Father Xmas

Actually I thought it was

"Oomph, nutcracker" Thud.

It's also about time the formally update the high end rig, which also got changed a bit from the last time which other than adding the OS, was 11 months ago.

Over that time the price of memory and the video card plummeted, knocking well over $125 off the price. Well, I can't let that stand.

The biggest change was going to 8GB of system memory from 4GB. That pretty much soaked up a lot of the price drop. I was forced to drop from the over aggressive Cas 7 to a more reasonable Cas 8. Plus the Cas 7s seem to be out of stock for the foreseeable future.

I also upgraded the CPU, even though I did this awhile ago, to the 2.8GHz i5-760 from the 2.66GHz i5-750. No real price change as the 760 came in at the 750's price at the time.

I changed the video card from the HD 5850 to the HD 6870 which is slightly faster and before the current HD 5850 fire sale, actually cheaper.

Lastly due to reports from some of you that the Corsair TX750 power supply was acting funky, I replaced it with the slightly more expensive Antec New TP-750 which also has modular cabling for clutter reduction and an additional 24 watts of power (2 amps) at 12 volts.

Well it's been awhile since I formally updated the low end rig, even though over the intervening 8 months I have tweaked it a number of times, mostly when a specific part became unavailable.

The CPU is now a 3.2GHz Athlon II X3 450. While the 10% boost in clock speed helps the reason for going from a dual core to triple core has more to do with how other games perform rather than this one. That said having a spare core to handle having the browser up or any of the team voice chat clients while playing this game can't hurt.

I also went from 4GB of Cas 9 to Cas 8 DDR3-1333 memory. It may add a percentage point or two to overall performance and the price increase was trivial.

As for the tweaks that happened over time. I was forced to switch motherboards as the previous MSI motherboard became unavailable. However the Gigabyte one I switched to does have USB 3.0 support and doesn't require me to toss in a SATA cable since it already comes with two. AMD 870 based motherboards are still a bit pricey for low end and only provides SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) in addition, which is great for some solid state drives but since this is a low cost rig, isn't really useful.

I also switched the hard drive to the 500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3 from the 500GB Seagate 7200.12 drive a few months back. When 1/4 of the feedback in the last 6 months at NewEgg rate the Seagate as 1 star, mainly about dieing within months, there may be some fire to that smoke.

The DVD burner and HD 5770 video card simply changed models but stayed with their manufacturers as my original choices became unavailable.

And with all these changes, I was still able to reduce the target price for this rig by $25.

Edit: I overwrote this post with my May 2011 update. Thank you Google cache!

What? A thread entitled "Emails lost AGAIN" wasn't specific enough for you to post there? It's only six hours old and didn't it occur to you that it could be about the same problem for you to check? Did you think you'll get special attention by starting your own thread? File a petition.

Jeez, this is going to get as bad as the usual half a dozen threads about the servers being down on Thursday mornings if we don't nip these repeat threads in the bud.

They were both cute and fun episodes. I forget how much I miss these being on.

El Cazador didn't really do anything for me. Saw all the revelations a mile a way. Noir was better.

Even though I posted this I only had a chance to watch the first two segments. Loved the video of the women in the audience crying over the Kodai/Yuki romance and the interviews after.

I don't care about it being over the top melodrama, that defines a lot of J-drama at least the ones I've seen. We don't have enough "win just one for the Gipper" moments anymore in movies.

on SyFy, 9pm EST.

Well at least this bomb squad checked the box first rather than blowing it up.

Not sure what kind of answer you are expecting from a board that is

No. The defense used is the best defense of all the attack types the attack has. In this case, 20%.

If you had 25% ranged and 20% psionic then it'll be 25%.

The purpose of the explosion was to incinerate and failing that, make it impossible to get any of those "bad bugs" that the doctor was talking about. All of that was multiple stories underground. The fire we see and the building collapse was simply collateral damage.

It's not like they had a FAE as a lobby chandelier.

Bellow $2000 per theater on it's opening weekend. That's sad.

But it did beat MacGruber per theater so that's something (except that MacGruber had only a $10 million production cost and The Warrior's Way was $42 million). Have to see how well it does in Asia.

Yes, SiS graphics isn't supported.

Actually SiS doesn't have a driver that supports the OpenGL features the game needs.

I'm always curious way the same question, or a slight variant of it, appear in clusters.

Bill Z Bubba's guide to moving the game.

Kings Row market is a very short flight/hop to the base portal. I guess the same could be said about Atlas and Talos now that I think about it.

Saw this over at IO9.

Union of Superlative Heroes Trading Card Set

Click on Save Log, open the log and cut and paste it here.

Not to be a sad sack here but 95% of the game files have been updated at least once in 2010. About 80% within the last 6 months. Other than staying on top of the updates as they happen, even if you aren't currently subscribed, there isn't a way to shortcut a long download after an extended absence.

Moving an up to date install from one system to another is easy, Bill Z Bubba has a guide for that, but a quick way other than sitting back for a long download, not really. It would probably be just as fast to grab the updater from your account screen and let it download the whole game.

Sorry.

Post a HijackThis report.

You can also get an idea by feeding the report into these analyzers here or here, but research any of their recommendations first before acting on them.

It's not like a police bomb squad overreacted before.

Did somebody overreact after watching the "A Fist Full of Yen" skit from Kentucky Fried Movie?

TOY ROBOT!!!

I'm betting it's his dad, the mysterious man with the robot arm. I don't think the rest of them are Galalunan. Solomon was simply taught by Lance's father. He's probably the person who found Lance's father, wounded from his use of the rift gate. I also wonder if the early rift gate also tossed him further back in time or if there is a time differential involved, 10 years there is 20 years here kind of thing.

Nice sky base. I always dig sky bases from Spectrum's to SHIELD's to the US one in Doctor Who.

And I'm still liking the foot soldiers with scarfs, very anime style.