In article <47383440@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

Was this before or after the overclocking? :)

Before. I always like to get a new mobo stable, which normally means 
defaults, before updating to the latest BIOS and downloading Windows 
updates. OCing comes after established stability.

These new-fangled hardware seem to be very picky. I spent a week figuring 
out why my new system seemed to trash the HD at random, totally destroying 
the Windows install, and the partition table/MBR.

Finally turned out the Seagte HD I had in the system didn't support Native 
Command Queueing, while the NVidia SATA drivers did. Swapping out the 
Seagate for a WDC RAID edition drive solved this, finally.

By that time the final game should be about out. ;)

By which time I still probably won't be able to justify the expenditure of 
buying it.

That's always a though decision to make, but it looks very very nice.

Ahhh, the reward systems in individuals varies so much doesn't it? Also, so 
is the base knowledge, from which the "work" starts. As my base knowledge of 
writing code is _zero_ the hill is steep indeed.

Undertandable. But a tool to switch of your computer on a timed basis 
should be available for download somewhere, I suppose. ;)

'Microsoft' and 'security' in one sentence!? Daring!

LOL! Yes, you have a point. Of course I mean security in the sense in which 
one finds security in familiar things. Certainly not in the sense of 
computer security. <g>

Well, a Live CD means you don't have to install anything to your 
harddrive. I was even able to download/install more software, so getting 
BOINC to run on a LiveCD shouldn't be too much work I suppose.

Very weird. By de-prioritising you mean your ping times increase? So
what ping do you get to the first link after passing through your
ADSL modem? This sounds like ADSL from the stone age!

Ping times increase, throughput drops.. I can't tell you the ping times as I 
on;y stayed on that plan for one billing cycle. However, the ping time that 
goes up is the one across (or, more correctly, under) the ocean, out of New 
Zealand. It's almost as if there's several priority levels for international 
traffic that vary depending on your ISP and what plan you have with them. Of 
course, ultimately all data goes through the hands of the monopolistic New 
Zealand Telecom. The giant of a company that used to be a state-owned 
enterprise, that also owns 50% of the "Southern Cross" cable that carries 
the bulk of data out of and into NZ.

Hmmm, yeah, that's probable a reason why NZ is different; due to the 
remote location, bandwidth to other locations is pretty expensive, and a 
sought-after commodity.

If you want an ADSL line with that speed, you'd have to spend quite
some effort overhere. The 2M down is still with the same 1GB / day
limit? If I did my math wrong, you can spend your day's worth of
downloading in about 68 minutes using 2M down.

Something like that. However, I'd then get the data I can download for the 
other 23 hours at 64/64kbps "free". Woohoo!!

Actually, my ISP, the best in the country, does have a window of free 
download time for two hours every night between 6 and 8pm. During this time 
whatever you transfer isn't counted against your daily total. That's where 
the benefit of the 2M over the 256kbps comes in. If I time my downloads 
right I can get quite a chunk of data during that period, even though the 
whole system does slow down a bit then as everyone is thinking the same 
thing.

Heh, well, this also something the 'cron'-alike tool mentioned above can 
do for you too. ;)

When I noticed the lower performance with the 6600GT (totally
unexpected, since the 6600GT blew the Ti4200 on all fronts out of the
water) I researched it a bit, and what I can vaguely remember is that
the 6600GT was an improvement on almost all fronts (more units, each
with more performance), except for one area, where the Ti4200
actually had more units (with of course a lower performance). My
'conclusion' then was that the units which were left out when going
from the Ti4200->6600GT were actually the ones being used a lot for
the Shenk Death Animation.

Interesting that you should mention that. My best cards for Diablo II have 
also been the ti4x00 range. I have thre of them, two 4200s and a "Golden 
Sample" 4400 that will run faster than a 4600 and is stock-clocked at above 
4400 speeds. I was quite disappointed when I fired D2 up for the first time 
after getting this system going with it's 7800GT only to find that it seems 
slower than my old Barton/ti4400 combo. :-(

You _are_ running a Glide Wrapper? I recently had to switch back to the 
Direct3D API for Diablo II, when the NVidia 169.01 and 169.04 broke the 
OpenGL stuff in such a way that the Glide Wrapper stopped working. I found 
the Direct3D version of the game to feel much, much 'clunkier' than the 
game in Glide. Difficult to describe, but everything seemed to 
run/animate/move much 'coarser'... So if you haven't already....?

Indeed. However, I don't see this group being used for much else in the last 
few weeks other than threads that I've started. :-)

It's indeed frighteningly quiet in here. Hopefully that's because 
everything SetiBOINC related is running smoothly and without any 
problems for everyone. ;)

Cheers Patrick,

Regards, Patrick.