Hi all. GPRT is short for my Giant Pixel Racing Team. The whole idea behind it is that when you lower the resolution on which you're playing your games, the faster they run. Up until last Fridays evening this had proved to be the plain and simple truth since the beginning of time. Okay okay, maybe it all started a little later, but still. Way back when. So when we were thinking up a name for our sim Racing team we thought it would be nice to exploit this simple yet extremely effective and proven theory and the Giant Pixel Racing Team, or GPRT, was born. As you may or may not know my graphic card died on me when I was halfway through day one of a three day race weekend (speaking of bad timing :S) so a new one needed to find it's way to me and do so fast. Even though it arrived one day too late with the last race for the Grand Prix Legends competition in mind, I was still very happy when on Friday my dad mailed me these few words: 'geez, what a huge box' ... From that moment on my weekend couldn't have been bad, no matter what happened. I'll get to the bad part later unfortunately ... When I was finished from work I made my way to my dads shop in a record breaking time and after more than a week without pixel power I had the solution in my hands. The first thing that went through my mind was 'geez, what a huge box' ... ;-) My dad asked me to get a package to the post office but after that I was on my way home to give my PC back what it had to do without for too long: video power! The installation of my new card was a breeze, as these things tend to be these days, so I could 'test' it quite soon after I came home. First thing I tried was GTR, our new racing sim. Boy that looked incredibly good and even though I was able to run it at quite high detail already, a few sliders could be set from 'high' to 'full' which made a better picture all together. Then it was simply a matter of trying every single sim and game I have installed to see how much difference the new card made. The results were a mix between 'as expected' and 'simply astonishing'. Grand Prix Legends for example looked almost just like it did before but take a flight simulator like Lock-On and you would wonder how you were ever able to do without this kind of massive power. It just about looked like a whole new sim, it's just unbelievable. Unfortunately this wasn't to be a race weekend but you'll have to believe me that I sure had fun behind my pc. Even though Saturday turned out to be a not so 'good' day physically. I almost stretched my back while reaching for a tool at work and in the evening at home my back almost went completely out when I miss stepped while getting a cup of coffee and just about hang on to the kitchen sink, gasping for breath. Had I missed that sink I would have gone flat out into other part of that room I like to call my living and who knows how I would have felt then. Well, worse probably :S Maybe my dad and I carrying that dish washer from the old to the other kitchen was a little too much for comfort ... On Sunday however I was feeling a little better so I sat behind my pc a bit more and tried out more games and programs. Getting back to the GPRT bit now. The point is that with this new graphic card I can now use small pixels and still they shoot across the screen like crazy too so that got me thinking a bit about this whole giant pixel theory. Not to worry though, I'm not going to change the name of the team. But you need to think of these things from time to time to prevent them from becoming something taken for granted. And the theory still stands on the majority of PC's so I guess we're save for the time being ;-) So bottom-line is: Don't go out and get yourself a killer graphic card because all it does is make you think weird about stuff ... ;-)