I'm using Seagate 1TB drives because I get them from a friend at seagate. They are far from quiet and out of the 3 in my server, 1 died within a month. I'm still trying to get him to get me another. Oh well, I'm happy enough with 2.75TB for now. :) (2 1TB Seagate drives and one 750 that I actually b...

Jesse, I imagine you are correct. The article was so well written that I assumed that it was correct. All the information I ever saw in it was accurate with what I had already learned, and it presents the information in a nice graphical manner. Regardless of the complexities of how the video was sho...

Current battery, and even planned future batteries, are a terrible solution to electricity storage in a car. There will be no successful battery exchange systems despite Israel trying it on a grand scale.

Sorry, 1080i is two fields per frame making frames a full 1920 x 1080. On static scenes there is no loss of resolution because fields are simply added together. This gives you the full resolution of 2M pixels and the incredible detail that comes with 1080. When a scene is moving, there is a loss of ...

yeah, $100 oil just happened by itself. also multi year high prices for copper, platinum, gold and other commodities. no, resources can never get scarce, it's impossible. Umm, I already addressed that in my prior post: As one resource gets more expensive to extract, another with take its place. the...

I hate these stupid hippie arguments about how resources are getting depleted, how the earth is warming, and how the consumerism economy is the enemy. Get a life people. As one resource gets more expensive to extract, another with take its place. Such is technology and free markets. Look what all th...

Instead of getting a new CPU, you can undervolt your current processor to below that of a 45W processor. Many have gotten their 3600+ to run at 1.0V at full load which would be nearer 20-30W. Research crystalcpuid or RMclock.

When you blow the image up to 60 inches and sit 11 feet away then 1080p really does make a huge difference. 720p is pretty close but slightly softer. On my 40inch 1080p TV from 13 feet away DVD looks pretty good. But on the 60 1080p is clearly a better experience. To each his own I guess.

Let's let MikeC and Jan explain it. Linky

When I say that undervolting is like overclocking, I am indicating that it can cause instability and you need to run the same stability programs as if you were overclocking. Underclocking is the opposite of overclocking. I was assuming they could tell the difference between voltage and clock.

I highly recommend the Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 heatsink for low power HTPC builds. It is low profile, very cheap, and effective at low RPM. It cannot handle overclocked processors, but I use them in most of my rigs with great success. If you are looking at alternatives to the AC7, make sure that you...

It seems like it performs pretty much the same as the AC 7. I use the AC 7 on all my new builds as a replacement for the stock AMD fan. I have 3 systems running in my house, and 2 family systems. As a replacement for the stock fan in budget builds, you really can't go wrong. In my house it cools a A...

The current generation of AMD boards do enough acceleration to allow a 2.1ghz dual core cpu to decode the HD discs. Is this any different from using a current NVidia or Intel board! Intel does no acceleration for VC-1 or h.264, requiring everything to be decoded by the CPU. If you are using the che...

The current generation of AMD boards do enough acceleration to allow a 2.1ghz dual core cpu to decode the HD discs. Because that is the bare minimum cpu sold these days, (save a few single core semprons and celerons) I do not think I was misleading in any way. Anyway, it is my opinion that you are f...

Since you won't be able to game at 1080p resolutions with a 8600GT, I see no reason to step up to the 512MB version. You will be pleased. The scaling and deinterlacing is also much better than Intel graphics. Looks like you should have gone with an AMD rig. The integrated graphics all have built in ...

Oops. I mean the 4000+. It is $53 on Newegg. Not sure how much it is there? Get whichever chip you feel gives you more performance for your $, but stick to the 65nm chips. As for heat? it is not a problem with these chips. They are 65W processors, but they probably use more like 40W at full load and...

MoDT (mobile on Desktop) was popular around here during the Pentium D and 85W AthlonX2 era. It has pretty much gone away IMO since the new desktop processors use very little power. I would consider either a cheap AMD system (they have the same stepdown as their mobile counterparts) or an Intel syste...

The system that was playing the BluRay disk had an AMD 3850 doing all the decoding of the disc. Since h.264 BluRay discs use 10% of my S754 3400+, I would hope the new chip could handle that. In fact, I bet a 500Mhz P3 could handle that. As for 720p video, if the chipset has DxVA acceleration, which...

Well, if it is indeed between 2 to 4 times as fast as the old one at the same clock, then it actually might have a reason to exist and will finally be able to compete with the celerons embeded on the intel boards. That would make the chip competitive clock for clock with Athlon64s. For most tasks in...

I'm a little confused by your airflow. So the fan blows out of the case right? And the intake is on the back of the motherboard? So the airflow really doesn't flow past the CPU heasink. Would you get better temps and slower fan speeds by reversing the fan to blow directly on the heatsink?

Right, management had nothing to do with it. Always someone else to blame. Sure is convenient. Meanwhile I still see new American cars with huge pieces of paint falling off them. I suppose that's the unions fault too. Management had everything to do with it. Management makes all the decisions based...

laserred, You have a long way to go before you can ever understand the way a business works. Unions are killing themselves and pricing themselves out of jobs, there is no stopping outsourcing, if you do, the entire economy would collapse and cheaper labor would still win. The economy is moving from ...

But unfortunately it's the least intelligent people that are having the most babies. Actually, it is the least educated that are having the most babies. I'm not about to make judgments on the intelligence of people until I meet them or see them driving or acting like morons. Global warming lost all...

Ram doesn't really get hot under normal conditions

I hate these arguments on this forum. Everyone claims to know what they are talking about but in reality, nobody knows crap. Anyone that claims to know, is full of crap. It is a theory only 10-15 years old and nobody can claim that it is fact. Anyone who does is full of crap. SFTU everyone and leave...

Well, it looks like I'll be working on undervolting my server for full load duty tomorrow. I sure hope this doesn't ruin the stability. My single core athlons fold all day and complete in about 3 days. Can I run the SMP client on them and get more points?

I've been folding for awhile now, but I haven't kept up on the latest trends in folding. I recently got a 40GB PS3 (almost exclusively for movies) and I'm letting it fold for me when it is idle. I checked out my scores and I'm getting 1400 PPD on the PS3, which I am very happy with. My 2 single core...

What's it for? Gaming, HD video, simple OTA or QAM playback?

In terms of overall PC performance, dual core is king. Only people with specialized needs should ever buy a single core now. Cache and memory speed are so insignificant that it is almost not worth mentioning. Only when you get down to 128K cache and DDR2 533 speeds does it begin to make a significan...

You have to rethink your assumptions here. You stated that you wanted small because you think that results in quiet. That is simply untrue. The smaller you get, typically, the louder it gets to cool that equipment. With two equivalent systems, the one with the larger heatsink will generally be quiet...