Who is the target audience?

Mediocre package design for awesome PC gear. I think BFG tech has improved design significantly with their newest product line. EVGA has been rated the best hardware manufacturer, but their packaging is mediocre and remains unchanged from a few years ago. For those who do not keep up with the latest benchmarks and don't know a companies reputation for quality, they may pass over the EVGA brand to get the BFG. Better Box ≠ Better Product.

So why waste the time to create these horrible designs?
If I bought a graphics card with this packaging I would worry about how badly it was going to perform. Luckily, that isn't the case here, but still, I would rather just see a photo of the motherboard or graphics card. At least that would be more interesting.





For all the "monstrosities" go here.

BFG has improved their retail packaging significantly in the last year. When I first built my PC I used a BFG nvidia 7600 GT which came in a lackluster package. It was "nvidia green", gray and had a clear section to look at the GPU fan. Wow. They have simplified the visuals and ordered information in a much more appealing way. This grabs my attention when browsing the retail isle more than ridiculous 3D renderings, flashy hologram stickers or horrid colors.

It's not perfect, but it is much better.

Before

The packaging shows the product, which could be good or bad. In this case, the product is not designed in a visually appealing way. The average person wouldn't know what they are looking at, they would just see some circuits, resistors and a fan. On BFG's newer cards (ie. GeForce 8 series) the heat-sinks are shrouded in plastic or metal, which would be great to showcase.

After

BFG tech's new packaging is easier on the eyes. The information is ordered in such a way that the eye moves from one point of interest to the next. They reduced the ambient "noise" by using a solid background. They highlight the name of the card "Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT" in green. This green on black is consistent with the Nvidia branding. The green accent color is used to help the eye move to the next point of interest "512MB GDDR3 Memory", which is important information to highlight. The secondary, detailed information is smaller and more subdued. They have included a simple scale for consumers to compare between their other products on a retail shelf. This scale highlights a range from Good -> Better -> Best. This serves as a quick scale of comparison for the non-technical consumer, but doesn't give a whole lot of detail to the "tech-advanced" consumer. That is where the rest of the package comes in.

The bulk of the technical information is neatly arranged on the sides of the box. Unlike the boring, bulleted list on the old BFG box, this list is visually separated into information boxes. Icons are used to highlight technologies included in the hardware. The way that the side wraps around, using the same gray color, to the front edge with the Nvidia logo is nice. It should stimulate the consumer to pick it up and turn it around. Overall, the design works together instead of the elements fighting for attention. It is a step in the right direction for hardware packaging.

Overclocking - Part 2

I worked on over-clocking my rig this past weekend. I was able to balance memory and CPU speeds to get a stable performance boost. The AMD 4200+ is an amazing deal! Currently, you can get this processor for around $65. Out of the box it is clocked at 2.2GHz. There is so much give in the clock speed, that makes this such an amazing deal. From the article I posted in the last post, they were able to get to 3.0GHz!

I was able to get mine to 2.85GHz and set my memory timings from 5-5-5-12-2 @ 800mhz to 4-4-4-12-2 @ 555mhz. This balanced out the performance and made the system stable. I pushed the voltage up on the CPU to 1.5v and the memory to 2.0v.

I tested out the stability with a round of Crysis.

I set all settings to VERY HIGH. The game ran with a few little hiccups in framerate. Over all it was almost playable on VERY HIGH. This was a huge jump from the original settings. I wasn't even able to get it to load with VERY HIGH settings. The loading screen took less time, also.

I am very pleased with the performance I am getting now. Startup is a lot faster, windows snap open, applications load faster. I can't believe I waited this long to over-clock the CPU this much.

Overclocking

I haven't posted in a week, mostly because things have been busy. I finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in the last week and I'll talk about that in a future post. I've been reading and trying to learn more about overclocking. I have already overclocked my PC to decent settings for my rig, but I felt that it could go higher if I understood more about how it works.

Currently, this is my rig:

• EVGA 590 SLi board
  
• AMD 4200+ 2.2GHZ (stock) OC'ed to 2.65GHZ w/ a HyperTX2 cooler
  
• 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 800mhz (PC2 6400) set to timings 5-5-5-12
  
• XFX 8800GTS 320MB OC'ed to Core: 650mhz, Shader: 1400mhz, Memory: 1000mhz.
  
• Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard
  

The case I use is a Raidmax Smilodon, which I highly recommend to anyone. It is easy to work in, has ample upgrade space and has plenty of cooling. Raidmax has a newer version of this case, The Aztec, and it is slightly better due to its use of a 120mm exhaust fan. The difference in price is about $20, so it may or may not be worth it.

I have tweaked some BIOS settings to bring the CPU up to 2.7GHZ, but I need to spend more time with balancing the memory speed/timings and the CPU speed.


For those with the AMD 4200+, I suggest this article if you are interested in OC'ing. Part1(air-cooling) & Part2(water-cooling)

The Orange Box - part1

I've been experiencing the various games in the Orange Box a little bit at a time since Christmas. Call of Duty 4 had taken over all of my gaming time. I climbed to level 55 in multiplayer and I'm not sure about going back. With this achievement out of the way, I have decided to go back to the Orange Box and give it some attention.

I had played through the original Half-Life 2 on PC when it was originally released. I wasn't a big fan of the whole "Episodic" game plan, so I never picked up Episode One. I became occupied with the countless PC games that were released between the time of Half Life 2 and the Orange Box and had put the Half-Life universe out of my mind.

That is where this story begins.

When Orange Box was announced, the one game that caught my attention was Portal. Having been a big fan of Prey, Portal was my cup of tea. I loved the idea of the confusing space. Prey took the idea to a point, but you were never able to control the portal. There were interesting moments where a portal would take you into a space that was smaller than the original and you would suddenly become miniature (ie. Alice in Wonderland style). The scene I'm referring to, if you have played the game, is when you come across an basketball-sized orb encased in glass, almost like a museum piece. Tommy goes through a nearby portal and is transported to a portal on the orb. It was really disorienting.

I was looking to Portal to take this to another level. The hype was high. The viral website gave clues, but also created more questions about the story. I was ready to buy the Orange Box on this one element.

I will review each element separately in the posts following this.

Nvidia Graphics Driver Widget

Nvidia has released a widget that allows driver search to be incorporated into another site. I feel it is important to keep updated on the driver releases as most improve performance/features. It comes in two "flavors", horizontal or vertical, depending on the space you would like to fit it in. The code can be obtained here: Driver Widget