So to ring in the new year, I decided to replace my 7800GT with a 9800GT. For just over $100 after rebate, I would have a card that's at least twice as fast as my old card and at least according to many of the charts I'd seen, it's not a terribly high power draw (80 watts) and can be cooled with an ...

I assume the increased performance from 4GB way more than outweighs the different timings, right? What do you use your system for, and how often does it have to page memory to disk? I have 2GB and no pagefile. I can count on one hand the number of times in the last year that it's run out of memory....

What if a criminal breaks into your home and wants to kidnap or murder you, your wife and children, are you going to say, "Go on ahead, good sir. Why, I preach non-violence." In lieu of supernatural intervention (which I believe in), a person must use some sort of physical means of defense to prese...

SlaveToSilence wrote:would that be good to find out which 6000+ i have? i think its the 90nm but am not sure

Maybe so. PM me an email address and I'll email it to you to try out.

SlaveToSilence wrote:http://www.thecoolest.zerobrains.com/fo ... c.php?t=83

link doesnt work, is there somewhere else we can get it?

I never understood the purpose of this tool, but I think I do have a copy of it, although the copy I have is only for AMD. It is version 1.18 from February 2006.

I don't understand AMD's marketing here. I've got an Opteron 185 currently, which was rated at 110W when I got it. It's a very hot chip and is challenging to keep it below 65C when slightly overclocked, even with the HDT-1283, which is one of the top HSF's available. The main reason I have avoided e...

I'm not sure whether overclocking will actually results in a significant difference. The RAM is PC6400, so I have some headroom starting with a 333MHz FSB. From what you're describing, I'm not sure overclocking the memory will make a lick's worth of difference to begin with. It sounds like the soft...

So I think it's safe to say the reference cooler is not so great. :) On the bright side, under load it has lower power draw than a 4830 according to the charts, so I should hope you could run an Accelero S1 r2 either passive or with low volted fan on it. I'm currently shopping for my first new video...

Your video has a brown tint and you are blaming the memory card? Did I read that right?

I noticed the modu82 disappeared from the major USA retailer NewEgg maybe 4-6 weeks ago too. To me, the Seasonic M12 430watt is a perfect replacement. Roughly the same price, specs, noise, and modular cables.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817151057

andyb wrote:My test-rig at work has 64-bit Vista installation on it, and its benches 26% in 3D Mark 2001 than the same PC with XP (32-bit).

Andy, your sentence is missing a critical descriptor. Is it:

1) 26% as fast
2) 26% faster
3) 26% slower

$67 for 8 GB? 4 GB of the same Geil memory costs $96 here, so $192 for 8 GB. MS didn't miss the boat. 2 GB is basically enough for everyone but a very, very small subset of users, and memory isn't so cheap in the rest of the world ;) I'm still on 2 GB and have no idea why I'd need more, by the way....

So just today I saw an 8GB DDR2 kit for $67 on newegg. I guess I realized prices had come down pretty far with a lot of the 2x2gb kits running $25 after rebate, but most of those have a limit of one rebate per household. Seeing 8GB ram for $67 without any rebate needed just somehow made huge amounts...

AZB - yes, based on the kinds of WUs developed. In the future they are suppose to be just about the same. Oh ok. I was scratching my head a bit on this one - for gaming, the new 48x0 cards seem real close to the 9800GT and 260GTX line, which implies they have close "power" but their PPD is far apar...

Based on the link above, it looks like nVidia cards do 4000-6000 ppd versus around 1000-2000 ppd for ATI cards. Is that accurate?

That extra platter = more noise, more power usage, more heat, slower drive ready time, more susceptible to shock damage, and more vibration. Makes sense. What I'm struggling to understand is why more platters (= more heads) doesn't translate into faster sustained read and write times. Don't know ab...

Well there's "out" and then there's general availability. I'm excited to see 500GB per platter already being demo'd, but I'll be more happy when I see it available in the general retail channels.

You'd have to have a massively ginormous TV to hit 700 watts. My year-old 47" HDTV pulls only about 200 watts according to my kill-a-watt. Newer models are continuing to push efficiency and when LED backlighting goes mainstream those will cut power consumption something like 30-40% per square inch. ...

I was about to post the report of 8 fixes issued for Firefox, 3 classified as critical too. Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks answered "because that's where the money is." IE has been a target for so long because it had all the marketshare. Now that other players ar...

All fluorescents have mercury, and the new CFL's have a relatively tiny amount; like 3-5mg. Stores are starting to take back old bulbs, to recycle the mercury -- my local hardware store (Aubuchon) does this. They also take tube fluorescents, which have about 10X as much mercury. The old thermostats...

As was pointed out, energy costs money. The best rule of thumb is that the more money you spend on manufactured goods, the more of an environmental impact it has. There's exceptions, yes, but it's still a very good general rule.

If Seagate stops offering 5 year you can still go WD Black and get 5 year. That's what I was going to say. I work in data protection for a living and value a long warranty and the build quality it implies even higher than a low noise level. The last time I purchased a set of 4 hard drives 3 years a...

well most do, but some won't because they simply hate Canada In one of my ebay auctions, it cost me 2x as much to ship to Canada as it did to ship across the USA. There's some kind of import tax to ship even very inexpensive goods to Canada. After that auction I marked all of my ebay auctions as US...

What operating system are you running? For that matter, what PROGRAMS are you running? If you have a windows operating system, disable the paging file. I have 2gb of memory and have had no paging file for at least 18 months now. When you get rid of the paging file, it prevents anything from getting ...

...so are these available yet? Not sure if the announcement means they can be purchased today. Good question. I checked their website and found two things. First, the product page is already up which implies that if it's not already available, it probably will be real soon. Also, the product page c...

OCZ and SuperTalent will launch new high-performance SSDs soon: http://vr-zone.com/articles/ocz--super-talent-unveil-high-performance-ssds/6262.html?doc=6262 The OCZ specifies upto 64 MB of cache, which should sort out the stuttering issue. Looking at the posts up above, there's one saying the Inte...

well not THAT obsolete, maybe the "2-3 years old" obsolete stuff. you know i found some old crap in the junk 2 weeks ago, old AT computers with old EDO ram sticks, old 4mb video cards, an old Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA! :lol: that's the kind of junk no one want to buy even if it's 5$ a piece I know, i...

Figures I just picked up the Blue 320GB WD at Fry's for $70 Well at least at frys I can return without a restocking fee. I'll give it a try anyway.... EDIT: I just checked the model number I got the 00B3A0 stepping, that is the good one correct? The Black 640GB is only $15 more from newegg if you d...

Funny you should mention it, since I own an S939 Opteron 185. I upgraded to the 185 about 18 months ago for maybe $280? I sold the 2.2 Ghz 3700+ (single core) for $10 or something on ebay and was astonished to see that my 185 is still fetching $200+ on ebay if you include the mobo and 2gb of RAM, li...

Wow, it was only what seems like 5 years ago that your OEM Dell's and HP's came with such junk power supplies that they were only 50-60% efficient. Now we're hitting 90% even. Looking at the loss side, losses decreased from 40-50% to as low as 10%. From here, even doubling efficiency only drops the ...