Related articles

• 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.

• 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

• Aladdin V / M1541/ M1543 - Core Logic for Pentium /M1/M2/K5/K6 based Business and Multimedia PCs Aladdin-V is the fifth generation 586 chipset from AcerLabs. It maintains the best system architecture (2-chip solution) to achieve the best system performance with the lowest system cost (TTL-free). Aladdin-V consists of two BGA chips to give the 586-class system a complete solution with most up-to-date features and architecture for the most engaging multimedia/ multithreading OS and software applications. It utilizes the modern BGA package to improve the AC characterization, resolves system bottleneck and make the system manufacturing easier. M1541 includes the higher CPU bus frequency (up to 100 MHz) interface for all socket 7 compatible processors, PBSRAM and Memory Cache L2 controller, internal MESI tag bits (16K*2) and Tag RAM (16K*10) to reduce cost and enhance performance, high performance FPM/EDO/SDRAM DRAM controller, PCI 2.1 compliant bus interface, smart deep buffer design for CPU-to-DRAM, CPU-to-PCI, and PCI-to-DRAM to achieve the best system performance, and also the highly efficient PCI fair arbiter. M1541 also provides the most flexible 64 bit memory bus interface for the best DRAM upgradeability and ECC/Parity design to enhance the system reliability. With the AGP interface design, the dedicated PCI_66 AGP interface can be concurrent with CPU and PCI interface. The deep buffer of the read and write buffer design makes the utilization of memory bandwidth more efficient. The interface supports AGP specification V1.0. Supports up to 128 entries table look aside buffer for Graphic Address Remapping Table (GART). The interface not only supports the AGP 66 MHz PCI protocol, but also the AGP 1X and 2X sideband address function. With the concurrent bus design, PCI-to-PCI access can run concurrently with CPU-to-L2 and CPU-to-DRAM access, PCI-to-DRAM access can run concurrently with CPU-to-L2 access. M1541 also supports the snoop ahead feature to achieve the PCI master full bandwidth access (133 MBytes). M1541 also provides the enhanced power management features including ACPI support, suspend DRAM refresh, and internal chip power control to support Microsoft On Now technology OS. M1543 provides the best desktop system solution. M1543 integrates ACPI support, green function, 2-channel dedicated Ultra-33 IDE Master controller, 2-port USB controller, SMBus controller, PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse controller and the Super I/O (Floppy Disk Controller, 2 serial port/1 parallel port) support. The built-in I/O in M1543 is an advanced Super I/O controller solution to the basic IBM PC, XT, AT and notebook peripherals. It incorporates two full function universal asynchronous receiver/ transmitters (UARTs), a flexible high performance internal data separator with send/receive 16 Byte FIFOs. It is suitable for notebook computers since it has Serial Infra Red for wireless communications with other devices. It can swap your drives A & B. It features basic functions such as standard mode, enhanced mode, high speed mode. It supports SPP, PS/2, EPP and ECP parallel port. It also has a programmable baud rate generator. It has high performance power management for FDC, UART and parallel port. Furthermore, Aladdin V is designed to meet the requirements of all socket 7 process-ors including business, multimedia and high performance CPU file servers.