Kitsune Knight

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Not the mention, when I went to Best Buy and played around with that exact machine, I couldn't seem to get it's strange interface to work. Some Black Screen with Blue media-center-like icons. I'm sure it was because it was just the floor model, but it seemed to have turned me off nearly instantly.

[/ QUOTE ]Sounds like you were in Splashtop (aka ExpressGate), which is an Instant-On Linux Distribution that ASUS includes on a lot of their machines, it's meant as an alternative to fully booting the OS to get access to your documents quickly... you can easily pretend it isn't there (you have to enter it by pressing the ExpressGate button while the machine is off, instead of using the power button).

Or, it could have been BestBuy's display software... if it's the same as the one I saw, there should have been a button to hide it, allowing you access to the desktop.

Checking HP's website, it looks like the other option is 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT? That'll still be fairly low end...


Have you considered an ASUS machine? Based on the stats you listed, the G71 would be a good fit, costing a bit less, with a pretty damn good video card (the nvidia 260M... as far as I know, the 280M is the only mobile card out there right now that's faster... and I've yet to see a machine with it). I recently picked up a lower end version of that machine as a replacement for an HP system that had the video card just go out just after the warrenty expired.

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For using weird ports,

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NCSoft didn't use "weird" ports, NCSoft simply didn't hijack a commonly used port like TCP 80 (which'd be hard to do, since the game runs on UDP, the other common Transport Layer protocol, which most all games use). Blaming NCSoft (/Cryptic) for not designing the game in a way to try to trick ISPs is a bit silly... especially when it really didn't become very common (at least for the public to know) that some ISPs (like comcast... [censored] holes) like to throttle their user's traffic (because, ya know, how dare they use the service as intended!).

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and secondly, for daring to have such a complicated program that has such high data needs

[/ QUOTE ]City of Heroes really doesn't send that much data (for the most part, it can run on dial up). CoH just likes low latency, which isn't something that most ISPs will even go near mentioning (broadband only refers to your transfer rate... it wasn't unusual in the early days of broadband to have LOWER latency on dial up than broadband... especially dsl).

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1. "ok" OS, personally I would have just used whatever OS you are currently using now and then when W7 is released, get the full version. Upgrade versions are and have always been dodgy. It's best to install full versions of operating systems.

[/ QUOTE ]You're wasting a huge amount of money doing it that way. Unless Microsoft changed things recently, you can do a full install using an upgrade version of the OS just by putting the previous OS's CD into the drive at the appropriate time during the installation.

Just as a heads up, as City of Heroes is a 32bit application, it can only use 3.5 gigs of RAM.

As for the video card, it's on the low end for the latest generation... so it might be a bit slow.

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I NEVER install to the default folder for games in Vista. I always install to my c:\Games folder or my E:\Games folder, depending on which computer I'm on.

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Why'd you install it to a different folder? I understand installing it to a different drive, but I see no possible benefit installing it to somewhere other than Program File (or Program Files (x86)). If it's a permissions thing, you can still simply take ownership of the installation's folder (personally, that's what I do along with Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit setting CoHUpdater.exe to RunAsInvoker instead of the OS trying to auto-UAC elevate it due to thinking it's an installer).

Also, Vista's indexing service isn't really very active once it finishes the initial index on the first run, and even then, it won't negatively impact performance.


And back on topic, the default path on Vista 64 is C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes\screenshots, assuming there is no virtualization involved.

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I just assumed the card wasm't THAT bad, but its looking like the culprit.

[/ QUOTE ]You have to actually search a lot when buying a notebook for one with out HORRIBLE graphics capabilities. I was just looking a couple days ago and pretty much all the machines I looked at had graphics that were inferior to a low end nvidia card from 5 years ago... even though every other piece of hardware in all the machines was very good.

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I am going to be using all new-at-the-time mid to mid-high level components

[/ QUOTE ]And CoX will look beautiful, and you'll save a fortune

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Wow, a GeForce2?

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Not only that but a GeForce 2 MX which is about half as powerful as the original GeForce 2 GTS.

[/ QUOTE ]I remember buying one of those nearly a decade ago...

1.) No, auto now.
2.) You'd need to look in the task manager... there should be an option to show the number of threads. Also, multi-threading really won't increase the performance that much.
3.) IIRC, it's just one additional thread.
4.) IIRC, all cards since the 9xxx series support it already (via a driver update). CoX's version of PhyX is too old to make use of it. IMO, this isn't a big deal, even a SLOW processor can run with Particle Physica on the max with no real impact on performance.
5.) Can't personally comment on this.
6.) Nvidia. ATI cards are fickle as hell


Honestly, it seems like you're going overboard with this a bit. A desktop with 2 gigs of ram, an older dual core AMD processor, and an 8800 GTS can run CoX with all setting on max and a VERY short load time (as in around 3 seconds... most of the time just waiting for the server to start the instance) and great performance. Hami raids with all settings at max with no human noticable dip in fps

I'm not sure whether I should hit you for saying that, or fall on the ground laughing.

Wow, a GeForce2?

Guess what? If you upgrade your computer to something even somewhat modern, not only will you get a much MUCH better computer... CoX will look COMPLETELY different... I really should do a video comparing CoX with low graphics and CoX with high graphics (I had forgotten how nice it could look!)...

The popup spam is the reason I stopped using AVG Free and switched to Avast! IMO, it's simply bad UI to have a non-passive popup appear for a mere 'nothing bad happened' notification. Hell, it annoys me to no end that I get a 30 second passive notification whenever I plug/unplug something in the headphones jack (Why yes! I did just do something with it! Thanks for telling me what I just did, then remaining on the screen for 30 seconds just in case!).


I like my security software to get the hell out of the way

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My goal, though, is to find out if people who are running 64-bit XP have had issues. Since I'm rebuilding the system anyways, I might as well upgrade the 3G of RAM I have with the 4G I have on the shelf.

[/ QUOTE ]Just a heads up: Most motherboards don't support more than 4G of ram (not counting the more recent ones). And also, even with more than 4 gigs of ram in the machine, CoX still won't be able to use more than the 32bit architectural limit.

Unless you're planning on running multiple instances of CoX at once, or CoX and other massive applications at the same time (like Firefox ), you likely won't see much benefit from switching to 64bits (at least w.r.t. CoX- 64bit video encoding and encryption software is far faster on 64bit systems).

Likely just a memory corruption... nothing to worry about long as it's a one-off thing.

Go with Wine. It's 100% free, it should be dead easy to install ('sudo apt-get install wine' should get it installed, Synaptic and other GUI package managers should make it easy as well), and from what I've heard, it works very well with CoH.

And, if for some reason it DOESN'T work, you can still try Cedega later without being out any money from trying Wine. Definitely a win-win situation

I'd recommend trying to start the game in Safe Mode (on the updater, before you accept the EULA check the tick box next to "Safe Mode", then click Accept) to see if it'll work. If the resolves your problem, then you can try starting the game normally, and then going into the Graphics options, setting it to Custom (or Advanced? can't recall which it's called) and set most all the options as low as they'll go, and slowly work some up until you find where you have the best visual with still having decent performance).


But yeah, Intel's graphics solutions are about as low end as you can get (their top of the line stuff is similar to the mid-range stuff from Nvidia and ATI from several years ago). Unfortunately, the manufacturers like putting in really low quality graphics into all their machines... even while every other piece is actually very good.

Another note: Service Pack 2 often won't show up (in Windows Update) if there's other important updates that need to be installed.

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You can always take a look at the GPU binning at Tom's Hardware. There they rank the GTX 260M significantly higher than the 8600M GS.

[/ QUOTE ]Perfect! I checked Tom's earlier but didn't find that. Looks like I'll be able to enjoy CoH with all the graphical goodness!

Recently my laptop's video card started dying (curse you teal dots of doom! )... so now I'm in the market for a new laptop!

The one I'm looking at right now has a GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB onboard memory... I'm wondering how that compares to the 8600M GS with 128 or 256MB (can't recall which) onboard memory in the laptop that died? From some googling, it sounds like it'll blow the pants off the old one, both in performance () and in heat output (), does that sound about right?

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Nor does it line up with City of Data's entry on Fury.

[/ QUOTE ]The power Fury does nothing. Check the actual attacks.


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Brutes do not have to "hold aggro for a team" in order to have 70%+ Fury.

[/ QUOTE ]You don't need a taunt aura to hold aggro... or even taunt.

I see mod8 has already gotten to this thread


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stupid, lazy implementation

[/ QUOTE ]Obviously not a software developer. Always annoys me when people assume that any and every bug is due to stupidity/laziness.

Actually, I think it'd just annoy mod8.

Ditch the spaces around the $$... you don't want spaces around them, it just causes issues.

Yeah, not dead for me either, but it definitely seems like it's happening a lot less often now (or I just got lucky )

I've yet to come across it. Sounds like they've at least fixed a lot of the cause, if maybe not all.