Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~

That's difficult to answer because I don't know the specifics regarding how taxing Arma2 is on various hardware bits. My drives are all Seagate SATA IIs spinning at 7200rpm (160GB for OS/apps, 500GB for games, 320GB for storage, plus a couple of externals for backups), and I can only recommend keeping your drives defragged. As long as you have 7200rpm drives, I can't see where you would run into performance issues that would have a major negative impact on performance. WD makes good drives, but I seems to recall while shopping that their Blue and Green series are not performance-oriented, and I'm quite sure the Greens spin at 5400rpm or thereabouts. If and when you can afford a decent 7200rpm drive, I would recommend doing so (prices on 500GB drives are very reasonable).

I'm actually surprised that I'm still using the card; when I first installed it, I figured I'd be upgrading after a year, but it had been working so well that I didn't see the point. Once I have a new card in place, I'll see what EVGA will do as far as the warranty is concerned, because a GTX 280 makes for one hell of a back-up card. I've done everything I can think of to remedy the problem, from re-seating the card and wiping/re-installing drivers, to taking the card casing apart and clearing out dust that way, and I always have the fan running at 80%-100% while gaming. Keep in mind that I've had the card overclocked, which I'm certain contributed to the shortened lifespan. It's all good, though, as I was planning on upgrading to a DX11 card soon; I already have Dirt 2 which uses the new tessellation effects, and Aliens vs Predator comes out next month. My instincts tell me that Nvidia won't be releasing anything soon, so I'm going to order the new card this week. I'll be up and running before next weekend.

Ixnay on that last post; I spoke too soon. It would appear that the video card in my gaming rig, a GTX 280, is finally giving up the ghost. It's not quite dead yet, but I expect it will be soon. While gaming, I get strange artifacts throughout the picture, my games freeze, or I lose the picture completely. And now that things are happening on the desktop as well (freeze-ups mostly), I know it's time to retire this card that has performed so admirably for the past 18 months. I'm going to wait one more week to see if Nvidia is going to release the GTX 300 soon--before the end of January--but the last bit of news I heard on that front was that, due to productions problems, the next major release from Nvidia may happen as late as June. If there is no word on a release date, I'll be going with a Radeon 5870. I'll try to get some gaming in during the wait, but if things keep going as they have been this past week, I'll be unable to play with freezes or crashes every 5 minutes.

Nice find, Durka! I poked around a bit and found that some major features like the Forums are still under construction, but I'm looking forward to some of the information that they'll have; hopefully they'll have some major releases reviewed in a timely manner.

Steam does have an offline mode that works well, but yeah, you do have to have Steam open. One benefit I found: when I built my new system four months back, all I had to do was set Steam to download and reinstall all of my Steam games while I slept, and most of those games I had the discs for. So no monotony of swapping out disc after disc and watching progress bars; I just woke up and all of my Steam games were ready to go!

Howdy folks, Now that the holidays are over, I expect to be back online and gaming with my fellow Spartans and our guests. I managed to make the Sunday races a couple of times, and I popped into TS a few times to let people know I was still alive, but otherwise this past month has just been one big real-life party, culminating at a spontaneous New Year's Eve gala in Las Vegas (spontaneous meaning that we left on a whim from Salt Lake City at noon on New Year's Eve). So give me a day to blow the dust off of my keyboard and reacquaint myself with the labyrinthine controls for Arma 2, and I'll see y'all soon!

I've never had a problem with a game downloaded via Steam (but always check the OS/system requirements!), although I have had to patch some games manually, such as Arma 2. As long as you always have an Internet connection (technically not even required all the time, but highly recommended) and you don;t mind the fact that you won't ever be able to resell a game without reselling your entire Steam account (which violates the Terms of Service), I would recommend Steam as a reliable and worthwhile service. I expect to see at least one response from one of our members telling you why they think I am full of shit.

Yes, you can stock up on gift purchases, in a roundabout way. When you make a gift purchase via Steam, you have the option to send an email message that tells the recipient how to download/install Steam and redeem their gift. All you need to do is send the email to your own email account. Supposedly, gift purchases never expire (I've had a friend wait over a month to redeem one), and once you've decided on a recipient, simply resend the gift email to the recipient's address. You do this by clicking on the 'Games' menu link at the top of the Steam client, then select 'Manage Gifts & Guess Passes'.

The sale started on Dec 23rd and runs through Jan 3rd. The daily deals (24-hours only) have been hit-or-miss, although I suppose it also depends on your tastes and what you already have in your library. The multi-game packs are some of the best deals around, so long as you don't already have most of those games in your collection; the THQ pack is one of the best I've ever seen--too bad I already have most of those games! The main games that I purchased for myself were Braid, King's Bounty: Armored Princess, and Prototype. As gifts for friends and family, I spent about $100, all for games that, at the time, were $5 dollars or less. These included games such as Audiosurf, World of Goo, Osmos, Quantz, Torchlight, Braid, and CS:S. In fact, I have purchased Audiosurf TEN times now, nine of those purchases being gifts for others. Most of the "casual" games will remain on sale with prices ranging from $2 to $5 USD throughout Jan 3rd, and many games that aren't spotlighted are still on sale ($25 for Empire: Total War). As as long as you don't have an aversion to Steam (as I know some of our members do), now is the time to make those impulse purchases.

I've been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. Here's why:

Good news/bad news: As I have a VERY similar model Toshiba, I can tell you that, for fast action games, the integrated graphics is nowhere near up to the task. You won't even be able to run an older source engine game such as CS:S; or rather, it will run, but at an unplayable 5, maybe 10fps at best. On the other hand, for undemanding casual games (think PopCap stuff) or games without fast action, you'd be fine. I run Civilization 4, Heroes of Might & Magic V, Galactic Civilzations 2, and Europa Universalis just fine on my machine; they're all turn-based games, and I can run them with mid-to-high graphic-level options. I also play things like Audiosurf, Quantz, World of Goo, and Peggle; again, all good game, not terribly demanding in graphics (although I do have to run Audiosurf at lower graphic detail options.) The other good news is that, gaming aside, looks like you got a really great laptop! More than enough for anything you'll need to do at school.

After much suspense and guessing on my part, it turns out that a relative gave me Dirt 2 as a holiday gift (the other option was Empire: Total War). It should be noted that, for her, the deciding factor was the box art; she said, "the game with the car on the front looked more fun than the game with the man wearing a funny hat and tights and holding a gun." "My bollocks are burning! This is NOT fun!" As luck would have it, it seems that Codemasters knows a thing or two about making a decent racing game, as those of us who have played Grid can attest. More specifically, once you've gone through the headache of installing the game and getting it configured correctly, the part where you get to drive vehicles is quite enjoyable. Anything else in between, however, is a pain in the arse. The menu system is one of the most unintuitive monstrosities I've encountered, and you can't even access it until you've gone through the tedious introduction videos and advice from your friends and have run your first race. I had to run that race using only the keyboard for control, at a low video resolution and with an incorrect aspect ratio before I could get to the point where I could change various settings and configure the game to recognize my racing wheel. And for a single player game, you can't even create a unique profile name; you will simply be known as "Player One". Lovely. As with Grid and the original Dirt, there is no mouse support; all menu navigation and setting changes are accomplished via keyboard input. For those using a gamepad to control the game, this is perhaps a minor annoyance, but as I have my keyboard pushed aside at an odd angle to allow the use of my racing wheel, the issue is rather troublesome. There are other issues with the non-racing parts of the game, but all of these issues are balanced out by the enjoyable and varied types of races. The game in not strictly about rally racing, so those looking for a more "pure" rally experience might be put off a bit. The physics model seems to be quite good, damage modeling looks terrific, and the overall look of the game is rather splendid. The feel of the game seems to lean more towards an arcade-style experience as opposed to a simulation, which is understandable when you consider that Codemasters is probably going to make most of their money from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. Later in the week, I'll post some footage on YouTube. All in all, if you don't mind traversing a labyrinth of menus, cutscenes and inane dialog to get to the good bits, I'd recommend the game to racing fans.

Try something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824001338 NewEgg has several good 24" displays in the $220 - $250 price range. I have a comparable Samsung 22" and it's great.

Two other things to keep in mind regarding LCD displays: Your monitor has a 16:9 aspect ratio, but not all games (primarily older titles) support widescreen resolutions, at least not in their menu settings. Visit www.widescreengamingforum.com to find solutions for getting these titles to run in widescreen resolutions; in most cases, you simply need to edit a config file. The other thing to keep in mind is that, to get a good gaming experience, your new display should have a fast refresh rate to prevent "ghosting"--the persistence of an image, most noticeable is fast actions sequences. Ideally, you want a refresh rate of 5ms or less, although 8ms is pretty decent. Any higher number does not lend itself to a good gaming experience.

Hah! You 30-year-olds are spoiled! At least you HAD video games! We had to play BOARD (aka bored) games with things like DICE! When you wanted to move something, you couldn't just click on a mouse; first you had to roll some dice to see how far you could move, and then you had to MANUALLY move your piece the appropriate number of spaces! And you had to keep track of your own money as well! You had to count it out and do things like ADDITION and SUBTRACTION when you bought or sold things, there was no computer to do it automatically for you! And when your game was over, you couldn't hit the off switch, you had to pick up all the pieces and cards and what-nots and organize them into their proper holding spaces/baggies etc, that way it would only take you one hour to set up the game the next time instead of two hours. Thirty-year-old crybabies!

I'm probably just too old-fashioned, but I've always enjoyed the luxury of time that turn-based strategy games provide. For a remake/sequel, I would choose X-COM: UFO Defense (aka X-COM: Enemy Unknown in Europe), which to this day, in my heart, was the pinnacle of turn-based, squad-based gameplay. I was very disappointed when the planned sequel, Dreamland Chronicles, was cancelled. As recently as 18 months ago, I picked up a DOS-Boxed version somewhere for $5 and gave it another spin, and despite the fact that the game runs at 640X480, it was still one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had. It is a crime against humanity that this game has not been given a modern facelift. For a semi-original game, I would just want a game starts with the Dawn of Man (a la the Civilization series), and carries through and beyond extraterrestrial and intergalactic colonization (Alpha Centauri, Galactic Civilizations 2), with everything in-between (The Settlers, Europa Universalis, Pirates!, Railroads!, SimCity, etc, to fill out the details). That's not asking too much, is it?

Welcome to our little home-away-from-home on the Internet(s). It's been my experience that, while we generally don't engage in any sort of competitions or tourneys, a competitive edge is always welcome, and a recent excursion into TvT territory (SPARTA vs. everyone else) was quite fun and went over very well. I believe we also have our GRAW 1 server up and running to help sate your tastes for TvT play. Aside from Arma, something tells me that, with your interest in motorbikes, you may have an interest in racing as well. While there are currently no decent/recent bike racing games on the PC (that I know of), there's a small group of us that play Need for Speed: Shift on Sunday, and if you have or should acquire the game, we could always use some fresh me--I mean, we would appreciate the added competition (or carnage, as is often the case).

Monday and Saturday are the only two days I usually don't play, due to work and time spent with friends and family. Tuesday-Thursday available after 7:30PM EST (12:00AM GMT) Friday available all day (and I'm definitely up for TacDom) Sunday available all day after the Sunday races (4:00PM EST until ?, generally 2 or 2.5 hours) And believe me, I'm always playing something, as the people at Valve/Steam will tell you: And these are just my Steam games. In the past two weeks, I also completed GTA IV, started playing Dragon Age, and spent the better part of the holiday playing Texas Hold 'Em with real people (and losing real money.)

In case you were interested: I threw some footage up on YouTube from the game Serious Sam HD. It's an insanely fun and rather difficult shooter; the "HD" version, so far as I know, is the same game as the original 2001 release, but with updated graphics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3zBu88Yqco

LOL, I won't touch that one above, but yes! Happy Thanksgiving and the lot to everyone! I am completing my download of Serious Sam HD from Steam as I write this, so it will be a festive holiday weekend for me indeed! I do hope to see many of you online and in-game during the holiday.

What really makes me sad in this case is that it's likely that the people who did the study are relatively intelligent people with a fair amount of resources at their disposal who could have spent their time and money doing some sort of research that would have been helpful in some real-world-application kind of way. I recently finished Grand Theft Auto IV, during which time I committed unprovoked virtual acts of depravity that, in real life, would render me incapable of posting this message, since I'm assuming I wouldn't have Internet access from a prison cell or the gas chamber. Since that time, I have committed, um, let's see, ZERO acts of depravity in real life (the incident with the sheep was consensual), so, by using the same kind of logic that is found in these "cause-and-effect" studies, one could argue that devoting 40 or so hours of one's life to playing GTA IV or similar fare has been shown to reduce criminal activity by said participant. Oh, and I also consumed large amounts of caffeinated beverages and foods high in carbohydrates, watched American football every Sunday (a relatively violent sport), and probably wanked off once or twice, so all of these activities should also come highly recommended as methods to curb any inclination towards socially unacceptable behavior. I had to look up what Conkers was. Closest thing to it in my childhood was "Apple Wars", where all the boys would take the apples from the school lunch, split into two groups, and throw the apples at each other until all of the apples and/or our faces had been turned to mush. Several visits to the school nurse were involved, but I don't seem to recall anyone getting into any trouble for it.

Better yet, if it's in WikiPedia, it must be true.

Like this, perhaps?

I was waiting to hear some good news on this before putting my .02 in. Batwing, whatever else happens with this situation, Arma is a great game, but we play other games here as well. Even of things don't work out with Arma, or if a long delay is involved, stick around and see what else is going on around here. I'm relatively new here myself, but I can't think of a better place to come to for gaming and company.

LOL!! No, Zeno, I love the game, as I hope would be obvious by my continued presence at the Sunday race. I just saw that picture on some random racing site and thought, "Wow, shitty cars." So I made what I thought would be a funny sig out of that idea. So not only may my sense of humor be out-of-whack with British sensibilities, but even my friends here in the US think that I'm an odd duck. Cheers!