The Computer Thread

Ayyy, found something that didn't make it through the upgrade to Windows 10: Dolphin, the Nintendo emulator.

Well, the config folder did. But not the emulator itself or my games. Fortunately I only had two games, and not much progress in one of them.

My cursor has been freezing randomly all day.

Probably a problem with your mouse.

My wireless optical mouse will every so often decide it needs a change of scenery.

edited 11th Nov '15 1:19:33 PM by TParadox

My laptop trackpad has had a persistent problem with freezing, but while before it was kinda rare and all I had to do to fix it was wait a little it has happened several times today and it has needed a full restart to fix.

Okay, sorry for double post.

I think my cursor-freezing problem is somehow related to Malwarebytes. Should this be alarming? The scan still continues.

So MWB has been running for days?

No, but when I run it the cursor sometimes freezes. I hadn't run it for like a week and I'd had no problems of any kind.

Thinking of upgrading for Christmas, as I want to play Rise of the Tomb Raider once it's available on PC and have it run really well. While I'm disappointed by the 2013 game, what I'm hearing about the new one sounds like I'd really enjoy it a lot.

Anyway, 4K is out of the question, as we just don't have the power for it yet. But what might be good specs for a 2560x1440 computer? Also, not using Nvidia cards. They tend to cause weird problems for me at times, and some games crash more on them than on ATI cards.

Hmm. That's a good one. I'm not really sure about 1440p gaming, as none of the monitors I have support that resolution, though my card supposedly does. Lemme see... Yeah, this:

http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/6000/6970 does, but not through anything I can hook up to it. Max support on the HDMI things I have is 1920x1200p.

AMD's latest R9 3xx cards will suit you for 1440p gaming and higher, but be aware lots of them will be rebadged R9 2xx cards that they couldn't sell when they were the latest thing. Seriously, looking at reviews online for the r9 380, in particular, you see that all the stats are the same as they were for the R9 285 cards, or very (very) slightly higher. If you can get one, any R9 380 with 4Gb of memory should do you for quite a while of gaming.

Meanwhile I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. This bundle:

https://goo.gl/SdnxT8

comprising as it does an Intel Core i5-6600K processor (overclockable by design), a Z170 chipset motherboard and 16 Gbs of DDR 4 low profile ram, not to mention the free case fan, makes my current system look like it's from the Stone Age.

But it's a hella lot of money, which I can afford easily for once - I got a small windfall courtesy of some people I'd much rather not give publicity to - but it's still a hella lot of money. I've never spent this much on computer hardware in one go before and it's scary.

I like how my widescreen monitor is about as log as yours is tall. I don't have a computer; I have a Tic-Tac.

Is there a good website or forum where I can get help on finding out exactly what parts to use to build a good 1440p gaming-ready computer?

There's a few I can think of.

http://www.tomshardware.com

http://www.newegg.com - lets you pick your parts and buy them, or at least price check them before you get them elsewhere.

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-build-guide-high-end-gaming-pc/

And of course reddit's got some ideas.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

That should be enough to give you a better idea of what you're looking for.

edited 23rd Nov '15 8:47:35 AM by TamH70

Thanks! I'll e-mail those links to myself to check out at home, since I'm at work now.

Why does it feel like hardware requirements are just vomited out by devs any more.

"Oh these settings take 3.7gb of video ram, you only have 2 are you sure you want to use them?"

"Yes"

-Game runs perfectly with no video stutter, nor my hardware overheating-

Video games requirement stats have been abused by an unholy alliance of hardware makers and software suppliers for years. It's pretty much an open secret that stat inflation has only been done to increase sales of the latest kit that graphics card and processor manufacturers bring out, regardless of how well or otherwise the new game will run on legacy kit.

I'm not immune to this pressure either - I've went ahead and bought the bundle I mentioned earlier in the thread - and jumped forwards three whole processor generations in the process. I only really did so because I had enough money to afford it and this would be the only real occasion when I could do so in the foreseeable future.

The last time I upgraded my computer has been very good to me over the years. Honestly, things run really well on here for the most part, except some games need their graphics settings reduced a bit.

However, I still wanna upgrade, and do some 2560x1440 gaming as well!

Windows 10 just updated. As usual, trying to find on my own PC what exactly happened with this new OS is more trouble than I can be bothered with.

Anyone know how to get the Windows 10 update files off my machine?

Since I've told it I don't want to upgrade but they're still sitting there taking up the 3GB of space when storage is already at a premium.

This site may be of help. The guy that wrote it is a bit tinfoil hatty but in this particular case I don't blame him.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2983777/microsoft-windows/how-to-clean-the-windows-10-crapware-off-your-windows-7-or-81-pc.html

If this doesn't work, give me a shout and I'll see what I can do.

edited to add

Got my new pc bits today. I'm probably not going to be building it all into my case until at least the weekend. It looks like I might have to trade all the guts of my current installation in to get a newish decent graphics card - I've my eye on a Radeon r9 290x, but the shop that has it will probably have sold it by the time I can get stuff ready to trade.

edited 30th Nov '15 6:29:54 AM by TamH70

OK, I think something's hinky about the wifi adapter in my netbook. Since if the computer goes to sleep on battery power it loses the ability to connect to anything when the system wakes, and if I restart the system the MAC address changes. Oddly, this doesn't seem to happen if I do a shut down reboot rather than clicking restart.

So I guess I'm asking if anyone has any recommendations for USB wifi adapters or something.

Netgear do some good ones.

http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/networking/wifi-adapters/WNA3100.aspx for the more traditional thumbsticky looking thing.

and

http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/networking/wifi-adapters/WNA1000M.aspx

if you want something along the lines of a very small one. They're both 'N' Class wireless adapters.

Yeah, I'm looking for small form factor stuff so I can just stick the laptop in its case without too much trouble.

I guess the ideal would be something like this sort of thing.

edited 1st Dec '15 1:01:23 PM by Deadbeatloser22

Hey deadbeat, there is something wrong with your mac address. That thing is supposed to be permanent.

Yeah, but you have to be careful with nano adapters like that - they're hella easy to snap off if you're not careful. And when they go they usually take your USB slot with them.

I am aware of that fact. One reason why I'm pretty certain this is a hardware fault rather than a software fault.

When I say "changes" it seems to swap exclusively between XX:E6:XX:XX:XX:XX and XX:E7:XX:XX:XX:XX.

edited 1st Dec '15 2:17:22 PM by Deadbeatloser22