Category Archives: Hardware

Thoughts on my new X-Fi

I asked for two things for Christmas: a Creative X-Fi (Extreme Music) sound card and a UPS. I got the sound card, but I kinda wish I’d gotten the other now. Let’s run through a list of expectation I had and whether or not it fulfilled them.

Fixed Half-Life 2 sound stuttering? Yes.
Fixed sound in ATI MMC TV v8.8 ? Sorta. The echoes are gone, but there are still…issues.
Increased performance in games? Maybe. If so, it’s too insignificant to tell, but I’ve only tried HL2, Red Orchestra, and Doom 3 (1.3 patch with EAX 4).
CMSS would make stereo music sound better in surround? Not any better than the SBLive already did automatically.
Music would sound better overall? Not much. You can hear strings coming though more brilliantly. I probably just need new speakers to get anything better sounding.
The 24-bit 96khz output and 109db SNR will make a difference to sound? Can’t really tell, but then I haven’t really had anything that supports outputting this.
EAX 3, 4, and 5 will sound awesome in games? I can’t tell for this either. I tried Doom 3 with EAX 4, but it didn’t seem any different, albeit it was extremely creepy. I’ll have to try some more games.

I had a lot of expectations and most of them go unfulfilled. Even worse, it adds problems that the SBLive didn’t have. One good annoyance is the lack of inputs and outputs. Three functions are shared with in one jack (Line-In, Mic, and Digital Out)–this is unacceptable. I feel like there should definitely be an included breakout box or card. But they want to push the need for their expensive IO Drive and Console, neither of which have the necessary jacks for standard PC Mic and Line-in plugs.

Also, some features are of dubious value. The Crystalizer is just a glorified hardware EQ/Dynamics filter. The CMSS-3D Xpand Upmix adds too little to the surround, and the Surround Upmix is the same as how my SBLive always worked (non-surround output is just mapped to surround). Surprisingly, the X-Fi installation CD has even more crap on it than my SBLive one did. A lot of it is stuff that you can change in the Audio Console (about the only thing you need) and the rest of it is demo/gimmicky type stuff, like the 3DMidi player.

I’m just generally disappointed in this thing. It was all a lot of marketing hype and everyone, even the reviewers, bought into it. I’m thinking now that there’s nowhere else for audio technology to go. I think we’ve mastered reproducing sound–any further “fidelity” will go unheard. I think the future is more in trying to consolidate the workload and get all sound processing into hardware no matter what and off of the CPU.

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What’s been going on

So the fall semester of school is finally over with–oh, when will it end. I managed to pass all of my classes, albeit busting my ass to do so. Next semester, I’m trying for a lighter after-school (homework) workload, so I can finally get to all these projects I’ve been meaning to do. Or at least the ones I don’t get started over break. Those include my alarm program (still some bugs to work out and polishing); calculator RPG (working on the combat system); a program to convert Trillian logs to HTML (just an idea right now, but something I’ve been meaning to do); the links, photo album, and feature archive sections of this site (probably more coding from scratch in PHP), and fixing up dad’s old computer for a local server.

I’d really like to use Linux for the server, but I’m unsure of what distro, filesystem, and other settings to use to give it the best interoperability with the Windows machines. There’s also concerns about what upgrades I can manage to spend on it. It’s a five year old Pentium 3-based machine, desperately needing an upgrade from a 10GB hard drive if it’s to be a media server. I’m also thinking about using it as a testbed, especially for this site. As I said, it’s a project on its own.

Kaylen has been staying with me for the last week. It’s been a good time for the most part. We’ve been trying for 100% completion on Lego Star Wars II (currently at about 85%). That game is surprisingly fun for how simple it is. I’ve also been back at Red Orchestra since the last free weekend. I’ve been playing offline with a cracked steam dll since then, but I really wanna buy it and make Kaylen drive tanks while I man the gun. 😉

I’ve been trying to play NWN2, but that’s been an ordeal. I was getting locks in the game with the Catalyst 4.12 drivers that I’ve been so adamant about for two years. So I tried just upgrading to the newest version of Catalyst (6.12). That did better with the locking, but then I would get some BSODs on Windows startup. After much fuss with safe-mode and restore points, I finally got the old 4.12 drivers installed back. I hear people saying all the time that the WinXP system restore feature is crap and a waste of drive space, but that shit is really useful. But, I digress. No NWN2 for me, I suppose. I really need a new system.

Kaylen and I were cleaning out my room yesterday, and I had decided to finally get rid of a majority of my box collection. But before I threw out the hardware boxes, I snapped a pic for memorabilia’s sake. The pictured Diamond Viper II and SBLive! were the first video and sound cards I bought. I still have the SBLive in my rig, but it’s soon to be replaced by an X-Fi, courtesy of Santa.

Boxes from my first Sound, Video, and TV cards.

Boxes from my first Sound, Video, and TV cards.

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Oblivion Modding, etc.

I’m surpised myself that it’s been nearly a month between posts. What’s more surprising is that I haven’t really done anything too important to post on. I’m mostly just working on various projects, particularly an Oblivion modification. But I should be back to working on the site before too long. I still have to get the Columns area up, filling a large void on the nav (which itself needs a facelift with a flash version). Before I got stuck on modding, though, I did put in most of the files for the Content system. There’s still some, particularly older, files that need to be added, but they will be gotten to eventually. I also did some nifty changes, one of which allows users to view file stats when the download link is moused-over. It can also read vital info on media files like length, codec, bitrate, etc. Tis quite swooby.

My monitor died some time in the period between posts. It had been doing some bazaar things before it keeled over, like color distortion, image jumping, and scrolling horizontal lines. Then one day (a Sunday, I believe), I got up and brought it out of standby and it turned right off. Then it turned on…and off…and on…and off, etc. The time between the on and off got closer and closer together so that eventually the on light stop turning off. It was a rather odd way to die. I’m pretty sure that there’s just some power issue with it, which would be easy to fix. But alas, my warranty must be up. The original post from when I got it is here. I’m still debating about whether or not to replace it with an LCD; so until I do decide (and have the money to buy a new one), I’m just using a loaner monitor. I think this one might die any time now, too.

So, about this mod I’m working on, nay slaving over: I had an inspiration one day about the items in Oblivion. I realized that there were no set items like the ones in Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege 2, where having more of the set gives the player increasingly powerful bonus effects. I remember what fun we had playing DS2 multiplayer over Christmas. Finding a set item led to instant jubilation and a scramble to pick it up before anyone else. It’s also one of the most difficult decisions to make in a game, whether or not to break a set. That kind of intense item fun is lost on Oblivion, so I’m trying to add it in.

At first, the mod was just a cool Thief set with some original and powerful item bonuses. But in the last few weeks, it’s grown into a larger project. The next set to be released soon is for mages. This set has new art for some of the items (robe, gloves, hood) to make the items match the name of the set: “Brilliant”. It has scripted and unique spell and power bonuses like invulnerability for a short time, health to mana sacrifice, and the super sweet ice storm spell which calls forth a blizzard on the target that does ice damage and freezes (as well as making the weather turn to snow). It also has a killer quest to go along with the set. You get the quest when you read a certain book. It has you going to a remote ruined fort that I’ve completely redecorated with new bosses, creatures, art, sounds. It’s quite a welcome relief from the standard oblivion designs. There’s also tons more stuff, but I can’t remember or say it all here. You’ll just have to check it out when it’s finished. Until then, here’s some screenshots from the upcoming release. You may download from here.

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Ramalicious, bitches!

Yesterday, I received my Christmas gift to myself, a stick of (get ready for some specs, bitches) 1GB OCZ DDR400 (PC3200) CL2-3-2-5 Platinum Edition RAM with a copper heat spreader. Of course, I already had 2 sticks of 256MB GEiL DDR400 CL2-3-3-6 Ultra RAM in a dual-channel configuration on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 mobo. I was skeptical about putting three sticks of differing RAM in my mobo and it working. The rule is usually that it’s not a good idea to fill all your RAM banks, even with high-quality memory. Such setups can cause the system to not POST or crash or lock on memory-intensive apps. So I popped the new 1GB stick of RAM into the free slot and left the case in a work position in the likely case I needed to swap some sticks around. However, it posted fine and I proceeded to set the optimal timings of 2-3-3-6, which was as low as the GEiL sticks could handle. It booted into Windows fine and then handled 6 hours of Dungeon Siege multiplayer hosting like a champ. Later on, still dazzled that all three sticks were working together, I booted into Memtest86+ and ran most of the tests. It handled those flawlessly as well. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but on POST, it says that the two GEiL sticks are still running in Dual-Channel. However, it still performs on par with nVidia 333Mhz dual-channel systems in Sandra memory benchmarks. So there were no performance improvements in benchmarks, but you can really see it in the quality of gaming. Now I can max out texture settings in games and have no memory hitching. And games also can be minimized without memory swapping and exit instantly. I can also leave any number of explorer or browser windows open while playing games. It’s nice. I give this OCZ stick of RAM a big thumbs up.

I also got a Saitek Eclipse keyboard for Christmas, but I really could have used some of the other items on my list more (like a UPS, X-fi sound card, etc.). It’s good for gaming in the dark, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t recommend it for use just based on the badass factor of it glowing blue. The glowing actually makes it harder to read in decent or better lighting. I don’t think it’s angled enough and that makes it harder to read in the light or dark, because yes…I hunt and peck when I type. But I may prop it up more to fix the angle. Sometimes the wrist rest rattles, too. The keys feel nice, though. They’re about 33% softer than the ones on my previous MS keyboard. So, I’d only recommend it if you like to use your computer in the dark. Just don’t tell me what you’re doing in the dark if it’s not gaming. 😕

Also, Betty Crocker Warm Delights are the shiznit.

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Well, everything is just booming into place.

Except the mail script I mentioned a few posts ago…I broke that unfortunately. I was trying to add multiple mailto addresses and, like a ret, overwrote the working script testing the new one. I’ll fix it one of these days.

Newegg and Fedex are just amazing. In just two days, I received my new stick of RAM–during the holiday season no less. It installed perfectly :) . I’m doing Dual-Channel now with an obvious speed boost :) . Rise of Nations is down from a couple minutes to unload to like 15 seconds 8) . That’s mostly to do with the fact that I doubled my RAM amount to 512. The system feels so smooth now…so relieved. It’s like taking one of those huge shits that just plops right out 😛 . Screenage:

The RoN Script Maker is coming along nicely. Actually, I only just started back working on it today. I completed one of the more daunting tasks, though, and with relative ease. I programmed RSM to read the unitrules.xml file for all the default unit settings so I’ll have some default values to work with in the unit stat script functions. I was actually surprised at how well Microsoft implements and supports XML. It also seems rather proliferated–should be good for older OSes. Tomorrow, I suspect I’ll write an editor for the unit stats and then saving and compiling routines. Here’s an alpha build screenshot:

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Updates.

I found this killer app for multimonitor setups the other day. It’s called UltraMon and can be found here. It has support for just about everything important that ATI’s Hydravision app has, plus a taskbar for secondary monitors that can show only apps currently on the secondary monitor and different wallpapers and screensavers for secondary monitors. It supposedly also supports an unreal number of monitors. Make sure you pick UltraMon up if you’re going dually like I am.

I also updated my CTT and MBM Interval Log CGI in the top frame. When I added readings for the HDD temp, it set all the other readings off. Alright…peace, niggers. I’m out.

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