The last movie you saw...

[dinky]

heroes, californication, journeyman. the latter is the only one I'll mention. it was the pilot. same guy who played verenus on rome. I don't care for the show. it wasn't bad. it just reminded me too much of generic sci-fi (kinda like quantum leap played strictly for drama). doubt I'll watch it once brotherhood and dexter start-up next week.

[maxpayne2409]

ive got journeyman to watch too, it seemed a lot like sevendays from the trailers i saw, but without the cheeky charisma of john la paglias frank b parker, or the action movie trappings, whereas journeyman seems more dramay from what ive seen so far, will watch it in full later, after heroes and K-Ville pilot

[spudthedestroyer]

@max

why'd you go for AMD in the end? intel is completely pwning in benchmarking atm in terms of power, cooling and price.

I went for this myself:
Quad Core 6660 (Intel)
4GB CORSAIRE XMS (800Mhz)
XTX 8800GTX

which i'm water cooling.

Buying a couple of bits from dabs was a mistake, I won't be buying from them again. The last bits just arrived and I've now put the PSU in the case, mounted the motherboard with the CPU + water block, and the ram. Put the huge graphics card in. Next step is attaching the pump and reservoir and then putting in the piping, filling it up and then seeing how it boots.

I downloaded vista 32bit, but think i'm now going to 64bit it

Going to play through bioshock properally and I also bought Medieval 2: Total War expansion pack this week so will play that too once its up and running.

Gave up for today though because its too much effort to setup the water cooling shit after work.

My new laptop finally arrived on Saturday so i've been using that. Its awesome

[maxpayne2409]

because i am an amd fanboy, amd are better for games, intel are better for stuff i dont really need.

Personally i don't trust watercooling, theres something not right about putting water into an electrical item

[spudthedestroyer]

amd is not better for games, not for a long time... you won't find any benchmark/fps charts that back that up anymore, in fact i'd be pretty flabbergasted to see AMD in any kind of major advantage:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/ ... age14.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/ ... age15.html

6600 is the alternative to the AMD you chose, which is proving to be a solid 10fps in the gaming benchmarks (at all sites); doesn't seem like a lot to some people, but down the line that's the difference between tolerable and unplayable so its quite important for a geek freak like me

I am upgrading from an athlon64, which was an upgrade from athlonXP; I think continuing the amd trend for me would have stung me. thankfully i have no brand loyalty, and have ditched nvidia, ati, amd and intel on different occasions.

That "its better for games" was applicable only about half a decade ago, when AMD had a better single core setup for gaming with its XP range; ever since core duo a couple of years back they are being trounced.

Not to mention AMD bugs for games like Total War and BioShock; amd are becoming a huge turn off. The whole ATI thing could be a disaster too if they neglect Nvidia (who are a better alternative to ATI imo, especially with their stronger drivers).

My 2 cents anyway, just surprised you picked AMD given the current trouncing intel is giving it, even in games these days. Its not to say amd is terrible but its X2 range just isn't competing like the XP range did back in the day Shame really.

Outside of gaming, i chose intel for my laptop too because their mobile chips run faster, on less power and producing less heat. That's why you see so many of them now in the market.

AMD is competing only by slashing prices quite significantly, which is costing them a big slice of profits this time round. Back in the radeon days, ati + amd were the combo to go for, but its a long time ago now

[maxpayne2409]

i hate ati they are shit, i used nvidia cards for ages, then i tried an ati last time and it runs terrible, so im going back to nvidia who have been consistantly good.

But then i also don't play total war or bioshock, i used to play total war but it got pretty boring pretty fast, as for bioshock, it's a series i've jsut never played

[MyK]

Much like Spud I don't favor one or the other and my top rig is now IntelR+NV sitting right next to my prev X2 NV+ATI. NV graphics is way faster for most of the games out there (that ain't specifically written to better support ATI chips), ATI graphics is way faster in DirectShow (something NV never cared much about in their driver releases, just think of HD support), Intel has way better chipsets than NV (if you value your data that is... I had a debate over RAID support in NV drivers on their forum, suggested what's wrong, gave them enough info I could write an update if I had drivers source code, yet that "problem"... not a small one, loosing all your data on mirrored disks faster than if you used a single spindle... still remains "unsolved" after some two years... lame. Intel has similar problems if you install their RAID management SW, but there's no need to even if you use Matrix RAID, It'll just give you CPU spikes... also lame.),... so I guess it all depends on what your needs are. Favoring one over the other will just make you buy lesser stuff IMO Sadly, no option out there is ideal. You won't find any of this on satellites or any equipment where it's crucial it's 100% stable. As for that water cooling... Iunno, you really need it only if you do extreme OCs, besides, you still need at least one additional fan in the rig cuz not only CPUs/GPUs need cooling, so watter cooling it won't make it much more silent. I have air cooled rig and is close to totally silent, you just have to take care when buying fans and a case... and some luck too, not even two fans of the same model/same manufacturer will give you same performance. I bought approx. 15-20 different fans (differ by manufacturers and sizes, models) and after some testing use only 4 of them (3x 12cm front, back and side panels, 1 9cm Papst for CPU, +1 12cm in Zalman PSU... good stuff IMO, cool, quiet, stable). All that said... good luck

[maxpayne2409]

if you buy antec stuff it's usually guaranteed to be high quality

Anyway tv wise i watched

Journeyman - enjoyed it more then dinky seems to have done, but it did feel like quantum leap in places

watched chuck, it was ok but it felt like Employee of the month meets John Doe, witha touch of Jake 2.0 nerdness

watched the family guy star wars episode, it was ok, it was better then the last couple of series have been by far, i also liked the little chris/peter robot chicken bit at the end

for some reason i keep downloading flash gordon despite not watching it because its absolute shit, no way should Painkiller Jane have been cancelled for flash, i mean PJ had its problems but it was way better then flash

Also watching new series (5) of Q.I. enjoyable as ever

[MyK]

Antec if crap: Antec Power Supply Trouble ... I could tell you so much of Antec but am still mad angry of them and their customer support. Just to give you an idea, I had thrown away ALL Antec PSUs I used in my rigs and in rigs I made for friends (say some two dozens of them). They ALL blew up in less then a year (mostly with consequences to other HW, BTW, like I blew two mamaboards, a pair of 1GB DDR,... and stuff like that). Replacing them is no use as they'll just send you "a revised" (yeah, right) version of the same crap... Or blame it on you saying you OCed it too much or some lame line like that (If anything I downclock, not overclock, ever!) I could boil eggs in less than a minute on the last PSU I received from Antec... threw it away (made sure it's useless before that, so no one could go through what I had to with it) and bought Zalman... now THAT's a quality PSU. There's prolly a plethora of other quality PSU making companies out there, I wouldn't know that much... just, for Gods sake, don't go with Antec. You were warned! Oh, cases are a different matter... they're cheap plastic crap but at least they don't blow up I still use one "Sonata 2.0" case only felt the urging need to replace that "Antec" sticker on it.

[maxpayne2409]

i've used antec for years not 1 problem, friends who've always used antecs have had no problems either, so i guess u have really bad luck, or antecs work better with UK current, which doesn't make any sense at all

also my antec case is the best case i have ever had

[dinky]

I'd like to find a place with reliable power supply reviews. specifically, you'd think it would be easy to figure out what PSUs are quiet. but nooooooooo. every damn feedback is full of shills and haters (at newegg.com). same with case fans. the write-ups are useless cuz of course they CLAIM to be quiet. then every other review will contradict the one before it. I don't know shit about what makes a quality fan and how that's related to noise.

smallville starts up next week with a bizzaro ep.

[maxpayne2409]

my antec psu is really quiet (to suit my case built for quiet), and no problems ever

[MyK]

@Max... To all fairness, they are quiet... then they go boom Sorry for bashing Antec but my story is something no one should ever go through, and hopefully won't. I even paid for a complete rewiring (useless though) cuz I never even suspected Antec to be the culprit behind all the troubles I had. I swapped for a different make of surge protector and UPS (I know, a bit of an overkill, but you can never be too sure)... no luck, problems persisted. Then I replaced Antec PSUs with whatever other brand PSUs (I personally use Zalman, and replaced a few of friends PSUs with cheapest I could find ) and all the problems mysteriously went away. Did Antec in the mean time I completely lost confidence in them change something and are now manufacturing real quality PSUs? I wouldn't know... but I wouldn't dare try too.

@Dinky... Most of the HW reviewing sites out there are in bed with one or the other manufacturer. I went on Antec rollercoaster via AnandTech... they're still in bed with them as far as I can tell. Also, you can never trust other ppls experience (don't even take mine for granted, I'm no expert in PSUs either ) for many reasons, some being ppl typically form opinion way too soon and prefer one make over the other for no apparent reasons. Sadly, there's no way of telling if your PSU will perform even close to what's claimed. HW reviewing sites receive double/triple/... quality checked products built with best components, and the only QC we (consumers) get is a small round sticker on a product that'll, eventually, fall off Same goes for FCC & EC logos.

[dinky]

yeah...well...you'd think decibel ratings or something would come with the specs of EVERY PSU, no? if they are, I can't find them. which leaves me at the mercy of the ridiculously unreliable user reviews.

[spudthedestroyer]

i bought a corsaire 650w for my new box (I'll plug together all the water cooling tomorrow because today i'm too tired to do it), its reviewed very well.

[MyK]

I also heard good reviews of Corsair 650W, also, a friend of mine setup his new rig with it and it's dead silent and not generating much heat, too, which is always a good sign IMO. @Dinky... I don't think there will ever be any standards for testing noise levels. They could prolly measure "bells" (I'm not sure if it's anything more than just a subjective scale though IIRC) but that'd do no good at all... most fans in PCs are way quieter than the total noise levels generated when they operate together. Fans can easily "resonate" with each other even if you use silicon paddings and such. I'm afraid it's a painful trial and error process setting up a nearly silent rig.

FTM: Watching "Warm Springs" now... it's that "F. D. Roosevelt" movie... so far it mainly concentrates on his illness and not so much on his political career. Pretty boring stuff

Anyone watched the "Life" pilot? Any good?

[maxpayne2409]

i've downloaded life but not watched yet

[MyK]

Started watching Bobby (2006) late last night and finished it tonight. Watched it in two parts not because it was boring or I didn't find it interesting but was too tired to concentrate on the movie. The setting is actually quite dynamic, perhaps even slightly too much. Loved that "acid trip" part LOL. I know it's meant to be a "snapshot" of one historical day, but there are so many points to it left untouched, so many characters in it we barely get a glimpse of... It is a good movie though and sorta relates to worldwide problems of present times.

[dinky]

I know you're not american, so this isn't aimed at you in any way. your latest review just reminded me of how much I don't give a shit about american history. I live through it (even if I didn't - revolution, civil war, vietnam). I don't need to mythologize it. I don't get how so many americans can be so into it. I mean, do you really need artistic representation of the same shit you live through 24/7? how exactly is that entertaining? being a bit facetious...but only a bit.

[MyK]

It would prolly make the same sense to me if I was constantly fed with the history of the country I live in. Thankfully, it's a really small country so there's not much of budget left for patriotic bullshit once they spend it on "essentials" LOL I wouldn't even call it "my country" cuz I don't give a shit for flag waivers of any kind... it's just plain lame and so last century Besides, we don't even have a space program or support one so WTF... see, I can be a bit facetious, too I'm a citizen of humanity and I live among human-like apes, primates and inhumane primitives With all that said, it really didn't bother me much watching what - I guess - an American would call an American patriotic flick. And patriotism is to me... well, it's "-ism" and I favor "-asms" LOL... 'nuff said!

I won't have the time to watch anything tonight (fuck, double negative, and my grammar was so spotless so far LOL) cuz of all the deadlines I have to sniff through... C ya l8r!