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This is working brilliantly now on my new setup, so might just pick it up again while I’m waiting for my connection to be fixed. My ping’s probably fine to play strategy games online though, so if anyone fancies a game give me a shout. Mulitplayer games tend to play a bit slower than single player, but there are ways to tweak this, and Turks if you were put off by the time it took us in our initial game, it’s safe to say a lot of that was down to my crap PC, which was loading turns as you finished yours.
There’s a limitation in winmrt in that it only shows the range of ping spikes, but doesn’t show the frequency of them. Does anyone know of a program that might show this, maybe in handy graphical form?
not even funny, but I read that as middle “egged”
Belated happy birthday though, to both of you 🙂
Well to get back to the original post regarding the upgrade itself, I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to hear how it has all turned out 🙂
I got the gfx card delivered next day, and immediately installed it so I could measure for myself the level of improvement I was getting for the rash investment. Running some games and benchmarks it became very obvious that the bottleneck in my setup was the CPU, as I was only getting a marginal improvement with the 460 GTX over the ATI 4850HD. Benchmarks showed an improvement of under 1000 3d mark06 points, bringing me up to around 7000 total. TF2 showed some improvement as I was able to whack everything up full and run the game at around 50 fps average, it would spike as high as 100fps on occassion but likewise drop to 35-40 when the going got tough, however it looked good. Interestingly BC2 also improved to a reasonably playable level, but it still looked shit. These less than impressive results clearly explain why page 3 models are not falling all over me.
So anyway, last night I had the joy of installing a new motherboard for the first time, and despite it being slightly more complex that I first thought it went pretty smoothly. There were some connections on it I had not previously noticed, such as fans and the power and reset switches, and the LEDs etc, but once I noticed they were all quite clearly labelled it was pretty straight forward. The motherboard I got in the cheap CPU bundle offer was also a lot smaller than my old board (as I thought both were ATX, or at least that ATX meant one standard size), and with the GFX card being larger than I expected I had some difficulty squeezing SATA cables and my soundcard in together, but I got it sorted. I’m limited to using 2 SATA connections, when I wanted to use 3, but you’ve got to expect some drawbacks when you’re buying something so cheap, and the main thing is that it won’t impact performance.
Now a tip for anyone who also feels like going down this route, make sure you have as many possible network drivers downloaded for your new motherboard’s onboard lan controller as you can, before dismantling your old setup, or at least make sure network drivers are on the driver CD provided with it. I downloaded one set of drivers but I was a bit careless with this as I assumed it was on CD, and this lead to problems later, since once you’re offline it’s difficult to fix driver problems. To be honest the problems were of my own making, because I was also careless when running the installation CD, and misread the setup program as having installed everything it could. When I retraced my steps later in the night I discovered this was where I’d gone wrong, and rerunning the setup sorted all the problems.
All the above problems can be put down to a complete lack of experience doing something like this, and whilst I admit I held my breath and half expected sparks to fly while I pushed the on button for the first time, overall I’d recommend this approach as a cheap PC option. That someone who’s experience in building PCs is limited to installing single components, can do this without an instruction manual, shows how easy it is. I wouldn’t recommend this for someone who simply knows how to send an email with a computer, like my mother, but for anyone here wondering whether they could do it as well, I believe you could. There are plenty of voices here who could help with any questions you have too, and I can certainly offer my advice now as well.
Regarding how the PC is performing, it’s amazing. TF2 is regularly hitting 200+fps, and I haven’t seen it drop below 100 yet. I’m going to have to cap the frame rate manually now so I don’t get frame lag 😯 BC2 is also amazing, and runs perfectly at high settings. I don’t know the command to check framerate in BC2, but suffice to say it’s good. I only have an issue to sort now with my ISP because of the shitty pings I’m getting, and I’ll be back online properly 🙂 Hopefully it’ll start raining page 3 models at that stage too.
@=XDC=MADMAX wrote:
seriously not comment, this game looks the shit
Not able to view it yet because it must ask for an age verification thing or something causing work to block it as “adult content”. Either that or you’re posting more pics of yourself.
Maybe it was a virus on your PC?!
Eh? Is that a dig in the PC vs console argument, because I’ve otherwise no idea what you’re talking about?
Actually this game did provide one of the better social experiences I’ve had on the Xbox, despite it mostly being us all in a room watching one guy playing. The banter over how shit the gameplay appeared to everyone, was quite entertaining 🙂
My lasting memory of this game was the constant sequence of play which went something along the lines of – fight, climb something, dive into some hay, be lost, climb something, dive in some hay, fight something, wander around endlessly trying to find something you missed which is required to progress to next stage, climb something, dive in some hay, wonder why this is entertaining?
Has it progressed any from this? Is there anything new to dive into from a great height?
I think you guys are doing a great job. Probably the only time there’s ever been a consistently functional XDC team across any platform or game. You’re doing us proud!
lol does that last post count as a pound to children in need?
Definite sarcasm and some abuse at the end, even if it’s only there for comic effect 🙂
I cant help to draw back to the point that you are comparing the cost of second hand PC equipment
Once again, I’m not. I’m comparing new PC components with console components. You’re at work, so I’ll let you off with any “read my post” comments, but I have already tried to clear that misconception up in the first paragraph of my last post.
Also factoring in money saved through selling old kit? Really? Ok… I sold my PS2 for £40… suddenly my £110 PS3 is £70.
No, the calcuations in the last post were all based on £250 cost, rather than my own outlay. I thought the final sentence below would make that clear.
My outlay is going to be at most £210 but hopefully under 200 if I can find a buyer for anything other than my GFX card, which is more or less sold already. Regardless of that though, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think even £250 is an unrealistic figure for the cost of a console,
However – the most important point is that you are comparing the cost of playing a game online for a PC with playing a game with mates in your living room on aconsole… A more fair comparrison would be MP gaming on both over the internet (where you dont have to buy a second controller), and comparing MP gaming with mates in the same room (where you are surverly limited on the PC – either sharing a keyboard for bomberman type games, or buying controllers for each person at additonal cost – either cheaply for shit, or expensively for the good stuff).
Several points here.
First, any comparison I’ve made has been with the audience here in mind, because you can do either platform cheaper if you’re really not that into games. I’ve been trying not to make too many assumptions, and have based most of the costings on what I’d expect to need if I was to get into consoles myself, and this includes XBox Live/whatever as well as an extra controller. Considering that anyone here would have had to have been quite heavily into gaming to have bothered joining XDC, I would be surprised if these were not on most peoples list of prerequisites when considering the cost of a console. It’s also worth noting that, while I’ve not yet made a big deal out of the internet subscription for Xbox Live (for example), the annual cost of that is surely around the cost of a controller?
I really don’t want to get bogged down arguing every little point in this argument because, as you’ve said yourself, it boils down to a case of each to their own. You can do everything with a PC that you can do with a console, and any social aspect really just depends on how you have your rig setup at home. Each to their own pretty much covers every argument we can come up with, but we have a group here where everyone has had some quality PC gaming experience, and where cost is often cited as the main reason why some have adopted consoles as their main gaming platform. If the console experience is what floats your boat, I’m not trying to sink you, but if you look at most arguments in this thread, people are really just defending their decision to chose a particular medium, and what’s the point? Most of us know the differences between the two, as well as knowing what to expect for your money when buying a console. Most people here probably also have both a PC and console at home, which makes it even more pointless. There are some though who are still interested in PC gaming, but for whom cost is still a barrier in keeping up with latest games. As I have been one of them for the past 12-18 months, I’m just keen to point out a solution before anyone is forced to alter what their “own” is on grounds of cost.
