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CoffeeFiend

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Posts posted by CoffeeFiend

  1. Okay, that's what I'm going with. Any objections/suggestions?

    Nice rig overall. Not a killer gamer's rig (due to the video card) but no complaints :)

    So I don't think I have a problem with that. Also forgot to mention, will I have any problem installing an x64 version of windows?

    Win7 x64 would work just fine on it.

  2. Why 550W?

    overkill...400W is plenty for this.

    The CPU has a TDP of 95W by itself and a Radeon 4850 will use another 100W or so (IIRC) on its own. Then you have to add everything else... And leave some expansion room for future upgrades, and you don't want the thing running at 100% either. I mean, I have good quality Seanonic 350W PSUs in the kids boxes, but they're low power Athlon X2's (45W TDP) with onboard video, NOT a Core i5 gaming machine with fancy video card.

    Either ways, there's only $10 difference between the two. And for that $10, you get lots more power available to you (534 vs 360W on the 12v rails -- nearly 50% more), a higher efficiency (it's 80+ silver i.e. over 88%) which will easily pay for the difference and more, 5 years warranty, it's ready for a 2nd video card (and his board has two x16 slots as well), etc. So why not?

  3. I just took the prices before rebate (it's a rip-off any way) ;).

    I know. I'm still under $700 without them :)

    By the way, I presented those mobos as they have SATA gen. 3 and USB 3.0, so no new add-on card is needed in the future :).

    Good call. And here is my updated list, for a i5 750, including a board that also has that:

    One more option, v2, copy-and-paste edition:

    Intel Core i5 750 Quad Core Processor Lynnfield LGA1156 2.66GHZ 8MB Cache Retail Box

    $219.99

    Gigabyte P55A-UD3 ATX LGA1156 P55 DDR3 2PCI-E 2PCI RAID GBLAN CrossFireX USB3.0 SATA3 Motherboard

    $150.99 still 4 DIMM sockets, two x16 slots, etc. Also has USB 3 and SATA 6 Gbps in case he has a need for those.

    Corsair XMS3 CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB DDR3 2X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24 Core I5 Dual Channel Memory Kit

    $99.99

    OCZ Z-SERIES 550W 80+ Silver Certified 24PIN ATX 12V Afc Power Supply W/ 120MM Fan

    $74.99 (there's a $25 mail in rebate, NOT included in that price)

    Powercolor Radeon HD 5750 700MHZ 1GB 4.6GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI Display Port DIRECTX11

    $139.99 (there's a $10 mail in rebate, NOT included in that price) otherwise you can get a 4850 with 512MB for $99 (if you don't really need DirectX 11 yet)

    Antec Three Hundred Mini Tower Gaming Case 300 ATX 3X5.25 6X3.5INT No PS Front USB & Audio

    $53.99

    Hard drive -- you already have. I'm assuming you also have the DVD-RW, otherwise a 24x Samsung SATA DVD-RW will run you $28 extra.

    Then I'd make it price match themselves (directcanada and ncix are really the same company) -- in your cart, select "start price match" and fill the prices and URLs (so far, they've never turned any of mine down):

    The exact same RAM @ $96.47 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...facture=CORSAIR

    The exact same CPU @ 218.88 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...nufacture=INTEL

    The exact same video card @ $138.01 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...ture=POWERCOLOR

    The exact same motherboard @ $147.68 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...acture=GIGABYTE

    That would pretty much be it.

    Before price matching or mail in rebates, the price is $739.94 (w/o the DVD-RW). After price matching with themselves (I still love this game), it's $730.02 so still $30 over budget (unless you go with the 4850 in which case you're down to about $692). Then if you do get the $35 back from the mail in rebates, you're down to $695 :) Or $657 if you go with the 4850... Mind you, I'd still look at a Athlon II X4 620 build like puntoMX said (more $ left for a better vid card like a 4890 or other things)

    The coolermaster 690 is better build than the Antec 300, it does have 1 HDD space less and it is more expensive indeed, but the value of the coolermaster is better

    It's nice for sure (I just built a box for a friend last week with a nice coolermaster case too). However:

    I'd like to stick to my two picks regarding the case

    So I went with that, just like he said...

  4. One more option:

    Intel Core i5 750 Quad Core Processor Lynnfield LGA1156 2.66GHZ 8MB Cache Retail Box

    $219.99

    Gigabyte P55M-UD2 mATX LGA1156 P55 DDR3 2PCI-E 2PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GLAN Motherboard

    $106.99 (not bad at all: has 4 DIMM sockets, two x16 slots, 7x SATA and one eSATA, spdif and toslink, firewire, it has solid polymer caps throughout, etc)

    Corsair XMS3 CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB DDR3 2X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24 Core I5 Dual Channel Memory Kit

    $99.99

    OCZ Z-SERIES 550W 80+ Silver Certified 24PIN ATX 12V Afc Power Supply W/ 120MM Fan

    $74.99 (there's a $25 mail in rebate, NOT included in that price)

    Powercolor Radeon HD 5750 700MHZ 1GB 4.6GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI Display Port DIRECTX11

    $139.99 (there's a $10 mail in rebate, NOT included in that price) otherwise you can get a 4850 with 512MB for $99 (if you don't really need DirectX 11 yet)

    Antec Three Hundred Mini Tower Gaming Case 300 ATX 3X5.25 6X3.5INT No PS Front USB & Audio

    $53.99

    Hard drive -- you already have. I'm assuming you also have the DVD-RW, otherwise a 24x Samsung SATA DVD-RW will run you $28 extra.

    Then I'd make it price match themselves (directcanada and ncix are really the same company) -- in your cart, select "start price match" and fill the prices and URLs (so far, they've never turned any of mine down):

    The exact same RAM @ $96.47 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...facture=CORSAIR

    The exact same CPU @ 218.88 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...nufacture=INTEL

    The exact same video card @ $138.01 there: http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=...ture=POWERCOLOR

    That would pretty much be it.

    Before price matching or mail in rebates, the price is $695.94 (w/o the DVD-RW). After price matching with themselves (I love this game LOL), it's $689.33. Then if you do get the $35 back from the mail in rebates, you're down to $654.33 :) Or $614.33 if you go with the 4850... Mind you, I'd still look at a Athlon II X4 620 build like puntoMX said (more $ left for a better vid card like a 4890 or other things)

  5. You can barely buy a good quality low wattage PSU for ~$40, so the bundled PSU with a $30 case... I wouldn't want of it for free.

    I have trouble believing that i5 is 15% faster than Core 2 Quads

    It is :) There's a whole lot more to it than just the memory controller (new Lynnfield core). Pretty much every benchmark on the web or benchmarking app will confirm that (passmark, everest, pcmark, etc)

    LGA775 isn't dead yet, DDR2 isn't dead yet, and i'll be damned if i can find something an i5/i7 can do that my Core 2 Quad can't (realistically)

    But why buy previous generation everything when you're really not saving anything (and is of less value and less future proof)?

    You don't quite need a i5 750 to play games, for sure. A dual core would be plenty for most games. But as far as quad cores go, your options are pretty limited:

    -Core 2 Quad, slower than i5's and not really cheaper -- I'd buy one today if they were priced better, but I could upgrade to a i5 for just about the same price as a slower C2Q would cost me (selling my old parts to pay for part of the upgrade)

    -i5/i7 good but definitely not cheap

    -AMD's offerings -- may not be as fast, but great value if you don't need the absolute fastest e.g. Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 vs AMD Athlon II X4 620: the C2Q is like 3 or 4% faster (not really noticeable outside of benchmarks) but costs 50% more... The AMD CPU has very similar speed, but for $50 less (I'm a bit tempted to sell my C2D to buy one of those)

  6. you could just go with Core 2 Quad. They're getting cheaper

    Not really. The i5 750 is $200, and the cheapest non-crippled quad core (with VT and all) is the Q9400 at $190 which is slower, uses old DDR2, the old socket 775 and all that (not exactly future proof). Totally not worth it for a $10 savings. The i5 is also a better value (costs 5% more, but is 15% faster)

  7. Were these installed on a full retail version of Windows 7 or was this an upgrade from XP or Vista to 7?

    Full retail, clean install.

    Are all of your USB devices working properly besides this one?

  8. Our Wacom tablets are working just fine under Win7 x64 (I believe I was using an older driver last time -- WacomTablet_605-7.exe). I don't ever remove anything, so I'm no help there.

  9. My favorite host based firewall is no doubt Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, introduced with Vista

    Same here. The built-in firewall is plenty good. I wouldn't switch to a 3rd party firewall even if they all became free and/or open source.

    As for Kerio, it's quited dated (from 2003), and as such likely won't work with "modern" OS'es, or IPv6, or x64 versions of Windows, probably doesn't integrate with Windows (and other apps as well, or using scripts, or group policy, or ...) nearly as well as Windows' own and so on.

    Lots of people seem to like Comodo. I can't be bothered to even try it.

  10. Wow that's worse than SecuROM!

    It would be, if there was any truth to it. Even the link he posted showed it wasn't the case (false positive from one particular vendor), and that information was there by the time he posted it....

    My MW2 Graphic is not smooth..

    In The Root menus of game, the graphic's good n mouse pointer moves quite well..

    but while playing, it slows down..

    NEED HELP !!!!!

    Like nitropuppy already said, you have slow laptop onboard video, and there's not much you can do about it.

    It has Intel GMA 4500MHD onboard video which is quite bad for games (even for onboard video). It gets 697 in 3dmark06, whereas fairly popular video cards (available under $100, nothing extreme) like the nvidia 8800GT and 9800GT score about 12000 (not quite 20 times faster).

    If you look at some benchmarks around the web like this, you'll quickly see it's inadequate for the vast majority of recent games (even with the settings on the lowest level) e.g. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Unreal Tournament III, Left 4 Dead, F.E.A.R. 2... But it'll run some older games like Counter-Strike: Source just fine, but that would be a game from 2004. Then again, it's way underpowered for some other games from that era e.g. Doom 3 (also from 2004)

  11. This is a more simple way to code for VB.net the OS version

    So many ways to skin a cat :)

    This one doesn't work though. And if it actually worked, it would test for Windows 7 (and 2008 R2) or later.

    You're taking a string made from all kinds of stuff (including the 2 simple numbers we want to check), and then use a math operator to compare the 2 different strings (I wouldn't say using greater or equal between anything else than 2 numbers "simpler" than what I had posted honestly), and it doesn't work.

    VersionString on Win7 is "Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7600.0". Compare that against string any version number, and it'll return true regardless (i.e. try Environment.OSVersion.VersionString >= "9.9.9999" or such, as M is 0x4D and 9 is 0x39)

    Then again, one could consider checking if the string is exactly what they expect it to be but it tends to change (depending on service pack and such) so it might be error prone. Using Major and Minor will work as expected.

  12. No point in trying to translate vbscript that uses WMI (it doesn't translate well at all -- normally WMI is used rather differently in .NET), especially when there's a "native" way to do it without any of that. Even if I wasn't doing it the normal way, I'd sooner PInvoke GetVersionEx. And even if I was using WMI, I still wouldn't use SoftwareLicensingService as it's only available Vista and later OS'es and as such the code (as-is) will fail (as in crash) on XP, and the Win32_OperatingSystem class is meant precisely for this.

    In C# you'd simply do this:

    System.OperatingSystem osVer = System.Environment.OSVersion;
    if (osVer.Version.Major == 6 && osVer.Version.Minor == 1)
    {
    //running Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2
    }

    If my memory serves me well (haven't done any VB at all in the last couple of years), it would be translated into VB.Net like so:

    Dim osVer As System.OperatingSystem = System.Environment.OSVersion
    If osVer.Version.Major = 6 AndAlso osVer.Version.Minor = 1 Then
    'running Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2
    End If

  13. That just isn't possible. You have to have physical access to the packets to capture them. You can't capture packets that aren't sent to you.

    You can run something like wireshark on the other machine (netsh also works for newer machines), or you can use advanced features (port mirroring and such) in some modern network equipment to make it easier for you.

  14. You need to read the old settings from the "old screen" and re-program them on the new one, by using a hardware flash programmer for 24S02 series chips.

    That most likely wouldn't help.

    Either:

    -the chip is good but the data is corrupted; in which case copying the corrupted data to a new chip won't solve anything... it needs to be reprogrammed, but where to get the valid data?

    -the chip is defective; can't get valid data from it which causes the problem, in which case reprogramming another one with the same thing wouldn't help

    -the chip is good and you have proper data on it, in which case the chip isn't be the source of the problems in the first place

    Flashing an eeprom over I2C is the easy part here ;) The hard part is finding valid data to put on the chip (old or new), and perhaps soldering SMD parts if you're not used to it and/or don't have the proper equipment

  15. Like it was said before, you do want to check if it exists first. Throwing an exception is expected behavior when you try to delete something that doesn't exist.

    You may still want to add some error handling, particularly to handle the DirectoryNotFoundException exception (it might still happen) as well as IOException (will be thrown if the directories aren't empty and various other reasons) and possibly also UnauthorizedAccessException (thrown if you don't have sufficient permissions to delete it e.g. NTFS ACLs preventing it)

    As for deleting directories that may not be empty, the Delete method is overloaded, and it's probably better to use the other overload (the one with a bool), and you don't want to repeat too much of the code all over again, so you'd want to create a function similar to this (I've included XML comments, which is something else you should look into -- look at what intellisense pops up when you write "NukeDir(" somewhere):

    /// <summary>
    /// Deletes a directory if it exists, and handles the related exceptions
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="dir">the directory name to delete</param>
    private void NukeDir(string dir)
    {
    if (Directory.Exists(dir))
    {
    try
    {
    Directory.Delete(dir, true);
    }
    catch (DirectoryNotFoundException)
    {
    //handle the error whichever way you want
    }
    catch (IOException)
    {
    //handle the error whichever way you want
    }
    catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
    {
    //handle the error whichever way you want
    }
    }
    }

    and simply call it any way you like in your button click event handler e.g.:

    string basePath = Environment.CurrentDirectory;
    string dirToDelete = basePath + @"\abc\def";
    NukeDir(dirToDelete);
    NukeDir(basePath + @"\something\else");

    Also, it looks like there's a LOT of namespaces at the top you don't need (unless there is more code you didn't show us). I don't see the point of the Thread.Sleep either (if you included them for debugging, why not step through the code manually instead?)

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