BF2S Forums Tech: Open thread

All boards should do away with it entirely, is it that much more costly for them to just put all PCI-e x1 ports instead?  What a waste of space

I'm mostly looking at $150 to $200 boards from Gigabyte and ASUS on Newegg.  It's just straight up disappointing.  I want a decently spec'ed board with modern ports but I don't want to have to pay $200 or $300+ for an enthusiast-grade motherboard.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's considered cheap for motherboards but I always assumed that meant all of those little Micro/Mini/other word for small ATX or ITX boards that you can get for like $75 that have a basic set of ports as a replacement mobo.

I guess I'm kind of making a big deal about PCI ports but I really don't remember there being so many on mobos sold in the upper end of the $100 price range last time I was looking and it's just a huge waste of potential for something very few people should still be using in 2013.  Like I said before, it doesn't help that they're putting the x1 ports in really stupid places either like right next to the x16 port so it can be blocked by a double-slot graphics card.  They just need to design these things better and drop PCI once and for all in favor of x1, there's really not too many things that don't use it now and it's so much better.  It's very frustrating when everything else in the computer can be changed or adapted perfectly and the motherboard screams compromise by design.

I haven't seen IDE in 2 years.

I cannot fathom what is better than what's in a Z77/Z87-D3H (~$180), unless you want to multi GPU. In which case. No you don't. 115x boards are shit for that.

They've generally made trash PSUs in the past but this seems to be decent quality and being 80+ Platinum it's bound to have decent components (is a Super Flower OEM and they're doing pretty decent PSUs these days).

That said, what kind of build are you doing? A good quality 500w is generally plenty for a single GPU build, but considering it's price unless you're going after a silent build a Seasonic 650w Gold would probably be a better choice to give you a bit of extra headroom and it is also cheaper.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6817151118

Obviously if you're planning on multi-GPU you're going to need more power again but that's a different story.

/my opinion.

Last edited by Little BaBy JESUS (2013-10-06 01:49:11)

Not really a tech ?, more software, but what would you guys recommend for a second web browser besides chrome? I have Firefox already.

Just need something to sit on the second monitor and play pandora while I game. Could figure out how to setup seperate firefox profile or whatever I guess.

Reason for no chrome is because its 'updating' service strangles my cpu 60% of the time and don't think there's a way to force it off besides uninstall.

Well, ff i want to open on the main monitor all the time and not have to fart with that bit when I go looking for something and its on the wrong monitor. And I'd like it on the second, so when something comes up that sounds good I can write it down quick and keep going without alt-tabbing.

Could use ie too.

http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal … esktop-app

who uses opera? What does it have that IE, FF, Chrome, (and Safari...) don't have?

*thirteenanned

Remember when HDDs had to have jumpers on them for all this slave/master bullshit?

Anyway, putting together a wishlist for a new rig in the distant future, for shits and giggles. Please tell me that higher numbers = better when it comes to Intel chips? i7 4770k seems to be the CPU I'm looking at, though I saw a 2600 for about the same price (which I'm hoping is because of limited stock because it's old).

Currently, I have a 650W PSU. Seems to be good enough for my current setup (Quad Core Q9550, Nvidia GTX 460, 2 HDDs, an SSD, DVD-ROM, and 4x2GB RAM). I take it this will probably be enough for whatever new mobo+cpu+gpu+ram I get? No plans on going SLI.

This will be my first upgrade in a long time, so I'm looking to go all out and future-proof as much as possible. I do edit/export videos, do some audio work as well, so I don't think the extra processing power will be wasted. But still, I'll compare prices when it comes down to it and keep that i5 in mind.

Will also check up on reviews for the AMD cards. I've had a few ATI cards over the years but just one NVIDIA, and this thing has lasted me so much longer. Also liking their Geforce Experience program, pretty handy. But again, will still keep a lookout on the ATI things, hopefully they deliver.

This shit changes so much, guess it'll be fun to dive back into the tech world for a few months.

Also remember that AMD is going to release their Mantle hardware-level API.
Like 3DFx' Glide back in the day.

Should give a drastic performance increase for AMD 7xxx series cards and onwards.
DICE's Frostbite engine has it built in, and it's likely that others will support it as well.