Keyrock

I was shocked at how tiny the box it came in is. I haven't opened the box to look inside yet, but I can only assume the heatsink and fan are pretty small. No worries, though, as I won't be doing any overclocking anyway, so heat shouldn't be an issue, especially since this is one of the Haswell Refresh Xeons (it's the successor to the E3-1230v3), and the Haswell Refresh chips supposedly run a bit cooler than the original Haswells (even the unlocked ones, not just Devil's Canyon).

Got my Witchblade up to lev 28 in Grim Dawn. I wound up finding the pauldrons for the Guardsman's Set, which now gives me 2 pieces of the set, since I already had the big ol' mallet that's part of the set. I found the entrance to the Steps of Torment, though I didn't go in yet. That's the big, deep, super challenging, optional dungeon. I want to clear out everything else before I head in there.

Speaking of Xeons. The final piece of the puzzle is here. Suddenly, I'm starting to feel sick. I may need to go home early... (j/k )

Wouldn't be surprised if they push the launch a bit later, but things are going as I planned. Built a xeon rig as cheap as I sensibly could and it will carry me nicely till skylake arrives. And actually little over it for a slight price drops. Then it's monster rig time. Edit: Build -> Built. That's my plan, except substitute Broadwell in Skylake's place, reason being that switching to Broadwell will be as easy as popping the Haswell Xeon out, selling it on eBay, and popping a Broadwell in. Skylake will require a whole new mobo as it's going to be a different socket and all that jazz. Broadwell will be the last hurrah for LGA 1150, to the best of my knowledge. If Skylake does show up next year, I think it will be very late in the year. Skylake showing up in July or August doesn't make any sense. We'll see Broadwell this year, so Intel has said, but I'm very convince it will only be the mobile chips. Pushing out the desktop chips this year makes no sense whatsoever. They just put out Haswell Refresh and Devil's Canyon, why put out desktop Broadwell this year if there is no competition whatsoever from AMD? Pushing out the mobile chips as soon as humanly possible does, however, make all the sense in the world. They need those chips out in the wild yesterday to take the battle to ARM. My prediction is mobile Broadwell November or December 2014, desktop Broadwell April or May 2015, Skylake early 2016.

Nah, the Xeon will work for me just fine until Broadwell comes next year. Don't get me wrong, 5.5 GHz on air cooling is impressive, regardless how many hundreds of dollars this particular air cooling setup cost, but I don't feel like playing the silicon lottery.

I'd like to know who the one dumbass who didn't vote for LeBron for 1st team All-NBA was. http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11031947/nba-thunder-kevin-durant-lebron-james-lead-all-nba-selections

I finished the first act, killing Warden Kreig, then moved on to the act 2 area in Grim Dawn. I'm probably a quarter of the way into the lands west of Devil's Crossing now and left off after finding the Conley Gang hideout (damn work breaking up my gaming). My Witchblade character is up to lev 25. The combination of Soldier and Occultist is working out beautifully. I'm a lot more heavily into Soldier than Occultist and am heavily invested in Physique, making my character very much a tank. From Occultist I put a little bit into the raven pet. The raven does very meager damage, but it does heal me every once in a while, which is nice. I have some points into Solael's Witchfire, which gives my weapon a bit more pop (adding chaos damage). By far my biggest investment in Occultist went into Curse of Frailty. I have that skill maxed out now and it's wonderful as it makes all enemies within a rather large radius significantly slower, weaker, and less resistant to physical damage, making the skill work both as an offensive and defensive boon for my character.

Tremendous

Luigi Death Stare Compilation

I don't think that routine check up went so well.. Warden Kreig vs. Luaxanna - The Showdown! I got The Warden's shield and a big ol' mallet (among other things) for my trouble. That mallet is part of a set, but I don't have any other pieces yet.

I'm not sure I will ever tire of Turn Down for What parodies.

You know you can still listen to the radio while on foot in SR4, right? Did not know that and I was getting so good at driving normally with the flow of the rest of the traffic You haven't lived until you've ran at hyper speed, jumped hundreds of yards into the air, and soared around Cyber Steelport while listening to Stan Bush ~ The Touch.

You know you can still listen to the radio while on foot in SR4, right?

Hoo boy, this thread is heading down this path YET AGAIN. *sigh* Allow me to leave this here and unsubscribe for at least a day while this runs its course. HUNT: Horrors of the Gilded Age http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt1n5ZkZReQ Alternate title: Left 4 Dead: Old-Timey Edition

So, the embargo has been lifted, the official announcement has been made, and Devil's Canyon has been launched and should be available for purchase in about 3 weeks (Newegg has it listed as 6/25/14). I've seen a couple of reviews so far from places that managed to get their hands on a sample (other sites are still waiting for theirs), and, to be quite honest, I was not at all impressed. Hexus did a review, but they didn't overclock in their review, which is odd, to say the least, since the i7-4790K is specifically aimed at overclockers, it's the exact demographic that Intel is targeting with this chip and advertising it to. In fairness to Hexus, they mentioned that the chip they got had trouble staying stable at the stock max boost of 4.4GHz, so you could forget about overclocking it using the stock cooler and I guess they didn't want to (couldn't be bothered to) overclock it with aftermarket cooling. Regardless, that doesn't bode well, especially since engineering samples are usually cherry picked. Jagat also got their hands on a chip and with a little help from Google Translate I discerned that they did indeed overclock using a Noctua NH-U12S cooler. They managed to get it stable at 4.8GHz at 1.35V (which is frankly a scarier voltage than I'd feel good about running full time, I don't think I could bring myself to run at over 1.325V full time) with a $70 aftermarket cooler. They got it to 5 GHz on a 1.4V (yikes!) on a max clock run (no way in hell would I run a chip at 1.4V full time, I'd soil myself from worry). Granted, this is a very small sample size, but, again, I'm not impressed. The stock speeds are impressive, but the overclocking potential seems like it's barely higher than i7-4770K, and, honestly, if you're buying a K chip then you're looking to overclock. Plus, it seems that the silicon lottery is still very much in effect for these chips, as it was with the first round of Haswells. With that in mind, I decided to go with Plan B and ordered a Xeon E3-1231v3. 3.4GHz base, 3.8GHz max boost, hyperthreading, no completely useless IGP, lower TDP (due to not having to share TDP with aforementioned completely useless IGP), and all for $100 cheaper. Add to that another $40 or $50 I save by not buying an aftermarket cooler (no need if I'm going to run at stock speeds). So rather than wait another 3 weeks, spend $140 to $150 more and pay a buck or three more a month on electric bills, all to get to 4.7GHz, maybe 4.8 GHz max boost, if I get lucky in the silicon lottery, or as little as 4.5GHz if I don't, I'll get this much cheaper chip and be happy with it. Then, roughly a year from now, when Broadwell comes out, I'll take a look at it and see if the die shrink and architectual improvements are enough to warrant an upgrade. If so, I'll sell the E3-1231v3 on eBay for somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 less than I paid for it (I might be able to get more), and put that money toward a Broadwell chip. Honestly, I should have gone this route from the beginning, but I wanted to see if, by some miracle, Devil's Canyon was going to be some magic overclocking machine. Turns out it seems barely better than a 4770K, which isn't really a surprise.

Chillin'

No idea what either of those are, so probably nothing I ever cared about I'm guessing Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six. Not my type of games, though Ubi did put out Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, admittedly a very different type of GR game, for 3DS a few years back and I loved the bejesus out of that game.

Check out Tom's monthly best gaming CPU for each budget article. The embargo on Devil's Canyon gets lifted tonight, it will be about 2:30 AM my time, so, shortly after I wake up tomorrow morning, I should have an idea of whether I'll be getting DC or not.

http://www.crytek.com/games/homefront/overview Windows/OSX/Linux/PS4/XBone - Sometime 2015

Well, i7-4790Ks are starting to pop up for order at a bunch of European retailers. Most of them are saying something along the lines of "we should have them in about 10 days". I don't know how reliable that is, but, if true, I can live with that. I can wait until the middle of this month to get my SteamOS Monster Rig finished.

That's actually quite lengthy for a FPS, particularly modern day ones. Most modern day FPS single player campaigns clock in well below 10 hours.

Here are my results: The first part they got correct, American (standard), the second part they're sort of off base since Polish is my native language, however I have spent the better part of my life in 'Murica and speak way better English than Polish, so it's not that far off.

Got my Witchblade up to level 17 in Grim Dawn and reached Burrwich. Not far to go to reach Warden Kreig now. I'm excited to see how the laboratory looks with the shiny new graphics, and even more excited to see what the act 2 area looks like. I'll probably cross that bridge and check the new area out a bit before going back to Burrwich to deal with The Warden, and if the monsters there prove to be much too high level for me, I'll just tuck my tail between my legs and run back to Devil's Crossing.

I posted that trailer in the Random Video Game News thread. Not sure if enough people care about this game here for this to warrant its own thread, but we'll see. Yeah, the 2D concept art definitely looked better than the 3D stuff shown in that trailer. I'm sure Inafune has his reasons for going with 3D. I still think it looks nice, just not as good as the concept art. Keep in mind that this game is still a year away from completion, so this is still very early alpha footage and there is a lot of room for tweaking and beautifying. The one section in the beginning of the video was definitely too close up for my tastes, but later on they showed another area where the view was more far away, at about the distance that would be my preference. Hopefully most of the game happens in that view.

LOL Yes, you can absolutely target specific demographics, if you so choose, for your vigilante justice. I try to be choosy whose bank account I'm siphoning. I try not to take money from cancer patients, people who volunteer at soup kitchens, that sort of thing. But, if you're so inclined, you can make it your mission to rid Chicago of all Scientologists, or whatever strikes your fancy. That's always the best part of sandbox games like this, making your own game out of it.