FiringSquad Year-in-Review

Well, it's the end of the year and so Ithought it'd be nice to do a quick year-in-review. Enjoy the parties tonight.:)

2005, started with theGeForce 6600GT AGP taking the world by storm. Not since the Ti4200 had we seena midrange GPU with so much potency and value. The fact that the 6600GT remainsa popular GPU today is a testament to just how incredible the card was at thetime of its launch.

February brought my infamous Gran Turismo 4 reviewand GT4 For FansOnly Bonus Article. The combination of Sony's best first party development studio and Logitech'sworld-class gaming device team produced the definitive driving simulatoron the market at the time. Never before had the PlayStation 2's unusualarchitecture been so challenged. Never had force feedback devices and theirintegration with the game been so sophisticated.

Still, GT4 representedthe first look of what would lead us down a path none of us wanted to follow.In GT4, sony began to *actively* exclude support for Force Feedback steeringwheels such as the MOMO Force. Many defended Sony's actions, I penalized Sonyon the review by 10%. In retrospect, with Sony's resent rootkit problems ... Ihope Sony's gaming division will tread more carefully in the future. EvenMicrosoft is supporting the iPod...

March brought us A SystemBuilding Guide and a Round-up of thenForce 4 SLI motherboards on the 'net. DFI lead the round, perhapsdeveloping the most highly awarded motherboard since the Abit BH6.

April showered uswith new technology galore. AMD brought dual-core processors to the world andin appropriate fashion, FiringSquad brought dual articles to the table. ChrisAngelini had his review withthe engineering samples and I brought my article with productionCPUs. Of course, the #1 story in April was Our Budget LCDroundup which introduced our own in-house developed color accuracybenchmarks.

May was a time forGPUs. FiringSquad taught you how to unlock the 6800,and looked at the 6800 Ultra 512MB-- a video card that had no purpose in life...

Because Junebrought the 7800GTX.The top story of the month was our 19" LCDmonitor review. June also held host to our first"every-two-years" Eternal Battle in which had one, two, three,four,and five articlesrelated to system building.

July and Augustwere relatively quiet months with us taking a closer look at 7800GTX CPUScaling and a guide tobuilding a $1000 PC. The GeForce7 series also hit the enthusiastlevel with the 7800GT.Even September was quiet -- we took a look atATI's Crossfire, but it was too little, too late.

Things changed inOctober. The Radeon X1800XTwas announced, providing ATI a viable contender against the 7800GTXGPUs and I took some time to compare D-SLRsagainst prosumer point-and shoots. If anyone thought the rivalriesbetween Intel/AMD fans or NVIDIA/ATI fans or even PS2/Xbox fans was heated, youhaven't seen photographers. Never before had I received so much fan mail or somuch hate mail about how I was biased or in favor of point-and-shoots or SLRs.Ironically, the article was written not to provide a conclusion -- people readinto it the way they wanted. Despite our relative disappointment with Quake4,you guys told us otherwise, making the Quake 4 High-EndGraphics Shootout and Quakd 4 CPUShootouts two of the most popular articles that month.

November, november,november. That's when we brought you our first Xbox360 article. If you only knew how many more you'd end up seeing...=P GPUs were the theme for this month 7800GTX 512MB,AIW X1800 XL,and the 7800 GS.

Which leads us toDecember. The Xbox 360 was the name of the game this month, with my unfiltered, raw impressions of the360 and the list of 11mistakes Microsoft made with the Xbox 360. Funny, how everyone wascalling me a Sony-fan this month, when in February it was the other way around.:) It was a great month for ATI owners with Catalyst 5.13launching ATI's video performance in the stratosphere, leaving NVIDIA in thedust when it came to unusual video sequences. Underdog XGI also saw a chance toshowcase its video technology, showing how their $50 GPU could even competesagainst the AVIVO Radeons with Catalyst 5.13. My favorite article for the monthwas the King Kong Reviewa game that was fun, had great graphics, and yet received poor reviewselsewhere because it was too sophisicated for the typical console gamer andbecause the best audio/video experience for the game was on the Xbox 360 ratherthan the PC...

So what's coming upfor January? Let's just say cool stuff. We've got another system buildingarticle coming up with the coolest chassis you will ever read about. Will therebe more xbox 360 content? Well, you'll have to wait and see, right?

There's one thing Ican guarantee though. FiringSquad has grown considerably in the 2005, and Ihave to thank you, the readers for making this possible. 2006 is going to be ayear of changes, and I can tell you that the FiringSquad team has some newfeatures in the works. It's not marketing talk -- 2006 is going to be special.