Father Xmas

And as I pointed out earlier, his system has two USB 2.0 ports.

Oops, I blame old age. Actually I was trying to remember a "short" issue before a major (as in BIG feature) issue so I thought back to MA and not power customization.

You are right, I meant Issue 15, not 13.

I'm using Firefox and I simply used Adblock Plus to block it. Of course I was motivated to do it because I'm on dial-up.

Well at least somewhat out of date with the current fashion, whenever he is.

I would guess one more issue or two issues with the 2nd being lightweight like Issue 5 and 13 before the sync issue with GR.

Warning, poorly constructed analogies and technical explanations ahead.

First a program can be constructed out of one or more subprograms called threads. Each thread can do their specific thing with ideally little or no interaction with other threads. Think of jugglers that every so often may pass a ball between each other.

Now today's computers often have one or more cores, some real, some only logical (code word Hyperthreading, older Pentium 4s also had HT logical cores). You can think of these cores as check out lines at your market and customers as threads. If you don't have a lot of lines (cores) open but a lot of customers (threads), it will take longer on average for a customer to check out than if you have a lot of lines open and few customers.

The operating system, Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, OS X, assigns threads waiting to run to cores, trying to limit the number of threads waiting to run on a core. Each thread can only run for a limited time and then the OS will allow another thread a turn to run and the current thread goes to the end of the line. It should be pointed out that the OS itself is composed of dozens if not hundreds of threads themselves. Fortunately most are waiting for specific things to occur before it gets in line for time on a core.

CoH/V has only two core intensive tasks. This is why the program itself doesn't really use more than two cores.

The Intel i7-8xx and i7-9xx CPUs have four cores/eight logical cores. Each core runs at the stated speed but each core can also be assigned two threads at a time. But doesn't this make each thread run half as fast you ask? Well yes and no. Due to the complexity of modern CPUs, often each core isn't being used to it's fullest, there are parts in the core not doing anything at all. However assigning two threads of work allows more of the core to be utilized over the same period of time. Now instead of two threads, each taking one unit of time each to run on a single core (2 times units total), the pair executing on a core that can handle two threads at a time could run both in, lets say, 1.8 time units. Ideally the OS assigns one thread to each idle core before it starts doubling them up.

So to summarize.

A program has one or more threads.

Your system currently has hundreds of threads started. Most run infrequently or quickly, waiting for specific events to occur.

Threads are only allowed so much time running on a core before they have to let another thread a chance to run. If there isn't anyone else, they get another turn.

This game has two threads that would each like to use a lot of time running on a core.

An i7-8xx and i7-9xx have four cores but each core could run two threads at the same time at slightly better than half speed. This should only happen if there are a lot of threads that are waiting for a core to become available.

The i7 and i5 (i5-7xx has four cores but only one thread per core) also have a built in overclocking mode that during times when not a lot of threads are waiting to run, it can shut off cores but overclock the remaining. With few enough threads waiting to run, the overclock can be over 20% on a single core.

My 50, my first and only after five years, still has a half a dozen contacts with available missions, a ton of stuff I missed but can do via Ouroboros, most of the task forces, roaming the shadow shard zone and I'm not even talking about badging or working toward elite loot. And he was leveled before the multiple times of XP smoothing, Patrol XP, reduced debt, etc. I would imagine 50s leveled today would have even more skipped content they could revisit and do "for the first time".

I assume you /bug these as well.

I wouldn't call it whim BillZ.

Items and such are attached to characters. Characters are attached to accounts. For an account wide "bank", something similar to a private SG needs to be attached to each account that all account characters are automatically "enrolled" into and probably accessed via the current Vault system. Of course for items this still means some upper limit on each item type (inspirations, recipe, salvage, enhancement, etc). Of course the problem with this is how much impact it will have on the marketplace as rarer and higher demand items suitable for one AT is now hoarded instead of sold off.

Of course that's only one way of doing it. The other way talked about is transferring via the mail system. Oops, forgot you disabled mail on the receiving character, to bad, mailman stole all your Netflix.

No it's not like the devs have a solution just sitting there ready to go and they choose NOT to give it to us. It's going to be some amount of time invested into creating it. Some amount of thought has to go into it so items stored or transferred don't end up falling through the cracks or duplicated if a server disconnect hits at the wrong moment. Just saying it's nontrivial. Of course all this speculation is moot if the devs decide NOT to change their opinion that twinking characters within the same account is discouraged (because of the current limited ways it can be done today).

If it's the one I'm thinking of, near where one of the troll raves spawn, it's been around for a very long time.

Last I checked it was only 99 of each type of Halloween salvage.

Starman, curious what you thought of Blink, since it was another Doctor light episode like Love and Monsters.

(just great, looking out window and seeing super sized fluffy snow falling)

Vet Rewards are a mixed bag. Sort of like trick-r- treating when you were a kid. Some of the stuff you like, some you don't.

Costume Parts - Some of these I've loved. Nobody can complain (other than not playing long enough) about wings or the trenchcoat. The belly shirts/kilts were generally well liked as well and the samurai armor set was excellent and sadly with the swing to add-on packs, the last full costume set (with multiple options) I would expect seeing (the anime tech armor was OK but one glove, boot, chest and pant item, meh). However items like the various chest symbols, the boxing set and shoulder cape didn't really float many people's boat. These all came with a tailor token.

Respecs - Nice but some people simply don't respec their characters often beyond the freespec every issue.

Pets - Deco pet is cute but pointless, buff pet is fragile (understandable with the mantra that vet rewards shouldn't affect play much).

Base Rewards - If you aren't in a position to edit a base, useless. If you are, it can add flavor.

Prestige/Inherent Powers - some quite useful and some helpful to flesh out your attack chain.

Pre-order rewards - Different sprints from CoH and Unique helmets from CoV. Mixed bag.

Now if you've been paying and playing this game since the game first hit the shelves then the later rewards seem to new players as extremely good. 50% discount always at tailors (except my oldest characters already have a ton of free tailor credits from the various times the devs handed them out for issues). Travel powers at Level 6 (more to do with CO I think and with safeguard/mayhem temp power not as attractive). And now the boost to salvage/recipe/market inventory. The only so-so vet power in the upper range is Reveal which would in theory make the shadow shard a tad more navigable right off the bat.

The thing is not everybody will like every vet reward. Just like you may not like every type of treat you got on Halloween. Some rewards are carrots, encouraging you to keep playing and paying to get them, some are like the lame mini comic book prize in your CrackerJacks instead of a tattoo or little plastic toy, worthless in your mind. But overall they are more of a positive than a negative.

As for the market, I'm guessing the problem has more to do with filtering and then sorting all the items and the shear number of items is causing the initial sort to go to disk. The sort isn't allowing the main event loop to run so the client stops talking to the server and eventially the server interprets the lack of communications as a disconnect.

Again a SWAG. However I do see a drop to zero of client to server traffic during these long delays in accessing the market as well as an increase in disk access (which could simply be loading all the item data from pigg files).

I believe the command also flushes any textures that are cached in main memory as well. Similar to what happens if you change the texture quality settings.

It's possible that unlike in the past the memory pools are fragmented enough that wholesale compaction of freespace and release back to the OS is no longer possible. It's a SWAG but I've seen fragmentation of memory pools cause havoc on systems I've worked on.

Happy B-day houtex.

It anything it's foolish thinking that they won't play well together. Yes ATI is part of AMD. However it was Intel's motherboard chipsets that were the 2nd source of Crossfire support ever since Intel's 955X chipset in 2005.

Check the test platforms in the reviews of the ATI 58xx video cards. I would bet most are using overclocked i7-920 or i7-975 as the CPU (because the standard way to test video cards is to use the fastest CPU you can get your hands on so the CPU isn't the bottleneck).

OK, with a P35 you can easily use any current Core 2 Duo or Quad CPU currently available (after flashing to whatever current BIOS is for your motherboard, just so it can auto identify the CPU).

2.4 GHz means you have either a E4600 or E6600 Core 2 Duo. You should be able to easily go to the E8400 with is a 3GHz dual core for $168 at NewEgg. You would actually get better than a 25% improvement in CPU performance due to more L2 cache, the faster FSB and a reworked architecture. I'll SWAG it's more like 35% faster. That may or may not translate into better gaming performance, it depends if a game is currently limited by the CPU or GPU (graphics card).

As for your video card, the 9600GT is a nice card. If you were to upgrade, I would skip the 9800GT (not that much of a performance gain over the 9600GT) and jump to the GTS 250, 512MB of memory if are running a 32-bit OS, otherwise the 1GB would be better (it's like a $20-30 difference in price). Price range lists in the $110-165 at NewEgg ($105-$160 after discounts and rebates) depending on manufacturer, factory overclocking, cooling tech and amount of memory. Actual PC gaming performance gain between a 512MB 9600GT and a 1GB GTS 250 at 1680x1050 is about 40%. Feel free to page back to one of the 19 games this site uses to test to see how they compare. Remember video card benchmarking is usually done with extremely fast CPUs with the quality settings maxed out in each game to accentuate the performance differences.

You can never have to much system memory. However 3 GB is fine for a 32-bit OS with a 512MB video card. A 1GB video card on a 32-bit OS may eat into the 3 GB of memory your system "sees" today. Given a choice between more video memory but less system memory or more system memory and less video memory, I would always choose more system memory.

I remember an endless box of spawned Clockwork Gears following me down several floors.

The curse of not running a character with any AOE damage powers.

The circuitry in older conventional CRTs did use a very specific frequency to drive the electronics, 3.58MHz for NTSC (US standard) and 4.43MHz (UK standard). I could imagine one could design a receiver to look for that frequency leaking out of a set. However most electronics are shielded so they don't interfere with normal radio (TV, cell, etc) communications.

I imagine in the very earliest days the task of locating unlicensed sets would have been easier to do and after a few published cases every year would convince the majority of the public to come clean.

There was discussion a couple of years ago to include computer monitors after the BBC started streaming video on the internet.

When base salvage was removed it was a time when storage racks could hold boatloads of base storage. Now it's limited to 30 and while you can't add beyond 30 items, if they already had say 1500 items it's still happy. Why spend the time to convert to brainstorms and then to i-salvage when you now need many times the storage racks to hold the i-salvage you got from the conversion?

Me, I converted all my base salvage to brainstorms and don't have a reason to convert them into i-salvage as long as I can purchase interested salvage at the market for reasonable prices. I have no pressing need to use them. Sold off my base's racks to avoid rent.

Then there are stories of players who collect obsolete drops just to have one of everything.