Aegis

What's the difference ? Is one better than the other?

It's really a matter of personal preferences. If you are an overclocker, then the LANParty will be better. If you're just trying to save money and get a decent board, the first one is better.

@kalo If you have insufficient memory to run a game, a popup appears informing you and you will be unable to run the game (though I doubt that any gamer will try to play on a system with less than 1GB of memory). If you have a 56K or anything else below Cable/DSL, then your packets will fragment heavily, thus degrading performance.

Another choice: Opteron 170 or X2 4200+ if I do decide to go with the 6800GS. X2 4200+ has a higher clock, but only 2x512KB L2 cache.

Do you have a pic without the plastic over it? And was the IHS making contact with the core when you removed it? I don't want to take unnecessary risks...

Is the Thermalright SI-120 any good? And what fan should I pair it up with for maximum cooling and minimum noise?

I've heard the IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) on an Opteron does not contact the core well. Is this a rumor or is it true? If it is, how do I go about removing it safely?

I have a budget of $1400.00 for the overall computer, including tax ($1285 without). Already have 2GB of RAM ($210) and plan to get 2 Raptors ($280). The rest of the money goes to the case, fans and heatsinks, motherboard, DVD drive, USB drive, headphones, processor, and video card.

I have the choice of buying an Opteron 170 or X2 3800+. If I buy the X2, then I can afford a graphics card upgrade to 7800GT. With the Opteron, I'll be stuck with 6800GS. Which one should I choose? I need to build this computer for professional work such as Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as for gaming.

grafx1's is amazing! Only thing I have to say is that the start menu should be updated to the new December builds. A close competitor was harunaksoy, only problem being that it was a bit plain and didn't match Vista's colors.

@tom_vilsack I'm planning to have no page file. Reason for this is that a page file runs slower than memory. Although this normally would cause application compatibility issues, games usually don't require a page file. @hoak I don't want to turn this into a big debate, but this article is quite helpful, as it still applies to Server 2003 and XP. http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index...&ArticleID=2816 Basically, the only difference with Server 2003 that optimizes performance is that the threads are never paged to file, which might be what you were saying with improved thread management.

Nice bank account .

@hoak Server 2003 support will of course be added. But it is worth mentioning that Server 2003 doesn't have an enhanced memory manager or fewer dependencies. What it does have is better security, which comes in handy with an OS that you're most likely not going to be able to patch. And for those of you doing your Christmas shopping, please note the system requirement on the front page. The issue for the week is whether to use a 64-bit OS or not...

Why all of this hate against RealTek?

THE LAUNCH of Opterons for Socket 939 was obviously just a smoke in the mirror. The complete stock of Opterons model number 14x and 16x (dual-core) dissapeared from e-tailers and retailers, with hundreds of overclockers buying even six or eight CPU's at the same time. Reason: Opteron, a 1MB L2 cache processor was priced lower than Athlon 64 models with 512KB of L2 cache. Also, those Opteron babies were bad-boys when it comes to cooling, working at 2.7-2.9 GHz with air-cooling - at zero problems, with a lower operating temperature than default-clocked Pentium D 840. Source: http://theinquirer.net/?article=28250

Removing the system would be bad, as there would be no easy way for us to tell if some noob who hadn't contributed anything to the community just takes advantage of the forums.

@Zxian Maybe you could make a new tag such as [Project]?

here you are: Vista Task Manger system files take about 80 MB of Ram... Hmm...80 you say? I see 800MB .

@tommyp It's not, the moderator of the forums may have not thoroughly read through the post before deciding that it did not comply with the rules . @tom_vilsack No, Mindows wasn't even suppose to go public, but due to popular demands, it did. Truth to be told, Mindows was more of a test to see how far Windows could be slimmed down. What I thought to be the smallest installation possible turned out to be false, as GE is already 20MB, with the entire installation, not just the system32 folder.

Maybe they could remove all of the useless junk and slim it down to WMP 6 style .

Most games have autopatchers though...

@atomizer Care to elaborate on that ? And I'm thinking of integrating Diskeeper 10 with GE. Maybe a stripped down version that won't do anything except defrag and then ask Diskeeper Corporation for permission .

XP-GE is meant to be even smaller than Mindows, having but ~3 directories in its Windows folder and ~3MB registry. Although the stats are bound to change, this is a much more impressive base than Mindows. In other news, I'm debating whether I should add in browser support or not...

Not even during gaming? And I've run into some rebate issues (like finding the UPC code) for the memory. Though I haven't solved it yet, one thing I've learned is that the OCZ staff is great! I sent an email off to tech. support and someone with good english responded within 30 minutes of that email ! Very pleased with OCZ .

Yes I regret that I didn't do my research beforehand...it was an impulse buy because of it's low price after rebate and the rebate was ending soon . Unfortunately, after I bought it, another rebate appeared that would've saved me $2 more! And after some more research, I dug up this: http://www.techpowerup.com/memdb/memdetails.php?id=m24 Now I'm just hoping one of these chips turns out to be a good overclocker.