Aegrus

That's odd. Have you changed any pc settings in between before the lag spikes and after? Also, are you gaming in a different location than usual? (That question may seem a bit crazy, let me explain). If you were gaming in a well-ventilated area before, your cooling might have been fine- but if you've been playing in a badly ventilated area lately, your pc might be underclocking itself to avoid overheating. To continue on this tangent, if there are any fans in your desktop/laptop (whatever you have), are they spinning? Because a fan failure might also cause overheating. Finally, have you tried any virus scans? It's possible that you just have a pc virus. Sorry if this isn't helpful, I've never heard of this kind of thing happening before.

Ah, yes, MAG. I used to play that quite a bit- and it really is fun. One of the best Multi-player experiences on the ps3, IMO. I will never forget mowing down hordes of Valor players as they swarmed a heavily defended SVER fortress. . . near their entire team rushed us- I'd estimate about 100 Valor versus about twenty SVER, and none of them made it through the door. We called in artillery and rained fire on them from covered positions in every window in that building. . .'Tis one of my fondest multiplayer memories of all time. On the down side (and this is what made me quit- I'm not really sure if it's still this way, but it was when I left), every side has a different play style- but only SVER really used their play style. SVER is the close range, heavy damage offensive force. Their maps have minimal cover, their guns have tons of recoil and do a lot of damage. They're supposed to be the commando-happy side. Raven is the ranged and tech support force. Their maps have lots of towers, foliage, and hills. They have the best support devices, snipers, and ranged weapons. They don't do too well when they go commando, but a well organized team is near unstoppable. Valor is the cover-centric defensive side. They have the best LMG's and the most cover. All their bunkers have firing angles on each other. They're intended to be the strongest defensive force. The problem is, everyone when I was playing went offensive/commando, just like SVER- only that style doesn't work for anyone but SVER. Raven and Valor it seemed like always ditched their niches and tried close range rushes, because that's what most people naturally do in most online games, and SVER always had the advantage in close range blood-letting. So of course, SVER used to win nearly every match. It got so unbalanced that SVER got most of the player base on its side. Not being one to bet on a winning horse, I fled SVER, and joined Raven. I think I still have a level 20 sniper there. . . maybe I'll give it a shot again.

I'd say that's probably a good assessment. As much as I like the idea of really open world games, I just don't know if true, unrestrained open world is my thing. -You were definitely correct in recommending Fallout 3 and Borderlands. I have them both, Fo3 almost made it on this list, and Borderlands would have, if it hadn't just completely slipped my mind until you mentioned it. I think I finished Borderlands completionist like 5 times. . . :thumbsup: 500+ hours into it. . . Borderlands 2, I'm going to buy at some point, but I'm waiting for the price to drop a bit. I'll have to look into Torchlight 1 and 2.

Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. They were all fun, but for some reason I just couldn't get into them. I never really felt excited exploring Tamriel after the first 40 or so hours in each.

Hmm. . . yeah, I was looking at Guild Wars 2 a while back. Three questions- 1. Is there a hit chance? Meaning basically, if I'm across a room from a guy, can he swing his sword and hit me if he's targeting me or something? 2. When it eventually goes offline, will I ever be able to play it again? I know I wouldn't be able to play with other people, but does some kind of single player remain? Ordinarily, I'd assume no, but it seems a bit different from most MMO's. Story heavy, for one. (Which is good, IMO), and you pay a flat fee for the disk, no monthly fees. 3. Is there necromancy? Because I've been looking for a game that has some darker magic elements to it. I'm a bit tired of the whole "golden hero in shining armor beats the crafty villain to death with his enormous balls" cliche. :biggrin:

I recently realized that all of my most-played games have several things in common. Here's my list, in no particular order. . . (I know they're not all pc games, but I'm looking for a new pc game. . .) Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite Minecraft Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Drakan: The Ancient's Gates Medal of Honor: Airborne The Killing Floor Shadow of the Colossus Little Big Planet 2 Star Wars: Battlefront Dragon's Dogma Mount and Blade Demon's Souls Flow All of them either have open worlds or open maps- none are linear. All of them give you complete control over your character. Be it climbing, jumping, jetpacking, kicking, parachuting, rolling- or some combination of them- they all give you a wide range of motion and abilities. Basically, they mimic the types of things you could do in real life. All of them reward exploration- few of them have objective markers, but the ones that did, I always tried to disable for realism. I have neglected the level-ups in every game I've ever played, even the rpgs, instead focusing on better strategies to help me win. (Thus, I'm not fond of games with hit chances and no dodging.) Several of them have large bosses that you can climb on. My question is: are there any pc games that you think I'd like, based on the above list? And is there a genre that most of these fit into? (So I know what to search for, in the future.)

-My rig is very similar to the one we've been discussing, and a 700 watt psu wasn't enough for it, even with only my gpu overclocked. And my psu was supposedly stable. Your key phrase is "at that price range". Most other psu's at that price range at similar wattages have review sections filled with doa complaints. Consider that, while 650 watts may seem good enough on paper, a psu will lose about 100 watts in its first year of use. We're looking at a 550 watt psu here, and running a psu at capacity degrades it more quickly than running it with room to spare. What's more, this psu is only 85% efficient. Notice all the reviews that state their psu was doa or dead after a ridiculously short amount of time (like a couple of months), compare it to the percent of expensive psu's that are doa. (It's about double) Buying a cheap psu is always a risk. -Question about the listed case: why does it say under the details that it only has two fans? Are those just the ones that ship built in with it? Because I thought they were the possible areas for fans. -Edit- I just checked two power supply calculators. Without any overclocking, this pc (my suggested base with Fmod's revisions) will draw almost exactly 500 watts. Another gave me 550 watts without overclocking.

I agree with the changes I deleted from the above post. -But I had a cheap 700 watt psu, and it died in about a year and a half. Even well-reviewed budget psu's die much sooner (on average) than the more expensive ones. Reviews don't usually mention this because the reviews are posted soon after the psu is received. More expensive psu's last longer and output higher and more stably than they advertise. What's more, a 650 watt psu will not be enough for overclocking the parts in that pc. It's also not modular, so you run a serious risk of running out of cables. -The case you linked only has 2 fan locations- not nearly enough to sufficiently cool the other parts listed, especially if they're overclockd. It's also a mid-sized case, so future upgrading would be more limited than full sized, and there's a much higher risk of overheating and parts not. . .to put it bluntly, fitting.

Newegg is probably your best friend. Here are some suggestions. . . Video Card: 560 super-clocked is what I use atm. It has only about a 5 fps difference from a 560 TI. It can easily run Skyrim on ultra. ($170) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130661 Ram: This is very good Ram, actually. And for an amazing price. ($43) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144 CPU: This is a very solid cpu. 4 cores is the most you'd ever need for a modern game, 3.4 ghz will max most games if it's not bottlenecked. And since this is a blakc edition, it's very over-clockable. ($100) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727 PSU: This is my model of psu, but a line lower. It's modular, so you don't need to worry about running out of cables. ($144) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010 Hard Drive: 1 tb is plenty for most purposes. My gaming pc has a 1 tb hard drive. ($99) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148697 Case: Cooler Master builds large cases, good for cooling and compatibility. I'm not sure of the dimensions on this one- you probably want to look it up more. I think it comes with fans. Not sure, though. ($150) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119245 Mobo: AS Rock makes a very good motherboard. This should support the RAM (and then some), and has 2 pci-e slots. It also is listed to work with Phenom II cpus, like the one I listed. ($90) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157280 So, total price: about $800. I know it's more than you wanted to spend- but these are just suggestions. I fully expect you'll want to sub out some parts for different or cheaper ones. You want to run Skyrim on medium- this pc should run any game on ultra, so it's kind of overkill. I just mean these listed prices sort of as a guide. I'm sure you can find the same prices on sale for less somewhere else, anyway. But I think this is a good base to work with. (Assuming it works, and I didn't forget any parts or screw up compatibility, lol.)

Haven't been here for a while, so I haven't seen most of these posts. Thanks for all of the suggestions and ways to check! I've played hours of heavily modded FO3, FONV and TW2 on max settings, and nothing happened (other than the usual CTD's that occur occasionally in FO3 and NV). It ONLY happens in Skyrim. And still is happening. :pinch: (I've learned to save about every minute while in game!:D) It SEEMS to happen more frequently when I'm in the open world versus being inside a "dungeon" or city. I've been using CPUID Monitor for the temps and it doesn't appear to be overheating. The only oddity is that the GPU fan doesn't seem to be running very fast. And I do use CCleaner and Advanced System Care. I also checked all the drivers, but I'll follow up with bben46's suggestion to make sure everything is seated correctly. So I ended up contacting the manufacturer (IBuyPower), and they want me to send it to them. Interestingly, prior to buying this new computer, I was running Skyrim on a much older, two core Intel processor computer with a Nvidia GTS 250 card in it, and this never happened. Of course, I had the settings set lower, but still . . . makes me wonder. I've got an update that might be relevant- I said before that I used to have almost identical problems to yours. Well, sadly, while playing Skyrim, my pc shut off again- due to psu failure. I know it was psu failure because my psu sparked, and I smelled burning plastic. I had to replace it. It doesn't necessarily mean you have a bad psu- but that turned out to be the cause of my problems. It seems likely to me that that's your issue as well, since none of the other thing's you've tried have worked.

67 degrees celcius, but that's the internal temperature of my video card under load. It's 55 degrees celcius just inside my case, under load. I'm thinking I'm going to get another two fans, to be safe for longer periods of time gaming. It's probably fine as-is (I've heard of people safely gaming with far higher temperatures), but fans are cheap, and I'd rather not take chances.

Good news! I got my new psu and installed it today. I then proceeded to test it for an hour on the most demanding game I have- Skyrim, with high-quality enb effects enabled, modded above ultra- and my pc ran flawlessly. (Which is good, because Skyrim with the same settings killed my other psu in less than an hour.) I checked my temperature- it got up to 67 degrees, which is a little higher than I wanted, but not dangerous. It seems that my pc escaped damage from the psu failure. I suppose something might fail sooner than it otherwise would have, but it seems to be working well right now. GlaDos is back in business. :thumbsup:

Origin nukes my games- not kidding. I re-installed it just recently to give Battlefield 3 another go, and it gave me huge amounts of active x errors before corrupting tons of game files. I uninstalled it again, and the issues went away. Then my desktop's psu died. But Origin didn't do that. I don't think. :wacko:

My psu was a Cooler Master- I forget the exact model, but it had a 4 star average review on Newegg. Cost $120. Pretty much everything as expected for a 700 watt psu. Not great, but not as bad as most stock power supply units. But bad news- my psu smells like burnt plastic, which is to be expected, but my video card and motherboard also both do (albeit more faintly). I'll examine them more closely when college is over for the day, as it's possible they just absorbed the smell from the psu they were stuck with all night. (I wasn't able to see any physical damage when I opened up my pc and glanced it over before college this morning.)

In enb mods, the cpu will almost always be the limiting factor, since Skyrim is cpu heavy and gpu light to begin with, and most enb effects are mostly run on the cpu. For people with nvidia cards, I always advise enforcing ambient occlusion and texture filtering through their video card instead of using the enb mod's, to spread the load more evenly between the gpu and cpu. But that advice is no good for amd cards. . . I suggest you use an enb mod that comes with shadow filtering, if you aren't already. Shadows resolution is a huge fps hit in Skyrim, and, like enb mods, they also use the cpu (not entirely, but more than they should), so if you get an enb mod with filtering, you can turn down your shadow res a bit further without losing very much quality. I typically don't like to turn off enb effects like dof and ambient occlusion. They're big frame rate hits, yeah. But they also look pretty awesome, when turned well. Losing some shadow detail, I usually don't mind (as long as its filtered and not pixelated), because most shadows in real life aren't pristine and clear, anyway.

The unthinkable happened today. While playing Skyrim, my 700 watt psu (the one my pc shipped with) died. It started clicking, I smelled burning plastic- and a second before I could turn it off, it sparked and my pc shut down with a popping noise. I started to turn it back on- it seemed like it would boot (no odd noises or anything, and I got to the windows loading screen)- but then I got nervous, and turned it off again. My pc is currently unplugged. I can see no obvious signs of damage, but then, maybe there wouldn't be noticeable damages. I don't know. I haven't opened it up to check yet- I've just been looking in. I've already ordered a new 850 watt, modular Corsair psu with a 5 star average rating, but it's worthless if the rest of my pc is fried. Does anyone know about how often a psu failure damages other parts in the pc? Does the pc starting to boot mean anything, or could parts still be broken even if it starts to boot? I am really not having a good day. This sucks- I really like my pc. It's always been very dependable- in everything except Skyrim. I should have just replaced that psu the first time my pc just randomly shut down (the first time I played Skyrim), but it was so. . .sporadic. Sometimes it went months without anything bad happening. I just figured the crashes might be a bad Skyrim bug- since it only ever crashed on Skyrim, not even in more demanding games. But Skyrim can't make psu's spark via glitches, so I'm guessing it's just Skyrim's erratic power-draw that killed my psu. . . I just hope that power failure didn't take half of the rest of my pc with it. It's funny how you start to think of your pc like a person after a while. . . I named mine GlaDos. Seriously. Its/her system name was set to GlaDos. She even used a custom GlaDos sound set for Windows 7. It always outperformed what the benchmarks said it would, always ran cooler than it was supposed to, was always quiet, avoided even common glitches in games, always drew less power than it was supposed to, had a 3-second start-up. . . It wasn't a very strong pc, but it never let me down. I shouldn't have pushed it so hard. . . :( Ps, I'm posting this from my netbook. Thank god I at least still have some connection to the internet.

Yeah, I'm using Nvidia Inspector. I haven't been able to find any compatibility mode that works. Kind of odd, because apparently ME 1 ambient occlusion works for ME 3. I'd think that it would work for ME 2, as well, but I can't see any in-game. . . . Maybe it does work, maybe it's just really subtle.

I've been trying to make ME 2 look as good as possible. Sadly, I haven't been able to find an nvidia ambient occlusion compatibility mode to enforce that works for it. None of the modes I've tried show up in the game, though I have ambient occlusion enabled, and it works fine in other games. (I've tried Dragon Age; Origins, Dragon Age 2, Unreal Tournament 3, Mass Effect 1 compatibility modes. . .) Does anyone know what ambient occlusion I should be enforcing? Does it even work in ME 2?

Very simply, I'm wondering how a 560 Super-Clocked compares to a 560 TI. I think the 560 TI is better, but I don't know by how much. Having picked up a new 560 SC for $140, I think I made a pretty good deal, but I'm not sure.

I'm a little confused. Can games on this list have multiplayer, if we just liked them for the single player? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Dragon Age 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *2. Dark Souls (Doesn't really fit, as there is an online component, but I love the single player.) 3. Half Life 2 4. Dragon Age Origins 5. Mass Effect 2 6. Minecraft 7. Kotor 2; TSL 8. Mass Effect 9. Kotor 10. Oddworld 11. Morrowind *12. Sacred 2 (Again, probably doesn't count, as there is online play. . .which I just never played.) 13. Oblivion 14. Two Worlds 2 15. Stalker; Call of Pripyat 16. Penumbra; Black Plague 17. Skyrim 18. Homeworld 19. Neverwinter Nights 2 . . . I can't think of any others that I've played that deserve to be on my list right now. I'm sure there are a ton, but I haven't played all that many pc games.

Pretty much, 7xxx series cards can be overclocked higher than most Nvidia cards, but 6xx series cards are faster at lower overclocks. Seeing as most people aren't going to push their overclock to the limit, 6xx series cards will get better performance. However, 6xx series cards also run considerably hotter than 7xxx series cards. There isn't much of a power difference between the lines, though 6xx series cards use slightly less. If you're going to overclock a 6xx series card and you don't have great cooling in your pc, I recommend a Gigabyte model. They usually have a lot more, and larger, fans in their video cards.

A 560, 560 TI, or 660 would all be great choices. All three can max most games at good frame rates. If I had to pick just one, however, I'd go for an EVGA 560. One's on sale right now on Amazon for $130. http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX560-Graphics-01G-P3-1464-KR/dp/B007TMXFE0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1346487513&sr=8-4&keywords=560 It'll get about 50 fps in battlefield 3 on ultra, at 1080p. About 55 fps on ultra in Crysis at 1080p. . . .wha. . .holy. . .really? I may have to buy that now. I had no idea they were so cheap. I was expecting about $200-$250. :tongue:

Wait, people actually listen to Metacritic? I thought it was common knowledge that the admins tilt the scores. :whistling:

The Source Engine (Valve's go-to engine) is about as moddable as the Creation engine, and waaay better optimized. Entire chunks of it can be easily replaced to keep it modern. Valve tends to make their games low-spec enough to run on most pcs, so you don't often see what it can do graphically, but there are some very impressive Half Life 2 mods that show off its potential. The mods also run well, even on my modest pc. I don't think I'd mind at all if Bethesda switched to the Source Engine. . . but that's highly unlikely, since it seems like Valve has a complete monopoly on it.

People say that fire bombs work against the Taurus demon for melee players. Whatever you do, if you sit up on the tower for too long, he will jump up there with you. That is not good. It is in fact possible to roll between his legs- I managed it once or twice. Also, when he swings, try rolling back towards his weapon. The greater net velocity means that the weapon is over you for a shorter time, increasing the chance that it'll pass harmlessly over you during your brief period of dodge immunity. Btw, no, Dark Souls does not require near a $500 card to run. My 6770 is an $80 card, and it runs it smoothly at 1600x900. The most I ever get os a 1-2 fps drop when a new area is being loaded, and that's because my cpu is hitting the wall.