[GAMING] Did you think that I have stopped playing Crysis 3? No way!

Crysis 3 is still the only game I play these days. I've almost settled down on two series of games: Battlefield and Crysis. After Call of Duty 4, which I played a lot, I haven't had much Call of Duty exposure. I didn't even finish the Black Ops II campaign. Why I don't play Call of Duty anymore is because the game is too expensive. There are workarounds to get games on Origin cheaply, even at launch.

 

Anyways, I've finally managed to reach the top character rank in Crysis 3. (Not in the player rankings of course). I'm not doing as well as I did back in Crysis 2 days because I don't have the low ping advantage anymore, nor a wing-man. (Still don't understand why I cannot find any Japanese servers. Are they only for Japanese version? I hope not!) The K/D has improved a lot but still haven't managed to hit 2:1. I'm getting there slowly.

 

The next step is to level up all the weapons. In Crysis 2, I only played for K/D ratio. Not for points. So I didn't really care about the weapons. I just used Marshall and ran around like a headless chicken. Now I'm playing for points. I've reached the top level (level 11: 500kills) in many weapons, but there are a few that I haven't killed even a dozen with. Marshall (6000+ kills) and Scar Mod 2 (6000+ kills) have been dominating the battlefield. I have to finish Predator Bow, K-Volt, O.G.R, L-Tag, Grendel, Typhoon and the sidearm. A long way to go I know.

 

Then there are a couple modules left for leveling up. Detonation Delay and Ordnance Alert. Haven't used them at all. They are still at level 1.I have leveled up all the other modules.

 

The thing is, I haven't been playing Crysis 3 as much as I did a couple of months back. You eventually lose interest. I've been trying to get my PC stable in the first place and because of that I've lost a lot of gaming sessions no thanks to long stress tests. But I think I've found the stable settings for my PC and I don't intend to do any stress tests here on after. Plus, I've been following two Cousera courses and I had to spend a lot of time doing the assignments. They were very time consuming.

 

Anyways, this is where I am now at.

 

 

Upgrade SandyBridge to IvyBridge-E this September?

Haswell for desktops was a flop. Now it is time to leave that sad incident behind and move on. Moving on means, looking forward to the next launch. The next launch from Intel is IvyBridge-E. IvyBridge-E CPUs are coming out this summer - September to be precise. That's only couple of months away from now. Fun times!

 

The IvyBridge-E CPUs

 

There are 3 models announced. The Core i7 4820K, 4930K and 4960X. Contrary to SandyBridge-E, all the CPUs are fully unlocked this time around. If you remember, Core i7 3820 was only partially unlocked.

The following is a detailed list of specifications of the upcoming IB-E CPUs. (image courtesy of Xbitlabs article)

 

 

Some more facts

The heat spreader is soldered to the die:

IB-E CPUs will have the die soldered to the heat-spreader. (Well, they have only confirmed it for the 4960X) IB didn't. IB simply had a thermal paste interface between the die and the heat-spreader. This caused IB to become hotter than SB when overclocked. Hence IB-E will have more thermal headroom for overclocking, which means it would be possible to overclock it higher than IB. Having a larger die (i.e. more surface area to dissipate heat) and having no iGPU would also help.

No x89 chipset:

It looks like there is no X89 core-logic coming out with IB-E. Intel's chipset roadmaps show X99 after X79 and X99 is for Haswell-E. The issue with X79 is that it lacks a lot of newer tech, such as native USB3.0 and more than two SATA-III ports. And a die Shrink would have improved thermals as well. This is good news for people who are running a Core i7 3820 because they can upgrade to a 4930K and enjoy a massive performance increase without spending a lot of money. You'll only need a bios upgrade at worst case. People running 3930K's or 3960X's won't see much of an improvement though.

 

So, upgrading to IB-E would be worth it?

 

The question remains. Is IvyBridge-E going to be a worthwhile upgrade from SandyBridge? You can receive a 50% increase in core count, unless you are stupid enough to get the 4820K. And there is 10% or so IPC boost. That would translate to about 60% more performance boost.

You will lose QuickSync support, which is not a big deal because Handbrake doesn't support QuickSync yet.

There will definitely be newer motherboards but sadly with the same old X79 chipset. I prefer having the controllers integrated with the chipset. I always disable the 3rd party controllers because they are not fast enough and I don't need that many ports in the first place.

But for most people, other than for bragging rights, this won't be a necessary upgrade. Games wouldn't benefit much for having two extra cores. But it would, if you are using quad GPUs, because the x79 platform provides 40 PCI-E lanes from the chipset (but this would be CPU in the case of IB-E), which allows you to use Quad GPU setups with hardly any performance drop or lag. Generally speaking, only the video editors will benefit from the added horsepower.

I guess I will wait and see how badly these Japanese shops will price the new CPUs. If I've learned something from the history, the pricing would be really bad. A 3930K costs ¥58,000 these days. That's about $580. Even if Intel releases 4930K at the same price, these bastards would sell them for like ¥70,000. Spending that much money only on the CPU is not going to happen in my book. When you think of it, I'd probably be stuck with my 2600K for eternity. The ugly truth!

Wait! I will have to renew my Internet connection in January. That means, I will get like ¥40,000 or so discount on select items when purchased with the internet connection. I hope the 4930K will be in that group of select items. :)

[Article] Refresh feature of Windows 8

Refresh is a new feature Windows 8 brought to the table. It allows you to revert your Windows installation to a fresh and clean state without losing any data. Of course, you will lose all the applications that your had installed before Refreshing, so hopefully you will have those setup files still in the hard disk. If not, you can use this method to install most commonly used apps easily. Windows Store Apps will be automatically downloaded and installed however. A file with all the applications that got removed will be saved on your desktop.

How do you Refresh your OS? There are two ways. First way is doing it from Windows itself. The second is doing is using your install media. (DVD or USB stick). But by default, you have to insert the install media for the Refresh to work. (Click here for a tutorial on how to make a bootable USB stick from a Windows 8 ISO file)

 

Doing it from Windows

 

This is how you do it from Windows. Refresh can be accessed from PC Settings -> General -> Refresh your PC without affecting your files. You will be asked to insert the install media and reboot.

 

 

Now, if you don't have a disc or USB stick that you had burned or prepared before, it will be a slight setback. But if you have the Windows 8 ISO file on your hard drive, you can actually use it as the source. You can find out how to do that by referring to this article.

 

Doing it from install media (DVD or USB stick)

 

If you cannot boot into Windows, you will have to use a bootable install media to Refresh your installation. 

 

 

However, if you can somehow manage to enter the recovery environment (repeatedly smashing F8 key just before Windows starts to boot), you can do it easily from there as well.

 

Things to do after a Refresh

 

There is one important thing that you need to do after a Refresh. The Windows Recovery Environment will leave behind the old Windows installation in a folder called Windows.Old. This folder will be in C drive and it is a huge folder. You cannot delete it the normal way. You have to do it via Disk Cleanup.