Parky

Well done, Simon! Does this mean you get to put the more curvacious and suspicious looking women through one of those X-ray thingys? Cheers, Parky

This friend of mine who lives in a pretty upscale neighborhood has been telling me for a long time that she has a next door neighbor who makes her life pretty unbearable. I'm not entirely sure this is the right approach to selling her house quickly and getting anywhere near the asking price.... Cheers, Parky

Knowing UncleAl...........you can bet your ass he does.......

A handy reference for those of us who are over 50.... ATD -at the doctor. BFF -best friend fell. BTW -bring the wheelchair. BYOT -bring your own teeth. FWIW -forgot where I was. GGPBL -gotta go, pacemaker battery low. GHA -got heartburn again. IMHO -is my hearing aid on? LMDO -laughing my dentures out. OMMR -on my massage recliner. ROFLACGU -rolling on floor laughing and can't get up. TTYL -talk to you louder! Cheers, Parky

Obviously you're still alive then....

First of all, cheers for sharing your personal experience with this particular set of drivers. Even if it doesn't save someone else on the forum from some headaches, it's a fine gesture. Well done In addition, when you thought your friend's idea that updating graphics cards drivers somehow updates the hardware's "firmware" was a bit odd.....good call. That's a load of rubbish. C'mon Pol.....admit it. We've all known for a long time what a huge Nvidia "fanboi" you are. I first figured it out when you and I were both running the X1900 series ATI cards.......... I do believe I made a post recently after shelving a Sapphire 5970 in favor of the GTX590 that indicated I would "NEVER", and I repeat "NEVER" put another AMD/ATI product in another one of my towers. That has absolutely nothing to do with their hardware either, and everything to do with their absolutely miserable driver efforts. Now THAT's what I call an Nvidia "fanboi"!! Well done Paulo.......as usual. Cheers, Parky

Just a quick word to the wise.... Windows 7 has a very nifty feature that offers to "troubleshoot" network connectivity issues for those who aren't savvy enough to figure it out on their own. Speaking from my own experience, proceed with extreme caution if utilizing this feature. I'm running a Linksys WRT 54G wireless router with DD-WRT 3rd party firmware, but I somehow doubt the problem I encountered is exclusive to that specific hardware/firmware combo. It doesn't matter how good you are at securing your wireless network when this particular scenario rears it's ugly head. It seems my son was unable to connect to our wireless network the other day, so rather than wait for me, he chose to let Windows 7 "troubleshoot" the connectivity issue. The connectivity problem was with our ISP and totally unrelated to our wireless configuration. Guess what Windows 7's idea of troubleshooting the issue was??? It basically reset our router to it's default settings and wiped out any and all wireless security measures (WPA2 in this particular instance). I came home to find about 8 people using our broadband connection.........not good. At first I was convinced somebody with some very sharp skills had managed to hack the router remotely. Tough to do when the default IP has been changed, wireless GUI is disabled, SSID is disabled, DHCP allows for only one address, Mac Address filtering is being utilized for the DHCP client, the username and password are extremely complex, and the security key is a 256 bit encrypted, 63 character ASCII entry. Took me a whle to figure out what had happened, but my son mentioned having run the Windows 7 network troubleshooter. I've since experimented with it and determined that it did in fact reset the router to DD-WRT defaults. I haven't had a chance to test this with any other routers or firmware yet, but thought I'd throw this up as a red flag to anyone with the same (or perhaps different?) hardware/firmware configuration. Cheers, Parky

As far as the semaphore flag "data" problem is concerned, I don't really give a s**t. Quite honestly, I don't even know what a semaphore flag data problem is. I did know however, Dr. McCoy, that you would in all probability, jump in here just to confuse the s**t out of me even more. Thanks..... Cheers Mate, Parky

I'm already convinced that you're a qualified network analyst. Allow me to qualify that comment though. Nobody said anything about router usernames or passwords being "stored in Windows". Even if they were, what does that have to do with the problem I described in my initial post? Did you by any chance miss the part where I said "the username and password are extremely complex"?? Your question about how "Windows" could possibly change any network settings is pretty uneducated.....period. Move along...... Parky

Paulo, Can we safely assume you're endorsing both of these products??? If so, consider them as good as installed on all systems (or at least the ones I really care about) (And thanks to Pol and Hasse for pointing them out) Cheers, Parky

Must be one HELL of a mouse.....

Tofke, UncleAl is worth his weight in gold when it comes to some of the lesser known aspects of the the OFF interface, and although he and I can seem like mortal enemies at times, I have the utmost respect for his talents in this regard. Well done, Al. I think it's only right that Pol should offer to lend you his new car for the duration of the summer... Cheers, Parky

He obviously realizes that would be a futile denial. Particularly if you've seen the picture of his new Lamborghini that recently surfaced...

Pol, This is precisely why we pay you the big bucks......:) Cheers, Parky

Hmmm, Actually, I'm pretty sure he's got a 17.3" 16:9 1080p (1920x1080) widescreen there. If that's the case, he should go to Workshops, click on "Graphics Config", then click on "File" and choose "Change Display Options". Then choose "Select Resolution" and in the dropdown menu, set his resolution to 1920X1080X32....click on "OK", then select "File" then "Exit". Once back in Workshops, he should set Aspect Widescreen to 16:10 Wide. Would probably be a good idea to have his desktop resolution set to 1920X1080 as well. That may help unless there's something else out of whack. The only other thing I can think of would be a scaling issue. He nay have an option to override native scaling through the Nvidia Control Panel. Not sure if it'll be available to him though. Cheers, Parky

http://youtu.be/l38blGqVeHc

Why do I get the sinking feeling that yet another OFF/RoF "comparison" thread is gonna' end up getting locked down?? C'mon chaps......let's behave ourselves, save 'em the trouble and just let this one die. Parky

Thats a good point as well, but as alluded to in my post just above this one, leaving fan operations on auto can be a bit of a crapshoot at the best of times. That's exactly what happened to the self-destructing cards you're referring to. I'm not sure if the drivers failed to spin the fans up at all on auto, but if they did, they obviously remained at a low idle which resulted in some very hot hardware, and in some cases, those cards just gave up the ghost. Interestingly enough, that 5970 I used for a while, ran hottter than a monkey's bum if I left fan operations up to the ATI drivers. With the CAT 10.2's that card would get up over 90C and the fan wouldn't get any higher than 40%. Go figure.... I wouldn't be surprised if there are a number of cards that suffer from shortened lives due to people relying on the default "Auto" fan settings that drivers come packaged with. Regardless, it's always prudent when installing a new set of drivers to pay close attention to card temperatures and fan speeds before you turn up all the eyecandy in the Witcher 2 (or any other graphically demanding game) and play it for 7 hours straight..... Cheers, Parky

Hi BD, I must say I'm absolutely thrilled with it. It'll run anything I throw at it with everything maxed out. SLI performance is brilliant in games that allow for it. Single GPU performance is more than adequate. The 270.61 drivers perform flawlessly. As with most cards I've owned, I did find it necessary to tweak fan settings to keep temperatures no higher than about 70C under extreme load (70C isjust my personal comfort threshold). Fan noise is minimal on this card even when it's cranked up. The only downside to this card is the pricetag, but for those who aren't watching their pocketbooks, a very, very worthwhile investment. Cheers, Parky

Excellent point. Since shelving a Sapphire 5970 in favour of the EVGA GTX590, I ain't EVER going back to ATI. Nothing wrong with their hardware, but their drivers are always a major pain in the ass. I'd much rather spend my precious gaming time actually GAMING, as opposed to trying to tweak the inevitable plethora of glitches out of poorly assembled drivers. The most complicated decision I have to make with the Nvidia setup is wether or not I should enable Vsync in certain games. I think I like it that way.... Cheers, Parky

Olham.......I'm not sure if you also like to eat something Chinese every once in a while, but if you do, and mostly because of where you live, be damned sure to stay away from anything that has bean sprouts in it. And btw....yes, this is a great forum. Cheers, Parky

I once accidently "liquid cooled" a K8N-E motherboard I was working on with about half a tall can of Coors Lite. It was powered up at the time and didn't survive. Moral to the story?? Keep your beverages away from any kind of computer technology....especially if you're half in the bag.

Well, Either he'll be going straight to Hell or he'll be going to sit at the right hand of Allah, as all good martyrs believe they will. If that turns out to be the case, according to Islam, he should also be presented with 72 virgins. I sincerely hope they're all men. Cheers, Parky

LOLOLOL

Yeah, like tourism advice or recommendations for any of the nicer 5 Star caves he's stayed in over the years. Cheers, Parky