Parky

Damn......I was sure it was a Canadian flag. I'm really gonna' have to stop smokin' this s**t

Yes....I second that. Thanks Rob Mobo: Asus P6X58D-Premium CPU: i7-920, O/C to 3.6GHz RAM : 6GB G-Skill PC3-16000@ 1804MHz 9-9-9-24 CR 1T Video: Sapphire 5970 OC/Core 735/Memory 1010/ 2 Gig GDDR5 Catalyst 10.4 Asus 26"wide (16:10 aspect; 1920x1200) HD: 4x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200rpm in RAID10 (C:); 1x Western Digital Raptor 36G 10000 RPM (Nothing but Page File for RAID10 Array on this drive) ALL SATA300 drives; ALL controlled by Onboard ICH10r Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Pro (PCI-1x) PS: 850 Watt Corsair HX850 Modular OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OFF BH&H, HitR patched to 1.47 Video settings (They vary from day to day as I suffer from Chronic Tweakitis) TrackIR 4 Pro w/clip. Software 5.0b Stuttering has never been an issue with this setup. Occasional, but not very obvious tearing when lighting conditions are "normal" and blue sky is present during normal gameplay. Much more pronounced when capturing a clip in FRAPS under same condtions. Capturing at higher framerate (60FPS as opposed to 30FPS) helps condition somewhat, but does not completely eliminate it. I can eliminate the problem almost entirely by adjusting filtering levels and adjusting sliders lower, but I ain't doing that....mostly because I'm a stubborn sonofabitch and I think there has to be another way around it. Seriously toying with the idea of installing a single SSD (for now) strictly to hold the OFF install in order to see what happens. If it fixes the issue, I'm going to be proposing marriage to both Tamper AND Morris, and then they can fight over who gets to wear the wedding dress. Cheers, Parky

That Snipe....look at it's wings. The dihedral is entirely wrong. What the Hell have these guys @ OBD been doing all this time? Sheeeesh!

Creaghorn, Fantastic news!! Glad it's working well for you. Just remember....if anything goes wrong with it, it's Von Paulus's fault Cheers, and WELL DONE!!! Parky

Wow, Ok.....did I remember to say "Wow!"? The graphs there pretty much speak for themselves. Most impressive results indeed. Not only are the random access times untouchable (mine are 12.3ms) but one thing that jumps right out at me is the consistency of performance the hardware controller brings to the table. I'm looking at what it does for read speeds on those platters alone....impossible to ignore that kind of difference. I think I at least need one of those....lol. Here's the interesting thing as well. You see your two RAID-0 Seagates on the onboard controller? Even they're kickin' my RAID-10 in the ass by about 50 MB/s. I have a feeling it might have something to do with my data strip size. With RAID-10 I'm forced to use 64KB.....please tell me you're using something larger than that on the Seagate RAID-0. Mirroring also has a negative impact on my array's performance, as with a 2 disk RAID-0, my performance was almost identical to that of your two Seagates. So much for ICH10 being so fantastic. Now....if I wasn't such a sucker for redundancy, I could put all 4 of these disks in a RAID-0 and I'll bet you a beer I'd see some impressive results. Thanks, but no thanks. I like the fact that when one of my drives fails, all I need to do is replace it and good old Intel RST rebuilds the volume for me in a couple of hours. Works like a charm... One thing you mentioned was what a pain imaging a RAID-0 boot volume can be, and you're absolutely right. Not sure which software you were using for that task, but Acronis True Image is worth a real good look. I've successfully created and restored RAID-0 boot images with it with virtually no grief at all. I tried that once (and only once) with Norton Ghost...I'll let you figure out how that worked out for me...lol. Tamper, thanks once again for an extremely comprehensive report and also for answering my questions. Much appreciated. I'm about ready to take the leap and at least grab myself a decent hardware controller for the RAID-10 array. I'd heard good things about them in the past, just figured it would be more hassle than it was worth. After looking at your results, I'm sold. By the way......guess what I just happen to have sitting here doing nothing on this motherboard?? Two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. Those are not hosted by the ICH10R but rather by a Marvell 88SE9123-NAA2 PCIe controller....which I must admit, I know absolutely nothing about. Guess I've got some more research to do, but those two ports are going to need something plugged into them eventually. Would seem a complete waste to hook up a couple more platter-based drives dontcha' think? Oh.....one other thing, just so I'm a wee bit closer to being on topic. Oddly enough, I never really see any "stutters", even if I'm recording a clip.....it's those damned triangles... Oops....almost forgot. Played around with Affinity/Priority settings. I've also toyed with completely disabling one GPU on the 5970 and disabling multi-threading on the i7. No joy.....but anything that can be tweaked is worth a try. Cheers, Parky

Tamper, First of all, I'd like to say thanks a bunch for taking the time to run those FRAPS tests. I was almost hoping you'd report back that running at 30 FPS had induced the jaggy phenomenon regardless of the lack of TIR in the mix. Looking back at the Poll, I see only one respondant (eric) who claims to experienced video "distortion" even without the use of TIR, but unfortunately he doesn't expand on what he means by that. It may not even be jaggies/tearing at all. Hopefully if he reads this, he'll take the time to provide a more comprehensive description. It would seem just from looking at the poll results that there is a very strong correlation between the tearing and the use of use of TIR. As indicated previously, I personally am unable to replicate the problem if I resort to other panning methods, even if I run my terrain and scenery sliders up to 5. As far is it being a waste of time for you to have run these tests without TIR? Absolutely not! I was more interested in seeing wether or not we could induce the tearing phenomenon on your particular setup by doing the FRAPS trial. I was also interested in finding out just what kind of impact your hardware RAID controller and SSD's might have on your FRAPS performance, even though OFF is the only thing installed on the SSD's (a couple of questions about that stuff to follow). Your results have yielded valuable info as far as I'm concerned. It strengthens the hypothesis that TIR is indeed instrumentally responsible for what some of us are experiencing. The fact that some people with lower end hardware and TrackIR aren't seeing this condition at all is nothing short of downright baffling....to me anway! Aren't computers wonderful?? As a point of interest (or maybe it won't interest anyone at all, but I'm gonna' drone about it anyway), I've got four 1T WD's in RAID-10. These are controlled by onboard ICH10. I've got my paging file (and nothing else) for the RAID array on a 36Gig Raptor. I've experimented with page file size. I've even out of desperation, experimented with using no page file at all in an attempt to force texture loads in and out of physical memory as opposed to the alternative. Yes, I know running without a paging area isn't recommended due to the potential for program or system instablility, but this was strictly an OFF experiment. I figured with 6 Gig of RAM I should be ok and oddly enough when I tried it, there seemed to be a slight improvement....although the jury is still out on that one. Could have been my overactive imagination....or too many Coors. Allow me to ask you for a bit more info if it's not too much trouble. I'm curious to know if you have your paging file on the SSD's or if it's on the platter based drives. I recall reading somewhere about concerns over having the page file on the SSD's due to excessive wear? Any truth to that, or is it merely speculation? Also, I'm curious as to which storage solution upgrade on your system seemed to yield the most significant results in overall "smoothness" in OFF. Was the hardware RAID controller installed subsequent to the SSD's or was this part of the same project. If done seperately, which one of the two upgrades in your opinion proved to be the most valuable? By the way, I'm sincerely sorry to hear about your motion sickness issues. I happen to know it's no laughing matter. A friend of mine can't even look at a 60hz LCD for any longer than about 30 minutes without getting excruciating headaches and sometimes getting violently ill as a result. He's gone back to good old cathode ray tube technology for obvious reasons. I suggested he might get away with a 120hz LCD, at which point I think he said something rather impolite about my ancestry. Hopefully your condition is nowhere near as severe as his and one day you'll be able to get away with using a TrackIR with no ill effects. Thanks again for your efforts and info I think I'm gonna' go try Louvert's affinity/priority trick and see what happens there. Also......BirdDog.....messing with my TrackIR speed and smoothing has resulted in definite improvement. You're a star!! Cheers, Parky

That makes sense to me, and you could certainly duplicate the situation where FPS are "locked" or limited (without even having TrackIR) just to see what the results are. I for one would be curious to see what kind of impact capturing a clip in FRAPS has on your system. That would kill two birds with one stone actually. It'll limit your in-game framerates to whatever capture rate you choose (one test at 30FPS and the second at 60FPS (fullscreen) would be ideal) and it also might give us an idea of how SSD's might improve performance in that scenario. I suspect the fact that there'll be a great deal of HD activity involved as the clips are being recorded to storage in real time will yield positive results in favour of the newer technology. It's unfortunate you're unable to incorporate TrackIR into the final analysis, as on my system, the only time I run into tearing issues is with TrackIR in use. I think I mentioned earlier that if I kill TIR and use another method of panning, the problem goes away completely.....go figure. Surely TIR can't be all that resource intensive. I will swear on a stack of bibles though, turning off TIR is like losing your best friend. Seriously, the only time I can bring myself to fly without it is for testing purposes. Any chance somebody'll put one under your tree this year?? We'll keep our fingers crossed for you... Cheers, Parky

Hell, Just to reassure you that you're not imagining anything, about the only time I really see any "Jaggies" is if I'm attempting to capture in FRAPS. If I'm just playing the game, they're pretty much nonexistent. I have noticed that capturing at 30 FPS (which as you know limits in-game framerates accordingly) it results in far more frequent and more noticeable edge tearing. When I bump the capture rate up to 60 FPS, even though the HD is being thrashed to death with roughly twice the amount of writes, the phenomenon is drastically reduced. Hmmmm.... Now that you've figured out how to at least mimimize the tearing problem on your machine, I think I can solve your stutter problems for you. Just order yourself a couple of these http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_179&item_id=030361&sid=vunkheq1m7ars15dsldcavlv80 and set 'em up in a RAID-0. It might even completely eliminate those last few jags you're seeing as well. Cheers, and thanks for the research efforts. Parky

Easily done, and right where the existing 140mm is. Plenty of room there. He'll need four 6 x 32 x 1 1/4" machine screws. Anything longer and he'll poke a hole right through that rad.....not a pretty thought. Here's a picture of a single fan arrangement in the HAF932 http://img10.imagesh...28/pa180287.jpg The four holes he's looking for are clearly visible on the rad.......piece of cake, but he will have to think about picking up the additional 120 if he decides to go that route. Thanks, Parky

Ok.....if it were me I'd go with the 932 as it's a full tower as opposed to mid sized so it has TONS of space. It also has better airflow potential over the 922. In order to mount the H50 you'll have to remove the 140mm fan that comes with the case and replace it with the fan that's included with the H50. Von Paulus....whaddya' think?? Cheers, Parky

That all looks good to me. Ok....just saw the PSU plan. Also.....you do understand that your bottleneck will now be that Nvidia 260, right?? (Just so you know.....) Let me take a quick look at the fan configs on the 922 and 932. If you're going with the H50, you want to be sure you can mount a 120 mm fan somewhere and I believe those cases come stock with the 140's. P.S. We know you're eager, but don't rush.....

Gentlemen, My bad. Let me rephrase what I said in terms of benchmarks. What I s'pose I should have said in this particular instance was "Gaming benchmarks don't lie". Also.....I'm not about to get drawn into a war of words about the value of solid state drives vs traditional drives when it comes to gaming and/or gaming performance. I will however, state what I believe to be an honest appraisal of their usefullness in general, and also of their usefullness in a gaming environment...but most importantly, specifically where OFF is concerned. I'm abundantly aware of the "benefits" of SSD technology over that of traditional HDD's and have been for some time. I've seen some very impressive benchmark results both in terms of their seek times as well as read and write results. One has to ask this very obvious question though when it comes to "real world gaming performance", particularly where a specific application (in this instance, OFF) is concerned, and with pointed reference to actual frame rates. Just how frequently is this application seeking info from the HD, and/or reading and writing info to or from the storage device when the app is in full swing? I don't know if anyone here has ever bothered to monitor I/O activity on their own drives when OFF (or most other games for that matter) are in full swing. Well I have, and guess what??? Hard drive activity is pretty minimal and sometimes virtually nonexistent. It's a simple test......you don't have to be a guru to figure out that your hard drives are lying there pretty much dormant during most of the action you're seeing on your screen. Once you realize that, you also have to ask yourself this next question. How can my blazing fast SSD's possibly be influencing my FPS or gaming experience so drastically if they're not DOING much of anything while I'm in the middle of a game?? I was always under the obviously misguided impression that my CPU, GPU, system and VGA memory were handling most of the workload once any required data had been loaded into memory. That would typically be after the process of a map or textures loading, and during actual gameplay. That's precisely why I invested fairly heavily in those other components as opposed to solid state drives. There are occasions when the hard drives get utilized while you're actively gaming, but from my experience it doesn't occur all that often. Even when it does, it's usually for very brief periods, during which time an SSD would of course have the edge over older technology. There are games that have a tendency to "stream" a lot of data on the fly and really can benefit from faster storage devices. OFF, from what I've seen, is not one of those games, and the last time I checked we were in the OFF section of this forum. We are....aren't we?? Soooooo.....when I speak about "real world performance", I'm assuming the reader will interpret that as meaning how it relates mostly to OFF, but not necessarily exclusively. Their is no denying that SSD's are vastly superior when it comes to a number of everyday computing scenarios. If you've got your OS loaded on one, you're guaranteed to boot to the desktop at blazing speeds. Web pages should load in the blink of an eye. If you've got Battlefield Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare loaded on your SSD, you'll likely be the first one to load a multi-player map and spawn before those who are using regular HD's, but that's where your speed advantage will come to an abrupt halt and the other components in your system will come into play. Your SSD isn't likely to get you much in the way of a framerate advantage (if any advantage at all) over someone running a Seagate 7200.12 when the firefight is on and that I'm afraid, is what it's all about when it comes to gaming performance.....frame rates....period. Perhaps once I have to start rendering down huge AVCHD videos on any kind of regular basis, I'll take the plunge and buy one or two of these beasts, because obviously when it comes to a task like that, the SSD is worth it's weight in gold. I am not however, going to swallow what I believe to be a misguided notion that solid state drives will somehow magically increase my framerates in OFF by any significant margin and completely eliminate the dreaded blue Bermuda Triangles. I happen to suspect otherwise, and I don't have to own one of these drives to have arrived at that conclusion. They're still a bit too rich for my blood regardless. I don't suppose when you purchased your SSD's that they were part of an upgrade that involved more than just storage devices? New graphics card, processor, RAM or something else of note at the same time? If that were the case, it would explain a lot about what I truly believe to be your very honest and sincere perceptions. Either way, if the SSD's work for you and have enhanced your experience with Over Flanders Fields, I'm thrilled to bits for you and can look forward to being able to experience the same dramatic frame rate increases......once prices come down drastically and I can justify the price vs performance aspect of things. Btw.....Morris, my dear old chap......2x the Asus 5970??? Holy Jumpin' Jesus! That's just plain OVERKILL!!!! Cheers, Parky

Yes, Von Paulus.....the Corsair comes with a single 120mm fan. It's nothing to write home about. Far better off going with 1 or 2 Scythes. As far as memory goes, I'm pretty much sold on G-Skill for now. I've used it in half a dozen or so builds. Never had a stick DOA and so far haven't seen one fail. We'd be foolish to think it doesn't happen though. I've also had good luck with OCZ, Patriot and Mushkin so far. With the Corsairs I've seen one DOA and had two sticks fail in two different systems. Didn"t have any problems with the RMA process. Their customer service is fine, but it's still a PITA to have to wait for them to ship out the replacements. The Rampage II Extreme is a good board. It is getting a little long in the tooth though as you've pointed out. No SATA 6Gb/s which in it's present state is not all that important, but also no USB 3.0, which for me easily replaces eSATA and is a very useful feature. When I check prices on Newegg, the Rampage runs about 80 bucks more than the P6X58D, and frankly (although I may be biased) I feel the P6 is a much better board for today's needs. Not sure about availability or pricing in the Motherland, so that is probably a consideration as well as a possible limitation. The Storm Scout is a very nice looking case, has reasonably good airflow, but is also a typical mid-tower sized case. If you're ever thinking about throwing a 5970 in it, you'll have to butcher the crap out of the case just to get the card in. You'd be far better off going with the HAF-922 which runs about the same price, or better still, move up to the 932 for about 50 bucks more. The 932 is a full sized tower with exceptional airflow and if you're planning on using passive cooling with that Megahalem, you'd best have a real wind tunnel of a case. On a positive note, the Megahalems allow for active cooling with the addition of either one or two fans (as long as the interior dimensions of your case allow for it). Not sure what the hell they were thinking when they listed a 300w PSU in that array. That just isn't going to cut it and I don't give a rats behind how efficient the supply is. Craig....one thing I learned early on. NEVER rush into selecting parts for a new computer build. In all probability you're going to be stuck with it for a fair while and it's crucial to take your time and choose wisely. I'm at work right now and don't want to get slapped upside the head by my boss, not to mention the network here is absolutely horrible. I'll take a look at that configurator when I get home and maybe come up with some useful suggestions. Cheers, Parky

I'm also inclined to agree that the "real" performance gains from running solid state drives are a bit over-hyped, particularly when you consider the potential for other relevant I/O bottlenecks that are inherent in even the most up to date hardware platforms. To semi-quote BirdDog, benchmarks don't lie. I doubt that if I was to replace my current WD's in RAID-10 with a couple of SSD's, that the occasional blue triangle I see would magically disappear. Having said that, please bear in mind that when you're running OFF, you'll not be able to realize the benefit of running more than one GTX260. Particularly where OFF is concerned, I'd be better off running a single 5870 as opposed to my 5970 dual GPU card. The single, stock 5870 is clocked @ 850mhz core and 1200mhz memory. My overclocked version of the 5970 has stock clocks of 735mhz core and 1010mhz memory, so just based on clock speeds alone the 5870 will outperform it in this specific 3D environment. I also hate to tell you this, but a single 5870 will quite simply annihilate a single GTX260 and would even give your two GTX260's in SLI a damned serious run for their money.....and yes, even your superclocked versions. I can also tell you this phenomenon has much less (if anything) to do with the OFF overlay of CFS3 than it does with the use of TrackIR (specifically with this game). If I shut down TrackIR, I can sit in the VC view and pan the view 360 degrees like a madman and never see a single blue square/triangle (regardless of blue skies, grey skies, green skies, aurora borealis or a freaking meteor shower). I think the simplest (and certainly cheapest) solution is to attempt to tweak your way around it by reducing detail levels in the game, and also attempting to tweak your TrackIR settings. A single 5870 or much higer-end Nvidia product would also improve things considerably for you, but that would involve throwing down some pretty serious coin simply in order to improve the appearance of one single game. Take solace in the fact that your are not alone. Let anyone among us stand up and declare that they use TrackIR in this game, have their detail settings reasonably high, and never, ever see a blue square or triangle at the edge of their screen.....then watch me call that someone a liar. Cheers, Parky

Just a quick picture of the PX58D housed in an Antec 1200 with the Corsair cooler in a push/pull arrangement: This was taken shortly after the initial build and first boot. The graphics card you see there is an 8800GTX, which was in place merely to get the system up and running pending the arrival of a 5970. What I did discover was I had to rearrange a couple of hard drives just to fit that big ATI pig in the tower. Actually, I shouldn't say unkind things about the 5970. It's an absolutely kickass card if you get a good one. Mine was a complete dog until I updated it's BIOS. Not for the uninitiated, or if you're not comfortable in a pure DOS environment. Remember, you're flashing a dual GPU solution here, and if you bugger up the master/slave order or pooch a DOS command, you could be looking at a very expensive brick. It is possible to recover a bricked card in most instances, but it's not an adventure I'd wanna' have to go through. The H50 you see here is set up to exhaust hot air from the rad back out of the tower....contrary to the way Corsair recommends you set it up. What I found was the ambient temperature inside this case was cool enough to allow for that configuration and it just seems illogical to me to have hot air from the rad being blown back into the tower. I also took the time to replace the two Tri-cools you see here with a couple of 1850 rpm Scythe Gentle Typhoons. They are much better suited to liquid cooling applications due to their superior static pressure. If all you want to do is blow air around and have it circulate, the Tri-cools are fine. If you want to blow air through a tightly packed space (like a rad for instance) go with something else. Noctua makes a good fan for that specific purpose and so do some others, but they'll usually cost you an arm and a leg, and from my experience, the Scythes do an outstanding job at bargain basement prices if you shop around. The Antec 1200 is not for everybody. Although it has superb thermal qualities, it does have it's flaws. It is definitely not a tool-less design. Mounting HDD's in this thing is nothing short of a complete pain in the ass, mostly due to having to remove both sides of the case along with a seemingly ridiculous number of screws. The front bezel filter design is also somewhat flawed in that in order to clean them you have to slide the HDD cages forward in order to get at them. This involves having to once again remove both sides of the case as well as having to remember to leave enough slack in your sata cables to allow enough forward movement of the HD cages. If you've failed to do that, there's gonna' be some swearing the first time you decide to clean those filters. Other than that, a removable motherboard tray would have been a nice addition, but those are about the only negatives I can come up with. As you can see in the picture, cable management shouldn't be a problem. I've since tidied the cables even further and it was never really an issue. That Corsair 850TX PSU you're looking at is a modular design though, which certainly helps in that regard. The RAM you see here is the G-Skill listed in my earlier post. It's run flawlessly from the get-go. You may find you'll have to adjust it's frequency manually though, as it defaulted to 1066 with stock BIOS settings. One thing I can tell you is it's fast as hell and stable as a rock. I have no complaints. The PX58D Premium is a fabulous board. Overclocking the i7-920 to 3.6 on this thing was so simple a chimpanzee could do it (well I did, didn't I?). Stability at 4Ghz provided a bit more of a challenge, but not all that much. The conclusion I reached was that the additional 400Mhz overclock isn't worth the diminishing real-world performance gains, the increase in voltages, or the accompanying temperature increases. For 24-7 use, 3.6 is more than enough with this hardware array and if it isn't, then somebody's expectations are a wee bit unrealistic. I'm not suggesting this is the build for you (Craig). It's just to give you an idea of what my designated gaming machine consists of and what it looks like. Basically, I'm pretty sure that with the collection of hobbyists we have here, between the bunch of us, we can get you set up with something you'll be fairly pleased with. You don't have to break the bank...there's always room for compromise. Cheers, Parky

I'm currently running these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231254 Not cheap, but you get what you pay for. They're running underclocked @ 1800mhz with the 3.6 overclock on the 920. I can tighten the timings but for now I settled on stock timings with a 1T command rate and stock voltage of 1.6 Got a bit of other info for you, but have to get my @ss back to work before I get fired....lol. Cheers, Parky

Wow!! Awesome representation of what this sim can bring to the table in terms of sheer white-knuckle, furballing goodness! Not sure what you used for rendering or how you went about it, but the clarity of this clip is nothing short of outstanding! Thoroughly enjoyed watching. Well done mate!! Keep up the good work!! (UncleAl......odd, but nowhere in the OP does Hellshade mention anything at all about "Phases" or even release dates for that matter, so I'm not sure where your little diatribe came from or why. One thing I do know. Your response is completely OFF topic, seems pretty self-indulgent, and for some inexplicable reason, sounds entirely bitter. What's to be bitter about? Not happy with the current state of the sim?? Don't like guys posting excellent videos of their experiences with OFF in it's current form, or should he have entitled the clip "Thought I'd post this to see if I could end up with a thread that resembles something closer to the Storm of War release date discussions on the UBIZOO forums??") Geez... Parky

That my friend, is a surefire recipe for divorce.....lolol But seriously....I'd have to agree that Creaghorn would be best advised to start looking at a new build. The current platform doesn't really allow for any upgrades that would result in any real significant performance gains. I'd be looking at going to a decent Asus or Gigabyte board with one of the i7's or i5's. Windows 7 64-Bit and probably 6 Gig of DDR3...a 5850 or 5870, some decent HDD's, but not necessarily SSD's (frankly I think they're over-hyped....and definitely over-PRICED). I'm currently running an Asus PX58D-Premium, i7-920 @ 3.6 Ghz, 6 Gig of G-Skill @ 1800 Mhz, a Sapphire 5970 OC, 4 Western Digital Black Terabyte drives-RAID-10 (more for redundancy than performance) and I'm happy as a lark. As a point of interest, I can push this i7-920 up to 4 Ghz without it even breaking a sweat, but there really doesn't seem to be a need. The Corsair H50 cooler that Appraiser mentions in his post does an outstanding job if it's set up in a push/pull arrangement with a couple of fans that have reasonably good static pressure. The Scythe Typhoons @ 1850 RPM do a nice job without making much noise at all. Looks to me like Von Paulus pretty much has this one covered, but thought I'd throw in a couple of cents anyway. Cheers, Parky

Hi Rob, Download and install the latest version of Firefox (if you don't already have it). Install this addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006 Works like a charm. Cheers, James

Actually, after re-reading his recent post, perhaps he's not all that keen on upgrading the PSU. Here's some food for thought though. 1) Grab yourself an old burned out standard ATX power supply. 2) Open up your tower and eyeball the available space around the existing PSU. 3) If it looks like you've got enough room for the standard ATX, pull the existing PSU out and see if you can squeeze the dead supply in without too much trouble. 4) If there's available space, it may be a simple matter of being creative and drilling a couple of new holes in the rear of your case in order to successfully mount a new PSU. Failing that, I really like Von Paulus's suggestion that you pick up a new case that comes with a PSU. There are several options available for well under 100 bucks. Finally.....if you decide to hold off for the new system, start being really, really nice to your wife for the next several weeks. Cheers, Parky

I would have to agree with you completely that he'd be walking the tightrope for sure with the current (no pun intended) PSU. I was under the impression he's considering upgrading that component though, and if he did, he'd be off to the races. I do know that people with a similar hardware array (including the new card) find that total system draw under load is typically somewhere just slightly south of 200 watts. That would leave some overhead, but only if the integrity of the existing power supply was top-notch.....which I somehow doubt after looking at it's specs. The way I see it, if he can get away with keeping his costs down to under $200 for the kind of performance gains we're talking about here, it'd be a worthwhile expenditure until he can afford an entirely new build. And yes.....I'd also agree that at that point he'd probably be bottlenecking at his core system components. I do believe the additional RAM (1 Gig) on that card would be beneficial for him though, and for the additional 20 bucks or so, if it were me, that's the route I would take. Hopefully we haven't confused him to the point where he gives up gaming completely....lol. Cheers Mate, Parky

Not sure where you came up with that idea. The number of 12v rails on the PSU has absolutely NO bearing on wether you can run AGP or PCI-e. Trust me. The only thing he has to be cautious of is if he goes with the card I recommended, I think he's gonna' need a 6pin from the PSU to plug into it. I know the same card from Sapphire includes a molex to 6pin adapter. Not sure about the XFX, but that adapter would probably run you all of about 4 bucks if you know where to look.

For what it's worth..... The advantages of running Nvidia over ATI graphics (specifically where OFF is concerned) is overhyped as far as I'm concerned. The only thing the ATI cards lack is the ability to render cockpit glass reflections. Nice bit of eye-candy for those who insist on being finicky when it comes to graphics detail, but that's all it is, a very minor detail that in terms of overall performance, doesn't amount to a hill of beans. As far as the ATI cards not "running OFF as well" as their Nvidia counterparts, that can be easily addressed with the appropriate tweaks. I'd be so bold as to say that some of the ATI cards will even outperform their Nvidia equivilents when one looks strictly at a price vs performance scenario. Let me make this real simple. If you were really serious about breathing some new life into that aging system of your's, here's what I'd recommend you do. Order yourself up one of these: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814150433 That little gem is light-years ahead of your 9600, will literally wipe the floor with the 7600GS and can be had for under $100.00, and yes, it's AGP. The last time I checked, it typically requires a very modest PSU and runs cool and quiet for a card that allows for the kind of performance increase you'll get. It doesn't hurt that XFX offers a lifetime warranty either. The worst-case scenario is you may end up having to pick up a slightly better power supply, but those can also be had for very reasonable prices if you shop carefully. I'd be surprised if your current PSU wouldn't be up to the task though. The only other thing you'd need to worry about is applying AMD's AGP hotfix in order to get the card up 'n running, but I have a feeling you were already aware of that little detail. Best of luck with whatever direction you decide to take......and welcome to the forum. Cheers, Parky

Quite simply outstanding.....

Yeah.....he's real good at that.