je_saist

.... if the computer caught fire I would suggest first of all turning it off.

Then I would suggest walking to the phone and calling the fire department. Let them check for any potential fire hazards.

Then I would call a licensed electrician to make sure there are no problems there.

Then I would call whoever sold you the computer and tell them the Magic-Smoke(tm) has been released.

*snerks*

I'm actually finding this hilarious from outside viewpoint because I just realized what the problem is. On the emachines page, check the left hand bar.

I count the following models:

• EL1352-01
• EL1352-51
• EL1352G-03w
• EL1352-03
• EL1352-07e
• EL1352-53
• EL1352-10e

It's almost like a Porche Showroom, which one is which???

Interestingly, PCI expansion ports are not mentioned on any of the factory pages. Ergo, I suspect the OP will need to pop open his model and see what is inside.

I took one of those Emachines chassis apart about 2 months ago to try and upgrade it with one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187114

The video card wouldn't fit.

Now, I don't know if that is going to be the case with the OP's chassis.

Your graphics drivers are corrupted.

I answered that in the very next line:

* * *
Now, that being said, there are a few troubleshooting steps you can take.

First: go get driver sweeper: http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Second: Uninstall all existing Nvidia software, including the Forceware drivers.

Third: Run Driver Sweeper before rebooting after the uninstall.

Forth: run the Nforce driver installer, but DO NOT ALLOW THE GRAPHICS COMPONENT TO INSTALL: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce3_winxp_5.11

Fifth: install the latest Nvidia drivers.


The next troubleshooting step you can take is to go get Heaven 2.1 and Tropics 1.3: http://unigine.com/download/

These demos can swap between OpenGL and DirectX.

If there is a problem with your system's OpenGL rendering system, these demonstrations will corrupt or crash. I would run these demos and make sure they complete loops under OpenGL before running CoH.

There's no Video Card under $100 that will run CoH in Ultra Mode well enough to be playable. Yes, you can find RadeonHD 4850's for around $100, but those will mostly be the 512mb versions of the card, and they are largely being phased off the market for a very good reason.

You don't even need to shop carefully to get the much more powerful RadeonHD 5770 for around $120, granted after mail-in-rebate.


Also, according to the Data posted, your computer is actually fairly weak.

The computer states it only has 1gb of Ram, not 4gb of ram, so that is going to weaken your ability to run intensive texture and data operations.

Second, it's a Pentium 4 at 3.2ghz. Given that this is a Dell computer, that is probably going to be either a P4 540 (32bit) or a P4 640 (Intel's ugly software version of x86-64). Either way, in terms of actual computing power, it would get destroyed by modern processors from AMD or Intel.

One of the performance problems is that while it says it has 2 processors, your computer doesn't. It's a single core with Hyper-threading. I did an over-view of Hyper-Threading, or SMT, as used in the P4 several years ago: http://www.mepisguides.com/fti/rig-r...g-rec-cpu.html

The semi good news is that the processor won't be a bottleneck outside of Ultra-Mode. It just will be a bottleneck inside of Ultra-Mode.


Now, if It was my money on the line, I honestly wouldn't be spending. Reason why is that your computer is listed as having a Geforce 6800 graphics card. Which version isn't listed, but that doesn't really matter to me.

Thing is, I have one of Clevo's D900T desknotes. It has a Pentium 4 530 (32bit) and the lowest mobile version of the 6800, which is more like a 6600. That laptop can smoothly drive CoH in classic rendering modes.

The problems are these:

• Any graphics card under $100 isn't going to buy you enough performance to get out of the classic rendering modes.
• Any graphics code over $100 is that can do Ultra Mode is going to be bottle-necked by your processor and amount of memory.

Now, if you are buying simply to replace the 6800 because it's dying, or some reason like that, go buy a RadeonHD 5670. It won't do Ultra-Mode, but it will keep the same frame-per-second performance profile of the most powerful 6800, the Ultra.

Shop carefully, and you'll spend around $80 total getting a 5670 with 1gb of Vram.

... I'm not sure if I want to answer this with a 2*4 or with Sarcasm. This topic has already been done to death. Twice.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ght=assumption
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ght=assumption

The short short short short short short short short short short short Version is this:

• The other dimensions are not our dimension
• The other dimensions' time-lines are not our dimension's timelines
• The other dimensions' events are not our dimension's events
• There does not have to be an equal and opposite action and reaction for every event, every person, or every object.
• The laws of linear physics do not apply

The hot-fix driver releases contains Avivo and Hydravision, stuff that's normally listed as an optional download: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...win7-32.aspx#3

* * *
The Hide power would also need to be replaced. In many of the Stalker Armor sets the replaced power is similar to the Hide power, such as Dark Armors Cloak of Darkness, or Super Reflexes Lucky. In other stalker cases, such as Energy Aura, Hide and Energy Cloak offer the same type of defensive and cloaking effect, but Stalkers get Repulse while Brutes get Dampening Field. Out of the stalker sets I think only Regeneration and Willpower give up a completely different power for hide: Quick Recovery

The precedent would be set then to simply push the Hide effect later into the power-set. So, minor problem.

The other minor problem is caltrops. The developers are largely against duplicating powers. Caltrops is already available in the Scrapper Epic Power Pool.


Given that Ninjitsu, as a power-set, would need at least 3 completely new powers to fit the scrapper / brute mechanics, proliferation of the set as it is known just isn't happening.

I don't think this means that some aspects of the Ninjitsu power-set won't appear in another Armor set some-time in the future.

and what makes you think I19 is ready for release to begin with?

I don't have a card from either series, so my practical input is limited.

Okay, it's been a long while since Tele and I had any conversation on this subject, and he's had his antenna full of other programs. To the "best of my knowledge" Eyefinity / Triplehead / 3D Vision Surround is not on the production schedule for supported Graphics Features.

Basically, if you are buying or looking at Triple-Monitor setups, I wouldn't feel right telling you that support could be "Soon(tm)" as it probably won't be.

given the original post, I somewhat doubt that "making friends" and "running with teams" are a priority for that player.

actually.

to be honest.

The only reason I found it is that I MADE the post and I new it had to be somewhere in the Technical Section.

Another way to think of it is this: Everytime you install an update, the game is essentially having to recompile itself to handle the newly updated data.

Yes, having the game re-compile each .pigg file from scratch is an annoying and time-consuming process. However, there is a definite trade-off. This pre-processing and compiling of the data allows City of Heroes to save on the amount of data that needs immediate processing while in the game itself. This saves on the amount of processing power needed to run the game in real-time. The .pigg file system combined with the patcher updater system allows City Of Heroes to retain a performance profile that is still similar to it's launch conditions.

This is why other games that don't do the pre-processing / pre-compiling have higher computational requirements to run the binary files because they do many of the animation, geometry, and power calculations on the fly, rather than having those calculations, effects, and other objects essentially pre-rendered.