X-Mas 2011: What did you get/are you playing?

[paul_nicholls]

Hey all,
I have been rather enjoying my new xmas present - the Doctor Who: The Complete Davros Collection!!
Davros_Collection.jpg

Woo hoo! I have wanted that box set for a couple of years now, and my wife managed to get it off Ebay

I have already watched 3 of the 5 Dr Who stories in it and watched some of the extras...very cool stuff

cheers,
Paul

[Ingemar]

No computer games for me, but my son got an Xbox 360 with Kinect and Halo 3. The Kinect was for me, I will use it from my Mac, for development experiments. I was reluctant to buy an Xbox, since I am not a Microsoft guy and we already have a Wii, but the Kinect is interesting and my son really longed for the later Halo games.

But the biggest theme this year was board games:

- Euphrates & Tigris, popular game.
- TransEuropa, simple and fast track-laying game, surprisingly enjoyable.
- China, interesting build-for-points game.

[Ingemar]

I got a Neo FreeRunner that I plan to write an OS for(in pascal of course)

Are you serious? Isn't that a rather daunting task even for a phone? But it would most likely beat Android pretty seriously, performance-wise.

[de_jean_7777]

I did not get anything, as there is no tradition of gift-giving for holidays in my family (and generally where I'm from). I did buy the Humble Indie Bundle 4, and I'm gonna play the games as soon as I find some time (it's hectic these days).

[Super Vegeta]

I kinda went the other way, I got my father Crysis 2. Pondered Shogun 2 for a while, as he is a big fan of the whole Total War series, but that one was a bit too expensive for me.

[JSoftware]

Are you serious? Isn't that a rather daunting task even for a phone? But it would most likely beat Android pretty seriously, performance-wise.

It is, but I think it is possible. And I know it'll be fun trying at least

[code_glitch]

Oh, me, nothing much - just that new rig I wanted for a while. Turns out the old rana chips have a nice tendency to unlock to propus phenom iis so I'm ecstatic...

[Lifepower]

By the way, since we are talking about gifts, I was thinking of getting a new rig too, but can't decide between AMD FX 8-Core Black Edition vs Intel Core i7 2600K. The last one is a bit too expensive for my taste, but is it worth the extra $$? Or should I wait for other options to come out?

P.S. Up until now I've been using my old Intel Q6600 passively cooled by Coolmaster Hyper Z600R, Mb Asus P5QL/EPU and RAM Patriot DDR2 800 with 4-4-4-12 timing (2.2V) and it's been a highly reliable machine to work with (have dual 1280x1024 monitor setup powered by XFX Nvidia Geforce 250 GTS, Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and Sound Blaster Fatality). I'll also be looking for a new video card, but I find it difficult to adjust for a double (2x) PCI-EX power connector and using PSUs with higher than 500W ratings. Any suggestions would be helpful there too.

[code_glitch]

@Lifepower:

Heres what I wanted: for around £410
ATI 5770 1gb GDDR5 version from XFX
AMD Phenom II 960t
ASRock 870 Extreme 3.0
2x2GB XMS3 DDR3 1600Mhz
64 GB SSD

Heres what I got by shopping around the stock crisis around christmas for a cut under £350:
XFX 5750 1GB GDDR5 which I've OCed to 5770 levels, but I don't need that much more juice
AMD Athlon ii X3 460 which unlocks to phenom ii b50e
2x2Gb XMS3 DDR 1600
32Gb Kingston SSDNow

For the money, considering the floods in thailand, I find this pretty good value coming from the C2D and intel world... The best bit is this: when piledriver is released for socket AM3+, I'll just sell off my athlon for, say, £30, and buy that instead! Problem solved. And for the GPU? Crossfire in a 5770 since they're compatible.

One thing I can't help but notice with your i7 rig is this: balancing. Your i7 can play things at 700fps (or some stupid number) BUT your GPU cannot... Unless you got 2 GTX 460s which would blow your budget. From what I hear the FX chips are not bad, but where not what we were expecting so be warned there. Its i5/i7 level performance, heres what I'm saying in a few points:

AMD:
+ Cheap
+ Clear upgrade path: AM3+. Piledriver etc... Overclocking and unlocking, free GhZ for no $£$£
- Sometimes more heat
- Not always the highest performance
Intel:
+ Next Gen performance
- Expensive
- Upgrade path is... 'Murky'? LGA1366, P67 etc etc etc. Intel likes change. a lot.
+/- Can run hot...

On the whole I'm thrilled by how my athlon is putting up a fight with skyrim I'm getting some nice FPS at high settings (ok, I oc'ed my card for this one, buts here its the GPU that counts). Its your call, intel for the next lots of years due to cost, or a cheap swap in replacement every 2 to 3 years for AMD? But do you need things running at 100frames/sec more than vsync?

PS: DDR2 - DDR3 Is a MASSIVE boost. As is an SSD, words can't express what a 10 second boot is like (from cold to desktop).

[mobilus]

I played Rage and Disciples III.