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My new parts arrived on Friday, and I had them in the computer before I left for my Friday night Shadowrun game. I also gave the computer a thorough clean-out to get any accumulated dust out... and oh, was there a lot of it. I had quite a bit to clean out of the fins of my CPU heatsink. A little canned air, though, and all was good. Happy side effect - the CPU runs about 6 degrees cooler at idle.
The video card gave me a bit more trouble than I'd like, but that was all a driver issue. I ended up running Catalyst 7.7 instead of 8.3, as the performance on my old AGP card was a bit better. I'm a little disappointed by some of the framerates - only about 27-30 FPS in Honor Hold, and 17-20 in Shattrath, but I'm told that Shattrath is hell on far greater PCs than mine. Out in the great wide open, though, I'm averaging about 48, which is a big improvement. I think I've about hit the limit on how far I can take this machine without going Dual Core on the processor, which is not happening anytime soon.
I also managed to get a Hellfire Ramparts run with my guild on Saturday. My first instance run in a year and a half... and oh, am I rusty. I'd say that I'm between 50% and 75% as effective as I once was, and it doesn't help that everything seems generally tougher in Outland (which explains why the gear is that much better). I imagine it'll be like riding a bicycle, though - I'll get back up to speed with a couple more runs. There's still two more pieces of gear that I want from the Ramparts, and a few more from quests I have in the zone at large.
I also have WoW on our laptop, and I have only one thing to say - touchpads suck for playing WoW. I need to get a lapdesk with enough room for a mouse.
The video card gave me a bit more trouble than I'd like, but that was all a driver issue. I ended up running Catalyst 7.7 instead of 8.3, as the performance on my old AGP card was a bit better. I'm a little disappointed by some of the framerates - only about 27-30 FPS in Honor Hold, and 17-20 in Shattrath, but I'm told that Shattrath is hell on far greater PCs than mine. Out in the great wide open, though, I'm averaging about 48, which is a big improvement. I think I've about hit the limit on how far I can take this machine without going Dual Core on the processor, which is not happening anytime soon.
I also managed to get a Hellfire Ramparts run with my guild on Saturday. My first instance run in a year and a half... and oh, am I rusty. I'd say that I'm between 50% and 75% as effective as I once was, and it doesn't help that everything seems generally tougher in Outland (which explains why the gear is that much better). I imagine it'll be like riding a bicycle, though - I'll get back up to speed with a couple more runs. There's still two more pieces of gear that I want from the Ramparts, and a few more from quests I have in the zone at large.
I also have WoW on our laptop, and I have only one thing to say - touchpads suck for playing WoW. I need to get a lapdesk with enough room for a mouse.
