Upgrade My desktop was out of commission for a few months, needed to fix my mobo. I decided to upgrade the old video card too. Ended up buying a 7800GTX 512 off Ebay for $155 (mislabeled auction!) which runs everything fine. What I really want is the ATI R600 DX10 part (or G80). The 7800GTX is allegedly faster than the PS3 RSX GPU which makes me happy (even those closed box is different from PC architecture and blah blah blah). My self-imposed rule is to never upgrade until new consoles come out, then get stuff which is better. The new quad-core CPUs and DX10 cards are extremely tempting though.



So the auction was labeled "Dell 7800GTX 256mb". Which considerably different (and cheaper) than what I received in the mail. I think people were freaked out by the extension on the card which is meant to keep it steady in XPS cases (due to the weight of the card). Took about 2 minutes to unscrew that part and tada!



Also upgraded the CPU cooler with a Tuniq Tower 120. These are nowhere to be found in the states so my uncle in Taiwan kindly hooked one up. The cooler is beast - copper heatpipes and lots of aluminum fins. It is so massive that my case won't close all the way.



So now my computer looks like a disco with all the blinking LEDs.



So revisiting PC gaming. Starting playing Age of Empires 3 and realizing it's the same game I played years ago but with nicer graphics. One of those games to beat and never play again. Half Life 2 ... the game still makes my stomach queasy (motion sickness?) Even more so when it runs so smoothly at 1280x1024 4xAA/8xAF. Need for Speed Carbon proves the point that racing games really suck with no analog control.

Not even going to touch WoW because my life will go into a even bigger black hole if I start playing.  ¶ 2:33 AM