The price of invisibility

I don't have the new computer a week yet, but I already got totally used to it. And come to think of it, I noticed that what I was paying for was mainly the things I don't have any more. I'm spending less time waiting, because the computer starts up faster, starts programs faster, and is ready faster after closing down WoW. In the game there is less lag, and due to running at higher resolution now, less visible pixels. And besides being invisible, the computer is noiseless as well.

I'm not running World of Warcraft with "full screen glow effect" on, because I find it makes the game too fuzzy. But I'm wondering whether it will be possible to turn anti-aliasing on. Not in the WoW options, there doesn't seem to be a switch for it, but somewhere in the Windows Nvidia graphics settings. I'll have to take an evening and experiment a bit.

Another thing I'm considering is running some other benchmark, maybe PCMark04. Because some of the added speed, for example when starting up Windows, I'm not quite sure where it is coming from. I suspect the new hard disk being a lot faster than the old one, but I'd like to have that measured. The old computer's hard disk always seemed somewhat slow to me. I would also like to know how much faster a Pentium 4 640 3.2 GHz is than a Athlon XP 3000+.

Except for the slightly guilty feeling of having bought a more expensive computer than I usually do, I'm quite happy with my Dell XPS 600. I know that as gamer I'm somehow expected to open my computer, fiddle with the components, and spent a week trying to overclock 5% more speed out of it. But I'm afraid that never has been really my thing. I opened up computers and exchanged components when necessary, but I never really enjoyed that. And overclocking, trading a decrease in stability for a tiny increase in speed, I always considered counterproductive. So now having this Dell machine which just works right out of the box, without me ever having even opened the case, is quite agreeable to me.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:22 AM Permanent Link