EVE Online Jettisons Old CPUs

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
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EVE Online Jettisons Old CPUs


EVE Online [http://www.eveonline.com/] no longer supports old Pentium 3 and Athlon XP processors but CCP is asking affected users to submit reports to its customer support department, suggesting that the situation might be temporary.

During testing of the Incursion 1.1.0 update for EVE Online, CCP [http://www.ccpgames.com/] received reports of a problem that caused the EVE client to crash at startup. The error log didn't provide any useful information, however, and the studio was never able to replicate the problem, which left the investigation dead in the water until someone on the testing team had a light bulb moment.

He realized that some of the third-party binaries used in EVE had recently been updated and after some digging it was discovered that a feature requiring the SSE2 instruction set had been enabled. The downside, naturally, was that older CPUs that don't support SSE2 - Pentium 3s, Athlon XPs and their predecessors - were no longer compatible with the software.

It's an uncool situation but given the "extremely few" number of reports about the problem that came up during testing, coupled with estimates that only about 0.3 percent of the player base is still running on the affected processors, CCP decided to roll out the update anyway. But the EVE Dev Blog [http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=844] suggests that this might not be the end of the story; the studio has added a specific non-SSE2 message that will display when the client is started on an incompatible machine and is encouraging everyone who runs into it to submit a report to the customer service department. CCP said further updates on the situation and what it's going to do about it will be forthcoming.


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Feb 13, 2008
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Me and Eve have always had this strange war going.

Everything that CCP have done, I've held in awe over the sheer brilliance of what they've done.

But Eve? as I've said before, most MMOs are like paying to work, Eve is like paying to get beat up at school.

Still not as tough as DF though ;)
 

vxicepickxv

Slayer of Bothan Spies
Sep 28, 2008
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With the progress of better software come a requirement to elevate your hardware. It's progress. There's not much that can be done about it. Of course, given that the Athlon XP chips go for 80 bucks for the high end, does tell you something about at least a small number of the users.
 

Kaymish

The Morally Bankrupt Weasel
Sep 10, 2008
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i was going to say its amazing people are even able to run older versions of eve on those sorts of processors but after some cursory research it seams that they are not that old they released the latest version of those around 2003 and they were pretty good for the time i think
 

DTWolfwood

Better than Vash!
Oct 20, 2009
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Hope those 0.3% of ppl realize its time to put their CPU out to pasture and preferably get new and better motherboards lol
 

thenumberthirteen

Unlucky for some
Dec 19, 2007
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While part of an MMO's strength is being able to run on any computer sometimes you need to let go of old tech that's holding back everything else. I say just cut them out.

*Breaking News: Portal 2 will not support Intel Core 2 CPUs*
Damn.
 

Delusibeta

Reachin' out...
Mar 7, 2010
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Pentium 3? Good grief. While it's more serious than it sounds (the 2003-era jalopy of a computer I used to use had a Celeron-banded Pentium 3), I really doubt that anyone's going to complain to loudly, especially considering a) it's a bug, and b) you really should have bought a new computer by now, regardless of your position on PC gaming.

I have no doubt the affected players will vehemently and boisterously voice their furious anger in this thread as soon as their carrier pigeons can deliver their posts.
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
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It's hard to fault CCP for this.
I mean, it sucks for that small player base, but as someone already said: It's progress. This isn't a regular game, it's an MMO which changes and evolves. If you want to keep playing, then you've got to keep up. Not that they need to keep up that much, since I'm playing EVE on a netbook.
 

Dana22

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Sep 10, 2008
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Want to buy higher resolution version of the picture in the news. Thank you.
 

Firehound

is a trap!
Nov 22, 2010
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
Me and Eve have always had this strange war going.

Everything that CCP have done, I've held in awe over the sheer brilliance of what they've done.

But Eve? as I've said before, most MMOs are like paying to work, Eve is like paying to get beat up at school.

Still not as tough as DF though ;)
DF= Free

Eve = pay.


It's the difference between paying to lose twelve months of your life, or hypnotoad stealing half of it by hypnotising you.


By the way... DF rocks. Magma for all.
 

Cowabungaa

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Feb 10, 2008
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
But Eve? as I've said before, most MMOs are like paying to work, Eve is like paying to get beat up at school.

Still not as tough as DF though ;)
I never got why that came is considered tough, like not even remotely. After going through the tutorial once I was off mining, doing missions, the likes. It's not that difficult.

Thing is, it apparently takes months or even years to get to the really good stuff. No way in hell I'm going to do that, which is kind of a shame because never has an MMO amazed me so much. The political intrigue, the sheer size of the almost completely player-run universe. It's amazing, but I could never join it.

And DF apparently has also found it's match in Aurora [http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php] in terms of sheer complexity. Also, it has Space Bambi's [http://www.virtualalbum.eu/index.php?pag=5&idf=26907#].
 

Dogstile

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Jan 17, 2009
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Cowabungaa said:
The_root_of_all_evil said:
But Eve? as I've said before, most MMOs are like paying to work, Eve is like paying to get beat up at school.

Still not as tough as DF though ;)
I never got why that came is considered tough, like not even remotely. After going through the tutorial once I was off mining, doing missions, the likes. It's not that difficult.
To be honest it really was hard in the first version. Later versions are easy, especially the "bug free" 40D, but I love 40D so I don't care. The new version is harder, but if you know the basic commands you'll live.

Especially if you shove one dwarf in a panic room on a soil layer with a farm and a fortified well.
 

Laice

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Apr 16, 2008
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Dana22 said:
Want to buy higher resolution version of the picture in the news. Thank you.
Link at the top of the page for the video that screenshot is from [http://www.eveonline.com/download/videos/?type=2]
 

Aeshi

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Dec 22, 2009
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How the heck does a Pentium 3 run a CPU-Gobbler like EVE in the first place?
 

Cowabungaa

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Feb 10, 2008
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dogstile said:
Cowabungaa said:
The_root_of_all_evil said:
But Eve? as I've said before, most MMOs are like paying to work, Eve is like paying to get beat up at school.

Still not as tough as DF though ;)
I never got why that came is considered tough, like not even remotely. After going through the tutorial once I was off mining, doing missions, the likes. It's not that difficult.
To be honest it really was hard in the first version. Later versions are easy, especially the "bug free" 40D, but I love 40D so I don't care. The new version is harder, but if you know the basic commands you'll live.

Especially if you shove one dwarf in a panic room on a soil layer with a farm and a fortified well.
Erm, I was talking about EVE Online, not Dwarf Fortress.
Aeshi said:
How the heck does a Pentium 3 run a CPU-Gobbler like EVE in the first place?
The game is older than WoW, that's why. Remove all the graphical updates of the last 6-ish years and voila, a game that runs on a cardboard box.
 

s99bf19a

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Oct 29, 2010
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Aeshi said:
How the heck does a Pentium 3 run a CPU-Gobbler like EVE in the first place?
I used to run it on a P4 and it was next to unplayable. I don't know how 12 year old chips like P3s could manage it.
Cowabungaa said:
I never got why that came is considered tough, like not even remotely. After going through the tutorial once I was off mining, doing missions, the likes. It's not that difficult.
The PvE is not what people talk about when they say it's tough.
 

Cowabungaa

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Feb 10, 2008
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s99bf19a said:
The PvE is not what people talk about when they say it's tough.
What then? The market? That's not very complicated, mostly just supply and demand. Piracy and fleet warfare? I'd say tactics aren't any more difficult than in most other games with similar combat systems. What's so hard about it?