The Way It's Meant to be Played

Among computer gamers and 3d-application aficionados, the question of which video card to buy is not as much a question as which manufacturer to go with. The primary two video graphics producers are ATI and Nvidia. Having owned both brands of video cards, it is hard for me to say which is better. Because their differences are so slight, the question you'd ask is, which logo do I like better? Although that is just in humor, both cards do have their differences. One company focuses on one aspect like the number of pipelines, whereas the other company focuses on the bits of the card - 256bit, 512bit, and so-on-and-so-forth.

I am not going to tell you which card is better, because new video cards are always being released - almost every week. But I will tell you my experience with one card I am quite happy with.

Earlier on another post, I talked about the Nvidia 7600 GT I bought. Well, I won't talk about how great of a deal it was, or all the features it has, because frankly, I already did. Instead, I will tell you about how great this card has performed while in Windows, as well as in Linux.

The card works in Windows. That is obvious. The drivers are great, Oblivion is pretty, Half-Life 2 is extremely fast. But in Linux is where I have grown a deeper respect for the card, as well as for Linux overall. Ubuntu has a new system of supporting non-free drivers if the user should so choose to. Well, I figured, shoot, I want 3d-graphics, I'll support Nvidia's non-open-source driver. It was two clicks and a reboot for me to have a 3d-desktop working perfectly in Ubuntu 7.10.

However, I did not know that I would get all the goodies that the Windows driver package has as well. For those of you who like the Nvidia settings, this will mean something to you. When you enable the Nvidia non-free drivers in Ubuntu, the 3d-settings are enabled, but also a tool from Nvidia is now able to be used. Before you use this tool, I would suggest you install something else, for your benefit. I suggest you install the Sysinfo tool. To install it, simply type this in the console:

sudo apt-get install sysinfo

Then open the tool by typing sysinfo, or selecting from the menu, Applications -> System Tools -> Sysinfo

This tool alone is the equivalent to many system info tools that would cost you $20 or more for the same functionality in Windows. You'll see an Nvidia button on the left-hand side of this application.









When you click the button, You'll see an Nvidia settings tool open. Within this tool you have many options, like anti-aliasing, Digital Vibrance to change the color-intensity, and so on.

If you did not want to install sysinfo, you can still access the Nvidia tool by typing in the terminal "nvidia-settings".



For any of the settings you specify within this tool, you will want those settings to automatically load at startup. To do this, go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions

Click on the "Startup Programs" tab, and then click on "Add". Type whatever you want for the name, but for the command type in "nvidia-settings -l" and it will load the settings without launching the nvidia-settings application.

The (Future) Best Media Player

I love searching the net for great information, and I just happened to stumble upon something like that. Mozilla, who is responsible for the creation of Firefox and Thunderbird, now is putting out a new project - Songbird.

Songbird bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple's iTunes, while proudly bearing the name of the Mozilla family tree. Songbird is currently in a development state, but it is currently available for download Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Why would this program become widely used? People, like me, have a computer with more than one operating system on it. I have Windows and Ubuntu Linux; other people have a Mac with Windows XP or Vista on it. The great thing about cross-platform software is familiarity and friendliness. Songbird, like Firefox and Thunderbird, is about being widely available to all computer users, regardless of operating system. My web browser of choice is Firefox, regardless of what computer or OS I am using. The same most likely could be with Songbird.

Straight out of the box (in Windows) Songbird supports playback 0f Windows Media files and Quicktime files. Upon install, it will automatically download and install the necessary packages based upon the options you choose.

If Mozilla creates this piece of software to be lightweight, fast, bug-free (for the most part), and very useful - which is why people use Firefox - this will be yet another friendly tool that can be used cross-platform.

Perhaps iTunes and Windows Media Player 11 might want to jump on the bandwagon. DRM is already becoming a thing of yesterday, so why not just let all users purchase the music they love anyways? (It would either be that, or the old-fashioned way - Limewire, Frostwire, Bittorrent, or whatever else is out there that people already would use for music.)

Free Bootable Partition Editor

If any of you are like me, you like to toy around with more than one operating system on any given PC. The best balance on a machine is Windows with Linux. It's like the Yin and Yang. (Sometimes Windows and Linux switch parts as to who is Yin and Yang, but they both balance each other.)

If you are also like me, than you may also be toying around with partitions too much. In my case, I decided to move completely from Ubuntu on my primary hard drive, and I am going to install a second drive completely for Ubuntu and it's goodness. While inside Ubuntu (or any flavor of Linux), a great free and open-source tool (as always) comes packaged with it called GParted. However, in Windows, there is no such a thing as a free partition editor that works well and won't destroy your harddrive. But wait. There must be, otherwise this article is about nothing.

I happened to stumble upon GParted's site at Sourceforge, and they already created a LiveCD made to boot fast, use few resources, and get your disk partitioned they way you want it in no time at all. The actual specs, according to GParted's site are as follows:

The CD aims to be fast, small in size (~50mb), and use minimal resources
to get that disk partitioned the way you want it. GParted LiveCD is based
on Gentoo-catalyst, and uses Xorg,the lightweight Fluxbox window manager,
and the latest 2.6 Linux Kernel.


The GParted LiveCD can currently support the following filesystems:

• ext2
• ext3
• fat16
• fat32
• hfs
• hfs+
• jfs
• linux-swap
• NTFS
• reiserfs
• reiser4
• ufs
• xfs

From a Windows user's perspective, if I wanted to partition a hard drive in NTFS or move, resize, or merge an NTFS partition, this LiveCD can now support it. Since this CD is only around 50mb in size, it is even possible to load the image onto a USB flash drive and if your computer can boot from USB media, that will save you a blank CD, while extending the usefulness of a flash drive a bit further.

In my personal experience, I deleted a Linux ext3 partition, and resized (or extended) the NTFS partition on the drive to the entire disk. However, there is some difficulty in getting the video to work correctly while booted into this LiveCD. It appears there is support for Intel, HP machines, and VESA graphics, but not for Nvidia or ATI. But booting to the preset VESA setting still worked for me, just with a very dim display.

If In Doubt, Just Install the Beta?

A few times I have run into roadblocks where a certain piece of hardware that is unpopular is unsupported by Ubuntu. As discouraging as that may sound, I am determined to get it working. After experiencing Ubuntu and what it can do, and what any person can make it do, I fell in love with it, and will not easy run away from Ubuntu. Well, I have an Edimax 7128G PCI wireless card for my desktop PC (because I'm too lazy to run a wire, and now I can do wired or wireless :) ). This wireless card is not as widely used as the Intel Pro Wireless card or some other bigger name brand. There turns out to be a built in driver for the card in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) called RT61, but my card still won't work. It won't use the WPA encryption (even though I use it in Windows) and it won't connect. I had resolved to leave that partition on my HDD for Ubuntu, and switch back to it when it was up and working. A couple days ago I decided to download the Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) Beta and install it. I figured, "What do I have to lose?".

To make a long story short, I'll tell you this: I am writing this on the internet on that computer with Ubuntu 7.10 Beta. It works. So if you ever have hardware that just is not quite working right and have the time and hard drive space to dual boot, try the latest beta of Ubuntu and see how it works. You just might be surprised.

Running Oblivion With A Less-than-Par Video Card

I eventually ran into the guys at Oldblivion and found my solution.

A few days ago, I purchased Oblivion. (Props, Walmart) I eagerly installed the game, and then tried to run it. The game started to launch, a little black square appeared in the top left corner, and then I saw the classic Windows XP error reporting tool. Oh how I love seeing that tool...

Here is a brief summary of my hardware:

Pentium D 805 2.67 GHz
1 GB DDR2 667 RAM
250 GB HDD
Asus P5L-MX Motherboard
Intel 950 Integrated Graphics

The biggest thwart in my computer's side is the Intel integrated graphics chip. The video card is great for normal Windows use; it is even Windows Vista ready. But for gaming, this card does the bare-minimums. It can run older games fine, but when it comes to the more modern games that require DirectX 9.0C to run, this card is horrible.

But back to Oblivion, I could not get the game to start due to my Intel graphics chipset. Oblivion did not even recognize the card to run. Apparently, Oblivion will only run if a video card can support hardware Transform and Lighting 2.0, which rules the Intel 950 out. I eventually ran into the guys at Oldblivion and found my solution.

I downloaded the Oldblivion tool and found their latest version only worked with Oblivion up to version 1.1.511, so I patched the game up to that version with the patch I found here.

Oldblivion installs with a configuration tool, and here is the screen you would see:



To even run the game, you must have the following checkboxes checked:

However, I strongly recommend you upgrade your video card to something that will play this better. Some video cards will cost you an arm and a leg, but if you play your cards right, you'll find a good deal on a decent video card.

Here is the card I'm going to be buying from Newegg:

If you do not know which card to get, I suggest you do your research. The articles at Guru3d have proven to be invaluable, as well as the advice from the users at the Guru3d forums. Make sure you know what your motherboard can support and how much many watts your power supply can provide - factors that involve whether or not you can even use a particular video card.