Any PC Gamers here in WW land?

[Mike Heidrick]

Any of you WW boys ever game with a PC at all?

WOW - I have not built a machine in 4 years so I was WAY out of touch. Tomorrow the motherload of PC parts arrives from newegg. Today I have been using the new 24" DCLCD with Ergotron VESA arm. All I can say is awesome. Since when does $360 buy a 24" LCD monitor for the PC? I know it is a TN panel but it sure is an awesome display.

Any of you boys/girls have a PC fever as well as a WW fever? Any other crazy PC machines out there :eek: :eek: :eek: :cool: :cool: :cool:

[Randal Stevenson]

Built all my machines after my first IBM compatable PC. Pre that, ones I had, or had access to, were quite a list. When I bought my Packard Bell, 386, 486's were out, but this was a bargain due to that. I bought the math coprocessor for $1, off of this new internet auction site, that my brother said would never last (Ebay), later upgraded ram to its max, bought an ide controller card, and bought a HUGE 1gb hard drive.

Lightening wiped it out 3 weeks later.

Now I am building a gaming machine out of some older parts (2.8 PIV, 1.5 gb memory, 500gb storage, 7600 geforce). By no means top of the line, but decent, and considering Microsoft said NO CURRENT VIDEO CARD will be Direct X 10.1 compliant, I decided to wait to go full bore.

All my other machines vary in degree of power and run Linux. My primary is an older AMD 64 4000, 2gb etc... that I built around 2 years ago.

[Russ Filtz]

I've been gaming since Pong came out! Also build all my machines. Recently got a Dell 24" WS monitor, but those are more like $570 on sale. Cranked up the PC power with a Core2 Quad (2.4 now, but will overclock on air to 3.0+ gHz), 4 gig of DDR2 800 ram, 320mb GeForce 8800GTS XXX video card (DirectX 10.0), Abit IP35 Pro board, Creative Fatal1ty Platinum sound card, Klipsch THX 2.1 speakers, PC Power & Cooling heavy duty power supply (only 510 W, but that equals about 1kW of lesser makes!).

Up to now have refused to go to Vista, but some games from MS are now requiring it! Also you need Vista to use DirectX 10.

Note to XP upgraders, supposedly you can use the XP to Vista upgrade disk to do a clean install. There are instructions online. I guess the disks are identical (Upgrade/Full) but are crippled based on your old XP serial.

[Mike Heidrick]

Here are the machine parts arriving in about 30 minutes.

AMD X2 6000+ Windsor
Asus M2N32-SLi Wireless Dlx
4GB of Cas 4 Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 PC2 6400 (4X1024mb) - Great price on these right now at $60 per 2Gb after rebate from newegg!
EVGA 8800 Ultra (Bad price on these right now :eek: )
WD 500GB SATA3 (one for now)
Lite On 20X DVD burner
Antec TPQ-850 PS
Antec 900 Hundred case
Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 CPU cooler
DCLCD 24A monitor
Ergotro LX VESA stand

Will be dual booting XP Pro and Vista and trying that out.
Bought Bioshock ($39 at amazon if you also want to try for less than $50), Company of Heros, and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 to test the new machine out properly. Also will play Neverwinter Nights 2 and a couple others that I love to play.

Machine i have right now is a 2700+ 2gb ATI9800ProAIW 300gb drive machine all in a Shuttle XPC SN41G2 case.

Pretty excited about the build.

[Robert Goodwin]

I am a software developer by day, so you would think I would not want to touch a machine after hours, but I cannot help it. I have built all of my machines and love to do it. There is always something that you need to figure out.

As for gaming, I played alot of BF2 and HL2, but recently got talked into WOW and I just can't stop playing. It is finally cooling off here in the desert, so I need to put away the games and get out into the shop.

[Russ Filtz]

Supposedly "Call of Juarez" has some of the best DX10 implementations (and a pretty entertaining shooter). Bioshock (playing now!) only has a few lighting effects, etc., I think nothing major over DX9. Not sure about the other two.

[Greg Narozniak]

I actually just rebuilt my Gaming PC a few weeks ago. I had not built a PC in a few years and It was actually fun.

A few years ago I bought an Alienware PC off Ebay for a very very good price. The main reason was I love the case. It needed Memory, HD, OS and Video Card all of which I already had so for $300 I had a 3.0 GHZ PC with 2gb of Crucial Ballistix ram 160gb 7200rpm SATA drive, X850XT and a 500 watt PS. The one downfall, not at the time but recently, was it was an AGP motherboard and I decided it was time for an upgrade

I just changed out the Motherboard for an ASUS P5B Deluxe, e4300 Dual core processor, 2GB of Corsair XMS2 memory, and a X1950Pro video card and combine that with 2 WD Raptors running in a RAID 0 it is a very nice machine.

In the past I played America's Army, Couter Strike Source, BF2, Half Life 2, Hitman but since the rebuilt it has only been America's Army mostly with a little Rainbow Six Vegas. I cannot get enough of AA and at a 79 honor that is not hard to tell :). I never got into the WOW or Everquests mostly just the shoot em up ones.

I should have done more research on the Video Card as looking back I think I should have went with a different one but the price was right. The next step will be a new ThermalTake PS and maybe another X1950Pro to run a crossfire setup or step up to an 8800

[Scott Lingle]

That is one sweet game, you sound like you have the machine to enjoy it with. At work, we recently got some high-end graphics workstations with 2 Dell 30in. UltraSharp displays per PC. Being in IT, it was determined that we should thoroughly 'test' the machines before releasing them to production. This meant a couple weeks of GRAW at lunch. The graphics are amazing on that game. The fact that you can see things like reflections on glass (not just static pics like they used to be) is awesome. Have fun with it. Just remember, sleep sometime, don't play 62 hours straight like some of those guys in Japan have been doing. :cool:

[Larry Fox]

Quake I, Quake II, Half-Life and later Unreal Tournament has nearly cost me my marriage on many an occassion. :)

[Cary Falk]

I used to build computers to game with.. I still build computers but I don't game on them any more since I got an xbox 360. It seemed to me every time a new game came out you needed a new processor, video card, etc. The price of admission got to costly for me to keep up. Now I buy an xbox 360 game and I know it will play just fine on my 360 no matter it came out.

[Kyle Laird]

I've just recently started to enjoy FPS games, but I'm still not very good at them. Stuff like Grand Theft Auto is more my speed...along with Monopoly, The Game of Life, and others like that.

As for systems, I purchased (with the assistance of my parents) a Dell Vostro 1700 laptop. 17" wide screen TFT LCD screen, Intel Core2Duo at 2 GHz, 3 gig 667 MHz RAM, dual 120 gig hard drives, 256 meg NVidia video card, 8x DVD+/-RW. I added 2 Western Digital My Book external hard drives - one at 250 gig and another at 320 gig. I'm mainly into videos, I guess. Plus, the externals make it easier to keep programs that I use consistently...I make disk images of the disks and keep them there to reburn if I need.

The first system I ever built is no longer working. But it was a 1.2 GHz AMD with 512 meg RAM, 4X AGP video, and a 40 gig hard drive. But it was a top of the line system when I built it...6 years ago. Amazing how these things progress through time, isn't it?

[Pat Doble]

My system's a couple years old, so I know it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay obsolete - but 4-5 times a year my buddies and I get a 7 or 8 person LAN gathering together for 12+ hours of Counter Strike Source and/or Ghost Recon. CSS is an amazing multiplier game.....

[Mike Heidrick]

Ok the new machine is set up and fully functional. I have made the switch to Vista as well thanks to a MSDN subscription. Dual booting right now with XP Pro SP2 and Vista Ultimate but not sure why I will run XP. Extra memory arrives early next week.

Games I am currently playing in Vista
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Company of Heroes
World in Conflict

Also have waiting to play
NWN2
GR Vegas
AOE III
Tiberan Wars
Half Life 2 again and Half Life Episode 1

I think I am liking Vista as scarry as that is.

[Kyle Laird]

Ok the new machine is set up and fully functional. I have made the switch to Vista as well thanks to a MSDN subscription. Dual booting right now with XP Pro SP2 and Vista Ultimate but not sure why I will run XP. Extra memory arrives early next week.

Games I am currently playing in Vista
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Company of Heroes
World in Conflict

Also have waiting to play
NWN2
GR Vegas
AOE III
Tiberan Wars
Half Life 2 again and Half Life Episode 1

I think I am liking Vista as scarry as that is.
What do you think of Vista so far Mike? I can't say that I've had many problems with it myself.

[Mike Heidrick]

I am really liking vista myself. Many of my friends are against it but it is playing these crazy requirement games just fine. Looks like RAM is 40% used as cache but will have a couple more gigs in the morning. I like it. This video desktop/aero dreamscape thing is pretty darn cool.

[Jesse Espe]

I used to spend a lot of time gaming. Very addictive, I decided that if I were going to spend a ridiculous amount of time doing something, I should have something to show for it. Hence, my reason #8 to start woodworking.

Of course, these days, I don't have time for either. :p

[Russ Filtz]

I used to build computers to game with.. I still build computers but I don't game on them any more since I got an xbox 360. It seemed to me every time a new game came out you needed a new processor, video card, etc. The price of admission got to costly for me to keep up. Now I buy an xbox 360 game and I know it will play just fine on my 360 no matter it came out.

Consoles are great and all, but FPS games on PC >>> than any console! (unless said system can use a mouse)

[Cary Falk]

Consoles are great and all, but FPS games on PC >>> than any console! (unless said system can use a mouse)

Russ,
I have played FPS on both and I prefer the controler to the clunky keyboard. With the controler I can concentrate on the game not where my fingers are on the keyboard. To each his own. I guess I am not enough of a hardcore gamer. I'm ok with that. :D

[Al Willits]

Discovered Unreal Tournatment and Mech Warrior on my Dell 686 and dial up, got killed....

Next step was to build my own comp, did that and went to cable and life was fun, used to play Mech until 2 in the mornings at times, belonged to a team and we fought league battles in several different leagues.


Mech died and I no longer game, did modify my comp with a few upgrades and added a 300 gig HD and another 300 external HD and revamped the comp for music/video mostly.

Now building one for the garage and will run the 300gig external HD on it, I have that HD full of music and it should replace the 5CD changer I'm using now.

Just waiting for the right game to come along and I'll build another comp, lucky enough to have a wacko friend who constantly upgrading his and I get to hear what works and what doesn't.
I just wait till he gets a system that works well and build one that's just a hair better...:)

Have fun, it can be habit forming...:)
Al

[Rick Gibson]

I just wait till he gets a system that works well and build one that's just a hair better...:)

Used to do that to a guy I worked with, there were 5 of us in a shop all into building our own PC's. This guy just had to have the best. One of us would get a new monitor, the next Monday he would have a new one just a little better. Then someone else would get a new motherboard. Next Monday same thing he had one just a bit faster with more RAM. We played this game with him for a couple years and got bored of it. Besides he was going broke keeping up.

My first one was a radio shack coco 1 back about 1980 with 4K of ram. By the time I built my first pc the coco had a whole 256K of ram, 2 hard drives and I was running OS9, a version of unix.

My first pc was a 286 and each time I upgraded the wife got my old one. She mainly plays solitaire and word processing so she's happy. Just built my latest intel core2 with 2 gig of ram. I don't do online gaming or run any that have to connect to the internet to run. Just don't totally trust these companies and I have to much other stuff on my pc. My son buys the games and when he finishes with one he gives it to me. Right now I am in the middle of Dawn of War Platinum edition.

[Russ Filtz]

Russ,
I have played FPS on both and I prefer the controler to the clunky keyboard. With the controler I can concentrate on the game not where my fingers are on the keyboard. To each his own. I guess I am not enough of a hardcore gamer. I'm ok with that. :D

Cary, once you play enough PC based FPS's, you will retain the muscle memory! Most FPS games use the typical WASD keys to move, maybe QE to lean, SHFT to run, ZXC to crouch, etc. So it's easy to go from game to game.

The MAIN issue with console FPS, is the lack of aim control, as well as spinning around/change of direction. The mouse is WAY more effective at that than a controller (even with a joystick).

[Mike Heidrick]

Just another plug for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter two. WOW. Intense battles. Anyone else playing this?

Also loaded up NeverWinter Nights 2 and Half Life 2 again.

[Greg Narozniak]

Just another plug for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter two. WOW. Intense battles. Anyone else playing this?

Also loaded up NeverWinter Nights 2 and Half Life 2 again.

Half Life 2 Episode 2 The Big Orange Box comes out tomorrow. Supposed to be amazing.

[Russ Filtz]

Just another plug for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter two. WOW. Intense battles. Anyone else playing this?

Also loaded up NeverWinter Nights 2 and Half Life 2 again.

Only play GRAW2 in spurts, they've got the difficulty dialed up too hard! Take two steps, sniped, reload, take two steps, sniped, repeat until you throw cordless mouse across room!