Netster 宅男

My pre­cious! Damn, this card is expen­sive! My GeForce 8500GT stop work­ing last month and I have no choice I need a card to power my HTPC while wait­ing for the war­ranty claim. With­out much thought I bought a new card right there and than. I won­der if this is a mar­ket­ing gim­mick – You return a card and at the same time you have to pur­chase a new one!

I use to think that hav­ing high end card on a HTPC is wast­ing money and resources, I like to take it back! :p it’s so big dif­fer­ent! Hav­ing high end Nvidia 8 series on HTPC is totally kick ass! Too bad I’m no gamer at all but I will wait for the new GTA to appre­ci­ate the adren­a­line rush. (I love fast car on screen! LOL)

As soon as I fire up the card, one notice­able improve­ment was the card is light­ing fast! I can change my TV chan­nel on Win­dows Media Cen­ter much quicker. Time shift­ing & record­ing is totally smooth sail­ing, lesser noise, the color is sharper and eyes pleas­ing. Ah! My HTPC is one expen­sive toy with qual­ity vitamin.

I set up my HTPC with duo screen dis­play. One at a dis­play res­o­lu­tion of 1680 x 1050 and another at 1280 x 1024 on a sin­gle card by con­nect­ing my wide screen View­Sonic 20.1 incher and Sam­sung Syn­Mas­ter 192T 19 incher via 2 DVI on the card. So far there’s no con­flict, ASUS EN8800GT han­dle both dis­play res­o­lu­tions simul­ta­ne­ously with solid per­for­mance. (The screen maybe off should game changes res­o­lu­tion dur­ing start up – hap­pen only on old PC games)

ASUS didn’t bun­dle that much of stuffs for all their cards release, keep­ing price low and stay in com­pe­ti­tion maybe two of the rea­son or they just try­ing to cut cost. For this card how­ever, in my opin­ion, con­sumer maybe con­sider lucky to have extra goody – ASUS CD holder! LOL (see box above)

Here are the down points

1. Not much of info pro­vided on the hand book or on the box about this card. I have many Nvidia cards and I think Lead­tek did bet­ter job in pro­vid­ing instal­la­tion instruc­tion and card specifications.
2. Very expen­sive but this is to be expected on all high end card! Even mid range is still a bit too pricey!
3. NO HDMI port. You still can use the con­verter for future proof but I guess, again it just another silly mar­ket­ing gim­mick to push more money out of con­sumer for their 9 Series cards.
4. When Win­dows Media Cen­ter on full screen, one other screen become use­less. NVIDIA or MS should fix this part through their soft­ware. This error or lim­i­ta­tion is con­sumer great­est loss of pro­duc­tiv­ity. (you can fix this prob­lem by not turn­ing on full screen, silly I know, that’s how it goes)
5. ASUS own soft­ware is bad for eyes sight, Bad UI but usable. I do not rec­om­mend this soft­ware on Vista – crash and error to be expected. (Since most of you guys OC your rig on XP sys­tem, you should have less trou­ble. I hate it, the soft­ware just look ugly on Vista!)
6. NVIDIA is focus­ing more on 9 series card. You may now be in dilemma and caught in the wait­ing games for lower price on high end card which prob­a­bly will not hap­pen! It was never hap­pen on 7 series card and it will not hap­pen on 8 series and def­i­nitely will not on 9 series.

What I like most about the card

1. Big! The card is so big! Same rea­son you drive a big car. The big­ger the bet­ter, psy­cho­log­i­cally! (LOL)
2. High end card! Sup­port PCI-Express 2.0! HDTV-out, DVI x 2, HDCP com­pli­ant and most of all…
3. 512MB DDR3
4. PCIe 2.0
5. The card is powerful!

	GeForce 8800 Ultra	GeForce 8800 GTX	GeForce 8800 GTS	GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB1	GeForce 8800 GT	GeForce 8800 GS
Stream Proces­sors	128	128	96	128	112	96
Core Clock (MHz)	612	575	500	650	600	550
Shader Clock (MHz)	1500	1350	1200	1625	1500	1375
Mem­ory Clock (MHz)	1080	900	800	970	900	800
Mem­ory Amount	768MB	768MB	640MB or 320MB	512MB	512MB	384MB
Mem­ory Interface	384-bit	384-bit	320-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit
Mem­ory Band­width (GB/sec)	103.7	86.4	64	64	57.6	38.4
Tex­ture Fill Rate (billion/sec)	39.2	36.8	24	41.6	33.6	26.4

Here’s a snip­pet of Tom Clancy’s Splin­ter Cell Chaos The­ory game. I have DX10 game, Com­pany of Heroes but my video record­ing of the games was not to my lik­ing so I am not going to show you. Splin­ter Cell Chaos The­ory how­ever, caught my eyes after I have updated the game’s patch. Trust me, I have this game for a very long time, I never play em’

I am NVIDIA slave! I have bought many of them, from 4th series – 8th series. Strangely and luck­ily I’ve skipped 7 Series or else I will have almost all of GeForce and be made amuse­ment! (Actu­ally I’m already there! LOL)

2004, This is ASUS V9180 SE GeForce 4 MX 440 card (below), my very first GeForce 4 card. This card marks the first time I assem­ble my own hybrid PC. (I don’t really under­stand why peo­ple call it a clone PC – so if a PC wasn’t Dell or Toshiba or branded PC is a “Clone”?) In fact this is my very first HTPC. HTPC is my only source of enter­tain­ment watch­ing 8TV when I was work­ing in Kuala Lumpur and stay in a rented room.

2005, Galaxy Zeus 5200 although I have been using my HTPC for some “long” time, I did not bother to buy mid range card. I still stick with entry level card which really seem to enough for my DVD experience.

2006, Win­Fast A6600 GT TDH 20th anniver­sary Lim­ited Edi­tion is my very first mid range card! This card packed with 2 games Tom Clancy’s Splin­ter Cell Chaos The­ory & Prince of Per­sia War­rior Within. This card is not cheap! It cost me bloody RM540! Just because it say spe­cial edi­tion and I bought the card *grin*

2007, Last but not least my mid range 8 series from Giga­byte. I have to get this card due to my new moth­er­board work only with PCI express. Since all of my dis­play cards are AGP ver­sion, it also spelled the end of it shelf life! This card is obso­lete, killed by full swing pro­duc­tion of socket 775 platform.

Any one seen my “Warham­mer 40000: Dawn of War — Dark Cru­sade?” I think I’ve mis­place it! Bummer!

Every liv­ing thing has it time and so do all none liv­ing thing! But mis­place it before los­ing it is pathetic! *sign*

2008, please refer to my topic I know I’m get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter with dis­play card over time. I think I’ve learn so much over the years. If you have cross expe­ri­ence between ATI and GeForce, please do let me know your opin­ion about both cards strength/weaknesses and why you love them. If you lazy to type, oh well…

oOo ^_^ oOo Thanks for reading!

I have given you salted eggs from my pre­vi­ous post. Now, it’s time for another type of egg! It’s call Cen­tury egg.

Cen­tury Eggs

This egg is spe­cial. it’s almost black in color and almost trans­par­ent. If you find the color taste­less, you maybe right! I never like Cen­tury egg and I can’t find the rea­son why should I love it. You prob­a­bly won’t like it too

Dur­ing my photo tak­ing ses­sion, I tried one slice, pre­tend­ing I love it and know how to appre­ci­ate it. I have to! Other wise the restau­rant work­ers would think that I’m mad tak­ing photo of the eggs but won’t eat it.

I harm my appetite dur­ing the mak­ing of this post.

Por­ridge with Cen­tury Eggs

Good night all

This resort should be the best resort in Kuch­ing! Damai Puri is the new name for Damai Lagoon, and the resort going through the major ren­o­va­tion last year and sup­pose to open to pub­lic in Q3 2007 but was delay and I remem­ber I have to post­pone my room book­ing and even­tu­ally I decided to can­cel it.

They have had change man­age­ment and I guess this change gives this resort a thumb up! I make a visit on Sat­ur­day and I was impressed how gor­geous this resort has been. Traveler/ tourist and the local who stay over Damai Puri would appre­ci­ate the sea view, natures, for­est, and the local cul­ture by vis­it­ing Cul­tural Vil­lage which just about 10 min­utes drive. Please ask for assis­tant from the resort help desk, daily free coach should be available.

The Lobby

Over look­ing the beach & Sea from the Lobby Area

The funny fact about Damai Puri you should know is that, just few steps away from your right (from the lobby view), the beach is called Per­mai Rain­for­est Resort. Per­mai Rain­for­est Resort pro­vides rooms up on the trees! I should try it next time, the feel­ing should be good!

For­est View

This children’s swim­ming pool is just sim­ply gorgeous!

The Design

So what do you think of Damai Puri? Mark your cal­en­dar for your next vaca­tion, you should choose Damai Puri as a choice of getaway!

Okay here a bum­mer, I didn’t stay at Damai Puri on Sat­ur­day. I was just pass­ing by to check out the newly ren­o­vate resort. I am in fact stay­ing at San­tubong Kuch­ing Resort and doing our BBQ at Per­mai Rain­for­est Resort’s beach.

I took this very beau­ti­ful plant from a nearby salt water stream/swamp. This plant can be found along the swampy and wet area in Sarawak. The native (Iban or Malay) set­tler would use it as a rope or you can dry it and make hand­i­craft. I use to fish crab when I was young, and water this clear, cross your fin­ger, you would catch a good and big king crab! I grew up along the muddy bank of salt water river and it really fun back than. I don’t think I would be able to show you or take you to expe­ri­ence the life of a house nearby a small river. I need a boat to do that there were fruits that you never eat before and can only be found along salt water river and there were way of life how to live by low and high tide.

After a tir­ing BBQ, what could be more fun than to drink a glass or two of vodka? I must admit orange mixed with Vodka is call screw­driver is my first! *ROFL* what a strange name for a drink. This team gath­er­ing was fun, we never had a suc­cess­ful over night gath­er­ing before and this is the first. I hope this gath­er­ing brings us closer to our objec­tive in life & work.

It’s been a long time since my last posted video! Hope­fully I’ll be able to embed a video of Damai Puri Resort & Spa by this week in this post. Too tired to do the video for now! Before I leave, pick your favorite legs

Good night and have a nice day my friend! (Another long week days)

P/s: I thought I saw Chicken wings! Speedy might like to join me

Updated: 08 April, 2008
As promised, here’s the video

I receive a mail from a friend today ask­ing for my opin­ion on free Inter­net access from a gen­er­ous neighborhood.

Hi bro,
Need to ask your opin­ion over this inter­net LAN router stuff.
Now I’m access­ing the inter­net via open con­nec­tion of my neigh­bour LAN router with­out his knowl­edge. So I won­der since he never impose restricted access by set­ting pass­word, can he detect or aware that some­one else is using his inter­net access ille­gally?
Can he read & have access to any web­site that I opened?

Yo, Bro!

I think you mean wire­less router.

Yes, he def­i­nitely can detect you from his wire­less routers con­trol panel. If he need to, he can trace where you are call­ing from or tem­po­rary set ban to your IP address. The radio fre­quency is the key to know where you are with the right soft­ware and tools any­way, it so easy to know that you are just within hun­dred feet away from his house. LOL

How­ever, in my opin­ion this per­son will not take the trou­ble to find you. If he cares about secu­rity he would have block all the access. By hav­ing his wire­less access open with­out pass­word, your neigh­bor sup­poses to be so afraid that you degrade their inter­net access or hack into them than you being hack! In your case, you and your neigh­bor should be mind­ful of the third party who is also snoop­ing around the same con­nec­tion. Both you and your gen­er­ous neigh­bor are ven­er­a­ble to the attack of viruses and hack­ers. Unless of cause your neigh­bor is also a hacker, invit­ing unfor­tu­nate com­puter users to lick his line while he take his time to “clinch” on your win­dow sys­tem. Well trust me 99% he didn’t aware that his wire­less access was not secured.

Can he read & have access to any web­site that I opened? – With proper soft­ware and tools, he can even use your credit card that you have just entered onto the web­site and make you bank­rupt. Ever heard of key log­ger? Com­puter users are expos­ing to all sort of threat every day and new one keeps coming.

Here’s my opin­ion, if you want to con­tinue using this line, make sure your Nor­ton Anti virus is up to date and you have fire­wall set on. I per­son­ally pre­fer to use Free ZoneAlarm Fire­wall to mon­i­tor my inter­net con­nec­tion (in and out) but unfor­tu­nately it doesn’t run well in Vista. It crashes the whole system.

Nor­ton Inter­net Secu­rity (NIS) comes with all the func­tion you ever wanted. You need to update your NIS every day and you can down­load Nor­ton Add-on Pack for safe brows­ing fea­tures. Reg­is­ter your NIS copy to take advan­tage of it. If you want the cheaper way to get a new license copy for NIS you can buy NIS 2007 ver­sion and upgrade to NIS 2008 for free by log on to your Nor­ton account and down­load the new ver­sion copy.

I also rec­om­mend you to use Win­pa­trol to mon­i­tor your active pro­gram activ­i­ties. You can choose to dis­able start up pro­gram or approve/decline pro­gram instal­la­tion behav­ior. Cool pro­gram and it free!

I read a mag­a­zine about a Sin­ga­porean kid who hack into a neighbor’s com­puter goes on Amazon.com shop­ping spree. The owner who sus­pi­cion of receiv­ing goods that he didn’t pur­chase seek expert for his prob­lem. You guess it right, the naughty neigh­bor was caught red handed the next moment he make a come back for another shop­ping

If you are just surf­ing, not down­load­ing giga­byte of Korean movies, Mp3… I think your gen­er­ous neigh­bor won’t set your house on fire!

Use it at your own risk and take advan­tage while you still can! *Roll on the floor laugh*