I had some interesting heat problems with my 750i board, will share some pics and ideas about it tomorrow morning. I am way sleepy right now and can not spend the time to edit all of the picures.

*edit: I have not gotten around to doing this, promise it will get done tonight.

So I downloaded and tried to install the trial for the Spore Creature Creator, you can find the download links for the USA here. I have been hearing so much about this game, and have watched some of my favorite people on YouTube.com play around with it, like sxephil (Philip DeFranco). Now, here are my system specs:

• Intel 3.0ghz Core2
• 4 gigs of RAM
• Nvidia 8800gt
• 750i FTW mobo

So I downloaded the app, and it went to install in the X86 folder, like MOST games do on my system, and I got this error

And of course, I went to Google to search for it, and found…nothing. Then I went to the support forum for Spore…which I could not find…then I hit up a couple of other Spore forums and sites, and found NOTHING about this error. So what did I do about it? Well, at first I was confused as I have an updated system, not ONE download from Microsoft was missing in Windows Update. So, I was like “fine, whatever, I will try downloading and installing Direct-X 9.0c” which, honestly I thought I did not have to do, assuming that DX10 was fully backwards compatible with 9, and that Microsoft would of installed it into my system by default. Not the case, I went and downloaded this version here (which BTW if you are using Firefox, the plugin will NOT load without a restart) so after going through my meaningless Windows Genuine Validation process, I downloaded the installer package, this tool goes through and checks my PC, and VIOLA, after it completes, I am able to install Spore. It was busy downloading and installing DirectX 9 optional compements.

Now, after installing the trial I was all like “WTF” because there was NO desktop icon, and NO Start menu linkage for it. What gives? I had to go into the file path found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\SPORE\Sporebin and make a link to the desktop out of SporeCreatureCreator.exe. So not only did the damn thing not go smoothly for me, after getting it installed, I STILL had to do work. And yes I did test this on a Vista X86 machine, and it had the same problem. Well, after all this hassle, maybe I will have time to actually PLAY with the creature creator now.

This is NOT film. Watch a realtime render of a scene that was created entirely in a virtual environment - made possible with the processing power ATI RV770-codenamed graphics cards and AMD Phenom X4 processors.

Now this is some impressive stuff, while the previous videos I had posted here were of poor quality and taken on someone’s mobile phone, this one here shows the true clarity and beauty of what this platform is doing. I say platform and not CPU/GPU should be evident by some of the performance analysis and outlook that can be found at this article from AnandTech.com. This is not about the fastest processor anymore, and its not just about the fastest GPU either, its about the ENTIRE package. Apple proves to us everyday that you have to have complete control of your hardware and software, the widget as they call it. Never more is this evident than in today’s computer hardware world. The folks in Sunnyvale just may have hit a home run with this idea, and their acquisition of ATI. You may have remember there were some leaked specs of the Radeon 4850 on Amazon a few days ago, well those same great folks over at AnandTech have gotten their hands on one of the cards and some details (read the whole review here) .
The quick and dirty:

• 800 Stream Processors
• 55nm
• 16 ROPS
• Single Slot Cooling
• 512mb
• Single PCIe power
• support for 8-channel LPCM output over HDMI
• $199

Yes, you saw that last one correctly, only ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLARS. While Nvidia’s flagship GPU is on sale right now for well over $600 USDA, this little puppy is WAY cheaper. So which card are YOU going to go out and buy, Nvidia’s new hot and heavy killer who sucks up power, or the Red Team’s sleek, small and cool card for $199? To me, its a no-brainer…I am gonna wait a week, even with Nvidia’s newly announced price drops on the 9800.

UPDATE
So yes, not 30 minutes after I made this post I went and checked the download counter, yes, they hit 7 million downloads!!

The actual count as of 10:00am today EST is 6895425, or 6777.0 downloads per minute. If you have not done so yet (which just seems silly) go ahead and download Firefox 3, http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and help the guys over at Mozilla make history.

This record is a big deal, even the guys over at Redmond have shown their appreciation for the Mozilla team by sending them, a cake, and this sort of proves that the boys in blue actually DO have a soul, unless the cake really was a lie.