The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

well CENSOREDZORZINGZZ!!!!!111!!111 me, my 458 FSB is not a problem anymore. a BIOS upgrade, and so far im sitting on 470 FSB, aka 3.996GHz

and i finally beat sam

me 21971

and sam:

21599

 

About time really (Oh, and it's 21629, not 21599)
342 extra marks for a £40 more expensive motherboard. Was it worth it?

 

YES

haha, well i got my satisfaction from it. im not done yet sam, 22k is my aim now

 

better?

 

Hey, all

Still alive here

Interesting talk you lot had a few pages back about piracy and CoD4 and whatnot.

I never knew there were cracked servers for it, and even now that I know, I will buy it the day I get DSL/Broadband

I was just playing crysis on thursday, the first long 4-5 hr gaming session I've had in a looooooooooong time
And when I was done I realized my cheapo mouse doesn't do these games justice.

After a bit of research I have found 2 that I like and can afford

--Logitech MX518 - 170SR (~30 pounds) everything I need but the paintjob is off-putting
--Razer Diamondback 3G/Copperhead - 210SR (~38 pounds) A little pricey but I may still go with it

Which one of these do you think is better, as I've never really owned a GOOD gaming mouse before

The only thing Left before I decide is your feedback, and going to the stores, and actually holding the mice in my hand to see which is more comfy

PS - Sorry bout the essay, I sound like rich (no offense )

 

i am in love with my mouse, and id gladly pay £100 for another if mine broke down and there was only one more left in the world!!!

Microsoft Habu, whos insides are made by razor, and the shell with its amazing ergonomics my MS.

its a fantastic mouse, and ill tel you to get that.

DO NOT get the Roccat Kone, how ever flashy and cool it is, untill they work out how to fix their mouse wheels being broken, do not buy form them.

 

Thanks for the advice

I also like Habu, but frankly its waaay out of my price range, the price they charge for it here is high

It's basically between the 2 I mentioned above

 

Congratulations Shaff!

F****king beat Sam at last! "Was it worth it" Sam asks. You bet! There is only one winner, and right now that is Shaff, just 29 measly points short of 22,000. Hahahaha.

Rock Out Shaff!!

All it took was a bios flash.

Duhhhhh.

"F****** me!" says Shaff. I know what you mean dude. Sounds like me screaming at myself on the new creek map hahahaha.

Wow, gone a day or two, had some crazy all-night sessions, got f*****king killed on the creek map (saw some new maps on shaff's xfire profile, so cloned my d drive and using the clone, to be safe, installed the 1.6 patch on cod4 which last time took out my server list. Picked up creek, chinatown, broadcast, etc.)

I swear this is not going to be a long post (Ray you bi**tch - just kidding hahaha.)

I like your comments, Ray, about the piracy. If ultimately we PC guys end up losing, because of no more good PC titles, we will have royally screwed ourselves!

By the way, Ray, I also am thinking about a better mouse. I was looking at the SteelSeries, which may not be priced decently in SA, but they had one feature which I wonder if it is worth it for you to look for - let's ask Shaff the pawn king (I saw Shaff's numbers - mofo is getting a 3 to 1 kill ratio!) - their mouse has an on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment. Some guys who accidentally kept pressing it changed both settings to be the same, but the idea is if you are sniping, you can hit a button and instantaneously reduce the mouse sensitivity for easier placement of head shots - then when you jump back into the map you hit the button for regular.

Anyway, that creek map was hard - but the most beautiful map I have ever seen. I had it too dark at first, which produces a breathtaking image, but it was bad for playing because I could not see the marines - their regular dark jacket suits perfectly blended into the cliffs. I turned the brightness up and started doing better, although the map doesn't quite look as good as it did.

It is a major sniping map, and the pace therefore is slower than I like, but there are alternate ways to play it, as I started learning, knowing that the map is filled with snipers. Another mistake I made besides the brightness, as I realize now, was the server I was on isn't ideal for learning a new map.

I chose the 24/7 creek server, so I could stay on creek. But that was a hardcore server, not a good idea for learning a new map for three reasons: 1. Like most hardcore servers, they don't really play the kill cam reviewing how you just got killed, which I really believe helps one to learn a map, 2. the hardcore instant kill (like counter strike) of course doesn't allow room for error, and 3: there is no cursor which also makes things a bit tougher as you are learning a new complicated map.

Toward the end I got slightly better. For example, a memorable moment: I was inside the house that has the back porch leading to the cliff, on the other side of the house, quickly walking across glancing out the windows onto the street. All of a sudden I stopped and asked myself, "was that something wrong - or am I just getting too paranoid - that I maybe just spotted through that first window, in regard to the left edge of the left-most house across the street, or was it just the weeds over there?" I switched weapons to G3 scoped, and slowly ... slowly ... slowly .... scanned back, and sure enough, a marine was just BARELY visible hahaha.

The bottom of his leg stuck out the most. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! I wasn't taking any chances, lol. That kill felt excellent!

"Sneaky Bit**ch!!! Ya think ya can ambush me, huh! Dead mofo, think again!"

Hahahahaha.

"Finally!" I congratulated myself.

A couple hours before I would have missed that! "What the f****k just happened again?" It definitely helps to learn the map!! LOL

Rich

 

Binkie7,

I can tell that you are very nice, and I bet you are also very fair. I only hope that you have the patience to read this entire response to your post, which only goes to prove Ray's point that I can't write a short post - damn him! Lol.

I just invested 5 hours into this "essay," as Ray would call it, to try to preserve the "friendly loose style" of this thread which is a style that several vocal members, and maybe all of the regulars, very much enjoy.

With all due respect, in regard to my post which bothered you, I did not see the various permutations of spamual's prior disguise of his new "CENSOREDZORZINGZZ!!!!!111!!111" (which ended up kind of funny actually - zorzingzz - where'd he come up with that lol) or I might have been more aware of what you didn't like about how spamual originally typed his expletive, and therefore changed my wording so as to not offend you.

But to answer your rhetorical question, yes, you either haven't noticed before, or you have just been skipping my long posts. There was no intention to "test" anything - I have not changed my wording on this thread for at least the past year, if you go back and review my disguised-expletive laden posts. LOL.

But if you truly decide to stick around and regularly visit, and maybe even post, I would certainly not want to offend you. I just would hope that by talking it out in this way, we could achieve an agreeable compromise about what is permitted on this thread that would allow us to retain a bit of the style, without offending anyone, certainly not you!

Binkie, first off, I do understand that aD is a family forum.

I also believe we would NOT be wrong to take guidance from generally-accepted journalistic standards, especially as applied to the target audience of this particular thread, who I feel are not likely to be 50 year old PTA housewives. Please don't misunderstand me, I love 50 year old PTA housewives and I mean them no disrespect. But 50 year old PTA housewives are not, generally, the target consumer audience for PC video cards. Can we agree that they do not generally play PC game titles like Grand Theft Auto. (They have better things to do, lol.) The name here says it all: The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I can just see it now:

So if it's not the PTA moms, lol, who IS our target audience, right here on THIS thread, as opposed to, let's say, other parts of aD?

On THIS thread, Binkie, as you may have followed it, we just had a GIANT, very illuminating and very serious, and almost depressing - blame Sam for the depressing part lol - discussion about piracy and the inhibiting effect it is beginning to have on PC titles. Sam said that PC game developers have come to the conclusion that, unlike console games, people who play PC games are technically competent, and well able to pirate. Sam quoted one executive: "If you know how to play PC games, you know how to pirate them."

My point is, that THIS is the target audience for this thread - goddamn pirates like me who play PC games - just kidding! (sort of) As opposed to people who play console games like donkey kong, etc., where developers are selling millions of the console versions, PC gamers are technically competent people who know how to, and DO, pirate those games, and who are ultimately screwing themselves by their short-sighted greed. (So what did I learn from the discussion, I brushed off my bit torrent and closed my ebay browser, lol. I'm no dummie!) Just kidding again! (mostly.) So my point is that these damn pirates, "shivver me timbers I'm a one of 'em," in my opinion, are NOT the least bit offended by "that creek is one f***ing hard COD4 map." LOL!

In attempting to set some standards, I believe generally-accepted journalistic standards provide a starting point. When I see a cuss word disguised in a daily newspaper - a family publication - they write things like:

Would you agree with that, Binkie? Now, honestly, if you saw that in a newspaper article, would that shock you? Would you be offended? I would bet the answer is no.

But even so, even if you agreed no, I could understand that you might want to make the perfectly valid point back to me - forgive me for putting words in your mouth - such as:

If you were to make that point back to me, or ask me that question, Binkie, I would respond as follows:

Many "strong" words that we use in "polite" conversation, are of course slightly disguised versions of the original "vulgar" form. I realize I'm not telling you something you don't already know. For example "darn it", of course comes from "damn it" which is now completely acceptable in print, although maybe not yet on the air.

That "flipping thing", which is YOUR edit of one of spamaul's raw posts, is STILL arguably derived from everybody's favorite 4-letter "f" word. In rock and roll, "funk me" tonight, is completely acceptable - nobody has the slightest problem with it. Those songs are played on the air and are heard by children of all ages, unless the parents control the knobs lol. How about "freak me tonight" - is there any question about which "f" word we really mean?

If I used on this thread: "That creek map drove me crazy last night - I couldn't see those funking little marine soldiers at all against those dark cliffs." ... would that offend your sensibilities? Even if you were to respond to me "Yes" would you believe that you could successfully argue that I had violated generally-accepted journalistic practices?

What about when I called Ray a bi**ch for implying that my posts are long. (Where did he ever come up with that idea?) A female dog is a bitch - it's right there in the dictionary, and it is the correct veterinarian description of a female dog. I decided to disguise the word to be more polite. Was I calling him a female dog? I guess. My intent was to be humorous.

Of course, humor is very personal. What is humorous to some people is offensive to others.

I could have said

Sorry - just kidding! LOL.

One of my friends, who has always aspired to be a professional comedian, told me some jokes he had heard recently from callers to a radio show. I answered back, "You know, Frank, the first one was funny, but this one doesn't exactly make any sense, because of ......" Frank replied: "Listen bit**ch, don't start analyzing my jokes again!" I laughed.

He COULD have said, "Listen Rich, I greatly respect your analysis, but can't you simply listen to the joke and then laugh or not as you choose best?" Sure, he COULD have said that, but that would have been about as unfunny as the jokes themselves.

In one of the most brilliant skits that Dave Chappelle ever did, in my opinion, based around the premise that Nick Cannon just got a movie role he was after - his little 5 year old son says to him, for the second time in the skit, "Yeah, daddy, that Nick Cannon is HILARIOUS!" Dave doesn't appreciate that a bit and responds back, "Now son, why don't you just STOP being such a little BIT*CH!" The kid runs off to complain to mommy. Hysterical - you had to be there!

On the DVD, in the director commentary, Dave says "I don't cuss at home in front of my kids, but that little boy wants to be an actor, so ...." which brings up another point: Dave has ONE standard for at home in front of his little boy, and a very DIFFERENT standard for the adult audience of his Comedy Central smash hit show. Of course.

Now, maybe Binkie you have never watched Dave Chappelle, or if you have, maybe you don't appreciate his humor. Humor is a very personal thing and there is, of course, no right and wrong. "Acceptable community standards" is a moving, evolving definition.

For this thread, are we after tightening up our speech to a totally high-brow intellectual level, as when I wrote papers for my masters degree? I believe that would make things too stiff and dry.

One of the aD members recently exclaimed, happily, that this thread was a nice place to have fun and let off steam as opposed to the uptight, often angry, builder thread.

I would respectfully ask you to consider, Binkie, that in your attempt to fairly apply what you believe are general aD standards, is it possible that some of your personal preferences are coming into play? In other words, is it working out that you are actually wanting to impose your own personal standards on those of us who hang out here regularly and read all the posts (on this thread which you say above that you were tempted to unsubscribe to, much as loco dropped out of the builder thread) or are you truly wanting to apply fair, and generally accepted standards of PG - teenage and above - family journalism? I do not believe that the posters here, these damn pirates, lol, nor the visitors, are offended by my posts.

But even given that you ARE being completely fair across the board, (although I have not been called to task for the same type of disguised expletives by ddp or creaky on the builder thread), is it possible, for THIS thread, given the likely "pirate" audience, that you could compromise a bit and be willing to test a slightly looser standard, where those of us who hang out here the most can have a good time and try to make the posts not only informative, but also entertaining? That would allow us to get our points across.

Emphasis is what we are after - conveying emphasis, in a relaxed, jocular, friendly, fraternal manner. Let's face it, nothing conveys emphasis like a profanity - be one male or female, a good profanity gets the emphasis across every time - lol - disguise or no disguise!

But of course, a disguise is more appropriate for a public forum, even for THIS pirate thread. Of course we can all agree to follow some basic rules for disguising a "vulgarity" in accordance with generally-accepted journalistic standards - (meaning how you would see it printed in a family newspaper in a quote like I used above) - so that those who pop in from time to time to get their questions answered - the great majority of them teenage or adult PC game enthusiasts - would not be offended.

So maybe what we are really discussing here is the type of disguise that our personal style dictates. I again would like to refer back to one of spamual's posts that you edited, where I DID see the original, and you replaced his word with the word "flipping." (He was quoting what Sam actually meant when he expressed shock that Spamaul would invest all his money to be the COD4 pawn king - no doubt one of the a***holes who was killing me the other night! lol)

Your word, "flipping" if we be totally honest, as I mentioned above, is still, deep down, the same word spamual used, but of course in very deep "polite" disguise. It's really the same word, deep down - you know what I mean, right? In its polite flippin' incarnation - very polite to be sure - hearing it, no PTA mom would even raise her eyebrows. But how do you feel about funking or freaking? Maybe one eyebrow lifted? What about friggin'? Both eyebrows come up? But you hear that all the time in polite company: "That friggin thing!" Pretty mild really, wouldn't you agree?

For THIS thread, unlikely to be visited by PTA moms, my personal style, Rich the harvard guy's style, is to replace letters with asteriks, which I think has MORE punch, and therefore, is funnier. When you take away the punch, you take away some of the humor - it's a fac jack!

So with an asterik, technically, you no longer even have a word. It's not a complete word. You could say "Yes but everybody knows what you mean." What about "that f*********** thing!" Would you say back to me, "Rich, good try, but I see right through that disguise. If it starts with an 'f' it can only mean one thing." If you were to say that to me, I would say right back to you "Binkie you have a dirty mind, I just meant, that thing is FINE!" LOL You see what I mean? How many asteriks do you want, Binkie, that's how many you'll get! LOL

Everybody might know the word, or think they know as in my example above where I meant "fine" (yeah sure I did) but technically you have not violated family journalism standards - you haven't printed out the vulgarity.

Now don't let this part bother you - I'm not wanting to offend you but I'm trying to see if we can reach a standard:

Would you buy the third editor's rule - use three asteriks. Or would you prefer flippin, funkin, freakin, or friggin?

In any case, Binkie, please don't let this response try your patience.

Believe me, I'm not trying to "split hairs" or "test" anything. ALL communication is a matter of subtleties! The meaning of words - symantics - is a VERY deep and profound subject. What makes something humorous is almost impossible to "define" - it's all a matter of personal style and taste, which derives from culture and friends and surroundings. What offends one person is entertaining and insanely funny to another.

In conclusion, Binkie7, I respect your position of authority. I understand that you have responsibilites which come from donating your time to moderate the thread. Good for you.

My goal is not to "test" your standards, but merely to question WHICH standards should be applied to this thread: your own personal standards, or your personal definition of aD standards as you see them, or generally accepted journalistic standards? Or, in any case, can't we be a little looser on this "pirate" thread?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

1. Unsubscribe to this thread as you considered doing "& let it carry on it's merry way....." which is exactly what loco did regarding the builder thread per ddp. And as you go, issue the following commandment: "All expletives MUST be disguised - nothing can be printed in its raw true form - a minimum of 3 asteriks MUST be used" and I promise you that we will then self-moderate to follow that. We will nag the offender to death, right Sam? Drop by to check if you like, or just see if, later, you receive any complaints about offensive posts.

And/or 2. send a PM to everybody who has posted on this thread in the last 6 months. Get their input. Why not ask them if they were to read a post in this thread that said "That f***ing value-priced motherboard really caused me a tremendous amount of grief and aggravation in my new build - don't go near that company!" Would they be offended by that disguised expletive?

And, in the ultimate analysis, as I've asked repeatedly, what's wrong with using a slightly looser standard on this thread, with its PG-rated piracy-competent teen to adult audience, versus, for example, the builder thread, with all children. Just kidding! Hahahaha.

Respectfully,
Rich

 

I agree with the entirety of that novel of a post. The target audience for a site like Afterdawn is most likely not offended by cussing, let alone disguised cussing. I personally believe that if the entire expletive is not typed out, it's perfectly acceptable. I have never been warned about censored words once in my entire 3 years here at AD.

Though we also have to comply to AD rules. I think the entire reason for the reprimand was due to the UN censored swearing being used. So it was rightly a request to clean up the language in general. Just because the words are censored doesn't mean you should spam them in your posts. We not only have to keep the conversation within journalistic standards, we also have to keep it in relative taste. And if Binkie thinks we should cut down on the expletives - censored or no - we probably should.

Though I am not offended by the language, I do find the frequency with which the words are used a bit distasteful. Especially for the nature of this particular thread.

-------------------------------------------------------

The latest Left 4 Dead patch is giving me some problems. When I have multi core processing turned on, I get random 10 second pauses every minute or so. Like hitching but on steroids. With it turned off, I get a big drop in performance, but no pauses.

Also, L4D seems to hate my Creative sound card. I have a problem where my mic only transmits static. And it's apparently really loud. Mic works fine in regular Steam voice chat and with all of my non Steam games. With my Realtek HD, it works fine with L4D but that means no high quality X-Fi sound

On another note, anyone wanna play Left 4 Dead??? PM me with your profile name and I'll add you to my Steam friends.

 

Wow, estuansis, you night owl. I'm just about to sit down for two hours of creek hell, then a family party tomorrow late afternoon.

Thanks for the support, and duly noted your good points about maybe too much disguised cussing going on. I have to admit, sometimes I get all hyper like boozer points out, and it comes out like a truck driver, disguised or not, and that's probably too much. So I'll try to moderate a bit.

The Left4Dead sounds puzzling. Steam has a pretty good support system, as you probably already know. Post your problem, and it WILL be studied and a solution will be posted. Your mic problem is similar to what I was saying about my mic problem on my audigy card that was solved using the on-board realtek. I think Sam said the on-board has - what did he say - feedback cancelling??? - and the sb didn't have that?

But everybody I talked to couldn't understand - audigy is so much superior. You said in a recent post that it is usually a matter of settings - I retained several somewhat complicated pieces that I got from Steam support about mic settings - something about setting the right frequency - poling frequency or something like that.

I am still pretty clueless about it. I never did dig into it as my realtek solved it, but I did have to drop from full 5.1 down to stereo and bass, since the realtek was using my back channel I think, for the mic. On the audigy, if I could have made it work, I could have retained the full 5.1 on my headphones (medusa 5.1) plus the mic. I'm back on true 5.1 now since I'm playing non-mic games.

So again, I can try to locate my mic steam info if you want me to look for it - it's a couple years old - but I might be able to find it fairly quickly. If you go to steam support and type microphone, I think you'll find the same pieces pretty fast. Or just PM me with your email - I'll locate and send the files to you.

I would love to shoot those damn zombies with you, mate, but I guess that will have to wait for some kind of new build or upgrade from what Sam was saying about the hardware requirements for the game. I asked Miles, the Left4Dead animator - we're grouping up at his house tomorrow - how sales are, and he didn't have a clue as I suspected. But then he said he heard - maybe a million so far?? I told him all you guys liked it.

Rich

 

Actually, Left 4 Dead should play decently on your computer. Think of it as Episode 2 with higher requirements. It benefits from the newest hardware, but scales down to older stuff quite nicely. My parents' machine with the X1800XT can handle it all high at 1280 res w/o AA. It gets kind of choppy in parts, but it's usually 40+FPS

 

Well Binkie, that sounds fair. Estuansis said as much the same thing - here and there once in a while - but not spamming the posts with a lot of crudity. Makes perfect sense.

Interesting link - maybe I shouldn't count the PTA moms out so fast LOL. Everybody's a gamer!!

Rich