Anyone?

Does anyone have any cool tips for extending the life of PC hardware? My computer is getting older by the day it seems. It is going to be atleast another year before I am allowed (yes, allowed, damn joint accounts) to upgrade. I think I have increased my longevity by building it decent and making sure I had highspeed raids, dual channel memory, and other lil tricks that retail computers don’t come with.

                                                                                            

However I was just curious if anyone had any good tricks, utilities, cheap pyseudo upgrades that help them coax more speed or power out of their aging PC. If you do, drop a comment with links, program names, etc. Thanks.

Solid Snake

Well, I thought I’d post this just to say that I finally unlocked Solid Snake in Smash Brothers Brawl. He is a kickass charactor. I’m not sure how many charactors there are total. I have a picture of it posted but I haven’t looked at it too closely because I don’t want to spoil the game. I’m also not sure how to unlock them all.

The Brawl is on…

Okay, okay, I realize that the Nintendo Wii isn’t in the PC enthusiast’s typical line of activities. However, I love my Wii. I also love saying that I love my Wii because it sounds so dirty in a childish way… Moving on. Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Awesome game. Not quite awesome enough to warrant the pre-order and the standing in line for 20 minutes in 0 degree weather at midnight, but definately worth having. Infact, its the only game I’ve really played in the last two weeks or so since it came out. If you don’t know what Brawl is, allow me this brief explanation.

In the Smash Brothers series of games (there were a few) the game is based around classic and some lil known Nintendo charactors. The object of the game is to use your favorite (or disfavorite) charactor to bash the living crap out of one, two, or three human or CPU opponets in a no holds barred super power slugfest. You can set the match to a time limit where either the person with the most knockouts at the end wins or you can square off in a last man standing style where each player/cpu gets a set number of lives and the match ends when the last person with lives remaining wins. Either way is killer fun. I do recommend the time limit mode for the fact that it keeps everyone in the game the whole time. Also if you are playing against the computers, it takes a long time for them to kill each other off if you die first.

With Brawl however, in additition to the single player tournament mode that is present in all of the Smash Brothers games, Brawl also includes a very unique single player campaign like story mode that has you side scrolling through plenty of smashin action with your favorite charactors and some you may have never heard of. My recommendation is give everyone a chance. They are all badass in their own ways. Along with loving the single player mode, I do enjoy spending countless (17+ so far) just going in and taking on 3 CPU’s at different difficulty levels to test my meddle against them. So far I can handle the 7th of 9 difficulty level and can muster a win now and then against the 8th level. Level 9 still rocks my world.

So definately, if you have a Wii, whether your a solo player like me (though not always) or have lots of friends and/or roommates, Brawl will be hours of Nintendo Charactor bashing fun for everyone. It’s worth the $50 and I don’t say that often.  

ATI or die…

                                                          

Okay. I’ve already declared my fanboyism for AMD. Now I am declaring it for ATI. Yes, I know, same company. I just can’t get over how visually stunning ATI graphics can be. Also, the raw speed ATI graphics cards boast is just too much to pass up. I realize that Nvidia cards often perform better (more frames per second) at lower speeds, but I just don’t get a sense of stability or see the same quality in color tone or overall graphic beauty in those cards.

I recently upgraded my rig against the better judgement of a friend of mine with an ATI X3870 512MB card. I got the card for $235 +ship back in Febuary. This was a decent price considering the cards were still retailing online for $250. I could not be happier with the card. Granted my friends get a few more frames per second than I do, there is no comparison to the downright beauty and stability I have achieved by adding this awesome card to my aging PC. Crysis on all high, no problem. COD4, no Jaggy and no Laggy. I have literally been able to crank the settings for every game out there to high, super high, or Ultra high settings and/or custom settings that have every setting/feature turned on. Everything looks amazing. Console only gamers, eat your hearts outs. You will never experience the same graphical experiences that can be enjoyed by playing the same games on a good PC. I absolutely love this card. Did I mention it’s a single slot card? And it doesn’t run hot!

Upgrading the Wife… Continued…

Well the wife’s upgrades were only partially completed. I was able to get her the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ running at 2.5Ghz however I was unable to upgrade her video card as planned. Unfortunately, the X1950 we ordered for her was a DOA and since it was reconditioned open box, the return policy stated money back only. So atleast she got alittle more umph. I was terribly disappointed by the failure of that card though. It should’ve been a nice card.

 Now however she is struggling with the Sims 2. At first glance the game does not appear to be terribly demanding and according to box specs, the 4000+ and the Radeon X1600 512MB should be more that capable of running the game smoothly. But when you get down to the nitty gritty and realize with all the expansions and the size of the lots she is working on, with all the 3D rendered stuff going on in the background, on full settings the game gets choppy. Thus leads me to search for the ultimate bargain upgrades for her PC. To be continued…