mmm, upgrades
So, I finally got around to upgrading the video card in my system. I'm currently rocking a GeForce 7800 GS OC from BFG Technologies, as well as a new CoolMax 500W power supply to keep it juiced up. WoW doesn't run quite as well as I thought it would, but that could just be due to other parts in my system (I have older RAM that run at different speeds (2700 and 3200, I think)), but its still a vast improvement: from 12-18FPS to 45-60fps (23-30 in Shattrath--god damn that city). I needed to upgrade my video card years ago, but since we all stopped doing LAN parties and such, and my focus on console gaming for a while, and then my general withrawal of interest from video games in general, I never bothered to upgrade.
Anyways, this thing should keep me going until I have the money to do a full system upgrade. The only other item I want to replace is my monitor. Its a 10 year old CRT, and I'd like to finally upgrade to a flat screen. It'd also be nice to have when I move to my sister's place, since I'll need to save as much room as possible.
Speaking of monitors and such, I changed the resolution up to 1280 x 1024, which is an absolute head trip for me, since I've had it at 1024 x 768 forever. My monitor will only display this resoulution at 60hz, which sucks for me since I like having it at 70hz, so I may end up going back down if it causes too much eye strain. In order to lessen eye strain though, I've spent the last several hours going through various programs and upping the font setting and changing everything from Courier to Times New Roman. So if I ever decide to go back to 1024 x 768, I'm going to have to spend several hours adjusting everything again.
Speaking of adjusting, I had to readjust all sorts of color settings through the nVidia control panel. This was a totally new experience for me, but it was hampered greatly by the program running so badly. It takes about 10 minutes to load, while winlogin sucks up about 20% of my system resources. And when it does load, changing each setting usually lags the system for several minutes before the change takes affect. Example: upping the brightness from 10 to 15 takes about 5 minutes, the slider doesn't change position, and you can't actually watch the brightness change in real time on the screen--it stays the same until after about 5 minutes it takes affect and everything is brighter. This has made changingt all the settings take hours, as I'm constantly overshooting my mark or making tiny increments. Anyone have any idea if this is normal, or if something is seriuosly wrong somewhere?
Anyways, this thing should keep me going until I have the money to do a full system upgrade. The only other item I want to replace is my monitor. Its a 10 year old CRT, and I'd like to finally upgrade to a flat screen. It'd also be nice to have when I move to my sister's place, since I'll need to save as much room as possible.
Speaking of monitors and such, I changed the resolution up to 1280 x 1024, which is an absolute head trip for me, since I've had it at 1024 x 768 forever. My monitor will only display this resoulution at 60hz, which sucks for me since I like having it at 70hz, so I may end up going back down if it causes too much eye strain. In order to lessen eye strain though, I've spent the last several hours going through various programs and upping the font setting and changing everything from Courier to Times New Roman. So if I ever decide to go back to 1024 x 768, I'm going to have to spend several hours adjusting everything again.
Speaking of adjusting, I had to readjust all sorts of color settings through the nVidia control panel. This was a totally new experience for me, but it was hampered greatly by the program running so badly. It takes about 10 minutes to load, while winlogin sucks up about 20% of my system resources. And when it does load, changing each setting usually lags the system for several minutes before the change takes affect. Example: upping the brightness from 10 to 15 takes about 5 minutes, the slider doesn't change position, and you can't actually watch the brightness change in real time on the screen--it stays the same until after about 5 minutes it takes affect and everything is brighter. This has made changingt all the settings take hours, as I'm constantly overshooting my mark or making tiny increments. Anyone have any idea if this is normal, or if something is seriuosly wrong somewhere?