taks

often was the word i used, not always. taks

those games will utilize both cores? taks

turns out the hog was real, but it wasn't feral. it started life as someone's pet, then got bought and escaped from its new owner. pictures are probably telling the true story as the sucker really was that big. apparently it was pretty docile when in captivity, though the owners stated that a lack of food may have turned it a bit mean. taks

btw, as i noted my latest build was initially spurned by a need to run more than one app at a time. in particular, when i kick of a matlab simulation, it takes down a single core (my current simulation runs for about 45 minutes to an hour). during that time, even editing a small word document is impossible, let alone any attempt to surf the web or play games. new build, however, jams righteously with matlab cranking on one core and NWN2 on the other. i'm sure i'm getting memory conflicts, but the overall degradation is not that noticeable. quite nice. i highly recommend dual core for this reason alone. multitasking HOoooo! taks

if you were talking about the duergar immediately after the tutorial, they were thralls. that meant they were not acting on their own will, and it is conceivable that they would not use all of their powers/abilities in a fight they personally did not have any stake in. thralls are sort of unwilling participants, being forced to do their master's bidding, and maybe not trying as hard as they would if the fight were personal. taks

nope, they aren't. at the speeds they're running today, and with advanced cache management techniques, code structure is the limiting factor. rarely is the CPU waiting on memory reads/writes for most applications. the performance spread between 533, 667, 800, and even latencies is probably below 1% overall. taks

the new AMIBios with the SATA connectors allows you to designate which input appears first in the drive list. taks

ultima 9, bard's tale 3, any one of the last several gold box games. taks

terrible idea. witness reactions to questions/comments are crucial to jury members' ability to discern truth from lie. most people don't lie well, and it is often easy to tell from their facial expressions, body language, etc. taks

that was a common problem with the power supply i had with a vaio. unplugging the cord to the box, or the plug to the mobo, "reset" the PS state and all was well. i never really tried to figure it out. taks

i think that was intentional. apparently he does really well in that new series in which he's a lawyer or something. taks

don't memories need to be configured for dual-channel in order to run in that mode? either way, the benefit is only in improved latencies if the mobo is restricted to 533 operation. of course, that's often the biggest improvement memory accesses can benefit from. taks

yeah, riiiiight. all those heated visceris vs. volourn debates at the old black isle/interplay boards were a figment of my imagination. meta, i don't think Ultima ][ really _saved_ the franchise, though your point about it being better is probably true. ultima 8 probably ruined it, and the ninth was a last gasp at redemption which also failed. i suppose the same could be said for BT2. the second, in that case, _made_ the franchise, though michael cranford's disappearance into the realm of some religious thing subsequently ruined it. taks

i'm surprised meta hasn't answered this yet. i personally don't know, though i'd lean towards dual channel. the one benefit i can see with the 667 memory is a potential adjustment to your latencies. if your mobo only supports DDR2 533, then the answer to the first is definitely the dual channel option. yes, however, 667 memory should still work as far as i know. taks

What happens to the extra 1GB then? Is it reserved for I/O-interrupts or is just sitting there, doing nothing? i've read that winders actually uses it, though i cannot fathom why or how. it would seem to me that if the memory is being used by winders, than a similar amount must also be used even when you have less than 3 GB total. however, in such cases, winders reports the entire amount, which leads me to believe that either a) what i've read is hand-waving to throw suspicion off of a bug or b) when winders sees that you've gone that far with extra RAM, it chooses to use that in addition to its normal paging file, so you're still getting some gain. the conspiracy theorist in me says "a," but i really don't know. either way, my system definitely runs fast now, but that's also a result of the E6600, 8800GTS and 7200.10 SATA drive (parallel read) as my system components. taks

3079276 KB in my window. taks

there are many ways in which to view this statement, none of which are anything less than sad and sick. taks

yes. visceris is the anti-volourn. it is and has always been that way. it may not be possible to hide from the impending doom. taks

ai is definitely bad, though probably no worse than infinity games. can't compare it to NWN1 simply because you only had one companion. the biggest problem would be that ai was actually implemented _better_, but that meant it was harder to control and resulted in dire consequences. for the most part, IE ai was simply "attack" or "heal" or "cast," whereas now it's a bit more complex and the danged companions will use their entire arsenal of tricks against a lowly rat. as for FPS, i'm not having those issues now (nor did i before the recent uber pooter upgrade i just did). i'm surprised there are only 27 FF sequels this year... i'd have expected more, hehe. i think the second bard's tale was the one that made that franchise memorable. granted, it stopped after the third, which was rather weak IMO, but it didn't really gain "fame" till the second. should duke nukem forever finally be released, maybe that'll reignite that franchise? how about a BGIII? taks

if you put the slider on "hardcore D&D rules," this combat style will lead to many situations in which the fireball caster is all that is left of your party. nothing quite like the beginning in which neeshka ends up with a wand of lightning and my front side tanks are dropping off due to the fact she thinks it's cool to zap the enemy. i had to take away the wand since i didn't want to otherwise micro-manage (read: puppet mode) my characters. taks

See one of the problems I have with the Bourne films is Matt Damon. Sorry but I just can't suspend my believe and picture him as a bad ass no matter how good the stunts or special effects are. i've always found matt damon to be an excellent choice for such character types. real life "bad-asses" often have an unassuming look/presence about them, designed to deflect attention. i.e., nobody notices them. bond types were _obviously_ the spy/bad-ass types IMO. besides that, i just think matt damon is a good lead actor. taks

sort of... it allows me to designate which drive appears first, though the actual SATA0 location is what turns up as C:, regardless of which order i put them in, and i'm booting off the second, which appears as E: (because my CD is at D:, for whatever reason). i think they have it backwards in the Bios. taks

yeah... hmmm... it's a mess, particularly since the danged IDE port is on the bottom of the board and i've got a full tower. let me think about how i can do this. camera phone may work. taks

pics of NWN2? or my rig? i've had several abit boards and, 5 years ago, that would have been my choice. asus is winning the review war for the most part these days (i weight anandtech's review pretty heavily) and the primary complaint is always their poor support and terrible documentation. taks

well, i finally got my latest system up and running. this has been nothing short of painful. first of all, while i generally like the quality of ASUS hardware, their software as well as documentation leaves a lot to be desired. horrid is actually the word i'd use for it. the AI Gear program, designed to allow overclocking, along with AI N.O.D., don't work right. At least, the two overlapping GUI images for every call of the top-level program, and each of the sub-programs, are difficult to decipher. You have to poke around on the buttons in order to figure out which is actually active. some of them are hidden, too. very strange. the odd thing about this build, using a P5B-E, is the boot process, also known as the rain dance i have to do to get things started. it seems that there are two items in the Bios (i blame AMI for this... got they suck) that are required for booting. first is a list of all your drives. only the first on the list shows up in the second item, which is the boot priority. i have to set the first to my first physical drive (C:), and tell the system to boot from it, even though i'm actually booting off the second physical drive (E:). i'm not sure i want to venture down the discovery lane with this. it works, so i should be happy, right? sheesh. other than that, all seems well. brilliantly, i installed norton (booo) and sure enough, it immediately went to work preventing me from doing simple things, like accessing my own network. yeah, the one that i created. literally, windows told me that i did not have permission to access the workgroup and that i should contact my sys admin. well, i'm the sys admin that just set things up. no mention of norton behind the scenes. on a whim i disabled norton and magically things worked. i think norton is actually a virus, one much more virulent than the ultimate virus, winders. grrr. i have mcafee, maybe it'll get a call instead. oh, i would recommend either putting the core2 on the mobo before installing, or finding a way to support the middle of the board (such as folded cardboard) for when you install the fan. i heard waaaaaay too many cracking and popping noises when i installed it, and that has me worried. also, modular cables with the supply are OK, not as great as i had hoped. it would be better if i were allowed to pick the actual cables themselves, so i didn't have unused connectors hanging around. i.e., if you only need one PCIE power connector, you certainly don't want a cable that has two or three on it, modular or otherwise. same goes for my standard 4 pin cables, which all have three connectors and i'd prefer two cables, each with two (easier layout). so, i've only had one BSOD and that was before i did the Bios and intel chipset updates. everything is fine as i've said. let me say that NWN2 is pretty sweet on a 21 inch monitor at 1600x1200 with every option on max or high and still pulling around 40 fps. of course, that's not why i upgraded... it's for school work, really. need faster simulation times. i swear it. taks