I recently purchased an extremely kickass new video card. It felt like old times again. The excitement of pulling the box out of the shipping peanuts…removing the card from the static bag…immediately modding it…making sweet sweet love to it all night long. No, wait. I guess there’s still something left to be desired 😕 . Anyways, upon removing the video card (an ATI Radeon 9600XT), I got the urge to take massive amounts of picage–especially of the copper ramsinks I added. Additionally, I decided to incorporate the pics into a guide that shows how I, a seasoned gamer and hardware nut (or just a seasoned nut), go about purchasing the right video card and installing it flawlessly. I call it the Novice Guide to Upgrading Video Cards and it can be found here. Previewage:
After the overcoming joy of the 9600’s speed and Pixel Shaders, I went right to the multimonitor support; and all I can say is “wow”. The implimentation of multiple monitors on this card is solid. I can’t see why more people don’t use it. I’m sure a lot of computer users have killer video cards and an old monitor, and it is only for their ignorance that they don’t marry the two. Although I’m still testing the capabilities and flaws, I’m still greatly impressed with the former. You can watch two movies at once (especially useful for pr0n), browse two sites at once, keep important apps always visible, leave a walkthrough open when playing a game, have a developer database (MSDN) open on one and the programming software of your choice on the other. The possibilities are endless. Mostly, I like to keep the apps I frequently check open on the second monitor (emule, AIM, Task Monitor) and reserve the primary for my focus. The only problem I can see is that you can’t move the focus from the primary to the secondary in a game without minimizing the game. If I find a workaround for this, I’ll be sure to report.
The only thing better than multimonitor is having two separate computers and a KVM switch; although, the smoothness of moving across both monitors seemlessly is also very sweet.
I’m out, bitches.
