Category: Tech

Tech

Another PC Upgrade

I upgraded my PC again to be ready for Armored Kill and Planetside 2. Granted I could already run those games pretty well. I just don’t want any slowdown in even the biggest battles, and with Planetside 2 that can be pretty large (hundreds of players). I replaced the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and Power Supply. I also got rid of my old DVD drive to get one that uses a SATA interface to improve cable management. My specs now are as follows:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 w/ two Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition High Static Pressure 120mm Fans in a push-pull configuration
Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance
Primary Hard Drive: 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD
Other Drives: Over 3TB of storage across 3 HDD
Optical Drive: Lite-On Super AllWrite 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
Monitor: Asus VG236H 120Hz 3D Monitor
Speakers/Headphones: Corsair Vengeance 2000 Wireless 7.1 Gaming Headset & Logitech X-540 5.1 Speakers
Keyboard: Logitech G15
Mouse: Logitech G500
Mouse Surface: Razer eXactMat
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
Computer Case: Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Power Supply: Corsair HX Series HX750

Tech

I miss 3dfx Interactive

I was digging around my closet looking for old junk to throw out and I came across some old PC hardware. This Voodoo3 3,000 was my very first graphics card. It brings back a lot of great memories of late 90s PC Gaming. It was an age of great innovation, with a lot more competition in the graphics card industry.

I remember buying Aliens vs Predator and being shocked that I had to then buy something called a “graphics accelerator” to get it working. Once I got this card installed, I knew I would be a PC gamer for life. AvP looked and ran amazing, and Starsiege: Tribes stopped looking grainy and gained colored lighting. This is the card that I first experienced Half-Life, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and System Shock 2 on. It was a great card for what it was. Looking back, its only downfall was that it didn’t support 32-bit color. I didn’t mind it at the time though, since I had no idea what I was missing out on.

3dfx managed to stick around until October 2002 when it filed for bankruptcy. Much of its intellectual assets and many employees were acquired by Nvidia. A majority of the 3dfx engineering and design team working on “Rampage” (the successor to the Voodoo4 line) that remained with the transition worked on what became the GeForce FX series.

Tech

New Monitor and PC Fans

So I decided to do a little upgrading on my PC again. The first thing I did was swap out some stock cooling fans on my radiator and go with a pair of Corsair Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition High Static Pressure 120MM Fans. These fans are designed to be used with radiators, and actually keep my temps cooler while making a lot less noise. I am very happy with them so far.

The second upgrade was a new monitor. I went from an old Acer AL2216W to a Asus VG236H 23″ 2ms 1920×1080 Full HD 3D LCD Display. The 3D is pretty cool, but I am more excited about the fact it is 120Hz. It might not sounds like much, but it makes a pretty big difference.

Tech Video

Microsoft Surface Revealed

Microsoft showed off their surface tablet PC yesterday, and it has everyone talking. I have never really been a fan of tablets in general because they feel limited to me, but this is pretty different. It is basically a Windows PC in a tablet form factor, so it runs all of your normal Windows apps. It also has all of the connectivity people have come to expect with a laptop, such as USB, HDMI, and Display Port. It also has one of the most ingeniously designed “cases” of any tablet with a built in kickstand and a detachable cover that doubles as a full multi-touch keyboard and touchpad. There are two versions of the tablet, one that runs on an Nvidia ARM processor, and one that runs on an Intel i5 processor. The i5 version of the table is called the Surface Pro, and I could see it replacing my laptop easily.

Check out the video below to view the full announcement and demonstration Microsoft gave yesterday. If you want to skip to the good stuff, Surface makes its appearance at around the 9 minute and 30 second mark. If it lives up to the presentation, it might just be better then the iPad.