Hurin

Had to go looking around for where I saw this. . . but here's an excellent break-down of the "best" for each budget class. . . last updated September 5. Hardware Leaderboard at PC Perspectives I don't agree with everything on there. But it's a nice break-down of what you can expect at each price level. H

Buying old equipment and then using it for 2-3 years? I may be a bit too much into computer hardware. . . but in my opinion, that's going too far in the other direction. A buyer has to contend with three urges: 1. Wait. Don't buy now because something great is right around the corner. The problem here is that there will always be something just around the corner. When you're done waiting, you'll want to wait again for that component that's just been announced. 2. Buy the absolute best. This is foolish with computers. There is a huge premium between the top-of-the-line CPU, and the one that is "one notch down." 3. Buy the cheapest. This is tempting. But your computer will be obsolete sooner and you won't experience games in as much detail and/or immersion as you might have with a better rig. My philosophy is: Pile all your money, and buy as much as you can possibly afford now. That might last you 2-3 years. Though buying already old technology will possibly give you some gaming enjoyment for a while, you'll unfortunately find that you're having to turn off all the eye candy to get decent performance. . . and you'll find yourself doing this more often as newer games quickly leave your machine's (intentionally) old technology behind. I wouldn't want to play Call of Duty 2 on anything less than my 7800GTXes. Even on those, it chokes up at times. I can't imagine finding it enjoyable, or the cinematic experience un-diminished, on a machine that I had built from parts that are were three generations old when I built my rig. Buying two or three generations older today would mean buying a 6800GT today (or was "generation" intended to mean two or three "notches" down within the most current generation. . . like a 7600GT instead of 7900GTX?). I'm sorry but that seems foolish when another $100 will get you vastly improved performance and a much more enjoyable gaming experience with a 7950GT. Yeah, you've saved $100. But you've also consigned yourself to lower resolutions, less AA, and fewer "wow!" moments in a lot of newer games. So, it really comes down to what you think is important. If you're buying a computer to enjoy today's games and games that will be released in the next year, I'd strongly caution against going the "buy old and save" route. Try to find a middle-ground. Just my 2 cents. H P.S. I gave up on Sharky Extreme years ago. But that write-up is pretty good! Glad to see they're still around! A similar write-up is at [H]ard|OCP here.

Hiriyu has a point. If you're not considering going SLI or Crossfire in the future, you might be better off with an ATi video card. Basically, ATi cards do have somewhat better image quality when rendering 3D. NVIDIA can match it, but you have to turn up some quality settings with NVIDIA for it to look quite as good as ATi. Now, I don't really notice the "texture shimmering" and other things that ATi fans are always claiming they see with NVIDIA (unless it's tweaked). But, the consensus is that NVIDIA's default image quality isn't quite as good and has to give up some performance to bump it up a notch in order to look as good as ATi. No big deal either way, but something you might consider. The only reason I remain partial to NVIDIA is because I like their implementation of SLI better than I like ATi's "crossfire." But, if the original poster has no interest in ever going SLI (which would require a different motherboard than the one I recommended), there is no reason to stick with NVIDIA. H

We try not to mention Robotech too much around here. Remember: In pure Macross. . . "Protoculture" is not an energy source, it is the "culture" or civilization that pre-dated the Zentraedi. Minmay isn't nearly as annoying in Macross. And, more importantly, she can actually sing. The overall tone of the series is much more "adult" than the over-narrated "kiddy-ified" adaptation we see in Robotech. Further, the dialogue is much better because there is less "Superfriends" style exposition where the characters explain exactly what they are doing as if those watching are mentally challenged seven-year-olds: Superman: 'Now I'll use my heat vision to melt the snow and put out the fire below.' Rick Hunter: 'Now I'll use my laser beams to cut a hole in the wall.' "Robotech Masters" has nothing to do with Macross. It was a totally seperate anime in Japan called Super-Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross. Harmony Gold grafted Southern Cross onto Macross in order to make a series that was long enough to interest buyers in the United States. "The New Generation" has nothing to do with Macross. It was a totally seperate anime in Japan called Genesis Climber Mospeada. Harmony Gold grafted Mospeada onto Macross and Southern Cross in order to make a series that was long enough to interest buyers in the United States. In most people's view here, grafting those other two animes onto Macross was a terrible disservice to the original anime. It would be like grafting Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek together, and then altering things so that Luke was Starbuck's father. . . and Captain Kirk was flying around the galaxy looking for Luke. H

Hehe, looking at the list I gave him (all priced and linked through Newegg), it's like we're reading each other's minds. I'm going to throw two G80s (NVIDIA 8800GTX) into my current rig when they are released. I'm hoping that even with that GPU power, we'll still be GPU-limited. . . so I won't also need to upgrade my CPU to Conroe to get the most out of them. But, if it comes to that, I'll do it, and bid my AMD X2 a fond farewell. Here's what I'm currently running: X2 4400+ Toledo @ 2.5GHz Dual NVIDIA 7800GTX SLI (MSI) 2GB Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2 Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe Creative X-fi Xtreme Music CPU: 250x10@1.50v | HT-Bus: 4x250 | RAM: 2-3-3-6-1T 416DDR (5:6 divider / 250 MHz @ 2.80v) Sony GDM-FW900 24" Widescreen CRT -- Best Monitor Ever! H P.S. The original poster should take the dementia above into account when considering my recommendations. Gaming computers are my primary hobby and I'm willing to spend more money on it than I probably should.

Well, since I increased the price, I guess I wasn't much help. But, that's the computer you won't be itching to upgrade in six months. The one the magazine recommended would need some "touch-ups" pretty darn quickly. You could save about $150 by going back to 1GB RAM. You could save about $150 by going to the base level Conroe/Core 2 Duo CPU (E6300). You could save about $50 by going to the 7900GT. But, really, I wouldn't really recommend any of those. You'll just be feeling obsolete that much sooner. So, unless you are absolutely, positively limited to a certain budget, I'd just bite the bullet and spend a few hundred more. H

Okay, the bad news is that the system below comes to $1520. But, it's quite a bit better than the one you had (2GB RAM, better video card, fast and dual-core CPU). If you need to trim it down for budgetary reasons, you could consider: *Trimming RAM to 1GB instead of 2GB as you had originally. *Going a notch or two down in CPU (but you lose "cache" when you go below that model). *You might consider downgrading the graphics card. But that will have the most drastic effect on gameplay. CPU -$315- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz Motherboard -$135- Abit AB9 (note, no SLI on this one) RAM -$249- 2GB OCZ DDR2 800 5-5-5-10 Video Card -$285- NVIDIA 7950GT (underclocked, but full-featured 7900GTX) 512MB Optical Drive -$30- NEC DVD & CD Burner Sound Card -$122- X-fi Xtreme Music Floppy Drive -- Can't find one with media reader that will match case. Power Supply -$130- Corsair 520W w/ Modular Cables Case -$70- Antec NSK 4400 Black/Silver w/ 380W Power Supply (will be a spare power supply. . . though you could forego the Corsair above and try to wing it with this one) The Abit motherboard above isn't my first choice. But the Asus one I had my eye on has been MIA for a while now. That one won't overclock worth a damn. But for stock performance, it'll be fine.

Graphics processing unit (chip on the video card) rather than Central Processing unit (CPU). Just noticed, you have a Plextor optical drive there. That's way overkill. They're nice. But much lesser drives get the job done just as well. Pricing something up now. Slow Sunday.

Okay, I'd go with a Conroe Intel CPU. . . especially if I didn't want to go SLI in the future (if you do, you have to forego Intel chipset motherboard and instead get an NVIDIA chipset motherboard for Intel CPUs). AMD used to be better for gaming, but Intel recently took back the crown. But, really, any CPU of a recent vintage is plenty for gaming since games have been relatively GPU (rather than CPU) limited in recent years. You should also consider going dual-core CPU. It's not that much more money now (and Conroe/Core 2 Duo is dual-core). The improvement in everyday multi-tasking is quite nice. If you aren't going to go for SLI, you could also bring down the power supply cost a bit. Tell ya what, I'm gonna go price out the system I'd get for ya. . . just for kicks.

Dual Video cards (called "SLI" when running NVIDIA cards or "Crossfire" when running ATi) will actually show some benefits at lower resolutions. You can often turn on more "eye candy" (higher anti-aliasing, anistropic filtering, dynamic shadows, lighting effects, etc.). However, Mechafan is largely correct that SLI and Crossfire are really only intended for the uber-geek, hard-core gamer where money (or credit card balances) is no object. If you're looking to build a rig, however, you might consider waiting just 3-4 more weeks. NVIDIA's new generation is due out in the second week of November. If the past is any guide, it's expected to be as fast (as a single card) as two current generation cards in SLI. Having said all this, I should point out that the Moderators may take issue with this topic. And my reply is not an endorsement of this thread's "on-topic-ness." H

Don't you mean that getting it perfect is impossible for transforming mecha and models? Perhaps I'm naive about 3D modeling, but why is it impossible to match the lineart for non-transforming mecha (that therefore lack "anime magic")? H

If you've got a good SQL dump of the database, recovery is usually pretty trivial. However, in MW's case, we not only needed to recover, but also patch the server and the IPB version (by several iterations). That took time as well. I think there was also an unexpected issue with the database backups, so part of the database needed to be reconstructed/repaired "by hand" (so to speak). But, all of this happened before I was admin. So I could be wrong. Keep in mind that there are a lot of 3rd-party plug-ins for IPB. Thankfully MW does not use any. But they are often used as a "vector" to attack IPB boards (even ones that are fully up-to-date). H

I wouldn't have to stalk you if you'd only loooove meeeee!

Simple and short answer: They wanted to provide TV FAST Packs. And the Hikaru VF-1J was the first TV valkyrie they released.

Unvalidated new users are cleared out every few days. That email address is no longer in the system. So, he should be able to just re-register with that email address again now (with the same username he tried before). I'm going to edit out his email address above lest spambot address grabbers see it. H

If it's still not working, please let me know. Because it certainly should be! H

The problem is that Shatner's voice is pretty girly nowadays. And two of 'em are dead. I don't see any need to re-record voices. I've never thought to myself: "Boy, Spock's voice is scratchy! But that light bulb that's supposed to be a ship is just perfect!"

The only part that bugs me about the loss of the cooler, better delivered line: "Bring my shuttle". . . is that it's the perfect example of Lucas fixing something that didn't need fixed at all. I don't know anybody who ever said: "Hey, how did Vader get back up there so fast?" Nobody ever seems to take Lucas aside and say: "Dude, you've lost perspective here. The audience isn't confused. You don't need to do that." or "You need to look at this as an audience member. That little silver droid is just going to distract everyone from what the characters are actually saying. It may look cool. But there's a reason we didn't put one on a friggin' string twenty years ago. Because it's distracting!" It makes me wonder if anyone, ever interjects their opinion in a Lucas project. He's just gotta be surrounded by Yes Men (or very poor filmmakers). Edit: Though I suppose you could argue he's earned the right to not be questioned on his creative decisions considering he's responsible for the most profitable film series in history (by far). H

Uh, yeah. That's what we were saying. Never said it was a Forums thing.

Much of the original series is still worth watching. Even if it is a "broader dramatic style" from an earlier era. As for the effects and remastering, I think they've struck the right tone. I have faith, if only because a middle-aged George Lucas isn't involved. If Gene Rodenberry were still alive and were involved, I'd be worried. The original creators feel more free to mangle something even after it's been in the public domain for a long while. Which is made worse because they seem to lose their touch as they get old.

Kensei beat me to the mouse wheel thing. Regarding signatures suddenly getting huge: Best,H

Yeah, there are moments of "bleh". . . but ANH looks remarkably good (especially indoor, static scenes). I still think it was a bit of a back-handed gift on the part of Lucasfilm. . . but I'll takes what I can get. Best, H

I hope it doesn't seem like that! They're still available. But, it just makes more sense to manage these threads where I can have more control of them. For example, originally, these threads were to have the screenshots of the settings for each program actually displayed within the thread. But, there is a limit over here for how many images can be in a single post (etc.). I started moving the threads over, and while I did so, I altered some information (like where to get DVD Decrypter, and buy the DVDs, etc.). . . and I realized that I sure didn't want to manage four different threads on two different servers indefinitely! Best, H P.S. Of course, this is really about these threads never getting the "pin" treatment over here!

Attention: The new (updated) home of this project is now at Macross Nexus. Please check its thread there for updates and/or support. This thread will no longer be updated. Thanks!

Well, the official Bandai one is expensive (like all DVDs in Japan). CD Japan still sells them here. But at $70 plus shipping (but again, normal price for Japan). Best, H