well certainly you need to "be careful" where careful = do a bit of research.
The newegg comments is actually a very good place to start on that research.
As far as cheap motherboards.. don't..
I'm not saying grab the most expensive thing on newegg.. just make sure that the class of board you are getting is well made.. which means not one of the cheapest thing on there (MSI "Military Grade" boards are very solid, but not all that expensive)
Thats funny because (A) I have had no trouble getting motherboards that support 6-core AMD's out of the box, (B) Flashing the bios is painless these days unless you are using some shitty assed brand of motherboard, and (C) AMD clearly wins the price/performance competition with all of the top-20 being AMD.
Dont forget the new breed of folks that build systems based on how quiet they will be. Thats sort of similar to the energy efficiency group, but not quite the same.
Its actually quite impressive what can be done with just some decent fanless heatsinks.
Then there are those sick bastards that submerge their computer in mineral oil...
The 1090T was running $280 when first released... so this one at $265 gives you more for your money.. I guess that sort of contrived logic explains it.
AMD's first Phenom II 6-core (the 1055T) was $200 when released (they are now $180 on newegg.) Thats a 2.8 ghz with locked multiplier (still highly overclockable, but the bus has to follow)
MSI motherboards auto-over-clock feature (capped at 20%) has brought several (all, I've built 3 1055T systems) of these up to 3.36 ghz without changing the voltage for me, and when AMD Turbo is being used by the CPU it brings 3 cores up to 4ghz (and down-clocks 3 cores.)
All of them have been stable with Prime95.
The unfortunate part is that the stock cooling is kind of weak for the over-clock, requiring either an excellent case fan setup (push-pull straight across, what I opt for) or a better heatsink/fan.
Two people each plan on spending $150 per year on video cards. Person (A) buys a brand-new $150 video card every year and Person (B) buys a brand-new $300 video card every 2 years.
Person (A) ends up spending half his time with better performance than Person (B), and vise-versa of course. The difference is that at the end of 2 years, Person (A) has accumulated two extra video cards while Person (B) has only accumulated one extra video card.
This is important when catastrophe happens, and it does happen, when a video card up-and-dies. One of them has a spare, and still further getting back to where they were is cheaper if they really want that performance back.
It looks to me like the GT 445M scores significantly better on benchmarks than does the GT 435M, and that one really *IS* just using higher clock rates.
nVidia's naming scheme uses the first number as an identifier for the generation of GPU, so it is not to be taken as simply a performance indicator.
The 540M will probably perform similar to a 445M, although I cant find any benchmarks yet so I am just guessing.
The later one performs slightly better than a 8800GT which is extremely respectable on the low resolution devices the M's are placed on (the 8800GT still runs pretty much all games very very well at low resolutions)
Google is within their rights to take "invalid" DMCA notices and act on them, and they are also within their rights to not re-instate your contents availability even when you send a "valid" counter-notice.
Google is not ever forced to make your content available.
I get the impression that Comcast does not want to saturate their bandwidth at the border routers. If the caching servers are -inside- their border routers then all the data flows on their internal (and hopefully much faster) network. Are you thinking that Comcast is is concerned about intranet traffic levels too?
Why would Comcast's border routers be abnormally underpowered compared to its internal routers? Comcast is not generating much traffic, so Comcast-To-Comcast traffic is currently a very minor part of the data its handling for its customers.
You have no clue at all about how peering / transit agreements work
I know how peering and transit agreements work.
Comcast is not a peer. Do you understand that? Comcast is not a peer. They are not the backbone. They are not transiting packets from one network to another. They are not a peer.
You have taken the little knowledge you've got and misapplied it.
Lets try this one more time.. Comcast is not a peer. Comcast is a provider.
Then you have no idea what network neutrality means, no idea what the issue at question is, or both.
So you claim. Would you care to back that up?
L3 is going from a 1:1 peering agreement to a 5:1 traffic ratio.
This is just bullshit. Its always 1:1 in this case.
One sender of the packet.
One receiver of the packet.
Both networks carry the packet.
Thats fucking 1:1.
What you are talking about is if Comcast was in the middle of sender and receiver.. but Comcast is not, being the endpoint that they are.
Thats why this is a neutrality issue. Comcast will always be an endpoint, so its own competitng services would have an automatic price advantage.. not because they could provide it cheaper, but because they charge the competition a fee.
Comcast would charge the same fee for that service as it is requesting of L3. Why? Because either way, Comcast has to deliver the traffic to its customers.
Either way, the cost to Comcast is based on Total Peek Capacity, not Average Bandwidth. Its not like they have a ton of capacity that they can turn off after midnight to save money. The routers remain on.
From the Comcast customers point of view, traffic originating on L3's network is being discriminated against if Comcast stops accepting that traffic even though its destination is Comcast.
Allowing this sort of thing sets up an easy way for all consumer ISP's to discriminate, making its own services far more competitive than they would be had there been a level playing field.
Fox was brought up for their propensity to use emotional pleas to sway public opinion away from scientific analysis or inquiry.
So you are against this?
On matters of importance to the nation and the world, should we decide based on a Koch Brother funded talking head spouting drabble that doesn't pass muster on PolitiFact, yet somehow makes the rich richer and everyone else poorer?
Ah, the good old "rich get richer poor get poorer" appeal to emotions. I thought that you were against this.
If you objectively look at this issue, something that you claim is important, you will find that in America the poor get richer too. The divide between rich and poor may be growing, but that doesnt make the poor poorer. Seeing the gap as something wrong in and of itself is just jealousy.
MSNBC and CNN are just as guilty as Fox on appealing to emotion. Your lack of a recognition of that is very telling of you own personal emotions, and adding that to your appeal to emotion above.. well.. thats even more telling.
A case-in-point is a co-worker of mine (non-techy ex-hippie) who said he was safe because he installed an anti-virus at the request of a website that said he wasnt protected.
Barry: "How do I know what is legitimate and what is not?"
Me: "Its simple. Assume that nothing is legitimate."
I see.
You want it "free" as in "free market:" rip off everybody and run away with all the money?
You seem to not understand "Licenses are artificial"
It most certainly is artificial for a particular arrangement of a string of 0's and 1's to be considered property. You cannot "rip [something] off" from someone for something that isnt property, let alone their property.
I don't see it as exactly moving the "pirate" stuff.
I see it as Google had probably already planned on tuning the auto-complete to remove a lot of pirate search terms because, quite frankly, its not helpful for anybody that those be there.
There is probably a lot of other things that will be down-favored in this same move, but Google gets to turn to the RIAA and say "See what we did for you!" by focusing its forward face on the coincidental removal of things the RIAA wants removed.
You do realize that the Democrats are considerably more responsible for our current copyright terms than the Republicans are, right?
The Copyright Act of 1976 was passed when the Democrats had both a majority in the House and the Senate (94th congress.)
I suppose that you are aware of how powerful the position of having both House and Senate is, that you can even pass laws that the majority of the American people are strongly against (such as health care "reform")
Slashdot Mirror
well certainly you need to "be careful" where careful = do a bit of research.
The newegg comments is actually a very good place to start on that research.
As far as cheap motherboards.. don't..
I'm not saying grab the most expensive thing on newegg.. just make sure that the class of board you are getting is well made.. which means not one of the cheapest thing on there (MSI "Military Grade" boards are very solid, but not all that expensive)
Its easy to go cheapo when you dont have to count the cost of the monitor, hard drive, or operating system.
For most people, those 3 alone (18" panel, 250GB HD, Windows) will run them almost $265.
It is much harder to justify skimping on the CPU/RAM when you are starting at $265.
I get you though.. I build my father a nice (for his needs) salvage-system for $150 when his mobo fried.
Thats funny because (A) I have had no trouble getting motherboards that support 6-core AMD's out of the box, (B) Flashing the bios is painless these days unless you are using some shitty assed brand of motherboard, and (C) AMD clearly wins the price/performance competition with all of the top-20 being AMD.
Dont forget the new breed of folks that build systems based on how quiet they will be. Thats sort of similar to the energy efficiency group, but not quite the same.
Its actually quite impressive what can be done with just some decent fanless heatsinks.
Then there are those sick bastards that submerge their computer in mineral oil...
The 1090T was running $280 when first released ... so this one at $265 gives you more for your money.. I guess that sort of contrived logic explains it.
A six core for $200 and I will bite again.
AMD's first Phenom II 6-core (the 1055T) was $200 when released (they are now $180 on newegg.) Thats a 2.8 ghz with locked multiplier (still highly overclockable, but the bus has to follow)
MSI motherboards auto-over-clock feature (capped at 20%) has brought several (all, I've built 3 1055T systems) of these up to 3.36 ghz without changing the voltage for me, and when AMD Turbo is being used by the CPU it brings 3 cores up to 4ghz (and down-clocks 3 cores.)
All of them have been stable with Prime95.
The unfortunate part is that the stock cooling is kind of weak for the over-clock, requiring either an excellent case fan setup (push-pull straight across, what I opt for) or a better heatsink/fan.
I frown on SLI, but you are right about the 80%.
Two people each plan on spending $150 per year on video cards. Person (A) buys a brand-new $150 video card every year and Person (B) buys a brand-new $300 video card every 2 years.
Person (A) ends up spending half his time with better performance than Person (B), and vise-versa of course. The difference is that at the end of 2 years, Person (A) has accumulated two extra video cards while Person (B) has only accumulated one extra video card.
This is important when catastrophe happens, and it does happen, when a video card up-and-dies. One of them has a spare, and still further getting back to where they were is cheaper if they really want that performance back.
It looks to me like the GT 445M scores significantly better on benchmarks than does the GT 435M, and that one really *IS* just using higher clock rates.
nVidia's naming scheme uses the first number as an identifier for the generation of GPU, so it is not to be taken as simply a performance indicator.
The 540M will probably perform similar to a 445M, although I cant find any benchmarks yet so I am just guessing.
435M Benchmark = 693
445M Benchmark = 1015
The later one performs slightly better than a 8800GT which is extremely respectable on the low resolution devices the M's are placed on (the 8800GT still runs pretty much all games very very well at low resolutions)
They arent oversized here. Perhaps you've deliberately fucked up your DPI settings.
Google is within their rights to take "invalid" DMCA notices and act on them, and they are also within their rights to not re-instate your contents availability even when you send a "valid" counter-notice.
Google is not ever forced to make your content available.
Unlock the taskbar, then drag it to the side you want.
I get the impression that Comcast does not want to saturate their bandwidth at the border routers. If the caching servers are -inside- their border routers then all the data flows on their internal (and hopefully much faster) network. Are you thinking that Comcast is is concerned about intranet traffic levels too?
Why would Comcast's border routers be abnormally underpowered compared to its internal routers? Comcast is not generating much traffic, so Comcast-To-Comcast traffic is currently a very minor part of the data its handling for its customers.
You have no clue at all about how peering / transit agreements work
I know how peering and transit agreements work.
Comcast is not a peer. Do you understand that? Comcast is not a peer. They are not the backbone. They are not transiting packets from one network to another. They are not a peer.
You have taken the little knowledge you've got and misapplied it.
Lets try this one more time.. Comcast is not a peer. Comcast is a provider.
Then you have no idea what network neutrality means, no idea what the issue at question is, or both.
So you claim. Would you care to back that up?
L3 is going from a 1:1 peering agreement to a 5:1 traffic ratio.
This is just bullshit. Its always 1:1 in this case.
One sender of the packet.
One receiver of the packet.
Both networks carry the packet.
Thats fucking 1:1.
What you are talking about is if Comcast was in the middle of sender and receiver.. but Comcast is not, being the endpoint that they are.
Thats why this is a neutrality issue. Comcast will always be an endpoint, so its own competitng services would have an automatic price advantage.. not because they could provide it cheaper, but because they charge the competition a fee.
Comcast would charge the same fee for that service as it is requesting of L3. Why? Because either way, Comcast has to deliver the traffic to its customers.
Either way, the cost to Comcast is based on Total Peek Capacity, not Average Bandwidth. Its not like they have a ton of capacity that they can turn off after midnight to save money. The routers remain on.
There is no such thing as a Free Market for ISP's in America.
Your choices are DSL, because your home already had telephone lines.. Cable.. because your home already had a Cable line.. or Wireless.
With only a few exceptions, those two wire owners will remain the only wire owners through the forces of regulation, legislation, and litigation.
This isnt quite right.
The analog would be that if I called you a thousand times a month and you only called me once, that I should pay more than you.
Oh I think it *is* a network neutrality issue.
From the Comcast customers point of view, traffic originating on L3's network is being discriminated against if Comcast stops accepting that traffic even though its destination is Comcast.
Allowing this sort of thing sets up an easy way for all consumer ISP's to discriminate, making its own services far more competitive than they would be had there been a level playing field.
The tough question in my mind is...
Can a user that downloaded it from RapidShare then later upload it *to* RapidShare without infringement?
Fox was brought up for their propensity to use emotional pleas to sway public opinion away from scientific analysis or inquiry.
So you are against this?
On matters of importance to the nation and the world, should we decide based on a Koch Brother funded talking head spouting drabble that doesn't pass muster on PolitiFact, yet somehow makes the rich richer and everyone else poorer?
Ah, the good old "rich get richer poor get poorer" appeal to emotions. I thought that you were against this.
If you objectively look at this issue, something that you claim is important, you will find that in America the poor get richer too. The divide between rich and poor may be growing, but that doesnt make the poor poorer. Seeing the gap as something wrong in and of itself is just jealousy.
MSNBC and CNN are just as guilty as Fox on appealing to emotion. Your lack of a recognition of that is very telling of you own personal emotions, and adding that to your appeal to emotion above.. well.. thats even more telling.
I guess we know which team you bat for.
A case-in-point is a co-worker of mine (non-techy ex-hippie) who said he was safe because he installed an anti-virus at the request of a website that said he wasnt protected.
Barry: "How do I know what is legitimate and what is not?"
Me: "Its simple. Assume that nothing is legitimate."
I see. You want it "free" as in "free market:" rip off everybody and run away with all the money?
You seem to not understand "Licenses are artificial"
It most certainly is artificial for a particular arrangement of a string of 0's and 1's to be considered property. You cannot "rip [something] off" from someone for something that isnt property, let alone their property.
I don't see it as exactly moving the "pirate" stuff.
I see it as Google had probably already planned on tuning the auto-complete to remove a lot of pirate search terms because, quite frankly, its not helpful for anybody that those be there.
There is probably a lot of other things that will be down-favored in this same move, but Google gets to turn to the RIAA and say "See what we did for you!" by focusing its forward face on the coincidental removal of things the RIAA wants removed.
Because 'Free as in Richard Stallman' is not an accurate description of the nature of information.
Licenses are artificial.
Tell that to FOX "news" and the Tea Party folks.
You do realize that the Democrats are considerably more responsible for our current copyright terms than the Republicans are, right?
The Copyright Act of 1976 was passed when the Democrats had both a majority in the House and the Senate (94th congress.)
I suppose that you are aware of how powerful the position of having both House and Senate is, that you can even pass laws that the majority of the American people are strongly against (such as health care "reform")