Well for me its hard to say when I got the bug. I remember my cousins had a black and white box with knobs that they hooked up to the family TV. I'm thinking it was '76 or maybe '77. Yes, it was PONG. But I don't think that's when I got bit. Many of my neighbors had consoles (Atari 2600, Intellivision, and the C64 too) that I didn't have to ask my parents for one. I could just go to the house that had the system I wanted to play and get my Jones on.

But to say what game really got me started in PC gaming. I would claim: Tomb Raider. The game that sucked me in i.e. the biggest time-sink when it was released: Omikron The Nomad Soul. I never finished that one because the first time I played it I lost track of time and my GF asked me if I was going to eat dinner. I asked her what time it was and she said 10:30 pm. Wha?!?! Four HOURS after I stared playing. It was at least a month before I played it again.

Hey Action,

The fan speed is OEMs answer to a design flaw in nVidia's GPUs. It seems, but they won't admit it, that many mobile and some add-on PC cards are defective. There's even a lawsuit pending...


http://www.girardgibbs.com/NVIDIAGeForce.asp?_kk=nvidia%20gpu&_kt=516d8b96-f74b-422c-9e76-3383e457b6b2&gclid=COrC8ODVnJYCFQWc1AodbikgiQ

HP knew about it a while back and when they pressed nVidia all they got in return was the sound of crickets. As I recall HP put out a BIOS fix to ramp up the fan speed in an attempt to keep the chip cool. So did Dell...

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=tt_comq&thread.id=184

This could be nVidia's undoing since they my have to spend millions to redesign and then replace the defective chips.

Sweet! The September issue has the next 3 events in its LAN party list.

8/9/08
10/11/08
12/13/08

Take it with a grain of salt. GameSpot aka Ca$hWhore newsletter that I subscribe to has a release date of Dec. 31, 2009. However, their website for Diablo III info has a release date of TBA. 

Here's a bit of info on AMD/Ati vs. Nvidia



http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-9968992-64.html?tag=bl

I have been using Ati for a while and to me it comes down to what do you want? If its top performance then expect to pay top price. If you want a graphic card to give you decent visual experience in a game environment then you can go for mid-range and that's where Ati competes well.

This is filed under "What Were They Thinking?"

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUxOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

You must read the article. Notice that Palit is mentioned as one Nvidia GPU seller who is not following proper channels in the U.S.

What think?

I am still using an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ on an nForce 2 chipset with AGP. Can't speak from experience but, for my 2 cents, all the reviews I have read over the past year proves to me AMD is in a world of hurt. Intel chips out perform AMD quite often in the areas that gamers care about.

Hmm, didnt ATI buy them out a year or two ago?

Other way around Modious. AMD bought ATi. Now it looks to be a bad move for the cpu department. AMD may only survive as a graphics card company. I sure hope they can turn it around and begin to make great cpus again. Can you imagine what you would have to pay if Intel was the only game in town?

Hey Guys,

Since i don't come from a compurter/IT background, just about anything makes me go, WOW. So, with that in mind, check this out...

www.untangle.com

Looks pretty cool to me. I just wish I had enough parts to throw a box together and try it out.

Click a lot. Yeah, that was one minor negative. I lost many a battle because I couldn't click fast enough 

Venus

P.S.

I will second the notion for needing a high-end machine. Intel dual core, nVidia 8800 GTS 512mb (SLI would be greater) and at least 2 gigs ram for XP, 4 in Vista and you are good to go. Oh, one more thing, the down load client was a heafty 13gigs. Install space needed was 32 gigs and finally settled at 24 gigs HD space after install. Whew!

I dropped out of the AoC beta only because it became unplayable for me. I was shocked at all the bugs still in the game with only a few weeks to launch. Then I snooped the webs and found a few blogs comparing Open Beta with Closed and found out OB is a much older client and quite buggy. CB is 180 degree difference from OB. I guess FunCom's reason for older client use is to stress test the servers but, man, not a good way to make a first impression with your potential customers. All in all it had a good beat and I could dance to it but then the record kept skippin'.

Venus

hey that's a great price ($10) for 32 days of gaming. You might want to correct the date for the 1st event in June posted on the NeXus front page. It reads June 7 to July 8.

Venus

Current game titles have pushed my machine out of LANs:

It can't run CoD4, BioShock, and UT3 for example


Windows XP Pro SP2 (SP3, maybe later)
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Zalman CNPS 7000B- CU cooler
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo
2 Gig. OCZ DDR PC3200 with 2.0-3-2-5 timings
ATi Readeon X800XT Platinum Ed. Yes, it is AGP  (I added an Artic Cooling Silencer 4 GPU and ram cooler)
Fatal1ty branded Creative X-fi sound card
Logitech Z-680 5.1 digital speakers
WD 74 GB Raptor  SATA  HDD
Segate 320 GB SATA HDD for storage
Plextor PX-708A DVD/CD burner
Antec TruePower 480 PSU
Cheftec Dragon tower case w/side window
Fatal1ty Pro Laser mouse
Logitech keyboard
ViewSonic VA902b LCD monitor

I have 2 installs of XP on this thing.

2nd install:

WD 80BG HDD
WD 40GB for backup OS image storage.
Both are in Vantec 5in. exterior bay lockable hard drive enclosures. I power off the system, turn off the drives w/ encluded key and power on to the game set-up when its time to get my frag on. BIOS has a boot order of HDD-0 then SCSI (which is SATA controller)

Must.........get..........a.........job........Buy............new........system......ugh......

Venus

I played WoW when it was beta and found it to be WAY too time consuming.    Which MMO isn't? I played Dungeons and Dragons when it launched and thought it was OK. I'm in the Age of Connan (AoC) and, well, it is in beta and my machine is woefully underpowerd. I like the story and the initial grind is not so bad. After 2-3 hrs. Im almost to lvl 7 (hey, I like exploring) and the beta is capped to lvl 13. Havn't gone into PvP yet.

Venus