The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I've invested 10 yrs with UPS. So suffice to say, I'm not leaving the company. Even if I stay part time. I have a much easier physical gig now. I handle packages that don't exceed 9 pounds. Bags rarely exceed 50.
Driving? Hard to say. If I found myself in a relationship, mother expecting... perhaps. Ultimately, I'd bite the bullet to support loved ones.
But for now, I work part time $19/hr, small apartment, and even save some money. I'm hoping to do some house shopping mid/late summer. I desperately need a garage, for both my truck, and other scientific hobbies lol

 

It's a good company. Besides driving - the guys who sort the boxes and load the trucks based on the route are very key - those boxes have to be in order when you turn around and go back to the truck or you will really be messed up. That never happened even once when I did the Christmas fill-in for them. Is that what you are doing - getting the trucks ready?

Hey, regarding buying a house - if you do get one, you might give some thought to trying to find a roommate to help with the rent. We have one here who's been here a good long chunk of time. We didn't get along great at first, but much better now.

 

May just have to play some GTA V tonight. Long over due blowout was done this weekend. She's cool as a cucumber
Anybody see the new HAF? I think she's sexy lol Sexy beast

I sort/bag the small packages. Bags that will be resorted by another building, or arrive at their final destination for delivery.
Roommate? Nah... I'm a loner lol

 

Hahaha - loner!

When are you going to give Arma3 a try - single-player loner way?

If you ever do, make sure you know how to do my "custom save" method, where you have all the saves you want, even though the normal scenario is only one save. It takes the game to a whole other level of enjoyment.

Like I say, the sorting at UPS is crucial - the drivers can't work without good sorting. That means you have each route perfectly memorized, right?

 

My bags are dumped wherever they go. And then sorted into cars depending on their route. So no, I don't have routes memorized lol

And it would appear my activation code for GTA V has been nuked. I bought the discs...
So I'll try saving the game saves, and reinstalling. One things for sure, I'll be damned if I'm purchasing it a second time.

 

Nawwww - that wouldn't be cool.



Man - I have to highly recommend Dishonored 2 which is totally a single-player game. With a little bit of Jeff's encouragement, I got it running in crossfire without glitches and full 2560x1600. My small amount of memory, 3 gigs, causes it to pause every minute or so to reload textures, but since the game encourages sleuth play over "kill everybody in sight" I am going kind of slow anyway. At "very high" quality just under ultra, I usually get about 28 fps, although in this mission it was generally low 20s.

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But I am going to post this wallpaper and here is why:

(Don't worry I'll post it bigger further below after a bit of explaining.)

This is the marksman scope?
​

I just went over to the gaming computer and got the latest screenshots from my fraps folder. I am going to post some screens about Dishonored 2, but first - when I went over to the gaming computer just now to get my fraps screenshots, this wallpaper was up. I have it cycling wallpaper every day or so - and somehow it got into my Arma3 screen folder. Here is the point of this screen.

This concerns my favorite single-player scenario, Operation Scotch Lass, about which I have extensively posted, for example here:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/threads/the-official-graphics-card-and-pc-gaming-thread.647383/page-477

If you follow that link, go down past your 9539 post, Kevin, about 20 posts down, the next one is long post 9540 with about 10 screen shots.

​

I used to be amazed at how it was possible for the enemy marksmen to be so accurate in their shooting.

For example, if I were way over there prone on that rock wall (open up to highest magnification and look at red crosshairs) firing at them with my high magnification sniper rifle, at least one of them was very expert at shooting me and wounding or killing me unless I got him first!

So I captured the above screenshot by going over to one of the guys that I had killed after he had wounded me, saw he was the marksman, and I tried his scope. You can see it is the same 2x zoom that you get even without a scope. I was completely puzzled for a long time.


How could they call him a marksman, and not give him a proper sniper scope?

Make sure you go to full zoom, and then go to the next image hosted on my website, for the full 2560x1600 image so you can see the rock wall I was lying on.


I am over on the rock wall, laying prone, and I have a high-magnification scope - how can he be so accurate shooting at me?


this screen will open to twice the size at full 2560x1600


But I am a complete dummy!!!!!!!!!


I just didn't know how to operate the scope!!!!


Recently, this year, in a different scenario, I accidentally triggered the intense zoom. I use the control key to go to crouch all the time for better aiming. Suddenly I had amazing zoom and I didn't even know how to turn off the zoom which in close quarters was too much!

So I did some googling. Using the scope, you HOLD ctrl, then you hit the scope key again. So yes, truly the enemy with that type of scope can see me just as well as I can see them!! Hahahaha

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GETTING BACK TO DISHONORED 2

The amazing thing in the last mission, was that you enter this decrepit enormous mansion - an entire state that has been left to go to ruin - owned by this guy who made his fortune off silver mining. He is holed up in a room, he's kind of a lunatic who doesn't know what is going on, and one gang has the code to the entrance, and they bring him plates of food shoved through the bottom of an impassable wire barrier.


When you finally get the code and go in, you can eventually go upstairs and then drop into his room where he is sitting by the grand piano, through holes in the ceiling boards. The whole manor was gorgeous 3 years ago, but today is a mess. At that point, the "outsider" arrives again - he is the one with the magic powers - and he gives you a timepiece with the power to go back in time, so that you can see what happened in the house 3 years earlier that brought the witch Delilah back to life and led to her recent seizure of your throne.


Here is the house as it is today, what a total mess!


this screen will open to twice the size at full 2560x1600


Here is the same shot as it was 3 years ago - it was gorgeous!



this screen will open to twice the size at full 2560x1600


At first I could not figure out how to get out of that room. But they have a directional square on the wire mesh blocking the entrance - the mesh juts out and protrudes beyond the two open doors. When you use the time power, the room returns to its former glory 3 years ago - the colors are brilliantly beautiful - but nobody is in the room, and the doors are locked.

So whether it is today, or in the past 3 years ago - you are trapped in the friggin room! And you don't have any of your normal powers - something about the mansion has made your power disappear, other than the one time travel power that you just received from the Outsider.

But why is that directional square over there?

I walked over and then finally my brain lit up. Wait a second, if I stand here right at the wire mesh barrier, I am actually beyond the open doors - let's go into the past. Sure enough, I am now outside the room. Friggin awesome.



Without activating the device, you can hit the F key and flare out a couple of fan-like blades, which show you the past if you are now in the present, or which show you the present, if you are now in the past.


There are so many guards everywhere, that it seems like the best thing to do is get rid of the ones out front in the very dingy weed-filled front gardens.


Unfold the time piece shows a guard and a dog in the front garden in the past - I have to kill the dog and then choke the guard


this screen will open to twice the size at full 2560x1600


The special use of the power called "unfold time piece" for me is on the F key - see lower right on the screenshot.

I am using the caps lock key for my powers - so that is the caps lock icon where it says "Transition in time."

(The mouse is for sword and for blocking. The caps lock is the key I have chosen for shooting guns or crossbow, or for using powers - depending on which weapon or power you have selected out of about 15 options, including laying down stun mines, throwing grenades, etc. The default was the C key for that, but I use that for the zoom instead. For sword I use left mouse, for blocking or for choking, I use right mouse, just as I did for Dishonored 1 about 3 years ago. The caps lock turns out to work pretty well for me - but once in a while when I start to run, I hit caps lock instead of left shift, and then I am screwed, haha. )​

Unfolding the timepiece works well for getting past the guards, who are in the past - there are a ton of them - you see them in the fan blades - then you activate the power and now you are behind them in the past and you can now choke them out which renders them unconscious without killing them. The timing has to be right.


(If it gives you the F - pickpocket clue - when you are behind them, you better do that first and pick their pocket, or the right-click mouse blocking/choking move might not work, and you find yourself with your sword in blocking position in a sword fight - and you might have to shoot the guy. So, trying to not kill anybody, I would have to go back to my save point. So after a while I starting looking for that and then I always did the pickpocket move if it suggested that - and then the choking worked okay. The extra second to do the pickpocket move was nerve-wracking but worth it - and that extra second was never a problem.)


And then things also get hairy when in the present, you are in an area with tons of blood flies that have moved in to the mess and established their nests. These are giant flies that will bite you severely - but in the past everything was gorgeous. So you have to be careful - you don't want to jump into the present to escape the guards and land in the middle of a nest of blood flies! You could easily be killed that way. LOL


It turns out that when you make the mansion owner go to sleep, he misses the seance, and he doesn't become a lunatic, and so now in the presence, the mansion is reasonably in good shape - but now there are workmen around and they attack you.

So that was a different twist - attackers in the present, attackers in the past - but hopefully not both in the same exact place.

When it came time to leave, I stayed mostly in the past, because I had mostly choked about everybody in the house.

Look at how awesome this house used to look - but in the new changed past it's still quite nice.



this screen will open to twice the size at full 2560x1600



The visual quality is one step below "ultra" at very high. I am getting fps in the low 20s - but it had a bit of trouble when I opened the fan - "unfold timepiece" and dropped to 10. That's okay - it recovers and I am able to play at the low 20 framerates without too much trouble. I directly compared "ultra" and it's hard for me to see any improvement in detail and color, etc. over what I am getting.

Nice visuals huh?

Rich

 

Omega, If it installs with Steam, you don't need the discs. I didn't know the hard copy of GTA V even did a discrete installation??? I thought it defaulted to Steam even from disc. Steam however, will save your ownership of the game forever if you remember your login credentials.

Got a rather okay tax return this year, so shopping I went Keep in mind I'm always hunting bargains and for a lot of stuff I don't mind ordering refurbed or open box, or in the case of this furniture, damaged shipping boxes, so reboxed by the Amazon warehouse. It's a bit of a gamble, but the chances of success seem to be far better than the chances of failure.

New computer desk and new AV/Stereo stand. Both very cheap <$100 but simple, sturdy construction and lots of positive reviews. Both of my current items are second-hand and sub-optimal for my specific uses. Current stereo cabinet is extremely closed and huge so bad for heat, space saving and wire management. My desk is a hacked up mod that started differently configured. Solid, clean and very sturdy, but a giant surface area. Very far out from the wall. Table-sized really. Takes a significant amount of floor area in my small room. I could have similar desk space with a narrower desk, thinner TV, and a solid riser. More room for my speakers, less sound blocking, get my TV back towards the wall. Open up the entire room. Lots of benefits there. Consequentially, I also bought a 40" long TV riser for the new desk that should work okay. LEDTVs are only 15-25lbs so weight isn't really a factor, but it's a pretty solid riser anyway. The Samsung monitor is heavier, so the new LEDTV outlined below should be great! lol

Replacing this aging 39" Coby CFL with a 43" TCL LED that gets good reviews and is a current 2017 design. Also supposedly very good color accuracy out of the box for some reason nobody can explain. Like almost perfect. Should be better than this thoroughly aged and dimming 39" Coby with color temp issues. Hopefully as well a little better quality than the cheap HiSense 40" LED I gave to my dad. The new LEDTV will also give me a little more power overhead as an always on device. The Coby guzzles power, and is in the neighborhood of ~120-150W. The newer TV should be somewhere around ~60-90W. CFL->LED, usually ~30% more efficient or in that ballpark for about 20% more viewing area.

The 43" TCL TV is getting on recommended lists for budget TVs and being reviewed well. Given the significant increase in viewing area, newer-ish display tech, and hopefully better colors and contrast, it should be an excellent display. I can deal with the loss in sharpness as the size increases. Like okay 50" would be way too extreme. However I can use DSR or heaps of AA and get away with it at 43". Even straight native resolution with no AA is fine. I really surprised myself with my tolerance for it. These TVs put up a mighty fine showing as a PC monitor. I love the huge cinematic experience. BIG sound and BIG picture. I always lean back when I'm gaming, so it's not like my face is in the pixels either. It totally stomps a monitor for movies, and is immersive for games, so I'll take the hit in pixel density.

 

Ditching the colby - you just re-activated it, and it had some pros the other didn't have, if memory serves me!!

Hahahaha

Just giving you a hard time Jeff - congrats on the new equipment!

Big picture and Big sound - what more could anybody want!!!

 

From disc, it never mentions anything about steam. Social club is really beginning to try my patience. I was glad when it was no longer necessary for GTA IV.
Says my activation code is already in use...
Opened a ticket with rockstar. How could I not? An installation of a $60 game shouldn't have a bunch of bull to go with it...

From what I've read, I should not count on a response...

 

Rockstar's customer support is legendarily bad. I buy games through steam because if I have any problems I can deal with steam. They have decent but not amazing customer support. It's workable. That really sucks though.

The pump on the H115i died today. Woke up this morning to my PC shut down from overheating. Put the H110 back in, booted up, re-applied my overclock. Everything's fine, *phew*.

Pretty disappointed. It performed very well, and had a higher speed pump. It made it what, 2 months? Will be RMAing it to try and get a new one. I have no reason to believe the older H110 pump will have any issues in the near future and the performance is still good so, whatever. Took my tiny knife and straightened out a few bent fins and threw it back in. Works fine.

 

Well, I don't play online. So I'll attempt to find a fix, for offline mode. That excludes Social club
In the future, I'll stick with steam. Even if I end up not getting, or waiting for better titles.

Well I'll be...
They responded in the early am. They want a screenshot of my failed attempt lol
Which blows my mind. I told them it said the activation code is in use.
They probably want to see the code I'm using...
They're not gonna like hearing I don't have the receipt anymore

 

Lack of a receipt may not be an issue. Did you pay with visa - there may be a record of the purchase that way. Maybe you went into a retail store. But if you have the disc - do you have the activation code on the back of the disc folder?


Wow, scary about that pump. Makes me afraid of water again. Good thing you had the old one.


Finally finished Dishonored 2.

The last mission was filled with witches. I took the gloves off and killed them all - the game had been scolding me, so I was playing nice guy for a very long time and choking everybody out but no kills.

The great thing about killing the witches is I activated my fake double to help out.

She is so super about rushing around trying to kill everybody. And when we're done she stays there for a bit, brandishing her sword, or just looking at me before disappearing in a puff of smoke. That was the most fun of the entire game!

I had a full game save before the first group of witches, and after completing the game I went back to that and played a lot more recklessly for hours with the doppelganger - the double. Someday I might post some more screenshots of her in action. I suppose the game ended cynically - but so what. It wasn't supposed to be Alice in Wonderland, was it?

I don't mind not killing all the soldiers - they were just doing their jobs. But I don't like witches. Hahaha.

Rich

 

Somebody on their website said they couldn't be helped, because they lacked a receipt. I'd wager it was a visa. Walmart.
But that was years ago. I rarely keep large quantities of cash on me. Yeah, I have both the GTA IV and V boxset. Each have their codes.
I'm sure rockstar doesn't like their product being resold.... I personally don't see the big deal. It requires "disc 1" be in the drive during play. Though I suppose there are ways around it lol

 

Rich, Glad you enjoyed Dishonored 2 Rich. I plan on tackling the Dishonored games eventually. The more good reviews I hear the more interested I am.

I'd be more concerned about leaks than the pump. There's enough built-in safety where at least a failed pump can be replaced. Honestly, I'm tempted to return to air cooling at some point, but it'd have to be a pretty beefy cooler, and also fit my mid-tower case. These AIO liquid setups just offer that much more performance for the dollar. Even the absolute best air coolers are not as good is this Gen1 H110. Intel CPUs love to run hot when you overclock them, so I'm much more comfortable with the temps it allows. IDK much about how AMD Ryzen runs for temps. Maybe it's less needy in the cooling department. I could drop back to my Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo or maybe one of the bigger Thermaltake, Cooler Master, or Noctua Coolers. There are some pretty decent air coolers out there.

Corsair have been making these AIO coolers for a while now so it's surprising that the absolute best unit in the line would have such an early failure. I mean yeah, the pumps have a finite lifespan, but we're talking 5+ years on a good example. I was forward thinking enough to set a temperature warning on my motherboard, and lucky enough to notice it was being reached and fix things before it caused damage.

The CPU seems fine, even though it probably did two or three 100*C shutdowns before I could diagnose heat as the culprit. Took it back to my OC settings and today enjoyed a 2 hour LAN session of Supreme Commander Forged Alliance with my friend. A pretty reasonably demanding game, and potentially very demanding in big battles with nukes being exchanged. No hiccups whatsoever.

Omega,

Considering the game gets updated regularly, it might be hard to find a working No-CD for your retail copy. Obviously we can't discuss any further on these forums, but good luck. I think Rockstar is more bothered by their game being pirated. GTA is one of the most pirated games, and GTA4 on PC historically had higher piracy numbers than sales for a while. It was pretty bad.

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Pretty excited about this new TV. It has 120Hz CMI so not true 120Hz but a processing effect within the TV. Will be interested to see what I can do with it. Have seen other TVs with similar tech and it actually looks quite convincing when done well. Combined with SmoothVideoProject, maybe I can get even smoother results than before It's also available outside of a software video player, unlike SVP. So could possibly benefit 60FPS games as well, something neither a real 120Hz TV nor SVP will do. A true 120Hz would need 120FPS to show a difference, while a 60HZ TV with interpolation only needs 60FPS to do its job. This means potential benefits with a much higher performance overhead.

The reason for its color accuracy is that it's an outsourced panel within its product line. It doesn't share a panel with any other TCL television. Somehow, they sourced slightly better panels for the 43" than the other TVs in the line. I can't complain. TCL makes some pretty good bang for buck TVs. Of course you get what you pay for, especially for longevity, but sometimes a company just comes up with a good design for cheap. Contrast and black levels are probably still going to be pretty entry-level. However, despite this Coby's advantages over the HiSense, the TCL panel has those advantages and more. It should be straight up better and more capable than the other TVs.

The reason color is so important is that, even though you can calibrate a TV somewhat, there's no way to make an inaccurate TV accurate. You can only get so close without killing some other part of the image. The best method is to simply get a TV that is as close as possible in the color department, then calibrate brightness and contrast and let it do its thing. The Coby is not okay in that regard, and needed to be calibrated with my colorimeter. The HiSense was okay, but all of my monitors have totally surpassed the TVs just in their stock form. From reviewer tests, this TCL is the closest I have seen a budget TV come to a quality monitor. Also, the Coby is well aged, and the CFLs are dim, which affect its abilities. When new it was noticeably better.

A good example, Lord of the Rings. Color is very muted and subtle in those films. With my 6 bit dithered to 8 bit Coby, it simply can't do the job. The HiSense was a little more reasonable, almost nice. However these films are ultimately going to look washed out and colorless without a very accurate screen. They look exceptional on my monitors. Particularly the Samsung. Gorgeous, vivid color with perfect saturation. If I can get closer to that with the TCL, I'll be happy.

In the end though, the biggest draw is the size. It's a rough 20% increase in viewing area over the 39". A significant increase when watching anamorphic films, which need every inch of screen you can give them. I needed to keep size practical for a computer desk though, so a 49" or the like would have been too large, and possibly too blurry/pixellated for desktop usage. I think 43" will be pushing my limits of comfort there. Will definitely need to recalibrate cleartype.

 

I no longer have my receipt...
I sent them a link to this forum, showing that I purchased it a mere 2 days after release. I'm hopeful that I can prove it to them via other means...
Surely they record the number of attempts against an activation code... until it's disabled of course.

 

It's like me doubting you on Metro - oh that game with freaks in a tunnel.

I was soooo wrong.

If you get them, and prices on the first one should have come wayyyy down by now - make sure to get the DLCs. I think there are 3 of them. At least 2. You should play them in order of course. In Dishonored 1 the gal you can play now (or you can play her dad) was a kid of about 12 - and pretty rambunctious at that. At one time she says "When I am Empress I can have two boats go full speed and crash into each other - can't I do that?" She was a kick. The first one had incredible flavor and tone - a lot of soul - it was VERY moving in parts.

This second one has my respect for some amazing innovations - the time thing - the blood flies - the domino power - the doppleganger. You can link several enemies with domino, then spawn your doppleganger, then get behind her and choke her out, thereby choking out your enemies. The first time I didn't want to do that, because I like her so much, but it didn't really hurt her - she respawned the next time I asked her to and didn't hate me at all!!!!

In one of the DLCs you can play as the bad guy Daud who actually killed the queen, and who is having incredible remorse over it. As him, you also play against the witches in "Witches of Dunmore" where you meet Delilah, the protagonist (does that mean villain?) in Dishonored 2. I actually did posts of that DLC it was so awesome.

Very smart.

By the way - would you guys be surprised if you heard me say that there is a new item on my To Do list with a "Do every 3 mos" timetable? And that item is "take the side door off the gaming tower, and unseat then reseat all hard drive cables (all 3)."

My Dishonored 2 did not want to work the other day, one day after a heavy workout on that mission with the changing time with all the screenshots. It crashed 5 times in 5 minutes. I thought - "Jeez, is there a friggin bug in this mission - that last one had me dropping major framerates whenever I opened that time thing up" but no crashing trouble at all.

At one point it did not want to load a quicksave - pausing and blinking loading, loading, but no progress. I had to kill the program, which crashed the computer.

In rebooting, there was one point where the boot was very slow - then finally picked up.

I said to myself - WAIT - a boot problem. Didn't I just go through that recently, maybe 3-6 months ago. What was the problem at that time?

Oh yeah, the paging disk, the blue cable to the small 250 gig xp drive (the other two are 2 TB enterprise) needed to be unplugged and reseated - at one time that drive dropped out - another time I got a warning that windows had created a temporary paging file. I keep my gaming notes on that 250 gig drive, and I had a hard time opening word at one time.

So I pulled the door off, unhooked then rehooked the drives, and the computer opened the program with lightning speed. I killed off all them witches without a bit of trouble!!!

Have you guys come across that before?

Kevin,

I think Jeff is absolutely correct. The fact that you have both boxes, with their codes, means you are not a pirate. It isn't the guys who might sell a used box - it's the guys who crack the activation and sell the digital game.

I think you should be able to prove that you are legit by a photo of your two game boxes with their codes. See if you can reach anybody in support who will let you email them something like that. Tell them you are a loyal customer who has spread the word about their games. I can certainly vouch for that. If it's a matter of somebody having stolen your code, then their own game server was cracked or hacked, and that is certainly not your fault.

Try to start a ticket and see if they will be kind enough to try to help out - that's what I would suggest. Good luck. The next time, I would try to get a game put under Steam - I know that guys have non-steam games and they somehow tie them into their steam, even if they play off-line. Like Jeff said, there may be a level of protection from doing that.

Now you've got my attention!!!


Hey Jeff, what does this mean:

Anna who? The queen of Siam???

Jeff your knowledge of graphics makes me feel like I was 5 years old - I was lost when you were talking about how the 120 hz monitor affects the visual quality of a 60 fps game. Say again - what ARE you talking about?

Damn right, Kevin, you were all over that game when it came out and I can vouch for that!


Sheesh! If anybody in the entire world was ever a GTA fan - it was you!!!! You got me playing it when I was stumbling along at 10 fps. LOL

Rich

 

Rich, SATA cables can be dodgy or become unseated over time. I use cables with locking clips and never have issues. However, sometimes I'll get a problematic cable in a batch, and it acts exactly like you described. Even if it's not an OS drive, it an cause hanging at boot, funky behavior, etc. I think you can safely assume, if it seems to have worked, then it worked. If it happens again, try a new cable. They're cheap.

Anamorphic is widescreen with black bars on the top and bottom, even with a 16:9 screen.

Anamorphic 2.35:1 is probably the most common widescreen aspect ratio there is. Most movies made are 2.35:1 or 2.39:1. It needs as much space as possible, because it does not completely fill a 16:9 screen as most TVs happen to be. Consequentially, it's hard to get that "BIG SCREEN" feel out of anamorphic films. You can of course zoom the image in to fill the screen, but you sacrifice both edges of the screen and potentially a lot of detail or action. Not only that, but zooming the film also makes the digital pixels larger and unmatched with the monitor's physical pixels. This makes it easier to see small artifacts and blemishes in the image and wrecks the clarity and detail. It's not ideal. So it's better to leave anamorphic untouched and simply buy a larger screen.

The other common widescreen ratio, 1.85:1, will almost completely fill a 16:9 screen, and is a much larger image. I get a better cinematic experience out of it currently due to my limited screen size. Hopefully the increase in screen area, will similarly help with anamorphic films.

 

True, I've had one bad Sata cable. Was not the snap/click style.

Looks like Rockstar helped me out. I suspect pointing them to this thread was compelling enough. Add on the picture I took yesterday of the open disc booklet, written email, and activation code, they reset my Social club account. And... since I reinstalled it, I have to wait for the 10.7GB to download. Says it will be done by 7 - 8pm. Depending on congestion of course. Which is fine, have to work in about an hour. Tonight is game night!

 

Yeah if they have any customer service at all, I'd say photos of the game and materials would do it.

 

That is awesome! I agree with Jeff - supplying photos etc. should do the trick - IF the customer service guys are at all sympathetic and suspect that you ARE NOT a pirate. So congratulations on getting that worked out.


Jeff, thanks for explaining that "anamorphic."

Yeah, I guess I should have put on locking clips on those sata cables - next time for sure whenever that is. In the meantime if I reseat them every 3 months I might be okay.

On the other hand, replacing the cables means pulling off the other side, and maybe even pulling out the graphics cards - at least one of them - the other end of the three cables are tucked way down there on the side of the motherboard and is a bi*ch to get to.

I just got my graphics cards set up so the monitor comes on for every boot. I have been hassling with that for 3 years. The cards are heavy, of course, and hang down in the slot. I now have them tied up to the inside top of the case, and I have a springy rubber band - a woman's hair band type of band, to supply steady lifting pressure on the card to keep it in the center of the expansion slot and keep all the pins engaged.

Plus the last time - two months ago - borrowing on what I had learned from the color printers in terms of making the ink cartridges register properly (I am refilling and using them over and over again) I used an eraser on all the contacts. The lower card heatpipe is tied to the upper card heatpipe, again with a similar rubber band supplying steady lift pressure.

With this new arrangement, the old problem of jiggling the dvi cable in the back of the tower to cause the card to move and seat better, in order to get the monitor to turn on - and occasionally having only one card engage not both - seems to have finally ended.

So I don't want to take either graphic card at all now that the monitor comes on each time. I'll just do the hard drive cables each 3 months on my timetable and cross my fingers. It's really easy to do - I could do it once a month if I had to.

But it definitely wasn't smart of me NOT to have used locking clips, and for sure I will remember that from now on - so thanks for the recommendation.

Rich