Father Xmas

Don't see a power supply.

Memory for Socket 1366 CPUs should come is sets of three not twos or fours. Like this (sticking with your choice of Corsair DDR3-1600, Cas 9) for example.

CPU wise, a question. Given that the i7-960 is nearly double the price of an i7-950 ($270 more) but best case is less than 5% faster (3.2GHz Vs 3.06GHz), does that sound like a good place to spend your money? Just putting that out there.

Why the 640GB WD Blue series drive with the tiny cache Vs their better performing Black series? Choices there range from same size, twice the cache, $10 less; same size, 4x the cache, same price; 750GB, twice the cache, same price.

You may want to look into a 3rd party CPU cooler. Check out this page from a recent heatsink review at Frostytech to see which ones are ranked the best at cooling and/or noise. The Hyper 212 Plus from my $1375 rig is still very good and is also narrower, lighter and cheaper while still being within a few degrees of the best.

Hellooo!

Excellent as always m'lady.

Even though the HD 5850 is the fastest video card of the 4 systems, I would choose one of the i5-760 quads over the dual cores. More and more games are starting to use more than two cores. Also the GTX 460 1MB is quite an awesome card.

The one thing I do have a problem with, not a fan of either power supply in these units. They both may be 700 watts but the PSU in the CyberPowerPC only has 480 watts/38 amps (which doesn't actually add up, 38amps at 12 volts is only 456 watts) and the PSU pictured in the iBuyPower puts out 600 watts at 12 volts but the review at JonnyGURU isn't pretty. In either case 700 watts is shear overkill for the load out in either of those PCs.

Likes and Differences: CyberPower uses a MSI microATX (H55M-P31) motherboard, the iBuyPower looks like it uses a full size ATX motherboard from ASUS (P7H55). Both use the stock Intel CPU heatsink/fan. Looks as both only have a single rear case fan. Memory in the iBuyPower appears to have heat spreaders in the interior case photo, the CyberPowerPC doesn't.

It's a coin flip but there's part of me that leans toward the iBuyPower. Maybe it's the PSU on bottom, location of the front ports, an ATX sized motherboard, 8GB of memory and a PSU that does put out 600 watts at 12 volts, even though it's an old inefficient design. But either should work fine.

That's my two inf.

Two words: Stuffed Gleek.

Replay tomorrow morning 9a EDT. 8-10a Sat is the rerun of 7:30-9:30p Fri shows. Batman is still on only once a week at 7p on Fri.

Well I thought he still possessed the strength of a man at ant size so it's possible in a world of cartoon physics.

What parent would let their child dress up as the scourge of the World Hamidon? And who is this Statesman, Back Alley Brawler or Lord Recluse?

I think someone needs some "counseling".

Well there's this. Not a lot but mentioned during the panel at PAX.

Watched it again last night.

A couple of things, one may simply be continuity error.

First time they show the plane flying toward the compound, there wasn't the weird noise/vibration that led up to the plane warping out. But it was there the second time. So did the plane crash originally but the timeline was changed or are we looking at characters hopping between multiverses? Could explain the cruise ship if the lead hopped to another verse. There's a kind of Noein flavor to that theory.

Also I didn't catch that the government is still catching people being detained. Either they escaped or they weren't all grabbed at once. The fact the facility has research labs is interesting but that doesn't say if the detainees are using them or they are being used on the detainees.

"The Event" obviously occurred years before and it scares the bejesus out of some in the government. That implies power/ability that the US doesn't have. Also makes me wonder if the original event had the same disruption as the air traffic control system and fighter jet we saw. The Northeast blackout in 1965? The 2003 one is too recent for the detainees to know "several presidents".

Of course the $64,000 question is who are "they" in the "they saved us". Was the agent in the black SUV talking to the fighter or "they" when he tells them to do something now?

Then again it could just be a group of super scientists. Think BioShock/Atlas Shrugged group of innovators working in secret for years since WWII, pushing tech and science way past what the rest of the planet has been able to do. The "Event" makes the US aware of them and they try to secure them and their research but only got some of the people.

Well I remember when I stumbled across Danny DeVito on SS. This was a few years after his Taxi days, I think he was trying to out grouch Oscar.

They had a freaking Penny-farthing in the alt verse, how cool is that.

"Tuck your knees in tight"

Just like sequels killed the movie business and TV (oh look another CSI, NCIS, Law and Order, medical drama ...).

So how quickly will they catch on to BOlivia? A couple of episodes or within this one?

Don't forget the first two seasons of Reboot, Dot has a monoboob because of ABC's weird standards and practices department (only bad girls had a sexy figure). When season 3 came out, after ABC dropped it the show in the US, she suddenly had cleavage.

Also ABC banned the word "hockey" from Reboot. Ah the innocent 90s.

Yes there isn't really a lot of options at NewEgg once you filter for microATX, Socket 775, 4 DDR2 slots and 8 or more audio channels (basing the criteria on your current motherboard).

If you stick to the last generation of chipset for Socket 775 from Intel that gives you a choice between a G41 and a G43 and the primary difference there is the G43 supports 16GB instead of just 8GB.

$20 but you get a free month ($15) and either the cyborg or magic pack.

Edit: This assumes you haven't applied the AE edition already to your account.

Single core, Socket 939 AMD, 1 gig of DDR memory (likely 2 x 512MB) and a nVidia 6600.

1) Yea, you are unlikely able to squeeze any additional graphics performance with that set up.

2) As others have suggested a RAM upgrade will help smooth out the game play, especially outdoors. But upgrading the video card (assuming PCIe and not AGP) will just make you CPU bound and there's not a lot you can do there. Then there's the power supply to consider if you try a card capable enough to run Ultra Mode as they are a bit more power hungry than an old nVidia 6600.

I suggest you save your money for a major upgrade all at once, power supply, motherboard, memory, CPU, video card. Possibly optical and hard drive as well since today's motherboards don't support many older ATA devices (use 40/80 pin ribbon cables Vs thin SATA cables).

Another possibility is a thermal shutdown of the CPU. Perhaps the thermal paste debonded.

Maybe a creepy crawly got behind the motherboard and case and is shorting something out?

Yea I'm grasping straws here.

Edit: The good news it looks like it uses a standard microATX motherboard. This should work as a reasonable replacement with the exception of a single old style keyboard/mouse port instead of two. The only unknowns are the cabling to the case (power, reset, front ports, etc) and replacing the IO plate for the new motherboard but it should be straight forward.

(grrr, damn logout forum bug)
I was going to ask this summer, after the end of last season who you would cast from the show for roles in Rocky Horror.

Finn - Brad
Janet - Rachel
Puck - Rocky
Brittany - Columbia
Santana - Magenta

Those are the easy picks. Artie as Dr Scott is too obvious and he can't do the traditional dual role as Eddie. No great loss as Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul isn't one of the memorable songs from Rocky Horror. Same with casting Kurt as Frank, too obvious of a choice. That still leaves the narrator and Riff.

But I'm betting that the groups rendition of Science Fiction/Double Feature will send chills down my spine.

Tell me about it. Give it six months and it'll get even more confusing.

Socket 1366:

This is the socket used exclusively (knock on wood, who knows what Intel marketing is going to do next) for the i7-9xx series of quad and hex cores. This is meant to be their premium platform. They all use the Intel X58 Northbridge chipset which has 36 PCIe lanes easily allowing motherboards to have three or four (all x8) video card slots for the ultra gamer.

The CPUs use triple channel memory, memory should be installed in threes, but the "official" memory speed is only DDR3-1066 unless you overclock or have one the expensive "Extreme Edition" CPUs. They have Turbo Boost, a feature that increases the speed of the CPU when not all of the cores are being used but it is very conservative when compared to Socket 1156 CPUs. Also all the i7-9xx CPUs have Hyper Threading, which is a way to better utilize all the internal hardware of the CPU by allowing it to run two software threads at the same time on a single core by faking out the Operating System.

Socket 1156:

This is more of a mainstream platform for Intel. Unlike Socket 1366, it doesn't use a Northbridge chip at all and has it's own 16 PCIe lanes integrated right into the CPU. This can be configured to either one x16 or two x8 video card slots (read motherboard specs carefully it make sure, it varies). Also it only uses memory in pairs like most CPUs however it's default speed for memory is DDR3-1333. Also their Turbo Boost is considerably higher than the i7-9xx series when single or dual cores are only being used.

The quads available are either the i5-7xx or i7-8xx series CPUs. The major differences is the i5-7xx doesn't have Hyper Threading, and has memory hard capped at DDR3-1333 without overclocking. The i7-8xx allows DDR3-1600 without need of overclocking. And there are some minor differences in the Turbo Boost amounts.

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Recently Intel has dropped the price and/or introduce faster versions of the i7-8xx and i7-9xx at around the same price. For Socket 1156 there is the 2.8GHz i7-860 for $280 and the 2.93GHz i7-870 for $290. For Socket 1366 there is the 2.8GHz i7-930 for $285 and the 3.06GHz i7-950 for $299. (prices from NewEgg)

Edit: Turbo Boost for the i7-870 is +667MHz for single core usage, +533MHz for dual core, +267MHz for triple and quad (based on power use). Turbo Boost for the i7-950 is +267MHz for single core usage, +133MHz for dual, triple and quad.

Performance wise, it all depends on the application being tested. If you are running a single or dual core software that isn't streaming through a lot of memory then the i7-8xx tends to win due to the better Turbo Boost. If you are running programs that process a lot of memory while using all the cores then the i7-9xx tend to win due to its triple core memory setup.

Here is a comparison between an i7-8xx and a i7-9xx at the same speed.

Platform wise the Socket 1366 tends to be more expensive due to it gamer appeal (shaft the hard core gamer) and triple slotted memory requirement.

I also have no idea why any ordinary person needs dual ethernet ports if all they are doing to connecting to the Internet rather than running game server host during a lan party.

Glee works on several levels for me.

First, nostalgia. As they pointed out last night, one complaint was it's all 80s pop and show tunes. Well I grew up watching the movie musicals from the 60's and early 70's when the family went to the drive in. Mary Poppins, Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, etc. Also I was just starting college when MTV came out in 1981 and videos went quickly from simple band playing song to mini musical stories that work with the song. So for me I relate music with visuals. For instance I can't help thinking of CoH/V when I hear Evanescence's Bring Me to Life due to Desolate Joker's excellent early CoH/V music video that features that song. Same is true with other 3rd party music video mashups such as anime music videos or ones based on popular TV series. Found a lot of new groups that way.

Second, the comedy. Sue Sylvester, the cheerleading coach is simply a great character you love to hate. Still the show does show her soft side on occasion. The other characters are all unique with their personality tics and the interplay between them can be quite funny.

Third, it tends to be upbeat. Bad things do happen on the show but overall I feel better after watching an episode than before. It makes me smile.

The one problem I have about the show is the cash cow which is iTunes. I like some story with my musical and the later half of last season was packing in the tunes so they had more to sell.

I don't think that was her daughter but a much younger "oops" sister.