By Cyrris , 28th October 1:30 pm
I have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 lately, and it’s been fun. Despite being based on the same engine as Half-Life 2 and CS:Source (which my PC runs flawlessly), TF2 has been pushing my computer over the edge, with low framerates during the more intense firefights. On top of this, the performance of the Unreal Tournament 3 demo and the Crysis singleplayer demo has made it all rather obvious: my PC can’t hack it anymore.
On the one hand, I am loathe to spend so much on what will now only be used on a handful of games - unlike before, I now tend to just stick to a few treasured series. It will also be less of an upgrade and more of a… complete replacement. Most of the technologies inside my current box (AMD Socket 939, DDR memory, AGP graphics) are all well and truly out of date, and aren’t going to catch up to the demands of modern games with a simple component upgrade here and there. I’ve never had to buy a whole new box up straight before.
» Read all of “It’s Getting to That Time Again“…
By Cyrris , 6th October 5:26 pm
Today I bit the bullet and went out to buy a new mouse. My Logitech MX500 has served me well over the last 4 years or so, but it was in a terrible state of disrepair. I wasn’t too concerned about the paint chipping off the logo, but having one of the slick pads constantly dislodging itself underneath was starting to drive me nuts. On top of that, I had to open the mouse up to stuff some paper under the left mouse button to make it contact with the clicker more solidly, as it had started to miss clicks. Then the scroll wheel started to feel wierd.
So, my goal for a new mouse was basically to find something as close to the MX500 as possible. The shape and weight of it were perfect for me, and I am not one to like changes to my computing habits, so similarity was a must. Thankfully, Logitech provides exactly that in the latest revision of it’s G5 mouse. As you can see, it’s the same shape and features mostly the same buttons as it’s predecessor:
On top of being very similar to an already excellent mouse, the G5 has some bonuses. Changable weights (which of course I used to get the exact same weight as the MX500), side-tilts on the scroll wheel, a fabric cord, much better grip texture, and the laser engine features a 3-tier DPI precision selector. The pads on the bottom are also much larger, less prone to coming off, and much, much slicker. Given how much I use it, the $AU 66 seems like a worthwhile investment, even if most of its extra features are completely superfluous.
By Vermouth , 19th August 7:01 pm
I recently made the move from Windows XP to Vista. I know, I know what you’re thinking - why? Well, truth be told, I was buying a new PC. It was primarily for gaming, but it just did not make any sense to buy a machine with XP on it, only to face the possibility that at some point in the future I will want a game that is for Vista only. It’s true that DX10 is Vista only, but because of budget considerations and poor midrange DX10 cards options, that didn’t really factor into my decision. All that being said the experience with Vista has had it’s ups and downs much like any OS. Vista was launched a bit before its time with plenty of annoying bugs and compatibility issues that needed to be ironed out. While there have been many updates, the system is still sorely in need of a service pack before this OS will be something I could whole-heartedly recommend. If you’re buying a new machine this still makes sense but if you’ve got a working XP box there is no real reason to rush out to upgrade your machine.
» Read all of “Windows Vista: A Gamer’s Perspective“…
By Head881 , 8th July 12:01 am
By now I’m sure most of the interested parties have heard, but for those of you who haven’t; Evil Avatar is reporting via GameDaily.BIZ that Sony is going to be slashing $100 US from the price of the PlayStation 3. Taking the much maligned price from $600 to a somewhat less absurd $500. No, I don’t want to hear about what a great deal it is for a Blu-Ray Player. I don’t care about Blu-Ray or the format war it and HD-DVD have started.
This was going to be an article questioning the readers as to whether or not the price drop would affect their perceptions of the PS3 and whether or not you were willing to run out and buy one when the price did indeed drop. However, Sony can’t buy, steal, or cajole good publicity these days and promptly denied they had such plans.
» Read all of “Course Correction? Maybe“…
By Cyrris , 29th June 1:25 am
Not too long ago, Nvidia released their GeForce 8800 series of graphics cards, and ushered in a new level of pixel pushing performance. As has become the norm, the flagship 8800 GTX offered performance almost double that of it’s predecessor. Just the other week, ATI released their latest high-end Radeon and it too shows impressive performance well ahead of anything they have previously released. Now, I have never been one to spend copious amounts of money on any single piece of computer hardware, so to be honest I am not usually too interested in the exact performance of these pricey monstrosities.
When shopping for a graphics card to get my game on, I take one of two routes. Typically, I will get a high-end model from the previous generation. I bought a GeForce 2 Ti when the GeForce 3 came out, and a GeForce 6800 when the 7800 was released. The second route is to just get a mid-range card from the current generation, such as when I got my Radeon 9600. In each case, the cards were easily capable of handling every game out at the time on reasonably high detail levels, with a bit of longevity assured. So the key issue for me is to see which of those routes to take, and usually it’s not too hard an option. However, after viewing the recently released benchmarks of the latest mid-range cards from Nvidia and ATI, it’s become a lot less simple. That’s because neither company has been bothered to release anything worthwhile.
» Read all of “Mid-range Cop-out“…
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