CobraA1

Reply to To 64bit or not to 64bit (need some advice) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]You may wonder why more resourceintensive games don't crash.[/quote] These days, the OS is partially responsible for stability. In the case of memory, modern OSes deal with low memory conditions by moving some memory to the hard drive when the memory is full. You may see a considerable slowdown when memory is full, but you shouldn't see a crash. Even when both are full, however, I've noticed that the OS will shut down the offending applications rather than crash the entire system

Reply to To 64bit or not to 64bit (need some advice) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]OP, you wont see a huge performance boost in games swopping to an x64 version of Windows, unless that game is specifically designed to take advantage of a 64bit system.[/quote] If the game is big enough that it's filling the 32 bit addressing space, then it's big enough to start knocking other applications and even the OS itself back to the page file. The more you prevent sending stuff to the page file, the faster your system will be. [quote]It should be noted that 64 bi

Reply to EU to Ban Pirates from the Internet? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]EA reserves the right to steal from it's customers, so why shouldn't I reserve the right to steal from EA?[/quote] Two mistakes: -Saying EA is stealing. Are they really? If they are, you can go to court over it if you want. -The whole "two wrongs make a right" philosophy. Sorry, but just because wrong to you does not give you the right to commit another wrong against them. [quote] Even better. Unlike cars, which have never been free and likely never

Reply to EU to Ban Pirates from the Internet? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Well, capitalism is going on a downward spiral and money will be cancelled eventually so we are not going to have to worry about this sort of thing.[/quote] Capitalism is an abstract concept - it cannot "go" anywhere, and is in no danger of going away. In fact, it is largely working as intended.

Reply to Pirates are eating themselves! in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]He's basically just saying that he's letting pirates steal his game because he can't do anything about it without hurting his sales.[/quote] Who in Stardock said that? Can you link to the post?

Reply to Pirates are eating themselves! in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]DRM is the one defense that creative people have, and Stardock has made a business, in part, out of not using it. Go figure.[/quote] Current forms of DRM have proven to be ineffective. The cheaters find ways around it, and the people who do not steal are often hurt by it. I am not saying that we should not attempt to curb the cheaters somehow - just that we need to find a new way of doing so because the current methods are ineffective. The solution should be two

Reply to EU to Ban Pirates from the Internet? in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

I'm wondering - how enforceable are the EU resolutions going to be? For people in the EU buying EU products it will be very enforceable. For people not in the EU buying products not in the EU, the EU doesn't care. But what about when the product is American and the person buying is in the EU, or when the product was made in the EU and the person is in the USA? This could lead to a lot of clashes over international law. Same goes with any other country - and th

Reply to To 64bit or not to 64bit (need some advice) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Since you are running a laptop, I wouldn't bother.[/quote] He's running 4 gigs of memory. He'd benefit from it, laptop or not. The specs look like they're 64 bit compatible (Core 2 Duo is a 64 bit chip), although being a laptop I'd be a bit worried about drivers for devices specialized for laptops. [quote]wow. so many people dont understand 64bit.[/quote] I would agree. Many people think it's just the extra memory, but a deep dive into microchip architecture, yo

Reply to Wow - tough game! in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Maybe I'll play the rest of the missions at the lowest level just to see what the plot is. I think otherwise I'll just play the sandbox games.

Reply to Wow - tough game! in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I was playing normal level, but the campaign gave me a very unbalanced setup.

Reply to To 64bit or not to 64bit (need some advice) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Microsoft is requiring 64 bit support for their logo program, so compatibility is becoming less of a problem. However, it still remains that some devices don't have drivers - so look for either Microsoft's certification logo, or even better it should specifically say it supports 64 bits. The biggest, most obvious benefit is access to more memory. If you're pushing the limits of your memory, yes 64 bit will help. There are some additional benefits, such as access to extra regist

Wow - tough game! in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Okay, so I'm playing the campaign, and I get a super-powerful ship, and I'm pitted against the Yor. At first, it sounds pretty simple: We're testing an uber-powerful ship. Wipe them out. Well, it turns out is isn't. I have two planets and they - well, they have the rest. Of course, I have to get the techs for taking over the planets, and they seem to research it (or already have it) at the beginning. Despite having the super powerful ship at the beginning, it just served to delay my demise

Reply to NVIDIA trumpets the death of the CPU in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Well there are a few problems with that: graphics embedded in motherboards is much lower performance than discrete graphics cards.[/quote] Tha gap is closing, though. The latest laptops I've seen are starting to come out with pretty impressive graphics. A year ago, I would've completely agreed with you. Today, though, it appears there is a serious push for better graphics on notebooks. [quote]Similarly, system RAM is much slower than graphics RAM, and the path from CPU t

Reply to NVIDIA trumpets the death of the CPU in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I seem to recall an article in a PC Gamer or the defunct GFW interviewing Gabe Newell (I believe) about the death of the GPU. Something about why have two processors when they can now be combined into one multicore processor. Why not have a multicore processor where 4 are cpu's and 2 are gpu's? One processor to rule them all.[/quote] I would agree - I do think it may be possible with multicore becoming the norm that some cores can be specialized. In fact, I think that's

Reply to NVIDIA trumpets the death of the CPU in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]One thing to bear in mind is that all the graphics card reviews now seem to focus on 1900x1200 and top performance GPUs. Lower (and more relevant for most people) resolutions mean that the CPU performance becomes a bigger factor.[/quote] Depends on what you're using the video card for. For videos, this may be true: A lot of video processing involves scaling, conversion, de-interlacing, decompression, decryption if you're using DRM, and a whole bunch of other stuff that v

Reply to NVIDIA trumpets the death of the CPU in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Please, it is a word processor. It requires very little in either GPU or CPU.[/quote] DirectX 9 has a limit of 65k for the number of instructions on each stream processor. Even word processors blew away that boundary a long time ago. DirectX 10 removes that limit, but it's still expensive to use the GPU to just do some processing without a lot of data, due to the way stream processors work. Perhaps a virtual machine or even just the OS itself is a better example

Reply to NVIDIA trumpets the death of the CPU in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I can foresee a merger of the CPU and GPU (multi-core processors with both GPU style and CPU style cores), but the GPU will definitely not totally replace the CPU. The GPU [b]will[/b] help a lot when you have a lot of data to crunch, but relatively few instructions. If you have very little data to crunch and lots of instructions, however, the GPU will be slower than the CPU. Much, much slower. For multimedia stuff it's great, but not for something like Microsoft Word.<

Reply to Programs need to play nicely with protection. in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] I use a router firewall and haven't had any problems for four years straight.[/quote] None that you know of, at least. Today's viruses and trojans are written for spammers, and generally try to keep very quiet about their existence. In addition, the vast majority of malware today is spread not via open ports as was done in the past, but by hijacking legitimate streams of data, such as a web page. This will easily penetrate the vast majority of firewalls. Al

Reply to So those couple of years where society collapses... in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Although I'm sure the defenses are in place for such things, one has to realize that the government has no interest in telling the population if such a thing happens. Because such things are nearly undetectable even after they happen means that in order to keep everyone from going crazy, they would keep it secret.[/quote] Well, an entire school would be difficult to keep it secret. I'm sure half the kids would blog about it as soon as they knew what was happening. And a truckload

Reply to So those couple of years where society collapses... in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]It also uses teams of people, who are themselves monitored, to check on changes in content.[/quote] Considering the scale of the project, they can only monitor a very small fraction of the entire project. [quote]Are you assuming that these people that allow the information to stay up are all corrupt or misinformed and that only you few guys know the real truth about how safe nuclear plants are?[/quote] Corrupt? No. Misinformed? A very likely possibility

Reply to So those couple of years where society collapses... in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]But here we yet again reach another difficult point: where will these alternative fuel sources come from? Ethanol? Shale oil? Hydrogen fuel cells?[/quote] Personally, I'm banking on electric and plug-in hybrids. It has the least number of problems, and can be implemented more quickly than other technologies. [quote]Nuclear power, anyone...?[/quote] Well, you can't fit it into an automobile, but it's certainly a good power source for electricity and could suppl

Reply to Questions to the devs > why ... ? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

The biggest problem is, frankly, that it even lets you [i]try[/i] to do it. It is rather silly that it allows you to try to do it even though it will never be allowed! [quote]The primary role of the colony ship is to colonize, so the only advantage of flying them out empty is to explore.[/quote] Or to go to a planet with extra population to get more settlers after dropping off settlers on a new planet. In any case, it's a minor complaint, but it is a tad annoying nonet

Reply to New Video Card in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

One thing I'm a bit worried about is developers just plunging into threads without knowing what they're doing. You don't actually want to divide any loop into a thread: The overhead will kill it if you're not doing much in the loop. There is a lot of overhead associated with creating and maintaining threads, so they are best used where there is a significant amount of computation is being done. Another thing I'm a bit worried about is that developers will get too bent out of shape with

Reply to Why PC Gaming is Dying in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]or would be ackward on a PC unless screens get much larger (Rock Band).[/quote] Well, most video cards created in the last couple years can be connected to a big screen TV if you wish. [quote]One massive game I personally still play is StarCraft.[/quote] Not to mention the "Battle Chest" for it is still available in most Wal-Marts. StarCraft is one of those games that is still on store shelves years after its release. Very, very few games can claim that title. M

Reply to New Video Card in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]512 ram nvidia 5200[/quote] Wow, and I thought I was a bit behind using a 6800 when everybody else was using 8 series and 9 series cards. By the way, the 9600 is a great card for a budget price. It's the card that finally convinced me to upgrade. [quote]And the tools abstract the difficult tasks these days. Visual Basic, Delphi, C++ Builder, C#, etc. The devs usually don't need to worry about the low-level stuff. It's a rare situation that even an application written in