Gaming on integrated graphics - my Radeon HD 4250 experience

Two years ago, i built my own system with a quad-core AMD Athlon II X4 645, a motherboard based on the AMD 880G Chipset, 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB HDD and an Nvidia 8800 GTS 320 MB graphics card.

The card was somewhat old for the system, as it was second hand (gift from a relative). So, after some months playing top and demanding games like Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim and Racedriver:GRID the card died. Well, i remember being in front of a black screen and after restarting there were artifacts everywhere. Then, there was no signal from the card to the monitor and much the same situation appeared when i connected the card to my other system.
Searching online, i found guides suggesting putting the card in the oven (!!!), a solution i never tried. Nevertheless, to my surprise, baking the graphics card seemed to work for many (brave) users.
But, let's get to the point of this article. After the card died on me, i immediately decided to turn to the integrated graphics and give it a shot with some games. My system has an integrated Radeon HD 4250, which i thought would be capable of some light gaming. I've never been so wrong. Just kidding. Of course, i never tried to even start Skyrim but i managed to play GRID in low settings. The integrated graphics didn't struggle with Full Hd video playback and old and not demanding games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Pro Evolution Soccer. Nowadays, i play a lot of League Of Legends and i get 9-23 fps in-game. Well, this is obviously a very low number but i find the game running smoothly so it doesn't bother me.
To sum up, i'm really pleased by the performance of the Radeon HD 4250. It's a reasonable solution till i get a new GPU.

Thank you for reading, comment below and have fun.

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Cheap gaming pc build guide

Let's cut to the chase. You want to build a gaming rig without spending too much euros (dollars, etc.). After an extensive research i've done the last few hours i concluded that the AMD platform is the way to go (and not because i am an AMD fanboy).
We'll use an AMD A-series APU ( Accelerated Processing Unit ) combining a quad-core CPU and AMD Radeon Graphics on a single chip; thus we'll have reasonable peformance and low power consumption.
For the motherboard we choose one with Socket FM1. AMD A55 chipset offers good performance/price.
As we put an APU in our low budget system there is no need for a standalone graphics card.
Putting 4 gigabytes of RAM in our system should be more than enough for everyday use and some quality gaming.
A 500 GB Hard Disk Drive will accommodate all of our files (games, music, movies, etc.) and leave us enough space.
It's critical that we use 400 - 500 Watts of power coming from a brand name psu, so that our system is stable.

Hardware|Model|Price(Amazon Price)

CPU: AMD A6-3670K (2.7 GHz) ~ 60 € ( $76.55 )

Motherboard:  MSI A55M-P33 ~ 50 € ( $47.99 )

RAM: Kingston 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM HyperX Blu ~ 30 € ( $36.67 )

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA ( WD5000AAKX ) ~ 53 € ( $54.50 )

PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX430 80Plus Bronze ~ 46 € ( $39.99 )

Drive: Sony AD-7280S ~ 21 € ( $27.87 )

Case: Antec VSK-3000E ~ 34 € ( $29.95 )

Total Cost: 294 € ( $313,52 )

Summing up, with a total cost that not exceeds 300 € we have successfully built a quad-core  system that can handle most today's games at mid-high settings in hd resolution.

Good luck with your setup, comment below and have fun.

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Presentation of the Team E14

I forgot to mention in my team's presentation on the pygame project you can write below this post your comments about the presentation, your impressions from the game, or anything that you thing that the team should improve at this project and maybe some ways to make it better. Any comments will be accepted.
Thank you

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Over 10 years have passed since its debut but it still is my favorite game

I'm talking about the first Unreal Tournament which was released on the year 1999 and quickly the media and players around the world described this game as the best of that time. Later, a special edition of the game was released the "Unreal Tournament; Game Of The Year(GOTY) edition" because of the success of the original. Also, the UT's community continues to support this old game (with mods, whole new levels, new weapons, armor etc and of course helping others get into UT's world) showing that some times the technology of a game (graphic engine, menu designing etc.) doesn't really matter if it is offering a lot of fun through lan or internet multiplayer especially at levels full of
redeemers :) and is challenging as well (right now i am finishing UT at experienced, i don't think i'll ever make it to godlike). The good part is that i am playing UT on my netbook and of course there is no problem with the requirements, i have more than the recommended 64mb of ram xD. So, if you are in the mood of playing one of the best first person shooters of all-time that showed the rest of them how is done or you want just to remember the old times you only have to try Unreal Tournament. And remember; gamers who forget the past are doomed to fail.

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A glance at Assassins Creed II

In Christmas holidays i had a chance to try Assassin's Creed II on my cousin's PS3. Although, this kind of games make me feel boring after some time, i really enjoyed the first Assassins Creed (i haven't finished it yet) that i played both on my pc and on playstation 3 of a friend. The only drawback i found about the first game of the series is that the missions are almost the same after some time and this gets annoying. Nevertheless, this doesn't appear on the second game, as far as i have seen it. You are arranged different missions each time from different NPC's and this is exciting as you reveal secrets through talking with many characters, understanding their behaviour and interacting with them. Also, Assassins Creed II kept all the good stuff from the first game as is the freedom you have to climb at every building and the really beautiful graphics and it added new features as is the cooperation with Leonardo DaVinci that lets you handle some of his inventions (ex. gliding machine) and the "ability" for the hero to swim, something that the hero in the first game couldn't do and it was a real disadvantage (he can climb 70-metre buildings but he can't swim lol). Summing up Assassin's Creed II is a must have game and i can't wait to buy it for my computer.
Official site for Assassins Creed II at assassinscreed.uk.ubi.com
Here is my favorite screenshot i took from Assassins Creed I.

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Prince Of Persia; The Sands Of Time on my netbook (gaming)

I thought it would be pretty easy for my netbook asus eee pc 1101(atom z520, 2gb ram) to run the first Prince Of Persia game. That wasn't the case here. Ok, at first it was lagging a hard time (i didn't count fps with fraps or other program but maybe i'll do it for another post) but i thought it happened because of the graphic settings. I turned everything at its lowest so all i had were low settings. The game begun to run much smoother at the beginning scenes at least. When i got to a scene of the game where many characters appear on screen (the first battle you had to use the dagger to retrieve the sand from your enemies) the game was unplayable. The whole thing seems strange to me as i run the game on 2gb of ram and i thought it would run smoothly at least at medium settings because its an old game after all (2003). I shouldn' t have waited for anything more from an intel gma 500 graphic system. I'll try to play the game with 16-bit colour setting instead of 32-bit as i have heard that helps a lot and i'll report to you.

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Alienware M11x; the most powerful ultra-portable laptop

Dell announced the Alienware M11x a mini laptop with unusual specifications for its category. Talking about unusual specs we mean that this laptop is much more powerful than other 11 inch laptops feauturing the NVIDIA GT335M graphics card that can easily be switched with the integrated graphics without having to reboot the system. Its performance is pretty impressive as it can hit 30 fps at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. On integrated graphics it is estimated to hit 6 hours of battery life while on gaming mode it can reach 2 hours. More specs; hdmi-out, vga-out, 720p screen resolution (not blu-ray). This very interesting notebook becomes a good deal as its price will be just under $1000.

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Who says netbooks can't game?

Netbooks don't have the specs of desktop computers of course and they can't even get close to the performances of current notebooks. Nevertheless they can be a part of some low entry gaming or handle games that are considered old. What seems really strange (to me) is that netbooks like mine (2gb ram) or weaker than mine can run smoothly more or less high-end games at their lowest settings of course. Also, as "netbook gamers" claim try running a requiring game at 16-bit instead of 32-bit and you'll see much increase at the performance of your netbook.
Here are some videos from youtube which prove that netbooks can do some serious gaming.

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