After that last post today about big bill I figured I better say something nice for a change. I just got a new computer (well sort of new anyway) from a guy that was going to throw it out (the prices was right - free is my favorite). I have been running an older MSI motherboard with a gig of ram and a 1.8 GHz proc. It's been a good little machine that has pulled me through for a good many years now (yeah I'm a cheap bastard, what about it).
So now I have this Dell Precision 380 workstation. I don't play with proprietary boxes very often so I didn't know much about what it had for guts when I got it. Needless to say when I got it home and popped the hood I was very pleased. Massive cooling fan can only mean one thing... A really fast proc. And to my great pleasure it came with 4 SATA channels - W00T! (yeah I know - this stuff is kinda old skool too, but compared to what I was using before - it's light years ahead of what I had before).
So I put the hood back down and repaved it then retired my old box to my son who has had the misfortune of using a machine that I pieced together from old leftover parts (yeah he's really happy too - he get's to play Kane's Wrath in his room now and doesn't have to beg to use mine anymore).
I tried out Sim City 4 - holy crap - I have been tweaking that old clunker of mine for a long time to get the kind of performance I got out of this one - very nice.
So now for the real test - I installed AOE III. All I can say is my breath was taken away. I still can't crank it up to the hilt yet (it only has an NVidia Quatro card which is great for 2 monitors - but for games... well... ehhh...).
So now I am on a mission to get a new card. I am open to suggestions from anyone who is willing to give them out. I have been looking at some of the new NVidia Cards and ATI cards (I have been a fan of ATI ever since I got my Game Cube and made the switch from my GForce cards). But either way the only thing I really care about is this - is it fast and does it work? (and I need P.S. 2.0 so I can keep making my games in XNA). I need to get a PCI express card since the AGP stuff I was using before is old hat these days. Wow - I can't wait to see what this game does with a real video card on this machine!
I gotta tip my hat to the Microsoft Game Studios guys - they really cranked out a masterpiece with Age of Empires III - I hope they make another expansion pack for it - I have the Asian Dynasties and the War Chiefs right now. These guys should consult them selves out to the rest of the company and give them some pointers on how to do things the right way, because they really do put out some quality stuff *chuckles to self*. I would love it if they went back to their roots with AOE III and made another one using the old middle age stuff they had in AOE II. Now THAT would be awesome.