Justin's New Baby!

[Head Mutant]

Neither boy nor girl... but a machine!

Today I finally got to order (as my birthday present) a new computer. It's been 4 years since my last one, and I'm dying to upgrade.

Went through Dell, got their XPS 400 (mid-range gaming system), upgraded to 3.0 ghz dual core processors, GeForce 6800 card, 2 gigs RAM, and some other goodies.

I'm not as brave as Shalen in building a new system (although some day I might)... but I'm darned excited to not only get a new rig, but also have my own 'puter -- since my wife and I have to share our current one and jockey for computer time.

[Spiderdancer]

Congratulations, big fella! You gotta love those dual core processors. When I get Oblivion and figure out how to obtain screenshots we should send each other some. And anybody else out there who wants to email me a screenshot of your Oblivion character, I'm completely up for that, because I have no life.

For anyone who's interested, or just didn't click away fast enough, my own baby is now up and running. I'm waiting for a patch before I buy Oblivion, but it plays Morrowind at REALLY FAST fps everywhere except the Balmora Expansion. I use quite a lot of mods, and it performs great even with all the different plugins running.

My final stats were -
JPAC Voodoo black case (cheap, but working) with 500w power source, a side window, and a spiffy blue LED light. I've added a bunch of glowing wire and a UV light and the fans have LEDs. In a dark room, it looks really amazing, by which I mean it looks like it belongs to an utter and complete geek. Which I am.
Sony 250 gb SATA drive and DVD writer combo with lightscribe
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor (used; they have better ones but I didn't have a thousand dollars to spend on a 4500+ cpu).
MSI KD480 Crossfire-ready motherboard. Recommend it highly as a working midrange board with NONE of those Via drivers that cause the ati2dvag error when coupled with ATI cards.
Sapphire Radeon X1300 graphics card. Plan to get another one to run Crossfire eventually.

I'm running Windows XP sp1. I used the cd from my old Dell and cracked the activation with the wpa_kill crack. Microsoft refers to the behavior of reusing software you have already paid for as "piracy," for those who were wondering. Unfortunately Linux still seems to be crappy for gaming.

It took longer than I planned, but I think when Sib 1 and I build her one this summer it will go much faster and cost somewhat less. Don't ever buy a Via motherboard, women and men.

[TheLuckyOne]

...my computer has a mouse AND a keyboard!

-D

[Hucklebubba]

My PC has a 3.2 ghz hyper-threading dealie and some other allegedly sexy hardware, but judging by difficulty encountered running some minimum-requirements-way-more-than-met games, I have yet to find the secret code that allows everything to run at full power.

up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A. . .okay, which key would be the "start" button equivalent?

[Spiderdancer]

What's your graphics card and memory look like?

Don't be shy, I promise not to wince because I didn't buy the cutting edge one and you did.

[Head Mutant]

It's certainly not cutting edge. Dell only offered four different cards with this system, so I went with the GeForce 6800 as a nice mid-to-high level card that will probably need to be replaced in the next couple years. 256 megs video memory. According to Oblivion specs, I should be able to play with max details at 1024x768 (or whatever it is) settings. But not larger than that.

[Spiderdancer]

I was talking to Hucklebubba. I thought I might be able to help in some small way, since I've spent so much time in the last month reading game performance tweaks and bug fixes.

[Head Mutant]

In that case, the thing runs on a slice of provolone cheese, slightly melted.

[Hucklebubba]

1024 megs of RAM. ATI Radeon 9250 with 256 megs.

I've come to a couple of quasi-conclusions myself regarding the whole situation:

1. If there is an actual culprit, I'd wager it's the video card, as it's a PCI, and they seem to just generally stink more than AGP cards.

2. It's more likely a compatibility issue than a matter of processing chutzpah, as there are only a couple-few games that cause trouble. Halo--as in, the first one--is a primary offender. At 800x600 with all of the detail tabs set to "Crap" my machine still chokes on it like. . .like a thing choking on a thing.

Far Cry is a lesser troublemaker, as it's at least playable, with only minor framerate hiccups. Still, it should run perfectly, at least in the imaginary candy world where I live.

And then there's. . .Sacred? Chintzy sprite-based top-down RPG? Yep. Computer no likey.

I've entertained the notion--at least in the last case--that my graphics card refuses to work properly out of disdain.

[Spiderdancer]

I don't think it's your card. I played the original Halo on my old computer, which had a 9250SE with only 128 mb and only 256 mb of system memory, with nary a glitch. What's happening? Are you getting crashes to desktop?

Does your motherboard have Via drivers? They can conflict with the newer ATI drivers and cause ctds and blue screen errors when both run in Windows XP (none of these three companies is admitting to being the source of the error, so everyone refuses to fix it). This is why I had to get a new mobo before I could get my own new build working.

[Head Mutant]

Woot! Although Dell said it'd be until next week before the computer shipped, they actually built it on Monday and got it to me yesterday. Going through the standard "Having to reinstall, re-set up, re-tweak" everything phase, but it's a blast so far.

This was brought to you by the department of It Probably Doesn't Matter At All To You, But I Felt Like Sharing My Joy.

[Spiderdancer]

Joy! Joy!

Have fun.

[PoolMan]

See, that's how I'd LIKE it to be one day. A planned affair, with a sense of anticipation, of joy.

Not coming home to the wife telling me the computer "just froze" and spending my entire vacation looking for parts before caving, buying a new motherboard and processor, and spending long days trying to reassemble my machine into something resembling what it used to be.

Of course, now I could run Doom 3 at nearly Recommended spec level. So there's plusses in there too.

[Head Mutant]

Yeah, I have to run troubleshooting a lot for my wife too ("Microsoft Office refuses to load files tonight! And I have a paper due! GO GO GO GOGOGOGOGOGO!"). It must be bliss to be computer illiterate sometimes...

[dajaymann]

Man, this thread makes me wanna cry. I shouldn't have even posted here.