Archer

Another update, and a change of heart one:

I returned the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro that I recently bought. Unfortunately, not only was the GTD 870m not giving me the performance I wanted at this price-point, but it was consistently hitting 92 - 93 degrees Celsius in temperatures.

It started to crash from time to time, and even I could see that it wouldn't last. Going to invest the 1800 dollars in a proper desktop, throwing mobility to the wind.

With that in mind, does anyone actually recommend an i7 over an i5? A lot of games are recently starting to throw in i7 requirements for ultra settings, and that's worrying me a little (since I'd prefer to spring for the cheaper i5 instead).

I didn't really enjoy CCA all that much *runs for cover*

^
I actually think India is one that works. I only know that because I'm Indian, and they were available when I tried to stream them a few months back when I visited India.

Don't know about any other specific countries though

I've had a lot of fun with Titanfall, and I actually found the controls and movement paths to be very intuitive. It may just be that I'm so used to COD (used to play a LOT a few years ago). While games like BF4 are incredibly frustrating for me (since I'm new to Mouse/Keyboard), Titanfall's PC controller and aim assist support has been wonderful.

That said, I don't know about Xbox One, but Titanfall PC is basically dead as of late. It takes ages to get into a match! I've never seen such a large AAA game lose its player base so rapidly (I can understand why though, the game is starting to get old for me too, and I've yet to hit the level cap)

Didn't the federation just get fat and lazy by the time of F91? I know in the crossbone manga a large amount of the federation forces were destroyed which led to the federation being weaker when zanscare shows up in victory.

Any hints or information regarding what happens to banagher, riddhe, and friends? I don't think "Zeon" ever makes a return save for in references after this. You would think God Mode Banagher could do something to "better" the world or something.

But srsly though, does anyone know what happens after unicorn? Is there some obscure novel/manga that I've missed that explains how everything changes so quickly?

^I believe you can still rent off the Sony Entertainment Store if you download Sony's media go program. You can stream digital media from your PSN download list directly on your laptop. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

Hope that helps! Or if you have an xbox or windows 8, you can get the dubbed version off the xbox store.

Just watched it on my PS3, just search "Gundam" in the store. Also, for some reason you can only watch on PS3, it won't show up on PS4.

Awesome ep, now to reconsile how things degraded so much by UC 123...

I saw it yesterday as well, and I thought it was excellent. A beautiful ending to an epic series. Sunrise has really stepped up it's game recently. I REALLY want to see what happens between unicorn and f91 though, it's kind of a hole in the UC history timeline outside of hathaways flash.

How does the government change so starkly in a time frame of only about 30 years. What happens to Banagher, mineva, and all the zeon remnants?

I can't seem to find it on playstation network. Guess I'll wait it out a little to see if they update the store with it. All other 6 episodes are available.

Edit: Thanks Azreal. I can wait till tomorrow.

Wow, that's insane! Glad to see AoT holding up stateside, even though I'm sure a lot of interested parties have already seen the sub.

Wait, season 2 is legit confirmed? With how successful season 1 was, I should have seen this coming, but still. I'm excited

So, as an update, I received my MSI GS60 Ghost Pro today (it has an 870m). I didn't get a chance to do too much with it (mostly, I left it alone while installing games), but I did notice some things.

First and foremost, SteelSeries Engine immediately picked up on my Sensei mouse and added it to the software (which was already added since the keyboard of the laptop is made by SteelSeries as well). All was well and fine as I messed around with the program. Unfortunately, I tried to add profiles to the mouse, and after it hung up, I tried to close and restart the program. I don't really know what happened, but the SteelSeries engine refused to open after that. I had to uninstall it and get a fresh download of the program from the MSI website. After that, it doesn't seem to show any issues. Needless to say, I'm not gonna try and mess around too much with this software, as even others have noted that its a bit touchy, unreliable, and the most recent version direct from SteelSeries (Engine 3) won't work on windows 8.1 (so MSI use an older version).

I only tried one game so far, and that was Skyrim with the HD textures pack. I didn't jump into ultra settings (as I was worried about the 870m throttling in such a small chassis), but the game ran beautifully on high settings.....for about 3 minutes. After that, I don't know why, but the game crashed, and crashed hard. Couldn't even crtl/alt/del my way out of it, and had to restart the computer. Upon logging back in, it appeared that steam was performing some update in the background.

I don't know if that is what caused the crash, but after trying the game again, I experienced no such further crashes (I think it was a random one time deal, it's happened before to me on my mac, so I don't think it's a big deal).

The touchpad isn't nearly as good as the one on my macbook, but truly, I've yet to find a touchpad as good as the one apple makes. That said, I actually REALLY like the steel series keyboard that MSI packages. It's "firmer" than a standard macbook/ultrabook chiclet keyboard, and feels heavy duty in a way. Haven't tried any fps yet, but when I get bf4 running, I'll report back about temperatures on the keyboard when gaming.

With all this said and done, the laptop is pretty light, and games BEAUTIFULLY. I know you guys with actual desktops may think light of this, but I've never actually had the chance to game with such "high" specs. My only experience with PC gaming has been with the 2012 retina mac's GT 650m, and the jump to an 870m has been glorious. I was playing skyrim before (with HD textures) at 1680 x 1050 on low settings, and barely managing 45 fps. Now, 1080p at high settings, with a full 60 fps, is jaw dropping, and that's on a game as old as skryim. I look forward to how battlefield 4 and Metro LL play on this card. Overall, money well spent! (obviously a desktop is more economical, but as a college student, it's not really plausible since I move around so much).

Does the cpu take a performance hit at high polling rates?

I'm sure that there are hardcore gamers out there who care about that stuff very much. All I can say there is that fussing with DPI settings has never made much difference to me, and I've used pretty much everything from el-cheapo mice to a Logitech G700. I've come to the conclusion that the only two things that really matter to me are that the mouse must have at least two buttons I can hit with my thumb (I map them to G and V keystrokes, then use G for grenades and V for melee in shooters), and I prefer that the mouse wheel can be set to clicky when I'm in game, but free rolling when I'm not. Aside from the piss-poor battery life, I've liked my G700, but I've got Logitech Marathon Mice I use with the bigger laptops (including the gaming one). It's all good.

Side note, I use a small Microsoft mouse on the little laptop... I can't remember the model. Wouldn't use it for gaming, because it's only got one thumb button, but it's smaller than the Marathon Mice, so it goes with the smaller computer.

I'm pretty soft core when it comes to gaming. The most "competitive" fps I play is BF4, and that's for casual play only, not really competitive. Most of my friends have a PS4, and not a gaming PC, so I'll be reserving my multiplayer heavy games for the PS4.

What's a 'good' or 'common' DPI that most people use for 1080p screens? I know it's user preference, but I'd like to set the mouse to one well adjusted DPI and call it good. I highly doubt I'll be taking advantage of the competition features like different profiles, polling rates, etc. Plug and play is more my sort of thing.

My body is ready

I really hope they don't go with the novel's ending, but we'll see.

It would be about 33% faster. But then we start getting into specifics. Does the 5400-rpm drive have more platters, thereby making each platter less dense with data, meaning searching the drive is faster. And the list goes on. If the drive is just storing data, then a 5400-rpm drive would be fine. If you have programs or are booting from it, then you would benefit from a 7200-rpm drive. Which is why I threw in the SSHD from Seagate. Yes, it's a 5400-rpm drive. But the SSD-part of it stores or caches the most frequently used programs making those programs load faster. And yes, there are other manufacturers of SSHDs from Western Digital and Toshiba.

Usually? No. And yes, the USB 3 would be the biggest disadvantages. I don't install games on a USB drive since there's a chance the USB might unmount due to a loose plug which would crash my system.

I'm going to say this about mice and keyboards (gaming or regular), in general. Be prepared to send it back if your hands do not like it. And this means trying it for a week. In fact, it would be better to try it in-store for a 1st impression if you can. If you're going to play for hours, then the mouse better be comfortable for that long duration.

Ideally, you'll want to leave the Windows settings and in-game settings at default and let the mouse handle the speed. Higher DPI means the mouse cursor moves faster (or you move much quicker). You'll be more twitchy at higher DPI, but since the sensitivity is higher, it will be harder to steady your aim as minor mouse movements will make you move a greater area. That's when you lower the DPI so that your movements are smaller. The trade-off at lower DPI is that you are less twitchy, meaning you can't rotate or adjust your angle as you would at higher DPI. Mice that allow you to adjust the DPI on-the-fly, usually have dedicated buttons to adjust the sensitivity.

Awesome, thanks! And yeah, I realize that there are downfalls to an external hard drive set-up for gaming. The rMBP that I've used for PC games the last 2 years has been limited with only about 90 GB in windows [bootcamp], so I've always had to delete a game before I download another. Now, with file sizes upwards of 30 GB, it's getting more and more unfeasible.

Obviously the MSI laptop has a 1 TB secondary storage, so space is no longer a paramount issue, but I'd rather not just shelve the Mac if at all possible. This is why external hard drives seemed to have some potential.

And thanks for the simple mouse explanation. I'll be sure to screw around with DPI settings. Hopefully, I can set it up so that I have a "standard" DPI and a "sniping/precision" DPI. As for mouse comfort, I had a magic mouse before this that I really liked, and the sensei is about the same size, so I think it will be fine. With that said, obviously I've never done too much gaming with an apple magic mouse, so I don't know how my claw grip will translate to intense gaming.

Do any of you guys use external hard drives for storing games? I would imagine the biggest cap to be the UBS 3.0 transfer rate, but I want to see if it's feasible.

In other news, my GS60 is yet to show up (GentechPC took their sweet time shipping it), but I purchased myself a gaming mouse in preparation for it. I found this: http://steelseries.com/us/products/mice/steelseries-sensei on amazon for 40 bucks, so I pulled the trigger.

I've never used a gaming mouse before in my life (I've always been a console guy, just now getting into PCs). The SteelSeries Sensei seemed to have gotten rave reviews, so I thought it would be a good place to start (and it matches the steel series keyboard of the laptop).

How does one micromanage DPI, and how does DPI relate to in-game mouse sensitivity options? For example, I know BF4 has a built in mouse sensitivity controller, but I know that this mouse also has the option to customize DPI settings on the fly as well.

So, a little update to my laptop situation (thanks for the suggestions by the way everyone). I ended up splurging some more money than initially expected to get myself an MSI GS60 Ghost with GTX 870m. I was planning on getting an ASUS ROG g750 or MSI GT60, but when I saw both in person, I figured there was no way I was willing to carry around 12 pound behemoths like that.

I ordered from Gentech PC, and I'm not familiar with their order processing time (it's been pending for a couple days now), but I'll let you guys know how the laptop is. Hopefully, that GTX 870m destroys the GT 650m that I'm working with right now (getting Witcher 2 to even run is a struggle).

I'm also hoping that this laptop will be able to outperform the PS4 I purchased (which, all things considered, I'm thinking it will), so that I can move all my next-gen gaming needs to this laptop, at least for the next 2 years, after which I plan on building a proper rig.

They promo'd that 1/35 GFF 4 years ago, but it never went on sale. IIRC, it's a non movable statue (well, the hatches work), and Bandai reps were saying a price tag of about $800 - $1000. Again, that was 4 years ago. We don't know what's changed, or why they decided to bring this back.

Ubisoft is saying you'll need GTX 780 and Core i7 to get this into ultra O_O

Looking for a gaming laptop that will be able to max or near max games for the next few (2) years. That being said, I don't really want to break the bank. Any suggestions?

Don't mind aesthetics too much, since I'm going for power/money, nothing else.

Edit: By max, I mean ultra settings in 1080p or even 900p if it comes to it

I wonder why the -0 series arms were so prone to breakage when Yamato got so many other "arms" right. I wonder if the -0 series arm design is just delicate inherently (which is why they went with diecast here)

I still think Episode 15 (vs. Fenice) was the peak of this series (which was a great series overall, don't get me wrong).

I too sort of wish we saw a legitimate Normal Yuuki Exia vs. Strike battle, but I can get behind why they had to do this

Bought Titanfall for PC, and had a lot of fun the first couple days. "Mash X to eject" is getting a liiiiittttlllllee old right about now though. I hoped that the Stryder and Ogre would change things up, but they really don't. I semi-wish that there was a pilots only game mode, or each class of Titan got its own equipment set.

To be fair, Titanfall feels like a good trial run for the inevitable Titanfall 2...

I never played the demo.

That said, the game is harder in the beginning. Once you get a handle on the brave/default system, get a few jobs, and get a few special attacks, things start to get easier. For me, the hardest battle was vs the white wizard. Meanwhile, figuring that the boss of the water temple would be water related, I loaded my specials with Lightning, power +40%, and anti-aquatic parts. I knew what I needed for each member to charge their special, went in with each character ready to use their special, and wiped out the boss on the first turn.

On that note, i think it helps that I tend to play in smaller spurts while leaving my 3DS in sleep mode most of the time I'm not playing. I'm just at chapter 3, but my village is almost 100% rebuilt.

Thanks for the info Mike. I gave the demo another try before purchasing, and I became a little hesitant. Instead of Bravely Default, in a completely impulse buy maneuver, I ended up forking over a lot more cash for Gundam Breaker on the vita. It's my first import game, hopefully lives up to the hype.

I'm waiting to indulge my RPG craving in FFX-HD, a game I had on PS2 but never bothered finishing.