DarthFettDude607

I guess I don't know the whole story (if there's some prior reading I was supposed to do, forgive me for having failed to do so lol). Anyway, why are you making the case switch (EDIT: Just read on the data sheet that that's a micro-ATX. An 8600GT and a bigger PSU would probably be fairly cramped in there-- at any rate, just follow Gamerdude's advice, he seems to have cornered that pretty well already)? Sadly, I guess my post is rather useless... all the advice I could offer you is fairly moot since you're using (what I consider to be) borderline ancient hardware... For a single core, 3.0ghz is pretty good and you can probably squeeze some juice out of it still... but God, if I was in your position I'd just abandon my upgrade plans and stow away some cash for a better rig. I just assembled a mid-quality gaming PC for my guests that only ran me $400 after rebates, and it could easily run circles around your machine (not intended to sound like a braggart, it's just something to consider). Send me a PM if you're interested at all in assembling a new rig, I don't want to get into the nit and grit of it directly on the forums... and of course if you're not, just ignore me lol.

This sounds like it would fit perfectly in a Kevin Smith movie!

Kind of reminds me of how Jim Rome takes the time out of his show to needlessly bash on soccer every now and then.

Bump for much needed discussion at the early hours of the morning. The appeal to WoW for me initially came when Jon (SG) introduced me to it back in August '05. WoW was just under a year old at the time, and I'd been hearing nothing but good things about it. On top of that, I'd always been interested in Warcraft lore since I'd played WC2, and he had a free account lying about for me, so I picked it up. WoW was my first MMO experience following Phantasy Star Online from way back in the day, and given that PSO was mostly "instanced" into small parties and lacked that true MMO mechanic, I really had no idea what I was getting into, but I've been more or less hooked ever since. WoW is astonishingly simple in its game mechanics-- in fact, it's fairly bare bones compared to many of the RPGs that have been on the market, MMO or otherwise, but it's (I don't care what you nugz say) affordable and easy to pick up. Duckboy also hit the nail on the head: the game has more of a pseudo-fantasy atmosphere than a "ye olde medieval"-fantasy atmosphere. It's hard to explain without getting in-depth, but Blizzard effortlessly blends various types of styles that would usually be considered unique only to a specific genre (like sci-fi, for instance) into one giant fondue pot of eye candy and good gameplay. The game can wear on you once you've logged enough time into it, and I have consequentially gone on hiatus from the game a few times now, ranging anywhere from 4-8 months, but it has a lingering allure that keeps the game interesting, whether for better or worse. More recently, Blizzard's made accommodations to the casual player for endgame content at level 70, as well as making the grind from 1-60 easier, so it's a great time to pick the game up and start playing if you've ever been interested before.

Hey now Daniel, it's 50 cents a day-- that is TWO quarters, not one. That's like a 100% difference, might as well be paying a second mortgage.

Diskeeper is my favorite defrag tool out there. I believe you can download a trial from the Diskeeper Corporation website, but it is SO worth purchasing if you have the money. Fantastic product. ssbfalcon recommended Spybot, and I'm going to reinforce that recommendation by adding my own. Another great tool. Also, I know you're looking for upkeep and maintenance tools, but if you're a Firefox user, I highly recommend you download NoScript. Using this with Firefox, I have not had Spybot detect ANY spyware on my computer in the past 5 months.

They put me on that shit once for my wisdom teeth. I seriously lost track of time by almost 9 hours. It was day when I took it and I was flipping out nearly 9 hours later because, as I told my friends, "I don't remember seeing the sun go down..." Anyway, good to hear you're in one piece DB. I got in a wreck at a crosswalk outside of an elementary school once, of all places. Some punkass teenager was "looking for [his] ipod" and didn't see me stopped at the crosswalk while I was waiting for some kids to cross. He would have seriously been in some deep shit if he had pushed me hard enough into those kids, but they were alright.

Myspace, BITCH!

Toss 4chan in the mix and I will lobby for you.

Lets hope he doesn't advocate a second holocaust then. EDIT: This post sucks, the joke is horrible, it's borderline non-sequiturial... I'm... I'm sorry, this just isn't how I thought it would turn out. I don't feel good about it at all. Lets go back to discussing GTA4. My friend says he played free roam mode the other day... I was talking with 2D about this a little while ago and we both were sort of hypothesizing on how fun it would truly be. The actual goal-based game modes have much to offer, I imagine, but free roam seems a bit dry. Now you can play GTA4 at the same time instead of taking turns with your friends! Great? I don't really know. The ceaseless ramping off of objects and murder sprees grew really old in single player, and I don't imagine that having another player doing the exact same things as you would add to the fun factor, but oh well. Ralphy tells me MTA was a jolly good romp back in the day, so I guess if this free roam mode plays similarly, then the same might hold true for it.

This topic title is so damn misleading, Aerosol. I wanted to hear something neato about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, not some world changing atom smasher. MY HEART IS CRUSHED.

Best game evar? Man, Ocarina of Time or GTFO. At any rate, I'll be waiting at the nearest electronics outlet with DW for the PC release, though that will undoubtedly be a significant jump in time from now.

Everyone say happy birthday to Mark the Echidna! THAT'S RIGHT, IT IS DFD'S TURN TO MAKE A BIRTHDAY TOPIC! Oh right sorry, this is about Mark, not me. HB duder!

Pink Floyd - What Shall We Do Now?

That summed things up nicely dani-boi. How's that fishing coming along?

TOTALLY did not see that coming.

22 seconds, then I loaded up Call of Duty 4 lolz

Yar, I downloaded that and tried it out. There was a notable jump in performance at 1280x800 and below, but I usually play games at 1440x900 or 1680x1050, plus those lower resolutions ran fairly decent to start with. Oh well. This is quite true, but there'll probably be an engine even bigger and better that will require technology yet unreleased to run capably. Those new 9000 series cards Nvidia released just a month or so ago are probably the only cards that, for instance, can deliver 60+FPS on Crysis at higher resolutions. As an aside, being a PC enthusiast can be so frustrating and bittersweet when you hardware shop.

Rite, but the engine primarily caters to a would-be realistic game with all the technical aspects it yields. Otherwise, you could just use the Unreal3 engine or, hell, the Source engine (Red, stop taking words out of my mouth!) even and get a much better FPS. Also, I would like to note that this tech demo looks borderline identical to the one they released in early 2007. Wtf did they improve, exactly? Unless it's frame rates, I don't give two shits and a sandwich. And that's not me being pessimistic, just business-like. The engine would be so much better if they could find a way to optimize it to run faster. My PC chews up Crysis (and then spits it out because it's such a garbage game lolz), but I wouldn't honestly ever make anything on its engine. Again, I'm more inclined to go with Source or UEd3. There's certainly a ton of potential with this engine, but from a practical standpoint, it's very meh (and Crysis was not the best game to showcase the engine with, might I add. Not so much that it doesn't have the visual flair and whatnot, but because it just wasn't all that fun, and that can and often does reflect back onto an engine's overall quality).

Couldn't have put it much better myself. The CryEngine is impressive, but it's very... blah. I guess it all depends on how you approach it, though. I personally have no interest in all the razzle-dazzle effects that it can put off, especially since I don't honestly notice it that much when I'm actually playing the game. More to the point, like Red said, it lacks style. It aims for realism and realism only. I mean it certainly looks good, but I'll take the visuals of CoD4 or UT3 over Crysis any day.

WoW was actually a lot more fun BEFORE Burning Crusade came out. I still play, but the game's endgame fun factor totally went out with the bathwater. I haven't tired of playing my alts yet, so the game still holds some level of fun for me in that regard. Sadly, WoW has succumb to catering to the casual players in every way. Being a casual player myself, that wasn't the worst thing in the world at first, but considering that at level 70 every thing is now open to you 100%, you don't have to work at anything except attending a raid every night. Subsequently, the game's attraction has slipped. All it would take is a little more individual and small group questing to keep me hooked. I do enjoy the sometimes epic questlines in that game, but they're so rare nowadays. Fingers-crossed that some sort of "fix" will come about with Wrath of the Lich King, but even if it doesn't, you can bet your ass there'll be still be 10mil+ people playing anyway. I'm still waiting for an MMO that plays the way Zelda does. At least that would require more than right clicking an enemy and left clicking spells.

Like Red said, I don't believe you can rightly compare this to WoW. WoW is kind of in its own league (or more specifically, Blizzard is). I kind of get the impression from looking at this trailer and reading up on the game that the gobs of customization that they're claiming they'll implement will likely kill the game. Oblivion isn't an MMO simply because the sheer amounts of freedom you're allowed in it aren't conducive to gameplay once you toss more than one player into the mix.

Jon how could you looooooooooooose

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=DFD&l1=

Jon Arbuckle is living the life of a serial killer right before he snaps. 2nd panel = gold