this project is supposed to have ended two weeks ago but recently decided the sound was not up to par. alot of background hissing and clicking from the system. dont know where the circut is dirty with static. anyway, looked around and got a Creative x-fi Extreme Gamer for $105, the usual price is $145. still on warranty till end of this year, i.e. 4 months old. the previous owner swtiching over to the new Asus dx card. pics here.
the box is a real mouse trap. the way the card and the extra items are arranged is really cramped and strange.
the stuff that came along with teh card. nothing much but drivers.
only half card tall. more punch in a smaller pack. no gold connectors but i doubt you'll hear a diff.
the cirrus chip. thats what gives the 7.1 surround sound.
the x-fi chip thats under the heat sink. a review online tried to pry away the heatsink to look at the chip but it was too well glued to the chip. anyway, really shoddy lapping of the chip IMHO, just look at the it, the corners of the chip are not under the thermal paste. crappy.
the other bugbear of the card is the super slow installation time. waited a good 5 minutes for the drivers to be installed. then after that updated them but had to uninstall first before downloading (which took like 30+ minutes) then going through the slow install process again.
but after that was done, the 3D rendering was really good. i'm a headphones person (mainly because there are always others around me so cant make much of a noise) so the 3D emulation on headphones was really superb. the clarity was also top notch. one of the tracks had a big thud in the beginning of the track and i instinctively turned to my left to see who droped something on the floor. my music is more 'in your face', crisp and clear. the bass i have yet to tweak but so far so good.
had to replace me old shaver, that i bought when i just came into uni. lasted me now like almost 7 years. got it for about $70 then, which was big money for a student. the battery died and now have to use direct from the plug. the blades are dull already but still usable, and the replacement blades are no more in production. so its time to say goodbye.
got this one online, as all my other recent purchases were. made in holland, but its a US version. locally known as the HQ8140. it retails in local stores for S$199 but i got it for only 100, brand new. this guy somehow gets it for real cheap in US and he goes there often for business. anyway, it comes sealed in the box, so nothing to worry. tried it after an hour of charging and it works slightly better than the old one... haha... its also washable, which means i can directly flush the whole unit under a tap to get rid of the hair stuck in the unit all over the place.
the only annoying thing now is the US plug, and i have to find an adaptor for it each time i charge.
the shave heads are quite a bit of amazing technology. looks really complicated. the replacement heads cost about $19 each, so 3 would cost about $57, erm, more than half the buying price... kinda not worth it to just replace the blades huh?
the specs for this really neat piece of eqpt. can be found here.
CRAP
what is wrong with me. i have been on hikes, bikes, planes, roller coasters, ships, and felt ok. but 10 minutes in front of my 17" LCD playing an FPS called Timeshift and i get all seasick like. Headache, feel like puking and generally unwell.
did a google and found out it was called simulator sickness, a variant of motion sickness, and even the US army have problems with it when trainee soldiers got sick while using plane/tank simulators. they have a report here.
some people recommend some bangles, others swear by ginger pills and others Dramamine. some say on all your lights, others say off them all. some sit 10 feet away from their 51" TVs others put an object for reference in front of their monitors. some say 60Hz is too low a refresh rate for monitors, or try to get a wide an angle of view as possible. others rebuff them by saying our eyes should be made to see as narrow a field as possible. some people just dont get it while others get it one minute into the game. so i postulate that it is probably genetically linked.
was supposed to try out my new rig to push it to the highest possible game settings to test its capabilities but looks like now i'm stuck with minesweeper. gone are Crysis, or FarCry, or Quake.
the other way out of simulator sickness is to stop the simulation. get away from the screen and have a life.
got all 20 badges for parking wars!!!
significant historical facebook moment for me!
yayayayayayaya
now to get the ice cream truck and $10M!
hhehe, only those who are playing it will understand what i'm blabbering about.
To park! and to War!!!
RAM. kingston value ram PC2-6400, 1Gb x 2 pieces, latency 5-5-5-18, DRAM400.8.
nothing spectacular but will do for the meantime. this board accepts up to 1066 rams so lets wait a year or two for teh prices to fall, then will change to 4 pieces of 2Gb 1066 of latency 3.5 muahahaha
the mainboard, aka motherboard.
a P5k, bought at $160, selling outside for 210. warranty from last october but the previous owner sent it in for replacement just a month ago, so its practically only one month old. previous owner decided to upgrade his motherboard to a newer chipset so let go of this one.
the blue 16x pci-e slot for graphics card.
in foreground, the southbridge copper heatsink, in background, the northbridge heatsink with a pipe
the tiny chip that gives 8.1 channels of sound. amazing bit of technology
decided to go with asus and not gigabyte as my old motherboard is because too lazy to read up on the gigabyte website, and am after all, an asus fan. wanted to get p5k-pro at first but decided against it coz i wouldnt half use the functions on the board, so save my $40 for somethign else.
got myself a quad core processor for $350. market price brand new is about 480. this guy boutht it, tested it out for two weeks or so then decided to sell it off. the fan is still brand new, although i have no intentions of using it.
it runs at a fsb of 333 and multiplier of 7.5. i.e you multiply the two numbers to get 2497.5, approximately 2500, i.e. the speed of the prcessor is 2.5Gz.
this is one hardcore card reader i must admit. downloaded like 0.5Gb of pictures and took less than half a minute.
was so fast that i thought it accidentally downloaded an empty folder instead of the one with my pics. double checked the folder on my hdd twice to make sure all the pics were there and can be opened.
got it (yup, second hand again) for $25, which is much cheaper than the $39 market price. it was bought in late jan 08, with two years of warranty, so nothing to fear. the owner upgraded to an internal card reader, i.e. one that is built into his desktop unit.
love it for the very simple design. it reads all the high end SHDC and UDMA cards, which is great as those are what i'm using. SD is not so much a problem as most readers can take them, but for CFs, it was a big hassle for me to try find one that could read my Lexar 300x speed 4Gb UDMA card.
one of my best buys, imho.
sorry for the long absence. had been busy, sick, and busy.
got my desktop at last done up.
got my processor chip
converted from AMD to the Intel camp
choice of chip: quad core Q9300, the first of the quad core's 45nm chip to be released with a FSB of 1333. clock speed is 2.5 with a multipier of 7.5. the low multiplier is sucky but since i dont overclock, its ok. bought this for S$350 on the second hand market. original price is around 480. its one month old, and so still has 2 years 11 months of Intel warranty.
transformed my old AMD rig:
to my new Intel rig!!!
all my other pictures are stuck in my other camera's CF card which i dont have a proper reader for now, hence cant upload the pics till end of this week when i find time to go to the shop to buy a decent card reader.
