Almost Here

I'm so excited, and a little anxious. My desktop that I referred to in my last post should arrive at my house sometime tomorrow! The GeForce 9800GTX+ was replaced with a GeForce GTS 250, which, for the 512MB cards, is basically a rebranded and smaller 9800GTX+. And after exploring PhysX, CUDA, and just modern game graphics, I'm more excited than ever for my computer to get here. Having the new Houdini 10 beta is also nice; as I'm sure it will be fun making smoke with 4 cores. However, I am a little anxious because after reading reviews it appears that sometimes CyberPower PCs arrive is, less than ideal conditions. Not everything is plugged in, something might be improperly mounted, or the worst, the PSU (Power Supply Unit) or another part is DOA (Dead on Arrival). But it also appears they've gotten better recently, I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see. If it is a little less than satisfactory, I guess I get what I pay for. I am currently prepared and able to deal with anything not plugged in to the motherboard, a DOA hard drive, anything not properly mounted, and that's it.

Signature; Desktop

As I somewhat insinuated in my previous post, DICE is a cool company and I am glad they make games for me and everyone else. And so to honor their awesomeness (and give myself a forums signature) I went and made this image.

http://flickr.com/photos/heydabop/3317351852/
 

Hope you like it.

 

Now on to my desktop. For a while now I've been saving up to buy a laptop, since my current laptop plays most newer games at 10-20FPS at lowest settings, needless to say, this takes away from the fun of the game. But today I figured I'd go browse desktops and see how they are these days. In about 10 minutes I lost all interest in buying a laptop. Sure the portability is great, but is it worth +$400? Not for me it isn't. So after looking around and picking and choosing carefully, I bought a desktop from CyberPower PC this afternoon. In order to take advantage of free shipping I had to skimp on a few things, like some RAM, an optical drive…and an OS. However, I can buy myself an optical drive soon after I get the computer, and I can install the Windows 7 beta (which is AMAZING) from a USB drive. What I did not skimp on was my video card and processor. My processor is an AMD Phenom X4 9850 2.5GHz, which will go great with SideFX Houdini. The video card is an NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX+ 512MB. I would've liked to get it with 1GB, but I wasn't sure if that was overkill for what I wanted, and I didn't have a whole bunch of money. So for the next 2 weeks or so, I will be greatly anticipating the desktop's arrival. But for now, I think I'll go play Battlefield 2142 at 20 FPS.