The games, the jobs, the moves

Posted on July 6, 2011 by InV4d3r

Haven’t wrote a while for quite some reasons. First of all nothing special actually happened. Secondly, too much happened that I haven’t found time for writing.

For those of you interested in my impressions according several games I have to apologize, I seriously have such a lack of time over last days that there wasn’t any gaming worth writing about. I can tell you that I played a lot DiRT 3 and I started playing Crysis 2, since the release of patch 1.9, including DX11 and HiRes textures and all this kind of stuff. These are AAA titles and I’m still not sure if I should write about games that get reviewed on every other single website.

I also started playing Duke Nukem Forever and all I can say till now, it’s a giant disappointment. I will, yes, I promise, I will give an impressions review on this particular title because the Duke is a phenomenon that simply deserves a review or just a gaming field report.

Another important thing that was going on, I’m still stuck between enemy lines. I’ve recently got an offer for a company that looks pretty promising according that point potential and development. As far as I know, it’s a network infrastructure that is pretty basic right now, that wants to grow to something, I actually do not know. Anyhow, it should get bigger and better and I shall be the man for it.

On the other side, there’s this job in this advanced technical college that wasn’t approved till now, but I also was not rejected till now. It’s another job that is very promising, also differs from what I’m doing at the moment and simply interests me very much. It’s more an operator job in some multimedia stuff, things I’ve recently done a lot, because I did some internet streaming and had to do some video editing, too (even though I hate this creative things).

The third candidate is my current company. It’s for sure that I’m not leaving without asking for a price to keep me in. And you can bet your mother that I’m going to be expensive, I mean, reeeaally expensive. I’ve taught myself so much during the last 5-6 years and I got skills in so many different areas that I want to get paid for this and receive the graditute I deserve. I decided to stay in my company, if none of the current opportunities fits my requirements in any way. I waited for such a long time to get a new job opportunity, I still have some breath left to wait a little bit more in the case that nothing gets rolling.

That’s the status for now. Plan for the weekend is to help out on a move of some friends of mine. I’m not uber excited about that, but hey, sometimes you help friends, you know?

Time to start it over

Posted on June 14, 2011 by InV4d3r

It’s pretty much a week now that my new gaming rig is up and running and my first summarization is: “I’m happy and satisfied”

The performance increase is so massive it’s such a pleasure to work with this system. I’ve done several benchmarks and lots and lots of stability tests and the final setup is far beyond my expectations. I didn’t wanted to have ultra hardcore settings these times for one simple reason. I did not want to burn my rig as fast as possible. I was more in a mood to find a good 24/7 setup. A balance between performance and green IT. Something between strong overclocking and energy saving. I finally found the settings I needed.

Additionally did I also change the heat exchanger in my water cooling circuit to get a much better results in cooling. The old dual fan heat exchanger was far beyond its capacity and the water was pretty much near the boiling point. After stressing my system for a couple of hours the CPU was finally at 72°C and the graphics card was something around 50°C. I ran Prime95 and Unigine Heaven Benchmark at the same time for over two hours. The outside temperature was around 25.5°C on these stressing days. I still don’t understand how people can get cooling results of 35°C with air cooling on their CPUs like you always find them in forums and review pages on several discounter sites.

Anyhow, the system is finished now and everything is totally up and running, but I’ll start things over. It’s like an old tradition that I never stay on a system for month that needed, let us say, a little exploration time. I’ve exchanged lots of software versions and drivers during the setup and I’m not a big fan of having orphans on my system. Additionally, the game explorer is not working a 100 per cent and this is because of one irreversible mistake I’ve done during setting this rig up. It’s going to take me like another 20-30 hours of work time, but it will be worth it.

It works!

Posted on June 8, 2011 by InV4d3r

I’m so happy. I’m sooo happy. After days of working on my new PC yesterday was the day where it was time to turn it on and see if it actually works. And it worked and still works. I mentioned previously that I had some serious problems with the water block that might additionally have caused a short-circuit on the system, but I was able to solve it.

I was expecting a children’s disease here and there while setting up the whole system, but it wasn’t the huge hurdle I was expecting. I had some tiny problems with the RAM. With completely full stacked RAM slots and without X.M.P. enabled the motherboard simply wouldn’t start and was caught in a boot loop. There was one system freeze on the very first installment of Windows 7, which could finally be solved by updating to a newer BIOS version. ISRT is not working at the moment. When I go by and enable RAID XHD the system denies to boot. It is not even able to boot a Windows 7 DVD or anything else. I’m pretty sure that this is just a BIOS related issue that is going to be fixed by Gigabyte within the next couple of weeks.

As you may know, I’m a benchmark addict and I just couldn’t hold to do a little 3D Mark 11 from the scratch. I gained around 6,600 points without any tweaks and tuning, which is around 700 points more than I my old system. Man, I’m so excited to finally overclock the CPU and even the graphics card. Till now the whole system is pretty basic. I spent a lot of time in doing some quick researches on drivers and utilities used on this board. ISRT was the only one that actually needed an update to give a software response. Anyhow, it’s not working in hardware so I decided to use this drive for ReadyBoost at the moment.

For the time being I’m going to restore my Steam library and install the most common program to get me back to track. I guess after get a little bit more into the whole infrastructure of the board and learning about its little bugs I’ll do a couple of benchmarks.

Barely finished… but almost

Posted on June 7, 2011 by InV4d3r

Normally, when I work on a PC and build it from the ground up, it takes like two hours to nearly half a day. Since I’ve started with rebuilding, cleaning, repairing and upgrading my gaming rig, six days have passed. The intention actually is to make it as good as possible. I don’t want no hidden rubbish areas in my chassis and most importantly no dust. Old builds of my PC always included weird cable constellations and packed cable trees in narrow corner. I tried to avoid things like this in this very build.

It takes a lot – and I mean a looot of time – to get all things arranged as one can possibly can. The mainboard alone was put around 6 – 8 times in the chassis. Main problem with the board was the backplate that was using too much space and could cause short-circuits. I finally found a good solution using less space and definitely not responsible for eventually upcoming short-circuits.

Another point is, well, it’s this kind of fetish of mine. I always use to put as much components in my PCs as possible. My working rig is somehow different, but mostly every PC I own is always packed. And by saying packed, I mean packed.

As you may know, the PC uses water cooling. Until now you can only find a water block on the CPU and a couple of tubes wandering through the chassis. The water pump is already installed, too. This time I decided to put the pump a little differently inside to gain a little bit more space inside. Additionally did I put some foam around the pump to minimize vibrations going on to the frame of the chassis causing noises. I also have plenty of room to do some quick maintenances in the case of an incident.

My new graphics card is going to be delivered this day’s afternoon and I’ll probably go to finish this PC by today’s evening. I was very lucky to get a 64GB SSD pretty cheap that I’m able to use ISRT immediately. I hope that it’s going to work with an previously set up RAID0, the storage solution that I always use for my system- and games partitions.

Anyhow, I’m pretty excited and nervous today and hopefully everything is getting well. I haven’t been working on a PC for such a long time before I finally started it and hopefully it’s going to be a good harbringer.

It’s dead and will not move no more

Posted on June 6, 2011 by InV4d3r

After having pushed several of my graphics cards to their limits and beyond I have to announce a death in the family. My Geforce GTX 570 died after some burn-in tests with FurMark. I was able to run 3DMark 11 a couple of times, but the card finally suffered the big heat and decided to simply turn off. Actually, one voltage transformer decided to burn out and the card wasn’t functional anymore. This happened because of several reasons. First of all, I think that the core voltage wasn’t set to high, because 1.152V is actually a value a GTX 570 should be able to handle.

I personally think that the overall heat, even in the water circle, was a to high. Around 50°C of pure water warmth is something that brings every circular flow assisted system on its knees. Anyhow, the whole system was boiling and cooking and my graphics card said “No, I’m leaving here”

Like I said before, I know that the GTX 570 is capable of handling the previously mentioned core voltage. I guess the used components were like manufactured on a Monday and deserved to die. After giving condolences and mumbling some last words to her, I decided it’s time to switch to something really, really fucking bad and ordered a Geforce GTX 580. Firstly, I ordered the wrong one. A Good Edition by Gainward with the main problem that the PCB differs from the original one. That’s a giant problem for me, because I use a waterblock that is designed for the common Fermi 570/580 design. The card is going back to sender and I finally ordered a card by EVGA.

I decided to take the Superclocked model, which is for what I believe, the card with the better single components on it. I had to pay a higher price, but that’s okay. EVGA offers some great terms of warranty and is in my opinion the new high end manufacturer. I was a fan of XFX for a long time, but they do not build Nvidia cards anymore, which is sad, because they put out some absolutely great products. I also liked Gainward a lot, but the price for their cards compared to the service afterwards is nothing in comparison to EVGA. You could say, EVGA is the real shit for every Nvidia fanboy.

At this very moment, my gaming rig is finished like 70 per cent and hopefully up and running within the next two days. I also hope that it will work, because I had some serious space issues with the retention module for the waterblock. Screws and kind of things like that touch the backplate. This IS serious, man. All fingers crossed for my work on electric isolation.

n3gative gaming rig mark II

Posted on May 30, 2011 by InV4d3r

After two years and barely a half, it’s time for something new. I’m speaking of the CPU working in my game system. It’s a good old Intel Q9550 overclocked at 3.8GHz. Actually I don’t really want to replace him, because it’s a totally fine CPU, but over the years came the issues. First of all, I had some serious problems with the RAM. I wasn’t able to clock any higher than 1000MHz without running into crashes and freezes. But this is more a board related things.

As the time passes by came a heat problem additionally. I found the optimum settings pretty fast for the CPU and it rarely got any warmer than 60°C at full speed with all cores maximum loaded. It now hits the 85°C mark pretty fast, mainly in games like “DiRT 3” or “Battlefield Bad Company 2”. It’s a unacceptable temperature for a water cooled system. Besides this issue the CPU turns out to be more unstable as it was before. I get a lot of freezes and crashes in several applications. This could have been something RAM related but it’s not.

To make a long story short. I decided to switch to the latest Sandy bridge chipset Z68 in combination with a strong Intel i7-2600K. I was looking for a 1366 board and CPU first, but it turned out to be too expensive. I mean, I want a powerful gaming rig with a little extra tuning and not a hi end rendering engine or whatever you might name. The Intel i7-2600K seems to be the right CPU, with enough horse powers at a very fair price. It’s getting bedded on a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD4-B3 and hopefully isn’t the BIOS too buggy.

As far as my experience goes, the first BIOS versions of a brand new board generation are almost crap and can be considered as beta. Even a manufacturer like Gigabyte puts out a lot of bug filled and barely finished products these days, but the technical specifications of this board look very promising. I’m very optimistic that we’re going to be good friends. Anyhow, I’m gonna miss my DFI board, it was kinda killer and stable as hell.

RAM – it’s going to be 16GB of it and for the very first time ever I’m going to put Corsair RAM into my rig. I decided to pick the Vengeance series which looks pretty awesome and they will fit perfectly well with the black colour of the board. Hopefully, everything’s getting here during this week so that I can “go live” as soon as possible.

Lowered expectations… or the lack of time

Posted on May 19, 2011 by InV4d3r

It’s a cross. I overslept like three times this week. Firstly, I missed gym two times in a row. Ya, I know that four o’clock in the morning is a terrible time to get off for some training. Anyhow, I feel good with and I’ll stay with it (if I can make it out of bed). Whatsoever, I also missed my regular alarm clock for work today. It rang, I noticed it and fell asleep again. Luckily the loss of time wasn’t that huge so I can get back home pretty early.

I took a training session the day before and, well, my overall condition was not that bad. Okay, okay, I just missed one week but I was actually expecting the worst. Maybe I’ll be able to throw some loops this weekend and get a little boost on my stamina.

The Sony network is back online and Sony’s offering lots of free stuff and compensations and all kinds of shit. I’ve got another 45 days left to play the “DC Universe Online” and hopefully Sony will come up with a lowered subscription fee as well. I was totally fine with 24 Euros for three month but unfortunately did I have some issues with one of my credit cards and they put me back on normal rate. Life’s tough sometimes, you know?

A little exception

Posted on May 10, 2011 by InV4d3r

Today’s the first day of my recently started training period where I decided to stay in bed instead of hitting the to road to the gym. Actually, I was really tired and additionally will I meet up with a couple of friends this very evening to watch a movie at the cinema. It would be a waste of money getting there and just falling asleep only because I forced myself to get up too early.

I want to keep a little comfort for myself and I don’t want to get to a point where I start hating sports just because I can’t find time for anything else. Or I’m too exhausting to do anything else. I’m glad to be a person who’s totally fine with six hours of sleep per day (or night) and I don’t want to bend it to the limits too much. There’s still my gaming hobby. Photography plays a big role, too. And of course do I want to meet up with some friends even during the week. Not to forget my girl also deserves a lot of time.

Well, anyhow, I just wanted to mention that this is not going to be the end of the road and I’ll stick to my sports plan, but you sometimes have to make some exceptions. I assure you that you’ll find me in the gym tomorrow morning training my ass off once again.

Passions regained

Posted on April 27, 2011 by InV4d3r

This is the announcement, that I’m back on track. Well, actually, it’s just an announcement that I’m finally back to a fixed, regular schedule for my gym sessions. It’s three days a week in the morning and one day in the afternoon. I’m totally happy and completely satisfied with this new schedule, it doesn’t burn me out too much, leaves enough room to rest and I don’t have the feeling to lose to much free time. Apparently, I’ve to go to bed pretty early because the alarm clock rings at 4:00am but like I said, it’s easy to handle when you have only three days per week to get up that early. I’m also making good progress when it comes to dexterity and pure muscle strength. The dexterity is good so far and much, much better as it was in times where I was a smoker, even with my massive overweight. Even though I’m at the beginning of training my strength is as good as it was the time I let the training fade away. I was also able to increase weight on some stations in the gym. Right now, I’m focussing on chest and neck. I guess it’s pretty obvious and I don’t have to mention it explicitely that I always train belly and back. Nothing’s more important than a well trained centre. Within the next couple of weeks I will also start a protein diet to get a little boost to muscle growth and lose some fat.

Secondly, I’m once again a little bit more into photography. During my trip to London, I haven’t even used a whole SD card for my pics. Compared to previous trips it’s an improvement, because I used like two or three cards within one or two days. A lot of crappy pictures came up these days. Just let us say I reached a border where quality took over quantity. Whatever the case, I personally see me making progress in photography and my picture are getting better. There are still some issues with incorrect focusing and a weird usage of depth of field, but this okay for the moment. I do no longer have these completely wrong exposures. It’s natural to get a couple of pics that too bright or too dark, but you don’t have to forget that some pics are snapshot style and I’m not always rethink light and stuff before a shoot the pic. This happens from time to time.

My besty gifted me on X-mas with a nice book about Lightroom and Photoshop. I’m currently working myself through the Lightroom book and it’s giving me a blast in knowledge about digital photo development. Until a short time ago, I was using Lightroom for collecting and organizing my picture only. The whole editing always happened in Photoshop and it happened a couple of times where the final product was worse than the original picture. Lightroom is fun and it’s so awe-inspiring to see how my pictures can still develop, even those that I already abandoned.

Finally, shame on me, I still owe you an article about XBMC and a couple of nice add-ons I don’t wanna miss anymore. It’s coming. Just be patient.

Game of the week #8/2011 – Amnesia – The Dark Descent

Posted on April 14, 2011 by InV4d3r

After games have left the uncanny valley, talking about scary does not always mean the horrible graphics, nowadays it can also mean that the game itself and his whole plot and story is scary and frightening. In the early nineties there were games like “Alone in the dark” that scared gamers to the bones. Nothing really was able to follow up this game and the first real horror game that can remember again was the ingenious “Clive Barker’s Undying”. Based on Unreal Engine I the look of the game still was almost artificial, but it was well scripted and was definitely able to give you the creeps. There were lots and lots of bloody and gore rich games in the late nineties and early new millenium years but nothing with a subtile horror feel. Even though games like “F.E.A.R.” and “Dead Space” are scary and claustrophic as well, in my personal opinion, they are still gory action games with a few frightening moments. The only game that had this special horror touch was “Silent Hill”, but it was stuck in the previously mentioned uncanny valley. If you really want to feel a cold chill floating down your back and shaking every single bone of your spine you should, no, you MUST play “Amnesia – The Dark Descent”.

First thing that I really like about this game, you cannot fight, you can only run away. But let’s start at the very beginning, you wake up in a probably abandoned castle and you don’t even know how you got there. You suffer from amnesia, only your name, Daniel, and after finding a note you get to know that your memory was erased with intent and that you’re the chosen one to kill someone in this castle. During the exploration of the castle you’ll find more and more hints that make you come to several conclusions why you are here. Needless to say, that there are lots and lots of bone chilling moments while wandering deeper and deeper through the halls and floors of this mysterious castle.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1nY_5-UrY4[/youtube]

Like I mentioned before, you cannot fight in this game. You have no real weapons. You can only run away and hide. Another important thing is, that you have to keep an eye on your health status. A rapidly beating heart is everything else than helpfull and also your brain might play some tricks on you. Did I already mention, that Daniel is afraid of the dark? As you can see, lots of elements that are actually needed to give you a nice and intense horror feeling with a nice dash of claustrophobia. I wasn’t actually able to play this game longer than thirty minutes because I found it too scary. Mostly played at the dark hours and home alone. Which is not a good idea, well, in this case it is.

The presentation of the game is up to date. Based on Unreal Engine III you’ll barely have anything to complain about and the level design is done perfectly as well. You’ll also find some nice physics elements which leads to the grade of realism that was missed in the horror genre for such a long time. I missed that aspect personally. So if you’re tired of being a nearly immortal super soldier fighting hordes of monster in the dark with oversized weapons, you should, no, you MUST play “Amnesia – The Dark Descent”. It’s worth every minute of play, because it’s very intense and of course something different in these days of stereotype game mass production.

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