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• Our test system for this article employs the Asrock 939 Dual SATA 2 motherboard, which is packed with an abundance of upgrade-oriented features. It supports native 8X AGP, PCI Express x16, single- and dual-core Socket 939 processors with dual-channel DDR memory, and even socket AM2 CPUs and DDR2 memory with a daughter board, which we used for testing. While searching online auction sites, we have seen people spending $200 or more for a Socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 4800+. It’s one of the fastest Socket 939 dual-core CPUs produced, but the device also represents a lot of money considering you can buy an even faster AM2 Athlon X2 for well under $100. Those stuck with Socket 939 will need to search the Web long and hard for a well-priced dual-core for their motherboard, but our AM2 compatible motherboard gives us the convenience of opting for an AM2 CPU with very little trouble and expense. We chose the following CPUs to examine the effects they have on gaming performance. First is the AMD Athlon 64 4000+. It’s base don the San Diego design, runs at 2.4 GHz, sports 1 MB L2 cache, and is one of the faster single-core desktop CPUs made. The direct comparison dual-core to this device is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4 GHz 1 MB cache per core). Next, we chose the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 + dual-core, which has a 2.2 GHz Manchester architecture with 512 KB L2 cache per core. The single-core direct comparison would be the A64 3500+, so our A64 4000+ should have an advantage both in clock speed and L2 cache in single-threaded applications. And lastly, the Athlon 64 X2 5600+ AM2 dual-core is a 2.8 GHz Windsor design with 1 MB L2 cache per core. With these three CPUs, we should get a good look at single- versus dual-core in gaming and have a good idea about how CPU clock speeds affect game play. Tested Hardware Motherboard Asrock 939 Dual SATA 2 Bios vs. P 2.30 Asrock AM2 CPU Board RAM 2 GB (2 * 1 GB) dual-channel Adata DDR 400 (3-3-3-8) for Socket 939 2 GB (2 *1GB) dual-channel Corsair DDR2 533 (4-4-4-12) for Socket AM2 Video Cards XFX GeForce 8800 GS 384 MB PCI Express 580MHz core/ 700(1400) MHz memory HIS Radeon HD 4850 512 MB PCI Express 625 MHz core/ 993 (1986) MHz memory Sound Card Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s Power Supply Antec EarthWatts 430 W OS Windows XP Professional 32 bit Service Pack 2 Display Driver Nvidia ForceWare 174.74 AMD Catalyst 8.8 Benchmarks 3DMark05 v. 1.3.0 3DMark06 v. 1.1.0 F.E.A.R. v.1.08 Far Cry v.1.4 Need For Speed Carbon 1.4 Test Drive Unlimited 1.66A Oblivion 1.2 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 1.4 Crysis 1.2

• By Travis Meacham Maybe the gamer on your Christmas list is more of the creative type, and you'd like to get a gift that encourages their creative side and their love of games. If that's the case, the FPS Creator from Enteractive and The Game Creators could fit that bill perfectly. The FPS Creator is a program for PCs that allows users to create complete first-person shooter games without writing a single line of code. It uses a simple drag-and-drop interface consisting of a set of pre-fab objects - weapons, furniture and enemies - and a design space where game levels may be constructed. It takes a little getting used to, but with some patience and the manual's step-by-step instructions, your gamer will be off and creating in no time. FPS Creator is packed with potential, and tools to help you realize same. FPS Creator reminded me of the Neverwinter Nights Toolset that came with both NWN games. The interface is pretty similar, and both use an object-oriented, scripting-supported graphical interface. FPS Creator can only take a game-builder so far without doing some coding, though. While it can design levels, drop in pre-made enemies, configure some simple A.I. routines, and populate each level with weapons, objects and ammo, those who really want to get into the finer workings of game design, will have to learn some scripting. Thankfully, FPS Creator has an active forum attached to its website. It offers a multitude of tutorials on using this tool, scripting basics, and even entire scripts gamers can copy and paste to suit their needs. Bear in mind that these sorts of game-creation tools deliver only what builders put into them. Novices won't build something to rival Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but they might learn the basics of videogame design and level construction. Also, for anyone who's ever considered a career in game design, FPS Creator will give them a real taste of the work involved. This isn't a game unto itself, but it is an easy-to-use tool that introduces people to level design for first-person shooters. FPS Creator takes a little work, but creative types will find the results rewarding, and just might end up getting involved in a mod community when all is said and done.

• In practice, this is what happens: in order to read or write to a memory point, the memory controller first transmits the row number of the desired address, and the RAS signal is activated. However, it takes a few clock cycles (the RAS-to-CAS delay time) until the columns can be accessed. Likewise, after the CAS signal is activated, further clock cycles must take place. With standard SDRAM based on the PC133 standard, this is always two or three; with DDR RAM, four or five clock cycles. In the DDR process, the "real" CAS latency times are two or two and a half clock cycles. The RAS-to-CAS time depends on the technology, and, since it's mostly between five to seven clock cycles, this is the fundamental factor for delays. You could also say that CL2 memory is by far superior to slower models with CL2.5 (DDR) or CL3 (SDRAM). Theoretically, this is true, but other factors put the advantages of fast data transfer in another light - for one thing, modern processors have a high hit rate with cache memory, which means that they seldom have to read directly from the memory. Secondly, the rows are also switched most of the time, so that RAS-to-CAS time is also needed, thus delaying the read process. Finally, the burst reads will occasionally happen - in this case, many of the memory cells that are directly adjacent to one another are read, but here the CAS latency occurs only once, and is therefore insignificant. Buying Memory: Always Go For Speed? Experience dictates that the advantages of fast memory are worth the slightly higher price that you have to pay to get it. However, many retailers still offer high-end PCs that make do using the slower memory with which they are equipped. This makes it entirely possible for a new Pentium 4 PC with a hefty 2 GHz to end up lagging behind the neighbor's 1.8 GHz computer in the benchmarks. But don't forget that the chipset also plays an important role here. Aside from Gigaherz and Gigabytes, the inner values (especially in the memory interface of the chipset) contribute considerably to higher performance. When buying memory, if the price for CL2 memory is only a little bit higher, then we recommend that you go for it. However, you should keep in mind that the slowest unit in the group will be the performance bottleneck. For instance, if you use three DIMMs with CL2 and one with CL2.5, then all four will run with only CL2.5 The most important thing is the price/ brand comparison: make sure that you always distinguish the brand name modules (Infineon, Micron, Samsung, Hyundai, NEC, etc.) from the no-name modules. In terms of price, this usually translates to about a 30% difference!