je_saist
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Posts
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Quote:I think you'll find that the DX11 Platform update brings WDDM 1.1 to Vista SP2. And if it didn't bring everything in WDDM 1.1, I'm pretty sure the entire update is in the SP3 builds that have been floating to OEM's. Which aligns with what I've been saying. Vista and Win7 are the same Operating System.
By the by, Win 7 does have more to it than you're selling. For one, WDDM 1.1 is vastly improved from the 1.0 with Vista. Under the old model, all program windows would have a framebuffer-sized chunk of memory allocated to it, to allow it to expand to fullscreen without issue. This also meant that every single window you opened took up that much memory. This wouldn't be too bad, but WDDM 1.0 also keeps a duplicate of such data in the system memory.
I'm not saying it's the same OS off the disc that you get. I am saying that if you kept Vista up to date, you are running the same stuff behind the GUI that Win7 is running. That is how Microsoft operates. That is their business model. Now, you don't find me arguing that Win7's interface is cleaner and easier to work with. But the Win7 default interface... well, it's most certainly cleaner and easier to understand than Vista's:
The My Computer / Documents icon, web browser, clock and date, and the little icons. Nice touch over Vista putting everything in the start menu.
yet... um. Desktop Linux... was doing this back in 2003.
So... Win7's interface... actually looks dated.
Also, in all fairness, it didn't take Desktop Linux long to figure out that giving users too many options on the task bar was also a bad idea, an by 2006, this was pretty much the gold standard look for a KDE 3.x distro. That's still approaching 3 years before Microsoft turned around and used the design ideas.
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Quote:*sighs*Originally Posted by Gulver
*latch on je_saist with his now flaming cavernous maw*
*pulls out the OMNI-TAZER SUPREME! and Zaps Gulver with it* -
wanted to catch a quick comment from something I didn't see addressed:
Quote:As I understand it, there are only six fabs that have machines that can produce in both the quantities, and sizes, that AMD and Nvidia need for their chips.So if TSMC has so badly messed up with both AMD/ATI and Nvidia, it sounds a lot more like a situation where the first of them to come to agreements with a new Fab partner might be the winner in this whole debacle. Or is TSMC the only game in town for cranking out silicon in the 40nm process?
Intel
Chartered Semiconductors
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)
GlobalFoundries
IBM
UMC
Well, Intel's out of the question. They are not about to produce Nvidia or ATi graphics chips when they have their sites set on the add-in market with Larrabee.
In a similar manner, GlobalFoundries is partly out of the question. Most of their business is taking up on AMD Central Processors. They would need to increase their capacity in order to handle also producing ATi chipsets.
TSMC is also out of the question, which is why AMD is having trouble keeping 58xx cards in stock, and they are partially responsible for Nvidia's Fermi being put to the side.
Chartered might be both out of the question and the solution for AMD. They've been bought by ATIC, which is GlobalFoundries: http://www.charteredsemi.com/newsroo.../20091104.aspx However, Chartered already had it's own list of customers they were selling chips to, so that's not a lot of headroom.
That leaves the United Microelectronics Corporation and IBM as the only foundries who have the capacity, and the technology, to possibly fill the orders for ATi and Nvidia.
UMC is already working for Nvidia, and was partially responsible for helping to deliver the G92 graphics processors. However, UMC is in the same position as TSMC... they are only getting around to 40nm support.
That leaves IBM as one of the few foundries that can possibly deliver on 40nm in large quantities. I suspect that AMD is probably trying to coax a deal out of IBM for that reason. -
A: Villains has far fewer zones than Heroes.
B: Most of the Villain zones were already linked from a single ferry. Excusing Mercy Island, and Port Oakes, once you hit Cap Au Diable, all of the rest of the villain zones have a single ferry. Trying to use the Villain Side, which was already connected very differently from zone to zone than the Hero side, as a model for how the Hero side should be connected is just a bad idea all around
C: the point of Ourobous is not convenience.
really, what it sounds like you want is what AE gave people. The ability to make avatars with no travel powers, sit in a single room, go nowhere, see nothing, and still level. Sorry, I don't want that kind of game. I'd rather be a SuperHero and actually have to GO TO THE FIGHT, not have the fight come to me. Add more teleport locations to Ourobous? No thank you. That's not why Ourobous is there. -
Quote:honestly, on the 7900 GT KO I have and the GTS 250's, I've had about 11 blue-screen crashes across various games under Win7 64bit. On some of the older titles I mentioned earlier, like the Lithtech engine games, I often get texture corruption with the Nvidia 64bit drivers. I gave up on games like Half Life 2, Ghostbusters, Dead Space, and Call of Duty 4 with Triple SLI under 64 bit Nvidia due to crashes. I even wound up borrowing a friends 9500 GT's to make sure it wasn't a problem with my GTS 250's. I also tested across both a couple of Asus Socket AM2+ SLI boards, as well as the non-Nvidia chip Intel x58 DFI board I own. Granted, the problems I've run into aren't as bad as when Vista launched and Nvidia was caught with their pants completely down.... but still, across 3 different motherboards, with 2 different sets of cards, and the 181, 185.85, 186.18, 190.62, 191.07, 195.62 beta and final drivers.Originally Posted by Flameshot
Just out of curiosity, what exactly isn't ready about them? I find nVidia's 64-bit drivers work just fine. Been using what's usually considered the latest drivers since I had my 8600 (Now on a GTS 250).
Not that I don't believe you may have experienced some issues with the drivers, but that doesn't mean they're "not ready". I am really interested to hear why you think they're not
So I'm likely to stand by my statement Nvidia's drivers aren't ready.
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Memphis: Actually good catch out. I do know why I typed Ultimate. I got rather used to Vista Ultimate actually having everything I wanted and often needed, where-as Win7 Ultimate is a huge chunk of change for ... not much over the Professional Edition. I'd actually be pressed to name anything outright from the Administrator Tools or underlying system components that are in the Ultimate version that are not in the Professional edition on Win7. -
Quote:BBCAmerica is a season behind, and only on premium cable networks. They also tend to cut content from the BBC2 original. Same goes for the BBC Prime and other syndicated versions. The older version that was made for the Speed Channel was also a cut-content version.Originally Posted by DocArcus
They run Top Gear where I live from time to time, so it can work in the US.
And no, you sort of missed the point. Top Gear does work in the US market. The shows producers are aware of the near fanatical bit-torrent following, as aware of the producers cracking jokes with some of the fans while filming the pilot that NBC declined to pick up or show after dropping several million dollars on the production costs.
The problem with Top Gear on the broadcast and cable networks is that the broadcast and cable networks are used to ad supported revenue. Top Gear UK, and Top Gear Australia on SBS, could get away with saying that a car was awful, not that good, and so on. In a sponsorship or commercial enviroment, like Top Gear Australia will be getting when it relaunches on Australia Channel 9 next year, tends to discourage presenters from being honest about their reviews.
To put this in perspective, an average Car review on Top Gear lasts around 5 to 8 minutes of review, then a quick lap around the power track, so an average car gets 7 to 10 minutes in the spotlight. During the 2010 superbowl, Ad rates are expected to be almost $3,000,000 for just 30 seconds of ad time. A 30 second ad for a Prime-Time show on NBC runs around $55,000 to $75,000. A 5 minute promotional ad then, for Prime-Time television, would be around $550,000 (x * 2 = n : n*5 = 5 minutes). A 5 minute promotional ad during a major sporting event would be a money sink.
US Advertisers would approach each car review as an ad. The huge concern with Top Gear Australia on Channel 9 is that the show will have to pander to the advertisers. If Ford doesn't like a review and they decide they don't want any more cars shown, that's it. No more Ford cars. And trust me, Commerical networks will fold in a heartbeat if they even THINK that ad revenue is at stake.
In order for Top Gear to work for any of the major US broadcast networks or Cable networks, they'd have to be willing to get the advertisers to ignore what the show says. That's not what advertisers are paid to do. All it's going to take is Tanner Faust saying one word about the new Camero's lack of quality, and poof, the UAW is going to be screaming for a lawsuit for damages against their reputation.
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Once you get beyond the dependence of the US television broadcast industry on keeping advertisers and vendors happy, at all costs, there's the other significant political problem, which I danced around. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are British and proud of it. They knock on other countries all the time. If an American host stood up and made one crack, just one snarky comment, about liberal democrats in the UK, or the French being Work Shy, Lamb Burning Peasants, the ACLU, PAW, and several other... idiotic minded organizations would be burning down the front doors of the studio.
NBC, ABC, CBS, and even Fox to some extent, keep pushing the moral and social boundaries of what's acceptable. Will and Grace, Friends, 90210, Simpson's, Family Guy, Futurama. Shows that glorify or promote various social lifestyles or political agenda's and deliberately insult and demean others. Some of the studios have admitted that they have filming policies that right wing politicians, conservatives, and Christians, cannot ever be shown in a good light on their networks. When one of those studios is called CNN, you can start to see the problem at hand.
Top Gear works, and draws a US audience partly because the Top Gear guys often say on camera what the US networks would never allow to be said. Picking apart the arguments for more speed camera's? The problems with the nanny-state? Nope. Such wouldn't ever fly against current corporate broadcasters in the US.
That's really why NBC killed Top Gear America. It's not that the show wouldn't work. It's that the show represents what is, essentially, incomprehensible Anathema to the executives who largely run the media broadcasting. -
Jay's Costume Request thread is here : http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=115275
You won't find me arguing about needing more costume options, even if they come from WoW, but putting it in For Fun won't do a lick of good. If you want the devs to consider it, you have to go post in Jay's thread. -
Quote:*head tilts*Originally Posted by Wuigly Squigly
Now im having a new prob, since Im using a 32 bit OS (XP) and downloaded the 64bit version, it says i gotta burn the ISO file to a dvd or USB drive, i only have an external HD (hoping this will work)
I'm... pretty sure that Windows won't initiate from a hard-drive install. You will need to burn the ISO to a DVD or utilize the USB boot option.
Theoretically if you extract the ISO contents alone to the external hard-drive, you might be able to fool the system into treating it as a thumb drive.
You shouldn't have to copy anything. As long as you do NOT Format your install drive, all of your files should be left alone. Any conflicting files will automatically be moved to a windows.old folder by the NT Installer.Quote:What files do I need to copy?
You won't be able to.Quote:Should I use VirtualCloneDrive?
The installer will have to reboot and start the installation process as the computer turns on. Which is why you need to burn to a DVD or use a thumb-drive that your computer can boot from.
You can't be running VirtualCloneDrive unless you are in an already turned on and running Windows instance (meaning you are at the Windows desktop), so loading the ISO up in a cloned drive won't do you a lick of good. When you turn the computer on, there won't be anything there for the computer to recognize as an installation disc.
If your computer is unable to recognize a USB device as a bootable drive, you will have to use a burned DVD. -
no. That's not an amazing idea. That's a I'd like to see City of Heroes crash and burn faster than Tabula Rasa idea.
Seriously. did Tabula Rasa or Star Wars NGE not teach anybody just how much of a bad idea it is to change the base gameplay on a large scale?
It's an extreme loss for over over an estimated 99% of the paying base... WHICH DOES NOT PARTAKE IN PVP PLAY AT ALL. -
Tier 1 Bot: Yap Happy; Ankle Nipping; Chew Toy Gnawing
Tier 2 Bot: Newspaper Shredding; Hydrant Drenching
Tier 3 Bot: Good Time
Avatar's last name: W. Pembroke -
Quote:Drat! The curse of Dr. Who and Top Gear!Originally Posted by Eat_Me
This explains why American television is so much better than British TV... OH WAIT! That other thing...
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on a more serious note, I understand why television licenses work to encourage shows that can be neutral. I understand why commercial television networks in the US couldn't ever dream of operating something like Top Gear. It would go against every single ad-supported policy on the books. I dislike how political bias has turned the major US television networks from something to watch during the evening into something where national pride is discouraged, and every single sitcom is about pushing some kind of political or social envelope. The idea of a Jeremy Clarkson type standing up and saying I'm American and Proud Of It on the US's networks is just... unthinkable. Network execs would have a heart attack and turn the satellite off than let something like that get off.
What I don't like about the Television License is the over-reaching implication of another tax, which is what I view a television license as.
Sometimes though, when I see what the BBC can do, and allows it's shows to do, I wonder if a product-based tax is worth it to form an organization that wants to get everyone... not just a targeted market. -
Quote:*head tilts*Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Generally, SLi and Crossfire will show an advantage when the CPU is waiting on the GPU to finish the current frame before it can start another. The longer the wait, the greater the impact. If a single GPU is fast enough so the CPU wait is short enough, there should be little if any difference in performance.
That's... not quite how the X.org driver developers have explained multi-gpu support in the past. That's also not quite right with how at least two of the modes of known Crossfire / SLI support work.
It sounds about right for Alternate Frame rendering where each GPU renders one frame of the picture at time.
Referencing NeoSeeker for the names: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Ha...iretech/2.html
There's also Supertiling, which unless something has changed, wasn't working with OpenGl... so it wouldn't work with City of Heroes, and Scissor Frame Rendering, where the display is calculated so that the GPU's share an equivalent processing mode.
Given the benchmark results I observed, it's safe to say that City of Heroes isn't leveraging Supertiling or Scissor Frame Rendering, which should have given some kind of boost to the frame rate. -
Well, in a recent thread I benchmarked CoH working under Win7 64bit with Radeon cards... : http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=200612
but there are a couple of reasons why I used Vista SP2 32bit to do the same benchmarking test when I got to the Nvidia cards. Nvidia's 64bit drivers just aren't ready. No other way to put it.
As far as the other programs you mentioned, it's really a trial-by experience. I can tell you that Avast, Spybot, and CCleaner work under Vista SP2 / Win7 64bit. I can tell you that older Lithtech engine games, like No One Lives Forever and AvP2 work under Vista SP2 Win7 64bit.
You'll want to make sure you grab the Pro or Ultimate Version of Win7 though. Eventually you will run into a program that isn't going to work on a 64bit platform. While yes, you could use VirtualBox and it's in-beta 3D support... Which actually does work on some commercial games, such as SOE's Planetside. You'd still have to go through the process of setting up a virtual PC, installing an older copy of Windows, dealing with Product Activation, and making sure you keep any future updates applied in the Virtual Machine enviroment.
Really, it's just simpler to use Microsoft's own Xp Mode for those instances when you have something that's incompatible with the NT6 platform.
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Insert Rant here
Also, one other thing to keep in mind. If Vista's reputation scared you away, remember, Vista SP2 and Win7... ARE THE SAME **** OPERATING SYSTEM.
Yes. Win7 has had almost all of the Winsxs junk required for NT5 compatibility pulled out so it's installed size is several gigs smaller than the old Vista. Yes, Win7 has a new KDE inspired desktop, and a KDE inspired menu system. You get the feeling somebody from Microsoft was looking over the shoulder of a Novell engineer setting up SLES for KDE 4.x, then went back to his office and announced that the new Win7 interface had been sorted. It's still the same kernel. It's still the same support files. It's still the same DirectX API's exposed to the user and 3rd party developers. There's nothing different under the hood.
Yes, Win7 out of the box is better than Vista. Yes, Vista's UI is still a clunky hash of Windows 95 and the Looking Glass 3D test disc. Once you get both installed and updated, as far as your programs are concerned, there's no difference. It's the same exact thing Microsoft did with Windows 2000 and Windows Xp. Microsoft slapped a fresh coat of paint on Windows 2000, resold it as a new home Operating System, and up till Win2K Service Pack 4 and Xp Service Pack 1, used the same development pool, only to artificially limit Windows 2000 by dropping Service Pack 5, would would have kept the operating system in synch with Xp Service Pack 2.
End Rant Mode here
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Honestly, I'd go with Dark.
The damage debuff on stone is something like 30%, and you'll easily make that up with fury.
Once you get granite (and yeah, that does take a while), mitigation doesn't really matter so much since you'll probably be able to easily soft-cap smashing / lethal resistance...
and if you spend some money on IO's, you'll probably be able to easily softcap on a couple of your defensive powers... although you'll probably be stuck in the awkward position of either soft-capping your defenses or getting enough recharge IO's to remove the 60% speed debuff... presuming you don't have a pocket kin. -
*note to self*
If I ever go to Sweden, don't pay a television license. Instead, find whoever decided a television license was a good thing and explain to them the differences between Public Access TV and Commercial TV licenses. -
Quote:^^thisOriginally Posted by brophog02
Where's the problem? You didn't state a problem, you stated a preferred leveling method. This is the ever failed argument of "if it ain't the best, it must be broken".
You did not state a mechanistic problem, you stated a people problem. When you find a solution to humans being lazy, please share it so we can implement it.
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On my own note. Yes. Players still use AE. Only they use it for what it was intended. Creating story content without the expectation of quick levels or quick rewards. Only players who never bothered to read the updater or visit the homepage could have possibly missed the developers saying that AE was not for rewards...EVEN BEFORE I13 WAS IN BETA.
Fussing about an anvil everybody and their *insert relative or pet here* KNEW WAS COMING over almost a calendar year beforehand really isn't carrying any weight with veteran players. If you don't like that AE now matches what it was designed to be, tough. Get. Over. It. -
This is derived from Posi's thread about which graphics cards would be able to run Ultra Mode and this post by PumBumbler.
Now, I do need to stress that this is by no means an exhaustive in-depth researching of how Windows systems with multiple GPU's run City of Heroes. I only went to one zone, and to keep things simple, used the free version of Fraps to capture screenshots and record the benchmark numbers.
That being said, I went to Cap Au Diable, and some of you might already know just from that where I went in the zone. To give the benchmark some context for what I did to create the numbers, here's a YouTube video of the ninja-run across rooftops in one of the most lagtastic parts of City of Heroes I have ever come across.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQZmgXtccUc
As a note, no, I didn't use the Demorecord function to create the benchmarks. Each of the runs was done manually, so there is some variation in each run. The resolution of the game was set to 1920*1200 with all details turned up.
First computer up on the blocks is a Phenom 9600 with Crossfired 4850's running Windows Xp.
I did two runs, one with Crossfire turned off
And one with Crossfire turned on
And then the results:
Scaling was pretty flat through the run. Crossfire support had no impact at all on the frame count.
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I swapped to Windows 7 on the same hardware
And while I remembered to take a picture at the start of the Crossfire run, I forgot to take one for the Crossfire turned off run.
The results were fairly predictable with Crossfire having no real impact on the game.
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Next up was another Crossfire system mixing a bit of old with a bit of new. My older RadeonHD 3870's coupled against an I7 920.
And the Crossfire mode setting on
and off:
And the results...
This is where things to start to get really interesting on the scaling of CoH's performance. Now I know, and even HardOCP backs this up, the 4850 is more powerful than the 3870x2.
Okay, yes, the 3870's I have were backed up by an I7 920 with a higher clock speed than the Phenom and more memory... but City of Heroes is a 32bit application. Handing it more than 2gb of memory pretty much does nothing, and the scaling was pretty much identical across Windows 7 and Xp... so it's not like the copy running on the 4850's was starved for memory.
The answer is actually one of my concerns for Going Rogue. The theoretical Megatexel performance of the 3870 is 12,400 MTexels. The 4850 has a theoretical fill rate of 25,000 MTexels. However, the MegaPixel fill rate on the 3870 is 12,400 MPixels, while the RadeonHD 4850 only has a 10,000 MPixel fill rate. From the quick benchmark I did, it seems that City of Heroes is bound to texture performance more than anything else.
OKay, the RadeonHD 57xx series starts at a theoretical rate over 16,000 MPixels, so it should be faster in the current game engine, but there's still the feeling that a modern graphics card is just spinning itself over, unable to bring it's full power to bear. If Going Rogue is more Shader dependent than Texture dependent, we should actually see framerates skyrocket on certain graphics cards.
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Now, over to Nvidia for the Triple SLI GTS 250 system coupled with an Athlon64 6000. This system is coupled against a smaller LCD panel, a 1680*1050 screen, so the benchmark results aren't directly comparable to the results on the previous systems.
Since I was running in a lower resolution compared to the other systems, and I was running on Nvidia cards, I did a total of 4 runs. Two with Anti-Aliasing enabled in the game, and two with Anti-Aliasing turned off.
GTS 250 SLI On
Now, before I go further, there is an interesting note here that will probably halt several players from purchasing Nvidia cards for a specific feature.
Note that although I'm using a Platform with Nvidia PhysX support... City of Heroes does not recognize PhysX On Nvidia Cards.
So, when I turned SLI off, I made sure to leave PhysX on... just to see what would happen.
GTS 250 SLI Off
GTS 250 SLI On 4x AA
GTS 250 SLI Off 4x AA
Then the results
Once again we see the same thing as the Radeon cards. The GTS 250 was spinning it's wheels on the 11,000 MPixel theoretical fill rate. Anti-Aliasing did little to change the overall performance through that section of City of Heroes in that resolution. Which is actually why I put the GTS 250's on a lower resolution screen since; A: RadeonHD 4850 Crossfire put's a dent in Geforce GTX 260 SLI; and B: most of the games I play don't optimize for multiple GPU cores.
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So, a couple things to take away from even this short test.
Multiple-GPU's don't do a whole lot of good in City of Heroes right now.
High-GPU's also don't do a whole lot of good either. They simply can't put their power down in what looks to be a texture reliant engine.
Buying Nvidia for PhysX support won't do you a lot of good. You'll actually need a PhysX PPU card, and they are no longer sold new. They are not that expensive used though.
I think the lack of Nvidia PhysX support might actually be an indication that the developers are spending time converting / upgrading the engine to use OpenCL instead. -
next step from this point is changing the graphics settings in the game itself.
go into the game options and try taking the slider down to performance (I'm betting it's on "recommended").
Also, depending on how you installed Vista, you'll want to make sure that it's updated to Service Pack 2. Just keep running Windows Update till it gets to Service Pack 2.
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oh, and if VIsta wants to install a driver for your graphics card, DO NOT LET IT -
... um...
...okay. You didn't say Vista in the first post. I thought with a 1250 you'd be running XP.
No, I think you'd need this version of the 9.3 driver : http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...?&lang=English
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and now as a reference:
OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer
OEM's are the guys who actually build the computer you are using.
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OpenGL is the industry standard for 3D Acceleration: www.opengl.org
Many OEM's, such as Asus and Acer, use a variation of the AMD driver for graphics cards that strips out or removes OpenGL support. Why? I really don't know. It's just annoying. -
*pulls the stunned Fedor out from under the covers, then sets the Sackboy in a Sack'a'pult and sends him flying into a snowdrift!*
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/emote facepaw
... oh this is gonna be fun.
First, you'll need to get proper drivers. Most OEM vendors tend to use drivers with crippled or no OpenGL support so you'll be stuck with software rendering, hence the lag.
The 1250 is an integrated chip from the... I want to say R400 series. It was discontinued by AMD several months back.
So, you'll need to grab the Catalyst 9.3.1 set here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...?&lang=English
Or the Catalyst 9.8 set here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...?&lang=English
I'd say stick with the 9.3.1 bug fix.
Then, you'll need to drop by Driverheaven.net and pick up the Mobility Modder tool : http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php
Follow the instructions for the Mobility modder and that should give you AMD drivers with OpenGL acceleration. -
Quote:*pulls out the Squeaky Rubber Mallet of WHAP and WHAPPLES! the Sackthingy under the blankets!*Originally Posted by Fedor
*Dives under the blanket with his freezing cold sack hands and sack feet to attack warm kitteh and puppeh tummies!*
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eh. only real problem I see is the Zonet card. I've had a couple... they never really worked well.
Other than that, it's a solid system. -
I hear you on that Radeon 7k bit. Back then ATi was selling cards directly, and I lost count of the driver issues on the original Radeon, the 7500 remix, and the 8500 series. I also recall listing the Rage 128 as a graphics decelerator. I also once tried to RMA a Radeon 8500 AIW. That... went over something along the lines of a ton of bricks.
In the history books you can actually track ATi's turn-around to one event, the ArtX buyout. The ArtX guys were largely responsible for the R300 architecture, and they were also responsible for revamping ATi's aweful driver program. The ArtX guys were also able to ... convince... ATi to move to Nvidia's business model of letting 3rd parties build graphics cards. I think the Radeon 9700 series was the first time you could buy a Radeon card that wasn't a branded ATi. That in turn helped solve some of the customer service issues as 3rd parties like TUL (the company behind PowerColor) and Sapphire started taking front line support for retail buyers.
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Quote:Yes / No...2. form what i THINK after reading both(je and Bill) posts that Alienware is not good(je) but LCLC might be good(Bill)
Father Xmas makes a point that Dell is able to negotiate lower prices for components because they buy in bulk, and generally sell in bulk. Dell's bread and butter has been the small to medium office setup where vendors buy 100+ computers at a time.
Still, everytime I've cracked open a Dell computer in the past 5 years I'm struck by the simple aluminum heatsinks, the shrouded ducts that channel air from a single fan on the backside of the computer off of a fanless heatsink. I'm struck by the use of a visibly lower quality motherboard with less layers in the PCB board. Yes, x58 motherboards can be made with 4 layers... that doesn't mean they should be made with 4 layers.
The last couple of times I cracked open Alienware computers over the past year, I've been met with a similar Dell interior. Low quality motherboard. Low quality heatsink. The same plastic green hard-drive inserts.
So I have a very low amount of respect for Alienware and what they do. I don't think they make a product worth the price they charge. -
Quote:*crashes through a Window in the upper part of the Thread atop another snowmobile, landing behind Fedor and gunning the throttle*Originally Posted by Fedor
Hey Twipper!
*Zooms in circles around robo-Frosty on his snowmobile!*
MEEEWHAAAH!!
*chases the Fedor through the thread!*