jazzy

Your GPU may be artifacting, this can be caused by more than just a faulty gpu, run HWMonitor and check temps to make sure there is enough air going through.

And yet top dollar will not always guarantee the best performance you fucktwits, even SLI can cause performance degradation in games that are poorly coded, along with high maintenance in SLI, top dollar does not mean best performance, the point of the fact is building your computer is meant to be a process that will save you money, if she wants the most costing computer out there I can direct you to the nearest bestbuy. Let's not be blunt, we're all shut-in nerds who think we have a college major in Computer IT. And I think we all need to relay both sides of what a purchase can do for you, and give an unbiased opinion on it. 0-I mean, I hope none of us are recommending hardware because we get a paycheck from the manufacturer for it, right? As for jen, when building a computer you need to be willing to learn aswell, if you want SLI/CrossFire, you need to be willing to learn about how maintenance works, if you want water-cooling, you need to be able to maintain it. I'm not questioning your tech skills, but you haven't given a lot of thought (from what I've seen) on what you're about to spend your buck on. but i digress, in short: sli may look the best, but these people who test these don't run them long term, they benchmark, shelve them, and don't worry about it until the next go around. you're a consumer and it matters how hardware performs under long-term conditions. Seriously, this still proves today, you'll notice the AMD Phenom II X6 may look nice and high end with it's big price tag, but it performs shittly in benchmarks. But yeah, don't buy hardware just cause it costs a lot and looks good on the outside!

I'm not so sure about the Phenom II X4, these processors were made to compete with the C2D/Q. They match up alright with i3/i5's but that's about it, the Phenom 2 X6 perform poorly as of right now, the i7 is a good choice if you can spread the cash. Personally, I'd wait until AMD unveils their new cpu, and since you're waiting on that, wait on the GPU as well, seeing how some new gpus on both sides are coming out soon, and prices on the older ones will be lower. It's up to you if you want to wait a few months and sees how it plays out.

do not recommend sli'ing/crossfiring.

Yes and a 9800GT is barely even MADE anymoroe, let alone cost-effective, the 9800GT varies $100 or so, while the 6850 doubles up performances on it, for about $60 more. Also why the fuck would you buy a 9800GT that's almost out of it's lifespan?

it's not just about running bf2 she should probably also prepare for upcoming games that require more resources, if she wanted to run just bf2 she wouldn't even need to upgrade. but 6850 is your best bet, the 460 isn't as good.

It depends what you want it do, AutoGK can convert to Xvid codec and at the same time reduce quality, DVDVideoSoft converts a wide variety of shitty codecs like Apple's codecs. When I did shitty youtube videos I would just load it up into windows movie maker, and then convert it to whatever format they, .wmv? You should look around, it honestly depends what you want to use it for, I assume youtube, so just look like for something good. I'll look around. I mostly re-encode ripped dvds into the xvid codec so i dont worry about anything else.

Sorry but Fraps is your best choice, Fraps uses the xvid codec (or is it divx..), and offers a high quality way to record videos, that's just the way it is, free up hard drive space and then re-encode to an easier format. Also if you need it reduced, use Half-Size, and 30 fps (to you, 30 fps will seem laggy, but when you watch the video it will look perfect)

Need any specific items on your monitor? Do you need more than just a VGA connector, what about HDMI? S-Video? What's your GPU? If you have a good one you can get a fairly bigger monitor so your FPS doesn't die in a fire.

lol yeah potshots mobo is 1156 and the cpu is 1366. Also get the HD 6850, unless you can find a cheaper GTX 460 that has 1GB of VRAM AND Manufacturer OC. Or you could wait until the 580 comes out so that prices shift dramatically and then pounce on a gpu. But either way, an i7 for gaming eeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Probably an i5 should cut it, if you listen to high quality music (FLAC), you could buffer up some room and get a good soundcard and some sweet headphones. Also yeah tell us if your monitor is LCD or CRT and what size, if you are still using CRT you should upgrade, but if you're going to buy a mid-range gpu (like the ones that have been mentioned), you should stick to lower resolutions or else in a few years your gpu wont be enough to power the game at the native resolution of your monitor, the smaller your monitor, the less the gpu has to work. Most people can be content with 1440x900 or the 1680x1024. believe me, get widescreen, or else you will get fucking owned by everyone else in any game you play because most people on games like source and battlefield games try to pump their fov to match their screens and can easily outmatch a 4:3 monitor.

1) How much are you willing to spend 2) What will you be doing (re-encoding, rendering, archives, audio playback, gaming (this one must be obvious), etc) 2a) The reason I ask this is because you don't need an i7 to play video games, but an i7 is soooo useful when you re-encode videos. 3) Are there any peripherals that you need? (sound cards, number of pci slots, number of pci-e slots, network cards, etc etc) 4) Please post your current PC build, sometimes you can have the ability to scrap old parts into a new one (ie a hard drive or a dvd burner, or sometimes you can even scrape with a old mobo, psu, ram sticks, or even a case) 5) What don't you need with the new PC? (monitors, mice, keyboards)?

Chances are if you discover time travel and you have a cellphone you don't need a fucking cellphone tower. But yeah, utter bullshit and no possible way that's remotely true.

I get hooked on caffeine once in a while, I'll buy a 12pk, sit on that for a week and then get pretty agitated the next week when I run out. I don't have fast internet so I've lived without the exotic features (porn, online gaming, youtube, music streaming, etc), but I still crank in singleplayer games from time to time and mostly just watch TV.

WD Fan here: I have a IDE WD drive that is from 2004 and still kicking, but i bought a sata 2 hdd a while back which is a WD Caviar Green 500GB. I'd recommend jumping up on 640gb> 1TB is still pretty cheap so there's no harm in buying one now, I thought I would never use all of my 500gb hdd space and next thing I know im ripping and re-encoding about every dvd i can find.

Run speedtest.net and check up speeds, compare the speeds that you are guaranteed by your isp and make sure it is nothing on their end. Also make sure your wifi router has a password with WPA/WPA2 protection, WEP is easily cracked by anyone with a 5th grade education, unsecured networks are an even easier target. Stuff like that is municipal but may be the cause.

Truth is saving bandwidth really won't help much depending on your connection. Can you run a speedtest at a place like speedtest.net and post results? But if you insist on getting top performance: Google TCP Configuring (or something like that there's an app for it but dialup is a pain) Also try out NetLimiter 3 to see if any unnecessary hosts are using up resources Next if you have a wifi router check to make sure it is password protected and make sure it is NOT WEP (WEP can still be cracked eeeaasssyyyy), WPA or WPA2 will do you good, or just start whitelisting mac addresses.

Does this mean they emulate a 360 inside the computer? Or do you use a second monitor to play 360. Or does it emulate a smaller monitor connection inside a connection? I just don't really understand how it works.

Saw this picture on Reddit :[

It's mostly got to do with the way new players have their experience. SG is pretty much similar to a store, if the customer is felt unwelcome, then he's probably not going to come back, if he's felt welcome, he's going to eventually shop again. After that's done it's really just down to making sure you get the user to get on the forums. Probably the hardest thing to do aswell. Most servers like to offer sort of advantages like free reserve slots. I've always had the idea to go back through all the SG.Mem Steam ID's, add them to a server list and allow this list to have access to a skin that says 'MEMBER' on the back, just to get people to want to get it. And by doing this you go back to phase one, if the person on the forum makes a post, gets the skin, feels welcome, he's going to eventually come back. It's like a cycle, I hope that makes the same sense it did in my head.

Although I hate Intel (fucked us over a lot with sockets), you shouldn't buy a Phenom II X6, they don't match up performance wise to Intel's i5 quad cores (or is it i3?). Don't bother buying parts and saying they are going to be used in 5-10 years, your warranty runs out after 2 and after that it eventually dies, making your high-end purchase useless. But you should stay atleast 600w> since you're running SLI + AMD cpu + a ssd + a hdd + a pci card. I'd recommend you get an extremely good case, you need amazingly good air flow for SLI'ing cards and you seem to have a lot of ram, they heat up rather quick. I recommend COOLERMASTERS or whatever, or Antec, they have alright cases. You should also get a buttload of fans!

Various recent firmware updates for SSDs actually stated in the changelog the data on the SSD would be wiped. So if you want to buy a SSD, fine! Just remember that updating firmware is about as dangerous as flashing bios. Oh, and you're paying a lot more! What is it now, $2/gb for a SSD and 20 cents/gb for a HDD. Wow. I've looked at graphs before, in fact I even compared two articles on tomshardware and a 2008 article actually had SSDs ranked better than the 2009 article. There is definitely mixed reviews on what is truly happening in the SSD vs HDD world. But i just cant see justifying 300$ just for a SSD for 100gb compensation. Sure you'll see a increase in performance, but is it worth the price gap?

Don't bother buying SSD's as of yet, from what I've heard the software for them is unbelievably broke and that the SSDs are prone to failures. I'd wait it out and just buy the fastest HDD you can find a SATA 6GB/S HDD, they are pretty fast, and I believe your motherboard is compatible with the tech. I might as well but myself into your Headphone conversation too, I was actually looking for new headphones but decided against it, but I talked with some friends (I was actually looking at HD201s, my friend quickly raped me with his audiophile skills). I was recommended http://www.gradolabs.com/product_pages/sr60.htm or Grando SR60's. I actually use Sony MDR V-150 (this is my second pair, the last one survived about Another person recommended me some Sennheiser headphones that are apparently "the best headphones in the world", ill have to dig up the name for you. But whatever, just make sure you buy quality headphones, and not some walmart brand shit!

Most of their hardware is top end but it's set at an unbelievably high price. Also the Mac OS isn't too bad, I like the way they run somethings. I wouldn't mind a Mac computer but they cost so much, it's just not worth it. I might install OS X one of these days just to kind of peak at the awesome UI they have and check out the source porting of games.

You're mostly not going to see premade linux tablets on your tablets/pads/slates, what the definitive os on tablets will most likely be is WebOS, we could also possibly see Android being ported and being buffed up, enhancing the idea of a Google Tablet at that point. The main problem at this point is waiting for a operating system that runs on the architecture that the cpu will have. I would like to see something like Damn Small Linux though. But ubuntu 10.04 should be good with their awesome cloud syncing service, if it can run, that is.

no, they are not the same. i dont really trust either opinions at this point and id rather get definitive proof of the model number of the motherboard. it's usually plastered somewhere where you can see it if you open up your case and check up on it. until i get definitive proof that you intelligently need help on getting a new processor, not going to bother with this.