The Video Game Revue

Updates on the New Computer

It's a funny thing having a computer with a GeForce 7900 and a measly 512 MB of not particularly fast RAM. I've played some Counter-Strike: Source and World of WarCraft on the new rig as it is currenly assembled, and the general experience is that as long as the scene isn't changing much, the frame-rate stays very high. Counter-Strike, for instance, is silky smooth as long as I'm standing in one spot and looking around, but when I start moving there are regular skips and jumps every few seconds. With World of WarCraft, the phenominon is most noticeable when using a flight path. Everything is really smooth until you take to the air, at which point there are some obvious choppy spots. I guess the problem could be due to network latency or something, but it seems similar to the Counter-Strike situation, and I was running CS locally.

I told a friend of mine (Phf) that World of WarCraft was an example of a game that would not benefit much from the new computer. I was fairly wrong about that. The jump from what I figure was about 20 fps to roughly 120 fps (disclaimer: I don't actually know how to check the framerate in WoW, so I'm just tossing these numbers off based on my naked eye estimations) is definitely noticeable and pleasant.

The process of getting a replacement for the OCZ memory is underway. NCIX.com issued me an RMA number (Return Merchandise Authorization) and the OCZ is now in the mail back to their returns department. I should be getting a $300 credit from those guys which will be applied against the cost of some similar RAM that will hopefully work with my annoying motherboard this time. I have my eye on Corsair RAM.

Also the noise problem is not as serious as I had first thought. Once I got the motherboard drivers installed, some sort of "AMD Cool & Quiet" feature apparently kicked in, and now the CPU fan is a lot more quiet. I'm assuming here that the idea is that the rps of the fan adjusts automatically depending on how hot the CPU is running, or perhaps the driver just reduced the rps to an arbitrary value. Either way, as long as my computer doesn't overheat, I'm happy with how things are running now.

My cold took a turn for the worse last night, but the worst of it seems to be over now. I'm still very tired and my head is plugged up. I'm light-headed and can't concentrate, but I've been taking the time to do some easy quests in WoW. Overall, it's not a bad way to pass the time while you're waiting for an annoying illness to pass.

posted by Parappa @ 5:05 PM