Category: Technology

The Differences of the Xbox 360 and PS3 (or Playstation 3) to a Gamer

Posted on by M o u s h i g o
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the setup i have at home, playstation 2 in the middle and xbox 360 to the right on a 32″ samsung lcd monitor, the 360 is directly connected to the router using a lan cable to enable tversity sharing with my pc

xbox360.pngI’m posting a funny video from YouTube uploaded by machinima.com. It is all about the topic. It is been quite a while since I won my Xbox 360 in a Microsoft event. I have not been playing many games on it but rather using it as a Media Center playing DivX movies, FLAC format Audio Files and Photos directly streamed from my PC using Tversity and has proven to be quite too useful almost as if it were a personal computer. I have always been an avid fan of Sony’s Playstation console but somehow I just think they overdid it with the (PS3) Playstation 3. c(”,)

ps3.pngOne thing bothers me with the PS3, the Blue Ray Disc. If you ask me, 40 gigabytes of disc space, especially in games, will always amount to lag. Unlike hard disk drives, removable discs are not mounted well enough to achieve high speeds and as it turns out I was right. The video posted below shows why this is so. It would have been better if they separated the Blue Ray Drive just like the Xbox 360 to reduce the cost of the console. A blank Blue Ray Disc would cost 1,000 Php ($25.00) here, how much more the games? They should have just placed the games in the DVD9 format. It looks as though they were trying to market it as a media console and not as a gaming console. Hopefully the price will go down throughout the year. You could save up to buy the console and you will save again for the games. In my humble opinion, if you would really really want to buy one, it would be better to get one that is second hand.

Summarizing this, To Sony, the Playstation consoles should always purely be for gaming! Put funds into the games you offer not into the console! This is the basic reason why the Playstation 2 and Playstation 1 were such great consoles. Have fun watching the video! c(”,)

this is a video from youtube created by machinima.com, although it is quite harsh to playstation 3 owners, it does prove to have some points on the downsides of having a playstation 3 console

Installing and Setting Up Teamspeak

Posted on by M o u s h i g o

Skype, Yahoo Messenger, GoogleTalk and Live Messenger, all these have a lot of useless stuff you will not need when the only thing you want to do is have a voice conference with 5-10 or more people. Teamspeak is a dehydrated version of all these messengers leaving only voice conferencing which is solely what you need when multi-tasking. This is most useful when in online games. So to all •Barons• members or anyone who is a member of guild that does sieges out there, this is how to do it. c(”,)

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Teamspeak Installation:

1.) Download the file named TeamSpeak 2 Client here. The file is about 5mb in size.

2.) Install the program, it is very easy, just click next until the program is installed.

3.) Done!

Teamspeak Test:

1.) Make sure your headset and microphone are properly connected to the rear of you computer, the green jack(speakers/headphones) should be plugged in the green socket and the pink jack(microphone) should be plugged in the pink socket.

2.) Open Teamspeak and click "Settings" and then click "Sound Input/Output Settings". You should see this window below:

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There are two settings here:

a.) The first one is just a Volume slider that increases or decreases the speaker volume, I did not highlight this in the image.

b.) The second one, Voice Send Method has two options, "Push to Talk" and "Voice Activation". Push to talk means that to be able to send your voice message you need to press a key in the keyboard, this key can be assigned using the Set button and reset by the Clear button. Voice Activation on the other hand does not need a keypress but rather the sound and volume of your voice, there is a slider below this that sets how easily the system will detect the volume of your voice. Whisper detects the faintest of sounds, this is not recommended when you are using a speaker because it will cause a lot of feedback. Move the slider to the right until you get the mix just right. Don’t put it in Shout though because you will really need to yell just for the system to detect your voice.

3.) The last thing to do would be to will be to test the setup, in the Local Test section, click "Activate local test mode". This will allow you to test your microphone. Try speaking into the microphone, if the setup was a success you should hear your voice from the speakers. The Test Codec option specifies the sound quality, the higher the Kbit the better the sound will be.

Troubleshooting:

I have not encountered a lot of problems with installing or using Teamspeak so far but these by far are the most common:

1.) Cannot use the microphone will using the front panel jacks of the computer. The best solution I have for this would be to disable the front panel detection. This commonly applies to Realtek sound boards. To do this:

a.) Open the control panel for the Realtek sound card and look for the Audio IO window. Click the Connector Settings button:

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b.) In the Connector Settings window make sure "Disable front panel jack detection" is checked.

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Intel Extreme Motherboard D5400XS (Skulltrail), the Overclocked Server!

Posted on by M o u s h i g o

Intel SkulltrailIntel’s latest top of the line motherboard, the Intel D5400XS, is the only desktop motherboard that I can say can perform as a gaming rig as well as performing the duties of a 24/7 server. It might be a pointless,stupid and unnecessary idea to do so because this would boost the price tremendously so no one will be able buy this board but that is just what Intel is all about.., to be able to balance extreme reliability and extreme performance. I dubbed it as the first ever retail "Overclocked Server" even though it is not a common thing to overclock servers. c(”,).

I am an avid fan of ATI and AMD as gaming platforms but since I work as a Systems Administrator, Software Developer, Web Developer and a hardcore Gaming enthusiast, I will always prefer a motherboard and a processor that can handle such tasks that pertain in each category, power, reliability, speed, efficiency and have good support. Based on my experience maintaining AMD class workstations (use, udpating bios, installing, formatting, bios/OS optimizations etc..), AMD is just not cut out to do this, AMD will always be for extreme graphics games and light computer processing. This is due to some motherboards that support the AMD platform, I will probably write a future article on why this is so. This motherboard however is a supports of all of the above. I was so amazed seeing this board when it first came out in February of 2008. Back then I was expecting if there was ever going to be a Pentium 5. Intel also does not support overclocking in their boards but this board is in the Extreme Series so it can do overclocking as well.

Intel® Desktop Board D5400XS (Retail Edition)
Intel Desktop Board D5400XS

As a Server and Workstation

dbextreme_74.gifThe Intel D5400XS can support 8 cores and is based on a Xeon supporting motherboard, Intel’s Xeon supporting motherboards are the best there is when it comes to reliability, as an example, Xeon class motherboards are used by IBM in its servers. I as a Systems Administrator have dealt with IBM Servers, they are very reliable and can be left on for months without slowing down and in my experience as an Intel user I too know how Intel boards are well built. My previous computer has Pentium 3 motherboard D815EEA2, it lasted me 5 years formatting only twice in that span. Dual booting with Windows 98 and Windows XP, it ran for at least 5-8 hours a days because my sister also uses it in the evening for her school assignments and other online activities, plus I leave it running to do downloads and uploads. I do not even hesitate or get scared in updating Intel’s motherboard BIOS, it’s just that reliable. It was the opposite back then when I still had a motherboard with a VIA chipset running S3… >_<

As a Gaming Platform

Let me just say one thing. Triple-crossfire support I do not know about Quadfire, looking at the board I do not think it will fit. Too bad for NVIDIA though it can only support 2 SLI and not triple. c(”,)

/hmm: It is a bit weird thought though, ATI is owned by AMD but Intel supports ATI over NVIDIA…

All in All

It’s an extremely good board! A bit expensive though but if you need a well balanced computer that will last you a long time, let us say 5 years or more, This motherboard or perhaps any Intel motherboard would be the best way to go.