I had a split weekend again where I had Friday off and worked on Saturday. Half of my Friday was spent driving around exploring the small towns around Austin because I have discovered some of my favorite food spots off the beaten path. In fact if you make it out to Taylor, TX you should forget Louie Mueller Barbecue and go to Davis Grocery & Bar-BQ especially if you like ribs.
So when I finally got home I spent the afternoon leveling Agent On’mitsu of Imperial Intelligence. I did pre-order the expansion so having the experience boost for class missions is really nice. By the time I logged off for the night on Sunday the Agent had leveled through 2 planets and 7 levels. The only issue I have is that my ground mount isn’t fast enough for planets like Hoth that are really large. Oh well, I still appreciate the boost. Thank you Bioware!
As I played on Friday I noticed that some of the cut-scenes would lag. Now I built my budget gaming computer about a 3 weeks ago centered around an AMD A10-7850K APU. An APU is a CPU that also contains a graphics processor. This isn’t a blazing fast high-end gaming PC, but I saved myself between $200 and $400 using an APU.
Because of the video issues I spent some time at work on Saturday researching dual-graphics using the A10-7850K APU. I learned that AMD has a dedicated page on their website that lists the compatible hardware for dual-graphics. So after work I purchased an XFX R7 250 at Fry’s Electronics with the intention of installing it Sunday morning.
Installing the video card and making sure everything was working was so fast I had enough time to try out Borderlands 2 before I left for church. I already had the updated graphics drivers installed, but I am pleased at the ease of the installation. The dual-graphics made a big improvement as I now have the graphics in SW:TOR set on high with no discernible problems.
Here is a list of parts in my budget gaming build.
AMD A10-7850K 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor APU
ASUS A88X-G43
Patriot Viper 8GB DDR3 2133MHz
XFX Radeon R7 250 2GB DDR3
Thermaltake NiC L32 CPU Cooler
Wester Digital 2GB Hard Drive
Windows 8.1
Away From Game 