PC PC GAMES

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:48:29 — 31.0MB)

Markus (Markee Dragon) gave us a in-dept report of what it is like traveling around the world for cool interviews with game dev’s sake. While he sounded a tad tired, and who can fault him for that it was great to hear about GameCom in Germany and then even more about PAX in Seattle. I wanna go to PAX now…

• GamesCom Germany
• PAX West
• Terra (MMORPG)
• Firefall
• Tron Evolution
• Red Orchestra 2
• The EVE Party is the party you want to be at
• How big can PAX get?
• World of Tanks
• Duke Nukem is alive!!! (Pigs do fly)
• RUSE and why it won’t do well (no, it’s not the DRM)
• StarCraft 2 talk
• Company of Heroes Online now live for everybody
• RealTime World troubles continue
• Elemental saga continues
• A little XBOX love…. NOT

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:29:25 — 42.7MB)

As you will listen to this weeks podcast you will also notice that it went quite a bit over two hours. Lots of fun talking about games and diving deep into hardware and hardware purchase experience. Wonder if you should buy the Best Buy warranty… (or any other extra warranty offered at different stores), we give you a good idea!
Last but not least Curlen will get you all hyped up for what AMD and Intel have coming up with the next generation!

• StarCraft2 Replays… not just for the pros!
• Our first meet and game with the Steamgroup
• Simon needs a gaming Laptop
• Steam News (no Linux, AI director and a Movie?!)
• Cryptic to MMO, or not to MMO
• Elemental War of Magic (Fail Launch)
• Elemental War of Magic (Fail CEO and why you should not blame DRM for a sucky game)
• APB… how long can it last?
• A little touch of Bioware
• Mass Effect DLC
• BlizzCon Stream
• Big dive into the mailbag
• Hardware talk (The wisdom of the Wizzle)

For those that might be interested, I ran across these links and coupon codes for Crucial’s Indilinx based SSDs. Both average out to around $1.55 per GB. The lowest cost per gigabyte that I’ve ever seen!

128GB Crucial M225 for $199 ($299 regular price, ~$275 on newegg)
Enter Coupon Code at checkout: 100M225US

256GB Crucial M225 for $399 ($599 regular price, ~$625 on newegg)
Enter Coupon Code at checkout: 200M225US

You will probably be charged tax and the shipping charges are pretty reasonable
Free for 7-12 day shipping
$4.99 for 3-5 day shipping
$7.99 for 2 day shipping
$19.99 for Next-Day, before noon shipping (for those that are really impatient)

For more detailed specs, refer to the PC Per SSD Decoder Ring. As you can see these support TRIM support in Windows 7 with the latest firmware and have Read/Write speeds of up to 250Mb/sec and 190 to 200Mb/sec. For reference, these drives will perform very similar to many other Indilinx Barefoot based drives such as the Corsair E series, OCZ Vertex and Vertex Turbo Series. They also come with a 5 year warranty!

Here are a few old reviews for you to look over:
PC Per
TweakTown
Benchmark Reviews
Legion Hardware

Being too hard to pass up, I’ve already ordered one! lol

Peace out
The Wizzle

Not sure how long this is good, but MICROCENTER has a buy a CPU, get a MB for free deal on AMD gear. So here is what you can get a system for:

• MSI 785G-E53 $9.99 after saving and $20MIR
• 6 Core Phenom II X6 1055 $199
• Antec Three Hundred ATX MID $49.99
• Hitachi 1 TB SATA Hard Drive $ $59.99
• OCZ 4GB Gold Series XTC DD3-1333 $74.99 after MIR
• Palit Geforce GTX460 $189.99
• Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 700w PSU $69.99
• Sony DVD SATA Burner $17.99

Grand Total: $671.93

You could save some more money lowering the video card and the memory. Now who said PC gaming is expensive?!

One thing I like to point out yet again. This is a full feature PC, not just a gaming console. What else can you do with a console other than watching a movie? But with this awesome system video and picture edeting, all sorts of work and non the least homework… can easily be accomplished. What a value dude!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:57:12 — 33.5MB)

• Just Cause 2… the game you should really own by now!
• World of Tanks BETA impressions
• StarCraft 2
• Company of Heroes Online Beta impressions
• Need for Speed’ssss
• Kane & Lynch 2 DEMO impressions
• Hard Ware Advice
• Another Screen Size vs Video Card resolution
• Dragon Age DLC
• Richard Garriot aka Lord British is getting some money
• 5 Issues with PC Gaming?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:45:04 — 30.1MB)

Staying within my delayed release schedule. This week I blame it all on Blizzard and you know why! We talked quite a bit about Blizzard this week. What does it mean for PC gaming, how big is Starcraft2 going to be and is Blizzard going to be contending with STEAM for the Digital distribution crown?
Also talked a bit hardware. After Nvidia made a bit of waves with the GTX460 what will ATI do to answer? And on the CPU side, is AMD going to challenge Intel with it’s next generation of CPUs? Competition, it’s a wonderful thing, so let’s hope so.

And this is what else we talked about:

• Alien Swarm
• Magic the Gathering
• Midnight opening for Starcraft 2
• CGI in Blizzard games
• What makes a real gamer
• BIOWARE and  DLC
• AMD CPU talk
• Mail call
• Monitor size and video card relation
• Digital distribution, what would it take to compete with STEAM
• Blizz-Con, now you too can be there

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25:47 — 24.5MB)

Technical difficulty caused this podcast to be late by a couple days. Sorry for that folks. Let me know if you have any issues from here on out.

We got together a day late since we all still recovered from the LAN. We had a lot of fun, sorry you had to miss it! If you never been to a LAN see if you can find a place local to you. Yes, you will meet some strange folk, but you can also make some great friends.

Here are the other things we talked about:

• Dragon Age DLC
• TF2 new updates
• ARMA2 and Operation Arrow Head 
• Blizzard Real ID issues and resolution
• Just Cause 2 MultiPlayer?!
• Apple
• Dragon Age 2
• WOW slowly waining even with the core
• NVIDIA GTX460
• Our Multi-Core CPU predictions
• Josh wants my 30″
• Physx not working on purpose?
• Racing Game promise
• Due WhiteOut wins! (Josh Rejoyced)
• Friends don’t let Friends hate on themselves!
• Game Giveaway NEXT WEEK!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33:51 — 26.9MB)

Will is taking a commanding lead in being part in all sorts of BETA’s. Funny, since he is the guy with the least time among us. And so it is that we talk quite a bit about Beta game-play, what is new, what is coming up and what we are looking forward to. I can seriously see us picking up LOTR once it goes free to play. I can’t wait to see what the pricing structure will look like.

Here is what else we talked about:

• Lord of the Ring Online Free to play Beta
• ARMA2: Operation Arrowhead
• Josh builds a Monster System, and then some
• HP EVNY17 Heat issue FAIL
• Cryptic is loosing their Executive Producer (In how bad a shape is StarTrek Online?)
• Super Heroes all sorts of MMO’s
• Metal of Honor Beta Impressions
• New laptop pet peeves
• Some Apple talk (Don’t hold it wrong… and then some)
• StarCraft 2 is not very much off
• NVIDIA 3D implementation, a listeners question

This is the first time I’ve built myself a really awesome machine. I’ve always built my own machines but usually not to this degree. Quite a few of the parts are in the picture above, the Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard, G.SKILL Ripjaws 24GB Ram (DDR3 1600), Silverstone 1000W PSU and the i7-930 processor.

(continue reading…)

Peace Out

The Wizzle

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:24:54 — 19.4MB)

Dedicated gaming mice… special keyboards and mousing surfaces the size of a sweater. Headphones and maybe even gaming monitors. Is all that stuff worth it? Do they enhance your game time or is it just for show? I am sure you will get some good information in this podcast!

As always there was lot’s of other gaming news and info to talk about. Here is the list:

To Be Continued…

The Wizzle

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:56:54 — 26.8MB)

If you have been playing Warhammer Online we want to hear from you! We all talked quite a bit about what happened with the billing fiasco. This has to be the biggest game to real life impact I have seen in a long time. So we where all very surprised to hear about your issues and how a long time publisher can fail so much. We feel they are failing in their response to the fans of the game, what do you think?

Of course we can’t help but have our weekly UBI rant… are you tired of it yet? But here is the list:

• Just Cause 2
• When do you let your kids play what?
• Starcraft 2 Price and Collectors Edition
• C&C 4 expected disappointment
• UBI rant of the week… and then some
• Modern “Knife War” 2
• Some Apple talk… not sure why?!
• Massive Warhammer billing fail!!!
• Windows 7 SP1 (not really news)
• Video Card issues and a look at FERMI
• PAX East Gaming Panel talking about the future of PC gaming (FAIL Panel)
• Serious Sam HD 2
• Just Cause 2 DLC
• GameTap talk
• Mount and Blade
• Another “I wanna be that Guy” victim
• FEAR 3 trailer

On March 19, BlackThunder talked about a cheap gaming rig from NewEgg for around $300. Well my friends, I had purchased that same exact rig that very day. And let me tell you, it’s nothing to sling boogers at. This machine is fast, runs cool and with the proper video card, it will run some pretty high details in your games.

The default system comes as an AMD Athlon II X2 245 Processor at 2.90GHz. The mainboard is an ASUS M4A785-M that is fully expandable from a Sempron to a Phenom II CPU. The chipset is the 785G accompanied by the ATI Radeon 4200 GPU. It comes with a Cooler Master case with a 460 watt power supply. The 4GB of 6400C5C Corsair RAM (mainboard will take up to 16GB) allows plenty of snuff to run Windows 7 64-bit and games sufficiently. The Rosewill CPU cooler seems very efficient and isn’t even hot to the touch. Top this bad-boy off with a 750GB HDD and a DVD-RW and you got yerself one a’ them-there nifty doo-hickeys they’s call a com-poo-ter! I seen one of those city slickers using one once.

All joking aside, this system is great. It was easy to assemble and only took about 30 minutes.

Once I got it up and running, I immediately ran 3D Mark 6 and Ungine on the system to stress the GPU/CPU. Boy, does the onboard Radeon 4200 suck squirrel nuts! If you think for a second that the onboard video is tip-top, then prepare to run for the hills. Run somewhere, because you take this sucker to any LAN parties and you’re gonna get laughed right out of somebody’s mother’s basement. The onboard vid will never do. I originally purchased a Radeon 4650 from Best Buy because I thought the power supply was only 400 watts. I later realized that it is a 460 watt (DUH!). So another trip back to Best Buy was in order to return the 4650 in exchange for the better HD 5770. I told Best Buy the card “sucked squirrel nuts” as I mentioned above and I wanted a better card. I could have just told them it didn’t work, but I needed the challenge to see how they would handle this return. The service manager laughed and almost had his Pepsi come out his nose when I said “squirrel nuts”. That was my highlight of the evening.

So the 5770 is in the rig, I’m pumping out 30 to 58 FPS on my benchmarks from DX9, 10 and 11. I could only get 30 fps tops with the 4650. The 4200 was lucky to get 12 or less fps. The 3D Mark tests on the CPU were pretty tough on it, but I take those tests with a grain of salt. I’ve never seen any CPU test well on 3D Mark CPU testing. My overall 3D Mark rating at high detail for DX11 was 9010 and was comparable to a lot of other gaming rigs when I submitted my results online. I was getting 7924 with the Radeon 4650. So there is a big difference in video cards.

If you want to ask me what I overclocked my hardware to, go ahead. I’ll tell you there is no way this chicken little is doing any such thing. I’m pretty happy with the existing set-up and don’t feel the need to be all Tim Allen and supe it up using Binford tools for more power. The only thing I ever felt comfortable overclocking was a Nvidia 8400GS card because it sucked so bad. Believe me when I say that it didn’t help any. This is my first ATI card I have ever bought and I am now convinced that Nvidia’s engineers drink the same toilet water they urinate in. You know that saying – “Never eat where you sh–!” I have had enough of Nvidia. I am now playing for the red team. Staying off the green like a Tiger Woods.

So all in all, this system was a great deal. $309.00 for the complete DIY system and another $160.00 for the video card. Now I can finally start kicking some ass on Crysis or Gears of War. Come and get me you bastards!!

GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:16 — 27.3MB)

This podcast is all in the spirit of gaming as a community. We talk quite a bit about the Lan Party of last weekend. But there is quite a few other PC gaming related topics we touch on, such as:

• Lan Party Details
• I wanna be the Guy
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 Gaming
• People that where at the Lan
• Kommie and Brownies
• Just Cause 2
• The Lan Playlist
• Quad Crossfire… pros and cons
• Borderlands on Eyefinity
• Ruse
• Fermi, Nvidia and GTX480
• Metro 2033
• Great March Game Specials
• Even EA employees don’t like C&C4′s online requirements
• And more DRM woes
• Newegg Special Hardware Review
• Listener Mail
• Old school gaming (Dreamcast, Commodore64 and Amiga FTW)
• Global Agenda
• Starcraft 2 (HD)

Since we were talking about it on the podcast, I figured I’d post my Just Cause 2 Benchmark results.  Click the image to see the full sized screenshot.

Curlen

Karsten

Joe

Tim

Every now and then we have been asked about gaming computers. You heard us also talk about that a gaming PC does not have to cost much. Case in point is this special that NEWEGG is running right now. You got a complete computer for $309.98 (if you bother to send in the rebate) and the only thing you need to add is a video card and a OS.

• Cooler Master RC-310-OWR460:$69.99
• ASUS M4A785-M:$79.99
• AMD ADX245OCGQBOX:$60.99
• Corsair (XMS Series) TWIN2X4096-6400C5C:$99.99
• Seagate ST3750528AS:$79.99
• ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS:$23.99
• Rosewill RCX-Z940-SL:$19.99

————————————————-

Total with savings: $334.98

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:40:46 — 23.1MB)

One of the hottest topic this week was UBI’s DRM announcement! Needless to say we talk about that one quite a bit. But that wasn’t all. We also touched on Starcraft 2, the ATI driver troubles with Eyefinity and some Bioshock. Here is the list in detail:

• UBI’s DRM
• Bioshock2 FOV and Eyefinity
• ATI and Driver woes
• Nvidia Fermi
• PhysX
• KillerNic
• Blizzard
• WoW Quests for low lvl folks
• StarCraft 2 Beta
• $300 and you too can play the SC2 Beta
• C&C4 no dedicated servers
• Global Agenda
• Allen Wake
• Shattered Horizon
• Digital Distribution
• StarTrek Online
• Stargate Online
• MAIL Call
• SupCom2 after close talk