Sunday, March 23, 2008

Outpinged Lives Again!

Sleek...

I finally got down to building my own computer. Last year, my workstation was very cluttered (click) and unergonomic. This new desktop let's me save space and have a much more ergonomic workstation (click). Last year, I had used my notebook connected to a display as my workstation. Little would i know that it would affect my posture quite badly (i actually had the initial signs of scoliosis but that's another story). It affected my ability to play sports and even walking became annoying.


The Tale of Outpinged

Once upon a time, there was a warrior, a trained sniper who totally owned at the legendary battlefields of 2fort5 in Teamfortress for Quake II. He was a veteren of combat who had experienced many other battles in Duke Nukem, Quake and Doom. Yet, he was unable to fulfill his maximum potential. He was limited by speed. Using an ancient 28.8kbps modem, he struggled during intense moments on the battlefield, trying to pre-empt where his enemies would be a split second later. The delays (pings) were sometimes outrageous, lasting about half a second. Some people are outrun on the battlefield. Some people are outsmarted. He was, "Outpinged*".

He had his fair share of leadership commanding armies in Warcraft (I,II,III), C&C and Starcraft, but the battlefield was where his heart was. He clocked more than 300 hours on counter-strike on dated equipment.

As time slowly crept upon Outpinged. He found himself increasingly disadvantaged by the limitations of his gear. That limitation has now been removed.

The last gaming rig:
  1. 0.6Ghz Pentium III. 10 million transistors
  2. Riva TNT2, 12 million transistors, 16mb RAM
  3. 64MB RAM
  4. Rolled iron and Plastic case
  5. 350W power supply.
  6. 17" CRT monitor
  7. RM5500

Gaming rig, 2008:
  1. 1.8Ghz Pentium Dual Core. 230 million transistors
  2. Geforce 8800GT, 666 million transistors, 512mb RAM
  3. 2048MB RAM
  4. Brushed aluminium case.
  5. 650W Coolermaster Real Power (19A x 3 @ 12V)
  6. 22" Widescreen LCD Panel.
  7. RM4600

*Ping is the delay it takes for a computer to communicate with the server.

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