I have been playing the Battlefied 2 demo since it came out and I love it.
The biggest problem with the game is it requires a new video card. The game has very high requirements, much more then doom3
I have been playing it at a friends shop because my pc does not have a video card that is good enough.
I wanted to get a Nvidea 6800GT but because I have a Shuttle XPC SB81P I had problems.
Specifically heat and size: The shuttle is a small form factor PC. What this means is that the space for a video card is very limited !
If space is limited it also means heat can become an issue.
So when choosing I had to make sure that the card is low heat and that it will fit.
This means either recommendations from other shuttle owners or trying out cards by plugging them into my PC.
Well living in Ulsan ruled out the second option.
It is pretty hard finding a shop that stocks 6800GTs even six months after they have come out!
So I ended up buying a 128MB 6600 for 120,000 w (@SU$120)
In hindsight this is a bad idea, but I was impatient!
(When do we want it? NOW, no fuck that, yesterday)
Pros: It works !
Battlefield Earth plays very well at medium settings at 800×600@60hz.
Cons: I should have got the 256mb version, if they had it, which they probably didn’t
I also ran Nasa’s World Wind which is an excellent program to test a video card. Result, fantastic, it works really well.
Now for the game itself.
I downloaded a version of Bittorent. I love it!
So now to buy it!
Fortunately I live in the Mega city of Ulsan 🙁
So I looked at HomePlus, Wal Mart, and Save Zone.
They are all big department stores / supermarkets
RESULT:Not a bloody copy in sight!
I looked online, and they appear to have it for sale.
But I would rather support local businesses, so I will wait.
There are some fantastic shops for XBOX and Playstation gamers, but alas, for PC games, the field is barren indeed.
Here is my PC.
You can see the video card in the bottom right.
At the top is a Seagate Baracuda SATA 200GB H/D
Inside the PC you can see a green circuit board belonging to the second hardrive, a Western Digital 200 GB IDE drive.
The space above the IDE drive and next to the Seagate is where a second SATA HD will fit.
I put a 2nd Seagate Baracuda there and the system could not keep it cool even when the fans were running at 100%! So I replaced it with the IDE drive you can see now.
The WD drive runs about 7 degrees cooler then the Seagate!
The Seagate is too hot for a small form factor PC like the Shuttle.
It can easily hit the high 40’s, while the WD sits on 37.