byrn's blog

AMD Phenom launches at 2.2, 2.3Ghz

Today AMD launched its sucessor to the Athlon 64 line, named Phenom, at 2.2 and 2.3Ghz.

Phenom is an evolution of the K8 architecture, which itself was an evolution of the K7, the original Athlon. This is not neccesarily a bad thing, if you can evolve a processor to acceptable performance then its definately the better option than a redesign from the ground up.

New GPUs: nVidia 8800 GT and ATi 38x0

Both nVidia and ATi (AMD these days) have now released their new midrange cards. Links are to Anandtech reviews.

Something odd is going on. First, at the end of October, nVidia release the 8800 GT. A new midrange card to repace the decidedly lackluster 8600 GTS, made on a smaller process to reduce heat production and make it cheaper to produce.

The odd thing is, its too good.

Half Life 2

I've been playing Half Life 2 recently, since EMW bought the Orange Box and passed his HL2 and HL2:E1 licences to me... cheers mate.

The game is well done, pretty and plays well. The physics is nice. For reference, although a recent patch changed the default difficulty to easy, I'm playing on normal. Sorry, no funky screenshots like Pete's, thought about this while walking in.

Shooting stuff

This last weekend I went on a Basic Coaching Course with the Air Training Corps (ATC). The usual panic of trying to get all the paperwork signed and apporved, and find the documentation we were meant to bring was added to by my car springing a heater matrix leak which makes it unsuitable for long trips.

Hello

'lo all. Finally turned up.

Will have a look about the place when I can get away from hitting Linux with a stick...