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My Devious Plan...

I

Isla

Elite member
Hi guys...

I'm cracking RC5 but all we have is 333Mhz... I want to run Seti, too, but Mr. Isla will not upgrade our computer until he finds a game that makes it necessary.

Sooooooo....

What can I buy him for Xmas that will make him want to upgrade????

Help me, so I can help you! 😉

Edit: Thanks, Guys! With this kind of ammo, you can be sure by December 26th, we will be looking for an upgrade. 🙂 I'll be able to run Seti by the first of the year w/out any domestic comflicts 😉
 
Mr. Isla will definitely want more CPU and Video to be an Unreal Tournament master. Smooths right out. Of course, DSL or Cable Internet service helps too when you get in on the big games.

 
Well, we do have cable internet... and we can afford to upgrade, I just need to give him a present that will make him need to do it, otherwise he won't. 🙁

Other interests, besides chasing me around the house? 😀

He does love Unreal... he was into Doom, Duke Nukem, etc... OH, and he loves TaeKwondo and the martial arts in general. There was a game called "One Must Fall" that we both loved!!!

He loves his truck and is very mechanically inclined... He has been collecting all his dream tools lately... just bought a huge, loud a$$ air compressor this weekend.

Oh, you guys would love Mr Isla! I haven't been able to get him to join yet. However, I do have his lovely younger sister on the hook.... don't be surprised if she shows up and starts cracking soon. 🙂 edit: she's in school for IT, so this is a good resource for her.
 
Isla, in addition to UT, I bet there are some CPU intensive "engine horse power" programs out there too. If he's a "motor head", he'll probably appreciate a program that will help him "tune" his truck. Just a thought.
 
Quake 3 for sure, there is a reason they use it to benchmark systems... team arena should be out by then too.
 
The first person shooters (FPS's) such as Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Half Life are definitely power hungry, there will be a new crop of games out for the holiday season. I'm sure we will be getting plenty of previews, especially if you look for them.

Tresh's FiringSquad game review links
 
Quake 3 is pretty hardware intensive, but I think Deus Ex is probably one of the most Mhz eating games out there. There's no way he'll be satisfied playing that on a 330Mhz PC. Muhahaha 😀
 
If he's a Dungeons & Dragons type fan, Diablo II is good quality game, but if you want a game that will FORCE an upgrade, get him a copy of Ultima 9; regardless of what you think of the plot of the game, it is a power-hungry monster! Even on a P3-833 with 256megs and a 32meg Gforce video card, it's playable.. but not what I'd call fast!

Actually, I should point out that this is due to poor software programming, but you did say you were looking to get a hardware upgrade. 😎
 
Well if he is a hunter, get him deer hunter 4 minimum requirements are a pii350, 64mg ram that should make him get at least a 700 somthing if he is like me. 2x min. req. is best for upgrades, that way it should be good for a year 😎
 
If into motorsport definitely recommend Microprose Grand Prix 3. Hard on the processor, hard on the graphics card.
 
Another vote for Unreal Tournament. It can be found fairly cheap and is more CPU intensive than Quake3 Arena. Q3A is used for benchmarks because it's got better OpenGL support than UT which was originally written for Glide (3dfx cards).

Rob
 
The most power-hungry game I can think of is Descent 3. With a Pentium3 450, 128Mb of good RAM and a TNT2 video card, it was still recording minimum framerates in the single digits and played jerkily when the action got hot. Good luck, Isla! : )

Guess I should mention the basic genre of the game... Descent 3 is a vehicular shooter, meaning you are flying a small zero-grav fighter that can move and turn in all six degrees of freedom, flying both inside and outside of bot-filled mines to complete your objectives. Some people actually get, um, ill when playing! Free Descent3 Demo can be found here.

Now that I think of it, another great demo is the new Mechwarrior 4 Test, which some of the TA IRC-channel crew are trying out, including me. You can get it here. This is a preliminary test release of the game engine and is incomplete in a lot of aspects, but it is a gorgeous game and is a very convincing simulation of 75-ton "walking tanks." I flinch when I fire the autocannons... ; )
 
One game will humble all of these:Trespasser. Each object in this game about a woman stranded on the Jurassic Park island reacts with real-world physics behaviour. When it came out, all the game magazines said that it was far too demanding for the 450MHz system that were top-notch then. They said forget the 'required system specs mentioned': can any one say <13 frames per second with an STB Velocity on a 450MHz P2 Dell? 😉

You can probably get this game for $10 nowadays because no one bought it. It simply was a couple of generations ahead. On his current system, this will be a slide show. :Q Ergo, instant upgrade urge.
 
Tresspasser? Man you're evil. I thought Isla was your friend? Might just turn him off to video games altogether. 😛

Personally, I am looking forward to Sacrifice. It is supposed to be out by christmas, I have heard as early as November.

On a side note, I do agree with dennil. That will probably bring a state of the art machine to its knees. maybe someone would like to donate their machine to see what it would run like? 🙂
 
Startrek Voyager: Elite forces (a Quake 3 engine game) is pretty rough on comps.

Another vote for Unreal Tourney though.

Klingon Academy (another Startrek game) is fairly intensive....

Wolfienstein 3d 😉 (okay, i'm joking, even my computer is so fast in that game that if i press a button, i'm at the end of the level 😛 )

Diablo II is suprisingly intensive when battles heat up, and all the goodies are turned on.

Drakan is pretty rough....

Falcon 4, a flight simulator is very, very, very CPU intensive....take a look here - they are not fillrate limited, but rather nearly completely limited by processing power.

Vampire: Masquerade is also very demanding - check this out

For real time strategy, Total Annhilation: Kingdom is very rough on fast processors too.

I have an idea....get them all 😉 You can't loose...wait. On second thought, even if you can afford the upgrade and all the games, if you do get all the games, the comp will never be cracking - it'll always be used for games 😉
 
Diablo2 is not CPU or graphic demanding, Diablo2 is memmory and Hd demanding.

Anyway, I vote for Tresspasser to, and DeusEX, Ultama9 is the best though, or just one idea. Just set RC5 priority to high and let him play any game, see the computer CRY for help.
 
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