FFXIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark & My New PC
So, not only did last night’s FFXIV Live Letter drop a bunch of bombs about how battle and classes are going to change, but the very last thing announced was that finally, the Shadowbringers Benchmark is here!
Even if you don’t have a sub or a copy of the game, you can install the benchmark and play around with character creation for all races, including the new Viera and Hrothgar. You can also put your PC to the test to see how well it will run Shadowbringers once the expansion launches.
This was very timely because I had just buttoned up my brand new gaming rig last night! Below is not the best picture, but it does show how much LED and rainbow is on my mother board now. I’m a bit behind on the times, so I didn’t expect my RAM to actually double rainbow like that.
So, a little over two weeks ago, I wrote about how I had a power supply I needed to return to Newegg. It had taken a beating during shipping and I wasn’t going to take a chance with it in a new computer… especially for the cost of the power supply.
While Newegg did me right with the return and got a new one back to me, the process took about two weeks, and that put my PC building on hold. In hindsight, it would have been faster just to ask for a refund, go to Amazon and have them Prime me the same item for just a little bit more (it was on sale at Newegg).
But I stuck it out and waited for the replacement instead. No one really knew for sure that the Benchmark was going to be announced last night, so it was just fluke that I popped the video card in and the machine was ready to test on the same day!
I have to say that going from mechanical to SSD bootup hard drive is sooooo amazing. I still have a large mechanical as my document and storage drive, but Syn got me this crazy little chip looking SSD as my main (for my birthday present).
This thing just slid in a little slot on my mother board and I was like… wow! I didn’t know they made hard drives with such a tiny form factor! I was really impressed. The new rig boots up and shuts down almost instantly!
With my old machine, I’d turn it on, go and feed the cats, get my breakfast, then sit down and still need to wait for it to load up desktop icons and shake off the cobwebs before I could open even an Internet browser. It’s crazy the difference this makes.
So, this long holiday weekend, I’ll be tweaking the machine and getting it where I want it to be — you always find some program you forgot to install for a while after building a new one! Also, Syn just upgraded her video card on her own machine, so I may be inheriting her Zotac GTX 1080 soon. The Fury I have in this machine is perfectly fine, but hey… I’ll take an upgrade anyday!
Sadly, because the Benchmark was released 10 PM last night, I only had enough time to run through it once. I didn’t have much time to look at the new character creator. Given that I do plan on rolling a Viera, and maybe a Machinist Viera (seeing the changes they’re making to the job), I do want to fiddle with that this weekend!