At 10/2/09 10:02 AM, Reaper93 wrote:
And, you know, reduce image ghosting. That too :p

I have 8ms and it's fine

Most monitors now are 5ms so 2ms isnt needed

My plans to build a rig might have just went down the pan. As I said a few pages back, a laptop would be a lot more beneficial for my student way of life. I just saw someone with a 13" MacBook Pro, and I think I just fell in love. Never before have I liked Macs, the thought of paying that much for a system which doesn't even match the specs of a PC in the same price range put me right off. Back then I'd never seen a MacBook Pro other than in videos.

I'd be going for the cheapest option. £899 will get me the following:
2.26GHz Duel Core processor
2 GB DDR3 RAM
160GB Hard Drive at 5400RPM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics

I don't know what has come over me. This wouldn't be my normal way of thinking, but the MacBook Pro seems to have won me over.

At 10/2/09 09:34 AM, TrantaLocked wrote: I want a new graphics card for my PC and have supplied my specs and TONS of pictures (22 to be exact) of inside and outside of the computer. My first question: Based of of the pictures, will I even be able to insert a new graphics card? Also, I will need to get a new power supply; mine is 300 Watt max I believe I need like a 500 Watt for todays graphics chips. Specs:

We need a password to see your album.

At 10/2/09 10:02 AM, Reaper93 wrote:

At 10/2/09 08:06 AM, TacoFreak wrote:

At 10/2/09 01:23 AM, Wylo wrote: Faster response time != Better quality

Response time is just a gimmick to get people to buy more expensive monitors

And, you know, reduce image ghosting. That too :p

Most people don't notice image ghosting which can only usually be detected by high speed phtography. If you are gaming, the most important part is input lag, not response time as it is usually slower. I have a P-MVA 8ms monitor, Benq FP241W and I love it. Won't go back to a TN panel ever again. Would you rather get better colours and overall quality, or a monitor that may or may not provide you with a teensy bit of responsiveness.

At 10/2/09 12:40 PM, GodsBitch wrote: My plans to build a rig might have just went down the pan. As I said a few pages back, a laptop would be a lot more beneficial for my student way of life. I just saw someone with a 13" MacBook Pro, and I think I just fell in love. Never before have I liked Macs, the thought of paying that much for a system which doesn't even match the specs of a PC in the same price range put me right off. Back then I'd never seen a MacBook Pro other than in videos.

Macs are getting cheaper, but its mainly because they are selling the old models off to clear stock. Don't buy a Mac if you want to game. I won't ever buy a Mac for that single fact.

At 10/2/09 08:06 AM, TacoFreak wrote: Response time is just a gimmick to get people to buy more expensive monitors

My old dell had 16ms; I still never noticed it in gaming.

@Traunta, the 630i provides pci-e lanes, so you'll be able to use a modern video card on that motherboard. You'll need a card that doesn't use any PEG power though, so this 9600gtwill work fine with your power supply.

At 10/2/09 12:40 PM, GodsBitch wrote: My plans to build a rig might have just went down the pan. As I said a few pages back, a laptop would be a lot more beneficial for my student way of life. I just saw someone with a 13" MacBook Pro, and I think I just fell in love. Never before have I liked Macs, the thought of paying that much for a system which doesn't even match the specs of a PC in the same price range put me right off. Back then I'd never seen a MacBook Pro other than in videos.

I'd be going for the cheapest option. £899 will get me the following:
2.26GHz Duel Core processor

This is tolerable.

2 GB DDR3 RAM
160GB Hard Drive at 5400RPM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics

However the rest should set an alarm off in your head. Why would you pay $1500 for a computer that barely puts up a fight against a $400 desktop? The thing about macs is that they surpass windows in some terms of functionality, however windows dominates in everything else. Don't forget that windows is customizable. You can get vista to look like Leopard with some custom themes, and even mimic some of the functionality with some further work. Also, your computer is not compatible with most software. Think how limited you are just in the fact that you can't open .exes. The windows alternative is Linux, not mac.

At 10/2/09 02:33 PM, Digital-Terror wrote: It's been more than a year since I built a computer, and I'm planning to do so soon...

What hardware would you guys recommend, with a budget of $1500?

Core i5, ATI 5870, maybe a RAID 0 of WD blacks.

I'm really at a major dividing point, and it's driving me insane. I have three choices; 1. Build my desktop and have more than enough power. 2. Buy a standard laptop with high specs. 3. Buy a Mac because... well because it's a Mac.

Right now I don't need anything for gaming. I was building a desktop for the purpose of gaming, but I never want to/get the chance to play games anymore, so it makes me feel like I should get a small, light and somewhat decent spec laptop which will come in handy for taking to lectures and such.

The Mac seems to fit the bill quite well from my perspective. It's small, light, has a 7 hour battery life and it still has more than enough hardware for what I need. Sure, Macs might not be as compatible with a lot of software, but all I need right now is BlueJ, Flash CS3, Second Life and something to produce text documents.

The Mac is appealing to me right now because it's something I've never tried before. It will be a new experience for me, and lets face it, they look pretty sweet as well.

All this because I saw some guy using a 13" MacBook Pro, and I wanted one. My heart says the Mac will be suit me nicely, my brain says I'm paying too much for an over priced badge. Spending this £900 is the toughest decision I've had to make in a long time. :(

Just Hackintosh.

XFX is cool now.

Woohoo, my computer's done! and its all thanks to you guys! Thank you all for the help you've given me! now I can obliterate games that once taunted me with my inability to play them. but even with this glorious victory, I have hit a few obstacles. I would do research on it myself, but I'm a lazy bastard and I've been pretty busy lately so I was hoping you guys could help me out.

The first problem I've had is when starting my computer I've been getting a floppy drive error. I've been told I've set up my hard disk drive incorrectly, but I have no idea how to actually solve it so I'm kind of in a fix.

another thing is I've had a problem with is, for some reason, after installing the drivers for my mouse, When I'm in game, the mouse5 button refuses to work for some reason, and the middle button continues to do its windows function rather than be useful in game. I've reinstalled the drivers time and time again, but to no avail.

the final thing I've noticed is, while playing Mirrors edge, when I enter a building, I get a bit of frame lag. Its not something that really affects the game play entirely, but it takes away from the experience of the game. I think this might have something to do with the Physx technology featured in the game, seeing as I don't have problems with any other games without it.

Hopefully you guys will be able to help me out, and once again, thanks for your help guys!

Carrrrl finally will give me this PC tomorrow I can play around with and put back together. I'll take photos and you guys may need to help me a bit. Much love <3

Who can guess which OEM enjoys using scotch tape instead of screws?

At 10/2/09 12:58 PM, Wylo wrote:

At 10/2/09 09:34 AM, TrantaLocked wrote: I want a new graphics card for my PC and have supplied my specs and TONS of pictures (22 to be exact) of inside and outside of the computer. My first question: Based of of the pictures, will I even be able to...

We need a password to see your album.

Not anymore.

I just got an AMD athlon.

I just found out that since I'm a university student I can knock £127 of the price of the 13" MacBook Pro I'm considering buying. Before, I wouldn't have even considered buying a Mac, but now I'm taking this decision really seriously.

Apple seems to be in the lead when it comes to winning my money for this decision. A Mac just seems like something new and exciting to me right now. I will no doubt go on to regret this decision later when I once again go back through the phase of wanting a really pimped out gaming rig. Right now though, a Mac meets all the criteria. Never thought I'd have said this, but "I think I'm going to buy a Mac".

At 10/2/09 03:45 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: Just Hackintosh.

I reiterate.

At 10/3/09 03:53 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote:

At 10/2/09 03:45 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: Just Hackintosh.

I reiterate.

I don't want a PC that look like a Mac, what's the point in that?

At 10/3/09 04:20 PM, deckheadtottie wrote:

At 10/3/09 04:03 PM, GodsBitch wrote: I don't want a PC that look like a Mac, what's the point in that?

So you're buying the Mac based on looks?

No, what I'm saying is why buy a windows laptop and then change it, to try and make it look like Snow Leopard like what French is (I assume) suggesting?

There are several reasons that I want a MacBook Pro and I've already mentioned them in previous posts in this thread.

Hackintoshing is the (of course illegal) act of pirating the Mac operating system and putting on a PC. I don't recommend it, because, again, it is illegal, but this brings me back to my original point- Don't buy a fucking mac.

At 10/3/09 04:35 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: Hackintoshing is the (of course illegal) act of pirating the Mac operating system and putting on a PC. I don't recommend it, because, again, it is illegal, but this brings me back to my original point- Don't buy a fucking mac.

Ah, right. Apologies on my misunderstanding. Obviously I won't be going down that route. As I've said, buying a Mac is something that I would never have even considered until a few days ago. I know you are paying more than you should be for the hardware that they offer inside their machines, but they seem appealing to me for other reasons. After having owned Windows based machines all my life, I feel it's time for a change. Snow Leopard looks like a nice enough OS and after watching several reviews I'm sure I will come to like it more than Windows.

MacBook Pros are small, light weight and have a good battery life. I just feel that if you want these features included in a Windows machine that matches the specs the MacBook Pros have you end up paying a similar price anyway. At least that what I've gathered looking around several sites. Like I've also said, the previously mentioned features make it perfect for me taking it to lectures and such without worrying about it taking up too much room (like my current 17" Windows laptop) or running out of battery midway through the day (again like my current laptop that will get me 3hours TOPS).

That's another reason that I'm considering going for a Mac over a Windows laptop. I won't be selling my current machine. It will most likely sit in my room and still occasionally be used for its large screen and some of the software that I have installed on it.

I'm pretty set on the idea of getting a Mac now. The only thing that may discourage me would be of someone can give me a MAJOR disadvantage of owning one, because right now all I've heard from people is nothing more than nitpicking and the opinions of those who hate Macs "just because".

Hey reaper, old audiophile old pal, I need some help making a concrete dicision on a sound card. I don't really know how to preface each one, so I'm just going to put links for the ones I'm currently looking at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as px?Item=N82E16829156005

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as px?Item=N82E16829132001

To be honest the only distinguishing feature there is that one (the Xonar) probably has a higher sound to noise ratio by a few decibels but is lacking EAX effects for games. Frankly I use(d) an X-Fi Titanium, it served my purposes wonderfully and is cheaper than either of those two cards. Plus if you like to play games, EAX is a big bonus.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as px?Item=N82E16829102019

Thar you go.

Otherwise, it's down to if the other card has EAX vs. a slightly better DBN ratio. All the flexbass, billion band equalizer crap you can do without, trust me on that one. You don't need a samplerate above 40KHz or so for human hearing anyway, so a massive samplerate on the cards is usually just a bluffed out selling point, much like how Vitamin C's 100% dosage is flushed from the body daily so taking more than 100% is usually pointless but companies add more anyway to make their product look better.

I heard from many sources that any X-fi labeled with adjectives like "fatality" and "extreme" are a waste of money. I know x-ram is useless, but other than that I've just gone off recommendations that auzentech and asus are good. It would probably help if I knew what a sampling rate actually does in terms of sound quality. Also, I was wondering about ohm impedence too. Reading reviews, it seems it has something to do with how much power it takes to drive the headphones, but clarification would help.

____

What do you guys think about the Lucid Hydra?

At 10/4/09 07:08 AM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: What do you guys think about the Lucid Hydra?

Nvidia will find a way to break it so that people will still have to use their SLI system. Money-grubbers...

No problem, I will clarify all of your basic audio questions!

To begin we have a wave in the air. This is the natural state of sound, it could be a sine wave, a couple sine waves put together forming some other wave like a saw wave, or what have you. You'll see our portal musicians talking a lot about using a "saw" as a lead or bass, that's what they're referring to. Any other shape being used as any type of instrument as well has the same principle.

This wave, however, is not literally transferrable to most mediums. To begin we used things like records where a needle could inscribe an exact (or roughly exact) copy of the waveform into the vinyl. This could then be read by a needle and sent via electric current current to a set of speakers. This electric current is known as an "analog signal" as it is a variable signal with a range of values.

The speakers then take this analog signal, which in the case of the vinyl is a direct representation of the waveform (except in this case rendered in electricity rather than waves or etched into the surface of some plastic) and turn it back into waves by moving their cones in and out.

This is all well and good, until we realized that vinyl is fucking huge and has problems with the sound accelerating as it plays and looked for an easier way. Well, for many years that easier way didn't exist outside of perhaps tapes and those were just as bad a mess. Then in the 90's we came up with a mass-producable wonderful invention called the "compact disc". This necessitated a new way of storing the audio, however, since as you know we don't etch information into CDs physically, but with bits (1's and 0's).

This is the relevant part of this history lesson. It was realized almost immediately that only two values representing the myriad different types of wave would be, well, rather impossible unless there was some kind of algorithm made up with which to store the sound. This turned out to be fairly convenient: we would take samples (or snapshots of the music at a point in time) of a certain bit-depth (using a certain amount of those bits to represent that snapshot) at a rate according to what was deemed necessary by a wonderful little theorem. This theorem stated that in order to accurately reproduce a sound, you needed two samples for every Hz above zero the sound spectrum you were reproducing had.

So, let's say we have something that makes sound up to 100 Hz (quite low, so maybe a bass drum). To accurately reproduce that sound, we would need 200 samples/sec, or .2KHz sampling rate. Consequently, given human hearing is between 20Hz and 20KHz of frequency, the usually-necessary samplerate is 40 thousand samples per second, or 40KHz. Modern audio uses 44.1KHz as a standard to make certain that sub-audible-bass and any sounds over most peoples' audio ranges are preserved for those that can actually hear some of them or for artists who want an effect such as a non-audible vibration to eminate from, say, club speakers (which would happen if you told the speakers to play a 5 Hz signal, assuming they were capable, since nobody could hear it but the sound would still vibrate the room).

So, now that you know what samplerate is, looking at these cards' samplerates you'll notice an interesting trend: they are all distinctly above the necessary quantity. This does not audibly improve sound quality whatsoever, much like my example earlier with vitamins containing over 100% of your daily vitamin C. Neither actually provides anything useful, because all the extra stuff is going completely to waste on the user.

With samplerate covered we then have to cover the make-up of the samplerate: bits. For every sample you have a certain number of bits representing the different decibel levels that the waveform maintains. If you look at a wave, you'll notice that from +1 to -1 on its graph (I don't have one handy, but you've seen waveforms before I'm sure) is an infinite number of possible points, or so mathematics tells us (points take up no space, therefore there are an infinite number of points between 1 and -1, just as there are an infinite number of numbers between those two numbers). What this means is that you need a finite number of points to represent possible values because obviously putting an infinite number of bits on your CD (or other digital device) isn't physically possible. This is what bitrate per sample is for. Most of the cards out there give you 16-36 bits/sample. What does this mean for the average person? Well, this tells you how much your sound to noise ratio will be, assuming a perfectly isolated signal.

The bits are used for a process known as "quantization", or turning that infinite number of possible dB values into a finite number. The fewer bits you have, the fewer possible values that your resulting sound will be able to have (e.g. only two bits will be "loud" and "none" in terms of volume, while four bits may be "loud" "moderately loud" "quiet" and "none"). This results in something known as quantization noise, basically white noise that your audio equipment will play when it doesn't have a value. For each bit you add, the quantization noise is reduced by 4 times. This means that at a 16 bit depth, the quantization noise is basically inaudible (.0000000009 dB per dB of actual sound). Again, anything more is probably just window-dressing for most situations except if the music is VERY VERY LOUD, and even then 16 bit usually holds up just fine.

Samples per second multiplied by bits per second gets you the audio's bitrate, or the "quality" measure you are probably most familiar with, though for things like .mp3 this can be somewhat warped by the compressing procedure. This is why .wav (uncompressed audio) files often have bitrates of around a thousand kb/sec or more (an example is this 54 second track I made. Sampled at 16 bits/sample it comes out to 74,424,000 bits or almost ten megabytes for only a minute of audio! Quite big!)

That is, in a nutshell, the process of rendering an analog wave into digital format. A Digital-Analog-Converter of course renders that back the other way (or the forwards way if you use an analog input like some microphones that don't have their own DAC) into analog, which is then sent to your speakers as before.

Basically speaking, you only need a little bit above a 40KHz samplerate and 16 bits per sample to have perfectly good sounding audio. Anything more is only detectable by those with very good ears, very good speakers, or most likely both.

Based on the above, any of the cards you put forth are basically identical with the X-Fi Titanium I recommended. Hence I recommended the cheapest of identical products (practically speaking), as at the user level you won't be able to determine any real difference.

Any questions?

At 10/4/09 07:08 AM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: I heard from many sources that any X-fi labeled with adjectives like "fatality" and "extreme" are a waste of money. I know x-ram is useless, but other than that I've just gone off recommendations that auzentech and asus are good. It would probably help if I knew what a sampling rate actually does in terms of sound quality. Also, I was wondering about ohm impedence too. Reading reviews, it seems it has something to do with how much power it takes to drive the headphones, but clarification would help.

Oh right, the impedance. Yeah, higher impedance means your volume is quieter. That's really it. Sound cards would be able to drive the volume of your headphones to ear-shattering levels if you really wanted them to so don't concern yourself too much about it.

At 10/4/09 02:53 PM, Wylo wrote:

At 10/4/09 07:08 AM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote: What do you guys think about the Lucid Hydra?

Nvidia will find a way to break it so that people will still have to use their SLI system. Money-grubbers...

I'd only imagine. They already disable physX if Radeon is the primary card in a system. Not to mention Lucid would have to pay licensing fees to allow them to work with Nvidia. In it's current state though, it allows 100% dual-gpu scaling, something which even straight SLI and crossfire don't do.

At 10/4/09 03:05 PM, Reaper93 wrote: Bitrate

So now I understand specifically why FLAC is better than MP3, but if my integrated audio codec can do 16 bits at 44.1khz, why is it that dedicated cards sound better?

Analag => Digital

You said you had a dedicated DAC for your headphones, what part does this play in making sound sound better?

Based on the above, any of the cards you put forth are basically identical with the X-Fi Titanium I recommended. Hence I recommended the cheapest of identical products (practically speaking), as at the user level you won't be able to determine any real difference.

My last and final gripe with Creative is that they have terrible driver support, especially in vista, which is why I would want the auzentech x-fi over your card. Not to mention, based on my planned m-atx setup for my new build, I'll be limited to a PCI slot for my sound card.

At 10/4/09 03:16 PM, Digital-Terror wrote: I used OSX a grand total of 3 times before giving up on it.

The only thing I like about OSX is being able to click on your desktop to return to it in photoshop.

At 10/4/09 03:05 PM, Reaper93 wrote: Any questions?

I had to read that twice to understand most of it.

you guys have to start PMing me lessons about computers.

I have a general question, I'll probably look like a moron. :3
What exactly makes up a graphics card? How does it allow your screen/comp to display good graphics?
Basically, what exact role does it play, IN DETAIL?

At 10/4/09 04:45 PM, ThoseSneakyFrench wrote:

At 10/4/09 03:05 PM, Reaper93 wrote: Bitrate

So now I understand specifically why FLAC is better than MP3, but if my integrated audio codec can do 16 bits at 44.1khz, why is it that dedicated cards sound better?

Because of isolation, mostly. Your integrated chip can do the conversion, sure, but it's also right next to an awful lot of electromagnetic interference. This is the primary reason for getting a discrete sound solution, its decibels to noise ratio will be vastly increased.

Analag => Digital

You said you had a dedicated DAC for your headphones, what part does this play in making sound sound better?

A dedicated DAC, much like the discrete card's DAC, is yet another step in isolation. The more isolated your components are the better the end result will be because they will not affect the analog signal of each other. The primary problem is EMI for your integrated chip in that it will affect the analog signal coming out the other end and so the signal will sound rather poor.

Having your own DAC allows you to take the digital signal out of your case, which is just flinging electromagnetic radiation around inside like a giant microwave, and put it through a DAC in a much cleaner environment. Plus a dedicated DAC is almost always more precise in its bit placement when it comes to quantization. Then you would of course need the amplifier because the DAC doesn't amplify the analog signal to very high levels and they would be insufficiently powerful to drive your sound device.

Based on the above, any of the cards you put forth are basically identical with the X-Fi Titanium I recommended. Hence I recommended the cheapest of identical products (practically speaking), as at the user level you won't be able to determine any real difference.

My last and final gripe with Creative is that they have terrible driver support, especially in vista, which is why I would want the auzentech x-fi over your card. Not to mention, based on my planned m-atx setup for my new build, I'll be limited to a PCI slot for my sound card.

Well, if you have no PCI-E slots then obviously my recommendation is void. But still, go for the cheaper one and don't get fooled by all the features that you probably won't use anyway ;)

At 10/4/09 05:31 PM, Elder wrote: Basically, what exact role does it play, IN DETAIL?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpu

At 10/4/09 05:31 PM, Elder wrote:

At 10/4/09 03:05 PM, Reaper93 wrote: Any questions?

I had to read that twice to understand most of it.

If you have a specific question about any concept I went over I can do my best to answer it if you don't understand.

IT'S TIME TO BENCHMARK, MU HA HA