Today (12/04/08) I decided to give it a shot at overclocking my (new?) X1950 Pro
Yes, I know it's an old card and is less than half the speed of current high-end cards, but that doesn't mean that I cannot overclock it right? I'm just six months/a year behind, but I too need the experience.
So here I am, firing up ATT and doing some simply overclocking. I read on forums that this card maxes out at around 660+mhz, so I should hit around that speed too.
So, start with 630mhz. No problem. 640, no problemo. 645, np. 650, np.
Have to start to be careful here. 654? Ok. 658, nothing wrong. 662? Easy.
Seems like 660mhz is easy for my card. I think I'll leave it to the auto-find-max. But that was a mistake. Coz it immediately jumped to 668, then 675, then 682, where it rendered (to my amazement) for a little while before hanging and blacking out.
But, if it manages 682mhz for that little while, it might be able to do 680. That's a nice stopping point.
So I tried. Ran for quite a while now, max temperature reached. Scan for artifacts, no artifacts found.
Woot, looks like I got myself quite a good card.
And the temperatures of this card isn't bad too. While normally it does 45~50 idling depending on room temperature (usually 46) and ~61 degrees load, it rises sharply too 75 degrees at 680mhz. 75 is still considered ok and even low for high-end overclocked cards, but that's because the normal temps are too low to start with. And that's considering that my cooling sux.
Ok, maybe AC Accelero isn't anywhere near sux, but my case is. Those kind of minimalistic silent pc with only the PSU fan spinning.
Lets test my ram now.
Unfortunately, my ram wasn't exactly the best. I set it at 800mhz (1600mhz) since it's around what everybody's getting. The card works at 680/1600 for quite a while in UT3 before showing checkerboxing - sign of memory failing. It didn't hang.
The fact that it took some time (and my core was at 75 degrees, with the surrounding not too far behind) suggests that it failed due to heat. And that's totally understandable; due to the Accelero, most of the ram chips are covered by it with little exposure to airflow. Eventually I'll be modding that cooler with a bigger, quieter fan, and I'll make sure the ram get the extra cooling from the bigger fan.
So, current highest stable, lets say 650/1500 for now. It was totally stable since I gave it so much distance from the maximum of 680/1600, which is just going to go higher.
I sure got myself a damn good card. With 1.5yr warranty left to boot, so I'm totally not afraid to spoil it and get a newer card in exchange. :P
But of course, I'm not going to run it at such high speeds. Default or lower is enough for me. Since I love silence and my CPU/RAM is bottlenecking (but not by a lot) anyway.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
After gfx card purchase - Review & Reflection
Why is it that usually after you hurriedly buy something because you thought it is a good deal you will find a better deal somewhere else only a short while later? That has been the case for my previous 3 hoots as far as I can remember correctly - x800GT (too hot and no SM3.0 and not yet powerful enough), X-mini capsule speaker (because other places sell it for $35, just 2-3 bucks more, there are probably other slightly bigger ones that sound nicer, a stereo version is available soon, and I didn't use it enough), and the most recent and going to blog about, x1950pro (right after I closed the deal I found another guy selling the 512MB version for 10 bucks more (or 10% more). This extra ram will come in handy in newer, more ram intensive situations where the performance difference can be more than 20%)
The third one is easy to swallow when I simply tell myself that if something is too good it's probably been taken. Or it's just too good (to be true), get what I mean?
But lets talk about whether getting the x1950pro is a right choice when the new 9600GT and 8800GT that's owning the entire industry as the highest end gaming cards with obviously superior performance are only selling for $240-$210 lowest, new and 2nd-hand respectively. Plus, their performance in certain newer games that is more than 3x as fast really don't justify their cheap price.
And yes, in a whole majority lot of situations, the 8800GT is almost twice as fast as the x1950pro.
Actually, that kind of makes the x1950pro worth the buy.
Why is it so?
Firstly, we all know that graphics card performance increases so greatly between generations such that the newer gen cards are always more worth the money. Even more so for the 9600GT and 8800GT which are probably the best in modern graphics card history.
However, to get this benifit, that means you will have to pay the extra 2x price to get this "economy of scale". If you can do that with a $100 card, why not? It's the same case with HDDs also.
Secondly, current gfx situation is that, even if you have just a 7900GT or 8600GT or certain x1000 series and above, you'll still be able to play many games at max settings without being unplayable, just not so smooth framerates and low res./AA/AF. Seriously, I see no point with 1600x1200 and above resolutions, simply because my monitor isn't that big and it never will be. Anything above 2x AA yields considerably less benefit and anything above 4x is almost indistinguishable.
And so why get a card that can play UT3 at 80fps when I'm already fragging people at 30?
Thirdly, and rather important, it has the AC cooler. I mean, that saves me from some assembling of the Zalman fanless. And this is definitely way stronger if I were to use my own 80mm fan on it.
And finally, lets look at the alternatives - a 7600GT and a new HD3850, now price lowered to $200 with a better cooler.
The HD3850 is still not worth the price even with the better cooler, its performance at $209 just sux so much to the 9600GT one shouldn't even be considering.
The 7600GT, while it would've been the card of choice not long ago, just couldn't cut it for the newer games that are more intensive on shaders. In certain situations you see it losing to the 8600GT and x1950pro by a factor of half (meaning half as fast if my maths/grammar isn't good). That really doesn't make it worth buying.
So after some thoughts, the winner is still the x1950pro. Plus, the extra heat doesn't really matter, since with that cooler and that it only runs 7W hotter idling makes little of a difference. But, the big problem is still the lack of ICM/ICC profiles in overlay mode for games/videos, and I don't think it will ever be implemented. Guess I'll have to live with it.
Enough talking, lets fire up my x1950pro. :P
The third one is easy to swallow when I simply tell myself that if something is too good it's probably been taken. Or it's just too good (to be true), get what I mean?
But lets talk about whether getting the x1950pro is a right choice when the new 9600GT and 8800GT that's owning the entire industry as the highest end gaming cards with obviously superior performance are only selling for $240-$210 lowest, new and 2nd-hand respectively. Plus, their performance in certain newer games that is more than 3x as fast really don't justify their cheap price.
And yes, in a whole majority lot of situations, the 8800GT is almost twice as fast as the x1950pro.
Actually, that kind of makes the x1950pro worth the buy.
Why is it so?
Firstly, we all know that graphics card performance increases so greatly between generations such that the newer gen cards are always more worth the money. Even more so for the 9600GT and 8800GT which are probably the best in modern graphics card history.
However, to get this benifit, that means you will have to pay the extra 2x price to get this "economy of scale". If you can do that with a $100 card, why not? It's the same case with HDDs also.
Secondly, current gfx situation is that, even if you have just a 7900GT or 8600GT or certain x1000 series and above, you'll still be able to play many games at max settings without being unplayable, just not so smooth framerates and low res./AA/AF. Seriously, I see no point with 1600x1200 and above resolutions, simply because my monitor isn't that big and it never will be. Anything above 2x AA yields considerably less benefit and anything above 4x is almost indistinguishable.
And so why get a card that can play UT3 at 80fps when I'm already fragging people at 30?
Thirdly, and rather important, it has the AC cooler. I mean, that saves me from some assembling of the Zalman fanless. And this is definitely way stronger if I were to use my own 80mm fan on it.
And finally, lets look at the alternatives - a 7600GT and a new HD3850, now price lowered to $200 with a better cooler.
The HD3850 is still not worth the price even with the better cooler, its performance at $209 just sux so much to the 9600GT one shouldn't even be considering.
The 7600GT, while it would've been the card of choice not long ago, just couldn't cut it for the newer games that are more intensive on shaders. In certain situations you see it losing to the 8600GT and x1950pro by a factor of half (meaning half as fast if my maths/grammar isn't good). That really doesn't make it worth buying.
So after some thoughts, the winner is still the x1950pro. Plus, the extra heat doesn't really matter, since with that cooler and that it only runs 7W hotter idling makes little of a difference. But, the big problem is still the lack of ICM/ICC profiles in overlay mode for games/videos, and I don't think it will ever be implemented. Guess I'll have to live with it.
Enough talking, lets fire up my x1950pro. :P
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Going to buy a gfx card, so doing some research, some thoughts...
Going to buy a gfx card for two reasons. 1. My CPU isn't keeping up with 1080P videos without hardware H.264 acceleration and 2. I'm so late in playing UT3.
And with the advent of G92-based cards that brought prices of current cards down a lot, it's time to source for a cheap 2nd-hand card that's good. And must be able to play UT3 with decent speed/image quality. And still, it must be low-power, as I'm a pc-silencer. :)
While the x1950pro has the best bang-for-buck since its launch, ATi cards' high heat and lack of overlay color profiles (needed for accurate color in games/videos if you have a calibrator, which I do) turn me off. Same goes for the x1900GT. It's sad, since these two cards have very good price/performance ratio and are just strong enough to keep up with current games.
The 7600GT is just the opposite - low heat, overlay color profiles, less price/performance (but not by much, since it's also one of the best during its time), and almost barely unable to play UT3.
And the problem? Shaders. 7600GT era was when people didn't care too much about shaders. x1000 series changed that, as with 8000 series. And as such, 8600GT's performance in UT3 is so spectacular it was unbelivable - it is about twice as fast as a 7600GT and faster than a 7900GT.
Well, that's at very high settings though. At lower settings, the 8600GT's weakness - lack in everything else, should show.
Now this brings a very interesting situation. Since we all know that the 8600GT is crap for price-to-performance compared to the rest of the cards, especially 8800GT and 9600GT, the latter priced at only $239.
If we were to have an Unreal-per-dollar chart, the 7600GT ($70) would be 0.27, 8600GT ($100) would be 0.39, and a NEW 9600GT ($239) would be around 0.42.
Seriously, the 9600GT is one heck of a good card.
Now I'm confused, should I buy the 7600GT or wait till people start selling 2nd-hand 9600GT at $100+? That'd depend on whether that 7600GT is able to hit 800mhz mem, since I told the seller I'll take his card if it so. Well, at least with 800mhz the performance won't be too bad, since we know that 7600GT is memory-bottlenecked.
And with the advent of G92-based cards that brought prices of current cards down a lot, it's time to source for a cheap 2nd-hand card that's good. And must be able to play UT3 with decent speed/image quality. And still, it must be low-power, as I'm a pc-silencer. :)
While the x1950pro has the best bang-for-buck since its launch, ATi cards' high heat and lack of overlay color profiles (needed for accurate color in games/videos if you have a calibrator, which I do) turn me off. Same goes for the x1900GT. It's sad, since these two cards have very good price/performance ratio and are just strong enough to keep up with current games.
The 7600GT is just the opposite - low heat, overlay color profiles, less price/performance (but not by much, since it's also one of the best during its time), and almost barely unable to play UT3.
And the problem? Shaders. 7600GT era was when people didn't care too much about shaders. x1000 series changed that, as with 8000 series. And as such, 8600GT's performance in UT3 is so spectacular it was unbelivable - it is about twice as fast as a 7600GT and faster than a 7900GT.
Well, that's at very high settings though. At lower settings, the 8600GT's weakness - lack in everything else, should show.
Now this brings a very interesting situation. Since we all know that the 8600GT is crap for price-to-performance compared to the rest of the cards, especially 8800GT and 9600GT, the latter priced at only $239.
If we were to have an Unreal-per-dollar chart, the 7600GT ($70) would be 0.27, 8600GT ($100) would be 0.39, and a NEW 9600GT ($239) would be around 0.42.
Seriously, the 9600GT is one heck of a good card.
Now I'm confused, should I buy the 7600GT or wait till people start selling 2nd-hand 9600GT at $100+? That'd depend on whether that 7600GT is able to hit 800mhz mem, since I told the seller I'll take his card if it so. Well, at least with 800mhz the performance won't be too bad, since we know that 7600GT is memory-bottlenecked.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Finally... Found: True Tears 1920x1080p Full-HD subs that can be downloaded!
...but for how long it'd be available I wonder.
Check out this page. http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=true+tears Check out the True Tears 01-10 1080p Full-HD torrent with both traditional and simplified Chinese subs. And the best part of this is you can just add you own English sub in .ssa format. Wait no, that isn't the best part.
The best part is, that THERE ARE SEEDS!!! Looks like I'd finally be able to start watching this series (Rozen's subs were also getting hard to find). And it's downloading at a decent speed, anything 2-digit I consider it as decent enough already. And it's doing 50kb/s currently and increasing. No doubt it'll reach 3-digit sooner or later and I'll have the entire content downloaded in a day or two.
And the nice part about this is, they use the original source file and just added the .ssa subs files. While you need to install VobSub to read the subs which isn't much of a problem, this leaves the source file well and untouched. In fact IMHO I believe all subbings in the future should be done this way - one unified raw (or any raw) that can be used with any fansub. No more will we need to care about which has better video quality and which has better/more accurate subs (or karaoke/color-usage for that matter, or typesetting, which I personally don't care nor like since it screws up the original video). Since there's all this talk about modularity, why not implement it here also?
The first episode is 861MB big. That's... huge. For a H.264 encode. Even if it's a Full-HD one. That's more than 4, perhaps 5mbps.
Check out this page. http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=true+tears Check out the True Tears 01-10 1080p Full-HD torrent with both traditional and simplified Chinese subs. And the best part of this is you can just add you own English sub in .ssa format. Wait no, that isn't the best part.
The best part is, that THERE ARE SEEDS!!! Looks like I'd finally be able to start watching this series (Rozen's subs were also getting hard to find). And it's downloading at a decent speed, anything 2-digit I consider it as decent enough already. And it's doing 50kb/s currently and increasing. No doubt it'll reach 3-digit sooner or later and I'll have the entire content downloaded in a day or two.
And the nice part about this is, they use the original source file and just added the .ssa subs files. While you need to install VobSub to read the subs which isn't much of a problem, this leaves the source file well and untouched. In fact IMHO I believe all subbings in the future should be done this way - one unified raw (or any raw) that can be used with any fansub. No more will we need to care about which has better video quality and which has better/more accurate subs (or karaoke/color-usage for that matter, or typesetting, which I personally don't care nor like since it screws up the original video). Since there's all this talk about modularity, why not implement it here also?
The first episode is 861MB big. That's... huge. For a H.264 encode. Even if it's a Full-HD one. That's more than 4, perhaps 5mbps.
April 2008 - Another Anime 'harvesting' season, in a different way:
Previously I talked about the vast number of shows that were ending in Mar-Apr 08. This time, I'm going to talk about the shows that are starting in Apr 08. And boy, remember when I said that the ending list of Mar 08 is the longest list I ever saw? Well, with 34 titles that are airing in Apr 08, looks like the future won't be boring either.
Now I'm amazed at how many different slots they have for all these Anime.
And, out of the 34 (Lets filter!), To Love-Ru, Kyou Kara Maou, Allison to Lillia, xxxHoLiC, Itazura na Kiss, Code Geass, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, D.C.II S.S., Vampire Knight are OBVIOUSLY going to be good. Ok, minus Allison, since probably only I'm thinking it's going to be spectacular (the story didn't turn out as great as I've hoped), but the rest are all big time famous names, so I don't see any reason why they wouldn't do well. (Especially D.C.II S.S., it better be good enough so as to not shame the legacy of D.C., that had different versions released over a long period of four years)
And out of the rest, ...i can really say that all of them look quite promising, maybe just that some do no appeal to all audiences. Well, I'm interested in 26 of them (out of all 34), and might watch roughly 10 or slighly more. (Well, I'm sorry that I'm not interested in these genres - aimless/pointless/senseless fighting, romance comedy with too little romance/comedy and too much ecchi (sorry To Love-Ru fans), Mecha/Sci-Fi/Space Age without the common-sense (*cough*), wierd wannabe-style settings including those of wives, maids, ancient Japan and monsters (but I do accept if they are good, and usually if they are they will be VERY good, especially for the first two. Nothing in-between success and failure here.), and almost all if not all sports in general.
That stringent requirement leaves me with... why not just talk about my likings instead - Moe, moe, and more moe. Okay, serious, I enjoy comedy and romance alot. Perhaps maybe comedy, or is it romance? Can't really tell. But for a while I thought it was comedy. BUT, the comedy must be a good one. Those that I've watched recently are good, but I remember a period of time one or two years ago when a whole lot of the population was enjoying bad, low-class comedy. It was tragedic. And romance, my requirement for romance is quite low actually, as long as it has romance almost all the time you'd see me watching it. So yes, the March harvesting season is godsend. But I still can tell what a bad romance show is.
And drama, I love drama, and certain amount and style of action. I love human/human fights, gunfights especially. But those exist mostly only in Hong Kong movies.
And daily-life/slice-of-life. While these two look similar they are far from each other. Daily-life = wierd happenings in an otherwise normal high-schooler's life = quite a whole majority of many B-grade settings out there. Slice-of-life = small bits and pieces of life in a normal/can be abnormal life. Daily(school)-life = Rental Magica (not a very good example but I hope it works), slice-of-life = Aria, get it?
(Ok, many may not agree with my definition and classification. That's okay. There's no proper definition to these genres yet.)
And super powers! Magic to be precise. And those fantasies. I love them a lot. Plus lately these magical fantasy shows are actually producing better fights with more eye-candy than those genres that were supposed to be good at it.
And finally, most importantly,
A dose of moe-ness, a huge dose
Moe-ness is good
I told you, lolis are the future
So that's it for Apr 08 and today's post. Hope you and I enjoy a good Anime time in the short future.
Now I'm amazed at how many different slots they have for all these Anime.
And, out of the 34 (Lets filter!), To Love-Ru, Kyou Kara Maou, Allison to Lillia, xxxHoLiC, Itazura na Kiss, Code Geass, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, D.C.II S.S., Vampire Knight are OBVIOUSLY going to be good. Ok, minus Allison, since probably only I'm thinking it's going to be spectacular (the story didn't turn out as great as I've hoped), but the rest are all big time famous names, so I don't see any reason why they wouldn't do well. (Especially D.C.II S.S., it better be good enough so as to not shame the legacy of D.C., that had different versions released over a long period of four years)
And out of the rest, ...i can really say that all of them look quite promising, maybe just that some do no appeal to all audiences. Well, I'm interested in 26 of them (out of all 34), and might watch roughly 10 or slighly more. (Well, I'm sorry that I'm not interested in these genres - aimless/pointless/senseless fighting, romance comedy with too little romance/comedy and too much ecchi (sorry To Love-Ru fans), Mecha/Sci-Fi/Space Age without the common-sense (*cough*), wierd wannabe-style settings including those of wives, maids, ancient Japan and monsters (but I do accept if they are good, and usually if they are they will be VERY good, especially for the first two. Nothing in-between success and failure here.), and almost all if not all sports in general.
That stringent requirement leaves me with... why not just talk about my likings instead - Moe, moe, and more moe. Okay, serious, I enjoy comedy and romance alot. Perhaps maybe comedy, or is it romance? Can't really tell. But for a while I thought it was comedy. BUT, the comedy must be a good one. Those that I've watched recently are good, but I remember a period of time one or two years ago when a whole lot of the population was enjoying bad, low-class comedy. It was tragedic. And romance, my requirement for romance is quite low actually, as long as it has romance almost all the time you'd see me watching it. So yes, the March harvesting season is godsend. But I still can tell what a bad romance show is.
And drama, I love drama, and certain amount and style of action. I love human/human fights, gunfights especially. But those exist mostly only in Hong Kong movies.
And daily-life/slice-of-life. While these two look similar they are far from each other. Daily-life = wierd happenings in an otherwise normal high-schooler's life = quite a whole majority of many B-grade settings out there. Slice-of-life = small bits and pieces of life in a normal/can be abnormal life. Daily(school)-life = Rental Magica (not a very good example but I hope it works), slice-of-life = Aria, get it?
(Ok, many may not agree with my definition and classification. That's okay. There's no proper definition to these genres yet.)
And super powers! Magic to be precise. And those fantasies. I love them a lot. Plus lately these magical fantasy shows are actually producing better fights with more eye-candy than those genres that were supposed to be good at it.
And finally, most importantly,
A dose of moe-ness, a huge dose
Moe-ness is good
I told you, lolis are the future
So that's it for Apr 08 and today's post. Hope you and I enjoy a good Anime time in the short future.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Sketchbook: full color's: Comments
(I realized that lately I've been enjoying most of the Anime I watch. (Most, because Myself; Yourself and D.C. II were big-time letdown. Even though they are supposed to be like the best stories out there) Either my standards have dropped greatly lately, or the recent Animes were really good. Mushiuta still has active forums over at the Chinese fansubbers' sites, even though the Anime is obviously only a half-done job versus the original story. Stuff like ef don't even need to say. So hopefully it isn't my standards that have dropped.
Plus, while i previously said I wait till the entire series gets finished before getting the whole series in one shot, truth is i already got the whole series a while back but ended up 3-months late in watching it.
Also, I should stop wasting time typing intros that are not related to the post. It is a bad habit and takes away the impact of the actual opening.)
If there's one phrase that can describe this series very well, it'd be "Aria in present day".
There's this tranquility in the series; nothing much happens, yet it doesn't get boring; Nothing important happens, yet you wouldn't want to miss out on anything; The show should feel short since there's nothing much really, yet it feels like you've watched quite a lot of stuff and there's lots more to go; Your mind feels at ease, yet time seems to have slowed down (usually time "slows down", or one has the impression that the time is moving slower when the mind is active but said person is not concentrated on any task, probably the reason why the mind feels at ease is because it is very active yet doing nothing? if you get what I mean, else it'd be a highly-clocked CPU that's idle).
Plus, there's the warmth and fuzziness as you watch this show, kinda like what a person feels when he/she's in another person's chest, be it mother, lover, or older sister (don't get the wrong idea you onee-chan maniacs).
That's why I call it "Aria in present day". Plus Makino Yui's singing makes it even more similar.
The first Anime I thought of when I saw this Anime is Hidamari Sketch, since both are slice-of-lives involving painting. But the approach is totally different. Hidamari Sketch is more comedy (no doubt thx to director Shinbo Akiyuki - Think PaniPoni and Zetsubou Sensei) and about small events and things of everyday life, while Sketchbook: full color's is about the everyday life that really is a lack of events, and how to approach this life. Good job IMHO, especially when the source is a 4-koma manga which is supposed to have punchlines. Though I cannot imagine how the original source would fare. (Lucky Star, for example, fares pretty badly in its original form IMO)
Now now, after all these theoratical talking, how does this show really perform? One very important key factor I consider is the ability to keep the audience wanting to continue watching the next episode, and is what I consider as the actual performance of the show, since it's job is done after you watched it and wasted your time on it. Yes, this factor carries a very high percentage in my rating system. Yes, storyline, plot, directing, artwork budget, even character design are important, but how it really captures (semi-literally) the audience is a mix of all these. And about this, I originally wanted to just watch the first episode on the way to my workplace (and watch Jigoku Shoujo Futagomori on the way back), but turned out I also watched the second and third episodes during lunch break (and even when I originally only wanted to watch one more), and the forth episode on the way back, draining the battery to the max.
Looks like there will be more than one series I'd be marathoning through this weeking. (The originally planned one is ef)
And whether it is worth the ~8 +- 0.3 rating on AniDB.net, I'd say, yes. Although not more, but definitely no less. The probable ratings can possibly reach as low as 2~3 since not everybody like this kind of story, but it's still a good show.
Try watching it if you're an Aria fan, or if you simply like slice-of-life, or this kind of show in general. But if you haven't watched Aria yet, you should watch that one first. :D
Plus, while i previously said I wait till the entire series gets finished before getting the whole series in one shot, truth is i already got the whole series a while back but ended up 3-months late in watching it.
Also, I should stop wasting time typing intros that are not related to the post. It is a bad habit and takes away the impact of the actual opening.)
If there's one phrase that can describe this series very well, it'd be "Aria in present day".
There's this tranquility in the series; nothing much happens, yet it doesn't get boring; Nothing important happens, yet you wouldn't want to miss out on anything; The show should feel short since there's nothing much really, yet it feels like you've watched quite a lot of stuff and there's lots more to go; Your mind feels at ease, yet time seems to have slowed down (usually time "slows down", or one has the impression that the time is moving slower when the mind is active but said person is not concentrated on any task, probably the reason why the mind feels at ease is because it is very active yet doing nothing? if you get what I mean, else it'd be a highly-clocked CPU that's idle).
Plus, there's the warmth and fuzziness as you watch this show, kinda like what a person feels when he/she's in another person's chest, be it mother, lover, or older sister (don't get the wrong idea you onee-chan maniacs).
That's why I call it "Aria in present day". Plus Makino Yui's singing makes it even more similar.
The first Anime I thought of when I saw this Anime is Hidamari Sketch, since both are slice-of-lives involving painting. But the approach is totally different. Hidamari Sketch is more comedy (no doubt thx to director Shinbo Akiyuki - Think PaniPoni and Zetsubou Sensei) and about small events and things of everyday life, while Sketchbook: full color's is about the everyday life that really is a lack of events, and how to approach this life. Good job IMHO, especially when the source is a 4-koma manga which is supposed to have punchlines. Though I cannot imagine how the original source would fare. (Lucky Star, for example, fares pretty badly in its original form IMO)
Now now, after all these theoratical talking, how does this show really perform? One very important key factor I consider is the ability to keep the audience wanting to continue watching the next episode, and is what I consider as the actual performance of the show, since it's job is done after you watched it and wasted your time on it. Yes, this factor carries a very high percentage in my rating system. Yes, storyline, plot, directing, artwork budget, even character design are important, but how it really captures (semi-literally) the audience is a mix of all these. And about this, I originally wanted to just watch the first episode on the way to my workplace (and watch Jigoku Shoujo Futagomori on the way back), but turned out I also watched the second and third episodes during lunch break (and even when I originally only wanted to watch one more), and the forth episode on the way back, draining the battery to the max.
Looks like there will be more than one series I'd be marathoning through this weeking. (The originally planned one is ef)
And whether it is worth the ~8 +- 0.3 rating on AniDB.net, I'd say, yes. Although not more, but definitely no less. The probable ratings can possibly reach as low as 2~3 since not everybody like this kind of story, but it's still a good show.
Try watching it if you're an Aria fan, or if you simply like slice-of-life, or this kind of show in general. But if you haven't watched Aria yet, you should watch that one first. :D
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