The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Kevin - you and me both. I'm thinking of SSD also for W7 and crysis. I think for $100 I can get a small one - 50 gigs? 100 gigs? Jeff said to turn off texture streaming - and I will soon be in crossfire on the 7950s (second one ordered today) - so maybe most of the textures will fit on the 3gb memory for each card - but with the game installed on the SSD, that should help get those textures to the graphics card much faster.

Hey guys, I have been playing Spec Ops, and at first I thought not too highly of it, but on suicide difficulty it has lots of very challenging parts, which is what I like, and I finally played it all through, so now I have it on fubar, lol. THAT is very challenging. (I dropped back to suicide only for the mad dash from the twin gattling guns on the apache helicopter that suddenly appears - there may be a way to do it on fubar but I don't care - that 20 second dash is boring and stupid, lol.) On the other hand I spent 3 hours and 30 attempts beating the "In the pit" checkpoint, where you fall into the bottom of this ground level area, from one of the Dubai skyscrapers that have been ruined by the tremendous sandstorms that wrecked the country, and you have to make a Deagle work until you get a few weapons, and hold off about 20 soldiers, crouching behind a car and firing backwards from your ump 45. The game is not exactly 1st person, it's 3rd person, like Max Payne 3, but it has a lot of the intensity of a good first person shooter. I'll do a full review if anybody is interested.

Performance-wise, this first HD7950, the HIS IceQ, is chewing things up. It is on full 30" gaming, max everything, and the card runs sometimes about 70% load. It is running very cool, virtually never hits 60 C at 60% fan, and is a miracle of engineering. But the card is a whopping 57 mm thick, whereas for a two-slot you need to be closer to 40mm, and I couldn't put it in slot 6 in my case - it hit the case bottom. Since next year's 3-gpu motherboard will include one slot with only 2-slot spacing to the next card, 2,5 and 7, I'll put today's power color with good reviews, into next year's slot 5 and today's slot 6. I'll get one more HIS next year - prices are dropping fast.

The cpu, the Q9450, is overclocked to 3.334, from 2.66, runs maybe 30% load per core, if ever. To get it to the 3.6, fsb 450, I need a new cooler, and I'm seriously considering the silver arrow thermalright, which one youtube review reported it beating the noctua NH D-14 by 2 degrees, then dropped another 2 degrees when a 3rd fan was added on.

I haven't yet tried BF3 or Crysis - the tough titles. Max Payne 3 is maxed and runs with no strain. I overclocked the card to 7970 clocks - actually a bit more to 950. I had it on 1050 but after 4 hours the card crashed - that happened twice, so since the card is breezing along, I just backed off the clock. I still have to read the full article on proper voltage to stabilize clocks all the way up to 1150. I might have to do that for crysis.

Hey happy 4th everybody.

I looked out the front door and there was a parade up the street - the neighbor said they've been doing it for years, but I never noticed, lol.

Kids pulling their wagons loaded with dolls, and a few flags, bicycle riders - people walking in the street - just a two block parade to the local park the neighbor told me - maybe a couple hundred people.

Rich

 

Happy birthday America

 

I'd go for at least a 100GB. Of current SSDs, the Vertex 4 is generally one of the better drives for all-around work and although I may have said this before, I'd get it. The 128GB model (one that I've used) should have a good amount of capacity and high performance, although the 256GB model would be better if you're willing to drop in enough money for it. Samsung's 830 is also good, although it has far inferior write performance. The 830 is better for laptops and such IMO because it uses almost zero power, so it saves a few minutes of battery time compared to to other SSDs and even better, compared to hard drives. I'd say that except for Intel's drives, avoid SandForce like the plague and even with Intel's, well, non-SandForce drives don't rely on highly compressible data to get full performance and can be much more uniform and high performance with all data rather than just some data.

I'm a little over 2 hours too late to say happy fourth, but oh well. The Silver Arrow is a good cooler and I can suggest it.

 

Blazorthon, this drive is very tempting. Thank you!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227792&Tpk=N82E16820227792

Slightly more than $1 per Gig. Don't be surprised if I'm bragging about it in a week or two. I might buy it today :S That 5 yr warranty is icing on the cake!

Now... anybody? Any thoughts on this?
Add-on Touch Panel
I'm considering it for multiple reasons I have a 15" Dell lcd monitor!

 

Ha I don't care much for touchscreen technology. I mean, it's good for some things... but who decided touchscreen was the next big thing??? It's kinda clumsy if you ask me. It's good for my iPad/iPod, but not so good for a laptop or something else with more powerful software.

 

It could be more productive in some circumstances Imagine using your mouse and fingers simultaneously But then, the stand on my Dell 15" might not be strong enough. I would like to play more with windows 8, and see just how windows 7 reacts. For less than 100USD, I can convert an existing 15". Seems like an agreeable upgrade?

 

Shouldn't be to tough to add to your Dell 15" 4:3 monitor.

Seems like a lot of effort just to surf porn though? LOL

 

If you think it's worth your time, how can I tell you no?

 

Ohhh, that's hitting below the belt LOL! Naw, certain facebook games would be smoother, plus I've just plain wanted one for some time now. This is much more affordable than I've seen other monitors going for.

The real question is, is the panel a replacement for the existing, or does it slip directly over the old? Up until yesterday, I was unfamiliar with the upgrade. I'm still searching on them.

 

I would imagine it's simply an overlay that corresponds to coordinates on a properly sized monitor. ie you click pixel # 34,566 on the touch panel and it accordingly hits the same pixel on the display. Basically you could probably just plug it in and use it without having it attached to the monitor. Kind of like a drawing tablet.

 

That exactly what I've been wondering! I plan on contacting the seller, and getting some information before hand. I'll post back.

 

It is an overlay which means it could dull the sharpness of you screen and installing it properly will be critical.

 

I'm no stranger to the inner workings of a monitor. Should be fun I know exactly what you're talking about steve. Thanks for the reminder though.

 

Just bought the Vertext 4 256Gb. A bit much? Perhaps. But I hate running out of space! I decided the touch panel will either have to wait, or not at all. However, I did contact the seller. We'll see what he says.

Instead of the panel, I decided to preorder the first season of Star Trek: TNG Blu Ray

I'll keep the Velociraptor probably for installs as well though. Or BD backups. Given it's a bit faster than my green drives

 

You'll like/love TNG in BD, I have the whole series on DVD and all the movies on BD as well as the first season, it's the only way to fly. My fav's are the Borg series or any of the other series from that writer.

Some day I'll step up to the 256G's or better, way to go. Did you get a third job yet? :O

 

LOL! No, just 1.5 jobs. I deposited 2194USD last month(though it doesn't show). I'm not doing too bad. I figured it was time for a treat. I'm still a ways out on the 30" Dell monitor, and a badboy Canon camera :S

I have all the Star Trek movies on BD as well. I'm a huge Trekkie. Never have gotten into star wars though. I have them, just haven't sat down and watched them.

 

S1 of the bluray TNG is out already? Not for a couple of weeks yet over here...

 

I preordered it!

 

Me too as well as season two which is a ways off. I can get on lists before most since I work at a place that sells them. I have all of the Star Wars too, even the new ones which I'm not real impressed by.

 

Vertex 4 256Gb installed, and running It's only hitting 380Mb/s(peak) read using everest. I'm pretty sure my port is accurate. Also set for AHCI. Perhaps my drivers aren't completely installed. I'm running out of time before work! Figures...

Overall, I'm seeing a substantial speed up though. Windows loads pretty quick, probably shuts down faster. That darned windows loading screen seems to slow it down.

I did NOT add that link by the way!