mikeszekely

For those of you thinking about building a new Windows (or Linux) computer in the next few months, the new round of Core i7 processors came out today. The new 860 supposedly outperforms the old favorite 920 with a slightly higher 2.8GHz clock speed (vs. 2.66GHz on the 920), uses less power, and costs around the same price. The new 2.93GHz 870 is supposed to be pretty close in performance to the 3.03GHz 950. Finally, for those of you looking to upgrade on a budget, the new $200 Core i5 750 (at 2.66GHz) is supposed to be pretty close to the old 920. The main differences between this new batch of Lynnfield processors and the older Nehalem/Bloomfield batch is that Lynnfields are optimized for dual-channel RAM instead of triple-channel, and if you plan on using SLI or Crossfire set ups the Lynnfields run the PCIe x8 instead of x16 (single cards still run at x16). Also, the Core i5 dumped hyper-threading. Oh, and either due to those changes, or just because Intel wants to be a pain, this new batch of processors uses a different CPU socket, LGA 1156 (vs. LGA 1366 for the old i7s, or LGA 775 for pretty much every other processor Intel has made for the last three years). The early consensus seems to be to stick with the 920 if you're 100% certain you're going for an SLI or Crossfire setup, but to go with the new 860 if you're thinking about saving money with a single-card solution. I'm personally a single-card man myself, since my solitary 9800GTX+ runs everything but Crysis at the highest settings. But then again, I just built my computer last year, so I'm hoping to get another year or two out of it before I do anything as drastic as a mobo/processor upgrade.

How much PC gaming do you do, and when you play, what kinds of games do you play? You'd pretty much have three options: Option 1: Buy a copy of Windows. Use the Apple software Boot Camp that comes with your Mac to install that copy of Windows. Boot into Windows whenever you want to install or play a game, and hope that the hardware is up for it. This is the best option if you don't play games often and the games you do play aren't very graphically demanding. Option 2: When you buy your Mac Pro, order it from Apple instead of buying the default cheapest one. Keep all the options at the minimum level, except when you get to the video card select the ATI Radeon HD 4870. This will add $200 to the price. It'll still leave you a little behind the current top video cards for Windows PCs, but apparently Apple uses special cards so you can't even go to the store and buy an HD 4870 off the shelf, let alone a GTX 295. Still, an HD 4870 should be enough to run 99% of the games on the market at the highest or near-highest settings. Also, for this option, after you buy your Mac you still follow the instructions from Option 1. This is the best option if you don't game too often, but you play some graphically intense games and you want to be able to run them on high settings for at least a year or two. Option 3: Buy your Mac Pro and use it for 99% of your computing. Buy or build a separate Windows PC on the side just for gaming. This is the most expensive option, to be sure, but with this option you could get 10 years of use out of your Mac Pro. This is a definitely plus, because Apple has gone out of their way to make sure you can upgrade hard drives and RAM, but nothing else in their computers. Kinda rude, since that makes their computers the most disposable, despite their premium price tag. For the Windows computer, you're free to upgrade that as needed to keep up with whatever game you're playing at the moment. This is the best option of you really enjoy PC gaming and you want to keep up with it without having to buy a new $2700 Mac Pro every two or three years.

295, actually. For Windows hardware, shopping for a motherboard is often more a function of finding one that has your CPU socket than and supports tech you want (RAID, Crossfire, SLI, etc) that whether or not is the mobo to end all mobos. But as far as I know, the mobo that everyone's been buying up for the Core i7s is an Asus. Not sure which model. I wouldn't really worry about DDR3. As I said before, I'd pick a motherboard that has a decent reputation, that supports the CPU I'd want to use, and maybe SLI since I usually buy NVIDIA cards (although the 190.62 drivers cause more problems than they solved, and the price tag on the Radeon HD 4890s are awfully seductive...). If that board happened to support DDR3, then I'd get DDR3. If it supported DDR2, then it supported DDR2. It's not a big deal. The important thing to remember about buying RAM though is that you're not actually buying the fastest RAM you can find, because it can't go any faster than the motherboard's front side bus speed. So if the mobo says it's FSB speed is 1066, then you buy DDR2 PC2 8500. It says 800, then you buy DDR2 PC2 6400. Well, that's kind of the crux of it. If you want the best hardware at the best price, something that will give you the highest level of functionality for all those things, then what you really want is a gaming-level Windows PC. If you want that Windows PC to physically look like a Mac, buy an empty Mac Pro or Power Mac G5 case off eBay and build a Windows PC in it. The minute you decide to go with Mac OS instead of Windows, you gotta start making compromises. Do you want minimum hassle, and do you want your Mac to definitely be able to run Windows too (you're definitely going to want to boot Windows, because gaming is lousy on Mac OS)? Then you have to buy an official, pre-built Mac. Of course, if you do that, you're stuck paying a fortune for the Xeon processor instead of being able to get a Core i7, and Apple doesn't make either the GeForce GTX 2 series cards available for the Mac Pro, nor the Radeon HD 4890. If you go this route, you're paying more for less. If you want better hardware and better prices, then you might be tempted to build a Mac. I don't know if I've made this clear or not, but building a Mac isn't like building a PC. The fact is, you're not supposed to be able to build a Mac at all. It can be done, but there's a good reason people say "I built a Hackintosh" and not "I built a Mac." The list of compatible hardware is slim, and hacked kext files are often necessary. Not to mention that you have to create an EFI boot disk onto a flash drive (minimum 8GB) or use a hacked version of OS X to even attempt to build a Hackintosh. And since you're doing that, I'm not sure that Boot Camp will work for dual booting, and if you want to run Windows you might have to install it to a separate drive and set up the boot loader to give you the Windows option. And at the end of all that, you really have to ask yourself if you want the best hardware on the market just to say you have it and you've got the money to burn, or if you really need it? I built my computer with top shelf parts (at the time) because I do play a lot of PC games, and it was important to me that I could play the majority of them (honestly, pretty much everything except Crysis) at the highest settings. I don't feel a strong need to upgrade my 9800GTX+ to a GTX 295 because I don't need it. I don't feel like tossing my mobo and processor to get a Core i7 in there because I don't need it. I only have 3GB of RAM because when I built it, I was using the 32-bit version of Windows Vista. I don't do hardcore video or photo editing, so I don't actually need more of that, either. So if you're not doing hardcore video or photo editing, just watching videos and looking at photos, you don't need a high-end processor or a crap ton of fast RAM. If you're not playing games, you don't need a high-end graphics card or a high-end processor (and if you're are playing a lot of computer games, seriously, just stick with Windows). That just leaves music, internet, and "general computing", and if you're really dead set on running OS X, a Mac Mini will do. Well, at the end of the day, practical advice only goes so far. I'm getting the feeling from you that you're considering our advice, but a part of you really wants that aluminum Mac Pro tower sitting on your desk, and I'm also getting the impression that you can afford that Mac Pro as well. So in your case, and I do mean your case specifically, screw practicality. Just go ahead and go the Apple Store, and buy a Mac Pro. A Windows computer might have slightly better hardware, but I can sense you really want the Mac. And a Hackintosh is really a fun geek project than a practical option for entry-level to moderate computer users. But buy the cheapest one (should be $2499), because Apple's going to rob you blind on any factory upgrades. IF (and I do mean IF) you decide you need more RAM or more hard drive storage, buy it separately later. And if you're budget really is $5000 (I'd be happy with $600... it'd build me a new Hackintosh and a new Linux box), spring for the 30" Apple Cinema display (if that's the display you saw the Mac hooked up to that you liked). It'd put your grand total at around $4300.

The list that was included in the Lifehacker post is a great place to start, because the author was able to get Snow Leopard on running on that hardware with everything accept the sound working, so he only needed to find one modified kext (a kext is sort of like a driver, but it's for Macs). And the hardware is certainly powerful enough... the processor is a step up from mine, he's working with 5GB of RAM more than me, and the video card is the same one I have, and I can pretty much pick up any PC game off the shelf without looking at the requirements and expect that I can run it at of very near the maximum settings. There are ways you could build a more powerful computer... go with a GeForce GTX 2 series instead of a 9800GTX+, or pick a different motherboard that can support a Core i7 processor, etc. But building a computer that can run OS X is a little trickier, and a little more hit-and-miss than building one that can run Windows, so it might be a better idea to stick with the author's list. The only change I would definitely recommend is dumping the 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard drive for the Caviar Blue or Black. From what I've heard, the Greens save energy by putting the hard drive into a low-power state when you're not accessing it. Then it takes time for the drive to spin back up when you are using it, so you wind up taking a performance hit with the Greens. If you want Mac characteristics, why Windows? For some people, they switch to Mac and they find it to be easier to use for their daily chores, like surfing the net or syncing their iPod/iPhones. Those people are content with Mac and never go back. Then there are people who use Macs professionally. It's the tool of their trade, and it's just what they're used to. Some people, though, buy a Mac and immediately have to run Boot Camp or Parallels so they can keep their old Windows apps. They're frustrated when they pay a premium for their Mac, and then a year later Apple releases a newer model and their hardware suddenly feels out-of-date, or they find a Windows computer with better specs for a lot less than they paid. Or they realize that gaming on OS X is kind of dicey. And they get frustrated because aside from the Mac Pro, upgrading a Mac is kind of a pain, and mostly limited to installing bigger hard drives or more RAM. Some people do get around all that by building a Hackintosh, but building a Hackintosh isn't really for the faint-of-heart. Lastly, I do feel like I should ask... what's the last version of Windows you've used? When I first got into Macs, I know that Tiger (that was OS X version 10.4) seemed light years beyond Windows XP, and Leopard and Snow Leopard are even slicker and shinier than Tiger, so I can only imagine what an upgrade they must seem from Windows XP. However, Windows 7 has handily caught up to OS X, and has even combined some of the OS X Dock functions with the Windows Taskbar. If you go the Windows route, you can pretty much go hog wild and buy the most advanced hardware on the market and expect it to work. If you want to try Windows 7 before it's actually released on October 22nd, it's unfortunately too late to download the release candidate from Microsoft. However, you can check various bittorrent sites (if you're into that) for either the release candidate (build 7100), which you can still get a key for from Microsoft that doesn't expire until March. Or, you can look for the RTM version (that's the version that'll go on sale in October). You won't be able to activate it, but I think you can still use it on a trial basis for something like 90 days. If at the end of all that, you still decide that Mac's the way to go and Windows is just not for you anymore, I'm sure we'll be glad to help you with a Hackintosh.

I think, if you pick hardware close to what was in the Lifehacker guide, and follow the instructions carefully, then yes it's a little technical, but you'll be getting better hardware. It's definitely easier to just buy a Mac out of the box, but I'm not sure that the iMacs or the Mac Mini are going to deliver the all-out power you're looking for, while the Mac Pro is really blowing a fat wad of cash on a server processor you don't need (like I said, the Xeon in the Mac Pro is based on the same architecture as the Core i7, has the same number of cores, and runs at the same clock speed, for something like $600+ less). At the risk of fueling the Mac vs. Windows fires, I think if you want a pre-built system you might want to wait until after October 22nd and buy a gaming-level Windows 7 PC. Check to make sure the graphics card is DirectX 11-compatible, and maybe go with a Core i7 processor. If you run the 64-bit version of Windows 7, go with either 6 or 12GB of identical RAM (for technical reasons, the Core i7 works best with three sticks of RAM in a tri-channel configuration). I think that'll get you the most bang for your buck, honestly... it shouldn't run you more than $2500 pre-built, or as low as $1500 if you build it yourself. EDIT: Just cleaning up an ugly run-on sentence...

Yes, the components are PC stuff. For the most part, since Apple adopted Intel processors, the hardware is pretty much the same in both systems. The main difference is that Windows PCs still use BIOS on their motherboards, while Apple has adopted EFI (that is, extensible firmware interface). This is the main hurdle in building your own Mac, but that's why you need an 8GB flash drive if you follow the Lifehacker tutorial. The idea is that you're setting the BIOS to accept the flash drive as the primary boot disc, and then you're setting the flash drive up to run an EFI bootloader. Although the instructions might seem daunting, the alternative is to try to get a patched version of the OS, which (even if you buy a retail copy of the OS) is kind of a legal gray area. Snow Leopard is the most current version of Mac OS X, version 10.6. Snow Leopard is actually good for Hackintosh (Hackintosh is a portmanteau of hacked and Macintosh) builders because the "upgrade" version is only $29 (the assumption is that you already have Leopard, which was OS X 10.5, installed on your Mac, and you're upgrading to it). Although the $29 version is called the "upgrade" version, it's the full OS and you're perfectly capable of doing a clean install from it.

Good choice, btw.

High end machines are great, you'll get no argument from me! If you really like the aesthetic of the Mac Pro tower, it might still be cheaper to buy an empty Mac Pro (or even a G5) case on eBay, then check the OSX86 Project's wiki for hardware that's know compatible with Snow Leopard, then grab the most high-end stuff you can. Aside from hardware differences, the previously-linked Lifehacker guide will still be useful for setting up the bootable USB drive that makes EFI work, and you'll wind up with a Hackintosh that looks like a Mac Pro. Then get the Apple Display with the money you saved!

No, I think the Clone Wars was last year. I haven't seen District 9, but it's on my list of things to do. I also haven't seen Moon, although it looks fantastic, because absolutely no one was showing it around here. Based on all the hype I've been hearing for probably over a year now, I'd actually put money on Avatar as being mediocre at best. So yeah, Star Trek is the best sci-fi movie of all time. For Pete's sake, I'll go on record as saying I did enjoy Salvation. It was just nowhere near as good as Star Trek.

If you do a lot of photo, video, or graphics editing, and you've got the money to burn, then it might be worth it. The Mac Pro is usually the preferred machine for professionals in those fields. I read an article once where the author was trying to debunk the "Apple Tax" myth by comparing a Mac Pro to a similarly specced Dell. I don't think he debunked the Apple Tax myth so much as demonstrated that it evens out on higher-end equipment, since it is pretty much a given that you can buy a Windows laptop for half the price of the cheapest MacBook, but I digress... If you're going to use the computer mainly for surfing the net, watching videos and making documents with Office/OpenOffice, there's really no need to drop that kind of money, as the Mac Pro becomes overkill. Get a iMac or even a Mac Mini, and upgrade the RAM later on your own. You'll save a ton of money by giving up performance you really don't need (in this scenario). If you play a lot of computer games, just stick to a Windows computer. The most powerful and expensive component in the Mac Pro is the processor, and that's because it's using a high-end $1000 server CPU. You can get a Core i7 with the same chip architecture, same clock speed, and same number of cores for under $300. For gaming, it's more important to have a good graphics card anyway, and the Mac Pro's GT 120 is a step down from from the GTX 2xx line, or ATI's Radeon HD 48xx cards. In general, the Mac versions of games come out a year later (if at all, although a few companies release Mac versions around the same time as the Windows versions), and cling to a $50 price tag long after the Windows versions are down to $20. Could you clarify that statement? I mean, yeah, Macs in general do have a very different feel than Windows computers. Some people prefer it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but I think OS X is a great operating system for people who just want to do stuff in Office, surf the net, and store their iTunes collection, and I think it'd be a great OS for netbooks for that reason. But it's a lousy OS for gaming. As far as the graphics thing, though, what exactly were you doing? Mac apps have a unique style to them, sure, and Leopard & Snow Leopard are kind of slick-looking operating systems, but Macs are actually nothing special in the graphics hardware department. Like I've already said, the default graphics card for the Mac Pro, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 150, is actually a step down from the GeForce GTX 2 series or ATI's Radeon HD 48xx cards. The iMacs and Mac Mini, IIRC, use the mobile versions of the GeForce 9 series, which aren't necessarily bad, but again not really competing with modern dedicated graphics cards. In any case, if you were really impressed by the visuals of the Mac Pro over the iMac, especially if you were just screwing around and not actually doing anything graphically intensive with the Mac Pro at the store, it might be the display it's connected to and not the computer itself that's really wowing you. Lastly, before you drop a ton of money on a Mac Pro, why don't you check out Lifehacker's Guide to building a Hackintosh? The author built one for around $900 in the example, and any of the parts could be upgraded to more powerful ones if you feel like spending more money. He also claims that he's been using Hackintosh computers as his main computers for two years. It could be a great way to save money while getting a powerful Mac, and if it turns out you don't like using Mac OS you can still go back to Windows with that hardware. One final, quick note before the Mac Vs. Windows thing turns into a royal flame war... I have a MacBook that I just installed Snow Leopard on for a laptop and a Windows 7 desktop. I've also been saving my old parts when I upgrade my desktop, and eventually those older parts are going to get reassembled into a computer destined to run Kubuntu Linux, so I'm pretty impartial to operating systems. Like I said earlier, I think OS X is a great OS for day-to-day net surfing and what not, but I'll freely admit I use my Windows desktop more, if only because I do play a lot of PC games.

I caught a few episodes back when it aired the first time, when I was still in college. I gave up on it pretty fast. I found the idea of people settling their differences through elaborate card games to be even more ridiculous than people settling their differences by having animals stored in little balls duke it out.

I wouldn't say that it's so unusual that I've never seen it, but they're definitely a minority. I looked at a few other fan controllers, and I'd definitely say the if you want a fan controller in your box, you're definitely going to have to replace a few fans. I'm not sure how many fans your controller supports, but I'd focus on the the 120mm case fans first, maybe the 140mm. Skip the VGA fans (you can control them manually with something like Riva Tuner if you really want). I'd leave the 230mm fan alone too, just let it do it's low RPM thing.

I grew up on G1. I watched the cartoon, I read the Marvel comic books, and I had the toys when I was a kid. As an adult, I still read or have read Dreamwave and IDW's G1 Transformers. I buy the DVDs. But the toys? Occasionally I'll buy a G1 reissue, like Optimus Prime and Soundwave. I'm actually really looking forward to the Toys 'R' Us exclusive Insecticons (Perceptor... somewhat). I can give the G1 line, or at least the '84-'85 line, a lot of credit for producing toys that looked like real vehicles in alt mode. But G1 toys can never be my favorite, because of the limited engineering at the time. They rarely looked like their animation models, and you were lucky if they had enough posability to move their legs. So when I was in my teens, I somehow let my parents give away a lot of my old Transformers (which I'm bummed about, because I had some seriously cool ones like Powermaster Prime, Tripticon, Metroplex, Omega Supreme, and Scorponok). And, despite being a member of a board where people were buying toys since I was in college, a part of me sort of thought of toys as something for kids to play with, not something to collect. I wasn't even tempted, aside from RID Prime, until late in the Energon line. I really wanted Prime, Deluxe Starscream, Shockblast, Scorponok, and Megatron. If I was single, I probably would have started collecting Transformers right then and there, but I didn't think I could get it to fly with my wife. And so it went on, until the Classics line came out. Modern reimaginings of G1 characters, with posable bots? I was sold. And so it was that I bought all of the Classics/Universe figures except for anything smaller than a Deluxe (with the exceptions of Wheelie, Brawn, Beachcomber, Cosmos, and Warpath), Dinobot, Cheetor, and Hot Shot. I bought a handful of Animated figures, a smaller handful of movie figures, and three RotF figures (not counting movie/RotF figures that were repaints of Cybertron/Energon figure). I'm at a point now where I'll buy a figure if it interests me, but I'm mostly into Classics/Universe. On the occasions when I do buy outside that line, it's only because I think the figure might fit with the line anyway (ex, I bought a movie Fracture, plus Animated Blackarachnia and Waspinator for my Classics Decepticons, and a movie Storm Surge that I repainted into Seaspray).

Been playing with Bruticus for awhile now, and there's a few things I'm really loving about him vs. the other Energon combiners. 1. Bruticus' chest has a distinct look when compared to the chest of the robot that forms his torso, while Devestator and Superion's chests are pretty much the same as the bots that make up their torsos. 2. The Energon weapons actually look like weapons for the individual bots. Superion's do too, but Devastator's were terrible. Especially the cranes'. 3. The Energon weapons actually look like parts of the vehicles. Extra guns and radar for the tank, landing skids for the copters. The weapons don't look too bad on the A-10s in Superion, but the rest are kibble on their vehicles. Especially Devastator's cranes'. 4. The Energon weapons actually look like they belong on the combined bot. Devastator's shovels' weapons made sort of passable claws and feet, but again his crane's weapons were terrible and out of place. The A-10s' weapons don't look too bad as feet, but as hands it makes Superion look like he's wearing mittens. And the other jets' weapons just look stupid as hands or feet. Bruticus' tanks' weapons are no worse as hands than anything Devastator or Superion's got, but I prefer them as feet for one simple reason: the helicopters' weapons actually look like hands with four fingers and a thumb. 5. The individual robots are pretty solid in their own right. Superion's weren't too bad, but I think Bruticus' are a little better. As for Devastator, the huge crane arms on his cranes and the huge shovel hand for Devastator's torso bot leave a bit to be desired. Not to mention that the cranes' heads are pretty much showing in alt mode.

No worries! It looks like a mod combined them anyway. I'm willing to give it a chance, but I still have my doubts. I guess I'm just jaded.

I don't know about this. I loved the first movie, but the movie ended on just the right note. It's a movie that didn't need a sequel, and the fact that it's getting one smacks of nothing more than an easy cash-in on the cult-popularity of the first one.

I'll admit to having moments when I just scan the first page of a board instead of searching when I'm starting a new topic... but this is on the first page.

How is it? I've only played the first one on PC. The basic mechanics seemed entertaining enough, but I felt like I'd played games five years older with the same graphics.

Your case? You mean your case fans use Molex connectors? As far as I know that unit doesn't support fans that use Molex connectors. I'm pretty sure they have cables that go the other way... that is, you have a 3-pin fan cable and you want to plug it into a Molex connector. I don't know if they make cables that do you what you want (of if, assuming they did, it'd work with your fan controller). You might be better off replacing your case fans.

To supplement what Az said, it doesn't plug into the motherboard. The PCIe slot you plugged the card into is the only connection to the motherboard. What the card needs is power. You can do like Az said and look for a pair cables coming out of the power supply that would mate with your cable (it's the same kind of power cable that plugs into IDE drives). It's worth noting that the cable in your picture is actually an adapter, though. If you have a modern power supply, you might just want to see if it has a plug that can go directly into the video card (it'd look like the six-pronged end of your adapter).

Don't know if any of you guys have been to Target lately, but I stopped by for something else and wound up finding and picking up RotF Bruticus Maximus. Just a heads up if anyone's looking for him. EDIT: Bruticus might be my favorite of the Classics/RotF Energon reissue combiners. The helicopters take some fiddling, but overall he's solid, his components are decent Transformers in their own right, and the Energon weapons actually make decent hands, especially the ones for the helicopters (although two helicopter arms makes him look a little un-buff). I might feel differently if the fan add-ons were cheaper/more available/actually came with Superion, or if Silverbolt's legs weren't put together wrong (I'm missing a tool to fix them myself), because Superion does look slick in some of the photos I've seen. But out of the box, I gotta give it to Bruticus.

The delay is because the developers are adding PhysX support. I'll gladly trade playing as the Joker on some stupid challenge missions for PhysX and a $10 cheaper price tag.

That would totally make my night.

Yeah. A four billion dollar reason.

Better late than never, I suppose?