Recent Posts

3726

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 12, 2005, 09:54 AM »

thank you brotherS and Carol.

i'm still in the position that i'm not sure what to go for. the new system is going to be based around an Asus a8n deluxe or premium motherboard with sata drives - sata II drives if the raid 0 isn't going to be used.

to be precise i'm looking at:

motherboard: Asus a8n nForce4 SLi deluxe (or premium)
cpu: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+
ram: Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL Pro TwinX
graphics: XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3
case: Antec P180 SPCR (the black one)
power supply: Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX 2.0
sound card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition

some bits may change - i'm still undecided on whether to go straight into water-cooling.

regarding the hard drive setup i was looking at:

two of these - Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA 8MB in a raid 0 setup. the idea behind this being that 10,000 with raid 0 is about as fast as i'll get (without scsi).

i would also be using two Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II as the storage drives.

the question really is, shall i just stick with the samsung sata II drives (this was my original plan) and scrap the raid 0 idea.

raid 1 and other configurations aren't really what i'm after - it's just the speed freak machine i was after.

i will be video editing in Adobe Premiere and encoding in other programs as well but as i'm used to doing this on a amd xp2200 machine i think any new piece of hardware is going to seem fast to me. hence my uncertainty about raid 0.

Carol has certainly given me something to ponder on regarding the raid 0 array - maybe i should get three or four Western Digital Raptors. the price is something i could just about swallow if i'm going to see an incredible performance increase.

as for the hardware or software raid management - you know, i didn't even realise this. i shall have to investigate - if the Asus motherboard doesn't have hardware raid management then i guess it's not worth going the raid way.

good point about the installation process with raid - if i get that far i'll definately disconnect the other drives first.

sorry that this is getting so geeky.

this raid business is pretty much the final thing i need to work out then i can start buying.

anymore advice would be greatly appreciated.

(i'm trying to make this new machine as silent as possible - raptor drives aren't going to be good for this so i'm looking at using cases around them. all other components will be cooled with 120mm fans or passive heatsinks or whatever i can get that is meant to be near silent. water-cooling would probably make more sense for this.)

3727

Living Room / nudone's new pc

« Last post by nudone on December 12, 2005, 08:40 AM »

i've been reading a pc hardware forum and making a few posts to get the opinions on the new pc i'll be putting together within the next week or two.

there are a few questions i'd just like to ask DC members as i believe i'll get a less biased response.

i'm going for the highest spec machine i can afford (£3000, it's only money!!!) which will be taking me into new territory (hopefully).

my main question that seems appropriate to ask is: how good is raid 0 - speed wise, i'm not worried about disk failure and losing the data as i'll be backing things up onto non raid drives.

i wouldn't ask such a daft question as to how quick raid 0 is, but what make me wonder was that a uk computer magazine mentioned that raid 0 wasn't' that big a deal compared with the speed of the latest hard drives (in a non raid 0 configuration). this sounded odd to me but it made me wonder.

i'm looking to get two Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM's and use them in the raid 0 setup. this would then be used for my operating system, games, large programs and video encoding/editing. i'll also have a couple of 250 drives for storage purposes and other video editing.

does this sound like a reasonable setup so far? i would like to dual boot into at least another operating system (maybe have 3 if can get away with it - Carol's setup sounded like a good system when separating operating systems for video, etc)

can i put more than one operating system onto a raid 0 setup? or would i have to use the 'storage' hard drives.

other than that, can i ghost the operating system on a raid 0 (i'll need to back it up for sure as i'm always ruining my operating system).

can i partition the raid 0 drives?

i'm sure these will be quite basic questions - i'm hoping Carol will be able to answer them if no one else can.

anyway, thanks for that so far.

3728

Find And Run Robot / Re: TalkAboutShareware thread

« Last post by nudone on December 12, 2005, 04:23 AM »

agreed, it looks like a positive outcome to me.

3729

Living Room / Re: Your owned computer history/upgrade path

« Last post by nudone on December 11, 2005, 02:08 PM »

atari 2600 (i know it's not a computer - just wanted to point out i've still got it and it works!) -> sinclair zx spectrum -> commodore 64 -> atari st -> 386 -> 486 -> pentium 133 -> amd 500 -> pentium 3 -> amd xp2200 (current machine) -> amd athlon 64 x2 dual core 4800+ (by the end of this week, yep, buying my own christmas present, sad eh?)

sorry, but i really can't remember the years - it's hard enough trying to remember the model numbers.

a few other computers (pentium 2's and the like) lying around the place not worth even turning on - i'd throw them away but it would be unfair to the environment. oh, and a couple of laptops - pentium 2 and pentium 4. er, pocket pc ipaq 5500. you know what - i still ain't got enough 

wr975's post reminded me i had an amiga 500 also.

3730

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com swag (shirts and stuff)

« Last post by nudone on December 11, 2005, 03:08 AM »

I want one of the thongs with "Donations Welcome" on it

ha ha, nice.

3731

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com swag (shirts and stuff)

« Last post by nudone on December 10, 2005, 05:47 PM »

very cool.

3732

Older Newsletters / Re: Columnist Central

« Last post by nudone on December 10, 2005, 02:05 PM »

yeah, good idea, it would be nice to read new things from VRGrrl and the rest. i'm beginning to miss the columns now.

hopefully they will be read by more people this time around.

3733

Living Room / Re: Ricky Gervais new audio show mp3 (from the british version of The Office)

« Last post by nudone on December 10, 2005, 08:31 AM »

thanks for the link Carol, i'll certainly subscribe to that.

any takers on the DVD i mentioned above? Carol? mouser? anyone else? i don't mind coughing up for the postage and disks - i'd just be happy knowing i've helped spread a little happiness.

3734

Living Room / Re: Ricky Gervais new audio show mp3 (from the british version of The Office)

« Last post by nudone on December 10, 2005, 03:35 AM »

hey, mouser, glad to hear you like Ricky Gervais.

i've something you may be interested in: i've a dvd containing the first tv series he did over here (before the office). it's called 'Meet Ricky Gervais' - he was relatively unknown at the time, only appearing in short slots on other people's shows. it's more in the style of his radio show than 'the office' but it's still quality viewing - i'd say it's some of his funniest stuff but you might miss out on some of the references as he's interviewing UK celebrities.

(you can't buy this DVD from anywhere as it was never released - it's just a straight copy from the TV as it was broadcast.)

anyway, let me know and i'll get it to you 

3735

Find And Run Robot / Re: TalkAboutShareware thread

« Last post by nudone on December 09, 2005, 04:24 AM »

i've just read the entire thread. what can i say? some of mouser's comments were humbling (nothing new there) and some of their replies are so adamant that the 'donationware' concept is so utterly flawed it's enraging.

when i can think of a calm response i'll try and make a post over there.

3736

Find And Run Robot / Re: TalkAboutShareware thread

« Last post by nudone on December 08, 2005, 12:30 PM »

  mouser, you are such a nice bloke. you're right, of course. your diplomatic approach is always going to be of the greatest benefit towards donationcoder.

(i just find some of the "it's not really freeware" comments, like on that site, are more akin to just ungrateful begging. sorry, i'm starting to wind myself up again.)

3737

Find And Run Robot / Re: TalkAboutShareware thread

« Last post by nudone on December 08, 2005, 10:04 AM »

that page is just showing posts from the usenet group alt.freeware.

that makes sense then, i was a little confused trying to navigate my way through their site, wondering where your post was.

just reading a couple of their remarks does make me wonder if these sorts of complainers are worth bothering about. they don't appear to be interested in supporting anything - they just want a 'free' piece of software, FREE to the point that they never have to be troubled spending a few moments of their precious time 'obtaining' a license key (either by asking or by donating).

the author of the freeware is of absolutely no importance to them and their philosophy on 'freeware' sounds entirely selfish and one sided.

i hope your post (that i've yet to read), mouser, will sway their view. if it doesn't then good luck to them. it's their loss after all - if they'd rather not use Find and Run Robot for the sakes of getting the key for it then i pity them.

3738

Find And Run Robot / Re: TalkAboutShareware thread

« Last post by nudone on December 08, 2005, 06:30 AM »

thank you very much vegas.

3739

Find And Run Robot / Re: TalkAboutShareware thread

« Last post by nudone on December 08, 2005, 05:21 AM »

what's the link, rj ? i'd like to see what kind of petty bickering is going on.

3740

General Software Discussion / Re: Managing Favourites

« Last post by nudone on December 08, 2005, 02:33 AM »

looks like a may as well bite the bullet and go the firefox way 

3741

General Software Discussion / Re: Managing Favourites

« Last post by nudone on December 07, 2005, 05:57 PM »

glad to hear it guys.

what with all the talk of firefox recently i was beginning to wonder if i was deluding myself.

3742

General Software Discussion / Re: Managing Favourites

« Last post by nudone on December 07, 2005, 04:30 PM »

at some point, dan, i'm going to have to try firefox properly - with the right extensions.

i'll perhaps have to do this but i'll offer it up for anyone else that is willing - how about a review comparing the abilities of maxthon and firefox?

okay, i'm sure firefox has more extensions - but maxthon has quite a few 'extra' features straight out of the box.

any other maxthon users around here (i remember Carol being a fan)?

3743

General Software Discussion / Re: Managing Favourites

« Last post by nudone on December 07, 2005, 04:17 PM »

can't honestly remember what i've tried (sorry) but i'm using 'spurl' at the moment as i want to access the same favorites from my place of work as i do when at home.

with a bit of messing about you can have spurl running with maxthon so that it appears down the left-hand side of your browser (it should work with internet explorer without the faffing about).

spurl allows you to attach comments/notes to the individual links and it is meant to be fast for searching through (i've no compliants). you also have access to your favorites from anywhere you can get online by using the spurl homepage so that's also a plus.

the main thing for me is that it works with maxthon and it's actually inside the browse - just a right click on the page you are viewing and you can 'spurl' it.

i'll have to try xrayz.co.uk - i imagine it's a similar thing to spurl???

3744

Official Announcements / Re: CarolHaynes and BrotherS have been made moderators on the forum

« Last post by nudone on December 07, 2005, 03:20 AM »

congratulations to Carol and brotherS. both well deserved and perhaps long overdue.

3745

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls, What you need to know...

« Last post by nudone on December 03, 2005, 10:24 AM »

great post PhilKC.

can't wait to read the next installment.

3746

Finished Programs / Re: idea: give a driveltter a name say E DVD-writer

« Last post by nudone on November 29, 2005, 01:22 PM »

briliant idea and brilliant (and swift) execution.

this sort of thing just makes me wonder why it isn't part of the operating system already. seems like an obvious thing to want after you've seen it done.

3747

Official Announcements / Re: New Review 11/28/05 - Dialog Box Extenders

« Last post by nudone on November 29, 2005, 01:18 PM »

  nice to see you getting back into the swing of things with the reviews, mouser. nice job as always. (just wish i could make up my mind which to go for.)

3748

Living Room / Re: Make movies using videogame engines - Machinima

« Last post by nudone on November 29, 2005, 01:02 PM »

personally i think this is the future of movies and it's pretty darn cool:

(hopefully) the unreal 3 engine will be out some time next year. after you've seen what it can do, it's not hard to believe there will be a machinima movie making revolution.

unreal 3 movie demo (poor sound quality): http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/15774 (the video isn't fantastic quality but if you look at the realism of the 3D models and the shadow effects you'll appreciate that it makes ALL other 3D engines look stupid, this really is NEXT generation graphics).

3749

DesktopCoral / Re: Multiple screens?

« Last post by nudone on November 26, 2005, 09:31 AM »

good idea.

3750

Site/Forum Features / Re: irc channel now lists new posts as they occur

« Last post by nudone on November 23, 2005, 03:35 AM »

brilliant idea.