warcraft for REAL

tonight i played warcraft for a few hours on my new machine. i haven’t been playing all that much over the last couple of months, but i wanted to see how much of a difference the ATI X850 graphics card makes. before, i was playing on the nvidia geforce 4 MX, which i thought was a pretty good card.
oh, i have never been so wrong. world of warcraft is one of the most seductive and immersive pieces of eyecandy going when you move every one of the video quality sliders over to the “ultra-high” position. every texture is soft and inviting and has a glow around the edges, and there is a major difference in the perception of three dimensional depth. in short, the difference is huge.
there is also a big difference in the amount of heat that this thing throws off. it is HOT in this room.