Hyperstrike

Okay THAT particular v570 model is not really going to be great for games. The graphics are the on-chip Intel. There ARE versions of the v570 that are more suitable though.

The v570 model you want is the 1066ADU.

Pretty much ANYTHING where the graphics says "Intel", just get a big mental Post-It note saying "DO NOT WANT".

Agreed. This thing may play on low-low settings, but it's still going to be pretty horrible.

Actually 30fps is the starting point for perception of smooth movement.
Small variations in framerate at this level can destroy the perception.

60-80fps is usually the point where movement is truly smooth, save for all but the largest framerate drops. It's actually a little different for everyone. Some people are unable to discern framerate chop above the 30-40 frame range. Others notice it until the 60-70 frame range.

The CPU is important in some cases. Multi-core isn't about speed in the game. What it DOES is allow the system to offload the non-game tasks to other cores while the game itself utilizes two cores unimpeded. So, it doesn't make it "faster", it's just another method to prevent it from becoming "slower".

Also, the GPU still relies on the CPU to keep it "fed" with data. Mismatch a CPU and GPU too much and you're going to nullify some of the benefits of having such a powerful GPU.

If you go into the User Control Panel, you'll see a section called "group memberships".

If you're a paid subscriber you'll have the option to select the VIP group. Your name will turn gold and your forum title will become VIP, rather than the post-based rank it is now.

*Backs away slowly, surreptitiously looking around for a large, heavy object.*

Brings a twisted little smile to my face...

Because nobody will ever need more than 640K of RAM.
But mom! This P2 system I'm building will be all the computer I'll ever need!

Basically, over time, the game is going to continue to grow. Eventually you really DO want a dedicated graphics card. It doesn't need to be anything SPECTACULAR. You don't need to run out and get a GTX580 or anything. But a dedicated graphics card will give you better performance and free up system memory (which the on-board 4200 is taking up for it's graphics duties).

And it may not seem like it to you, but $350 is a an absolute pittance to be spending for a computer nowadays. I've paid 10x as much as that for 1000th the processing power.

Were you dropping $1500-2000 on an i7 machine with 16GB of RAM, Solid State Drives, and SLI video cards, I could see you wanting to be able to pick up a monitor and speakers too.

Thing is, you ALREADY have a monitor and speakers. That's why I sent you to that one.

Your issue is NOT disk space at this point. A 500GB drive is a good starting point and you can always augment later when you have spare cash. A 1TB drive does NOTHING for system performance.

You want to keep your eye on the prize here. I know you're seeing "ooh shiny" with the all-in-one. But you want a machine that's going to give you the most *bang*, in terms of graphics crunching power, for your buck. That's NOT the all-in-one. Things that aren't, necessarily, easily upgradeable for you are things like the CPU. The Inspiron570 gets you from point A to point B best.

Other things like memory and hard drive capacity ARE easily (and cheaply) upgradeable. Therefore it makes more sense to settle, initially, for smaller amounts to save money up front.

A slower CPU will just become outdated faster.

And if you can't sell them the old system for $100 without the monitor and speakers, see if they'll take it for $50. Then use the $50 to buy yourself the discrete video card. Or use it as a door stop.

And no you can't (and don't want to) swap your P4 in. It's an older, MUCH less efficient processor technology. Moreover, it's not pin-compatible with the socket on either of the motherboards.

Yes. The cards are expensive. And AMD is a multi-million dollar company.

But even THEY don't have the ability to test every POSSIBLE hardware and software combination in existence.

Telling them to "just fix it" helps NOTHING. Because they can't operate Q&A in a vacuum. They need system and software information to help them determine if there are any hardware/software conflicts on your system and if necessary, replicate your setup.

Nobody's ASKING you to take another full time job as a hardware/software tester. There's merely an implicit request for the provision of system specifics so that a proper troubleshooting job may be done.

I never really complained about the snakes. Honest!

Now Longbow. Oh dear BOB the Longbow!

I could DEFINITELY do with, while not an elimination, a definite dispersion of them amongst more plentiful non-Longbow content.

Fixed that for you.

And NO!

Well, if $350 is your limit, maybe look at (Dude, you're gettin') a Dell.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/popular-desktop-deals

Look at the Inspiron 570.

It's not a GREAT computer or anything, but it's a GOOD step up from what you have now.

Also, it's expandable.

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...n/cs/cs_en.pdf

The PDF shows it has a PCI-E slot in case you want to load in a discrete graphics card later.

The system comes with a 3Ghz AMD Tri-core CPU and 4GB of RAM (expandable to 8).

That's $349.99 plus shipping.

Currently the 7-business day shipping is free.
3-5 business day is $9
2 day is $15
Next day is $25

Honestly, nobody here could put together a decent enough parts list for you for cheaper than that.

This would get you up and running (barring problems with current Radeon drivers). And down the road a couple months, you could put in a discrete graphics card and give yourself a decent performance bump.

Understood, but when you began talking about "posting guidelines", that has a strong whiff of

"If you want to post a guide it has to look like:"

[Guide]: Topic: Description/CatchyText

That's the kind of "user organization" I'm talking about. You could mandate this all day, every day, forever. It wouldn't help anything, save driving people off the forums.

Technically I'm "skirting" the rule. I'm using an image that's significantly smaller than the upper limit. But I'm using multiple images.

What I'd like to see is an increase in the size of text/HTML signatures so that people who post their guides into their sigs can do so in plain hypertext.

Currently it's SEVERELY limiting to try and do with extant size limits, even proxied through URL shorteners like TinyURL.

Right now I'm burning roughly 50KB of images to convey something I could do in less than 1KB of text.

To the controller forum. There's still only ONE forum for controllers. It simply has gateways from each of those sections. So someone searching based on different criteria has a couple options about how to find the forum.

Agreed on everything above. And were the forums refactored to look like this, I'd be on board.

You're talking to a guy who has his forum preferences set to 500 posts-per-page.

I'd rather scroll through than have to click through.

That advice is only marginally useful on forums of this sort of formatting.
It's better to have your forums clearly delineated than to have a mush of multiple forums and rely on some sort of "suggested formatting" to organize it. That's essentially what some of these forum merges (in the AT areas specifically) would accomplish. You'd be pushing the job of organizing the forum off onto the user instead of organizing it yourself.

In my experience running forums of this sort, my advice would be STOP NOW. Expecting the users, no matter how cool and self-organizing they are to be responsible for keeping organization in YOUR forums is a recipe for fustercluck.

I disagree that some of these proposed merges would constitute an "improvement".

Additionally, if this is merely some attempt to give an artificial appearance of "busier" forums, don't. Just...don't.

I miss the snakes...

Now I'm going out of my way to thwack the poor buggers in Port Oakes.

I'd also check your GPU temps when it locks like this.

No. While it may not have worked for you, it HAS given some people relief from their situation with the current generation drivers. As such, it's valid advice. If it works, he's golden. If it doesn't work, he's no worse off than he was before.

Yes. The last couple versions of the Radeon drivers have been an absolute *AHEM!* as far as CoH is concerned.

In most cases, uninstalling the current drivers, running a driver cleaner, then reinstalling with the older driver package solves most of the issues.

And considering that they're on the 4th rev of drivers since it started breaking things, I don't know if anyone can tell you when (or if) AMD is going to ever fix it.

Yeah. I have a lot of activity going on in SQL, pretty much 24x7. So it's buffering a lot into memory to keep the lag down. Even then, I've got it limited to 5GB. I've seen SQL eat 16GB servers for breakfast, belch, then scream for more...slowly...

Honestly, yes. Throwing memory or a marginally more powerful video card at it will be like throwing a band-aid on a cannon-ball hole through someone's chest.

Now, the GOOD news is that if you already have the dosh to spend out for some of these upgrades, you have a good chunk of what you need saved up already.

Take a look at Father XMas' low-end computer. And when I say "low end", only in comparison to some of the other parts lists he's got for beefier budgets. His budget system parts list will still make CoH SCREAM.

Also, if it's going to take a couple months to save up the rest, you'll look to be spending out right about the time all the Christmas deals hit. Making it easier to get stuff cheaply, or allowing you to trade up to a beefier rig because prices have dropped.

If you REALLY have to (and judging by my seeing CoH eat 1.8GB of memory tonight on my machine you may), toss the memory I suggested earlier into your current system and leave it alone after that. It won't make a HUGE difference, but it'll give you a bit more "slack space".