ATI’s Gift

Posted in General, Games and Ego 5 years, 3 months ago.

So I’m walking downtown after one of my classes today to go grab some food and on the way I noticed a big truck with a huge ATI logo on it. There were about eight or so people standing around and once I got closer I realized they were playing video games. It turns out that ATI was doing a little promo/demo where you could try out their graphics cards and if you wanted, learn more about their products. I walked up a little closer and one of the guys running the gig told me to fill out a entry form to win some free games that they would hold drawings for every hour until 4:00 pm. He also told me that the person who logged the best lap time at the end of the day in Colin McRae Rally 2005 would win a free graphics card.

I stepped up and ran two races, the second of which I actually beat the leader with a lap time of 4:01.23 (that’s minutes not hours). Having the best time, I went to my next class only to return with my time beaten severely. 3:39.45 was the new time and looked like it might hold up the rest of the day. Still, I thought I would try since I was finished with classes for the day and honestly had nothing else going on. After three or four tries I was able to squeak by with 3:33.97. Since it was 3:20 pm and they were closing up shop at 4:00 pm, I thought I had it pretty much locked up. Well, until the kid who I had beat returned at 3:45 pm and ran a lap of 3:31.53. Everyone kind of challenged me to try it again but with only ten minutes until the end I figured it was a lost cause. I did two run but kept running into trees or getting turned around on the course so my times were getting pretty bad. At about 3:55 pm I thought I would give it one more run. It started out like usual, by this time I had a pretty good grasp of the beginning of the course, and I hit the halfway point with a solid five second lead going into the toughest part of the course. Even still, I was able to get through and keep a three second lead into the last leg. At this point, I was trying to keep myself under control and not blow it by hitting a tree. Fortunately, I must have had something with me today because I flew through the last leg and was able to beat the 3:31.52 time with a 3:21.32. That might not sound like much but a ten second jump was pretty unbelievable, especially considering it was the last race they allowed for the day.

With the best lap time, I was awarded a Sapphire X700 Pro graphics card. This thing is a stacked 128MB card with PCI-Express, TV-Out, DDR3 memory, 8 parallel pixel pipelines, and came with both SplinterCell and Prince of Persia. Better yet, after some reading online, this card is fully capable of running Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, and Far Cry with relative ease. It’s an impressive card but unfortunately, I already have a more than adequate graphics card. So, I think I am going to go ahead and sell this brand new card but wanted to offer it here on my site before I put it up on Ebay. I’m looking for about $150 so if you are interested or might know someone that is, please shoot me an e-mail with some details.