tweaked

if you decide to venture into multiplay: Desert Combat Mod for battlefield 1942 is the best game i've played in... well... best game i've played!

1. it was formulaic. go to dungeon, kill critters, kill boss at bottom, get rune, repeat. 2. the story AS WRITTEN BY LORD BRITISH was cut off about 50% through and the ending was completely re-written by execs at EA wanting it to be ready in time for xmas that year. (also causing problem number 3) 3. with 2 patches the game is still very very buggy and still doesnt run well on todays high end hardware. 4. AI routine; see player, rush player, repeat. There is currently a major mod being done for the Morrownd engine of ultima 9 with the complete story and original Lord British ending. Don't get me wrong, i love the Ultima series more than just about anyone, been playing since ultima 1 on my pc junior in 81. The story and gameplay in ultima 9 was weak when measured against the legacy that spawned it.

ultima 9 sucked major @$$ unfortunately. another game ruined by EA.

the nforce has 3 things that the audigy 1 does not. 1. 64 hardware accelerated 3d audio channels. 2. dolby digital ac-3 5.1 output. 3. basically comes free on nforce boards. The audigy has a much higher signal to noise ratio, IE cleaner signal. They both use about the same amount of cpu time +-~5% depending on audio codec used and the game, blah, blah, blah. close enough. For just 3d games i would definately go soundstorm if my board had it. But being a media Whore i like the audigy 2 for my HTPC as i have less difficulty in making a variety of sources sound exactly as i want them to. Sounstorm can be quite a bit tricky in HTPC configs: http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=37&sid=a452da86e4dcadbe12c67351a8ef8243

the audigy is FAR better at taking multiple channel tracks and mixing it into the number of speakers you have... IE 2 channel into 5.1. upconverting there is only a mild difference.. but downconverting there is a huge difference. with soundstorm if you play back a 5.1 signal through say a 4channel setup, you completyely lose the center channel, it doesn't downmix it into the front channels. kinda wierd... only noticeable in very few situations (playing back a 5.1 dvd on a 4 speaker setup for instance) audio quality is a liiiiitle bit better on the audigy as well. Edit: Actually i should have qualified the statement as "you CAN lose the center channel" as you don't always. After experimenting with the 2 audio solutions for quite a while i find that creatives drivers are more mature (WHAT?! good drivers? creative? HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!!!). However, I think if we give Nvidia another 1 1/2 years then they will own the consumer audio Market.

Ultima 7... (Comic book guy voice) "Best RPG EVER!" of the the newer RPG's neverwinter nights was really really good... very satisfying! i am waiting to try morrowind until i have more time... i got it right here.. the box is opened.. (has been for 2 months) i just know i can't commit the time to play it. soon baby, sooooon... (carresses box) edit: woops! just reread the first post... yeah U7 came out more than 5 years ago... but i HAD to say something! did anyone try Arcanum:of magics and steamworks obscura? (errr somethin like that) i found it to be alot of fun... was i alone?

Thats one way of putting it ValkyerieK7. In a mulitple drive system with lots of drive access, SCSI still owns IDE by a wide margin. If doing Pro audio recording, the ability to record 16 tracks to 8 seperate HD's easily, is an accomplishment few IDE system will do. Under any kind of complex IO operation, SCSI will show its strengths. I've got both, Fast SCSI drives and "Western Digital WD1200JB With 8 MB". And in the real world, Even just 10,000 rpm SCSI outperform the proud WD.

yeah i overstudied too... overstudy again, its worth it.

95 didnt introduce plugn'PLAY, it introduced plugn'PRAY. 2k was the first OS to really deliver on the promise of plugn'play. ahhhh, I remember those early days of my youth using windows 95 fondly... "general protection what?" "whats with this bluescreen?" "freaking run this program damnit!" "I said SAVE! SAVE! Not crash and DIE!" "what do you mean your out of resources? There isnt anything running!"... Of course if I hadn't learned at an early age how to troubleshoot a PC i woudn't have this lucrative career i haver now... Thank You Microsoft, You gave me Job Security. Thank god XP still hiccups a LITTLE (mostly user error), otherwise i would be out of a job. ME didn't come out because of 2k, ME came out because MS wanted to milk the uneducated (non 2k using) masses for more $$$. needless to say, i started using 2k when i got the first beta of it i could find (beta 2? pre rc1?) and i havent used a 9x system at home since. 2k in early beta form was FAR more stable than 9x ever was... getting drivers for everything was a biatch tho. (damn you creative) at work i still support 98se and the occasional 95 (dont ask why ;( ) but i refuse to run win9x on my systems there. i just support it from memory.

exactly what vermyn said.

99.99% of the time, spam mailers don't actually send from the address in the sent from field in the spam mail. Apparantly its real easy to fake that. Often they will hack into unsecure email servers and use them to fire off their trash.

Viagra, the gift that keeps on giving!! (rimshot)

if your getting low scores with your radeon 9700 and havent formatted and reinstalled windows i recommend you do so. when i upgraded from a gf4 to my 9700 my score was only 1300 ish, after a reformat and reinstall i am breaking past 16,600. it makes a big difference.

This will definately help both companies, IBM has some very good ideas on the sub 0.09 micron process chips that AMD will NEED, whereas AMD has ALOT of experience designing excuisite chips that are very effecient. This is a win-win situation. AMD's only real short coming presently is keeping up with Intel with die process shrinks (.15 to .13 to .09 etc etc.) I think this will enable AMD to become a MUCH major player within the next 5 years.

very popular, also seen on: http://petemoss.com/spamflames/ShifmanIsAMoronSpammer.html

jimf43 & ptba42 freakin chill OK? An Athlon 1600 is still a pretty capable chip, but saying that there isnt a game on the market that doesnt utilize a 1.2 gig is just plain wrong, try battlefield 1942 on a server with 64 players (or 64 bots if you wanna make it really crawl!), even with the radeon 9700 pro it will not play well. There are many games out right now that benefit from a 2.0ghz+ cpu. About video cards: I am a former "nvidiot" who bought an ATI 9700 pro. Is it fast? YES!. are the drivers up to Nvidia standards? NO! getting better... but not there. anybody that surfs the rage3d forums will tell you of the MANY complaints radeon users have... if you want your card to "just work" with damn near any and every program you throw at it, get nvidia. If you want the fastest card available TODAY with better 2d and good dvd and don't mind having to troubleshoot drivers and figuring out wierd software incompatibilites, get ATI. this is NOT flambait, just my opinion being a nvidia AND ati user who commonly reads (and try's to help people on) nvnews and rage3d forums. in my opinion, if you go ATI you might as well get the 9700, if your gonna fight with ATI drivers you might as well have the top performer, otherwise it is barely worth it. (And for those that want to argue that nvida drivers are sucky too... I refer you to John Carmacks opinion... When using a nvidia card and he has a problem in opengl, it is ALWAYS his code that is wrong... NOT the drivers for the card he is using... He considers Nvidia drivers to be the GOLD STANDARD for drivers. I can't speak for everyone, but that say's ALOT to me)

that little hole is for gasses to escape so the heatspreader doesnt pop off. as the core heats up the very small amount of gas trapped around the core (not between the core and heatspreader but around it) expands a small amount, without that hole to alow outgassing the heatspreader would pop right off. FYI, a friends who used thermal epoxy (WHY? i dunno) to mount his heatsink to his p4; epoxied that hole closed in the process, 1/2 hour into windows install later it got REAL FREAKING SLOW and finally died, the heat spreader had popped off the core... of course then he just epoxied the core to the heatspreader... its a real testament to intels thermal capability when a chip loses its heatspreader in the middle of running and it doesnt go POOF!

unvaluable?

yes, very well depending on the model, make sure to get updated drivers for xp.

SCSI owns me. my friends always say that IDE is just as good... until they see my load times are twices as fast as theirs!

i've used adaptec scsi raid controllers with ghost.

the original source drive didn't have that 8mb empty space, but that is something to consider.

ahhh, except that i am having much the same problem with a scsi set up. i jumper my newly ghosted drive to ID 0 (same as the source was) after i ghost it... ideas anyone?

i have the same problem ghosting from an 18gb scsi drive to a 36gb. exact same problem except that mine just sits at the windowsxp screen with the moving bar thingy... sits there forever... blah.

what they said.