Hyperstrike

"Fair" in this game is when a buyer is willing to meet or exceed what a seller is willing to take for the item.

Nobody is forcing the buyer to pay that much. Nobody is forcing the seller to take less.

Currently you have the alternative to go out and earn it yourself.

For salvage, this is through random drops, AE rolls and AE spec buys.
For recipes, this is through random drops, AE rolls, Merit Rolls and Merit spec buys.

Would you like to straighten this sentence out? Right now it's a run-on mess that, beyond the first comma, makes no sense.

There IS a store for common IOs. The crafting station.
There IS a store for uncommon to rare IOs. The merit vendor.

Shovel time!

*KLONG!*

A slightly older, but still very decent CPU.
One downside. Socket 1366 is obsolete. That means you don't have much of an upgrade path.
The currently supported socket architecture is Socket 1156

Already talked about the socket issue.
Decent board. But, it's an early implementation of SATA3 and USB3. If you use them as such, you'll wind up stealing bandwidth from your video card.



Okay, it's not an X2 card. So it's single GPU.
However, it's one of the fastest single GPU cards available right now.
What you've got is set for Eyefinity.

Go here to look at your card.


Look at the second picture. You'll notice it doesn't have the conventional "monitor" plugs on the back. It's set up for Mini Display Port.


If you have Display Port-ready monitors, you can drive up to 6 of them at a time. Moreover you could "combine" them into a single display unit.

Here's a link to a video review of Eyefinity.


Don't worry if you don't though. The card you're getting comes with adapters.

2x Mini Display Port to DVI (conventional monitor digital connection)
2x Mini Display Port to Display Port
1x Mini Display Port to HDMI (HD connector you usually find on big screen HDTVs)



Your motherboard does triple-channel RAM.
So you're either 6x 2 Gigabyte sticks or 3x 4 Gigabyte sticks.



WD: Western Digital (The Hard Drive manufacturer)

1TB: 1 Terabyte (technically less (909 Gigabytes) because hard drive manufacturers classify 1TB as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (10 to the 12th). Technically a TB is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes (2 to the 40th).

More info here.


32Mb: (This is wrong, Mb is Megabits). Technically it's MB (Megabytes). That's how much on-drive cache memory the drive has. This cache memory is used to intelligently pre-fetch information from the spinning platters. The reason for this is, the retrieving data directly from the platters is several orders of magnitude slower than the cache memory, which is slower than system memory, which is slower than the memory on the processor or the processor itself. So if the data the CPU needs isn't available in one of these memory locations, it winds up (metaphorically) twiddling it's thumbs for "long" (nanoseconds) periods waiting for the data request to be filled.

SATA2: 2nd Generation SATA.

What's SATA? Ever look into an older computer? Remember the fat ribbon cables? Thats' Parallel ATA (PATA).

It used to be, when they wanted to up the speed of a drive interface, they'd usually opt to increase the number of connectors available to the drive. They did it this way because increasing the signaling speed was tough. They had to keep everything coming across the connector timed just so.

PATA used to come in 40 and 80 lead varieties. Actually the 80-lead variety simply had 40 dead connectors in it to isolate the actual "live" lines from one another and prevent "crosstalk".

SATA got around this by moving to a single set of wires and signalling at very high speed.

PATA is a 40 lane road with everyone going 33, 66, 100, or 133 mph. Sometimes it's an 80 lane road of the same speed, but 40 of the lanes are permanently blocked off for safety.

SATA is a 2 lane road where people are zinging by at 1500 (SATA1), 3000 (SATA2) or 6000 (SATA3) mph.

7200 rpm. This is how fast the platters (spindle) of the hard drive turn (rotations per minute). 7200 rpm is fairly standard now for most hard drives. Older drives, and low-power drives will spin slower. Very high performance drives will spin at 10,000 rpm for SATA or SCSI and 15,000 rpm for SCSI.

Realistically, with the obscenely large caches (up until a few years ago, 8MB of cache was an outrageous amount), the actual spindle speed of a drive is of less importance nowadays unless the drive is heavily taxed.


LG: The manufacturer
22x: How fast the drive recovers data from the disk compared to the original 1x standard.

DVD 1x = 10.8 Megabits/sec.
DVD 22x = 237.6 Megabits/sec.

Also note that that's 22x only with certain preferred type of media (DVD+ vs DVD-, etc)

Also, the drive will probably read CDs at 48x (vs the original 1x CD standard.

CD 1x = 1.23 Megabits/Sec
CD 48x is actually variable. It reads fastest towards the outer edges of the disk and always spins at a constant velocity.
CD 48x can be up to 59 Megabits/sec. Certain drives used to go up to 72x, but they spun at very low velocities and actually used multiple lasers to retrieve data.

The drive is also a burner. This means you can author your own DVDs (either just data dumps or, with the right software, video).



I'm not real fond of the Creative lineup. They haven't done anything REALLY noteworthy in several years now. The competing Xonar line of cards from various manufacturers is a MUCH nicer card.



Thermaltake is a decent manufacturer.
1000 Watt Power Supply Unit (PSU).
Nice big fan in the thing. 140mm. Spins slow but moves LOTS of air fairly quietly.
The PSU is also modular. This means you can hook up ONLY the connectors you need and leave the rest in a box. This cuts down on cable clutter in the case and helps maintain decent airflow throught the case.



Not a big fan of window cases or cases with LED fans.
That said, Cooler Masters' cases are usually VERY nice. They're a mostly tool-less design. So you can mount the hard drives in shock-resistant trays and put the DVD burner into it's bay and use the bay locks instead of screws. Saves lots of time and aggravation.

The case itself is roomy as heck. So you shouldn't have a problem mounting your video card.

Also, it's got THREE gargantuan 200mm fans for great ventilation and low noise.

Make sure to keep the case clean though. The 200mm fans aren't always easy to come by as replacement parts.


If you're buying this separately from the computer (as in buying a parts list), make sure you buy the OEM copy. Don't buy the retail box. It's a waste of your mopney.

I'm not completely enamoured of Win7. But it's not bad. Should work just fine for you.



Hope this helped clear some things up for you.


Also, if you're looking for decent monitors, give Dell and the Dell Outlet (if you're looking to pick them up in multiples on the cheap) a look-see. Dell's screens aren't "spectacular", but they're not horrific.

The DEEP south...

Arena matches expressly are NOT counted.

Though this could be wrong. As it's talking about hero vs hero and villain vs villain which is impossible to do outside of confuse in Zones.

My SG is fairly small. There are about 5 active players in it and I'm the main prestige bot.

Protector.

I guess. This'll probably have to happen in a few weeks though. Too close to GenCon right now with too much on my plate.

You could motivate me to completely rewrite and and manually bugcheck the entire CoH client within a week with a threat like that.

And I don't have the temperment for programming.

Fire/Rad 1: Why's the scrapper just standing over in the corner?
Fire/Rad 2: He's sulking.
Fire/Rad 3-7: *Nod* LETS BURN STUFF!

Actually it's First Tuesday is Champion and the rest are spread across other servers.

Oh, and it popped into my head just now.

I will not be here for the Liberty Fire/Rad group or TT next week. I'm going to be down in Indianapolis at GenCon.

If any of you live in the area (or are going to the con), there's a Meet and Greet at the Spaghetti Factory on Friday, August 6th.

Nah, turning off XP is my friend. I have a Widow I'm working through ALL red-side content in level-order that's making EXTENSIVE use of this. The hard part is trying to remember when and where to stop to give yourself maximum effectiveness without outleveling things.

That's just it, the level spreads are sometimes fairly wide. So it can be a bit...gappy at times.

TT has been going a lot longer than we have.

That's like some guy emigrating from Outer Spotsylvania coming to the US and asking the whole country to go someplace else.

And heck, the TT this week drew something like 5-6 full teams. I was gobsmacked.

Yeah. We had a good run in the Hollows. Gave a bunch of trolls a good shellacking, taught some Igneous the meaning of "assault and battery".

Then half the team decamped to TT.

Fun had by all.

Thursday we'll finish the Atta arc and unlock the Cavern of Transcendance trial. Then I can turn XP back on.

Seriously? Were you having problems hitting stuff?
Or were you getting mezzed a bunch?

Or was it that it just felt too easy and too much like PL?

Honestly, with Fire/Rads, especially a full (or near-full) team of them, it really IS just that easy. And it does feel like you're not doing a whole lot for all the XP you pull in. And yeah, we do occasionally faceplant. Not a huge deal.

About the only way to make it feel tougher is to severely crank the difficulty. Which just makes it feel MORE like PL as the exp boost causes you to level at an even more astronomical rate.

Or fight enemies that don't mez easy. But, again, with 6-8 people throwing down mez, it's just a matter of time.

We actually went up against carnies a few weeks back. Now, as a tank, carnies have always been one of those "ah crap" enemies when they come up.
We sawed through them like a chainsaw through warm butter.

Quite frankly, we don't care if you siphon a few easy levels out of this. We're more interested in getting you to a place where you feel you're contributing to the group as an equal.

Maybe it would have been less off-putting had we done a TF in your level range.

All the facile justification aside, I do hope we'll see you back.

Also, if the time frame for the Freedom group is problematic for you, you may want to take a look at the twice-a-week Fire/Rad group forming up on Liberty. They meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8PM Central.

Again, one doesn't need to devote 10 minutes out of every 45 minute play period to this. The ratio of time spent to time played factors in.

Howsabout a big frothy cup of NO?

The problem is, I understand the argument being made. I simply disagree with it. And I will not "yes man" you (generic you) simply to soothe your (generic you) wounded ego over the fact that I'm rolling in inf for a piddling time investment and you're (again, generic you) not.


If you're posting about being chronically short of inf because you "don't have time to market", then obviously this is not the case.

Because some people wouldn't recognize "subtle" if you drowned them in it, then set the resulting mess on fire with a nuclear blast.

As to idiocy. If you (again generic you) are whining about having no inf, and I'm doing it as an afterthought and making bank, how is what *I* am posting "idiocy"?

You (non-generic this time) DO realize that effectively telling someone to "shut up" on a bulletin board is one of the most futile and idiotic things you can possibly do right?

Bah. Don't take the piss out of yourself that way. If you want to have an opinion, have at. I don't begrudge you that. I simply don't have to agree with you. Nothing wrong with that.

Why? It's not like there's a link at the bottom of each recipe that runs a search for all the components.

Oh wait!

And again, place a bid you feel is fair. Creep the bid if you get no traction after a while (not 5 seconds).

If people want, we can do this again next week. Several of us finally bumped into the levels necessary for the Vanguard intro.

From what I understand, they're reducing scrapper resistances by 50%, defenses by 30% and completely removing defense debuff protection.

Moreover, they're octupling endurance costs and changing everything to clicks.

Also, when one of your powers is clicked, it suppresses the scrapper crit chance.



















































No... Not really.

Fixed that for you.

I'm not devoting huge blocks of time to my marketing. I place bids on the stuff I want. Play my butt off (christ there's a lot of butt left...), and then clear what sold, dump any drops, add any new bids if I have space and go. If the marketing takes up 10 minutes of play on a single toon in a 3 hour period, I'd be stunned.

As long as they're not level-locked TFs, you can take them along.

I always loved the riff the Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag comic did on JD.

The titular character gets sucked into the comic book world and runs across a thinly veiled JD. He naturally rips off the guy's helmet.

And there's nothing there...

Note: The link goes to a free download of the comic in PDF format from the publisher's site.