GeForce 9800 GX2 Released

The long awaited 9800 series has finally arrived and it looks to be the fastest card available on the market, but at a price. Right now you can own the card for $599.99 + S&H, but what does price matter when your system will be able to play the latest games at maxed out settings on 1900 * 1200 resolution without skipping a beat.

This card excels at high resolutions and it is a big improvement from the 8800 series. But for those of you who run 20 inches or less, you may be somewhat disappointed as the improvements aren't as noticeable. All in all this card will have your rig easily set for the next year or so without the need for an upgrade, and as new drivers come out the card can do nothing but get better.

Here is some consolidated information about the GeForce 9800 GX2 for those that wish to learn more.

New Xponex Project

I've personally been working on a new project from Xponex Web and Media that has to deal with a new convention vendor page. The site is coming along nicely and aims to provide all the latest in technology rental equipment to companies who attend trade shows and conventions.

As always the site will also have the latest information on popular convention centers. The site should be coming along over the next few months and we expect big things out of it.

How To Make Vista Bearable Pt.1

Its been a year since the release of vista and still this OS seems just as buggy as ever. Most users have resigned themselves to be contempt with the shortcomings of Vista and have given up hope of it improving. After listening to several different tech's about Vista, I have come up with several things which can improve your OS and make Vista liveable.

First off the bat you will want to throttle user account control. Nothing is more annoying in Vista than to get overloaded with Vista's security pop-up system. This is a quick and easy fix that will help keep you from pulling your hair out when dealing with this system. It's easy to do, just visit the User Accounts control panel and click "Turn User Account Control on or off," then uncheck the box in the following screen related to UAC.

Another relatively simple thing that will give your PC a little boost is the refine the Registry with TweakVI. TweakVI is a downloadable application designed to fine-tune your Windows Registry and give your PC a speed boost. To tweak your registry, simply download this free version of the application here and install. When running this application focus your time and energy on the System Information and Tweaks section, then lastly run the CPU Tweaks. While this will in no means turn a core 2 duo into a quad core, expect to see a small increase in overall speed and performance. Don't waste your time and money buying the $50 yearly subscription as the free version should give you everything you need.

This ends my first installment of how to improve your Vista system, there are many more things you can do to increase your overall experience with Vista and make this OS much more enjoyable. These updates should be coming soon.

Call of Duty 4 - First Strike Xfire Event

Xfire is hosting the first officially sponsored Call of Duty 4 Tournament Called First Strike. This is a free tournament opened to all North American players and is scheduled for November 15-21.
I will personally be competing in this tournament with Team 50 Calibre and hope to go far in the tournament.

The prizes include a Voodoo Omen Gaming PC (priced at $7,400) for 1st place and a XFX NVIDIA Video Cards (specs TBA) for 2nd place. A Professional Series Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty will be rewarded to 3rd place and Fatal1ty Gaming Headset will be rewarded to 4th place respectively.

This is good news for the Call of Duty 4 competitive scene as it shows a bright future for the game seeing as it has been sponsored by Xfire within the first week of release.

Soldier of Fortune 3

Recently announced is the game Soldier of Fortune: Payback, which is supposed to be the third game in the Soldier of Fortune series. However the game isn't being designed by Raven Software, who made the Soldier of Fortune and Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix. Rather picking up where they left off is Cauldron, who is designing and producing Solder of Fortune: Payback.

For me this leaves some speculation, I loved the first two games made by RavenSoft and hope that Cauldron can make this third game as enjoyable as the first and second. I will be buying the game and I hope to see great things from it. For me what will make or break the game will be the multiplayer, coming from SoF2, which i feel had the greatest multiplayer in any FPS genre so far, I hope to see some of the things that made the Double Helix so great.

A Trailer for Soldier of Fortune: Payback can be seen HERE

Bioshock

I have just finished playing the newly released game Bioshock. While i enjoyed the game i cant help but feel disappointed. I remember System Shock 2 being such a great game and was looking forward to the same feel from Bioshock. Unfortunately it didn't happen. The game felt to easy and at times the story line didn't make sense to me. The cartoonish looks of the game also did not appeal to me. It also got a little old for me killing the same monsters over and over again. I didn't even use some of the weapons like the grenade launcher because i kept saving it for something harder to kill. The boss at the end was a joke and both endings were awful. While the game was fun to play it didnt' live up to my expectations.

The CTF Incursion

After the end of season 5 CAL CTF I have decided to partner with Max Reiger and Curtis Laboiteaux to help design and produce a Call of Duty 2 frag video. The movie will be called The CTF Incursion: It Stops Here. The directing and editing will be done by myself and Max Reiger, with graphics by Curtis. We have decided to make this movie to try and promote the CTF community, which is largely ignored and frowned upon. We are hoping that with the production of a high end movie, it will attract more players to the gametype.