prophetik music

liquid cooling did it. that's a lot of power there. when i go LC, i'm going to have it be powered externally. a lot easier that way - i can shut it down a little after the computer, to allow it to finish cooling the system rather than just shutting down and setting the computer on fire with waste heat.

i'm interested. i'd also be interested in if you'll separate certain issues. if you're going to magfest, or know someone close by who is, i'll get them there =) edit: don't forget to look at flat-rate boxes, too, since they'd be WAY cheaper per pound than standard shipping.

this is correct. there is no way/point to go from the early 360s to an HDMI without an expensive converter. composite and component are analog cables, hdmi is (in the name!) digital. you'd need something to convert the signals, but there's no gain in visual quality. arcade units are the hot cheap item this season. they all are jaspers, which fail less than 5% of the time, and all have hdmi cables. they also all have internal 512mb memory.

they did the same thing with kotor. at least they took them out of cutscenes. i liked what they did in Guild Wars, where you can choose to see them only in the field (not in towns), always, or not at all. same with the capes that GW has.

wait, halt's going? awesome!

i'd generally advise against open-box, since they always seem to come with the part you don't have missing. motherboards always come without the I/O shield, which is a great way to overheat your chipsets with dust and dirt contamination. the main reason i advise against it is because the price that open box components are is usually the cost after the product's been out for six months or so. the 4830 is available now for a very low cost, with all the warranties and bits that you wouldn't have otherwise.

all ram is starting to go up. i'd be surprised for it to go much higher than it is, now. there hasn't been much innovation in the field in about six months, with pretty much no new packs coming out. i'd be surprised if that held true over the next six months as well. the 9800GTX+ would be enough for you, then, as it's particularly strong with GPGPU and CUDA technologies. you could go lower and not be hurt by it, but don't go too low - a 9500GT (512mb of ram, 256 or 128 bit bus) or the 9600GSO would be the lower end of the spectrum for what you'd want, i'd think. if you're not using GPGPU- and CUDA-enabled applications...you will be, in a year or two. so get a gpu that's worth the time. it's quite expensive, yes. the days of spending 600$ on a computer and having it be good for longer than six months are gone, though, with the astronomical rise in the renewal speed of technology. go big now, so that you don't have to spend money for a long time. and always - ALWAYS - spend more to get the warranty. it's worth it, in the end.

that is an AWESOME room.

not even all 9800GT cards have the smaller manufacturing process. some are just straight rebranding, which is dumb. that's why i always suggest going 9800GTX+ or the next step up. the difference in cost is like 10 bucks and the difference in performance can be as much as 20-25%.

amd is horrid, for a lot of reasons. mainly, their cpus perform far below what their measurables (FSB, clock rate, etc) say they should. not to mention they run extremely hot - the phenom quads they sell are rated at up to 145w of heat, which is literally enough to scald the skin off of your fingers in an instant (or boil water). you might get decent performance, but any cpu that runs that hot and doesn't have really awesome cooling - like, a hand-lapped heatsink with two large fans on it - will die once it is past the one-year mark. go with a newer-model i7, like the 860. the motherboards for the LGA1156 cpus are way cheaper than the i7s requiring the 1366 socket. i'm an evga fanboy, mainly because their warranty is so damn good (lifetime warranty, regardless of the issue. they're awesome!). check out the p55 model they're shopping now. if that's too much, gigabyte makes excellent long-term stable boards as well. don't even bother with x2 and pentium dual-core. pentium DC are before the core 2 came out, and the core 2 architecture now has been outdated by the i7/i5/eventual i3 architecture as well. of course, it depends on cost. don't even try to future-proof a computer when you don't have the cash to handle it. save and buy later instead of spending 600$ now. you'll regret it in less than a year. spend the money on your psu and motherboard, since that's what matters in the long term. go ddr3 if you can. here's what i'd say you should get: evga p55 model mobo - 200$ intel i7 860 - 289$ zalman 600w psu - i own this psu, and it's got the guts of the 750w model...as in, i've had it outputting 775w for hours and there were no issues! what an amazing psu. if you can't afford it, get the ocz modxstream, which is modular and a well-designed psu. evga 9800gtx+ - good sli, good card. if you can afford it, get one of their gtx 260 core 216 cards, which are absolute monsters. g.skill ripjaws (ddr3 2000, 4gb total) if you can afford it, ddr3 1333 if you can't for hard drives, anything on this page lg dvd-rw drive (12x burn speed for DL discs? do want!) for a case, i recommend the antec three hundred. protip: get whichever model happens to have free shipping, and it'll save you 25$ for shipping the damn thing. there's always a model of the three hundred on sale, it's just a matter of finding it. with the ripjaw ram, a 750gb hard drive, and the expensive psu, you've got a fantastic system for 1040$ or so. really, really awesome, and futureproofed out the ass. you might upgrade the gpu in two years, but everything on that list has at least a five-year warranty (aside from the hard drive, since none have more than three nowadays), and your mobo, psu, and gpu have lifetime warranties on them. the cpu, psu, ram and mobo are all components that you'll have for years and will function just as well then as they do now. need to drop some cost? use the ocz gpu (-25), the i7-750 (-90), the cheaper ram (-30), or the gigabyte mobo (-35 or so). always buy as much hard drive space as you can afford, and never ever scrimp on your psu or ram. crappy ram or an inefficient psu will really make you pay in the long run (particularly with psus, an inefficient psu can cost hundreds a year over what you could be paying). if you've got questions, let me know.

prior to the G92 architecture redesign, sli got you 42-45% efficiency at best. with the advent of the G92 8800GTS (the 512mb version), 8800GT (second version), and the 9600GT (initial version), sli increased to well over 90% - in fact, two older-model 8800GT cards in sli were comparable to two newer-model 9600GT cards at launch, even though the drivers were designed with the 8800 in mind (and the 9600GT was well below the price of the 8800 at that time). don't forget that your 7600GS, while good for its time (i did all of witcher on it!), is four and a half generations old at this point. even the difference between a 7600GS and a 9600GT (or GSO, i don't think they're selling GT cards anymore) would be immense. between a 7600 and a 9800GTX+ or GTS 250...hot shit. get an awesome single card, so that down the line you can buy another and link them. that 500w psu will support a gtx+ easily, and since it's the exact same card it should be able to handle a GTS 250 as well. right now, the best cost-to-performance ratio of any card falls in the gtx+'s favor below 140$ and in the GTX 260 core 216 for the 200 and under bracket (i got my core 216 for about 150 on sale, from evga/newegg). a core 216, due to 55nm manufacturing processes, actually uses four watts less than a gtx+, too. ps: when you did the xtreme power thing, and it said 276 watts...what gpu was that with? that's a rather high number if you had the 7600gs on there, since the GS only needs about 25-30w of power to run. if it WAS with the GS, you've got other issues...like, why you need that much. my e8400, core 216, five hard drives, two optical drives, and five high-performance fans (with 25% capacitor aging, since my computer's on 24/7 for about a year) takes 360w total =)

eh, whatever. it worked. and it's fun to be a bunch of flies. i should point out that when i said tank, i meant 'damage sponge'. i didn't actually mean 'distraction with damage included', like most people think of tanks. also, if you think that those two forms are better than a corrupted bear with overwhelm, you'd be very surprised. bears have no armor, therefore are always the last character to be attacked. bears do more raw damage than any other form, and can still take the effects of frost weapons and the like. a well-classed corrupted bear can knock over any enemy - my bear beat loghain easily - and overwhelm will knock out 3/4 of most enemy's health. considering i only needed it for a few specific situations, it worked.

good choice. the rp5002 has crappy efficiency, so going high on the wattage balances it out. doesn't balance your power bill, but yeah =)

i did shapeshifting for two reasons. in the event that one of my mages runs out of mana and i don't have a potion (happened often earlier in the game), and a tank dies, i have another free tank without effort. the bear is really damn powerful later in the game, too. plus, there's the constitution bonus. morrigan and wynne both had ridiculous stats in the magic department but were getting killed in three hits. the extra health helped a lot.

i hate EVERYONE

we have differences of opinion on 'high settings', schwaltzvald =) stampede, when he says high settings, he's not talking about AA. anti-aliasing is the thing that separates good cards from lower-end cards - it's what requires the most ram and the fastest clock rates to achieve, generally. i'll put it this way: a 9500 or 9600 can play crysis on medium-high to high if AA is off. that doesn't mean it's a good card - it just means that AA is everything for graphics quality. does crysis LOOK like it's on high? no. most modern games depend on AA for graphics quality and the 'high' settings just reinforce that. modern game graphics still rely on a good cpu, too. yours is passable, in that regard. not great, but passable.

actually, it is - in classical music, the 'for x chamber ensemble' is rarely capitalized because the title isn't the whole thing, it's just the first part. so, Locke's Theme for brass quintet is totally appropriate.

a 9500gt is enough. what processor do you have? check out the extreme power calculator. put in everything (be generous, you want extra), add 25-30%, and that's your minimum power needed. the key is to plan for psu efficiency - if you need 400w of power, you need 600w at 66% efficiency. see what i mean? regardless, i suggest you go with the modxstream pro 500w psu. it should be enough to cover your needs unless you've got a ridiculous amount of peripherals or a huge quad core. it's a great psu, it's modular, it's guaranteed to be over 80% efficiency...it's great. just put it in a computer for firouzi, here. for more info on efficiency and all that, check out my guide in my profile. i should point out that the 9500 is pretty damn bad. it'll handle itself, but look into getting the 9800gtx+ (it'll play new games at medium-high to high settings)...and the evga version is 119 dollars with their lifetime warranty. the rebranded version, the GTS 250, is the same card and everything with a different name. if these are too much, a 9800GT is excellent as well. now, back to the OP. how much do you want to spend? everything i said before is just as good now, but you'll almost definitely have to upgrade your psu as well regardless of what you put into it. i'm pretty sure you've got a 300w psu in there, if that, so you'll need much more to handle a graphics card of any ability. also, thanks for the compliment =) i spent about two months of free time writing that. it's getting outdated - i wrote it right before the gtx2xx cards came out - but it's still got info regarding plugs and all that.

finished this game last night, around 60 hours played. i loved it. there were some minor gripes, but i really enjoyed it. i just wish that most of the decisions made in the last few hours of the game actually mattered with THIS runthrough. sure, it's cool having stuff for the next game, but who really took advantage of that with KOTOR 1 and 2? how many people are actually going to 'continue' with DA:O 2 comes out? maybe it's just me, but i like more closure than the fallout 3-style ending allows. edit: archaon, do you realize how easy it is to leave a dungeon and go unload all your stuff on a merchant and run around topside for a while? like, easier than any other game i've ever played. so stop bitching. they made it long on purpose - some people LIKE to grind dungeons. like me. edit 2: did anyone else think it was enormously funny to find OMG SPOILER sandal in Drakon Fort at the end of the game, and when you ask him how everyone in the room was dead /OMG SPOILER he says "ENCHANTMENT!" and takes you to the rune screen? i laughed for a solid ten minutes at that one. i had to get up and walk around. edit 3: i should point out i did the entire game with myself (champion/berserker), alistair (templar/berserker), morrigan and wynne (both shapeshifter/spirit healer). i used sten before i got wynne, but he dies too much. both alistair and myself were sword-and-shield fighters. i was mostly damage-based - i was doing 70-80 a hit with a sword, plus up to 25 bonus from runes - and alistair had juggernaut armor, constitution of 50-something before being enhanced, and a tower shield that was very, very expensive. he had like six hundred health =) basically nothing could kill him, including being the only one alive at the end of the paragon battle in the deep roads. once you get up higher, you can keep enemies on the ground for the entirety of the battle between war cry, shield bash, and stone fist. i REALLY like that. oh, and kanthos, cast grease once you've got earthquake, before you do inferno and fireball. it's a significant increase in damage, and it's like 2 mana to cast. if your characters have indomitable, or the shield bonus that doesn't allow knockdowns, they can kick ass the whole time your enemies are on the ground, too. even more so when your tank has massive dragon-scale armor, with 75% fire resistance. you can just leave him in there and tank the shit out of them.

first of all, if you actually want to learn about all this you should check out the guide that's in my signature. it's got pages - literally, pages - of computerspeak turned into plain english. which is why i wrote it. download a program called cpu-z, run it (no install, just run the .exe), and tell us what's under the motherboard pane. a screenshot would be glorious. depending on what you've got, i'll be able to give you definitive answers on what to get based on what kind of cash you've got. this is, after all, what i do with my computer business, after all =)

lol, meteo AND damned. you didn't even bother to google the phrase, first, did you? VHD's usually pretty cool about releasing his arrangements, but it might be a good idea to try and figure it out by ear yourself. it's always a learning experience when you notate something you love by hand.

depends on the track, really.

yeah, the stuff i've seen so far is pretty cool.

i wouldn't mind more dirt on the bass track. like, just layer some noisy shit on there to dirt it up. this feels really more like funk than hip-hop to me, personally. the rhodes does it in.

not at all, dude.