Weekly Wrap-Up :: W44-2015

Concept art taken from the upcoming game "Dreadnought".

There use to be a time, what seems like ages ago, when I used to publish these Speedlinking articles listing all the EVE Online news. So I thought that I'd start doing that again, listing all the interesting bits of info tweeted of the course of the week, movies and trailers I've seen, and stuff I'm reading.

What I'm watching:

• "The Man In The High Castle" [PILOT]
• "League of Legends PROJECT: Overdrive" by Axis Animation
• Video: Deconstructing the art design of Dragon Age: Inquisition

What I'm reading:

• "Newton's Wake" by Ken MacLeod - Took me a while to get into it, but now I'm hooked.
• "Beacon 23: The Complete Novel" by Hugh Howey - Hooked after the first sentence!
• Pre-Ordered: "EVE: Valkyrie Hardcover" by Brian Wood

Gaming:

• EVE Blog Banter 68 "If I show you my rig, will you show me yours?"
• "Microsoft Will Focus Primarily On Xbox Live Usership, Not Console Shipments" via Game Informer
• "Ubisoft joins Open Gaming Alliance" via Games Industry
• "Respawn & Nexon partner for Titanfall franchise" via Games Industry
• "Big changes are coming to Star Citizen in the Alpha 2.0 release." via PC Gamer

Concept Art:

• Some fantastic space colony concept art by Bryan Versteeg (aka @spacehabs)  via SpaceHabs 
• Beautiful Terraformed Mars Concept Art

EVE Blog Banter 68: If I show you my rig, will you show me yours?

They say "Better late than never..." Well that's all fine and dandy, but it makes for a shitty first impression. Or in this case, for a shitty re-introduction. I wanted to jump back into the  EVE Blog Banters, my child of yesteryears, who's all grown up and soon turning six, with a BANG! But the Blog Father is bit rusty, and three days late will have to do!

Enough ramblings (damn, I AM getting old!).

Just like an old rust bucket of a space freighter, my current rig is a patchwork of parts scavenge here and there. There used to be a time when she was the pride of my geek gene. Built by yours truly way back in August of 2009, she was made up of an old Antec Plus 1080AMG File Server Case and the following components:

• Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 7200RPM 32MB Dual Proc SATA 3.5IN HDD
• Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 ATX AM2+/AM3 AMD770 PCI-E16 2PCI SATA2 MoBo
• XFX Radeon HD 4870 750MHZ 1GB 3.6GHZ GDDR5 PCI-E 2XDVI HDCP Graphics Card
• G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ PC2-6400 4GB Dual Channel RAM
• Corsair VX450 450W ATX 12V 33A 24PIN ATX Power Supply
• Windows Vista Home Premium 64BIT OEM DVD with Win7 Upgrade Offer

Over the years when moved on from Vista to Win7, and recently to Win10 (very happy with that last OS by the way), the GPU card was upgraded to a 1535MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 (NVIDIA) and the RAM was doubled to 8Gb. 

As the keyboard and mouse combo, I'm using Logitech's G110 and G500, respectively. Both feel comfortable and I love the customs combos. A Plantronics GameCom 780 headphones envelopes me in a full 3D sound experience!

Finally, the display is a decent 23" LG W2361 monitor, which no longer feels appropriate. I'm currently eyeing an  LG 25UM57-P Black 25" 5ms (see below) - now THAT would be sweet!

She (continuing the ship analogy here folks, bare with me) still runs all the games I play at a decent level, with a good balance in terms of visuals/performance.

But I'm itching to build a new one, though I'm not sure the Secretary/Minister of Finance would approved. She (the wife here, not the rig - please stay focused) might prefer a few more incremental upgrades before going with the completely new rig.

As such, what would you recommend I upgrade first? CPU? RAM? GPU? That new 25" monitor. I'd love to know your advice!

EVE Blog Banter #68 Contributors:

1. My Cat's Bed aka Eve Online PC! - Sand, Cider and Spaceships
2. @tgl3 cannot be arse to blog but Tweeted a photo :S
3. Go Fund Me - Eveoganda
4. Get yer rigs oot - Notes from New Eden
5. My Rig - Morphisat's Blog
6. Its not Much, But its Mine - Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
7. Rig Check - The Ancient Gaming Noob
8. Show me yours and I'll show you mine - Absence of Substance
9. Flying the Deadly Skies on Ductape and a Prayer - A CARBON Based Life
10. If I show you my rig, will you show me yours? - CrazyKinux's Musing
11. Back In The Saddle? - Diaries of a Space Noob