Bartimaeus

Dark Souls 2 is not very CPU intensive. When I go to bed, I change my power policy to a custom power savings mode, where my CPU has a maximum frequency of 800MHz vs its default 3.5GHz, (because I have to have it on for various reasons through the night, but I don't think it should use more power/create more heat than necessary). I forgot to change it back this morning, and played for like two hours and didn't notice the difference. I only realized belatedly, yes, it was a little laggier than normal, but not bad at all, and in fact ran better than Dark Souls 1 does when I have my CPU clocked at 3.5GHz... Why am I upgrading to a 4770k, again? I have a bunch of complaints about Dark Souls 2, but I'll save them for a while more, yet.

Uh, what? How would increased RAM help your HDD/SSD load the necessary files for level transitions? RAM would help if those files were *already* loaded, as in, if you've already been to the area you're transitioning to and already had the files loaded in your RAM, but that information is cleared away for efficiency in most cases anyways, even if you have way enough RAM for it.

That's awesome. I'll have to try that...and, uh, probably get destroyed because I'm only okay at best. Thanks.

Age of Empires II: HD Edition. Played against four moderate AI opponents, (if I recall correctly, moderate is the hardest version of the AI, and the subsequent difficulties just give them ridiculous starting resources...possibly other bonuses, too - at least it was that way in the non-"HD" edition of this game), with the four of them divided into two teams, and then myself. I ran into framerate issues...at first, I thought it was because, you know, huge amount of units being individual controlled by each AI would probably hurt my CPU, especially considering this game is almost absolutely single-threaded. But I realized towards the end of the match, by which time I'd killed off three of the four, that it was not as I thought - whenever I was personally directing a large amount of units, my game would lag, particularly if it were ships I was moving, it seemed. So that's pretty weird - never ran into that in the original game, as far as I can remember. There's also not really any good reason for my GPU to be struggling... The AI really needs to learn to bunch up their units together into an actual army - it's ridiculous that they still have the horrible vulnerability of throwing each of theirs *individually* at their foes, instead of as a group, so if they're fighting a group of cavalry archers, the cavalry archers are able to just pick off each unit as they come, while slowly backing up or slowly advancing, depending upon how thick the stream of units coming at them is. The previous point also plays into my next issue with the AI: they burn through their resources, particularly their gold, (which is extremely finite!), much too fast, and their economy crashes and burns as a result. It doesn't help that they're unable to make any real dents into my cavalry (archer) army thanks to the previous point, and they're constantly trying to replace their own units that were recently slaughtered. Eventually, they run out of gold, sometimes even wood, depending upon the map, (and then food, too, as a result), and then just sit there like buffoons, unable to do anything. I looked at their economy scores at the end of the game, (economy score consisting of both the value of all their remaining units/buildings on the map, as well as their remaining resources), and they just had nothing left. By the end, I had kill about 900 units, lost sub-50, razed around 300 buildings, lost less than a handful, and they had lost 200-300 units each, and 50-100 buildings. Pretty dumb. Also spotted a stupid bug that I've known about since the release of the *original* AoEII expansion - in the Attila campaign, in the first mission, you can make an ally with another band of nomads called the Scythians against your Persian and Roman foes - except, by the time you do that, the Romans are already dead, (necessitated by the fact that you must destroy them to become allies with the Scythians), and the Persians are, for some reason, allied with the Scythians, yet the Scythians are not allied to the Persians. Ergo, the Scythians attack the Persians constantly, and you can sit back and relax while the Persians have their base destroyed, as they're unable to attack the Scythians in kind. Pretty stupid that that was never fixed...in the first mission of that campaign, nonetheless.

Maybe I'm using my SSD wrong, (120GB PNY XLR8 as my system drive), but...I honestly haven't noticed *that* big of a difference switching from an HDD to an SSD. And from an extremely old HDD to boot, (a ten year old 80GB SATA 1 drive that had a maximum read speed of like 20MB/s...eugh, that thing was slow, ). Sure, boot up is about...uh...I'd say...five to ten times faster, but, I mean, you bootup maybe three times *at max* in a day, so I don't feel like that's that big of a deal - and also it's an unfair comparison, given the datedness of my previous system drive. My browser loads up in about the same time it used to - but maybe that's because it's usually cached in my 8GB of RAM, anyways. Um...searching through my registry editor is faster, but I don't do that too often. ...Control panel usually loads instantly - that's neat, I guess. So what're the other huge performance benefits everyone else seems to see from just using their computer normally?

Killing myself in World of Goo. I've gotten really OCD...doing the OCD requirements. That, and going beyond them - doing the absolute best in the levels that I can envision there being. On a level I just did, (Chapter 5 - Weather Vane), the OCD requirement was saving 42 goo balls - with a harebrained scheme, I got more than double that with 88. Over ten minutes and 200 moves on that single try, (if you don't know, that's really ridiculous for a single try - a more typical OCD try would probably be closer to 2-3 minutes and maybe 50 moves, at least for that level). And now I have a headache. Luckily, since I'm in Chapter 5 out of 5 and I've already done all the previous chapters, I'm almost done.

The graphics look like a huge ripoff of Minecraft...

Ha! I actually didn't have too much trouble with the game - I made it to like day 20 without ever really having any problems, (I think a family member got sick once, but I had enough money to cover it). I think properly setting things up before the day starts and making sure you don't get frazzled is probably one of the biggest factors to not falling behind, (being good at memorizing stuff so you don't have to keep checking through the stupid book is great, too).

Actually, I really like the new control scheme...I could never remember any of the hotkeys when I originally played, because the buttons were spread all over the place and random seeming...(and I was also a little kid, but you know, that's probably unrelated...) - now it's only according to where they're at in the UI.

Best Steam sale is always the first one. Yep: by the fourth or fifth, you've got most of the games you really actually wanted, and plenty of games you now belatedly realize you didn't that were a waste of money (for you), so now you're much more careful about what you buy. I've bought one or two games each sale for for the last...two, three years? I bought a bunch in the first ever huge Steam sale, then a bunch more in the next, and then some more for the third, and by the fourth, I realized that it's basically a scam if you don't reign yourself in and only buy the games you *really* are going to play.

Well...that sucks. I bought it and the expansion for three times that. Oh well.

Tried fighting Nito in Dark Souls on NG++++++ - second time I'd ever fought him, (I edited my character to go from NG+ straight to NG++++++, ok - didn't feel like doing all that incremental nonsense that all the + difficulties have, so might as well go straight to the hardest). Got riposted by one of the small skeletons on the very last hit on Nito that would've killed him, and died. Made me burst out laughing, because of how ridiculous this game is. If Nito was actually hard - it was only my..third attempt, I want to say?...I might've been more unhappy.

Playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Lost Alpha: was going to wait for one more patch before playing, since people had been reporting a lot of problems, but they're taking too long for me to wait any longer, and I figured, hey, if it doesn't work, nothing lost, right? But if it does work (to some degree, anyways), I can get a taste of the game. Well...there are a bunch of problems, (note: skip past this paragraph if you don't care about the technical problems they'll probably fix in the upcoming months). The new DX10 render is basically nonfunctional for me - shadows go crazy, I get white artifacts all over the place, and it's generally crazy. Looks pretty good when it's working, though...though I think I need a better GPU to be able to use it properly, as the FPS dips around 30 FPS on max settings. I've never been able to stand the Stalker DX9 render, so I'm playing on the DX8 static lighting render for now, and even that looks at least decent, so I'm fine with that. I still get weird stuttering every once in a while, though, where it'll pause for about a second every five seconds for a few minutes, and then it goes away. I also get weird lighting artifacts from my flashlight - my hands/gloves look like I become a chemical burn victim when I have it on in the dark, for example, and it occasionally makes everything blue. You also don't apparently make any sound when you walk...or even run, or sprint, which means you can sprint right up to an enemy and be completely undetected as long as they're not looking at you. I'm assuming that's not how it's supposed to work, but it's not *that* big of a deal, at least not that I've noticed thus far. Uh, whenever I reload after dying, the game crashes, so I have to clear the current game first, and then reload. Not a big deal on static lighting and having on the game on an SSD - the only game I've installed thus far on it - which means the game loads pretty fast anyways, but if I were on the higher end settings on a regular HDD, that'd get pretty annoying really fast if I were dying a lot. One random CTD not related to the aforementioned "reload" CTD thus far, which isn't half-bad, I daresay, not for what's basically a brand new Stalker game, anyways. Those are the problems I can think of right now. As for the positives...uh, well, holy crap, these levels are so amazing, it actually *hurts* me to think of how boring and sad vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl's, my favorite Stalker game, are by comparison. There are underground passages, rivers, ponds, small swamp areas, *real* forest-like areas - not Stalker's occasional trees that are just sort of there, but really actually completely surrounding and blocking your view type stuff - more similar to the Red Forest, which is probably my favorite ShoC area, except more, since not everything is dead, . It's actually a bit overwhelming: I'm so used to vanilla ShoC's levels, levels I completely know from top to bottom...to suddenly be placed in levels where I see vague similarities, but where it's still completely different, and bigger, and much more detailed...I'm only in the Garbage thus far, but it and the Cordon have both really impressed me thus far. Uh, monsters and other Stalkers are placed mostly well. Saw a group of loners try and overtake a military outpost in the Cordon - they died horribly, but it was fun to watch, nonetheless. Bloodsuckers are freaking dang near completely invisible in *broad daylight*, which is really freaking scary to think about if you have to face them at night. There are rolling hills pretty much everywhere that really put the other Stalker games' mostly flat or slowly ascending/descending terrain to shame. Cordon and the Garbage are...semi-recognizable, and have similarities to their ShoC incarnations, but gosh dang, they're just...so much better...not to mention bigger feeling. Gunplay could be better, I think, but I think the same thing about default Stalker gunplay, and honestly, it's not even too bad by my standards. New voice acting ranges from a little poor - not terrible, but definitely could be better - to actually pretty good. Some random ladders that I think you should be able to use you can't for some reason - possibly a bug, not sure, but they look like you should be able to go up them, and I think it'd be cool to be able to. Overall, I'm having a really extremely positive experience thus far. Honestly, after years of watching and waiting for it to be released, I was almost positive before starting to play that I had inflated my expectations and exactly how much a mod could do to a game, but, if anything, I really hadn't been expecting *enough*, and all the images they released beforehand for all these years did not do it justice at all. I took a look at the world map just a little while ago: good lord, there are *so* *many* areas, and they look so big. It's actually quite daunting to think of what I'll be seeing assuming the game doesn't fall to bits as I keep playing. Are there problems? Yes, absolutely. But they're not systematic, I don't think, and neither do I believe they're unfixable.

Holy Smoke Barti !!!! That's hectic, do you think a virus caused it? Make sure you do a full scan and confirm your definitions are updated I don't understand. A virus that effects your system can cause major problems, you need to update your anti-virus software and run full scan...I'm worried Barti..I'm worried about other hidden issues Bruce, your messages are sometimes hard to decrypt.

Holy Smoke Barti !!!! That's hectic, do you think a virus caused it? Make sure you do a full scan and confirm your definitions are updated I don't understand.

My 360 controller broke while playing Dark Souls on NG++++++ - the hardest difficulty possible. Weirdly enough, what's wrong is both the right trigger, which is the "heavy" attack - the internal pegs keeping it in place have snapped off - as well as the right bumper, which is the "light" attack, where the internal spring seems to have...disappeared or something, because it no longer snaps back into place after pressing it, and just sits permanently in a "pressed" state, and intermittently activates. I found that out in the middle of talking to a friendly NPC - one of the blacksmiths - when I inadvertently sent my scythe through their forehead when I hadn't been pressing anything at all. They seem to have broken at the same time - not sure what's up with that, as their physical mechanics are completely separate. I'd just beaten the Four Kings, too, which was the hardest boss that I've done thus far in the game (on NG+X6 - they were super easy on NG)...besides perhaps Manus on plain old NG, who I shudder to think of facing on NG+X6.

I like number pads...although not for actually typing numbers. I use them for custom binds - e.g. with Cheat Engine.

Alrighty, thank you. I did not know that about the Desktop Environments - that's probably the bit that actually runs the worst on it, as Windows often is doing random things in the background and taxes the poor single-core CPU to its capacity for a few moments, so it can often stutter a bit. Not to mention its mere 2GB of DDR2. It's really quite old, haha. P.S. That image doesn't seem to work - not for me, anyways.

Keyrock, since you seem to be knowledgeable in this area: I have crappy, really old PC, (think single-core Althon64), that will, basically, in this day and age, never be able to do more than stream video. If I wanted to stream games from my Windows PC to it via Steam, for like use with a TV, as well as video from another (Windows) computer on the same home network, what OS would you consider to be best fit for the job? Right now, I have it on Windows, and that's...fine, at least for regular HD video, but I'm wondering if some form of Linux wouldn't serve the old thing better. Right now, it's using a weak AMD card, but I have an old Nvidia card I could put in it, too, if need be.

How hard would it be, I wonder, to have NPCs with relatively small collision - but still some - that are constantly moving and milling about that you can't click on/interact with. There's no way cities would actually work as envisioned in Baldur's Gate (2), but you can't have the streets completely unnavigable and impossible to sort through for actually useful NPCs, too.

Good for you. I tried twice and was unlucky both times. That's the way she goes. Yep, it's a roll of the dice with cheap Korean no name monitors. You get lucky and you essentially get a monitor every bit as good as a brand name monitor that costs almost twice as much, you roll snake eyes and you get something with cringeworthy backlight bleeding that looks like it was assembled by a 6 year old with a learning disability. Lady luck, she was on my side this time. Why not contact XFX before getting the card to find out about the warranty from the horse's mouth? I, personally, would get the 265. I'd be mother****ing myself every time I had to turn a setting down in a game if I got a weaker card for essentially the same price. Because I could hedge my bets and possibly force them to extend the lifetime warranty to my purchase if I claimed to not know ahead of time - and how could I, unless I already knew the random trivial fact that they normally only offer lifetime warranties on their Double D cards? ...now that I put it into actual words, it does sound a bit immoral. Some of us, actually, are quite content to live off of our relatively cheap, midrange cards (and other components - indeed, this entire "build" only comes about as a result of having a great opportunity, getting a $350 CPU for $100) for years and years - e.g. my 5 year old 5770. In fact, I'm still pretty content with my 5770, hence why it's only a "possibly" at this point. Five years is basically the ideal time, though, for me - and that's something only XFX offers, (as far as I know).

What exactly are you insinuating, buster? I think I might actually get that 265. I'll have to sleep on it, though. I have the time, apparently. Funny thing is, I actually saw it posted on reddit earlier today, and passed over it. I am pretty sure it's not supposed to have a lifetime warranty, but if I got it, I'd immediately contact XFX and confirm it with them, or something.

Fair enough. I've tried dealing with them recently for this cheapo 6450 I have from them as an emergency replacement, and...it hasn't been great. They ate my mail in rebate, and refuse to answer the multiple email inquiries I've sent in. For the last few months, up until about two weeks ago, their website was literally unusable - if you tried using their "contact us" thing, or their warranty service, it would just give you a SQL error or some such, (tried multiple times, with different browsers - Googled and found out others were having the same problem). The fan on this thing is awful - tiny and loud, and it runs warmer than my old XFX 5770 (e: single fan cooler) at both idle and at peak usage. Ridiculous. Overall, my experience with them has not been great.

Yeah, it's a bit amusing that their 265 is somehow cheaper than their 260X. That was just a placeholder...for now. Ideally, I would get the Double Dissipation version for the double lifetime warranty, as XFX's warranty service is generally great, but you're right, it is quite pricey. I daren't get that PowerColor crap, (the $70 260X). Their fans are awful, their rebates unusable (they never fulfill them), and their service if anything ever goes wrong unreachable. Newegg shouldn't even be allowed to sell their products with that "2 year warranty" in its specifications, as they won't provide it. (edit): Wait, their 265 is given a lifetime warranty, too. That's unusual. Only their Double Dissipation products are supposed to have it. Now I'm *REALLY* tempted to buy it... (double edit): And the number of stream processors listed in the specs seem to be incorrect, too. 1280 vs all other 265s' 1024. Double weird. All black, though, which is nice...

I'll be reusing my old RAM for my Intel build, as I really don't need anymore/better for my low key Intel build, (sans the i7 CPU that I got for $100 - which arrived earlier this week). Will pickup either 4GB or 8GB for the old build, depending on how prices are affected by DDR4's release - I've been told that prices will probably drop either a little to some for a short while, then probably spike up to even higher. Does anyone have any experience with the switch from DDR2 to DDR3 that would suggest that something else might happen and I should probably grab something now? Settled on Corsair 300R (non-windowed) for the build. Settled also on the ASRock Z87 Extreme4 for my motherboard - as it's the only board that I can find, after looking at literally every single one I can on newegg and PCPartPicker, that matches all of my criteria. Now I play the waiting game for them to drop to better prices. Hoping for about $120-$125 for the motherboard *without* MIR - if there's a further discount via MIR, that's fine, too, but I won't be burned with another MIR to unmake a deal. $50, $55 is my target range for the 300R. Might also end up getting an R7 260X - not sure yet. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For $100.00) Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($129.99 @ Newegg) Memory: Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $50.00) Storage: PNY XLR8 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $40.00) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $50.00) Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 260X 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($134.99 @ Newegg) Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Silverstone 500W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $25.00) Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $15.00) Total: $606.97 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-06 01:28 EDT-0400) My build is definitely much lower key than your guys, anyways.