Dr. Strangelag Or: How I learned to Start Bitching and Hate my Computer

I bought my current PC back in April 2001. Now, granted it wasn't top of the line even then. It's a 1.2 GHz Athlon Thunderbird, and currently has 256 MB of PC-133 RAM and a GeForce3 Ti500. I know, the RAM is especially low, but for whatever reason, even with the latest motherboard BIOS loaded, I have strange lockup issues with sticks of 512. I can't even use one slot due to a strange problem I had over a year ago. I had one RAM module short out, and since then any module in that slot isn't recognized. Blah.

Anyway, as a college student working part time - I don't have the cash to upgrade. I could probably finagle something, but I'm a cheap bastard. So I've decided to bitch about something I'm greatly annoyed with.

I started playing Asheron's Call in 2000, but it was released in 1999. The original system specs for it was a Pentium 166 (or 133, not entirely sure but its not fast either way,) 32 MB RAM and optional 3D card. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't my computer STILL way above the system reqs? I know they've added a lot of content and made the game much larger, but the graphics engine hasn't really changed.

I have incredible video lag issues on Singularity Caul. I guess it's because there's so many textures and particle effects there. If I go into the central volcano, it becomes an unplayable slideshow. Even staying out of there, in some parts I can barely move. Since this happens to a lot of people, it's not a big issue.

But now when I go onto, say the Obsidian Plains, or even into the Sclavus Temple, I have to turn the graphics settings down to prevent the video lag. It gets infuriating to play a game from 1999 with a system much higher than the reqs and have such issues. Note that I can play some much more curremt games such as WarCraft III (I know it's two years old) with nary a hitch.

I guess it's just that Turbine has a really system intensive graphics engine, and doesn't know how to compress their textures very well. Maybe if anyone was left of the original team who had the slightest clue of how to use the code this wouldn't be such an issue. Then maybe I wouldn't have to turn the damn game on wireframe mode to play it decently (slight exaggeration). Then again, being the ignorant fuck that I am about programming maybe I should just shut the hell up. I'm just pissed.

Then there's those odd occasions (more and more common, though) where my computer refuses to load the operating system on bootup, and tells me that the "Operating System is not found." Yet if I hit the reset button, it loads without a problem. Ugh.

Somebody buy me a computer.