Sentimental Gamer

Ah, excellent stuff. So after a few issues between Mass Effect and Vista’s User Access Control (hint: turn it off ), got the game up and running on this machine. I had been testing out some other games on it, and was simply dumbfounded at the performance (though I guess it’s easy to blow away somebody who’s previous laptop was a Latitude D610). Basically, it easily handles total max settings and max resolution for any game over a year old. Specifically, Sims 2 gave it no issues, HL 2 was bee-yoo-ti-ful, and LOTR: BFME 2 ran smooth as butter (wait, is butter smooth?).

So Mass Effect was the only game that I have now that really challenged it. Pretty insanely, it was giving playable performance at max res (this is on a WUXGA 1920 x 1200 widescreen) and high settings! However, it did dip for the complex scenes. So, since I value a consistent 30 - 60 FPS over pretty looks, I reduced to something like 1280 x 800 or whatever it is for widescreens. At that, ran just fine. Cinematics ran at 60 FPS (I think they reduce background complexity during these) and regular gameplay usually up above 50 FPS. Some people say that running at non-native res leads to blah visuals. Personally, I didn’t feel that way at all. Sure, there’s fewer pixels being pushed, but it didn’t seem muddy or anything as a result of the res reduction. Sweet deal.

And then there’s the temps. I’ve got the lappy sitting on our kitchen table with a little notebook shoved underneath the far end to get a little height, though I’m not sure what would happen without it. Basically, the CPU runs at about 30 - 35 C while “idling” (read: light web use), the GPU is at 40 idling. Nice and cool. Running Sims 2 the GPU was still in the high 40s, low 50s (again, on max settings). Finally, checking it on Mass Effect (using Rivatuner, no OC’ing), looks like it never went above the quite reasonable 65 C.

So that, I would say, is a good sign. Doesn’t look like this lappy’s going to melt like the Wicked Witch during monsoon season on me. Good first day. Hope the next 3 - 4 years are similar !!!!

Gigs of old digitized family home videos: ~19
Gigs of family pictures: ~58 and rising (12 from 2007 alone… what a year…)
Gigs of music: ~75 and rising
Trying to keep all this data synchronized between my external WD drive, our family’s home PC, and any other backup drive I can get my hands on while avoiding duplicate file creation, making SyncToy ignore iPod photo cache, and not having the internal drive make a fairly scary whining sound from overheating:

Byteless.

Some days, you’re on fire. Everything you do works out, and you just have this giddy sense of accomplishing anything you want effortlessly.

Other days, you accidentally stab yourself and cause minor bleeding on your upper lip while trying to lick the jelly off the end of a butter knife.

Today is an example of the latter.