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Hahaha |
Originally Posted by The_Foo
Four hours later, he's still playing fort inside the box it came in.
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I'm kinda partial to:|
Originally Posted by ChristopherRobin
YES! Awesome buddy, I'm happy you got it in time for the holidays. All that extra effort now feels worth it.
  Plus now your mother owes me $5 heh.  And now a word from Pyro's new PC... 37.2 Gigabytes? HAHAHA. Not anymore pal with more than 1.7 TB (yes that means over 1,700 gigs  ) total storage throughout the system(internal and external) you can call that guy back and tell him you now measure storage in TERABYTES cuz that's how you roll... ...measuring storage in gigabytes is so 5 minutes ago. |
GB? What's a GB? Is that like a TB for older computers?
(Right now, I stand at about 2.86 TB of total capacity)
Way back in 1987 I made a bet with a bunch of friends that in my lifetime I would own a computer with a billion pixel screen, a trillion ops per second, and a quadrillion bytes of storage. At the time, that target was about three thousand times more pixels, a million times more ops, and a hundred million times more storage than my computer at the time.
At present, that target represents a computer with five hundred times the pixels, twenty times the processing power (not counting the GPU), and three hundred times the storage. Assuming we don't count the GPU in the calculation number, the trend is that I will hit the processing target in about six years and the storage target in about ten years. The display target is a little iffier: it might be thirty years, it might be only a decade (if things like wall and desk-displays become common in ten years). At this point, though, I'm willing to state I'm a lock to win that bet, unless I get hit by a bus in the near future.
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Maybe that's how CR makes his money. The computer costs $19.95. The cables cost extra.
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Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
Well...so far...it works. BUT, I can't get an Internet connection. It won't connect the way my old computer did (USB), and I don't have an Ether cable/cord.
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@Arcanaville, Here's hoping none of your friends you made that bet with drive a bus.
@Pyro, D'oh thought you had some ethernet cable or I would have sent you some (I have a bunch of the stuff here) and while Win7 will take some time to get up to speed on it is truly an upgrade (the upgrade vista should have been but wasn't) over XP, until then some stuff now goes by different names and may be located in a different place but all your apps will still run normally and more importantly City of Heroes will play exactly the same as it always has.
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Holy cow that cable better be able to go in the kitchen and make me a sandwich for that much money! One of the guys reviewing it cracked me up with his reply that about sums up how awesome this cable would need to be:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Maybe that's how CR makes his money. The computer costs $19.95. The cables cost extra.
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"With this cable I effortlessly: conquered my virginity, hung my next door neighbors dog, came up with an agreeable Healthcare Plan, AND became engaged to Chuck Norris! Thank you Denon!"
P.S. - I'm yet to open a dimensional time rift... =(
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm kinda partial to:
GB? What's a GB? Is that like a TB for older computers? |
And here I remember when we were on a committee at work reviewing standards for our first computers having to do time tracking to show that we should go for the floppy plus 10 Meg HD instead of the dual floppy system, which I got to run testing on.
Those were TerrorBytes.
My Deviant Art page link-link
CoH/V Fan Videos
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Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
Well...so far...it works. BUT, I can't get an Internet connection. It won't connect the way my old computer did (USB), and I don't have an Ether cable/cord. I've got two coming tomorrow.
BTW...Windows 7 is going to kill me until I get use to it. |
If you have a wireless router, those frequently come with one to direct connect in lieu of all wireless connectivity. I'm sure you've checked every box you have, but thought I'd toss that out, just in case you had one and were blinded in the excitement. I know I would be....and probably would be at Wal Mart or Best Buy if they were open.
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CoH/V Fan Videos
Well you can still use your new PC tonight even if you just can't go online with just yet. And you know
you will be ready when your parents do arrive tomorrow rather than having to wait until the day after Christmas.
You sure you don't have any ethernet tucked away in a box (like the one your ISP gives you) somewhere?
P.S. Sent you a PM with some pics you can post up tonight if you like otherwise we can all wait until tomorrow.
P.P.S. You should be up and running as soon as you have a cable to plug it in... that is one of the things Win7 excels at
is getting a network setup. Often times it will just do it all for you and by the time you get back up from plugging in the cable
and sit in front of the screen you're already online. If for some reason there is a problem it will troubleshoot and tell you exactly
what to do to fix it... it's way better than older Operating Systems at fixing stuff.
Well I can understand the Dexter addiction. I'm on Disc 2 of Season 3. I hear Season 4 is amazing....
Anyway can't wait to see and hear more about your new machine!
Well I'm off then to go visit with family, not sure if there will be a pc I can use to check in there or not so just in case you see no orange text until after... take care everyone and thanks for following along, have a safe and Merry Christmas.
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Really? You'd think that with how much of an upgrade Pyro got that CoH would play smoother, at a higher FPS, and have quicker load times. |
Originally Posted by ChristopherRobin
more importantly City of Heroes will play exactly the same as it always has.
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<.<
>.>
Joking. I've seen the FPS reports above.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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Yeah. I have the same case. VERY nice case. I've been torturing myself with Antec Sonata cases for the last few years in the quest for quiet computing. I finally got sick of having to squeeze stuff in with shaped directional charges and went for something bigger.|
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
First, just to let you know...CR takes thousands of pictures and puts them into a "photo receipt" file. Everything that you could possibly think of or forget about...you've got a photo of it (several of it actually).
THE CASE! |
It's louder than my Sonata is, but not by a heck of a lot. And routing cables in it was much cleaner too.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.|
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
MISC.
MAME ROMS: More than 4,400 Classic Arcade Games >0.o< (hunh WHAT???) |
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Originally Posted by mamedev.org
MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with images of the original arcade game's ROM and disk data, MAME attempts to reproduce that game as faithfully as possible on a more modern general-purpose computer. MAME can currently emulate several thousand different classic arcade video games from the late 1970s through the modern era.
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Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
Wait... Pyro is on the video card? Inside the case?? Totally out of view???
That's both very cool and... Well, a waste of time and effort?
I mean the coolness factor is huge but at the same time I cannot help but wonder if it was worth the effort. Definitely would have been super mega cool if you had gone with the clear sided comp case but since it'll hopefully never be seen (cause this comp is so great and state of the art that it'll never breakdown or need upgrades) I think the effort maybe should have gone elsewhere?
CR - did you start this detail before Pyro picked the case? Because that I would totally understand... *shrug* maybe I'm not appreciating coolness for coolness sake enough...
One of the most awesome threads of the year, CR you're a true artist! Congrats Pyro, time to work on the Altitis... Enjoy the day everyone!
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I approve!!! |
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
PSU: OCZ PowerStream 600w (quiet and 80plus efficient)
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Okay I'm very impressed. The wiring is immaculate. The images are total bonuses and very cool! I'm also impressed that CR got such FPS from an I5! Though the GPU helps. I was debating an I5 vs I7 and I now may have my decision.
Grats Pyro! Once you get logged in you must take a minute to let us know how it "feels" to have so much power at your fingertips!
Oh also I have that same keyboard and have had it for about three years. My "S" and "A" keys are just now showing some wear on them! Probably from my fingernail hitting them when i blame a blaster and am backing up so much!
Now off to take your "receipt" and price this thing for myself!
Egads I have you fooled! Mwuahahaha! Now on to phase two of my master plan!!!
(seriously, I mainly just have too much time on my hands so I blabber on a lot...)
Anyway, like I said, there's a definite coolness factor there... It's just that if I put that much effort into something I would want it front and center not being the secret core of all coolness
Just checking in briefly here, I'll have more time to post stuff tomorrow but yeah I had started planning this out back when I was looking at a windowed case for Pyro or even a reverse btx style case, where the motherboard is upside down and so the videocard graphic is visible through the window. It ended up going in a different direction but I decided to see it through because I knew Pyro would still appreciate it and it was good practice for me that I can carry on into other builds.
I'm always looking at ways to add creative touches to make my builds stand out more and really make an lasting impression on the recipient. The ultimate goal for me would be to combine my artistic ability with my pc building skill and do custom paintjobs and even laser cuts like the Dragon case... this is a step in that direction.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas with family, friends and many shiny presents.
Congrats Pyro, I am extremely jealous and have started to drop hints to my g/f about getting one of these for myself.
CR - fantastic personal touches, kudos to you my friend for what looks to be a great rig.
And thanks again to both of you for sharing this endeavor with us all.
Enjoy Pyro
Member of the Hyperion Force
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Maybe he captured the pic with vertical sync turned off so he could see the maximum possible, and then shipped the box with vsync turned back on and that's about 60Hz. That's just a wild guess, though.|
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
Question...to CR or anyone that might know. This is the pic that CR posted regarding FPS.
 Now when I type in /showfps 1, I'm not getting that. I'm seeing 61.5 (17m/Fm). What's the difference in his (4m/Fm) and my (17m/Fm)? |
Vertical sync is a setting that tells the game not to redraw faster than your monitor is painting the screen. If you don't sync and the video card actually changes the display out of sync with and faster than the monitor refreshes, you could see shearing or odd frame tweening (meaning, the display shows one frame, and then before it finishes the graphics card changes the frame so the bottom half of your screen shows a different frame: this creates visible artifacts).
Beyond that, I can't hazard a guess.
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What you are seeing in those pics is the negotiated speed between your computer and your switch or cable router (whatever you plugged your computer into). That's not your internet bandwidth, that's just the speed of the card to the device its plugged into. Its a fifty-lane onramp merging onto a two lane highway.|
Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
Also, this might seem like a dumb question, but I don't know that much about broadband internet connections. What's a "fast" speed? What are typical, and what would be a goal to reach?
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To find out what your actual internet bandwidth that you're getting from your provider is**, you need to use a speed tester. Two that I use are:
Speakeasy
Speed Test
I also use DSL Reports occasionally. Of the three, I probably use Speed Test the most often. These sites will test your upload (speed you can send data), download (speed you can receive data), and latency (average time it takes for a packet to get from them to you and vice versa).
Broadband connections are generally considered crap unless they can get to at least a megabit per second (about 125kbytes/sec) of download, and you want a low latency connection to play real time games on the internet (< 100ms to the game servers). My own cable modem connection tends to give me download speeds of 400-500 kbytes/sec (about 3-4 megabits per second) and round trip network travel times of about 75-ish milliseconds to the CoH servers (which is not the same thing as the /netgraph latencies).
CoH doesn't require a lot of bandwidth (in fact, we're bandwidth limited at their servers or their network infrastructure). It does want as low a latency as possible.
** There's no such thing really as "internet speed" because just like the highway system, you're bound to the worst link in the chain between you and where you want to go. If you are trying to connect to me "on the internet" then even if you had 100 mbit to the internet, since I don't you won't actually get that speed to me. Most of the time, the critical bottlenecks are from your house to the main backbone(s) of your provider, and any bottleneck on the side of the target you're trying to reach. This is what typically goes awry with some DSL internet providers. They claim to give you 6 megabits per second to "the internet" but actually they give you only 6 megabits to their *office*, and you're then sharing (the industry term here is "oversubscription") something like a 45 meg link with a few hundred other people.
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I can give a partial answer but networking is not my area of expertise. I can set them up and even optimize them with custom router firmware upgrades and various registry edits but I am usually following what someone else has done and not knowing the meaning of every listed setting and how it relates to the others.
As for the FPS it is a combination of many factors but primarily it deals with how fast you are connecting to their server and how fast your PC can draw frames to your monitor.
30 fps (or thirty image draws for every second) is considered the minimum for a good gaming experience.
60 fps is generally the goal for totally smooth with no lag ever occurring.
A fast connection coupled with a fast PC and a properly configured router/system will get you smooth gaming at all times.
Somethings to consider:
If you put a fast PC on a slow internet connection (say dialup) you will get lag.
Also if you put a slow PC on a fast connection you will also get lag.
So it follows that two different computers on the same internet connection can have dramatically different FPS.
Also the same PC (moved to another house) will have different FPS readings when on different connections.
The FPS number IS dynamic (i.e it changes in real time) in response to your connection, what settings the game is using (low med high or maxed) and what is on the screen that it must draw at that moment so you want to look for an average. Is it always at or around 60fps at your house? or does it range from 60fps to 120fps?
***Your listed speed in that connection box is NOT a dynamic number (i.e. it will always show 1.0Gbps no matter what you are doing) and only shows what the maximum possible is.***
If you want a more realistic number for what your connection speed is google bandwidth test. DSL Reports has a good one and also SpeakEasy is good too. Run a few and take an average. For a reference I am getting 16752kbps Download and 1024kbps Up and 13ms latency on average.
So what to take from all this?
In a best case scenario you want to have nothing being the "weak link" in the chain. You want a fast PC hooked up to a properly configured router on a fast internet connection for the best possible result and if you are seeing 60 and above while gaming you are fine. If it were to frequently drop below 30 I would say something was definitely not right with the connection or the router or some other variable, the PC I know is fast enough to run with as much bandwidth as you can give it.
Here is a sample of mine.
The chart below shows my last five runs with the green arrows for down and red arrows for up speed.
Hey Arcanaville how did you test the latency to the CoH server? Is there an ingame command for that?
Edit: @ Pyro: Use what is closest to you for a best case scenario I imagine but try any/all of them if you like.
Just for the heck of it I tried a server that is as far away as I could find and got 11,543 Down 964 Up and 16ms latency.
Edit: @Arcanaville: I ran without V-sync and all settings maxed (excepting the ATI water bug which can't be helped until they patch it) and I shipped it the same way so it should still be off... can you take a look Pyro and confirm that? Also I happen to have the exact same model monitor (it's my back up screen) that Pyro does here and the same resolution and digital connection options as he should have at his house.
I do not see any shearing or visual artifacts (and I am very picky about visual quality) here with V-sync off but if you notice anything like that Pyro by all means take a tip from Arcanaville and turn V-sync back on.
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Not really (/netgraph doesn't quite do that). I sort of do it "by hand" with things like traceroute, but something you can use to automate the process a bit is the NCSoft Network Info Tool. Among the things it does is perform traceroutes to the three CoH data centers (Euro, West Coast, East Coast), which you can see in the network data file (it also checks connectivity to the forums, the update servers, and the login/auth servers). The game server farms don't allow pings or traceroute packets specifically, but you can extrapolate your likely latency from the latency to the hop closest to the servers (in the file, it'll be the RTT for the hop just before the traceroute terminates).
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Originally Posted by ChristopherRobin
Hey Arcanaville how did you test the latency to the CoH server? Is there an ingame command for that?
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I would do two tests (at least). One: pick the server nearest to you. This is likely to be close to the bandwidth your ISP is giving you, from your house out to their backbones. Two: pick the server nearest to the location of the CoH servers you play on. That's likely to be close to the bandwidth you have in theory from your house all the way to the CoH game servers (or, replace the CoH servers with some other target you're trying to guestimate your bandwidth to).
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Originally Posted by Pyro_Nympho
Thanks Arcanaville and CR! At the test sites, does it matter which server to test from? I'm in Nashville, TN...so do I choose the closest to me? or do I just test several different servers?
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I'll be back after while...to show you!