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description= Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;
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mmo, rpg, you, friday, saturday, tuesday, november, 2016, 2012, podcasts, blogroll, links, in, it, the, march, 2025, april, 15, 2023, june, 18, 2022, monday, august, 13, 2018, 22, wednesday, december, july, 31, pages, reference, youtube, channels, blog, archive, blogs, mothballs, past, pc, contributors, labels, venture, all, filler, end, when, game, betrays, gamer, other, pastime, now, that, more, like, um, ouch, don, think, he, overcompensating, for, something, do, hold, on, while, get, my, coffee,
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nah man if i can figure out how to get a refrigerator to fit in a small kitchen i can buy the right sized graphics card from catplanet org the only surprise i had during installation was that the power connection was on top of the damn card not on the side which meant that i had to get creative in terms of making sure the card fit around the case frame still the installation and driver updates went fairly smooth and the card itself is quieter than the old hd7700 i had in the pc over the past week i ve had a chance to sit down and try a stable of games with the new card to see what sort of difference it made to the graphics settings now i don t have a game that s less than two years old wildstar and mass effect 3 are the newest from 2014 so the games i have don t really stress a game card like a current gen game such as say witcher iii or black desert online still this card ought to handle both current gen games without much issue as for the games i own let s just say that one game in particular surprised me a lot lotro experienced some lag when entering certain areas such as around emyn lun in mirkwood as if the game were busy loading data from the lotro servers given that lotro is closing in on its 10 year anniversary next year i wasn t expecting the graphical lag like i got but once that initial lag was over the game ran smoothly i ve checked online a bit and discovered that i m not the only person who has had these issues with lotro and that it might actually be due to the game architecture i can t really say but it is definitely the only game that i ve experienced this issue with but the graphics oh yes all of the little lotro graphics options are selected and it makes a big difference in the background on the game items such as fog are much more realistic now and background scenery is far more detailed i can stand on the northern dwarven outpost in angmar and look down at imlad balcorath in the distance and see all of the details something i couldn t see without sacrificing framerates not too surprisingly the game that benefits the most from the new graphics card has been swtor the graphics engine for swtor is a bit clunky even bioware admits that but with a 4 gb card the game finally shines i can actually set the shadow detail on high and get good framerates no blobby shadows for me anymore i really need to get over to my own personal hell alderaan and see how the game holds up now that used to be the place where my old graphics card went to go cry in a corner so if it can handle that place it can handle anything swtor throws at it before the new card those shadows would be blobs from mmorpg com as for other games the weirdest result i got was when loading star trek online it bitched that i didn t have the current graphics firmware but then proceeded to load up the highest settings anyway something tells me that cryptic studios needs to update their graphics card firmware data neverwinter and wildstar looked better but not overwhelmingly so as did age of conan now if there was a way for your guild wars 2 toons to look more well lived in with higher graphics settings and not as pristine as they do was it worth it to upgrade well since i had no real choice yeah but if you mean compared to the old card then yes to that too i believe that the bigger boost to my system however would come from replacing the hdd with an ssd but that is now an adventure for another time besides i ve got other items to worry about for the next few months such as university applications oh yay why change out the power supply when i can find a card that works sure it d be nice to get a sapphire nitro rx470 but not because i had to spend an extra 50 100 on a power supply posted by redbeard at 4 24 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels computers family graphics video games friday november 4 2016 um ouch i was minding my own business killing a few mobs on lotro in mirkwood when my screen went beige as in the entire screen turned into one single beige block and the computer began emitting a braaaaaap sound sort of beige having seen this sort of thing before i knew what it meant my pc s video card decided to give up the ghost but i clean the damn thing regularly i exclaimed shaking a fist at the screen my wife heard me from the other room even though she was in the middle of a tight game of mario kart online what s going on she asked i recycled the computer in a futile attempt to recover the thing sighed and walked over to the tv room i think the video card just died weren t you just talking about thinking of upgrading parts of the thing yes but i turned and shook my fist in the general direction of my office not now so what are you going to do what does a replacement cost about 150 or so i m going to see if the motherboard has intel integrated graphics capability so that we can limp along for a month or two a few hours and one abortive attempt to try to use the old nvidia graphics card out of our previous pc later i managed to expose the previously hidden dvi connection for the intel hd graphics 4000 and get the machine back up and running i figured it couldn t hurt to try lotro since it s a pretty old mmo and fired it up that was a mistake i had to lower the graphics quality to low in order to get a fairly smooth if you want to call it that experience in mirkwood i quickly realized this wasn t going to work and switched to civ iv instead civ iv worked better until the graphics froze locking the system this happened multiple times until i threw up my hands in disgust well i told my wife you can watch videos but don t try to tax the system too much or it ll just die on you it s something we ll have to deal with for the time being alas gaming is about to be shelved for a while not that i don t have things to write about i do but it would be nice to actually you know play something after a long day at work somewhere murphy is laughing i m sure of it yes i finally made it to mirkwood i m kind of aware that the moria questline will go back and forth for a while but i don t know how it ll ultimately end up we ll see i suppose the machine bitched like you wouldn t believe so i gave up posted by redbeard at 7 55 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels computers family graphics wednesday december 5 2012 you don t think he s overcompensating for something do you you know illidan s favorite line yeah that was me when i hooked up the new desktop late last week i was so not prepared i work on a 14 inch laptop 81 in 2 our old desktop had a 19 inch 160 in 2 monitor the school laptop is 15 6 inches 120 in 2 the new desktop by comparison has a 23 inch hd monitor 230 in 2 i felt like it was the first day at a previous job back in the 90s going from working on a 14 inch terminal to a 21 inch sgi workstation the only difference was that this new machine required a bunch of patches right off the bat new os you know but once that and the security software were in place i was off to downloading some mmos the first one was wow because i could play in a limited basis while the client itself was downloading i d played so long on extremely low graphics settings that i was unprepared for how the game would look with current equipment with a bit better than average graphics card for one thing the 1080 resolution on a properly sized monitor is positively huge there was all this freaking space around where i was used to having to shoehorn in my mods i d grown so accustomed to having to mentally keep track of where enemies were located just off my viewing area that actually seeing them on screen was unnerving and i ll be honest i thought i was playing an upgraded version of wow because i could actually see the detail in both the background and the toons if i thought that wow was good lotro and age of conan were better aoc seemed to have a bit of an issue with getting the toons at distance filled in but it was still light years better than what i d seen before aion on the other hand seemed to be similar enough in graphics quality but just moved better then i tried out tor the details that i d missed playing the game at extremely low graphics settings were stunning there i was in tatooine of all places staring at the sand on the screen the cutscenes didn t look all that different but the actual worlds amazing i said in guild chat when i was exploring the wetlands on my rogue everything is so huge yeah said a guildie running on a smaller screen really takes out a lot of the details and this is with a machine that you d kind of classify as only a borderline gaming machine too not one of the high powered 2k machines borderline gaming yeah no 400 graphics card or solid state drive about the only splurge i did was to get the i7 cpu and 12 gb ram now i d be lying if i said that the fancy new machine suddenly improved my gaming because it didn t actually my gaming got worse because i was so used to being able to move around the smaller screen so quickly with a short flick of the wrist that having everything spread out so much made it more of a chore to use i also spent a lot more time looking down at where things were rather than where the enemy was when i was out and about and i have to confess that i spent way too much time just looking around rather than paying attention to the mobs around me you know the ones that might actually kill me i can easily see why some game houses spend so much money on artwork in their attempt to take advantage of modern computer graphics but i can now also see how that can be a money pit while i can stare at the visuals now after a while it ll become old hat once that happens all the visuals in the world won t save a game without a deep and engrossing story good gameplay and replayability but in the meantime i m going to grok some sand and swampland for a while okay perusing some clips on youtube came first and setting up my family s accounts and setting up my wife s e mail and setting up the network drive so i could listen to music edit family videos and and the pets with the higher resolution graphics the shivarra was a bit more pg 13 than i was comfortable with having my kids around but then again i d already covered that a while back aion still feels too nintendo for my taste when i read the quest text the language style isn t what i would use and it just feels more like a translation from another culture it seems strange saying that especially since aoc was developed by funcom but whereas the aoc npcs talk like they came out of a robert e howard short story aion s is decidedly different my sister in law once said that professional golf broadcasts on television were tailor made for hdtv now having seen the details in games with hd graphics i can understand her argument a bit better and yes for the record we don t have a hd television in our house our old 25 inch rca is still chugging along and there s been no need to replace it yet posted by redbeard at 12 25 am 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels computers graphics tuesday july 31 2012 hold on while i get my coffee there are certain stereotypes surrounding gamers that everyone knows such as the 40 year old who lives in his parents basement or the guy with no self esteem or social skills who has never talked to a girl ever since puberty hit a stereotype peculiar to video gamers is that they spend all their money buying the latest upgrades for their computers and or console systems don t bother hitting a video gamer up for beer money he just spent it on a new video card well if that gamer is out there he must be made of money because i m surely not i m still playing mmos on the family computer which five years ago was a middle of the road core duo 32 bit machine running vista today even with only a few upgrades it s still basically that same core duo 32 bit machine running vista i haven t even bothered to upgrade it to win 7 because the machine is in such high demand from the entire family that i can t seem to schedule any downtime life on a machine that barely meets the minimum specs to play a game is well interesting it s a good thing i cut my teeth on gaming back in the 70 s and 80 s because i m used to long loading periods if you ve ever loaded a saved game from cassette tape to your commodore or ti 994 a you know what i mean you start the process hear the good old screeching of the computer data and go get something to drink by the time you get back with a glass of coke maybe you were lucky enough for the load to go well so you get back to playing tunnels of doom otherwise you had to rewind the cassette and start over those old days have returned in the form of mmo loading screens there have been times where i actually hear the distinct sound wow makes when a guildie logs in while i m still in loading mode i ve lost track of the number of times i ve had someone say hi red in guild chat about a half a minute before i actually get to see it sometimes i wonder if people think i m blowing them off but really it s not you it s the machine the current load king is tor naturally because i think it tries to use so much memory that i m afraid one of these days i m going to see stuff come oozing out of the sd chip slots a side effect of these long loading times is the mysterious floating weapon syndrome ever walk into a high population zone and see a pair of daggers hanging in mid air or maybe a lone double bladed lightsaber bobbing along then you ve seen a victim of mfws also known as what happens when you ve got a slow computer and it s trying to render a high density area on screen if i get up and go away the problem resolves itself after 2 3 minutes and every nearby toon gets rendered but if you made it into org on patch day that really sucks not being able to actually see people once the game is loaded how it plays on the low end machine is a different matter entirely of all the games i play lotro actually plays the best i can t put a finger on why because i think the graphics are more precise than say wow has but i ve never had a glitch while playing at all age of conan on the flip side seems to cause the most issues with gameplay it s become bad enough that i dropped the graphics from 1440x900 down to the 1280 range which isn t thrilling but at least it plays relatively smoothly wow being the oldest mmo i play that hasn t had a major overhaul plays well even so i had to crank down the settings on the fancy new water rendering for cataclysm because otherwise flying through zones like the pre cata loch modan would be akin to watching somebody filling a pool oh and i learned to avoid certain scenarios such as some of the mob packs in aq40 whose graphics would end up kicking me out of the game dal on tuesday nights was miserable with single digit fps not that uncommon and if you get 40 people wailing on vann in alterac valley there was a good ch...
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