Hi Gamespot,

In my email newsletter on 10th September you featured a story with a link which lead to a 404 error LINK

This is a screencap of the content in question in the email newsletter

I then searched for this news story (it exists somewhat) but that still didn't work...
- http://uk.gamespot.com/search.html?qs=Kinect+brain+training%2C+Pac-Man+unveiled+in+Japan#story

Hope you can fix this.

Its because there is a watermark on the page that shouldn't be there.

I removed this and its back to normal black text and no transparency, quite a simple fix that should've been sorted by now.

Firstly, all cores will be the same speed. In BIOS make sure SpeedStep is off & any Core Throttling that saves power.

It will spread the load across the cores, but some older games could dominate just the 1st core. Also, you can clock the CPU to an easy 3Ghz & any slowdown using the 1 core will dissappear. I Seriously doubt you'll get any slowdowns at all but you'll want your monies worth out of the CPU. Its VERY OC'able when you come to play DOOM3, COD4 or whatever takes your fancy.

Try this: 1) Add in your GTR2 properties shortcut and in the commandline put +fullproc to see if it uses more than 25% of your CPU. If not, then 2) load GTR2, press Alt+Tab at the same time. Go to task manager Ctrl+Alt+Del (Processes). Right click GTR2.exe, then go to set affinity. Put a check in cpu-1 because cpu-0 should already be ticked. You can do No.2 to any game.

Also make sure you patch all the games to latest versions as they will improve support for multiple cores, widescreen & with DOOM3 1.3 patch you get EAX hardware support provided you have installed ALchemy on a XFI soundcard.

What about the Alienware ALX for thoughts because of the high clocks & minimal bottlenecks? I'm NOT going to tell you the price as its too high & would be just advertising it!

CPU: QX9770 @4Ghz, RAM: 4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator @1600Mhz, MOBO: 790i Ultra SLi, GPU: GeForce 9800 GX2 in SLI, PSU: 1200W, etc....

I would be suprised if this struggled to play Crysis. If it did, then theres something seriously wrong with the game. Just wait a few months for prices to drop so you can get a similar system cheaper. Or do what I did & edit the CFG files to slightly tone down the game/gfx details to get decent FPS. There are lots of guides out there.

My mate has got a QX6850 @ 3.5Ghz, 4Gb 1.1Ghz RAM + 8800GTX in SLI (all watercooled) & managed an average 40fps at 1650x1080. Using the tweaks I learnt, he then averaged 60fps. He scored 18K in 3dmark06.

Also try this after patching to latest and last Crysis Patch v1.2; I have created the neccessary files already tweaked to put into your Crysis Config folder for higher FPS but still high quality gfx. Backup existing files mysystem.cfg + system.cfg. Once its been extracted, you should see your Graphic options has some listed as Custom. Don't change these from now on unless you want to undo the config, only change the other items if you want even higher FPS.

Link HERE.

Thanks very much for your feedback :)

Thats what I enjoy - and why I upgraded my account in the first place - to access your huge library of HD videos that shows games in all their glorious details. Whenever I download a HD, I always keep them because I always end up looking back at them to show friends & family when they pop over, because they are keen gamers as well.

You do have a good point about the resources HD Quicktime uses; I tried it out on my quad core CPU,using real-time monitoring & my video I edited as seen in 1st post as the example. I was skipping forward to a point in QuickTime & it uses 22% of the CPU... playing it normally uses 7%. Bear in mind I only encoded it using a bitrate of 1.38Mbps - but thats the typical resource demand of HD these days. Your huge 941Mb video that was encoded @14Mbps, used 30% skipping forward to a point & 28% playing it normally, which rules out a lot of single core CPU thats people maybe using to view it. If you use anything under 10Mb then it uses up only 17% CPU whilst playing, meaning more single core users can view it without any stuttering or other issues.

I also compared that to a WMVHD video (C&C - Kane's Wrath On the Spot HD Demo @7Mbps) and the CPU usuage is alot lower when playing the video, it used just 6% CPU using Windows Media Player. So theres a case there for a HD download to offer for MAC in the H264 codec & a separate HD download for PC using the better WMVHD codec that I love. By the way, I ran the H264 on my PC in full screen & its plays perfectly...lucky me. But it used a big 36% of my CPU to do it which is why many might have issues.

As I said above, when I download HD movie trailers, I prefer the highest quality possible to be at 6-7Mbps with 2-pass VBR. I use this setting for my own family DVDs in Adobe Premiere 2. I know its always trial & error, deciding the time it takes to encode them speed vs quality & getting them uploaded to everyone without it taking ages. Do you think your servers are struggling with demand? Because if they were fast enough or you had more of them, you would negate this issue completely & keep the highest quality.

Anyway, I am really pleased to here of big changes coming to GS to help improve the video quality & service to everyone. And I wish you luck for these exciting changes & hope it really works out for everyone involved. Could you provide this thread with news on the changes in video quality to come - I don't like waiting too long for great news like this or mind you 'going overboard' at all :)

Firstly, this is just a harmless, simple test that I done...

I've downloaded many game trailers over the years from GameSpot & really enjoy watching them in HD. But I have been finding these HD trailers getting too big in size to & theres no increase in quality. I recently download both low res & HD trailers of Assassin's Creed Official Movie 3 from here to compare them - LINK

As you can see, one is 103Mb & the HD one is a massive 941Mb. I know it lasts for 8min50sec but thats still huge. And why they've encoded it at 14Mbps is beyond explaination - normally it should be half that at a more reasonable 7Mbps. I think its all down to the programs they are using to encode the videos. The quality of the 103Mb low res trailer should be much better than what we are getting & I can prove that GameSpot can do alot better with the way they are encoding our videos, escpecially for the low-res versions.

Heres the outcome of what these steps below will achieve (using a low-compression screencapture) - LINK

My aim is to make a much better 'low-quality' trailer thats both lower in filesize than GameSpots & double the amount of pixels because I took it from the HD trailer.

1. Firstly, I took the huge 941Mb trailer & opened it in using Apple's QuickTime v7.4.1 Pro - you have to work with the HD trailer for the best quality output & this is the only program I have to edit .MOV files.
2. Then you just simply go to File>>Export for Web. The export filetype you want is H.264 1.5Mbps maximum data rate & output it to your Desktop. This will take some time depending on the filesize & your hardware.
3. It then dumps a folder onto your Desktop that contains the files. To get it into one trailer again, simply open the .MOV file that it output on your Desktop, then go to File>>Save as.
4. Then just make sure its already selected as 'Save as self-contained movie' then click save. It does what it says on the tin!

As you can see, the filesize is now only 88Mb and much better quality. You can now delete both files because you have the quality of the HD trailer & the small size of the low-res trailer - well its actually 15Mbs lower than the GS 103Mb trailer :) If you didn't want to try this out, download the low-res trailer & compare it to mine here as an example. So I hope its ok with GS (I'm only leaving it up for people to feedback to) as you can only download it through this - LINK

Use Everest Home Edition to find out your basic PC parts, CPU speed, RAM amount, GPU type and go from there & maybe even do a few upgrades if your a fast learner. Get the 8800GT or GTS for the nVidia route or the 3870 for Ati.

Also run 3DMark06 to see how you fair & post back your results. I would say you need to score 10,000+ to play Crysis. You can play Call of Duty 4 since it very tweakable to play on most PCs when you lower the detail levels or just let the game do it for you.

Also check out the sticky thread if you need help on a game you've decided but are still unsure if you can run it.

Topic: PC Game Requirements 2 - Ask

Ive been a free subscriber for many years now & decided to get GameSpot Plus account to download many demos & HD vids but when go to my folder - downloaded using the Download Manager - the names are all gibberish & I have to download them one at a time to rename them from the link I clicked.

This takes up time so why doesn't it name itself correctly?

Thanks

These load points don t ruin that wonderful game at all. As many others, I only waited 15 seconds per load point which is totally correct. It only gives you the opportunity to relax a bit after having lived stressful and intense moments.....Domingo1093