CTF Incursion Stream

For those of you who never saw, The CTF Incursion has finally been uploaded by Max Reiger and is now streaming. Both Myself and Max edited and directed this Call of Duty 2 frag movie and made it for the CAL CTF community in hopes that it would draw more attention to the gametype. Unfortunately, CTF was not included in Activisions Latest addition to the Franchise, but instead, made a new gametype called Sabatoge which has about as big of a following as CTF did for CoD2.

For those of you who would like to watch, here is the stream for the CTF Incursion. Hope you enjoy.

Frag Dominant CoD4 Division

The most recent team I have joined for Call of Duty 4 series to finish out the current Cevo-P season and to compete in future LANs is called Frag Dominant. We are currently the #3 seed in the Cevo-P Season 1 playoffs with a recent loss to MoB Gaming placing us in the lower bracket. Our next match is scheduled for April 24th and from the looks of it we will most likely play the winners of EG vs. MoB. This is a relatively new roster and we hope to finish the Cevo-P season strong as well as have a good showing at NERV 2.

Current Roster:

Charly "BUNz" Bun
Ryan "twmbly" Twombley
Casey "CaseMan" Garber
Alex "MasterAlex" Solis
Chad "jestlolk" Hansen

Buy a Better Graphics Card, Not CPU

In a study conducted by nVidia comparing speed boosts from an upgrade in a processor and an upgraded graphics card, nVidia says an upgrade in graphics card is a better option. In short, nVidia states that in most cases you can get better performance for the same amount of money if you spend more on the graphics processing unit (GPU) and less on the central processing unit (CPU).

nVidia has created a PC balancing website to help users calculate just how much they should spend on upgrading their computers. With intensive graphics beginning to play a larger part in everyday applications such as Google Earth, a stronger graphics card may make a bigger difference than a stronger processor.

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.