THE THREAD!!!

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay





Bought it yesterday, started it up... BUT, I need a new system. Without a dual core CPU whenever you reach an autosave point the game goes into a continuous loop trying to save. I guess sometimes in the next few weeks I'll have to put together a new machine...

Well, that's why I have an i7.[:D]

Does DA2 really need that much more processing power than the original? The original DA ran fine on my shite machine.

No, not even close.

[Onime No Kyo]

Simon, Dixie, or anyone else who knows....

I was skimming through my upcoming reinforcements and came upon K Squadron, a Brit fighter unit. Do you guys know what the backstory is to it not having a numeric designation? Just curious.

Thanks. [&o]

[Grollub]

ORIGINAL: Onime No Kyo

ORIGINAL: Grollub

I'm sorry, but my wakizashi is in the dishwasher. [:'(]

Edited. Language center malfunction.

You could use a dull butter knife. [:D]

Those are also in the dishwasher. [:'(]

[Grollub]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: Grollub

ORIGINAL: Mynok


Man, prayers for the pacific.....that's a MASSIVE quake. Doesn't Richter only go to 9?

Agreed. And no, the Richter scale is a normal logaritmic scale so could (theoretically) go even higher. Highest magnitude earthquake that they've measured was a 9.5 in Chile 1960.

Translated into non-geek: it's an open-ended scale.

Right. And for every 1.0 the magnitude goes up, the shaking amplitude doubles.

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: Onime No Kyo

Simon, Dixie, or anyone else who knows....

I was skimming through my upcoming reinforcements and came upon K Squadron, a Brit fighter unit. Do you guys know what the backstory is to it not having a numeric designation? Just curious.

Thanks. [&o]

K Squadron was a provisional Hurricane unit pieced together from bits and pieces (planes and pilots in transit) for the defence of Ceylon. It became G Squadron and ended up as 258 Squadron.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Grollub
Oh, you got the dreaded ASUS bug [X(]. I used to run ASUS MB's in my earlier rigs and never had any problems with them. (Luckily) switched to a Gigabyte MB for this one and is even more satisfied. Good quality for a pretty good price. Never tried MSI although they usually get good reviews.

My P4 was rebuilt back in the early 00's using an MSI high end board (Neo- series ....designed for overclocking etc). Great board and performed just as advertised on the boot up screen...."Fast...reliable...stable". Ran for eight years of heavy use without a hitch......till it caught fire. (and that was most likely due to a defective power source.) I purchased a used one of the same model off Ebay to replace it as i still use the P4 as my Win98 box (and along with the 486 i found...i still have it)

The core2 machine....yeah, serious pisser. I tried every fix i could find via research, including removing the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS completely. Nothing worked....even had it worked, there was no fix from ASUS so i'd litterally have had to leave the machine on for the rest of it's service life.....kind of hard when your living out of your car!

Scrapped the MOB....and the case and now i'm carrying around several hundred dollars worth of spare parts in the trunk of my car. I should probably sell the CPU.....might get a few bucks for it......still a spry CPU.

Howdy, Nik and Per.

What is it that's so special about "gaming" machines? I do lots of very graphics intensive drawings for patent applications and lots of engineering drawings for the toys we build for the military, but have never had any issues with a good old standard machine (does have 4 Meg RAM and a 1 Gig HD, though). What is it that gaming machines do that makes them so pricey? or need all that extra oomph?

[Terminus]

A lot of it is pure testosterone, John. "Look at my mighty machine! Cower, for it is great!".

[Terminus]

Speaking of toys, I got a PS3 today. I think I'm getting a little overexcited with the money...[X(]

[Grollub]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Grollub
Oh, you got the dreaded ASUS bug [X(]. I used to run ASUS MB's in my earlier rigs and never had any problems with them. (Luckily) switched to a Gigabyte MB for this one and is even more satisfied. Good quality for a pretty good price. Never tried MSI although they usually get good reviews.

My P4 was rebuilt back in the early 00's using an MSI high end board (Neo- series ....designed for overclocking etc). Great board and performed just as advertised on the boot up screen...."Fast...reliable...stable". Ran for eight years of heavy use without a hitch......till it caught fire. (and that was most likely due to a defective power source.) I purchased a used one of the same model off Ebay to replace it as i still use the P4 as my Win98 box (and along with the 486 i found...i still have it)

The core2 machine....yeah, serious pisser. I tried every fix i could find via research, including removing the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS completely. Nothing worked....even had it worked, there was no fix from ASUS so i'd litterally have had to leave the machine on for the rest of it's service life.....kind of hard when your living out of your car!

Scrapped the MOB....and the case and now i'm carrying around several hundred dollars worth of spare parts in the trunk of my car. I should probably sell the CPU.....might get a few bucks for it......still a spry CPU.

Howdy, Nik and Per.

What is it that's so special about "gaming" machines? I do lots of very graphics intensive drawings for patent applications and lots of engineering drawings for the toys we build for the military, but have never had any issues with a good old standard machine (does have 4 Meg RAM and a 1 Gig HD, though). What is it that gaming machines do that makes them so pricey? or need all that extra oomph?

John,

Actually, T hits the mark, concerning me at least. Guilty as charged. The price does not justify what the machine can do (as compared to "normal" machines) and I don't *really* need a graphics monster just to play games. It gives a certain satisfaction, though, to be able to run any graphics heavy game without the slightest hickup. The funniest part, though, is evaluating components before you have even built it, and then to put it together.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Howdy, Nik and Per.

What is it that's so special about "gaming" machines? I do lots of very graphics intensive drawings for patent applications and lots of engineering drawings for the toys we build for the military, but have never had any issues with a good old standard machine (does have 4 Meg RAM and a 1 Gig HD, though). What is it that gaming machines do that makes them so pricey? or need all that extra oomph?

It depends in part on the time period your in. Back in the mid 00's......the latest 3D graphical intensive games (aka "Doom 3") on the highest settings actually were beyond even the best Pentium 4 machines of the day. (i recall my Alienware laptop P4 could just run it....but started hitching if too many enemies were on screen at the same time....Quake 4 was even worse)

Nowadays.....advances in computers have so exceeded current gaming needs that you don't need an ultra system to run programs well. A good Core2 quad will still run most games well if you have a good GPU to back it up.

Still....you want high quality to ensure smooth running for games under the highest quality settings and just as importantly, for new games that will come around in the near future. Gaming rigs include not only a high end CPU and GPU but also will support large quantities of the best RAM and prior to the i5/7 era, very fast FSB and other bus speeds.

That said.....as related when i built my Core2 machine...i was able to build a very powerful system for my needs without getting the absolute fastest most expensive CPU offered by Intel. That saved me serious buckage and even 3 years later, it was still running everything i bought at the highest settings with mirror smooth graphics.

Terminus is 100% right in regards, absolute bleeding edge systems. Its all about bragging rights. Its a losing proposition though.....today's best is tomorrow's 2nd best so for the people whom bragging rights are most important in regards their rigs....they have to continually spend major bucks to stay on top...and no "top line" system stays on top for more than a few weeks to a few months at the absolute latest.

[USSAmerica]

ORIGINAL: Grollub

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: Grollub



Agreed. And no, the Richter scale is a normal logaritmic scale so could (theoretically) go even higher. Highest magnitude earthquake that they've measured was a 9.5 in Chile 1960.

Translated into non-geek: it's an open-ended scale.

Right. And for every 1.0 the magnitude goes up, the shaking amplitude doubles.

I'm pretty sure it's actually a logarithmic scale, so every 1.0 increase on the scale is actually 10 times more powerful. Now I need to go look it up to make sure. [:D]

[JWE]

Thanks guys. LoL, always thought testosterone was an important component, but the hardware guys could always confuse me enough that I was never really sure. [:D]

So I guess the gaming part is mostly for motion processing of 3D graphics renderings? That makes a lot of sense to me. Most of the processing I do is iterative math computation aiming for convergence for finite element and finite difference kinda stuff. Not hard, just twiddle-your-thumb time consuming. My graphics have gazillions of verticies, but they are still flat, and don't have to move.

Okay, think I get it.[;)]

Ciao. J

[Grollub]

ORIGINAL: USS America

ORIGINAL: Grollub

ORIGINAL: Terminus




Translated into non-geek: it's an open-ended scale.

Right. And for every 1.0 the magnitude goes up, the shaking amplitude doubles.

I'm pretty sure it's actually a logarithmic scale, so every 1.0 increase on the scale is actually 10 times more powerful. Now I need to go look it up to make sure. [:D]

Don't bother to look it up Mike. You're of course right and I'm an idiot. [:D]

[USSAmerica]

Too late, Per. [:'(]

[Onime No Kyo]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

ORIGINAL: Onime No Kyo

Simon, Dixie, or anyone else who knows....

I was skimming through my upcoming reinforcements and came upon K Squadron, a Brit fighter unit. Do you guys know what the backstory is to it not having a numeric designation? Just curious.

Thanks. [&o]

K Squadron was a provisional Hurricane unit pieced together from bits and pieces (planes and pilots in transit) for the defence of Ceylon. It became G Squadron and ended up as 258 Squadron.

Thanks T. [&o]

[Mynok]

My dad is a math professor. I understand the concept of logarithmic. 10 times is exactly right. Sheeeeeeesh!!!

Those poor people. That is devastating. That's twice as powerful as the Indonesian quakes from a few years ago. [X(][X(][X(][X(]

[Grollub]

ORIGINAL: USS America

Too late, Per. [:'(]

To be an idiot? That's never too late [;)]

[Onime No Kyo]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Speaking of toys, I got a PS3 today. I think I'm getting a little overexcited with the money...[X(]

If I were you, I'd be more worried about getting overly excited about scantily clad video game witches. [:-]

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


My dad is a math professor. I understand the concept of logarithmic. 10 times is exactly right. Sheeeeeeesh!!!

Those poor people. That is devastating. That's twice as powerful as the Indonesian quakes from a few years ago. [X(][X(][X(][X(]

If you're talking about the one that erupted in the Indian Ocean and killed 200,000 people a few years back, that was a 9.1.

Either way, bedtime... Laundry day tomorrow. Woo. Hoo.[>:][>:][>:][>:][>:][>:]

[Onime No Kyo]

[:D][:D]