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    Baldur's Gate 2 question about mages

    Wisdom is useful IIRC for bonuses vs Charm/Hold type spells. Characters with low Wisdom tend to get constantly enslaved :S Some point, but not a lot. You can shave points off your Charisma instead and grab the ring outside the first dungeon...it gives you a CHA of 18.
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    Was the Pentium 4 the worst processor design in history?

    You could get a K6-2 350 for about the same price as a P2-233/266. The processors might not have been as good as P2s, but bang/buck wise they stomped all over the Intel chips. I built my first PC on a k6-2 350, still have the board/cpu/voodoo3 in the closet. K6-2 was about bang/buck...
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    Opteron 175 for $19.10

    OMG Even more of a deal than the other opterons. In for a couple.
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    1gig Ultra DDR PC3200 $59.99 AR +ship

    I had this ram ALMOST running cas2.5. I picked it up on the same deal at Microcenter earlier this year. I tried running it at 400mhz cas 2.5. It would pass memtest but I got random lockups, about once a week. Especially Civ4. I clocked down to cas 3 and the problems went away. So...
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    Which OS would you use?

    700mhz Celery is plenty fast for WinXP. Just drop some cheap ass RAM into it. Spend the $20 and put another 256MB of RAM in the damn thing. 200mhz box - that's a Win98 box for sure. If it's an old lady she's probably going to ask other people for help. Stick with win98.
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    Who liked windows 98 back when it came out? POLL

    Yeah, I thought that was him. That's what brought this thread to mind. My win98 box seems pretty good so far.
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    Who liked windows 98 back when it came out? POLL

    Well, I got my win98SE box up and running. Celery 333mhz, Voodoo3, SBLive. It's not actually that bad. Driver installation is a bit annoying, and I noticed that when I tried to get to Windows Update it didn't work right (page cannot be displayed - microsuck must have moved the page). but an...
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    backlit keyboards

    Another recommendation for the Saitek Eclipse here
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    Any reviews of HIGH end GPUs with LOW end CPUS

    Agreed. In my experience, people spending gaming boxes spend too much on CPUs. This has always been true IMO. It really isn't needed. I'm still running socket 754 for my gaming: Venice 3400+ @ ~2682ghz + x850xt I'll stick with this until I need more CPU power for games - that'll...
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    Windows ME --- Socket 939

    Again, I say, who the hell cares how many bits it is, if it does the job?
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    Just go ahead and pick up a CRT?

    That boldfaced, linked part implies that all LCDs are better than CRTs in everything. You link to a story about an LCD which certainly has potential, but will probably cost ungodly sums of money. LCDs are better for text, consume less power, and have a smaller footprint, and have perfect...
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    I just grabbed a westy 32" (updated)

    Size > resolution for gaming I'd play games on my 800x600 DLP projector at 100" any day over my 24" CRT @ 1920x1200
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    Windows ME --- Socket 939

    Who cares if it is 16-bit, 32-bit, or whatever. There's no significant difference between 64-bit and 32-bit at this point, really, so what does it matter if it's 16-bit, or 8-bit like a NES? As long as it does what you need it to do, who cares how many bits it is?
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    Who liked windows 98 back when it came out? POLL

    I got nostalgic for win98, and so I'm buildnig a 98se box with my old k6-2/voodoo3 stuff. Just kidding. I actually got nostalgic for some DOS games that are flaky under DOSbox. Win98se will work great for playing the ol' DOS games.
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    How to reinstall windows in a new system?

    I've successfully done this in the past a few times. My wife hates it when I kill her Windows install. Last time I just popped out the old hard drive from her old KT133/Athlon 1.1ghz and plopped it into the new KT333/ 1800+ system. No problems. Of course I kept the video card ATI...so no...
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    Should I upgrade Athlon 2400+

    [Newegg has Biostar NF325-A7 nForce3 motherboard and Athlon 64 3400+ Socket 754 Processor for $90 + $5 shipping. This is a new Socket 754 core- It's Faster than 3500 and almost as fast as 3800 939. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...MP=AFC-SlickDeals&Item=N82E16813138247 Add mobo...
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    Help with nForce Socket 754

    It's not so much the motherboards as the CPU memory controller that don't like double-sided dimms. It'll downclock to 333mhz (PC2700) speed automatically. You might be able to overclock the RAM and get away with it, but it depends on the board/RAM/etc. A socket 754 Venice 3400+ will do it...
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    why is everyone suddenly assuming the discrete graphics business will be dead in the near future?

    I don't get it either. People seem to think ATI is going to drop out of the graphics market. Hello, AMD needs to make money from their acquisition, not lose it. ATI still needs to sell graphics cards.
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    Any s754 A64 Venice users?

    Highest I could get my Venice 3400+ overclocked Prime95-stable was 2.67ghz. I think I got it running 241x11.5 (2.77ghz) but I didn't like how much voltage I had to feed it (1.65v). A guy over in the hardforum socket754 club thread got his to 2969.3mhz but it was with crazy amounts of voltage...
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    ATI HDTV Wonder High Definition PCI TV Tuner $53.99 AR

    Good deal if you are in range for OTA HDTV. I am just a bit too far out to get most channels without crazy amounts of antenna aiming for getting a rooftop antenna. Too bad it doesn't do QAM :(
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    Who liked windows 98 back when it came out? POLL

    HAHAHAHA. You should see how WinXP runs on my dad's old K6-2 450mhz system. I brought it up to 384MB and it still runs like hell the minute it gets any sort of stuff installed in the taskbar. It takes so long to boot and so long to clean up Windows that it's been sitting on the floor in my...
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    X800GTO16 $110+shipping

    Yup, found a few sites with that card. Interesting.
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    Refurbished 21" Sony Flat Trinitron OEM GDM-5410

    Good deals on the 21" CRTs. We still use 'em at work, they are way better than the 20ms 19" IBM LCDs they've started replacing them with. I'm pretty happy with my 24" 16:10 FW900 for $200 (physical pickup). But $130ish shipped is pretty awesome for a 21" CRT.
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    24" Widescreen CRT (FW900) From Ebay arrived,Comments.

    :Q 2 FW900s for the win!
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    24" Widescreen CRT (FW900) From Ebay arrived,Comments.

    The Sonys are silver, which would definitely go better with my silver stuff. But for $200 I wasn't going to argue :D I know you can spray paint monitors given some care. Maybe I'll try it sometime. BTW Manufacture date is 2002-2003 according to the monitor.
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    24" Widescreen CRT (FW900) From Ebay arrived,Comments.

    Weird, well, here they are on imageshack http://img234.imageshack.us/my.php?image=monitor27jd.jpg http://img234.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newmonitor7ln.jpg
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    Need quick answer please! worth updating my video card to a cheap newer one?

    If you aren't gaming, there's no point to a new video card. They all produce video pretty much equally. Only way you should be considering a new video card is if you plan on playing HD video and getting one of the Nvidia cards with HD acceleration.
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    24" Widescreen CRT (FW900) From Ebay arrived,Comments.

    bump I just got one of these from the lady selling them in Macomb, MI on ebay...pickup only for $200. Took a 30 mile drive up from the hotel in Detroit we were staying in. Then drove it home in the car a few hundred miles north back home. Here's some pics...
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    Gaming @1920x1200 resolution. What kind of proc and video card would a system need?

    I just got myself one of those Sony 24" widescreen CRT monitors. I'm running 1920x1200 for Guild Wars with my vanilla x800 without a problem - thankfully it doesn't require that much power. I'm haven't tried Quake 4 yet, I have a feeling that's gonna be a bit more brutal. But since I have a...
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    Who liked windows 98 back when it came out? POLL

    This link19 dude is funny. Every post has the words "POS OS" in it. This thread provided a good 15-20 minutes of amusement :D 98SE was a very decent OS. XP is about the same. Most Microsoft OSes all suck about equally - maybe Windows ME sucked a little bit more. :D
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    Who liked windows 98 back when it came out? POLL

    My Win98SE systems were completely stable. Although they crashed once in a great while, it was normally just Internet Explorer crashing...games were stable and worked well, and decent DOS support. In fact, I've had more trouble with XP than 98 - although I've run XP longer, I guess. Once...
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    21" CRTs

    I know you said you prefer shadow mask over Sony, but you need one of these 24" 16:10 CRTs :D http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-GDM-FW900-24-F...5QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem There's a dude here in Michigan selling the HP version for $199. I just have to convince myself to do the drive to...
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    1gb Single rank ddr400 ram? (non-ecc, unbuffered)

    I could use this myself. My s754 Gigabyte K8N-E motherboard doesn't like my current setup of 2 512MB sticks of Corsair value select - they run at 333mhz. For 2GB @ 400mhz I need single-sided ram. As far as I can tell though, it doesn't exist. Oddly my older Nforce3 Gigabyte board had no...
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    BOSE AM3 Speakers 30% off- $199.99

    "Cheap speakers"? It's $150 freaking dollars for the ONE brand of speakers derided by any knowledgeable home theater person as being poor quality, overpriced, improperly-designed speakers. Friends don't let friends buy Bose. Buy ANY speakers but Bose. Try reading some of the...
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    Show your support for AMD or Intel.

    Cheaper Bang/buck is king with me. That said, I haven't owned anything but an AMD since my K6-2 350mhz machine. AMD's bang/buck is almost always better.
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    Any good 754 boards with PCI-E support and at least some AGP support?

    Just bite the bullet and buy a PCI-e card. Not like your 9000pro is really very good. Geforce 6200 cards have been available at $30-$50 after rebate lately. Wait for a deal on one of them for cheap.
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    Best SocketA performance?

    IMO you should do the outpost.com Sempron/3100+ deal. If you decide you're unhappy with the motherboard, it was basically free :D Nforce4-4x boards are a good upgrade path, too. Many have PCI-e with AGP support, be it partial or full. You could always ebay the outpost motherboard and get...
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    Any good 754 boards with PCI-E support and at least some AGP support?

    Yeah, you're probably OK as Sapphire was basically OEM boards for a long time. Still, something to keep an eye out for possible problems.
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    Any good 754 boards with PCI-E support and at least some AGP support?

    The Neo3-f is a good choice, but keep in mind that the AGR slot only supports certain AGP cards... The list is here, and I don't see your Sapphire 9000pro on it. http://www.msi.com.tw/html/products/mainboard/agr/7135agr.pdf MSI neo3-f review...
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    Saitek Eclipse TrueVu Illuminated Keyboard for $19.95 + tax (maybe) ARs

    I've always thought the spacebar was a little loud on it. But that tends to hold true for a lot of keyboards - it's a big key.