Wow, I used to be up on all this stuff....

Stylerod · 10-27-2006, 09:44 AM

After I installed my first motherboard on my IBM 8088 clone to make it a 286 I have been a huge hardcore hardware fanatic. I never bought a new system. Constant upgrades. I used a dremel to cut the side of my case to put a window in, water cooled a system, lived at HardOCP/Anandtech/Toms Hardware and all the other fan sites.

I used to buy my CPU's based on where they were made and what batch they came from. I made sure my thermal grease was silver and not white. If I wasn't water cooling my PC the heatsink better be damned copper and weigh more than a pound.

Then, about 4 years ago, I got a job IT. Now I'm just happy to have a relatively fast PC that runs right all the time. I don't overclock anymore. I have no idea what people are using anymore for their 3d speed benchmarking. Hell, I can't even remember the name of the one I used to run a few times a day when I played with memory timings, multipliers, and Video clock speeds. It had the cool animated Matrix shooting scene in it and you could upload your stats to their site and compare to every one else.

I don't play games like I used to. It's also not just the IT job I got about 4 years ago, I also had my 2nd son just over 4 years ago, so I'm sure that played into it as well.

I just bought BF2142 last night. I have been playing the demo and I like it. My 7 year old is into the demo as well and has already gotten me banned on 2 servers for team killing

And I figured it's been a while since I updated my video drivers so I went to ATI's site. And lo and behold it seems ATI and AMD have partnered with each other???? Did one buy the other? When did this happen? This just shows how out of it that I am. I can't believe I didn't know this. My how times have changed.

I was always the go to guy for family, friends and friends of friends to ask "What is the best video card for the money right now?". "Which CPU and m-board combo should I get?" "Who is making the fastet RAM?". I used to know all those answers off the top of my head. Now I have no idea. Weird.....

ballz2wallz · 10-27-2006, 09:49 AM

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I have been playing the demo and I like it. My 7 year old is into the demo as well and has already gotten me banned on 2 servers for team killing

Stylerod · 10-27-2006, 09:52 AM

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

Yeah, needless to say he will be limited to single player mode on the full version. Or I'll have to set the filters to only go to servers where you can't hurt team mates. Besides that he's pretty good. He just gets confused with who the bad guys are sometimes.

avsp · 10-27-2006, 09:59 AM

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Yeah, needless to say he will be limited to single player mode on the full version. Or I'll have to set the filters to only go to servers where you can't hurt team mates. Besides that he's pretty good. He just gets confused with who the bad guys are sometimes.

this is worring & i am scared
so, i venture to suggest a trip down the opticians in preference to one down the machine gun range, ..., possibly

motivez · 10-28-2006, 09:07 PM

I can't remember when it happened exactly, it wasn't that long ago though.

Personally, I'll never buy another ATI card. At least, not until they provide decent support for Linux through drivers that aren't completely horrible.

Nvidia has much better support for linux and the open source community, and the new Intel processors are much more powerful than anything AMD currently has to offer.. so it's a win win for me.

SICKGUY · 10-31-2006, 01:35 AM

Originally Posted by motivez

I can't remember when it happened exactly, it wasn't that long ago though.

Personally, I'll never buy another ATI card. At least, not until they provide decent support for Linux through drivers that aren't completely horrible.

Nvidia has much better support for linux and the open source community, and the new Intel processors are much more powerful than anything AMD currently has to offer.. so it's a win win for me.

i have never really been a guy that could tell you whats what with hardware, but i have always been pretty good at learning apps with little or no formal education. i took a total of 3 autocad classes in college, and none for photoshop. now i use both on a daily basis for my job producing presentation work for our marketing department.

i used to be a big gamer, now i cant even play 10 minutes of halo without getting bored. same with movies, i used to be a huge movie buff, now im lucky if i can sit through one.

i think i have some form of adult ADD, but i think it helps me in some ways