Siolfir

Oh, sure, just qualify it by saying it has to be a good team. Well, that leaves me out!

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That's 7:00, what time zone? same time as normal or earlier?

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*cough*
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Death to the octopus at 7 pm PST 2/17/09!

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Ended up with this Video Card

This Processor

This case

This MoBo

And various other little bits.

Now to see if I can figure out how to put it together!

WWEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

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Yay! New toy!

I say we nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

And, failing that, we should just finish Tuesday instead.

Due to typical airline delays, I may actually be able to make it tonight as I won't need to be at the airport at 10p est.

I won't know for certain until probably just before the team forms, though.

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Ooh. That mission is sort of an 'intentional failure.' I completely forgot about that one.

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It was supposed to be failed?

I still had over 7 minutes on the clock at mission complete. (Warshade with SS ftw)

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Have you analyzed the total number of missions/merits blue-side vs. redside?

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Yes. Otherwise they couldn't pick on villains.

Villain, 1-15
Arc name: Family War
Contact: Billy Heck
Merits: 7 (+2)

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emailing me this and telling me to "make myself useful" and post it:

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Pwnage.

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See how I get treated around here? Just for that, I'm not showing up next Tuesday!

banned for emailing me this and telling me to "make myself useful" and post it:

---


From the Adventure Log of the Countess Clink Clank



Today we resolved to investigate the Professor’s strange condition once and for all. With that goal in mind, we headed to Striga Isle to meet with the mysterious Moonfire. She sent us on a series of missions against old yet unfamiliar foes, werewolves and vampires and beings wielding the forces of darkness. Although the names and appearances were the same, the beings were different somehow.



At one point, seeking information in yet-another series of tunnels, we were unable to locate the last foe. He was hiding from us, the coward, and we were forced to appeal for divine intervention to bring him to us. Luckily, our petition was answered within moments by a strange being of power, identified only as “GM Rayan.” While none of us are sure which pantheon he was from, or even if he was just a benevolent fey, he was able to transport the coward to us and we promptly defeated the coward, gathering the intelligence we needed, and remembered to thank the GM Rayan. Hopefully he was not fey, or he might have taken offence at my thanks.



I also had communication with non-guild members. One, a Dream Saint (I confess I am unfamiliar with all of the saints in the worlds’ religions, but who is the Saint of Dreams?) offered to assistance, but we were unable to take him up on his offer. He predicted our failure, saying he alone had the power to defeat Akron, but clearly he was mistaken or bluffing, as we defeated the villainous handily.



In the end, the endeavor was a success, as we learned more of Kheldians and Nictus and the intergalactic wars. And the Professor seems to be coming to peace with his manifestations, although one aspect of his personality which emerged and called us ‘meat creatures’ was MOST rude. And not nearly as handsome as the Professor’s normal visage.



Next we plan on returning to help Synapse against our old foes the clanks, and then either to return to Striga or investigate the haunted realm of Croatoa. And we agreed to fight the giant octopus, as well.

banned for not posting a summary.... oops, wrong thread

I had yucky microwave food.

The foggy zone is Dark Astoria.

Croatoa is Halloweenland.

You must learn focus.
/miyagi

What was I... ooo, shiny!

lol... that's the case that my Intel is in.

The front fan was the one I replaced to get rid of the annoying blue LED.

Who doesn't hoard the good drops?

And now that I'm done poking around on newegg, I think I'm going to go check the merit drama thread.

And I've had Panda Express, but it's just bleh IMO.

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What other games besides CoX?



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This one.

And I have the redone enhanced version of this. which all of the info I'm finding says the enhanced version is great but is way way a resource hog on your machine.

That's just two of them.

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Okay! Poking around, you could easily get by with a midrange graphics card - 9800GT or GTX (~$130-180) if you're on a budget. If you want complete overkill, double the price and get a nForce 260 or 280.

On a budget, $80 for an AMD processor, $30-35 for a heat sink, $75 for a motherboard, $50-60 for 4GB of memory, $80-100 for a power supply, $30 for a DVDRW, $50-120 for hard drive (320GB-1TB), $50-60 for a case, and a $130 graphics card ($200 for a better one); total price: $600-700

Dell's version (2GB memory, ATI 4670 - an $80 graphics card, overclocked AMD 5600+ CPU, 500GB HD) is $999; so you save a chunk of money building it yourself, plus you know what went into it - as opposed to the cheapest available parts.

The price will fluctuate a bit more as you look at different cases, other options, and if you want to replace fans with silent, no-led fans in the case you pick (I did, at $8 for a 120mm 16dBa fan). But that should at least get you a starting point for a decent gaming system, and you can work up from there are your budget allows.

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Tossing my 2 cents in...

If you grab an NVidia card (think 8600 series or higher) you'll have issues with CoX and Vista. It's a known issue, with no fix from Windows, NVidia or NC^2, but randomly you'll get "nvddmlkm(sp?) driver has stopped responding" errors. Which translates to your current game client doing a hard crash. I've still not found the reason for it, I just deal with it, and reset when it happens.

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I've never had to deal with that - previously I was using a 7950GX2 and was getting hard crashes while playing the game, but that was an overheating issue that went away when I put it into a case with more airflow.

The only problem then was I kept hearing the fans screaming, so I replaced it with the (second) 8800GTX, and haven't had game crashing trouble from it.

What other games besides CoX?

That video card should work well for you; if you're looking for cheap an AMD processor for under $80 will get you there (I'm on an overclocked 5000+ Black edition - the clock multiplier is unlocked so all I did was set it to 15x to get to 3GHz without having to touch the voltage at all). I recommend an aftermarket heatsink and fan if you're going that route, though. Pick a decent motherboard and at least 2GB of memory, grab a power supply and case, and you're good to go.

My current system(s):
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AMD 5000+ Black OC/3 GHz @ default voltage
Gigabyte M61P-S3 motherboard
XFX nVidia 8800 GTX 768MB
2GB Patriot DDR2 800 4-4-4-12
150GB WD Raptor (boot drive)*
300GB Maxtor Diamondmax (storage drive)
OCZ 650W power supply

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Intel X6800 2.93GHz
Intel 975X MB
PNY 8800GTX 768MB (dead and needs replaced)
2GB 4-4-3-8 DDR2 800 (forget brand)
1GB Maxtor HD, 3 partitions
750W Antec power supply

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Both are more than capable, and the rest of the AMD system combined cost less than the graphics card. I'd recommend skipping PNY as a brand name, though - there's no excuse for that card dying in under a year but I can't find the receipt to get them to replace it.


* - this is the only one (of 3) I have that hasn't died in 18 months - I won't buy another

See, now you're going to have her saying she wants a pony again.

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All sorts of craziness.

You only need dual core... no you need quad core... this brand sucks... no wait it rocks...

Don't build prebought they use cheap stuff.

No buy prebuilt prices are dropping due to crappy economy and they are cheap as hell.

Don't use Vista, vista is fine.

Use this brand vid card NO this one, get 1 G vid card mem... shut up fool 1 G is ridiculous and over priced... she only needs 500K MB vid card memory is fine.

AMD processors are fine. NO they BLOW and it is worthwhile to pay for Intel.

Syn's head usually explodes about here.

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Dual Core vs Quad Core:<ul type="square">[*]For most people's computer usage, they don't even need dual core. You never need quad core, although if you're a heavy multitasker you won't notice as much slowdown.[*]Many games (including CoX) don't perform any better on a multicore system than a single core system.[*]What price are you looking for? Dual core processors are cheaper and perform just as well for almost all computer users; quad cores will have increased performance but only in niche situations.[/list]
AMD vs Intel:<ul type="square">[*]When the choices were Pentium 4 vs AMD64, AMD had the clear advantage - they were not only faster, but ran cooler and cost less as well.[*]Intel processors from Core 2 Duo and newer are generally faster at the same clock speed compared to AMD processors, but AMD will top Intel in certain tasks.[*]AMD processors are less expensive than Intel processors for approximately the same level of performance.[*]At the top end, Intel is outperforming AMD. Ever since they abandoned the Pentium 4 architecture they've been more innovative as well.[/list]
Prebuilt vs Do-it-yourself:<ul type="square">[*]At the low end, prebuilt is much less expensive, but you don't know how upgradeable the system will be.[*]Building it yourself lets you control what parts go in it, but provides some concerns with customer service and support (as in, there is often little to none).[*]At the high end of performance, building it yourself is cheaper than a prebuilt system.[/list]
Vista vs XP:<ul type="square">[*]I personally don't like Vista, but yes, it will perform "fine".[*]Vista has a much larger "footprint" in memory, which means that you have less resources available for the programs you want the OS to run.[*]Many people have gotten used to where things are in XP; things have been moved quite a bit in Vista. It's like going from XP to KDE Linux - things seem familiar, but not everything is where you think it should be.[*]Micro$oft is actively trying to push XP out so that people buy the new OS. This means less support for newer hardware in XP and many times prebuilt systems don't even supply drivers for XP at all.[/list]
Graphics cards:<ul type="square">[*]nVidia is supported better than ATI currently in CoX (there's a whole thread on ATI issues).[*]Depending on the resolution you run the game at and what settings you're running on, a mid-grade card will likely perform just fine.[*]I personally use an nVidia 8800 GTX w/768MB of memory and it's pure overkill, but I get (vertical sync-capped) 60 fps in almost every situation in the game, while running with advanced graphics settings which are set higher than the "very high" settings default to at 1920x1200 resolution.[*]If you spend more than $200 on a graphics card, you're paying for "new and shiny" instead of performance.[*]Video processor speed and memory bandwidth is more important than amount of memory. A high end, newer generation 256MB card will outperform an older, slower 1GB card.[/list]
As an afterthough don't skimp and get one of those $20-30 power supplies. A failing power supply can show up as a lot of seemingly unrelated problems, and a friend ordered one online because it was cheap and it exploded (literally - flame shooting out the back of the case) on the first day, taking the motherboard with it.

Actually putting a computer together is easy. It's not like there are all that many ways to put the parts in so that they aren't in the right places. Just remember the heat sink compound goes between the processor and the heat sink, not the processor and the socket (yes, someone did this when I was working customer service at a computer store) and that the spacers that come with the case are there for a reason - screwing the motherboard directly to the (conductive!) backplate is not a good way to make the computer work (another brilliant computer engineer did that one). Also, don't file out the plastic tabs in the memory slots just so that you can fit DDR memory in a DDR2 slot.

As for picking parts, what's the conflicting advice you're getting?

Oh noz! It's Monday again!

And time to change my avatar until Valentine's day.

Hey, if the game can give me Carnie missions like "Defeat Aribeth and his guards"...