Redshift

Well as some of you know I bought an nVidia GeForce 7600GT back in October to replace my aging GeForce 5200 card that was slowly dying a slow and fairly painful death (It finally died on me when it started producing artifacts on-screen when in a game). So here’s what I have to say about the 7600GT after a month of use: It’s amazing. I know it’s not a top of the line card, I know it’s basically considered “last gen” because of the Geforce8 being out right now, But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still awesome. It does a fine job of running every source-based game I have maxed out at 1680×1050 (my new monitor’s native resolution), and it runs most newer games on medium fairly well so I’m happy. There was just one hitch with the card: The cooling system. Now when I bought this card, I didn’t pay attention to the cooler size because I’ve never had a video card that’s needed anything more than a fanless heat sink to cool it (like my 5200), but man that was a big mistake. The stock cooler on my card (Seen Here) is ridiculously tiny. The heat sink is literally non-existent and the fan did a horrible job of cooling it down, so I did what any boy with 40 bucks and semi-decent pc building skills would do: I bought the largest fan and heat sink I could afford that would fit on the card and shoved it on there. That Fan and heat sink being the Zalman VF700CU cooler. The thing is massive and is literally is bigger than the card (I’ll take a picture later), but it does such a good job of cooling the system that it makes up for size. Here’s what I mean: Stock cooler idle temp: 70 Degrees Celsius. Zalman Cooler idle temp: Between 38 and 43 Celsius. That’s one hell of a difference if I do say so myself. The load temps are about the same difference, if not more. So back on topic am I happy with my new card? Yes. Will I buy another EVGA card again? Yes. And yes, I’ll be using zalman in all of my builds from now on. And now I’m off to go play HL2: Deathmatch.

I know I don’t ever do posts about stuff on MarioMedia, but this is a special occasion: Thanks to Kevin (Hero of Fate The guy keeping it the site alive), MarioMedia now has a near-complete rip of the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack. We’re still missing a few songs apparently but that’s to be expected since it’s an in-game rip, BUT it’s in amazing quality, so props to whoever did the rip (I can’t remember who Kevin said did it). Hopefully we’ll have a full rip sometime in the near future but for right now this is awesome enough. So enjoy.

To download the soundtrack: Go Here, Click Shares -> Music, Then go to Wii -> Super Mario Galaxy -> and then just go nuts and download the entire soundtrack. I’m sorry we don’t have a mass download feature but that would kill the server, and I’m pretty sure Phil doesn’t want that to happen.

Happy Thanksgiving! If anyone cares, mine was fairly okay, involved lots of food, and random visiting with my family… Well if you consider “visiting” hanging out in the basement for most of the day lying on the couch watching TV and playing geometry wars on my 360 until I dragged myself upstairs for dinner. Anyway as you probably noticed (and if you didn’t, get your eyes checked) I updated my blog’s theme slightly. The horribly glitchy snow is back again, and I have a new winter-themed header because I was in a semi-festive mood the other day. Now for bad news: I have to work tomorrow, on black Friday. So if no one hears from me again, it’s because some woman trying to find the last Wii in town has somehow managed to kill me in a psychotic holiday-sale driven rage. And on that note I’m off to go play something. Possibly Geometry Wars, but then again I may break out the Dreamcast emulator and start playing Jet Grind Radio again.

Comic: Diet Coke+Mentos

So I’ve done absolutely fuck all today, I literally spent the day in bed up until 4pm when my mom forced me to get up. So what’s happened since 4? Well I finally listened to “Sound of Silver” by LCD Sound System (which is awesome by the way) , worked on the Lambda Records website a little bit, and then talked to mike who told me that his Legend of Zelda feather stylus for his DS came in, so I got up and checked the mail and there was mine. It’s pretty cool looking for it being a simple plastic feather-shaped stylus. It won’t ever replace the one for my DS lite, but hey it’s a free collectible stylus so I’m not complaining. I’d take a picture but I can’t find my camera’s memory stick anywhere so mike’s being kind enough to let me yoink the picture he took.

Like I Said: It’s simple but cool looking.

Comic: Fight

Now why in the hell wasn’t this included on With Teeth =\

Well, I got an Xbox 360 on Friday, and so far I’ve been very happy with my purchase. I bought the Xbox 360 Arcade bundle, which comes with the console, wireless controllers, 256mb memory unit and 5 Xbox Live arcade games, so I’ve been playing through those a lot. Monday I bought Dead Rising, although I haven’t played it all that much since I’ve been too busy with other stuff to have time to really just sit down and play for a few hours. I also had to change my GamerTag because my last account (XiinRhade) was made 2 years ago so it was stuck in “child mode” thus blocking me from Xbox Live, but it doesn’t bother me so much since I found out about that small glitch when my GamerScore was only 65. So my new GamerTag is NintendoRev for those that want to add me, although I think I’ve already added everyone that reads this and has a 360. I’ve also setup one of those nifty 360 blogs for my console. The RSS feed is on the sidebar under the “My 360’s Blog” section if anyone feels like reading it and seeing what my 360 has to say about me. Mike had one and I thought it was kind of cool so I decided to copy him and make one, But I may take it a step further, because I’m working on getting a plug-in for wordpress setup so it will automatically forward posts from 360Voice to here and post them on here, cool huh? Anyway that’s all that’s going on right now, so I’m off to bed.

Comic: Classic