Aegrus

It's a good deal- but perhaps this is a better monitor for the money? It seems absolutely identical to yours, but a bit less expensive. Maybe it's the exact same one, but on sale now? Asus VE248H Black 24" 2ms Full HD HDMI LED Backlight LCD Monitor w/Speakers 250 cd/m2 10,000,000:1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236102 Price: $180 without rebate, $164 with.

I went on youtube today. Then I got trolled out. I wasn't even being offensive. Defending the superiority of the pc master race isn't offensive if it's true, right?

Right. Well, tomorrow I'll be dropping the 670 off at the local ups store so they can return it for a refund. If that goes according to plan, I'll save up a good chunk of cash, and then buy a 7950, a couple more fans, and a new psu all at once. No offense, though, but I'd rather not buy a 1000 watt psu for $100. It's a great deal, but it was either dao or blew up on a third of the people who reviewed it. :(

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware both put the 7950 at 1-5 degrees cooler than the 670, with the 7950 consuming slightly more power. However, actual users put the 7950 at about 15 degrees or more cooler than the 670- some up to 30 degrees celcius cooler- and I believe it, because the 7950 has 3 large fans built in. ;D I can't have a card that draws more power than the 670 with my current psu. . . but the $50 I save over the 670, combined with whatever I sell my 6770 for- would be a nice step towards buying an 850 watt psu. . . And the user reviews on the EVGA 670 are much, much worse than the critic reviews. Heating seems to be a serious issue with the 670, and I'd rather not see my rather expensive pc start on fire. Also, 670s crash- I know this first hand. If I go with the 7950 I'll lose enforceable ambient occlusion, but if I get a cooler running, more stable card in return, for $50 less? Who cares. Ambient occlusion is nice, but most modern games have options for it anyway, and most of my older games are pre-2005, and thus can't use it. The performance on the 7950 is a little worse than the 670, but they can both still run any game on ultra above 60 fps (with a 1080p monitor or worse, and mine is 1600x900), and I usually cap my games at 40 fps just out of taste, so this doesn't really affect me. (For some reason, 40 fps looks smoother than 60 to me. I heard somewhere that it's because at above 40, your eyes stop 'filling in' missing frames, but I have no idea if that's true.) And I couldn't be happier with my AMD 6770- It's reliable, and gets higher fps than benchmarks suggest. It's a little sad that it just doesn't have the horsepower to max many modern games. . . . I bought my 670 online, from Newegg, through amazon. Hopefully they'll let me return it without exchanging. Because if at all possible, I'll be gettng a 7950.

I have uninstalled the 670, and replaced it with my original Amd Radeon 6770. After looking at more reviews online, it looks like I definitely have a defective card- EVGA made quite a few, apparently. So many that they're upgrading affected people for free to the 670 FTW edition with their RMA process. Various people seem to be having similar problems as me- with their card getting inexplicably jumpy, often low performance in games that should be no problem to run. I got below 20 fps in the killing floor- the killing floor! My 6770 runs that at a stable 60 fps. I wasn't sure if my 670 was behaving normally at first, because I've never actually had a high end video card, so I had no idea what to expect. But it sometimes runs games worse than my 6770- and that is bloody impossible for a functional, $400 card, when all the benchmarks claim 60+fps in anything ultra, low power consumption (some say a little less than my 6770, in fact), and low heat. The card works for most people, and they've given it amazing reviews- but amazing hasn't been my experience with it- so I'm RMA-ing it for a new one. Fingers crossed. My psu is 700 watts, by the way. I would just buy another AMD card, because my 6770 has run great for a year now-no complaints, but a big reason for upgrading my video card were the enforceable Nvidia effects (like ambient occlusion).

"The fact of their existence does not presuppose an intelligent design by some absentee father-figure." I love how haughty Morrigan sounds when she says this. You can practically taste the loathing in the air. Also, I greatly dislike Leliana, so any time she gets verbally annihilated by my favorite evil witch, it's a good line.

:D THAT IS EVIL!!!! AND AWESOME!

Dragon Age II, by a long shot. Look, don't judge me. I actually loved that game! Male mage hawke- spirit healer- Merrill, Varric, and Aveline. Entire party maxed friendship, Merrill romanced. Sided with the mages. I had tears in my eyes at the end credits. Took me about 45 hours to complete (almost completionist), without the dlc. The game really is better if you play as a mage- the mage/templar conflict feels much more personal, then.

My EVGA gtx 670 appears to be overclocking and underclocking itself to extremes periodically. So, one minute I'll be getting triple-digit frame rates (like 300 in Portal, or 120 in Dragon age 2), and the next minute, my frame rate will die down to about 20 or less. A moment later, it picks back up. . .then drops. . .rinse and repeat. My hypothesis is that my psu and fans just can't keep up with the overclock, so the card declocks itself massively to stay within acceptable parameters. I know this because Speedfan and Nvidia inspector told me that I was using at least 97% of my psu's capacity, and my gpu temperature was 70 degrees celcius ( and climbing) after 20 minutes of gameplay. My question is this; why does my 670 overclock itself to such a huge and unsafe degree, if I can run games perfectly well at 60 fps? Does anyone else's card do this? As far as I know, they're designed to find a happy medium that keeps the frame rate as high as it can, while not exceeding cooling or power supply. So going to 300 fps, then crashing does not seem normal to me. (It crashed once- my entire pc turned off.) Using EVGA precision X, I have locked my frame rate at 40 and set my psu to never use more than 80%. It's been working fine since then- on ultra settings, the most stressful games never use more than 70% of my psu's power, and my temperature never even gets to 60 degrees celcius. And I plan to replace my psu and add two more 120 mm fans to the two 120 mm fans (and one 80 mm) that I already have, in the hopes of removing or reducing the power/temperature bottleneck. But I'd really like to know if my card is defective for those huge frame rate jumps, or if they just. . .do that.

Thanks for the advice, everyone, but I got it working. It just randomly was detected after I took it out and put it back in for a third time- perhaps because I cleaned my pc of dust this time? Seems to be working great now. I'm not getting below 60 fps in anything ultra, even with ambient occlusion and lots of anti-aliasing enforced. It's also quieter and cooler than my AMD 6770. This card is amazing. :D

1. Everything is connected and seated correctly. 2. I only have 1 PCI-e slot, but my other video card still works fine there. 3. How can I try this? My mobo is an M4N68T-M V2

Something similar used to happen to me in Skyrim- my pc would just randomly shut down (as though the plug had been pulled), about every hour. Sometimes it happened every 5 minutes, sometimes it didn't happen for 4 or more hours. The only real difference between our stories is that I didn't have to turn the powerstrip off then on- I just had to turn my pc back on. Eventually, after I made a bunch of modifications to my pc, it just stopped- so something I did fixed it. You could try re-downloading your drivers, or downloading beta versions of newer drivers. You could check Skyrim for corrupted files, you could download Advanced System Care 5 for free and use it to fix registry errors, and I know that some people used to have problems with Skyrim randomly crashing because of audio bugs. You might want to look that up. To test your power supply unit yourself, you could play a game with a similar fps to Skyrim for a while. If it crashes in that game as well, it's likely a problem with your pc/power supply unit. If it doesn't, it's probably just a Skyrim bug.

As the title says, my EVGA gtx 670 is not being detected by my pc, (it won't show up under my devices, and it's not outputting a signal to my monitor- but my chipset is.) My pc has reverted back to its integrated chipset. The card is properly seated and connected to the psu- my 700 watt psu had 200 watts of power to spare, even with the 670 installed, so power is no issue. The fan on the 670 even spins when my pc is on, but I only get 1 fps in games which I used to get 60+ fps in with a far inferior 6770. I have un-installed the old drivers from my AMD 6770, and I have done clean installs of the current Nvidia drivers, Evga drivers, and even the Nvidia beta drivers. None have changed the issue. I have tried disabling my integrated chipset in an attempt to force my pc to use the 670, but the 670 still didn't work- my pc just switched to relying entirely on my cpu until I re-enabled the integrated chip set. I tried to enter my BIOS to force the pc to use the 670, but my pc wouldn't let me enter my BIOS- by this, I mean that none of the buttons that are supposed to have brought up the BIOS actually brought up the BIOS. I'm really frustrated and miserable right now, as I don't have the cash to buy a new 670, but it's looking like this one was dead on arrival. Any help would be appreciated.

Edit- Feel free to move this, because I just realized it would probably be better off in pc gaming. Not sure, though. I upgraded my pc recently, so I'm planning on modding the living daylights out of Skyrim's graphics. I'd like to know, basically, if I'll be able to run it at a stable (capped) 30 fps or better. My specs; EVGA gtx 670 8 gb 1600 ghz ram. 700 watt power supply unit. ( No idea what model.) 1600x900 resolution monitor. AMD Phenom II 6 core at 3.2 gigahertz Graphical Effects/Mods. (I included only those that affect the performance. For example, Illuminated tree lod,lush grass, and enhanced blood would barely touch the performance, so I left them out of the list.) Full ultra settings (vanilla) Skyrim hd 2k Vurts flora overhaul Dense grass Boris Vorontsov's latest enb mod with all effects enabled, with high quality ambient occlusion. Xenius's Character Enhancement Ugrids bumped to 11. Tree, grass, and landscape shadows enabled. Higher quality lods. Smim. Better Dynamic Snow.

Is this a joke, because that seems to be a god pc. :teehee: You should have no trouble running pretty much anything on ultra with uber-sampling.

Oh, sorry. I missed the part where you said you already know about Dark Souls.

I can run Skyrim on ultra with no stutter and a considerably worse pc than your- I don't think your hardware is the problem. Perhaps consider capping your frame rate? The creation engine is awful for stutter.

Get the Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition when it release for the pc. Absolutely no handholding whatsoever. There was so little handholding, people complained that it was too hard to figure out what to do in the game. There are a couple messages on the floor in the area where you start that can tell you the controls, but even those are optional, and they only give you the bare minimum. The game is very difficult, open world (Skyrim is like a bubble, Dark Souls is like a spiderweb), and there are no load times after the main menu. Very immersive, very atmospheric. Some of the best graphics on a console game as well. After going from Dark Souls on the ps3 to pc Skyrim, (vanilla ultra settings), I was disappointed by Skyrim's graphics.

By default, it has 6 player co-op. It's not as polished as Left 4 Dead, but the maps are open, not linear. You kill a certain amount of enemies each round (more each round, with tougher enemies each round), and you get cash for each enemy you kill. At the end of each round, a fortified trader opens up shop somewhere, and you can buy better gear. Matches are typically ten rounds. At the end of all ten rounds, an ultra-tough Patriarch enters the map and the team tries to take down the boss. There are many difficulties- Beginner is just flat out easy. Suicidal is, well . . . really, really suicidal. There are tons of mods for it- there are so many modded maps, I've played for 300 hours and I'm still seeing new ones on occasion. Some modded maps include modded guns, enemies, and skins. There are also modded game modes that function differently than simple round defense. No mod installation is required, because all mods needed for a match are automatically downloaded and installed before the map loads. It's easy, but it can be quite lengthy if the host is using a lot of mods. Some modded maps can get up to 200 players, but you need a very strong pc to run those. With my AMD 6770, I can run the game on ultra smoothly in maps up to about 20 people. After that, I start getting lag. There are several classes, and as you level up, your stats with certain weapons types improve, and costs on certain weapons decrease. However, you lose your gear at the end of each round. There are a lot of skins to choose from, but most of them are dlc. If you bought a new copy of Red Orchestra 2, you get 2 free WWII era skins for the killing floor. I use the russian skin. It is awesome. Graphically, the game wasn't impressive, (not awful, but not very good.)However, the new hdr lighting makes it look quite a bit better.

I'll try it when it goes f2p. Otherwise, I'm not interested. They must still plan on keeping premium content, though, or they'd never make it f2p. It'd be both a noble, and severely stupid move on their part without lots of premium content.

When I played Oblivion, that topped my list. However, I then played Dragon Age; Origins, and that moved ahead. And then I played Mass Effect 2, and that was winning. And then I played Dragon Age 2, and that was winning. . . and then I played Kotor, and then Neverwinter Nights 2, then Morrowind. . (I know, the order in which I discovered these games is screwed up), and then Dark Souls, then Skyrim, then Kotor 2; TSL. . . among others. Looking back in retrsospect, my all time favorite rpg is Dark Souls. 1. Dark Souls- Amazing gameplay, tons of lore, no quest JOURNAL (there are still some quests- but no fetch quests :P) or objective markers, great interactivity, tons of hidden options, seamless open world, not n00b friendly, pvp and co-op online, New Game+. Many options; Crafting, upgrading, large variety of useful spells, various types of melee from fist weapons to swords to axes to spears and daggers and more, kill any npc (even the important ones), multiple endings, Covenants, archery (crossbows and longbows), functional hotkeys, bosses, transform into a dragon-thing (better than a werewolf), level ups don't affect loot drops, double-hand any weapon, no perks (real level ups). After the prepare to die edition releases, I may never need to play another action-centric game again. For characters and story, though, I'll stick with Bioware. 2. Dragon Age 2- Don't ask me to justify this. I know that, objectively, the game isn't great, but I loved the characters, and they made the game for me. My party was Merrill, Aveline, Varric, and a Spirit-Healer Male Mage Hawke. I got all of their friendships maxed by the endgame. I sided with the mages. 3. Mass Effect 2- Obviously it had to be on the list somewhere. I love you, Tali. Also, Mordin and Garrus. I bought ME 1, and plan to play it, then re-play ME 2 in order, so with that in mind, this game may move up in the future. . . not sure if I'm ever going to finish ME 3, though I'll try it at some point. I may just switch it off before the ending. Or I may force myself to believe that the human reaper in ME 2 was the main reaper, and ME 2 was the end of the story. :P 4. Dragon Age: Origins- It's only this low on my list because sometimes characters seemed to miss shockingly obvious implications to actions. Got a little frustrating. Also, the combat is rough at best. I wouldn't mind if it just weren't good, as it's not really a combat-centric game, but there are often animation bugs for me, which break immersion. Maybe it's just my copy, but I have to rate the one I played. 5. Skyrim- Quite good, but vanilla graphics are worse than Dark Souls or ME 2. Combat and lore appeal less to me than Dark Souls. Character graphics are good, (very good, with a little help from Xenius), but they lack dialogue and good AI.) Huge landscape, but too many load times.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is selling well already! It's in the list of Steam's top-selling games, and it isn't even available for download yet- just pre-order. Come to think of it, I may just pre-order it in a few minutes.

I'm not trying to say that Dark Souls has the best graphics or anything, or that it runs better than Uncharted. It definitely doesn't look as good as most pc rpgs. My point was just that, since the graphics are good for a console game, and since it's open world without load times, I don't think that bad coding is the reason it runs so badly. I attribute that to the consoles being outdated, and them being especially bad at running open world games. If the coding isn't bad, then there shouldn't be any reason why the game can't run well on pcs. Really looking forward to that stable 30- it'll be a huge improvement. Of course, Dark Souls runs worse and looks worse on the 360. So far, I've been referring to the ps3 version, which is the version that I've played. I agree that the 360 version looks pretty awful with its downscaled. . . everything, and stutters horribly, given the lack of cpu cores for which Dark Souls was built.

Some people will insist that you do have to kill it, but others will say they avoided it. Apparently, when you do enough damage to Sif (the wolf), his health hangs up with a tiny sliver left on your last hit, forcing you to hit him again, even if you should have done enough damage to kill him in one more hit. I don't know if he's actually one of the optional bosses.

You're missing some links, Rennn.