Torchlight

Almost at the end of Dragon Age, thought I'd slip into a little action-rpg for a few - little did I know how addictive "Torchlight" would be. Fun game, burned half a day on it building up my Vanquisher (rogue equivelent) class character. It's a lot like Fate - a sort of Diablo tribute w/ a cool pet to help you out. And fishing! ( the pet likes fish)



Specializing in the Marksman line, going full-on gunslinger w/ this character. All the way w/ crits and ranged specialization. I really like the "ricochet" skill, usually the first skill they give you starts to suck pretty quick and youre stupid to dump points in it, but it's turning out to be pretty cool. Pretty bloody and violent, yet cartoony fun!

Dragon Age movie mayhem

Now that I'm running a real pc, FRAPS can handle the task of taking movies in Dragon Age. I particularly like the "finishing moves", here's a couple movies of just that.

Morrigan is casting spells on and blasting away at an Ogre during a fight, infuriating the creature. It charges her, and she uses a quick spell to temporarily freeze it in it's tracks - just enough time for the wily Rogue to come up behind and dramatically take him down w/ her poisoned blades!





Ogres can be dangerous foes if allowed to bust out their special attacks. Twice Draconia is pummeled hard by the creature, the second attack sending her flying. Unfortunately for the big oaf, she has a little special attack of her own called "dirty fighting". The momentary stun is more than enough time to unleash a fatal combination of blows that paves the way for her signature takedown.






The "Brood Mother" was a particularly revolting foe, Draconia was more than happy to put her down with a merciless throat slashing.

Dragon Age gets an ATi makeover

Good shot of Draconia about to deliver the final blow to a downed Ogre. With the shadows and lighting, this pic kinda looks like Simon Bisley'ish.


I'm really liking this new card. No slowdown at all, anywhere, and I have everything cranked up. The firewall, antivirus, and everything else is running as well, things that I used to have to shut off on my other PC. I guess the processor and 8g of ram helps a little bit too.

And the game looks good.

Nvidia gets fired

After updating my video drivers, the Nvidia GPU cookout went down and they were taking them off the site and telling everyone to roll back to an earlier version. That, plus the lack of any good utilities, and locals urging me to go ATi convinced me to jump ship while I still had a 30 day return escape hatch.

The XFX Radeon 5850 "black" edition (overclocked out of the box) was about 150.00 more, but in still keeping my system under 2K I think that I'm doing good. I'm a hobbyist, and this is an investment in my hobby - that I theoretically shouldnt have to upgrade for literally years....

Theoretically

The Raven has Landed

Ive taken a bit of a gaming hiatus due to a new family member, codename:Raven.

This is the first pc that Ive ever built from the ground up, and I have to say - I'm pretty surprised w/ how smooth the whole thing went. From getting the parts that I needed, to fiddling w/ the BIOS and installing windows 7 x64, there was really no problems. There was a little bit of an issue when trying to install Dragon Age, but as I was canceling out of the failed install, win7 asked if I'd like to let them do it "their way". Paraphrasing of course.

Next thing I knew, I was running around Ferelden at the highest frames-per-sec Ive seen yet. This thing is amazing.

Quick report on the win7 64bit compatibility, these all work fine:
Dragon Age
Company of Heroes
Warhammer 40k II


Here's my specs, and the final total of the system:

CASE: ANTEC 900 II	$100.00
MOBO: GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P	$202.00
PSU: ANTEC TRUEPOWER 650W	$108.00
GPU: XFX RADEON HD 5850 'BLACK'	$390.00
CPU: INTEL I7-860	$329.00
RAM: 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X 1600	$238.00
HDD: WD BLACK 1TB	$119.00
DVD: HP DVD-RW 1270I	$55.00
OS: WIN7 PRO 64 OEM	$164.00
FINAL COST + TAX=	$1,705.00

Here it is w/ both side covers off, ready to get decked out in it's new hardware



The intel I-7860, the brain of the system

I didnt even see the ram before I bought it, we pretty much did everything on a pc there at the store to see what would be the best for my money. Worked out well w/ the color palette, as you'll see later.



Motherboard Phase#1 - install cpu



Motherboard Phase#2 - heat sink & fan


Motherboard Phase#3 - ram installed


Installing the PSU, I dragged the wires thru the holes in the back, but at this point wasnt sure how to run everything. Better put the motherboard in.


Mobo installed, things are looking up now.


I really like this "behind the motherboard" style of wiring, keeps the mess out of the case.



The casual observer would never suspect the mess of wires behind the motherboard...



The absolutely massive Nvidia BFG GTX 260 OC. Yes, it actually fit in the case!



I didnt bother taking pics of the HDD & DVD install, so lets wrap it up!












Loaded w/ LED fans, a huge one up top, two in front of the drive bays, and the standard rear fan. Again, the color palette that just coincidentally happened on this rig is pretty nice!





Time to get some gaming in!