LadyCrimson

I rather expected Tampa to sock it to Boston like they have most of the time for the past season or more, but we lucked out I guess. I now expect Tampa to take revenge tomorrow...tho of course I hope Boston's luck - or Tampa's bad luck - continues.. I'm pleased w/the Giant's progress in the WC race...they and Boston continue to fuel my fantasy for a Giants/Red Sox WS this season...

That's a good point. I've never overclocked a system in my life, however, and I probably won't start now. Still, it's clear that the 950 on it's own is not worth that much extra, so... One other tech question would be re: hard drive speed. It was pointed out that the 7200rpm is now supposedly really slow and that would affect gaming, but a quick search tells me that 7200 is still very 'average' for most home systems. The 10000rpm is still fairly new and costly per capacity, and the few articles testing such indicated that the faster spindle speed did not, in fact, really help w/gaming much...mostly helping in giant file crunching tasks instead. Thoughts? No, that's not it. I'm not technically very savvy - tho I can assemble parts in a case, it's not hard - but hubby's very tech savvy overall. All our past systems he's put together himself. But neither of us finds the process very fun. For once I'd just like to order something and be done with it. Also we like to online purchase as little as possible-buying parts all over the internet in search of the deal isn't our thing. Since it's clear that finding actual walk-in stores that have all these parts for build-it-yourself savings is becoming more work than worthwhile, choosing one online place where you can customize options/hardware and end up w/a rig you can upgrade later etc. seems the best option for me. From what I've read on forums many found they were hard pressed to build their own similar i7 systems for terribly significant savings and just opted to buy the prebuilts w/customization because it's so much less hassle, instead. Edit: Shoot that last part was a lot longer than I meant it to be. I ramble so. Heavily edited to be shorter.

Hubby doesn't think the 950 is worth the extra few hundred over the 920...so we could start with the V1 instead, and customize it up to about a $1500 rig. Would anyone agree/disagree about the 950 vs 920, for gaming performance? the GHZ rating certainly isn't all that huge a difference...don't know how important .40 GHZ is to gaming these days...

IGN from April 2009 liked their service quite a bit, building a whole Paladin w/monitor. They did say ie, you might save $400-$800 building it yourself, which seems not unreasonable. I must say that their customizing options are 3 pages of dizzying lists. My quickie run through of all those, unchecking 1 vid card and the Blue Ray and adding USB external ports/soundcard to replace the onboard etc. meant I'd likely price the V2 for $1890 or so, not inclu. shipping.

Heh yeah...no display. Already bought one of those, so that's ok. The 950 is rated at 3.06 GHZ, the 920 at 2.66

I've seen similar rigs selling for a couple hundred bucks cheaper here and there, but not by a whole lot. Also, I might switch out the ATi's for Nividia's, and I could go w/only 1 card which would make them a bit cheaper I guess. I don't know if I really need the 2-graphic card setup, the way I play games?

This time around, I'm so out of touch with general hardware/graphic tech, prices, etc. that every time I start to research what I need to build one, I get a headache. I feel lazy and I think I'd prefer to buy a pre-built system. My problem: where to buy one from? All these companies/websites...there are 2 main issues that concern me for buying pre-built: customer service, and the ability to upgrade/alter your rig at a later time, yourself. ie, if a company's pre-builts are somehow proprietary in any way, I want to avoid them. John Scalzi (a Hugo winning author whose blog I read) bought an i7-950 recently and he seems pretty happy with it. He bought it from iBUYPOWER.com. His rig is the middle one in the list of specs here: http://www.ibuypower.com/dual-radiators/HA...ators.aspx#p=p2 (page down past the flashy graphic). He customized it a little bit beyond that, and I probably would too. Anyone heard of them? Use them? I sure haven't. Does that system seem ok? A decent buy? blah blah blah. Edit: Newegg sells their i7-920 version, and 72% of 54 user reviews gave them a 5 star...you can see their customer reviews of ibuypower & rig here.

I really hope he does well and I'm glad to hear he's been doing fine so far. I do NOT want his career to end with the memory of his Boston performances, which were probably Smoltz still trying to find his post-injury rhythm and the fluke of bad luck.

lmao...that's almost exactly what I said to hubby whilst watching. @Kelverin - yeah, I can see it working in a book/novel just fine, where a chr. is written for a role or you don't have visual info to get in the way of suspension of disbelief.

Sorry, I don't read back or go thru all threads/websites all that often anymore. I don't have any big issue with the arrangement myself...but the above still doesn't negate hubby's dislike of having to register for an account to play w/me over a desk. ie, if he's not going to play on bnet & effect anyone else in any way, why should he have to register on a service to verify he bought the game etc .... and don't yell at me, that's his principle, not necessarily mine...tho I do understand him. Hmm...not sure I like that. But like I said in WoT...old curmudgeon.

It's not always about that. As good as home cable internet connections can be, if you have lots of guys in a living room all trying to play using the same line, lag can start to increase. Not that such LAN 'parties' are very common anymore. Or for those still without cable internet, it's nearly impossible. There are still people w/out cable internet who like to play games w/their family/friends now and then. For hubby, it's just principle. He doesn't want to suck up bandwidth/be forced to register/login just to sit next to me and play a game pc-to-pc.

You Only Live Twice....which has to be one of the worst yet funniest Bond movies ever. Who was the decision-maker who thought it was even remotely believable to pass Sean Connery off as Japanese?

Wake was awesome. But his back is now acting up again so he's out again. Not awesome. Get better, ya old fart. Green pitching 2 (lucky) scoreless/hitless innings was awesome and made the awful loss at least entertaining. Beckett continues to be not-awesome, which is...well, not awesome. All in all...another week in the topsy turvy 2009 Boston season. That's entertainment!

Today I've decided that I'm slowly turning into a female version of the curmudgeon. Soon I will be walking around town mumbling to myself and cursing complete strangers.

So we now have 1 heavy armor/melee class, 1 mage class, 1 necro/druid type of class, and 1 assassin/melee/kick-arse class. I wonder what the 5th one will be? Physical ranged I'd expect. Perhaps...a combo of Bow Hunter w/a bit of Druid summoning...a Ranger?

Most long-timers here would expect me to say Dungeon Keeper, but for some reason I've never considered that a RTS, even tho I suppose it is, kind of. And I haven't played many RTS in recent years, so I'll stick with saying...Majesty. Loved AoE1 when it first came out but Majesty's quirkiness wins out.

It's very nice and usually what I do...I may splurge this time tho. Need a rig that'll run all the new games w/all the whistles turned on, in 1920 res. without a twitch. For once in my pc life, I don't want "ok", I want "awesome."

Disappointed Giants lost last night, was rooting for them...still hoping they'll make the wild card. Boston/NY having their usual crazy games...one routs the other one night, the next night opposite result. Tonight, Beckett and CC...this could be epic.

The space/ship stuff does indeed look nice....but the ground action doesn't appeal to me at first glance. There were Starfleet with phasers standing toe to toe with a Klingon using a melee weapon...they were shooting their phasers at him from about a foot away...and the Klingon didn't go down immediately. It looked silly plus will the ground action consist of everyone standing still shooting at each other? I dunno...gameplay appeal hard to judge from that vid, I guess.

When I saw District 9 and saw the preview for a 'big' upcoming movie based on the 2012 thing, I immediately thought of this thread. I may not believe in the stuff, but the movie looks like it might be fun.

Brad Penny, I don't like you. You might be the nicest guy on the planet, but when you're on the mound against the Yankees...well, like I said..I don't like you.

Reaction? That doesn't, to me, necessarily have to do with how pretty/modern the graphics are. From the 12 minute actual gameplay vid, there was plenty of visual stuff...bodies exploding, spells effects, etc. I dunno...it looks like gameplay/battles move so fast I'd barely notice anything too fancy anyway.

I disagree that it's more fun. Prettier, yes...more fun...no. But that's just me.

Who gives a flying fart, really? I mean, this isn't an in-your face kind of game where graphic wizardry can mean a whole lot more in terms of immersion. It's a 'I can barely tell what the monsters face looks like' top down perspective. Even if they have a zoom function (not saying they do/don't, I don't know), I doubt many would use it while actually playing...just screenshots. It's much upgraded from the old games and looks fine for playing.

Wow... those are some pretty bad graphics, honestly. I don't mind color, but Diablo is supposed to be gritty. This just looks too clean, too shiny. I know very much what you mean about the graphic color atmosphere...D3 reminds me a lot more of Titan Quest in that regard...but if the gameplay is still as mindlessly addictive, I won't care about the graphics. Besides, Diablo2 had lots of beige desert sand, too..and it's grittiness was more due to 800 resolution and pixelation than anything else. We shall see.