Can I borrow a couple hundred bucks?
by AC - permalink
My new T6425 can multitask the shit out of just about anything I throw at it. New apps open almost before the Start menu can hide itself. Windowed DVD playback is seamless no matter what I'm doing in the foreground. Older games like Medal of Honor and Ghost Recon run fast and smooth even maxed out. But goddamn do I need to upgrade.
First, the audio. The onboard 6.1 capable sound generates random, sparse pops no matter what it's doing. MP3 playback, game audio, movies, whatever. I can't make it stop, and it sucks. Second, newer games like Doom 3 that are designed for an independant GPU don't run well at all. Even Call of Duty is giving me problems, and I just don't get it. Given nearly identical graphics settings, Half-Life 2's Source engine runs way smoother and faster than Call of Duty's modified Quake III engine. I don't understand this because Medal of Honor and Quake III blaze right along on this system.
I knew going in that I'd need to add a new PCI-Express vidcard to this system, but I didn't think the onboard ATI Xpress 200 would need this much help this soon, especially with a Gig of system RAM and an AMD64 3500+ to work with. The only question now is how far to go. I'm thinking that I'll wait one more paycheck, then take a ton of cash to Best Buy and just buy the best I can afford. Picking and choosing the right card is just too fucking inconvenient these days. If you pinpoint what you want, you end up having to find a distributor that actually has one in stock, then have it shipped to you, if they ship at all.
Backtracking to Half-Life 2 for a moment, it turns out turning texture detail back to max creates almost no obvious framerate hit, which was just stunning to me. The Source engine would be my favorite ever if it didn't mandate constant downloads to play even single-player games offline. I've been trying to play Counter-Strike: Source, but after two hours of downloading I've gone from 91% updated to 92%, and of course I still can't even play the goddamn game. Thanks, Valve.
by AC - permalink
My new T6425 can multitask the shit out of just about anything I throw at it. New apps open almost before the Start menu can hide itself. Windowed DVD playback is seamless no matter what I'm doing in the foreground. Older games like Medal of Honor and Ghost Recon run fast and smooth even maxed out. But goddamn do I need to upgrade.
First, the audio. The onboard 6.1 capable sound generates random, sparse pops no matter what it's doing. MP3 playback, game audio, movies, whatever. I can't make it stop, and it sucks. Second, newer games like Doom 3 that are designed for an independant GPU don't run well at all. Even Call of Duty is giving me problems, and I just don't get it. Given nearly identical graphics settings, Half-Life 2's Source engine runs way smoother and faster than Call of Duty's modified Quake III engine. I don't understand this because Medal of Honor and Quake III blaze right along on this system.
I knew going in that I'd need to add a new PCI-Express vidcard to this system, but I didn't think the onboard ATI Xpress 200 would need this much help this soon, especially with a Gig of system RAM and an AMD64 3500+ to work with. The only question now is how far to go. I'm thinking that I'll wait one more paycheck, then take a ton of cash to Best Buy and just buy the best I can afford. Picking and choosing the right card is just too fucking inconvenient these days. If you pinpoint what you want, you end up having to find a distributor that actually has one in stock, then have it shipped to you, if they ship at all.
Backtracking to Half-Life 2 for a moment, it turns out turning texture detail back to max creates almost no obvious framerate hit, which was just stunning to me. The Source engine would be my favorite ever if it didn't mandate constant downloads to play even single-player games offline. I've been trying to play Counter-Strike: Source, but after two hours of downloading I've gone from 91% updated to 92%, and of course I still can't even play the goddamn game. Thanks, Valve.
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