Supreme
Since a couple of months, two of the five computers in my room are ones that I use on a daily basis. One is the laptop that I’ve got since a couple of years, the other one is a desktop system which I put together a while ago and I’m expanding it with new/better components from time to time. Today (or by the time I finish writing this, yesterday – it’s 23:57 now) was one of those days when I upgrade something.
I have, obviously, a motherboard in my desktop system, and among other things it has an on-board graphics chip. It’s not that bad actually since it can be conf igured to use up to 1 GB of memory – and I havn’t seen that many 1GB graphic cards if any at all – and it actually manages to run Supreme Commander pretty decently. Also, it has 2 outputs so you can actually run dualscreen with it, but one of them is DVI-D and I only have VGA monitors so that’s not really useful. Anyway, as even a basic graphics card outperforms an onboard chip and tomorrow (or by now, today) a new monitor will arrive, I decided to buy a video card.
This card had to fulfill a couple of basic requirements. Obviously it must be an improvement that is worth the money compared to the onboard chip, it has to be a PCI-Express x16 card, at least two outputs, and it must be able to run without an extra power connection from the power supply (nor draw too much power) since I currently use a cheapass 400W PSU which doesn’t have any 6-pin PCI-Express connectors. I found something that fits those requirements and within my current budget, so I placed an order and picked it up at the store.
At the first attempt to install the card, it didn’t work (except that the fan was running). Not on the next couple of attempts either. Once it worked, I screwed the card into place and then it stopped working again. After an hour or so searching the Internet and taking out and re-inserting the card a dozen or so times, I found how to make it work: don’t push it in all the way. Seriously: if it’s in all the way the system completely fails to detect that it’s there, if its out of the slot just a tiny bit, it works. I have no idea why, but judging from the stuff I read it appears that it’s an issue on the motherboard itself and that it happens to other people as well (I might just e-mail the store where I bought it about that). Either way, it worked, so I put my huge, old, ugly, sucky CRT on my desk next to the HP vs17 flatscreen which I ‘borrowed’, installed the drivers, and behold, I have dualscreen 
For the motherboard slot issue, I may try it with any of the other 3 identical motherboards that I have here, but it’s likely that I’m too lazy for that. Instead I might just buy a new motherboard at some time when I have money to spare, but then I am sort of planning to go for a dual socket motherboard right away (dual quadcore CPU ftw?).
I tried out Supreme Commander in dualscreen. It’s kind of nice, but also a bit buggy. You can’t queue up orders on the 2nd screen like you can on the 1st (which is VERY annoying when trying to build stuff), the mouse cursor is kinda bugged on the 2nd screen, and probably a couple of other things I forgot. Still, having a minimap which is bigger than the actual main screen is both nice and useful in it’s own ways 
Also I finally got the e-mail to tell me that my new monitor has been shipped, so I expect it in today. It’s a leet new Samsung panel, 19″ widescreen. I could have gone for a 22″, however since I’m planning to get another two of them sooner or later that’s just too big. Three 19″ wides next to eachother already resembles a private fortress (minus the siege weapons) when standing on the other side; 22″ would require me to extend the size of my desk, and my desk is already pretty huge.
IfI don’t forget to charge a couple of batteries for the camera – and I have to admit that’s a pretty big if – I’ll try to get a few pictures of one or two things soon.
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