A Pirate\’s Logbook

I tried to upgrade my graphics card this week.

A couple of years ago, after the ex left, I replaced my case because the psu was screaming at me. When I opened it up I found out that sometime in the weeks between when I fitted a new soundcard and him leaving, he’d basically swapped the insides of my computer for his mate’s computer, leaving me with something that wasn’t bad, but wasn’t what I bought and paid for and was already out of date.

When I bought my new graphics card I forgot this. Turns out the one I want is PCI and the one I have is AGP, so I need to upgrade the whole insides really to get what I want. When I looked at the current price of RAM for my system (SDRAM is reeeeeeally expensive these days people) I decided I might as well do the lot when I can afford it. Which is a shame, because I was hoping I could do it in bits. Thanks to the help of The Great and All Powerfull Wizard of Oz Mista Uxian I have swapped the new graphics card for a 250gb HDD and sata/pci converter. Over the weekend I shall be backing up what little remains to be backed up onto my external storage drive and installing said new hard drive. Apparently this means I can get rid of the one that’s groaning at me but still use it when I upgrade the rest. Result.

I did manage to get my new tft though. A 19″ widescreen HD LCD with DVI-D for when I upgrade and it’s awesome. Of course, there is a certain irony in playing EQ2 in High Performance mode on it, but it’s not for long and tbh, it looks way better than it ever did on a CRT already. I just wish I could get the birhgtness/contrast right so that it doesn’t burn the back of my retinas but I can still see in game at ‘night’. I have it set to 20/30 which is OK for reading a white screen without eye strain, but I then can’t see in Norrath. Hoping messing around with the gamma will fix that.