Parky

We sure have....... I imagine only some of those in the UK will have understood the "Orange" comment...... Cheers, Parky

Awfully flattered that you think so old chap, but CW3SF is in good hands here with the likes of Tamper and Almcoyjr. Both of these guys really know their stuff! Excellent advice from both of them here (as well as UK's two cents). The suggestion to go with an LGA 1366 platform is spot on. Couldn't agree more. The views regarding how much RAM to go with is also right on the money (No pun intended). Any more than 6 or 8 Gig (depending on wether it's dual or triple channel of course) would be an unwise investment if all we're trying to do is put together a fast gaming rig. Perhaps on a high-volume server or a system that was going to be used to render a boatload of video, it would come in handy. In this case....nope. One little thing I would like to add though. If CW3SF decides to go with the LGA 1366, he's going to be dealing with the X58 chipset, which the last time I checked, would indeed be the choice today for someone who's planning on running more than one graphics card (wether it be now or later on). The X58 is a great chipset in it's own right. In fact, I've put together 4 towers in the last year or so using the P6X58D Premium motherboard from ASUS. One for myself and three for other people. No problems at my end and the other 3 guys are happier with that board than pigs in poop. That board provides for x16 operations with two of three PCI-e slots populated, at which point slot 3 can be used as a PCI-e1x. If a third graphics card (an unlikely scenario?) is dropped into slot three, the lanes are then reduced to 8x. The point I'd like to make though is this; Most X58 based boards that I've seen suffer from one obvious problem. Once you introduce a 2nd graphics card to the mix, it effectively wipes out the possibility of using the regular PCI slot (not to be confused with PCI-E) for a sound card or other PCI compatible device. If one wants to run a dedecated sound card as opposed to relying on the onboard sound chip, it would be wise to make sure one chooses a PCI-e 1x sound card. Either that, or make damned sure you can still utilize the basic PCI slot once both graphics cards are installed. Just as a point of interest, the aforementioned board also supports USB 3.0 and SATA3. Unfortunately, the Marvell SATA3 controller on the Premium board doesn't allow for RAID on the SATA3 ports. The P6X58D-E does, as it uses a later version of the same contoller. Not much difference between the two boards other than that and the 16 phase power design on the premium vs 12 phase on the "E" version. It should be noted that the "E" version does not have dual gigabit LAN either. It has only a single port. Slightly better chipset cooling on the premium along with the 16 phase power design would be a better choice if you were in to extreme overcclocking I suppose. There are a handful of very good X58 based boards from the likes of Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA and others. I just happen to be a loyal ASUS user.....perhaps I should shaddup now.....starting to sound like a freakin' fanboi......lol Cheers, Parky

Lou, It's a damned good thing you didn't install the entire Spybot Tea & Crumpets feature, or you would have really been screwed. Cheers, Parky

Ditto, I haven't had problems with any mysterious 32-bit security updates either. Oddly enough, Microsoft actually recommends installing Office 32-bit on it's 64-bit OS. Something to do with 3rd party add-on compatibility issues. In addition, a default install of Windows 7 results in the primary account having administrative rights, so all this stuff about having to "be in administrator" is a bit confusing as well. Winzip is a 3rd party compression utility.....it doesn't come with Windows 7, and it didn't come with any previous Microsoft operating systems either, so I'm not sure if that should be an issue for the OP. Speaking of which, now that we've come this far off topic, perhaps it's time to try to help with the original question. Just my opinion, but I'd probably opt for a clean install of OFF, as opposed to trying to transfer it over. A transfer might work, but a clean install may just save you some headaches and result in a more stable and better running piece of software. The install on Windows 7 should be a starightforward affair. No magic required. Cheers, Parky

Al, There's no need for me to PM anyone about any problems. I don't have one....but I'll most certainly and eagerly look forward to the release of Phase IV. Cheers, Parky

Best to adjust your detail sliders individually. Try running with your effects slider on 5 and the rest on 3. If you're still seeing poor performance, try reducing your clouds, scenery detail and terrain sliders one at a time.....in that order. You can run with the clouds slider on 1 and you won't see a real big difference between that and a setting of 5. Cheers, Parky

UncleAl, I could have swore that Rugbyfan more or less "politely" asked you not to respond to his post with that "if you run your terrain slider on 5, your computer will over a period of time, mysteriously self-destruct or burn your #@%^ing house down" theory of your's. It's absolute rubbish. I'll grant you that it's not exactly rocket science that running any of the sliders on 5 as opposed to a lower setting, is going to result in some kind of performance deterioration, particularly if your hardware isn't up to snuff. A moderately clever chimpanzee could figure that out. He'd also figure out that reducing the terrain slider one notch, either from 5 to 4 or 4 to 3 or even 2 to 1 for that matter isn't going to miraculously solve all those noobs "inexplicable video problems", and it isn't going to help them avoid formatting their hard drives either. It may help in some cases, but it's not a cure-all as you would seemingly have us believe. I've been running all sliders on 5 with the exception of clouds since last May. I haven't seen any cartoon characters, pink elephants or UFO's appear on my screen yet. Perhaps I'm just lucky, as Rugby apparently is as well, but his "broken record" comment was well justified. You've just managed to reinforce that justification with your latest response. Basically, you're . So......when somebody asks you directly to cease and desist with one of your ill-founded, completely irrational and irritating "theories", have the courtesy to do so. Oh......and......on Olham's behalf, I'd like to personally thank Almccoyjr, Tamper and Hellshade for their valuable, well informed and helpful contributions to this thread. This has been a public service announcement...... Cheers, Parky

Sorry guys.....lol Lou, Look at it this way. Things could have turned out much worse. The microwave experiment could have resulted in you developing sudden-onset ADHD at which point you'd be looking at also having to get your Homeopathologist to prescribe some lemon-flavoured Valiums. Apparently you have to be extremely cautious when taking lozenge-based tranquilizers because they desolve at such a slow rate. There's the everpresent risk of falling asleep and choking to death on a half-desolved candy.....at which juncture the distance to Australia wouldn't matter at all. Cheers, Parky

Olham, In order to run crossfire you'd need a motherboard that supports it, and two fairly identical ATI cards (as well as a crossfire bridge) or a single card with dual GPU's (such as the ATI 5970). The mainboard would have to have two PCI-e slots (preferably capable of both running @ PCI-e 16x even when both are populated). A lot of motherboards, even if they have two PCI-e 16x slots, will drop PCI-e speeds to 8x when both slots are populated. This isn't a game-breaker necessarliy, because the difference between 16x and 8x performance levels is in my opinion, not all that noticeable. Another requirement is that the mainboard's chipset BIOS provides support for crossfire arrays. Not all do....particularly when it comes to a number of "older" boards. Easily determined though, by simply checking on the manufacturer's website. Special attention must also be paid to the power requirements of a crossfire configuration. They would be substantially higher than that of running a single card. You also have to remember that your system will only utilize the available memory from one of your two crossfire arranged cards. IE...if you have two 1 Gig cards, you won't double the amount of available dedicated graphics card memory. You'll still be limited to 1 Gig if I'm not mistaken. In your specific case, dropping another card in would theoretically "double" your performance in games that actually provide support for crossfire. From my experience, the performance levels are never "theoretically correct", but you would realize a significant performance boost with any game that provides crossfire support or has a crossfire profile associated with it. Once again, unfortunately OFF provides no support for either Crossfire or SLI, so either enhancement would be a non-enhancement in this particular scenario. The best possible upgrade I can think of in your case would be going to something like the ATI 5850....or better still, the 5870. These cards are becoming more affordable every day, and I suspect when AMD/ATI releases their new offerings in the very near future, prices will drop to very reasonable prices. I can tell you without hesitation that a 5870 would literally wipe the floor with your current card, as would a 5850......just not to quite the same degree....lol. Cheers Mate, Parky

UncleAl, I could have swore you said "a little cut and paste"......... Jamieandnici, There are a couple of things that pop right out in that hardware list. Morris mentions the Xonar sound card. Good advice there....and I own a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium Pro. Go with the Xonar. Creative makes a good product, but their drivers suck....and always have. Follow Gordohk's advice with regard to the case. It would be a shame to try and cram all that nice, new hardware in the Antec 900. Go with a full tower....not mid-sized. You won't regret it. I'll be happy to point you in the right direction if need be. Your choice of hard drives.....I'd take a long hard look at that. The WD Greens are fine for external storage, but I wouldn't even consider them as primary drives. Their average sustained read & write speeds are quite horrible. Not good in a gaming environment at all. Yes, they use less power, and yes, they run a bit cooler, but these are 5400rpm drives and not geared toward performance. Go with the Black series or look at some of the Seagates. Trust me.... http://www.hardwarec...e-review-7.html Graphics cards......hmmmm. Always good for some interesting debates, but if I was limited to a choice between a single 5970 and 2 x 6970's in crossfire, I'd go with the 6970's in a heartbeat....and I'm currently running a Sapphire 5970 (which I'm extremely pleased with, but only after flashing it to a new BIOS) The card was a complete POS with the original. There are umpteen million references to some of the issues it suffered from on the AMD forums. Quite honestly, If I wasn't limited to a choice between those two specific solutions, I'd be inclined to take a long, hard look at a single GTX 580 with an eye towards dropping a second one in somewhere down the road. Those are magnificent cards, although a bit overpriced at the moment. That "OCUK" RAM you refer to. I've never heard of it. Did you mean OCZ?? Regardless....the last few gaming rigs I've tossed together, I've been using G Skill memory. Outstanding RAM.....fast, affordable, and very, very reliable. Just a thought.... You have the makings of a very nice rig there, but don't make the mistake of being impulsive and making hasty decisions as I've done in the past. Take your time, do a bit of research, and maybe consider some of the advice you'll get here. It may just save you some grief... Cheers, and best of luck with whatever hardware array you finally decide on. Parky P.S. Lou......how's that tumor of your's coming along??

With absolutely no relevance to that detail slider, or even the old Days for that matter, I have a really bad headache>>>>>>>>>:suicide2:

I'm no computer-ace, but here's what I'd try. 1) Uninstall the current driver, then use Driver Sweeper to make sure you've removed any remnants from your system. (Make SURE you follow the instructions with Driver Sweeper carefully). 2) Reinstall the current driver, set up your OFF cfg again and see if your problem is solved. 3) If that doesn't work, use the method listed in step #1 to remove the current driver yet again, but this time install a different (earlier) driver version. Time-consuming I know, but I really do suspect your issue is driver related....not hardware related. Cheers, Parky

I've messed about with both core affinity and priority settings, and quite honestly, I didn't see any significant improvement with either set of tweaks, although I never ran into the stability issues you've described. This doesn't mean those tweaks won't work for some people though. Every hardware configuration is different, but as a rule I just don't place much stock in the effectiveness of optimizing OFF performance via either of those methods. I think I'll try that trick of your's with the TrackIR priority settings regardless, as that's the only real area I still have any issues with. I'll let you know how I make out. It's pretty much the industry standard now, and won't cost you all that much more than a dual core. Might as well shoot the works and future-proof yourself. You never know when somebody will release some software you'll want that absolutely requires a multi-core CPU in order to run efficiently. Lou, If the size of your facial tumor is diminishing every time you shave, you're quite simply applying far too much pressure to your razor......it has nothing to do with the pills. Cheers, Parky

Hi Olham, The short answer is, I think it's a complete and utter waste of valuable flying time. I would also be inclined to agree with your "computer advisor friend" when it comes to programs that claim to increase gaming performance by shutting down "unnecessary" background taks and/or services. Proggies like End-it-all may be useful for someone who's running significantly older hardware than what most of us here are using, and needs to squeeze every last drop of performance out of an aging CPU and RAM. With any of the modern multi-core processors, you'd be far better OFF experimenting with core affinity settings as opposed to the "smoke and mirrors" approach of adjusting priority values. As an example, if you had a quad-core CPU, you could try assigning OFF to run exclusively on core 2 and a proggie like FRAPS to run on core 3. Cores 0 and 1 should by default be assigned to handle most OS activity if I'm not mistaken. Speaking of FRAPS, Lou's advice for configuring it so it records to it's own designated drive is spot on. An SSD would be absolutley ideal. What you're looking for is the fastest sustained writes you can possibly achieve, and a solid state drive would certainly be your best bet. Basically, I think the prioritization feature in Windows is the equivilent of naturopathic medicine, which in most cases involves eating some kind of sugar pills. If you try hard enough to convince yourself that you can shrink that grapefruit-sized malignant growth on your face by sucking on a candy, chances are you'll also convince yourself it's not as big today as it was yesterday. Cheers, Parky

Stonehenge isn't located anywhere even close to that. It's located about 2 minutes north of Athens Greece. How do I know this you ask? Easy.....because I just built it there playing as Alexander in Civ 5.

Whew!! Damned glad I didn't choose to go with the name "Panky"........

Absolutely brilliant!!! Thanks for sharing, Pillowshaker!! Oh....and Happy New Year!!!! Parky

BD, Oddly enough, I've never had a card die due to overheating. Maybe I'm just lucky, or perhaps it's because I've always been inclined to purchase top-end graphics cards, which from what I've seen, usually come with better stock cooling solutions than some of the mid-tier products. I did toy with the idea of replacing the HSF on a GTX280 I have here as it runs hotter than hell if I don't crank the fan up to almost 70%. At that point there's a pretty good hum from the fan. Doesn't bother me though, as I'm inclined to use a headset if I'm gaming and don't hear it at all. I've never been a big fan (no pun intended) of leaving speeds on "auto" at the driver level. The fans never seem to spin up enough to keep the cards at reasonable temperatures. Both ATI's drivers and Nvidia's drivers seem to suffer from the same issue. In fact, it wasn't too long ago that Nvidia released a set of drivers that left fan speeds at low idle regardless of GPU temps. Several people ended up with toasted cards and I'm sure weren't too impressed. Regardless, it's always prudent to monitor a card's temperatures and fan speeds under load for a while when you first set it up just to see what kind of adjustments it may need. It doesn't hurt to run through the same process after updating the drivers....and for obvious reasons as noted above. The entire process is easily accomplished by running any 3D app in windowed mode along with a decent montioring utility like GPU-z. All I do is stress the snot out of the card and watch GPU temperatures closely. Doesn't hurt to keep a close eye on VDDC temperatures while you're at it. At that point I'll manually adjust fan speeds to something more suitable than what the auto setting allows for. Typically, I like to see my GPU temps somewhere down around 60C under load, and I can usually accomplish that without jacking fan speeds through the roof. The 5970 I have here ran pretty hot right out of the box, but running the fan @ 55% while gaming keeps temperatures well within acceptable limits for this card. If I leave the fan speeds on auto and look at the temps, it gets downright frightening. I think the bottom line is simply this; DON'T trust your graphics card drivers to keep your GPU at reasonable temperatures when it's taking a thrashing in a 3D environment. Chances are it'll run that way just fine......but for how long? If I ever do run into problems with the 5970, I may just take your advice and go with one of these: http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/19/accelero-xtreme-5970.html?c=2182 I bet that thing would get the job done and then some Cheers Mate, Parky

No they don't.....not if you're clever enough to run the cooling fans at adequate speeds for the exisiting conditions. You end up with a bit more noise in return for a card that will run at very acceptable temperatures even under the most extreme demands. Cheers, Parky

Sorry OVS......didn't see this until just now. Must be my 52 yr old eyesight....or my 72 yr old brain. However, AVG and ZoneAlarm are both very good proggies, considering they're free. Prior to experimenting with Mickeysoft Security Essentials, AVG was always my recommendation to those who were looking for "free" protection from viruses and/or spyware. It gets the job done (usually) and the price is right. ZoneAlarm has always been a good free product for those who aren't behind a hardware-based firewall and are looking for something more substantial than the firewall protection their MS OS has built into it. ZA is not without "issues" though, and it can cause some real grief if you're not at least somewhat "saavy" when it comes to some of the more advanced configurations. The same can be said about AVG, or just about any protection-based software, regardless of whether it's free or subscription based. As far as your question about video card upgrades and increasing RAM is concerned, top-dollar budget for the card and RAM would be an asset in terms of being able to suggest something. As I recall, we decided on the P6T for you with future upgradability in mind. It was a good thought. That motherboard will certainly provide support for whatever it is you'd like to accomplish here, even though it's two years old (which can be a lifetime when it comes to this technology if you don't shop real carefully...) An upgrade to Win7 64 would be a big step forward to begin with. You could go through the hassle of trying to find additional memory identical to the modules you already have, but I'd recommend looking at some G-Skill16000. Absolutely brilliant RAM at very affordable prices. I used to be a Mushkin, Corsair and OCZ fan.......but not any more. G-Skill is the way to go......but that's just my preference of course. Drop at least 6 Gig of any decent, reliable, and fast RAM on that board and Windows 7 will run like a top for you, and with one of the newer cards, so will your games. Fire me off a PM if you like and give me an idea of what you're looking to spend. I can't remember if we decided to go with stock cooling on your i7 (I'm pretty sure we did) but regardless, I'd hold off on any attempt at overclocking at all until we get you set up with some accurate temperature and voltage monitoring utilities. The P6T is a very "overclock-friendly" mainboard as Hellshade has pointed out, but merley adjusting multipliers, base clocks and RAM frequencies more or less "blindly", can be a recipe for unexpected expenses and sorrow. I certainly wouldn't proceed without closely monitoring a number of resulting and potentially dangerous conditions. Chances of an unrecoverable "whoopsie" would be remote, but please....proceed with caution!!!! Cheers Mate, Parky

A lot of the newer motherboards sport at least two, if not three PCI-e slots. If you want to build with an eye toward SLI or Crossfire somewhere down the road, it would be wise to make sure you select a mainboard that features at least 2 PCI-e slots that are capable of running @ 16x when both are populated. Some of them will drop PCI-e performance to 8x when you add the second card, so shop wisely. On the other hand, you could get real silly like I did and look at a single PCB/dual GPU solution like the ATI 5970. I've often toyed with the idea of dropping a second card into the mix, which would result in Quad Crossfire using only two slots...(or would that be "Quadfire"?) If I were running a machine strictly to fly OFF, I'd go with the fastest single GPU solution I could find, as OFF will not benefit from either Crossfire or SLI arrays. Cheers, Parky

The last time I checked, Norton's was still subsciption based software. That is, unless you're referring to one of their "free" 60 day trials which come with that wonderful feature which continuously nags the shyt out of you to subscribe and part with a big wad of cash. Oh.....and then there's the "free" Beta version of their 360 software, which I wouldn't even install on a PC belonging to someone I didn't like very much. To each his own though. Whatever works for you, gets the job done, and causes the least amount of headaches I s'pose... Cheers, Parky

Thunderbird is a free e-mail proggie from the same people who make Firefox. You can use it as a replacement for any POP3 based e-mail client, including Outlook Express. It looks and behaves in a similar fashion to what you're used to. Link here: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-GB/thunderbird/ As far as Nortons goes....frankly I think it's an over-priced, over-rated, bloated, system-intrusive pile of crap. I wouldn't use it if Symantec paid me. Go with something nice and lightweight that gets the job done. See the info in this thread: http://combatace.com/topic/60840-microsoft-security-essentials/ Cheers, Parky

Hmmmm......I've never run into that problem....uninstalling a patch or critical update because it came with a label. Not to worry though. If you have your Windows 7 disk, I'll gladly walk you through a reinstall of your OS over the phone if you like. It's not rocket science, and besides.... I get fantastic long distance rates. Would be helpful if you had your motherboard CD handy as well, but that's easily overcome if you don't. Cheers, Parky

Not true.....Microsoft Office is available in both 64-bit and 32-bit versions. Microsoft recommends installing the 32-bit version on the 64-bit OS only if you're inclined to install 3rd party addons for Office, which may cause you some compatibility issues as most addons are 32-bit. Microsoft doesn't "notice 32-bit e-mail" coming from anyone's computer, and neither does it install "a security update for all 32-bit programs". What happened was Windows update detected that there were security updates available for your versions of Office and/or Outlook Express, and because you chose to enable completely Automatic Updates, it installed them as it should have done. I serously doubt it was these updates that caused the issues you experienced with OFF as that seems highly unlikely, but that's merely an educated guess. Also......just for clarification, I have a restore point showing here that goes back a full week, which I believe involves slightly more than 4 days. It's also always prudent to manually create a restore point prior to making any kind of system changes. However, I'm pretty sure Windows Update in Windows 7 automatically creates a restore point for you just prior to installing anything that might blow your computer up....and for obvious reasons. It does for me anyway.... Regardless, it's never been a real clever idea to enable Automatic Updates to download and install anything without having it at least notify you first. In fact, I have mine set to merely notify me that updates are available. I can then take a look at what it might be trying to slip by me, and make an informed decision as to wether or not that stuff makes it onto my hard drive. Even if I decide to allow those updates and any of my programs fail to work as a result, it's usually a simple matter of going into Control Panel/Add Remove Programs, and getting rid of the offending update. A good option if for some reason you've limited your number of restore points, or disabled system restore completely. Hope you get your PC sorted out quickly, Al, but as I said, I doubt very much it was the critical updates for Office that pooched your system. If I were you, I'd be looking elswhere... Cheers, Parky