It has been a while since I was last here on GS. Let’s just say that I haven’t had the best start to the New Year, and to make matters a lot more inconvenient, I don’t have broadband anymore. I have contacted several other ISPs but it appears it’s going to take a while to get broadband.
As of now, I am accessing the internet using my friend’s mobile phone. The speed is pretty decent at 115Kbps; at least I can surf without having to wait forever for pages to load. But the catch is, I can access internet from 10PM-6AM only. I could log in during the day time, but it’s really expensive at .60/- a minute. But I am glad I at least to get to check my email, and log onto my communities every day. I felt like I was cut off from the world when there was no internet.
Life without internet is no fun at all..
I am yet to read the blogs of my friends, so much seems to have happened in two weeks! Lots of catching up to do…
I did pretty well in my exams, well enough to clear them at least, so that’s a huge relief. I have more exams coming up in April, but that headache is far off, so I won’t have to worry about it just yet.
On gaming front, I bought a new GeForce! It’s a BIG GeForce 7600GS AGP with 256MB RAM. It’s a solid card that allows me to play most of the games on 1280*1024 with 2X FSAA, which is good enough for me. Of course most of the games that are going to be released from now on will struggle to work on this one, but at least I can play the games that I have without having to compromise on visuals, and that’s really important because I have a lot of games that I delayed playing because I couldn’t get the best out of them on my GeForce 6200.
So as soon as I got my hands on the card, I started playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault. Not that the game will test the capabilities of my card or anything, but that’s one of the games I wanted to play since a long time. I suppose the game will work just fine on my old 6200, but then again, for some reason I waited. And I suppose that’s a good thing, because I played the game at 1280*1024 with 4X FSAA and 8X AF, I have my doubts if 6200 could have handled this. Pleased with the results, I have finished the game in about 10 days…and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Medal of Honor remains one of the best World War 2 games I have played.
I felt while 6200 is a decent entry level card, it just couldn’t handle FSAA, its way too ‘weak’ for that, and after playing games with Anti-Aliasing I have started to realize the difference. F.E.A.R works like a charm with medium-high settings and with 2X FSAA, I really couldn’t ask for much more.
I am looking to play Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Prey etc. As of now, I am playing Call of Duty…seems like I have World War 2 fever! But this game is so much better than Medal of Honor Allied Assault, even though both of them are based on Quake 3 engine, I felt Call of Duty had has more impressive visuals, and the AI is a lot better as well. But that’s just the way I feel…
Here are the scores on 3D Marks 2005 of the all the GeForce cards that I have used until now:
BFG GeForce 5500OC (256MB RAM): 216 3DMarks
Game Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 0.8 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 0.7 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 1.2 FPS
CPU Score: 1096
XFX GeForce 6200 (256MB RAM): 1010 3DMarks
Game Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 4.3 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 3.4 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 4.5 FPS
CPU Score: 3748
BIG GeForce 7600GS (256MB RAM): 3811 3DMarks
Game Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 16.4 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 11.6 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 18.6 FPS
CPU Score: 3703
First published on GameSpot