Computers, How I Love Thee
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A while ago I purchased a retail copy of Half-Life 2, having thoroughly enjoyed the original game, which even inspired us as we were developing Deus Ex. As I now use Macs full time (since about October 2003), I don't have a state-of-the-art PC, but since I was able to play the excellent Doom 3 at a reasonable frame rate, I figured Half-Life 2 would run just fine. Well, that might have turned out to be the case if I didn't encounter the infamous stuttering problem with the game. Basically the game "stutters" fairly frequently, usually coinciding with audio that plays (such as an NPC speaking). This greatly detracts from your experience, especially in what is normally a fluid game that does a good job of immersing you in the game world.I tried several measures hoping to remedy the problem, but nothing would alleviate the stuttering. I looked on Valve's forums only to discover that a huge number of people were experiencing the same problem, and few were having any luck resolving it. I did play a fair way into the game (not sure exactly how far I got), but as I progressed further, the stuttering problem because worse. I eventually gave up playing the game, frustrated by Valve's inability (or unwillingness) to fix the problem, and moved onto other games. Unfortunately, I have no recourse--I cannnot sell the game (which I purchased at a retail store) since my license key is tied to my Steam account, nor do stores (generally) accept software returns. Great deal for Valve, horrible for gamers. Rest assured that I won't be purchasing any future games from Valve as long as they continue forcing people to register their games with Steam. Fast forward a few months and once again I fired up this PC to start playing Freelancer, a game I've wanted to partake in for some time now. Anyone who remembers Elite from the Apple II days (or other platforms it found its way to) will be right at home in Freelancer. The graphics and audio are obviously far improved, but the basic premise is the same. You start out with a small ship and fly around to various planets and space stations, taking up odd jobs and buying/selling merchandise to slowly upgrade your ship with better armament and equipment. As you progress a broader story unfolds, and you can also buy new ships. You also develop reputations (good and bad) with various and sundry organizations and governments, which determines who lets you pass without incident and who fires upon you on sight. So I fire up Freelancer, which I had installed a few months prior but didn't play for more than a few minutes at the time. Upon starting the game, all the 3D graphics were rendering incorrectly, and I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the game (which I assumed at first) or a hardware issue. I fired up Half-Life 2 and saw the same glitches with the graphics. Finally, I ran the "dxdiag" (DirectX Diagnostics) tool and saw the same issue with its 3D tests. I tweaked some of my motherboard's BIOS settings, but wasn't able make the problem go away. I then decided, "Whelp, time to buy a new motherboard and CPU". I went to Fry's, purchased a low-end (read: non-SLI) motherboard, an Athlon 3000+ CPU, and a half gig of memory (I'll buy more later). When I got home, I swapped everything out, proceeded to boot Windows 2000, and it crashed. Well, that wasn't too surprising, so I booted into Safe mode, tried to remove various drivers and then rebooted again. No luck, still locked up. I dug out my Windows 2000 disks and reinstalled the OS from scratch, as I didn't yet have enough joy in my day and this was a wonderful way to cap the evening off.After Windows 2000 took forever to install, I reinstalled a few key apps and then installed Freelancer again. I also reinstalled Half-Life 2 (downloading it from the Steam servers), thinking that perhaps since I had a brand new motherboard, a new CPU, and new RAM (all of which was considerably faster than the old machine) that I might be blessed with NO stuttering. I would have no such luck this day, and as soon as I fired up the game it started stuttering right as the introduction begins playing. However, the rendering glitch was gone, so at least I knew I'd be able to play a better programmed game, such as Freelancer. I did experiment with the Half-Life 2 settings a bit, and I was able to get the stuttering to go away when I turned every single setting to the minimum, for the graphics and audio. That's pretty damn ridiculous, especially for an Athlon 3000+ CPU and an Nvidia 5700GT w/256MB of RAM. A 6800 Ultra it's not, but it ran DOOM 3 just fine, even with the slower machine/CPU I was using before (dual Athlon 1.2Ghz MP processors). Thoroughly disgusted (again) with HL2, I went back to Freelancer and began having fun playing a game, instead of fighting with both the hardware and software. Oh, and upon looking carefully at my old motherboard, I found a swollen capacitor right next to the AGP card slot. I'm fairly confident that this cap is the culprit, and when I have some time I'll replace it with a new cap and put this board in an even slower machine downstairs (I think it's an 800Mhz or so Thunderbird.) This older machine is on 24/7 so I can connect to it using Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection on the Mac to run a few apps I need Windows for. But since PCs are typically so damn loud, I put the machine downstairs so I can have relatively quiet computing bliss in my office. Except when I need my PC gaming fix. 
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