Eheheh, you fan boys sure got told again.

So yeah, I will stick with my iPhone 3G which can multitask now thanks to iOS 4 and I can hold it however I’d like to!

Yes, I’m still alive. No I didn’t give up on this blog. It’s just that:

1.) I can’t find much interesting stuff to write about.

2.) I’m busy job hunting… and playing Bad Company 2

Currently I’m rank 44 (Colonel II) and have already played over 300 hours.

So I guess I’ll have spent enough time online to judge the game.

While Bad Company 1 was only available for “last gen” consoles, Bad Company 2 brings the Battlefield franchise back to the best, technically most advanced gaming platform: the PC.

Bad Company 2 features a real campaign, which is funny but of course very short. You are not paying for single player anyway. What you are paying for is multiplayer! (I’m always playing in hardcore mode. This means: more realistic weapon damage, no ammo/health bar, no enemy spotting, no crosshair, friendly fire is on and no mini-map and sometimes no third person camera in vehicles.)

The game types featured in BC2 are:

Rush:

Players must defend or destroy pairs of M-COM stations for as long as the attacking team’s respawn tickets hold out. Lost tickets can be regained by reviving fallen teammates. An M-COM station can be destroyed by planting a charge, using explosive weapons or when a building is collapsed down on it. Definitely my favourite type, I’m nearly always playing Rush now.

Conquest:

The classic gameplay from every Battlefield series game. Players must capture and hold flags for as long as the enemy respawn tickets hold out. Every kill makes the enemy lose one ticket, and enemy tickets constantly decrease when a team controls more than half of the flags on the map. Vehicles unlock as control points are held.

Squad Deathmatch:

Up to four squads and one Infantry Fighting Vehicle roam the map. First squad to score fifty kills get the win.

Squad Rush:

Squad Rush puts a squad of four players versus another squad of four players for a max of eight player matches of Rush. The maps for squad rush are taken from both conquest and rush. There will be only 2 M-COM stations in the entire round.

Onslaught: One squad of up to four players faces an onslaught of enemy AI soldiers. This game mode will feature new lighting and time of day on existing maps, as well as new vehicles. It is currently available for Xbox and PS3 only.

Bad Company 2 is one of the first DirectX 11 games and is probably the best looking multiplayer shooter so far. Although some weapons don’t look as detailed as in Modern Warfare 2, the massive maps look awesome.

My Radeon 5770 can handle the game really good in 1920×1200. I would recommend to get a Radeon 5770/5850/5870 and a quad core CPU if you’d like to enjoy the game in all it’s glory. Two cores won’t be enough for that.

BC 2 uses the Frostbite Engine 1.5, featuring Bullet Drop and ability to destroy whole buildings.

So compared to other shooters you have to keep the following things in mind:

1. Nowhere to hide:

Any wall, any fence, trees, bushes and even the ground can be destroyed by grenade launchers, RPGs, explosives and such. Tanks can drive trough walls are shoot big holes into them. Buildings will collapse if most of the walls are destroyed.

You have to move constantly, if you camp somewhere it won’t take long until someone just blows your cover away. Destruction 2.0 is also important for Rush mode. On some maps I just take a tank and drive trough the walls of the building where the M-Com is located (especially if my team just can’t manage to destroy it in the usual way.)

2. There is something called gravity:

Games like Modern Warfare 2 teach you wrong physics. The ones in BC2 aren’t completely accurate either but at least it feels more realistic. Bullets are affected by gravity, keep it in mind and stop wondering why you can’t get a hit. This is quite important if you are a sniper douche bag of course… ährm.. I mean recon douche bag of course. And while we are at it, lets talk about the different classes in BC2.

Classes:

Assault:

Usually using assault rifles, the assault class is great as spearhead of any attack.

Note: “Usually” because there are class specific weapons and ones that can be used with any class. At first you just have a few weapons unlocked but you will get new ones quite fast. Additionally you will unlock gadgets like defibrillators, grenade launchers and so on and specializations like red dot sights, sniper scopes and what have you.

There are automatic rifles like my beloved Steyr AUG A3, rifles firing bursts like the AN-94 and the M16A2. Every assault rifle comes with either a 40mm grenade launcher, 40mm under barrel shotgun or smoke grenade launcher. Besides the sidearm which can be equipped by any class assault soldiers also carry ammo packs with them. You can ask for ammo by pointing at the assault dude and pressing Q. (This also works for medics, vehicles, enemies and basically anything in BC2.)

Providing your comrades with enough ammo is especially important on maps where you have to use lots of ant tank weapons. In Bad Company 2 every in game voice has a meaning, it’s not some ambient noise. If someone asks you for ammo you hear them say things like “ammo, I need some ammo” and their overhead icon will flash.  Throw a box and maybe you just provided them with that one more rocket that was needed to blow up that f*cking M1A2 rolling into your base.

Engineer:

Most of those folks are using a submachine gun, for close quarter combat and carry anti tank weapons with them. Either the “noob-tube” M2 Car Gustav (loved it first, since I did maintenance on those things when I was in the army, but it gets really annoying now) which is really effective against infantry too, the RPG 7, the M136 AT4 (laser guided) or anti tank mines.

If you usually hang around in a tank or helicopter you will hate those guys. Why? Because any class can carry a so called Tracer dart gun as sidearm instead of a pistol. It is a small, handgun-shaped weapon that can launch magnetic tracer darts at vehicles. The Carl Gustav and the RPG 7 can pick up that signal and you can fire a rocket without having the target in sight. And, yes you can also tracer dart other players. xD

Don’t underestimate the engineers primary weapons. Most of them are silenced and are highly effective especially when used with a red dot sight.

Another gadget the engineer is carrying with him is the repair tool which is used to repair friendly vehicles. It can also be used to destroy enemy vehicles and to kill enemies. Yes, even headshots are possible. ^_^

Medic:

My favourite class. Medics are the guys with immense firepower who will also sacrifice themselves to rescue their comrades. Medics usually carry a machine gun as primary weapon. Most of those have 200 rounds in one magazine! My favourite one is probably the Chinese QJY-88 or the Russian PKM. The German MG 3 would be great but at the moment it’s underpowered compared to other machine guns.

The 5,56 x 45mm rounds of the M249 do more damage than the 7,62mm rounds of the MG 3. Maybe for balancing purposes but this will be fixed with the next patch.

Medics have two of the most helpful gadgets with them: The Defibrillator to revive fallen comrades and Medkits used to heal themselves and other players within range.

Once again, make sure to listen to your comrades. It’s quite annoying if you are all messed up but the medics don’t care and just run by.

You can also pick up the kit of any killed soldier. That way you can pick up a medics kit and revive him!

Recon:

No, those are not just snipers. Yes, Recons wear a ghillie suit and most of the time they have a sniper rifle with them but they can do much more. They can relay enemy positions to their comrades with motion mines and they can destroy enemy vehicles, buildings and such with C4 or a mortar strike. Recons should clear the way for their troops by taking out stationary MGs, ATs, tanks. Also: Shoot the medic first! Yes, the Geneva Conventions say otherwise but considering how war making countries like the US systematically kill thousands of civilians without anyone interfering, it won’t be that much of a deal in a game I guess.

Recons can rush too! There are fast firing weapons available for the recon class, like the VSS Snaiperskaya which is a short, automatic sniper rifle. Equipped with a red dot sight and magnum ammo it’s one of the deadliest weapons for close quarter combat.

In hardcode mode one hit with a sniper rifle kills you unless you are equipped with the body armour vest specialisation.

The “all kits” weapons:

Besides the class specific weapons you can equip your soldier with weapons and gadgets which can be used by any class.

Those are pistols and the tracer dart, shotguns and marksmen weapons like the M14 or if you are a Battlefield Veteran the M1 Garand.

Pistols are quite effective in close quarter combat. There are fast firing variants like the Beretta Model 93R firing off a 3 round burst and revolvers like the Russian MP412 REX which does a lot of damage and often one shot kills.

Shotguns are great for close quarter combat but some of them, especially the Remington 870MCS are ridiculous accurate at long range too.

Vehicles:

A game of the Battlefield series wouldn’t be complete without the vehicles.

You can man light vehicles like ATVs, Jet skis, HMMWVs or patrol boats,  light tanks like the M3A3 Bradley, heavy tanks (T90 and M1A2) and choppers like the Blackhawk, Mi-24 Hind, Mi-28 Havoc or the Ah-64 Apache. There is also a UAV which can be very effective too.

Vehicles can be really effective if used right but will be destroyed in a matter of seconds if used wrong.

On certain maps, for example in Arica Harbour a good Squad with one T90 can destroy dozens of enemy tanks in a row.

Vehicles can be equipped with specialisations like better armour, stronger ammunition, smoke grenades, enhanced optics, secondary weapon systems, motion sensors or faster reloading time.

Enemy mines spotted!

No matter how well you use your tank.. sometimes it will just blow up. Always look at the ground ahead (or behind) you. Engineers often position AT mines on roads, in shallow water or behind random vegetation. You also have to look out for enemy C4, recons calling in mortar strikes, AT guys and stationary ATs.

Use your vehicles wisely, don’t waste them but if necessary sacrifice them (+yourself) to take the objective. If you already get the missile lock signal, you tank is damaged and no engineer is near you (or they are noobs) just use your tank to mow down the enemy and the M-COM building.

As you can see, Bad Company 2 is quite complex compared to older Battlefield Games. To sum it up: It’s all about team play. In games like Modern Warfare 2 you can be a Rambo like, camping, dual-shotgun wielding, lone wolf. In Bad Company 2 this won’t work. You usually are fighting in a team consisting of squads of four. Healing, reviving, providing ammo, repairing a squad mates vehicle gives you more points as a reward than usual. You can also spawn next to one of your fellow squad members instead of your base. Unfortunately some gamers didn’t notice that yet and this is on of the…

Problems of Bad Company 2:

Nothing is perfect and the flaws of Bad Company 2 can be broken down in two major categories:

Problems caused by DICE/EA:

A game always has graphical glitches of course…

…but I’m not talking about those here. Technically most of the game works now but…

Server browser: It’s still a POS. The search function is worse than the one in Windows 95, servers marked as hardcore are often none hardcore. The ping is only displayed if you launch Bad Company 2 as admin. Ping issue will be fixed with the patch.

Ingame chat:

You don’t see the chat and can’t interact while you are dead. (Will be fixed in the next patch.)

Third person bug:

Sometimes you can’t switch back to first person while in a tank.. for the entire round!

Knife bug:

The most annoying one. For some reason from time to time it’s not possible to knife somebody from the back.

MG 36 red dot bug:

The red dot on the MG 36s sight is not displayed in hardcore mode.

Weird EA Online disconnects:

Well, yah…

Spawn lag:

The game laaaags after you spawn. Will be fixed with the new patch.

Voice over IP:

Most of the the time this won’t work. We are using TeamSpeak anyway but would be nice.

The way DICE/EA treats us:

Battlefield became big on the PC in the golden days before the era of crappy console ports.

But now console players get patches and map packs… while PC players are nearly waiting two months for the announced PC patch!

Also: MAP PACKS:

The Map Packs DICE/EA is talking about are the same old maps with game modes like Squad Deathmatch or Squad Rush activated.

Some new maps would be fine because certain maps are getting boring.

But at least they announced a Vietnam add-on lately:

Hopefully you can turn on the radio in your Hueys like in good old Battlefield ‘Nam. Eheheh.

Problems caused by gamers:

Sniper/Recon bobs: They are a weird, egoistic species. They usually hang around far away from the frontline or spawn camp in the enemies base. They don’t care if the team wins or looses, they don’t move often and like to camp.

Recons can be useful, but no team needs more than a handful of them. Sometimes teams consist of 70%+ recons. This might be annoying for the enemy team but in the end the enemy will win.

Especially the light house on Valparaiso is often crowded with them. Sometimes this is just hilarious. Once I saw 6-7 recons of my team camping in there while 3 of the enemies recons where camping on the rocks below the light house…

Some of them use valuable vehicles like the Blackhawks just to get to their camping place and crash it their after parachuting out.

Carl Gustav lamers:

The Carl Gustav is f*cking effective against infantry… but some folks use JUST the CG and not there primary weapons. LAME!

Excessive spawn camping:

On certain maps you can enter the enemies base and their spawn zone. While it’s not that much of a deal if a recon get’s left behind if the base is taken in Rush it certainly is if one or more squads are constantly killing you from behind seconds after you spawned in your base.

Enemy Vehicle Stealing:

In certain situations it’s not that much of a deal but in combination with spawn camping stealing the enemies main battle tanks is just lame. On certain maps that way a team could get 5 MBTs while the other one would have none.

Hackers/Cheaters:

Aimbots, wall hacks and what not are used by some noobs who can’t play or have fun in destroying the game for others. If you encounter one of those idiots report them!

Former Modern Warfare 2 addicts:

They never heard the word word teamplay… they don’t heal you, they don’t revive you, they don’t pick you up, they don’t provide you with some ammo, they don’t destroy enemy AT mines or warn you about them and they never heard of the repair tool. Obviously their Q key is barely used.

Playing the same class all day long:

Some folks never switch classes. Sometimes you have to! If there’s a enemy tank attacking spawn as engineer, if a sniper is killing your comrades spawn as recon, if you have trouble moving forward join as Assault with an equipped smoke grenade launcher and so on.

But even with those problems Bad Company 2 is one of the best (the best?) multiplayer shooters I played so far. Action, teamplay and the variety of ways you can use to win are just great.  So if you love multiplayer first person shooters go and buy Bad Company 2 (for PC) now!

Fell free to add me ingame: Just search for “hikky” on your friend list thingy.

Some of you might know that my main/gaming rig was powered by an old AMD Dualcore processor from 2007. The power of that “thing” was enough back then but nowadays it is NOT. When my water-cooling systems pump started to make noises like a Leopard 2 tank a few weeks ago, I just felt like it’s time to get a new rig. So for my birthday, I got myself a few boxes full of shiny, new hardware.

Now let’s see what I got after the jump:

Processor:

After looking at benchmarks I just had to go with… AMD!!! Yes, you heard right.

If you are going to build/order/beam over a new rig everyone seems to go for an Intel i7 (or if the budget is tight an Intel i5 processor) now. Looks like most people have forgotten about a certain innovative CPU maker called AMD or they where to shocked by the Phenom 1 dilemma.

Yes, the newer Intel CPUs are ahead of AMDs CPUs in most synthetic benchmarks (encryption works way better on AMD CPUs for example) but how does this translate to gaming performance for example? The truth Intel doesn’t want to hear is: Get a decent, well priced CPU and spend the money on a powerful graphics card if you are a gamer.

AMD is well off here of course because they offer both and the current Nvidia line-up is… crap. (Unless you want to heat your house with your graphics that is.)

If I would be into heavy video editing for example a Intel i7 quad or sixcore CPU would make sense but for my needs definitely not.

So I got the top of the line quadcore CPU from AMD, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition for 150€.

Specification:

Quad-Core "Deneb" • TDP: 125W • 45nm • L2-Cache: 4x 512kB • L3-Cache: 6MB shared • Hypertransport: 4.0GT/s • Memory Controller: Dual Channel PC3-10667U (DDR3-1333), Dual Channel PC3-8500U (DDR3-1066), Dual Channel PC2-8500U (DDR2-1066) • Stepping: C3 • MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64, Cool’n'Quiet, AMD-V

Obviously an improvement over the old processor.

It’s Black Edition CPU which means I can set the multiplier up to x35 which would result in a core speed of 7GHz, theoretically. In real life this would not go that well for the CPU. Unless you use N2 cooling cause then it is possible:

Motherboard:

I was a little bit in a pinch here. Should I get a “old” board with a 790 chipset or one of the the just released 890 chipset boards?

GX890 of course! 

In fact Gigabytes first motherboard featuring the 890 chipset, the brand new GA-890GPA-UD3H.

Feature list: (A geeky one. If you like to see the important features wrapped up in bright colours take a look over here: www.gigabyte.com.tw/mb_890gpa_ud3h/ )

• ATX Form Factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm
• Support for Socket AM3 processors, new generation AMD Phenom™II X6 processors included
• Hyper Transport Bus: 5200 MT/s

North Bridge:

• AMD 890GX, South Bridge: AMD SB850
• 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory, support for DDR3 1866(OC)/1333/1066 MHz memory modules
• Integrated Memory: 128MB DDR3 SidePort memory
• Onboard Graphics (ATI HD 4290)
• Realtek ALC892 High Definition Audio, 7.1-channel, Dolby Home Theater,  S/PDIF In/Out
• 1 x Realtek 8111D chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8
• 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
• 2 x PCI slots

South Bridge:
• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors 6 supporting up to 6 SATA 6Gb/s devices
• Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, and JBOD

GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:

• 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
• 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices

Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD

iTE IT8720 chip: 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive

IEEE 1394: 3 x IEEE 1394a ports (1 on the back panel, 2 via the IEEE 1394a bracket connected to the internal IEEE 1394a header)

USB: Integrated in the South Bridge:

• Up to 14 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (6 on the back panel, 8 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)

NEC D720200F1 chip:

• Up to 2 USB 3.0 ports on the back panel

USB3 is not implemented into the chipset but comes with the NEC chip. I’m not surprised. Is there another USB3 chip out there in the wild yet?

Back Panel Connectors:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard port or PS/2 mouse port
• 1 x D-Sub port
• 1 x DVI-D port
• 1 x HDMI port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 1 x IEEE 1394a port
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 6 x audio jacks

The layout is nice and tidy, connectors are well placed. What I’m missing is the e-SATA port. The comparable ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 comes with one of those but with less USB ports and some folks reported stability problems with the current BIOS on the ASUS board, so Gigabyte this time. My next external drive will be a USB3 model anyway.

Performance wise the 890 chipset performs slightly better than the 790 chipset according to the interwebs. Furthermore the SATA3 integrated into the new chipset seems to perform better than the usual Marvell controller found on former boards. I guess it’s time to get a SSD soon. 

What I’m wondering about is: WHY ARE THERE IDE AND FLOPPY CONNECTORS ON THAT BOARD? It’s 2010! Who is still using IDE drives? A IDE port next to a next gen SATA3 port looks just wrong!

The accessories are a little bit disappointing though. I would prefer a USB/firewire bracket over those stickers and the DVD with already outdated drivers. Only two SATA cables aren’t a problem for me (I have more of those lying around than I could ever use) but if a random Joe buys this together with two hard drives and one optical drive this could be a problem.

But after all the board isn’t a bad deal for 112€. Comparable Intel socket 1156 boards cost more and have only two SATA 3 ports (via the Marvell chip) and a drawback: If you use the USB3/SATA3 Turbo mode the primary PCI-e 2.0 x16 port runs in x8 mode and the second PCIe 2.0 x16 ports runs in 0x mode (LOL) on some Intel boards. I guess that’s because the Intel chipset provides only half the bandwidth of the AMD chipset.

This shouldn’t be a problem for a current, common setup, but lets say you have a ATI Crossfire setup with two 5850 running on your Intel Core i7/i5 rig. In a few months you buy a external USB3 drive and suddenly your second graphics card is  unusable. Not that great if you ask me.

Memory:

Not much to mention here. First I wanted to get 8GB DDR3 ram but the current memory prices are completely fraked up. So I just bought a “cheap” 4GB OCZ Gold Low-Voltage DIMM Kit (DDR3-1333, CL9) for now.

Cooling:

Yes, I got the boxed version of the processor which comes with a AMD stock cooler. But who would use those?

So I got myself a nice piece of engineering from Japan manufactured in Taiwan:

\o/ WUAHHAHAHA! That’s the Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B.

Ährm yeah, its a little bit bigger than the stock cooler.  Even bigger than Japanese roris!

Combined Dimensions:
130 x 100 x 158 mm / 5.12 x 3.94 x 6.22 in

Fan Dimensions:
120 x 120 x 25 mm / 4.72 x 4.72 x 25 in

Noise Level:
0 ~ 26.50 dBA

Air Flow:
0 ~ 74.25 CFM = 0 ~ 126 m³/h

Fan Speed:
0(+200 rpm) – 1,300 rpm(±10%)

Weight:
870 g / 30.69 oz.

Material of Base Plate:
Nickel-plated copper

Comes with all screws and stuff to mount it on Socket 478/T/LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366 and Socket 754/939/AM2/AM2+/AM3/940 motherboards, a back-plate, a fan mounting thingy, a Scythe Slipstream fan (SY1225SL12LM-P), a manual and some thermal grease.

The mounting system is little bit different than what I’m used to. You basically screw the mounting parts matching your Socket to the bottom of the cooler. 

After applying some thermal grease (I used Arctic Silver 5) you have to mount the backplate from the bottom of the motherboard, which is tricky.

The best way to do it is by flipping the cooler over and basically mount the motherboard on the fan as shown in the following clip.  (It’s in German but you should get it.)

No compatibility problems with the motherboard but memory modules with high cooling fins could cause problems.

Looks quite impressive compared to the old motherboard. I don’t want to think about the price of the ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition board back then. (~260€)

Time to put all that goodies inside my old case.

Old setup:

New setup:

Removing the liquid cooling system took most of the time, because you don’t want to have green coolant in your case, right?

In the front and in the back I mounted silent 800 RPM Scythe Slipstream fans.

My Enermax case comes with a 240mm LED side fan which makes sense in a liquid-cooled system but usually messes up the airflow if you use a tower CPU cooler. So I just removed it.

The Mugen 2 gets enough cool air trough the mesh windows anyway.

After a few days the Arctic silver seems to break-in and the temperatures as well as the noise is quite good.

Idle (=Firefox+Winamp+Livemail+Tweetdeck+Skype+MSN+ Ultramon+CCC+Avast+a to of background applications): The system is highly unimpressed. The loudest parts are the hard drives.

Stress (=Prime95, In-place large FFTs for over half an hour): Still cool and quite silent.

3,8Ghz runs with a core temperature of 48°C! 4Ghz should run fine too, but I don’t need the power at the moment.

I’m highly impressed how far air cooling has come. I’m actually glad that I don’t have to deal with those aliens living inside my cooling systems any longer. ^^;

Urgs… wäähhh! You don’t even want to know what life form dwelled inside the coolant reservoir. It was nothing from this world, that’s for sure.

After applying some car polish even my case is like new again.

I could post a ton of benchmark results like I did on my Radeon 5770 review but who would care how much better this system performs than a randam2 1/2 year old system?

The system feels fast as hell, standard tasks are blazing fast, the real bottleneck, like in most systems is the hard drive now.  All games (besides Metro 2033 obviously) are running with maximum settings on 1920×1200. Bad Company 2 finally performs well and thanks to the Catalyst 10.4 preview driver I’m now usually the first on the maps. (Feel free to add me btw. Ingame name: hikky. Yah, I’m that medic who is NOT running around with a M60.)

I’m really happy with my new rig and it was definitely worth every single one of those 390€.

One tip if you get this board too: Do NOT use the Easy Energy Saver (EES) app from Gigabyte. While Easy Tune is a great application, EES is garbage. It saves a few watts and keeps my system ~1°C cooler by decreasing the Vcore! This cause applications to hang now and then, which is not what you would want. FAIL!

It has been a while since my latest figure review because most figures released lately weren’t falling in my DO WANT category. Unlike this figure here which was pretty much love at first sight. After several months of waiting (including  2 months delay) Kiriko finally arrived here last week.

The original character was obviously designed by Shunya Yamashita for an anime/manga/figure/ novel/drama-CD project called “Enka Ōdō Dai Shōgun” from Studio Anima. Studio Anima did the animations for Metal Gear Solid 4, Valkyria Chronicles and Ninja Blade so this could turn out quite well.

More details can be found on the official homepage which is unfortunately only available in Japanese. http://www.studioanima.co.jp/dai-shogun/

The didn’t go with the original, purple colour scheme and used a light-purple-ish one instead. I guess this works far better for such a large figure after all.

The sculpt for Kiriko was done by Yoshizawa Mitsumasa better known as “Reflect”. (He is currently working on a really awesome Asuka figure by the way!)

Kiriko is manufactured by Yamato. Now this can be a problem quality wise, as some of you might know. Not this time! The quality is really great and justifies the 145€ (+shipping & customs) I spent on her. The retail price is 11,800 Yen but even a few days after the release Kiriko was already sold out at most online shops, so I guess by now she will be worth a zillion Yen already.

If you didn’t notice it yet: She is really standing ~340mm tall from head to toe.

After comparing her to some other figures, I guess Kiriko is around 1:5.

Some comrades over @ tsuki-board where worried that Yamato would frak up her face, but it looks like they did a good job after all. Isn’t she gorgeous?

What I really like about her is that she doesn’t need to flash her panties, she doesn’t need DFCs or F-sized oppai to get your attention like all those other bitches half-naked figures. Nope, Kiriko just needs to be herself, a classy Ninja girl. ^_^

Quite a simple pose but I guess it’s exactly that simplicity that  gives her some sort of elegance.

Although some said that her bottom isn’t fat muchi muchi enough for them, I don’t see a problem there. She is a ninja, ready to rip your head off before you even notice it which means her body is thoroughly fit. Nothing wrong there.

Rawwr, great looking ponytail.  Her hairpin can be removed by the way.

Kirikos armour is quite well done. Love those read bits mixed with the black armour.

Her sword comes separately and needs some squeezing to put it in place.

While the tassels (Have those things a certain name?) are made of PVC the cords are made from real fabric.

The base comes with a nice iMac-effect mirror-effect, great to observe some figure panties on the shelve above her.

Unfortunately nothing is 100% perfect in the 3D world.  There is a small problem with that base. Kiriko doesn’t stand completely upright. It actually looks worse on the picture but she is slightly leaning to the right. I’m wondering how I should fix this, maybe glue her to the base?

The first promotional pictures showed her with a wooden base. Maybe she would have been more stable with that?

Overall this figure will be among my all time favourites from now on for sure. At first I was little bit shocked when I unboxed her cause the armour had some white smudges. Turned out to that this was just some white dust, so I guess it was something left over from the the production process.

Yamato and Reflect did a great job and I’m really looking forward to see more from Enka Ōdō Dai Shōgun. Wondering when we will here some news regarding the anime.

My next blog post should follow in a few days and contain a certain black box, a high-tech Japanese cooling solution, a just released Gigabyte main board and more. Yes, it’s finally time to upgrade my rig!

(This article is one again PC hardware/software related. Sorry for that, but there’s not much going on at the anime-sphere that would be worth blogging at the moment.)

Spring is coming and it’s time for a change…

…and that’s why I’d like to introduce my new waifu: a Sapphire Radeon HD5770 Vapor-X OC

Inside this article you will find:

- My GPU history

- HD5770: Inside and outside

- A look at temperatures and the 2D mode

- Benchmarks: DX9, DX10, DX11 in 1680×1050 and 1920×1200 (including recently released games like Bad Company 2)

- Conclusion

Bought my last graphics card, a Zotac GeForce 8800GTS 512 in December 2007. Time to change it, if I consider my GPU changing schedule which is shown below:

Feeling quite nostalgic now for some reason…

Inside the box:

I bought the lite  version which comes for ~ 150€. The full retail version comes with Dirt 2 and Arcsofts SimHD plugin.

Inside the box you will find the graphics card (obviously), a quick start manual, a driver CD (who uses those outdated drivers anyway?), a Sapphire sticker, a Crossfire bridge, VGA to DVI adapter, 4-pin to PCi-e 6-pin adapter for… whatever.

The outside:

The HD5xxx series is around for a few months now and more and more AMD partners are introducing their own designs. So far the Sapphire Vapor-X and the MSI Hawk are the most unique looking ones.

My card is actually from the 2nd revision of the 5770 Vapor-X. Recognizable on the new, blue PCB designed by Sapphire ( which is also 1cm shorter), the letters “OC” in the cards name and the new number: SKU# 11163-05-20R

Some among you are probably wondering where there aren’t any heat pipes on that thing, but some might have noticed the “Vapor-X” in the cards name.

Vapor-X is a new cooling technology intruded with some Radeon HD4000 series card.

And that’s is how it works:

1) Heat source heats Vaporization Wicks.

2) Working fluid, pure water, is easily vaporized due to the extreme low pressure (<104 Tor or less)

3) Water vapor moves easily through the vacuum until.

4) It meets the Condensing Wick – adjacent to the cooled surface – and turns back to a liquid state.

5) The liquid is then absorbed by the Transportation Wick by capilary action and moved back towards the Vaporization Wick.

6) The recycled liquid is then reheated and re-vaporized by the Vaporization Wick and the process repeats.

To connect up to 3 monitors with ATIs Eyefinity technology the card features: 2xDVI, 1x Display port, 1x HDMI.

On the inside:

The GPU used on this card is ATIs Juniper XT (RV840) manufactured in 40nm.

800 shaders, 1024MB GDDR5, GPU clock 860MHz, memory clock: 1200MHz

Quite a leap forward compared to my old card. What’s weird is that they decided to use only a 128bit interface. Guess that’s because they didn’t want to make it too powerful. (Old 4870 and new 58xx entry level card stocks.) GPU-Z seems to have a problem with the new HD5000 cards, cause it shows the bus as PCI-E 1.1 (while it is actually using 2.0) and can’t show the changing clocks if the card switches into 2D mode.

The 5770 comes with a 2D mode, which means 860/1200Mhz 3D mode, 157/300MHz in single monitor 2D mode and 400/1200Mhz in multiple monitor 2D mode.

When decoding movies and such with ATIs Stream technology the clocks switch to 400/900MHz in single monitor 2D mode and for some weird reason to 400/900 in multiple monitor 2D mode.

The temperatures are higher than in some test on my card but I guess this is because of the cooling situation in my case.

Idle (single monitor): 38°C

Idle (dual monitor): 45°C

Gaming: 65-75°C

Furmark: 81°C

The temperatures are at least lower than my old card ones (8800GTS = 75°C idle!) and the fan isn’t noticeable.

Benchmarks: 8800GTS vs 5770

Did some benchmarks to compare the power of my old 8800 to the new 5770. I used some of the benchmark scenarios used by the chaps from the PCGH (a well known German hardware mag) with their settings.

System:

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3GHz (My CPU is limiting the GPU in some scenarios unfortunately.)

Mainboard: ASUS M2N32-SLI VISTA PREMIUM (Nforce 590-SLI)

RAM: 4GB DDR2-800

Primary HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TB

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Catalyst: 10.2, AI default

Monitor: 24” Samsung T240 (1920×1200)

Deactivated the second T240 while doing those benchmarks..

Farcry 2 benchmark tool settings:

DX10: AA 8x, Standard-AF, Ultra High, Performance Settings: Very High, Ranch Small, KI on

Starting of with a random DX10 game. Average FPS are higher than the maximum with the old card. –> WIN

(Benchmark download: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=830 )

Heaven benchmark settings:

DX10: shaders high, AA 4x, AF 4x

DX11: shaders high, AA 4x, AF 4x, tessellation on

If you would like to see your graphics card suffer the heaven benchmark is the way to go at the moment. This benchmark is already using DX11 with the awesome feature called tessellation.

(Benchmark download: http://unigine.com/download )

Call Of Pripyat benchmark settings:

DX10 (DAY): Preset – High, Enhanced Full Dynamic Lightning (DX10), MSAA 4x (DX10 style), SSAO: Default – High

Dx11 (DAY): Preset – High, Enhanced Full Dynamic Lightning (DX11), MSAA 4x (DX10 style), SSAO: Default – High, tessellation on

The STALKER series is well know for using all of your PCs resources. The newest instalment uses DX11 with tessellation. The results above confirm that DX11 doesn’t need that much power if used right. On my old card the benchmark is unwatchable. ^_^

(Benchmark download: http://downloads.guru3d.com/S.T.A.L.K.E.R-Call-of-Pripyat-benchmark-download-2433.html )

Colin McRae Dirt 2 settings (PCGH save game Malaysia):

DX9: MSAA 8x, AF 8x, max settings

DX11: MSAA 8x, AF 8x, max settings

Dirt 2 is one of the games used by AMD to promote DX11 but the features aren’t really visible in my opinion.

Modern Warfare 2 settings (PCGH sequence “The Gulag” ):

DX9: max. settings (4x AA, 16x AF)

Modern Warfare 2 is only released in a DX9 version. The FPS numbers are obviously higher. \o/

Bad Company 2 settings (“Crack the Sky”):

DX10: max details, HBAO: on, 4x MSAA, 16xAF

DX11: max details, HBAO: on, 4x MSAA, 16xAF

The newest Battlefield instalments comes with DirectX 11 support and great graphics but needs some power of course. Performance wise the upcoming Catalyst 10.3 driver should bring us a few more FPS. Tweaking the settings a little bit can help too. Disabling the barely noticeable HBAO option for example improves performance around 12%. Setting the shadow quality to “low” gives you up to 30% higher frame rates.

Call of Juarez benchmark settings:

Dx10: shadowmap size – 2048, shadows – High, MSAA 4x, AF 16x

I remember seeing a not so awesome performance with this benchmark on a friends rig with an over-clocked 8800 GTX (95°C+ GPU temp ^^; ) in 2007. For a modern card it’s daily business of course.

Just when I finished all those benchmarks I received a package from Amazon with Metro 2033 inside. Released this week and using DX11 graphics. That game is a GPU killer!

PCGH benchmark with a HD5850 below:

For max. details on 1920×1200 and beyond you better get one of those 600€ Radeon 5970s. ORZ

I’m tweaking around a little bit for now cause 1920×1200 with max. details is just too much for a 5770.

Conclusion:

For some upcoming the HD5770 will be too slow if you  are gaming on 1920×1200. For now the card is fast enough for most games and the price isn’t that bad. The overclocking potential is great (around 980MHz/1425MHz is possible, at least on the old revision). The power savings are quite nice but unfortunately not really effective for dual monitor users. Catalyst should bring us up to 30% more FPS in some recently released games.

If you want higher frame rates in upcoming DX11 titles and got the moolah get a 5850 or 5870. (Or maybe a Femi, but those don’t look that promising for now.) You could also buy one now and get a second one later if needed.

And now please excuse me, I’m running around into a certain Metro for the next few hours…

TIP: You can get the Russian/English/German uncut version of Metro 2033 from amazon.de for 18,99€ by entering the code MTRO2O33.

Want to get an iBoard? Thanks to some fellow Austrians you can:

“de tastatur kinn ma nimma verwendn…na,  der is hin jetzt, gell?” –> LOL

You can get this thing constructed of two titanium PowerBook G4s on ebay!

Received a few packages yesterday. One of them contained… a box.

With a loli in it! Awwwwwwwwwwww!

The loli is Noumi Kudryavka known from Key’s eroge Little Busters! Ecstasy.

This cute little figure is an extra that comes with the March issue of Dengeki G’s Magazine.

Still available from Hobby Search for 943 Yen: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10104570 (Now with SAL shipping.)

Many thanks to comrade Guy who found her while browsing some online shops earlier this year.

More about how he fell in love with Kud over here: http://geekorner.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/loli-puppy-in-a-box/

At the bottom of Kuds box you will find the logo of Key’s upcoming eroge called Kud Wafter (クドわふたー). This spinoff of Little Busters! focuses on Kud and should be released this summer.

More info over @ Wikipedia or the official website. Teaser below:

So cute… <3

If you are interested in some pics of the magazine itself head over to this Flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/Dengeki G’s Magazine March 2010

Now on to some tech-stuff again:

Not long ago I assembled my ION powered HTPC. Every thing seemed fine back then. Unfortunately my hearing is pretty well and Western Digitals Caviar Green isn’t as silent as it is advertised. The LianLi case has rubberized HDD mounting screws but unfortunately they riveted the mounting frame to the cases bottom. Because of that the hard disks vibrations are directly transferred to the rest of the case. No one else noticed the noise but I just couldn’t live with it.

Ordered the ichbinleise Box HDD 10 from Germany for 25€.  (“Ich bin leise” means “I am silent”)

The best HDD silencing box, the GrowUp Japan SMART DRIVE 2002C seems to be sold out everywhere. (Would cost over 90€ anyway.)

The ichbinleise box, which needs to be assembled in a few easy steps, contains of:

- 2x aluminium side panels and 2 x inter panels 3mm thick (There are versions for two or three hard drives available.)

- 2x sound damping panels

- 1x self-adhesive decoupling pad

- 4x knurled-head screws

Assembly complete. It’s a hardrive sandwich! With the hard drive inside the box is really heavy.

Fits perfectly into my ITX case as you can see above. HTPC Revision 1.2 ready to go – (Guess I need to come up with a name for it, any ideas?)

It is indeed working well and the hard rive is quite silent. The temperatures are little bit higher but 37°C isn’t a temperature to worry about. (Apple thinks it’s okay that hard drives have constantly around 60°C for example. o_O)

My tip if you are going to build a HTPC too:

Check reviews for the most silent hard drive models, get a 2,5” model as those are usually quieter or (if you have too much money) a SSD.

My main machine got some attention too cause my old and cheap gaming headset decided to die last week. Ordered this as replacement:

Creative FATAL1TY Pro Series Gaming Headset. Unlike some earlier revision the latest one is quite good.

Specifications:

Earphones

• Driver units: 40mm Neodymium magnet
• Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz 
• Impedance: 32ohms
• Sensitivity (1kHz): 110dB/mW

Microphone

• Microphone type: noise-cancelling condenser
• Frequency response: 100Hz-15kHz
• Impedance: <10kohms
• Sensitivity (1kHz): -40dBV/Pa
• Cord length: 8-foot / 2.5m Oxygen-Free Copper cable
• Input/Output plugs: 1/8" / 3.5mm gold-plated stereo miniplugs
• Net weight: 7oz. / 200g (without packaging)

Works great combined with my Creative X-Fi soundcard. Way better gameplay for example in Modern Warfare 2 as you don’t miss any sound. Guess they will do a good job in Bad Company 2 too which I preordered for only 28€ from here. (Limited Edition!)

Anyone of my readers playing MW2 by the way? Kinda boring without some buddies as way too much of my comrades decided to play FPSs on consoles! WTF???

My next blog post will probably contain some half naked figure and some thoughts about a certain DX11 graphics card. xD

-hikky logging out

After three weeks I’m finally able to write about my HTPC building process. Was a little bit delayed because of a shipment fail and a slow parcel service, but since yesterday it’s finally completely finished.

Bunch of boxes get! Now let’s take a look at the components:

ZOTAC ION ITX-A mainboard

- Intel Atom N330: 2×1.6 GHz, hyper threading, 8W TDP

- up to 4GB DDR2 6400

- GeForce 9400 IGP: DX10, max. 512MB shared memory, CUDA capable

- Wifi 802.11b/g/n

- 90W power supply

- external: 1x VGA, 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 6x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN, 1x eSATA, 5.1 Audio, 1x PS/2

- internal: 4x USB 2.0, 3x SATA II RAID 0/1/0+1, 1x PCIe Mini Card

Inside the box you will find:

- CPU heat sink fan

- I/O back plate

- 3x SATA cables

- 1x SATA power connector (for 3 SATA devices)

- WIFI antenna

- Manual, driver CD, ZOTAC sticker, Quick install leaflet, a rori, some packaging material

- and the 90W external power brick. Just like from a random laptop.

Size comparison (CPU fan and RAM already installed): ITX is really compact. There are already Socket-1156 ITX boards out there which means you could build a really compact Core i7 machine too. Quite funny considering what kind of main boards were needed just to get a small amount of that power just a few years ago.

The rest of the internal components (a few more are actually built into the system now but more about that later):

- Western Digital Caviar Green 750GB, 32MB Cache, 5400rpm-7200rpm (WD7500AADS)

- Vivanco High Quality HDMI 1.3 cable

- LiteOn iHOS104, Bluray drive

- Kingston 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz CL6 (KVR800D2N6/2G)

And of course the case housing all of those parts: The LianLi PC-Q07

(LianLi is the Aston Martin among PC cases for those not familiar with the name.)

Some product details in this quite gay sounding product video:

Ährm, yah sorry but I don’t want to make love with the case…

Comes with all accessories needed to mount components inside the case.

LogiLink Wireless Desktop 2.4 GHz (ID0013): Yah, it’s not a Logitech diNovo Mini but thanks to that it costs only 18€. Works well even from over 10m away. (Unlike some more expensive Microsoft wireless desktops which fail at 1,5m distance).

Now let’s put that thing together. How hard can it be?

Installation of the motherboard is easy as you can unmount the left side panel of the case too.

But after placing the Bluray drive inside the 5,25” bay I came across the first problem:

As Zotac used default SATA connectors the connector barely fitted. The SATA connector didn’t fit at all. Luckily I had some angled SATA connectors from my main machines ASUS main board lying around.

Mounting the hardisk is quite stress free. You just have to use those rubberized screws , screw them into the HDD…

… and place the hard disk on the hard disk bay. An easy, vibration preventing system.

Unfortunately the SATA power cable is nearly too short here too. The guy who came up with the length for those cables deserves to be punched in the face in my opinion. And the “I never heard of angled SATA connectors” guy too of course.

HTPC Revision 1.0 ready to launch:

… and lift off, SSMEs throttling up to 104%, igniting SRBs, all system working, so far so good.

Installed Windows 7 Ultimate (x64). Everything worked out of the box but I installed the newest drivers of course. Updated the BIOS and increased the framebuffer size from 256MB to 512MB which is necessary to use CUDA.

But there were two problems:

The stock CPU fan was quite noise and running at 3000RPM without a possibility to control it. The temperatures where around 60°C.

Replaced the stock fan with a SilenX iXtrema Pro (60x60x25mm, 1600rpm, 16.89m³/h, 8dB(A) (IXP-34-08)) and attached a Scythe Slip Stream (120x120x25mm, 500rpm, 41.6m³/h, 7.5dB(A) (SY1225SL12SL)) at the back to get the warm air out of the case.

That’s how Revision 1.1 looks like:

The case wasn’t designed to mount a fan at the back but works quite well by using the grill next to the I/O shield. To cover the hole (designed for a full size PSU) and to secure the other side of the fan, I used some perforated metal plate from an old speaker cover. ^^; The while system is cooler now and completely silent (The only part you would notice right next to the case would be the harddisk.)

You might notice the second RAM DIMM in the picture above too. My HTPC has now 4GB RAM. Why?

Because 1080p playback wasn’t smooth with MPC-HC and CoreAVC 2.0. Surprisingly it was way better with the integrated DXVA decoder (a GPU using decoder included in Windows).

I ordered a second 2GB RAM DIMM and playback is now smooth by using DXVA. CoreAVC still lags so I uninstalled it right away.

Maybe the 2GB RAM running in single channel mode was a bottle neck? Not so sure about that, as this is my first integrated graphics card. Any ideas?

Playback of 1080p material with CoreAVC:

Uses more GPU and more CPU which leads to higher temperatures but the playback isn’t that smooth.

Playback of 1080p material with DXVA:

Smooth playback, lower usage of system resources (besides the memory which isn’t that important in that case)  and for free. The way to go on Windows for now.

A detailed guide on how to configure MPC to use DVXA can be found here: http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/

Watching 1080p stuff since a few days now on the TV. Really awesome as I used to watch HD movies on my PC monitors since many years. But 52” > 24”

Bluray playback works great too using TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum. Way better than PowerDVD which became some sort of spam filled crap. TotalMedia Theatre uses CUDA too and even uses it’s power to upscale DVDs to 1080p. Integrates itself into the Windows Media Center software too.

Speaking of Blurays: Looks like a GITS Bluray set (contains GITS 2.0 and GITS Innocence) fell from the ceiling lately.

So yah, I’m completely in love with my HTPC setup at the moment. ^_^

I prefer this over a bunch of boxes with limited functionality. If you are looking for a way to watch Blurays, DVD, fansubs and what not or for a cheap PC for daily computing tasks I can highly recommend Zotac’s ION series. You could even play some newer games, not at highest settings of course. The fan should be replaced though if you want a silent system but everything else works out of the box.

Well the year just started but this game could be number one at the end of 2010 too.

I’m of course talking about Mass Effect 2. It’s out since last Friday but unfortunately Royal Mail isn’t as fast as I thought.

Already played until I reached the last chapter last week thanks to the interwebs and finally received the pre-ordered Collectors Edition today. Ordered it from Game for 45€ (a great deal because the German Collectors Edition costs 99€!). Quite weird as this version would be multilingual too. (Installed it in English of course.)

The Collectors Edition contains:

- Mass Effect 2 (surprise!) + Bonus DVD containing behind-the-scenes and making-of videos

- Limited Edition Mass Effect Redemption #1 comic book

- 48 page hardcover art book:

Anyone got a Normandy SR2 wallpaper in a decent size yet? DO WANT!

- Limited edition Cerberus Network card:

The card is the most important bonus item. Granting access to:

- Exclusive in-game Collectors armour and weapon as well as bonus content like extra star clusters and missions. Some already available and a few coming in the future.

So now a few words about the game:

(If you haven’t played Mass Effect 1 get it right away otherwise you miss a great game and have no idea what’s going on in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.)

You start the game with a sequence showing the Normandy under attacke and getting destroyed by an unknown vessel and Sheppard floating around in space (which isn’t that healthy.)

Thanks to a corporation named Cerberus (yah, those guys) Shepard get’s sunrised because they need a man to save humanity (and every other organic life form in the universe). Sheppard’s wounds aren’t completely healed yet when the medical facility is under attack and he has to fight his way out. This first level serves as tutorial and you come across something really important there: The new inventar-HUD thingy. The invenatar in Mass Effect 1 wasn’t something Bioware could have been proud of. In Mass Effect 2 they fixed this issue by getting rid of the inventar. Eh what? Yes really, they did and they came up with a HUD like interface which works way better in my opinion. Gunfights are now way faster and full of action.

After leaving the medical facility you meet the mysterious Illusive Man, Cerberus chain smoking CEO, for the first time. He unveils some not so nice facts, for example disappearing human colonies and asks you for help. And you can’t say no of course cause he has a little present for you: the Normandy SR2. Bigger, faster better and in need of a new crew. For the next few hours/days it’s your job to find the best of the best somewhere in the universe to fight against the mysterious enemy out there.

Once one of those folks joined your crew you can help them with a certain personal problem. After that they are loyal which unlocks their special abilities. I guess that’s one of the reasons why the character development is much better in Mass Effect 2.

Another improvement worth mentioning is the atmosphere. Sometimes it’s a pity that you have to concentrate on the bad guys, cause the landscapes, buildings and all different kinds of surroundings are just amazing. You find such an amount of different planets: From mech factories, to tropical planets to planets with way too much radiation (even for your shields).

You can’t visit all places though but you can scan every single piece of frozen rock out in the universe for minerals. You need those to research and develop new technologies, from new ammo types up to new main guns for the Normandy 2. Unfortunately this takes a little bit too much time, but I couldn’t stop cause maybe you’ll find a side quest on one of those planets.

You never know, right?

Overall Mass Effect 2 is a really satisfying game. At some points the story is a little bit predictable but it still surprises from time to time. Highly recommended!

Can’t wait to see Mass Effect 3, cause the last few frames of the outro were just screaming: “OH SHIT! NOW WE HAVE A REAL PROBLEM!"

Mass Effect 2 Launch trailer below:

The next blog post will once again be about something mostly anime unrelated:

“HTPC building and configuration with hikky”. My HTPC is already put together and running but had to order a different heat sink cause the onboard fan is way to noisy. Expect the article around Saturday.

hikky off

P.S.: Dammit, why Bioware, why? I still don’t know how she looks!

Looks like Madobe Nanami did a good job for Microsoft so far cause they released a few more

OS-tan theme packs for Windows 7 now. (Also available as zip file for Windows Vista or Windows XP.)

Have chosen the purple haired, red eyed girl with twin tails of course. She sounds so awesome. ^^

I recommend to set the sounds and wallpapers manually though. Cause otherwise you get messed up fonts (usually used on Japanese Windows systems) and weird coloured window colours.

Head over to this webpage ( http://campaign.live.jp/bing/download_s.htm#nanami ) to download either the theme pack if you have chosen wisely or if you are running an old OS the zip.

Note for Vista/ XP users: The zip file for contains only the sound files. I recommend to download the theme pack and unzip it to get the wallpapers too.

If you are a mac fag I’m very sorry but you can at least use the wallpapers contained in the zip file.