Super Street Fighter 4, Tekken 6, Dead or Alive 4 and Marvel vs Capcom 2!!!!
We're even looking at doing a World of Warcraft level up tournament - How quick can you level up a chosen race and class!

Starting on Saturday the 23rd of October, and finishing up on Labour Day afternoon (Monday 25th) we have over 48 hours of gaming and LAN goodness. Tournaments will run across the weekend, with the venue open from 9 until 6 each day, but 24/7 for the LAN! You'll be provided with the standard tools of a LAN - a powerpoint, a network port, and a seat and away you go from there. With what is definitely going to be an electric atmosphere to play games in, and with LAN tournaments like we're looking to put on, there is plenty of fun to be had across the weekend, and one of the biggest expos in the gaming and related genre in New Zealand.

So fire up the questions, or if you want to just get on and get in to the fun, head over to the ON3 Shop to get your ticket now. For those who buy their ticket before 30th September, you will receive a $10 Earlybird discount, and for those clans who want to rock on up, there's a $5 discount on any ticket purchases for groups of 5 or more - so organise your clan mates, and get up to $15 off for an earlybird ticket.....

A weekend of LAN good times, and good fun for only $70 which includes a full pass to Armageddon for the weekend, tournaments, and a host of specials for gaming hardware, software and related goodies!? Get signed up and paid up NOW!!!!!!!!!

http://www.on3network.co.nz/shopon3

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pabreview: MSI Big Bang Fuzion with Lucid Hydra chip!

August 29, 2010, 09:07:45 pm by pablo d

A couple of years back, a little fab-less semiconductor company called Lucidlogix made a pretty grand announcement about a little chip it was developing which it claimed would turn the world of multi-GPU gaming on its head.

The chip was called Hydra and, in a nutshell, it allows you utilise the processing power of two or more video cards regardless of their model, specifications, or even vendor.

Now here we are in 2010 and finally we have products on the shelf which feature this magical, revolutionary wee chip. Taiwanese electronics manufacturer MSI were the first to partner with Lucid in bringing the Hydra to market, with the first such product being the MSI Big Bang Fuzion motherboard which we’re looking at today.

Before we get into the Hydra side of things, let me just cover the fact that the Fuzion is a high-end part with or without Lucid’s little silicon add-on. It is virtually the same board as the MSI Big Bang Trinergy, which had the Nvidia NF200 chipset.

All the premium MSI features are here like the THX-certified Quantum Wave dedicated sound card with EAX Advanced HD 5.0 audio processing, 100% Hi-c caps and super ferrite chokes for maximum stability and overclockability, 8mm superpipe cooling, “V-kit” which lets you check critical voltage levels directly with a voltmeter, plus MSI’s OC Dashboard.

The OC Dashboard is actually quite a cool wee device and appealed heavily to my tinkering side. It is basically just a little control panel which plugs into the motherboard and allows you to adjust settings like base clock frequency and voltages on the fly. Very handy when stressing the system out to find the maximum stable overclock for the CPU, motherboard and RAM.

The “OC Genie” feature, which is just a button you push to automatically overclock the system based on the motherboard’s best guess as to what a good stable overclock would be for the parts you’ve plugged in, is also supposed to appeal to overclockers but I would never ever advocate any sort of automated overclocking system so it doesn’t really earn any points with me.

More vital statistics for this socket 1156 board can be found here.

So yeah it’s a good motherboard blah blah blah, let’s get to the main point, Pablo – the Hydra.

The version of Hydra which MSI has gone for is the LT24102. This is the high-end Hydra part with support for up to 4 video cards, although the Fuzion board only has 3 PCI-E x16 slots (and you can’t use dual GPU cards like the 5970 or GTX 295 with the Hydra for technical reasons).

The chip is built into the motherboard itself, and you don’t need to run any connecting cables between the video cards like you have to with ATI’s Crossfire or Nvidia’s SLI solutions. All you need to do physically install the cards, install the display drivers, and then install the Hydra software.

As of writing, all the latest video cards are supported (excluding dual GPU cards) such as the HD 5850 and 5870 from ATI, and all cards in Nvidia’s GTX 400 series.

For a game to benefit from a Hydra set up, it needs to be a “supported” title, which currently there are plenty of. If a new game comes out you need to wait for a new Hydra driver before you’ll get support for it – you’ll also need to wait until Lucid release new software before you can update your display drivers as well because it needs to be a compatible version.

Anyway, to test the Hydra system out, I grabbed the two fastest cards I could get hold of and put them through some of the titles I had which were supported by the software.

Test System.

Intel Core i5 750 @ 4.0GHz
G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3-1600 @ CL8
XFX ATI HD 5870 1024MB
Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 480 1536MB
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
LG 1920x1080 LCD monitor

Ahem. Ok, granted I only tested a few games at one resolution and with only one combination of cards, this is still a pretty epic fail. Adding the HD5870 to the GTX 480 yielded less than two more frames per second on average. Eek.

You may also be wondering how Hydra stacks up against native Crossfire or SLI (for example running two GTX 480 cards in Hydra mode then compared to using SLI). I didn’t have any identical cards to test this with (plus the MSI Big Bang boards don’t support SLI) however after reading a few reviews online which did test this out, I can tell you that Hydra just doesn’t stack up here either unfortunately.

At $649 NZD, you may think the MSI Big Bang Fuzion with Lucid Hydra technology is an expensive joke, however let’s not forget that the last Big Bang board without Hydra retailed for $599, so it’s not as if you’re paying a massive premium for the feature.

There are also cheaper boards with lower-specced Hydra chips (the ones that only support 2 video cards) like the MSI 870A Fuzion motherboard for AMD’s AM3 platform which retails for $229, so you don’t need to splash out the think end of a grand to get your feet wet with the technology.

At the end of the day, the Big Bang Fuzion is a fully-fledged high end motherboard with a wealth of features and enough potential to satisfy the most demanding of tweakers and is a stunning example of the level of quality MSI can pump into a motherboard.

The addition of Lucid’s Hydra, until performance can be boosted via software refinement perhaps, is pretty much just a novel add-on.

---

My thanks to PlayTech for providing the review sample.

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But wait.... There's more!!!!!!!!

August 18, 2010, 02:27:37 pm by Arseynimz

Just when you thought we'd seen enough in the way of the collectable editions of games and other such (Black Ops, Halo being the main two so far), what will possibly be the biggest selling expansion yet has shown it's Collector's Edition face. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is now available for pre-order with an RRP of $139.95 set for the New Zealand marketplace.

So what do you get alongside this expansion which has been touted as a big patch with a level cap raise (and a few instances to get you there)?

A DVD giving you the behind the scenes look at Cataclysm and the rest of the Warcraft universe.
The Collector's Edition soundtrack which features music from the game and some exclusive bonus tracks just for the Collector's Edition.
A 176 page Artbook with all the game concept art through the completed visuals.
World of Warcraft Trading Cards.......
An exclusive in game pet - Lil' Deathwing.
A Special Edition Mouse Pad depicting Deathwing menacing Azeroth.
And last of all, but the most important, a copy of the expansion set for the game which is compatible for Mac or PC.

So, outside of a nifty in game pet, and the mouse pad, it seems like your standard Collector's Edition roll out. Not much more to say really, but if you do want a collector's edition of the next instalment of this monster MMO, then you better get on and get it done. Playtech of course has pre-orders available, so head on over to their site and get the ball rolling.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Promo Train is coming.....

August 13, 2010, 10:13:11 pm by Arseynimz

So the chatter has already begun on the Call of Duty franchise as the next instalment, Black Ops, starts to ramp up their promotional train for November this year. With just under 3 months until the release date, we saw the multiplayer preview pop up earlier than expected last week, and now today a global announcement of the Prestige Edition.

The Prestige Edition is a monster effort from Activision as Treyarch's instalment looks to fend off both the console and PC gamer's furore over Modern Warfare 2's shortcomings, and the disgusting game that World at War was. The Prestige Edition incorporates a very big boy's toy remote control car which has a host of features as a product in it's own right. A low resolution 220x176 display attached to the more popular trigger style controller brings video and audio to the user at a distance of up to 60 metres. The vehicle which sports independent suspension for off road action alongside a high and low speed setting to get it to where you want to snoop is a real show off addition to the prestige version of the game. But wait, there's more - you'll also get an avatar (for free - unlike the micro transaction you had to make for MW2) for your console of choice's online arena, along with a special collector's edition medal in a display case. Adding to the digital aspect, owners will also extra maps made available to them which are not included in the standard game editions. The game is in the Hardened case, albeit New Zealand's distibutor of Activision products has informed us that although a "Hardened Edition" is likely, they have no details...... you don't have to look far to see that it will be coming, so stand by for that announcement as well in due course. Playtech have the standard and prestige editions available for pre-order now, so if you're interested follow this link and order for your chosen platform ($299 for prestige, or $119 for console standard, or $99 for PC standard editions). If you're still in two minds, then let's review what we know......!

In respect to a total picture of a game, it is still early days for a total picture of Call of Duty: Black Ops. In this respect, short of buying it, the biggest test will come in October when a beta/preview will be made available to the public (from this writer's understanding), and thus those who have pre-ordered will either be rubbing their hands with glee, or looking for a refund on what is sure to be the biggest acid test for the Call of Duty franchise in it's close to 7 year existence. Either way you look, with the facts we have and the visible details from the MP trailer reveal, we know the following:

Dedicated Servers
Prone (with dolphin dive?)
Record functionality from Day one (in game console functionality?)
Server Browser (at least it's back - how it performs is supposed to be improved)
New killstreak perks
New weapons

We also know that the Modern Warfare 2 version of the Quake engine that Call of Duty has progressed on over the years, works. It is very pretty, and Treyarch do not have to do too much to make this game look good. That said, as a result, it is hugely visible to see that this game has the MW2 roots, and thus you can also see, feel and understand that Treyarch know they have a huge weight on their shoulders. Let's hope they have broad shoulders, great developers, and they are prepared for some post release support this time, otherwise it will be a short lived title, and likely the beginning of slow death of a once lively gaming franchise. Ironically, one could argue that Treyarch started this decline.

All the above stated, I'm still excited. I love Call of Duty, and this coming version of the game has the makings of a bloody good title using all the lessons from the previous three titles. If Treyarch take all the good parts of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and mash them in to an all time greatest game development hits, I'll make a GetSome video that resembles Garth & Wayne meeting Alice Cooper. Get some we will - but let's just hope we get more than we think!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_fsM6LBi54" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_fsM6LBi54</a>

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Calling all creative geniuses!!!

August 11, 2010, 01:15:29 pm by Arseynimz

Playtech send out a lot of PC's on a monthly basis, and customisation of the installs is something they go about regularly. Part of the next customisation revision they'd like to have a standard Playtech Desktop - so this is where you talented ON3 Network legends come in!

So for your chance to win a Flip Mino HD 120m valued at $369, head on over to this thread:
http://forums.on3network.co.nz/index.php/topic,74671.0.html

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Rush on in -The Logitech Squad Rush Tournament

August 03, 2010, 10:11:18 pm by Arseynimz

Bad Company 2 springs back to life in the short form version of the game, as the Squad Rush 4v4 action comes online after a pretty decent showing at xLAN. Teams are invited to participate in an ON3 Network tournament thanks to the good dudes at Logitech who will be bringing some pretty Logitech gear to the winners of the three divisions.

So make sure you get your team registered ASAP. Registrations will close on the 15th of August.

You can register your team here:
http://forums.on3network.co.nz/index.php/topic,74474.0.html

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