Humanoid

My mistake by omission. All i5 and i7 CPUs have turbo mode, it just behaves slightly differently in that the 920 does not speed itself up by quite as much. When all 4 cores are operating, they have the following clock speeds: i5 750 2.66GHz i7 860 2.8GHz i7 920 2.66GHz Yes the 750 and 920 have the same stock frequency, but because the technology is slightly different the 860 and 920 end up being almost the same speed in practice. With 2 cores active and turbo mode on it goes to: i5 750 3.2GHz i7 860 3.33GHz i7 920 2.8GHz The difference in clock speed is now suddenly magnified. In this situation both the 750 and the 860 will beat the 920.

I'm finding the haze effect when you have a fiery weapon or any sort of fire near you, especially during cutscenes, to be awfully distracting as well.

The rebranded 8800GT is called the GTS250. The i5 750 is the mainstream offering, compared to the i7 series it loses the Hyper-threading feature which while handy for some applications, does not count gaming among them. Therefore it is considered the best value gaming CPU around. The i7 860 and i7 920 are priced almost identically and perform roughly as such. The difference is that the 920 plugs into the premium and more expensive X58 platform while the 860 makes do with the same P55 platform the i5 lives on. The 920 is easier to overclock (which I don't think is of interest to most buyers of pre-built systems), while the 860 has a faster turbo mode. Turbo mode is the system in which the clock speed of the individual cores is automatically boosted when not using all 4 cores at the time (which has a tangible performance impact in many games). The difference between X58 and P55 is tri-channel vs dual-channel memory (no practical difference for gaming) and twin x16 PCI-E slots vs x16/x4 or x16/x8 (which just means it'll be faster in by somewhere south of 5% when equipped with dual high end video cards). By virtue of the motherboard costing less and not having to install as many sticks of memory, the P55 platform can make for fairly decent savings. The rule of thumb for new purchasers is this - people who need X58 already knows they need X58 and why; everyone else defaults to P55. Now for the practical stuff - I'd say buy the XPS 8000 instead. This as far as I can tell downgrades the CPU from a 920 to a 750, which is a negligible loss for gaming. This chops off $300 off the listed price. $180 of that goes towards upgrading the video card to a GTX260. The rest you can put towards a better monitor - $120 gets you an upgrade to a 24", which along with the video card upgrade brings to the total package price to the same point as the base XPS 9000. So in all you lose a tiny bit of CPU power, gain a huge upgrade in any 3D programs, and will have the monitor to do it justice. It's a tradeoff I'd take every time. P.S. If you can swing an extra $60 it's probably worth upgrading the RAM in the 8000 to 8GB just to guarantee getting 4 matching 2GB sticks. 6GB is a bit of a silly number for dual-channel, it implies 2x2GB + 2x1GB sticks.

Command and Conquer ....Might and Magic. That's a simple enough substitution. Though I'd probably skip the main franchise and go for the Heroes of Command and Conquer spinoff. If C&C went turnbased I might buy a game from that franchise for the first time ever. Hex-based for bonus credits!

I'd call it 7.5 rising to 8 once the technical bugs get ironed out. The game world is pretty well-realised given it's the first outing for it and you can take as much interest in it (or ignore as much of it) as you like. The combat mechanics will take a while to mature and should do so either in future patches or in sequels. What's there is implemented well enough - the spellcasting system is a highlight for example - but it'll take a few more iterations for proper balancing. Tactical encounters are somewhat lacking in variety, consisting of either scripted ambushes or generic rooms with generic lackeys in them. Still, they go by fast enough and rarely drag on too long. Enough's been said about the story and although sometimes improbable or overcooked at times (everyone you meet with either a) die within 30 minutes, or b) betray you) it goes along at a decent pace.

I'm perfectly capable of multiple full party wipes in quick succession on easy difficulty. I don't really play for the combat which is fairly repetitive so I only give the barest attention to tactics and skill selection.

A bug that hits me a few times every play session is during movement, the game may abruptly switch to a different party member. Initially I thought it might have just been me fat-fingering something but I'd say not because the originally selected character would just continue running in the original direction and get split from the party (most usually sprinting into a wall or a rock or somesuch). This tends to happen when I move with the mouse instead of the keyboard, although I haven't specifically tried to reproduce it.

There should be a book somewhere in Denerim IIRC. Check the merchants. Will do! I just hope I can afford it. Thanks. Well you can always save, buy the book (selling everything you own if you need extra cash), learn it, then reload and have the specialisation open. Yes, it's sort of cheating, but cheating the the same way that overclocking is stealing.

It always makes me sad that I can't use the acronym WC in a gaming context anymore without 95% misidentification by other "gamers." Especially when the alternative isn't even a valid acronym.

Ultima 4 - but then that was the whole point of the game.

To be fair I don't think tooth decay was a major issue until the advent of the modern diet.

The biggest problem tactically seems to be the overabundance of doors. Not doorways, despite most strategies revolving around them, but the closed doors with mini-armies stationed behind them which just kills the tactical setups in most encounters. I'm not asking for JA2 or anything of the sort but the design of almost every encounter generally discounts the tactical use of space at the moment, with the single point of approach elimination positioning as a consideration. It also marginalises the Survival skill because as useful as the information it gives could be, you're prevented from acting on it most of the time because of the door in the way. Doors could be justified in numerous situations, such as mansions and other such dwellings but I'm not really seeing the rationale of them in say, ancient dilapidated ruined temples where every architectural feature within has or is in the process of crumbling away. Except the doors, which are as sturdy and functional as ever. So yeah, curse you damned doors!

I could have sworn that one of the NPCs referred to the event of the game's first battle as being "a year ago."

Well it would be in Oblivion.

Buy, steal or otherwise gain the Darklands rights. No elves, no dwarves, no magic. Failing that at least copy the character creation as close as possible.

Bioware has already done that before with NWN Hordes of the Underdark.

Maybe the EU competition regulator will step in and force competition for the micropayments in game - so you'd have various blacksmiths stalls and the customer would be free to purchase from whichever company will sell you a Longsword +3 for the cheapest vendor. Or buy the iLongsword +1 from a certain vendor instead for double the price (it'll have a nice brushed aluminium hilt!).

Anyone with it installed on an SSD have a report on load times?

Google control all information in the known universe, so in a fight against the collective governments of the world, Google will emerge victorious. And I for one welcome our new Googly overlords.

I replaced the cooler on my 8800GT with an Accelero S1 (with undervolted turbo module) and I'm pleased with the results, and installation wasn't too bad. However with most (or even all) 3rd party coolers, there's a catch - it decouples the GPU cooling from the memory and the VRM cooling, which gets delegated to small or non-existent individual heatsinks. The danger therefore is that while the temperature monitor will report a nice drop in the GPU temperature, you won't be able to determine whether the other chips are necessarily getting sufficient cooling.

Well they have apparently stopped making them, or at least that's what retailers say.

Indeed it's been going on and on and on and on and on since the opening of the Interplay boards in 2003.

A bootable Linux CD (i.e. an OS that runs off a DVD) might be useful for rescuing stuff if the Windows installation is beyond help.

Best value SSDs these days would be the ones based on the Indilinx controlled, e.g. the G.Skill Falcon, the OCZ Vertex, the Corsair X series, the SuperTalent UltraDrive, the Patriot Torqx, the Crucial M225 ...and probably a few more - all these drives would be pretty much the same and lead the price:performance stakes. Intel X25-M is the market leader and is faster for most uses, and it's priced accordingly, especially given there is a worldwide shortage of them.

Thing is, a Raptor costs pretty much the same as a 64GB SSD these days, so for most applications they'd be rather obsolete. 64GB would easily cover the OS and the games du jour for most people.