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September 5th, 2009
02:17 pm - Back in the boondocks...
And pissed that my new GPU won't arrive until Tuesday. And that I can't play STALKER right now. And that I am too lazy at the moment to do anything constructive.
Oh yeah... I recently went back through my posts and saw that I had let the world know that I bought WoW. Just so all of you know, I do indeed own it, but still haven't installed it fully because of the patch issue. It is simply too much time to sit at a computer waiting for a program to install. And I can't just get it rolling over night, because I have to initialize the individual patch downloads...
I will get around to playing it eventually (I friggin bought it), but for now, I extend a very sincere "get your shit together" to Blizzard. Sure, millions of people are playing it already, so I guess they don't have much to worry about. BUT, if I had known how long and grueling the patch process was, I would never have bought it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Current Music: Translating the Name
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August 16th, 2009
02:03 pm - 'Oh, Hello'
I just moved back up to school and am bracing for impact. It is mere hours before this train starts moving, and my anxiety builds. I will get into the swing of it eventually, but this semester is going to be a bit different than my last two.
First, I am living in an on campus apartment, which is awesome, because it means I get my own room, no more community showers, and a full kitchen (!!!). So yeah, I'm totally stoked about that.
Second, I am taking more than 12 hrs. 14 to be exact. And they are all very intense classes. Calc, Physics, Logic, and Data Structures.. :/. Hopefully I can pull it out.
Third, I just can't stop listening to the stuff that Anthony Green does... He is a musical genius in my opinion.
Here is a song in particular that I just can't stop listening. That is Saosin, in their glory days, before they lost three members (one of whom was Anthony himself) and sold out to a studio. They aren't bad, just not at all like they were, which if you have heard any of the new stuff, you know what I mean.
Anthony went on to create Circa Survive with some old friends of his in Philadelphia. They are beyond exceptional. He also partook in a three album experimental side project with Rich Balling called "The Sound of Animals Fighting." I am just cracking the lid on that one and so far so good. He has a single solo album, which was released in '08 but I am yet to acquire it.
So, enjoy that song, and look forward to more regular posts as structure forces it's way back into my life.
Current Location: Georgia Tech
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/shock.gif) anxious
Current Music: The Sound of Animals Fighting - I, the Swan
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June 23rd, 2009
05:36 pm - Developers Take Note
Well, today I received mt 9800 GX2 back from EVGA for the second time, and in response to that I have been spending several hours on my beloved PC playing some of the old favorites. First Call Of Duty 4 (the game in which my card throttled before I sent in), CS: Source, and then (cause my weird bones are chiming today) I played the Zeno Clash demo.
Okay, this game is freaking weird, and it kind of intrigues me for that reason. Just to have the chance to see and interact with some mind-blowing-ly weird/fucked up stuff is a rare opportunity, so I hit up isohunt to see if there is a working torrent for it. I see this: ttp://isohunt.com/torrent_details/77570805/zeno+clash?tab=comments.
If you skip down the page a bit, you can see a comment by "abordeu," in real life Carlos Bordeu, one of Zeno Clash's Chilean developers. After reading his apologetic and sincere comment, I was pretty shocked and almost moved enough to purchase his game. I would have, if I was currently employed... And it seems I am not the only one. The entire board is there-on-out filled with comments complying to Mr. Bordeu's wishes.
You see, publishers? You see, developers? Instead of considering your audience a bunch of cyber criminals who are bent on never paying a cent for digital intellectual property, maybe you should treat them like people who just don't want to spend fifty bucks for a game they can only install 3 times, that they don't legally own even after paying for it. Or fifty bucks for a game that should only cost twenty. It turns out that it is the publishers who are mindlessly grubbing for money, using someone else's intellectual effort to make themselves stinking rich, and they make the paying customer deal with it when they get pissed that some clever hackers have broken their best DRM. They respond by making DRMs that give less and less license to the paying customer, decreasing the number of paying customers. Sure, it takes an extra 24 hrs to get cracked, but after that, all you are doing is pissing off people that would have given you money.
Anyway, I proudly declare that I did not torrent Zeno Clash today. I would like to buy it, if the universe ever decides to let me have a job again.
Current Music: The Crystal Method
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01:51 pm - ...
I honestly have found that motivating myself to write really interesting posts on here is definitely not going to happen for a while, so how about this for a topic:
There is a scratch on my 22" LCD monitor.
And it SUCKS! It is on the bottom left corner of the screen, right next to Vista's start button. In that position, it kind of looks like a line on the edge of the quick-launch icons... But alas! it is not.
That's all for today.
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May 23rd, 2009
08:31 pm - WOW is right...
I have broken... In the recently dreary world that is PC gaming, I have entered into the bittersweet shadow of the World of Warcraft.
Before you even say it... Shut up. Don't even go there. It really isn't anyone's business but my own what I play. I have had quite enough crap thrown at me already over this. It isn't my fault that there aren't any good looking PC games on the horizon. I am just dealing in my own way.
Well, I started with the ten day trial, which showed me how the game CAN be fun, and interested me enough to buy it. So I did... About a week ago. I am currently downloading the SIXTH patch for the game, on one of two systems on which I plan to install it... WTF?!? Really Blizzard? That's unbelievable. I have looked and looked, there is no condensed full patch. You have to apply patch after patch, a few of which are upwards of 500 mb.
This is ridiculous...
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January 22nd, 2009
04:33 pm - JAPPLETS!
I know, I know. The Windows 7 article I said would have posted by last weekend is not here! For this I apologize. Know that I am working on it, and will have it up soon.
This week has been a crazy one with school. First test down, as well as first Proofs homework (which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me). Thank God this week is almost over.
I have come to the conclusion that Tech students live for the weekend. During the week, we dream about the weekend: imagining its glory, salivating at its prospect, and making constant plans at its expense. Then the weekend comes, and it's over far too quickly. Then we start Monday, frustrated at the fact that the weekend betrayed us in its shortness, while, at the same time, we start to crave the wonders of the next weekend.
Maybe that was a little dramatic.
I thought I had a lot more to say than that... But I guess not.
Well then, I have about 35 pages to read in my Java textbook and two programs to write. So I will talk to you soon.
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January 14th, 2009
10:24 am - Alternate Realities and the Madness They Contain
My use of Windows 7 has been very limited as I have not spent a huge amount of time in my dorm. When I am at my computer, I am using Vista 64 because all of my music is neatly arranged on that partition of my drive, which, interestingly enough, cannot be accessed by Windows 7 for some reason. Vista can prod at 7 all day long, but 7 is blind to its predecessor. Interesting metaphor there, Microsoft, making 7 unable to read a Vista drive, in a sense rejecting the mistakes of the past. Or maybe not. Maybe you just did something retarded and for some dumb reason I can't access my stuff. Yeah... That's probably it.
Good news is, after tonight, I will not be needing to use any of the apps that I regularly do in Vista, so it will be 7 all the way to the weekend. If anyone is reading this, and for some reason doesn't want to take the time to use it themselves (*cough* Brit *cough*), just write up a list of specific programs you want me to try. I have 96 gigs to put stuff on, so give me what you got. I will attempt to hit pretty much everything I use on a regular basis, and some stuff I don't that are meant to be improvements, like the IE 8 Beta 2. I should still be able to churn out the evaluation by the weekend.
In programming news, I am in search of a simple IDE for Java. I have downloaded and installed NetBeans and Eclipse, but haven't really done much with either. A cursory glance leads me to believe that they are pretty complicated programs, meant for some hardcore development. Really, I just want something simple. I mean, really simple, like a text editor and a command prompt. I am used to using the package that comes with Python, and I really liked it. It allowed me to simply open an editor and start messing around. With these Java IDEs, I have to customize all these options and start a project and specify class or script or whatever. Can I not just have a box I type some damn code into and see what gets crapped out the other side?
Bioshock has been temporarily placed on the back burner, and center stage has now been occupied by the ever so frightening Silent Hill 3. I have never played a Silent Hill game, and my good friend here at Tech insisted that I play it. It's pretty insane. I have only put in about two hours and I am already on the verge of pissing myself.
It seems that, unlike Dead Space, or Resident Evil, or Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill 3 does not place a large amount of it's scare value in the shock factor. First and foremost, Silent Hill 3 has some of the most messed up looking monsters I have ever seen. It goes beyond claws and glowing red eyes. The creatures in Silent Hill have a very unnatural feel to them. They look stitched together, with pus oozing out of the seams, and they twitch and walk oddly. It just goes against everything the human brain has come to expect from a living thing, and therefore, it reaches the level of macabre. But the sight of the monsters is not what puts the nail in the coffin of the player's confidence, it is the sound. When one enters a room that contains a monstrosity, the soundtrack kicks in. I guess you could call it music, but it's more like the sound of hell itself. Static mixed with industrial sounds, like hammers pounding and gears turning, all played over a sound I can only describe as the foot steps of an evil giant, crushing the earth beneath it. It is one hell of a technique, and it sends my heart rate through the roof. Then throw in other random sounds, like dogs yelping and growling, and voices mumbling, along with the sight of the monsters themselves... Yeah, it gets pretty bad.
I hope to supply you with a full review-ish type entry when I complete it, if I don't die of sudden bowel evacuation first.
Current Location: Student Services Building
Current Music: Tell Them That She's Not Scared - Envy On the Coast
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January 12th, 2009
02:31 pm - Well... hello!
Geez, it has been too long. When I started this whole blog thing I really didn't want it to be something I post on once or twice and then forget forever, so I'm back to raise it from the dead. Not that it really matters, no one reads it anyway.
My second semester at Georgia Tech has just started and I am trying my best to turn a new leaf. My grades from fall ended up better than I could have hoped for, but I scraped by in a few too many courses. I will be the first to tell you that the reason for that (or, at least a good percentage of the reasons) is that I am kind of a lazy ass. Procrastination is my middle name, "sleeping late" is my creed, and skipping-class-to-do-pointless-shit-on-my-computer is my favorite word (do ya see how I kinda made it a word? Do ya?!?). But I am hoping to move that in the other direction this semester.
Now that the beast known as Calculus 1 has been slain (with quite a few injuries on the part of yours truly), I have moved up with the big boys to Calc 2. My professor, believe it or freaking not, is NOT Russian! He is an American PhD student and he seems to have some inkling of a soul. I have yet to take a test, and that will certainly be the clincher, but so far things haven't been too bad. While I certainly hope it is not the case, it is possible we are just doing elementary stuff. It also could be that I am actually giving it some effort this time around, rather than staring at a page and wanting to shoot myself. Perhaps that is the lesson I learned last semester: that a little effort can go a long way. Seriously, it got me a C in Calc 1, a feat that could easily be compared to flying to the moon using nothing but a gum wrapper, a spoon, and a bottle of laxatives. Try an IMAGINE a way of doing that with those materials, and you MIGHT approach experiencing the frustration I experienced with Calc last semester.
In today's personal gaming news, I suppose I should tell you that I did end up acquiring a copy of Dead Space for PC. Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable experience. I must note the story and art direction, as they are definitely the highlights of the game. If you didn't think this already, "Resident Evil 4 in space" is a good way to describe Dead Space to someone who hasn't played it yet. It has the same over-the-shoulder perspective and a similar weapon upgrade system. The enemies are pretty freaky (a result of that excellent art) and share that previously-thinking-human-being-to-hive-minded-mutated-monstrosity motif that Resident Evil founded. While the story really drives the experience, Dead Space fails in some areas due to the same follies that ail every other survival horror game. The game relies on the shock-factor for its scares. Eventually, as a thinking human being and not some instinct driven animal, one can tell immediately whether a new area will produce an ambush through a combination of several factors: lighting, vent locations, music, room size, room geometry, room geography, time passed since last ambush, the player's current task, etc. Sure this occasionally fails, which is nice when it does, but that is very rare. I found myself sprinting through this giant "planet cracker" filled with previously-human mutants with a stone face and an unbreakable will. Attacks would be expected, and beaten off with ease. This would be immensely disappointing if the story sucked, but joy! it does not. If anything, it will be what drives you to finish the game long after the scares and adventuring grow tired.
Currently, I am replaying Bioshock. Doing so has reminded me of how great of a game it is and how much better games are on the PC. When I complete that, I hope to tackle Fallout 3 with a whole heart.
On a software note, I have started running the Windows 7 Beta just yesterday. I am already thoroughly impressed and can tell that Microsoft is really trying to make an effort on this one. I intend to use it primarily this whole week and write a thoughts article this weekend.
Alright, I'm in class and wasted half of it writing this. Focus time.
Current Location: Health Class
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/tired.gif) sleepy
Current Music: A Perfect Lie (G&D Mix) - The Engine Room
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November 22nd, 2008
09:33 pm - Edumacation
A hard lesson we all must learn... but obviously some need to learn it more than others.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) jubilant
Current Music: Deftones - Change (In The House Of Flies) Acoustic
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October 20th, 2008
04:05 pm - Watchmen + Max Payne Thoughts + Video Games
It's been a while, huh?
Well, I have recently finished the world's most esteemed graphic novel. I am, of course, referring to Alan Moore's Watchmen.
Initially, I was reading it in PDF form. I wasn't enjoying it that much. I felt a little disconnected, being thrown into this universe I didn't know or care too much about. Also, PDFs are a generally unwieldy way to read an extended work, and my annoyance with that distanced me from it further. So, after covering about 100 or so pages that way, I gave up for a bit. However, when one of my best friends bought it off Amazon for a great price, my subconscious interest readmitted itself, so I bought it as well.
At first, I was stuck in the rut I was in when I put it down. Wasn't familiar, didn't care, impersonal characters and all that. So I forced myself to read it, because I paid money for it. And then, my labor started to pay off. I don't know exactly when, but things just got good. Enough was revealed for me to realize what the hell was going on and why I should care about it. And from that point on, it only got better. I will say that the ending is beyond mind-blowing. The climax isn't a point, but a series of them, and then you turn the last page. It proved effective in leaving me in a state of shock for a couple days. It was epic, worth reading...
And I can't wait for the film. I had a friend who was trying to get me to read it, but the impending film was my main motivation. In my enthusiastic impatience, I have been doing a bit of reading about Alan Moore and some investigation into his other works. As most probably know, he is the author of "V for Vendetta," which was adapted to film recently. What most people don't know, is that Alan Moore hates Hollywood and does not like Vendetta at all. Apparently, Moore is pretty exclusive in the thought that his works were written as comics and graphic novels. In his mind, that's all they were made for, all they are, and all they ever need to be. I am sure he would not feel this way if Hollywood would pay any sort of respect to source material. You can read the Watchmen film Wikipedia page for proof of how frustrations like that can develop.
Knowing this, the bad news is he feels the same way about Watchmen. There is, however good news. Word from the set suggests that this current try at adapting the novel is pretty faithful, or at least as faithful as "300." I never read the comic, only saw the film, but from what I hear, it was pretty accurate. One thing I am going to extend a boo in Moore's direction for is his judgment of Zack Snyder, the director, for his production of "300" saying it was "racist, homophobic, and sublimely stupid." He admits that he hasn't seen it, only heard these things, and he still criticizes Snyder by them. A little ignorant for a self-important, "enlightened" graphic novel author, are we?
Anyway, after finishing "Watchmen," I read up on Moore's other work, and saw that he wrote "The Killing Joke," which was Heath Ledger's primary influence when he was constructing the personality for "The Dark Knight"'s Joker. It's also on Amazon, in hardback and blazing cheap, so I ordered that, should be here in a couple days.
Speaking of adaptations, and the problems many of them have, I saw "Max Payne" this past weekend. All I could say as I was walking out the theatre was... Well, let's just say I shouldn't repeat it. I was a HUGE fan of the games, played them both through at least twice, and always considered their dark stories their chief appeal. I really wanted an adaptation (for some reason, if some form of fictional media is awesome, I always want a movie, as if film is the epitome of entertainment and expression. It's odd, because I never say, "I want a 'Wall-E' book." That would be RIDICULOUS, right?) and I thought if it was faithful, it would be awesome.
"Max Payne" is the opposite of faithful. It's as faithful as a married hooker. It's as faithful as a full-blown atheist. And in addition to that, it's a bad movie in general. Like terrible. It's one of those movies that you wouldn't be able to say "what the HELL?!?" in unless you were incapable of coherent thought.
Moving on. Today, I just finished the campaign in "Crysis: Warhead." My initial reaction: it's pretty cool -- I mean, shoot, it's still Crysis -- but it was pretty weak when compared to the game it's expanding. Crysis and it's awesomeness can be defined by the segment in the alien ship and the following tropical blizzard. Warhead doesn't really have moments like that. I also think having a main character that you only take control of, rather than distinctly becoming, seriously detracts from the experience. Not to mention the fact that Crytek does NOT know how to make effective, engaging cut-scenes. They are way too drawn out (anime comes to mind). Seeing the world entirely from the character's eyes -- essentially becoming that character -- is one of the best experiences a first-person shooter can offer. I honestly think that's why Half-Life and it's sequels are so awesome, and positively influential. In some games, like in the case of the "Master Chief," having an identifiable character works. Unfortunately, in Warhead, it does not.
"World of Goo," a puzzle game available on Steam, is one of the best things I have played in a long time. The demo is free and quite substantial, so go and check it out -- ASAFP!!!
"Dead Space" is finally out for PC and no one has reviewed it. I fear I may have to wait for a month or something retarded like that while the critics cater to console gamers, flooding the Dead Space profile sites with information and goodies pertinent to people's respective systems.
"Duke Nukem 3D" has been released on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I grew up with that game, and I will not lie, the prospect of playing it again is rather tempting. It's 800 Microsoft 'Points' (who is giving MS all these points they are selling to people? I don't know, but definitely not me, or anyone I know for that matter. NO POINTS for Microsoft), which is about $10. Notice that I don't know exactly how much money 800pts is worth? It's because MS sells the points in flat 100pt, 500pt, 1000pt, etc. amounts and then sells shit for weird amounts like 400pts, or 800pts, or something even more ridiculous like 327pts. Just another example of why MS should go suck a nut and stop being idiotic. Anyway, I may buy that, particularly because it has an awesome online co-op mode. I am on the edge right now, and I think what would really push me over is the knowledge of a real online community for it. I bought "MARATHON: Durandal," which was really awesome, but I don't even touch it anymore. I am sure if finding an online game wasn't impossible, it might not have been so short-lived. I hope that isn't the case with Duke 3D.
Yeah, my fingers are tired. Peace
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September 26th, 2008
11:12 am - ?Anonymous?
The internet is such an interesting animal. And I do mean animal. It has a life of its own, and it does whatever it wants. Memes, websites, videos, just weird stuff, etc. Anyone, anywhere can be somebody on the internet. Youtube has given people that power... blogs have given people that power... networking sites and forums give people that power.
And the thing I find most interesting about this virtual world most of us now live in is the kind of people you meet, or see, or read about. Is it just me, or is every one blown away daily by a teenager's writing skills he exhibits in his blog? Or some random person's knack for taking images that are generally not funny, slapping a grammatically incorrect, misspelled caption on to it and making it hilarious? I see things like this and I can't help but note how much hope we have as a species. Of course, such things would not seem so monumental to me if there was not a multitude of idiots jacked into the inter-webs as well; The people that can't communicate coherently, but also feel like their opinion matters. And these people have opinions about EVERYTHING. I could go on for days about how these people piss me off, so let me recover this digression before it gets any worse.
Why am I saying all of this? Well, a certain group of people have just recently caught my attention. I am sure many out there have known this for quite some time, but when a friend showed me this, my interest was piqued. Now, if you took the five minutes to watch that I am sure you are doing what I did: Wikipedia-ing the hell out of anything in that video that may return results.
Well, let me end your search right here. The keyword here is 'Anonymous,' the moniker with which the Fawkes-faced vigilante names himself, collectively.
Who is Anonymous? Well, in short, we are. All of us. The users of the internet that are simultaneously its guardians and representatives. The name Anonymous has been used by many of us to rally allies and wage virtual war. In many cases, it seems this has been done to perform something seemingly pointless, and maybe heavy handed, like raids on hip hop sites. But in other cases, some of it has been done to bring that which should be into the light and reinforce our freedoms. I am, of course, speaking of the 'Sarah Palin Email Hack.' I feel that the release of personal photos was not necessary and frankly intrusive on Mrs. Palin's rights, but the exposure of emails that should have been public in the first place was a justice.
What seems to be Anonymous' flagship campaign is also their (our) most properly motivated. The war against Scientology, while started because the 'church' tried to suppress freedom of information in the form of a Tom Cruise interview, has grown into something much more righteous since then. Avenging the death of an innocent, exposing fraudulent practices, and unveiling the general insanity of Scientology have all become goals in this campaign.
I don't know what you might do with this information. Hell, I don't know what I am going to do about all this. Just some food for thought.
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Also, I have been limited to classic gaming as of recent. The video card that I so sensitively reviewed below is the reason for this. So I bought the "Doom Pack" off of Steam, and have been happily blasting demons since.
There are a couple of source ports that I have been using that I find increase the joy of this classic immensely. The first and most important is called ZDoom.
The biggest improvement this makes over vanilla Doom is mouse free-look. The mouse-and-keyboard configuration for first-person-shooters is simply the best control variation the genre has seen on any platform (damn you Microsoft for not letting 360 users plug-and-play a mouse and keyboard... actually, damn you Microsoft for just about everything you do), and being able to play Doom this way is... nothing short of awesome. Enable mouse free-look, throw in a cross hair, and your Doom fun meter will hit the roof. It might even warrant turning the difficulty level up a notch or two, as the player no longer depends on the standard auto-aiming system.
Also, neatly packed in, is the ability to change resolution. Now Doom can actually look sort of good. The only issue is it automatically caps the framerate at a lower level the higher the resolution. My monitor is 1680x1050, and at that resolution, Doom tops out at 35 frames per second.
I am currently using a client called Doom Connector for multiplayer games. Yes, thats right, people STILL PLAY DOOM ONLINE. And for good reason, I'd say. Games are intense and incredibly fast, and Doom Capture the Flag is nothing short of greatness. The only drawback with Doom Connector, or possibly Doom multiplayer in general, is that most servers use the source port Skulltag. It is primarily a multiplayer source port, but from what I can tell, one can play the single-player campaigns using it. It has most of the same features as ZDoom, so I guess that it might even be a better choice. The good news is, with Doom Connector, one doesn't have to start up Skulltag, Doom Connector does it for you. That is to say, if you decide to use ZDoom for single player and Skulltag for multiplayer (or, if you get trapped that way by downloading ZDoom first, like I did), you can just nestle Skulltag in your Doom 'Base' file and leave it be, DC does all the work.
One advantage to using Skulltag over ZDoom is that it has a Linux version. So if you have an old Doom.wad file sitting around, grab Skulltag and start fragging.
Alright, that's just about all I have time for right now. I have about three hours to make a website for my CS class, so I gotta run.
Peace.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) contemplative
Current Music: Zero, The Beginning is the End is the Beginning - Smashing Pumpkins
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September 19th, 2008
01:31 pm - Annoying much? (Man i need to stop putting question marks in my titles).
A couple good things.
First of all, my good friend who I had blogged about earlier is not a total wanker. Good to know. Thought I did, but that probably has more to do with me than with him.
Second of all, my fingers + cold = difficulty typing. Dunno why it's so cold in here.
Third, I have actually come up with a pretty ergonomic desktop structure when working through a coding manual.
Thank you, my good friend, for recommending a third-party host for images!
Replace the browser on the left with a PDF, word doc, etc. And BOOM! Productivity unhindered! Now to just do away with distracting sites on the internet. But that is a key element of my plan for world domination so I can't discuss that now.
Fourth, my roommate is having one of the people I find most annoying on this planet over tonight. His annoyance factor combined with my roommate's already substantial annoyance factor might just cause me to go to jail... for life... for double homicide... cause I would have killed them... violently...
...
Fifth... just kidding, there is no fifth. I must get back to CODING!!!
Peace
Current Music: Creep - Radiohead, The Reaping - Coheed and Cambria, Fall of Troy stuffs
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September 17th, 2008
08:04 pm - A PCI Graphics card... What?!?
Well, after finally building a new rig that destroys anything I throw at it, I have managed to squeeze less than a week's worth of time out of it before something has gone wrong.
The GPU (or GPUs I should say) I am using is the almighty 9800 GX2. This card is a beast, and plays Crysis as well as I have seen it played. However, it seems that my particular card is a hot one. It has hit temps as high as 89C, which is incredibly hot and not healthy for computer hardware. So, when the heat started to cause artifacting, I RMA'd with EVGA and pulled the card out of commission. As a temporary replacement, I received this:
The VisonTek ATI Radeon X1300 running at 400mhz clock and equipped with 256MB VRAM
This rinky little card is a PCI (note the absence of the E there) card that was in one of my friend's unused computers. So, being an adventurous person, I tried out some of the games I had loaded on my computer with this thing and have come to LJ to post the interesting results.
The first game I actually got around to playing with it (that is, for the purpose of testing it) was Far Cry. And actually, I was pretty surprised at its performance. It held steady between 25 and 35 frames just about the whole time. I had the game running with everything on its lowest setting and the resolution set at 1200x800 to accommodate my wide screen display.
Here you can see that it really doesn't look too terrible. Foliage looks pretty good from far away and the gun model is nearly identical to higher setting gun models. Up close, however, you can see the how the plant sprites are very low res and pretty ugly.
I included this shot to show the water quality. Transparency and reflections are totally nonexistent at these settings. I can't imagine the frame rate if they were present, either.
The next challenge I presented the x1300 with is the Source Engine showcase Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. Once again I had everything running at its lowest possible setting, and the resolution at 800x484.
Once again, it was pretty playable. However, the water detail still stayed pretty intense even with everything on low, causing a rather significant frame rate drop when one looks out to sea.
I lost 5 frames just by looking left. And it is much worse when one is close to the water; it drops to about 12-15 frames per second.
Bioshock was next on the chopping block. This one was pretty bad, to tell you the truth. I set the resolution at 800x484, and had every setting as low as possible, except for shaders, which I left on, because Bioshock without shaders would be about as much fun as nausea.
All seems well? Just wait and see...
Bioshock worked the X1300 pretty damn hard. It goes without saying that this card did NOT like it... at all.
Are you crying yet? The water looks like used engine oil and the card still chugs at less than 20 fps.
While the difference isn't that noticeable in the opening two minute plane ride, once the player takes control, it just gets bad.
At least the fire looks okay.
Even when there are no stressful graphical assets to process, the frame rate will never break 22 per second.
Is that a statue, or some sophisticated bronze origami?
So what does Bioshock show us about the X1300? Mediocrity is consistent (what? we're talking about a video card... an old one at that)...
So, for the finale, I thought I would chuckle a little, and give the X1300 to Crysis so it could chew it up and spit it out... and oh did it.
Just for fun, I left all my settings the way they were for the 9800GX2. That is all high, save for the resolution, which I kindly reduced to 800x484. And here is the product.
Looks shockingly good, huh? Note the FPS in the top left corner.
Crysis destroys this X1300. It takes it and kills its entire family and cooks barbecue with their burning plastic bodies. It isn't even FAIR. I have never seen any game be so unplayable. I guess I have never really cared to try. But, c'mon, this card isn't that old. I remember when the x1350 was the top of the line. Crysis was on the horizon at that point, I believe. Well, don't trust me, I could be wrong.
So I decided to be nice and lower all the settings.
Looks familiar, no?
Lowering the settings doesn't really help that much. The frames double, which means we are still in the less than 10 fps range. But now, Crysis takes on a very Far-Cry-ish look. There is twice the foliage, but it looks the same from a distance, and the water and sky also look very similar to Far Cry's. It all makes sense, considering the game was made by Crytek, the same developer that made Far Cry.
See how fuzzy the sight is?
Well that's it. I can really see the benefit of integrated graphics now. Independent graphics that aren't built to perform just take up space. Even when browsing the internet I notice the difference between this thing and the 9800GX2. Gah, I can't wait to get the replacement.
Btw, sry about the low res photos... LJ is lame.
Current Mood: Inquisitive
Current Music: Narayan - The Prodigy
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krow684's journal