This week I found out that running Virus protection on everything Microsoft seems to be essential.  My main system was rebuilt a few months ago and I decided that I’d not install AV right away or any kind of protection.  I found out this past week that it’s not a wise move.  While I wasn’t infected with a virus or worm (typically choosing to open a document from an unknown source) I did find I had a trojan that was wreaking havoc on gaming.  I typically have issues with Unreal Tournament 3 and crashes since they can’t seem to fix the OpenAL issue that plagues the game on SoundBlaster X-Fi cards or it bounces back and forth between them and Creative.  Regardless I started having frequent crashes in Call of Duty 4 which has never happened.  I did some reading and found that people were reporting issues and the answer was a trojan.

I initially thought that I hadn’t done anything to warrant the concern but downloaded and installed a few spyware apps and Spywarefigher found an executable residing in my Program Files that looked like an MS patch that it reported as a trojan as well as a few tracking cookies.  I did the clean up and viola the crashes went away.  While it wasn’t a hard lesson learned, it was a lesson learned that running Virus protection is vital for the integrety of even gaming.

Thought I’d post that even if you think you’re privy to something like this, you may want to think again.  I’m still not sure what I did that allowed this to happen but I went ahead and installed AV even with the hit it takes on resources.

Why can’t we have a perfect game filter?  So many games create filters and leave so much to be desired.

Most of the first person shooters have filters but it seems a mishmash of what we would like to see.

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I happen to notice the “This Time Last Year” post mentioning Bioshock and I realized that we’ve not been hit with very little exciting news on the FPS gaming front this fall.  At this point last year we had a few titles already hit (ET: Quake Wars, Medal of Honor: Airborne and, as mentioned, Bioshock) with quite a few on the horizon for late fall (UT3, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Timeshift, Hellgate: London, F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, Painkiller: Overdose and an initial Frontlines: Fuel of War demo).  So that was 3 titles already out and 8 demos available by mid October.

So far this year we have Far Cry 2 scheduled for October and Crysis Warhead coming next Tuesday.  Call of Duty: World at War is coming complete with Kiefer Sutherland lending his voice with a November release but I’m not sure where this game really treads new ground.  I guess I’m happy to see another WWII installment but the Pacific theater doesn’t ever seem to be that popular in gaming.  The addition of bushido rules and the reinsertion of vehicles may work out.  Throw in Jack Bauer barking out orders and maybe it’s a more exciting release than I’m expecting.  Battlefield Heroes is suppose to hit as a free (more…)

I was happy that Intel hasn’t changed anything in their architecture for reading the RAID and the ICH7 built RAID was recognized on the new motherboard using ICH9. I also gave it a try of just booting into Windows but the drivers weren’t compatible so I did a “dirty” refresh of XP. I grabbed the ICH9 drivers and did an XP refresh install with the drivers, added the motherboard drivers and brought it up. So far it’s running very well without a complete rebuild. I’ve not oc’d it yet but Crossfire is working great and I ran a few rounds of flawless UT3. I’ve also had it running Folding@Home without issue the past 2 days.

I typically rebuild with new hardware but this one went so smooth (and I really don’t have the time to rebuilt right now and the build is about 2 months old) that I think I’m going to keep it for now. When I do a rebuild, I’ll probably (and I hate saying it) go to Vista 64 to fully utilize the 4gb of RAM among other things.

I do have to say that this was one of my easiest and most flawless upgrades. Typically there’s always some small stupid thing I miss, forget or there’s something hardware related causing issues. I dropped the chip on the board, added the ram, attached the Zalman 9700 (a dream to attach compared to the Tuniq Tower), plugged in connectors and it powered on. I finished up with the cards and was booted in no time.That’s not to say it didn’t come without irritation or scars. The biggest irritation is fitting video cards and cabling inside of cases these days and avoiding fans. Part of it could be my Apevia PSU, a part the Antec Nine Hundred’s layout and a final part how they are making motherboards these days. The motherboard is nice but I hate having the SATA connectors on the side of the board rather than on the surface. This is, for the most part, an enthusiast board but Asus makes some of the pieces more difficult for that same crowd that swaps hardware more often. Having a CMOS reset switch on the back is also nice. At least you can keep the case closed while doing OC testing.

I’ll toss some pictures up of the upgrade, more information and some analysis of performance and overclocking differences between this and the Intel E6600 and Asus P5W Deluxe tonight.

I also added the Intel NIC but not installed the other card in my server or started using the 3Com switch as of yet.  I needed more than a 4 port switch (I don’t need my wireless router/switch with the Uverse RG) and I wanted gigabit so I went with the 3COM 3CGSU08.  I’ll get those up tonight as well.

I found a few servers this weekend that were hosting Battle Team Arena and Battle Freezetag Arena! Very cool MOD and I loved both of them!

Here’s a few shots of the Battle Freezetag Arena and the last is from Battle Team Arena…

You can read more about it at BeyondUnreal and download it here!

I also added some screenshots from Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 2004 (I Know it’s old) and Frontlines! You can check them out in the Gallery.

I’ve not posted a lot since I’ve been busy with a few other sites. One of which is myGamerZone, which I’m hoping to be up soon… just need to clean it up a bit and make it a bit more flashy. It’s not intended to be a clan like site but rather a site that combines a blog, review site and gaming. I’m hoping to get the forums and galleries up this weekend and work towards a bit more “flash”.

There’s really nothing exciting going on in the FPS world either so I’ve just been playing UT3, BF2 and BF2142. I really need to get back into the single player games that are sitting unfinished (CoD 4, Crysis and both Half-Life 2 episodes). I’ve also ventured back into UT2004 and UT99 with mixed results… I think my weapons only adventures in UT3 has improved my aim in UT2004 on IG and sniper moded servers… I’ve enjoyed a few very good nights… UT99 is another story, it’s really a shock to the system going into that after playing UT3 graphically and in terms of physics. It’s amazing to look at the 3 and how the graphics have changed over the, almost, 9 years. I’d love to see a UT99 10th Anniversary Edition released using the UT3 engine, it won’t happen but get back some of the feel with the updated graphics would be awesome!