SysteMax Hellcat

I woke up today expecting a PC and I got one and I had a hard time pushing the box inside. I couldn't find the activation code, but it was in back. It is a Athlon 64 X2 4800 and I overclocked it 200 MHz. It came with Windows with Nero, PowerDVD, RealTek sound equalizer. I had a heck of a time plugging in IDE cables into both DVD burners when switching them to different bays since it was easier than taking a sliver tool to remove and reset the jumpers differently. After that I installed a lot of software including Suse Linux. Haven't installed any games, but you bet that I'll install some tonight and test my new videocard. The RealTek codec sounds very good better than the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 in my opinion. This is only temparly until my sound card comes in 3 days or so. On the Suse Desktop the sound is a little distored, but until Monday or Tuesday when the Turtle Beach Montego DDL this problem will disppear! I was looking at Ultima Linux, but realized that I like Suse 10 better just because I been using it since 2002.

By the way, I figured out you can play MP3/WMAs in a videogame off a thumb drive on Xbox 360 by pressing the controller's power button.


Suse 10 running on it.






Number of fans

* back case fan
* case fan on the window
* 3 case fans on the right side near the front
* PCI fan card (2 fans)
* CPU fan
* GPU fan
* motherboard fan

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800
- two CPUs overclocked at 2.6 GHz
250 GiB Serial ATA 7200 RPM hard drive
Windows XP Pro service pack 2 Turtle Beach Montego DDL
OpenSuse Linux 10.1 Beta 1 X86-64 (4 GiB partition).
BFGTech Geforce 7800 GTX OC 256 MB GDDR3
- 460 MHz
- 41 GB/s texture bandwidth
Drive 1 Sony Q28a 8x DVD Burner (DL 4x)
Drive 2 OptoRite DD0401 8x DVD burner (w/o DL)
- 1024 MB Kingston Hyper X PC4000 DDR
- DLink 108 Mbit Wifi PCI card
- 1 Gbit RJ-45 intergraded LAN
- Turtle Beach Montego DDL (sound card) PCI
* Dolby Digital 7.1 surround
* EAX 3.0
- transparent windowed case with lights
- RealTek 7.1 Surround Sound codec.
- Cyber Acoustics 4.1 Surround Sound Speaker System
- Vantec Spectrum PCI Fan Card with Blue UV LED (shipped Saturday)
- 550 Watt Ultra Power Box
- Logitech Lazer Mouse

X360 owned!

I drove to Target and got this plus a $50 warranty. But not before I was looking at Quake 4 and Dungeons and Dragons for PC. Teenager clerk asked me what games I owned so I told him. My checking account didn't bounce after the transaction! At home, I was watching the Project Gotham Racing 3 FMV and noticed it has a lot of trance music in it like Robert Miles. IGN gave PGR3 a 10/10 in sound saying comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. On the back side, there is a fan and it blows hot air making it the hottest videogame system I had. I was going to buy a PC game, but I didn't see any Xbox 360 in stock, but they were in the back room. Graphics are 720p, but my LCD TV's resolution is 1280x960. Forza Motorsport (favorite game right now) comes close to PGR3’s graphics. It comes with a PC power cable and a power box is huger than the one inside Xbox. I’ve been playing 3 hours on two AA batteries so I don’t know how long it’ll last. Buying Lithium ion batteries would last even longer, but buying a lithium ion battery pack would last longest I imagine.

Second game I tried was Dead or Alive 4. On my TV where the graphics were resized made it look a lot like Dead or Alive 3 from 2001. That’s not the X360 fault. A major factor was upping the game from Teen to Mature so the game could kind of appeal to the hardcore gamer crowd. I always thought that boob bouncing had to do with sexual themes. Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Vollyball has been rated Mature just for bikini aspect.

Xbox 360 plays half my games on it. If you go to http://www.xbox.com/pcsetup you’ll find that you can transfer mp3s/wma to the hdd wirelessly via WiFi. You have 12 GB to your disposal after all the WMV and WMA pre-installed the hard drive.

The power box is gigantic


12V output
120V input

My SysteMax Hellcat hopefully will come in tomorrow.

Just two more days till I own four computers!

I am/was an ATI graphics user for the last 2 ½ years supporting Radeon 9250 and Radeon 9800 XT videocards for PC gaming purposes (ie: UT2004, UT2003, Neverwinter Nights, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction, Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Doom3, Half-life 2, Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind, F.E.A.R., The Sims 2). I was not kind to my Radeon 9800 XT by overclocking it, running settings at highest possible resolutions and it never failed on me (just error popup infected ATI drivers released after September 2005 :-). Then I find that Geforce 7 series has better frame rates and edge over Radeon X1800 series at the moment in demanding PC games. BFGTech, a licensed Nvidia manufacture is my choice for future graphics needs. On Tigerdirect, the Radeon X1800 XT 512 is getting 4% performance over a XFX Geforce 7800 GTX. Nvidia Geforce 7 is known for it’s superior Doom 3, F.E.A.R. frame rates averaging around 80 fps at 1280x960 and 60 fps is considered fluid to the retina. The Geforce 7800 GTX succeeds Athlon 64 with 260 million transistors vs. 233.2 million transistors. It’s clearly one of the most advanced GPUs to date. ATI on the other hand got superior frames on Far Cry. Looks like 3:1 ratio to me. Yes-sir-ee-bob! I mean both cards can play these PC games at 1600x1200, but anti-analyzing affects both cards so it must be off. Truth is games don’t have to be at 1600x1200 on a 19” to look great. It can easily look just as good at 1248x1024 with 4x anti-analyzing. Better then what I have now. I don’t have money for two Geforce 7800 GTXs and I am planning to gamble on an Xbox 360 in stock at Best Buy tomorrow. Geforce 7800 GTX OC is l337 at the moment!

My SysteMax Hellcat is delayed due to Tigerdirect’s contract with some 3rd party semi trucking company. Dad and I have complained earlier about this, but truth it’s been shipped and no GPS tracking like before. Arrrrg! Tigerdirect.com is located in Florida and I am living in the “middle of the Middle Midwest”. But on the positive side of things this PC will have a single 250 GB HDD plus an external 120 GB Fantom Drive giving me plenty of space at the moment! Basically anything not using 100% bandwidth of an IDE cable is not on my IDE hard drive such as DivX movies and MP3 collection. Right now I have 120 GB + 120 GB to my exposal. Whoa snazzy!

Sometimes my CPU load averages 80 – 90% continuously starting at random times. I get BSoDs occasionally too. I can’t explain it well except a Trojan horse might trigger it. I am positive WinXP Service Pack 1 is more prone to viruses than Service Pack 2. I shall download the update because better late than never!

Bought a Turtle Beach Montego DDL with 7.1 Dolby Digital Live! Surround Sound and EAX 2.0

I went to Ruby Tuesdays restaurant with my parents in Stillwater, MN to have an Ultimate Burger Supreme with everything and I talked about TVs and soundcards. Burger tasted great. Then we’re talking about the successor to UHF and VHF TV bands (that isn’t satellite/cable) in shortwave band form. It’s a black box that receives digital signals (MPEG4 stream) hooks up to your coaxial connection.

Then I bought something really awesome! A 7.1 Dolby Digital Live surround sound card called Turtle Beach Montego DDL, cutting edge technology that rivals the Sound Blaster X-Fi, but is $50 less. Same specs at least. $130 less with 64MiB X-RAM. What’s 64 MiB X-RAM? It is audio RAM for games that support it. Could well be the best sound card for $80 USD. For speakers I normally use mini-headsets that fit inside my ear. I also have Cyber Acoustics 4400 5 piece 4.1 surround sound speaker system, but I don’t use them at all. I like the room quiet.



I suspect that Tigerdirect meant 5 business days when they shipped my PC on Tuesday cos it’s not here yet. I thought the postal service didn’t take holidays off. I also bought a PCI card with adjustable dual fans for $19! What a bargain it was! My other PCs need their case fans and case fans are so inexpensive! I’ll show pictures once I get it without the Montego DDL obviously.

I might be able to get into Minnesota Life College, but I don’t know anything yet. This’ll help me be successful in life and my computer more than likely will stay home for I would have an apartment. Little disappointed I can't tinker around with the PCs there like i can with my own.

ADVANCE PNG: PNG with 7-ZIP's deflate

I've been using ADVPNG for two weeks and what it does is compress PNG with 7-ZIP's deflate compression instead of any old deflate compression. Results can vary between 9 - 20% better PNG compression. I put mine in the C:/image directory. ADVCOMP, deflate, and png are all free.

DOWNLOAD IT

I just add the images I want compressed in the image directory than type

ADVPNG -Z -4 *.png

All done!

advancecomp v1.15 by Andrea Mazzoleni
Usage: advpng [options] [FILES...]

Modes:
-l, --list List the content of the files
-z, --recompress Recompress the specified files
Options:
-0, --shrink-store Don't compress
-1, --shrink-fast Compress fast
-2, --shrink-normal Compress normal
-3, --shrink-extra Compress extra
-4, --shrink-insane Compress extreme
-f, --force Force the new file also if it's bigger
-q, --quiet Don't print on the console
-h, --help Help of the program
-V, --version Version of the program

Athlon 64 X2 4800

Yesterday, I downloaded 5 CD ISOs (3.3 GiB) of SUSE Linux 10.1 beta 1 for my new PC. I must trust Windows XP for PC games which is why dual boot is necessary. My SysteMax Hellcat got an unexpected upgrade…an Athlon 64 X2 4800 which is roughly as powerful as Athlon 64 FX-55 (step up from A64X2). The integrated sound will use the CPU to process 7.1 surround sound with EAX 2.0 environmental enhancement, but this can be avoided by installing an Sound Blaster Audigy 2.

I got bored so I looked at my 4 books full of baseball cards (my collection before videogames) That is 1989 – 1996 baseball seasons. Despite sticking baseball cards to my wall, it was only masking tape, so my baseball cards don’t seem affected. That took 10 minutes.

Baseball card collection

Randy hasn’t come over for three weeks and I know Bob won’t. If he did I would try to buy an Xbox 360 over in Minnesota.

Here's some frame rates out of the latest PC games and higher is better bundled with Nvidia's latest GPU, Geforce 7800 GTX OC. Geforce 7800 GTX OC is $550! This config is ready and able to play Unreal Tournament 2007 and Elder Scrolls 4 at 1600x1200! My motherboard comes with a second PCI-e slot so I can stick another GPU and make it 512 DDR instead of 256 DDR! I know that 1 PCI-E card is running at PCI-e 16X, but there isn't dual PCI-e 16x slots. Only 1 Nvidia Nforce 4 motherboard supports dual PCI-e 16x slots. An ATI Radeon 1800XT is 5.2% faster than non-overclocked Geforce 7800 GTX. I used ATI Tool for my Radeon 9800 XT getting a 6.7% increase in core clock speed (core 412 MHz, OC 440.7 MHz).




Dual Core processing does have advantages for programs that support it.

My Pentium 4 right now



And SDRAM stats

Turrican II on my Virtual Amiga

I was bored Saturday so I bought a pack of 10 DL-DVDs instead of Xbox 360 at Best Buy. I figure every place was out of them. Yesterday, I was playing Soul Calibur II on the PS2, beat Arcade mode with that female with sword and shield. I had fun so I bought Soul Calibur III yesterday. Soul Calibur III has a customize character mode, but it makes up a MB of memory card kind of like NFL or Winning Eleven franchises.

I might be able to increase my processor from a A64x2 4400 to a A64x2 4800. I am unsure if I can get away with the price of $2400. I might have to decrease my GPU from a Geforce 7800 GTX OC to a 7800 GT OC. The difference is two pipelines and 4 GB/sec texture bandwidth lost. One of the great things about a A64x2 4800 is it can be over clocked to 2.6 Ghz and be stable for 3D games

I downloaded WinUAE 1.11, the only emulator built on reverse engineered data. Amiga 2000 came out in 1987 by Commodore. The Amiga is hard to emulate. Make sure you got the kickstart 1.3 ROM or you won't be able to run anything! Get it at http://home.online.no/~mrroboto/pacmania/the-emulators/the-emulators.htm


Sample Screenshot

CPU Motorola 68040
8 MB of RAM
107 GB available hard drive space!!!
FREE copy of Turrican II
Stereo portable mini-speakers
Decised in a Dell Dimension XPS case!!!!

Today, I drove to Best Buy, but was 1 hour after the second Xbox 360 sold at Noon. I am betting that next Tuesday the store gets new shipments! Meaning I'll be there. Instead I bought Lunar Eternal Blue Complete, but I had Quake 4 in my hands for a long period. O-Well. I am not very excited for Quake 4 anyways.