Game Review Time…

This blog is a little bit of everything. Since I’m a gamer, I have to talk about the games. Nothing too special, just my insignificant opinions on a handful of titles that has caught my attention lately. So without further ado…

Flatout: Ultimate Carnage!

 

This game is “flatout” awesome! It seems like they have taken the best of both Flatout and Flatout 2 and recompiled them into this masterpiece. Flatout 2 has long since been a favorite game of mine. I like the down and dirty racing. I’m not so big on rules and customizing my cars so the simplistic choose a car and race it really appeals to me. In this game, there are no warning laps. If you smash someone’s car on the road you better be watching for it mext time you come around the bend. It’s details like that that really pull me in. The realistic crumping and smashing of the parts of your car as it suffers the abuse.

On top of that, this game has some other cool features not availible in most car games. There are two demolition derby modes and an assortment of stunts to perform in. With up to 8 player multiplayer you can race and demolish your friends or challenge each other to the best points in the stunts. Also new to this title is the beat the bomb mode where you have to race the count down of a bomb in your car to the next checkpoint where it’ll give you more time. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve reached a checkpoint to have my car explode right in front of it.

Another plus for this title I feel is the music. I don’t know if I’m just off the scene or what but I don’t reconize any of the names of the bands this time. In Flatout 2 there was music from a whole host of popular bands. However, just because I don’t know the bands, doesn’t make them bad. I actually enjoy every song on this games soundtrack. I may not know these guys, but their songs blend in perfectly with the action on the track. Yes okay… I’m moving on now.

Left4Dead

 

Okay if you haven’t heard of this game by now you’re pretty lame. This game is mad fun. I don’t know about you, but I love Zombie movies. I don’t care how terrible it is, I will watch any movie that has zombies in it. Well this game trumps that by actually putting me into a Zombie movie. While being an online cooperative play game, L4D manages to include enough story, though left vaguely open, to keep you interested in what’s going as you play it again and again. And the crazy simple action is complex it enough for straegies yet is as easy to operate as point and click.

My only complaint is the limited ability to LAN this game. The biggest match is 4X4 which makes it tough to play at a LAN with 10 people or more. Though surprisingly enough the 2 on 2 kept four of us rather entertained during a lull in the LAN action. It’s definately a great back up game or awesome for mini-LANs in basements if the host has good highspeed.

Well that’s all I have for reviews at the moment. Let me know how you feel about these games if you’ve played them. Let me know if there is a fun game that you are playing and think is really good. I am always looking for new games to try.

Finally… because I just caught up to 12yr olds in terms of utilizing the net, the premiere of my first YouTube upload which I did specifically for this blog. And it’s not that I thought I couldn’t use YouTube, it’s just that I never really had a purpose for it before now. So here is my little game play demo of Flat Out: Ultimate Carnage. ***Please note that I used X-Fire to record the video during gameplay and my performance took a huge hit. When I’m not recording video the game runs immaculately smooth.

 

Also to follow up I just wanted to mention that since I am on a budget and I like to help people get the best deals, it’s hard to find Left4Dead for less than $50. I did however manage to get a brand new copy of Flat Out: Ultimate Carnage for $11 shipped on Amazon. I kinda took my chance with a 50/50 rated distributer but I figured since it was a $7 game I wouldn’t be too worried about it.  So gaming doesn’t have to cost a small fortune.

Still Lovin It!

After two months of use I’m still loving it. Infact I am loving it more than I ever loved Windows XP (Blasphemy!). Infact I’m so used to everything Vista that now when I am at work and trying to explain something to someone, I have to stop and think oh wait, their still in XP. As far as my experience with Operating Systems goes, or software in general, Vista Ultimate is the cats meow.

So yeah, my performance rating isn’t the highest it could be, but that’s because my processor only scored a 5.3. I got 5.9’s on everything else. I am running fairly beefy system which helps. My only critism is that things seem to take just a bit longer to execute games for instance taking a full minute to load. Though I have noticed that this only seems to happen with a certain type of game. Some of them still load almost instantly. Also I’ve noticed some hesitation pulling up file structures and browsing folders. It seems to take longer for the file indexing service to process these activities.

Other than that, the interface is gorgeous and almost completely customizable. I love that you can finally set your start bar to match your background or make it translucent. On top of that, the new search engine is amazing. Sometimes, it late at night, or I’m in a hurry and I just have a hell of a time tracking down a program in my start menu. With the new search engine, all you have to do is hit the windows key and start typing the name of the program and it finds it for you. If you’re close enough to the name all you have to do is hit enter and it will open right there. You can do that for any program or file on the computer. Ever try to find a picture to show someone and gotten stuck digging through folder after folder trying to remember how you categorized it? Now all you gotta do is type in what you named it and bam it’s there! SO much nicer than the old XP search that would take minutes to dig through 300 possibilities.

Also, my next favorite feature… the mouse over preview windows. They allow the program to run in the preview window. So if you’re playing WoW or Secondlife and you need to check out a web page real quick, you can keep track of your activities just by mousing over the program on your start bar. It works awesome if you have a bunch of program windows open and want to quickly bounce from one to the other.

Also Alt+Tab has a new look. It also shows your programs in a preview window so you can Alt+Tab much more precisely to the right window. And now, even cooler if your PC can handle it, the Windows+Tab key brings up the Aero 3D program browser. Thus allowing you to see all of your programs running three dimensional stacked view where you can either cycle through them by continuing to hold the Windows key and tapping the Tab key or by clicking on which one you want with your mouse. It’s very much a frill feature where you don’t really use it unless you think about it but it’s pretty cool so you’ll try to find a way to work it in.

3D gaming performance is the bees knees with DirectX10.1. Of course my video card is what really makes this possible but you miss out on a lot of effects and detail without it. 16X AA shows you the game the way it was meant to be played. Fire looks and burns like fire instead of an under detailed orange blob. It totally made paying $250 for a video card worth it.

So I guess that’s pretty much my review of Vista. Everything I ran in Windows XP still runs in Vista. My printer prints fine, all my devices are reconized. Everything I have needed thus far has been Vista compatible. Even for my 64Bit version which requires 64bit drivers for everything.

So I give Vista Ultimate very high marks. I definately feel that it was a worthwhile platform and I hope they continue to support it after Windows 7 releases. I’ve heard Windows 7 is really just a new spin on Vista and not actually a new OS so why not be able to support both? I wonder if that means Windows 7 is going to turn out to be another Windows ME. I guess we’ll see. I’ve hedged my bet.

Decisions and Revisions

Okay, so things didn’t go quite according to plan. However, that doesn’t mean that things didn’t work out well. I’m as happy as a lamb right now. Check this out, here’s the scoop.

I receieved my windfall tax return today as expected. Actually I received my state return yesterday which is when I placed my newegg order. After much plotting and planning and hours of being racked with guilt I decided to scale back my upgrades yet again. This time in an effort to save $250 to put toward our kitchen makeover instead. I had changed the original plan to go from an AMD Phenom to an AMD Kuma (still a dual core). On top of that I had planned to pick up a 22″ widescreen monitor. I’ve been eyeballing those for acouple years now and I had even found one with great specs and esthetic appeal for only $150.

So in an effort to appease my wife and to ensure that our kitchen gets pulled into modern times from the 1950’s, I decided to remove those last two things from my order. Instead I just went with the Saphire Toxic X4870 1GB and Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit. I have to say I have not yet been disappointed in the slightest. I haven’t really had time to do a lot with my new video card but I can  already say this about it. It’s a freaking monster. Physically and by specs. I can’t wait to load up some games and start putting it to good use.

So I’ve spent the last several hours doing what I hate most with my computer. Wiping it out, installing, and starting over from scratch. Though I have to say, this time it’s been kind of fun. I was really nervous making the jump into Vista based on my previous experience with a pirated copy. Knock on wood, I have not had a single solitary issue. The experience I’ve had tonight has been phenominal. I am falling hard for this new (to me) OS. Especially now that I’ve been to a seminar and have been shown some of it’s wonderful features, I am already at home with it for the most part. And you have to admit, if you’ve ever seen it, the Aero program browser is just cool as all hell.

I’m still fine tuning my installation. There is not a whole lot left for me to tweak but as usual I am finding things as I explore deeper into it’s functionality and features. Perhaps if I have time between all the home improvement shopping and actual doing of, I’ll write up a review of sorts. So far if I had to rate it based on my current experience I’d give it 5 stars. I don’t know if my past experience was based on a poor quality hacked copy, lack of decent hardware to run it on, or a pre service pack 1 install, but at this point it’s been nothing but smooth sailing and an easy transition.

As for my processor and monitor upgrades, those will have to wait. I may have some more money coming availible to me later on and hopefully by then the deals will get sweeter and sweeter. For my total cost of these upgrades I spent $462 shipped. To be fair, I paid $30 for overnight shipping. The final cost of my video card was a mere $250 marked down from $270. Windows OS’s almost never come down in price so I was stuck paying $180 for that. Not an ounce of regret for any of it.

Revisions to the Plan… I’m going badass style!

I’ve made a few changes to my plan. As previously posted I was looking at the AMD Phenom 9950 @ 2.6GHz, 4GB of additional ram, and an Sapphire X4870 1GB. I’m not deviating too far from the plan, but now I am picking up the following for only a few dollars more.

Sapphire’s TOXIC ATI Radeon X4870 1GB.

This card is about $30 more than the stock X4870 but from what I read it completely out performs it. It comes factory overclocked with upgraded cooling. Not only does it out perform the stock card, but it also runs quieter and cooler. It’s too hard for me to resist the temptation of going badass on my video card for only such a small price increase.

 

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition @ 3.0GHz.

Again, going for the badass approach for not adding a whole lot of money to the equation, I have selected the Phenom II 940 over the Phenom 9950. The price was significantly more but it’s hard to shake off the speed gain from my stock 2.6 GHz of my X2 and the added bonus of the 6MB of L3 cache. I really want my system to fly so why not get the best processor AMD offers to accomplish that.

So to keep things in line costwise, I have decided to hold off on my ram expansion. 4GB is plenty to run Vista on and there probably wouldn’t be a whole lot of benefit to jumping up to 8GB. I’d rather get the best of the best then settle on less especially for the sake of superficially upgrading my ram. The only thing that hasn’t changed in my purchasing decisions is that I still intend to pick up Windows Vista Ultimate 64Bit Edition.

PS… I’m F@cking Matt Damon!

Just wanted to throw that one out there. I love that video and Jimmy Kimmel’s response. I know that’s old news but I just saw Disaster Movie last night and it brought it out for me.

Upgrades Ahoy!

So here’s the deal. This year I am expecting somewhat of a windfall tax return. Obviously you can never count on these things until they happen but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan them out right? So with a small (or large depending on your perspective such as my wife’s) chunk of that money I am planning on finally finishing my so called masterpiece build. Sure my rig is always a work in progress but with these upgrades I will finally reach the culmination of years of planning and preparatory upgrades.

So as you may or may not have read prior, last summer I started off with some budget upgrades. One of those budget upgrades was a socket AM2+ motherboard. I’ve had my sights set on a quad core AMD Phenom processor since they debuted. I am glad I didn’t get one then as they have improved remarkably since. However, with that being the endgame I made sure that my budget motherboard would be capable. That is why I selected a motherboard with the AMD 780G chip set. To my delight I just learned today that this board will also support the brand new Phenom 2 processors running on the 45nm architecture. However due to even future budgetary constraints I had to shy away from such.

Without further ado, on with the geek porn…

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103273

 

This is the processor I have selected. I would much rather have the Phenom II 920 or 940 but for the price break and the fact that this runs at the same physical speeds I have settled for this beast. Also this is a coveted Black Edition making for some serious overclocking potential. If I can get it up to 2.9GHz as I have my X2 5000+ at (stock is 2.6GHz) I will be incredibly pleased. If not, oh well, I’m still gaining two additional cores out of the deal.

 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801

 

This is the video card I have selected. Sorry for the crappy picture quality. I am swiping my pictures from http://www.newegg.comand I am forced to deal with the image sizes they provide. This is Sapphire’s ATI Radeon X4870 1GB. I have selected this card because bar only the X2 model of this card, this is ATI’s pinnacle achievement. Granted there are some better cards by NVIDIA out there, not for this price. I was debating between this and the 512MB model but I figured video is where I need the most so that’s why I chose to skimp on my processor and save $75 there instead of shaving $40 off my video card selection. I’m saving more money this way and putting the power where I really need it.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184

This is a Corsair XMS DDR2 PC6400 (DDR2 800MHz) Dual Channel Kit. I am currently running one of these. The addition of this kit will bring me to a whopping 8GB of Ram. I know that seems a little extreme but that’s the point really. It goes hand in hand with the next item I am adding to this list. You can never have too much ram right? Well, at-least not if you’re running a true 64bit OS. Which I am currently and will be in the future when I add this as well.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116493

 

No, I am not shy about my love for Microsoft operating systems or their productivity software. I think there is a good reason that Microsoft is such an industry giant. They make good shit. With a Quad Core Processor, 8GB of Ram, and an ATI X4870, I think it will be high time that I be able to take advantage of all that with Direct X 10 which you can only get by having Windows Vista. With the 64bit edition I will have no trouble with my 8GB of ram. Also I expect to find a 10% performance increase in my games by switching to DX10 alone, aside from the vast improvements in my hardware.

As I said, I’ve been preparing to make this jump for a long time. This summer I got my Socket AM2+ Main-board and my first 4GB of DDR2 ram. On black Friday I picked up a sweet deal on a Rosewill 600watt power supply for a mere $30. All of this in preparation of the events that are supposed to transpire next month to net me the cash to build on. No this will not be my final upgrade ever, however it will mark a victory milestone for me in my beloved hobby of computer building. It will also mark the beginning for a new era for me in PC Gaming performance. Here’s to hoping everything comes through for me.

What is the internet for?

Have you seen that Youtube video “The Internet is for pr()n“? It’s actually a fairly funny and entertaining video if you like World of Warcraft as that’s how it was created. I only mention that in passing as it’s sort of the lead up to this topic. I’m starting to think that the WoW charactors are right. The internet does seem to be for Porn lately. Well, porn and cheap sex hookups.

Even Myspace and Facebook are littered with raunchy date site ads. “Meet Sexy Singles in your area” with a picture of some uncommonly beautiful girl who is supposedly single and living in your town. For one, and this is besides the point, those ads and the pictures in them always lie. Secondly, those ads are everywhere. If I wanted to see half naked women all the time I’d go to porn sites all the time. I’m a married man. The last thing I want is to be bombarded with sultry ads for loose women in my town.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a very liberal person. I don’t mind it here and there but as I become more and more saturated with it, it becomes more and more disgusting to me. I just think it’s go too far. 4 out of every 5 websites are already porn sites, now it’s going to be 3 out of 5 are porn and 1 out of 5 are sleazy dating sites. Seriously, how many of them can there be and how much money could they possibly have for advertising? Whatever happened to having to search that stuff out. Now all you have to do is go to any webpage and bam, there it is. Enough already.

So that’s my rant for the time being. I know it all comes down to advertising dollars and those that put up those dollars get posted to the ad bars. I just wish some of these more mainstream sites would have more of a social filter on some of this garbage. God forbid anyone turned down advertising dollars. I’d give a billion Kudos to anyone that did.

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.