I hope to start real testing in a month – it’s not much considering my primary obligations at work and limited amount of time I have to spare for it.

The new build does not bring a lot of changes – the most welcome and thoroughly tested will be probably the XP compatibility mode, which is nothing else, but Virtual PC itself embedded into Win 7. The RC will be operable until 1st June 2010, but the protection kicks off on 1st March – it will allow only to run the system for two hours and then the system will reboot itself.

Installation is planned for this weekend – depends on how wasted I’ll be.

So far I’ve come up with three categories to play:

1. suicide screen – get the most MHz out of your mems, no matter how unstable they are, just have a screenshot/CPU-Z validation
2. bandwidth – it would require eg. benchmark in Lavalys to be run and would be based on the score
3. stability – run an hour of large FFT Orthos with priority 9 and send a screenshot

It’s not a fresh idea – I thought about some time ago last year, but maybe now I’ll try to put it to life.

WTF, I thought for a moment BIOS had died again (remember my problems two months ago?) but then the computer boots, the HDD LED blinks vividly, so it’s running with no video. Then I thought ‘VGA dead’ with a smile – I would replace the crappy GF8500GE with something newer (HD4770/4830/4850 or GF9600GT/9800GT/GTS250), even started looking for warranty card. I even dug out some old S3 Virge PCI VGA which proved some of my theories – using it I saw the computer booting (bootloader was installed correctly), but then came the idea ‘what if I switch PCI-Express slots’.

Damn I hate those moments of truth.

Anyway, I put the 8500 in second PCI-Express slots, and it worked! Seems like the first (PCIEx16) slot went down to hell, so I quickly changed the configuration of PCIE slots from 16/2 to 8/8 (damn you DFI for those jumpers), reseated the VGA in the second slot and off we go.

Good thing is that I realized this could be the cause – I would spend money but the problem will be there still.

Bad thing is that I don’t know why and how this could be reverted.

Now I have to reassemble the water cooling.

P1236 is documented with screen, I think I should find one with P1268 – that’s the most I was able to squeeze without resorting to vmodding the VGA.

BTW the third spot in 8500 GT category for Vantage is not so far away – P1343, reachable with 900/2200/800 clocks even with my A64 (this will require 1,7vcore/2,3vmem ). Second spot is 1532 at the moment – I’m not too optimistic, but who knows?

Will upload the screens later – maybe I’ll do the modding as well

For me first of those was Outwar back in 2003 – I played for about half a year, which was long time considering how simple (and stupid) the game. You had to post your link around the net and wait for someone to click in order to gain strength.
Then came Hattrick in which I spent about three years. Hattrick wasn’t so occupying – you could log on twice a week for 10 minutes to set up your team, pick up new player and probably arrange sparring in the middle of the week. At first, the game was funny – yet another football manager, but different, with lots of people around. Then the economy changed and I simply dropped – no fun anymore.

In the meantime there were few others – Travian (civilization-alike), The Crims or Monstersgame, to which I devoted maybe a month each.

Most time I spent at oGame, of course. I built two empires, one at universe 3 of ogame.org and second at universe 37 of ogame.pl. I had a friend who kept sitting with me all days and nights doing crazy actions. This stuff was really addictive, no kidding. Every time I see ogame now, I turn around, I don’t want to make the same mistakes anymore. Lost two years for it I guess.

Now I don’t want to indulge myself in such pleasures. I do have one account in erepublik (login phobosq, of course), but (at least that’s what I say to myself) it’s really innocent.

Be warned. Web MMO’s can take your life away if you’re not careful. That’s why I want to create one. if you come up with any ideas, contact me – maybe we’ll figure something out.

The case is very stylish, of course it’s black. It comes with all the accessories needed to mount your equipment inside. There are five 5,25″ bays, two (or maybe three – can’t really tell right now) 3,5″ ones, and three slots for mounting hard drives. There are also three 120mm fans included – one for the back of the case and two for Core Fan stuff (it’s just a bar in the middle of the case which allows you to have good air flow directed at your mobo).

I have disassembled my water cooling set and rebuilt it using new case. It’s superb, however, I still need little fixing – the hose coming into the case through PCI slot is squeezed – the temps are a little high due to blocked flow. I should have some time now – I get up before six every day, which gives me two hours before going to work.
BTW the case is a great birthday gift

The game installed OK but then I had trouble finetuning video details. In the end, I chose 1024×768 medium details. The game looks okay, but I’m not the fan of hand-drawn characters. Besides, the difference between medium and high details is enormous – I switched to high for a moment and even if it was unplayable (low framerate) it really looks much better. Time for new VGA, I guess (should have known it while trying out World in Coflict lol).

About gameplay itself – it’s real arcade, which hasn’t changed much since Sands of Time six years ago. You have to run, jump, do some fighting, climb the walls etc… You can’t die – your partner in journey, Elika, has got some magical protection over you, so every time you fall from a distance or are about to die in combat, she saves you from trouble – you’re back in the moment before death would occur. This can be annoying during fights, but who cares?

I’ve played about an hour – passed the tutorial, completed the introduction in the temple and saw how the map works. While I have some more time, I’ll probably proceed further. For now – it’s worth the try. 7 out of 10, I guess.

I’ve got a terrible cold, so I’m at home now, have some time off (work is exhausting, believe it or not – I don’t have time for playing then) so I’m having a bit of fun. I started Prince of Persia (later about it) and Red Alert 3.

I was wondering why some sites keep calling RA3 “sexiest strategy ever” until I launched it. I started, of course, with Soviet campaign and was really amazed by debriefing chick… the game sucks, I thought, that’s why the EA decided to make it interesting this way. Then it gets better, when you start Allied campaign, the chick’s even hotter. Unfortunately, the Japanese isn’t showing off at all.

The gameplay is fairly standard, so if you’ve ever played any C&C-like RTS, you’ll be familiar with it very quick. I think the only new stuff is extra bonus weapon, which is unlockable based on your achievement during mission. Soviets have magnetic satellite and a kind of orbital drop, I don’t know about the others – haven’t played that far.

By the way, the game has rather big requirements – I could play only 1024×768 with medium detail. The visual experience is rather poor then, so I guess that 8800GT or HD3850 is reasonable minimum for the game. If you wanna play in HD-resolution you’ll probably need HD4870 or something similar. Hope that Starcraft 2 doesn’t follow this trend.

Final judgement – nothing new, big requirements, poor graphics. I would recommend it only to C&C series fan. The score would be about 6 out of 10.