EVGA GeForce GTX780 ACX Cooler Overview

I purchased the new EVGA GeForce GTX 780 with ACX cooler on June 5, 2013 for $659.99 + 3.99 shipping on NewEgg. Buying these high end cards on launch is a tricky deal. They are in stock for about 10 minutes before they are sold out. Of all the cards I have seen on NewEgg at the time, this one was the best in terms of factory overclocked settings. Even the awesome looking Gigabyte model had lower clock speeds.

The card is roughly the same size as the EVGA GeForce GTX680SC. It should fit in almost any mid sized case.

Side by side comparison of EVGA GeForce GTX780 with ACX Cooler & EVGA GeForce GTX680SC

It runs cooler than 680 and makes less noise. Those who have used the 680 would know that they hardly make any noise, I had to listen for it to even notice it. I was happy that the 780 performs even better.

Performance wise, the average frame rates are higher, the leap isn't all that big from a GeForce 680. Guild Wars 2. The frame rate certainly dips below 60 on ultra in Lion's Arch. Those who don't play Guild Wars 2, Lion's Arch is a hub where every player from level 1 to 80 would gather for something or the other. Its a highly populated area and there is always something or the other going on. Check out this video of Lion's Arch on ultra settings.

I was pretty impressed with the performance of the card in Battlefield 3. Here is a video of Battlefield 3 in ultra.

Temperatures are lower on the 780, and that probably has a lot to do with the better cooling system on this card. I would absolutely recommend buying this instead of any reference model. Higher clock speeds, and better cooling system is definitely worth the extra $10.

Quick note about the power connectors - 780 uses 1x6pin + 1x8pin PCI-express power connectors. This version of the card is bundled with the 8 pin power connector.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Compatibility with older BIOS

I have a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motheboard, which was running with a stock BIOS, which was last updated on 3/12/2013.

When I first installed the card, it would go to the BIOS screen and just sit there for a good minute. The LED debug code would show code 62 (Installation of the PCH runtime services). After about a minute, I would then be able to load windows. However, if I connected my other monitor, CD drive, data drive (non SSD drive) or if I hit Delete or End, the debug LED code would show one of the following:

• AD (Issue Ready To Boot event for OS Boot)
• AE (Boot to Legacy OS)
• AB (Wait user command in BIOS Setup)

Once it reaches this point, it would just not do anything. I was under the impression that there was something wrong with the card itself, and I was quite disappointed.

My wife then had suggested that I should upgrade the BIOS. I looked up my BIOS date and version, and I realized it was quite old. I figured I should at least give it a shot.

I removed the 780, installed my 680, ran through the BIOS upgrade windows utility, and shut down my machine. Then I installed the 780 again and started the machine. This time around, I was through to the windows login screen in about a few seconds.

I was relieved to know that a BIOS upgrade was what was needed and there was nothing wrong with the card.

So my suggestion, first find out the version of the BIOS that is currently installed. This can be done through Windows. Having done this, find out if this version of BIOS is the latest, and if it is not, upgrade it before installing the GPU.

More GPU pictures below.

Microsoft & Sony - The Used Games Situation

For those who are unaware, here is some background:

We are at the verge of new generation consoles. The new Microsoft console - the Xbox One - has tons of DRM in order to prevent gamers from buying & trading used games. They constructed an elaborate system of blocking second hand games by tying them to Xbox Live accounts. It is not possible to trade Xbox One game discs - even for single player games because they are all tied to Xbox Live account. Its essentially like Steam on PC.

Sony on the other hard, made things a lot easier. By not having any DRM on used games.

I imagine there was a conversation between the companies that went something like this:

Microsoft: Hey Sony. We came up with this awesome new plan to make a ton of money!

Sony: Oh yeah? What is it?

Microsoft: Well, seeing as how with the current consoles, we do not get any share from second hand sales, how about we implement a system that would block them from trading games by tying them to an online account? This way, gamers cannot hand over a disc to a friend! We will make it mandatory to enter a serial code, which we are totally going to sell. This is going to bring in tons of second hand revenue!

Sony: That sounds like a great idea! You guys should totally build a system!

Microsoft: But for this to work, we both need to be in on it. This will mean a lot of money for both of us!

Sony: Oh yeah! Absolutely. We hate it when gamers decide to give their discs to their friends - like they own it after they paid for it once!

Microsoft: Yep! We are also thinking about making it mandatory for the console to have to be online at least once every 24 hours....just to make sure the gamers aren't up to any mischief.

Sony: That is a great idea! The more control we have, the less control they have! What could go wrong with that! Nothing, I say!

Microsoft: So we can count on your support?

Sony: Oh yeah man. You got it.

Meanwhile they are thinking

Then E3 happens, and Sony releases this video: 

And in their conference, they totally screwed over Microsoft in a dazzling display of capitalism:

At the end, I imagine this is what Microsoft is thinking:

And the rest of the world is thinking:

New Year's Resolutions - 2013

After reading a post on PC Gamer forum, I decided to put my resolutions in writing. I am not a particularly irresponsible person. I hold a good job, and I worked hard to get there. That being said, there is a LOT of room for improvement.

So here is a list of my new year's resolutions.


1. Learn to be competent at programming in Java. Having gotten a start as a developer, I moved away from that path for so long that I am useless at writing code, but I feel that I need to get back to my roots.

2. No buying games (except Battlefield 4) at launch.

3. Be more responsible with money (kind of a vague goal)

4. Work out every day - at least go out for a walk after dinner.

5. No more playing video games for hours. No more than 30 minutes on weekdays.

6. Eat healthy - eat out no more than once a week unless traveling.

7. Spend more time reading books - put that Nook to good use.

This is all I can think of right now. Hopefully, I will be able to work hard and fulfill the promises I am making to myself.

Unlocking the L85A2

To unlock the L85A2 in Battlefield 3, two assignments need to be completed in this order:

1. Best Friend Forever

This requires:

• 10 revives
• 10 heals

2. Professional Russian

• 100 Kills with assault rifles
• 20 kills with underslung grenade launcher
• Win 5 rounds of squad deathmatch (SQDM). 

All of those can be easy enough, except winning 5 rounds of squad deathmatch.

I have tried to join in to a SQDM by myself, but I never had any luck winning. The chances of winning a SQDM game are one in four, and going solo has never really helped. The best way to do this is to be in a squad. I had my wife join me, and we won five out of the 8 games we played. 

Here are a couple of good SQDM servers I found: 

1. Close Quarters
2. Battlefield 3

Here is a break down of our wins

1. Operation 925

My wife and I started off the round as assault, and for whatever reason I was terrible with the AEK. I just couldn't control it, and the best I got were kill assists. Then I switched to support class with M27, and I got considerably better. It also helped that my wife was there to revive me more often than. The match ended with 125 - 75. 

The reason my score looks that good is because I got revived several times. This is essential to winning SQDM. We had the perfect balance going. My wife healing me, while I gave her ammo. 

RomkaTerminator from C squad was my nemesis. He/she was extremely good with the shotgun, and in close quarters, and my M27 was not fast enough.  

2. Ziba Tower

So we just had our first win in SQDM, and we figured its worth seeing if we can repeat our success. So off we went to Donya Fortress. 

And we lost by 5 points. That was a close game, and we figured we should try again. 

Now its Ziba Tower. My wife played assault and I played support. This time however, I knew the M27 was not going to be fast enough. Ziba Tower has a lot of close range encounters. Considering I am really no good with shotguns, I had to find a way to beat RomkaTerminator. I went with P90 and suppressor. This proved to be very effective. I got better of the two several times, and we ended up winning. 

3. Scrapmetal

Following this victory, we wanted to play another round. This time it was Scrapmetal. My least favorite map. I don't know why, I just hate this map. I don't understand it very well. I decided to go assault, and that didn't go very well. I went back to being support with M27. That worked very well. RomkaTerminator did get me a few times, but the team didn't do very well, and we won the game. I was surprised I did as well as I did considering I was never any good at this map. 

By this time, our luck has run out is seems, and we lost the next two rounds. We decided it was time to quit. 

4. Noshar Canals

Next morning, I was casually looking through the servers for something interesting, and I found a server in Brazil that had SQDM with BF3 maps. I never played SQDM on these maps, so I wanted to give it a shot. My wife wanted to go back to playing Close Quarters, but I convinced her to at least give it a shot. 

This match went amazingly well for us. My wife was assault as usual, and I was an engineer with G36C. I also played as support with M27. I did not realize that SQDM had vehicles in it, so after taking some beating with the LAV, I spawned as an engineer, and that worked out very well for the team. 

The match ended with my wife being the MVP, even though I had 18 more kills than she did, she revived me a number of times, and that turned the match in our favor. 

5. Seine Crossing

In the preview round, I didn't have any one in the opposite teams dominate me, so winning the round wasn't much of a fight. In this round, I had this one fellow twobles, constantly harass me. He was playing as recon with SPAZ, and would annoy the hell out of me. He would jump out of nowhere and shoot me in the face and disappear. Thankfully my wife was always close by to review me or to give me health. 

Towards the end however, I got the better of him. I switched to my go to gun - M249B, and ran to the opposite building, and just waited for him to come running around the corner, and gun him down. After a few attempts, it seemed like he decided to give up irritating me. 

The round turned out to be very close. It was basically a battle between Squad C and Squad D. At one point of time, they got control of the vehicle, and were tailing us by 5 points. For whatever reason no one in my squad was going after the vehicle. I told my wife to provide me cover, and spawned as an engineer, and went after it with my SMAW. I ended up destroying the vehicle (the only time I did that in the round), and that turned the tide in our favor. 

We slowly gained momentum, and we won the round, and I unlocked the L85A2. 

Now, I am not saying I single handedly won the round for us, I did play a crucial part in our victory. 

L85A2

Having gotten the L85A2, I am not sure I am a fan of the weapon. I haven't played with it a lot, but I feel the AEK and M416 are a lot better than this. I don't have all the attachments unlocked yet, and at some point, I will give this weapon another try, but for now, when I play as an assault, I will go with the AEK. 

My first kill with L85A2 after unlocking it

Mass Effect 3 and Guild Wars 2

Mass Effect 3

I played a little more of Mass Effect 3, and I am still impressed with it. I just finished playing a quest where one of my favorite characters in the previous game is killed off. That was a little disappointing. The mission had me make some tough decisions.

I enjoy the gameplay in Mass Effect 3 so much, that it makes me put up with some very awkward controls. I am not a fan of the way the cover system works. There are several times when I wanted to run, and I took cover instead, and times when I vaulted over cover when I wanted to just stay behind cover. Any other game would have probably annoyed my to a point where I would just give up playing. I hate putting up with console controls on PC. Mass Effect is an exception.

I realized that the dream sequences in the game remind me of Max Payne quite a bit.

Dream sequence in Mass Effect 3

Guild Wars 2

Having played single player games for the longest time, I seriously got into multiplayer games with TF2, followed by Battlefield 3.

A couple of days ago, my wife convinced me to buy Guild Wars 2. I have never played a MMO before, and I was not very enthusiastic about it. I didn't see myself playing an RPG for months, so I didn't want to waste money on it. 

The wife however, insisted, and I bought it. 

I must say, I am glad I took her word. I think I am going to enjoy Guild Wars 2 quite a bit. The game looks amazing. 

I am playing as a human guardian, and the starting world looks like a fairy tale. This kind of reminds of Trine in 3D.

I was told that most other MMOs do not encourage exploration. I don't know if this is true, and it seems kind of counter intuitive to me. The designers obviously spent a lot of time creating the world, and I would imagine they would want players to explore it.

Apparently, that is not the case. Guild Wars 2, from what little I have seen has a number of perks for those who want to wander off into the world. I am glad it does that. I wouldn't want to play a game that would punish me for wanting to the world.

There is so much about MMOs I need to learn, but I think Guild Wars 2 might be a good idea to begin. I am glad I don't have to deal with subscription fees. I can play this at my own pace. Considering I have so many games in my backlog, I really wouldn't want to deal with a subscription.

I will play some more Guild Wars 2. Considering it is 19F outside, and snowing a little bit, I am not stepping out of home anytime soon. I am blissfully enjoying my Christmas break playing some new games.

Hamachi Logging Off After Disconnecting

I've been using Hamachi for a while, and everything was fine, until recently.

I remote into my home laptop when I am away. One fine evening when I was out of town, I was using my laptop at home remotely, and once I was done working, I put my computer to sleep. When I resumed working, I couldn't remote into my home laptop anymore. At the time I thought something must have happened to my home internet connection, and Hamachi couldn't log back in.

When I went back home, I discovered that the laptop was always online (I could tell because I was still connected Pidgin, and all my chat windows still showed me as online).

After some research I discovered that Hamachi would go offline every time the session is closed.

For example, I am using my home laptop through a remote desktop session, then I decide to close the remote desktop session, I can't remote back into the machine because Hamachi goes offline on all the networks.

Here is an excerpt from their blog post:

So, in the hopes of converting more of you into paying customers, we’re making a small change to Hamachi: unless a computer is part of a paid network, you need to be logged in and running the Hamachi UI on your desktop in order to allow it to function. If no user is logged on to the computer then – even though the Hamachi service or daemon is active in the background – it will not go online in any networks that it may belong to. We believe this a fair change; if you’re using Hamachi casually (such as for gaming), then we’re glad to have you as a free user and this change does not affect you. If, on the other hand, you’re using Hamachi to access unattended computers, then this change does affect you and you will want to upgrade to the premium service in order to continue to benefit from it.

 Read the full post HERE.

I don't know if there are better alternatives to Hamachi. I did not like Team Viewer 7. I will keep looking.

All I need is a free VPN application that I can install on both machines, and be able to remote desktop using the VPN ip address.

Portrait Wallpapers

Video games

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 1200x1920 wallpapers

Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand

Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand 1200x1920 wallpapers

Deus Ex Human Revolution

Deus Ex Human Revolution portrait wallpapers

Credit for the all the above pictures goes to my wife who took the time to make these for my portrait monitors. Mouse over the pictures for more detail.

Dead Space

1080x1920 Dead Space portrait wallpapers

Tomb Raider

1200x1920 Tomb Raider wallpaper

Duke Nukem

1200x1920 Duke Nukem wallpapers

Miscellaneous 1200x1600 wallpapers

Abstract Design

Scenery

Last but not least, we have Batman

Batman 1200x1920