Father Xmas

I was giving examples why someone may decide to keep their memory while upgrading. I was distracted by Zep's DDR2 comment which wasn't actually one of the OP's requirements and your reply. My bad.

On to the OP.

If he wants to go SLi, he will need an AMD AM3 motherboard that uses an nVidia chipset. Sadly unlike Intel, nVidia isn't willing just to license their secret sauce to motherboards using an AMD chipset. Also the Fuzion Tech solution is still not ready for prime time.

There aren't a lot of choices there. Either the Asus M4N75TD for x8/x8 or Asus M4N98TD EVO for x16/x16 SLi. If he only uses a single video card then he'll have his three extra PCIe slots as the main video card slot is next to a PCI.

With AMD chipsets with no chance for SLi but plenty of chances for Crossfire, which he doesn't want. No PCI is a long shot, nearly all of them come with at least one. A quick scan found three, all 890FX based with one PCI slot and either 5 or 6 PCIe slots. You lose two of those with a fat video card leaving 3 or 4 PCIe slots left of various widths. I only looked at MSI, Asus and Gigabyte. Asus didn't have any new in stock with the 890FX, Gigabyte had one and MSI had two. Here they are.

Let's say you don't have much of a budget but you do have a last generation Pentium 4/D system based on the 945P. It's DDR2, it has a PCIe slot. So you are only looking to upgrade the motherboard and CPU because you only have $200 to spend. So you are limited to either an AM2+ motherboard and an AM3 CPU or a Socket 775 with a Pentium Duel Core as long as the P45 motherboard was configured to use DDR2. Especially true two years ago when DDR3 memory was still more expensive than DDR2 per gig.

Now lets say they have the money to also replace the memory so they could go to a Socket AM3, 1156, 1155 motherboard system. The next problem would be how many IDE/PATA drives they are taking with them as newer motherboards only support two devices and mixing hard drives with optical drives is problematic on the same cable. Now they have to buy a SATA drive or burner. Yet another item they weren't planning to upgrade.

Not everyone can afford to build a new box from scratch or have the space to keep the old box around.

People will recognize whatever comic character they grew up with. Only reason Bats and Sup are ultra popular because they've been around for so long that numerous generations of people knew of them as children.

For those who grew up in the early to mid 80s I would imagine TMNT, GI Joe, Transformers are iconic. And since they've been multiple TV series for each of them over the years since their debut, they are probably as recognizable to those under 30 as Batman, Superman and even Spider-man and the Hulk.

Just about anything beats an integrated graphics solution.

And either case forget UM. Just forget about it. Go back to the haughty days of olde, like pre Issue 6 graphics.

At least the HD 4350 is designed with unified shaders. The 2100 is based on pre Dx10 GPU design, fixed number of pixel and vertex shaders (not many in either case).

Actually looking it up the HD 3450 and the HD 4350 have similar performance. Actually the HD 4350 has twice the number of SPs and texture units so it may even be faster.

The i7-970 is also a hex core. Six cores/12 threads, that's the reason for the extra cache. Since you also plan to use it with video editing then there may be a good reason to get those extra cores.

Wait, you said laptop. A laptop with desktop CPUs? Okay, more of a portable computer than one you would run off of batteries for more than an hour at most. Life would be so much easier with portable ARC reactors but I digress.

Yes the 485m does indeed look awesome. Performance similar to a desktop GTX 460 768MB. Can't really get much better in a laptop without going SLi or Crossfire solution.

Shhh! I'm hunting wabbits.

TechReport just put out a new list of systems designs.
bit-tech.net also have a recent list of system designs.

If you could, wait for the Sandy Bridge, Socket 1155 motherboards with the fixed chipset come back to market. They are scary fast for the money. If you were limited in budget then AMD is the way to go as Intel's value CPU line is still based on the now outdated Core 2 based Pentium line on Socket 775.

Now even if you don't want to build it yourself, you can take the info gleemed from those lists over to CyberPowerPC or iBUYPOWER and play with their system configurators. One thing I really don't like about those two places are their generic power supplies they push. I would pay the premium and get a brand name, well reviewed power supply than their cheap specials.

Edit: And don't forget the Microsoft Windows 7 tax.

Laptop

Intel graphics

/e facepalm

Start the game up in safe mode. Go into graphics options and maybe up the resolution to 1366 x 768. Save. Restart.

Forget ultramode. Forget any fancy shader effects like depth of field or even basic water. You have an integrated graphics solution. Fine for a 2D gaming, lousy for any gaming beyond flash like games or 3D games on minimal settings. Except maybe Minecraft or Quake III.

Didn't say otherwise, just chiming into the discussion.

Some people, who may have invested most recently in extra memory will hesitate in switching platforms if that means all that memory can't be taken to the new platform. Same could have been said 6-7 years ago with AGP video cards. Especially true if you are on a budget and want to keep as much of your old hardware as possible.

It would be like buying four new tires and alloy rims for your classic sports car and then the garage you have it in collapses under the heavy snow and crushes it the next week. So do you buy a new car, which the rims won't likely fit, or buy an identical model of what you had so you can use the tires?

I fondly remember Miller's Daredevil Born Again arc. Hadn't read Daredevil up to that point, being more of a Ironman, Spider-man and X-man/mutant fan.

Well it's true. DDR3 is the memory that's used exclusively for Socket AM3 from AMD as well as Socket 1156, 1366 and 1155 from Intel. That's because the memory controller is an integrated part of the CPU and at least in Intel's case, they only included a DDR3 memory controller.

AM3 CPUs can be placed in Socket AM2+ motherboards and run DDR2. Intel's Socket 775 can be DDR2 or DDR3 as the motherboard chipset can support either but is usually one or the other, rarely both.

And Zep is right. DDR2 prices are rising, DDR3 prices are falling. If you are locked in wanting to use DDR2 memory, upgrade options are somewhat limited.

I'm just wondering if the op is using the wrong link. Wish he would post the link he's trying to use.

With SG:U not being on Hulu or SyFy's site means I'm watching that and catch Castle on Hulu next week.

The problem with SG:U from a lot of SG1 and SG:A is sort of along the same lines as how I choose where to eat if I'm going out.

I don't go to a restaurant and spend 10 minutes studying the menu. If I go to restaurant X, it's because I'm ordering Y. Or conversely if I feel like eating Y, I will go to restaurant X. Fine I'm weird.

I think many SG fans tuned into SGU expecting what the previous to series had in spades. Sentai team fighting the good fight against the current galaxy big bad every week and win or survive to fight another day. Action oriented, but often needing to out think their opponent. Instead they got next to on action with lots of deep introspection with a touch of impending doom.

It would be like me going to my favorite Italian restaurant and finding out that they are all out of veal. No, I came here to have your excellent veal parm, if I wanted something else, like lasagna, I would have went somewhere else. I came here because I wanted veal.

It would be like a Star Trek series set on Earth with the cast going nowhere, just reacting to events going on elsewhere. How long would that last before they added ships back in. Remember the earliest days of DS9? Who wanted a ST series that went nowhere? Then they got a ship and went places and the series became acceptable ST.

Caprica died because it only was a faint tie in with the new BSG. The new series is actually going to have fighting and stuff. It'll probably do better because of it.

SG:U was sticking a concept for a show that didn't need to be tied to the SG franchise but was and the fans of that franchise simply rejected it like a mismatched organ donation.

By the time the Oscars aired last night I've seen Inception, Toy Story 3 and The Social Network.

Now I skipped over to the Oscars every few minutes so I wasn't as bored as some may have been if I watched the whole thing from start to finish. The parts I hung around for I enjoyed. Also James Franco could have been an animatronic and nobody would notice. And someone needs to cut Anne Hathaway off whatever she was on because I could here her whoop every time a presenter was announced, sounded like that super school spirit girl that's found in every high school. I think she went through ten dresses during the broadcast.

The good news was I missed most of the terrible skits that was put on, except for the Jude Law, RDJ banter leading up to the special effects Oscar.

Happy that Trent Reznor won best soundtrack for The Social Network. The special on the music that's on the 2nd disk of the DVD set was fascinating to watch.

Biggest wow moment was when I flipped over and saw Mandy Moore and Zack "Chuck" Levi sing the nominated song from Tangled. Forgot they prefer to get the original singers for each song. And Randy Newman has been nominated 20 times?? And they weren't all Disney or Pixar movies??

My biggest surprise was that Kirk Douglas was still alive and walking. I expected him to be in a Captain Pike chair if at all.

Edit: Lastly, Batman is a ginger? Well at least his beard was.

That series just makes me smile for some unknown reason. It could be Shojo tropes turned to 11, the fact that the first episode has a glowie, the fact that only Haruhi thinks it's odd every time Renge pops out of the floor, the Dark Magic Club in general or that only Haruhi so effortlessly sees each member's true self.

Still it's much funnier if you first watched some of Hana Yori Dango first. Similar setup "poor" scholarship girl goes to exclusive high school for the rich and powerful and falls in with a group of guys, but in this case is played straight up standard Shojo. It's a good exposure to the tropes that Ouran plays for laughs.

One of the things I like about Fringe this season are the three different versions of it. You have the original, the alternate universe and the 80's story lines.

Personally I would go with the GTX 560Ti but I'm cheap. The GTX 570 is generally 15% faster in games than the GTX 560Ti, but is that worth $95-110 and 50 watts more power (170 Vs 220)?

Compared to the 8500GT, either card will be an extreme improvement.

Notice that too after the last forum down time.

Also they got rid of read receipts from PMs.

Mid season breaks work for an established series like Burn Notice, Psych, Royal Pains on USA, which are the same people who control SyFy. Even series like Eureka and Warehouse 13, people who like the series will be on the lookout for it. But those series are fairly episodic with a minor overall story arc for the season.

SG:U however tries to be Lost in space. Large cast, mostly random strangers, tossed together in much less than ideal circumstances. Finally after a season and a half they start to get the ship they are stranded upon under some vague control they, SyFy, choose to break on a cliffhanger big *** space battle. Also it's not a happy series. Unless you define happy as "we didn't starve, suffocate or flip out and kill everyone today".

So yes I'll watch the end of it. Let's see if Chloe turns into a homicidal alien hybrid. Let's see how the ship survives this battle. Let's see if someone is left behind only to catch up again. Maybe it will end on an upbeat. Probably because they are almost out of down beats.

I just discovered 5 Guys a couple of months back. Sadly we don't have an In-n-Out around these parts. Heck, we finally got a Sonic, some 40 miles away still, but it's closer than before. Been seeing commercials for Sonic for like 5 years now but never able to try one. Still haven't, not crazy enough to go 80 miles round trip for a burger and shake.

8600GT can't really handle UM settings such as environmental reflections and hard shadowing at low much less at high.

<Don Rickles>Good for you, you won a cookie.</Don Rickles>

The OP was asking if he had to anything to automatically renew and the next thing we get are people suggesting that he cancels billing so he can resubscribe to be sure. The thrust of my comment was you don't have to do that.

It's like saying you have a problem with Windows and people immediately suggest reformatting your drives and reinstall everything from scratch.