Appropo of nothing, and to start a conversation, I figured I’d relay my recent experiences with gaming:
Wii: put in Wii Sports, start playing (yeah, got it on opening day, still only play emulated games and Sports)
Xbox360: put in game, start playing
PC: Purchase nVidia 9800 GTS+, nominally for video transcoding and Folding At home. (and dirt cheap at $125…8 months ago it was a $400 card!)
[ul]
[li]Power Down computer[/li][li]Insert card[/li][li]Power Up computer[/li][li]Download Beta Windows 7 Drivers (probably my first mistake was assuming Windows 7 would be happy)[/li][li]reboot[/li][li]Download Demo to show off game, stop when the download service is abnormally stupid (sign up and for 3 euros, get uncapped unlimited downloads! Here, install this ActiveX download helper and search bar!)[/li][li]hunt around trying to find a legit download service… finally notice the 3dMark2006 download is complete[/li][li]Try folding at home app. It works. Cool.[/li][li]Try a demo, find I need directX installed, surpisingly, don’t need a reboot. Demo fails. Reboot.[/li][li]After reboot, folding at home app doesn’t work.[/li][li]Install 3dMark2006, run it. First demo looks AWESOME… Application craps out trying to show second demo.[/li][/ul]
I was roughly 90 minutes in before I saw anything remotely cool looking. The the system blew up.
[install XP, patch to the hilt, download drivers, install DX9&10, redownload demos.
So…the Doom 3 demo looks…good. It does the native resolution and turns on ALL of the effects…but it doesn’t look, I dunno, earth shatteringly better. It’s comparable with a good game on the '360 with the Big Screen.
And XP is much more stable…but bland. And the two day experience (interspersed with running a family) is a real turn off.
This doesn’t include the sad realization I lost the registration code for spore.