Waiting is the hardest part.
Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 - 11:07am
I've recently assembled my previously discussed system and despite several snafu's on my part (namely WinXP thinking my SATA was a SCSI drive and me not figuring it out) and really bizzare internet issues at work (like not being able to access Maxtor's website) it's all ready to go.
Now I just need to find the time to install Far Cry and UT2k4 on that beast. 
Oh. Does anyone know where I can order a Logitech MX510 today?
I can't seem to find a vendor that has it instock.
"If Blizzard announces a subscription fee for Diablo III we will have to build a second Internet to make room for all the complaining." - muttonchop
Best Buy I understand has an exclusive on the MX510 for a period of time..
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
WHHAAAATTT?!!!!!
See my post in the other thread for my thoughts on Best Buy at this particular moment.
"If Blizzard announces a subscription fee for Diablo III we will have to build a second Internet to make room for all the complaining." - muttonchop
Well...my Razer Vipers are awaiting my return from MD at my house..
If you wait until tonight I''ll post my impressions of them..
http://www.razerzone.com/viper.html
Unless you insist on ergonomic or extra buttons on your mice the Viper may just be what you need..
1000dpi...optical..rubber grips...<drool>
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
Half of my new system is in a Fedex Truck. Waiting sucks. I second your emotions about Bestbuy too.
Is there much performance difference with a SATA drive?
There is no performance increase with a 7200 rpm SATA drive over a 7200 IDE drive..
Now..the Raptors at 10K rpm are a different story..
There you will see a significant boost...especially with the 74gb version..
That competes in desktop applications comperably with 15.3K SCSI drives..
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
Ok, cool. I''m gonna pick up a Western Digital WD1200JB 120 GB 7200rpm drive today. I''ll look at the price of the raptor, but I''m guessing it''ll be out of my price range.
But the cable is small!
"If Blizzard announces a subscription fee for Diablo III we will have to build a second Internet to make room for all the complaining." - muttonchop
I just spent $400 for two 74GB Raptors in Raid 0. I have to wait for everybody elses map to load in UT2k4. The speed is nice, but I''m a hardware junky.
BF2
BF2142
Until the month of April I believe, not sure exactly WHEN in April it will be more widely available.
Certis beat me to it. - Elysium
How do you guys justify spending so much for faster hard drives? I mean personally I have never been sitting at my computer and said ''Gee this hard disk is just slowing down loadtimes way too much''. Given any type of limit on your spending budget I would rather have a larger hard drive vs. a slightly faster one, or an upgrade to almost any other component. Of course if budget were no issue I am sure I could find some kind of display device that I would take over the faster hard drives and would make the budget an issue.
PSN ID: Stric9
My parts for my new system are arriving here at work today. I thought they might make it in yesterday but somehow it took them 24 hours to get from dallas to plano(a suburb 30 minutes north of downtown dallas).
The wait is driving me nuts.. and even worse is the fact that I''ve got a continuing education course tonite from 6:30 to 8:30 and wedding planning to do tonite.. so I won''t even be able to put it together untill lunch tomorrow!!!
This is killing me.. slowly.. and painfully.
Please see the part in my post about being a hardware junky. This was to complete my new Athlon 64 system. I have two computers networked together with a total of 5 hard drives and about 350GB of storage. Also the DVD burner for long term storage. So storage is not a problem. There is no room for a bigger display at my computer desk and my wife would know if I bought a new HDTV.
BF2
BF2142
Fortunately, I don''t have to justify it. I just do it.
As for the larger vs faster issue, my systems are mostly for games, not video editing. I have no clue what I would do with 100+ gb hard drives on multiple systems. My PC''s are networked so I only need my MP3''s stored on one machine to access on both. It comes down to what you use it for I suppose.
All this talk of 74gb Raptors has made me want to upgrade my 36gb ones. Anyone know of any site that rate SATA RAID add-on cards?
Not too long ago I would have agreed with you, but after seeing the kinds of improvements these 10k rpm SATA drives offer over the 7200 rpm drives, and after experiencing the load times of UT2k4 maps...I have to say that it will be worth it to me to get a Raptor for my next system. I have sat so long waiting for maps to load on UT2k4 retail that I join in the game about the time the 2nd node is being captured.
Tobyus
Still searching for the perfect game...
Last edited by Tobyus on Sep 14, 2006 - 02:06 PM; edited 1,000,000 times in total
Of course, there''s always the RTR-720 Mark II...
http://www.gamingmouse.com
The website has a bunch of marketing hooey, but I bought an earlier version of this at a store a year or so again and it''s fantastic. Takes a few days to adjust to the throw distance and set your sensitivity, set up profiles and all that, but it''s just fantastic when you get it going. I upgraded when the new one showed up.
Fully programmable, down to random number generators (for example, there''s a sample code sequence that you can tie to a button that will randomly vary your movement from a baseline for several seconds - automated sniper evasion in games like CoD) and multiple keystroke sequences or even programs on push, hold and release, as well as timers. 4 top buttons, 3 side buttons, can use keys to increase the number of seperate functions (ctrl-button 1, for example). Rubber grip all around. Ergonomic. Choice of LED colors, button LED colors and top texture/color. Inset button for your own logo on top. 1600 DPI, adjustable. Stores up to 32 profiles *in* the mouse.
I barely scratch the functions, but just for the ergo side alone, it''s helped my mouse wrist tremendously. Very cool mouse. They also have a special mouse pad that you can wax (!) to get your desired degree of smooooove.
And it comes in a ""Can O'' Whoopass""! Can''t beat that.
Robear
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.
I guess it''s a personal preference - it''s exactly opposite for me. I don''t care about getting > 30 fps, or being able to see every single leaf on a tree 3km away in a game, but it drives me crazy when I have to wait... and wait... and wait... for XP to load, a game to finish saving, or a program to compile. Much moaning/wailing/gnashing of teeth ensues at that point.
Everything can be debated, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's debatable.
--Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
All this talk about mice.
I want to know what mouse Instagib Master Zedian is using.
BF2
BF2142
Yeah, I''m a little cranked at Fedex. They shipped my parts out on Friday. I tracked it all weekend and watched it travel through CA to TX. It made it to houston, my city, on Sunday at 5 AM. I know it''s not gonna move on Sunday and there''s no activity on Monday. Then, on Tuesday at 8:41 AM it lists it as ""On Fedex Truck for delivery"", followed by ""Package not due for delivery"" at 8:45 AM. So, it''s just sitting there all day because it''s not scheduled to be at my house until Wednesday. I paid for 3 day (business days). Isn''t Friday, Monday and Tuesday three business days? Aaargh. The wait is driving me nuts, too.
Hard drive speed makes a huge difference in compiling code. I can also imagine it would be a huge boost to video editing and photoshop stuff.
Now what would be funny is if one of the old infinity engine games loaded sections in like half a second. Now that would be cool!
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
Sure but having more hard drive space on one system means being able to leave more games installed on that machine. To me re-installing a game is really annoying, and having to delete a game from my system that I am still pseudo playing is even more annoying. In my current system I have 2 200GB hard disks and have never been happier.
I have never had this experience with any game, although I have only played the demo version of UT2K4 so maybe it''s something specific to that game.
But still I don''t understand it, the drives aren''t twice as fast are they? Yet capacity wise they are much less than half as big. I mean wouldn''t a couple high performance 200GB drives in a raid array make a lot more sense?
PSN ID: Stric9
I am starting to get the impression that I play a lot fewer titles than most folks here. I''ve never had more than 32gb of data on any single hard drive. In fact, the bigger my hard drives, the more lazy I am about keeping them clean. If you like big drives, that''s cool. I just don''t need much space, and I do want speed.
not sure I like the form factor...but I''m intruiged... I''m ordering one as I type this...
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
That could be true. But if you played say UT2K4 isn''t that about 5 gigs gone right there. I just like to keep as many games on my machine as possible in case I get the urge to go play them again. As I have stated in previous threads I rarely finish games, so if I do get the urge to go play a game that I have stopped playing it''s a pain to have to install it and find my save games.
PSN ID: Stric9
I never had this problem with the demo, but I have had this problem many times with the retail game. I think the problem is that the maps in the demo were some of the smallest maps in the game, and alot of the retail maps are absolutely huge! Some of the onslaught maps feel like they never end...even when you are flying or driving a really fast vehicle. I believe that Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield vietnam both have annoyingly long load times as well, so this is definitely not something that I would associate only with UT2k4, it''s just that UT2k4 is the worst on load times for those big maps.
Tobyus
Still searching for the perfect game...
Last edited by Tobyus on Sep 14, 2006 - 02:06 PM; edited 1,000,000 times in total
Yeah, but I don''t have very many 5 gig games. Also I always have a second hard drive for storage, and older games that don''t require much storage speed like Diablo 2.
Having fast hard disks is really useful. I have a Quantum Atlas 10Krpm SCSI for my music recording. I also use it for Photoshop cache and C++/java coding. It REALLY makes a difference. I wish I had enough space on it to install XP... I used to run 2000 on it and the startup time was real fast. Plus the install was almost twice as fast, the hard disk was writing/reading so fast that it made an uninterrupted sound instead of bits of sound!
"A 'critic' is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally." - Robert Heinlein
My 8mb cache 7200 rpm hard drive loads the maps in under 15 to 20 seconds last I checked. I can justify saving the money I would spend on a faster drive to put towards ram and processor power.
As for needing very large hard drive space, I think 60 to 80 gigs is enough for me. When I have kids and start video editing and burning home movies then I could see myself buying 250+ gigs of space.
Xbox Live: Kooter06
Guru,
You really need to read the doc that shows how to hold the thing. A good forearm support is pretty essential for the ergo to show. Basically, you ground the outside of your palm, thumb side facing up, then you can grasp it with the thumb and fourth finger. Or third finger if your hand is big. It''s pretty natural that way, but very different from other mice, since you can''t use your palm at all to drive it. I don''t use the side buttons, but some folks like them.
They have an updated programming interface that is point and click, or you can write your own stuff. I find adjusting the sensitivity very important for the fast games. if I leave the mouse that 1600 DPI in something like BFV, I can spin like mad, but when something startles me every little twitch gets sent to the screen and I die writhing wildly.
But for photoshopping and such, full sensitivity is just great.
It''s an interesting toy, the kind of thing you fuss with for a while then wonder how you did without it. Sort of like the old TM gear was.
Robear
"Sometimes I go around saying, 'Kommisar Paulson has seized the commanding heights of the economy!'" - Paul Krugman, asked if recent changes to banking are socialistic.