–Tale’s Corner–
Good evening, internet. I’m here to talk about exciting things. Strap yourself in. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.
Sound Cards, Monitors, and Peripherals! (Oh my?)
Monitors. Don’t even say the letters C R or T. Cathode Ray Tubes are a thing of the past. If you have one, save up and get a LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). Please. There are several cheap options out there:
Judging by the reviews, that Monitor is a steal. When buying an LCD, there are a few things to look for:
Size. The 20″ above is nice enough, anything below 20″ isn’t really worth it in my opinion. When you get past a certain threshold, the prices start getting expensive. 22″ monitor like the one I use is a fairly good value. I love my monitor. Let’s talk resolution. Anything below 20″ will be 1440×900 or 1360×768. If your computer isn’t very high end, these resolutions can be okay for squeezing a bit more performance out of games. Take heed, however, you cannot set the resolution higher than an LCD’s native resolution. My monitor is 1680 pixels wide and 1050 pixels long. I cannot and never will be able to set my resolution to 1920×1080, because I simply do not have the pixels to display that resolution. Full HD monitors start getting pricey though. You will get an occasional 22″ full HD monitor, but 1680×1050 is the most common resolution for LCDs of that size. Here is another good deal for a full HD monitor at 22″ for only 70 dollars more plus shipping than the 20″ above, it is well worth waiting to get this. Samsung is also a more well known brand than AOC. If you want to go all out, get a good HDTV and hook your computer up to it through HDMI. Hardly a desktop solution, but I can’t even begin to describe how awesome computing on an HDTV is. I have yet to game on an HDTV, but I have a computer hooked up to an HDTV, and it looks nice. Anyway, that about says it for size. Bigger the better, generally.
CONTRAST RATIO! You’ll almost always see a number:1 in descriptions for monitors. That’s the contrast ratio. The higher the better. A low contrast ratio means not very black blacks. Everything becomes gray. High contrast = good. Anything above 1000 should be acceptable, but if there are monitors with higher contrast ratios in the same price range, with the same size and resolution, go for it.
RESPONSE TIME! Back in the day, when LCDs were new, ghosting was a huge problem because of a slow response time. Ghosting means pictures lingering on the screen after you have moved on. Common phenomena include pointer trails (not the ones you can enable in the mouse settings) and terrible movie quality (From the picture not keeping up…). If the response time is anything above 6ms, you should try and avoid it at all costs. 5ms is good, 4 is better, 3 is pretty great, and 2 is incredible.
Look here. The only good thing about that monitor is the high resolution and size. The price is insane, the contrast ratio is borderline, and the response time is fairly atrocious. Despite the 5 star ratings, that monitor would not be a good choice for a gamer in my opinion.
Sound cards.
In my opinion, Sound Cards aren’t all that necessary anymore, with the advent of Realtek HD audio being built into most motherboards. Granted, Sound Cards take stress off your CPU and motherboard. But which one to get? Really, go with a known brand, and don’t skimp. A no-name 7.1 card for 20 bucks will not perform as well as a Creative X-Fi card. It comes down to sound processing algorithms and the like. I don’t have an internal sound card myself. My soundcard is housed within the Razer Megalodon control pod. We’ll get to that later when headphones/headsets are covered. Umm… So… good brands to go with… Creative, obviously. They kind of are *the* name in sound cards. You don’t have to bother with the fata1ity stuff, you’re just paying extra for a lightning bolt F symbol and Jonathan Wendel’s signature on your hardware. Whoo! You can if you want, they look cooler, and may have some nifty bells and whistles, but the price is steep.
Here’s a good example of an alright sound card. It’s PCIe 1x, which can be a mixed blessing, as some graphics cards will cover the PCIe 1x slot on motherboards. There are PCI options, and external options.
PERIPHERALS…
What fun. We’re talking Mice, Keyboards, and Headsets. Every gamer should have a good one of each. I myself, am a Razer fanboy. I like the aesthetics of Razer, and the performance is good as well. Mice… I have the Razer Lachesis. Many people don’t care for the ambidextrous design. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I love it. It also has a very high sensitivity sensor, 4000 DPI. That’s sensitive enough to go from one side of my screen to the other by moving the mouse less than 2 inches on my mousepad. The drivers allow for on-the-fly sensitivity, which allows you to adjust the sensitivity (not the DPI) of the mouse. Currently I have my mouse at 4000 DPI and 2.5 sensitivity. So it’s accurate, and movement is smooth. And if I go into an FPS and need more tracking speed, I just have to hold down the programmable button I designated (1 of 9!) to control On the Fly sensitivity and scroll my mousewheel to go from 0.0 to 10.0. The DPI can also be changed from the mouse. No playing around in control panel, just click a button. Unseen and Kash both use the Razer Deathadder, which is ergonomically designed. It has less programmable buttons, and a lower DPI but will fit a right handed person’s hand more easily. If not Razer, other companies to look at are SteelSeries, Logitech, and Microsoft. I like Razer too much to dedicate any of this paragraph to those other brands.
Keyboards. Again, I have a Razer Lycosa. It’s black. The keys are backlit with blue. It has slim laptop style keys, but is the size of a full-size keyboard. This makes keystrokes easier to make. Also, it has Microphone and Headphones ports in the back, as well as a pass-through USB. I did a review on the keyboard itself a littler later back. Read that. It’ll do you a world of good and make you cool. The kids at school will like you if you read that review. Moving on from the realm of statements I can’t back up whatsoever… Other keyboards. Unseen and Kash use the Logitech G15. Kash did a review here. Really, anything you feel comfortable with that has macro capabilities (for all of you MMO players) is a good buy. I’d go with Razer or Logitech. Saitek is also a possibility, but some of their keyboards have mixed reviews.
Headsets… goodness. I’m using the Razer Megalodon right now. Listening to some Muse. Showbiz. Everything about this headset is amazing. Sound quality, Bass, virtual 7.1 surround sound, comfort, complete plug-and-play. The 150 dollar price tag is steep. Birthdays are good things. That’s how I was able to snag mine. The sound quality is not all that matters with a headset, Mic quality is also very important. There’s nothing worse than chatting in game with someone with a terrible microphone. I can’t recommend the Razer Piranha based on reviews that the microphone is bad, amongst other problems. The Razer Carcharias is basically the Razer Megalodon without the 7.1 engine. The nice thing about the Megalodon is all of the mic volume controls are on the control pod. No going into sound properties. Makes life so easy. Venturing on from the land of sentence fragments, let’s talk about other good brands of headsets. Plantronics has some good headsets out there, Unseen uses the Plantronics Gamecom 377. It’s fairly comfortable, from my limited experience with it. When communicating online with Unseen, I can understand him. The mic is good quality. The Plantronics Gamecom 777 gets better reviews than the 377 across the board, but also costs 50 dollars more. The 377 is very good for the price. Creative makes 2 Fata1ity headsets, the entry level gets mediocre 3 star average reviews on Newegg. The Professional gets 4/5 stars. So, there are options.
MOUSEPADS!
They can greatly improve tracking and precision. Go Razer or Steelseries. There are other brands, but the professionals use the aforementioned brands, generally. Prices go from 15 dollars to 40 dollars for a mousepad. Again, go with what you feel comfortable using. Razer offers the eXactMat, which has an optional wrist rest, if you’re a person who needs a wrist rest. They also make the Sphex, a paper-thin skin that adheres to your desk, if you can’t stand having your mouse even 2mm off the desk. There are options. Do some research. I have the Razer Destructor, which is awesome, but is ridiculous in its own light. For starters, it costs 40 dollars on the Razer site. It also comes with a protective carrying case. That makes me laugh. The case is almost as nice as the mousepad itself, which attests to Razer’s build quality, but I digress. It’s a fantastic mousepad, but cheaper ones from the same company perform just as well in a pinch.
That’s all for now, I’m tired of typing. Hit us up with comments. BUY OUR SWAG. Do it now. All the kids will love you if you wear a gDose t-shirt. They’ll all be your friends. Buy them for your kids and they’ll be popular.
Again with that whole “statements I can’t back up” thing. Oh well. Support us if you love us!
Tale’s out.
