Video Cards

I have read mixed things in reviews on various reseller websites but I wanted to take this opportunity to pitch in one of my opinions. When it comes to purchasing ATI video cards the brand I tend to trust the most is Sapphire. I’ve read things about cards being DOA and running loud or hot, but I’ve simply never had that experience with any of their products.

Every Sapphire product I’ve owned has always been of the utmost craftsmanship. They are solid cards, they look attractive (literally as some of them have attractive females on their heat sinks), and they’ve been solidly reliable. I’ve yet to have one be arrive dead, or even fail on me. I’m on my second high-end Sapphire card and am planning to purchase a third. I just can’t think of another brand that has impressed me more.

On the other side of things, here are a few brands that I have had bad experiences with. For one, ATI brand ATI cards as found at Best Buy or ordered from ATI directly. My experience came from one purchased from Best Buy. I had an X1600 that after only a year failed out of the blue. There was no explanation for the failure and fortunately for me, Best Buy replaced it for me.

Another was HIS. Granted the HIS product I had ordered was listed as open box, the card was seemingly over designed. It was large, filled with capacitors, and worked for about 5 minutes, just long enough for me to get the drivers loaded, and then it died, never allowing a successful POST after. Since then I have avoided HIS like the plague.

Finally, and this is not a manufacturer of ATI cards, I’ve had a recent rash of EVGA failures at work. EVGA manufactures a video card model specifically for my company. This card is based on the Geforce 7300 chipset but is doctored up for video input capabilities. All of a sudden in the last few months I’ve had several inwhich after light to normal operation (no gaming or any kind of strenuous workload), three of the main capacitors on the card blow out. After this happens the system will continue to POST and will even get as far as the Windows XP splash screen. After the loading indicator finishes and the splash screen disappears as if it were loading the Windows Environment, it just stops sending signal to the monitor. The computer will even boot into safe mode and run in that environment normally. After experimenting with uninstalling the drivers, getting into Windows standard, and reinstalling the drivers, the problem persists. Finally on a whim I cracked one of the cases and took a look at the card and discovered the blown caps. Now as soon as I get a call describing these circumstances I know exactly what to do (IE replace the card) and I can have it fixed in 10 minutes. This has occurred with both the 7300’s we sell and the older 5200’s that we have in some of our older machines that are being supported. AGP or PCI-E, it makes no difference. So just a word of warning against EVGA.

“People will bow to it”

That quote is from Grandma’s Boy, one of my all time favorite movies. I have mentioned it in passing on my list of geeky movies. I’ll have to come out with a updated list here pretty soon but that’s not the purpose of this post.

This is post is to announce the future of my gaming rig. Earlier today out of sheer boredom and the anticipation of a future windfall, I spent some time on Newegg selecting my next set of upgrades. Here I have posted the wishlist that I have constructed.

With my last round of upgrades I set myself up quite nicely for future improvements. That was the goal afterall. Even when upgrading or building on a budget, one should always have their eye on the future. This time I am slightly less budget concsious, but still trying to keep costs down as much as possible. I never have a ton of money to spend and every dollar should go as far as possible.

For my upgrade path I have selected an AMD Phenom quadcore processor. One of the reasons I went with the AMD 780 chipset as it is one of a few that supports Phenom processors. Also I intend to boost my graphics performance atleast 2 fold by going with an ATI 4850. I would have preferred a 4870 but it is very difficult for me to justify a $300 video card purchase when the net gains from a $180 card are going to be phenominal (no pun intended.) Also I intend to increase my storage capacity by including two more 250GB hard drives that will set up in a raid 0 array for a total storage capicity of 1TB. I will finally be able to do away with my aging SATA I 160GB array. I am still considering a 4 drive array 0 for one massive 1TB drive though having it split across two 500GB arrays has it’s organizational advantages.

Also included in this path is an InDtube by EVGA. This is an HD TV-Tuner USB device that will allow me to turn my computer into a TV. This will save me $220 in the long run in purchasing a seperate TV for my computer room as my wife is tired of me watching my beloved Green Bay Packers in the livingroom as it ties of the TV for 4 hours every Sunday. I chose the InDtube because I have some experience with it and it seems to be a solid TV Tuner product. I have seen many that were not so solid and am still a little weary about going this route.

Finally, I am finally going to take the plunge into Windows Vista headlong. Windows Vista Ultimate is a fine product and I am tired of missing out on DX10. I have tried out a pirated version but I am never comfortable leaning on pirated products for full time usage. Many pirated OS’s are very buggy and unreliable. The one I had simply would not install properly and after many hours of dealing with BSOD’s and other issues, I went back to being fully legal. In the brief period that I did have it working, I enjoyed the experience so I am looking forward to finally being able to afford a legal copy. Plus there is always a sense of pride in having that official COA to back up your most important piece of software.

So wish me luck. Most of these upgrades will not happen until I receive my tax return in 2009 however I will be working as diligently as ever to raise as much fundage as possible to procure as many of these items as possible before then. First on my list is that 4850 as one can always use a better video card. Next on my list is the processor as that would stregthen the very core of my rig (again, no pun intended).

When these upgrades are completed I do expect to finally be able to play Crysis on full settings. Maybe not at the highest resolution, but atleast I’ll have all of that splendid detail in realtime at a playable frame rate. I know that seems like a silly goal, but atleast it’s a measurable benchmark that I can use to compare my rig to others. Also that’s just a really fun game and I can’t wait to see it in it’s full glory.

All Hail Windows XP!

Isn’t Windows XP great? Not that I am trying to say anything against Windows Vista. Windows Vista is a great new product with a lot of cool features. Well, if you buy the right version anyway. Windows XP also requires that you have the professional edition for it to be fully functional, but lets assume that you know this already.

Why does Windows XP rock? Here’s my thought on it. Earlier today I was working on a pair of computers for a customer of mine. Both of these computers were purchased brand new with P4 2.0Ghz and 512MB of ram with Riva TNT 2 64MB models. That alone dates the hard back to the year 2002 at best. I remember running a TNT 2 back in 2000. But I don’t recall exactly when P4’s debuted. I’m thinking it was 2001 or 2002. What else can be dated back to 2001? Windows XP. That’s right. And I’ve been running Windows XP Pro since the month it debuted. I wish I could say the day but it was shipped and you have to account for that time frame.

So my point is that this month Windows XP is 7 years old. 7 years is 2 and a half lifetimes for a computer. It’s probably 14 generations of computer hardware. Think of where mainstream computing has gone in the last 7 years. The progression of technology since 2001 has been absolutely astounding. We went from Pentium 3’s and AMD Athlons in a slot form running at 1GHz tops to socketed Quad Core processors running up to 3.0GHz per core. That’s almost 12GHz of processing power compared to 1GHz. Ram capacity has gone from 1 to 2GB tops to 16 – 128GB tops. Video processors have gone from a few hundred megahertz to a few gigahertz with amounts of ram that were considered highend in computers of the 01′ era. 

The point of all this? What has seen it all and run it all? Windows XP. Windows XP continues to be the operating system of choice in the business world. Why? Because it’s stable and it’s proven itself. I think many people forget that the only reason it’s been so successful is because it’s use was practically forced on us and people were forced to make it work. For some reason people don’t want to go through that process again with Vista. Personally I’d love to purchase a copy of Vista and upgrade if I had the funds.

However, since I don’t, and I’m stuck with XP, like the old song says “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one your with.” Actually it’s more than that for me. I am just astonished at how well XP is holding up for new technologies and how it will continue to grow and encompass tech that hasn’t even come out yet. What other software do you own that is 7 years old that you still use every single day? I can’t name a single one. That my friends, is why Windows XP rocks.