crapy clawn forums

Let's say I wanna buy one...

Someone give me a quick synopsis of what's hip these days. I'm too busy and lazy to do my own research.


Ready...Go!

On a semi-related note...

What's the deal with a "Windows 7 Upgrade"? My university's computer store is selling the ultimate 64bit upgrade for $19. Did they program something into Vista where versions that weren't part of the upgrade plan won't work? Or will it work with any? Does anyone know?

small solid state harddrive for your OS and 1 game or two. doubles boot speed and game loading time, etc.
windows 7, dual or quad core, 2.5-3 ghz
all ram is ddr3 now, get 4-6 gigs
buy a 150-250 dollar video card. Dual video cards has never really paid off, the market moves to fast. But if you have money to burn I guess you could try it.
don't bother with blu-ray, it'll only get cheaper in the coming years.
Stock heatsink/fan is probably not good enough these days.

if you learned anything from going from ME to XP, never buy the upgrade plan. It's worth it to get the clean slate CD. (unless the difference is 200+ dollars)

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We're all gonna die, but I got a helmet.
http://www.explodingdog.com/january2/we ... nadie.html

Yeah the store doesn't have just a Windows 7, only the upgrade. I don't understand what an upgrade actually does so I wanted to ask. I assume it pretty much keeps vista and changes the major stuff, but that would cause problems with organization and what not.

Stock HS/fan have been plenty for me. They're copper with heat pipes nowadays.

This is Texas. I always have overheating problems.

For XP->Win7 you still have to do a clean install, I just have no idea how it authenticates (if at all) that you actually had a legit XP license to begin with. It might just ask you for your XP key. In any case, the disk should be the same as the full install and you can legitimately use the upgrade license if you're going from XP->7.

Video cards, wait until at least Nvidia gets their shit out. Hopefully that'll make prices more competitive.

I had huge overheating problems in Memphis area with my last comp, dropped $70 on an awesome aftermarket HS for latest build and have no regrets on it.

Also on video cards: I'm running a gforce 280 (this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130368) and can run max-nearlymax settings in every game I have. Looks like this one is unavailable now, but sure there is similar out there. With current drivers runs great with no issues.

Yar, it verifies your XP key... but I would 100% advise the upgrade, providing you have *a* valid XP key. Its the full version (requires a clean OS free partition), for $19. Simple.

Also, you still want the highest CPU clock you can afford. Even if its only dual-core... I've done quite a bit of reading, and quad-cores don't show performance increase in any(?) games, and quads actually show a decrease with some games.

3.4G dual vs. 2.5G quad, the dual wins every time.

I think you do a little research, you can spend $150 on a video card and be very happy for a year or two.

Next question: Can I upgrade vista 32bit to 7 64bit? Or am I going to have to buy a new vista for $19 and then the 7 upgrade for 64bit? Is the 64bit worth the extra $19?

Needs a clean install, but should be fine.
With modern processors and games, it's more or less irrelevant. You'll almost always be GPU-bound (excepting AI/Unit-heavy RTS games a la SupCom, possibly SC2, and those tend to make much better use of multiple cores).

Yes to 64-bit. You'll need it so you can have lots of RAM.

games are finally starting to see use from dual cores and quad cores. As in, tf2's support was a joke, but L4d1 had an update which enabled dual core support and I saw a visible difference. l4d2 runs great for me, but on ash's single core she gets barely 10 frames per second. Granted, that's probably in large part to the video card too, like heretic said, but still.

here's a review from 2008:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scali ... cessors/11 Are you expecting to play brand new games primarily, or stuff from 2005 to 2009? Let that guide your decision. (or whatever is on sale.)

Also windows7 will make good use of all of your cores and all of your ram and all of your 64 bits, whereas XP never properly supported any of that. You should have a really snappy windows experience, better than XP even.

I'd like to see some new benchmarks with brand new games for dual/quad vs raw speed.

_________________
We're all gonna die, but I got a helmet.
http://www.explodingdog.com/january2/we ... nadie.html

I plan on getting back into the habit of playing with you guys, so whatever you are playing most likely. Not sure if I'll get into Zombie mode, but anything else is a possibility.

I was looking at cyber power and saw something that was different to me. What's with the NVIDIA PhysX cards? Does anything use them yet?

games you need:

L4D2 (this is a must)
L4D (we keep threatening a francis/bill renaissance. we'll see)
TF2 (we play occasionally)
BFBC2 (new hotness)

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Some of us remain hesitent on the BFBC2. The greatness has yet to be proven.
Also if you're an RTS fan several of us still playing Company of Heroes. Wait for a steam sale to grab all 3 (origional + 2 expansions) for about $30

The greatness was proved to me about five minutes into my first game. Pore over reviews all you want, but you're missing out on something really great here.

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Agreed.

A map on UT3, a couple of mediocre SP games, maybe a couple of terrible MP games, and Batman:AA. If you ever need PhysX down the line, just buy a cheap-ish 8-series+ card and drop it in to a second PCI-e slot (assuming you have a second one).

Also it's generally not worth it to go for Dell, et al unless you want something on the lower end. CyberPower is probably overpriced.

i have a feeling ld41 will come in handy because valve will marry the games with the promised release of next map called The Crossing. I predict 8 man survivor teams with all characters from l4d1&2. l4d1 will probably also go on sale at that same time so just buy l4d2 now and wait for l4d1

_________________
We're all gonna die, but I got a helmet.
http://www.explodingdog.com/january2/we ... nadie.html

I already have l4d1.