Father Xmas

Lol

TweakCoH

It's a little late for those of us who weren't planning on going to PAX East since the tickets are sold out.

His post over on the Tech Board said he had a 9300GS but the card wasn't even registering in the CoHHelper report so there was no way to confirm it.

And let me point out something. The original GTS 250 specs the clock at 738MHz and memory at 2200MHz. I notice that several of the "cheaper" GTS 250s are clocked at much lower speeds.

It was more of a general comment about people overbuying PSUs. There isn't anything wrong with the one you got, just that it's large for a single GPU rig.

And yes the drawback, due to the shape of the efficiency curve, is that at lower wattage will use more AC power and that extra will be converted into heat. But it's relative.

It's not like it'll generate more heat if you are only using 100 watts Vs 500 watts or cost more in electricity. Only that a more appropriate sized PSU would generate less heat and use less electricity. Of course this assumes both PSUs efficiency curves are similar relative to their output.

Sorry if I confused or panicked you, it wasn't my intention. It's like buying a cigarette boat for a lake with a 15MPH speed limit. Yes, it's a boat, it'll float and move but it'll be a waste just to bass fish with it.

Reviewed here.

While I'm bringing up the info I'm going to guess slight differences in clock speed and maybe accessories.

Yep, that's it.

Stock has a clock speed of 725MHz with 4GHz memory.

XXX is 755MHz with 4.5GHz memory. +$40 over stock (list price)

Black is 765MHz with 4.5GHz memory. +$20 over XXX (list price)

How much better? No idea. Google for XFX XXX or Black reviews, they may compare it to a stock speed version.

I'm not sure if there is a single GPU video card that can run Crysis with the knobs turned to 11 at a reasonable framerate and resolution at the same time.

A handy chart about what's what across generation and brand is the current Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart at Tom's Hardware.

There are two things to consider when picking a video card. One, will it fit. Faster cards tend to be larger to hold all the power circuitry and allow for a larger heatsink, because of all the power it will be using. Two, a power supply that can properly feed your choice. The important stat about your power supply is the maximum wattage at 12 volts your PSU can provide as that is what the video card feeds on.

It is also best to have a power supply that have the correct power connector(s) for your video card. Cards usually include one converter cable to convert a pair of 4 pin non-SATA drive power connectors into one 6 pin PCIe video card power connector.

The GTS 250 is a bit faster than your 9800 GT. It uses one 6-pin PCIe power connector. The next up from that is the GTX 260 that uses two. The GTX 260 may still come in two flavors, the original with 192 streaming processors or the later one that comes with 216 SPs, raised when ATI came out with their 1GB HD 4870. Posi says the GTX 260 (I'm assuming the 216 version) is mid Ultra Mode settings.

No idea what price range you are looking at. At the top end for single GPU cards is the GTX 285 that Posi says will run Ultra Mode at max, for around $380 online.

Between the GTX 260 and the GTX 285 should be the GTX 275, but you can't find them anymore. It was a $250 card.

The latest and greatest from nVidia, their next generation, is due sometime in March and I don't expect them to be cheap, I'm guessing in the $450-600 range. They will be GTX 4xx series if rumors hold.

Maybe they are fumigating the Atlas Park AE? I hear that AE spammers are worse than cockroaches.

I doubt that'll happen. Right now the HD 5850 is as fast or slightly faster than the GTX 285 and it's for $80 less. If the price hasn't come down in the three months or so the HD 5850 have been available, it says to me that the manufacturers simply don't want to lower the price.

Right now at NewEgg there are only four GTX 285s in stock at NewEgg with six out of stock, with only one with a restock date.

I've been sick as a dog for the past couple of days so your post made me wonder if my brain was on the blink.

ATX cases and motherboards have been around for years. I honestly surprised that the MB and Case companies in Taiwan haven't come up with a standard wiring block for cases.

Hit and run attacks are the key.

The cadavers and abominations generally have a very short attention span and chase you for only a short distance before forgetting what they were doing. Also it's a lot easier pulling one of them.

Their human masters on the other hand, the Reapers, will run you down and aggroing them with pull their cadaver and abomination minions as well. The upside is they are slow so you may be able to defeat the Reaper before their buddies get within projectile vomit range.

Next are the Mortificators. They will rez cadavers and abominations. If you can keep them away from a fallen one for 10-15 seconds or so, by aggroing them, then they won't be able to bring them back.

Last are the Eidolons, they are bosses and hence annoying as all get out. Again the tactic is to separate them from their cadaver/abonmination minions so you will have the time to defeat them.

And they aren't zombies. Not technically. They are closer to Frankenstein in origin, they are not True Undead.

I dropped you a PM about it from the Ultra Mode thread, didn't see this thread here until now.

As for overkill, we still haven't seen what Ultra Mode with the knobs at 11 will do to a system.

Let me warn you, MegaTokyo is an acquired taste.

The main story is now around 1000 or so pages with a few hundred pages of filler, guest comics and side stories shuffled in. It started out as a commentary about gaming and Japan with sort of a story but then turned into a full blown manga with ninjas, magical girls, rent a zillas, android gaming accessory, idols, school girls, voice actresses, Otaku, the Tokyo Cataclysm Police and finally a little bit of romance, all centered around two Americans stuck in Japan. One, an artist, views everything through the prism of manga, anime and visual novels (aka dating sims). The other, a gamer and tech wiz, views everything through the prism of video games. There are at least a dozen or so of other characters, some primary, some reoccurring.

Readers are lucky if the author is able to crank out 100 pages of main story a year so it becomes a very slow read once you catch up.

Move into space.

The network lag is from a 100,000 mile round trip off of a satellite (50,000 miles each way). That'll add 500-600ms to the ping right there. No amount of system upgrading is going to fix that.

You press the button labeled Forum Output. A window will pop up with a little animation of some Spore critter. Eventually it will go away and you will get a popup that says the report is in the Windows' clipboard and all you need to to is paste (Ctrl-V) it into your post.

HiJackThis will actually create a file that you can copy and paste from.

On the other hand by affecting the to hit of the critter it is like granting defense to everyone on your team for that critter and the defense is typeless. It's because of this that To Hit debuffs are powerful and therefore, to balance them, resistible.

Well I can understand a bit about the OP's POV. The way some people go on and on about "can my computer run ultra mode?" it can lead to the belief that after Issue 17 a whole lot of people will be left behind. It's just prettier graphics. A few extra settings on the advance page. Another setting on the shader option.

Go play the game with all the pretty turned down right now. Does the game play any differently? No. Uglier or older looking? Yes. Ultra mode is all about upping the engine so if you have the horsepower, you can make the game better looking. That's it.

Now for the rest of Issue 17, we really don't know a lot. We know the GR powersets will be available to those who pre-order GR. The Epics unlock at 20 and we'll be getting other "stuff" (AE changes, emotes, QoL fixes, UI changes).

So yes, if you exclude Ultra Mode graphics update and the new powersets from GR, issue 17 does seem to be a bit light in content compared to other issues. But still it's FREE!! (argue among yourselves about "free" upgrades in a subscription based game, I know somebody is going to).

Grab CoHHelper and post it's report. It'll give us an idea about hardware and drivers and game settings.

A report from HijackThis will tell us what shovel ware may be running on the system (since it's a new store bought PC).

To bad about his $1000 limit, the $1050 Dell at Best Buy from the other thread is quite the powerhouse in comparison.

The $600 rig? Okay.

Short form, the Dell will stomp it into the dirt.

Long form, the CPU is 30-40% faster unless the app is suited for a lot of cores, then it can be 2-3x faster. That's what happens when you go from two to four/eight cores. Between that and double the memory, multitasking lots of apps should be smooth like butter. Graphics wise the HD 5770 is about 20% faster than the GTS 250, nearly the same performance as a GTX 260 (Ultra Mode at medium settings according to Posi).

Compared to the $1200 rig. The CPU is not that much faster, less than 10% unless the apps like lots of cores, then 20-30% faster. With only four cores, no hyperthreading and half the memory of the Dell, multitasking won't be as smooth. The graphics in the Dell is about a third slower but that's understandable, the HD 5850 in the $1200 rig is nearly the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market.

My remarks about some of the advantages in my $1200 rig, like faster memory, a more powerful PSU or that the Dell would have something akin to a stock heatsink/fan only makes a difference in overclocking the system, which was something I kept in mind when picking parts for it.