Father Xmas

Call Lighthouse or Ex to resticky it.

It comes in bunches. Six or so zones at a time about every two hours on Virtue. Was on from 10p-1a EDT, saw two bunches.

Was on Virtue myself for several hours this evening (8-11 PM EDT). Didn't see any Zombie uprisings until around 10:30 when they popped up in at least a half a dozen zones at once. Felt like someone kicked the servers manually to trigger it.

At least I had a fun time ToTing in IP without much Zombie interference.

Let me preface this with during events like this, or the Rikti zone invasions, I normally solo or at most team or be near at most, two other players. This is due to being on dial-up. It also means that I will most likely never get the boss or uber badge due to the lack of sympathetic teammates that would allow to fight alone nearby while the rest of the team can fight at a rally point.

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3) I'm a bit disappointed that this event is so completely like the Rikti Zone Invasions. I get that it's far easier to copy and paste code, especially for an event that only happens once a year, but can't something be done to make it seem like it's not a compete rip off of the Rikti Zone Invasions? Ok, I realize that suggestion is vague and unhelpful, but I can't think of a good way to accomplish that. I'm certain that someone who is far more creative than I am will suggest something.

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During the Ritki zone invasions I've never, with any level character, felt overwhelmed while soloing. Zombies however just keep popping up like weeds one after another even if there are no other players within sight. Combined that with their level 30 number of hit points and it easily overwhelms a level 20th character. Just like a zombie apocalypse should.

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4) Zombie Appocalypse doesn't really seem that appocalyptic. Me and a friend were in a back alley fighting zombies and they were coming at us two or three at a time. Not very appocalyptic. My understanding is that large teams (or a large ratio of players to defeated enemies) cause LTs and Bosses to be summoned. Perhaps a system can be set up where if the team doesn't qualify for LTs or Bosses to show then more minion level zombies will start showing up. After all, being overwhelmed by hordes of zombies is what a zombie appocalypse is really all about. And this way there really would be "Safety in Numbers."

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Like I stated above, they just keep coming. Last night in Perez I found the right hovering height where I couldn't be hit by them while I could blast them. I had over a dozen zombies looking for ways to get into range to spit me out of the sky. Half Lieutenants. BTW whatever height that was also caused zombies to materialize above me and fall to the ground. Nice "rain of zombies" effect.

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5) People outside during a Rikti Zone Invasion are safe if they stand underneath something. No such luck for the Zombie Appocalypse. I'd like to suggest that people standing on rooftops be safe and not targeted by the zombie invasion.

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I know that the original Rikti invasion caused massive loss of life but so much that the dead were used in building materials in skyscrapers and elevated road beds? That or the mob also controls the building material market in Paragon City.

And a problem/question that I have. Sometimes when fighting a zombie it despawns even though I had been doing damage to it. I don't get credit for a kill or the XP from it. Most of the time they had been impaired ether with a hold or confused.

Only one change in my $1200 build.

First let me point out that a large number of items on this wishlist are currently on "sale" at NewEgg. Since I don't take these sale discounts into consideration or rebates for that matter, I only had around $35 to apply toward upgrading something performance related.

So I begrudgingly upgraded the CPU from a 3.00GHz E8400 to an 3.16GHz E8500 for $20. Begrudgingly because it's only a 5+% theoretical improvement for an 11+% increase in cost.

End of Sept 2008 $600 Build.

Beware, for some reason NewEgg wishlists seem to be influx with older selections suddenly reappearing. If something looks wrong, like an AMD processor with an Intel motherboard, that's the reason. I had to redelete a number of parts that suddenly reappeared again on both wishlists. I'll try to keep an eye on these wishlists to clear up any "ghost of parts past" from reappearing.

The major changes since August's configuration is the upgrade from the Intel E2220 (2.4GHz, 1MB cache, 800MHz FSB) CPU to the new E5200 (2.5GHz, 2MB cache, 800MHz FSB). The combination of twice the cache, 100MHz speed increase and the improved Wolfdale core shows an 11% improvement in CPU benchmarks over the E2220. And it's $5 cheaper. Be on the lookout for the E5300 in October which is 2.6GHz and will assume the same price point as the E5200 does today.

For the AMD crowd I haven't forgotten about you. Besides using the Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard I highlighted last month, I recommend the new, lower power Athlon X2 6000+ instead of the Athlon X2 5600+ from last month. A historical note, it was around 18 months ago that this class of Athlon X2 was over $430. Thank you Intel for the competition to drive down CPU pricing.

On the video card side of things the "new" 9800GT (really a 8800GT with a name change) is now within price range of the $600 build bumping off last months 9600GT. It was only 11 months ago that the 8800GT came out at twice the current price. Thank you AMD finally for the competition to drive down video card prices.

Not as many changes in the $1200 build.

Once again with the loss of my preferred choice of case, I've substituted the Cooler Master 690 case. This case comes with 3, 120mm fans already and if that isn't enough, there are plenty of mount points for additional 120mm fans, including two on the top, a second one in the side panel and one on the bottom of the case. There is even a mount point for a smaller fan to blow on the underside of the MB about where the CPU would be located.

I'm not sure but I believe I've upgraded the PSU as well from a Seasonic 550 watt to the Corsair 650 watt which has two, 6+2 PCIe power connectors if you decide on one of the monster video cards in the future.

On the graphics front, the introduction of the nVidia new 200 series and AMDs surprising 4xxx series have sparked a price war that drove the price of what was the top end single GPU video cards of 6 months ago down to a really affordable price. The "new" 9800GTX+ squeezes a bit more performance out of the G92 GPU than my previous pick.

Also I went from a P35 to the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R, P45 based motherboard which should last until Intel obsoletes the Core 2 line of CPUs. The latest rev of the PCIe bus doesn't hurt either.

I've also changed the hard drive from the Seagate single platter 250GB to the Western Digital two platter 640GB drive which is even faster.

I again updated the DVD burner from the Samsung 20x to 22x.

After all the various price drops we've seen in the past few months, nominally caused by the release of bigger and faster on the market, I've tweaked my $600 build.

The major changes are:

Since the previous Cooler Master case is no longer offered at NewEgg, I'm now using the Antec NSK6580 which incorporates the Antec Earthwatts 430 power supply I had previously picked. I also tossed in the 2 optional 92mm, 3 speed fans for the front of the case. At the lowest speed setting they will still provide intake air across the hard drive at very little noise.

I also upgraded from a 384MB 9600GSO to a 512MB 9600GT which will provide a nice little speed boost.

The biggest change is going from an AMD CPU and motherboard to an Intel Core2 family 2.4Ghz E2220 CPU and a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L motherboard. I really would loved to have gone with an E7200 for a CPU but I simply couldn't find any way to work it in with my pricing rules. The primary reason for the switch, there is a lot more upwards room for CPU improvement with Intel than AMD.

However if you are still a diehard AMD user, you can swap the CPU and motherboard to a 2.8GHz Athlon X2 and the Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard for nearly the same price and performance.

Also if I believe I've upped the speed of the DVD burner to a Samsung 22x from a 20x. Simply the same drive ratcheted up in speed.

Sadly there is part of me that believes some teacher or parent would consider that shirt threatening, as if she could shoot fire out of her hands, note her aggressive posture and the cowering person (yes I know he's a bad guy but mundanes don't).

Then you will get called in for a Parent/Teacher conference and told that fantasy escapism for someone so young isn't healthy for a child of her age.

Still a great shirt since we don't have official T-shirts we can order online in the US.

It doesn't look like you use the inkjet transfer paper, at least the kind I have. Curious what you used.

Video Card
This is probably the most asked about topic for upgrading on the Tech board. First correcting a misconception. The power supply requirement for a video card, which is normally listed as X watts and Y amps at 12 volts. The Y amps isn't just for the video card, it's for the whole system. And the reason for the X watts, most people don't know how many watts at 12 volts is available from their PSU but the system's manual or website may tell them how many total watts it has. Both of these values are on the high side to reduce support calls about adding a video card and now their system won't boot.

Also reviews of video cards usually have a chart showing you how much power under load a graphics card uses. Be aware that 95%+ of these charts are the AC power drawn from the wall socket for most of the components found in the system box. Actual amount of total DC power the test system used depends on the efficiency of the power supply, assume a high value like 85% to get an idea of the power usage of the video card along with the memory, motherboard, CPU and hard drive. Power supplies are rated in DC watts, not AC watts.

Now onto the meat, which card is better and by how much, I prefer to use real benchmarks instead of something like 3DMark. Reviews with the most games, the most resolutions, the most AA/AF settings tested and the most number of video cards tested side by side matter to me most. The Tech Report tends to have good multi card reviews. And the charts, updated about once a year, at Tom's Hardware is a good resource as well. Recently I found that the card reviews at TechPowerUP include a lot of cards, games, settings and resolutions in their charts. These include lower end and older cards that you rarely see reviewed at all. Earlier reviews, before they switched test platforms had many more of these older and/or lower end cards.

Also remember that these benchmarks are usually run with all the graphic options to 11 so less powerful cards with less memory suffer greatly in these tests. Lowering the settings even by a bit will make these low end cards perform much better than these charts usually indicate. Which brings us to another misconception. That more video memory means faster performance. It's not that having more memory makes a game faster, it's not enough memory for the game settings and resolution, that makes a game slower. Beware video cards that come with more memory than the standard card. Check very closely at the speed of the memory. It's notorious with the 8600GT that a number of inexpensive 512MB 8600GTs use slower (over 40% slower) DDR2 memory instead of faster GDDR3. This actually makes the card slower even on games and settings that more memory normally makes a difference.

Also memory speed and bandwidth is important but it doesn't trump raw GPU performance. Back a few years ago, nVidia had the 6800XT. It had the same memory width and speed of a standard 6800 but half of the processing power. A 6600GT which had half of the memory width but faster memory and a more powerful GPU easily beat the 6800XT on benchmarks but that didn't prevent lots of people from buying it anyways simply because it was a 256-bit card. Excess bandwidth doesn't get you anything, it's not having enough that will hurt you.

If you are upgrading your graphics, the two things you should figure out before buying is what video card slot your motherboard has; PCI, AGP or PCIe (or PCI Express). Each are unique. The other thing you should figure out is if the new card you are looking at is truly an upgrade. The best source for this info is Tom's Hardware's Best Graphics Card for the Money: <Current Month> article. The last page is a two column chart, sorted by relative performance with just about every graphics card of the last 10 years from nVidia and AMD/ATI into similar performance "bins". Find your current card's GPU, find the one you are thinking about switching to and compare. Keeps you from swapping that 6800GT for a 7600GS and complain that your performance dropped big time. The rest of the article details their opinion of what to buy for what video card slot PCIe or AGP for X amount of dollars.

In my build I chose the 8800GS (soon to be called the 9600GSO) because is seriously out performs an 8600GTS for only a few dollars more. The next step up from it is the 9600GT which was too expensive for the low cost system. The high end system uses an 512MB 8800GTS. A number of reviews show that the 1GB video cards aren't needed, yet, and cost more, use more power and generate more heat.

Other Bits - Sound Card
Nearly extinct nowadays, because of "acceptable" sound quality from integrated audio on the motherboard, the market is composed of three distinct segments. First is the cheap $20-40 sound card market. These are based on the same chips that are on the motherboard. They may provide you with a little higher quality sound by getting away from some of the electrical noise on the motherboard. The $200 audiophile sound card. Much larger than the cheap sound cards with many more filtering stages to produce a cleaner sound at the output. Then there's Creatives X-Fi line gamer line. Starting around $100 at NewEgg, it contains additional processing power to offload some of the work from the CPU as well as having a better analog back end for improved sound quality. However with the advent of fast multiple core CPUs and the little work required to manage sound, the performance boost is getting less and less all the time. Also the change in the Vista Direct Sound portion of Direct X now requires Creative to do an end run around Vista to allow older games access to the same effects.

I included a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer card because I could and it didn't seem right without one.

Other Bits - CPU Cooler
CPU Coolers - Nearly all retail CPUs come with a combo fan/heatsink to bleed away the 40-60-125 watts of heat a dual or quad core can generate when under load. They do their job, just not as well as they could. And when you start to overclock your CPU, they can't handle to work at all. So the replacement CPU cooler market is born.

It comes in two major flavors, liquid and air cooled. Now I don't like liquid cooling. You have pumps and tubing and external radiators and then you have the liquid itself. Great for car engines, not elegant enough for my taste.

Air cooling it is. These coolers come in two basic designs. The "awesome blossom" flower style with the fan blowing at the motherboard or a tower design that use heat pipes, a non-mechanical heat conveyor that's faster than just a chunk of metal (brought to us by the space program), to draw the heat away from the CPU to an array of multiple, sharp as razors, thin blades of metal that all together has the surface area of a sheet of newsprint. The heat leaves the pipe going into these blades which are then air cooled with usually a large fan. The fan is mounted at 90 degrees to the motherboard, normally pointing at exhaust fan at the rear of the case. These tower designs generally work better than the flower design in keeping the CPU cooler, eliminating one of the side effects of overclocking.

There are two sites that have nice reviews of the various 3rd party coolers that I look at, X-bit Labs and AnandTech.

I included the Freezer 7 Pro in the more expensive build. Since I decided someone will likely overclock their Core2Duo processor, the Freezer 7 Pro does reasonably well at handling this extra heat for not a lot of money.

Other Bits - Operating System
Well in a few months it will be impossible to get Windows XP Pro, which is my preferred OS, even though it's only 32-bit. However with the price of DDR2 memory where it is and with a motherboard that can support more than 4GB, switching over to a 64-bit OS seems inevitable. If you are going to get Vista get at the minimum Vista Home Premium 64-bit with SP1. Sure you could go nuts and get the Ultimate edition, even one with Bill G's autograph if you want Texas Hold-em that bad. And a backup utility. And drive encryption. Hopefully your printer has a 64-bit driver by now.

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Well that's it. Hopefully people will find it useful. I'm sure that people with strong opinions that are different than mine about the Duo or Quad question as well as my dislike for RAID 0 and SLi/Crossfire will chime in. I'm sure that when the 9900GTX comes out next month and the future price cuts on CPUs as well as newer, faster models will make this guide seem quaint.

Just research the parts before buying, ask up at the tech forum if you have questions. Check the sites I've linked throughout this guide for reviews on the new technologies as they arrive.

Also remember, it was less than 6 months ago that the 8800GT came out, now it's about $100 cheaper. Less than two years ago the original 2.93GHz Core2Duo was priced at over $900 (OK it had an unlocked multiplier, like overclockers needed it), now a 2nd generation Core2Duo with more cache at 3.0GHz is around $200. My point, today's cutting edge is tomorrow's bargain. We are at a price/performance point today that was undreamed of only a year ago. What will it be like in another year?

TTFN

CPU
Well we all know that at this time, May 2008, that the Intel Core2Duo/Quad is king of the CPU world. AMD does have CPUs that exceed at the low end in price/performance, which Intel competes in by disabling a large portion of the L2 cache of the Core2 (from 6 or 4MB down to 1MB), the fastest Intel Core2 is much faster than AMD's fastest Athlon X2 or Phenom. For $200 you can get a 3.0GHz Core2Duo that will outperform the fastest AMD CPU by 30-40%. However in the $75 price range, AMD reigns King. It also currently has the most affordable quad core on the market today.

I use both The Tech Report, X-bit Labs and Tom's Hardware when comparing relative performance for price.

As for the question of which is better, fast dual core or slower quad core for the same price? Unless you run a lot of CPU intensive applications at the same time or have applications that can take advantage of more than two cores, I would say choose the faster dual core. If you run multiple copies of this game for instance or do a lot of video compression, then maybe you would be better off with a slower quad core.

For my two builds I use two very different processors. The 2.3GHz AMD Athlon X2 4400+ is a nice inexpensive CPU. In games it beats out Intel's solution at that price point in performance. The other build uses the 3.0GHz Intel E8400 Core2Duo it's about twice as fast as the 4400+ but costs nearly 3 times as much.

Memory
DDR2 Vs DDR3. Currently DDR3 doesn't provide enough of a benefit when price is taken into consideration. Fast DDR3 is currently about twice as expensive fast DDR2 and gives only a 1-2% improvement in performance in memory intensive apps like games. Some games like DDR3 more than others but 1-2% is average.

Again the usual suspects are gathered as resources. X-bit Labs, AnandTech and Tom's Hardware.

I use 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-800, CAS 5 memory in the less expensive system and 4GB of DDR2-800, CAS 4 memory in the Intel system. Without a 64-bit operating system coupled with a motherboard that recognizes more than 4GB, you won't see all 4GB, some will be lost to system resources occupying the same space.

Motherboard
Motherboard selection boils down to a few key items. What CPU are you planning to use? What kind of memory are you planning to use? Should it support PCIe 2.0 or not? How many video card slots you are planning to use? If the answer to the last question is at least two then you have a few more. AMD/ATI or nVidia? If you are planning to run a pair or more of video cards in Crossfire or SLi modes be aware that this is very much motherboard specific and must be chosen in advance.

Motherboards built around AMD or Intel chipsets are Crossfire only. Motherboards built around nVidia chipsets are SLi only. Then comes the question how many PCIe channels are available to each video card if I install a 2nd card. Some chip sets will only allow each video card to use 1/2 the number of channels each that a single video card would use. On some Intel motherboards, the 1st video card slot keeps 16 or the 2nd only has 4. Crossfire can handle this but the combined performance suffers.

Me, I think SLi is the greatest marketing gimmick since hyperthreading or the Pentium 4. Unless you know for sure that your game's framerate is being limited by your video card's performance, and there isn't a faster card available, your CPU isn't breaking a sweat and you are simply uncompromising in your resolution and graphic settings, then SLi/Crossfire is the way to go. But if you plan on building a system with a pair of low end video cards, stop right there. In a lot of cases you can get a single higher end card for around the cost of that pair of low end cards and get better performance. It also simplifies the power supply, reduce heat and noise and the problem of if SLi/Crossfire doesn't work well with that game, you are stuck with a much inferior low end video card. SLi/Crossfire motherboards are usually more expensive since they are being sold to people who generally looking to dump a huge sum of money for video cards and a high resolution monitor.

Also if you are considering to buy a Crossfire/SLi platform as a hedge, planning on adding the 2nd card later, beware, the shelf life of a particular model video card is short. 6 to 12 months usually. The longer you wait the more difficult it'll be to find a duplicate for the card you have. Also during this time, the price of higher end cards plummet which makes simply upgrading your single card an attractive alternative.

If you haven't guessed yet, yes once again we go to our usual suspects for information. X-bit Labs, AnandTech, The Tech Report and Tom's Hardware. The chip set reviews allow you to get an idea what each chipset brings to a motherboard while the multi-motherboard reviews with the same chipset shows you the subtle differences in performance.

Both Asus and Gigabyte make excellent motherboards. The motherboard on the AMD system uses the latest AMD 790G chipset with their latest south bridge chipset as well. The motherboard supports the AMD Phenom quad core. The motherboard on the Intel system is based on the older Intel P35 chipset. Both motherboards support more than 4GB of memory and have only one PCIex16 video card slot.

Keyboard, mouse and speakers
This is the easy bit. As I stated before, I believe that gamers have strong personal preferences to their input devices so I simply don't recommend them. Also since I don't know the amount of room someone has for their sound setup, a full 7.1 or a simple 2.1 (I do believe a subwoofer is a must) and that I don't necessarily appreciate the subtle tonal differences of different speakers. I defer this choice to the user or people better informed and have better ears than I.

Monitor
I didn't select a monitor again for the reason of different strokes for different blah, blah, blah. Plus most people plan on keeping their current monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers and are simply looking to swap out the system box.

If I was choosing for myself. Well I'm a simple man. Must be widescreen. Must be a real 16.7 million color display, no dithering, with a reasonably fast update time (but monitor makers have gamed the system here, more on that later). Since LCD panels display best at their native resolution, it's important to match this resolution to the performance of your video card. Hooking a 1920x1200 monitor to a low performing video card simply results in regret and remorse. Sort of like getting expensive speakers but a crappy amp.

A place where I have found informative reviews is up at X-bit Labs. They don't review every monitor out there, no one really can, but they do extensive tests on update times and their results show how the numbers that monitor manufacturers report are cherry picked. Also be aware that quality from the same manufacturer can vary widely across models. Also it's best to go to a local store and actually take a gander at the model in real life before you simply order it online, sight unseen.

Case
I have a set of selection criteria for cases. 2, 120mm fans, one front, one rear. Good air circulation is a must. Next question is what ports do I want access to up front. I think USB as well as audio is a must. IEEE 1394a and eSATA is optional depending on your choice of external drives or video cameras. Tool-free is entirely optional in my book. I don't plan on opening the case without my trusty computer tool kit, and I don't plan on opening the case once the system is up and running, for at least 18 months or unless I smell smoke.

The case I picked for my two builds (note a number of parts are identical between the two builds) is simple, clean and straightforward.

Power Supply
This is the one part that is overlooked buy most first time builders. They either settle with whatever came with their case, which has a good chance of being underpowered at the important +12 voltage, or they get some kilowatt monster and use only 1/3 of the power available, or they get the "pretty" one. Chrome or gloss finished in a preferred color, even transparent with UV wrapped cabling with an LED lit fan, all features that have nothing to do with selecting a good power supply.

The two tools I use to pick a power supply is the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite to estimate the power requirements of the build, and then my eyes as I check out detailed information found on the sticker on it or published at it's manufacturers website. With the calculator (I use 30% for capacitor aging), I take it's suggestion and increase it by 35-50%. That gets me in the ballpark. Then I check out the power supplies in that range. Expect to pay $0.20+ a watt for a good quality PSU. I also go with an 80 Plus certified one. The more efficient the power supply, the less heat it generates and needs to be removed from the case. Also look to see if it meets ATX12V V2.2 or higher and/or EPS12V specifications.

Lastly check to see how many watts are available at +12 volts across all rails. Remember the original wattage that the calculator suggested. Add 25% to that and you should have that many +12 volt watts available. Why? Because the CPU and video card is powered almost exclusively by +12 volts. New PSUs will list this either as watts or amps (watts at 12 volts = amps at 12 volts x 12). This is should be listed either at the manufacturers website or on the sticker on the PSU, which you should be able to look at on NewEgg if you view the photo gallery for that unit. Simply adding the amps of all of the +12 volt rails isn't a good enough estimate.

There are a few good sites that have good reviews of power supplies. First is SilentPCReview then X-bit Labs again and lastly Anandtech. Each site tests them through a whole range of loads while measuring voltage, ripple, efficiency and noise. Avoid reviews that are nothing more than installing it in a system and seeing if it'll run.

The power supplies I chose for my two builds are tuned for those system. The 430 Watt has enough power to allow you to upgrade the video card to a 8800GT, add more memory and another drive, even upgrade the CPU a bit. The 650 watt power supply in the 2nd build had enough power to upgrade to the current top end CPU and GPU and overclock both and still only use only 80%.

Optical Drive
Simple. SATA interface, whatever the current burn speed for DVD-R/DVD+R is for this generation. In May 2008, that's 20x. If you are interested in extensive testing and review, CDFreaks is the site to go to. Some people like more than one optical drive in their system for disk to disk copying or to avoid wearing out the burner with extensive use. Others may want a Blu-Ray reader/DVD burner.

For my builds, one optical drive is plenty and by keeping the number of parts the same between the two builds, it highlights where the differences are and how much those differences cost. My choice of Samsung over Lite-on is simply noise. Samsung is reported to be a lot quieter.

Hard Drive
My two parts lists have the same "puny" 250GB hard drive. It may be small by today's standards but it's quick. There are four important numbers that determine hard drive performance. Random seek time, how much time on average it takes to move the heads over the area where the data is stored, lower is better. Rotational speed, this affects how much additional delay on average before the data desired passes under the head as well as the time it takes for the entire block of data to pass under the head, faster is better. Buffer size, the more you have, the more responsive the drive is from the POV of the operating system. Lastly, areal density. How much data per square inch can fit on a platter. A higher areal density means more data passes under the read/write head in the same amount of time. It goes hand in hand in determining the maximum rate of data on and off the hard drive.

That 250GB Seagate hard drive uses a single platter to hold 250GB. This allows the drive to use less power to spin it (less weight) and the increased areal density means it's data rate is much higher than other 7200RPM drives. You can get bigger drives at the same price but they won't be as fast. A good place for hard drive reviews are The Tech Report, Anandtech and Tom's Hardware (don't forget to look at their hard drive charts as well). If you need more space just add another drive.

I would also like to take a bit of time to give you my take on RAID 0 drive arrays, which can double the performance of your rig's storage. It comes at a terrible price for in practical tests, not a lot of benefit. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. Unfortunately a RAID 0 array in not redundant at all. If you have two independent hard drives. One will have the OS system on it the other doesn't. If a drive fails you have a 50/50 chance that you can still boot. In a RAID 0 array, you have a 100% chance that you can't boot if one drive fails. Some people can accept to 10 seconds of better level load performance in their favorite FPS shooter for the cost of halving the mean time between failures of the drive array. Needless to say, I'm not one of these people. For the extra, what 10 minutes a day at most of time saving you are cutting years off of your drive subsystem before a failure occurs. I hope you do backups.

Hi, if you haven't been over to the Technical Issues and Bugs forum I'm one of the many players who post there regularly. A number of these have to do with part selection for upgrades or for a completely new rig. This guide is to provide some insight as to my methods as well as the resources I use in designing a rig.

There are a number of basic parts that all computers have and need to run. They are, in no particular order.

- Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers
- Monitor
- Case
- Power Supply
- Optical drive(s)
- Hard drive(s)
- CPU
- Memory
- Motherboard
- Video Card(s)
- Sound Card
- CPU cooler
- Operating System

Now the primary tool I use to look for a particular part is the Advance or Power Search tools at NewEgg. It allows my to weed away the parts that don't meet my rather particular requirements to a much smaller list. The Advance Search allows you to thin down the selection, one qualification at a time. Take graphic cards for example. Select Chipset Manufacturer to nVidia, poof, all the non nVidia based cards vanish. Choose 256-bit Memory Interface, poof, all that's left are cards with 256-bit Memory Interface. However if you say are interested in cards with at least a 256-bit Memory Interface, it's best to use the Power Search tool as you can select several entries in each filter. You don't have to buy through NewEgg. Buy through whomever, but I find NewEgg's search tools to be 2nd to none.

A bit about my philosophy about gaming rigs. First let me tell you a bit about myself so you have an idea where I'm coming from. I'm a Computer and Systems Engineer by degree, Software Engineer by trade (firmware and application). I'm in my mid 40s. I prefer elegant, simple solutions. Therefore I design systems that are relatively bling free, whose individual parts do their job well, for a good price, with minimal complexity. I design systems that when assembled and confirmed that they are in good working order are stuffed under a desk until something breaks. They are not pieces of modern art. They are not the high tech equivalent of a hood-less hot-rod at a cruising event. Mine are more like the used family wagon that hides the fact that it could easily take 85% of the cars at those events and do it for less money by simply concentrating on what is important and cost effective.

Before I go onto how I choose each part, let my link to my two part lists I have up on NewEgg. I keep these up to date at least once a month, more if there are major price shifts, old components going obsolete or newer components becoming available. These part lists include just the Case and everything that goes in it. No Keyboard or Mouse, users tend to have specific preferences, no speakers, again depends if the user has the space for a 7.1 setup or a simple 2.1, no Monitor for reasons I'll go into later and no OS due, well, religious differences among people plus the fact that the "Microsoft Tax" can be a substantial % of the cost to any low price system. Also I don't go over my price point and I don't take into account any rebates or sales. I also leave about a 5% pad for upward fluctuations in the price.

My $600 rig, as of 5/23/08, is based on a 2.3GHz AMD Athlon X2 4400+ coupled with a 384MB 8800GS video card and 2GB of DDR2-800, CAS 5 memory. It uses an Antec 430 Watt Earthwatts power supply that can put out 30 amps (360 watts) at 12 volts.

My $1200 rig, as of 5/23/08, is based on the 3.0GHz Intel E8400 Core2Duo with a factory overclocked 512MB 8800GTS and 4GB of DDR2-800, CAS 4 memory. It also includes a sound card and a 3rd party CPU cooler. The memory and 3rd party CPU cooler were selected for those who are looking to overclock the CPU a bit or simply prefer to run a cooler machine. It uses a 650 Watt Corsair power supply that can put out 52 amps (624 watts) at 12 volts. Enough power to upgrade to and overclock a QX9650 with a 9800GX2.

Now on to part picking.

Well he's following a script then and the script says your graphic drivers are out of date.

Checking with your posts in the mapserve thread, you may be experiencing a similar set of symptoms but a different cause entirely.

Start a new thread and post your DxDiag and HiJack This reports asking the forum gurus to take a look to see if they/we see anything glaringly wrong. Expect things like "update your drivers" and the occasional troll dissing your rig. There may be something else blocking up your connection.

Fear not, 90%+ of those e-mail's are automatically generated. You just need to get by the first few layers of support. However in a case of a Internet blackhole, they need to compile enough data to bludgeon those in charge of that hop to fix the problem.

Heck, I keep getting survey requests for how to rate my experience of support's response to my spammer petition. However since the policy is not to report back to the requester about such petitions, there is nothing to rate for the survey.

However if I submit a petition for being stuck and a GM comes and helps me, do I get a survey request then? Of course not.

The net tool does a number of things. However the largest portion of the test is getting the traceroutes to the various NCSoft servers.

The IP addresses to those servers are:

West Coast Servers
216.107.240.3

East Coast Servers
216.107.248.3

Login Server
216.107.249.131
206.127.144.229

You can do a Traceroute yourself or use a tool like PingPlotter.

ParagonWiki

ParagonWiki: Supergroup

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with the first aid station, although it removes the 'hook' for my EMT character, an emp/elec that is part of a search-rescue battallion attached to the Paragon Fire Dept. Many hours have I spent in the Hollows, waiting for the call for rez/evac. Now players can do that themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]
You did that too? My tank spent a good deal of time starting in his 20s hanging around the Hollows healing and rez fallen heroes (usually blasters) who insist on "fighting a desperate battle against incredible odds". Got the Medic badge this way.

Yea Sister Frost! and her dad. Great interview.

[ QUOTE ]
What I want is a "Defeat Frostfire" badge for grinding through a minimum number of Frostfire missions.

[/ QUOTE ]
Call it Ice Capades.

ROFL.

And I don't post that lightly. Good job. Where's BillZ?

Lose Frostfire and the Trial, never happen. They'll never throw away story arcs, not since we now can do them in flashback.

The Hollows was the prototype for self contained mission zones that directly lead to the zone designs of CoV. It was also considered an alternate and more challenging path than the KR/Steel/Skyway contacts to get to the mid teens back before the difficulty slider and auto EB/AV scaling.

As for poor baby newbies, listen buster I did the Hollows back in the days were debt was level 5, full debt in missions and the mobs near the Atlas gate were a lot worse. I ran back to that gate so many times I lost count. I simply believe that the data mining has shown a downturn in the use of that zone, possibly because if you get "stuck" there you miss out on the temp travel powers and lets face it, with temp travel powers that zone is so much friendlier to the low levels. I remember the first winter event when everybody got jingle jet backs, the skies over the hollows were full of players jetting to and fro and the Hollows was "fun".

Since in all likelihood players will still have to exit the zone to train and sell the local rez point is only useful for the "Darwin Award" style players or the ones who simply blindly or unluckily leapt over the wrong fence or turned down the wrong ally. Yes those players do get a break but so do teams who lose a member mid mission and have to wait 5 minutes for them to cross Atlas and rezone, that time will be reduced (of course your teams may simply ignore the down teammate and continue to play on, which I consider rude).

Boomtown never ever had the traffic that the Hollows had at one time. Other than the security chief mission and a few missions that send you into that zone, people simply don't go in there to play. Someday it'll get the Faultline treatment and be an interesting place to go but if nothing else it's a reminder of the devastation of the original Rikti invasion.

Greetings and felicitations Blue Steel and Mynx.

Please keep your arms, legs and tails within the forum while its in motion.

Mind the gap.

and Merry Ho-hos

mmmm Ho-Hos

Except that's the whole purpose of zone detectives and the concept behind zones like the Hollows, contacts with missions in the same zone.

The addition of a detective and swat truck for transport to the safeguard will allow those players going to the hollows who don't know better a way to at least know about the safeguard rewards and a way to get them. So we have

Hollows 5-15
Faultline 15-25
Croatoa 25-35
RWZ 35-50

Four zones, each with four story arcs, three with detectives, all (soon) with hospitals. A nice streamline path from 5 to 50.

It's been stated, relayed by a red name from War Witch, that the Hollows isn't getting the full Faultline treatment. An added vehicle with rez tubes. A detective contact with Safeguard entry point. More variety of enemy groups. Looks as if you still need to zone to sell and level. After all, it's still a hazard zone.

Don't forget that the Hollows was meant to be an alternate and harder path to take instead of Kings Row and first half of Steel and Skyway. The problem now is that if you ignore Kings Row, you most likely not be getting the Raptor or Zero-Gee Packs which would be so handy for the Hollows. These changes fix those problems.