Spellhold Studios: Qwinn - Viewing Profile

Okay, so I was recently forced to upgrade my old Dell system. I needed a new system in a hurry, so I wound up getting the following:

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-112y PC
AMD Phenom II x4 925 Quad Core Processor
8GB DDR3 RAM
1 Terabyte HD
ATI Radeon HD 4350 video card w/512 mb RAM
Windows 7 64 bit

Now, considering the haste with which I needed to buy this thing, I'm not too displeased with the result. As far as I can tell, most of the above specs are Perfectly Acceptable or even better in some cases. The main bottleneck this thing appears to have is the video card, which I now see sells for around $35 these days :/ It's not *bad*, I can run ME2 with all the adjustable settings fine, but if I try to force anti-aliasing, I can't even run it at 2x with an acceptable framerate (drops down to around 8 fps at 2x AA).

So, here's my questions:

1) Am I correct that the *other* specs I listed above are decent at this time, or should I consider upgrading something else?
2) What's a good video card these days? I'm not one to pick up a $400 card when it's going to be worth $60 in two years. But I might be willing to go $150 or so for something of real value, and I've done this enough to know that $100 can make a pretty huge difference.
3) Far as I can tell, this thing has a 300 watt power supply, which my reading appears to confirm is Nowhere Near Good Enough. Am I correct? If so, upgrading the PSU is probably the first thing I need to do. Any recommendations? This is not a part I've upgraded often before, so I'm a bit concerned about running into trouble *after* buying one, like "doesn't fit in the case" or "has enough watts but needs X power to Y rail" (which means little to me, I'm afraid, at least I know enough to ask the question). Any advice?

Qwinn

I've received a report of installation troubles with win7. Anyone installed successfully under it, and did you have to do anything out of the ordinary to make it happen? Here's the report I got:

Quote

I don't have Win7, so unfortunately I can't test anything related to this.

At least for UB and Tweak Pack, the debug error indicates it's having trouble copying the torment.exe file.

Qwinn

Time for a new bug report thread

Here's the Known Issue list, hasn't been fixed yet, will add a Fixed section when they are:

1) Ice Knife spell applies permanent +2 THACO debuff which stays on victim until victim dies and resurrects.
2) Aid spell (and presumably those that mimic its effect like the Embalming spells) don't increase current HP when cast on someone at full health.
3) Friends spell should not be cumulative with itself.
4) Exceptional strength issues, fixes postponed from v4

I'm thinking v5 is gonna have a lot of mage love, heh Don't be expecting -that- to come out for another solid year, tho. At least.

Qwinn

EDIT: Actually, look for a v4.1 to come out relatively soon, with a few dozen more fixes.

Phew! Finally!

Thanks again to scient for all his amazing engine work! And to SHS for continuing to host the mods.

Now I needs me a nap.

Qwinn

So glad I'm doing this full test run.

Part of the delay is because I was going to skip redoing Expanded Deionarra, but at the end decided better safe than sorry, since I had made a couple minor changes based on player input. That testing went well.

The other problem is that now I'm crashing upon clicking on the portal to the Fortress. I've no idea what's causing this, as I don't make any deliberate changes there. So... wish me luck. Obviously, from the portal to the endgame isn't far, so shouldn't be more than an hour or so after I finish cleaning this up, and most of the readme is done.

Qwinn