New/Old PC Performance

My resurrected PC is doing wonderfully. I installed Halo and FarCry (my two favorite, if a bit old, PC games). I was able to set Halo to the highest resolution it handled (1368×786) which my monitor scaled well (the monitor is 1680×1050). The came performed perfectly, if a little sensitive with the mouse. I was able to run FarCry at 1680 x 1050 with all the graphics set to Very High. This is the first time I was able to do that. I played it for a little while and it looked very good. It made me wonder if this machine will play Crysis.

Stay tuned for that.

Next up is F.E.A.R. I will hopefully test that in the next couple of days. I did not get far in F.E.A.R. when I played it on my laptop. I will see if I can transfer the saved game files, but I am not too concerned. I would not mind playing it from the beginning.

So far the biggest issue is sound. I hooked hop my Creative 5.1 speaker system to the motherboard based sound system. My rear speakers are not hooked up. Previous pets (a cat and/or rabbit we no long have) chewed up the speaker wires in my study. At the moment I only have the center, left and right front speakers and the sub-woofer working. When I setup the speakers in Windows Control Panel it stepped me through perfectly to test each speaker and even tell it that the rear speakers were not attached, even though it was a 5.1 system. Very slick.

Non of this is the problem with sound. Playing games with sound is the problem. My study is right across the hallway from the master bedroom. If I turn up the volume to hear background sounds or voices it is too loud for the gun fire and blasts. Oops. The troubles we go through. I loved playing for a couple of hours when no one was home.

I have to get to F.E.A.R. now. I’ll keep you posted.