Off Topic Thread V2.0

ShadowHearth

Sarz91 wrote: »

Yeah pretty much. I'm still on the first set I bought about 3-4 years ago so the design may have improved and I may be better off just buying a new set when these go on the blink again.

On another topic, how are you finding the PS4? Is it worth picking one up for Destiny alone?

He he, I would be the worst person to ask. Since I got wii U I have not turned on my PS4. I still love PS4, but even now I can play all the stuff on PC, that I could be playing on PS4. Plus why should I pay 70eu per game, that I can get for 20eu on PC.
As for Destiny, I am not really excited about it m8. I was never fan of Halo games, so Bungie is not some sort off Icon of boners. It looks okay and I might pick it up at some point, but I doubt I will bother on launch.
If you are interested in Destiny, then next gen is the only way to go. Look at this comparising video and PS4 just looks plainly better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjrVH9yuPYU

Solitaire

As with all Boards.ie Mega-Threads (yes we have one in here!) the Off-Topic thread has died from its own obesity! But not to fear, for here it has been reborn! Dedicated to ED E for claiming the 10,000th post in the previous thread! murderer

And for a more seamless experience here be the last post from the old thread shamelessly copypasta'd ^

ShadowHearth

Sorry, could not resist!

Luck100

This thread is logically impossible. All allowed posts must stick to the topic of the thread. The topic is "off topic". So, if you're off topic...you're on topic. But if you're on topic...you're off topic.

game4it70

Luck100 wrote: »

This thread is logically impossible. All allowed posts must stick to the topic of the thread. The topic is "off topic". So, if you're off topic...you're on topic. But if you're on topic...you're off topic.

That's far to deep

ED E

glynf

glynf

MSI are showing off their new X99 boards. I think the all black would look deadly in a Silverstone FT05.




More here..

McSasquatch II

Have my eye on that X99 board alright. Doubt I can afford a Haswell-E build though.

Lu Tze

And the first 750ti thats passively cooled has appeared

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GTX_750_Ti_KalmX/

glynf

Oak76 wrote: »

Have my eye on that X99 board alright. Doubt I can afford a Haswell-E build though.

Imagine pricing will be similar to 4820k, 4930k and 4960, it will be interesting to see how much they charge for DDR4 though.

deejer

glynf wrote: »

MSI are showing off their new X99 boards. I think the all black would look deadly in a Silverstone FT05.

Any further news on when the FT05 is being released? Seems like ages since first heard about it.

TheBandicoot

My new graphics card arrived yesterday, was only when I looked at the box I realized that I actually ordered the R9 290- in my head I thought I was getting a 290x! It's the Sapphire Tri-X, I think the X in that confused me.. Still a fine card though, have to get home later and install it.

glynf

deejer wrote: »

Any further news on when the FT05 is being released? Seems like ages since first heard about it.

Supposedly they are trying to release it before September, no fixed date yet though. Thinking of changing the FT02 as well?

WhiskeyGoblin

Lads, what would be a good card for 1080p gaming at High/Ultra settings for about 250/<300?

I feel like the 5850 I have is starting to call it a day for newer games.

TerrorFirmer

R9 280x!

Great value card.

Going from a 5850 is a massive upgrade as well

Should be able to get 50 or 60 for that 5850 as well.

WhiskeyGoblin

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

R9 280x!

Great value card.

Going from a 5850 is a massive upgrade as well

Should be able to get 50 or 60 for that 5850 as well.

I had a 280x but had to send it back Apparently an issue with the batch of cards

cherryghost

Just surpassed 2000 hours of Dota 2. Should I be proud? :P

WhiskeyGoblin

cherryghost wrote: »

Just surpassed 2000 hours of Dota 2. Should I be proud? :P

Burgo

cherryghost wrote: »

Just surpassed 2000 hours of Dota 2. Should I be proud? :P

then again I've just passed 1200 hours of csgo!

nesf

cherryghost wrote: »

Just surpassed 2000 hours of Dota 2. Should I be proud? :P

Well, you now can question someone's mother's sexual habits in half a dozen languages which I suppose is something.

Squaredude

cherryghost wrote: »

Just surpassed 2000 hours of Dota 2. Should I be proud? :P

I've played a grand total of 5 minutes of Dota 2. Just enough time to start up a game and realise I really don't like this game.

deejer

glynf wrote: »

Supposedly they are trying to release it before September, no fixed date yet though. Thinking of changing the FT02 as well?

Yep! Haven't come across a case that I consider a worthy replacement yet and I am hoping this will be it.

Baked.noodle

AnandTech article on midrange desktop builds for AMD and Intel.

Obviously the builds are based on availability in the US, but it should give people an idea of what to buy.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8356/best-desktops-for-under-a-grand

Midrange AMD System
Component Description Price
CPU AMD A10-7850K (4x3.7-4.0GHz, 4MB, 95W, 28nm) $170
Motherboard MSI A88X-G43 $78
RAM Team Vulcan 2x4GB DDR3-2133 CL10 1.65V $78
Storage Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB $84
SSD Crucial MX100 256GB $109
Case Fractal Design Core 3300 $63
Power Supply Rosewill Capstone 450W 80 Plus Gold $60
Subtotal $642
GPU (Optional) Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB $190
GPU (Alternative) Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB $138
Total with GPU $832

Midrange Intel System
Component Description Price
CPU Core i5-4590 (4x3.3-3.7GHz, 6MB, 84W, 22nm) $200
Motherboard ASRock Z97 Anniversary $90
RAM ADATA 2x4GB DDR3-1866 CL10 1.5V $77
Storage Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB $84
SSD Crucial MX100 256GB $109
Case Antec Three Hundred Two $64
Power Supply Rosewill Capstone 450W 80 Plus Gold $60
Subtotal $684
GPU (Optional) Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB $190
GPU (Alternative) Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB $138
Total with GPU $874

Monotype

Not sure I'd get an APU with a graphics card - even though they're listing it as optional to have a GPU.

However, the boards are better for FM2. Very poor selection of mATX and almost non-existant mini-ITX boards for AM3+ around anymore. It seems to be ATX or nothing, unless you want to settle for old chipsets.
I wonder why they don't just throw in an athlon for FM2 instead. Save a bit and it's still the four cores.
http://www.hardwareversand.de/en/Sockel+FM2/157299/AMD+Athlon+X4+760K+Black+Edition+Box%2C+4x+3%2C80GHz%2C+FM2.article

nesf

Not good when a new GPU (770) resulted in the machine not getting to POST and the motherboard needing to be moved to a different series of bios updates for this to get resolved while the update software from MSI insisted I should stay on the older series of updates and that this was up to date while their site suggested the newer series.

At least it's all working now, I hate having issues pre-POST with machines. :P

TerrorFirmer

To be honest, I think those lists are total ****e. Why would you chose an APU when you could buy a dedicated CPU that's as fast for half that price? I know they say the GPU's are optional, but to be honest, the a10 is light years away from mid-range gaming with it's integrated GPU - and when you've got a budget like that, you wouldn't be considering an APU anyway. Dunno what Anandtech are smoking but those are absolutely terrible uses of a decent budget, though the Intel build is decent enough. I reckon there must have been some sort of advertising incentive on their part!

nesf

I can understand the place of APUs in desktops when people want ultra thin, ultra quiet mid-power machines. Not proper gaming machines sure, but for many people dedicated cards are a waste for what they'll be doing. For general gaming though, yeah I can't understand why someone would go the APU route for a desktop.

LukeS_

Hello lads, do any of you remember an 'old' alternative to Steam regarding the social aspect? I remember it being quite big back around 2005-2008, but can't remember the name of it for the life of me. I remember it having a blue sort of background, friends, chat, achievements, time played, videos, screenshots and the like. Been trying to Google it, seen Playfire and that set me off, but then googling that I'm pretty sure that's not what it was. Driving me mad here, anyone any ideas?

nesf

Gamespy? Impulse?

papu

LukeS_ wrote: »

Hello lads, do any of you remember an 'old' alternative to Steam regarding the social aspect? I remember it being quite big back around 2005-2008, but can't remember the name of it for the life of me. I remember it having a blue sort of background, friends, chat, achievements, time played, videos, screenshots and the like. Been trying to Google it, seen Playfire and that set me off, but then googling that I'm pretty sure that's not what it was. Driving me mad here, anyone any ideas?

Xfire?

Monotype

Xfire used to be decent back in the day. I think when it changed hands a few times, it didn't help. Also only supporting steam versions of several games which were also available DRM free didn't help either when they were competing with steam more and more as time went on.

Seaaan

I'm still looking for a second monitor solution that would work in portrait alongside my Qnix. Would one of the Dell ones with pivot, or a cheap BenQ/LG with an arm for both monitors be better in terms of cost and desk space? (I may have made ballsed that question up) I don't really fancy spending over 200€ as, at the end of the day, I only want it for Reddit and the odd browsing without having to leave game window. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

ShadowHearth

Seaaan wrote: »

I'm still looking for a second monitor solution that would work in portrait alongside my Qnix. Would one of the Dell ones with pivot, or a cheap BenQ/LG with an arm for both monitors be better in terms of cost and desk space? (I may have made ballsed that question up) I don't really fancy spending over 200€ as, at the end of the day, I only want it for Reddit and the odd browsing without having to leave game window. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2312hm has a very good stand and it goes in to portrait mode too. Great Monitor, for reasonable price.
Dell in general god good stands and a lot of them go in to portrait mode.

Seaaan

ShadowHearth wrote: »

2312hm has a very good stand and it goes in to portrait mode too. Great Monitor, for reasonable price.
Dell in general god good stands and a lot of them go in to portrait mode.

Amazon seem to be the only stockists of that monitor, and it';s 160£ which is the cheapest of any Dell monitor with pivot. Is that the best solution then, as it'll never be used for gaming? Only other i see is this one with thin bezel for ~180£.

nesf

I've two of these and find them superb: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-UltraSharp-U2412M-inch-Monitor/dp/B005JN9310/ref=pd_sim_computers_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=17R0NXFK2F6AKY1RWZBK

16:10 aspect ratio though, I prefer this but many prefer 16:9 because they're heathens.

Seaaan

nesf wrote: »

I've two of these and find them superb: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-UltraSharp-U2412M-inch-Monitor/dp/B005JN9310/ref=pd_sim_computers_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=17R0NXFK2F6AKY1RWZBK

16:10 aspect ratio though, I prefer this but many prefer 16:9 because they're heathens.

I'm not sure if I could justify the extra 20£ if it's not going to be used for anything other than webpages. Is the extra res noticeable (or is the 16:10 much if a change)

rd1izb7lvpuksx

Speaking of 16:10 monitors, I'm thinking of getting a Portrait-Landscape-Portrait triple monitor setup for work. Does anyone know of any monitors that match in terms of both size and resolution for this kind of thing?

nesf

Seaaan wrote: »

I'm not sure if I could justify the extra 20£ if it's not going to be used for anything other than webpages. Is the extra res noticeable (or is the 16:10 much if a change)

They don't feel as wide and instead feel taller than a 16:9 screen. If you put a 24" 16:10 monitor beside a 24" 16:9 monitor, the 16:10 will be taller and the 16:9 wider. You can get example images of this if you google it (example). In games this isn't a good thing because many, many games are meant for 16:9 and you lose some width on your field of view by having 16:10 and you don't gain any extra height because they just scale up the existing height. Watching films has the exact same issue. For documents though it's nice as usually vertical height is more interesting than width. Ditto browsing webpages.

16:10 used to be the old widescreen format for PCs. Then 16:9 panels became the standard for TVs and the price of 16:9 LCD panels dropped far below than of 16:10 ones when economies of scale kicked in after LCD TVs became hugely popular. So 16:9 took over as the PC widescreen format despite (arguably) the format being worse for "productive uses" of a PC as opposed to consumption of film/tv/games.


Honestly though, if you're quibbling over an extra £20 I would forget 16:10. It's noticeable sure but if you're that price sensitive it probably isn't worth it if you didn't already have a very strong preference for the format and unless you have very specific needs there's little hard advantage in 16:10 over 16:9 for non-gaming use whilst 16:9 definitely has advantages for games and movies over 16:10 due to it being the industry standard.

Seaaan

Hmm the extra width in portrait does sound nice for what I want it for, and £20 is negligible so I'll see I guess. Thanks for help though, you've put me thinking haha

nesf

Portrait? Definitely do 16:10. You *really* want the extra width when you're doing that.

Seaaan

nesf wrote: »

Portrait? Definitely do 16:10. You *really* want the extra width when you're doing that.

Eh, It's only 25€ or so extra, I'll do it. Not buying for a little while yet though, but you've fully convinced me

Baked.noodle

Errata prompts Intel to disable TSX in Haswell, early Broadwell CPUs...

The TSX instructions built into Intel's Haswell CPU cores haven't become widely used by everyday software just yet, but they promise to make certain types of multithreaded applications run much faster than they can today. Some of the savviest software developers are likely building TSX-enabled software right about now.

Unfortunately, that work may have to come to a halt, thanks to a bug—or "errata," as Intel prefers to call them—in Haswell's TSX implementation that can cause critical software failures.

As is customary in such cases, Intel will disable the TSX instructions in current products using a CPU microcode update delivered via new revisions of motherboard firmware. Disabling TSX should ensure stable operation for Haswell CPUs, but those chips will no longer be capable of supporting TSX's features, including hardware lock elision and restricted transactional memory.

Software developers who wish to continue working with TSX will have to avoid updating their systems to newer firmware revisions—and in doing so, they'll retain the risk of TSX-related memory corruption or crashes.

This erratum was evidently discovered quite recently, too late for a fix to be included in the first revision of Intel's upcoming Broadwell Y-series chips. As we reported yesterday, Intel is currently shipping production Broadwell-Y silicon to its customers for use in Core M-based tablets this holiday season. These first production Broadwell chips will also have TSX disabled via microcode.

Update: An Intel spokesperson has provided TR with a brief statement on the TSX erratum, confirming that Intel has "addressed the issue" and "disabled the TSX feature on affected products." He further stated that Intel is "committed to the feature" over the long run and plans to "re-implement it in future processors." We have inquired about how the TSX erratum will affect upcoming Haswell-EP-series server CPUs and will post another update if we learn more.

glynf

I never knew Robin Williams was an avid gamer and built his PC's, another reason to like the guy.

McSasquatch II

glynf wrote: »

I never knew Robin Williams was an avid gamer and built his PC's, another reason to like the guy.

Yeah, he named his daughter Zelda too (they appeared together in an advert for one of the games from the series). Huge Doom fan back in the day as well, apparently.

ShadowHearth

So yeah, I split up with my misses 2 weeks ago. I decided to move out and I have eircom on my name. Still 6 month contract. She does not want to keep the broadband. So I called eircom and they want 232eu as Cancellation Fee!!! :eek: So basicly they want me to pay for 4 months++ of broadband, out of 6...

glynf

If it's likely that you are getting eircom again, can they put the contract on hold and transfer it to a new phone number /account? Might be worth asking.

ED E

ShadowHearth wrote: »

So yeah, I split up with my misses 2 weeks ago. I decided to move out and I have eircom on my name. Still 6 month contract. She does not want to keep the broadband. So I called eircom and they want 232eu as Cancellation Fee!!! :eek: So basicly they want me to pay for 4 months++ of broadband, out of 6...

Theyll move the contract with you to a new premises.

ShadowHearth

ED E wrote: »

Theyll move the contract with you to a new premises.

I know that, but most likely I will be just renting a room now, now a house. So I won't need it. It's balls...

Lu Tze

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I know that, but most likely I will be just renting a room now, now a house. So I won't need it. It's balls...

Two rooms surely, all that Lego has to go somewhere!

ShadowHearth

Lu Tze wrote: »

Two rooms surely, all that Lego has to go somewhere!

All my nerdy stuff will stay behind for now, only taking Pc. TV , consoles and normal stuff.. At least until I sort out good place. Who knows, I might get a good place with enough space for all my stuff.
There are 2 girls that want me to move in with them, as they are looking for a house right now. So in that case I will be able to transfer eircom. Otherwise, I am going to my buddies place, who lives in the middle of nowhere with barely any internet and he has already eircom...