Father Xmas

Grrr, I hate it when I load a new page on top of a reply ...

The GTX 670 is a great card if you can swallow the $400 price tag. It's 90-95% the performance of a GTX 680 for 80% of the price, uses 25 watts less power and in your case only uses 10 watts more power than the GTX 460.

As NewChem points out, the GTX 550Ti is inferior to the GTX 460. A original stock clock (675MHz) GTX 460 1GB/256-bit is 20% faster than the 550Ti. A GTX 670 is about 3 times faster than the GTX 550Ti.

Yes you don't have the latest and greatest CPU to feed it and will only have it plugged into a PCIe 2.0 slot (which only costs you under 5% compared to a PCIe 3.0 slot) but the GTX 670 will be a card you can keep whenever you decide to upgrade the motherboard/CPU.

We are running out of Grand Masters, the youngest still alive is Connie Willis and she's 66. The oldest is Jack Vance at 95. Like the Nobels you have to be alive to get it.

On a personal note my favorite novels of his were Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes. But he was a prolific short story writer and nearly all the SF anthologies on my shelves has at least one of his works.

And I did like his TV series, The Ray Bradbury Theater.

RIP Mr. Bradbury, you were one of the greats.

Statesman is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!

Yes, the NCLauncher app uses .NET 2.0.

Well they may be able to cast the "new" Superman and get Reynolds to do GL but no way are they going to get Bales to be Batman again without a dump truck full of cash. One thing that makes the Avengers is everyone but Banner is played buy the same actor from their individual movie. Even the secondary characters are played by the same actors.

If WB casts a bunch of random actors into a JL movie it's going to not feel right.

... Alan Moore power up his giant bearded mecha and set a course to rampage through Warner Brothers Studios in Hollywood.

That would at least be more interesting than a studio doing a series of prequels without the original creator's input or consent.

Didn't the very first Mark 3 take only 5 hours to fabricate at his house. Imagine the facilities in the tower, where I'm guessing this scene is from. Battle damage? Pffft, order up another breast plate and a few more pairs of gauntlets and have them ready by dinner.

I don't choose content based on character (beyond blue side/red side/gold side) but by how I'm feeling today.

If I'm having a good day, I'm more likely to play one of my defenders.

If I was annoyed at a store with either staff or checkout, I'm likely to scrapper/brute lock that evening.

If traffic is what annoyed me that day, I'm likely to play a range character hurling fire/ice/electricity.

And this is from what exactly? Iron Man 3? Avengers cut scene?

Hopefully the mods won't consider this update thread necromancy.

It's been a while, August of 2011, since I last seriously tweaked the high end rig. That's because simply nothing all that excited has happen that warranted it. Note this system is designed to handle a 2nd video card as well as overclocking the CPU. Even though I call it the $1375 rig, my price target is around $1288 excluding NewEgg "savings" and rebates.

Well the big change is going to a Ivy Bridge/Z77 motherboard configuration.

For the CPU I went with i5-3570K. It's the logical upgrade from the i5-2500K of the Sandy Bridge build. Minor performance improvements as well as an extra 100MHz base clock speed. Nothing to really write home about.

A while back I switched over to the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO from the Xigamatek Gaia due to slightly better overclock cooling performance. Still using Arctic Silver 5 to mediate between the CPU and the heatsink.

For the motherboard, I'm using the ASRock Z77 Extreme6.

Memory is kept the same, 8GB of CAS 8, 1.5 volt, DDR3-1600 memory.

The Optical drive is a fairly generic ASUS DVD burner at $18.

Due to the price shock in October last year that still hasn't completely subsided, the "cheapest" 1GB SATA 3 hard drive I would recommend is Seagate's ST31000524AS at $110 list. In retrospect it use to be the WB Caviar Black for $90, which now runs for $150 (it was $250 at peak). Subjective difference is minor between those two.

Due to the ever present video driver saga from AMD, I swapped over to the GTX 560Ti last August and that recommendation still stands. AMD announced that they are stopping the monthly driver release schedule so hopefully once they get it to work with CoH, that whatever fixes they did won't be "forgotten" in the next.

I downsized the power supply to a 750 watt, 80plus Silver, Corsair HX750 from the HX850. I looked at the power requirements again and decided that even with moderate OCing of Ivy Bridge and a 2nd GTX 560Ti that 850 watts was overkill.

I'm still using the Cooler Master CM 690 II Advance as the case. I may tweak this as I find out more about the USB 3.0 version of the case in a couple of weeks.

Of course Win 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM is included in the list. Get it now before Win 8 is forced upon.

Concur. nVidia doesn't cater as much as they use to in the low to low-mid end performance cards with their newer GPU lines. The latest word is that they are rebadging their GT 520 and GT 440 as the "new" GT 610 and GT 630 line instead of fabricating a new low end GPU based on the tech in the GPU that powers the GTX 680 (and 670 and maybe a 660).

Not Newkirk!



RIP

Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron in skin tight space suits.

I need no other reason but more info about the Alien universe is plus.

Thundercats - all right episode. Wonder if someone's been reading Gunnm considering the trash falling out of the sky ... and killer robots.

Justice League: Invasion - More Doctor Who love (spoilers). The ol' lair has taken a beating after 40 years, not yet averted. Good to see Flash in all his Flashness (the old suit in ring). B plot with Cheshire and Red Arrow was both humorous but moved the plot forward.

DC shorts - Didn't remember the title card in front of the Atom episode last week but I was right about Sword of the Atom. Interesting that they are doing it like an old time serial. New Teen Titans was amusing.

The Legend of Korra - So much happens. Asami finds out about Korra and Mako. We find that they still segregate the sexes for Airbending. It's confirmed once more that Tarrlok is a grade A tin plated mad man with delusions of Godhood. And I agree with Oathbound, he isn't Amon. Remember Amon didn't want to deal with the Avatar until the very end. Nice to see that Korra has been holding back in a fight.

As for the spread of specialized bending skills in 70 years. Well I could see Zuko allowing lightning to be taught to help power the post war reformation. Toph herself taught metalbending to the police force. As for secrets like bloodbending, well discovery is a lot easier once it's known that something is possible. Also the visions show that Aang's great challenge that was mentioned at the start of the series seems to be a blood bender. And I could see Aang remove bending from someone like that.

My theory for the week is that Tarrlok and Amon are brothers.

Everything looks good. Quite the price swing on the CPU cooler.

I don't like doors blocking my optical drives so looking at tigerdirect.ca I like any of these sub $200 full tower cases (since that's the style of case you have as a place holder).

Cooler Master Storm Trooper - $165 before rebate
Thermaltake Element V - $150 before rebate
Cooler Master HAF 932 Advance - $165

They each come with a lot of drive bays and nearly as many fans with space for more. The two Cooler Master cases also have USB 3.0 connectors on the front panel (well the HAF 932 is on a 3.5" front drive bay mount).

Actually I got a good laugh out of this story.

Let me expand upon my likes and dislikes in comedies. I hate over the top characters, in mannerism or speech or lack of common sense. This is why I dislike the majority of Adam Sandler films.

In the first movie we have a Bug in an Edger suit. Yes it walks and talks funny but it's an alien that isn't trying that hard to fit in while trying to get "The Galaxy". Small cameo with Frank the Pug but that simply an example that aliens could be hiding as anything. The Worm Guys have very limited screen time.

2nd movie we get a lot more Frank and the Worm Guys plus the dulcet tones of Johnny Knoxville. I felt it's humor was aimed toward kids more than adults.

3rd movie we don't to much wacky comedy. We are back to J being somewhat the fish out of water again, being in the 60s and doing a poor time blending. The big bad isn't funny in anyway as he is simply a CGI killing machine with an odd laugh. The aliens encountered aren't that strange and unusual, not even Griffin who just seems odd. The movie's humor didn't strike me as targeting kids but people who might have been kids and teenagers 10 years ago when they saw MIB 2.

Saw it last night ($5 Tuesday's). Agree, better than the second. Younger O was hot.

Actually at TigerDirect.ca, the i7-3770K is 40 loonies more than that Socket 2011 CPU.

But yes, for that amount of money I would go more with an Ivy Bridge setup with a GTX 670 than a SB-E with a GTX 570.

i7-3770K - $350

Asus P8Z77-V - $210

eVGA GTX 670 - $400 (about 1/3 faster than the GTX 570 plus uses less power)

That's $960 for those 3 parts Vs $955 for the Socket 2011/GTX 570 setup. You could even drop it to $950 if you went with the older Sandy Bridge i7-2700K, if you are looking to OC since Ivy Bridge has some power/heat problems as you push past 4.5GHz. Now I'm assuming you are looking to OC since you have that top dollar, 1.25Kg heat sink on your list.

The launcher fetches the game location from the Windows Registry. Sounds link it's not finding it.

Review on the heat sink for those interested.

My only concern with such a large heat sink is checking to see if the case can handle it.