Cujo

malware bytes. it gets rid of 99% of anything i've come across.

2405 brightness 50. contrast is locked to 50 i guess cause it's dvi? colour is also 50,50,50. i tried messing around more but without proper config it just looks weird. i could have told you dell would be night and day better than acer! infact, i'm sure i've been saying it for years. how much did you pay?

i get 60-65% cpu usage in source. remember, css is not really all that optimized for multiple cores so what you're seeing is perfectly normal. 60-70fps lows are perfectly normal with that cpu at that speed. as i said above, with my c2d at 3.2 i drop into the 80s occasionally. short of upgrading your cpu there isn't much you can really do.

just upgraded my 8800gtx to a hd 4870 1gb and it only further illustrates the cpu limitation of css. running 1920x1200 with everything on including 8x msaa i'm getting 100fps with drops to the 80s (i cap my fps at 101). the ati overdrive section has a handy little tool which shows gpu activity and it hovers in the 60-70% range for the whole time. i've only tested it on d2 to this point. i've not tried hdr or harder gpu maps like inferno. but basically until that gpu usage is up in the 90s i know that i don't need a new card. in mercenaries 2 however, the gpu usage is in the high 80s/low 90s so i know that the video card is getting close to being a bottleneck but i could still benefit from a cpu upgrade cause ideally that gpu usage is 100%. in that game my cpu usage is generally 100% as the game is highly multi-threaded.

ya this is definitely a different deal as i don't have anywhere close to a 50,000 balance... i believe it's over now anyhow.

wow so gold.

any loss is generally related to your connection. choke is common on most servers especially those over 10 people. i see 50 choke on gc regularly especially when everyone is alive but it almost always drops. as for your changing of the gfx settings i could have told you that. faster cpu is king on css. that's never been in question and i've done extensive testing in the past to prove it. i was able to get the same fps at the same settings with an ati x550 and an ati x800xt pe at 1024x768. anyway, to avoid this post getting any longer there is absolutely nothing wrong with your fps with that setup. the loss is related to your isp or the routing from you to the server. your choke is also normal for what i've experienced on gc and other servers with similar numbers of players. if you want more fps including higher low end fps then upgrade your cpu. simply switching to a c2d at the same speed will boost that min fps by 20-25 which is slightly lower than my typical min with cpu at 3.2ghz. i'm speaking from experience as i had an x2 3800 at 2.8ghz and those are the gains i saw. when i upped my vid card from an x1950xtx to this 8800gtx my fps did not change in css and i'm running 1920x1200 with full settings.

a friend of mine has the air and it's useless. yes anon, a friend of mine works at rbc and has been tryin to get me to switch for a while. when i heard about this deal i figured it was meant to be.

i'm supposedly getting a free one for switching to a my new bank so i'll post up when i get it if i decide not to sell it right away.

funny how they have an 8800gt for the same price when the gtx is significantly better. anyway, those b-stocks are dirt cheap. never knew about them before. thx for the link.

i could never go back to xp. yes, it is quicker for general tasks but vista is so much easier. installing new things, fixing problems, day to day use, it's all easier on vista.

64 bit here for over a year with no issues other than buggy creative sound drivers. why ultimate? 64 bit business is all you really need.

i see similar numbers though i'm probably at a higher res but i also have a better/faster cpu. those fps numbers are normal as far as i'm concerned.

$200 + shipping? btw, it's been overclocked stable to ultra speeds but no further.

dweez, you want my evga 8800gtx?

here's a couple good viewing distance links. http://www.cnet.com/1990-7874_1-5108580-2.html http://www.bestbuy.ca/learnmore/BuyersGuid...p;test_cookie=1 so with a 65" it looks like you should be ideally 12 or so feet away. i know with my 50" there's no way i'd want to sit closer than 6'. i generally sit between 8 and 10' back. not to mention any more than a 50" would have taken 3 ppl to move. two of us had a hard enough time with a 50". the box didn't even fit in my car. had to take it out just to fit it. and no i don't have the beetle anymore...

just bought a 50" and i'm telling you guys, unless you sit 12+ feet back from the tv, have tinkle poor vision (in which case your money may be better spent on laser eye surgery) or need to have the biggest balls in your neighbourhood, this tv is complete overkill. you'd be better off spending the same money on a higher quality product to get the most out of your viewing experience. that said, it's a really good deal on a 65" tv.

as most have said. avoid sli, ddr3 and vista ultimate. the new 260 is actually better all around than a 4870. i would have an x2 4870 myself if money is no object. make sure you get at least a 700w psu of a quality brand. also, as boiler said, any q9xxx series cpu will be good. the q9550 is probably the best priced right now, at least in canada. for mobo get any p45 or x48 board that is in your price range just make sure it has ddr2. 8gb of ram may not be worth it yet but if you've got the money to burn then why not. a good ocz, gskill 2x2gb kit should be enough. i've got 2x2gb of gskill 1066.

i love my dell 1230. it's still kicking around as friends use it when i have mini lan parties. gotta love 1600x1200 at 100hz. as for those linksys devices, they're designed to be stacked. ya they'll get a bit warm but it should be ok. as long as they're not hot to the touch.

be sure to post up if you find it. simply doing a google search for hard drive effect fps brings up several forum posts with the question and the majority of people seem to feel it doesn't. also, if it did, i'm sure most hard drive reviews would do at least one game benchmark.

gamers buy the hard drives for level load times mainly. also, it adds to the "i have the best pc" factor. i bought my raptors for the speed in loading apps, games and data transfers. yes, it was probably stupid but i'll probably stupidly buy an ssd drive shortly as well. i don't understand at all how game performance can be affected by hard drive speed. i can see hard drive cpu usage affecting gaming performance but not speed. btw, i have a hard time respecting that review when the numbers don't match the graph output. somehow the bar on the seagate for raid 0 is longer than the bar for a single drive when the fps is 85.2 vs 88.3... figure that one out. also, each test was run once so... the single drive tests were well within a standard margin of error and with no repition it's impossible to read much into that. the raid 0 and 1 teests go back to my hard drive cpu usage. it's likely the raid controller may have had an easier time with the firmware in the raptors than with the seagates. anyway, MANY, MANY holes in that review. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.as...hreadid=2221141 edit for second link: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244415-3...0rpm-hard-drive

lol, the game will load faster but it's impossible for a hard drive to increase fps unless there is something wrong with the hard drive causing it to eat cpu cycles. if your hard drive is frequently accessing while in game then you likely don't have enough ram which would cause page swapping which would hinder performance. the only other way a hard drive could affect fps is if the game loads data on the fly. most games however load all the level data into ram before you start so this would never come up. if you were playing a game which loaded data on the fly the difference in speed of hard drive would make a negligible difference in fps. you'd see a similar frame hit while the data is loading and then your frames would be back to normal. as for a 3d benchmark. each stage is loaded into ram while the loading screen is on. after that the system only accesses the needed data from the ram. there should be no hard drive access of any kind.

hard drives have nothing to do with 3dmark 06 btw. here's my current config: ASUS P5Q Deluxe Intel E6600 @ 3.2GHz w/ 1.5v 2 x 2048MB PC2 8800 GSkill @ 1066MHz (5-5-5-15) w/ 2.1v EVGA 8800GTX SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum 2 x WD1500ADFD RAID 0 4 x WD5000AAKS RAID 0+1 Tt Armor Aluminum Tower Enermax Galaxy 1000W DXX DELL 2405FPW recent changes include swapping the p5k for a p5q and swapping the 4x1gb ram for 2x2gb higher clocked.

still goin to infonec. i like not having to ship back doa items.

tek my sm2 score is much higher but sm3 is about the same. i thought for sure the 4850 would be faster than a 8800 ultra but maybe not...