Since 2000-something or so, I had enjoyed playing games on my cute little rig. It was and still is a very sturdy machine, not having the system failures that the other machines in our household have had over the years. Sadly, it is an aged machine that was starting to choke on FFXI when it used to run it so beautifully years ago.

I’ve wanted to upgrade my rig for awhile now, but money (like with anything else) was an issue. I didn’t really NEED to upgrade, it was more of a want. My sister’s computer, however, had finally eaten the dust about a month ago and it was a good reason as any to pick up parts during Black Friday this year. So while my faithful friend has taken me through all my years of college by not only entertaining me but helping me with research and the writing of my papers… I had to bid farewell as I sent her down the hall to my sister’s room and now welcome my new baby whom I have fondly named Shantotto.

The specs aren’t the top of the line, but they are much better than what I had before and are more than enough than for what I typically do. Here are the specs:

– Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
– OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2
– GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3

The end result was remarkably beautiful! I downloaded and tried the FFXI Benchmark 3 (which in the later years of my last PC’s life, it totally killed it), and I got well over 8k before I just closed it. I also cranked up most of the settings on high, with the exception of shadows which I left on normal. Putting it on high did this stupid layered effect which made me want to orz more than anything else. Watching the benchmark and then going into the game with my new PC was almost like playing a new game! I could actually see the sky! I was pretty astonished to see that the sky was so pretty with clouds in the sky. I could even see people MOVE and animations which I had to start turning off a little more than a year ago.

For the fun of it, I even reactivated my WoW account and was tickled with how awesome the game looked with pumped up settings. It was mind boggling to see flowers, butterflies, or even fur on the flying mounts! It has definitely made playing WoW more tolerable, since I am no longer as slow as a snail. ;o

Speaking of WoW, currently playing as a Shaman Draenei. I wanted to wait for Orophen before touching Hunter, and am kinda of frustrated with my Rogue BE. Its certainly much easier playing Shaman this time around, and after a few hours of gaming I’m already level 15 and am mucking around that stupid bloody island of… blood. Ick. At least it doesn’t make my eyes bleed nearly as much as it used to.

But why write when I can actually play and get myself off of that accursed place… again. D;