OT: Climbing System Requirements and Specs

[Fyron]

Atrocities said:
According to most game reviewers and hard ware testers, the top of the line ATI and Nvidia cards are vastly superior in quality and performance over their half priced brethin.

Those reviews are full of baloney. Artificial benchmarks are fairly useless. All that the current generation top of the line lets you do is run at best settings. Last generation's top of the line is generally going to be 90%+ of best settings, which is still practically the same. Go back two generations and you might lose the latest useless buzzword feature (like HDR), but the game will still look great and play extremely well.

One thing im missing is a proper soundcard. I think i will get an Audigy ZS 2 soon.

That's not a proper sound card, however. Sure, it can spit out a lot of mediocre quality sound, but it is pricey. Better to go with a card like a M-Audio Revolution.

[Atrocities]

This is why I love coming here. You guys always know more than I and that usually results in me saving money.

I can upgrade the video card in this HP POS so long as it is an AGP card. Man I can remember when AGP first came into play and it was the Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Now its worthless again... WTF? Everything is going to PCI - Express. This has to be some kind of gimic to force people into buying new MB and Video Cards.... Kinda of like changing gas powered cars to nitrogen or something... Must buy a whole new car or replace the motor you have in order to run the new, and only, fuel available.

[Fyron]

There are still going to be AGP cards available for at least a few years...

[Renegade 13]

Atrocities said:
Kinda of like changing gas powered cars to nitrogen or something... Must buy a whole new car or replace the motor you have in order to run the new, and only, fuel available.

I wish is was possible to make a car that could be powered by nitrogen! After all, about 76% of the atmosphere is nitrogen. Unfortunately, it's a rather stable element, and wouldn't work as a fuel at all.

Now ethanol...that's a fuel we should be using more. Cheap, easy, renewable, environmentally friendly.

Whoops, a little off topic there. Oh well.

You can still find AGP cards, even at the top-of-the-line. But who'd wanna pay that much for top-of-the-line stuff anyways?

[Fyron]

Ethanol would require a huge amount of land to be added for cultivation for any sort of wide-scale use (possibly as much as it takes to make food for 7 people, if this site is reputable), which is not particularly good for the environment either (though obviously in a different way). Ah, tradeoffs. Hmm... a quick search for "ethanol production" found a number of issues with using it as a fuel.

[Atrocities]

FlexFuel cars are already being sold in South America in great numbers. They have an established distribution infrustructure for ethanol fuel and have been selling it for years now.

The myth that we would need huge amounts of land to cultivate bio-fuel is a myth started by the oil companies in order to discourge research into that area. The truth is, you can make ethanol from many crops not just corn.

Alcohol fuel is the best alternative and is what I believe they are using in Brazil at the moment. Remember, the oil companies don't want alternative fuels on the market and have virtually bottomless pockets to keep the anti alternative fuel PR machine going.

"Its bad for the environment." - false
"Its bad for your motor." - False - look to flex fuel engines built by most manufactures now.
"It will cost more to produce." False, look to brazil and see that it is about a 1/3 the cost of gas.
"It will hurt the economy." Untrue, just flat out a lie.

Don't buy into the PR machine funded by the oil companies.

[Atrocities]

AGP vs PCI Express. Which is better and why? Is there really a noticable differance?

[Fyron]

AGP vs PCI Express. Which is better and why? Is there really a noticable differance?

PCI-E is a faster bus than AGP, so you will get better performance with PCI-E.

[Atrocities]

I wonder if my HP POS is PCI Express? I have never looked to be honest with you. What is the major differance between PCI and PCI Express slot? An additional smaller slot or something

[psimancer]

as a computer shop owner for 5 years (1995-2000) and still mildly follow the market

you are correct theyt do make changes every 5 years or so to force a repurchase

example basic motherboard slots

isa vs mca (the pc xt era)
isa was 16 bit mca was vastly better at 32and nearly as fast at data transfer as a pci howwever the isa added two options to compete eisa (extended ) which worked very well and was backward compatible
and vesa an extended slot design that cost more and only 3 slots per machine instead of all eight (thats right EIGHT SLOTS !!!!!) vesa was replaced by pci losing its backward compatible slot design the first instance of a completly non backward compatible design replacing and winning in popularity (note the user base attitude change from tech heads who understood what they were buying and the implications of compatibility and later addons or replacement of a board vs today's userbase that says fix my computer toaster please )then next step was shrinking the motherboard and the case thus forcing fewer slots (cost reduction) now standard at 1 to 3 plus an agp if not a builtin card then as a addon agp the accerlerated graphics port came in to promise faster graphics vs pci slots and now pci express is attempting to replace the agp with an extension of the pci slot standard

the computer industry has to change standards to force business users to change machinery every few years otherwise business the mainstay of the industry would still be running there programs on 80386 computers which can handle most business applications (properly programmed with good tight code) and only purchase faster machines for programs that required the massive bloated power needed for windows and its overblown interface (yes i run wxp pro i havent really become happy with linux like tomany old programs i have)