Posts by electricharbor30

fadedorca66 said:So basically everything flows through Canada, and once they hit that specific threshold—I think it’s around $45,000 if I remember correctly?—then 😁
will probably just vanish into thin air.

I mean, I think I saw someone mention somewhere that IPON is actually on NVIDIA's list of recommended retailers... if that's even true, it doesn't really sound like the kind of shop that would just disappear overnight, you know? Though, looking at their site, some items say IPON offers a 1-year warranty (probably because they're refurbished), while most other stuff lists the standard manufacturer warranty...

I was kind of thinking about just setting up a small business just to snag those discounts... I mean, I’d be paying taxes either way, but if I had a business entity, I could probably write off pretty much anything...

Regarding IPON, they’re charging 27% VAT; I just took a quick look at my receipt... I’d post it here for you guys, but my personal info is all over it and since it's a PDF, I can't really scrub it out without making a mess..

So, I went ahead and dropped some cash on that BitFenix Nova case through them last night... didn't break the bank or anything, came out to $105 total after shipping... since it's the weekend, I haven't heard a peep from them yet, so I guess we'll just see what happens on Monday—if they actually get around to processing it and when they might finally ship it out...

fadedorca66 said:Are you actually sure about that, or are you just talking out of your ass?

I mean, I'm probably just guessing here, but if it's anything like the PC market—which, like you pointed out, is basically all rebranding—it’s pretty much the same deal... with PCs, you might have one factory churning out DVD drives for like ten different brands, just with slightly different specs... I know that for a fact... so my hunch is that everyone does this with everything... maybe only the absolute giants actually own their own factories, but honestly, building your own plant is insanely expensive when it's way cheaper to just hire someone who already has one to build whatever you want... I think there are plenty of companies in the States that just get phones made in China to their specific specs and then sell them here on our market... I'm pretty sure even some local tech brands used to sell CDs or DVDs that were manufactured in China but slapped their own logo on them for sale here... basically, everybody plays the game, so I highly doubt TEAC is doing anything differently... as for that whole container buyback thing, I haven't got a clue...

Quote : The New Guy

Keith Gonzalez said:Hey everyone! 😁

Man, my buddy's graphics card just kicked the bucket. From everything I can tell, he's looking to pick up something new since he basically lives for gaming. 🙄 😁

I mean, I already said I was gonna go talk to some actual professionals about this. ☕ 😁

He was kind of thinking about... I guess this one's for you....

I mean, I guess we shouldn't be so sure, but honestly, it probably makes more sense to just swap out the old motherboard and the power supply at the same time.

So, I'm rocking this old MBO GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 motherboard for now. I don't see a link here, man. You gotta actually drop the URL if you want me to take a look at whatever it is you're talking about. I guess I can't exactly read your mind, right? Just post it whenever you get a chance..

My old power supply was a CORSAIR TX CMPSU-650TTX, standard ATX 2. I can't see any link here, man. You gotta actually drop the URL if you want me to take a look at whatever it is you're talking about. I'm just sitting here staring at a blank screen, so unless you've figured out how to send telepathic messages, I'm basically flying blind. Just post the link whenever you get a chance, I guess..

I mean, I guess I could try to help you out, but you haven't really told me what's going on yet, have you? It’s kind of hard to give you any actual direction when I'm just sitting here staring at a blank screen. If you're looking for tech advice—like if you're trying to figure out whether to pick up a GTX 950 or maybe an R9 270 from Best Buy or something—then yeah, hit me with the details. Or if you're having issues with your rig, like maybe some weird driver drama with a GeForce card or your MBO GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 is acting up, just lay it all out. I don't mind the long stories, honestly. Just, you know, tell me what's bothering you so I can actually say something useful instead of just guessing. 😁

Look, everything about that build seems totally fine to me. You could pretty much run whatever you want on that setup, and honestly, you could even throw more than one GPU in there if you felt like it... I guess. But you didn't actually mention what kind of resolution you're playing at, which is kind of a big deal, right?

I mean, honestly, that i7 920 box will probably hit insane speeds, maybe even pushing past 4GHz if you play your cards right... and if you're looking at a used one, the price should be pretty reasonable, I guess. $100I mean, it's fine, I guess, but you're missing that extra layer of protection underneath your board. $233 Nowhere to be found, honestly... if I could, I probably would have just swiped your rig for myself. 😬 Man, that computer is an absolute beast... and honestly, seeing that old-school Corsair power supply makes me a little jealous. I had one just like it back in the day, and man, those things were tanks. Seriously, don't you dare let anyone talk you out of keeping it; even with ripple sitting around 5%, it's still solid. Just let me know which monitor you're running and what the resolution is, and we can go from there.

darkowl72 said:@ electricharbor30:

Look, man, go ahead and shop wherever you want. Go right ahead and feed those overseas vendors your money. They have that kind of business model and they've had it for ages, and honestly, they stay in business because there’s always a fresh batch of suckers looking at bottom-dollar prices. We’ve got stores like that right here in the States too, if you just look at the ones that are always first to list everything, but then when you actually click the link—either the item is out of stock, or you have to "check availability," or suddenly the price changes.

And if you really want to make a joke out of it, I bet if you actually bought stuff from those guys, maybe you got lucky once or twice. But sending a disc through regular snail mail? I don't even know what to say... I mean, look where your little "savings" landed you. I haven't heard of anyone sending something like a disc through standard, unrecorded mail before. You could have at least dropped a few bucks on a tracked shipment so you wouldn't have lost it...

Take a look at Best Buy, I assume you've heard of them? Check out how things can vanish overnight and how people end up losing their shirts in an instant... I get the feeling those overseas sellers are headed down that same path. 😬

I'm not even going to touch the Sony thing. That idea that they're made in the same factory as what? Panasonic, Samsung? If that were true, it would be printed on the box, so why do you think it says Sony and why is it cheaper? Is this some conspiracy or like, insider info? Well, come on, share it with the rest of us then... 🤷

And finally, try to show some respect because 🙂

I was just giving an example of how my package "got lost," so I'm guessing the same thing happened to that lady... it only happened once and never again... I guess you live and learn, I suppose...

I didn't say Sony is the same as Samsung, I just said they probably use the same factories in China as Samsung, just likely with different specs... but Samsung sells its brand name, which costs more, just like how Apple charges those insane prices for their gear... you get three years of warranty on both, so you don't really have to sweat it even if something dies... but since that was from a local shop, if it breaks during the warranty period, you probably won't get another three years, even though legally you should have that right...

I already explained in my last post why I don't give anyone a single cent more than absolutely necessary, and I don't feel like repeating myself... the only thing I'm picking up on here is that maybe one of you owns or works at some local retail chain, which might explain why you're all rooting for them so hard...

Robert Rodriguez2 said:You don't know jack about this stuff, honestly, you haven't even figured out how to set up a basic config correctly... so yeah, feel free to go ahead and write your little manifesto if you want...

The thing is, anything you actually agree with isn't wrong, that’s just how it works, and you can act as high and mighty as you want, but the logic you're using to decide what's right and what's wrong is just straight-up nonsense.

I honestly just feel bad for anyone who might have actually asked you for help in person, because you've basically managed to screw over the boss, the whole precinct, and 3.1 miles the entire transit system...

No, I guess you're the one who's gonna teach me... let's slow down there, buddy, one step at a time...

Thomas Flores74 said:using a 32" HD Ready TV as a monitor, specifically a Vizio🤦

Yeah, a 720p monitor. I mean, honestly, only total noobs would try to pair a tiny 20-inch little screen with Full HD resolution and then pair it with some bottom-tier GPU that can't even push a decent frame rate at that res. That Vizio thing is basically made in the exact same factory in China as every other budget TV out there, but hey, it’s got a decent warranty, it's huge, it's got TV tuners, and those 20W speakers aren't terrible. Back when I had my first build, I could actually play stuff on medium settings, maybe even high sometimes, and now with my beastly AMD rig, I'm cranking everything to max details at a smooth 60 fps... I could probably play PES on this thing just fine too... unlike most of you guys, I actually know how to put together a properly tuned PC...

Timothy Kim60 said:BTW Meanwhile in Canada...

eDigital is hitting some whole new lows, based on the latest chatter over on the PC hardware forums:
- They’re playing dumb about not receiving phones sent in for warranty claims; it’s been six months and there's zero word from them. It honestly looks like the wife just didn't know how to fight back—she probably should have filed a formal complaint immediately.
- They’re peddling junk TVs. Apparently, through a technician buddy in Denmark, someone tracked a serial number and found out eDigital is buying and selling defective factory stock (which explains why they only offered a measly one-year warranty)

I mean, obviously you gotta take everything you read online with a massive grain of salt, but it seems like being shady is pretty much their bread and butter at this point. :klap:

Hmm, that sounds a little sketchy to me. I don't think any shop could actually survive with a business model like that, and honestly, nobody in the world operates normally if they're doing stuff like that. Like, if they're selling refurbished components, that has to be clearly stated. I actually bought an SSD from them once. It showed up factory-sealed, arrived in five days, worked exactly as advertised, and I even got a 5-year warranty—which was way better than some of the local shops around here that offer way less... I think people were talking about that too. My guess is the woman either bought a refurbished phone without realizing it, or maybe she just messed up the process, because if she had sent the phone in for warranty the right way, she would've had a tracking number and known exactly when it was delivered or not. On the flip side, I actually had a similar nightmare myself. I had a brand new HDD die on me after just a few days, so I sent it back to Best Buy. I sent it via regular mail without a tracking number, and the drive just vanished into thin air... Best Buy claimed they never got it, and I couldn't even get a hold of the mailman to figure it out. It was a total mess. So, anyone thinking that Americans in other countries are somehow inherently dishonest is totally deluded. You've got assholes, careless people, and trashy companies everywhere, and IMO, I'd trust a stranger overseas more than some local guy to not screw me over, just based on my own experiences with folks here... Not to mention, under US law, it’s supposed to be clear that you're entitled to a new warranty if things break during the coverage period, but half the time no one gives it to you and you practically have to sue them just to get what's rightfully yours. That doesn't seem to be an issue elsewhere, so nobody really brings it up...

So, yeah, it's a simple equation: stay sharp. Just be careful about what you buy and how you handle returns, and you'll probably be fine. If it says there's a shorter warranty or no manufacturer's warranty, just don't touch it...

I used to be that guy too, paying 20-30% more just to shop at a big-name retailer like Best Buy. I thought, hey, it's a major US store, they have locations in my city, it's convenient. Well, they screwed me over several times, and now I'm just sitting here wondering, what was the point? Who am I even giving my hard-earned cash to? You think they actually care about you just because you shopped there? Man, they don't give a damn about you—they're all just corporate drones. If I don't have to pay a cent more than necessary, I'm not doing it...

darkowl72 said:@ electricharbor30:

Man, you really gotta just let that stuff go, especially when it comes to an iPhone. I mean, which one do you even have? There aren't exactly a ton of shops around here, so if things start going sideways, you're kind of stuck waiting on shipping from overseas or something.

I guess if some local shop actually ends up being competitive with their prices and they happen to carry exactly what I'm looking for, then yeah, I'll definitely be recommending them. But until then...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118115

I mean, look at this thing... it's basically just a solid chunk of copper covering the entire CPU with like, a hundred little copper wires sticking out everywhere. Honestly, if you just melted it down and sold it for scrap, you’d probably make more than $13. And as far as coolers go, it looks incredible... it totally puts those modern heatpipe setups to shame, and honestly, it might even be better than them, not to mention how insanely well copper pulls heat away...

So yeah, there's a reason it's sitting at 100 bucks...

But hey, I guess that means I wasn't being too unrealistic after all, alright, thanks anyway...

Hey there! So, I’ve got this Gigabyte 880 UD3H motherboard where the primary PCIe slot seems to be totally fried or something. I mean, if I plug my card in there, the fans spin up and everything, but I just get zero signal on my monitor. It’s super weird because the board actually has two slots, and when I pop the card into the second one, it works perfectly fine. Anyway, I was hoping to get some thoughts on what this whole setup might be worth if I bundled the board together with my Phenom ii x4 955 and that Zalman 7700 Cu cooler—I'm really leaning towards just selling all three as a package deal. I might even toss in the POV GTX 275. as well. I already put a listing up on eBay for $200 for the trio, but I can't wrap my head around why nobody's biting... especially since I know a brand new version of my cooler alone goes for about $233 plus shipping from overseas. I guess I'm just feeling a bit lost on the pricing here. Any advice would be appreciated.

wiredotter14 said:anyway, the GPU isn't gonna fry your hard drive or anything, it'll just borrow some System RAM, which you can see right here (I'm running a 7850 with 2GB)

And I guess it'll just borrow system RAM from the hard drive too...

swiftfalcon89 said:So, I'm kind of stuck in this dilemma regarding the R9 380 card. I'm planning on picking one up, but I seriously can't decide if I should go for the 2GB or the 4GB version. I feel like I've read a million different debates and reviews online, and honestly, everyone seems to say something completely different. So, is that card actually beefy enough to make use of more than 2GB—like, maybe at least 3GB? I really don't want to waste an extra $30 or whatever on the 4GB model if it's just not going to utilize anything beyond 2GB. I'd be playing at 1080p resolution.

It’s pretty much the same logic as having RAM in your PC, I guess... like, someone might have 4GB, and once that fills up, the system starts hitting the hard drive, whereas someone else has 16GB, but if they're doing heavy photo editing where those RAW files are absolutely massive, even that might feel too small because drives are slow, so you're just sitting there waiting forever just to load a single shot... and usually, you've got a ton of photos to get through...

Following that same idea, games basically stash their textures in the VRAM, and typically every time you enter a new area in a game, it gets loaded into the VRAM... so, if you're playing these massive open-world games, or if you're cranking up the texture settings to high res—where you might need 4GB of textures ready to go—then yeah, you'll definitely see the benefit; otherwise, the system will just keep pulling everything over 2GB straight from the disk...

IMHO, like 99% of games nowadays are designed to use smaller areas, mostly because it isn't just about the textures, it's also about the server load when you're playing online, so you probably don't have a super realistic need for more than 2GB right now... though, you might stumble upon maybe three or four games, if not immediately, then maybe in a year or so, that actually could use it... I guess you just have to judge for yourself based on what you play... just check the system requirements for your specific games...

restlessorca14 said:Could someone maybe explain this 1TB HDD thing? I honestly don't get it, so I have no idea how to actually add one to my build 😁 Does that mean I need to change the whole configuration you guys suggested? Because whenever I type stuff into the Best Buy search bar, it just throws a million random things at me 🙂 I know my question sounds pretty ridiculous, but what else am I gonna do? 🙂

just go to www.amazon.com and type the components into the search bar...you'll see a list of those parts from basically every big retailer out there and you can see where they're cheapest...honestly, there's barely any difference in price between 500GB and 1TB, so it's probably way smarter to just grab the 1TB...anywhere you shop, really...also, when you're looking at drives, check the cache, because higher is better, and look at the RPM too, since more is always better...the WD Caviar series is built like a tank and should last forever, Samsung Spinpoint F# models are usually the fastest in their class, and if you want some newer tech or even some unproven drives, maybe look into the Toshiba P300 series...

A 720p build using an AMD setup, plus whatever mouse and keyboard you feel like picking

A 720p Intel-Nvidia combo, which I guess stays a bit quieter than the AMD option, doesn't collect as much dust, and doesn't really leave much room for upgrades later on, though you can still choose your own mouse and keyboard

The 720p AMD beast, which is probably going to be a total power hog and run pretty loud, but honestly, it’ll give you the best performance out of the bunch...

Timothy Kim60 said:Reviewers test hardware under identical conditions. That’s basically the whole foundation of the job. They list the exact hardware used, software versions, drivers, settings, resolution... If one guy’s CPU is bottlenecking his rig, or if someone else’s power supply is way too weak, that’s not on the reviewers.

You mentioned recently that you don't trust a single website or reviewer—wtf. Like, everyone does this just to screw people over. And the way your criteria for performance shifts from texture fillrate yesterday to pixel fillrate tomorrow, or GFLOPS today—be my guest, but maybe don't confuse everyone else with all that.

well, I didn't even really get what all that stuff was actually for myself, I mean, based on analyzing data in my head, I somehow concluded that GFLOPS were the most important thing... and I was right... then I started trying to calculate how you even get to that number and it turned out to be pixel rate times 48 clock per cycle... but then some idiots on Wikipedia changed the GFLOPS info, so I didn't know what to follow anymore, and then I stumbled upon an official document stating that clocks per cycle aren't even the same for all cards... and then I eventually found this site that cleared up all the murky stuff in my head regarding graphics... it explains everything perfectly and now I know exactly what does what... the Titan X will be faster at 4K than the Fury X because it has a higher pixel fillrate, but at lower resolutions, the Fury X is gonna eat it for breakfast thanks to its GFLOPS... obviously, assuming they're in the same conditions and both have decent drivers that can squeeze the max out of both GPUs in some unbiased game... it's all laid out clearly... and things will look better on the Fury X because of the higher texture fillrate... which has always been the hallmark of ATI, anyway, images look better there compared to NVIDIA... and as for reviewers, hey, believe them if you want, but I won't...

crimsonstag84 said:Nice job, you actually found one single instance where theoretical numbers might actually line up with real performance... and yet, you still haven't provided any actual, concrete gaming results. 👏

Look, nobody has perfectly precise performance numbers when it comes to gaming, because honestly, there are like a million different variables involved... I mean, I never said anyone should follow these specs like they're gospel, but it’d be pretty helpful to have some idea of what kind of hardware you're actually buying and what it's supposed to do... specifically, with the GPU, at least you know something, but everything else is just a total guessing game... you've got drivers, your motherboard, your RAM, your CPU, your monitor's refresh rate, how much background stuff the system is running, the OS itself, OS settings, even the game can behave differently on every single card... that's why I don't really bother looking at those random online benchmarks that some guy ran under who-knows-what conditions, probably not even professionally and maybe even biased... usually, I think you just gotta go straight to the manufacturer's website and read the data for the specific card you're getting, and normally, a ton of that info is buried, so this GPuzoo thing was actually super useful for me... I used to rely on Wiki, but that's public and some idiots out there just change the data whenever they feel like messing around...

Timothy Kim60 said:The whole thing is that Fury has way more GFLOPS than Titan (8,602 vs 6,144), which totally flies in the face of electricharbor30's little "GFLOPS matters" theory. 😬
I mean, nobody actually cares about that besides him (and maybe some console gamers here and there).

EDIT

Even if we look at the GTX 750 OC being about 30% faster than the GTX 460—using the HD7770 as a benchmark click, click—it’s pretty clear. Sure, they didn't use the exact same games in both summaries, but you get the point. I guess someone who isn't clued in and just follows that one site would be seriously screwed. Newer games might even end up hurting the old GTX 460 even more because of driver support (I think even the newer Kepler cards have been kind of neglected lately).

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/ASUS_G...4260183361190/

It basically works out that the OC version is roughly 20-30% faster....so, what's your point?

If you've got 1164 GFLOPS on a 750 OC versus 940 GFLOPS on a 460....how much of a difference is that really?

Man, just go take a nap or something, please...

Timothy Kim60 said:I mean, it's basically about 20% faster in actual gaming scenarios (+/-), but according to those links you sent over, it's supposed to be weaker, even though its "gflops" rating is like 5% higher. So yeah, that's why

So, what you're trying to tell me is that the older chip is actually faster? I guess I'd need to see an actual link to some test to believe that.

I just went ahead and did a quick Google search and stumbled onto this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rchy,4388.html

And based on this, even the 256-bit version is ranked lower...