PC News and Game Reviews

Well my short answer to the title of this post is…..YES!

For the past 3 years I’ve been surviving with a Radeon 9800 and a 3ghz P4. Now this machine has served me well but when faced with the onslaught of Windows Vista and direct X 10, I think its time to upgrade.

Now many gamers (like many other P.C users) hate Microsoft and the products they purvey. But alas there is no alternative. To further complicate things the good folks at Microsoft have tied our hands and sealed our fate…….Direct X 10 will only ship with Vista. This move effectly means if you want to get the best performance from your games rig….you have to invest in vista (or get a hookie copy off the intertnet)

When getting a new computer I always buy parts, as i refuse to pay a company to assemble them for me and pass the work off as their own with a badge on it! My latest rig is looking like:

• Antec P180 case (Silver) - My previous case was a Cheiftec Dragon. This case was absolutely huge. At one stage I had 5 80mm fans, before ditching 3 of them and buying an Aquagate water cooler. My reason for changing case - ergonomics. Too big/too noisy, but looked excellent!
• Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 - This I believe is my first slip up. I went for a slightly cheaper board in the 650, but noticed after purchase that you can only run 8X/8X in SLI, compared to 16X/16X with the 680i mobo. That said we needed the 4 IDE inputs for legacy devices (Hard Drive and CD-Rom’s)!
• Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 “LGA775 Allendale” 2.13GHz - The overclockers friend, I think I made the right choice here.
• Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 - Again with Vista 2gb will become the norm, can’t go wrong with Corsair.
• BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB - I’ve heard good things about BFG on the forums….and this card. Its a beast, say no more. In the board above it will run at 16X, however if I wish to pair it with another one ill have to get a new board….but this is at least 2 years down the line!…..at which point I hope 680i’s will be dirt cheap
• Enermax Liberty 500W - Now people staging that for SLI you got to be running 600W+ are full of crap. I’ve read hundreds of posts by people running SLI fine on 500W, and I did’nt want to burn a hole in my pocket and the ESB bill with a 650W supply!

So that my rig. Ill be adding a Raptor 74gb to drive the OS…and a 320gb drive (at a later date) to store games and the like……I’m hoping this machine will see me through till 2009 without any modifications…..heres hoping….

In my opinion the Command and Conquer Series have been the best P.C games ever made. The combination of excellent story telling (cut scenes) mixed with explosive real time play wins the day for me. I’ll never forget the video in command and Conquer where Kane shoots the Brotherhood of Nod commander in the head for being a traitor…..what a way to introduce the bad guy!!!!

Red alert introduced a few new factions but kept true to the Command and Conquer style of excellent level design and amazing plot twists!

Then came Command and Conquer: Generals…..nice in my opinion but did not cut the mustard. The Matrix style “zoom in an slow mo” when vehicles were destroyed reeked of show off the game engine….forget about the game play!!!! No video cut scenes…..what were you thinking!

So on to the next serving…..Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Now I must say that this game seems to me like Command & Conquer: Tiberium Sun with the bells and whistles attached. Tiberium Sun was set in the a futuristic settling…sometime after the first Tiberium war. The developers tell us how ever that this game is set much later, in 2047 or something….meaning a few new units. I’m surprised the popular Mammoth tank has survived in service with GDI for 50+ years!!!!! (Obviously to appease the fans!)

So its 2047 and NOD (The Brotherhood of NOD…or Al Quida) and GDI (Global Defence Initiative….or the Americans) are at it again….fighting for control of the Tiberium fields and untapped endless energy! Alas the party gets crashed by: “The Scrin!!!!”. It seems the developers have decided to spice things up a bit and introduce an alien race.

Now I can see where this is going….and I hope it does not go there. An unholy NOD and GDI alliance to defeat the evil Scrin….and Kane and the GDI commander can hold hands singing “Come by a me lord” with flowers in their hair when they defeat the Scrin!!!!! Lets hope not!

More interestedly we are promised a whole new race and a host of new units for NOD and GDI. The engine looks super: click here

Heres hoping it a good one!