Hyperstrike

What makes a man turn Neutral...
-- Zapp Brannigan

Are you using this as a file-dump disk, or are you planning to put the OS or your swap/paging file on there?

If the former, just stick with a USB2 enclosure. It's perfectly fine for basic file transfer.

If you plan to actually use it for swap/paging, or moving your OS over to, then go with an internal drive, no enclosure, and the aforementioned SATA controller.

The whole "3 GBit/sec" is a maximum for the entire SATA interface. And you're NEVER going to see that from a single disk.

Most mechanical hard drives have a throughput that maxes around 130 MBit/sec.

Throughput on USB 2.0 is listed at 480 Mbit/Sec, though in reality, chop about 1/3 of that off for overhead (320 Mbit/sec), which is still higher than the output of a single drive.

So the entire thing is a giant predestination paradox?

Naught but a Nemesis Plot!

Note: If you're getting an external enclosure, you don't need a SATA controller card. All you need is a USB port.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Disks) is an umbrella term for various methods of combining, mirroring, and/or adding failover capability to a disk system.

If you're simply adding one disk, you don't need RAID.

At the rate listed above, that's not "a lot of people" starting to PvP. That's the current, miniscule community. Get the actual farmers, with multiple accounts, involved and you'll be awash in purples and PVP IOs in days. All it'll cost is a tray full of wakies for each toon.

We're talking purples (and pseudo-purples) here. Stuff so valuable you can't even pay REAL merits for a roll, let alone have enough to buy one.

*cough*bovinefeces*cough*

Some servers are deader than others. Go into an empty PVP zone, park, and collect merits.

Also, collecting a purple roll for 25 kills? Come on! A bit of cooperation and you'd see hundreds of these purples generated.

This is what alts are for!

No problem. That'll be 137,562,949,746 inf.

No, you're just working in one of those nasty corner cases where a combination of low level (and all the deficiencies that implies), and power sets of your enemies or combining to just whup your donkey.

Not quite. If you're going with installing an internal hard drive, you'll need an EIDE drive.

If you're going with an external, you can get IDE or SATA and an enclosure to go with it. Or you could just buy one of the ready-made externals.

Note: If you're going with internal and EIDE, you're probably not going to find a whole lot of drives beyond 500GB anymore.

If you're going to go that route, this drive would probably be my suggestion.

If you're going to go external, it's probably more cost-effective to go SATA now. This 1GB SATA drive is is only about $12 more expensive than the 500GB drive listed above.

And why am I just recommending Western Digital drives? I've had good luck with Western Digital. My luck has been so-so with Seagates and positively HORRIBLE with Maxtor. Others may vary in their experience.

As for an external enclosure, I've had good luck with Vantec's NexStar line. So here's an enclosure recommendation.

So for $110-120 you have yourself a nice, portable drive.

Now, if you just want to go with pre-bought/built it gets even easier (and even slightly cheaper for the same amount of drive space). me thus far is MORE than sufficient.

If so, pick one from the list in this link.

There may be one tradeoff though. External drives usually aren't performance-oriented. They tend to use lower rotational speeds and less cache to limit power consumption and heat output. Not that performance will be BAD, but burst performance might be slightly lower. Also, the pre-built ones tend to use plastic more prominently in their enclosures (where some of the better after-market enclosures use aluminum for better heat dissipation).

On the flip side though, it's not as if you're going to be using this drive as your primary OS or swap drive. If you were, and were going to be hitting it all the time I'd tell you to just go with an internal drive. Less chance of you cooking it. But as a file-dump drive, pretty much anything recommended by

What exactly are you aiming for with the build? Defense cap (See Call_Me_Awesome's guide)? General, all-around Superman clone (see Vox Populi's SuperTanker guide)? Take a browse through the various guides. That should at least give you some starting points for the build you'd like.

Only if you're not taking into account that you're now selling to the aggregated demand pools of both sides.

I could conceivably see a couple markets that are very marginal on one side or the other turning into big money propositions in a merged market.

Click on Powers
Click on Attributes
Open up the Defense section.
Right-click on one of your defenses (usually recommend Smashing or Lethal) and choose to monitor it.
Move the little monitor that pops up someplace convenient.
Then go jump into a mob of enemies and aggro them.
Watch your defense climb at that point.

Okay, retyping this. Accidentally closed the tab with the original reply.

A "high end" computer in this case is about $700 worth of parts (less by the time the game debuts).

We're talking about a whopping:

• AMD Phenom II X2 3Ghz: $90
• Motherboard: $100
• Case and PSU: $140
• 6GB DDR3 RAM: $120
• nVidia GTX : $170

Now let's look at the various case scenarios for players.

• BOO-YAH! : Your computer vastly exceeds minimum specs and you'll be able to turn on UGM without missing a beat. Rock out with your...reflections...out.
• BOO-WHA? : Your computer exceeds the minimum specs, but you may have to turn down the resolution a notch or two to keep framerate acceptable. Rock out with your...slightly lower resolution reflections...out.
• BOO! : Your computer base platform is fine but you may need to upgrade your graphics card to play in UGM. On the upside, you can play in regular graphics mode until you can afford the upgrade.
• BOO-OW! : Your computer is going to need several upgrades besides just the graphics card (upgraded PSU, more memory, slightly more powerful processor). Again, you can play in regular mode until you can save up the cash for the upgrade.
• BOO-HOO! : You basically need to replace your computer completely to get UGM. Again, you can still play in regular mode until you can save up.
• BOO-HOO-HOO! : You need to replace your system completely to get UGM. But you're dead broke, unemployed, on a minimum wage job, your parents pay for your CoX addiction, or you're a mutant who generates a cash-repulsion field somewhere in the exapascal range. Well, nothing is stopping you from playing in regular graphics mode.
• BOOM! : Your computer blew up and all the conditions pertaining to "BOO-HOO-HOO!" apply to you. Well, in this one, solitary case, you're BONED.

So, we have roughly 6-8 months notice (roughly 35 weeks to June 30 2010).

$20 a week (watch a DVD instead of going to the movies, buy the cheap gas, eat ramen instead of ordering a pizza, read a book instead of going out and getting fecal-faced (pointedly NOT looking at a certain server), etc).

• In 8 weeks of this, those who just need to upgrade their video cards are set.
• In 13-15 weeks, those who need vidcard + 1 component (RAM/PSU/CPU) are set.
• And by release date, those who need to replace their system with something that'll play it in UGM can.
• Those who're too broke to do as prescribed above can STILL play in normal graphics mode.

As such, they're unaffected by this. It's simply one of a myriad of features they ALREADY ARE NOT USING.

I disagree. While eyecandy is, by definition, superficial, it WILL help retain people and will also help draw people in.

They're seeing their Pretty Ugly Girl go through her Movie Makeover. As such, they're suitably impressed.

Well, that, and a bunch of our people are unabashed hams of the first order.

And, as such, shouldn't introduce massive quantities of lag-inducing performance degradation to implement now. Especially when the tech is so tried-and-true.

The graphics update wasn't something I asked for. As it is, at the resolutions I'm playing and with all the graphics options pegged, the game looks pretty sweet already (yet another reason I was so *meh* on *AHEM* a competing superhero MMO product *AHEM*. But if this is a bone they're chucking to me to make it look even BETTER? All I can say is "No no. I don't need to look at the horse's teeth. Thanks for giving him to me!"

As to the rest, I'm not suitably moved by it just yet. Maybe if I'd been sitting in the audience, I'd have been more wowed.

About the only real forehead slapper I have is the decision to STILL not merge the markets. If anything, this is an ongoing issue of stubborn boneheadedness of grotesquely monumental proportions.

*Infini-facepalm*

Bah. I'm from Chicago. 65 degrees is nice....

If I can sit naked in front of a fan...

And with THAT disturbing piece of mental imagery firmly ensconced in your craniums, my work here is done...

Have this on my Thinkpad (1920x1200).

I still have a couple old CRTs at work that do above 2048x1536.
I also have a 30" LCD as my main, and yeah. Cost a fortune. About $2000 new at the time.

I know. But at work, I'm on monitors that make the screen real-estate of 1920x1080 feel dinky.

Nah. Just 1920x1080

Maybe by doing something like this?



Click for full size image.