Games can be more than just a fun timesink; at times they are a thing of true beauty. This biweekly feature is dedicated purely to demonstrating the beauty of modern day gaming. So two times per month another Screenshot Spotlight will appear featuring some sort of beautiful, or otherwise interesting, screenshot I recently acquired.

However, rather than simply posting some pretty picture and leaving it at that, I’ll include a bit of information about the game it was taken in - and the circumstances of the screenshot. Think of it as an optional background story for you to read. If you don’t care for any of that you can of course simply admire the pretty pictures and be done with it!

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As of last weekend I finally made the jump from oldschool CRT monitor goodness to a more modern-day TFT screen. I had always held off on the purchase, because my godly 19″ CRT delivered awesome image quality… and to be honest, the TFT screens I had seen my friends use looked horrid in comparison, or displayed a lot of ghosting and tearing. However, in recent years TFT screens have improved a lot, which prompted me to get one anyway - alongside recommendations from a few of my colleagues.

So say hello to my new 22″ monster, the wellknown HP W2207 TFT Widescreen monitor, well… once I upload some pictures that is. Anyway, the difference with my old iiyama CRT monitor is immediately noticeable. Not only is it lighter and thinner, but it seems about twice as big because it takes up so much horizontal space… which is great! The widescreen format feels much more natural than the regular old square blob and the visual quality is beyond a shadow of a doubt completely superior to my previous CRT monitor.

If you thought my soundcard upgrade two months ago was amazing, then you’ve seen nothing yet. Now you’d be hard-pressed not to mistake my PC for a fullblown home cinema set! So by all means, scroll through for my experience with visual (near-)perfection!

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For my brand new gaming system I decided against purchasing a sound card, instead opting to try out Realtek’s onboard ‘HD Audio’ solution. This was a fairly decent experience, offering sound quality mostly on-par with my former Audigy 2 sound card… until recently that is. As of late I had been experiencing a lot of crackling sound, particularly in games like Settlers VI and World in Conflict. So, in a desperate attempt to get rid of the annoying pops and creaks - I went on a leap and bought a fairly inexpensive - 69 euro - Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer card, which arrived today.

Heading into this expecting merely to solve my crackling problem and otherwise offer up largely similar audio, even though reviews indicated otherwise… I was very ill-prepared indeed for what this upgrade would truly mean to my PC. Installing was easy enough - a monkey could do it… no really! - and after altering some driver and application settings everything was working properly. Then I fired up my first video and was welcomed by an explosion of aural goodness: this went way beyond fixing some pops and creaks, or slightly improving my sound experience. It’s completely revolutionized my PC gaming/media experience and instantly became the most impressive feature on my brand new rig (including a Geforce 8800 GTX video card).

Read on for an epic tale of genuine aural bliss!

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Games can be more than just a fun timesink; at times they are a thing of true beauty. This biweekly feature is dedicated purely to demonstrating the beauty of modern day gaming. So every other week another Screenshot Spotlight will appear featuring some sort of beautiful, or otherwise interesting, screenshot I recently acquired.

However, rather than simply posting some pretty picture and leaving it at that, I’ll include a bit of information about the game it was taken in - and the circumstances of the screenshot. Think of it as an optional background story for you to read. If you don’t care for any of that you can of course simply admire the picture and be done with it!

Read the rest…

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If you liked this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Games can be more than just a fun timesink; at times they are a thing of true beauty. This biweekly feature is dedicated purely to demonstrating the beauty of modern day gaming. So every other week another Screenshot Spotlight will appear featuring some sort of beautiful, or otherwise interesting, screenshot I recently acquired.

However, rather than simply posting some pretty picture and leaving it at that, I’ll include a bit of information about the game it was taken in - and the circumstances of the screenshot. Think of it as an optional background story for you to read. If you don’t care for any of that you can of course simply admire the picture and be done with it!

Read the rest…

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