I am about to start a serious PC upgrade - I may be offline a while.

I am looking into a shipping carton that contains a shiny new motherboard, processor, ram and disk drive. Within the next few hours I will hopefully have completed a major upgrade of this my main gaming PC. Of course these things don't always go as planned so wish me luck.

I am also taking this opportunity to finally migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7. XP has served me well since 2002 and I remain genuinely fond of it. I think it stands out as the best operating system Microsoft has ever made but all good things come to an end and the time has come to move on is now. I managed to avoid Windos Vista entirely but I have been using 64 bit Windows 7 on my laptop for a few months without problems so I am hopeful it will serve me as well on my gaming rig.

Another novelty for me is that this will be the first time ever my main gaming rig has an Intel processor. I have been building and using AMD rigs for the last 15 years (from AMD 586 through to an Athlon 64X2) but I was tempted over to the dark side by Intel's I5-760. Intel appear to have a considerable technical lead over AMD at this point in time and the I5 range which is only a mid range processor for Intel offers comparable gaming performance to AMD's top end parts but with considerably lower power consumption. AMDs parts are probably still slightly cheaper especially when you take the motherboard into consideration but lower processor power consumption is a lovely thing to have with knock on impacts on cooling and power supply requirements.

Comments

Benita Bolland said…

Upgrading your computer is a good decision. Game developers aren’t slowing down in making new games with high specification requirements, so upgrading is definitely a good idea, maybe even necessary. A lower power processor would mean less chances of overheating, which is good for the system and the hardware. I think using either Windows 7 over Vista is also a good choice.

3:21 pm

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein...

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p...

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get...

Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Search This Blog