Well, this morning I received my documents from LaSalle College of the Arts that concerned my Orientation Programme and administrative matters. Also came with it is the Order Forms of all the MacBooks offered by LaSalle.
OK, let's stop there. Now I was instantly baffled by the pricing of the Apple Products. This comes after a recent move by Apple to crank out cheaper products which I still think it's nonsensical regardless.
Now here's an example:
You could say that the pricing seemed a bit reasonable but here's a thing. If I compare the Base vs my Desktop, that's the amount of money I spent to build my Gaming Rig with a Single 21.5 1080p Screen, complete with the thickest 120mm Corsair AIO Liquid Cooling that I can shove in there, SSD and 3TBs of Space, a GTX 780 which was the bulk of the cost, OC Core i7 2600K.... actually slightly less than that!
On the Laptop side:
LaSalle's Order Forms, but the MacBooks are still costly and don't have that price to performance ratio all other laptops except Razer has.
Although this has discounts across the board, it's still a freaking hefty price to pay. For example the Base MacBook Pro 13 Inch which cost 1588, I could buy Laptops much more powerful than that which cost that much. E.g. Aftershock XG13 costs the same but with a Gaming Grade GTX 860M which is tonnes better than the most powerful GPU powering the MacBook 15 Inch at a wimpy GT 750M which cost 3588 before discounts. And even a more far cry than the Base MacBook Pro's HD4000 by a whopping 84%.
Although Apple Products are very good and all, they should at the very least offer a wider customization scope and redesign their internals, at least starting with the storage. Because, who will in the right mind pay so much for 512GB PCI-E storage for their laptops! It's insane!
If you want to see the full magnitude here, if Apple can redesign the Bays to accommodate a more traditional 2.5" bays, it's easier to do a closer apples to apples comparison. Let the Aftershock X15S-V2 be the more competitive comparison, the Recommended Config is 600 bucks less. And it offers a Core i7, 8GB of RAM with the option to double that, an optical bay, a traditional sweet spot storage of SSD and HDD molded together, and the flagship GTX 880M GPU. Now look at this! You're paying less for a top end 15-Inch, more customization for storage. More ridiculous is the base config for the Aftershock Titan. Though it only has a Mechanical HDD as storage, you can always swap it out. And for the price of the MacBook Pro 15-Inch with a GT 750M GPU, you get SLI Flagship GPUs! Big difference there, Big difference.
To be reasonable, the 15 Inch MBPr should have a bare minimum of a GTX 850M with GDDR5 RAM for the price you pay for.
Apple, seriously, after looking at the order form this morning, please for the love of God, make your products cheaper and increase customization options, PLEASE! I don't want to spend a bomb right away at this point.
Well, some of you may be aware of the Devil's Canyon based Haswells that hit the market. But Intel also came with what could be a CPU aimed at Budget gamers.
The new Pentium Dual Core G3258
But you can call it a Pentium K
It was initially dubbed as the Pentium Anniversary Edition but the SKU has been given a designation as the G3258. Now basically, the G3258 is a G3240 and the 3420, same specs being a 3.2GHz Dual-Core CPU, having 3 Megs of Cache, and a HD Graphics running on a 350MHz - 1150MHz. But here is where things get a little different.
Now although the G3258 doesn't have the K Designation on its SKU, treat it like it has one because it is fully unlocked and unleashed. Slick from LinusTechTips dubbed it the "Pentium K" which is apt due to that reason. Only thing about it that does put some users off is that it requires a Z97-based Motherboard in order to overclock it. And Z97 boards are not cheap, depending where you look and what motherboards that are offered. However, cumulatively, the price compared to the i3 4330 and a H87/97 boards will be slightly lower. And word has gotten from Board Partners that they are creating BIOS-es that allow the H87/H97 Boards to overclock it, so keep your eyes open for any updates.
It is designed to be overclockable even on a stock cooler to keep costs down even further. Now when overclocked, it can still compete with an i3 4330 in Synthetic benches. However in terms of CPU Coolers concerned,I absolutely will not, and will never endorse using the stock wimpy coolers supplied by Intel. A Bigger Down Draft firing cooler, (Not even a tower is really needed) will fit the bill just fine. Something like a MassCool 8W553B1M3 will be fine.
Gaming however, is where Pentium G3258 is practically geared towards. When heavily overclocked, though it will still generally fall behind the bigger brothers like the Core i5 4670/4690, but not too much. It'll still put up a show.
At the price of around USD 75 give or take, this will be the sweet spot and will directly compete with the AMD APU (minus the GPU) based Athlon X4 750K. Games that are also CPU bound will enjoy the performance boost as you overclock it heavily.
Some reviews have appeared with regards to the CPU. This link (Polish One that was translated to English) pits the G3258 with other CPUs that were generally affordable, including an outrageous comparison with the 8-Core AMD FX-8000 Flagship 8350. Of course in heavily threaded loads it's not gonna match up but In terms of just pure gaming alone, a baby Pentium Overclocked to 4.7GHz handily beats the 8350 in a large majority of the benchmarks thrown by the reviwers that it's not even funny.
http://pclab.pl/art57691.html
Hexus even pit it against a Core i7 4770K:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=7
Of course Integrated Graphics is not gonna obviously do any good but scroll all the way to the bottom where Hexus slams a GTX 750 Ti in, there's barely any difference in FPS count in certain games between the G3258, Core i5 4690 and Core i7 4770K.
So yeah. Go figure.
BOTTOMLINE
So if you're on a budget, and you want something that can perform very well in games as CPU hooked to a dedicated GPU, this should fit most budget builds. I've actually Ditched my AMD Build for this CPU which I pre-ordered from Amazon, cause' this seems to be a fun chip to play around a bit. Although it may be 2 cores, but overclocking this thing will bring itself closer to the 4 cores in gaming. Moreover, the CPU's TDP as such will not be so high anyways compared to the AMD CPUs I'm initially planning to get. I'm just like getting a CPU, Motherboard, Storage, PSU and Case, that's it. I've already have a couple of GPUs with me, but it'll be nice if Kitguru sends me one of their 2 R9 280s. With that I can have better data whether this CPU will hold the GPU back in performance as I now have a Radeon 6850, Radeon 5850 and a GTX 780, so I need something in between the 5850 and the GTX 780.
Well, I've been increasingly EXTREMELY pissed on how restricted our internet accessibility here in Singapore. There are some websites and forums to be specific that I wished to be in a community in. But all the time I've been getting Errors from all of them:
Sorry, you don't have permission for that!
[#1001]
You are not allowed to visit this community.
Or
Your IP Address is known and blocked to be suspicious of Spammers, you are not allowed to register.
Now tell me, What the fuck is this?
Here are some forums I tried to sign up for that resulted me getting this stupid error code that is a result of some government crank down on internet accessibility from sectors like the Media Development Authority (MDA) that really cut the crap on all this.
Here are 3 of the Websites that I couldn't get in. 2 of the 3 have YouTube Channels that I absolutely tune in everytime.
Tech Of Tomorrow Official: http://techoftomorrow.invisionzone.com/
OC3D: http://forum.overclock3d.net/
Dota Cinema: http://www.dotacinema.com/news
Now I'm EXTREMELY Pissed. Our Internet Freedom is absolute JACK FUCKING SON-OF-A-BITCHING Heap of Shit that is blocked and regulated by a group of Government beasts.
Please whatever you can, Help get me out of this vicious cycle fast! It absolutely annoys me where I cannot be part of some Tech Communities in the Bigger Side of things. Singapore's Tech Community is though very active but not big.
Now I've a tonne of things have arrived but some have to go and some I might keep. Now there are 2 Agendas there I hopefully could address ASAP. Hopefully I can trade for some parts for a Bedside Endeavor. Well, this is all the excess stuff I got:
PART I: GETTING RID?
Parts that I have on hand. Plus an OCZ Vertex 2 that's not in the picture.
TOP: P8P67 Pro, P8P67 Deluxe which I might contemplate of switching out.
Parts I'm trying to get rid:
P8P67 Pro Motherboard
P8P67 Deluxe / P8P67M-Pro
Radeon 6850
With regards to the 6850, if you can see the images, you can see that it is quite filthy as I'm in a middle of cleaning it, but when it arrived this morning, it was a lot worse, as seen in this photograph when the seller released it. To the seller who sold it to me, I don't know how the heck this card was alive for who knows how long, but this was disgusting and I couldn't stand the amount of dust that was in it.
When it first arrived from the USA: Look how fucking filthy it is!!
And after spending a couple hours, check it out.
After cleaning, what a difference, really what a difference!
Parts I'm keeping in hand for the upcoming build:
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 128GB
XFX Radeon 6950 PART II: Potential AMD Bedside Build
The reason why I'm keeping these parts as part of my agenda is that I want to build an AMD system intended to be used as a bedside computer. The current configuration is hooked up like so in the photograph:
Believe it or not, it's quite a bedside rig. And it's powered up by a single Laptop, that's none other than my Clevo W110ER / Aftershock X11 with a Core i7 3630QM, 8GB of RAM and a GT 650M Graphics. Now just in case you aren't caught up yet, I will be starting my Semester at LaSalle College of the Arts and chances are that the Laptop will be used as part of my school stuff so I won't probably use this further as a Bedside computer.
Now what I do need is a more permanent system to be used as a Bedside Rig, and needs to fit under my bed with a case that's no more than 8 Inches Tall with the case on its side. And meant to play games.
At this point, I really would love to have a rig that's powered by AMD Specifically. And I have 2 of the parts here; the Radeon 6950 (1 GB Version ) and the SSD. Now I have used Sandy Bridges and Ivy Bridges, and actually Intel CPUs as a whole. AMD CPUs and Motherboards, I... never really got a chance to play with it. So now what I need are:
CPU: Specifically Phenom II X4 / X6 Motherboard: Socket AM3 Motherboards that support Phenom IIs RAM: I might salvage 4 or 8 Gigs from my Main Machine. See how it goes Case: Nothing Wider or taller than 8 Inches when case is on its side. PSU: Enough Juice to support a Radeon 6950, the CPU and a couple of drives. Storage: Another Mechanical Drive.
So yeah, for now I need funds. If you guys have any thing you could contribute Money / Parts to my build, would appreciate if you just let me know.
1. Corsair HX-1000W Power Supply: Reliable and paid a small price.
My Zotac GTX 780 and the Corsair HX1000 1KW PSU
One of the biggest components in my computer. The size of the PSU only gets bested by the Newer AX1500i 1.5KW PSU also from Corsair. I got this 2nd hand, for just 110 SGD (About US 87 Bucks) from somebody on VR-Zone. I've been using this since August 2012. It came from another owner who used it for a further 3 years. It had a 5 year Warranty, and we didn't have to use it. It has outlived its warranty and I just checked the Voltages, it's still doing very well, alive and happy and not once has it failed me. This was like worth 320 bucks but I got it for 110 and it's trucking along nicely. It's bigger than an average Power Supply Unit which made me remove a bracket inside my Fractal Design Define R3 in order to accommodate its length. I didn't have to make any mods when I first used it in my ThermalTake SpaceCraft VF-I. Honestly speaking, for the configuration of a heavy overclocked i7 2600K with a Single GTX 780, this PSU I'm using, Overkill MUCH! I know the Corsair HX1000W has enough juice for 3 GTX 780s but my Motherboard only has room for two.
2. ZOTAC / NVidia GeForce GTX 780 AMP! Edition GPU Cheaper than a 780 Ti but performs like one This is the current graphics card in my system. And out of the components of my computer, apart from peripherals and the 2 4GB Black Corsair Vengeance RAM Modules which came from my old build, the GPU is the only thing that I got new. Performed much better and cooler than the Reference GTX 680 that I used to own. I'm gonna go all out on that GPU till I could buy a 2nd GTX 780. What's good about this GPU is the immense factory overclock that's already on it. With those clocks, and after testing, the GPU can already compete with a Reference GTX 780 Ti and downright defeats the Titan. Such as the 780 Ti isn't really worth the upgrade for 300 dollars more or even the Titan at 770-780 dollars more (That difference is already more than my 780!). The VRAM however may be low, 3GB of GDDR5, as I run a triple screen setup.
3. CLEVO W110ER / AFTERSHOCK X11 - Smallest Gaming Laptop in the World in 2012.
Clevo W110ER: A Small but very portable gaming laptop.
This is the Laptop that I'm currently using to replace the ASUS X42J that I used 3 years ago till it broke. Apart from my first Custom build (the I5 2500K Rig), I didn't have any portable system left when that happened. That time I was recovering from my Post Audition Trauma from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, then a lot of crap happened. Fate Intervened, I took part in a Lucky Draw and Aftershock was giving away a Laptop; the Aftershock X11. So I won it, then spent a bit of money on upgrades. I got an Core i7 3630QM over the i5 3210, I added an OS and swapped a 500GB Hard Drive for a 250GB Samsung 840 which was the first SSD that I had.
It's not the most powerful laptop, but the on-board nVidia GT 650M graphics and the upgrades I put in gave it practically the highest performance per square inch at the time of receiving it. It does have heating issues despite using IC Diamond Thermal Compound, but so far it operates like a champ. Ever since Elric Phares from Tech Of Tomorrow unboxed the AVA Direct's branding of that laptop, that laptop was in my mind till I finally won it. Since then, that Laptop has been a Godsend. Light and small, and it's currently in use as a Bedside Rig and a LAN party machine. It will be like this for the next couple months till I start school. From there it will be used actively as my school rig. Now if there was a replacement, I would go for the Aorus X3 that is more than twice the power with its GTX 870M Graphics but having the same portability.
Flagship Indeed, ready for today's needs
4. Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Samsung's Flagship tablet this year
This is truly my very first tablet that I got as a gift. Although I have used tablets in the past like the Apple IPad, they were never mine for me to own. We did have 2 Retina Apple IPads and Mum was supposed to give me one. However my brother bugged to keep it so I was the only one without a tablet. So when everybody else in the family except me got a tablet for far too long, come Christmas 2014, just before Midnight Mass, I received this as a gift. I've played quite a bunch of games and you've seen me doing some videos with it that I put up on YouTube as MusicHaven2012. And with the tablet, because I don't normally use my Laptop to game outside, when it comes to meetings, I favor the tablet to take down notes because for one, it's so light to carry around, and a tonne more portable. This is also just the right size to be used to read documents. It also had an insane battery life, with a capacity that's ironically larger than my laptop even. On idle, the tablet can last for many days at a time.
Now it's been almost 2 years since Diablo III came out and the highly anticipated Reaper Of Souls Expansion has been officially launched. LAUNCH DAY EXPERIENCE
Starting Act V. Just three Minutes after Launch hour.
That's how seamless the transition was.
Now unlike Diablo 3 Launch Day 2 years ago, there was a lot less hiccups in server-loads as soon as it went live. Also, the best part is, I was in-game when the announcement of the RoS Content finally went live. There was no downtime which is very nice though it'll be safer to logout and then log back in again IMO. Although re-logging back in was no way perfect with occasional error 3005s and 3006s, it was WAY (I mean way WAY) smoother and a less painful process as it took me about 4 minutes instead of like 2 freaking hours in Diablo III Launch to successfully get myself back in, transition to RoS and commence Act V pretty much right away. I actually expected a lot worse, but I guessed Blizzard has anticipated this and installed enough servers to accommodate with Launch Day. So Good one from your part Blizzard! So I join my regular group to conquer Act V.
PLAYERS: DarkNemesis - Myself (G2), CruXed (G2), Rocket (G2 and Synarchy - Singapore's Local Competitive Clan), Visco (Synarchy)
A Screenshot in 5760 x 1080 while receiving a Banner Award.
Using my Barbarian as usual.
FIRST LOOK - CAUTION SPOILERS!!!!
Act V takes place at the Fall of Westmarch after Tyrael seals all the Prime Evils within the Black Soulstone.
It was then taken by the corrupted Lord Malthael. Malthael was a former Archangel who disappeared after the destruction of the Worldstone during events of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. As one of the Nephalem, your task is to trace the whereabouts of Malthael and his allies, destroy them, and reclaim the Black Soulstone from his grasp.
Diablo III Reaper of Souls adds some new content while trading that for the departure of the Auction House. This is a great point as it promotes farming the way it meant the game should be. And it boils down to luck. The most obvious is Act V. The game also unlocks the Level Cap to 70. Reaching that level will unlock the 4th Skill Point which you can use and only then will your characters start regaining Paragon Levels. And upon reaching a certain part of Act V unlocks a new NPC; the Mystic which is FREAKING useful. For a cost of Crafting Material, you can change one of that stat you don't want. Upon beating the Act V, the Adventure mode is unlocked where you can just pretty much go anywhere without changing acts to take on random bounties and rifts for random loot. These can be done at your own leisure and is a great way for earning Legendary Items and Experience. In fact in the post-game, Rifts are your primary means of levelling.
A Portrait of my Very First Crusader: GuardianZ
And of course the big one is the introduction of the Crusaders. This new hero class really resembles the Paladin from Diablo II in terms of appearance and his role in the game. He's a hybrid of a melee fighter, tank and a Holy Spellcaster who can don heavy armor and specialize in Sword and Board combat, or rather, Greatsword and Board Combat with a certain passive ability. At least now we have use for the 2-handers now!
A Cutscene Prologue of the Crusader.
Taken via my Aftershock X11
Other additions intended for Reaper of Souls have already been implemented in the Pre-RoS Patch. So if you've been playing throughout the last couple of weeks and this week, you'll know all this. But just a summary:
- New Paragon System - Limit is practically removed and the levels are spanned throughout all characters account wide. Every Paragon Level-up gives a point to spend on certain attributes available in your Paragon Layout. Any Character you have who has reached 70 (or 60 without RoS) can level Paragon Levels for all Characters.
- Item Quantity Drops reduced but proportionately boosted in quality. Yellow Rares need not be identified. Set and Legendaries you pick are account bound but most carry abilities that can potentially boost your builds. Legacy Items (Legendaries that you picked prior to this patch) are not account bound, but can't benefit from the new Mystic NPC.
- Cursed Chest and Shrine Events - Primary Objective mostly is to kill as much as you can within the time frame. Most of them however have a timed bonus event which rewards a Radiant Chest upon successful Bonus Objective met like killing 5 waves or a specific number of monsters.
- Difficulty Overhauls. Torment Difficulty (with Torment VI being the hardest difficulty currently in the game)
- Pools of Reflection - These Pools will boost the rate that you gain experience by 25% till you reach a certain amount. These promote more defensive play.
All these changes make the game having a large replay value. So you've always have something to do all the time.
MY IMPRESSIONS
The fact that I literally whacked through the game throughout the night last night and for 12 hours the day before with little sleep is a big testament on how much work that has been planned out by Blizzard to get it done the right way.
The difficulty of the monsters as you level from 60 to 70 gets harder dramatically with most of my level 60 gear pretty much become obsolete as you creep the levels in. But it's been loads of fun.
As for Crusaders, the class uses a combination of holy magic and Melee Combat. He carries a sword and shield. With a certain passive, he can wield two-handed weapons on his main hand and shield on the other. It makes him quite tanky. But a few complaints is that he is painfully slow in attack and damage isn't really promising. Although 2 handed-weapons are high damage, their slow attack speed severely hits.
However, that said, a new patch is upcoming, which practically increases damage of most abilities all across the board for all classes, most heavy is on the Crusader with the exception of Heaven's Fury Fires of Heaven Rune.
GAME REQUIREMENTS
The game requirements in general aren't high; as what you might expect when the game launched 2 years ago. For low details and resolutions, the game can run happy on just the HD 3000 graphics from Sandy Bridge line, but should have at least a Core i5 CPU to run at playable frame rates. Dual cores and below unless with Hyper Threading, won't be enough. HD 4000 Series and up will run it no problem. The higher up HD 4XXX series graphics can even crank it to Medium High Details at 1366 x 768. So as of now; most Integrated Intel Graphics Solutions from the Sandy Bridge line till now can at least run it without a problem in Low Settings.
Maxing out the game will require a bit more at 1920 x 1080. But as far as Dedicated Graphics Go, then the CPU requirement is less of an issue, even a Pentium Dual Core with a GTX 580 can pump 120+ Fps excess Maxed out. But as a desktop guideline, if you have a decent CPU, your minimum GPU requirement is at least a Radeon 6450.
The Iris Pro 5200 will simply breeze this through maxed at that resolution. However it is still playable on a DDR3 Radeon 6670 or even the older GeForce 8800 GT. So you can expect at least a GT 540 and above no worries. At 2560 x 1600, even the old GTX 550 Ti with its 192-bit bus and limited 1GB RAM, is still playable at max but recommend you just turn the settings down just a little bit. Anything higher than a Radeon 6770 and a 7770 is pretty much overkill unless running 3 Monitors surround via Windowed Fullscreen mode. For me I run my games in a 3 Monitor Setup; and even that resolution of 5760 x 1080 is merely calling for more in my GTX 780. And here's a video of someone actually running this at a whopping 7680 x 1440 in Eyefinity, that's a full 11-Megapixels compared to my 6.22, that's like nearly 78% more pixels to fill!
BOTTOMLINE:
Diablo III Reaper of Souls offers a Hugely expanded amount of playtime. But be prepared of some mechanics that may put you off slightly. Game requirements are nice and easy, even an entry level gaming system or a high end gaming system that's over 6 years old can still run it.
When the first Hawaii GPU R9 290X came out, it was good but a Hot Hawaii. And I said it before that with a good cooler, taking heat out of the equation totally will make cards like that run stable.
AMD has responded with this solution for the Dual GPU.
Meet the Video Card that claims to do just that: The Radeon R9 295X2.
I wasn't expecting AMD to come up with a Dual GPU Solution this quickly. And AMD crafted a Dual GPU being cooled by both Air and Water powered by Asetek's line of AIOs.
This idea of hybrid cooling is not unique. Not long ago, ASUS introduced the Tahiti Based ARES II that consists of 2 7970 GHz Ed. GPUs in CES 2013. It was however a large card in terms of width despite being a 2 slot card so it won't fit in narrower chassis. It was limited to a set number of cards as you might expect from most flagship ROG goods. And EXTREMELY power hungry; with 3 8-pins as opposing to 2 for the 295X2.
As you can probably notice, the card fits in line within most narrower chassis and cases and has a slightly larger center fan.
Tom's Hardware and Guru 3D have tested this card. Heat is entirely out of the equation so throttling problems should be practically non-existent. As you would expect, this card will not be for the meek of wallet and outlets in Singapore are not selling it yet (as far as I know). Users will be happy that this dual GPU Card will work especially well for a small form factor build (Below), just need to make some room for the rad. An mATX build will be the sweet spot for a less cramped build.
